Or did he? The White House quickly went into defensive attack mode. Officials cast aspersions on the writer’s reporting ethics and on John DiIulio’s truthfulness. Press Secretary Ari Fleischer called the accusations “baseless and groundless” from the briefing-room podium. By midweek, DiIulio himself–after conversations with people in the White House–parroted Fleischer calling his own criticisms “groundless and baseless.” That might ring more true if he hadn’t put many of them–though not the juiciest quotes–in a lengthy and thoughtful memo to Suskind.
Just what pressure DiIulio felt if any to retract his comments is hard to gauge. He released a statement declaring himself “remorseful,” and now he’s not talking. But Suskind is. And his tale shows a glimpse of what it’s like when the White House message machine turns on a journalist. The president, one top aide said last week, laughed off the recent flap. “He understands the reporter,” the aide explained, implying that Suskind can’t be believed.
This is not the first go around for Suskind, an author and Pulitzer Prize winner who spent a decade at the Wall Street Journal. Six months ago, in an article about presidential counselor Karen Hughes, he quoted chief of staff Andy Card worrying aloud that Hughes’s departure would leave political strategist Karl Rove unchecked. It caused a stir. Card went on the talk-show circuit, where he referred to the “alleged quote” but, when pushed, wouldn’t say he was misquoted. The White House took a harder tack. “We’re taking up a collection to buy the author a tape recorder,” Fleischer said in a briefing in June.
It’s the first lesson in Media Management 101: blame the bum reporter. A lot of Americans think we are lazy at best and liars at worst, so it’s a good gambit. And print reporters are the easiest to malign because we don’t always have a camera or tape recorder rolling like TV and radio reporters. If you are trying to gain a source’s trust, especially if they are skittish, a tape recorder sometimes scares them off. When I pointed that out to one official last week in Suskind’s defense, he quipped: “At least you’re taking notes.”
“I’m a great note-taker,” Suskind insists. “I’m a crazy overreporter. I scribble tons of stuff.” He just doesn’t play the reporter role all the time. He argues that that’s how he gets what no one else has been able to. With no daily or weekly deadline, he “hangs around a long time” and eventually wins people’s trust. Plus, he believes, as “author guy” he has a credibility and seriousness that loosens reluctant lips. For the Rove article, Suskind says sources called him from pay phones and even other people’s houses to avoid being traced. “Truth arrived in the land of sound bites,” he said.
This time around, the White House couldn’t really take issue with DiIulio’s quotes since most of them were in his own hand. But Suskind also quoted a few anonymous “senior administration” officials being very critical. “I think he misspelled ‘junior’,” says one senior administration official(no, really). Reporters always run the risk when we use anonymous sources of being accused of making up quotes or attributions. But often that guarantee of anonymity is the only way we can get anyone to say anything interesting. This White House likes to have it both ways: they will usually only tell reporters useful things on background but then they will criticize them for using anonymous quotes when they are critical.
Some reporters have joined the White House in wondering how Suskind can get senior officials to dish when those on the beat haven’t been able to. Conservative columnist Robert Novak took Suskind to task in a recent op-ed for what he claimed were inaccuracies, and media critic Howard Kurtz was less than flattering in his portrayal of Suskind as a self-promoter. Indeed, on Suskind’s own Web site he proclaims himself “author, journalist, documentarian” next a slick promotional photo of himself (although, who am I to talk).
But Suskind’s scoops are plausible. Andy Card is one of the few unmanaged voices in the White House. The message machine can’t clamp shut the chief of staff. Like Dick Cheney, he’s too senior and he knows too much. And Card has the truth-telling gene. The trait is just not as compulsive as it is in outgoing Treasury Secretary Paul O’Neill. As for DiIulio, he left his White House job in frustration. He had butt heads with Rove’s shop and was worried that the faith-based initiative was going nowhere. President Bush will breathe life back into that program Thursday when he will talk up his domestic policy agenda in Philadelphia. He won’t be turning to DiIulio, a respected academic, for help this time. White House aides insist that the president encourages a diversity of opinion, even criticism, just not in print.
