“China Hand” Owes Me a Retraction

[Update, 31 May 08: China Hand publishes a retraction:

In a comment on Arms Control Wonk in 2007, I made the statement that the website Onefreekorea had apparently received an advance copy of a government ruling concerning Banco Delta Asia. I inferred this from my reading of the timestamp on the OFK post, which I believed indicated that the post had been put up the day before the ruling was officially announced and publicly available. OFK’s proprietor has advised me that he obtained the ruling through an electronic subscription to the Federal Register and did not receive it in advance. I regret the error, withdraw the statement, and apologize to OFK. I’ve also asked ACW to delete the comment.

End update.]

Original Post: So, what did you do this weekend? I took my kids to the circus, mowed my lawn, fixed the tires on my bike, and received a belated notice that I’ve arrived as a made member of the neocon conspiracy, complete with 3-karat pinkie ring and powder blue Coupe de Ville. The belated part is unfortunate, really. Such powers have shelf lives, especially when you use them for world domination. No doubt, my potent svengali juju has begun to wane before I could begin toppling ChiCom satellites like dominoes just in time for the Olympics. My notice came in the form of a year-old blog post about Treasury’s issuance of its final rule putting the hammer down on Banco Delta Asia, with this confident statement:

Definitely some Boltonian shenanigans at work. It appears regime-change advocate Onefreekorea had the text of the Treasury decision ahead of its release and was pushing the idea that the BDA issue would be the “critical failure point” that could derail the Six Party Agreement (perhaps because Treasury’s strongly-worded statement of zero tolerance for ongoing North Korean malfeasance was meant to intimidate other banks and provoke the North Koreans to a precipitate response). Judging from the State Department and Chinese response so far, they’re going to be disappointed. I blog http://chinamatters.blogspot.com/2007/03/twilight-of-boltonians-treasury-works.html the issue at China Matters.

— China Hand · Mar 16, 10:27 PM · [Comment, Arms Control Wonk]

Off to show some leg in the big city, are we, China Hand? (The link in that comment goes to his “China Matters” blog.)

I’m just finding out about this today by accident because China Matters never took time out of the sisyphean work of tongue-bathing pandas and justifying the shooting of Tibetan nuns or somesuch to ask me about my Boltonian shenanigans. Truthfully, John never calls anymore (the bitch). Now, I admit to the occasional bout of self-importance when people leak me things, but here, I must protest. There is no importance. Not only did I not get any advance from Treasury, that probability is plainly obvious to a careful reader. China Hand seems in awe of my ability to find the very same information he could have found on public U.S. government web sites. Again, the suggestion that I had any advance notice of Treasury’s final rule is false and made with a reckless disregard for the truth. So are the skullduggery and delusions about my importance he infers from his own error.

China Hand probably refers to this post of mine, dated March 13, 2007, which links to the final rule on Banco Delta Asia published by the Treasury Department’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (Fincen). Being just literate enough to make a buffoon of himself, China Hand clicked the link to Fincen’s pdf — not mine — of the pages in the Federal Register publishing the BDA final rule. No doubt, he saw the date March 19, 2007 printed on the header.

Presto — neocon conspiracy! Hey, what more proof do you need?

The funny thing about the Federal Register is that sometimes, the date a proposed rule is filed can precede the actual date of publication by several days. Had China Hand read the date of filing at the end of the rule, he’d have seen that it’s actually March 14, 2008. So why is that still the day after I published my post? Because I linked to the Federal Register page in an update, which I must have put up the same day the final rule was issued.

But how could anyone possibly be so all over the publication of the final rule without the guiding hand of John Bolton? Please allow me to demystify that as well. Anyone with the interest can go to Fincen’s web site and subscribe to their updates. Long-time readers know how interested I was in this story. I subscribed. And in fact, the very same FR page that I uploaded to my blog and which you see linked at this post was sent to me by Fincen in one of its subscriber updates on March 14, 2007, at 11:35:58. Yes, I still have the e-mail.

Now as to the charge that I seek to “change” a regime that does this kind of stuff to people, there’s no point in pressing an accusation I freely confess, proclaim, and wear as a badge of honor. Nor is it a secret that I am not cheering for the success of State’s series of surrenders to Kim Jong Il. There’s nothing hidden about any of this, and I haven’t cut politicians of either party any breaks for the stupid stuff they’ve been saying or doing.

Still, it galls to see such carelessness and sloppiness when people write about you. China Hand / China Matters constructed his conspiracy theory on such a slender reed without showing the rigor — or the cojones — to at least confront the one he accuses. He flatters me if he actually believes this. On the other hand, it’s probably no accident that China Hand did not link back to my blog when he made his accusation, knowing that this would probably leave tell-tale trackbacks or show up in my visitors’ log. In light of what passes for due process in China, maybe that shouldn’t surprise anyone. But in the blogosphere, there are certain rules of conduct you follow if you want credibility and respect. One of them is that you don’t write baseless things about people without some minimally diligent investigaton of the facts, and another is that when you get a fact wrong (as we all do) you correct it.

I’ve asked China Matters to print a prominent retraction, including over at Arms Control Wonk, where comments probably closed moths ago. I posted my request many hours ago, but there’s complete radio silence over at China Matters. I understand how time-consuming it can be, constructing those justifications for the starvation of Burmese peasants. Regrettably, this requires me to undertake, as a public service, to post the corrections China Hand won’t.