STONEWALLED the Story (3 parts)

Monday, January 5, 2015

Notes on “Stonewalled,” part 1

Posted on January 5, 2015 by Scott Johnson in Media, Obama Administration Scandals

Notes on “Stonewalled,” part 1

Over the weekend I read Sharyl Attkisson’s book Stonewalled: My Fight for Truth Against the Forces of Obstruction, Intimidation, and Harassment in Obama’s Washington from cover to cover. I read it in preparation for a brief interview we are scheduled to record with Attkisson for the next Power Line podcast. I would like to share notes, thoughts and excerpts in a series of posts, of which this is the first.
My inspiration here is Jay Nordlinger and his Impromptus at NRO. When Jay flips over a book or a movie or a conference or an interview, he uses his column to empty his notebook. (This past summer, for example, Jay devoted a three-part series of Impromptus to “D’Souza Nation.”) That’s what I’d like to do in this series.

• Attkisson is an outstanding investigative reporter reporter and Stonewalled is a gripping book. To use the cliche, I couldn’t put it down. (Sorry.) I rate it among the five most important books for conservatives published in 2014. It deserves your attention and repays it with increased understanding of the scandals that have characterized the Obama administration: Fast & Furious, green energy crony capitalism, Benghazi, and Obamacare (she reports on the website fiasco). Attkisson reported on each of these scandals and devotes a chapter to her work on each one.
• Each chapter combines Attkisson’s reporting with her experiences working on the story against the forces of the Obama administration. The book is thus part memoir and part reportage. It inevitably recalls All the President’s Men and the work of Woodward and Bernstein on Watergate. Attkisson’s book lacks the unity of All the President’s Men but is a more trustworthy and useful source.
• I took it somewhat personally when we sought to extract information from the White House press office about the hacking of the computer system maintained by the Executive Office of the President. The White House failed to respond to my phone calls and email messages. It then leaked the story to a friendly news outlet. Attkisson’s book shows me that I shouldn’t have taken it personally; this is how “the most transparent administration in history” rolls.
• I forgot to mention that Attkisson was one of the most distinguished investigative journalists in television news. She received numerous awards for her work including the Emmy and the Edward R. Murrow Award during the course of her 20-year career at CBS News. She encountered a higher degree of difficulty practicing her profession at CBS News during the Age of Obama than at any other time. As the subtitle of her book has it, she ran up against “obstruction, intimidation, and harassment in Obama’s Washington.” “Obama’s Washington” is a euphemism for the Obama administration. She relates experiences and names names in the book.
• Having read the book carefully, I have absolutely no idea what Attkisson’s politics are. She seems to me something like the Platonic ideal of a reporter; she is the soul of fairness. Attkisson introduces a trope she calls the Substitution Game. Conservatives play it all the time. She asks herself, how would this practice look if the subject were a Republican? This is a trope that does not go over well at CBS News in “Obama’s Washington” or the Age of Obama. Among other things, CBS News president David Rhodes is the brother of Obama national security adviser Ben Rhodes. Attkisson’s difficulties practicing her profession were enhanced by the tilt within CBS News. She makes it clear that CBS News has become a public relations arm of the Obama administration.
• The New York Times and the mainstream media haven’t reviewed Stonewalled. The memoir by former CBS News producer Mary Mapes, the absurdly titled Truth and Duty, was an insane piece of garbage, but it was the subject of a featured review in the New York Times Book Review.
• But the conservative press has also fallen down on the job. Her book has not been reviewed in National Review or the Weekly Standard either. NRO posted an interview with Attkisson conducted by John Miller here, but Miller really doesn’t explore the book at all.
• By contrast, C-SPAN has done a terrific job with the book. Nia-Malika Henderson spent an hour with Attkisson on the book for an installment of After Words; the interview is posted here. Attkisson also spent an hour taking calls on one of the C-SPAN morning shows with Greta Wodele Brawner; that is posted here. Kyle Smith wrote an excellent account previewing the book’s highlights in the New York Post here. Ken Allard’s review for the Washington Times captured the book’s excitement.
• I want to leave you with a stray paragraph from the book:

  During the 2012 presidential campaign, Obama Treasury secretary Timothy Geithner was afforded the chance to meet with and spin network news managers off camera. According to those who attended, Geithner pretty much blamed all of the nation’s economic troubles on–the drought. His analysis became a basis for subsequent CBS Evening News story decisions that advanced the drought theory of economic weakness, helpfully pinpointing a factor outside the president’s control and, therefore, one for which he could not be blamed. Naturally, this advanced Obama’s case rather than that of his Republican opponent, Mitt Romney.

Coming soon, I think: Part 2.

 

 

 

 

 

Wednesday, January 7, 2015

Notes on “Stonewalled,” part 2

Posted on January 6, 2015 by Scott Johnson in Media, Obama Administration Scandals

Notes on “Stonewalled,” part 2

Reading Sharyl Attkisson’s Stonewalled from cover to cover over the weekend, I flipped over the book. In this post I continue to jot notes on the book to amplify the (insufficient) attention it has received so far. Part 1 is posted here; our interview with Sharyl Attkisson, recorded yesterday, is posted here.
• Attkisson organizes the book around the Obama administration scandals she covered at CBS News, and she covered just about all of them with the exception of the IRS scandal. Each of the scandals falls into a larger pattern of scandal management practiced by the Obama administration. The book is great at providing the details of the pattern. Without her saying anything about it, the reader can see how the IRS scandal fits the pattern precisely, to a T. This is one respect in which her book is invaluable, combining her reportage with her work behind the scenes inside CBS News.
• What is the pattern? False denials (bald lies) and stonewalling. Attribution of responsibility to the lowest level of bureaucrat when that fails. Rather than responding to straightforward inquiries, administration spokesmen pump reporters for the information they have so they can undermine it. (Attkisson calls this technique “pump and mine.”) Slanted leaks to friendly bloggers and reporters. Characterization of advances in the story as “old news.”
• Disparagement of sources and reporters advancing the story via friendly bloggers and reporters. (Attkisson calls this technique “controversialization.”) Attkisson has been a prime subject of the technique of controversialization. She is speaking from personal experience recounted in the book. Attkisson singles out Media Matters as the prime mover of administration spin into the mainstream media. As Attkisson demonstrates, however, MM’s power derives from the complicity and cooperation of MM’s media allies, i.e., the Obama administration’s media allies.
• And then we have this (page 278): “Perhaps the greatest PR coup of all is that the administration’s expert spinners successfully lead the media by the nose down the path of concluding there’s no true controversy unless there’s a paper trail that lays blame directly on the president’s desk. Time and again, with each scandal and each damaging fact, Democrats and the White House read from the script that says ‘there’s no evidence President Obama knew’ or ‘there’s no evidence of direct White House involvement.’ Anything short of a signed confession from the president is deemed a phony Republican scandal, and those who dare to ask questions are crazies, partisans, or conspiracy theorists.”
• One more quote (also from page 278): “Under President Obama, the press dutifully regurgitates the line ‘no evidence of White House involvement,’ ignoring the fact that if any proof exists, it would be difficult to come by under an administration that fails to properly respond to Freedom of Information Act requests, routinely withholds documents from Congress, and claims executive privilege to keep documents secret.”
• Here Attkisson actually plays a round of her Substitution Game (also from page 278): “If past presidents had received similar treatment, the headline for Hurricane Katrina in 2005 might have read, ‘No evidence Bush had direct involvement in botched Katrina response’ instead of ‘The botching of Hurricane Katrina will affect Bush’s legacy’ (U.S. News and World Report).”
• Finally, Attkisson shows the honchos of the Obama administration berating her and running to CBS management about her and her coverage of the various scandals. She doesn’t understand! She is being unreasonable! She needs adult supervision!
• Attkisson argues that these techniques are common scandal management practices, but (outside national security issues), would Republicans think they can get mileage out of complaining to management? Attkisson doesn’t play what she calls the Substitution Game on this point. Having covered stories highly unflattering to the Bush administration, however, she is in a position to do so, and not hypothetically. I conclude from the evidence she presents in her book that the Obama administration has gotten away with practices that a Republican administration wouldn’t dare to try.
• I should add that Attkisson pays tribute to management’s support of her work up to a certain point. She singles out former CBS News president Rick Kaplan in particular for his support. Kaplan’s successor, however, is David Rhodes, the brother of senior Obama administration adviser Ben Rhodes.
• Nevertheless, Attkisson’s book covers two sets of scandals in the book. The first set is the Obama administration scandals around which the book is organized. The second set is the treatment of these scandals inside CBS News. With respect to each of the scandals, Attkisson demonstrates the success, more or less, of the Obama administration’s scandal management inside CBS News.
• What I characterize as the CBS News scandal thread culminates in Attkisson’s account of the suppression of the 60 Minutes interview with President Obama on September 12, 2012, in which he explained why he did not characterize Benghazi as a terrorist attack. The release of this interview might have been of interest, shall we say, in the aftermath of the second Obama/Romney debate. It was only as a result of the dust raised by Attkisson and others inside CBS News once they belatedly discovered the interview that CBS News posted it online, the weekend before the election — too late to matter.
• You and I will probably never read Hillary Clinton’s memoir of her service as Secretary of State, but Benghazi is one of Attkisson’s stories and Attkisson has read Clinton’s chapter on it. Attkisson includes a devastating reading of Clinton’s take on Benghazi (pages 211-216), concluding with this observation: “Throughout the chapter, Clinton laments ‘a regrettable amount of misinformation, speculation and flat-out deceit by some in politics and the media.’ On that point, many would agree. They just might disagree on who’s responsible for perpetuating the deceit.” This is an observation that applies generally to each of the Obama administration scandals Attkisson covers in the book.
• Attkisson has received multiple Emmys and other awards recognizing the quality of her investigative reporting. Yet her experience inside CBS News “in Obama’s Washington” (to borrow from the subtitle of her book) was so unpleasant that she sought to be released from her contract before its expiration, and CBS News accommodated her. David Rhodes remains president of CBS News, Ben Rhodes remains inside the White House and Attkisson remains off the air as a reporter, at least through whatever period of noncompetition might be specified in her severance agreement with CBS News. (I’m guessing there is one.) From the perspective of the Obama administration, her departure from CBS News is a win/win, though it gave her the time and freedom to write this important book.
Coming soon, I hope: part 3.

 

 

 

Wednesday, January 7, 2015

Notes on “Stonewalled,” part 3

Posted on January 7, 2015 by Scott Johnson in Media, Obama Administration Scandals

Notes on “Stonewalled,” part 3

This concludes my series of posts on Sharyl Attkisson’s important new book, Stonewalled: My Fight for Truth Against the Forces of Obstruction, Intimidation, and Harassment in Obama’s Washington. Part 1 is here; part 2 is here. We recorded an interview with Attkisson about the book early Monday afternoon; the interview is posted here.
• Attkisson bookends her accounts of the Obama administration scandals she has covered with the story of what appear to be coordinated intrustions into her her telephones and computers. She begins the book with this story and she devotes the penultimate chapter of the book (Chapter 6: “I Spy”) to it. The concluding chapter recounts her departure from CBS News as a result of her frustrations with news management.
• She’s working on the Benghazi story when she is advised by a friendly source “connected to a three-letter agency” that “the administration is likely monitoring you–based on your reporting.” In fact, she’s had troubles with her phones and computers; they have been behaving oddly. In addition to Benghazi, she says, she now has a new mystery to unravel.
• Her computers are examined by three sets of experts, one set retained on behalf of CBS. Each concludes that she is the victim of computer intrusion and monitoring. One finds classified government documents secreted in her hard drive that she has had nothing to do with. She believes that they were placed there by the intruders for use against her at an appropriate time.
• CBS’s expert confirms the computer intrusions. CBS prepares a statement announcing they have determined “Attkisson’s computer was accessed by an unauthorized, external, unknown party on multiple occasions in late 2012….[F]orensic analysis revealed an intruder had executed commands that appeared to involve search and exfiltration of data. The party also used sophisticated methods to remove all possible indications of unauthorized activity, and alter system times to cause further confusion.”
• It isn’t long before CBS begins to treat her like the perpetrator rather than the victim. “I can’t explain why, other than intuition,” she writes (page 306), “but I get the eerie feeling that CBS wants to downplay what’s happened–maybe even try to advance a narrative that there was no computer intrusion.”
• Attkisson’s experts conclude that the intrusion of her computers was likely perpetrated by a government agency with highly sophisticated software proprietary to the government and Attkisson strongly implies that the government is responsible for the intrusions. I asked her about this in the interview with her on Monday. It’s hard to believe the government would single her out; she wasn’t the only reporter working the Benghazi and other Obama administrations scandal stories. Attkisson cites the administration’s acquisition of the telephone records of James Rosen’s and the AP reporters. “My case and that of AP and FOX are enough to suggest that the government had a coordinated effort at least by 2012, and probably beginning earlier, to target the leakers and reporters who were perceive as making the administration’s life difficult.”
• This aspect of Attkisson’s story recalls the atmosphere of surveillance and paranoia conveyed by Woodward & Bernstein in All the President’s Men. Watergate generated a genre of movies such as Three Days of the Condor in which government agents perpetrate evil schemes against the rest of us. Attkisson’s story is more chilling and more credible; it would make a great movie. Someone should buy the movie rights.
• The Department of Justice has issued two statements on Attkisson’s case. In response to Attkisson’s first public mention of her experience, in the course of a radio interview, the Department of Justice issues this statement (page 303): “To our knowledge, the Justice Department has never ‘compromised’ Ms. Attkisson’s computers, or otherwise sought any information from or concerning any telephone, computer, or other media device she may own or use.” I should note here that the FBI falls under the jurisdiction of the Department of Justice.
• “To our knowledge…says the Justice Department’s quasi-denial.” Who is the “we” encompassed in “our,” Attkisson asks. “The entire Justice Department? Did officials really, in the blink of an eye, conduct an investigation and question 113,543 Justice Department employees? That’s impressive! I’m still waiting for answers to Freedom of Information Act requests that I filed with them years ago, but they’re able to provide this semi-definitive statement within minutes of the question being posed.”
• Oklahoma Senator Tom Coburn, just retired, sent Attorney General Holder a letter making broad inquiries on behalf of Attkisson. Attkisson sets forth Coburn’s inquiries at page 331 and then quotes the response submitted by the Department (page 332): “Your letter ask whether the Department is responsible for incidents in 2012 in which the computer of Sharyl Attkisson, a CBS reporter, was allegedly hacked by an unauthorized party. The Department is not. It also does not appear that CBS or Ms. Attkisson followed up with the Federal Bureau of Investigation for assistance with these incidents.”
• Coburn’s letter to Holder had sought information regarding actions taken “[d]uring your tenure as attorney general,” not during 2012. Attkisson drily observes:

Instead of answering the questions at hand, the administration had posed an entirely different question and chosen to answer that one. Senator Coburn’s letter hadn’t referred to “hacks,” it didn’t narrow its questions to 2012, didn’t ask whether the Justice Department was “responsible,” and didn’t narrow its questions to the Justice Department alone. I conclude there’s a reason they stuck to posing and denying a very narrow set of circumstances, using such specific language, rather than simply answering the questions Coburn asked.”

Attkisson paraphrases Coburn telling her “my case may be the worst, most outrageous violation of public trust he’s ever seen in all his years in office.”
• And that’s not all: “On February 18, 2014, Coburn issues a follow-up letter to the Justice Department pointing out that none of his questions from the previous July had been answered in its December response….Five months later, more than a year after the original congressional inquiry was posed, the Justice Department had still provided no further response.”
• Attkisson notes in her penultimate chapter: “On May 6, 2013, I make contact with an excellent source who has crucial information: the name of the person responsible for my computer intrusions. He provides me the name and I recognize it. I’m not surprised. It strikes me as desperate and cowardly that those responsible would resort to these tactics. That’s all I can say about that for now.”
• On Monday Attkisson filed an administrative claim against the government as a predicate to bringing a claim under the Federal Tort Claims Act and also brought a lawsuit against the government for violation of her civil rights. The Obama administration will grind it out. Whatever resolution may be brought to these troubling questions will await a new administration, but Congress should be looking for answers right now.
• Attkisson deftly articulates one of the bona fide occupational qualifications for service as a spokesman in the Obama administration. Referring specifically to HHS spokesman Joanne Peters, who is perfectly representative in this respect, Attkisson writes (page 267): “It takes a certain kind of person to be untruthful and then display utter lack of contrition when caught.” (Attkisson had caught Peters lying to her.)
• I can’t help but note Attkisson’s sidelong glance at Rathergate (pages 366-368). A senior producer tells Attkisson of the then upcoming 60 Minutes II story on President Bush and shows her the supposedly typewritten documents on which the story is based; he tells her she may have to follow up on the story. Attkisson takes a look at the documents and tells the producer: “These look like they were typed by my daughter on a computer yesterday.” Attkisson notes parenthetically: “My daughter was nine at the time.” When ordered to cover the story after it airs, while CBS was still sticking with it, Attkisson refused. She tells her senior producer: “I can’t report a story that says something I know to be false. And if you make me, I’ll have to call my lawyer.” Attkisson concludes: “Nobody ever again suggested that I report on Rathergate.”
Thanks for sticking with me through this series.