Gen. McChrystal allies, Rolling Stone disagree over article's ground rules

Reaching out

Gallery

Gen. Stanley McChrystal is relieved of his duties

President Obama removes McChrystal as commander of U.S. and NATO troops in Afghanistan on Wednesday after remarks he made in a magazine interview about top administration officials.

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The general's first action was to call his superiors. Then he began reaching out to members of the Obama administration mentioned in the article. He reached Vice President Biden -- whom one McChrystal aide referred to in the article as Vice President "Bite me" -- on an airplane as Biden was heading home from an official trip.

At the White House, copies of the article were already circulating among key West Wing officials.

"Tuesday was definitely not a normal day" in Kabul, the source said. McChrystal tried to maintain his schedule, assuming that the response to the story would be handled by the White House and the Pentagon. It was late in the day in Afghanistan when Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates called to order McChrystal home immediately for face-to-face meetings.

As events unfolded at the White House, members of McChrystal's staff in Kabul "were all heartbroken," the source said. "I've seen incredibly brave men cry this week."

Bates said it was telling that it took four days for those close to McChrystal to begin crying foul. Subjects of critical articles, he said, have many ways "after a story appears to question its veracity, [to complain] that things were taken out of context or off the record. None of those objections were raised during the critical few days in which this became a national issue," he said. "You're used to instantaneous responses from sources who feel they were abused in any way."

Sholtis said that "arguing about the merits of the article would have seemed like we were trying to protect or excuse ourselves rather than acknowledge our mistake. That may have not been the best PR strategy, but it was the approach consistent with the character of General McChrystal."

Officials also questioned Rolling Stone's fact-checking process, as described by Bates in an interview this week with Politico. "We ran everything by them in a fact-checking process as we always do," Bates said. "They had a sense of what was coming, and it was all on the record, and they spent a lot of time with our reporter, so I think they knew that they had said it."

In an interview Friday, the managing editor, Will Dana, said the reporter's notes and factual matters were exhaustively reviewed.

But 30 questions that a Rolling Stone fact-checker posed in a memo e-mailed last week to then-McChrystal media adviser Duncan Boothby contained no hint of what became the controversial portions of the story. Boothby resigned Tuesday.

In the e-mail, a copy of which was provided to The Washington Post by a military official sympathetic to McChrystal, Boothby is asked to confirm the makeup of McChrystal's traveling staff on the Paris trip and the communications equipment they brought with them on an earlier visit to London. "They don't come close to revealing what ended up in the final article," the official said.

"Does McChrystal's staff joking refer to themselves as Team America?" the fact-checker asked. "Not really," Boothby replied. "We joke that we are sometimes perceived that way by many of the NATO forces" under McChrystal's command.

In the article, Hastings wrote that McChrystal and his aides "jokingly refer to themselves as Team America, taking the name from the South Park-esque sendup of military cluelessness, and they pride themselves on their can-do attitude and their disdain for authority." In other passages, Hastings took what appear to be similar minor liberties with the facts as Boothby described them.

In the last question, the fact-checker asked: "Did Gen. McChrystal vote for President Obama? (The reporter tells me that this info originates from McChrystal himself.)"

Boothby replied in all capitals. "IMPORTANT -- PLEASE DO NOT INCLUDE THIS -- THIS IS PERSONAL AND PRIVATE INFORMATION AND UNRELATED TO HIS JOB. IT WOULD BE INAPPROPRIATE TO SHARE." He went on to describe the "strict rules" under which military personnel keep their political views to themselves.

In the article, Hastings reported that the general "had voted for Obama."

Bates said that the remark was "absolutely" not off the record, and he noted that Boothby's appeal "isn't on accuracy or even that it was off the record," but that it was irrelevant. He said the magazine, like other news organizations, had no obligation to warn sources that they had made unwise remarks.