Watergate Glory Days Revived, Motivations Skipped, Felt a Hero --6/1/2005

1. Watergate Glory Days Revived, Motivations Skipped, Felt a Hero
Vanity Fair magazine's well-orchestrated publicity efforts for its revelation of the name of "Deep Throat" led most of the media on Tuesday to enthusiastically re-live their glory days of Watergate. All three broadcast network evening newscasts ran multiple stories on the identification of former FBI official Mark Felt, but unlike CBS and NBC, ABC failed to note that President Nixon's decision to not name him FBI Director, after the passing of J. Edgar Hoover, may have meant personal bitterness was his motivation. CBS featured reminiscing from Dan Rather who declared of Felt: "I think he performed a public service." Later, on CNN's NewsNight, Aaron Brown seemed befuddled that anyone would not consider Felt to be a "hero." When Chuck Colson denounced Felt's betrayal of confidential criminal investigation information ("To think that he was out going around in back alleys at night looking for flower pots, passing information to someone, it's just so demeaning"), Brown demanded: "Why is it not honorable?" Brown conceded that he always "saw Deep Throat as a hero" and that "I want to spin that in an absolutely heroic way."

2. Moran Gives Credibility to "Gulag" Description of Guantanamo
At Tuesday morning's presidential news conference in the Rose Garden, ABC's Terry Moran gave credibility to Amnesty International's characterization of the detainee camp at Guantanamo as a "gulag." In his question, Moran proceeded to demand to know "how it came to this," as Moran presumed it "is a view not just held by extremists and anti-Americans, but by groups that have allied themselves with the United States government in the past" and that "in many places in the world the United States these days, under your leadership, is no longer seen as the good guy."

3. Showing Silliness, Morning Shows Look at Hillary v Laura in 2008
Showing their silliness, the ABC and CBS morning shows on Tuesday jumped on Lynne Cheney's joking suggestion that "I think Mrs. Bush ought to run for President. If we want to have a Bush dynasty, let's get Laura Bush." With "Battle of the First Ladies" on screen, Good Morning America opened with side-by-side photos of Laura Bush and Hillary Clinton. ABC's Robin Roberts, in Manhattan, ludicrously claimed such a match-up was "the talk of Washington this morning" and called the imaginary match-up "very interesting," leading reporter Jessica Yellin to agree: "It sure is." Yellin claimed that Senator Clinton's "newfound popularity has Republicans scrambling to find a worthy contender and you won't believe where they're looking." Yellin soon characterized a pedestrian remark from Senator Clinton ("The American military has performed admirably"), as an example of how "lately she's sounding awfully presidential." On CBS's Early Show, Rene Syler insisted from Manhattan that "everyone" in Washington, DC "is buzzing about another race involving Clinton and Bush. Only this time the potential candidates are both women." A giddy Thalia Assuras soon trumpeted: "Some say it would be the battle of the century."

Watergate Glory Days Revived, Motivations
Skipped, Felt a Hero

Vanity Fair magazine's well-orchestrated publicity efforts for its revelation of the name of "Deep Throat" led most of the media on Tuesday to enthusiastically re-live their glory days of Watergate. All three broadcast network evening newscasts ran multiple stories on the identification of former FBI official Mark Felt, but unlike CBS and NBC, ABC failed to note that President Nixon's decision to not name him FBI Director, after the passing of J. Edgar Hoover, may have meant personal bitterness was his motivation. CBS featured reminiscing from Dan Rather who declared of Felt: "I think he performed a public service."

Later, on CNN's NewsNight, Aaron Brown seemed befuddled that anyone would not consider Felt to be a "hero." When Chuck Colson denounced Felt's betrayal of confidential criminal investigation information ("To think that he was out going around in back alleys at night looking for flower pots, passing information to someone, it's just so demeaning"), Brown demanded: "Why is it not honorable?" Brown conceded that he always "saw Deep Throat as a hero" and that "I want to spin that in an absolutely heroic way."

None of the pieces on Tuesday's World News Tonight, which included anchor Charles Gibson reminiscing with Sam Donaldson, pointed out Felt's bitterness, at being passed over by Nixon, as a motivation. Instead, Brian Ross relayed the party-line of Felt's lawyer, John O'Connor, whose byline is on the upcoming Vanity Fair article and who achieved a rare feat Wednesday morning: simultaneous interviews on all three broadcast network morning shows.

Ross asserted: "Felt was the number-two man in the FBI at the time of Watergate. And according to his lawyer, became frustrated as the Nixon White House tried to block the FBI from fully investigating the political scandal."
John O'Connor: "When Mark saw what was happening, he had to do this. Remember, this was the FBI's investigation that was being obstructed. It was his baby. And he was in charge of it. He was going to let it happen."

Over on the CBS Evening News, Jim Axelrod let Chuck Colson explain why leaking made Felt a "bum" in the eyes of Colson who argued: "If you're the deputy Director of the Federal Bureau of investigation, you walk into the head of the FBI's office and you tell them this is wrong and then you take it to the Oval Office. You don't go sneaking around in dark alleys at night passing tips to reporters."
Dan Rather, on Tuesday: "I think he performed a public service."
Axelrod, over some Watergate-era video of Rather: "If the thinking is Felt should've gone to law enforcement rather than reporters, CBS correspondent Dan Rather, who covered Watergate, says a reminder of just what was at play is necessary to put Felt in proper context."
Rather: "Widespread criminal conspiracy led by the President of the United States. I, for one, think it would have succeeded had it not been for Woodward, Bernstein, Bradlee and the source to whom they promised anonymity."

Later, CNN invited Colson aboard NewsNight where, via satellite from Naples, Florida, he opined: "I was shocked, because I knew Mark Felt well and did not believe -- I thought he was a consummate professional, an FBI man who would take the most sensitive secrets, have everybody's personal files in his control, deputy director. I talked to him often and trusted him with very sensitive materials. So did the President. To think that he was out going around in back alleys at night looking for flower pots, passing information to someone, it's just so demeaning. It's terribly disappointing. It's not the image of the professional FBI that you would expect. It's one more tragedy to chalk up to Watergate."
Anchor Aaron Brown seemed dumbfounded: "That's an interesting way to look at it. Why is it not honorable? Why is it not -- believing that an institution you've devoted your life to, care a lot about and is important to the country, is being used in an improper way, and the only way you have to solve it or to deal with that is to go outside that agency? Why isn't that honorable?"

Brown soon gave up trying to understand Colson's view: "So in the end -- I mean, I wonder if there's something generational here, honestly, that people my age -- I'm 55 -- I went through this when I was a kid, really, in the '60s, in the 20s -- I was 20 years old, late 20s, saw Deep Throat as a hero of a sort, because we didn't believe, honestly, that government was willing to investigate itself."

In the next segment, Brown talked with Tim Noah of Slate, Howard Kurtz of the Washington Post and CNN and David Gergen, who checked in from Harvard's John F. Kennedy School of Government where he's the Director of the Center of Public Leadership.. Brown began by reading back to Gergen a statement he made on NPR in 2000: "David, let's start with you. Back five years ago or so, you said this: 'I think if you have information that there's been wrongdoing or skullduggery' -- and congratulations for using that word -- 'or criminal activity in the government, rather than going to the press. It's best to take to it the Justice Department and to authorities. I did not think Deep Throat acted in an honorable way.' Do you still believe that Deep Throat did not act in an honorable way?"
Gergen: "I have never thought that it was a badge of honor to be Deep Throat. I did believe and do believe that the first course should be to take it to higher authorities...."

Brown prompted Noah to outline how Felt was "no Boy Scout." Noah elaborated: "He was no Boy Scout. Indeed, he was among other things a lawbreaker. He was prosecuted for allowing break-ins to -- involving members of the -- or suspected members of the Weather Underground, a violent anti-Vietnam organization. He was prosecuted for that and convicted. And later pardoned by Ronald Reagan. So you kind of have a lawbreaker breaking a whistle -- sorry, blowing the whistle on a -- on a lawbreaker. So no one's really a hero here. Plus the motive that Mark Felt had was, at least in part, a simple bureaucratic one. The White House was trying to get control of the FBI, which had been a rogue agency for years under J. Edgar Hoover."
Brown retorted: "But why can't I, I want to spin that in an absolutely heroic way, that what actually he saw happening was the political side of Washington trying to take control of an institution with enormous power that needs to operate outside of whoever is in government at any given time, not unaccountably, but independently."

A bit later, Brown declared: "I just think -- I don't know hero, that's not a word I throw around. But it just looking at the landscape at the time, what Washington was like, it does make a kind of moral sense to me."

Moran Gives Credibility to "Gulag" Description
of Guantanamo

At Tuesday morning's presidential news conference in the Rose Garden, ABC's Terry Moran gave credibility to Amnesty International's characterization of the detainee camp at Guantanamo as a "gulag." In his question, Moran proceeded to demand to know "how it came to this," as Moran presumed it "is a view not just held by extremists and anti-Americans, but by groups that have allied themselves with the United States government in the past" and that "in many places in the world the United States these days, under your leadership, is no longer seen as the good guy."

Listen to MP3 audio clip [1] Text of clip + audio archive [2]

A few hundred men caught on the battlefield in a fight against terrorism and then held in a detainee camp where they are well-fed is hardly the same thing as the Soviet gulags which held innocent millions in poor conditions and used them as slave labor.

Last Wednesday, ABC's World News Tonight provided publicity to Amnesty International's charge when anchor Charles Gibson gave time to trumpeting how their "report takes aim at the United States for its treatment of prisoners at Guantanamo. Quote, 'When the most powerful country in the world thumbs its nose at human rights,' Amnesty said, 'it grants a license to others to commit abuse with impunity.'" For more, see the May 26 CyberAlert: www.mediaresearch.org [3]

At Tuesday's 10:45am EDT news conference, as tracked down by the MRC's Ken Shepherd, Moran asked: "Mister President, recently Amnesty International said you have established quote 'a new gulag of prisons around the world beyond the reach of the law and decency.' I'd like your reaction to that, and also your assessment of how it came to this, that that is a view not just held by extremists and anti-Americans, but by groups that have allied themselves with the United States government in the past, and what the strategic impact is, that in many places in the world the United States these days under your leadership is no longer seen as the good guy?"
Bush replied: "I'm aware of the Amnesty International report, and it's absurd. It's an absurd allegation. The United States is a country that is -- promotes freedom around the world. When there's accusations made about certain actions by our people, they're fully investigated in a transparent way. It's just an absurd allegation. In terms of the detainees, we've had thousands of people detained. We've investigated every single complaint against the detainees. It seemed like to me they based some of their decisions on the word of -- and the allegations -- by people who were held in detention, people who hate America, people that had been trained in some instances to disassemble -- that means not tell the truth. And so it was an absurd report. It just is."

CBS's Thalia Assuras and NBC's David Gregory, in their CBS Evening News and NBC Nightly News stories, ran a soundbite from Bush's answer but, ironically, ABC's World News Tonight did not. ABC didn't even carry a story on the news conference.

Two earlier CyberAlert items from this year which recounted questions Moran posed at presidential news conferences:
-- April 29 CyberAlert: ABC's Terry Moran demanded to know: "If we're winning the war on terrorism, as you say, how do you explain that more people are dying in terrorist attacks on your watch than ever before?" For details: www.mediaresearch.org [4]

-- January 27 CyberAlert: In a "gotcha" moment at Wednesday's presidential news conference, ABC's Terry Moran raised the case of a man in Jordan jailed for "slander" after he claimed the Jordanian government uses U.S. weapons against its own people. Moran snidely asked President Bush to square that arrest with his Inaugural address: "I wonder if here and now you will specifically condemn this abuse of human rights by a key American ally, and if you won't, sir, then what in a practical sense do your fine words mean?" In Thursday's Washington Post, reporters Glenn Kessler and Scott Wilson devoted a story to how "President Bush was stumped yesterday" by the question and had replied: "I'm unaware of the case." Though al-Jazeera has highlighted the case, neither the Washington Post or ABC News has ever previously reported on the December arrest. Moran apparently still didn't consider it newsworthy since he didn't mention the subject during his World News Tonight story on the press conference. See: www.mediaresearch.org [5]

Showing Silliness, Morning Shows Look
at Hillary v Laura in 2008

Showing their silliness, the ABC and CBS morning shows on Tuesday jumped on Lynne Cheney's joking suggestion that "I think Mrs. Bush ought to run for President. If we want to have a Bush dynasty, let's get Laura Bush." With "Battle of the First Ladies" on screen, Good Morning America opened with side-by-side photos of Laura Bush and Hillary Clinton. ABC's Robin Roberts, in Manhattan, ludicrously claimed such a match-up was "the talk of Washington this morning" and called the imaginary match-up "very interesting," leading reporter Jessica Yellin to agree: "It sure is." Yellin claimed that Senator Clinton's "newfound popularity has Republicans scrambling to find a worthy contender and you won't believe where they're looking." Yellin soon characterized a pedestrian remark from Senator Clinton ("The American military has performed admirably"), as an example of how "lately she's sounding awfully presidential." On CBS's Early Show, Rene Syler insisted from Manhattan that "everyone" in Washington, DC "is buzzing about another race involving Clinton and Bush. Only this time the potential candidates are both women." A giddy Thalia Assuras soon trumpeted: "Some say it would be the battle of the century."

Charles Gibson teased at the top of the May 31 Good Morning America, over side-by-side pictures of Laura Bush and Hillary Clinton: "The battle of the First Ladies. New talk it could be Hillary versus Laura in the next race for the White House. Is America ready for a female President?"

The MRC's Jessica Barnes took down the 7am half hour segment, which tri-host Robin Roberts happily set up: "The talk of Washington this morning, the 2008 presidential race. Now, some comments Vice President Dick Cheney and his wife, Lynne, made on Larry King last night are fueling talk about a surprising match-up. Could it be a battle of the First Ladies? Our White House correspondent Jessica Yellin has the details from Washington. Very interesting, Jessica."
All smiles from the White House lawn, Yellin agreed: "It sure is. Good morning, Robin. Well, according to a new Gallup poll, 52 percent of Americans say they are somewhat likely or very likely to vote for Senator Hillary Clinton for President. The Senator's newfound popularity has Republicans scrambling to find a worthy contender and you won't believe where they're looking. When asked who should run against Hillary Clinton in 2008, last night Vice President and Mrs. Cheney suggested this match-up to Larry King."
Mrs. Cheney, during the pre-taped interview conducted outside the VP mansion: "I think Mrs. Bush ought to run for President. If we want to have a Bush dynasty, let's get Laura Bush."
Vice President Cheney: "I think I know who would win."
Yellin: "The proposed First Lady duel-"
Mrs. Bush, at the White House Correspondents' Association dinner: "I've got a few things I want to say for a change."
Yellin: "-is just a sign of how competitive Hillary Clinton has become. But while Mrs. Bush has never so much as hinted at an interest in being Commander in Chief, Hillary Clinton has been careful and coy on the topic."
Barbara Walters, in Dec. 2003 interview: "Will you throw your hat in the ring in 2008?"
Sen. Clinton: "I'm just not thinking that far ahead, Barbara. I'm really not."
Yellin maintained: "And lately she's sounding awfully presidential."
Sen. Clinton at AIPAC, unknown date: "The American military has performed admirably."
Yellin: "Her posture may be a defense against the constant scrutiny, including revelations in this new book [The Survivor, by Washington Post reporter John Harris], which discloses that during the Whitewater investigation Mrs. Clinton taunted White House aides saying, 'JFK had real men in his White House.' As First Lady she allegedly called Republicans 'my enemies.' All this could cause a stir among those who are eager to see that Hillary Clinton never gets to the White House."
Sen. Clinton, during a campaign stop: "That's right. I'm going to work hard."
Yellin: "The attacks have not stopped Clinton yet, which may be why some top Republicans appear to be thinking outside the box for the perfect candidate to run against her [footage of Laura Bush being given a standing ovation].
"A new poll shows that in a presidential match-up, Hillary Clinton would lose to Senator John McCain, tie with Rudolph Giuliani and beat Florida Governor Jeb Bush. We have no numbers for a possible match-up with current First Lady Laura Bush. Senator Clinton's office tells us that Hillary Clinton is currently focused on her job in the U.S. Senate."

At least CBS's Early Show, the MRC's Brian Boyd noticed, waited until the 7:30am half hour to jump on the silly story. Rene Syler touted: "The next presidential election is still three years away, but that doesn't seem to matter much in Washington where everyone is buzzing about another race involving Clinton and Bush. Only this time the potential candidates are both women. CBS News correspondent Thalia Assuras has more."
From the White House lawn, Assuras asserted: "There's already a lot of buzz about the Democrats' Hillary Rodham Clinton. In fact, a recent survey found 53 percent of Americans at least somewhat likely to vote for her. But the newest Republican strategy could take the fight into a whole new ring."
Lynne Cheney on Monday's Larry King Live on tape: "I think Mrs. Bush ought to run for President. If we're going to have a Bush dynasty, let's get Laura. Has she been wonderful?"
Assuras: "That's right. Speaking last night on CNN's Larry King Live, the wife of the Vice President saw this as an all female challenge, the current First Lady taking on the former First Lady. Mr. VP says he won't run, so why not?"
Dick Cheney: "I think I know who would win, too."
Assuras contended: "Now, the proof could be in the numbers. The latest CBS News poll shows President Bush's approval rating at 46 percent. But should there be a push to keep the Bush family in the White House for another four years, Mrs. Bush's approval rating is at a sky-high 80 percent. And lately, she seems to be working on her speaking skills."
Laura Bush at White House Correspondents' Association dinner: "I've been attending these dinners for years and just quietly sitting there. Well, I've got a few things I want to say for a change."
Assuras: "Some say it would be the battle of the century."
Craig Crawford, not taking it seriously: "I think the Lincoln-Douglas debates would pale in comparison to this."
Assuras: "When asked about the proposed match-up, Senator Clinton's office declined to get into any pre-fight banter, saying 'She remains focused on being the best Senator she can be for the people of New York.' Laura Bush's office wouldn't take the bait, either. Could both be keeping their best punches for 2008?"

-- Brent Baker