This afternoon I attended a panel at The New Yorker festival entitled "Winning the War on Terror," which was moderated by the magazine's Jane Mayer and featured Ali Soufan, Mike Scheuer, Deborah Pearlstein, and Brad Berenson. I can't say I had very high hopes for the event, since panels tend not to be all that informative (Nora Ephron: "What is it about panels?"); but I tend to get a kick out of them anyway, if for no other reason than to see in person people who I've read or read about.
Mayer has written an extraordinary collection of articles on the war on terror, including a piece on extraordinary rendition and the authoritative profile of David Addington. Soufan was the FBI agent profiled by Lawrence Wright this summer in "The Agent," which I described at the time as "fascinating and gut-wrenching all at once." According to Wright's telling, he came heart-breakingly close to connecting enough dots to prevent 9/11. Scheuer, in the mid-90s, headed Alec Station, which was the CIA unit tasked with tracking down Osama bin Laden. Berenson was an administration lawyer for a few years, and Pearlstein works for Human Rights First on legal issues surrounding the war on terror.
I was most interested in hearing Soufan and Scheuer speak, but the event got somewhat hijacked by Berenson and Pearlstein. Berenson got the first question and launched into something like a 10-minute answer that bored the hell out of me. Pearlstein then pointed out some logical errors in his arguments -- "what a law professor," she said, "would call category errors," which, to me (and presumably other lawyers in the room) registered as an understated but still damning criticism. The two later had a back-and-forth on a couple somewhat subtle legal points, which I suspect bored most of the audience but actually interested me quite a bit. At one point, Berenson argued that administration lawyers had been scrupulous at all times about obeying the law, leading Pearlstein to respond that the torture memo, riddled with legal errors and omissions as it was, suggested quite the opposite. Berenson then said that the memo had been withdrawn, as if this proved anything more than that the administration had been shamed by public scruitiny to disavow a document that never should have been written in the first place.
Scheuer and Soufan made a variety of points that are well-known. Soufan wants the US to engage with people in the Middle East in a meaningful public diplomacy effort, rather than Karen Hughes's worldwide tour to parade her provinciliasm and, in the process, embarrass both herself and this country (my view, not his, but correct nonetheless). For his part, Scheuer wants to kill anyone and everyone who might be a terrorist but also takes pains to point out that Islamic terrorists are responding to our policies in their part of the world (whatever one's view of them), not our democracy. He also fidgeted relentlessly, occasionally dangling his feet off of the director's chair he and the other panelists were given to sit on, and had a strange way of looking at absolutely nothing when he spoke, fixing his gaze alternately on the floor and toward the ceiling.
In any event, it was mildly informative and entertaining but not earth-shattering. It was a panel, true to form.
Jane Mayer is actually somewhat petite, which I didn't realize I wasn't expecting until I saw her take the stage. After the panel ended, I sort of bumped into Lawrence Wright and told him I'm a big fan of his work. (This had the virtue of being true, unlike a similar compliment I recently paid to a well-regarded but ultimately mediocre and self-important media critic that I met.) He said a nice "Well, thank you!" and seemed to be a little taken aback -- but in a good way -- that he had been recognized. That, to be honest, was probably the most entertaining part of the event for me, though I wish I had been able to immediately summon up some incredibly intelligent comment to make. Coming in at a close second was a random sighting outside The New York Public Library of Chuck Todd, the editor of the politial tip sheet The Hotline. I have no idea what he was doing in Manhattan, but it was definitely him; he was walking and chatting with a woman, and I made no attempt to accost him.
