Holland, Naftali, and the Wisdom of Discretion
[Additional disclosure: I haven't spoken to Holland since he left the Miller Center; I have spoken to Naftali once, for less than five minutes many months ago, in that time. I have no connection to Naftali's current work at the Nixon Library. Naftali and I were once, many years ago, finalists for a job at the Univ. of Hawai'i; he got the job.]
Holland’s departure from the Miller Center apparently wasn’t a pleasant one; in 2005, he cryptically noted, “A dispute between the Miller Center and Mr. Holland ended in a mutually agreeable settlement.” Following the settlement, he launched sporadic attacks against both Zelikow and Naftali. In one essay, Holland faulted Zelikow, as staff director for the 9/11 Commission, for seeking to distribute the Commission’s report through a commercial press (Norton) and the internet rather than through the GPO and government depository libraries. (Holland complained that this approach—which almost certainly brought, and continues to bring, the commission’s work to far more people than would have been the case through a GPO/depository library strategy—“discriminates against citizens without on-line access, as well as those without a broadband connection.”) Holland also described as “cronyism” the hiring of Naftali (an expert in both the history of intelligence and the history of the presidency) by the Commission.
In another of his commentaries, Holland criticized Zelikow, Naftali, and Ernest R. May for the standards of the Presidential Recordings Program. As I noted at the time, Holland envisioned “criteria that could only be satisfied by a transcription that contains all utterances, sounds, and potentially pregnant pauses, along with an aural rather than grammatical transcription.” Such an approach, while not one that I share, is intellectually defensible, but, much like Holland’s preference for depository libraries over the internet, would have had the effect of rendering the historical source less accessible to the widest possible public. In both of his columns, Holland also employed a tone that suggested something more than a good-faith intellectual dispute was at issue.
Holland’s essays came across as somewhat cranky—a little like recent criticisms of President Obama by John McCain, someone determined to find something to criticize about his target—but essentially harmless. Holland’s latest anti-Naftali work is quite different, as immediately evident from its labeling Naftali a “hustler.”
First, Holland (now writing for a publication, “Washington Decoded,” for which he is editor) no longer disclosed his dispute with the Miller Center, as he had done in his 2005 History News Network post. Instead, he softened his revelation: “Max Holland worked on the Lyndon Johnson presidential tape recordings at the University of Virginia’s Miller Center of Public Affairs from 1999 to 2003; during that time, Naftali was director of the Miller Center’s Presidential Recordings Project.” I e-mailed Holland to ask why he didn’t disclose the settlement with the Miller Center; in his reply, he didn’t explain his decision, though he did write, “Certainly I hope there will be full disclosure, too, about your role at the Miller Center.” I believe I have accommodated his request.
Second, Holland used three anonymous quotes, which allegedly came from former 9/11 Commission staffers, deeming Naftali’s work (which eventually was published as Blind Spot)“not pertinent,” “irrelevant,” and “a screed.” Holland informed me that these alleged staffers only would criticize Naftali’s scholarship under the cloak of anonymity. That’s obviously their right. But a more dispassionate essayist would have shied away from allowing anonymous sources to provide non-specific, negative comments about a book that was extensively reviewed in both academic and mainstream media publications—by reviewers willing to put their names behind what they wrote. Holland does turn to one such reviewer, Hayden Peake, whose negative review Holland considers “worth quoting at length.”
“Washington Decoded” has a prestigious editorial board, including David Barrett, Barton Bernstein, Mark Kramer, Stanley Kutler, Leo Ribuffo, and Thomas Schwartz. Surprised that any of these scholars would have approved such an unusual use of anonymous sources, I asked Holland whether any of the editorial board had reviewed his essay before it appeared. He declined to answer the question. The website of “Washington Decoded” does not explain the editorial board’s function.
Given Holland’s history with the Miller Center and his signs of bias—not reaching out to Naftali for pre-publication comments (or referencing Naftali’s refusal to comment about the essay’s claims); allowing anonymous sources to make non-specific but harshly negative attacks about the subject of the essay—I suspect that most editors would have considered Holland too close to the issue emotionally to write about it fairly. And, I suspect, all involved would have been better served if Holland had chosen discretion and assigned the essay to someone else. Holland, unfortunately, is determined to continue his crusade, promising a future anti-Naftali broadside.
Excluding the anonymous material, Holland’s essay levels two principal criticisms of Naftali: first, that Naftali was tardy with his work for the Commission, to an extent that the Commission couldn’t use the work effectively; and second, that Naftali acted as a “hustler” by publishing his research as Blind Spot rather than donating it to the Commission.
The first point, though hardly a breathtaking development—a professor who’s late with his work(!)— would be relevant to a narrative history of the 9/11 Commission. The second amounts to a value judgment for which Holland’s bias renders him a dubious evaluator.
In his essay, Holland claims that not personal pique but a high-minded rationale accounted for the time he spent ferreting out his tale: “Naftali’s self-aggrandizement at taxpayers’ expense might be a forgotten matter, except that he is now on the public payroll, and has been since 2006 as director of the Nixon presidential archives.” The first segment of his rationale exaggerates the evidence that Holland presents; the connection drawn in the second segment seems a stretch, to put it mildly.
In his reply to me, Holland complained that my three areas of inquiry to him (his non-disclosure of his settlement with the Miller Center; his using anonymous sources for harsh, non-specific quotes; and a request about whether his essay was seen by the editorial board) “evidence a lot of bias.”
Those questions struck me as both obvious and appropriate. But to paraphrase Barney Frank’s comment to Kenneth Starr (minute 97.00 at this clip), I’ll have to concede the point, since Holland certainly seems to have become an expert in bias.