How The New Republic Got Suckered

An inside look at scandal and the perils of publishing what one insider calls a “sociopath.”

By Richard Miniter

Just as the world was beginning to wonder if The New Republic had been tricked by a fabricator for the third time in the past decade, the magazine’s staff went to a party.

It was a going-away party for a longtime New Republic senior editor Ryan Lizza, but the staff seemed more interested in discussing the magazine’s immediate future. It was July 20 and the avalanche of questions about a first-person “diarist” piece under the pseudonym “Scott Thomas” -a direct threat to the magazine’s credibility-was starting to tumble down.

The staff gathered at New Republic Editor Franklin Foer’s Northwest Washington home. Foer asked them not to worry; the editors would investigate the charges.

(Bloggers at Confederate Yankee, Little Green Footballs and Ace of Spades, among others, as well as the online edition of the Weekly Standard, called into question the authenticity of a pseudonymous article, headlined “Shock Troops,” in The New Republic. In the coming weeks, Scott Thomas Beauchamp, the man behind the pseudonym would come forward, ultimately signing a written statement recanting his work for The New Republic. The U.S. Army has not released this signed statement, citing Beauchamp’s federal privacy protections.)

Later that night, Robert McGee, a then-assistant to The New Republic’s publisher, went looking for the host. He is curious what Foer thinks about the building scandal. He wants the inside dope.

He finds Foer on the front porch and asks as casually as he can: “So, what’s up with this?”

As McGee recalls the conversation, Foer immediately volunteered the standard answer: conservatives have an ideological grudge to settle because they perceive the magazine to be anti-war, anti-military and so on.

“He sounded almost rehearsed,” McGee said.

What bothered McGee about the conversation was that Foer saw the questions from the bloggers as a completely ideological attack. “Foer wasn’t acknowledging that at least some of the attacks on the [Beauchamp’s] ‘Shock Troops’ piece came from active-duty military members whose skepticism was factually grounded, and not just from stateside political pundits.”

Perhaps because McGee worked on the business side of the magazine on the first floor and not with the editors and writers on the second, Foer didn’t consider him a genuine insider-and therefore gave him the company line. But McGee believes that Foer was speaking his mind.

Then the conversation turned to Beauchamp himself. Foer told McGee that soldier-writer was “an articulate guy on the front lines.”

McGee disagreed, thinking Beauchamp “wasn’t that rare of an asset.”

The web is fat with currently serving soldiers in Iraq posting their views as well as the reporting of embedded journalists and retired officers. He told Foer that “the military bloggers were just as qualified, if not more.”

“At that time, my main reason [for talking to Foer] was that I was sympathetic to the military service members who had already weighed in,” McGee explained. “Sympathetic (a) because I felt their skepticism was reasonable on factual grounds, and (b) because I fully understood their grievance that Scott Thomas Beauchamp’s anecdotes — though written in the breast-beating tone of a first-person confessional — effectively attacked the professionalism of everyone around him, and not just the personal character of Beauchamp himself.”

Foer did not see it that way.

What Foer did not tell McGee was that Beauchamp was married to Elspeth Reeve, one of the magazine’s three fact-checkers (a point that the press missed too). So Beauchamp was effectively an insider-and would get treated as such.

That understandably human decision would have painful consequences for The New Republic‘s reputation.

The Cone of Silence

The New Republic has not responded to repeated phone calls from PajamasMedia.com.

Foer’s office voicemail indicates that he is on paternity leave until August 15. On the 16th and 17th, he did not return phone calls. What appears to be his home phone number-the only Foer listed in D.C.-has been “temporarily disconnected.”

Perhaps a cone of silence has descended. A longtime New Republic editor told me that she was not sure that she was allowed to discuss the Beauchamp affair, citing the magazine’s lawyers.

If the magazine had provided a full and immediate accounting of the incident, the story might look very different, full of mitigating factors and useful distinctions. It is a pity that the editors did not provide it.

But The New Republic cannot control the story. An insider-turned-whistleblower and the fabricator’s former fianc√©e, as well as other sources, have spoken to PajamasMedia.com-providing a plethora of new details that raise new questions.

Those questions include: Did the fabricator’s wife, Elspeth Reeve, fact-check her husband’s articles? Did her staff position make other fact-checkers go easy on him? Why didn’t Reeve’s knowledge of Beauchamp’s character and history make her skeptical of his work? (Remember the old journalist saw: “If your mother says she loves you, check it out.”) Did Foer’s friendship with Beauchamp affect the fact-checkers or provoke Foer to defend him in the face of mounting evidence? And, why was the whistle-blower the only New Republic staffer to be fired? Finally, what does the magazine intend to do to ensure that it does not get fooled again?

The Monday After

The Monday after the party, at the magazine’s offices, Foer was locked in a long serious conversation with Leon Wieseltier, the bear-shaped intellectual who has run the magazine’s literary section with distinction since 1983. They were talking about Beauchamp. Foer couldn’t understand why anyone would just make things up.

Wieseltier did. “Maybe he [Beauchamp] is a sociopath.”

As new details about Beauchamp’s strange private life emerged, Wieseltier’s initial assessment would prove to be on target. Wieseltier did not return phone calls regarding the incident.

Meanwhile, a floor below Foer and Wieseltier, McGee was about to make a controversial and momentous decision, which would soon cost him his job.

He had just learned that Elspeth Reeve (a reporter-researcher at the magazine) had a husband who was somehow involved.

He decided to post anonymously to three different blogs-discardedlies.com, Little Green Footballs, and Ace of Spaces (www.ace.mu.nu) -that the accused fabricator was married to a New Republic staffer.

“I avoided using Reeve’s name, referring to her only as a “TNR staffer.” Also, I initially said that ‘the staffer’s husband is either ‘Scott Thomas’ himself, or possibly one of the soldiers who is corroborating the claims in the article.’ (I didn’t phrase it that way out of coyness; I simply didn’t know for sure how Ellie’s husband was involved.)”

What he did not know: Reeve is a fact-checker for the magazine. Did Reeve fact-check her husband’s articles? So far, The New Republic has not publicly addressed that question.

McGee’s leaks would continue as he learned more. On July 25, “I first leaked Ellie’s [Elspeth Reeve’s] name late Wednesday evening, in a private email to the guy who runs the Ace of Spades.”

At roughly the same time, unknown to McGee, the magazine was busy trying to find who was leaking this damaging information. It wouldn’t take them long.

By the time Reeve’s name appeared on the Ace of Spades blog on Thursday, 26 July, The New Republic published a letter from Scott Thomas Beauchamp, revealing his real name and defending his work. Beauchamp did not admit his wife worked at the magazine and neither did The New Republic, at that point.

But McGee’s posts were not the magazine’s only worry. “I wasn’t a source for the Weekly Standard,” he says dryly.

The conservative weekly had launched its own investigation.

How Culpable is Reeve?

In the days after the party, Elspeth Reeve received the sympathetic attention of editors and fact-checkers at The New Republic‘s offices. They did not blame her for escorting a fabricator into the magazine’s inner sanctum, who hoodwinked them and body-slammed the magazine’s reputation, according to McGee. Apparently, they did not ask what responsibility she might bear.

Reeve certainly knew enough about Beauchamp’s strange history of lies to lead her to be careful of his journalism or to speak up when other editors fact-checked his work. Beauchamp’s odd personal history directly bears on his credibility and on Reeve’s fiduciary duty as an editor to flag potential problems.

Reeve is not talking to the press, most likely on orders from editor Franklin Foer or the magazine’s attorneys. Yet it is possible to reconstruct what she knew about Beauchamp.

I tracked down Beauchamp’s former fianc√©e in Schweinfurt, a town near a U.S. Army base in Western Germany. Her name is Priscilla. She didn’t give her last name. She describes herself as “half German, half American.”

She knew Beauchamp well. He had proposed to her in August 2006 and she was very close to his family and his Army buddies. While heartbroken lovers are not a wholly disinterested sources, in an exchange of emails she comes across as pretty generous and fair-minded. “I don’t really know what to think about him now. He is so different. The time with him was wonderful, but maybe just lies.”

In another email, she writes: “Well, I think he is a good person, but, he is not sure what he wants. He makes stuff too much in a hurry and doesn’t think about it. Sometimes he is very philosophical and looks for reasons, what is life about …. blah blah blah.”

While clearly hurt by Beauchamp earlier this year, she is not consumed by a burning hatred of her former beau. So the rest of what she says should be weighed carefully, not least because it reveals what TNR fact-checker and wife Elspeth Reeve knew about Beauchamp.

Reluctantly and indirectly over a string of emails, Priscilla reveals a recurring pattern: Beauchamp was repeatedly willing to deceive those close to him to reach his goals.

By age 23, he had been engaged three times to three different women whom he did not marry.

Or consider his relationship with the Army. Priscilla writes: “He hates the army. The only reason he joined was because he wanted to have more experience to write about.”

Oddly he was secretive about his intentions to serve his country. “He didn’t even tell his mom he joined in the army. One day before basic training he left a note on the table for her…”

It is telling that he did not talk to her face-to-face, but simply made his admission and vanished.

He is manipulative. “He is very charming and he can convince people very good and he tries to make his side very clear.”

He is ambitious. “He always wanted to become a writer and he has a huge imagination,” Pricilla writes, without irony.

In another email, she notes: “He always wanted to write for The New Republic and so he thought the ‘Iraqi Diary’ is a good start and he could keep writing for them after that.”

Beauchamp wrote his first “Baghdad Diarist” for The New Republic, in January 2007, while he was still engaged to Priscilla.

Priscilla believes that one of the reasons that Beauchamp was interested in Reeve (and ultimately married her) was her position at The New Republic.

Indeed, it appears that Beauchamp’s relationship with Reeve shifted into high gear around the time he was first published in the magazine. “He knew Elspeth from college, but they never were a couple. Then she started emailing him in February or so.” That was a few weeks after his first piece appeared in The New Republic. “I really think she supports him with his articles.”

Did Reeve’s job at The New Republic really make a difference? “Yeah, I think it was a plus point for her that she is a writer/journalist …”

Reflecting on whether Beauchamp saw marriage to Reeve as a good career move, Priscilla refused to go that far. “I don’t know why he married her. I mean they weren’t together before … but like I said, I think her job was one reason too.”

It appears Beauchamp had little interest in Reeve until she was in a position to help him. “I knew he was engaged twice before he was with me, but not with Elspeth [his college friend and now wife]. … Last summer, we were together in my room and he told me about her and made fun of her.”

Reeve knew that Beauchamp was a cheater. “Of course she knew about me,” Priscilla wrote. “She knew about me since last year and she knew we were engaged.”

Beauchamp has a history of disappointing those around him. Beauchamp’s best friend in the Army (who now no longer speaks to him) was dating a local girl and he encouraged the budding young writer to meet her sister. That is how he met Priscilla.

Soon things got serious. “He proposed to me last August, then he went to Iraq. I had very good contact with his family and we planned the wedding together.” They planned to wed as soon as he returned.

Beauchamp’s parents believed that Priscilla was about to join their family. “His family came to Germany for his [Beauchamps’] R&R and they thought they would come to see me. He didn’t even tell his family that he wanted to break up with me.” He simply pretended that he still intended to marry Priscilla.

Then, he suddenly switched. “I waited over 8 months, faithfully, and he just came to my hometown for a day. He said he is not ready for marriage yet but he still loves me! …. Well, after Germany, he went to France for a week and then to the States to marry her [Elspeth Reeve]. It was quite a surprise for his family.”

Beauchamp appears to repeating this behavior. Even though he has access to free phones on base to call the United States, he is not offering an explanation to the press-just as he didn’t offer one to Priscilla.

If Priscilla could talk to him “I would ask him why! And how it is possible that a man can change like this …”

The editors at The New Republic might be wondering the same thing. They should also wonder why Elspeth Reeve didn’t warn them.

Instead, Reeve was a treated as a victim. “She certainly got sympathy from other staffers (women and men) in the workplace the following week,” McGee told PajamasMedia.com.

Perhaps The New Republic staff did not want to argue with her or make her defend her husband. Or perhaps insiders did not see the moral dimension to this journalistic scandal. Dig a little deeper and far more human motivations emerge.

Is The New Republic’s fact-checking operation structurally flawed?

Let’s go into the fact-checking department. Elspeth Reeve was one of three fact-checkers at the magazine.

Did she fact-check her husband’s articles? While it is hard to believe that an established magazine would make such an elementary error, so far no one at the magazine has bothered to address the question. That’s an interesting omission.

Even if Reeve did not double-check her husband’s reporting, she worked alongside the other two fact-checkers and often shared a take-out lunch with them in the magazine’s conference room. They liked her. Would they really treat Beauchamp’s pieces like an article that floated in from a stranger?

At any publication, staff writing is less closely scrutinized than freelance material. Not coincidentally, virtually all of the journalistic fabrication scandals of the past 30 years-from The Washington Post’s Janet Cooke to The New York Times’ Jayson Blair-involved staff writers. Insiders. Trusted people.

More pointedly, the last two sets of New Republic journalistic scandals-Ruth Shalit and Stephen Glass-were perpetrated by staffers.

Scott Thomas Beauchamp was not a staffer; he may not have ever stepped foot in The New Republic’s two-floor rabbit warren of offices. But he was an insider, through his wife.

Perhaps the fact-checkers believed that they didn’t have to check his work thoroughly because they knew and trusted his wife, who they affectionately called “Ellie.”

The New Republic’s fact-checking department may be structurally flawed. At the magazines with the best reputation for fact-checking, The New Yorker and Reader’s Digest, fact-checking is a career. At The New Republic, it is an entry level job known as “reporter-researcher.” It is a stepping stone, a dues-paying drudgery endured so that one can become a full-time writer. Even the job title is revealing. The “reporter” part comes first. Often the fact-checkers are busy writing items of their own for The Plank, the magazine’s weblog, or the magazine itself. (Elspeth Reeve has written a number of pieces; one was about Bob Tyrell’s book party at Morton’s.) So it would not have taken much for one of the fact-checkers to skim, not scrutinize, Beauchamp’s “Baghdad Diarist” pieces.

Maybe they feel sorry for Reeve because they are partly to blame. Beauchamp published three pieces over a six-month period. Odds are each of the fact-checkers had a hand in one of them.

Then there is the role of the magazine’s editor. Foer had met Beauchamp, shook his hand and talked to him, according to McGee.

That’s the real reason why Foer insisted on correcting his quote in The New York Times about knowing that Beauchamp was a soldier with “near certainty” to “absolute certainty.” Some of the blogosphere’s speculations look overheated once we know that Foer actually met Beauchamp.

Did the fact-checkers also give Beauchamp a pass because they knew their boss, Foer, met and liked the charming young soldier? Is Foer fighting back so hard because he just can’t believe he too was suckered?

McGee, the former assistant to the publisher, thinks so. “They dragged their feet about admitting problems with Beauchamp’s articles because he was married to a staff member,” McGee told me.

Another foot-dragging factor: The New Republic has been hoaxed before-and everyone, even Hollywood, noticed. The film “Shattered Glass” chronicles Stephen Glass’ elaborate fabrications. The Glass incident was painful; who can blame Foer for not wanting to repeat the experience?

What did the fact-checkers miss?

A lot, as it turns out. Beauchamp’s first article for The New Republic appeared in January 2007 and so far been completely ignored by bloggers and the press.

It describes a neighborhood he calls “Little Venice” in Baghdad that can only be transited by vehicle because of waist-high sewage streams. This seems suspicious to me. I have been to Baghdad a number of times between November 2003 to May 2006. I have never seen (or heard of) sewage flowing down the street higher than the top of anyone’s boot. Yes, there is sewage on the streets in some Baghdad neighborhoods, but it is not waist-deep. If there was, Beauchamp would not have been the first to break the story. Add to that, a neighborhood filled with canals of flowing sewage would require a lot of water in parched land…

In the same piece, Beauchamp writes that one of the vehicles in his convoy had to stop to change a tire. That’s odd for two reasons: most vehicles have run-flat technology and, standard operating procedure would be to tow the damaged vehicle, not change a tire on a sewer-soaked battle space.

The final bit that is hard to believe: that Beauchamp and his comrades would be allowed by their commander to dismount and talk to the locals who were wading toward them. It is hard to imagine that an NCO or officer would allow his men to be exposed to sniper fire or roadside bombs. Indeed, that could be a career-killing mistake even if no soldiers were harmed.

Why didn’t any of The New Republic fact-checkers puzzle about these things? There could be good answers for any or all of them, but the piece doesn’t reflect such hard questioning.

Which raises the next question: How good was the magazine’s after-the-fact fact-checking of Beauchamp’s articles?

Not very. Consider this post from “Confederate Yankee,” one of the most effective watch dogs on this story.

The blogger found one of the “corroborating experts” that The New Republic spoke to in the course of its follow-up investigation. A spokesman for the maker of Bradley Fighting Vehicle told Confederate Yankee the he been contacted by an unnamed male fact-checker from the magazine. It would appear that the fact-checker kept his questions at a very non-specific level, possibly to solicit a stronger-sounding corroboration. The unnamed fact-checker searching for some rhetorical cover-it might be possible for a Bradley to do some of things Beauchamp described-rather than probe for uncomfortable truths.

Hunting the Whistle-Blower

Shortly after 7 AM on Thursday, July 26, McGee got a short phone call from The New Republic’spublisher. The magazine staff had tracked his anonymous web postings to his work station near the publisher’s office. Her message was short: “Your services were no longer needed.”

The magazine was at least as consumed by finding the whistle-blower (McGee) than in presenting a full accounting to its readers.

McGee’s says his leaks were not motivated by ideology. He told me he “didn’t feel an ideological distance when I worked there. I felt pretty comfortable.”

He said he felt frustrated that the magazine could not do the simplest thing: admit they’d made a mistake, that their fair-minded critics had raised some good points and that they would address it as best they could.

It is odd that McGee has been the only one fired over the Beauchamp scandal. Wouldn’t Foer be a likely candidate? Or the fact-checkers who failed to do their duty? Or Elspeth for knowingly bringing Beauchamp into its respected pages?

Instead, the left-o-sphere turned on its attack machine and pointed it at… McGee.

An attack on McGee in the Huffington Post outed the former publisher’s assistant as gay.

“It was funny, making an attack that was pointless. Actually, doubly pointless — not only is my homosexuality a complete non-secret, but in any case, the factual claim that I’d made about Ellie’s [Elspeth Reeve’s] link to STB [Scott Thomas Beauchamp] had already been publicly confirmed by The New Republic. Also, I think it’s worth pointing out that [the author] was clearly attempting to ‘out’ me not as merely gay, but as a ‘gay conservative.’ In other words, someone who ought to have no credibility on either the left (because of my self-loathing politics) or on the right (because of my unbiblical fondness for cock).”

Funny, how the anti-gay attacks now come from left field.

McGee has been out since college-and noted that few on the Right had raised any issues about his interest in men. He sometimes openly mentioned it on posts on Little Green Footballs. “No one ever made a big deal out of it,” he says, until the Huffington Post did.

Still, McGee isn’t bitter. He thinks he did the right thing and has plenty of good references from prior temp jobs to get a new gig. His interview with PajamasMedia.com was his first and his last. He just got a cease-and-desist letter from The New Republic; he won’t be doing any more interviews.

Meanwhile the editor, Franklin Foer, the fact-checker, Elspeth Reeve, and her fabricating husband, Scott Thomas Beauchamp, hunker down in a fortress of solitude.

The magazine has so far announced no reforms to safeguard itself from future fabricators.