NYTimes, John Bolton, and more.

The West 43rd St. Sausage-Making Plant

In publishing news, the New York Observer reports that Basic Books is readying New York Times correspondent Alan Feuer's memoir Over There: From the Bronx to Baghdad: Two Months in the Life of a Reluctant Reporter for publication in June. An account of the fewer than three weeks Feuer spent in Iraq proper, Over There is written in the third person, with a character named T.R. (for "This Reporter") standing in for Feuer.

If the excerpts are any indication, the book looks likely to shed new light on how the Times's Baghdad bureau functioned--or, more precisely, dysfunctioned. In this excerpt, T.R. turns his notes into a dispatch from the war zone:

There was a name in the pad, Haidar something, A-R-something, Aruban or Arubay, it was impossible to tell. He bore down on the notebook and tried to sort it out. Aruban or Arubay--what difference did it make? All right, Mr. Arubay, speak some words to the readers of the Times. "Haidar Arubay" indeed showed up in the Times on April 14, 2003. In another passage, Feuer/T.R. observes colleague Ian Fisher (not a pseudonym) write the paper's lead Iraq story of the day. Fisher scanned the Internet for wire reports, listened as [Feuer] toted up his own experiences, borrowed bits from [Times reporter John] Kifner, stole a pinch from Reuters, staged a raid on AFP [Agence France Presse], then cobbled everything together. . . . The premiere story in the next day's Times was being fashioned out of wire reports and late-night recollections from exhausted correspondents.

"In the book itself, Feuer acknowledges that he has taken liberties with his reminiscences," Times spokeswoman Catherine Mathis wrote the Observer's Tom Scocca in an email. "We very much believe that is the case." Maybe so. But whether or not Feuer is lying about lying in the pages of the Times, or Mathis is lying about Feuer's lying about lying (we think we're keeping this straight), you can be sure The Scrapbook will buy a copy of the book when (and if) it's finally released and report its own findings.

Until then, we'll have to content ourselves with yet another brewing scandal in the Times's Baghdad bureau. This one turned up in the gossip pages of the New York Daily News on April 7. Turns out that former Baghdad bureau chief Susan Sachs--she held the job for just under five months in 2003 and 2004--in order to have revenge on star Times war correspondents Dexter Filkins and John F. Burns (with whom she reportedly clashed often while in Baghdad), allegedly sent emails and postmarked letters to her colleagues' wives informing them that their husbands were having affairs in Iraq.

No one knows, or wants to know, how the Times reporters spent their downtime in Iraq, but we do know that Sachs was fired from the Times shortly after the Daily News item appeared. For her part, Sachs says she didn't send the emails, and that a polygraph shows she's telling the truth. For its part, the Times isn't answering any questions. Which is too bad. Because we want to know: Where do you find these people?

Kicking John Bolton

The Senate Committee on Foreign Relations last week opened its confirmation hearings on President Bush's nominee for ambassador to the United Nations, John Bolton. The committee's Democrats were loaded for bear. Reading between the lines, we suspect they disagree with Bolton's profound skepticism about the record of the United Nations. (A well-earned skepticism, by the way: Bolton's thankless task in the Bush I administration was getting the U.N. to repeal its morally grotesque "Zionism-is-racism" resolution.)

Many of Bolton's Democratic inquisitors, for instance, seem to labor under the delusion that it is the ambassador's duty to have a high opinion of the United Nations, as if he were the U.N.'s ambassador to the United States and not the other way around. Here was Barbara Boxer, the Cicero of Marin County: "You have nothing but disdain for the U.N. You can dance around it. You can run away from it. You can put perfume on it. . . . "

That was, however, among the more substantive comments. After an adversary of Bolton's from the State Department described him as a "kiss-up, kick-down sort of guy" who was rude, or worse, to subordinates, the deliberations took a farcical turn, as senators began discussing workplace etiquette in Washington.

Here is Delaware's Joe Biden, the ranking Democrat: When a government official confronts a subordinate "and reams him a new one," that's "just not acceptable." Biden further vented: "You have a habit of belittling your opposition, and even some of your friends." Chimed in Boxer: "I think Mr. Bolton needs anger management."

The Scrapbook cannot improve upon the reaction of a blogger buddy of ours at TheAmericanScene.com, Reihan "Rapmaster" Salam, who asked:

What if the lower-level official badly needed "a new one"? Is the senior official not obliged to ream him one? Recall that Joe Biden is one of the tough-talking "national security Democrats." If he's unwilling to "ream" low-level officials "a new one," how does he plan on dealing with the Outposts of Tyranny (OoT), let alone the Axis of Evil (AoE)? Far be it from me to endorse bullying, but I dare say that there comes a time in a bureaucracy's life when "new ones" must be "reamed."

What The Scrapbook wonders is how many of Biden's colleagues on the committee meet his definition of acceptability for office. We'd like to hear from you, Hill rats especially, any firsthand (or second-and third-hand) accounts of Senate Foreign Relations Committee Democrats who have a history of "kicking down" or otherwise maltreating subordinates.

We intend to conduct this little investigation according to the same high evidentiary standards adhered to by the Senate Foreign Relations Committee minority staff--i.e., feel free to email any dirt you have on Biden, Boxer, Dodd, Kerry et al. anonymously or otherwise to scrapbook@weeklystandard.com.

John Paul the Great, cont.

Richard John Neuhaus of First Things is publishing a lively and well-informed diary from Rome during the papal succession. A sample:

Raymond Arroyo and I had Fr. Peter Gumpel on our EWTN broadcast last night. We thought that would make for an interesting ten-minute segment--but it turned into an utterly fascinating half hour.

Gumpel is from an aristocratic Austrian family and has had personal encounters with popes going back to Pius XI. A "relator" (an independent judge) in the office dealing with the causes of saints, the Jesuit Gumpel has been working in Rome for more than 50 years. While he believes that John Paul II will be and should be declared a saint, he is strongly opposed to rushing the process. The procedures established in the 16th century--including the rigorous examination of alleged miracles by the best medical science of the times--are essential, he insists, to avoid the awkwardness of the subsequent discovery of possibly embarrassing facts. He is also cool to the idea of declaring the late pope "John Paul the Great," although there is no official procedure for applying that title. "Does it mean that other popes were not so great?" he asks. To which I counter, "Does declaring him a saint mean that other popes were not so saintly?" We agree to disagree on the appellation "John Paul the Great."

Neuhaus's diary is being made available to subscribers and non-subscribers alike at his journal's website: ( www. firstthings.com/romediary/romediary.htm)