Split Decision

This morning I have a new piece out on the internal debate at the New York Times over the paper’s decision to endorse Hillary Clinton. The Times‘ editorial board initially leaned towards Obama. Big city newspapers across the country have all backed Obama. He’s racked up endorsements from the the Times-owned Boston Globe, the LA Times, Chicago Tribune, Atlanta Journal Constitution, the four biggest dailies in Texas and the Cleveland Plain Dealer. Ultimately, Times publisher Arthur Sulzberger Jr. decided to back Clinton. Read the full piece here:

John McCain vs. The New York Times

I have a New Republic piece out on the backstory to the New York Times’ long-awaited investigation into John McCain’s alleged connections to a lobbyist named Vicki Iseman. The piece goes behind-the-scenes as the Times reporters and editors debated for months whether to publish suggestions that Sen. McCain and Iseman had an affair in the late 1990s. An excerpt:

What happened? The publication of the article capped three months of intense internal deliberations at the Times over whether to publish the negative piece and its most explosive charge about the affair. It pitted the reporters investigating the story, who believed they had nailed it, against executive editor Bill Keller, who believed they hadn’t. It likely cost the paper one investigative reporter, who decided to leave in frustration. And the Times ended up publishing a piece in which the institutional tensions about just what the story should be are palpable.

Read the full piece here:

Crash Landing

On Monday, Colorado-based Adam Aircraft announced it was “suspending” operations after the start-up aerospace company couldn’t secure $30 million in short-term financing. In the September issue of Conde Nast Portfolio, I reported on the travails of Eclipse Aviation, another troubled manufacturer of ballyhooed “Very Light Jets.” Eclipse’s founder, Vern Raburn, has been an evangelist for this new breed of tiny private jet that he claims will revolutionize air travel. He’s scared up nearly a $1 billion in capital, but like Adam, Eclipse has been dogged by problems from the start. Will he be the next to crash?

State of War

Today, the Times reports that the Justice Department has issued a subpoena to reporter James Risen, to reveal his sources used for a chapter of his 2005 book, State of War: The Secret History of the CIA and the Bush Administration. The chapter, which never appeared in the Times‘ own pages, revealed the CIA’s efforts to pry open Iran’s clandestine nuclear program. State of War was a small book, measuring a slim 256 pages. But the book, and its author, have had a long and complicated relationship with the Times. In 2005, I reported at the New York Observer that Risen wouldn’t reveal the contents of his book to his editors. In the fall of 2004, Risen was steamed that the Times‘ editors had spiked his piece on the NSA’s secret warrantless wiretapping program, which he had reported with fellow Times colleague Eric Lichtblau. Risen left the paper on book leave, and quietly incorporated the NSA reporting into his book project. When the Times learned that material might appear in State of War, he forced their hand, and the story raced onto the front page on December 16, 2005, just days before the book hit stores. More from the NYO here:

Risen Gave Times A Non-Disclosure On Wiretap Book

January 23, 2006

BY GABRIEL SHERMAN

New York Times editors published reporter James Risen’s December account of National Security Agency wiretapping without having seen the manuscript of Mr. Risen’s book on the same subject, according to multiple sources with knowledge of the events.

Ever since the appearance of Mr. Risen’s Dec. 16 piece, co-written with Eric Lichtblau, rumor and speculation have surrounded the relationship between the article and Mr. Risen’s book, State of War: The Secret History of the C.I.A. and the Bush Administration, which was published early this month. The Drudge Report implied that the paper had timed the wiretapping scoop to promote Mr. Risen’s book; the Huffington Post fueled criticism on the left that The Times had stifled the story for a year out of deference to the Bush administration.

In fact, sources familiar with the Times’ Washington bureau describe a more complicated relationship than either scenario: When they decided to send the long-gestating N.S.A. piece to press in December, Times editors couldn’t confirm whether Mr. Risen’s manuscript contained the wiretapping story or not. In the end, they didn’t see the book until a week before it was in bookstores.