By Deborah Howell
Sunday, March 18, 2007

Three topics dominated recent mail -- the lack of coverage of an address by Jordan's King Abdullah to a joint session of Congress, an op-ed piece on Iraq by Robert Kagan and the Justice Department's firings of eight U.S. attorneys. Liberal bloggers seemed to be driving the complaints about the Kagan op-ed, and conservative bloggers, the comments about coverage of the firings.

Serge Duss of Alexandria wrote: "The head of state of an Arab country, Jordan's King Abdullah, addressed Congress on March 7 and The Washington Post ignored it. Not a word in the following day's paper. I couldn't believe it!" Reader Joan Salemi of West Springfield said: "When [Israeli Prime Minister Ehud] Olmert addressed that body it was front and center as it was for [former Israeli prime minister Binyamin] Netanyahu."

Karen DeYoung, senior diplomatic correspondent, had planned to cover the address, but in what she termed "the perennial problems of deadlines and space limits . . . at mid-afternoon, I was asked by the desk to change gears and do a different story, which didn't involve Abdullah or Jordan." As it turned out, that story was held because of a lack of space. DeYoung believed -- and I agree -- that "we should have at least had a brief wire or some acknowledgment of his speech to the joint session and what he said on the day it occurred."

Her editor, Carlos Lozada, also agreed: "I should have assigned someone else to write a story on the speech; even though it was not a major news event, it was worth having in the paper, but it slipped through the cracks. However, we did come back to the speech in a larger Sunday story by DeYoung and Glenn Kessler about evolving U.S. diplomacy in the Mideast."

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The story on the ouster-that-backfired of eight U.S. attorneys around the country kept getting deeper last week as media and congressional scrutiny continued.

Readers' complaints sounded generally like this one from Malcolm Tanigawa of Fairfax: "Regarding the front-page article 'Firings Had Genesis in White House,' I request that you look into why [reporters Dan] Eggen and [John] Solomon saw fit to avoid any mention of the firings of all U.S. attorneys by President Clinton. For the younger generation and people with short memories, the article would imply that such firings are a new thing."

Eggen, who covers the Justice Department, did note that fact in several but not all stories on the firings. He said, "Bush also got rid of all but one U.S. attorney in 2001, and in both of those cases it was at the beginning of a change in party power, which seems fairly obvious and routine. The issue here is doing a mass firing in the middle of a term, which leads to appearance problems and which is viewed by many as an intrusion on the independence of prosecutors. No one, including the Department of Justice, can cite a time in recent decades when it has happened before."

Seems like a reasonable explanation to me.

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Waldemar Storm of Fargo, N.D., complained, with about 60 others, about Post columnist Robert Kagan's op-ed headlined "The Surge Is Succeeding." Storm wrote: " Kagan is the brother of Frederick Kagan, the main architect of the 'surge' Iraq war strategy. . . . Perhaps readers should simply assume that the brothers Kagan are interchangeable, as their views are the same on this and related topics. The March 11 column failed to disclose the sibling relationship of the author to the originator of the strategy which is the topic of the article. . . . This seems irresponsible, perhaps unethical, a serious failure of full disclosure by the author and The Post."

The Kagan brothers are well known for their separate work on foreign policy and national defense; they supported the war. Important information about an op-ed writer should be disclosed if that information is likely to affect how readers understand the writer's motivations. This piece didn't meet that criteria.

Both Kagans said that they thought it was unnecessary. So did op-ed editor Autumn Brewington, who said, "We didn't consider identifying his brother. For one thing, Bob Kagan has been on the record calling for more troops for much longer than his brother has been known to support the idea of a surge. Second, his brother isn't part of the administration. The surge Bush implemented was the construction of [his] government. His brother might have supported such a plan, but it's not like he was the . . . official carrying it out."

Robert Kagan, a senior associate at the left-of-center Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, said, "My consistent position since the beginning of the occupation is that there were too few troops," and that position "was not influenced by Fred. It didn't occur to me that all of a sudden I need to start attributing my thoughts to anyone else. While we look at the world the same way, he has far greater expertise in the military than I do."

Frederick Kagan, a resident scholar at the conservative American Enterprise Institute, said, "He was continuing to make an argument he started making before I did, and I should not be given credit for his idea." He was the main author of an AEI study on Iraq released in December that made "recommendations similar to but not identical to what the administration has done."

Robert Kagan said he and his brother do not always agree, especially on whom "the Yankees should be pitching today."

Deborah Howell can be reached at 202-334-7582 or atombudsman@washpost.com.