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McClatchy DC Editor Accidentally Forwards All These Emails About Blackwater Murders By Hamilton Nolan, 2:10 PM on Wed Aug 5 2009, 2,472 views
This is interesting mostly just for being a candid look into how your news stories get made: McClatchy DC's online managing editor Mark Seibel accidentally forwarded this email chain to a marketing list, woops. It's a convo between Seibel and Jay Price, a reporter at the Raleigh News-Observer, about how to approach a story about a lawsuit alleging that Blackwater's founder was responsible for murders in Iraq. This is what journalists do! Let's not get all wing-nutty about these things. (We know that some right-wing bloggers are getting wing- nutty about this right now). Jay Price seems like a very balanced man, we must say.
On Aug 5, 2009, at 11:15 AM, Seibel, Mark wrote:
> You guys doing anything on the murder alegations?
From: Jay Price To: Seibel, Mark Sent: Wed Aug 05 11:30:32 2009 Subject: Re: Blackwater?
dunno, sent the material to joe yesterday but we havent talked. I'm on night cops rotation all this week since we no longer can afford night cops reporters.
I would be careful about how seriously I took this stuff.....The allegations are anonymous and part of a lawsuit that frankly is pretty shaky with some wilder stuff re: child prostitution etc. Norfolk wrote it because its in their yard, but their story was pretty lukewarm. This is not the same as someone publically saying this stuff happened. They are prone to threats but its been essentially junior HS boy cheft puffing, no sense they would ever do this or that the talk of christian crusades... they shot a lot in iraq but if there were lots of intentional killings we'd know about it.
On Aug 5, 2009, at 11:39 AM, Seibel, Mark wrote:
> I don't know about that last part. I think there were many intentional killings. Let me know if you guys decide to do something.
From: Jay Price Sent: Wednesday, August 05, 2009 12:24 PM To: Seibel, Mark Subject: Re: Blackwater?
will do. I mean intentional in the sense described in lawsuit, where they are alleged to have gone over on a christian crusade to kill iraqis. The allegations of killing potential whistleblowers is another red flag on this. victim(s ) are unnamed and it's not as if there are a ton of potential candidates. BW didnt lose but a handful there and most are known issues — fallujah and chopper shoot downs/crashes. So we have unnamed accusers, no names or circumstances for alleged victims etc. , lawyers who have been really pushing the limits of credibility and Jeremy Scahill who has made a career out of sensationalizing.... worth digging at, but there isn't even a small piece of solid evidence to support this stuff. Eric is Catholic and surely religious but the guys he put in the field were no more interested in religion than anyone else, and prob less so.
On Aug 5, 2009, at 12:26 PM, Seibel, Mark wrote:
> i imagine that's true — that the contractors themselves weren't driven by religion. they were driven by money
From: Jay Price Sent: Wednesday, August 05, 2009 1:18 PM To: Seibel, Mark Subject: Re: Blackwater?
Joe's hacking through the two guys' statements to see if there is somewhere further to push it. He and I are both aware of threats to folks inside the company not to talk but his take is this new stuff is not huge ..... will let you know if he starts to pursue.
Crime site looks good, wish we had a vast promotional budget for stuff like that.... it could take off with enough spotlight.
From: Seibel, Mark Date: Wed, Aug 5, 2009 at 1:20 PM Subject: FW: Blackwater? To: Wash Buro Web Marketing
let's be watching for this.