Bryan Bender leaves the Globe for a post at Politico

Bryan Bender
Bryan Bender

National security reporter Bryan Bender is leaving The Boston Globe to take a position as national security editor at Politico, where he will be reunited with executive editor Peter Canellos, a former Washington bureau chief for the Globe.

Bender is the author of the 2014 book “You Are Not Forgotten: The Story of a Lost World War II Pilot and a Twenty-First-Century Soldier’s Mission to Bring Him Home.” Romenesko has the memo from the Globe’s current Washington bureau chief, Christopher Rowland. (Warning: The Yankees figure into it.) I’ve got the message Bender sent to his fellow Globe staffers:

“How lucky I am to have something that makes saying goodbye so hard.”

Winnie the Pooh said that. As I hang up my hat after more than a dozen years at the Globe, it captures how bittersweet it is to bid adieu to all of you and this great institution.

I feel as though I am leaving part of my family, one that raised me as a journalist and taught me the meaning of integrity and hard work and that what we do in this business truly can be a public service.

I will always be grateful for the front row seat the Globe gave me to some of the defining events of our time. I had a heck of a lot of fun doing it. The adventure continues for me and I know I am prepared for what lies ahead only because of where I came from.

Cherished colleagues have come and gone over the years but I will never forget our Globe sister and brother, Elizabeth Neuffer and Anthony Shadid, who gave their lives giving voice to the voiceless. I was so darn lucky to have learned at their knee.

There are so many others to thank in Washington and Boston for this exhilarating, deeply meaningful ride. But no goodbyes to my Globe family. I reserve full visitation rights!

See you again.

Bryan

Former Liberian dictator threatens to sue Boston Globe

Days before the Boston Globe published a withering editor’s note essentially retracting its Jan. 17 story about former Liberian dictator Charles Taylor’s alleged ties to the CIA, African news sources were reporting that Taylor was threatening to sue the Globe for libel.

Taylor escaped from a jail in Plymouth, Mass., in 1985, under circumstances suspicious enough to stoke rumors that U.S. authorities were involved. He is now facing charges in a war-crimes trial stemming from his brutal reign.

This past Monday, two days before the editor’s note appeared, the New Dawn, based in the Liberian capital, Monrovia, quoted Taylor’s lawyer, Courtenay Griffiths, as saying that Taylor denied having worked as a spy for the U.S. government. The article includes this:

“I spoke with Mr. Taylor,” Mr. Griffiths said. “He was very adamant that he has never worked for any American (spy) agency. The Liberian Security Agencies have worked … His National Patriotic Party of Liberia (NPFL) … But he as an individual has never worked (for the US Intelligence Agency).

“I know Mr. Taylor is very angry and he is not taking this likely [sic],” Griffiths told the New Dawn.

The story was carried in All Africa, which aggregates African news from a variety of sources. It includes the text of a letter Griffiths said he sent to Globe editor Marty Baron and others at the newspaper demanding copies of the documents they relied on in putting together their report. But the Globe now tells us there are no documents.

The editor’s note couldn’t be much tougher. It begins: “A front-page story on Jan. 17 drew unsupported conclusions and significantly overstepped available evidence when it described former Liberia president Charles Taylor as having worked with US spy agencies as a ‘sought-after source.'”

It goes on to describe the Globe’s longstanding Freedom of Information Act request that U.S. officials turn over documents related to what if any relationship the government had with Taylor. But though the Jan. 17 story, by longtime Globe staff reporter Bryan Bender, appears to be based at least in part on the documents, the editor’s note says otherwise:

[The US Defense Intelligence Agency] offered no such confirmation; rather, it said only that it possessed 48 documents running to 153 pages that fall in the category of what the Globe asked for — records relating to Taylor and to his relationship, if any, with American intelligence going back to 1982. The agency, however, refused to release the documents and gave no indication of what was in them.

The editor’s note concludes:

Taylor, now standing trial before a UN special court on charges of rape, murder and other offenses, denies he was ever a source for US intelligence. The Globe had no adequate basis for asserting otherwise and the story should not have run in this form.

There is still much that we don’t know. For instance, on Tuesday, Africa Review reported that Griffiths had “acknowledged that the Liberian Security agencies as well as his [Taylor’s] National Patriotic Party of Liberia worked or associated with US intelligence organs but not himself personally.” That’s hardly a blanket denial.

And at Foreign Policy’s Passport blog, Joshua Keating doesn’t seem all that upset about Taylor’s injured feelings. Calling the Globe’s note a “near retraction,” Keating nevertheless ends with this: “The fact that these ‘records relating to Taylor and to his relationship, if any, with American intelligence’ [quoting the Globe] exist but the CIA won’t release them is only going to increase the curiosity about what they contain. The correction is unlikely to stop the rumor mills in Monrovia, Washington, or The Hague.”

Bender is a good and careful reporter, and it seems pretty clear that there are other shoes yet to be dropped. The only thing we can say for certain at this point is that it’s all way too weird to come to any conclusions.

The Globe, the Times and RFK’s papers

Robert Kennedy

There’s been a pretty interesting development in the battle over Robert Kennedy’s papers. The New York Times reports that members of Kennedy’s family are unhappy with the John F. Kennedy Library in Boston, and may move the papers to George Washington University.

The story also says the family decided on March 1 to release 63 boxes of papers, some of them “dealing with Cuba, Vietnam and civil rights, [that] are classified as secret or top secret.”

These would appear to be the “54 crates of records” that the Boston Globe revealed last January were being withheld from all but a few favored historians. At that time, Robert Kennedy’s son Max placed his foot firmly in his mouth, telling the Globe’s Bryan Bender that he’s all for openness except in those cases when he’s not.

“I do believe that historians and journalists must do their homework, and observe the correct procedures for seeking permission to consult the papers, and explain their projects,” Max Kennedy was quoted as saying. Max’s boffo performance led me to bestow a Boston Phoenix Muzzle Award upon him recently.

In the Times story, there is no mention of Max. Instead, another of Robert Kennedy’s sons, former congressman Joe Kennedy, emerges as the family spokesman, and he comes off as considerably more diplomatic than his younger brother.

A search of the Globe and Times archives shows that the family’s March 1 decision to release the papers was not reported prior to today’s Times story. That suggests a deliberate strategy of working hand in hand with Adam Clymer, the retired Times reporter who gets the lead byline today. Clymer, you may recall, is the author of “Edward M. Kennedy: A Biography,” a respected though admiring treatment of the late senator published in 2000.

All in all, fodder for a follow-up by Bender.

Library of Congress photo via Wikimedia Commons.