My next contact with Calame's office arose when I included him as a recipient on a short message I sent to feedback@nytimes.com about an error in the Times's web archives (a correction not attached to an article). My message was acknowledged the next day by Mary Flanagan of NYTimes.com Customer Service, who told me it had been passed along to "the appropriate department." By the time she sent her message, the error was already fixed.
I answered that I'd forgive him if he'd explain why my earlier communications to his office had been ignored. That led to the exchange reproduced below -- in which the Times ombudsman's office responds, for the first time, to the messages I'd sent two months earlier.
Whether the response is satisfactory is, of course, another matter. I turn the complete correspondence over to you to judge for yourself:
From: Uriel Wittenberg
To: Joe Plambeck
Sent: Tuesday, November 01, 2005 10:30 AM
Subject: Re: 10/31 OPE Response Re: Correction not attached to article in archive!
I'll forgive you if you tell me why my earlier communication to your office
a couple of months ago was ignored.
From: Joe Plambeck
To: Uriel Wittenberg
Sent: Tuesday, November 01, 2005 10:43 AM
Subject: Re: 10/31 OPE Response Re: Correction not attached to article in archive!
Hmmm. What was it about?
From: Uriel Wittenberg
To: Joe Plambeck
Sent: Tuesday, November 01, 2005 10:51 AM
Subject: Re: 10/31 OPE Response Re: Correction not attached to article in archive!
>Hmmm. What was it about?
Please don't think of me as normally being a defender of President Bush, but
I do care about accuracy:
----- Original Message -----
From: Uriel Wittenberg
To: Times Ombudsman Byron Calame
Sent: Monday, September 05, 2005 10:08 PM
Subject: Now 3 columnists have contradicted the news story
Dear Mr. Calame,
To the two columnists cited in my earlier message below, we can add Frank
Rich, whose Sept. 4 "Falluja Floods the Superdome" has:
The president's declaration that "I don't think anyone anticipated the
breach of the levees" has instantly achieved the notoriety of Condoleezza
Rice's "I don't think anybody could have predicted that these people would
take an airplane and slam it into the World Trade Center."
Regards,
Uriel Wittenberg
----- Original Message -----
From: Uriel Wittenberg
To: Times Ombudsman Byron Calame
Sent: Saturday, September 03, 2005 4:29 PM
Subject: News Story Contradicts Columnists Krugman and Dowd
Dear Mr. Calame,
A Times news story reports (details below) that experts did not foresee that
a hurricane could cause the levees protecting New Orleans to be breached.
Paul Krugman says the opposite in his Sept. 2 column ("A Can't-Do
Government"): "Yesterday Mr. Bush made an utterly fantastic claim: that
nobody expected the breach of the levees. In fact, there had been repeated
warnings about exactly that risk."
Maureen Dowd implies the same, though less explicitly, in her Sept. 3 column
("United States of Shame"): "Who on earth could have known that New
Orleans's sinking levees were at risk from a strong hurricane? Anybody who
bothered to read the endless warnings over the years about the Big Easy's
uneasy fishbowl."
Here are the relevant excerpts from the news story, "Government Saw Flood
Risk but Not Levee Failure," September 2, 2005:
[D]isaster experts and frustrated officials said a crucial shortcoming may
have been the failure to predict that the levees keeping Lake Pontchartrain
out of the city would be breached, not just overflow.
In 2000, [officials] studied the impact of a fictional "Hurricane Zebra";
last year they drilled with "Hurricane Pam."
Neither exercise expected the levees to fail. In an interview Thursday on
"Good Morning America," President Bush said, "I don't think anyone
anticipated the breach of the levees."
[On Thursday,] Army Corps personnel, in charge of maintaining the levees in
New Orleans, started to secure the locks, floodgates and other equipment,
said Greg Breerwood, deputy district engineer for project management at the
Army Corps of Engineers.
"We knew if it was going to be a Category 5, some levees and some flood
walls would be overtopped," he said. "We never did think they would actually
be breached."
I would appreciate your response via email.
Sincerely,
Uriel Wittenberg
From: Joe Plambeck
To: Uriel Wittenberg
Sent: Tuesday, November 01, 2005 11:02 AM
Subject: Re: 10/31 OPE Response Re: Correction not attached to article in archive!
Mr. Wittenberg,
If my memory serves me correctly (and it sometimes doesn't), there were
reports that warned about the potential breach of the levees. It seems
that doesn't necessarily mean the officials in New Orleans or FEMA
accepted or knew about those reports.
Or am I missing something?
From: Uriel Wittenberg
To: Joe Plambeck
Sent: Tuesday, November 01, 2005 11:18 AM
Subject: Re: 10/31 OPE Response Re: Correction not attached to article in archive!
>there were reports that warned about the potential breach of the levees.
Well, that conflicts with the news story. Just read the brief excerpts from
it that I provided in the message.
From: Joe Plambeck
To: Uriel Wittenberg
Sent: Tuesday, November 01, 2005 11:47 AM
Subject: Re: 10/31 OPE Response Re: Correction not attached to article in archive!
The excerpt says what an [official] report said. Reports could be
conflicting.
From: Uriel Wittenberg
To: Joe Plambeck
Sent: Tuesday, November 01, 2005 12:03 PM
Subject: Re: 10/31 OPE Response Re: Correction not attached to article in archive!
>The excerpt says what an [official] report said. Reports could be conflicting.
This is a very strange argument. The excerpt quotes the deputy district
engineer for project management at the Army Corps of Engineers. The excerpt
says those are the people "in charge of maintaining the levees in New
Orleans." The quotation has the man saying "We never did think they would
actually be breached." Note the "WE," which presumably means the relevant
experts at the Army Corps.
Plus he's referring to a Category 5 hurricane. (I.e., more force than when
Katrina hit the levees.)
From: Joe Plambeck
To: Uriel Wittenberg
Sent: Tuesday, November 01, 2005 12:11 PM
Subject: Re: 10/31 OPE Response Re: Correction not attached to article in archive!
Mr. Wittenberg,
You're right, we're not getting anywhere here.
It seems that this is an argument about what people know, or knew, and
that the people at the Corps say they knew one thing, and the columnists
that you cite have the opinion that the experts should have known more.
I think it best that we consider this matter closed.