Wednesday, January 11, 2006
James Risen: Inverting democracy and protecting his assets
Michael Barone quotes James Risen, who broke the NSA surveillance story, speaking on the Today show:
Like most people who believe that the President should order around the agencies and not the other way around, Barone can't resist dipping into the snark tin and taking out a big chaw:
Barone goes on to attribute Risen absurd perspective -- and we are in complete agreement that it is absurd -- to Risen's politics:
Far be it from me to argue with Michael Barone on bureaucratic politics and its interpretation by the mainstream media, but rank results-orientation may not be Risen's only problem. Risen, like many Washington reporters, has built his career with the help of his sources. He has spent years building up his network of middle and even upper echelon civil servants who will feed him stories and tell him what he needs to know to be a successful reporter in a very competitive business. These bureaucrats are a critical strategic asset for the investigative reporters who tap them. Isn't this the reason why reporters rarely tell their readers the really important thing about an anonymous source: his or her motivation? If they reveal the game, rather than the source, they are not burning the source, but they are making it angry.
Now, it is no secret that the career guys within the foreign policy establishment -- State, the intelligence agencies, and even DoD -- are furious with the Bush administration. Some of this is because these bureaucrats sincerely believe that Bush's dramatic departures from recent precedent are bad policy, but it also depends from Bush's attack on the accumulated relationships of mid-level guys at State and the CIA. These foreign service and intelligence officers have built relationships with the monarchies and autocracies in the Arab Muslim world over the course of their careers. Bush's strategy is to create the conditions under which all those governments will eventually fall to democratic elections. This has made all these kings and princes and generals -- including especially "allies" of the United States -- pretty angry with the Bush administration, even if they do not, by and large, express that anger in public. Isn't that incredibly threatening to the relationships that are so important to the careers of all those bureaucrats?
So, Bush attacks the value of the relationships that foreign service and intelligence officers have been building over their careers. They fight back by making every effort to frustrate the Bush administration's strategy. The Washington press corps takes their side partly because of their political views -- Barone is surely correct about this -- but also because the investigative reporters know that if the current cohort of bureaucrats leave the government in frustration and failure they will lose their most important strategic asset.
Risen: Well, I–I think that during a period from about 2000–from 9/11 through the beginning of the gulf–the war in Iraq, I think what happened was you–we–the checks and balances that normally keep American foreign policy and national security policy towards the center kind of broke down. And you had more of a radicalization of American foreign policy in which the–the–the career professionals were not really given a chance to kind of forge a consensus within the administration. And so you had the–the–the principles–Rumsfeld, Cheney and Tenet and Rice and many others–who were meeting constantly, setting policy and really never allowed the people who understand–the experts who understand the region to have much of a say.
Couric: You suggest there was a lot of power grabbing going on.
Like most people who believe that the President should order around the agencies and not the other way around, Barone can't resist dipping into the snark tin and taking out a big chaw:
What a scandal! Presidential appointees like Donald Rumsfeld, George Tenet, and Condoleezza Rice and an elected official like Dick Cheney were meeting together! How dare they? And they were settling policy! Astonishing! What will such people dare to do next? (emphasis in original)
Barone goes on to attribute Risen absurd perspective -- and we are in complete agreement that it is absurd -- to Risen's politics:
So that is the New York Times's idea, or at least this New York Times reporter's idea, of how democratic representative government should work. Unelected bureaucrats should rule. If the policies produced by their understanding of the region should produce September 11, they should still rule. Elected officials' jobs are to sit in their chairs, to meet infrequently if at all, and to accept the decisions of the unelected and for the most part unremovable bureaucrats.
At least so long as those bureaucrats' policy ideas are considered suitable by James Risen or the New York Times. One suspects that Risen's theory of government would shift completely if the bureaucrats opposed the policies he liked and the elected officials and their top appointees favored them. Then Risen might favor democratic government. But not now, not while George W. Bush is in office. James Risen: for democracy, but only if elections come out his way.
Far be it from me to argue with Michael Barone on bureaucratic politics and its interpretation by the mainstream media, but rank results-orientation may not be Risen's only problem. Risen, like many Washington reporters, has built his career with the help of his sources. He has spent years building up his network of middle and even upper echelon civil servants who will feed him stories and tell him what he needs to know to be a successful reporter in a very competitive business. These bureaucrats are a critical strategic asset for the investigative reporters who tap them. Isn't this the reason why reporters rarely tell their readers the really important thing about an anonymous source: his or her motivation? If they reveal the game, rather than the source, they are not burning the source, but they are making it angry.
Now, it is no secret that the career guys within the foreign policy establishment -- State, the intelligence agencies, and even DoD -- are furious with the Bush administration. Some of this is because these bureaucrats sincerely believe that Bush's dramatic departures from recent precedent are bad policy, but it also depends from Bush's attack on the accumulated relationships of mid-level guys at State and the CIA. These foreign service and intelligence officers have built relationships with the monarchies and autocracies in the Arab Muslim world over the course of their careers. Bush's strategy is to create the conditions under which all those governments will eventually fall to democratic elections. This has made all these kings and princes and generals -- including especially "allies" of the United States -- pretty angry with the Bush administration, even if they do not, by and large, express that anger in public. Isn't that incredibly threatening to the relationships that are so important to the careers of all those bureaucrats?
So, Bush attacks the value of the relationships that foreign service and intelligence officers have been building over their careers. They fight back by making every effort to frustrate the Bush administration's strategy. The Washington press corps takes their side partly because of their political views -- Barone is surely correct about this -- but also because the investigative reporters know that if the current cohort of bureaucrats leave the government in frustration and failure they will lose their most important strategic asset.
3 Comments:
By 
Cardinalpark, at
Wed Jan 11, 09:06:00 AM:
Equally stupid, by the way, is Katie Couric's completely foolish comment about power grabbing. You're talking about the guys running the USA - the President, Vice President, the Sec of State, SecDef. They don't grab power, they have it. More than anybody on the planet. No kidding.
What a fool. Kinda cute, but empty head. Except of course when it comes to grabbing the money -- over at CBS is my guess.
By TigerHawk, at
Wed Jan 11, 09:48:00 AM:
Couric's remark was so stupid it did not even warrant the effort of a fisking. But she isn't a real journalist -- she's a talk show host at best. Risen is a real reporter and has written a book on a serious topic. He needs to be called out.
By Counter Trey, at
Wed Jan 11, 12:00:00 PM:
