This Week’s Column: CONTINUING DISSENT, Part 2 Dennis Loy Johnson talks with Renata Adler DJ: Let's move on to that. Last year, in April, 2000, the Times ran an anonymous editorial — which you subsequently pointed out was written by Eleanor Randolph, who was criticized in "Gone" — that took you to task for that sentence and called for "Ms. Adler" to "produce her evidence." You've produced quite a bombshell piece of evidence in the new book — sealed indictments by the Criminal Investigation Division of the IRS against Sirica dating to 1927 for "fixing a prizefight and for income tax evasion." Why do you think that the Times has ignored your new evidence about Sirica's indictment? RA: I guess nobody there, including the reviewer, actually read the book. Also, I think they have absolutely no interest in the facts of the matter. None. This was never about the facts. DJ: So what's it about? RA: Beats me. Bureaucratic solidarity, in the face of any criticism? DJ: Why didn't you cite this evidence a year ago? RA: There was so much evidence. I had never wanted to write a definitive work about Sirica. It was also clear to me that if I wrote that he had been indicted, they would have said, "Well, he was never convicted." Or, even if he had been convicted, "1927 was so long ago." Or "Lots of people were indicted for fixing prizefights and tax evasion." Not lots who became federal judges, perhaps, but there it is. So I kept the Harper's piece to proving the literal words in my book. When they wrote about that piece, however, "Well, this doesn't prove anything," I thought, Well, let's put in a little more. DJ: You say in the book that, "My source for the information about Sirica's inclusion in the indictment . . . was the Criminal Investigation Division of the IRS — which published its own historical study for internal use." How, exactly, did you get this document? RA: Well, I'd like to say Deep Throat confided its contents to me, but I don't believe in Deep Throat. I simply got it from a source at the C.I.D. DJ: Did all of the ongoing business with the Times color the choice of essays and articles you used in "Canaries"? RA: No, we just included every published piece since my last collection of published pieces, with the exception of one, an essay in the New Republic about the Bush v. Gore case before the Supreme Court, which I just didn't really publish because it came out in July and it was too late. I also threw in one unpublished piece. DJ: The profile of G. Gordon Liddy you did for the New Yorker? RA: Right. DJ: How come the Liddy piece never ran in the first place? RA: Oh, there was just a lot of political correctness at the New Yorker. DJ: Meaning your piece was seen as favorable of someone you weren't supposed to be writing favorably about? RA: I don't know that. I really don't. DJ: Did doing the story make you change your mind about Liddy? RA: I had no preconceptions about him. I thought he'd written a very writerly autobiography, which was interesting. But mostly I was curious about him because he'd burned money, burned cash after being caught in the Watergate burglary. DJ: "Canaries" also includes your famous negative review of Pauline Kael, who died just as the book was released. Did that make you uncomfortable? RA: I don't feel at all differently about it because she died. You know, if I'd written it when she was on her death bed it would be quite a different matter. I've been careful in my life not to write polemical pieces about people who are fairly powerless, let alone less powerful than us. That was precisely one of my complaints about Kael — she was extremely harsh on independent filmmakers. And when I wrote about her, she was in her prime, so . . . I mean, I didn't want her dead, you know. DJ: Did you have any contact with her after that review? RA: No. But I still think that her style of reviewing, her method of reviewing, had a huge impact not just on the way reviews are done, but also on the way journalism is done. This way of just flying at things, and insulting people you don't agree with — this whole sort of hype and insult style of opinion has, I think, demonstrably affected reporting. Part 3 — ADLER ON WOODWARD: "Absence of cerebral activity" is exactly right.

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