Ben Wyskida from the Nation here. While Amanda did a fair job in her reporting, we did feel that this article misrepresents why Peter Byrne's article was not printed.

Simply: Byrne's article did not meet the Nation's standards for publication. There were problems with the writing; there were problems with the sourcing; and his central thesis could not be corroborated. The article wasn't "censored;" we could not substantiate the main claims it made. Byrne himself notes the laundry list of other publications that passed on his article. Conservative stalwarts like the American Spectator and the Weekly Standard would have jumped at the chance to run this story if they believed they could stand behind it.

The Nation has a strong and unyielding history of challenging politicians of any party or perspective. Our investigation into the questionable corporate ties of the Clinton campaign (Hillary, Inc., May 2007) is just one example of articles in the last year alone challenging Democrats and demanding accountability for the Iraq War. Its convenient to blame politics here, but its just not true.

The Nation’s public relations flack, Ben Wyskida, is most disingenuous. In the magazine’s kill memo, which Amanda Witherell saw, The Nation’s investigative editor, Bob Moser, who had worked closely with me on the project, wrote that I had done a "solid job," but that the magazine liked to have a political "impact," and since Feinstein was "not facing a strong challenge for re-election," they were not going to print the story. If that is not a political reason, then I do not know not what is.

Wyskida, who was not involved in the project, is not telling the truth when he talks about problems with sourcing etc. Notice that he does not refer to a single concrete example of a supposedly incorrect fact. That is because every fact stems from a public record or an on the record interview for attribution; and every fact was triple-checked. After the right wing talk radio demagogues started broadcasting my findings in March, thousands of bloggers, and an assortment of mainstream media reporters, glommed onto the story searching for factual errors. They found not a single one. Nor did The Nation find any factual errors; and the central thesis of my reporting, that Feinstein did not recuse herself from acting on matters that significantly impacted her personal finances, was clearly corroborated by the Congressional Record. No less than four non-partisan ethics experts reviewed the material, and it was their clearly reported statements in my story that Feinstein had a conflict of interest that gave the article gravitas. Wyskida is blowing smoke because The Nation is embarrassed that conservative bloggers and radio-jerks like Rush Limbaugh and Michael Savage were lauding the story and applauding The Nation for funding it.

As for The Nation’s status as a mouthpiece for the moderate wing of the Democratic Party, you will observe that Vanden Heuval does not like Rupert Murdoch’s darling, Hillary Clinton, but she gushes over Mister War On Terror is Good Barack Obama. And The Nation recently loathed Cindy Sheehan in print for daring to run against the Democrat’s Great White Warmonger, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. And, please note, Mister Wyskida, that your boss, Katrina Vanden Heuval wrote an editorial praising Feinstein after the November 2006 elections.

And of course the neoconservative magazines passed on the story: because they consider the so-called liberal Feinstein as one of their own! If The Nation had any guts, it would come clean and admit it made a mistake based on political opportunism. And you’d best get your facts in order, Wyskida, because I have an email trail of every interaction that I had with The Nation’s editors. That said, there is an obvious fracture within the editorial ranks at The Nation. The managing editor who originally approved my story is gone; so is the person at The Nation’s investigative fund who wrote the check. And not all the writers are pro-Pelosi, pro-Obama. Despite being forced to witness socialite-millionaire Vanden Heuval’s self-promoting antics on television, radio and the Net, many fine writers at the magazine swallow their gorge and continue to perform good services. The ancient, ailing publication just needs a new editor/publisher—one who is not a political partisan.

For the full account of what really went down see my exposé, DiFi Backlash: [link]

--Peter Byrne

The Nation wants people to believe that the problem was with: "the Nation's standards for publication. There were problems with the writing; there were problems with the sourcing; and his central thesis could not be corroborated."

However, the Nation also has been publishing Alexander Cockburn's outrageously deceptive claims that 'global warming is a hoax'. See [link]

I think the real problem here is a reluctance to really examine what has been going on with government and private business contracts and the University of California. A few examples include the Bechtel/BWXT/Battelle 'partnership' with the UC system to run the Lawerence Livermore Labs, the British Petroleum 'partnership' with UC Berkeley to create biofuels (or coal fuels?), and so on. There are many other examples of secretive arrangements between the UC Regents, various university departments and private interests that are seriously damaging the integrity and image of the UC system.

A quick search of The Nation reveals that they have published nothing on any of the above stories. The corporate takeover of academics is apparently just too touchy of a subject for them.