Jeffrey Goldberg Caught In LIE About Glenn Greenwald On NPR

[Hissyspit]

http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2010/08/20/goldberg/index.html

FRIDAY, AUG 20, 2010 06:21 ET
Jeffrey Goldberg's fabrication on NPR

This is really quite strange.  Yesterday, my inbox began filling up with email telling me that Jeffrey Goldberg had gone on NPR and, when asked about my critiques of his Atlantic article on bombing Iran, claimed I had "retracted" part of what I had written.  When I read the first couple emails, I assumed the emailers had heard it incorrectly or were mischaracterizing Goldberg's remarks, because not only had I never issued any retraction of those criticisms, but I never wrote anything remotely close to what could possibly be misconstrued that way:  I never even hinted that anything I had written was inaccurate, because it wasn't.  I was reasonably sure that even Jeffrey Goldberg wouldn't simply fabricate such an event of that significance and announce it as fact on NPR as a way of discrediting a critic.  But sure enough, once the audio was posted by NPR and I listened to it, I found -- genuinely, perhaps naïvely, to my amazement -- that what the emailers described is exactly what happened.

A caller asked Goldberg about the glaring contradiction between what he wrote in 2002 and his current Iran article regarding the efficacy of the 1981 Israeli air strike on Iraq -- a contradiction first flagged last week by Jonathan Schwarz, amplified on two consecutive days by me, and affirmed by several others who understood the contradiction the same way, including Harper's Ken Silverstein.  After Goldberg responded to the caller (the caller's remarks begin at 43:30), the program's host, Tom Ashbrook, specifically asked Goldberg about my Salon article where I raised that contradiction:

GOLDBERG: . . . . I think (the caller's) just misreading the article.

ASHBROOK:  Glenn Greenwald, I think, was writing about that in his--

GOLDBERG (interrupting):  Yeah, but then he retracted it once I pointed out the mistake.

- snip -

Last night, I emailed Goldberg, told him I intended to write about this, and asked him to point to what he was talking about, since I am quite sure no such thing ever happened.  He responded by acknowledging that no such thing had happened and apologized gracefully enough ("You're right, I'm wrong. My apologies"), but then -- assuming I'd be writing about this -- went to his blog and preempted it with a backhanded admission of error (cleverly titled:  "Glenn Greenwald and Saddam Hussein") which essentially distracts attention away from his total fabrication by accusing me of refusing to retract a false charge ("I mistakenly said that I thought Greenwald had retracted a particularly dumb charge leveled against me . . . Glenn sent me an e-mail in which he noted that he had not retracted the charge, even after I pointed out to him that it was false."). 

I'm not going to re-visit Goldberg's conflicting claims about the Israeli strike -- which just oh-so-coincidentally happened to be expressed each time so as to justify a new war -- because I wrote twice about it just recently, as did several others.  Beyond that, how could my argument be "false" when even Goldberg claims, both in his original response and in his email to me last night (published here), that the apparent contradiction was a by-product of his being unclear in what he wrote?  I apologize for taking up readers' time by writing about this episode; I affirmatively do not want to play lowly insult-ping-pong with Jeffrey Goldberg.  It's almost impossible to respond to things like this without being dragged down to Goldberg's level.  But just think about it:  someone goes on NPR and, when asked by the host about criticisms directed at him, just blurts out that the critic "retracted" the criticism -- a fairly serious charge -- when he must know that that claim is a total fabrication.  

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