Posted by: mcq on Wednesday, October 24, 2007 Apparently Drudge has managed to get ahold of a transcript of a conversation that Scott Beauchamp had with The New Republic editor Frank Foer & TNR executive editor Peter Scoblic on September 7th. It is an amazing conversation. In it Beauchamp adamantly refuses to talk about the stories in question. Foer and Scoblic are understandably upset about that decision. There are some interesting comments by Scoblic in the beginning where he states that when the Beauchamp story was published he was on leave from TNR and didn't see any of this until he returned, but states that he can understand why there were questions. More than a little bit of a shot a Foer. Beauchamp comes off as an almost sympathetic figure in this. You can tell he knows he's screwed up, he's had an epiphany somewhere in the process and he has made a decision that he is done with anything to do with writing or the media. He claims to be totally dedicated to his job now (to be fair in all of this, his squad leader and a specialist from the PAO are on the call with him, but he tells Foer and Scoblic they're there - however it would be hard to argue his squad leader's presence wouldn't have some effect). Foer comes off as the heavy in this. He uses Beauchamp's wife (who works, or worked, for TNR) as a lever claiming to have gotten an email from Beauchamp's wife asking him not to recant his story. Pretty cheesy in my estimation. Both Foer and Scoblic get Beauchamp to cancel interviews with Newsweek and the Washington Post saying that Beauchamp owes them the right to control this story and its outcome. Beauchamp agrees. They also get a lawyer on the conference call in order to work out how they'll get the sworn statements released through military channels to Beauchamp so he can release them to TNR. He agrees to that as well. This was all on September 7th. Since then not a peep. Read the 3rd document as well. It's the summary of the official investigation. In essence is says the disfigured story is a total fabrication with no truth to it at all. The second story about the skull cap is also a fabrication, with Beauchamp admitting the only bones he found on site were animal bones. And lastly, as you might expect, the third story is also fabricated, i.e. the running over of wild dogs with a Bradley. Reading through the final document, it appears absolutely genuine (as does the memo from the battalion commander to Beauchamp appended to the second part of the transcript). As Drudge notes: Further the report stated "that Private Beauchamp desired to use his experiences to enhance his writing and provide legitimacy to his work possibly becoming the next Hemingway."And as we noted, to derision from some who wouldn't know a MRE from a COP, those with experience in both the technical aspects of the stories as well as the culture of the Army knew from the get-go that these narratives weren't right. We now await the promised word from TNR on their "findings" in this case. UPDATE: The docs are gone from Drudge's cite, but they can be found here. UPDATE II: Franklin Foer to the NY Observer: Mr. Foer said he called TNR's contact there, Major Kirk Luedeke, as soon as the documents appeared on Drudge's site. According to Mr. Foer, Major Luedeke told him that the Army was "investigating the source of the leak," though they did not explicitly take responsibility for it.Ummm ... leaks are only good when they show up in the NY Times and give away secret programs, huh? Maddening. In the meantime note that Foer doesn't dispute the contents or validity of the documents. |
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| TrackBacks | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Return to Main Blog Page | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Comments For This Post | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Previous Comments to this Post |
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Add Your Comment | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|
| Vicious Capitalism |
Buy Dale's Book!
|
