More Glenn Greenwald and Joe Klein

Glenn Greenwald keeps us up to speed:

Sen. Russ Feingold submitted a letter to Time protesting the false statements in Klein's article. But Time refused to publish it. Sen. Feingold's spokesman said that the letter "was submitted to TIME very shortly after Klein's column ran but the letters department was about as responsive as the column was accurate."
[...]
Rep. Rush Holt -- before he published his response in The Huffington Post detailing Klein's false claims -- asked that he be given the opportunity to respond to Klein's false column directly on Time's Swampland, where Klein was in the process of making all sorts of statements compounding his errors. But Time also denied Rep. Holt the opportunity to bring his response to the attention of Time's readers.
[...]
Let's just ponder for a second how lowly Time's behavior here is. It refused the requests of two sitting members of Congress, both of whom are members of the Intelligence Committees and have played a central role in drafting the pending FISA legislation, to correct Klein's false statements in Time itself. What kind of magazine smears its targets with patently false statements and then blocks them from responding?
[...]
[A]t least 100 individuals wrote letters to Time's editors protesting Klein's article and responding to its claims. I know this because that's how many people (at least) cc'd me on their letters, forwarded them to me, and/or copied their Letters to the Editor in the Comment section here. Managing Editor Rick Stengel's voice mail and email box overflowed with responses.

Nonetheless, Time -- while publishing 15 separate letters on a whole array of topics in its print edition this week -- did not see fit to publish a single letter about the Klein falsehoods. At every step, they sought to hide from their readers -- and continue to hide from their readers -- just how outrageous and severe were Klein's false statements by suppressing all responses.

[...]

[A] letter was also sent to Time jointly from House Judiciary Committee Chairman John Conyers and House Intelligence Committee Chairman Silvestre Reyes. Although they communicated with Time in advance and advised them that the letter was coming, Time has not published this letter either.

Rush Holt on Joe Klein

Congressman (and physicist) Rush Holt (D-NJ) weighs in on Joe Klein's factually challenged Time article:

I was pleased to see Time Magazine columnist Joe Klein acknowledge that he "may have made a mistake" in his column attacking the House Majority ("The Tone Deaf Democrats") and misrepresenting the RESTORE Act. Unfortunately, Mr. Klein still professes confusion toward the bill's contents and continues to question whether the House should have passed it in the first place.

As one of the bill's authors, I want to set the record straight about what's in the RESTORE Act, why it's needed to safeguard Americans from unwarranted surveillance, and ultimately, why it will lead to better intelligence gathering.

In his original column, Mr. Klein incorrectly wrote, "Unfortunately, Speaker Nancy Pelosi quashed the House Intelligence Committee's bipartisan effort and supported a Democratic bill that - Limbaugh is salivating - would require the surveillance of every foreign-terrorist target's calls to be approved by the FISA court, an institution founded to protect the rights of U.S. citizens only." It contains no such provision.

(Also, as someone closely involved in trying to produce a good bill, I cannot figure out what bipartisan House Intelligence Committee effort Speaker Pelosi "quashed" that Mr. Klein could possibly be talking about. Several Republicans proposed something close to last August's Protect America Act, but that never got anywhere.)

I'd certainly like to see more of this. When a careless journalist (who says he has "neither the time nor legal background to figure out who's right") misrepresents a Congressional bill and then calls its proponents "well beyond stupid" based on his ignorant misrepresentation, you've got to call him out on it. Loudly.

Glenn Greenwald on Joe Klein... Yet Again

Joe Klein has written a fifth piece about the pending FISA legislation. Glenn Greenwald brings us up to speed here:

In the last five days alone, Klein has now written five separate times about his FISA debacle, and is further away than ever from having any idea what he's even talking about -- first was the column itself; second was the Swampland post the same day in which he emphatically defended the accuracy of what he wrote in response to my post; third was the post yesterday in which Klein said he "may have made a mistake in [his] column this week about the FISA legislation" -- the understatement of the year; fourth was an Update he added to that post this morning claiming that he did speak to a Democrat but "may have misinterpreted a Democratic source's point" and "if [he] did, a correction will appear in the print magazine next week"; and now, his fifth effort, worse than the others, in which he still professes confusion after "spen[ding] the past few days nosing around in the ongoing dispute about what the House FISA Reform bill," and he then unleashes this: "I have neither the time nor legal background to figure out who's right."

I now know who Klein's editor for this piece was and I will have much more to say about all of this tomorrow. In comments to Klein's post today, the lawyer (and blogger) Anonymous Liberal quickly debunked the new, insultingly false claims from Klein about the alleged "dispute" over the meaning of the House bill. And the normally mild-mannered Ryan Singel of Wired today wrote his second post excoriating Klein's completely ignorant claims about FISA.

Thus, for now, I just want to ask that everyone ponder the extreme lack of professionalism and corruption required for someone like Klein to write the article that he did accusing Democrats of wanting to give Terrorists the same rights as Americans (therefore showing they can't be trusted on national security), and then -- once he is exposed for having spewed outright falsehoods -- announcing that he really isn't interested in bothering to find out if anything he wrote was accurate.

As my post earlier today here demonstrates, that is hardly unusual behavior for Time. But that doesn't make it any less flabbergasting, or repugnant. Doesn't it go without saying: if Klein doesn't have the time or background to understand what he's writing about, then he ought not to write about it? Doesn't anyone at Time agree with that?

I'm curious as to what Time magazine will actually do about this. My guess is that they'll do absolutely nothing.

I'm not a fan of the legislation myself, but people really need to either report on it accurately or refrain from mouthing off. Especially if they're ultimately arguing that something they don't understand enough to comment on is "well beyond stupid."

UPDATE: Joe Klein has now amended his fifth post, in an attempt to downplay his ignorance. Once again, Greenwald replies appropriately:

Klein has now returned to amend tonight's post by adding this phrase after his sentence about how he has neither "neither the time nor legal background to figure out who's right": "(ADD: about this minor detail of a bill that will never find its way out of the Congress)". This "minor detail" that he now wants to dismiss as irrelevant was the entire basis for his smear of House Democrats... he has now claimed, in sequence, that his false assertions were: (a) true, (b) disputable, (c) too complex and time-consuming to figure out, and (d) just a minor, irrelevant detail. Is this conduct not completely humiliating to Time?

Also, I really like this comment about Klein's choice of title ("FISA: More Than You Wanted To Know"):

Allow me to point out the condescending idiocy of the title of this post: this is not "more" than I want to know about FISA.

By your own admission, you have reached no conclusion about what the bill even says, and you don't have the "time" to figure out what it means. All you have told us about FISA is that you are utterly clueless about FISA, which I'm afraid everybody already knew.

As a politically aware, semi-literate American, I certainly want to know a whole lot more about FISA that this pathetic tripe.

Actually, the comments to this post are all pretty good. I highly recommend skimming through them.

Glenn Greenwald on Joe Klein... Again

Joe Klein issued a semi-apology ("I may have made a mistake in my column... Democrats say that I was wrong") for his sloppy ("Clearly, I didn’t do sufficient vetting of the facts") Time article on a pending FISA bill.

Glenn Greenwald responds. Again.

Now, let's wait and see if Klein issues a correction in the print issue of Time (rather than just this online blog "correction").

UPDATE: This Joe Klein quote really sums up his awful approach to "journalism":

People like me who favor this [NSA wiretapping] program don’t yet know enough about it yet. Those opposed to it know even less — and certainly less than I do.

Glenn Greenwald on Joe Klein

Constitutional lawyer Glenn Greenwald has an excellent article up at Salon about a particularly horrible Joe Klein editorial in Time.

This is the same Joe Klein who misdescribed the last FISA bill.

(While we're at it, I highly recommend Greenwald's article on AP photographer Balal Hussein)

UPDATE: Ryan Singel at Wired has another article up about this awful Joe Klein editorial. It's very refreshing to see people actually calling Klein out on this.