The NewsMax Republic?

Over at the new New Republic blog, Kausfiles Jr., Gregg Easterbrook continues to make dubious arguments seemingly designed to support predetermined conclusions.

The latest example is an entry about a settlement between Chief Charles Moose, former police employee of Montgomery County, Maryland, and the Marriott Corporation. Easterbrook claims to get his facts about the matter from an August Washington Post article, but the allegations he reports come a lot closer to a report from wingnut website WorldNetDaily.com than the story in the Post.

Easterbrook writes:

In an August story[*] that received surprisingly little attention, The Washington Post revealed last December, just after Moose became a celebrity, he essentially blackmailed Marriott, which has a division headquarters in Montgomery County, into giving him around $200,000. (The Post story built on an initial report on the mainly conservative web site WorldNetDaily.com.)

In fact, the August 2003 Post story I found doesn't state that Marriott gave Moose $200,000. The Post said that Moose wrote a letter to Marriott in which he demanded $200,000, and that the matter was settled, but does not state any settlement amount. (Of course, the article also does not mention "blackmail.")

On WorldNetDaily, however, Paul Sperry wrote on June 18 that "[t]wo sources say Moose settled out of court for $200,000, but a third source said the figure is 'exaggerated.'"

Continuing with Easterbrook:

After the sniper attacks ended, Moose and his wife took a well-earned vacation at Marriott's Ihilani resort in Hawaii. While Moose was wandering the grounds, a security guard asked to see his room key as proof he was a registered guest. Moose claims this was racism, that he was suspected because he is African American. But the Ihilani's claim to fame is a spectacular private beach, pictured here. Security personnel at this hotel routinely ask to see room keys, to keep the un-registered out of the facility. If security wasn't keeping the riffraff off the private beach, the resort would not have been worth what Moose was paying to stay there.

Here's the Post:

At some point during the Mooses' stay, sources familiar with the allegations said, the chief wandered into what the hotel managers call "the back of the house," an unfinished area reserved for employees . Moose was confronted by a hotel employee. When the chief was asked to produce proof he was a guest at the hotel, in the form of a room key, an argument ensued, the sources said.

Nowhere does the Post state that security rountinely asks to see room keys (or that Marriott claims to have such a practice). However, that contention is made by two unnamed sources in the WND article, a "police source" and "[a]n industry securities analyst who follows Marriott."

Continuing, Easterbrook writes:

Shortly after returning from Hawaii, the Post asserted, Moose wrote a letter to Marriott threatening to generate bad publicity for the company unless it gave him $200,000. This was done while Moose was still police chief of the county; Moose was threatening to harm a company he had the power to harass in many ways. That's blackmail. If Moose really was the victim of racism, he should use his First Amendment rights to say so. But justice wasn't on his mind, money was.

But that's not what the Post article says. It says:

In a letter to a top-level Marriott executive, the source said, the Mooses threatened to sue over what they considered discriminatory behavior at the Hawaii resort. In the letter, Moose asked for $100,000 for himself and $100,000 for his wife, to compensate them for "suffering" and "distress," the source said.

According to the Post, Moose threatened a lawsuit, not bad publicity. And, again, the Post never mentions blackmail, or any express or implied threat by Moose to use his position to "harm" Marriott.

Easterbrook continues:

To prevent bad press, Marriott settled for an amount believed to be slightly less than $200,000, and the company signed a confidentiality agreement, forbidding it from talking about the incident or accusing Moose of being an extortionist. Moose, in turn, is currently trying to block Montgomery County from revealing the payment on his final county-required financial disclosure form.

Here, the Post does cite unnamed Marriott executives who said they wanted to settle to avoid a "public relations debacle," and that there was a confidentiality agreement in the settlement documents. But the article doesn't say that Marriott believed Moose to be "an extortionist" or accused him (or wanted to accuse him) of being such. The article doesn't state whether the hotel chain wanted the confidentiality clause either. And, again, the Post doesn't mention "an amount believed to be slightly less than $200,000."

Easterbrook then writes:

It turns out that when Moose was police chief of Portland, Oregon, his wife Sandy Herman Moose, who worked for the police department, accused another department employee of sexual harassment. Maybe this really happened, though it seems hard to believe anyone in a police department would be so incredibly stupid as to mess with the chief's wife. The Mooses received an undisclosed amount of money, in return for not making public accusations against Portland.

Easterbrook gets it wrong yet again. The article quotes a former Portland employee as saying Sandy Moose's settlement with the city was for $10,000. (Easterbrook attributes a $200 K settlement figure to the article which is not in the article, yet ignores the $10 K settlement figure which is in the article. I wonder why.) Also note: (1) the article does not state that the settlement was "in return for not making public accusations" and (2) the article says the $10 K went to Mrs. Moose, not "the Mooses," as EB claims.

After some more general bashing of Moose, Easterbrook asks:

And why, with Charles Moose enough of a story for the cable news universe to broadcast hundreds of hours of his face, has his sideline as an extortionist not been widely reported?

Easterbrook repeatedly calls Moose a "blackmailer" and an "extortionist" for reaching a perfectly legal settlement with Marriott. The Post article doesn't suggest that Moose did anything illegal or improper in either case, and it doesn't discuss the merits of the Marriott case, beyond stating that Moose was asked to show his key and "an argument ensued." Yet Easterbrook is so confident that Moose's claim was unmeritorious that he accuses Moose of committing crimes and abusing his office, without any substantiation.

So what do we have here?

First, Easterbrook attributes statements of fact to the Post which are not in the only Post article I could find on the subject.

Second, some of the allegations not in the Post article appear to come from WorldNutDaily, which Easterbrook mentions but does not identify as a source.

Third, Easterbrook jumps to conclusions -- including calling Moose a blackmailer and extortionist -- which are not supported by Post story I found.

To sum up, Easterbrook misreads or misrepresents the Post story numerous times to come up with his favored conclusions, namely, that Moose is a racial shakedown artist and the liberal media is refusing to report that fact.

Is this the best the New Republic can do?

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* Because Easterbrook does not link to the Post story or identify it by its exact date (or authors or headline), it is not possible to determine whether the Post article I found is the same one to which he refers. His post suggests there was only one such story ("the Post buried its own story in the Metro section"), and this was the only August Post story I could find on the subject.