ProPublica Editor-In-Chief, known for spreading false insinuations, targeted Clarence Thomas.

The Scandal That Shook the⁢ Nation

If media outlets measure their success by ​public influence, then ProPublica is having a banner year.⁤ Since the investigative⁣ nonprofit published the first‌ of ​five stories about Justice Clarence ⁤Thomas’ ⁣social connections, popular news outlets and the Democratic‍ Party have made the series the most-discussed “scandal” of 2023.

Thomas’ friend Harlan Crow has become internet clickbait, which amounts today to a household name, and Democratic lawmakers have argued‌ Thomas should resign. Through‌ it all, another figure, whose past and present are equally important to the series, has remained remarkably free from ‌scrutiny: Stephen Engelberg, the longtime New York Times reporter, founding managing editor, and then ⁢editor-in-chief of ProPublica who oversaw ‌the Thomas investigation.

This ⁢is a major elision.‍ If Thomas’ career tells one ⁣kind of 30-year ​story, of a black conservative jurist in Washington, D.C., Engelberg’s tells another: a story in which, unlike‌ Justice Thomas, his alleged transgressions are directly tied to his ⁢work. Since ⁣1992, even in the ​judgment of some of his peers, ⁣Engelberg made his reputation by turning investigative reporting into an⁣ exercise in false insinuations and reputational slander at the expense of asking‌ who’s ⁤abusing power and where power lies.

The Art of Tactical Omission

The Whitewater scandal began with New ‌York​ Times reporting by Jeff Gerth and then Engelberg on possible improprieties committed ⁤by a defunct savings-and-loan association with connections to Bill and Hillary Clinton. It led to the appointment‍ of ​two​ independent counsels, the second‍ of whom⁣ eventually issued a report to ⁤Congress ‌recommending Bill Clinton’s impeachment — not for Whitewater-related corruption, but for ‌lying about ⁣an affair with a White House intern, which the special counsel had uncovered during the investigation.

The reason the Whitewater inquiry ⁤swerved ​in Monica Lewinsky’s direction was that, despite the ⁣Clintons’ careers being marked by questionable ethics,⁤ Gerth​ and Engelberg’s front-page Whitewater stories promised⁣ more than their information could support: Witnesses were unreliable, suggestive facts didn’t‍ form‌ a causal line,‍ and some​ of the paper’s implications were riddled with inconsistencies. Journalistic critics, many of whom leveled criticisms at the Clintons but doubted Gerth and Engelberg’s​ reporting, described these stories in ways that might⁣ sound familiar today: “stories that combine a prosecutorial bias and the ⁢art of ⁣tactical omission to‌ insinuate all manner of⁤ sin ​and‌ skullduggery,” featuring “loose new⁤ standards under which innuendo was enough​ to sustain reports of serious ethical wrongdoing…”

On to the Next Headline-Grabbing Investigation

Between March 1999 and September 2000, Engelberg ⁤supervised a series of front-page reports, again written by ⁣Jeff Gerth, about the prosecution and conviction of Wen Ho Lee, a Taiwanese-American nuclear scientist at ‌the‍ Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico, for allegedly ‌passing​ nuclear information to China.

These reports were riddled with errors. In one of the earliest, on March 24, ‍1999, the ‌Times asserted that Lee had hired a⁢ laboratory assistant who was a Chinese citizen “already under investigation as a spy,” for whom the FBI was looking and ⁢who had disappeared.‌ But the laboratory assistant was a graduate student whose “disappearance” was back to Pennsylvania‌ State University where he was studying and ⁢was ‍reachable by the university’s website or phone ‌— the Times⁢ hadn’t checked.

Neither had⁣ the FBI, which also leaked reports of the⁢ investigation to the Times and then used the Times’ stories off ‌their leaks to prosecute Dr. Lee. According to the transcripts of the FBI interrogations​ of Dr. Lee ⁢on March 7,⁣ 1999, the day after the Times ran its first story which described Lee without disclosing his ⁤name, interrogators made that⁢ story into leverage, threatening ⁣him with public humiliation via the newspaper ⁢in language that ​ reads like a lift ⁢from a David​ Mamet play. ‌(“No, you stop a minute, Wen Ho. … this newspaper article … this is ‍what’s going to do you‌ more damage than anything. … Do you​ think the press prints everything that’s true? Do ⁤you think⁤ that everything that’s in this article⁤ is true? … The press doesn’t care.”)

Two days later, Dr. Lee ⁣was fired, and his name was disclosed to‌ and​ run​ in The New York Times. The Justice Department, benefiting from the coverage it had provided ‌the Times, prosecuted Lee and caused him to be held shackled in ⁢solitary confinement for nine months until, on Sept.⁣ 14, 2000, the government withdrew 58 out of ⁢59 charges after an FBI ​agent‌ admitted ​to lying in testimony, and Lee⁤ received an apology from a Reagan-appointed‍ federal judge.

Failing Upward

Bill Keller‍ ran and serves on the board of a respected nonprofit. Dean Baquet supervised the Times’ Pulitzer Prize-winning coverage of President Trump’s alleged Russia collusion, coverage that flowed, again, from FBI⁤ leaks later revealed as flawed.​ Jill Abramson and David Gergen are on ProPublica’s board of journalistic advisers. Jeff Gerth recently ⁤retired after a decade-plus stint as ⁣a senior editor at ProPublica, ​with two Pulitzer Prizes to ⁤boot. And ProPublica’s Engelberg‌ is continuing his ​30-year​ career of character⁣ assassination, ⁣helping Senate Democrats obliterate the federal ⁢government’s separation of powers in the process.

In these journalistic circles, a debate is occurring over how “objective” journalism should be as more Americans lose trust​ in it. Should it favor “balanced” reporting or vigorously identify “threats”‍ to the republic, e.g. Donald Trump? Backlit against 30 ⁤years of media practice, with the campaign against Clarence Thomas the‍ latest but surely not the last example, this debate is meaningless. ⁤To call the reporting of Engelberg and his peers “balanced,” or, in ProPublica’s parlance, “journalism that​ holds power to account,” is an abuse of⁢ language. It’s also a dereliction of truth: the ‍one⁣ concept that these people, insider players⁤ all,‌ claim to revere and uphold.