David Corn
David Corn | |
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Born | February 20, 1959 |
Education | Brown University (BA) |
Occupation(s) | Journalist, author |
Known for | Winner of George Polk Award for Journalism, 2012 |
Notable credit(s) | Chief of Washington bureau for Mother Jones; Washington editor for The Nation, appeared regularly on FOX News, MSNBC, and National Public Radio; frequent guest on Bloggingheads.tv |
Spouse | Welmoed Laanstra |
Children | 2 |
Website | Official website |
David Corn (born February 20, 1959) is an American political journalist, author, and the chief of the Washington bureau for Mother Jones.[1] He has been Washington editor for The Nation and appeared regularly on FOX News, MSNBC, National Public Radio, and BloggingHeads.tv opposite James Pinkerton or other media personalities.
In February 2013, he was named winner of the 2012 George Polk Award in journalism in the political reporting category for his video and reporting of the "47 percent story," Republican nominee Mitt Romney's videoed meeting with donors during the 2012 presidential campaign.[2]
As an author, Corn's output includes nonfiction and fiction and generally deals with government and politics. Corn has also been a book reviewer. On one occasion, he criticized his own organization when Nation Books published the translation of a controversial French book on Osama bin Laden and the 9/11 attacks. Forbidden Truth: US-Taliban Secret Oil Diplomacy and the Failed Hunt for Bin Laden, by Jean-Charles Brisard and Guillaume Dasquié, suggests that the attacks resulted from a breakdown in talks between the Taliban and the United States to run an oil pipeline through Afghanistan. Corn argued that publishing "contrived conspiracy theories" undermined the ability to expose actual governmental misbehavior.[3]
On November 1, 2017, Politico reported that David Corn's employer, Mother Jones magazine, had opened an investigation into allegations that Corn had engaged in inappropriate workplace behavior.[4]
Early life and education
Corn was raised in a Jewish family[5] in White Plains, New York.[6] He attended Brown University where he majored in history and worked for The Brown Daily Herald.[6] After his junior year, he interned at The Nation where he accepted a job as editorial assistant instead of returning to finish his degree.[6] He earned his remaining credits at Columbia University and received a B.A. from Brown University in 1982.[6] He joined Mother Jones in 2007.[6]
Books
Corn's first book was a 1994 biography of longtime Central Intelligence Agency official Ted Shackley, which received mixed reviews. The book used Shackley's climb through the CIA bureaucracy to illustrate how the Agency worked and to follow some of its Cold War-era covert operations. In the Washington Post, Roger Warner called it "an impressive feat of research"; but, in the New York Times, Joseph Finder claimed Corn was seriously distorting history to blame Shackley for a series of CIA failings.[7][8]
Corn moved on to fiction with a contribution to Unusual Suspects (1996), a paperback collection of crime stories published as a fundraiser to combat world hunger.[9] His first novel, Deep Background, was a conspiracy thriller about the assassination of a president at a White House press conference and the ensuing investigation. Reviews praised Corn's mastery of the political atmosphere and characters, although they split on whether this was a virtue or, coming at the conclusion of the Clinton years, already all-too-familiar territory.[10][11]
With the arrival of George W. Bush, Corn became a harsh critic of the President. His next book, The Lies of George W. Bush, charged that Bush had systematically "mugged the truth" as a political strategy; and he found fault with the media for failing to report this effectively. The book also broke with journalistic practice for its explicit charge of lying, a word usually avoided as editorializing.[12][13]
In particular, Corn criticized many of the arguments offered to justify the 2003 Invasion of Iraq; and he challenged New York Times columnist William Safire for claiming links between Saddam Hussein and Al-Qaeda.[14] In Hubris, written with Michael Isikoff of Newsweek, Corn analyzed the Bush administration's drive toward the invasion.
Corn announced on The Rachel Maddow Show on 9/12/2017 that he and Michael Isikoff were working on a new book about the Trump campaign and administration's ties with Russia and the Russian hacking during the 2016 Presidential campaign, as well as a history of Russian tactics; which was released on March 13, 2018 and entitled Russian Roulette: The Inside Story of Putin's War on America and the Election of Donald Trump.
The Plame affair
Corn was personally involved in the early coverage of the controversy over leaks to the media of the name of CIA officer Valerie Plame. After Robert Novak revealed Plame's identity in his July 14, 2003, column, Corn was the first to report, three days later, that Plame had been working covertly;[15][16] and he raised the possibility that the leak of her identity violated the Intelligence Identities Protection Act.[17]
Novak, for his part, disputed that Plame had been a covert operative at the time her identity was revealed. He also objected to the negative portrayal of himself in Hubris, for which he blamed Corn more than Isikoff. He said of Corn, "Nobody was more responsible for bloating this episode." Novak felt that Corn was too close with former ambassador Joseph Wilson, Plame's husband and a key figure in criticism of the administration's arguments for invasion.[18]
However, in early 2007, an unclassified summary of Valerie Plame's employment history at the CIA was disclosed for the first time in a court filing and confirms that Plame was indeed a covert operative at the time her name was made public by Novak.[19]
Mitt Romney "47 Percent" video and George Polk Award
In announcing Corn's being awarded the George Polk Award for 2012, the sponsors wrote:
David Corn of Mother Jones will receive the George Polk Award for Political Reporting for a story that rocked the nation and perhaps cost Mitt Romney the Presidential election. Through persistent digging and careful negotiation with a source, Corn secured a full recording of Romney at a $50,000-a-plate Florida fundraiser declaring that 47 percent of Americans — those who back president Obama — are “victims” who are “dependent upon government” and “pay no income tax.” Corn worked for weeks to obtain the recording, but it was his years of high-impact journalism that helped lead him to the source of the recording. Furthermore, it was Corn’s extensive previous reporting on Romney that convinced the source to trust him with its release.[20]
David Corn's story that introduced the secret tape was published in Mother Jones on September 17, 2012.[21][22]
Publications
- Blond Ghost: Ted Shackley and the CIA's Crusades. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1994.
- Deep Background. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1999.
- The Lies of George W. Bush: Mastering the Politics of Deception. New York: Crown Publishers, 2003.
- Hubris: The Inside Story of Spin, Scandal, and the Selling of the Iraq War. New York: Crown Publishers, 2006. (Co-authored with Michael Isikoff.)
- Showdown: The Inside Story of How Obama Fought Back Against Boehner, Cantor, and the Tea Party – William Morrow, 2012.[23]
- Russian Roulette: The Inside Story of Putin's War on America and the Election of Donald Trump, 2018. (Co-authored with Michael Isikoff.)
References
- ^ "Observer". Archived from the original on October 6, 2008.
{{cite web}}
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suggested) (help) - ^ Monica Bauerlein and Clara Jeffery, "Mother Jones' David Corn Wins George Polk Award," Mother Jones, February 17, 2013.
- ^ Rutten, Tim. "French 9/11 Theory Finds Voice in the U.S." Los Angeles Times, July 3, 2002, p. E1.
- ^ Concha, Joe. "Mother Jones bureau chief David Corn investigated for inappropriate conduct" Politico [1]
- ^ Interfaith Family: "Politically Correct" by Nate Bloom. November 13, 2012
- ^ a b c d e Brown Alumni Magazine: "You Don't Have to Trust Me" by Stephanie Grace May/June 2013
- ^ Warner, Roger. "The Spy as Bureaucrat". Washington Post, October 23, 1994, p. WBK1.
- ^ Finder, Joseph. "The Spy in the Gray Flannel Suit". New York Times, October 23, 1994, p. A22.
- ^ Weeks, Linton. "They Wrote the Book on Fund-Raising". Washington Post, May 15, 1996, p. B1.
- ^ Whitten, Leslie H., Jr. (September 20, 1999), "Let the Secret Out: A Top-Notch Conspiracy Thriller", Washington Post: C2
{{citation}}
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suggested) (help)CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link). - ^ Polk, James. "The West Wing". New York Times Book Review, October 10, 1999, p. 25.
- ^ Hodgson, Godfrey. "Trust Buster". Washington Post, December 18, 2003, p. C3.
- ^ Hertsgaard, Mark. "Chapter and verse on the need for regime change". Los Angeles Times, March 14, 2004, p. R3.
- ^ Okrent, Daniel. "The Privileges of Opinion, the Obligations of Fact". New York Times, March 28, 2004, p. 4.2.
- ^ Corn, David. "Nigergate Thuggery". The Nation, August 4, 2003.
- ^ Toensing, Victoria. "What a Load of Armitage!" Wall Street Journal, September 15, 2006, p. A12.
- ^ Kurtz, Howard. "A Hot-Water Leak". Washington Post, October 1, 2003, p. C1.
- ^ Novak, Robert, "Who Said What When: The rise and fall of the Valerie Plame 'scandal.'" The Weekly Standard, October 16, 2006.
- ^ Seidman, Joel (May 29, 2007). "Plame was 'covert' agent at time of name leak". NBC News. Retrieved June 8, 2017.
- ^ "LIU Announces 2012 George Polk Awards in Journalism" (press release), February 18, 2013.
- ^ David Corn, "SECRET VIDEO: Romney Tells Millionaire Donors What He REALLY Thinks of Obama Voters," Mother Jones, September 17, 2012. [retrieved 2-20-2013]
- ^ For the story about how and why Corn obtained the tape, see Paul Farhi, "How Mother Jones got the Romney '47 percent' story," Washington Post, September 18, 2012.
- ^ ""Showdown": Inside the Obama White House".
External links
![](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/4/4a/Commons-logo.svg/30px-Commons-logo.svg.png)
- David Corn's official website
- David Corn on Twitter
- Appearances on C-SPAN
- David Corn profile from Crown Publishing Group
- Were We Misled? A Debate on Pre-War Intelligence (Episode of The Brian Lehrer Show on WNYC with Corn as a panelist, February 15, 2006)
- Video discussions/debates in which Corn has taken part on Bloggingheads.tv
- David Corn, "WATCH: Full Secret Video of Private Romney Fundraiser. Mitt Romney wanted the full tape. Here it is." Mother Jones, September 18, 2012.
- [2]
- 1959 births
- George Polk Award recipients
- American male journalists
- American magazine editors
- American political commentators
- Jewish American journalists
- American political writers
- 20th-century American novelists
- Brown University alumni
- Living people
- MSNBC people
- New York Press people
- The Nation (U.S. magazine) people
- American male novelists
- Mother Jones (magazine) people
- 20th-century American male writers
- Novelists from New York (state)
- People associated with Russian interference in the 2016 United States elections