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Still More Moyers

For those following Bill Moyers's role in gay-hunting at the Johnson White House (see Jack Shafer's articles at Slate, and Clay Risen's response on The Plank), check out Andrew Ferguson's blistering critique of Moyers that TNR published in 1991:

Not long before the election, Jenkins was arrested in a bathroom stall at the YMCA on a charge of "disorderly conduct." Johnson, convinced that Jenkins was somehow set up by Goldwater's campaign operatives, ordered Movers to gather information on the sexual histories of Goldwater's staff. Movers called DeLoach, who reported back that he had been unable to find anything of political use. Ten years later Moyers won an Emmy for two PBS shows on Watergate, both noteworthy for his fiery indignation over Richard Nixon's abuse of government power for political ends. The outrage was displayed again in the two ninety-minute PBS shows he has produced on the Iran-contra affair.

Of his experience in the White House, Movers says, "I've never exonerated the past. But I've never let myself be imprisoned by the past, either. I worked in Washington in those years, but I'm not a journalist practicing in those years--I'm a journalist now. I can't let myself as a Journalist be slaved by the indiscretions of those years, anymore than [former Nixon aide] Bill Safire can." The difference, of course, is that when Safire worked in the White House, he was, as it were, the buggee.

Read Ferguson's entire article here: "The Power of Myth: Bill Moyers, Liberal Fraud."