- David Corn
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For those of a similar name, see David Korn (disambiguation).
David Corn 
Born February 1959 Education Brown University (1981) Occupation Journalist, author Spouse(s) Welmoed Laanstra Children Maaike Laanstra-Corn, Amarins Laanstra-Corn Notable credit(s) chief of Washington bureau for Mother Jones (magazine); Washington editor for The Nation, appeared regularly on FOX News, MSNBC, and National Public Radio; frequent guest on BloggingHeads.tv Official website David Corn is an American political journalist and author and the chief of the Washington bureau for Mother Jones.[1] He has been Washington editor for The Nation and appeared regularly on FOX News, MSNBC, National Public Radio, and BloggingHeads.tv opposite James Pinkerton or other media personalities.
As an author, Corn's output includes nonfiction and fiction and generally deals with government and politics. Corn has also been a book reviewer. On one occasion, he criticized his own organization when Nation Books published the translation of a controversial French book on Osama bin Laden and the 9/11 attacks. Forbidden Truth: US-Taliban Secret Oil Diplomacy and the Failed Hunt for Bin Laden, by Jean-Charles Brisard and Guillaume Dasquié, suggests that the attacks resulted from a breakdown in talks between the Taliban and the United States to run an oil pipeline through Afghanistan. Corn argued that publishing "contrived conspiracy theories" undermined the ability to expose actual governmental misbehavior.[2]
Contents
Books
Corn's first book was a 1994 biography of longtime Central Intelligence Agency official Ted Shackley, which received mixed reviews. The book used Shackley's climb through the CIA bureaucracy to illustrate how the Agency worked and to follow some of its Cold War-era covert operations. In the Washington Post, Roger Warner called it "an impressive feat of research"; but, in the New York Times, Joseph Finder claimed Corn was seriously distorting history to blame Shackley for a series of CIA failings.[3][4]
Corn moved on to fiction with a contribution to Unusual Suspects (1996), a paperback collection of crime stories published as a fundraiser to combat world hunger.[5] His first novel, Deep Background, was a conspiracy thriller about the assassination of a President at a White House press conference and the ensuing investigation. Reviews praised Corn's mastery of the political atmosphere and characters, although they split on whether this was a virtue or, coming at the conclusion of the Clinton years, already all-too-familiar territory.[6][7]
With the arrival of George W. Bush, Corn became a harsh critic of the President. His next book, The Lies of George W. Bush, charged that Bush had systematically "mugged the truth" as a political strategy; and he found fault with the media for failing to report this effectively. The book also broke with journalistic practice for its explicit charge of lying, a word usually avoided as editorializing.[8][9]
In particular, Corn criticized many of the arguments offered to justify the 2003 Invasion of Iraq; and he challenged New York Times columnist William Safire for claiming links between Saddam Hussein and Al-Qaeda.[10] In Hubris, written with Michael Isikoff of Newsweek, Corn analyzed the Bush administration's drive toward the invasion.
The Plame affair
Main article: Plame affairCorn was personally involved in the early coverage of the controversy over leaks to the media of the name of CIA officer Valerie Plame. After Robert Novak revealed Plame's identity in his July 14, 2003, column, Corn was the first to report, three days later, that Plame had been working covertly;[11][12] and he raised the possibility that the leak of her identity violated the Intelligence Identities Protection Act.[13]
Novak, for his part, disputed that Plame had been a covert operative at the time her identity was revealed. He also objected to the negative portrayal of himself in Hubris, for which he blamed Corn more than Isikoff. He said of Corn, "Nobody was more responsible for bloating this episode." Novak felt that Corn was too close with former ambassador Joseph Wilson, Plame's husband and a key figure in criticism of the administration's arguments for invasion.[14]
Publications
- Blond Ghost: Ted Shackley and the CIA's Crusades. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1994.
- Deep Background. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1999.
- The Lies of George W. Bush: Mastering the Politics of Deception. New York: Crown Publishers, 2003.
- Hubris: The Inside Story of Spin, Scandal, and the Selling of the Iraq War. New York: Crown Publishers, 2006. (Co-author with Michael Isikoff.)
Notes
- ^ Mother Jones Lures David Corn From The Nation | The New York Observer
- ^ Rutten, Tim. "French 9/11 Theory Finds Voice in the U.S." Los Angeles Times, July 3, 2002, p. E1.
- ^ Warner, Roger. "The Spy as Bureaucrat". Washington Post, October 23, 1994, p. WBK1.
- ^ Finder, Joseph. "The Spy in the Gray Flannel Suit". New York Times, October 23, 1994, p. A22.
- ^ Weeks, Linton. "They Wrote the Book on Fund-Raising". Washington Post, May 15, 1996, p. B1.
- ^ Whitten, Leslie H., Jr. "Let the Secret Out: A Top-Notch Conspiracy Thriller". Washington Post, September 20, 1999 p. C2.
- ^ Polk, James. "The West Wing". New York Times Book Review, October 10, 1999, p. 25.
- ^ Hodgson, Godfrey. "Trust Buster". Washington Post, December 18, 2003, p. C3.
- ^ Hertsgaard, Mark. "Chapter and verse on the need for regime change". Los Angeles Times, March 14, 2004, p. R3.
- ^ Okrent, Daniel. "The Privileges of Opinion, the Obligations of Fact". New York Times, March 28, 2004, p. 4.2.
- ^ Corn, David. "Nigergate Thuggery". The Nation, August 4, 2003.
- ^ Toensing, Victoria. "What a Load of Armitage!" Wall Street Journal, September 15, 2006, p. A12.
- ^ Kurtz, Howard. "A Hot-Water Leak". Washington Post, October 1, 2003, p. C1.
- ^ Novak, Robert, "Who Said What When: The rise and fall of the Valerie Plame 'scandal.'" The Weekly Standard, October 16, 2006.
External links
- David Corn's official website
- David Corn biographical sketch from The Nation
- David Corn profile from Crown Publishing Group
- Were We Misled? A Debate on Pre-War Intelligence (Episode of The Brian Lehrer Show on WNYC with Corn as a panelist, February 15, 2006)
- Video discussions/debates in which Corn has taken part on Bloggingheads.tv
Categories:- American journalists
- American magazine editors
- American political pundits
- American political writers
- Brown University alumni
- New York Press people
- The Nation (U.S. magazine) people
- 1959 births
- Living people
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