Skip to comments.

Posted on 11/11/2001 6:49:49 AM PST by fightu4it

For purposes of discussion only

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------- by Christopher J. Barr

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The CNBC show, Rivera Live, is about the burgeoning White House scandals. It has been almost every night since January. As usual, Rivera is using his one-hour cable show to mount a shameless defense of Bill Clinton. He is clearly smitten with Bill Clinton; he hero-worships him openly. Once actually proclaimed his "love" for Clinton and expressed his desire to "just hug him." Objective journalism is not what this show is about.

Before cutting away to a commercial, [August 24th], Rivera has played a tape of Congressman Paul McHale calling for Clinton to resign or face impeachment. McHale is not running for reelection and is looking forward to spending more time in the Lehigh Valley with his wife and three kids. But Clinton's August 17th speech pushed the straight arrow Marine over the top. He is the first Democrat to publicly call for the president's resignation.

When Rivera Live returns from the commercial break, Geraldo announces, with a cat that swallowed the canary grin:

"I just got a call from my source, [Guess Who?], very close to President Clinton, who reminded me that there was a controversy in terms of the medals [McHale] won in the armed forces of the United States. He was indeed a, what was it, a Bronze Star winner, but maybe he claimed to something even more honorable than that." This casual smear is shocking, but it did not come out of the blue. It follows months of warnings by Clinton media shills that any Congressman or Senator who dares do his duty when the Starr Report arrives on Capitol Hill will have his or her own skeletons exposed. McHale is the first, the first who could not be simply dismissed as a right-wing extremist, partisan Republican. McHale, it seems, is to be punished as an example to others. As much because he is a Democrat as despite of it.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Tuesday 25 August 1998

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------- I was furious - outraged that the White House would gratuitously attack a Congressman's military reputation for merely speaking his mind on a public issue. This use of the smear is the vilest part of a vile campaign. It is one thing to impeach the credibility of a witness against you. It is one thing to smear an electoral opponent. But it is entirely beyond toleration to smear and threaten to smear judges and jurors. This is extortion! One of the crimes that ought to be in the articles of impeachment is the organization of this extortion campaign, which publicly threatens members of Congress with the exposure of their secrets if they dare to take the Starr report seriously.

So I call Paul McHale's office. They have heard that Rivera has made a disparaging remark, but do not know the details. I make sure that they do now. I ask the staffer if he knows what Rivera was talking about. He does not.

When McHale finds out about the smear, he faxes Rivera: "Your source at the White House obviously provided false information [and has] abused your trust." McHale attacheÑs his military biography.

I still wonder what it is all about. I probe around on the Internet looking for stories that might shed light on it. The paper of record in McHale's district is the Allentown Morning Call. I search their archive for articles with "Paul McHale" and "medals" and find nothing substantive. At about 4:30 pm, I call the paper and talk to a reporter. He has no idea what I am talking about. I tell him about Rivera's comment last night. He switches me to an editor.

The editor is more amused than interested. "-Geraldo" said that?" I try to explain that the news story is that the White House is saying it through Geraldo. "You can't believe anything Geraldo says, says the editor, "how do know he really has a White House source? I would not put it past him to make it up and attribute it to a White House source just to make himself feel important." I try to explain that Geraldo has pretensions of being a serious journalist now, that I do believe that he has a source and that it is Sidney Blumenthal.

At about 9:30 pm, CNBC telephones the Allentown Morning Call for the first time and asks if they have the dirt on McHale's record. This is almost twenty-four hours after the original Rivera charge. The newsroom has no idea what they are talking about and tells CNBC that. They refer the matter to a reporter in an outlying office and ask her to look it up when she has a chance. She notices my earlier call in the log and smells a story.

At 9:45, Rivera speaks to the subject again. In what is supposed to be an apology to McHale, who has come down on the program quite hard, Rivera actually reiterates and elaborates on the original slur.

"Last night on the program, after we played a tape of Pennsylvania Congressman Paul McHale, the Democrat who was calling for President Clinton to resign, I quoted one of my always reliable sources-the source told me that Congressman McHale had at one time falsely claimed to be a medal of honor winner-while, in reality, he had, in fact, been decorated, but with other medals but not the medal of honor. Today we've been told that a publication called the Navy Times, a newspaper, reported several years ago that Mr. McHale had, indeed, exaggerated his military duties while campaigning for Congress. Two marines then, reportedly, accused McHale of overstating what he had done over his long military career. A conservative group called, Citizens for America, then also came forth and accused McHale of the same kind of exaggeration. The newspaper, the Allentown Morning Call, then reported on this entire controversy. Now, throughout this, and this is very important to say, Representative McHale denied these allegations and in a letter to me today (I have it right here) the Congressman stated unequivocally: -Every statement I have ever made in public or in private regarding my military decorations has been absolutely truthful.' So, I apologize to you, Mr. McHale, if either my reference to the Medal of Honor or Bronze Star was inaccurate, but in fairness to me, apparently there has been some very real controversy over your claims about your military service." It is almost certain, from the timing of events, that Geraldo has absolutely no idea, as he speaks these wounding words, what the so-called "controversy" is all about. I am so angry, I set the VCR to tape the rebroadcast.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Wednesday. 26 August 1998

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------- I replay the offending segment from last night. I note the slight of tongue-the cunning shift from claiming unearned medals to the exaggerating military duties, the logical discontinuity camouflaged by the word, "indeed." No one says Geraldo is stupid; he is actually quite clever. He is just intellectually dishonest to the core. And I recall why I have always been so hostile to him, why I enjoyed his Al Capone Vault debacle so thoroughly. In 1974, the day Nixon resigned, Rivera (then a local reporter on the New York City ABC station) telephoned Alger Hiss on the air and asked him if he felt vindicated.

I call the Navy Times and get a reporter. I explain that I am a Navy veteran and had served in the Vietnam War. I ask if they have anything in their archives about McHale and his service record. I explain why I am asking. I tell him that as a veteran who volunteered to fight in a different war and then "just did his duty" like thousands of others, as McHale has described his own service, I am deeply offended by these attacks on him by men who never served at all. The reporter speaks of Rivera with obvious disdain, but looks in his database. No such article exists. He asks me to e-mail him Rivera's Tuesday "apology" and anything else I have. I transcribe the tape of the "apology" and send it to him. I also send it to McHale's office.

Today, there is an article very critical of Rivera, written by Howard Kurtz, in the Washington Post. I read it online and send a copy to the Navy Times. It quotes Paul McHale as saying that for an ally of the President to leak the false charges was "reprehensible." ``Dishonorable. It's consistent with the pattern of personal criticism that emanates from this White House when a person, including a member of the United States Congress, voices opposition to the president,'' he said. ``That person acted with malice. Clearly he knew what he was doing.''

"A defense of the President ought not involve character assassination."

The article says that the White House apologized to McHale through Chuck Brain, legislative liaison, and that McHale accepted the apology.

"The White House will not tolerate comments like these," it quotes the White House press spokesman, Joe Lockhart, as saying. "Unfortunately, we can't control some jerks outside this building who purport to speak for the president.'' But, Howard Kurtz observes, "Lockhart acknowledged he had no way of knowing whether the unnamed source is on the White House staff."

It quotes CNBC VP, Media Relations & Corporate Communications, George Jamison, as defended the Rivera accusation, and his failure to check its accuracy before airing it. ``The comment was clearly attributed, and in fact there was a controversy.''

I wonder if the subject will arise again on Rivera Live. It does, almost tangentially. Rivera does his best to avoid the topic, but when Arianna Huffington taunts him for having swallowed White House "disinformation" on McHale, Rivera responds defensively: "I don't want to go down that road either. Because as I reported yesterday, there's a lot of great-very good information about that particular person. (There was a specific apology. I don't want to withdraw it or retract it.)" Arianna breaks in about having called the Congressman and his denying it. Rivera tries to finish his thought and finally mutters: "It was not misinformation."

So, I think, he is actually saying: I apologize for the story but stand by it.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Thursday. 27 August 1998

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Things are heating up at CNBC.

The Navy Times reporter calls me to tell me to watch Rivera that night. They have done a thorough search and have determined that no article has ever been printed in the paper containing the charge "that Mr. McHale... exaggerated his military duties while campaigning for Congress." (The only article found is a laudatory one about Desert Storm veterans running for Congress.) They have, he tells me, demanded a written apology from CNBC and have gotten it. They also demanded an on air retraction by Rivera.

I check the Morning Call web site again, and find a very detailed entitled, "McHale accepts apology-But White House mea culpa still doesn't have him convinced." McHale, it says, "still believes someone close to President Clinton is responsible for Rivera's report Monday that McHale lied about his military awards." Although Chuck Brain, White House legislative liaison, has assured McHale that no friend of the President would have made such an accusation, McHale's chief of staff, Christine Messina-Boyer, has told the Call that "Paul [McHale] said he must differ with [Brain] on that...." McHale is quoted as saying, "I suspect this individual is a nationally known figure very close to the president. I have a very good idea who it is.''

Although McHale does not mention any specific name, his chief of staff comments that Rush Limbaugh on his show has speculated that Rivera's source was Sidney Blumenthal. "We have no way of knowing what his sources are,'' Messina-Boyer is quoted as saying. "But [McHale has] some ideas.'' She comments that this was not the first time the White House has tried to spread negatives about someone who's been critical of the president, but will not elaborate.

It occurs to me that Blumenthal can not be very happy with this outcome. If he were indeed exposed as the "always reliable" Rivera source, his $30,000,000 case against Drudge would be ruined. The false charge against McHale is no less onerous than the false charge allegedly made against him. CNBC has excused their broadcast of the McHale story, unchecked and unverified, by saying that it had been properly attributed. So had Drudge's charge against Blumenthal been. Drudge actually had two sources to Rivera's one. Moreover, Drudge immediately withdrew his story and genuinely apologized, something I doubt Geraldo will ever really bring himself to do.

I now have the complete archive of relevant stories from the Morning Call. The worst that can be said about McHale's military record, on the basis of the articles, is that there was a quibble by some Republican operatives over the newspaper's original use of the three letter verb, "led," to describe McHale's role as senior officer in the security detail. None of the material facts was in dispute. McHale had been where he said he had been. He had done what he said he had done. He had been, as he had said, the senior officer present. And he had exercised some command responsibility-although he had not even claimed this. It is difficult to come up with another verb that the newspaper, or McHale, could have conveniently substituted for "led." A fair reading of the material leads to the inevitable conclusion that the so-called controversy was merely dirty politics waged by a desperate Republican incumbent. The Morning Call's reporting at the time was as close as good journalism comes to a directed verdict. And certainly the voters did not disagree, giving McHale a solid victory over the incumbent.

McHale's 1992 opponent, the Republican incumbent, was a man named Don Ritter. On a whim, I call Ritter's former campaign manager, Alex Ray. Ray actually left the Ritter campaign before the smear started and was replaced by a consultant, named Solomon, who had, until then, worked only with Democrats. ("A bush-league Dick Morris" I had called Solomon to a Morning Call journalist, much to the amusement of the newsroom.) Alex Ray is blunt and to the point. "Paul McHale was a straight arrow." He said. "There was "absolutely no basis" to Ritter's accusations. They "cost Ritter the election."

I tune in to Rivera Live to see the second "apology." Towards the end of the show, it comes. Rivera's delivery is very awkward and halting, revealing, I suspect, the pressure that has being brought to bear. CNBC is taking the flap seriously and is in damage control mode. I know because I called earlier in the day and was told by the show's publicist that all media inquiries on the McHale matter, even simple requests for transcripts, are being bumped up immediately to George Jamison, VP, Media Relations & Corporate Communications for the cable network.

Rivera's scoop is leaking like a sieve. His original report, alleging military medals falsely claimed, has been entirely discredited and is now abandoned. With some slick misdirection, he has fallen back to a more general slur, delivered under the guise of an apology, about exaggerations in McHale's military record. He has tried to fortify this position with a reference to the Navy Times. This, too, is blowing up in his face. Nothing is left now of his original accusation except that there was, during a 1992 campaign, some sort of "controversy" involving McHale's military service. And even that was, it is now universally accepted, more an unjustified smear than a real controversy.

But Rivera will not be inconvenienced by truth.

"I have to take a couple of seconds here to address a mini-controversy that's been brewing the last few days-thanks in large part to the Washington Post, but hey, that's their job. It reached the level of the White House today, and the Chairmen of two Senate committees, believe it or not. Monday night, after playing a tape of Representative Paul McHale-the Democratic Congressman calling for the President of his own party to resign-I reported that a source close to Mr. Clinton had given us some information on the Congressman: namely, that during his election campaign there was, quoting myself, 'a controversy about his candor' in terms of the medals he won in one of the Armed Forces. The very next day, the Congressman, very angrily and righteously, informed us that he had never misrepresented his military decorations, and I reported that denial. But I also noted that, in fairness, there indeed had been a controversy over Mr. McHale's military record. The controversy took place during his 1992 campaign for election to Congress. Here are nine articles from one of the principal newspapers in his own Congressional district, the Allentown (Pennsylvania) Morning Call, attesting to that dispute. That controversy. And, Congressman, I'm sorry, let's move on. I don't think anything more needs to be said about it. "I do. however-and this is additional-I do, however, wish to make a final correction. In my attempt Tuesday night-that's the second night of all this-to, ah, to clarify the situation with Congressman [McHale] I reported that we had been told by a source that a military publication, called The Navy Times, had done a story on the McHale controversy. Now, although The Navy Times tells us they did publish articles about Congressman McHale and his military record , the paper informed us today that they have never written anything about the allegations of the controversy, itself, so on that point-significant or insignificant as it is-we stand, we absolutely stand corrected. OK. So, now, let me move on."

This carefully crafted second "apology" speaks volumes about Rivera's atrophied professionalism and ethics. He manages to repeat, yet again, the false charge against McHale-a charge he must, by now, know to be groundless-while holding up as purported "proof" the very articles that tend to exonerate McHale. And, of course, in a Clintonesque way, they are proof. Proof that there was a "controversy." A well placed "indeed" here and "own Congressional district" there gives the impression that some more substantial accusation is still being advanced.

Even the outright apology to The Navy Times is sabotaged by the gratuitous "significant or insignificant as it is." It never occurs to Geraldo, apparently, that to the real journalists at the Navy Times-most of whom are veterans themselves-the issue of whether or not they published a vicious smear of a valiant Marine might be significant. The black hole of Rivera's ego and ambition sucks into itself all the pain and grief and passion and honor within its reach as mere matter to feed its inexorable expansion.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Epilogue

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------- On Friday, I call Jamison at CNBC again and ask him for a list of the nine articles Rivera held up. I have about seventeen, which show conclusively that McHale's account of his service was correct. Which ones did Geraldo select to hold up? I have not found any combination of nine of the articles that support Geraldo's characterization. Jamison tells me that he will have to check. He never calls me back. Nor does he answer my fax on Monday outlining my findings.

On Wednesday, September 2nd, The Morning Call sums up the whole situation in the following editorial:

"As subplots go, the one involving TV personality Geraldo Rivera and U.S. Rep. Paul McHale wasn't a bad one. Mr. McHale had seized national headlines two weeks ago when he said President Clinton should resign. He was the only Democrat of national stature to do so. "But a few days later, on Aug. 21, Mr. Rivera said on his CNBC show -Geraldo Rivera Live' that someone close to the White House was charging that Mr. McHale had lied about his service record. The source of the supposed tip to Mr. Rivera never was identified, but the next night he apologized to Rep. McHale ... in a left-handed sort of way that also dragged in The Morning Call.

"Mr. Rivera said he wished to make -sort of correction-apology' and acknowledged that the Bethlehem Democrat didn't falsify anything about his record in the Marines. Then he went on, -But in fairness to me, apparently there was some very real controversy' about the McHale record, and referred to a series of Morning Call stories from 1992. His point, that because a newspaper wrote about the charges against Mr. McHale it gave them some weight, was dishonest.

"What had happened in 1992 was that conservative supporters of incumbent Republican Rep. Don Ritter accused his challenger, Mr. McHale, of over-stating his role during Desert Storm. The project drew in Ritter associates and turned out to be a -whispering campaign' that backfired -- Mr. McHale won the election. The Morning Call reported on the charges and Mr. McHale's defense against them. But in no way did the newspaper coverage substantiate any of what the Republicans were saying.

"Perhaps the same sloppy work that led Mr. Rivera to report, without checking them out, charges against Mr. McHale on Aug. 21 was involved in his misunderstanding or twisting of what happened in 1992. Mr. Rivera may believe that gesture saved him face, but among those who have followed the whole story, it only made him appear more foolish."

Also on Wednesday, Daniel J. Harris & Teresa Hampton of Capitol Hill Blue report in an article entitled, "Confirmed! White House leaking damaging information about opponents to the press", that Sidney Blumenthal was the source of the McHale story.

"Last week, sources confirmed, Blumenthal orchestrated leaks about Democratic Congressman Paul McHale's military record to CNBC tabloid talk show host Geraldo Rivera after McHale called on the President to resign. Rivera later was forced to retract his statement that McHale had inflated his military record after the information furnished by the White House proved to be inaccurate." Intrigued, I e-mail the publisher, Doug Thompson. He writes back: "What I can tell you is that we had three sources confirm it: Two in the White House and a third that has proven reliable in the past. I'd recommend working the phones with White House staff. There's a lot of low morale and dissatisfaction there." I decide to leave that to professionals.

The disclosure that Blumenthal was the source ends my interest in Rivera in this context. In this whole incident Rivera is now revealed as really a bit player. No more than a ventriloquist's dummy on Sidney Blumenthal's lap. No one, except Rivera, takes Rivera seriously. Certainly none of the journalists I spoke to. But because of his lack of self- control, his tawdry self-dramatization and his absolute keenness to swap his soul for a scoop, any scoop, Geraldo is a useful idiot to the master manipulators in the White House.

What does it tell us about this White House that they would make allies of such men as Geraldo Rivera? And employ such as he to throw their muck at an upstanding, honorable man like Lieutenant Colonel McHale?

Or is it Geraldo who is slumming? ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Ayn Rand Milton Friedman Charles Murray Henry Hazlitt Jack Parsons Napoleon Hill Ludwig von Mises Richard Epstein Internet Corruption Cryptology Economics Free Thought Sovereign Law Science Fiction 'Out to Lunch'

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.