Deny, deny, deny. But why deny now? This is a "dead story," right? :)There is a reason, unknown to me, why this is being brought back from the dead. It'll be interesting to see where this goes.
Posted on 06/02/2004 7:00:27 PM PDT by Pikamax
Fall girl
It was a dream tabloid story - the frontrunner in the race to become Democratic presidential candidate had been sleeping with a young campaign worker. There was just one problem - it wasn't true. Alexandra Polier traces the origins of the scandal that changed her life
Thursday June 3, 2004 The Guardian
On the evening of Thursday, February 12, as John Kerry had just chalked up his 12th state-primary win in his quest for the Democratic presidential nomination, I was at a dinner party in Nairobi. Five months earlier, I had quit my job at the Associated Press in New York and moved to Kenya with my fiancé, Yaron Schwartzman, who had grown up there. That night, the group included aid workers, diplomats, photographers, and the local AP bureau chief, Susan Linnee. As we started dinner, I was dimly aware of Linnee's mobile phone ringing. I didn't know her well, but was excited to talk to her in case a job in the bureau came up. She went outside to answer it, then came back and beckoned me to join her in the garden. "The New York office wants to talk to you," she said.
"Hello, Alex," said the familiar voice of my old boss. "I hate to tell you this, but you're on the Drudge Report." He proceeded to read me Matt Drudge's latest "world exclusive".
"A frantic behind-the-scenes drama is unfolding around Senator John Kerry and his quest to lock up the Democratic nomination for president, the Drudge Report can reveal.
"Intrigue surrounds a woman who recently fled the country, reportedly at the prodding of Kerry. "In an off-the-record conversation with a dozen reporters earlier this week, General Wesley Clark plainly stated: 'Kerry will implode over an intern issue.' The Kerry commotion is why Howard Dean has turned increasingly aggressive against Kerry in recent days, and is the key reason why Dean reversed his decision to drop out of the race after Wisconsin."
I wasn't named, but my boss said everyone knew who Drudge was talking about. I was stunned. "I have no comment," I managed to say, as tears began to well. I had never had an affair with Kerry. Who was trying to make me into the next Monica Lewinsky?
I met Kerry for the first time in January 2001, in Davos, Switzerland. I was living in Manhattan, stop-gapping at a public-relations firm and wondering if my application to the Columbia University graduate school of journalism was going to be accepted. At heart, I was a politics junkie. I would scour the Economist, cutting out articles for my "current affairs" scrapbook. I had also spent several months distributing emergency supplies in Kosovo and a year working as a researcher in the House of Commons. (In an ironic nod to Lewinsky, my boss, Nick Harvey, a Liberal MP, cheerfully referred to me as "the American intern".) I recall one Wednesday afternoon stumbling across Tony Blair and a minister chatting quietly down an obscure corridor. "Hello," Blair said, smiling. It was more exciting than meeting Brad Pitt. To me, politicians were the ultimate celebrities.
In January 2001, I cadged a ticket to the World Economic Forum in Davos. I was wandering around the main complex during a gala event when I spotted Kerry at the bar. I had just read an article about potential Democratic candidates for 2004, which concluded that Kerry stood a chance of beating Bush. I walked over and introduced myself.
"Hello, I'm Alexandra Polier. I'm one of your constituents." I had grown up outside Boston, and he looked pleased to hear a familiar accent. "What are you doing here?" he asked cheerily, and ordered me a drink. We moved swiftly through American foreign policy to his political ambitions. "I think you're going to be the next president of the United States," I said, with a confidence that probably seemed very forward. "Oh, you do, do you?" he replied, looking slightly amused. He asked if I had any desire to work on a political campaign, so I ran through my resumé. He seemed impressed, then shook my hand and said, "Get in touch with my office. Maybe there's something you can do for the campaign."
I called the senator's office the week I got back and was invited to a fundraiser in New York later that month. At first I was afraid that Kerry wouldn't recognise me. "Alexandra, so glad you could make it," he said, when he reached me. As the last guests were heading out, Kerry came back and suggested we all go to dinner nearby. I was surprised to be invited, and flattered when I was seated between Peter Maroney, Kerry's finance director, and the senator. The senator was flirtatious and funny. I felt I held my own with the other dinner guests, and Kerry announced to them that he hoped I would be onboard the campaign soon.
A phone friendship with Peter followed, and we started dating that spring. I spoke a few times on the phone with Kerry, who indulged me by offering advice about my career. Peter was ferociously private and kept his personal and professional lives separate: on the rare occasions that I saw the senator we discussed my career or his campaign. While finishing my course at Columbia, I got a job as an editorial assistant at the AP. Eventually my relationship with Peter fizzled out, but we stayed in touch via email. His name popped up in my inbox on the morning of the Nairobi dinner party. "Al," it read, "there's a rumour going around the office that you slept with my boss."
My name made its first appearance in the British tabloid, the Sun, on Friday, February 13. The "exclusive", by Brian Flynn, purported to quote my father at home in Pennsylvania discussing the senator. It also quoted my mother as saying Kerry had once chased after me to be on his campaign. My mother was not even home when Flynn called, and Flynn didn't tell my father that he was interviewing him. Instead, he presented himself as a friend trying to get hold of me to talk about John Kerry. My father, a Republican who believed Kerry had flip-flopped on various issues, said, 'Oh, that sleazeball.'" Here's how it reappeared in Flynn's piece: "There is no evidence the pair had an affair, but her father, Terry, 56, said: 'I think he's a sleazeball.' "
By the time I got home from Nairobi, there was a scattering of reporters parked outside the house and I was getting an inkling of how big the story was going to be. I called Peter, who told me Kerry had been forced into issuing an official denial. Peter recommended that I talk to Kerry's spokeswoman, Stephanie Cutter. She peppered me with questions. Were there any pictures of the senator and I together? "No." Had I ever been alone with the senator? "No."
Had I spoken to anyone in the press? "No."
What I thought she wanted to ask, but stopped short of saying, was: was I going to seek out the limelight? Had I started this to bring Kerry down? Perhaps she also wondered whether her own boss was telling her the truth. "What do you want to do, Alex?" Cutter asked. "I don't want to do anything," I said. In retrospect, I wonder whether I should have denied the rumour sooner or if I should have asked more clearly for advice.
Having discovered that I had worked for an MP, a British television station interviewed Nick Harvey, who declared that I "was very attractive and was at the centre of much interest among young male researchers," sending the British press into a further frenzy.
By Monday, I was going stir-crazy, and decided to make a statement. My parents, who had also received advice from the Kerry campaign, were ready to issue theirs. Our denials made the front pages from New York to Calcutta. By the end of the week, the reporters had gone, empty-handed. But millions around the world still thought it was true. My name would be for ever associated with a sex scandal.
When I returned to the US I knew I had to get past this, but how? I decided that one way I might feel better was to try to understand where the story had come from and face down the reporters who had initiated these lies. I was still a journalist, after all. I began by calling political reporters and strategists, who told me that as early as the New Hampshire primary on January 27, two weeks before the story appeared on Drudge, there had been rumours that Kerry had an intern problem. "We shook the tree," says one reporter. "A bunch of names fell out, and yours had the most flesh to it."
By the time Drudge broke the story, Kerry had won 12 of 14 states, conceding only South Carolina to John Edwards and Oklahoma to Wesley Clark. Bush was taking a major battering over stories that he had never reported for National Guard duty. The media needed distracting, and they found me.
As I traced the rumour, it occurred to me that no single person had engineered this. First came a rumour about Kerry, then a small-time blogger wrote about it, and his posting was read by journalists. They started looking into it, a detail that was picked up by Drudge - who, post-Lewinsksy is taken seriously by other sites.
I was still unsure how I had got dragged into it. My relationship with Peter had put me close to the senator, and I certainly hadn't kept it a secret that I had been excited to meet and talk to Kerry. The more people I talked to, the more one supposed source kept coming up, a woman whom Drudge had called my "close friend", and who had worked for a Republican lobbyist. I couldn't believe one of my closest friends would say such a thing - we went all the way back to tenth grade. I had even asked her to be a bridesmaid. She denied it, then softened her position. "Look, I was once with you when you phoned Kerry's office and then he called you right back. And I thought, how amazing - and I got excited and I told friends about it." She started to cry. "I'm very, very sorry," she sobbed. "If all this leads back to me, it wasn't intentional."
Finally, I called the Sun's Brian Flynn, who had first named me. Afraid I would lose my temper, I asked my editor to call him first and name the source of his story. "Ah, many people have asked me; it was a fantastic source," he said. "I broke that story to the world, you know."
"But your source was wrong," she pointed out. He paused, startled. "You've just ambushed me," he cried. "You've ambushed me!"
"I think you should speak to Alex," she said and passed me the phone.
"I'd like to talk to you," I said. "I'm writing a piece and have some questions."
"It's not a good time right now," he said. "Let's meet up next week."
"Why did you quote my mother when she wasn't even home?" I persisted.
"I really can't talk about this right now, Alex," he said.
When I finally tracked him down the following week, he told me to go through the Sun's PR office. I asked about my mother again, but he kept saying, "Sorry, Alex, proper channels." Lorna Carmichael, the Sun's PR manager, refused to comment. I went to Flynn's home and spoke to his wife through the intercom. "Go away and leave us alone!" she cried. "He's not going to come down or speak to you."
My final call, inevitably, had to be to Matt Drudge. "In retrospect, I should have had a sentence saying, 'There is no evidence to tie Alex to John Kerry.' I should have put that," he told me.
I started out as an ambitious young woman inspired by politics and the media. I have ended up disenchanted with both. I don't mean to dredge up old news by writing this, and I am not trying to create any now; I don't intend to discuss it again in public. But for me, this painful experience will be hard to forget. It may be only a minor footnote to the campaign, but it has changed my life completely.
Query: Can she prove she did not have an affair with Kerry?
I'd say she's got a lot more problems than the way Matt Drudge handled her. Besides, she's a "newsie" and should know better to whine and moan like this. Just digs a deeper hole you know!
The lady doth protest too much, methinks. And why open her yap now, in any case?
Wasn't the whole point of this fabrication to create the pretense that Kerry has sex appeal?
This slug is the one that left the smear. She smeared herself. Sorry but I'm not buying her bullshit story.
Wow, retelling this sure helps her pal Kerry.
< /sarcasm>
What about the blue dress honey?
Spoken like a real RAT-skank. Most RAT pols want to be considered celebrities. Chicks like Alexandra are their enablers. "Let's pretend you're a celebrity and I'm your groupie." Guaranteed gratification all 'round.
Lay down with dogs....wake up with fleas.
If I remember correctly, this chick spread the rumor herself that she was sleeping with Kerry.
I agree with the bullshit story part... It's interesting that Ms. Polier reignites the 'I didn't do it with Kerry' story after it was dead in the press and in the minds of the US voters. I wonder why?
Do the checks come from Heinz-Kerry or just Kerry????
It's impossible to prove a negative, you either believe her, or you don't.
"YooHooo! Okay, boys! Don't chase me anymore!.....
Alright, boys?!..........
boys?!...........
c,mon guys....."
Deny, deny, deny. But why deny now? This is a "dead story," right? :)There is a reason, unknown to me, why this is being brought back from the dead. It'll be interesting to see where this goes.
Hildabeaste, is that you?
'The lady doth protest too much, methinks. And why open her yap now, in any case?"
I am wondering the same thing. Why talk now?
Trying to wring those last few seconds out of her 15 minutes.
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