When I wrote about the open letter on Iraq by a pack of academics yesterday, I thought it was shallow and lacking in direction. But I did not suspect any scams. Silly me. There were academics involved. Of course there was going to be a scam. Lawrence Kaplan at the New Republic offers background.
he New York Times ran an unusual editor's note last week. It alerted readers to the fact that the Times had asked Charles A. Kupchan, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, to review two books critical of President Bush's foreign policy. It also alerted readers to the fact that Kupchan serves as "an unpaid adviser to John F. Kerry's presidential campaign. Had The Times known of that affiliation, it would not have asked him to review political books during an election season." Times culture editor Jonathan Landman explained the decision to run the note this way: "We're not blameless. We didn't ask him if he has an affiliation."
Why should they have to? Because Kupchan is one of many Kerry foreign policy advisers who, publicly at least, decline to bill themselves as Kerry foreign policy advisers. They fail to do so even though they have signed formal agreements with the Kerry campaign making them exactly that, even though they chair or belong to the campaign's "policy teams," and even though, in many cases, they act as its surrogates.
Kupchan is one of the signers, and he is identified as "Professor of International Affairs, Georgetown University; Senior Fellow, Council on Foreign Relations". No mention of being a Kerry advisor, in a letter specifically critical of the Bush administration. I have no idea how many other Kerry advisors are on the list, left unidentified. But Kaplan puts it this way.
David Shipley, op-ed editor at the Times, says the question of campaign affiliations is "something we ask [contributors] pretty much right off the bat. Then we go through as many of the different shadings and levels of involvement as possible." As for the hundreds of media outlets with less stringent checks, if more than one foreign policy expert per page has kind things to say about Kerry, make an assumption: They probably work for him.
