What WAS he thinking?
“Flounder… You f**ked up… you trusted us!“
– Otter, Animal House, 1978
A lot of folks are scratching their heads about how a sharp operator like Gen. Stanley McChrystal gave carte blanche access to a Rolling Stone reporter whose all-too-accurate portrayal of the less attractive side of his command did him in.
I mean it’s Rolling Stone, what did he expect? Michael Hastings, the former Baghdad correspondent for Newsweek magazine, says he has no idea why McChrystal was so generous in sharing his innermost doubts and invited him along to witness the irreverent and sometimes contemptuous attitude of his top aides.
Hastings speculated to ABC, among others that it might simply be a character flaw, “a sort of natural kind of recklessness.”
I have another theory based on my 16 years of traveling with senior defense officials and military officers. Gen. McChrystal might have been under the misimpression Hastings would protect him, in return for the great access and candor.
The dirty little secret among beat reporters who routinely travel with top military officials is that there’s a unwritten code, a general understanding, that off-color jokes, irreverent banter, and casual conversations are generally off-the-record, or on the deepest of background, unless otherwise agreed upon.
Usually this is an informal understanding, especially when a group of reporters is traveling with an official, but sometimes it’s part of official ground rules, like for instance on the Defense Secretary’s official plane. All conversations are off-the-record, and if you want something on-the-record, you have to ask and get permission. This is to allow the Secretary, and his top lieutenants, to let their hair down and relax. It also gives the reporters a chance to get to know the officials and have unguarded conversations with them, information that can be very useful in providing context down the road. It makes the plane a welcome sanctuary at the end of, what is often, a grueling day. The plane policy began as an informal understanding, until one reporter blogged a first-person account of what it’s like traveling on the official aircraft, and mentioned that the flight surgeon was handing out sleeping pills to anyone who felt they needed them. This angered then-Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, and the result was a formal policy.
A formal policy would certainly have helped Gen. McChrystal, because the most explosive and disrespectful comments came, not from him, but his staff, none of whom were named in the Rolling Stone article. (That would be what we call background attribution, but not DEEP background, which would conceal their positions as well as their names.) And by the way nothing is ever truly off the record, unless it’s between just two people who trust each other, and one is dead.* SEE: AJR “Off the Record”
McChrystal may have been lulled into a false sense of security by his previous experience with military reporters, who stuck to the big issues, and didn’t embellish their stories with all the titillating tidbits of daily life of “Team McChrystal.” Hastings, after all had covered the military, and the war close up for a mainstream publication, Newsweek.
So why would reporters protect senior military officers from what could be career-ending self-inflicted wounds? One word, “access.” Access now, and even more importantly access later. No self-respecting reporter wants to give the military a free ride, but the best way to get future access to leave the impression you gave them a fair shake. So most beat reporters, who need continued access, are willing to forgo a momentary splash with a sexy anecdote in return for more access down the road, when they really need to know what’s going on. But the agreement is made up front. “THIS part is on the record, THIS part is on background, THIS can be reported.” If reporters think they are being manipulated, they can simply not agree to the terms.
I once had a senior commander, very senior, who would call me up and want to go off-the-record. I often resisted, but it was the only way he would talk to me. He would vent about problems with the Pentagon, and frustrations with his mission, and sometimes I could eventually get him to go on-the-record, and he would throw me a scrap I could report. Then I would see him at a news briefing and he would be toeing the administration line. I wasn’t a big admirer of his integrity, but it was valuable to know what he was really thinking, and I factored it into my reporting.
I have also been allowed to sit in on private meetings where military commanders conferred with national leaders. It was off the record, but again, provided insight that could help me calibrate my reporting, and say things I knew to be true with more authority.
No doubt some people will think this relationship is too cozy, that everything should always be on-the-record. In an ideal world that would be true. But the truth about anonymous sources is that while journalist purists decry them, often the only way some of these people can speak freely if they know they won’t lose their job for telling the truth.
Hastings really didn’t burn McChrystal as much as he did himself in with an excess of hubris, and a shortage of common sense. You might think he would have learned a lesson from the forced retirement of Ad.l William Fallon, who was portrayed in an Esquire magazine profile in 2008 as brazenly bucking the Bush White House on Iran policy. Defense Secretary Gates praised and buried him the same day.
And maybe some recall how in 1995, Pulitzer-prize winning reporter Tom Ricks, then working for the Wall Street Journal, probably curtailed the career of a rising commander Col. Greg Fontenot. Ricks was embedded with Fontenot in Bosnia, and reported some politically incorrect remarks the Colonel made in casual conversation, one a reference to the Bosnian Croats as racists, and another expressing private doubts the U.S. would leave Bosnia in 12 months, as scheduled.
Remember, the press isn’t the enemy, but we’re not your friends either. SEE: “Know Your Frenemy”
* off-the-rec•ord adj. 1. Not for publication, public disclosure, or reporting in any form–unless it’s really, really good.
PHOTO CREDIT: U.S. Navy Petty Officer 1st Class Mark O’Donald/NATO
Tags: McChrystal, Michael Hastings, Obama, Rolling Stone
