The Last Magazine: A Novel

by Michael Hastings

  “Professor,” Berman says.

  “Milius, Sanders,” he says.

  “Off to CNN?” Sanders asks, a note of hopefulness.

  “Oh, no, no time for television today,” Nishant says.

  “Me either,” Berman says.

  Two men who, as their reputations confirm, find it very difficult to go forty-eight hours without finding a way to a television studio, who carry makeup removal swabs in their pockets, are now both unavailable.

  “I have a speech to give on Milton Friedman,” Nishant Patel says. “An award ceremony. Hastings, you have that speech for me?”

  “Right here, Nishant,” I say.

  Delray M. Milius’s doughboy face flinches; he hadn’t seen me, hunched behind the velvet cubicle walls.

  “Lucy, Patricia, is my car ready?”

  “It’s waiting, Nishant,” they respond.

  Patricia snatches the manila folder from his hand, and Nishant leaves two of his assistants trailing.

  Sanders Berman gives me a pained smile and turns the corner back to his office. Delray M. Milius follows him.

  Peoria comes charging out of his office next.

  “I’m supposed to be on CNN in forty-five minutes,” he tells me.

  I follow Peoria outside while he smokes a cigarette. The CNN studios are only two blocks away on Columbus Circle.

  “Peoria, man, I think they want you to take the blame for this,” I say.

  He looks at me, inhaling, his cheeks turning Granny Smith–apple green in the cold.

  “We have nothing to apologize for,” he says. “All sorts of fucked-up shit is going on at these detention facilities. I know that, Healy knows that. We just need to stand by it, you know, and since I’m the one who was over there, I really have the credibility—that’s what they told me, and I liked that, having the credibility to speak for the magazine. It shows that they really have put their faith in me, to choose me to do this, you know?”

  “I don’t think so, man. I think they’re ducking for the fucking hurricane shelters while you’re standing out there with the microphone, dodging telephone polls.”

  “You’re a fucking cynical person for your age. You know, I was never that cynical when I was coming up. Now . . .”

  Maybe it’s the drugs or another hangover or the prescription meds or just the numb stressed-out feeling he’s described to me since coming back. He doesn’t get it.

  24.

  Mid-January 2004, Continued

  Forty-five minutes later, I turn up the volume on the television on the pillar next to Dorothy’s and Patricia’s cubicles.

  “A CNN exclusive interview,” the anchor says, “with the reporter who wrote the now infamous story that sparked the Magazine riots in Iraq.”

  Although Peoria has gone to the studio, they don’t actually put him in the same room with the anchor. He is, as he tells me later, brought down to a dark room on the second floor, behind a wall of glass, where production assistants and assistant producers and other young-looking people in headsets mill around, slamming phones down, rushing, wound-up. The anchor is on the fifth floor. Peoria is put on a chair to look straight into the camera.

  They at least have given him a spray of makeup, I think, as his face flashes on screen, the green tone of his cheeks removed.

  Isolated below, he doesn’t have the comfort of seeing a human face—he feels trapped, cornered, staring at a camera with the words of what the anchor is reading scrolling underneath.

  “In Iraq’s holiest city, riots broke out after allegations in a Magazine story offended tens of thousands of Iraqis and others across the Muslim world. The story alleged that Iraqi detainees were victims of abuse at the hands of U.S. soldiers, a claim that both the White House and the Pentagon have strongly denied. The riots have now claimed the lives of thirteen Iraqis. With us is A.E. Peoria, the Magazine reporter who wrote the controversial story. First, let’s look at the words that have caused the deadly violence.”

  On screen, the offending paragraph is put up, with a number of ellipses.

  According to a U.S. military official, detainees were told to strip naked . . . subjected to “debilitating noise levels” of rock music like AC/DC . . . and told to flush the Koran down the toilet. In one incident, the Koran was used to capture the ejaculate of a soldier who was reading aloud a page of Hustler’s letter section to the captured insurgents. . . .

  I hear Peoria clear his throat.

  “Do you think you owe the Iraqi people an apology?” the anchor asks, as a way to ease into the conversation.

  “An apology, I mean, I’m sorry that they got so offended, but—”

  “The sources in the story—everyone has backed off this. Our own CNN reporting also couldn’t confirm your story. You can’t really confirm it, can you?”

  “I mean, we quoted—we had quotes from an eyewitness.”

  “But you never saw this yourself?”

  “No, we had quotes from an eyewitness, like I said, uh, I never saw this myself, but I think, you know, we reported on this investigation that is going on into it—”

  “But the government says that this investigation doesn’t contain anything like what you described, that it is just a routine checkup of the facilities, and the claims that you make in the story haven’t been confirmed by the investigation.”

  “Right, well, the other reporter, who wrote this, his sources told him that they saw a draft of the report—”

  “A draft, so this was just a draft of a government report? And you’re blaming Matthew Healy, one of the most well-respected journalists in the profession? As I know, from personal experience covering the government, the final version often has many things that are taken out, and so don’t you think it was reckless to go ahead with this?”

  “I don’t think, I mean, you have to understand that I’m sorry that this rioting happened, but you know that cleric, that guy, he’s a real jerk—he’s not like a good guy, you know?”

  “We have to go to a commercial, and when we get back, we’ll bring in a Middle East expert to discuss the fallout. To join in the discussion, log on to CNN.com.”

  It is the first time I have seen a friend melt down on live television. It is a brutal experience. I want to give him the benefit of the doubt. I know the adrenaline is flowing through his mind. I know what he should say, I know that he should just say, Stop this madness, your questions are asinine. It’s worse, too, when I put myself in the place of an average viewer who happens to be tuning into CNN at an airport lounge or as background noise as he makes the second pot of coffee in the kitchen, or the first pot of coffee if he’s watching on the West Coast.

  I know they will take one look at Peoria and think: This guy is fucked-up, this guy doesn’t know what he’s saying, he’s not making any sense at all. Because the words Peoria says jumble together. They don’t fit in sound bites. I know he needs time to explain himself, to explain the story, to have the viewers see the context. He just wants context. If he can just give the context of the story, if he can just make a few simple points—that the story is accurate, that perhaps they could have been more careful in how they reported it, but that other reporters had been digging around, hinting at similar activities by American forces. If he could have cited an Associated Press story from November, if he could have cited a Reuters story from last week, if he can just explain himself. But Peoria can’t explain himself, because once you start trying to explain yourself on television, it’s hard to win—you can’t explain; you just have to state yourself, without hesitation.

  I want to give him the benefit of the doubt—to take out the “ums” and “ahs” and how his eyes keep darting to the left and right. (He will explain later that his eyes were looking at the other television monitors, and he will swear the producers were cutting back to him at exactly the wrong moments.)

  “We’re back wi
th noted Middle East scholar Daniel Tubes. Daniel, what did you make of the—”

  “Can I just respond to what Mr. Peoria said first? What he’s doing is classic. He’s blaming the victims for his own reckless reporting.”

  “How is he blaming the victims?”

  “He’s saying it’s their fault for rioting, their fault for reacting to the erroneous information he put out. And I think that’s just despicable.”

  “Uh, no, I’m just saying—”

  “He obviously knows nothing of Middle Eastern culture,” Tubes continues. “I hate to be blunt, but that’s so clear to me.”

  “Why do you say that?” the anchor asks, lobbing another softball to Tubes.

  “Hustler? The Arabs don’t have a culture of masturbation,” Tubes says. “The story has so many holes in it, it’s an embarrassment. It’s offensive, because in the Arab world, and I don’t think I can put this more politely, there just isn’t the culture of masturbation that we have in the West.”

  “Mr. Peoria,” the anchor says. “Is this true? Were you unaware of the cultural sensitivities you were reporting on?”

  “No, I guess I wasn’t aware of the, uh, lack of cultural, um, in that sense. I mean, the Iraqis I knew, um, they really liked looking at pictures of naked women and things. Um, I mean, they didn’t even need to be naked, just like, you know, advertisements of a girl in a robe or a bra, or a girl in a dress that doesn’t fully cover, you know, that was pretty shocking to them—”

  “And so you thought it was a good idea to write about Hustler magazine?”

  “I mean, I’m there to report on what’s happening. I don’t really—”

  “This is the smoke screen that the liberal media have been hiding behind: they want to do their best to undermine the Americans. They hate the troops, they don’t care that what they report actually puts American lives at risk. And by the way, a source at the Pentagon told me that pornography isn’t even allowed among Americans in Iraq! It’s against General Order Number 1. So how did they get this so-called Hustler magazine, this so-called November edition? How, I ask, did they get that? And flushing the Koran down the toilet? I spoke to another high-level source who told me that there are no flushing handles at the detention facility Peoria so inaccurately depicts as hostile. They don’t even have toilets; they have little holes to squat in—and they have porta-johns.”

  “I mean, it is just to get at the idea they were throwing the Koran in the toilet, you know?” Peoria says.

  “Oh, so he’s changing his story again, right here! Admitting to another mistake! They don’t flush; they throw! Next think you know, it’s going to be, Well, there was a Koran that fell off a table in the room next door!”

  “All right, we’re going to turn to the viewer email, see what our audience is saying. Sam from Georgia writes, ‘Peoria is a disgrace to America. I’d cancel my subscription to The Magazine but I don’t even have one.’

  “Caroline from New Mexico says, ‘I’m so disappointed in how the media always gets things wrong and no one holds them accountable. Kudos to your show for calling that reporter out for his bad news.’

  “We’re heading to commercial. Mr. Peoria, thanks for your time. Daniel Tubes will stay with us, and we’ll be right back. You’re watching CNN.”

  Peoria disappears from the screen, scratching his nose.

  I turn off the television and go back to my cubicle. Within minutes, a story appears on the wires: “Journalist apologizes for erroneous story.”

  I click on the story and scroll down. In the second paragraph, the story says The Magazine has released a statement. This is news to me. The statement says that A.E. Peoria is suspended from his duties at the magazine, and the magazine is instituting new regulations to prevent this kind of mistake from happening again. The story quotes Delray M. Milius. It’s clear they had the statement ready before Peoria even went on air.

  25.

  Mid-January 2004, Continued

  I know I’m jeopardizing my job, for sure, but every once in a while, I’m supposed to stand up for what’s right—at least that’s what I’d absorbed from all sorts of morality tales I’d heard over the years.

  What can I really do, as a cubicle slave, as a desk jockey, as a kid just one step removed from an internship?

  I know what I can do, actually—I can leak the real story. I know I can go to Wretched.com.

  I type in the URL, and wait for the screen to upload. I open another window to log into my personal email account, on Gmail. The Wretched.com site is coming up. It’s the most popular media gossip site on the web.

  The top story that day happens to be about an assistant producer at Fox News who’d gotten drunk at a party and had an accident in her pants that was picked up by a camera phone video. The editors at Wretched.com are loving that story, but I think after Peoria’s appearance on CNN, they’ll probably write something about him, too.

  Sure enough, after I refresh the screen, there is a YouTube clip with Peoria, with the choice quotes printed below.

  On the sidebar, there is a link for people to send anonymous tips to Wretched.com. I start writing up an email, putting down the real story, the cover-up.

  Thirty minutes later, I see my email, name redacted, printed in full.

  It would have worked, or perhaps helped save Peoria’s reputation, but at almost the exact same time, the governor of Virginia got caught getting a blow job in the bathroom of the Amtrak Acela Express, DC to New York. The guy who broke the story? Healy. He must have been saving that one.

  If Peoria had just waited a few hours, maybe he could have survived the damage, as the Magazine riots were forgotten with the new round of blow job news.

  But then I hear screaming down the hall.

  26.

  February 2004

  Reeling, reeled, rocked, slipped, sliding. What is the right word?

  A.E. Peoria stares at his computer screen, sitting in his boxers, the white bandage visible through the slit for his penis. He scratched another bandage on his thigh covering up a puncture wound.

  The Word document is opened up to his journal, file name wd35. When he had started this Word file during his senior year of college, he didn’t want to name it something like “diary” or “aejournal,” because if he ever lost his computer or if someone was looking in it—“someone” meaning a girl he was dating—then they’d know where to look, they could go straight to the source. He had transferred and resaved the file thirty-five times since that first document, in one of the early versions of Microsoft Word, and making its way from outdated laptop to outdated laptop, the journal now stretched to 1,700 single-spaced pages.

  It isn’t the most coherent document. There are so many spelling mistakes and typos that the red-line function, which marks a misspelled word, stopped working in late 2001.

  But on the evening after the CNN appearance, it is to the wd35 that A.E. Peoria turns.

  He knew that it couldn’t have gone well. In the five minutes after removing the earpiece, being shuttled into the elevator by another large-breasted assistant producer, and being dumped out onto the street in the cold, he kept waiting for his mobile phone to light up with text messages and voicemails from friends and family who’d seen him on the program. Usually, after a TV appearance, he would be flooded with words of encouragement and support: great job, you looked great, excellent. He’d get notes from people he hadn’t seen or heard from in years, all of a sudden impressed with him because he had managed to get onto a television screen.

  Nothing this time.

  When he got back to the office, the silence was even louder. He passed the security guard, and in the lobby there was a TV screen turned to CNN, and the security guard, a large African American woman, asked him for his ID.

  “I was just on TV,” he told her.

  She looked at him.

  And she waved him by.
The doors opened to a crowd heading out for lunch, the clique that always seemed to hang out together, a group of assistant editors and senior editors who, Peoria had always felt, were replaying their high school fantasies of being the cool kids—and how he wanted to be among the cool kids! And Peoria thought that he had been finally making inroads into this crowd: one of them had asked him, at the homecoming party, if he would join their table for dinner Friday night, and this little group had come out in a bunch and blown past him, pretending they didn’t recognize him, or at least pretending that they didn’t know him well enough to say hello in the hallway.

  On his floor, he walked by that kid Hastings’s desk, and even Hastings just said hi, nothing special, no “Great job, man,” and he knew Hastings was the kid who would have said “Great job” no matter what he had done.

  And then he sat down at his desk and the email from Delray M. Milius was there, asking him to come into his office.

  Peoria walked down the hallways again, and stood in front of the secretary sitting outside Delray’s office.

  “It was that bad, hunh?” Peoria said, fishing for at least a little encouragement. The woman at the desk didn’t even smile and waved him in without answering his question.

  “Alex, sit down,” Delray M. Milius said. “We need to talk.”

  Peoria sat down and inhaled.

  “We’re putting you on administrative leave. We think you should take some time off.”

  “I don’t think I need to take time off,” Peoria said. “I don’t think the story is getting any bigger now, I mean, what more could we do?”

  “No, we think it’s best for you to take time off, at least for a few weeks.”

  The conversation went back and forth like that for fifteen minutes, and Peoria finally agreed that he would take time off.

  “Okay, Milius, I’m a team player and everything and I don’t mind doing that at all, you know, so I only ask that we keep this confidential, because you know if it gets out that I’m taking time off, it’s like I’m admitting I’m guilty and admitting I fucked up, and I really don’t think I did, you know. I mean it was Healy’s story and I just added that quote, so I don’t—”