Libby trial provides lesson on spinning media

ctv ^ | Jan. 27 2007 11:36 PM ET | Associated Press

[Grig]

Updated Sat.

WASHINGTON -- A smorgasbord of Washington insider details has emerged during the perjury trial of the vice president's former chief of staff.

For example, when Dick Cheney really needed friends in the news media, his staff was short of phone numbers.

No one served up spicier morsels than Cheney's former top press assistant. Cathie Martin described the craft of media manipulation -- under oath and in blunter terms than politicians like to hear in public.

The uses of leaks and exclusives. When to let one's name be used and when to hide in anonymity. Which news medium was seen as more susceptible to control and what timing was most propitious. All candidly described. Even the rating of certain journalists as friends to favor and critics to shun -- a faint echo of the enemies list drawn up in Richard Nixon's White House more than 30 years ago.

The trial of I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby owes its very existence to a news leak, the public disclosure four summers ago of CIA officer Valerie Plame's identity.

A private brainstorm of Plame's in 2002 brought a rain of public attacks on Cheney the following year. Cheney was accused of suppressing intelligence and allowing President Bush to present false information about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.

Plame's husband, ex-ambassador Joseph Wilson, started the attack. Her unit at the CIA had sent him to Niger in 2002 to check a report Iraq was buying uranium for nuclear weapons. Cheney and the departments of State and Defense wanted to verify that.

Wilson thought he had debunked the report, but Bush mentioned it anyway in his State of the Union address in 2003. The story helped justify war with Iraq.

Wilson claimed Cheney's questions prompted his trip and Cheney should have received his report long before Bush spoke.

Wilson's charges first surfaced, attributed to an unnamed ex-ambassador, in Nicholas Kristof's New York Times column. But Martin testified she felt no urgency to set him straight because Kristof "attacked us, our administration fairly regularly."

But by July 6, 2003, Wilson wrote his own account in the Times and appeared on Meet the Press on NBC.

After that much exposure, Cheney, Libby and Martin spent the next week trying get out word that Cheney did not know Wilson, did not ask for the mission to Niger, never got Wilson's report and only learned about the trip from news stories in 2003.

Cheney personally dictated these points to Martin. She e-mailed them to the White House press secretary for relay to reporters.

When the story did not die, Martin found herself in a bind because Cheney's office was known for disclosing so little.

"Often the press stopped calling our office," Martin testified. "At this point, they weren't calling me asking me for comment."

So she had to call National Security Council and CIA press officers to learn which reporters were still working on stories.

Once Martin got names, Cheney ordered his right-hand man, Libby, rather than lowly press officers, to call -- a signal of the topic's importance.

Top levels of the Bush administration decided that CIA Director George Tenet would issue a statement taking the blame for allowing Bush to mention the Niger story. Cheney and Libby worried Tenet would not go far enough to distance the vice president from the affair.

Libby asked Martin to map a media strategy in case Tenet fell short.

A Harvard law school graduate, Martin had succeeded legendary Republican operative Mary Matalin as Cheney's political and public affairs assistant. Matalin had brought Martin to Cheney's office as her deputy and trained her.

Martin offered these options in order:

Put Cheney on Meet the Press. Leak an exclusive version to a selected reporter or the weekly news magazines. Have national security adviser Condoleezza Rice or Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld hold a news conference. Persuade a third party or columnist to write an opinion piece that would appear in newspapers on the page opposite the editorials. Not only did Tenet leave unanswered questions about Cheney, his remarks came out late on a Friday, the government's favorite moment to deliver bad news.

Why?

"Fewer people pay attention to it later on Friday," Martin testified. "And in our view, fewer people are paying attention on Saturday, when it's reported."

As Martin rated their options, putting Cheney on Meet the Press, NBC's Sunday morning talk show, "is our best format." Cheney was their best person for the show and "we control the message a little bit more," according to Martin.

The downside was that Cheney could "get pulled into the weeds and specifics. We like to keep him at a pretty high level," she said. Also, it "looks defensive to rush him out on Meet the Press."

Next they could give an exclusive or leak to one reporter and she considered David Sanger of The New York Times, Walter Pincus of The Washington Post, or Time or Newsweek.

Because reporters are competitive, "if you give it to one reporter, they're more likely to write the story," Martin testified.

Plus an official can demand anonymity in return for the favor. "You can give it to them as a senior administration official," she said. "You don't have to say this is coming directly from the White House."

The news weeklies offered a focus on the big picture and opinion-editorial writers and columnists could voice opinions.

Ultimately, Cheney crafted an on-the-record statement to be attributed to Libby by name along with some anonymous background information. Libby personally called Matt Cooper of Time, who had e-mailed questions to Martin earlier.

But when Libby suggested calling Newsweek in fairness, Cheney's aides were at a loss.

"We were scrambling for a number for a reporter that we know there named Evan Thomas," Martin testified. "We were looking around for a number. I didn't have it with me." Eventually, they found a number and left a message.

But Cooper did not use the full quote and Martin called to complain. "I put Scooter on the phone with him, which we didn't do very often on the record with a quote," she testified, "and he took just a piece of it." The result "wasn't helpful" and the story did not fade away.

So the following week, two senior Bush aides -- communications director Dan Bartlett and Rice's deputy, Steve Hadley -- briefed White House reporters. Cheney invited a group of conservative columnists to lunch at his residence.

[meema]

To read later.

[Humal]

For more on the Libby trial and the media's selected reporting, see http://www.mediabloggers.org/scooter-libby-trial

[geezerwheezer]

I noticed the AP was not called by Mr. Cheney's staff. Gee, I wonder why not? :0 )

[Tallguy]

...legendary Republican operative Mary Matalin...

< snicker >

[piasa]

Wilson thought he had debunked the report, but Bush mentioned it anyway in his State of the Union address in 2003.

The report Bush mentioned was the UK report... about Congo. The story Wilson was looking into was about Niger.

The story helped justify war with Iraq.

Nonsense- the war with Iraq had already been approved by Congress months before Bush's SOTU and before the documents Wilson said he was sent to investigate on the tea drinking trip were even delivered to the CIA.

Wilson claimed Cheney's questions prompted his trip and Cheney should have received his report long before Bush spoke.

Wilson himself says he never wrote a report but gave his report orally... and not to Cheney. He gave the report casually outside the CIA [over a plate of Chinese food as I recall.]

[rod1]

So Wilson's "oral-only" report in a Chinese restaurtant was supposed to have been formally received by the VP---sure.

Joe Wilson and Valerie Plame are the ones who should be on trial and headed toward jail.

[Bryan24]

Every single political appointee at the CIA and every manager at the CIA needs to be fired. The guys attempted a "media coup" on President Bush.

[Zman]

Don't see much focus on the Senate Intell. Committee report
which said that Wilson lied about EVERYTHING.

[freespirited]

Cathie Martin described the craft of media manipulation

Baloney. What she described is a *mutual* process by which the presstitutes get information to advance their own agendas.

[okie01]

For the AP, this is an amazingly candid report of the preliminaries.

With just one exception: they omit the very salient fact that Wilson's trip actually confirmed the suspicions about Saddam shopping for yellowcake. So that, in reality, he was lying when he issued his op-ed.

Which brings up another question: So, when Tenet issued his mea culpa, why didn't he clarify that Wilson had misrepresented his own report? That would have brought the whole process to a dead halt.

[Steve_Seattle]

"Wilson himself says he never wrote a report but gave his report orally... and not to Cheney."

You are correct. Wilson was briefed by the CIA, and CIA staffers wrote up a report, which was deemed so insignificant and inconclusive that it was never forwarded to Cheney. But Wilson, and the press, made it sound like Wilson had delivered a blockbuster report proving conclusively that Iraq had never sought uranium in Niger, that Cheney had read the report and deliberately disregraded it, and knowingly went to war under false pretenses.

[Steve_Seattle]

"Cathie Martin described the craft of media manipulation." - Baloney.

Oh, it isn't baloney per se. What's baloney is the implication that this sort of thing is unique to the Bush administration, or to Republicans. The reference to Nixon's "enemies list" is calculated to achieve that impression. In fact, carefully managing press relations is SOP for all administrations and all politicians. Anyone who thinks that the Clinton administration, for example, did not have its own explicit or implicit "enemies list," and did not spend a great deal of energy in trying to manipulate the press, curry favor with reporters, etc., is either quite naive or quite partisan.