If it IS Rosen, Coral Davenport of the New York Times may know it is Rosen. In fact, my completely off-the-wall pure speculation is that Davenport was Rosen's contact that the opinion page staff "trusted". So Rosen, who obviously was in touch with Davenport for this article, probably contacted her privately about potentially writing the op-ed. He gave her the op-ed, and then she passed it anonymously to the opinion page editors. Then after they decided they wanted to publish it, they communicated with Rosen directly to confirm his identity.
Rosen already had established a confidential relationship with Davenport, so it would make sense that he would contact her -- someone he trusted -- first
Proving It's NOT Rosen
One huge issue is whether someone involved with national security wrote the op-ed. I have assumed, from the first time I read it, that this wasn't the case. It just seems implausible to me that someone dealing with top secret information on a daily basis would open themselves up to potential blackmail like this. If it IS someone involved with national security, that person should resign immediately to remove the threat of being compromised.
The other huge issue is whether it was written by the administration official. There is no doubt it is written by someone who is an experienced and outstanding writer; the NYT editors made that point and it is clear from the text itself. That is one of the biggest clues that it might be Rosen, since he has a history of writing op-eds and is an excellent and clear writer.
However, it could easily be ghost-written by someone for an administration official. In fact, it's not impossible that Rosen is the ghost writer! Or it's possible that Rosen's writings were ghost written and that person actually wrote the op-ed. The most likely candidate there would be Brian Callanan, who co-authored a lengthy piece with Rosen, and who is currently Deputy General Counsel at U.S. Department of the Treasury. Callanan and Rosen are connected via Senator Rob Portman.
Analyzing Callanan's writings would be a good way to test the Rosen theory. Does Callanan, who was a co-author with Rosen, have stylistic things in common with the op-ed? Here is an example article he wrote recently. I don't see strong similarities, but I would be interested in other people's opinions.
The other way of looking at it is that the stylistic tendencies I have noted are just tendencies of people who do a lot of legal writing. The em dash and hyphenation may be examples of this. I do think that is partly the case. So if Rosen is not the correct candidate, it may be that looking for someone with a long history of legal writing would be a good starting point in any search.
Anyway, easy to speculate, but the above is just speculation. Intrepid reporters need to pick up the ball and follow these leads. Or, for all I know, they may have already ruled out Rosen and have leads in other directions.
Serious Research to Prove or Disprove the Rosen Case
I don't have the time or energy to do the research, but there are a few studies that would be helpful in nailing down things in a more scientific manner.
The first would be to collect 50 or 100 of the most recent NYT op-eds from outside contributors and to analyze those for stylistic cues. This might help determine which stylistic tendencies are due more to NYT copy editors and which to the original authors. It might also help elucidate how truly unique or common are the stylistic tendencies I have noted below.
Another test would be to examine the backgrounds of all of the Deputy Secretaries and similar officials to see which ones have a history of writing op-eds for themselves. The seemingly unique thing about Rosen is that he wrote op-eds by himself for no reason other than to express his opinion. They weren't done in an official capacity or directly related to his work. How many other officials have done that?
A third test would be to compare Rosen's writing in other contexts with other writing in similar publications. How unique is his writing style? Or is it just the style of someone who has been a law partner for decades?
I don't have the time or energy to do the research, but there are a few studies that would be helpful in nailing down things in a more scientific manner.
The first would be to collect 50 or 100 of the most recent NYT op-eds from outside contributors and to analyze those for stylistic cues. This might help determine which stylistic tendencies are due more to NYT copy editors and which to the original authors. It might also help elucidate how truly unique or common are the stylistic tendencies I have noted below.
Another test would be to examine the backgrounds of all of the Deputy Secretaries and similar officials to see which ones have a history of writing op-eds for themselves. The seemingly unique thing about Rosen is that he wrote op-eds by himself for no reason other than to express his opinion. They weren't done in an official capacity or directly related to his work. How many other officials have done that?
A third test would be to compare Rosen's writing in other contexts with other writing in similar publications. How unique is his writing style? Or is it just the style of someone who has been a law partner for decades?
No comments:
Post a Comment