"Evidence suggests New York Times editors deliberately held McCain lobbyist story
"
"Related
Evidence suggests New York Times editors deliberately held McCain lobbyist story
Employer of McCain linked lobbyist Vicki Iseman removes her bio from Web but doesn't understand concept of Internet Archive
by John Byrne
Hints that Washington Post also had elements of story
The New York Times faces a gathering storm after a panoply of new reports suggest the paper sat on a story detailing an alleged romantic involvement between Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) and 40-year-old Washington lobbyist Vicki Iseman.
Last night, two Times staffers told Politico the second lead reporter on the Times story, Marilyn Thompson, announced she was leaving her job at the Times Feb. 12 after concerns the piece had not yet run. Thompson said she was returning to the Washington Post.
"Rumors had circulated internally that Thompson had been working on the McCain piece and was dissatisfied it had not yet run, according to two Times staffers," the site's Jonathan Martin and Michael Calderone wrote.
Martin asked Times Washington Bureau chief Dean Baquet if sitting on the piece had anything to do with her departure.
"I'm not going to go into stories that may or may not run in the paper," Baquet said. "I had long conversations with Marilyn, and it's about her regarding the Post as home."
Thompson's byline is the only one of the four authors not linked on the Times piece.
What's more, McCain aide Charlie Black said late last night that the Times had only moved their piece because another piece was to come out in The New Republic.
After The New Republic's reporter began making phone calls to the Times, they decided to publish, he said.
The magazine posted its piece detailing behind the scenes efforts at the Times Thursday afternoon.
"It pitted the reporters investigating the story, who believed they had nailed it, against executive editor Bill Keller, who believed they hadn't," writes TNR's Gabriel Sherman. "It likely cost the paper one investigative reporter, who decided to leave in frustration. And the Times ended up publishing a piece in which the institutional tensions about just what the story should be are palpable."
Sherman says the four reporters assigned to the McCain story came from both its Washington and New York bureaus, which have feuded in recent years.
The Drudge Reports first post on the developing Times' story came two days after the reporters met with McCain's attorney Bob Bennett, who previously represented Bill Clinton. The source of that Dec. 20 Drudge post remains unknown.
In a blog post, The New Republic's senior editor Noam Scheiber wrote: "The McCain campaign is apparently blaming TNR for forcing the Times' hand on this story. We can't yet confirm that. But we can say this: TNR correspondent Gabe Sherman is working on a piece about the Times' foot-dragging on the McCain story, and the back-and-forth within the paper about whether to publish it. Gabe's story will be online tomorrow."
Drudge fingered story in DecemberLast December, the conservative news and gossip site The Drudge Report floated a story averring that McCain was in a "ferocious behind the scenes battle" not to publish a report saying McCain had given special treatment to a female lobbyist. During the 2004 election campaign, Drudge published an apocryphal story alleging Sen. John Kerry (D-MA) had an affair, so Drudge's McCain story seemed to be of dubious authenticity.
But Drudge's claim may warrant a fresh look following the story's release.
"Just weeks away from a possible surprise victory in the primaries, Republican presidential candidate Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz has been waging a ferocious behind the scenes battle with the NEW YORK TIMES, the DRUDGE REPORT has learned," the site remarked, "and has hired DC power lawyer Bob Bennett to mount a bold defense against charges of giving special treatment to a lobbyist!"
"McCain has personally pleaded with NY TIMES editor Bill Keller [at left] not to publish the high-impact report involving key telecom legislation before the Senate Commerce Committee, newsroom insiders tell the DRUDGE REPORT," Drudge continued. "The paper's Jim Rutenberg has been leading the investigation and is described as beyond frustrated with McCain's aggressive and angry efforts to stop any and all publication.""The drama involves a woman lobbyist who may have helped to write key telecom legislation," he added. "The woman in question has retained counsel and strongly denies receiving any special treatment from McCain."
The lead author on the Times piece: Jim Rutenberg.
Within hours, Post had several anonymous sourcesA 1,000 word piece in Thursday's Washington Post -- which quotes four anonymous sources dealing with an alleged "inappropriate" liaison between Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) could suggest the paper already had a story ready to roll, raising new questions about why media outlets held a story that was apparently in the works as early as December.
The Post piece, "McCain's Ties To Lobbyist Worried Aides," by Michael Shear and Jeffrey Birnbaum, did not draw from the rich panoply of sources the Times piece did, and did not as strongly suggest McCain had had an affair.
The Washington Post receives early copies of the Times under an agreement whereby the Post is able to rewrite short form versions of Times pieces. The Times story, "For McCain, Self-Confidence on Ethics Poses Its Own Risk" was posted early Wednesday evening.
But its emergence on the same day as the Times piece -- with four sources of its own -- adds new kindling to claims that major media outlets sat on the story last year.
Author floated rumor LA Times held story
Journalist and author Ron Rosenbaum wrote in a blog post from October of last year that he'd heard the Los Angeles Times was sitting on a sex story about a presidential candidate.
Rosenbaum said he'd "run into a well-connected media person, who told me flatly, unequivocally that 'everyone knows' The LA Times was sitting on a story, all wrapped up and ready to go about what is a potentially devastating sexual scandal involving a leading Presidential candidate." The LA Times apparently never did publish the piece, if it is indeed the same story as reported by the New York Times.
The LA Times, however, did not publish an exclusive piece on the topic Thursday. Their article, "McCain's ties to female lobbyist questioned," relied on compiled wire reports from the Post and the Times, to which the Los Angeles paper is a subscriber.
The Post piece cited a senior McCain aide as the main source for their story. The Times cited the same aide, though with less emphasis.
"John Weaver, who was McCain's closest confidant until leaving his current campaign last year, said he met with Vicki Iseman at the Center Cafe at Union Station and urged her to stay away from McCain," the authors wrote. "Association with a lobbyist would undermine his image as an opponent of special interests, aides had concluded."
"We were running a campaign about reforming Washington, and her showing up at events and saying she had close ties to McCain was harmful," another anonymous aide said. "'The aide said the message to Iseman that day at Union Station in 1999 was clear: 'She should get lost.' The aide said Iseman stood up and left angrily."
Three "telecom lobbyists" and a former McCain aide spoke on condition of anonymity to the Post. It's unclear whether Weaver was a fifth source.
"I never discussed with him alleged things I had 'told people,' that had made their way "back to him," she wrote in an e-mail message. She said she never received special treatment from Mr. McCain's office.
Perhaps most damning in the Times piece is its second paragraph: "A female lobbyist had been turning up with him at fund-raisers, visiting his offices and accompanying him on a client's corporate jet. Convinced the relationship had become romantic, some of his top advisers intervened to protect the candidate from himself -- instructing staff members to block the woman's access, privately warning her away and repeatedly confronting him, several people involved in the campaign said on the condition of anonymity."
According to the Post, the lobbyist's firm is "heavy with municipalities and local government entities, which suggests that its major emphasis is on the controversial business of winning narrowly targeted, or 'earmarked,' appropriations."
Both the Times and the Post shied away from making direct sexual allegations, focusing instead on a tamer line: that McCain's close association with a lobbyist undermined his issue as a vociferous supporter of campaign finance reform.
Times no stranger to 'holding story' claims
The New York Times is no stranger to criticism over holding explosive content.
In late 2005, the Times published their now famous piece revealing a secret National Security Agency wiretapping program. Though its lead author, James Risen (at right), has refused to comment about events leading up to its publication under an agreement with the paper, a soon-to-be released book project seems to have pushed the Times to publish the piece, the details of which they'd had for some time.
"According to multiple newsroom sources close to Mr. Risen, the reporter was vocal in his desire to get the wiretapping piece into print, and he informed Times Washington bureau chief Philip Taubman that the material would be appearing in his book," the New York Observer wrote in early 2006. "Mr. Risen left the paper on book leave in January 2005 and resumed his campaign to get The Times to publish the wiretapping piece when he returned to the bureau last June. That set off a renewed push by The Times to get the story into print. Mr. Taubman resumed discussions with senior Bush administration officials over the paper's interest in publishing the scoop, according to sources with knowledge of the events, culminating in the Dec. 6 Oval Office face-off pitting President George W. Bush against Mr. Keller, Mr. Taubman and Times publisher Arthur Sulzberger Jr."
In the final story, the authors admitted they had held the piece for a year because of concern from Bush Administration officials.
"The White House asked The New York Times not to publish this article, arguing that it could jeopardize continuing investigations and alert would-be terrorists that they might be under scrutiny," the authors wrote. "After meeting with senior administration officials to hear their concerns, the newspaper delayed publication for a year to conduct additional reporting."
Co-bylined with Eric Lichtblau, Risen's story, "Bush Lets U.S. Spy on Callers Without Courts," appeared in the paper Dec. 16, 2005."
Also see: Pakistan's Nukes and N.Y. Times Censorship
Now for a reader reaction to the McCain revelations post:
"The New York Times SAT on ANOTHER STORY?!"
"McCain In Bed With Lobbyist. No, Really In Bed With Lobbyist.---
Related
Timing, Sourcing Suggest GOP, Not Dems, Behind McCain ‘Smear Campaign’
---
A reader responds to," New York Times Drops McCain Bombshell Report on Romantic Link to Lobbyist",
WTF?!?!
The New York Times SAT on ANOTHER STORY?!
And ONLY RELEASED IT after SOMEONE ELSE WAS GOING TO REPORT IT?
Like Bush's ILLEGAL SPYING PROGRAM that began BEFORE BUSH TOOK the oath?
They endorsed McCain despite knowing this info?
Never mind the IMPORTANT ISSUES like the economy and the war. We are talking sex stuff again.
If this doesn't officially certify the death of the New York Times as a "news"paper, then we need to hold a wake."
But wait a minute.
Is the New York Times just playing FOOLEYS again?!!
"Why John McCain Owes The New York Times a Thank You Card"
"Related
New York Times Drops McCain Bombshell Report on Romantic Link to Lobbyist
---
Marc Cooper
Posted February 21, 2008 | 12:56 AM (EST)
The Republican Right is already howling over the bombshell dropped by The New York Times on John McCain, the GOP's all-but-official nominee. It's an outrage, they say. A deliberate torpedo. A liberal media smear.
Sorry, but these guys have got it backwards. The Times, in fact, couldn't have found a moment more favorable for Johnny Mack to let this fearsome cat out of the bag. If McCain could have personally chosen when to have this story break, it would have been right about now.
Not to say that the well-researched piece that broke late Wednesday evening isn't any candidate's nightmare. It's not only a detailed run-down of McCain's awfully close friendship with a pert and well-connected lobbyist thirty years his junior; the Times also does an admirable job of rehashing the Senator's long record of cozying up to the same sort of lobbyists against whom he repeatedly rails in public.
So what's my beef? The timing, folks. The timing. Everyone who knows anyone has been hearing about this story for some months. Back in December, Matt Drudge got wind of it from inside the Times and teased it at the top of his site. We all waited, but the shoe never dropped.
Under what is said to be intense pressure from McCain and prominent D.C. criminal attorney Robert Bennett, who was hired to help deal with the matter, the Times capitulated and held off on publishing the story - offering no explanation, then or now. And if you read through the piece just published, there doesn't seem to be any new information that the Times couldn't have had two months ago.
So what, you ask? Just one small detail: In the intervening weeks between the moment when the Times was first going to publish the story and finally did publish the story, the same New York Times endorsed John McCain! And while he's described in the endorsement editorial as a "staunch advocate of campaign finance reform" he's tagged in this Wednesday's news piece as having accepted favors from those with matters that came before the very committee he used to push that reform. And many, many other favors.
More importantly, if the Times had published its expose when it first had it over Christmas, it would have preceded all of the Republican primaries and caucuses. To say it would have changed the dynamic of the GOP race is perhaps the understatement of the decade. You can bet Mitt Romney and even Mayor Rudy are up late tonight gnashing their teeth and pounding their heads against the wall over this one.
So should Republican voters. They've been seriously toyed with by the paper of record. The Times gives them McCain. And then, only after it's too late to reconsider, it takes him away. McCain might, indeed, be seriously wounded by this week's revelations. If they had come out two months ago, he would have been reduced to a political asterisk, a footnote alongside Tommy Thompson and Tommy Tancredo.
Yes, we know how the Times will plead: innocent. There's a clear division, you see, between the news side and the editorial pages of the paper. Tut tut.
More like a clear division between the real and the surreal."But who could have done such a thing, readers?
Who could have leaked such a damaging story to the "liberal" New York Times?
"Timing, Sourcing Suggest GOP, Not Dems, Behind McCain ‘Smear Campaign’"
What? New York Times carrying Republican water?
"The NYT endorsed McCain, January 25, 2008. Go figure!
---
Update: Spinning McCain ‘Smear Campaign’
Related
Why John McCain Owes The New York Times a Thank You Card
On January 31, 2008, John McCain's campaign was effectively broke
McCain: I did not have sexual relations with that woman
---
Jon Ponder | Feb. 21, 2008
The McCain campaign has had two months to prepare for the story published in the New York Times about his cozy relationship eight years ago with a young blond woman who happened to be a lobbyist.
The possibility that Romney’s mitts were all over this might explain McCain’s palpable antipathy toward him.
The campaign’s rapid response team put out a news release last night that twice used the phrase “smear campaign” to describe the Times story:
“It is a shame that The New York Times has lowered its standards to engage in a hit-and-run smear campaign. John McCain has a 24-year record of serving our country with honor and integrity. He has never violated the public trust, never done favors for special interests or lobbyists, and he will not allow a smear campaign to distract from the issues at stake in this election.
“Americans are sick and tired of this kind of gutter politics, and there is nothing in this story to suggest that John McCain has ever violated the principles that have guided his career.”
They have had this response in the can for two months, so it bears some scrutiny. The word “smear” is predictable but to use it twice in conjunction with “campaign” is interesting.
One news story is hardly a “campaign.” And it is obvious from even a casual reading of the Times article that lawyers have been all over it. But is there more to come? The McCain team’s use of the word “campaign” suggests there could be.
Or, it is equally likely that “campaign” is a bit of transference — that McCain and his operatives know the source of the story was a rival campaign.
Conservatives are swarming the media this morning trying to pin this story on a) Democrats and b) the liberal media. But as was noted here last night, the timing and sourcing — as well as the actions of two of the other GOP candidates — suggest the Times got the story from McCain’s conservative Republican opponents.
First, the source of the Times article can only be detected by parsing, but it is clear that the details could have only come from — and confirmed by — operatives in McCain’s 2000 campaign, all of whom, let’s assume, were Republicans. As to motive, how about sour grapes from a 2000 staffer who was not asked to work on the 2008 campaign? Or perhaps one of the 2000 operatives was an extreme-right Dittohead mole, who had a job on a rival GOP campaign when the story was originally set to run in December.
Second, the timing: Whoever leaked the story to the Times appears to have synced it to the campaign schedule so that, with fact-checking and the other vetting, the story would be ready to go around December 20 — immediately before public attention turned away from the campaigns and onto the holidays — and two weeks before the Iowa caucuses on Feb. 3.
In late December, the Democratic campaigns were focused on each other, and weren’t expending much, if any, energy on their Republican rivals. At that point, it was far from clear that McCain would become the frontrunner.
The source of the story was most likely one of McCain’s rivals. Judging by their actions, almost all of them could be eliminated except for Mitt Romney, who, as has been noted here and elsewhere, made a big show of “suspending,” not ending his campaign. (Campaigns are often technically “suspended” when they close in order to keep payroll and accounting functions open but the difference here is how Romney stressed the word “suspended” in his concession, and how that keyword was picked up and repeated over and over by Beltway pundits and newsreaders — all of whom have known about this story since before Christmas.)
The possibility that Romney’s mitts were all over this might explain McCain’s palpable antipathy toward him.
The Huckabee campaign has known about the story, too, which explains Huckabee’s insistence on staying in, despite the dead-certain odds he’ll never get the delegates to beat McCain at the convention. Huckabee has said he’s sticking around in case McCain has a “macaca moment.”
Perhaps this is it.
So the question remains...
"Why Did The NYT Hold McCain-Lobbyist Story?"
"Related
The New York Times SAT on ANOTHER STORY?!
---
Sam Stein
The Huffington Post
February 20, 2008 10:58 PM
In the wake of revelations that Sen. John McCain had a close and perhaps romantic relationship with a telecommunications lobbyist, political observers are left wondering why The New York Times chose to run the article when it did. Meanwhile, conservatives are contemplating how different the election would be had the story been published sooner.
In the aftermath of the Times story, some subtle but important information has come unearthed showing how McCain's relationship with 40-year-old Vicki Iseman, a partner with the firm Alcalde & Fay, became public.
Bob Bennett, a powerful D.C. attorney and lawyer for McCain, acknowledged the extent of his fervent efforts to kill the story for the first time during an interview on Fox News.
"I did have several conversations and one meeting with the New York Times reporters and repeatedly provided them answers to their questions," he said Thursday evening. "And I was satisfied that there was nothing here. But no, I worked very hard at it."
As Bennett notes, news that the Times had an article on McCain's relationship with Iseman was known months ago, albeit with only slight hints of the romantic angle.
In December, the Drudge Report wrote that McCain was waging a "ferocious behind the scenes battle with the Times... against charges of giving special treatment to a lobbyist."
Soon after, the Washington Post's media reporter Howard Kurtz penned an item in which McCain was quoted as saying he had "never done any favors for anybody -- lobbyist or special interest group." Allegations otherwise, he added, were "gutter politics."
Other journalists believed to be on the story included, according to Radar Magazine's Charles Kaiser, Michael Isikoff of Newsweek and Michael Calderone of Politico.
So why would the Times hesitate to act? A number of theories, beyond threats of legal action, have been batted around by analysts. They range from the generous -- the paper could simply have thought it unfair to publish the story on the eve of a slew of presidential primaries -- to the nefarious -- the Times was waiting to unload on McCain only after he secured the nomination.
"Everyone accuses the New York Times of liberal bias," political analyst Keli Goff speculated on CNN. "If they wanted to play politics, they could have sat on the story and waited until you have perhaps an Obama-McCain match-up and drop this baby in October when it really matters. I think that this idea of...them playing politics with it to, you know, harm the Republican Party, I don't know if we can really agree with that."
Timely competitive pressures also may have been in play. As the McCain story was making the rounds on the cable news networks Wednesday evening, news surfaced that The New Republic had been slated to do a piece of its own. The magazine's blog noted that a story on the Times' foot-dragging will appear on the site on Thursday.
Regardless of the paper's motives, conservative pundits were left fuming, noting that the Times had, at once, spared McCain at the point of his greatest vulnerability (when his campaign was still a long shot) and denied his primary opponents perhaps the knock-out blow. Would the GOP have a different candidate on its hands had things been handled differently?
"Oh, there's no question it would have impacted [the race]," Bay Buchanan, a former adviser of ex-Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, told CNN. "I think John McCain would not have won this primary if there's any evidence whatsoever that surfaces that these stories are true... McCain's lawyers went into the New York Times and said do not touch this story. Do not move on this story. And there's no question this was beneficial to McCain to hold the story. No question. His nomination was very much threatened by this story if it broke too early. So what they did was hurt the Republican Party by not allowing this to be aired properly at the time they received this information."
So tell me again how the MSM doesn't SELECT our presidents, readers?
