60 Minutes's 'Inside CECOT'

The Full Video and Bari Weiss's 'Memo'

Well, I was supposed to be taking a break, but the news never stops. —

As you may have learned already, Bari Weiss, the newly installed editor-in-chief of CBS News, spiked a 60 Minutes story at the last minute about the detention and torture of Venezuelan migrants in El Salvador’s notorious CECOT, which is really more of a concentration camp than a prison. She requested significant changes to the piece, including on-the-record interviews with administration “principals” such as Steven Miller and Tom Homan. The White House, DHS, and the State Department had already declined to comment. In a trollish way, they referred 60 Minutes to El Salvador for comment.

In a colossal fuck up, Weiss did not realize that the original segment was slated to air in Canada. Copies of it are now widely available online, and I have uploaded the full video above.

Also available is Bari Weiss’s memo that she wrote upon watching the segment:

Hi all,

I’m writing with specific guidance on what I’d like for us to do to advance the CECOT story. I know you’d all like to see this run as soon as possible; I feel the same way. But if we run the piece as is, we’d be doing our viewers a disservice.

• Last month many outlets, most notably The New York Times, exposed the horrific conditions at CECOT. Our story presents more of these powerful testimonies—and putting those accounts into the public record is valuable in and of itself. But if we’re going to run another story about a topic that has by now been much-covered we need to advance it. Among the ways to do so: does anyone in the administration or anyone prominent who defended the use of the Alien Enemies Act now regret it in light of what these Venezuelans endured at CECOT? That’s a question I’d like to see asked and answered.

• At present, we do not present the administration’s argument for why it sent 252 Venezuelans to CECOT. What we have is Karoline Leavitt’s soundbite claiming they are evildoers in America (rapists, murderers, etc.). But isn’t there much more to ask in light of the torture that we are revealing? Tom Homan and Stephen Miller don’t tend to be shy. I realize we’ve emailed the DHS spox, but we need to push much harder to get these principals on the record.

• The data we present paints an incongruent picture. Of the 252 Venezuelans sent to CECOT, we say nearly half have no criminal histories. In other words, more than half do have criminal histories. We should spend a beat explaining this. We then say that only 8 of the 252 have been sentenced in America for violent offenses. But what about charged? My point is that we should include as much as we can possibly know and understand about these individuals.

• Secretary Noem’s trip to CECOT. We report that she took pictures and video there with MS-13 gang members, not TdA members, with no comment from her or her staff about what her goal on that trip was, or what she saw there, or if she had or has concerns about the treatment of detainees like the ones in our piece. I also think that the ensuing analysis from the Berkeley students is strange. The pictures are alarming; we should include them. But what does the analysis add?

• We need to do a better job of explaining the legal rationale by which the administration detained and deported these 252 Venezuelans to CECOT. It’s not as simple as Trump invoking the Alien Enemies Act and being able to deport them immediately. And that isn’t the administration’s argument. The admin has argued in court that detainees are due “judicial review”—and we should explain this, with a voice arguing that Trump is exceeding his authority under the relevant statute, and another arguing that he’s operating within the bounds of his authority. There’s a genuine debate here. If we cut down Kristi Noem analysis we’d have the time.

My general view here is that we do our viewers the best service by presenting them with the full context they need to assess the story. In other words, I believe we need to do more reporting here.

I am eager and available to help. I tracked down cell numbers for Homan and Miller and sent those along. Please let me know how I can support you.

Yours,

Bari

Now, a lot of people are defending this as a “reasonable” editorial note, and it does sound reasonable—if you know nothing about the practices of magazine journalism, the constraints of the medium, or critically examine any of the claims made. In other words, if you know as little as Bari Weiss evidently does about the business, it may sound okay.

1. The purpose of a magazine feature is not the same as a story in a newspaper. It’s to present an in-depth look at an issue, often with a focus on the human factor. That’s what the “60” story does. They don’t need to “break news” really: the interviews on camera are enough. In her email to CBS staff on Monday morning, Weiss said the segment didn’t “advance the ball.” But even if that’s not a standard a successful piece of this type needs to meet, it does! There are details about the torture that have not been reported on before.

2. Weiss’s commentary sounds like someone who has only worked at a newspaper or a blog. This is TV. You cannot just call someone’s cell and hope to get an offhand comment. You need to set up an interview as a long and involved process that the administration, as a team, must agree to. They would be prepared if they did agree. It seems as if they did not want to play ball with the story already, and no one in the history of journalism has ever taken “no comment” as a reason not to run a story. As the piece’s correspondent Sharon Alfonsi remarked in her email to the staff, “If the administration’s refusal to participate becomes a valid reason to spike a story, we have effectively handed them a ‘kill switch’ for any reporting they find inconvenient.”

3. The memo states, “We do not present the administration’s argument for why it sent 252 Venezuelans to CECOT.” This is not really true. The piece begins with Alfonsi outlining the invocation of the Alien Enemies Act and their identification as terrorists by the administration.

4. “ We then say that only 8 of the 252 have been sentenced in America for violent offenses. But what about charged?” This section is substantially false. The piece does say that 70 people had pending criminal cases—in other words, it says how many had been charged. In any case, it doesn’t really matter. The only possible reason this would be to make the fact that we sent people to a torture prison appear somehow justifiable.

5. The section about the legality is the most egregious perhaps. “It’s not as simple as Trump invoking the Alien Enemies Act and being able to deport them immediately. And that isn’t the administration’s argument.” In his ruling Judge Boasberg wrote, "The Government itself has not even contested that the detainees who now make up the CECOT class received inadequate process prior to their removal.” Weiss writes, “The admin has argued in court that detainees are due “judicial review”—” But the Pam Bondi DOJ memorandum on the invocation of the AEA states, “"An alien determined to be an Alien Enemy and ordered removed ... is not entitled to ... judicial review." Later in court, they did argue that habeas corpus applied, but this was evidently to find a way to get people out of the country before a habeas petition could be filed. Justices on the DC Circuit Court asked, “[Is it] the government’s position that it could immediately resume mass removals of the five named Plaintiffs and the class members, immediately? Administration lawyers answered, ““Your Honor, we take the position that the [Alien Enemies Act] does not require notice [and] the government believes there would not be a limitation [on removal.]” So, yeah, judicial review, if you’re lucky. Also, there is absolutely no “debate.” The Supreme Court ruled unanimously that the Kilmar Abrego Garcia deportation was unlawful. The Court also ruled that migrants do require notice and the deportations are subject to judicial review. The ruling in JGG v. Trump specifically rejected the government’s contention that it could deport detainees without notice or review. They precisely did argue that and lost repeatedly.

Weiss is trying to change a story about the human cost of the deportations to one about a debate over policy and law—just one problem: there is no debate. It’s a settled question of law. The policy was unconstitutional. To spell it out: per the Supreme Court, THE ADMINISTRATION ILLEGALLY SENT A GROUP OF PEOPLE TO BE TORTURED ABROAD.

Now, we have to consider the context of Weiss’s hiring. She was put in place by the Ellisons, who are political allies of Trump. They are working on a major merger that would require sign-off from the Federal Trade Commission. She reports directly to that family. Any reasonable person would ask questions about that in the case of interference in a politically sensitive story.

At the very least, this episode has revealed Weiss to have bad judgment, limited knowledge of the job she is occupying, and just no idea what she’s talking about. She’s incompetent at best, and then tried to make the people at 60 Minutes look like they were the incompetent ones. Now there’s a whole discourse to defend her actions: A cloud of misrepresentation that makes her sound “reasonable,” when the reasons she gives don’t hold up under the slightest scrutiny.