MSNBC is said to be preparing a new program that will feature the anchoring duo of Ron Reagan, Jr. and Monica Crowley. Crowley is a former foreign policy aide to Richard Nixon and comes to MSNBC following a stint as a Fox News political analyst.

Over the years she has also been busy writing books and magazine and newspaper articles, often about Nixon. The only problem is that her authorship, at least on one occasion, appears not to be her own work. The filching was reported at the time by Timothy Noah for Slate.

In August of 1999, Crowley wrote an article for the Wall Street Journal commemorating the 25th anniversary of Nixon’s resignation. Four days after the article ran, the paper published the following:

“There are striking similarities in phraseology between “The Day Richard Nixon Said Goodbye,” an editorial feature Monday by Monica Crowley, and a 1988 article by Paul Johnson in Commentary magazine … Had we known of the parallels, we would not have published the article.”

The similarities are indeed striking:

From Johnson’s “In Praise of Richard Nixon,” Commentary, October 1988:
“There was none of the personal corruption which had marked the rule of Lyndon Johnson, let alone the gross immoralities and security risks of John F. Kennedy’s White House.”

From Crowley’s “The Day Nixon Said Goodbye,” Wall Street Journal, August 9, 1999:
“There was none of the personal corruption that had marked the rule of Lyndon Johnson or the base immoralities and outrageous security risks of the Kennedy and Clinton White Houses.”

Johnson:
“Nixon … consistently underestimated the unscrupulousness of his media enemies and their willingness to sacrifice the national interest in the pursuit of their institutional vendetta.”

Crowley:
“Nixon, though always suspicious of his political enemies, consistently underestimated their ruthlessness and willingness to sacrifice the national interest in the pursuit of their institutional vendetta.”

Johnson:
“So great was the inequity of Nixon’s downfall that future historians may well conclude he would have been justified in allowing events to take their course and in subjecting the nation to the prolonged paralysis of a public impeachment, which at least would have given him the opportunity to defend himself by due process of law. But once again his patriotism took precedence over his self-interest …”

Crowley:
“Given the inequity of Nixon’s downfall, historians may yet determine that he would have been justified in allowing events to take their course and subjecting the country to a prolonged process of impeachment, which would have given him the chance to defend himself by due process of law. His allegiance to the country, however, overrode his political self-interest.”

Johnson:
Characterizes the 1960 election as “one of the most corrupt elections of modern times.”

Crowley:
Characterizes the 1960 election as “one of the most corrupt elections of modern times.”

[This assertion, unlike the others, has some merit, and it’s possible the two arrived at the phrase independent of one another; but given the other examples cited here, that likelihood is not great.]

Johnson:
“By a curious paradox Richard Nixon was one of the very few people who emerged from the Watergate affair with credit.”

Crowley:
“Ironically, Nixon was one of the few people who emerged from Watergate with credit …”

[Johnson is British, Crowley American; why would she, on her own, use a Britishism like “with credit”?]

Slate reports that this rather blatant plagiarism was not widely disseminated at the time. Certainly Fox’s journalistic standards would not preclude the hiring of such an ethically-challenged individual, and maybe MSNBC’s standards are no better. But some attempt should be made to disseminate this story now and force MSNBC to defend (or even articulate) their standards.

Reagan has paid his dues at MSNBC and should not have to share this program with an avowedly right-wing hack who lacks the requisite principles for the job. Furthermore, if the network is seeking to achieve ideological balance, the last thing they need is a conservative analyst from Fox. Reagan should anchor the program himself or be paired with another independent-minded former Republican, Arianna Huffington.

Crowley needs to be challenged. It is unseemly for news professionals to be promoted with unexamined issues like this in their past. And it is dereliction on the part of the network (and news consumers, i.e. us) to ignore such a violations of the integrity of authorship. Ms. Crowley and/or the network should be required to answer this allegation and we should put their feet to the fire.

Freedom may be on the march, but freedom of speech is under the boot. The Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) of the US Department of the Treasury recently issued regulations that forbid American companies from publishing works by certain foreign authors without first getting permission. If the authors are from countries that the U.S. has targeted for sanctions, a license would be required to publish their work in the U.S. unless it has been previously published in the country of origin. Ironically, the result of these regulations would allow writings that were appproved by the author’s repressive native government, but prohibit writings that criticized it, because a repressive regime would be unlikely to publish such work.

Violators in the U.S. face penalties of up to $1 million dollars and 10 years in prison. The regulation is being contested legislatively by Rep. Howard Berman of California, and several weeks ago, Iranian lawyer and Nobel Peace Prize winner Shirin Ebadi (above) filed suit after discovering that publishing her memoirs in the U.S. would be illegal. Other litigants include the PEN America Center and Arcade Publishing.

The absurdity of silencing the very voices that represent the best of American values is disturbing, to say the least. Compounding that is the frightening notion that any American publisher must seek permission from a federal agency to exercise what should be guaranteed under the first amendment’s freedom of speech.