John Bolton’s extravagantly funded limited hangout, teased in today’s New York Times, reminds me of the old adage about the boy crying wolf.
Only in this instance, the boy cries wolf after the beast has devoured the villagers– then blames the village elders for not doing enough to stop the monster in time.
And one more thing: in this case the boy pockets a book contract worth $2 million while keeping his mouth shut and leaving everybody ill-informed and poorly armed. This buys him and his publisher enough time to process his book and whip up enough advance publicity to ensure stratospheric sales once it hits the marketplace.
Author and publisher then gobble profits while the eviscerated victims seep blood.
It is truly galling that Bolton dares to shiv House investigators for not pursuing their impeachment inquiry far enough when it was always in his power to light their way.
As Peter Baker of the Times writes: “the former national security adviser says in his new book that the House… should have investigated President Trump not just for pressuring Ukraine to incriminate his domestic foes but for a variety of instances when he sought to intervene in law enforcement matters for political reasons.”
Nice to know. But it would have been nicer to know earlier.
While I commend Simon & Schuster for offering to fight for Bolton’s right to publish, I can only wonder why it didn’t occur to his editors to pressure him to begin parceling out his revelations discreetly when they could have changed the course of the impeachment inquiry — and history.
Oh, I know: they owed absolute fealty to their author and were morally obligated to accede to his wishes. Good on them. I wouldn’t want it any other way.
But I suspect their $2 million advance to Bolton could have persuaded this terminally venal man to acquiesce in some strategically targeted leaks during pivotal moments in the impeachment circus. At the very least this would have amplified the priceless pre-publication publicity. And it wouldn’t have substantially added to Bolton’s legal liabilities, which were dizzying anyway.
I trust S&S will now follow the lead of my own publisher, Random House in a similar case (US v Snepp) and stay true to Bolton in court even after the publisher’s own book profits are safely flowing in. Honor requires it.
So do the larger imperatives of the First Amendment.
The administration will use Bolton’s official non-disclosure agreements and alleged violation of them to try to exact such punishment of him that every potential future whistle-blower and his/her publisher will be chilled into paralysis. The people’s right to know – and to be made safe against future Trumps – depends on S&S seizing the high ground and defending it with every legal weapon at its disposal.