TIME FOR REGIME CHANGE AT THE WASHINGTON TIMES

TIME FOR REGIME CHANGE AT THE WASHINGTON TIMES

September 21, 2006
Time for Regime Change at The Washington Times

The Washington Times is in crisis. Max Blumenthal's fair and accurate cover story in the Oct. 9, 2006 issue of The Nation, "Hell of a Times," documents the rampant racism, sexual misconduct and abuse of power at the top of The Washington Times.

<http://www.thenation.com/doc/20061009/washington_times>

In particular, the Nation article focuses on the paper's Editor-in-Chief Wes Pruden, and his loyal number two and hand-picked successor, Managing Editor Fran Coombs.

I am quoted on the record throughout the story, bearing witness to heinous racist comments made by Coombs and Pruden, as well as to the mass discontent in the paper's newsroom because of their abusive management style. Rather than deal with the substance of the allegations and the widespread evidence presented in the article, Coombs and Pruden are seeking to destroy my credibility.

For example, Coombs recently claimed to Patrick Gavin at FishbowlDC that I am a "disgruntled former employee" who sought to get my old job back at the paper in late 2005.

http://www.mediabistro.com/fishbowlDC/newspapers/big_next_week_for_twt_43148.asp

http://www.mediabistro.com/fishbowlDC/newspapers/forthcoming_two_washington_times_exposes_33598.asp

Coombs also attacked me as someone who is detached from "reality." In other words, The Times' top editors are spreading the false (and vicious) rumors that I am out to get The Times out of some vendetta, and that I am a little crazy to boot. Pruden and Coombs have even hired a public relations firm, Hill & Knowlton, to help them in their campaign of personal destruction. I know how the Washington power game is played: I am the whistle blower and hence, I need to be discredited for fear the story will get picked up in the mainstream media.

But Coombs, Pruden and their PR team have a major problem: The truth is against them. Contrary to what Coombs asserts, I never specifically asked to return to The Washington Times after I retired in September 2005. My mother's cancer was progressing more quickly than anticipated and I wanted to return to Virginia from Phoenix as quickly as possible. I simply inquired of Coombs in a friendly meeting in his office last Christmas if my reporter slot on the national desk had been filled, and he said the slot and salary had been moved to another department (the paper's Web site staff). End of subject. I did not specifically ask to come back. Coombs is just making that up.

I had considerable savings and decided to write my book, "Journalism is War," full-speed and full-time. I am not a disgruntled ex-employee of the Times, as Coombs asserts.

Moreover, what he and Pruden cannot explain is if I am somehow detached from "reality," why was I nominated by the paper four times for the Pulitzer Prize? If I am so mentally detached from "reality," why did Coombs and Kenneth Hanner, his dutiful successor as national editor, consistently write very laudatory annual reviews of me during my 21-year career at the paper? If I am detached from "reality," why does Blumenthal have more than a dozen current and former employees of The Times testifying that Coombs is a racist, a sexual predator, and an abusive micro-manager?

The answer is a simple one: Pruden and Coombs are trying to demonize me because they know I am saying the truth. Also, they are trying to make me the issue in an effort to detract attention from the real issue-namely, their neo-Confederate, white supremacist worldview and the immense damage it has caused The Times over the years. In fact, don't even take my word for it. On the record comments by Coombs proves without a doubt he is an unreconstructed racist.

Take the issue of the late Samuel Francis. For years, one of Coombs's closest friends at the paper was Francis, a former staff columnist, who was eventually fired by Pruden --reluctantly I might add - in 1995 for remarks made at the American Renaissance Conference. The event was a gathering of academic racists and neo-Nazis. (Francis said, "The civilization that we as whites created in Europe and America could not have developed apart from the genetic endowments of the creating people.") Francis was a leading theoretician of the "white nationalist" movement. One would think having been fired from one's paper for being a eugenicist and rabid white supremacist would put Francis beyond the pale of respectable political opinion. But not according to Coombs. Recently, he praised Francis as "the voice of the Founding Fathers speaking down through the ages," on a Web site promoting a posthumous collection of Francis's writings called Shots Fired. This is akin to saying that David Duke or some current KKK Grand Wizard is "the voice of the Founding Fathers speaking down through the ages."

(In fact, Coombs sent me down to Louisiana in 1991 to cover the governor's race between Duke, the former Ku Klux Klansman and the Republican candidate, and Edwin Edwards, the ultimate Democratic victor. Coombs was solidly for Duke and instructed me to cover the story in his favor. After I interviewed Duke and determined for myself that he was a racist scoundrel, Coombs made sure my reporting was heavily edited to reflect his pro-Duke sympathies.)

Or take Coombs' support for current Times assistant national editor, Robert Stacy McCain. Coombs played a pivotal role in hiring McCain from Georgia, who is an avowed white supremacist. McCain belonged to a white supremacist group called the League of the South that opposes interracial marriage, and he has frequently made bigoted comments against interracial couples in the newsroom. He is also a staunch defender of slavery.

When confronted with this evidence by Blumenthal, Coombs is quoted in The Nation article as calling my allegations against McCain "bullshit," and he goes on to say McCain "has not made any comments in the newsroom like that, and if he had, there are African-Americans in the room who would kick his butt."

Coombs is clearly lying-and he knows it. An inveterate blogger, McCain posted messages on FreeRepublic.com under a pseudonym BurkeCalhounDabney, raling against blacks, liberals, and interracial marriage. In one message, he complained that the media "now force interracial images into the public mind and a number of perfectly rational people react to these images with an altogether natural revulsion. The white person who does not mind transacting business with a black bank clerk may yet be averse to accepting the clerk as his sister-in-law, and THIS IS NOT RACISM, no matter what Madison Avenue, Hollywood, and Washington tell us."

McCain later bragged to people in the newsroom that Coombs and Pruden had held meetings with him where they said "they agreed with me." According to McCain, however, they warned him that "they may have to fire me" if the "mainstream press picks up on the story." But apart from a few reporters and bloggers, the press largely ignored the story. Many in the newsroom-myself included-were stunned and dismayed that Pruden and Coombs had not fired McCain for his outrageous comments.

For Coombs to now claim that he has no knowledge McCain made any outrageous racist statements is simply false. Over two dozen Times reporters and editors over the years have personally heard McCain make deeply derogatory statements about African-Americans, Hispanics, and women. If Coombs really cared about running a professional newsroom that is respectful towards women and minorities, then he should simply ask the people that work underneath him what they have heard come out of McCain's mouth. But Coombs doesn't care-and that is the point. It is an open secret in the newsroom that McCain is a racist, and that Coombs is one as well.

Ultimately, the buck stops at the top, as Harry Truman famously put it. McCain and Coombs are allowed toflourish at the paper because their neo-Confederate, anti-black, white supremacist views are shared by Pruden. In his columns, Pruden openly portrays himself as a champion of the Confederacy. He waxes nostalgically about "the War Between the States," presenting Abraham Lincoln and the Union forces as the immoral "aggressors" in the Civil War. He supports the cause of Southern independence during the war, even though the practical consequences for the region's blacks would have been the continued existence of slavery and a system of apartheid across the country, in which millions of blacks would be mired in misery, poverty and oppression.

Yet it is not just Pruden's neo-Confederate views that are troubling. It is even more troubling that Pruden has deliberately supported, nurtured, protected and promoted Coombs during his tenure at The Times. This was done even though Coombs' virulent racism and abusive management-style were well-known to almost everyone in the newsroom.

Under Pruden's and Coombs' inept leadership, the paper has slowly but relentlessly lost its way as a serious, independent and relevant voice within the larger media landscape. They represent the worst traits of an older Southern conservatism-nativism, racism, chauvinism, xenophobic nationalism-that is out of touch with the modern conservative movement and with the general reading public.

They are viewed by most of my former colleagues as the primary obstacles to unleashing the vast talent and stifled energies in the newsroom. Morale at the paper is very low. The Times still has excellent reporters and editors. But their skills cannot flourish as long as Pruden and Coombs remain at the top. The paper will continue to lose many of its finest reporters. It will continue to lose its readership andultimately, its relevance.

This is why no matter how much they try to smear me or attempt to obfuscate the truth by attacking me they cannot spin their way out of this. Pruden and Coombs have lost the confidence of the best at The Washington Times, where cheers will be heard if they are gone and a new, feisty leadership team is brought in to do honest, complete coverage again.