February 22, 2008
FP Responds To West Point
Yesterday, we published West Point's protest of a statistic found in the Foreign Policy magazine and Center for a New American Security [PDF] survey of active-duty and retired military officers released earlier this week. USMA spokesman Col. Bryan Hilferty said that 40 percent, not the 58 percent reported by FP, of the class of 2002 left active duty in 2007.
We requested a response from FP on Wednesday, and finally got one this afternoon.
"Foreign Policy fact checks every article that it publishes, ensuring that there is an objective and independent source for every statistic that appears in our pages. That is no less true of the U.S. Military Index appearing in the March/April issue of the magazine," editor Mike Boyer wrote in an e-mail today.
Boyer pointed out that in congressional testimony earlier this year: "Col. Robert F. Norton, USA (Ret.), the deputy director of government relations for the Military Officers Association of America, told the committee that the Army had lost more than half of the West Point class of 2002."
Hilferty requested a correction on Wednesday. FP is sticking by its figures, and has asked West Point to supply data on assignments for every member of the class of '02. The magazine plans to publish the figures once it receives them from West Point.
