Regret the Error

An Editor’s Note:
A story on page B1 of the April 5 edition of the Citizen, which looked at the future of NATO, should not have included quotes attributed to Clifford Gaddy, a Russia expert at the Brookings Institution in Washington, D.C. Mr. Gaddy was not interviewed by the Citizen for that article, and the Brookings Institution says that the quotes incorrectly attributed to him do not reflect his actual views.

So were the quotes fabricated? Plagiarized from another source? How did this happen? And why can’t/won’t the paper explain the origin of the quotes to readers?

Here are the relevant passages from the article, which is not online:

“What confuses matters is that the two pillars of Bush’s legacy plan — developing a better relationship with Russia and promoting democracy through NATO in Eastern Europe — appear to be in conflict with each other,” says Clifford Gaddy, a Russia expert at the Brookings Institute, another Washington think-tank. “The result is he might wind up achieving neither.”

Ukraine and Georgia provide another contradiction, Mr. Gaddy notes. Support for NATO membership might be high among ex-patriates in Canada and the U.S., but polls suggest the people actually living in the two countries are not so sure.

“In Ukraine, there is still lingering suspicion of NATO left over from the Cold War,” he says, “and while there might not be a lot of love for the Russians, people see the advantages of not provoking them. It’s a pretty even split.”

Note that the Brookings Institution is incorrectly identified as the “Brookings Institute” in the article. That error is not corrected in the Editor’s Note.

From further down in the story:

For his part, Mr. Gaddy of the Brookings Institute contends that NATO, one tier or not, is as valuable as ever to the U.S. in a world where the rise of China as a great power, combined with the muscle of a resurgent Russia across Eurasia, requires the counterweight of an North American-European alliance

Thanks, Doug!