Fun With Fact-Checking for Condoleezza Rice

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Earlier this year, when we were getting ready to ship the Mother Jones excerpt from my book about refugees from Burma, Clara Jeffery called me into her office. There’s a part in the article about how many of the refugees couldn’t get asylum in the United States because they were considered terrorists (long story), at least until Condoleezza Rice signed some waivers that allowed the immigration of tens of thousands of them. “How did this issue end up on Rice’s desk?” Clara asked me. I had little doubt that the lobbying of Christian groups was involved (many Burmese in Thai refugee camps are Christian), but I said I didn’t really know, because I didn’t. But do you know who else doesn’t know? Condoleezza Rice. Her personal researcher, Leisel Bogan, just called me and said that Rice would like to know if I had any idea how this issue ended up on her desk.

“We were on a plane,” Bogan explained, “and I was reading the Wall Street Journal review of your book and showed it to her, and she said, ‘This looks really interesting; we should get it.’ Bogan did not mention whether Condi’s interest had anything to do with the Journal‘s somewhat gratuitously calling me “a profane young bisexual from Ohio,” but in any case, it turned out that “Your book was the most informative I’ve read.” And since I had 67 pages of source info, I was also obviously a superanal geek. So when they needed some backstory about US-Burma policy for Rice’s upcoming book, Bogan rang my bell.

Bogan and I did some constructive brainstorming that I think will lead her to what they need. Time will tell how accurate my speculations about the waiver’s history are. But in the meantime, knowing that Rice couldn’t have answered Clara’s question makes me feel like less of a slacker for not knowing, either.

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WE'LL BE BLUNT

It is astonishingly hard keeping a newsroom afloat these days, and we need to raise $253,000 in online donations quickly, by October 7.

The short of it: Last year, we had to cut $1 million from our budget so we could have any chance of breaking even by the time our fiscal year ended in June. And despite a huge rally from so many of you leading up to the deadline, we still came up a bit short on the whole. We can’t let that happen again. We have no wiggle room to begin with, and now we have a hole to dig out of.

Readers also told us to just give it to you straight when we need to ask for your support, and seeing how matter-of-factly explaining our inner workings, our challenges and finances, can bring more of you in has been a real silver lining. So our online membership lead, Brian, lays it all out for you in his personal, insider account (that literally puts his skin in the game!) of how urgent things are right now.

The upshot: Being able to rally $253,000 in donations over these next few weeks is vitally important simply because it is the number that keeps us right on track, helping make sure we don't end up with a bigger gap than can be filled again, helping us avoid any significant (and knowable) cash-flow crunches for now. We used to be more nonchalant about coming up short this time of year, thinking we can make it by the time June rolls around. Not anymore.

Because the in-depth journalism on underreported beats and unique perspectives on the daily news you turn to Mother Jones for is only possible because readers fund us. Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the type of journalism we exist to do. The only investors who won’t let independent, investigative journalism down are the people who actually care about its future—you.

And we need readers to show up for us big time—again.

Getting just 10 percent of the people who care enough about our work to be reading this blurb to part with a few bucks would be utterly transformative for us, and that's very much what we need to keep charging hard in this financially uncertain, high-stakes year.

If you can right now, please support the journalism you get from Mother Jones with a donation at whatever amount works for you. And please do it now, before you move on to whatever you're about to do next and think maybe you'll get to it later, because every gift matters and we really need to see a strong response if we're going to raise the $253,000 we need in less than three weeks.

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