[In the following essay, Judis defends White House aide Sidney Blumenthal against the accusations made by Hitchens during the Clinton-Lewinsky scandal.]

I initially resolved not to write anything about the quarrel between White House aide Sidney Blumenthal and author Christopher Hitchens. I've been friends with Sid for 20 years and used to be friendly with Hitchens until about a decade ago, when he abused my trust. But, after having had my opinions taken out of context in the press, I have decided to weigh in on this unpleasant controversy.

I first met Sid when he was writing about politics for the left-wing weekly In These Times and I was editing his copy. Covering the 1980 campaign together, we shared a foreboding that the Democrats would lose big. Since then, we've talked regularly. He has been a loyal friend and, to the best of my knowledge, a conscientious father and faithful husband. He hasn't fired anyone without cause or made merry with the Council of Conservative Citizens. These would be superfluous observations except that they're needed to counter the vilification to which he has been subjected in the press. This reached its reductio ad absurdum in The Washington Post's review of Rushmore: “Schwartzman, the self-confident son of Rocky's Talia Shire, wins sympathy and a great deal of affection for Max, never mind that he could grow into Sidney Blumenthal.”

Sid has written three excellent books on political consultants, the conservative counter-establishment, and the 1988 campaign, and he produced memorable pieces for this magazine on Gary Hart, Lyndon Johnson, Bob Kerrey, and (once upon a time) Bill Clinton. I did not like the way he covered the Clinton campaign or administration. It wasn't a question of partisanship, or of ideology, but of a kind of idolatry that made him see only the best in Clinton and the worst in his opponents. Sid is the opposite of the stereotypical journalist: His characteristic sin is not grating cynicism but worshipful credulity. I urged him to join the Clinton administration and was happy when he finally did so in 1997. (My quip, which got twisted in transmission, was that Sid would now be getting paid for what he had been doing all along.) Contrary to his detractors, he joined the administration to advance a political agenda that he identified with Clinton, Tony Blair, and the “third way,” not to engage in a political war with an Ahab-like special prosecutor and his Republican mates. As far as I can tell, he has performed his duties selflessly (not seeking like other aides to enhance his own celebrity) and effectively (the assault against Clinton has been a right-wing conspiracy of sorts, if not a perfectly orchestrated one). In return, Clinton has ruthlessly exploited Sid's trust and credulity by lying to him and putting him in the line of Republican fire.

I became casually friendly with Christopher Hitchens when we both worked for left-wing publications. I didn't like his journalism, but I admired an essay he wrote on George Orwell for Grand Street. I had, however, two experiences with Hitchens that soured me on him—experiences that don't show me in the best light either, by the way. Eleven years ago, as my biography of William F. Buckley was about to appear, I told Hitchens what I had learned about a prominent conservative professor and friend of Buckley's while doing research at the Hoover Institution. This professor was a patron and protector of a conservative group that was loudly attacking a liberal professor for his teaching. I had learned that the conservative professor had once threatened to sue a student for merely complaining about one of his classes to his department head. I didn't want to do the story myself because I needed Buckley's goodwill, but Hitchens was eager to write it, and I gave him the means to confirm it on the express condition that he not name me as a source. He wrote the story, and all hell broke loose. A month later I got a furious call from the professor who told me that Hitchens, after a few drinks, had told him that I had been the source of the story.

At almost the same time, Hitchens showed me a column in which he had criticized Norman Podhoretz for comparing Gorbachev to Hitler. I was writing an essay on conservatives and decided to include this item because it perfectly illustrated the unwillingness of some conservatives to come to terms with the end of the cold war. Just to make sure, I called Hitchens to confirm that he had accurately characterized Podhoretz's words. He convinced me that this account was accurate, but, after the essay was published, I received an angry letter from Podhoretz, who enclosed the original column that he had written, which, I discovered, Hitchens had indeed mischaracterized. I published a retraction and an apology. I yelled at Hitchens on the phone and—except for a few chance contacts and an exchange of notes—have had nothing to do with him since.

Let's assume that Hitchens is telling the truth about what Sid said during their fateful March 1998 luncheon. If so, Sid misled (at best) the Republican interrogators when he said that he told no one but his wife about his conversation with Clinton. But the thrust of Sid's statement—that he did not immediately feed Clinton's January statement about the “stalker” to the press—stands up. The luncheon was nearly eight weeks after Sid and the president met, and it was as much between friends as between a journalist and his source. Anti-Clintonites are praising Hitchens for his truthfulness, but being truthful is an act defined by its context and not simply by its informative content. Hitchens chose to reveal the lunch to a band of zealots who were desperately seeking the barest inconsistency on which to hang the president and, if not him, then one of his aides. He was not legally compelled to talk to them—indeed, he had been eagerly recounting the story to advocates of impeachment. Hitchens claimed that he wanted to discredit Clinton, but his only victim was a man with whom he claimed to be close friends and who had, on balance, done little wrong. Like many of Hitchens's columns and pronouncements, his words had the aura of moral witness but smacked of old-world wickedness.

Sid will survive this exposure, just as Monica Lewinsky survived Bill Clinton and Linda Tripp. But pundits like Mark Shields, who barely knows Blumenthal but who still feels free to pronounce him “a thoroughly unlikable person,” would do well to ponder exactly what Sid experienced at the hands of Clinton and Hitchens. Sid is certainly no angel, and he has engaged in his share of malicious gossip. What these incidents reveal, however, is not a grandmaster of devilry and intrigue but someone too credulous for his own good.