Coming
Soon!
From Common Courage Press
Recent
Stories
May
29, 2003
CounterPunch
Wire
WMD: Who Said What When
Jason
Leopold
Despite Thin Intelligence Reports,
US Plans Overthrow of Iran Regime
Ron
Jacobs
Popular Uprising, Inc.
Michelle
Ciaccorra
Bush's Nuclear Policy: Do As I Say, Not As I Do
Yves Engler
The Economics of Health Care in
America: Pay More to Die Sooner
Kimberly
Blaker
Vouchers for Jesus
Harry
Browne
Stakeknife: Britain's Army Spy at
the Top of the IRA
Stew
Albert
Cops of the World
Steve Perry
Greens 04: In or Out?
May
28, 2003
David
Vest
DubyaCo.: It's Not So Funny Any More
Dave
Lindorff
My Grandfather's Medal
John
Stanton
America's Dying: Arts and Philosophy Hold the Key
Bernard
Weiner
A PNAC Primer
Robert
Jensen
Texas Dems Set a Standard for the Rest of the Party
Ahmad Faruqui
The Oil Business of Regime Change:
the CIA and Iran
Hammond
Guthrie
Disarming Conundrums
Steve Perry
What If There's No Such Thing as Al-Qaeda?
May
27, 2003
Kurt
Nimmo
Condoleezza Rice: Huckstress for Israeli
Myths
Anthony
Gancarski
Hillary: a Dem the NeoCons Could Love?
Patrick
Cockburn
Terror, Bush and Joseph Conrad
John Chuckman
an Interpretation of Bush's Character
Kathleen
Christison
What Sharon Wants, Sharon Gets
Jeffrey
Blankfort
AIPAC Hijacks the Roadmap
Steve
Perry
Trouble in the Hinterlands
Hot Stories
Cindy
Corrie
A Mother's Day Talk: the Daughter
I Can't Hear From
Elaine
Cassel
Civil Liberties
Watch
Michel
Guerrin
Embedded Photographer Says: "I
Saw Marines Kill Civilians"
Uzma
Aslam Khan
The Unbearably Grim Aftermath of War:
What America Says Does Not Go
Paul de Rooij
Arrogant
Propaganda
Gore Vidal
The
Erosion of the American Dream
Francis Boyle
Impeach
Bush: A Draft Resolution
Click Here
for More Stories.
|
May
31, 2003
CounterPunch Diary
A
Whiner Called David Horowitz Moans at Sid Blumenthal and Imagined
CIA Slur; A Commie Called Graydon Carter; What Chavez Said to
Lula
By ALEXANDER COCKBURN
Merely from the whines and howls of his numerous
enemies on the right, you can tell that Sid Blumenthal has drawn
blood in his book The Clinton Wars, many pages of which are spent
detailing what his pal Hillary Clinton famously referred to as
"a vast right-wing conspiracy". It's an awfully long
book, but the chapters that I have thus far worked my way through
do make a pretty good case in buttressing HRC's claim about a
right-wing conspiracy, although it was scarcely vast, consisting
of about 10 prime players. Of course, from our point of view
a far vaster rightwing conspiracy is represented these days by
HRC herself. Blumenthal's chapter on the Hitchens affair is vivid
too on the latter's disgusting behavior.
Mind you, it makes me laugh when people
talk about Blumenthal and his killer instincts. He always struck
me as more in line with Bertie Wooster's descriptions of the
sheep-like Gussie Fink-Nottle.
Prime among the whiners and howlers is
David Horowitz who lashes out at "Sid Vicious", saying
the guy has been beastly to him every since Horowitz and Collier
staged a "Second Thoughts" conference in Washington
in the fall of 1987, designed as a sort of ideological hospice
for renegades in the same stage of transition from left to right
as themselves. Horowitz charges that it was Blumenthal who urged
left wing assailants such as myself to attend and then to deride
the proceedings in print.
I can't speak for the others, but in
my case Horowitz has it all wrong. I was visiting Washington
and had better things to do with my time than go to the Second
Thoughts affair but got dragged along by Hitchens. When I entered
the hall Horowitz was delivering the keynote, and was visibly
nonplussed at the sight of potential hecklers. He lost his train
of thought, rambled inconsequentially, then plunged back into
his childhood, recalling the upbringing of his sister and himself
in a Communist family, where as so often happened the children
observed and resented the long hours their parents spent away
from them, doing "party work".
"My sister will never forgive them,"
Horowitz wailed to the audience of some 200, then depicted the
abyss of his own deprivation. He had never been allowed to go
to Doris Day and Rock Hudson movies, but rather was forced to
sit through uplifting Soviet features.
If only he'd been allowed to watch Pillow
Talk ... And of course, among the ironies is that Horowitz and
Hitchens are now ideological bedfellows.
Horowitz mentions what he calls Blumenthal's
"vindictive" libel suit against Matt Drudge, who had
published the indubitably libelous charge, which he was unable
to sustain, that Blumenthal was a wife-beater. Blumenthal sued.
Then Horowitz continues,
"I have myself once or twice used
the threat of a suit to deter particularly scurrilous charges
and to avoid the kind of damage that libel suits were made for.
Alex Cockburn, for example, spent a lot of time at cocktail parties
in the 1980s spreading the rumor that I was a CIA agent. In fact,
I have never had contact with a CIA official or operative to
my knowledge, or worked for any government agency or -- with
three exceptions -- any outside employer for that matter."
Now, it's true that in May of 1989 Horowitz
did send me a letter accusing me of making "false and malicious
statements" but it had nothing to do with the CIA. I can
imagine the Agency being capable of almost any infamy or folly,
except that of hiring Horowitz as an agent.
It's curious that Horowitz should have
misrepresented, or misremembered why he was jumpy enough to threaten
legal action. If he looks in his files, or glances at page 101
of his copy of my 1995 book The Golden Age is In Us he'll find
that he sent me the following letter:
"Dear Alexander Cockburn, It was
come to my attention that you have been making false and malicious
statements about my interviews with the late David Kennedy. I
have consulted counsel about this matter and advise you to stop
doing this. I am sending this letter to you to serve notice to
you that if you intend to publish this, you and your publisher
do so at your peril. Sincerely, David Horowitz, Los Angeles."
Nothing here, as you can see, about the
CIA. So far as I can recall, Horowitz had formed the impression
that I had repeated a story going the rounds at the time among
friends of the Kennedy clan that this same clan entertained a
particular loathing for Horowitz and Collier on the grounds that
while researching their book on the Kennedys they had helped
satiate David Kennedy's craving for drugs, in return for inside
stories about the Kennedys. An obviously outrageous and baseless
charge, as I'm sure all will agree.
It can't be said that Horowitz draws
much blood on his attacks on Blumenthal. In fact his onslaught
ends up as an intentional testimonial to Blumenthal's accuracy.
For example, Horowitz quotes the following passage from Blumenthal's
book, and then offers his own commentary in what is intended
as rebuttal:
Blumenthal: 'In July, the Ledeens' testimony
yielded the information that they had arranged through a friend,
David Horowitz, for Drudge's defense to be paid for and handled.'
Horowitz: 'It is true that Barbara Ledeen
called me and said, "You have to help Matt Drudge,"
whom I had never met. As Barbara and many other people knew,
I had created an "Individual Rights Foundation" which
mainly fought speech codes on college campuses, but also defended
a liberal feminist under attack from the politically correct
left and filed an amicus brief for a leftwing racist, Leonard
Jeffries, because he was fired for making a public speech (a
violation of his First Amendment rights).
'I had no other conversations with Barbara
or any other member of Sidney's conspiracies about the legal
defense of Matt Drudge. Following Barbara's phone call, I had
a lunch with Matt Drudge and persuaded him he needed a lawyer.
I then set up a meeting with Drudge and my lawyer for the IRF,
whom he took on as his counsel. I then created a "defense
fund" which raised money through direct mail and Internet
appeals to pay the lawyers' fee. The Ledeens had no hand in these
matters whatsoever.'
Seems to me this is confirmation that
Blumenthal had it right.
Graydon The Red
In the June Vanity Fair with homely young
Drew Barrymore on the cover there's an editorial by Graydon Carter
that we would have been happy to publish on the CounterPunch
site: a spirited attack on the Bush crowd for the war on Iraq,
plus many sarcasms about the missing WMDs, then a furious attack
on the same Bush crowd for its brutish assaults on the Bill of
Rights and its regressive economic policies. If Carter keeps
this up, will Hitchens resign in protest , same way as he quit
the Nation?
No, he won't. Too much gravy on that
train.
Chavez to Lula
"Your tragedy is that no one will
ever mount a coup against you."
Today's
Features
CounterPunch
Wire
WMD: Who Said What When
Jason
Leopold
Despite Thin Intelligence Reports,
US Plans Overthrow of Iran Regime
Ron
Jacobs
Popular Uprising, Inc.
Michelle
Ciaccorra
Bush's Nuclear Policy: Do As I Say, Not As I Do
Yves Engler
The Economics of Health Care in
America: Pay More to Die Sooner
Kimberly
Blaker
Vouchers for Jesus
Harry
Browne
Stakeknife: Britain's Army Spy at
the Top of the IRA
Stew
Albert
Cops of the World
Steve Perry
Greens 04: In or Out?
Keep CounterPunch
Alive:
Make
a Tax-Deductible Donation Today Online!
home / subscribe
/ about us / books
/ archives / search
/ links /
|