Yesterday, Barrett Brown posted an item on FrontBurner about a Washington Post item concerning a Rolling Stone story about him. (Follow?) (Or, rather, Barrett sent me the item, and I posted it under his byline, since they don’t allow inmates access to the back-end WordPress site for FrontBurner.) I’ll try to make this simple: the Rolling Stone writer in question, Alexander Zaitchik, crafted his story in such a way as to lead readers to believe he was present for a scene he did not himself actually witness. Barrett claims that Zaitchik not only got details of that scene wrong, but he made other errors, too.
Today, the Washington Post has another item about the matter. In it, Zaitchik defends himself, saying that Barrett doesn’t recall correctly what happened. Zaitchik says Barrett wrote something for the Guardian with pen and paper and handed it to his lawyer. Barrett says that’s not the case, that at that time, he was writing stuff and sending it to his mother, who would then type it up for him and send it along. Barrett tells me that he doesn’t want to get into a pissing match with Zaitchik right now because his (Barrett’s) sentencing will happen Tuesday. That’s all he’s focused on right now.
But here’s the thing: I have a June 27, 2013, email from Barrett’s mom to his lawyer. Attached to that email is the Guardian piece that she typed for her son. Zaitchik told the Washington Post today, “I saw the draft, and copied directly from it.”
I don’t see how that’s possible. Zaitchik never got to see Barrett himself. If Barrett had handed his lawyer the Guardian draft on paper, then Barrett’s mom wouldn’t have been typing it up for him and sending it to the lawyer (unless, of course, the lawyer had taken the draft, sent it to Barrett’s mom, and asked her to type it up and email it to him — something I doubt happened).
And there’s one more thing: in Zaitchik’s telling, the article is titled “The Cyber-Intelligence Complex and Its Useful Idiots.” The Guardian editors gave it that title. The title on the original document that Barrett’s mom typed for him is “Trusting the Invisible Empire.” Again, if he were copying directly from the draft, I don’t see how that discrepancy would arise.
I’m not saying that Zaitchik made anything up. I’m just saying that the evidence squares with Barrett’s memory of how things happened.
