A L S O+T O D A Y [ M E D I A ] Sid and Christopher's naked lunch By James Poniewozik The Blumenthal-Hitchens flap reveals the dirty secret of Washington's elite journalists [ C O L U M N I S T ] Left Hook: Taking it out on Sid By Joe Conason The frustrated House managers are helping Ken Starr go after one of the president's aides out of revenge   T A B L E+T A L K When is censorship justified? Discuss cases where free speech and the law collide in the Social Issues area of Table Talk   Find deep discounts and great selection on the books you need to read at barnesandnoble.com Search by:  Keyword Title Author       R E C E N T L Y The mysterious death of Tyisha Miller By Lori Leibovich Black leaders in Riverside, Calif., insist a police shooting victim would be alive if she were white. But would she? (02/08/99) The vanilla story By James Poniewozik Our long national bad date is almost over (02/05/99) What did the president touch, and when did he touch it? By Michael Bérubé Republicans say no to more Monica, and look for a way to end the trial (02/05/99) The last plantation By Debra Dickerson The "niggardly" scandal should teach whites to watch their language, and blacks to toughen up. (02/05/99) Peace with honor? By Joshua Micah Marshall Republicans say no to more Monica, and look for a way to end the trial (02/05/99) - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Browse the Newsreal Archives - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
		Stalking Sidney Blumenthal IS IT POSSIBLE CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS AND HIS | "FORMER FRIEND" ARE BOTH TELLING THE TRUTH? BY JOSHUA MICAH MARSHALL It started with a friend's betrayal -- Linda Tripp's of Monica Lewinsky -- and it may end with one. In what seem to be the waning days of the Clinton scandal, as senators look for a way to end the trial, Washington has been riveted by journalist (and sometime Salon contributor) Christopher Hitchens' decision to submit an affidavit to Republican trial managers swearing that his old friend, presidential aide Sidney Blumenthal, described Lewinsky as a "stalker" over lunch last March, contrary to Blumenthal's own sworn deposition in the trial last week. Hitchens' accusations have elicited bipartisan calls for a Justice Department investigation of Blumenthal. But the legal ramifications of his act may, in the end, be minor. What's certain is that the topic has stunned liberal Washington, providing what writer Christopher Buckley has called "a Chambers vs. Hiss moment," referring to the controversy that divided liberals in the 1950s. Buckley is certainly exaggerating -- it's unlikely anyone will be writing books about this decades from now -- but the Hitchens-Blumenthal split has surprised people who know both men well. Their 15-year friendship was well known in Washington, despite Hitchens' increasingly bitter antipathy toward Blumenthal's boss. Their families regularly socialized, and Hitchens attended Blumenthal's last birthday party and toasted his friend warmly. One journalist who is friends with both men told Salon that Hitchens' decision to attack Blumenthal publicly is due to his "extreme bitterness" over Clinton's ability to slip the noose in the Lewinsky mess. Mutual friends within the liberal and left journalistic community have persistently resisted Hitchens' often diabolical estimation of the president, this friend said, and Hitchens has grown increasingly strident, and vocal, in questioning their sanity and their integrity. Hitchens himself has said that in the course of researching a Nation column on Blumenthal's overzealous defense of Clinton, he mentioned their March lunch to some Republicans. Then he got a phone call from House Judiciary Committee counsel Susan Bogart, who -- surprise, surprise -- had heard of his claims. She asked him to make a sworn statement, which he did, though he has said repeatedly he will never testify against Blumenthal should he be charged with perjury. And perjury is what Republicans have been trying to pin on Blumenthal. It is true that for many months the buzz within journalistic circles was that Blumenthal had peddled various disparaging stories about Lewinsky to the media. And Hitchens repeated that charge Sunday on "Meet the Press." "I would say most of the people I know in the profession who heard that story," Hitchens told host Tim Russert, "they knew it either directly or indirectly from Mr. Blumenthal." But, to date, none but Hitchens have come forward. On Monday a friend of Hitchens' submitted an affidavit swearing that Hitchens told him of his lunch with Blumenthal where the presidential aide smeared Lewinsky, but no journalists have joined Hitchens in revealing that Blumenthal was the source of such stories. Blumenthal has not specifically denied that he discussed the Lewinsky-as-stalker theory in his March 17 lunch with Hitchens and his wife, Carol Blue. His statement over the weekend denied that he was a "source for any story about Monica Lewinsky's personal life." (Hitchens did not return phone calls.) The core of Blumenthal's defense seems to be that literally hundreds of stories describing Lewinsky as a "stalker" had already run in the media before his lunch with Hitchens. Though Blumenthal has said he has no specific recollection of the lunch meeting, he says he would have considered such a lunch with his "then-friend" Hitchens a social event, not a professional meeting. This would mean that he was telling the truth when he said in his trial deposition that he had only talked about the Lewinsky mess "with friends and family." Several Blumenthal defenders have observed that if the presidential aide had wanted to plant the stalker story with a journalist, Hitchens would have been his last choice. The British journalist is open in his utter contempt for the president, and it would stand to reason that if Blumenthal were going to leak the story into the press he would leak it to reporters who have been more supportive of Clinton. N E X T+P A G E+| "I am baffled by it"