Annals of Intelligence

 

Director of Central Intelligence lies to Senator Ossoff.

Unsurprisingly, Pete Hegseth's first instinct was to lie about the thing, brazenly, and about the messenger, Atlantic's Jeffrey Goldberg, suggesting that he'd somehow made the story up:

“I've heard how it was characterized. Nobody was texting war plans, and that's all I have to say about that,” Hegseth said shortly after landing for a layover in Hawaii on a trip to Asia.

Hegseth criticized Goldberg as “a deceitful and highly discredited, so-called journalist who's made a profession of peddling hoaxes time and time again, to include the, I don't know, the hoaxes of Russia, Russia, Russia, or the fine people on both sides, hopes, or suckers and losers.”

“This is the guy that pedals [sic] in garbage. This is what he does,” he added.

It's true that Goldberg scooped a bunch of news about Trump's contempt for America's war dead ("Why should I go to that cemetery? It's filled with losers"), but it's not as if there were any doubt about the truth of that, given his publicly undisguised contempt for Vietnam POW John McCain, and World War II hero George H.W. Bush (shot down as a Navy pilot by Japanese), and the parents of Humayun Khan, killed in Iraq in 2004, etc. And if Goldberg was an early proponent, in summer 2016, of the idea that Trump might be a "de facto" Putin agent, he plainly meant not a Putin agent—

Poser

First issue, 1857, via Wikipedia.

OK, so one last moment of engagement with the saga of Kevin D. Williamson, because as it turns out the whole thing really was about one tweet, apparently, or Williamson's inability to give a satisfactory explanation of it to the Atlantic's editor-in-chief, Jeffrey Goldberg:

Specifically, the subject of one of Kevin’s most controversial tweets was also a centerpiece of a [2014] podcast discussion in which Kevin explained his views on the subject of the death penalty and abortion. The language he used in this podcast—and in my conversations with him in recent days—made it clear that the original tweet did, in fact, represent his carefully considered views. The tweet was not merely an impulsive, decontextualized, heat-of-the-moment post, as Kevin had explained it. Furthermore, the language used in the podcast was callous and violent. This runs contrary to The Atlantic’s tradition of respectful, well-reasoned debate, and to the values of our workplace.

Kevin is a gifted writer, and he has been nothing but professional in all of our interactions. But I have come to the conclusion that The Atlantic is not the best fit for his talents, and so we are parting ways.

Which was the one issue I hadn't really given a lot of attention to, interested as I was in Williamson's general tendency to dehumanize whoever he doesn't like, from African American children in East St. Louis, Illinois to the Trump voters of Hardscrabble, New York and Childwhelp, Kentucky, and the success with which he masquerades (like William F. Buckley, Jr., or Mr. Bret Stephens) as the kind of writer somebody like Jeffrey Goldberg might refer to as "gifted".

West of Eden: The Washington Playbook

Recess at an Aleppo elementary school, 19th century. Halep'de Bir Sıbyan Mektebi, Oyun Saati, Ottoman Archives.

Early on in the big Jeffrey Goldberg piece in the Atlantic on the "Obama doctrine" (as I said, it's got a lot more than David Brooks thinks it does):

Power sometimes argued with Obama in front of other National Security Council officials, to the point where he could no longer conceal his frustration. “Samantha, enough, I’ve already read your book,” he once snapped.

Mr. President, thanks!

I also loved learning that the phrase "stupid shit caucus", which I thought I invented in October 2014, was actually common currency in the White House around the same time, after the newly departed ex–Secretary of State Clinton gave Goldberg that interview in the August 2014 Atlantic complaining about Obama's failure to build up a "credible fighting force" out of the students and professionals who had led the peaceful protests against Assad in the beginning of the Arab Spring:

Insult or compliment? God knows.

William Blake, God judging Adam. Via SHAFE.

Everybody wants to be a critic—

Jeffrey Goldberg:

Critics of the Jews have often called us stiff-necked, but sometimes this insult can be understood as a compliment.

Yahweh:

Go up to the land flowing with milk and honey. You are a stiff-necked people. If I were to go with you even for a moment, I might destroy you. Now take off your ornaments and I will decide what to do with you. (Exodus 33:3)

Anti-Semitic or just snarky? You be the judge. Wait, no, better not. One thing for sure, faint praise is probably not a good sign.