Who Is Jeffrey Goldberg?

As Signalgate rages, let us put in a word for the editor of the Atlantic, Jeffrey Goldberg. We’re animated by the attacks on his character by President Trump, who called the editor a “total sleazebag.” There may be a touch of the journalistic sleaze in all of us ink-stained wretches, but less of it has rubbed off on Mr. Goldberg than almost any scrivener we know. He is one of the most remarkable journalists of his generation.We first met Mr. Goldberg in the office of Jonathan Rosen, who was then cultural editor of the Jewish Daily Forward, which we were then editing. Mr. Goldberg, who’d just returned to America from Israel, was looking for a job. What we remember about the moment is that when Mr. Rosen waved us into his office to meet the young writer, Mr. Goldberg didn’t stand up. He was clearly going to be no pushover. So we hired him on the spot.Mr. Goldberg turned out to be a scoop magnet. Within weeks of starting at the Forward, he brought in a historic beat — the findings of the 1990 Jewish population survey. It disclosed a soaring rate of intermarriage that rocked the Jewish community and ignited a nationwide push for Jewish education. Within a few weeks, he landed another world beat, the secret negotiations to settle billions of dollars in World War II material claims in Europe.He eventually landed at the Times, where he wrote so illuminating a piece on Liberia that the chairman of Dow Jones, Peter Kann, a Pulitzer winner and himself a masterful stylist, called us and asked, “Who is this guy?” We couldn’t tell him much, we replied, for Mr. Goldberg rarely opened up about himself — until in 2006 he brought out his book, “Prisoners,” about his time in the IDF, where, while a prison guard, he befriended an Arab prisoner.At one point, Mr. Goldberg was celebrating Passover at the prison compound, which was in the Sinai. He found himself reading from Exodus: “I am the Lord your God, who has led you out of the land of Egypt, the house of bondage.”“The house of bondage?” Mr. Goldberg exclaims.“Here we were, celebrating Jewish freedom in a prison filled with our Arab captives! We had built a prison and planted it right along the pathway of Jewish freedom, and we had filled its cages with Palestinians who were demanding only what Jews themselves demanded, in the time of the Exodus and today: freedom. No! I would not think this way. This was not the house of bondage. Israel was not Egypt. These Palestinians were not slaves.”His derring as a reporter became legendary. Once Mr. Goldberg hired anti-aircraft gunners to escort him into Kurdistan in pursuit of the story of Saddam Hussein’s massacre, by poison gas in 1988, of thousands of Kurds at Halabja. Vice President Cheney held that dispatch up on television to underscore the case for invading Iraq. Alone, by car and on foot, Mr. Goldberg nosed around the most dangerous of the Hezbollah-occupied zones in Lebanon. Politically Mr. Goldberg has landed far to our left. Yet when he was hoisted to the editorship of the Atlantic, we held a dinner party in his honor. The dinner for Mr. Goldberg was memorable for the diverse circle of affection around him. We ourselves had endorsed Donald Trump for president. Mr. Goldberg would swing the Atlantic behind Secretary Clinton. In the 30 years we’ve known him, we’ve never had a complaint about his accuracy or ethics. At the dinner, we presented Jeff with a copy of an article in the Atlantic by Abraham Cahan, the famed founder of the Forward and a leader of labor in the fight against communism — a cause we like to think that all three of us shared. Then we walked him over to Fifth Avenue and shook hands. We’ve been out of touch since, but we haven’t lost our admiration for Mr. Goldberg. Mr. Trump could only enjoy inviting him to lunch and getting to know him in person.

Who Is Jeffrey Goldberg?

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