Washington Post Hires Marc Thiessen; "Crossfire" With O'Donnell

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WaPo Hires Another Ex-Bush Speechwriter


The Washington Post, which already provides a home for Michael Gerson on its op-ed page, today featured a new weekly online column from another former Bush speechwriter, Marc Thiessen

It was a busy day for Thiessen. On Friday’s “Morning Joe,” he had a heated exchange with Democratic analyst Lawrence O’Donnell, who called his sparring partner one of the “torture-mongers in the Bush White House.”

In the past, Thiessen has written in support of Torture, and is now making the rounds to promote his new book: “Courting Disaster: How the CIA Kept America Safe and How Barack Obama Is Inviting the Next Attack.” The title shouldn't be a surprise considering that Thiessen declared that “Obama is already proving to be the most dangerous man ever to occupy the Oval Office” just days after inauguration.

Greg Sargent, who blogs for the Washington Post Co.’s “The Plum Line,” pointed out at the time that Thiessen’s assertion “crosses over from mere opinion into verifiable or disprovable assertion." And today, the hiring of Thiessen was met with criticism from liberal bloggers, such as the American Prospect's Adam Serwer, and on sites like Wonkette.

But editorial page editor Fred Hiatt defended the decision to give Thiessen a platform with the Post.

“I think he makes some strong arguments, and I think it’s good to have other points of view represented, particularly given that our editorial page has been very strongly against the interrogation program and for having the army field manual govern all interrogations,” Hiatt said.

Hiatt said he was unfamiliar with the National Review item where Thiessen made the grandiose claim that drew a rebuke from Sargent and others. But Hiatt said that "if you look at the body of his work over the past months, he has strong views and he argues them forcefully."

The Post also added a liberal voice to the roster this week, giving Katrina vanden Heuvel a weekly online column. And next week, centrist Matt Miller will be starting an online column.

Thiessen will not only be writing on torture and national security. His first effort was actually on hockey.





















Morning Joe Goes "Crossfire"


Former Bush speechwriter Marc Thiessen went on "Morning Joe" Friday morning to talk about national security. But the Bushie wound up on the receiving end of a yelling tirade from Lawrence O'Donnell, who was on the New York set.

The liberal O'Donnell - who's hosting "The Ed Show" Friday night on MSNBC - wound up yelling at Thiessen, saying he was "lying." As the show's hosts tried to get him to stop, O'Donnell grew more irate, talking over everyone. Thiessen had to ask, "Can I get a word in?"

Finally, "Morning Joe" host Joe Scarborough put an end to it, saying: "Stop. Let's stop. We're going to break right now. We're going to break right now. We'll be right back and I'm going to be interviewing Mark by myself. We'll be right back."

When the show came back from the unscripted break, the show was announced as: "Thiessen Interview Take 2."

O'Donnell was still on set, Scarborough noted, "because we don't yell on this show. ... By the way, Lawrence, if you wanted some psycho talk, you just run the clip of yourself tonight, you got psycho talk."

Then Scarborough threw out new rules. "We're going to let you talk," he told Thiessen, adding that "Lawrence will get 30 seconds at the end and you'll have a 30-second response."

When O'Donnell was given his 30 seconds, he was far calmer, but his first question was: "I want to know your own personal experience with torture. I know you grew up in the richest zip code in America on the Upper East Side. You went to the only boarding school in Connecticut that I know of that has a golf course ... and then you went to Vassar. And, of course, like all the tortured mongers in the White House, that Cheney family included, you never served a day in the military, never considered that. I'm wondering with that background, what is it that gives you an expertise on torture? What makes you love it so much?"

Thiessen defended himself by saying "One, it's not torture ... I had a security clearance ... I met with the actual interrogators."

Scarborough finally concluded, "We don't usually do the Crossfire thing here, but what can I say."


Sources: Washington Post, MSNBC, Morning Joe, Politico, The Atlantic, Plumline, National Review, Perseus Distribution Services