Gen. Stanley McChrystal is out. Rolling Stone and contributor Michael Hastings (ex-Newsweek, like me) are basking today in the professional glory of revealing information that shook the U.S. war effort in Afghanistan to its foundations.
The trouble over the snarky, Bud Lite-fueled remarks by McChrystal and his entourage over their civilian overseers on the Obama administration's national security team could have been so easily avoided. All it would have taken is three little words: "Off the record."
There is no excuse for McChrystal and his top aides not being aware of how news interviews work. If you don't mind remarks being published but you don't want them attributed to you, you simply say "not for attribution." If you don't want them to be made public at all, you say "off the record." The reporter is obligated by ethics, custom and professional reputation to sit on those remarks. They can't be used. Period. At best, if McChrystal and his people had gone off the record, Hastings could come no closer than writing vaguely that around the four-star general there was at times the impression of an attitude bordering on disdain for the competence of some unnamed civilians involved in the war effort. That way, McChrystal is left with the defense that he's not responsible for a reporter's mere, alleged impression.
It's astounding that the sophisticated soldier had not taken to heart what New Yorker writer Janet Malcolm once said about journalists: We are always selling somebody out. Give us a sword, as Richard Nixon might say, and we will carve you up.
McChrystal inexplicably was as clueless as the late, unfortunate Earl Butz, the Jerry Ford agriculture secretary who lost his job in 1976 after saying jocularly amid the camaraderie of a plane ride: "You know what the colored man wants? Loose shoes, a tight pussy and a warm place to shit." He said this in the presence of John Dean. Dean was not only the best-known American snitch of the 20th Century, he was then writing a piece on the 1976 Republican national convention for -- guess who? -- Rolling Stone. Butz knew this, but went ahead. Today, score another one for Rolling Stone.
From now on, generals are going to give a lot less access to reporters, and will be tight-lipped during any periods of access that are granted. That's a loss to the public.
And that's on the record.
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