BANNED Pres. Bush Interview (Irish Interview Merge) - Tilted Forum Project Discussion Community

host · 10-11-2005, 10:34 AM

Two days ago, Carole Coleman, a reporter for the Irish news network, RTE, published an article on her experience of her July, 2004 interview with George Bush. She relates the white house requirements of pre-submitted questions, filming of the interview by the white house's own film crew, the "tease" of a later interview of Laura Bush, (If she got on well in the interview with Bush, himself), the "respect" that the white house staff affords Bush, their genuine, gushing reference of Bush as "the Leader of the Free World", and Bush's own annoyance with a reporter who attempted to control her own interview.

The bottomline is that Bush has no experience with being "grilled" by a professional, aggressive, working US press corp. Coleman's article validates the image of a petty, vindictive, president and white house staff. How is it that Bush supporters believe and repeat the accusations that the press has a liberal bias and that their "coverage" is somehow unfair to Bush?

Coleman's article reinforces that with the white house, it is all about future access. If you follow all of the rules and serve up Gannonesque, softball questions and report on Bush favorably, you are permitted future interviews. If you don't.....well.....it seems aside from Coleman's experienc, it doesn't happen. The white house actually initiated a diplomatic protest of her interview with Bush, to the Irish embassy. Is it any wonder that Harriet Miers could describe Bush as having "the most brilliant mind"? Bush surrounds himself with an "admiration society", which then attempts to demand the same of the press corp. Is the "great leader" tenor of this white house staff, even an "American" concept. Where is the precedent for it?

Quote:

www.taoiseach.gov.ie/
The Taoiseach is the Irish prime minister.

Quote:

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/newspap...7008_2,00.html
The Sunday Times October 09, 2005

Ireland: I wanted to slap him
George W Bush was so upset by Carole Coleman’s White House interview that an official complaint was lodged with the Irish embassy. The RTE journalist explains why the president made her blood boil
With just minutes to go to my interview with George W Bush, I was escorted to the White House library, where a staff member gave instructions on how to greet the president: “He’ll be coming in the door behind you, just stand up, turn around and extend your hand.”

I placed my notes on the coffee table, someone attached a microphone to my lapel, and I waited. The two chairs by the fireplace where the president and I would sit were at least six feet apart; clearly I would not be getting too close to him.

The room was well-lit, providing the kind of warm background conducive to a fireside chat. Several people had crowded in behind me. I counted five members of the White House film crew, there was a stenographer sitting in the corner and three or four security staff. I was still counting them when someone spoke. “He’s coming.”

I stood up, turned around to face the door and seconds later the president strode towards me. Bush appeared shorter than on camera and he looked stern and rather grey that day.

“Thanks for comin’, Mr President” I said, sticking out my hand. I had borrowed this greeting directly from him. When Bush made a speech at a rally or town hall, he always began by saying “Thanks for comin’” in his man-of-the-people manner. If he detected the humour in my greeting, he didn’t let on. He took my hand with a firm grip and, bringing his face right up close to mine, stared me straight in the eyes for several seconds, as though drinking in every detail of my face. He sat down and an aide attached a microphone to his jacket.

Nobody said a word. “We don’t address the president unless he speaks first,” a member of the film crew had told me earlier. The resulting silence seemed odd and discomforting, so I broke it. “How has your day been, Mr President?” Without looking up at me, he continued to straighten his tie and replied in a strong Texan drawl, “Very busy.”

This was followed by an even more disconcerting silence that, compounded by the six feet separating us, made it difficult to establish any rapport.

“Will Mrs Bush be seeing any of our beautiful country?” I tried again, attempting to warm things up by adding that I had heard that the taoiseach would be keeping him too busy for sightseeing on his forthcoming trip to Ireland.

“He’s putting me to work, is he? Have you not interviewed Laura?” “No, I haven’t met your wife.” I suggested that he put in a good word for me. He chuckled. By now he seemed settled and the crew looked ready, but still nobody spoke. I was beginning to worry that the clock may have already started on my 10 minutes.

“Are we all ready to go then?” I asked, looking around the room. The next voice I heard was the president’s. “I think we have a spunky one here,” he said, to nobody in particular.

MC, a White House press officer whom I’ve decided not to identify, had phoned me three days earlier to say that President Bush would do an interview with RTE. “Good news,” she had said. “It goes this Thursday at 4.20pm. You will have 10 minutes with the president and Turkish television will talk to him just before you.”.........

The interview sounded like quite a production. We wouldn’t be able to just saunter in there with a camera. It would be filmed by a White House crew, which would then hand over the tapes to me to be copied and returned the same day.

MC asked me for a list of questions and topics, which she said was required for policy purposes in case I should want to ask something that the president needed to be briefed on. The request did not seem odd to me then. The drill had been exactly the same for an interview I had conducted six months earlier with the then secretary of state, Colin Powell.

“What would you ask the president of the United States?” I enquired of everyone I met in the following days. Ideas had already been scribbled on scattered notepads in my bedroom, on scraps of paper in my handbag and on my desk, but once the date was confirmed, I mined suggestions from my peers in RTE and from foreign policy analysts. I grilled my friends in Washington and even pestered cab drivers. After turning everything over in my head, I settled on a list of 10 questions..........

......Still, with the arrangements starting to fall into place, the sense of chaos receded and I returned to the questions, which by now were perpetually dancing around my head, even in my sleep. Reporters often begin a big interview by asking a soft question — to let the subject warm up before getting into the substance of the topic at hand. This was how I had initially intended to begin with Bush, but as I mentally rehearsed the likely scenario, I felt that too much time could be consumed by his first probable answer, praising Ireland and looking forward to his visit. We could, I had calculated, be into the third minute before even getting to the controversial topics. I decided to ditch the cordial introduction.

The majority of the Irish public, as far as I could tell, was angry with Bush and did not want to hear a cosy fireside chat in the middle of the most disputed war since Vietnam. Instead of the kid-glove start, I would get down to business..............

On Thursday June 24,......Stephanie and I arrived at the northwest gate of the White House that afternoon, and were directed to the Old Executive Office building, Vice President Dick Cheney’s headquarters, and were introduced to MC, whom I had spoken to only by phone. An elegant and confident woman, she was the cut of CJ, the feisty White House press secretary on The West Wing television drama.

A younger male sidekick named Colby stood close by nodding at everything she said and interjecting with a few comments of his own every now and then. Colby suggested that I ask the president about the yellow suit the taoiseach had worn the previous week at the G8 Summit on Sea Island in Georgia. I laughed loudly and then stopped to study his face for signs that he was joking — but he didn’t appear to be. “The president has a good comment on that,” he said.........

.....Then MC announced that she had some news for me. “There may be another interview in the pipeline for you,” she said.

“Me?”

“We’re not supposed to tell you this yet, but we are trying to set up an interview with the first lady.”
She indicated that the White House had already been in contact with RTE to make arrangements for the interview at Dromoland Castle, where the president and Mrs Bush would be staying. As an admirer of Laura Bush’s cool grace and sharp intellect, I had requested interviews with her several times previously without any reply. Now the first lady of the United States was being handed to me on a plate. I could not believe my luck.

“Of course, it’s not certain yet,” MC added. And then her sidekick dropped his second bombshell. “We’ll see how you get on with the president first.”

I’m sure I continued smiling, but I was stunned. What I understood from this was that if I pleased the White House with my questioning of the president, I would get to interview the first lady. Were they trying to ensure a soft ride for the president, or was I the new flavour of the month with the first family?

“I’m going to give the president his final briefing. Are there any further questions you want to pass on to him?” MC asked.

“No,” I said, “just tell him I want to chat.”

Stephanie and I locked eyes and headed for the ladies’ powder room, where we prayed.

Mr President,” I began. “You will arrive in Ireland in less than 24 hours’ time. While our political leaders will welcome you, unfortunately the majority of our people will not. They are annoyed about the war in Iraq and about Abu Ghraib. Are you bothered by what Irish people think?”

The president was reclining in his seat and had a half-smile on his face, a smile I had often seen when he had to deal with something he would rather not.

“Listen. I hope the Irish people understand the great values of our country. And if they think that a few soldiers represent the entirety of America, they don’t really understand America then . . . We are a compassionate country. We’re a strong country, and we’ll defend ourselves. But we help people. And we’ve helped the Irish and we’ll continue to do so. We’ve got a good relationship with Ireland.”...............

.........The president did not see the look of horror on the faces of his staff as he began to defend his stance. “I’m the first president to have called for a Palestinian state. That to me sounds like a reasonable and balanced approach. I will not allow terrorists determine the fate, as best I can, of people who want to be free.”

Hands were signalling furiously now for me to end the interview.

“Mr President, thank you very much.”

“You’re welcome,” he replied, still half-smiling and half-frowning.

It was over. I felt like a delinquent child who had been reprimanded by a stern, unwavering father. My face must have been the same colour as my suit. Yet I also knew that we had discussed some important issues — probably more candidly than I had heard from President Bush in some time.

I was removing my microphone when he addressed me.

“Is that how you do it in Ireland — interrupting people all the time?”

I froze. He was not happy with me and was letting me know it.

“Yes,” I stuttered, determined to maintain my own half-smile.

I was aching to get out of there for a breath of air when I remembered that I had earlier discussed with staff the possibility of having my picture taken with the president. I had been told that, when the interview was over, I could stand up with him and the White House photographer would snap a picture. Not wanting to waste the opportunity, I stood up and asked him to join me.

“Oh, she wants the photograph now,” he said from his still-seated position. He rose, stood beside me and put an arm around my shoulder. Taking his cue, I put an arm up around his shoulder and we both grinned for the cameras.

In my haste to leave I almost forgot the tapes and had to be reminded by the film crew to take them. I and my assistants bolted out to the street. We ran, high heels and all, across Lafayette Park. Running through rush-hour traffic, I thought that this had to be about as crazy as a journalist’s job gets.

I had just been admonished by the president of the United States and now I was turning cartwheels in order to get the interview on air. As I dashed past a waste bin, I had a fleeting urge to throw in the tapes and run home instead.

At the studio I handed over the tapes. My phone rang. It was MC, and her voice was cold.

“We just want to say how disappointed we are in the way you conducted the interview,” she said.

“How is that?” I asked.

“You talked over the president, not letting him finish his answers.”

“Oh, I was just moving him on,” I said, explaining that I wanted some new insight from him, not two-year-old answers.

“He did give you plenty of new stuff.”

She estimated that I had interrupted the president eight times and added that I had upset him. I was upset too, I told her. The line started to break up; I was in a basement with a bad phone signal. I took her number and agreed to call her back. I dialled the White House number and she was on the line again.

“I’m here with Colby,” she indicated.

“Right.”

“You were given an opportunity to interview the leader of the free world and you blew it,” she began.

I was beginning to feel as if I might be dreaming. I had naively believed the American president was referred to as the “leader of the free world” only in an unofficial tongue-in-cheek sort of way by outsiders, and not among his closest staff.

“You were more vicious than any of the White House press corps or even some of them up on Capitol Hill . . .The president leads the interview,” she said.

“I don’t agree,” I replied, my initial worry now turning to frustration. “It’s the journalist’s job to lead the interview.”

It was suggested that perhaps I could edit the tapes to take out the interruptions, but I made it clear that this would not be possible.

As the conversation progressed, I learnt that I might find it difficult to secure further co-operation from the White House. A man’s voice then came on the line. Colby, I assumed. “And, it goes without saying, you can forget about the interview with Laura Bush.”

Clearly the White House had thought they would be dealing with an Irish “colleen” bowled over by the opportunity to interview the Bushes. If anyone there had done their research on RTE’s interviewing techniques, they might have known better.

MC also indicated that she would be contacting the Irish Embassy in Washington — in other words, an official complaint from Washington to Dublin.

“I don’t know how we are going to repair this relationship, but have a safe trip back to Ireland,” MC concluded. I told her I had not meant to upset her since she had been more than helpful to me. The conversation ended.

By the time I got to the control room, the Prime Time broadcast had just started. It was at the point of the first confrontation with the “leader of the free world” and those gathered around the monitors were glued to it. “Well done,” someone said. “This is great.”

I thought about the interview again as I climbed up the steps to RTE’s live camera position at Dromoland Castle to account for myself on the 6pm news next day. By now the White House had vented its anger to the Irish embassy in Washington. To make matters worse for the administration, the interview had made its way onto American television and CNN was replaying it around the world and by the end of the day it had been aired in Baghdad.

Had I been fair? Should I just have been more deferential to George Bush? I felt that I had simply done my job and shuddered at the thought of the backlash I would surely have faced in Ireland had I not challenged the president on matters that had changed the way America was viewed around the world.

Afterwards I bumped straight into the taoiseach, Bertie Ahern, who was waiting to go on air.

“Howya,” he said, winking.

“I hope this hasn’t caused you too much hassle, taoiseach,” I blurted.

“Arrah, don’t worry at all; you haven’t caused me one bit of hassle,” he smiled wryly.

I don’t know what he said to the president, who reportedly referred to the interview immediately upon arrival, but if the taoiseach was annoyed with me or with RTE, he didn’t show it.

When I returned to my little world on the street called M in Washington, I felt a tad more conspicuous than when I’d left for Ireland. Google was returning more than 100,000 results on the subject of the 12-minute interview. The vast majority of bloggers felt it was time a reporter had challenged Bush.

At the White House, the fact that I had been asked to submit questions prior to the interview generated enquiries from the American press corps. “Any time a reporter sits down with the president they are welcome to ask him whatever questions they want to ask,” Scott McClellan, the White House press secretary, told the CBS correspondent Bill Plante.

“Yes, but that’s beside the point,” replied Plante.

Under repeated questioning, McClellan conceded that other staff members might have asked for questions. “Certainly there will be staff-level discussion, talking about what issues reporters may want to bring up in some of these interviews. I mean that happens all the time.”

I had not been prevented from asking any of my questions. The only topics I had been warned away from were the Bush daughters Jenna and Barbara, regular fodder for the tabloids, and Michael Moore — neither of which was on my list.

Moore did notice RTE’s interview with the president and in the weeks that followed urged American journalists to follow the example of “that Irish woman”.

“In the end, doesn’t it always take the Irish to speak up?” he said. “She’s my hero. Where are the Carole Colemans in the US press?”

© Carole Coleman 2005

Quote:

http://www.prospect.org/web/page.ww?...articleId=8061
The Fighting Irish
A reporter for the Irish television network RTE didn't play by the rules when she interviewed President Bush. She won't get a second chance.

By Rob Garver
Web Exclusive: 07.02.04

Does the Bush administration retaliate against reporters who don’t play nice with the White House? Well, let’s just say that Carol Coleman, the Washington correspondent for the Irish television network RTE, won’t be interviewing President Bush again anytime soon -- or ever, for that matter.

In an interview timed to coincide with Bush’s visit to Ireland over the weekend, the veteran reporter questioned the president aggressively about the U.S. invasion of Iraq and the subsequent occupation, interrupting him several times during the 11-minute exhange.

It was the first one-on-one presidential interview granted to Irish television since the Reagan administration, and the White House selected RTE from among a number of Irish media outlets that had requested time with Bush. Coleman returned the favor by asking pointed questions, and by noting that the president would be met in Ireland by large crowds protesting the U.S. invasion of Iraq.

When Bush tried to justify the war on the basis of Saddam Hussein’s use of weapons of mass destruction, Coleman quickly pointed out that no such weapons had been found. When he strayed from the topic of her questions -- which had been submitted to the White House three days in advance -- or gave rambling answers that threatened to eat up her allotted time, Coleman tried to bring him back to the point by interjecting follow-up questions.

The president became visibly irritated with Coleman, and evidently communicated his displeasure to his staff, because within 10 minutes of the interview’s end, Coleman got a call from a White House communications officer, who berated her for the tone of her questions and for interrupting the president.

She was then told that an interview with first lady Laura Bush, tentatively scheduled for the next day, was canceled.

To top things off, the White House Office of Global Communications called the Irish Embassy in Washington to lodge a complaint about Coleman. “

They were concerned about the interviewer’s style,” the spokeswoman said, adding that the White House also complained that Coleman showed a lack of respect for the president.

The administration’s surrogates outside the government got into the act, too. Radical right-wingers on FreeRepublic.com posted the address and phone number of Coleman’s Washington office, resulting in an answering machine full of abuse and invective, much of it in language common to sailors and, well, vice presidents.

The reaction of the Irish media to the White House’s decision to lash out at Coleman was one of general bemusement. “Ms. Coleman was a fairly aggressive interviewer but no more so than would be the norm in Ireland, when a politician is the subject of the interview,” wrote the Irish Emigrant, a Web site delivering news to Irish expatriates in the United States..........

Ustwo · 10-11-2005, 10:49 AM

My scroll finger hurts...seriously.

Need to stop using the middle scroll button and just use the sliders from now on.

I can't seem to find a link between your title and the article other than they both involve the media and left wingers.

Locobot · 10-11-2005, 11:12 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Ustwo

My scroll finger hurts...seriously.

Need to stop using the middle scroll button and just use the sliders from now on.

I can't seem to find a link between your title and the article other than they both involve the media and left wingers.

Maybe if you'd actually read the articles instead of scrolling by them you'd be able to contribute something a little more substancial here.

stevo · 10-11-2005, 11:19 AM

my mouse broke.

Ustwo · 10-11-2005, 11:25 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Locobot

Maybe if you'd actually read the articles instead of scrolling by them you'd be able to contribute something a little more substancial here.

There is nothing of substance here to link it with the title. Having set interviews are quite common for political figures (ask Hilary Clinton when her last open interview was) and really has nothing to do with media bias as a whole against Bush.

Grandiose claims in the title vrs small time reality.

Charlatan · 10-11-2005, 11:28 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Ustwo

My scroll finger hurts...seriously.

Need to stop using the middle scroll button and just use the sliders from now on.

I can't seem to find a link between your title and the article other than they both involve the media and left wingers.

Get a mouse with a wheel..

I am not surprised by this in the slightest. The President of the United States rarely, if ever, has to actually face the press. The joke that is called a press conference is a staged affair. The press is free to ask what they want but will never get called on to ask another question if they ask the wrong question.

This is true of Bush as it has been of just about every President going back, at least, to WWII.

Knowing how journalism is practiced other parts of the world the President doesn't get nearly as rough a ride as he should. In Canada we have what is called a "media scrum". After question period (the time in Parliament when the government and the Prime Minister must stand and face the questions of the Opposition Parties) the PM nmakes his way back to his offices and is subject to questions from the press. They literally surround him and ask whatever they would like. This is not a staged affair.

The President is treat much more like English royalty. You must address him in certain ways, ask only prepared questions, etc. I find it odd...

Seaver · 10-11-2005, 11:45 AM

The reason Bush doesnt give open interviews? The same reason almost no one does.

One slip of the tongue, or a misplaced word can cause a shitstorm. Watch the movie Patton if you dont understand. Because he didnt mension Russia while giving a speech to a ladies club in how the US and Britain would win the war, he almost got fired.

What this shows is over-eager reporters who dig for crap that is not nessisarily there. So Political leaders (almost ALL, left AND right) go over questions and their answers OVER and OVER again in order not to send a mixed or false message.

With so much out there to hate Bush for, this is just weak.

powerclown · 10-11-2005, 11:56 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by host

I've never resided outside the U.S. I refused to cooperate with selective service in the military draft during the Vietnam war.

Curious minds want to know...DETAILS!!!

boatin · 10-11-2005, 12:03 PM

Host, thank you for posting. I don't always read everything you post, but it's easy to skim - or pick and choose. This is a really interesting topic. And I see a direct connection to your title. It's not even a complicated connection. I appreciate your continued efforts, and marvel at how you tolerate the continued cheap shots.

Ustwo/stevo, why the cheap shots? It's not like you don't know what you are getting when you open a post by Host. If you don't like it, don't open it. If you can't see a connection, why not treat Host like we are supposed to in TFP-land, and ask for clarification? Why do you do this? Why

Stevo, You only have to look one post above yours to get an answer to your implied question. This isn't about open interviews, this is about needing the respect Kings/Gods used to get. There is a continuum, and it seems that Bush is at one extreme. There are other options on that continuum. Do his choices seem right to you? Is that what you want from your president? (assuming you're American)

Seems like a good example of the greater problem of this administration to me. Again, don't like the topic? Don't post. Criminy.

Ustwo · 10-11-2005, 12:27 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Charlatan

The President is treat much more like English royalty. You must address him in certain ways, ask only prepared questions, etc. I find it odd...

Lets pretend I was of a left wing bent and wanted to make a name for myself. What a better way to do it than asking 'tough' questions about whatever and being an asshole to the president of the United States, whom I disagree with. The president doesn't know everything about anything. You could quite easily ask specific questions on purpose to make someone look bad, unfairly. You do recall the world leader question and Bush in the 2000 election I'm sure, in 2004 in one of the silly democrat candidate debates they asked them the same question. No one was willing to answer then either, but at the time the 'surprise' Bush question was used to make him look stupid.

And you are correct, we DO have respect for the presidential office. This is the United States, not some third world protectorate. He is the democratically elected leader of our republican government, and as such you don't interrupt him when he is speaking. This doesn't mean you can't question or criticize his actions, but what you don't do is be an ass to him. After he is out of office, have at him, but even then we have a respect for our leaders, even Carter. This is why Clinton had so much backlash, it wasn't what he did per say but that he cheapened the office of the presidency with juvenile antics and pursuit of personal legacy.

Of course this really has little to nothing to do with left wing media bias, but its an interesting tangent.

pan6467 · 10-11-2005, 12:29 PM

I see a good article and some interesting points brought by Host and I see a bunch of personal attacks and negative posts that truly add nothing from the right and absolutely no debate, sad, this forum is headed back downhill.

Host, while I do believe that all presidents and most interviewees get to prescreen, I often wonder why the press feels it cannot ask the president hardball questions. It should be the primary purpose of the press to ask tough questions and to hold the president accountable for his actions to the people, regardless of party.

Poppinjay · 10-11-2005, 12:51 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Ustwo

And you are correct, we DO have respect for the presidential office. This is the United States, not some third world protectorate. He is the democratically elected leader of our republican government, and as such you don't interrupt him when he is speaking. This doesn't mean you can't question or criticize his actions, but what you don't do is be an ass to him. After he is out of office, have at him, but even then we have a respect for our leaders, even Carter.

Even Carter? hmmm.... As far as Clinton, I think the voters made their choice known.

I respect the office and would never be disrespectful If I were interviewing Bush. However, the deal in America is that the president is still a man, not chosen by divine intervention. If he screws up, and he has, he needs to take the heat. It's an American tradition.

stevo · 10-11-2005, 12:57 PM

No, really. My mouse is really broken. Do you know how hard it is to navigate the internet with a broken mouse? It really is a pain in my a$$.

On a side note, on my computer all of host's posts come up pink. Why is that? There must be a setting in the User CP that I need to look at.

docbungle · 10-11-2005, 03:21 PM

Well, I think the thread title is a little off, too. However, I do find this article very humorous. I find GWB to be embarassingly aloof. it shows very clearly when he is put in situations like this one. So incredulous is he that this reporter would dare ask him such things, he doesn't know how to respond. Doesn't she know who he is?

Fucking hilarious, this guy.

Lebell · 10-11-2005, 08:08 PM

No more complaints about the thread title not matching the story.

Oh, and no more complaints about length.

I've seen plenty of posts that long by other members of this forum.

Seaver · 10-11-2005, 09:16 PM

Quote:

I see a good article and some interesting points brought by Host and I see a bunch of personal attacks and negative posts that truly add nothing from the right and absolutely no debate, sad, this forum is headed back downhill.

Hey now not all of us are insulting Host. I read through the post in it's entirety, yet my stance is the same. Give the President a break.

I dont care how smart a man is, anyone can make him look dumb. When you have reporters bent on proving that, it can make a mountain out of an anthill.

Do you know the socio economic conditions of Sudan, class structures between religion and ethnic lines? Probably not. The President probably doesnt either. But he has people in charge of that, they tell him what's going on. Pretend a civil war breaks out there, and a reporter the next morning drills him with questions. You see my point.

My point from my previous post still stands as well. Any slip of the tongue can potentially piss off people whom it was never intended to. Too many bad things can happen with an improved interview.

roachboy · 10-11-2005, 09:48 PM

so let's see here:
what you have is an effect of the largely republican practice of pooling the press, one pioneered by the reagan administraton and slavishly imitated by this sorry bunch---bush obviously has no experience being grilled because his handlers prevent it from happening. no surprise, folks.

tha bush himself gets pissy in a kind of irrational way when confronted with information and/or questions he does not like is also not a surprise if you have been following this administration and its titular head for any time with any degree of attention.
but it is good to be reminded when the occasion presents itself.

that information is tightly controlled coming from the white house: no surprise.
the problems emerge when that control breaks down: no surprise.
but it is good to be reminded, when the occasion presents itself.

that the lumpenconservatives who float around here have nothing to say about it that could possibly be confused with something of interest is obviously, and sadly, no surprise. that they would prefer to, once again, attack host is yet another index of the debased intellectual content of conservative discourse in general.

i think seaver's defense of bush is rooted in a bizarre identification with the person of george w bush which extends only so far as to set up the claim "if i dont know it, it is unreasonable to expect the president of the united states to know it".....a claim which is wholly insane: you, seaver, have no power. it does not matter, realy, what you know or do not know, any more than, from the same viewpoint, it matters what i know or do not know: but it bloody well does matter what the president of the united states knows and does not know because he, unlike you or i, is in a position to make many many people die on the basis of his particular beliefs about events in the world. how you can see tha george w bush does not know the first thing about sudan in a context where that country presents a fundamental humanitarian crisis is beyond absurd.

how conservatives find the ignorance of george w bush to be reassuring is a total mystery to me.

analog · 10-11-2005, 11:42 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Seaver

Give the President a break.

Considering the power, authority, and control he has, and what his job is, he doesn't deserve "a break", nor should he be given one. If he's doing things that make us want to scrutinize him to the nth degree, then so be it, it's his doing. The republicans would have foamed at the mouth, ripped your arms off, and beaten you to death with them if you suggested anyone give Clinton "a break". The point is, regardless of who it is, the President of the United States of America doesn't "get a break".

I just think it's funny how the same wheels (and I mean this for both sides) spin the same way, no matter the topic. The typical bush-kissers call it bullshit posturing, and the bush-haters hail anyone who they think knocked him down a peg, or supposedly called him out on something.

Regardless of the "reporter trying to make a name for herself", as the righties here say... if the quotes are accurate, then some of his personal banter was flatly rude and disrespectful, and there's no context in which they could appear otherwise.

And, if the lefties are correct in that the president is constantly coddled by the press, then i say whose fault is that? It's the fault of the press as a whole. There's only so much control the president can have if no one plays their little games of "no more interviews if you hardball the president". People need to step it up a little.

hrandani · 10-12-2005, 12:48 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Ustwo

Lets pretend I was of a left wing bent and wanted to make a name for myself. What a better way to do it than asking 'tough' questions about whatever and being an asshole to the president of the United States, whom I disagree with. The president doesn't know everything about anything. You could quite easily ask specific questions on purpose to make someone look bad, unfairly. You do recall the world leader question and Bush in the 2000 election I'm sure, in 2004 in one of the silly democrat candidate debates they asked them the same question. No one was willing to answer then either, but at the time the 'surprise' Bush question was used to make him look stupid.

And you are correct, we DO have respect for the presidential office. This is the United States, not some third world protectorate. He is the democratically elected leader of our republican government, and as such you don't interrupt him when he is speaking. This doesn't mean you can't question or criticize his actions, but what you don't do is be an ass to him. After he is out of office, have at him, but even then we have a respect for our leaders, even Carter. This is why Clinton had so much backlash, it wasn't what he did per say but that he cheapened the office of the presidency with juvenile antics and pursuit of personal legacy.

Of course this really has little to nothing to do with left wing media bias, but its an interesting tangent.

You are so selective minded it hurts my opinion of humanity. Everytime somebody criticises bush, you guys climb out from the woodwork to talk shit about Clinton. Nobody gives a shit about Clinton. Or Carter, so don't even go there. He's not president. Whether he was or wasn't a good president is irrelevant. Jesus. Like you can critize him for forming a personal legacy with Bush in office? He is the manifestation, incarnate will, of establishing a personal legacy. He is the result of his father's legacy. Are you blind?

Furthermore, it's not like she's asking tough questions, just questions on his policies. His policies. And I think he knows there's no actual weapons of mass destruction.

Jesus it's not like she was asking for him to describe the different stages of nuclear arms manufacture, which he should know anyway but probably doesn't.

The thing is she's not some radical journalist. She is expressing the mainstream opinions and she isn't pandering to him. And apparently that is shocking to the White House. That is the source of outrage, in case you were missing it.

docbungle · 10-12-2005, 07:50 AM

Well, without the questions and answers from the actual interview, it's a bit difficult to know if the interviewer was rude or if the answers the president gave were so vague and/or confusing that he may have needed some prompting.

Redlemon · 10-12-2005, 07:59 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by docbungle

Well, without the questions and answers from the actual interview, it's a bit difficult to know if the interviewer was rude or if the answers the president gave were so vague and/or confusing that he may have needed some prompting.

Agreed; I don't know why Host left that part out. It is in the original article that he linked to...

Quote:

"Mr President,” I began. “You will arrive in Ireland in less than 24 hours’ time. While our political leaders will welcome you, unfortunately the majority of our people will not. They are annoyed about the war in Iraq and about Abu Ghraib. Are you bothered by what Irish people think?”

The president was reclining in his seat and had a half-smile on his face, a smile I had often seen when he had to deal with something he would rather not.

“Listen. I hope the Irish people understand the great values of our country. And if they think that a few soldiers represent the entirety of America, they don’t really understand America then . . . We are a compassionate country. We’re a strong country, and we’ll defend ourselves. But we help people. And we’ve helped the Irish and we’ll continue to do so. We’ve got a good relationship with Ireland.”

“And they are angry over Iraq as well and particularly the continuing death toll there,” I added, moving him on to the war that had claimed 100 Iraqi lives that very day. He continued to smile, but just barely.

“Well, I can understand that. People don’t like war. But what they should be angry about is the fact that there was a brutal dictator there that had destroyed lives and put them in mass graves and torture rooms . . . Look, Saddam Hussein had used weapons of mass destruction against his own people, against the neighbourhood. He was a brutal dictator who posed a threat that the United Nations voted unanimously to say, Mr Saddam Hussein . . .”

Having noted the tone of my questions, the president had now sat forward in his chair and had become animated, gesturing with his hands for emphasis. But as I listened to the history of Saddam Hussein and the weapons inspectors and the UN resolutions, my heart was sinking. He was resorting to the type of meandering stock answer I had heard scores of times and had hoped to avoid. Going back over this old ground could take two or three minutes and allow him to keep talking without dealing with the current state of the war. It was a filibuster of sorts. If I didn’t challenge him, the interview would be a wasted opportunity.

“But, Mr President, you didn’t find any weapons,” I interjected.

“Let me finish, let me finish. May I finish?”

With his hand raised, he requested that I stop speaking. He paused and looked me straight in the eye to make sure I had got the message. He wanted to continue, so I backed off and he went on. “The United Nations said, ‘Disarm or face serious consequences’. That’s what the United Nations said. And guess what? He didn’t disarm. He didn’t disclose his arms. And therefore he faced serious consequences. But we have found a capacity for him to make a weapon. See, he had the capacity to make weapons . . .”

I was now beginning to feel shut out of this event. He had the floor and he wasn’t letting me dance. My blood was boiling to such a point that I felt like slapping him. But I was dealing with the president of the United States; and he was too far away anyway. I suppose I had been naive to think that he was making himself available to me so I could spar with him or plumb the depths of his thought processes. Sitting there, I knew that I was nobody special and that this was just another opportunity for the president to repeat his mantra. He seemed irked to be faced with someone who wasn’t nodding gravely at him as he was speaking.

“But Mr President,” I interrupted again, “the world is a more dangerous place today. I don’t know whether you can see that or not.”

“Why do you say that?”

“There are terrorist bombings every single day. It’s now a daily event. It wasn’t like that two years ago.”

“What was it like on September 11 2001? It was a . . . there was relative calm, we . . .”

“But it’s your response to Iraq that’s considered . . .”

“Let me finish. Let me finish. Please. You ask the questions and I’ll answer them, if you don’t mind.”

His hand was raised again as if to indicate that he was not going to tolerate this. Again, I felt I had no choice but to keep quiet.

“On September 11 2001, we were attacked in an unprovoked fashion. Everybody thought the world was calm. There have been bombings since then — not because of my response to Iraq. There were bombings in Madrid, there were bombings in Istanbul. There were bombings in Bali. There were killings in Pakistan.”

He seemed to be finished, so I took a deep breath and tried once again. So far, facial expressions were defining this interview as much as anything that was said, so I focused on looking as if I was genuinely trying to fathom him.

“Indeed, Mr President, and I think Irish people understand that. But I think there is a feeling that the world has become a more dangerous place because you have taken the focus off Al-Qaeda and diverted into Iraq. Do you not see that the world is a more dangerous place? I saw four of your soldiers lying dead on the television the other day, a picture of four soldiers just lying there without their flak jackets.”

“Listen, nobody cares more about death than I do . . .”
“Is there a point or place . . .”

“Let me finish. Please. Let me finish, and then you can follow up, if you don’t mind.”

By now he was getting used to the rhythm of this interview and didn’t seem quite so taken aback by my attempt to take control of it. “Nobody cares more about death than I do. I care a lot about it. But I do believe the world is a safer place and becoming a safer place. I know that a free Iraq is going to be a necessary part of changing the world.”

The president seemed to be talking more openly now and from the heart rather than from a script. The history lesson on Saddam was over. “Listen, people join terrorist organisations because there’s no hope and there’s no chance to raise their families in a peaceful world where there is not freedom. And so the idea is to promote freedom and at the same time protect our security. And I do believe the world is becoming a better place, absolutely.”

I could not tell how much time had elapsed, maybe five or six minutes, so I moved quickly on to the question I most wanted to ask George Bush in person.

“Mr President, you are a man who has a great faith in God. I’ve heard you say many times that you strive to serve somebody greater than yourself.”

“Right.”

“Do you believe that the hand of God is guiding you in this war on terror?”

This question had been on my mind ever since September 11, when Bush began to invoke God in his speeches. He spoke as if he believed that his job of stewarding America through the attacks and beyond was somehow preordained, that he had been chosen for this role. He closed his eyes as he began to answer.

“Listen, I think that God . . . that my relationship with God is a very personal relationship. And I turn to the Good Lord for strength. I turn to the Good Lord for guidance. I turn to the Good Lord for forgiveness. But the God I know is not one that . . . the God I know is one that promotes peace and freedom. But I get great sustenance from my personal relationship.”

He sat forward again. “That doesn’t make me think I’m a better person than you are, by the way. Because one of the great admonitions in the Good Book is, ‘Don’t try to take a speck out of your eye if I’ve got a log in my own’.”

I suspected that he was also telling me that I should not judge him.

I switched to Ireland again and to the controversy then raging over the Irish government’s decision to allow the use of Shannon Airport for the transport of soldiers and weapons to the Gulf.

“You are going to meet Bertie Ahern when you arrive at Shannon Airport tomorrow. I guess he went out on a limb for you, presumably because of the great friendship between our two countries. Can you look him in the eye when you get there and say, ‘It will be worth it, it will work out’?”

“Absolutely. I wouldn’t be doing this, I wouldn’t have made the decision I did if I didn’t think the world would be better.”

I felt that the President had now become personally involved in this interview, even quoting a Bible passage, so I made one more stab at trying to get inside his head.

“Why is it that others don’t understand what you are about?”

He shrugged. “I don’t know. History will judge what I’m about.”

I could not remember my next question. My mind had gone completely blank. The president had not removed me from his gaze since we had begun and I wanted to keep up the eye contact.

If I diverted to my notes on the table beside me, he would know he had flustered me. For what seemed like an eternity, but probably no more than two seconds, I stared at him, searching his eyes for inspiration. It finally came.

“Can I just turn to the Middle East?”

“Sure.”

He talked about his personal commitment to solving that conflict. As he did so, I could see one of the White House crew signalling for me to wrap up the interview, but the president was in full flight.

“Like Iraq, the Palestinian and the Israeli issue is going to require good security measures,” he said.

Now out of time, I was fully aware that another question was pushing it, but I would never be here again and I had spent four years covering an administration that appeared to favour Israel at every turn.

“And perhaps a bit more even-handedness from America?” I asked, though it came out more as a comment.

The president did not see the look of horror on the faces of his staff as he began to defend his stance. “I’m the first president to have called for a Palestinian state. That to me sounds like a reasonable and balanced approach. I will not allow terrorists determine the fate, as best I can, of people who want to be free.”

Hands were signalling furiously now for me to end the interview.

“Mr President, thank you very much.”

“You’re welcome,” he replied, still half-smiling and half-frowning.

host · 10-12-2005, 08:49 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by docbungle

Well, without the questions and answers from the actual interview, it's a bit difficult to know if the interviewer was rude or if the answers the president gave were so vague and/or confusing that he may have needed some prompting.

Well....doc.... the text of the interview is available at the article link on the thread starter. I cut out the actual interview when I excerpted the article for postin here. I have to be sensitive to the protests of those who are resistant to receipt of too much information, a requirement that seems to insure exposure to less complicated issues or incomplete reports.

The inteview vidoe is also available at the Irish network (click on red script)
http://www.rte.ie/news/2004/0624/primetime.html
Whatever version that you choose, I am interested to read your opinion as to whether this rose to a level where it justified a complaint by the white house to the Irish embassy, with regard to the manner in which Ms. Coleman conducted the interview, or in the content of the questions that she asked Bush. Coleman says that the questions were all pre-submitted, at the request of the white house staff.

Harriet Miers may have "spoiled" Mr. Bush to the point that Coleman's treatment of him was indeed, a rude awakening..........

Quote:

http://www.newsday.com/business/ny-b...-top-headlines
........."You are the best governor ever -- deserving of great respect!," she wrote in a birthday wish to Bush in 1997, when he was the governor of Texas, according to The New York Times. "Keep up the great work. Texas is blessed."............

Before the point of this thread lost most of it's meaning because a moderator took it upon himself to change the thread title from it's intended emphasis on the "lie" that the MSM is biased against Bush, my intent was to feature this incident and Coleman's "take" on it, that the interview was a routine effort by a newsreporter to do a "normal" interview with a POTUS.

The U.S. press has submitted to behavorial modification at the hands of the white house, in exchange for "access". Ms. Coleman refuse to do that, thus shocking Bush's sycophants into protesting her "behavior" to her country's embassy. The American people are the losers because the press has traded away our "right to know". The "lumpenconservatives", as roachboy called them, seem to thrive on the news vaccuum that U.S. press has created by it's failure to act more similarly to Ms. Coleman. Their complaint of press bias is completely opposite reality. Rove has been able to successfully foist the Bush production, first on Texas, and then, on the whole of America because the press failed to examine the capabilities of Bush, himself. The presidential debates one year ago revealed to anyone who watched, that Bush is an inarticulate incompetent who is not fit to be POTUS. We are fortunate that he is only a figurehead, but a figurehead who undermines the folks who actually govern. It is difficult to pinpoint who is accountable to who, in this hierarchy, but thanks to a press that has abdicated it's mssion, none of them are accountable to any of us!

Lebell · 10-12-2005, 08:57 AM

I guess since the thread has "lost most of it's meaning", it won't be a big deal to close it.

Arc101 · 07-10-2007, 01:12 AM

Here is an interview by an Irish journalist. I think he keeps saying let me finish, so she can't keep asking him awkward questions. So what are people's thoughts about this interview.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fze2J2Ve9is

ratbastid · 07-10-2007, 04:17 AM

I wish we had a Prime Minister's Question Period like they do in the UK. We've turned our President into a celebrity, suddenly he's untouchable. It takes someone from a political tradition of grilling their leaders to ask the real questions.

Charlatan · 07-10-2007, 05:06 AM

I think you haven't turned your president into a celebrity... you've turned him into a king (granted, one that can be voted out of power). Nobody questions the monarchy.

host · 07-10-2007, 07:19 AM

I did this Irish journalit's iinterview with Bush video as a thread in October, 2005....included a still active link to the actual original source of the video....can we merge the two threads.

http://www.tfproject.org/tfp/showthread.php?t=96004

Members comments are all there....they don't even have to go through the effort of commenting again on this same subject......

ubertuber · 07-10-2007, 07:32 AM

Fair request, host. The threads are merged and reopened for comments. I'm sure we can do better than last time around...

Elphaba · 07-10-2007, 12:19 PM

I recommend viewing host's video because it shows Bush getting very pissy with the journalist after the formal interview ended. It's a side of him that we rarely get to see.

reconmike · 07-10-2007, 03:49 PM

And GW getting pissy with a reporter is news why? All president in recent times have had interviews go this way, meaning questions are screened.

And if reporters ask questions that the presidents dont want to answer why shouldnt they get banned?

highthief · 07-10-2007, 05:42 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by reconmike

And if reporters ask questions that the presidents dont want to answer why shouldnt they get banned?

Ah, um, I ... I have no idea what to say to this.

He's an elected politician, not your King or your god.

I usually don't give a hoot about what Bush thinks, says or does (aside from invading other countries) but I do care about what average people think. And your statement is frightening.

host · 07-10-2007, 10:10 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by reconmike

And GW getting pissy with a reporter is news why? All president in recent times have had interviews go this way, meaning questions are screened.

And if reporters ask questions that the presidents dont want to answer why shouldnt they get banned?

reconmike, I want to thank you for the challenge your last post gave to me.
I caught myself before I made the mistake of posting about the conflict between your post and the American tradition of a free press...a fourth [estate] branch of government that challenged elected officials....asked the questions that we want answers to but are nor in a position to ask.....

But instead, I opted to spend some time finding out if our founding fathers practiced what we've been told that they preached.

Now....I want you to know that I cannot disagree with your <b>"why shouldn't they get banned?"</b>...because I don't have an answer that doesn't seem to me...to be too naive, compared to what I have learned.

What I want to know from the press is reliable reporting of "inside information", as in this example:

Quote:

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/19649910/site/newsweek/
Friends in High Places
Inside Bush's decision to give Scooter Libby a pass.
Backstage: On the Libby matter, nobody doubted Cheney's stance

By Michael Isikoff
Newsweek

......Behind the scenes, Bush was intensely focused on the matter, <h3>say two White House advisers who were briefed on the deliberations, but who asked not to be identified talking about sensitive matters.</h3> Bush asked Fred Fielding, his discreet White House counsel, to collect information on the case. Fielding, anticipating the Libby issue would be on his plate, had been gathering material for some time, including key trial transcripts. Uncharacteristically, Bush himself delved into the details. He was especially keen to know if there was compelling evidence that might contradict the jury's verdict that Libby had lied to a federal grand jury about when—and from whom—he learned the identity of Valerie Plame Wilson, wife of Iraq War critic Joe Wilson. But Fielding, one of the advisers tells NEWSWEEK, reluctantly concluded that the jury had reached a reasonable verdict: the evidence was strong that Libby testified falsely about his role in the leak.

The president was conflicted. He hated the idea that a loyal aide would serve time. Hanging over his deliberations was Cheney, who had said he was "very disappointed" with the jury's verdict. Cheney did not directly weigh in with Fielding, but nobody involved had any doubt where he stood. "I'm not sure Bush had a choice," says one of the advisers. "If he didn't act, it would have caused a fracture with the vice president." .....

My problem is...that when I get what I want from a news reporter, I am concerned about how he got the "access". There is a cost to be paid to an organization like the Bush white house in exchange for any exclusive information that it chooses to "give" to any reporter. Thus.... I suspect that Newsweek's Isikoff, if his story was reliable...... owes some white house slanted reporting...next time....or this reporting itself, was what the white house intended for us to know.....

So....what I really want is the kind of reporting that only "access" can obtain, but I want it reported by someone who has an adversarial relationship with power, and it follows....little or no access. I want my news from someone like Helen Thomas....she never flinched from or flattered power....and she tried to make up for being "closed out", by working hard:

Quote:

http://209.85.165.104/search?q=cache...lnk&cd=9&gl=us

<center>CBS News
FACE THE NATION
Sunday, February 5, 2006 </center>

(Last Paragraph)
.....[Bob] SCHIEFFER: I have interviewed all the men who have served as president since
Richard Nixon, and when I interviewed President Bush the other day, people
asked what they always do, which was, `Who was your favorite interview?' They
were surprised, as they always are, and this is no reflection on any of them,
but I still have to say the one I remember most is my very first presidential
encounter. It was 1969, Nixon had just come to office, and I was a rookie
reporter in the CBS News Washington bureau.....

....I was
sent the very next Sunday morning to cover a White House reception for the
president's supporters.
It was such a minor affair that <h3>Helen Thomas of UPI and I were the only
reporters there.</h3> A receiving line was set up, and when no one told us we
couldn't, Helen and I just got in the line. Well, there was a story going
around that the president was bringing in some new advisers, and when it came
my turn to shake his hand, I said, `Mr. President, will these be outside
people or in-house advisers?' `Oh, no,' he said, `these will be outhouse
advisers.' Then he realized what he had said and added, `Well, you know what I
mean,' and he wandered off into the crowd....

Quote:

http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwa...mas/index.html

Glenn Greenwald
Thursday June 28, 2007 10:39 EST
Interview with Helen Thomas

Last Thursday, I <a href="http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2007/06/21/podhoretz/">wrote about</a> an acrimonious exchange at the White House press gaggle between Helen Thomas and Tony Snow regarding the number of Iraqis who have been killed during the war. Thomas relentlessly challenged the administration's tactic of labelling everyone killed in Iraq a "terrorist," and demanded to know how many Iraqi civilians had been killed during the four-year-and-counting war. Snow claimed he did not know the answer because the U.S does not "track" that information.

About that exchange, I wrote: "It is unnecessary to identify the reporter asking these questions because there is really only one White House correspondent who would." Several commenters suggested an interview with Thomas, and following up on those suggestions, I interviewed Thomas this morning regarding the state of modern journalism, the Bush administration and related issues.

Following is a verbatim transcript of that interview, edited solely for length:

GG: You have covered every President since John Kennedy. I wanted to ask if you could identify how the White House press corps has changed over time, if it has, and what differences are there in terms of how journalists cover presidents?

HT: Well, that's a big order. But I do think that in the good olden days, reporters were really straight reporters. I worked for a wire service, UPI, for 57 years, and I covered the White House for UPI from the 70s onto Bush, and then became a columnist. So I certainly know both sides.

As a wire service reporter, I played it straight, with the facts, which is absolutely required of a wire service reporter. But that doesn't mean I bowed out of the human race. I permitted myself to think, to care, to believe, but it didn't get in my copy.

I did think that tough questions were always very important. With Kennedy, we knew he enjoyed the banter with the press, and he had the first live televised news conferences. And it made a big difference in terms of really capturing the imagination of the public. It was the first time they really saw reporters in action, they saw a witty president that was able to dodge questions as deftly as anyone, and he had great eloquence. That was the first time the American people really became interested in presidential news conferences.

And then Johnson had a love-hate relationship with the press. He couldn't live without us, and yet at the same time, he thought we were hurting him every day. The words "credibility gap" were created in that era.

With Nixon, that is when news management and manipulation really began. Now, every president wants to put his best foot forward, and always be able to manage and manipulate news coverage.

All presidential candidates, especially, vow to run an open administration. But they step foot in the Oval Office and the Iron Curtain slams down. Suddenly, all information that I think belongs in the public domain becomes their private preserve.

The manipulation of the press has become greater and greater. This is the most secretive administration I have ever covered. And they're all secretive.

GG: Has the press corps that covers the White House played a role in why the White House is so manipulative and why they're able to get away with such secrecy?

HT: Very much so. Reporters, after Watergate, realized that we had let so much go by us. They got much tougher when President Ford took over. It wasn't animosity. It was anger that we hadn't asked the right questions. And the press became tougher.

But they really went soft after 9/11. Reporters, I'm assuming, did not want to be called unpatriotic and un-American when we were in a national crisis.

And I don't think the corporate heads exactly wanted anyone to rock the boat at that time.

But I kept asking questions about the validity of going to war against a country that had done nothing to us.....

<b>FYI: Nothing has changed in 230 years. Our founding fathers were harder on the press than contemporary politicians, and Jefferson actually created his own adoring, compliant newspaper, right before he was inaugurated. The government had moved from Philadelphia to DC, and he brought his favorite Newspaper editor/publisher and friend, Samuel Harrision Smith with him to DC. Franklin's grandson and Anti-Federalist Jefferson's prior sympathetic newspaper publisher (The Aurora) Benjamin Franklin Bach, had died of yellow fever after he was jailed because of 2nd US president John Adam's war against the adversarial newspaper editors who were critical of his plans for War with France:</b>

Quote:

http://hhh.gavilan.edu/lhalper/270A/...Devil4,20.html
The Sedition Act of 1798
Sedition Act of 1798 – a brief history of arrests, indictments, mistreatment
& abuse

4. 1798: The first test--The Alien and Sedition Acts and heroism in the defense of liberty, featuring Benjamin Franklin Bache, Margaret Markoe Bache, and William Duane

<h3>Mr. Bache has...celebrity in a certain way, for his Calumnies are to be exceeded only by his Impudence, and both stand unrivaled.--Geo. Washington, Sept. 1796....</h3>

......Benjamin Franklin Bache (pronounced "Beach") was Benjamin Franklin's beloved grandson. Franklin, who lost his four-year old son Francis (to smallpox, which made him ever after an advocate of newly-introduced vaccinations), brought his daughter's son B.F. Bache along with him to Europe in 1776 when Franklin went to negotiate for French aid, aid that many believe was the deciding factor in the US. victory over Britain. B.F. Bache was exposed early to excellent schooling, democratic ideals, and revolutionary politics. Though his grandfather originally considered training him as a politician, cynicism set in and instead he encouraged B.F. Bache to learn his own honest trade: printing. Thus in 1790, the year Franklin died, his twenty-year old grandson inherited the very presses, font slugs and shop that Benjamin Franklin had used to print the popular Poor Richard's Almanack. B.F. Bache started a newspaper named the Philadelphia Aurora. The paper came out six mornings a week, competing with two much more conservative afternoon papers. It traded gall, both personal and political, with them and with just about every powerful figure around. Because of the Franklin name, the family talent for writing and reasoning, and the concentration of lawmakers in Philadelphia, the Aurora was influential from the start. Soon it was the leading opposition newspaper in the country. And soon B.F. Bache was being called Young Lightening Rod, a reference to his ability to draw political fire and to his grandfather's famous electricity experiments.

By the late 1780s the fragile courtesy among the Founding Fathers was breaking down. Thomas Jefferson and both Benjamin Franklins found themselves on one side of a breech with George Washington and John Adams, the nation's first and second presidents, on the other. We know now that the elder Franklin was resented by both Washington and Adams, and that Adams in particular was jealous of Franklin's popularity and offended by his romantic dalliances and religious non-conformity. But there were political differences as well: Washington, Adams and the wealthy were Federalists tended to favor the British form of government with centralized power and a strong ruling figure, while Jefferson, the Franklins, and common laborers (the "Anti-Federalists) remained passionately on the side of representative democracy, and watched with approval most of the events in revolutionary France. Predictably, Federalists were far less interested in knowing how common people felt, and far less enthused about the rights to free speech and press.

From the start, B.F. Bache, supported by his wife Peggy, did not hesitate to print strong Anti-Federalist opinions. When Bache wrote about two congressmen insulting and spitting at each other on the floor of the House, the House responded in December 1791 with its first gag rule, forbidding reporters to publish any report on Congress until Congressmen could look it over. Bache ignored this (as did others), and continued to cover the spat, which escalated into scuffles with improvised weapons. For his honest reportage he was spitefully barred from the area where other reporters sat comfortably; Bache had to sit in the remote spectator's gallery. In 1795 Bache scooped everyone by publishing a secret treaty with England negotiated by John Jay; President Washington was frustrated because he'd wanted the treaty to be concealed until the Senate ratified it. The Aurora continued its criticisms of politicians with their "apish mimicry of Kingship" and when John Adams became President in 1796, the paper found much to ridicule in the frizzy haired, plump president ("His Rotundity") who wished to take the country on a "march to monarchy" complete with a state religion. Bache's tirades sent First Lady Abigail Adams, an important political force, into daily frenzies. Adams was friendly to Britain and hostile to France, and as the two countries were at war with one another, there was pressure on the United States to take a side. Adams used a bribery attempt by French officials and incomplete facts to inflame public opinion against France. In 1797 Bache was beaten for pointing out these inconsistencies--a shipbuilder who disliked Bache's abuse of John Adams came up from behind and starting punching, putting Bache to bed for two days (The perp was rewarded with a governmental appointment!) The Aurora called Adam's presidency a "reign of witches," but Adam's tactics worked: by 1798 so many citizens were convinced France was a threat that militias were formed and Congress passed legislation enabling Adams to fund and raise an army. Anyone daring to wear an ornamental cockade with the tricolors of France might be beaten on the street and left for dead by mobs wearing British black. Even worse from the Aurora's viewpoint were the Alien and Sedition Acts being debated in Congress:

·The Alien Act empowered the US president to arrest and deport foreigners considered "dangerous," while

·the Alien Enemies Act allowed the deportation of any natives of countries against which the US made war.....

Quote:

http://209.85.165.104/search?q=cache...lnk&cd=6&gl=us
By Gordon T. Belt
First Amendment Center library manager

Introduction
In 1798 the Alien and Sedition Acts were signed into law by President John Adams in response to
fears of an impending war with France. These acts, consisting of four laws passed by the
Federalist-controlled Congress, increased the residency requirement for American citizenship
from five to 14 years, authorized the president to imprison or deport aliens considered
"dangerous to the peace and safety of the United States" and restricted speech critical of the
government. While the Federalists, led by Alexander Hamilton and Adams, argued that these
laws were passed to protect the United States from foreign invaders and propagandists,
Democratic-Republicans, led by Thomas Jefferson and James Madison, saw the Alien and
Sedition Acts as a direct threat to individual liberty and the First Amendment by a tyrannical
government.
The Alien and Sedition Acts were fiercely debated in the press, which was overtly partisan at the
time. Many editors of Democratic-Republican-sponsored newspapers vehemently opposed the
new laws, in particular the Sedition Act, which made speaking openly against the government a
crime of libel punishable by fine and even prison time. Federalists sought to quell dissent by
prosecuting those who violated the Sedition Act to the fullest extent of the law.
Accounts vary about the number of arrests and indictments that occurred as a result of the
passage of the Sedition Act of 1798. Most scholars cite 25 arrests and at least 17 verifiable
indictments – 14 under the Sedition Act and three under common law. Ten indictments went to
trial, all resulting in convictions.
1
Because these laws were designed to silence and weaken the
Democratic-Republican Party, most of the victims of the sedition prosecutions were Democratic-
Republican journalists who openly criticized Adams’ presidency and the Federalists.
2
All but one
of the indicted individuals – James Callender, from Thomas Jefferson’s home state of Virginia –
were from the Federalist-dominated New England and Middle Atlantic states.
3
Symbolically
enough, Callender’s sentence ended on March 3, 1801, the day the Sedition Act expired.....

Benjamin Franklin Bache
As editor of the General Advertiser in Philadelphia, also known as the Aurora, Benjamin Franklin
Bache supported Thomas Jefferson’s Democratic-Republican party and was the main target of
Federalists and the Sedition Act. Federalists sent “committees of surveillance” to spy on Bache.
12
The Aurora was threatened with strict postal controls and advertisers were intimidated in an effort
to force the newspaper to cease publication.
13
Bache and his wife, Peggy, six months pregnant
with her fourth child, received death threats
14
and their home was vandalized by an angry
drunken mob who Bache claimed had dined with President Adams the same day.
15
In 1798, when political passions ran highest, Bache was physically assaulted twice, first by Abel
Humphreys, son of a shipbuilder, while visiting a Philadelphia shipyard,
16
and later that year
when John Ward Fenno, son of the editor of the chief Federalist broadside, the Gazette of the
United States, attacked Bache for accusing his father of being a British agent.
17
Fenno bit
Bache’s knuckle, but Bache pinned Fenno to the wall and beat him over the head with a cane
until spectators succeeded in separating the two.
18
Even before the Sedition Act became law,
Bache called the legislation an “unconstitutional exercise of power”
19
and suffered dearly for his
opinions. Bache was arrested under common law on June 26, 1798 and charged with “libeling the
President & the Executive Government, in a manner tending to excite sedition, and opposition to
the laws, by sundry publications and republications.”
20
However, before Bache could be brought
to trial, he died of yellow fever on Sept. 10, 1798.

William Duane
William Duane, Benjamin Franklin Bache's successor at the Aurora, was arrested under the
Sedition Act for his support of the Democratic-Republican Party and for his criticism of the
Federalists in the election campaign of 1800.
Born in America in 1760 to an Irish couple who had recently immigrated to America, Duane found
that his heritage became political fodder for his opponents. In an effort to suppress the Aurora,
Federalists challenged Duane’s citizenship and attempted to have him deported. On July 24,
1799, Secretary of State Timothy Pickering wrote to President John Adams saying that Duane
“pretends he is an American citizen, saying that he was born in Vermont, but was when a child,
taken back with his parents to Ireland, where he was educated.” Pickering claimed that since
Duane left America before the Revolution and returned only recently, he was actually a British
subject who might be banished from the United States under terms of the Alien Act.
33
Duane was arrested and charged with “deliberately procuring an assembly of people with the
determination of subverting the government of the United States” after soliciting signatures on a
petition to repeal the Alien Friends Act, one of the three laws collectively known as the Alien
Acts.
34
After only 30 minutes of deliberation, a jury acquitted Duane of all charges. A month later,
30 members of Philadelphia’s volunteer cavalry dragged Duane from the Aurora’s office and beat
and whipped him until he was unconscious.
35
For his acerbic writings and influence in the
Democratic-Republican party, the Federalists made Duane a chief target of persecution. Between
1798 and 1801, he was indicted under the federal Sedition Act and tried in a state court for “riot
and assault.” He was prosecuted and forced into hiding for breaching the legislative privileges of

the U.S. Senate, sued several times for libel, and brutally beaten by a gang of Federalist soldiers,
among other troubles.
36

79
James Thomson Callender
Described literally and figuratively as the most venomous of the Democratic-Republican
journalists, James Thomson Callender was a Scotsman who had been expelled from England in
1792 for publishing The Political Progress of Great Britain, a work highly critical of the British
government.
80
When he arrived in the United States he turned his attention to prominent
Federalists. Callender is perhaps best known for exposing an affair between Alexander Hamilton
and Mrs. Maria Reynolds in 1797 and, five years later, accusing Thomas Jefferson of having an
affair with his slave Sally Hemings.
81
(Callender, originally a supporter of Jefferson, turned
against him after he was denied a position as postmaster in Jefferson’s administration.) His trial
for sedition, however, has come to be regarded as the most important of all the cases brought
under the Sedition Act of 1798.
82
As the Alien and Sedition Acts were making their way through Congress, Callender feared that he
would soon become the target of attack. To avoid the Alien Act, he became a naturalized
citizen.
83
When his friend and colleague Benjamin Franklin Bache was arrested the day before
President Adams signed the Sedition Act into law, a Federalist paper in Philadelphia announced
that “Envoy Callender left this city on a tour to the westward – destination unknown.”
84
He fled to
Virginia, where he refrained from writing for several months for fear of his safety. But as the
Sedition Act grew increasingly unpopular, Callender decided to resume his political writings. In
1799 he joined the staff of the South’s leading Democratic-Republican newspaper, the Richmond
Examiner, where he renewed his criticism of the Adams administration.
85
While working for the
Examiner, Callender compiled material for his best-known pamphlet, The Prospect before Us, an
electioneering booklet advocating the elevation of Thomas Jefferson to the presidency.
86
In it,
Callender described the administration of John Adams as “one continued tempest of malignant
passions. As President he has never opened his lips, or lifted his pen without threatening and
scolding; the grand object of his administration has been to exasperate the rage of contending
parties, to calumniate and destroy every man who differs from his opinions.”
87
Callender accused
Adams of contriving “a French war, an American navy, a large standing army, an additional load
of taxes, and all the other symptoms and consequences of debt and despotism.” He concluded by
offering a choice: “between Adams, war and beggary, and Jefferson, peace and competency.”
88
After a Federalist informant sent Supreme Court Justice Samuel Chase a copy of The Prospect
before Us, Callender was promptly arrested and indicted under the Sedition Act.
89
In his defense,
Callender’s lawyers argued that the Sedition Act was unconstitutional, but Justice Chase
disagreed, reaffirming his decision in the prosecution of Thomas Cooper, sentencing Callender to
nine months in jail and a $200 fine.
90
Imprisonment, however, did not temper Callender’s opinions
of the Federalist government. While in jail, Callender wrote the second volume of The Prospect
before Us, and intensified his verbal assault on Adams. He described Adams as a “repulsive
pedant, a gross hypocrite, and an unprincipled oppressor.”
“He is,” Callender continued, “one of the most egregious fools upon the continent.”
91
Callender
also attacked Justice Chase, calling him “the most detestable and detested rascal in the state of
Maryland.”
92
When Chase wrote Callender in reply that he planned to beat him after his release
from prison, Callender vowed, “[I]n case of attack, I’ll shoot him.”
93
Though their duel was never
consummated, Callender ultimately had the last laugh when his sentence ended on March 3,
1801, the day the Sedition Act expired.
94
- 7 -

......David Frothingham and Ann Greenleaf
The New York Argus newspaper was the leading Democratic-Republican journal in New York
City. Established and edited by Thomas Greenleaf, who like his Democratic-Republican
counterpart Benjamin Bache of the Philadelphia Aurora died of yellow fever in 1798, the Argus
became a target of the Federalists when on Nov. 6, 1799, the paper under the leadership of
Greenleaf’s widow, Mrs. Ann Greenleaf, reprinted an article that had appeared in several
Democratic-Republican journals. The article featured an extract from a Philadelphia letter
charging that Alexander Hamilton planned to purchase the Philadelphia Aurora in an effort to
suppress it.
126
The day the Argus reprinted this story, Hamilton called it to the attention of the
attorney general of New York, Cadwallader D. Colden, and urged him to prosecute Mrs.
Greenleaf and the paper’s foreman, David Frothingham, for seditious libel.
Frothingham was arrested on Nov. 9, 1799, and placed on bail pending a trial.
127
On Nov. 21,
Frothingham was tried before a New York court under the state’s common-law doctrine of libel.
As New York’s constitution contained no guarantee of freedom of speech or of the press until
1821, Frothingham’s conviction of libel at the state level was far more likely.
128
Frothingham
pleaded not guilty to the indictment, which charged him with publishing a libel designed “to injure
the name and reputation of General Hamilton, to expose him to public hatred and contempt, and
to cause it to be believed that he was opposed to the Republican Government of the United
States.”
129
On Dec. 3, Frothingham was sentenced to four months of imprisonment and fined
$100. He was to remain in jail until the fine was paid. Moreover, he would not be released until he
posted a $2,000 bond as a guarantee of his good behavior for two years after his sentence
expired.
130
Frothingham’s prosecution was part of a twofold effort by the Federalists to suppress the Argus.
Mrs. Greenleaf was also indicted for sedition in 1799 and over the next two years became the
subject of a relentless legal assault by the Federalists, forcing her to sell the Argus and its rural
companion paper, the Patriotic Register.
131
Her sedition trial was set for April 1800, but by then
Mrs. Greenleaf no longer owned the Argus and could not repeat her paper’s attacks on the
Federalist administration. In a letter to Secretary of State Timothy Pickering, New York District
Attorney Richard Harison urged Pickering to drop the sedition charges. Pickering laid Harison’s
letter before President Adams, who agreed to drop the prosecution against Mrs. Greenleaf....

Quote:

http://www.americanforeignrelations....lligencer.html
NATIONAL INTELLIGENCER

Although the National Intelligencer began as a party newspaper, the talents, principles, and government connections of its editors soon helped it to develop into one of the nation's most influential periodicals, a position it maintained for much of its early history. <b>In the summer of 1800 Thomas Jefferson and Albert Gallatin encouraged the Philadelphia printer Samuel Harrison Smith to follow the federal government to Washington to start a Republican newspaper.</b> Smith, a strong Jefferson supporter, readily complied, and on 31 October 1800 the first issue of the tri-weekly National Intelligencer and Washington Advertiser appeared.

After Jefferson's 4 March 1801 inauguration, Smith and his wife, Margaret Bayard Smith, became members of the Republican government social circle, dining with the president and members of the cabinet and Congress. Smith's political and social access to Congress and the administration led to profitable contracts for government printing as well as insights into the views of the president and the department heads. The National Intelligencer was soon known as the "court paper" of the Jefferson administration. Smith supported administration policies but avoided the strident tone of many of his contemporaries, striving for a moderate and balanced presentation of domestic and international affairs. Because of this evenhanded approach, the National Intelligencer's detailed reports of congressional debates and executive activity quickly became source material for editors across the country.

After Jefferson's retirement to Monticello in 1809, Smith left publishing for finance, selling the Intelligencer in 1810 to his employee Joseph Gales, Jr. Two years later Gales entered into a partnership agreement with his brother-in-law, William Seaton. Gales and Seaton continued Smith's policy of high-minded editorial comment combined with detailed reports of congressional happenings and maintained amiable relations with the Madison and Monroe administrations. Because of the Intelligencer's support for President James Madison and the War of 1812, the British destroyed the newspaper's offices on 25 August 1814 during the invasion of Washington, dealing a severe blow to the partners' finances. To improve their still unstable financial situation, they began publication in 1825 of the Register of Congressional Debates, a detailed compilation in book form of the debates of each congressional session. Gales and Seaton's support for the Bank of the United States, to which they were deeply indebted, and for Henry Clay's "American System" led to estrangement from Andrew Jackson and his supporters.

After Jackson's election to the presidency in 1828 they no longer enjoyed close relationships with the administration and received far fewer government contracts. ....

reconmike · 07-11-2007, 02:58 PM

So this article on one of your own, would mean that this also was unaceptable?

I know I know, here we go again bringing Clinton up, but as I look to see if this is the first time it happened, it surely wasn't. I am still checking on what other president has also had a fit with a reporter and subsequently had them banned.

Quote:

http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/ar...TICLE_ID=20765 Editor's note: In the fall of 1999, President Bill Clinton endured something to which he was not accustomed -- a member of the news media challenging him with tough questions about issues of concern to the American people. WorldNetDaily Washington bureau chief Paul Sperry, then a reporter with Investor's Business Daily, went toe-to-toe with the president during a picnic on the White House south lawn. The widely publicized confrontation caused Clinton so much consternation that Sperry was subsequently banished from the White House.
The following was originally published as the cover story for WorldNet Magazine (later renamed Whistleblower) in February 2000.

By Paul Sperry
© 2000 WorldNetDaily.com

WASHINGTON -- There's probably no finer place to throw a party than the South Lawn of the White House, and no better time to do it than on a mild and breezy day in early fall. And there's probably no guest more grateful for such a free fete than the Washington press corps.

My colleagues will climb over each other to get to a table full of rubbery hoagies, soggy chips and stale Budweiser. Doesn't matter what it is, really, so long as it's free.

But this. This was hog's heaven for the cheap scribes who filed onto the White House grounds that Friday night in September for a Cajun party in their honor. What a spread. On red-checkered picnic tables spanning the length of the plush green lawn, beckoned trays of jambalaya, boudin and boiled shrimp.

And the bars, under colorful tents, were stocked full of liquor. No kegs here. Black-tie-clad help poured your favorite libation from bottles. Forget Budweiser; they had Guinness Stout and other imported brews. Fine reds and whites, too, and highballs. All free.

Zydeco tunes skipped across the crowd of giddy guests. As the sunny day faded to dusk, the soft lights of the White House portico glowed behind us. Intoxicating. What a night.

But, for me, there was still something wrong with this party -- namely, the host.

President Clinton, the function's main attraction, was due to make a cameo appearance at any moment. Despite having to wade through 40-plus scandals over the previous seven years, my cohorts in the press were all atwitter at the prospect of pumping Clinton's arm and snapping shots of him with their spouses and kids.

Just 48 hours earlier, four FBI agents had testified before the Senate that Justice Department lawyers had stopped them from pursuing leads back to Clinton in the ongoing campaign-finance investigation.

Not only that, agents swore that lawyers for months had blocked their request to ask a judge for a warrant to search the Little Rock, Ark., office of Clinton fund-raiser Yah Lin "Charlie" Trie. Agents sifting through his trash found that key records subpoenaed by the Senate had been shredded.

Among the torn-up documents: checks from Asian donors to Clinton's legal defense fund, Democratic National Committee donor lists, travel records for Chinese money men and statements from Chinese bank accounts. There was also a FedEx slip showing the White House had sent two pounds of documents to Trie just two months before a 1997 Senate probe of Chinagate kicked off.

What's more, one agent said 27 pages of notes detailing her struggles with Justice over the Trie case were ripped out of spiral notebooks after she turned them over to her superiors.

The explosive testimony was ignored by most of the media. But I couldn't shake it from my mind, no matter the occasion. Was Clinton's attorney general covering for him in one of the gravest probes in U.S. history, one with national security implications? Did Clinton have any knowledge of it?

Sometime after 6 p.m., the president emerged from the Oval Office. Dressed in a suit, he strolled down the walkway, only to disappear through a doorway. His aide Sidney Blumenthal strolled on and joined the crowd. At his side was Rep. Ed Markey, D-Mass. (I ran into Markey later in the evening inside the White House. He was giving his wife and father a tour. Markey's now all over the TV talk shows flacking for Vice President Al Gore's campaign.)

The suspense built as the guests closed in around a loose rope line that stretched from the edges of the Oval Office area to the stage where the band played. Then, at last, Clinton came out of the White House wearing what can only be described as a get-up -- tight black pullover shirt, tight black pants with a big silver-buckle black belt and black cowboy boots.

Strutting past me, he looked like a bad imitation of Johnny Cash. Or was it an over-the-hill Elvis? Tom Jones? Whatever, the silver-haired devil made a beeline for the stage, climbed up on it and drawled on about how great it was for all of us to be there with him on such a wonderful night listening to such great music. At that, a guest tried to hand a tenor saxophone up to him. Several painted-up women pushed their way to the stage. By the way, Clinton remarked, "Hillary wanted to be here with y'all, but she's up in New York tonight." Wink-wink.

Little did he know that in just a few minutes, a rude guest would give him a Maalox moment to remember and probably spoil any entertainment plans he had for the evening.

As Clinton worked the rope line on his way back toward the White House, it was hard not to be taken up in the electricity of the moment. Everyone was having such a good time. And a buoyant Clinton was working the crowd, yucking it up like no one can. At one point, he was even wearing baubles around his neck. Husbands were offering up their wives and children for grip-and-grin shots. Photojournalists were camped out like paparazzi. Why not? A notorious celebrity was in their midst. Even one of my reporters was snapping shots with his instamatic -- for his wife.

I stood there slack-jawed, watching one powerful journalist after another clamor like so many fawning teen rock-idol fans to grasp the hand of the most corrupt president in U.S. history.

So many scandals, so many unanswered questions -- so many unasked questions. National security at stake. That little boy there, that little girl over there ... your sons, your daughters. Don't you care what this president has or hasn't done with our military secrets?

Maybe I just cared too much. Relax. Yes, have a good time; it is a party after all. Don't be so serious. Loosen up.

But just as I was about to give in to the perverse euphoria, suspending disbelief about the harmlessness of old Slick like everyone else around me, I recalled a Proverb I'd read that morning -- "Do not envy wicked men, do not desire their company" -- and I closed my eyes for strength.

It was my turn to meet the celebrity president. As he approached me, I politely, if coolly, asked him when he would hold his next formal press conference. It had been several months since his last and he's had fewer than any recent president. I admit I was trying to agitate the proper forum for questions about the FBI agents' charges. But, to me, this was still a rather innocuous question, even within the supposedly neutral zone of a party. A relevant question, too, given the gathering. Other hard-nosed reporters surely were wondering when they'd get another crack at Clinton.

Or so I thought. My simple question was rewarded with boos and hisses from the adoring Clinton groupies around me. So much for the adversarial press.

But that was nothing compared with Clinton's reaction to my inquiry about his next press confab. In an instant, his 100-watt charm shut off, replaced by a taunting belligerence. "Why?" he barked.

"Because the American people have a lot of unanswered questions," I replied, struggling to hold my bladder. At that point, he moved back down the rope, pulling up square in front of me, and demanded, "Like what?"

"Well, like illegal money from China and the campaign-finance scandal ..."

What happened over the next 10 minutes was nothing short of a "scene." The party-goers collapsed in around us. I watched the blood rush to Clinton's gargantuan face as he launched into a tirade against ex-Republican National Committee Chairman Haley Barbour, the FBI, Bob Dole and Republicans in general. All the while, he tried to belittle me by making faces (to get a rise out of his fans) and intimidate me by getting in my face.

And now I can see how he can do that to people. Clinton's not just intellectually intimidating, he's physically imposing. He's tall (6-2) and big-boned.

Luckily, I'm the same height and was able to stand toe-to-toe and eye-to-eye with him. I'll never forget the maniacal look in his bloodshot eyes. There was a moment, fleeting, where I sensed he wanted to try to take a swipe at me. I was getting full frontal Clinton. His volcanic temper, hidden so well from the public by his handlers, erupted less than 12 inches from my eyes.

Clinton always is game for a debate. That I asked him hard questions at a party wasn't what ticked him off. It's what I asked him about. He clearly doesn't want to talk about the mother of all scandals -- Chinagate.

He also may have been thrown by my grasp of the facts. I'd been tracking the Beijing-tied Lippo Group's influence in the Clinton White House since 1996 and have been suspicious of the probity of Attorney General Janet Reno's special task force since she let John Keeney Sr. set it up -- a month after the election -- to look into Lippo's influence.

Keeney's son is none other than a defense attorney for John Huang, the former Lippo executive and convicted Clinton-Gore fund-raiser. Junior, who's also a long-time Democratic National Committee lawyer, cut Huang a deal with daddy's old task force that got him no jail time and immunity from prosecution for espionage.

Clinton also was unprepared for my tenacity. Other reporters may back down after he singes their eyebrows with a verbal fusillade. Dummy me, I hung in there for more abuse, challenging his answers, following up with more questions. Which only made him madder.

Take, for instance, the exchange we had after I asked him what he thought of the FBI agents' charges two days earlier that they'd been blocked from following trails back to the White House in the Chinagate probe. (When I first mentioned the agents, he acted dumb: "What FBI agents?")

"The Eff-Bee-Ahh," Clinton said, his tone dripping with contempt and suspicion. "What do you think of the FBI?"

I don't have an opinion, sir. My question is to you.

"Yeah, the FBI wants you to write about that rather than write about Waco," a reference to lingering questions about the agency's role in the 1993 fire that killed Branch Davidian separatists in Waco, Texas.

It was an extraordinary remark. The president was questioning the motives and veracity of his own agency.

I piped up that these were career FBI agents. One had been with the agency 25 years. And they made these charges under oath.

"Are you suggesting they're not telling the truth, Mr. President?" I asked.

Clinton's face turned a darker hue of red, almost the purplish color of raw hamburger meat that's been left out on the counter. Changing the subject, he attacked Republicans for their own fund-raising woes.

After Clinton had had enough of me, he tried to move on. But, I pressed, reminding him that he still hadn't answered my original question: When will you have another formal news conference?

"You just had one," he snapped.

With that, I turned around and knifed my way through the crowd that had gathered. Two women -- one from AP, then another from CNN -- rushed up to me. Both asked what got Clinton so angry.

"Why'd he turn so red?" asked one. Good question, I said, then replayed the exchange for them. Both asked for my card, though neither of their news agencies filed a story.

Before grabbing a plate of Cajun food and a much-needed cold one, I scribbled down what Clinton had told me on some White House napkins and left the grounds soon after. As I made my way to the Metro station, I realized my knees were a bit wobbly.

Still dazed by the time I got home, I trudged in the front door and only half-jokingly told my wife to prepare for an IRS audit. As I did radio shows around the country over the next few weeks, I found I wasn't the only one with that thought. Except callers weren't fooling.

Some warned me to get my tax forms in order and "not to take any plane trips." They were concerned I'd pay a heavy price for "standing up to the scary occupant of the White House," as one put it.

Another radio caller reckoned "there is a lot of info from FBI files being used to leverage reporters." (That's actually not so far-fetched. White House correspondents have to submit to background checks.)

One wise guy actually posted a phony Washington Post obituary on the Internet.

"Paul Sperry, the Washington bureau chief of Investor's Business Daily, was found in the swimming pool of his Richmond, Va., home early this morning," the prankster wrote. "He had apparently shot himself in the head in his living room before throwing himself fully clothed into the pool. A .45-caliber bullet was found in his skull and he was holding the suicide weapon, a 9 mm automatic with the serial numbers filed off.

"His notes and home computer were found burning in a trash can," he added. "Police were alerted to the body by an anonymous tip. No foul play is suspected."

I'm of the mind that the president and first lady, both of whom have strangely gone out of their way to remind the public that they've "even been accused of murder," like that people think that. It breeds fear, and fear makes those who might otherwise confront the Clintons with the facts think twice about doing so.

Still, after taking calls into the wee morning hours, such thoughts didn't exactly help me sleep over the next several days as the story grew legs.

Saturday night, Sept. 25: As I was typing up my story, James Grimaldi, a reporter for the Seattle Times, called me at home. He had been covering the Microsoft trial in Washington but he was working on another story -- mine -- and had a few questions for me.

Turns out Grimaldi was standing right next to me during the exchange with Clinton. He heard the whole thing and we compared notes. He said he was filing a story for the Times' Sunday edition. At first, I was frosted seeing that Grimaldi would beat my story. My paper at the time, Investor's Business Daily, only publishes Monday through Friday and Monday's paper is put to bed on Friday. So my story wouldn't run till Tuesday.

Even so, I was thankful that another major paper would corroborate the interview.

"The blood was rushing in and out of his face," Grimaldi observed over the phone. "He actually blew up. His initial blow-up was unexpected and unanticipated."

He counted at least 10 exchanges, "back and forth." Not one question I asked, he said, was "rude" or "disrespectful," although the entire impromptu interview could be construed as such. He also said Clinton "was baiting you" into asking more questions.

At one point, Grimaldi said the official White House photographer standing behind Clinton shouted: "This is so inappropriate! This is so inappropriate!" I never heard him. Clinton's own shouting must have drowned him out.

Tuesday night, Sept. 28: The Drudge Report posted a story at the top of its website: "Fight Club: Furious Clinton Orders Reporter Banned After Grilling!"

Wednesday, Sept. 29, at 3:12 p.m. EDT: In the White House briefing room, a Washington Times reporter asked Clinton spokesman Joe Lockhart about Clinton's FBI remark. But Lockhart brushed him off. Then the reporter asked about the Drudge Report.

Before answering, Lockhart lectured reporters on the "virtues or lack thereof" of using citizen cyberjournalist Matt Drudge as a news source. He nonetheless confirmed Drudge's report.

"I was asked for comment from the reporter about the incident and I made the comment that the only regret I have is inviting him to the party -- and I wouldn't make that mistake again," he explained. "So to the extent that we judge coverage of this building by the parties, he's banned."

Lockhart left the impression that he personally told me I was banned. And that's the way the press reported it.

In fact, Lockhart never called me. He had his girl give me the news. And even she passed it along sheepishly.

On Monday, Sept. 27, I had called Lockhart's deputy Jake Siewart to see if the president wanted to clarify any of the remarks he made to me. Siewart replied, bluntly, that Clinton "doesn't regret making" them.

Not 10 minutes after I hung up, a woman called from the White House identifying herself as Lockhart's assistant. She had a message for me.

What is it? I asked.

"I didn't say it. It's not coming from me," she assured me, speaking under her breath. "It's specifically from Joe Lockhart."

All right, what?

"The only regret we have is inviting you to the party," she said, quoting her boss, "and we won't make that mistake again."

Is he serious? I asked.

"Uh-huh."

How juvenile, I thought, but how predictable for this White House.

I left that part out of my story at the request of my editor, who asked me to divorce myself from the story as much as I could.

But the next day, Drudge called from Hollywood and asked about the story which, by then, was bouncing around the Internet. I mentioned being kicked off the invite list. He wasted no time in posting the news later that night on his website.

Where Drudge got the "Class A s--thead" slur, I don't know. No one from Lockhart's office uttered it to me. (Could it be that Drudge has a mole in the White House?) If Lockhart indeed used the childish epithet, he clearly was accusing me of being a relative.

Wednesday, Sept. 29: Washington Post reporter Beth Berselli called my editor Wes Mann in Los Angeles for comment on the Drudge Report. Her first question: "So what disciplinary action do you plan to take against your reporter?"

The presumption of guilt came through loud and clear in the next day's "Reliable Source" column she helped pen. Reporting with the certainty of an eyewitness, Berselli said I "ambushed" Clinton.

Only, she wasn't there. She relied on the account of Lockhart, who told her I was "badgering" the president. Only, Lockhart wasn't there either. Berselli never talked to me.

I never planned to buttonhole the president, but I'm glad I did. His heated reaction to simple questions was revealing. And I pried away some remarkable quotes, particularly about the FBI.

Though admittedly a far cry from the backbiting seen during Watergate, there hasn't been this much tension between a president and his chief law enforcement agency since President Nixon.

It was news. Big news. Yet the Washington press corps, by and large, passed on the meat of the story and focused instead on the theater of a reporter mixing it up with the president at a picnic.

"National Papers Miss Flare-Up Highlighting Clinton-FBI Rift," said a report in Media Critic, an online newsletter of the nonpartisan Center for Media & Public Affairs in Washington.

"Beltway Blinders: Smaller Papers' Scoops Get Little Notice," said White House correspondent Josh Gerstein in his ABCNEWS.com column. Gerstein was the only reporter who picked up my line of questioning with Clinton. On Oct. 1, as Clinton was dashing off to California, he pressed Clinton to open up more about his problems with the FBI, though without much luck.

Sure, the New York Times and the Washington Post eventually used my revealing quotes, while holding their noses and calling me "rude" and "impertinent" for extracting them at a social event -- as if I were the first to do that. According to former press secretaries, both Sam Donaldson and Helen Thomas worked over President Reagan and President Bush at press parties and state dinners.

A social aide for Reagan told me the two veteran correspondents were hectoring the president to such a degree during one dinner that she and other aides had to literally put their bodies between them and the president to spare the guests from more obnoxious shouting at closer range.

Funny how the press corps suddenly stands on ceremony when a Democrat is in the White House.

The old bar flies at the National Press Club roundly booed me when they saw me talking about the dust-up on one of the Fox News shows. And they weren't just booing my TV performance.

Though I clearly exposed a nerve on Chinagate, the White House press corps has failed to tap into it. At Clinton's Feb. 16 press conference, no reporter plied him with questions on the still-mushrooming conspiracy and now-fully active cover-up -- even though 10 days earlier the Los Angeles Times had reported that a foreign donor with ties to the People's Liberation Army laundered money through convicted Clinton fund-raiser Trie (who, it turns out, drove around Beijing in a PLA-issue car).

Citing FBI interviews, the story also revealed Trie sought "fund-raising help" from the Chinese consulate in Houston right after Clinton told him he was running for president early last decade.

Did Clinton in fact meet with Trie back then? What did they talk about? Did he have any idea that his Arkansas friend was so tight with the communists in Beijing? No one bothered to ask.

If I get banned for asking tough questions about a deadly serious scandal (unlike the Lewinsky affair), what does that say about all those among the White House press corps who haven't been banned? Are they tossing up softballs?

"I've been all around this country, and you are the first person to ask me about (Chinagate)," Clinton claimed. "Not one person has brought that up."

Maybe no one among the media elite. But average Americans have. Surely, Clinton's heard or seen the placard-waving citizens who for months have been protesting his blind appeasement of China at the north entrance to the White House. Many of them are tied to FreeRepublic.com, which has built a compelling chronology of the Chinagate scandal.

Investor's Business Daily got more than 1,100 e-mails and letters and hundreds of phone calls from readers. All but one were supportive (the lone dissenting voice wished I'd asked about the homeless). And most demanded more answers about Chinagate. Here is a sample:

"When President Clinton said Mr. Sperry was the first person to ask about the Chinese campaign finance scandal, he showed just how badly the American people are being under-served by the media," said T. Downs of Neptune Beach, Fla. "We Americans really would like to know what went on in the Chinese funny-money scandal."

Wrote Wendy Jacques of Farmington Hills, Mich.: "I read what happened to you when the president did not wish to answer your factually-based question regarding the apparent cover-up by the Justice Department of the president's acceptance of illegal campaign donations and apparent compromise of our country's national security in exchange for those donations. I admire you for asking an important question."

"Keep going after this China thing," said Jerry Hatch of Idaho Falls, Idaho.

Christopher Sivley of Decatur, Ala., said: "If the president took illegal money from the Chinese in exchange for U.S. technology, then he is guilty of treason. It's about time the press started ... asking real questions."

"Thank you for your courage in asking the president to explain to the people of the United States why he sold our secrets and weapons technology to the Chinese for campaign money," wrote Esther Nobrega, Nashua, N.H.

Patrick Giagnocavo e-mailed: "Please know that I, too, would like to see many more answers from the White House concerning the very serious, very detailed charges of what can only be called treason."

"I send my appreciation to Mr. Sperry for asking President Clinton about China and campaign finance," wrote Connie Ward of Pensacola, Fla. "I am disgusted by the president's response."

"Despite what Mr. Clinton says, the American people do want to know," said Michael McTaggart.

R. North responded: "About time somebody rattled his cage about a very important matter."

"Please thank Mr. Sperry for his courage in confronting the president with questions about the Chinese contributions to the DNC," Bill Bynum e-mailed. "The president hasn't heard those questions asked in his travels around the U.S. because he is shielded. But I guarantee there are people like me who want answers to them."

Michael Audette insisted: "I, for one, am very interested in his connections with the People's Republic of China."

"It's about time the news media stopped giving Clinton a pass," wrote R.H. Langill of Plainfield, N.H. "The selling of policy for Chinese money in 1996 and probably earlier should be completely aired."

"Paul Sperry is to be congratulated for his efforts. He is asking what many Americans want to know," said J.A. Brady of Mashpee, Mass. "I hope that other reporters will also ask President Clinton for more details about his involvement. Clinton has never been held accountable for his part in those fund-raising activities due to the stonewalling of Attorney General Janet Reno. Please continue to press for answers."

Bo Mosley of Honolulu wrote: "The China fund-raising scandal has burned me to the core, and I am pleased to see that some inside the Beltway are just as concerned as I am."

"Someone has to have the guts to ask some of these questions," said Steve Tronnes of Edgerton, Wis. "If there wasn't anything to any of these allegations, then the president would not have gone ballistic."

Excellent point, but one apparently lost on my normally hard-boiled colleagues. They seem more interested in currying favor with this White House and maintaining their good standing in the Washington cocktail class than ferreting out the truth for the American people and holding the president accountable for sending our national security to China in a handbasket.

The press corps should be ashamed that a single reporter was able to fire off as many, if not more, specific and tough questions at the president about Chinagate in 10 minutes than they've managed to do in the three years since this scandal broke. Did I pay a price in becoming the persona non grata of the Clinton White House? Yes, but I wear it as a badge of honor. I did my job. Now it's your turn.

This incident happened with a foreign reporter, so if she doesnt like the way she was treated, she can keep her ass in Ireland.

reconmike · 07-14-2007, 09:04 AM

Well? Host? Im still waiting on a reply to my last post, not much to say now?

I know, I know, that was then this is now, oh wait a minute this was then also 2004.

10-11-2005, 10:49 AM	#2 (permalink)
Ustwo Pissing in the cornflakes	My scroll finger hurts...seriously. Need to stop using the middle scroll button and just use the sliders from now on. I can't seem to find a link between your title and the article other than they both involve the media and left wingers. __________________ Agents of the enemies who hold office in our own government, who attempt to eliminate our "freedoms" and our "right to know" are posting among us, I fear.....on this very forum. - host Obama - Know a Man by the friends he keeps.

10-11-2005, 11:19 AM	#4 (permalink)
stevo Rail Baron Location: Tallyfla	my mouse broke. __________________ "If I am such a genius why am I drunk, lost in the desert, with a bullet in my ass?" -Otto Mannkusser

10-11-2005, 12:29 PM	#11 (permalink)
pan6467 Lennonite Priest Location: Mansfield, Ohio USA	I see a good article and some interesting points brought by Host and I see a bunch of personal attacks and negative posts that truly add nothing from the right and absolutely no debate, sad, this forum is headed back downhill. Host, while I do believe that all presidents and most interviewees get to prescreen, I often wonder why the press feels it cannot ask the president hardball questions. It should be the primary purpose of the press to ask tough questions and to hold the president accountable for his actions to the people, regardless of party. __________________ I just love people who use the excuse "I use/do this because I LOVE the feeling/joy/happiness it brings me" and expect you to be ok with that as you watch them destroy their life blindly following. My response is, "I like to put forks in an eletrical socket, just LOVE that feeling, can't ever get enough of it, so will you let me put this copper fork in that electric socket?"

10-11-2005, 12:57 PM	#13 (permalink)
stevo Rail Baron Location: Tallyfla	No, really. My mouse is really broken. Do you know how hard it is to navigate the internet with a broken mouse? It really is a pain in my a$$. On a side note, on my computer all of host's posts come up pink. Why is that? There must be a setting in the User CP that I need to look at. __________________ "If I am such a genius why am I drunk, lost in the desert, with a bullet in my ass?" -Otto Mannkusser Last edited by stevo; 10-11-2005 at 12:59 PM..

10-11-2005, 03:21 PM	#14 (permalink)
docbungle It's all downhill from here Location: Denver	Well, I think the thread title is a little off, too. However, I do find this article very humorous. I find GWB to be embarassingly aloof. it shows very clearly when he is put in situations like this one. So incredulous is he that this reporter would dare ask him such things, he doesn't know how to respond. Doesn't she know who he is? Fucking hilarious, this guy. __________________ Bad Luck City

10-11-2005, 11:45 AM	#7 (permalink)
Seaver Junkie Location: Fort Worth, TX	The reason Bush doesnt give open interviews? The same reason almost no one does. One slip of the tongue, or a misplaced word can cause a shitstorm. Watch the movie Patton if you dont understand. Because he didnt mension Russia while giving a speech to a ladies club in how the US and Britain would win the war, he almost got fired. What this shows is over-eager reporters who dig for crap that is not nessisarily there. So Political leaders (almost ALL, left AND right) go over questions and their answers OVER and OVER again in order not to send a mixed or false message. With so much out there to hate Bush for, this is just weak.

10-11-2005, 12:03 PM	#9 (permalink)
boatin Psycho	Host, thank you for posting. I don't always read everything you post, but it's easy to skim - or pick and choose. This is a really interesting topic. And I see a direct connection to your title. It's not even a complicated connection. I appreciate your continued efforts, and marvel at how you tolerate the continued cheap shots. Ustwo/stevo, why the cheap shots? It's not like you don't know what you are getting when you open a post by Host. If you don't like it, don't open it. If you can't see a connection, why not treat Host like we are supposed to in TFP-land, and ask for clarification? Why do you do this? Why Stevo, You only have to look one post above yours to get an answer to your implied question. This isn't about open interviews, this is about needing the respect Kings/Gods used to get. There is a continuum, and it seems that Bush is at one extreme. There are other options on that continuum. Do his choices seem right to you? Is that what you want from your president? (assuming you're American) Seems like a good example of the greater problem of this administration to me. Again, don't like the topic? Don't post. Criminy.

10-11-2005, 08:08 PM	#15 (permalink)
Lebell Cracking the Whip Location: Sexymama's arms...	No more complaints about the thread title not matching the story. Oh, and no more complaints about length. I've seen plenty of posts that long by other members of this forum. __________________ "Of all tyrannies, a tyranny exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It may be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end, for they do so with the approval of their own conscience." – C. S. Lewis The ONLY sponsors we have are YOU! Please Donate! Last edited by Lebell; 10-11-2005 at 08:10 PM..

10-11-2005, 09:48 PM	#17 (permalink)
roachboy Super Moderator Location: essex ma	so let's see here: what you have is an effect of the largely republican practice of pooling the press, one pioneered by the reagan administraton and slavishly imitated by this sorry bunch---bush obviously has no experience being grilled because his handlers prevent it from happening. no surprise, folks. tha bush himself gets pissy in a kind of irrational way when confronted with information and/or questions he does not like is also not a surprise if you have been following this administration and its titular head for any time with any degree of attention. but it is good to be reminded when the occasion presents itself. that information is tightly controlled coming from the white house: no surprise. the problems emerge when that control breaks down: no surprise. but it is good to be reminded, when the occasion presents itself. that the lumpenconservatives who float around here have nothing to say about it that could possibly be confused with something of interest is obviously, and sadly, no surprise. that they would prefer to, once again, attack host is yet another index of the debased intellectual content of conservative discourse in general. i think seaver's defense of bush is rooted in a bizarre identification with the person of george w bush which extends only so far as to set up the claim "if i dont know it, it is unreasonable to expect the president of the united states to know it".....a claim which is wholly insane: you, seaver, have no power. it does not matter, realy, what you know or do not know, any more than, from the same viewpoint, it matters what i know or do not know: but it bloody well does matter what the president of the united states knows and does not know because he, unlike you or i, is in a position to make many many people die on the basis of his particular beliefs about events in the world. how you can see tha george w bush does not know the first thing about sudan in a context where that country presents a fundamental humanitarian crisis is beyond absurd. how conservatives find the ignorance of george w bush to be reassuring is a total mystery to me. __________________ a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear it make you sick. -kamau brathwaite Last edited by roachboy; 10-11-2005 at 09:59 PM..

10-12-2005, 07:50 AM	#20 (permalink)
docbungle It's all downhill from here Location: Denver	Well, without the questions and answers from the actual interview, it's a bit difficult to know if the interviewer was rude or if the answers the president gave were so vague and/or confusing that he may have needed some prompting. __________________ Bad Luck City

10-12-2005, 08:57 AM	#23 (permalink)
Lebell Cracking the Whip Location: Sexymama's arms...	I guess since the thread has "lost most of it's meaning", it won't be a big deal to close it. __________________ "Of all tyrannies, a tyranny exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It may be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end, for they do so with the approval of their own conscience." – C. S. Lewis The ONLY sponsors we have are YOU! Please Donate!

07-10-2007, 01:12 AM	#24 (permalink)
Arc101 Addict Location: Nottingham, England	BANNED Pres. Bush Interview (Irish Interview Merge) Here is an interview by an Irish journalist. I think he keeps saying let me finish, so she can't keep asking him awkward questions. So what are people's thoughts about this interview. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fze2J2Ve9is

07-10-2007, 04:17 AM	#25 (permalink)
ratbastid Darth Papa Location: Yonder	I wish we had a Prime Minister's Question Period like they do in the UK. We've turned our President into a celebrity, suddenly he's untouchable. It takes someone from a political tradition of grilling their leaders to ask the real questions.

07-10-2007, 05:06 AM	#26 (permalink)
Charlatan Getting it. Super Moderator Location: Lion City	I think you haven't turned your president into a celebrity... you've turned him into a king (granted, one that can be voted out of power). Nobody questions the monarchy. __________________ "My hands are on fire. Hands are on fire. Ain't got no more time for all you charlatans and liars." - Old Man Luedecke

07-10-2007, 07:19 AM	#27 (permalink)
host Banned	I did this Irish journalit's iinterview with Bush video as a thread in October, 2005....included a still active link to the actual original source of the video....can we merge the two threads. http://www.tfproject.org/tfp/showthread.php?t=96004 Members comments are all there....they don't even have to go through the effort of commenting again on this same subject......

07-10-2007, 07:32 AM	#28 (permalink)
ubertuber spudly Location: Ellay	Fair request, host. The threads are merged and reopened for comments. I'm sure we can do better than last time around... __________________ Cogito ergo spud -- I think, therefore I yam

07-10-2007, 12:19 PM	#29 (permalink)
Elphaba Deja Moo Location: Olympic Peninsula, WA	I recommend viewing host's video because it shows Bush getting very pissy with the journalist after the formal interview ended. It's a side of him that we rarely get to see. __________________ "You can't ignore politics, no matter how much you'd like to." Molly Ivins - 1944-2007

07-10-2007, 03:49 PM	#30 (permalink)
reconmike Thank You Jesus Location: Twilight Zone	And GW getting pissy with a reporter is news why? All president in recent times have had interviews go this way, meaning questions are screened. And if reporters ask questions that the presidents dont want to answer why shouldnt they get banned? __________________ Where is Darwin when ya need him?

07-14-2007, 09:04 AM	#34 (permalink)
reconmike Thank You Jesus Location: Twilight Zone	Well? Host? Im still waiting on a reply to my last post, not much to say now? I know, I know, that was then this is now, oh wait a minute this was then also 2004. __________________ Where is Darwin when ya need him?