Presswatch / Teflon John and Jim

...Olson took part in any concerted action designed to obstruct...

...For months now Dingell has been investigating Drexel Burnham Lambert and its role in junk-bond financed takeovers...

...Gray had constitutionalreservations...

...The rest, of course, is history, and some history it was—Olson's constitutional challenge to the independent counsel statute resulted in a landmark separation of powers case, Morrison v. Olson (which, by the way, was wrongly decided by the Supreme Court last summer...

...Baker was evidently consulting more closely with congressional leaders than with colleagues in the Bush Administration...

...Pear did not miss the obvious conclusion: "Mr...

...Morrison wrote that Olson's testimony "while not always forthcoming was in our view literally true—and hence not subject to prosecution...

...A while ago I would have said that news organizations don't pay enough attention to the Hill and that the Washington media are still in a post-Watergate stupor, more suspicious of what goes on in the executive branch than in Congress...

...It's doubtful Bush will be as trusting of Baker...

...The Detroit News, which circulates in the congressman's district, blasted Dingell in an editorial titled "Dingell: Investigative Excess...

...The next day Pear answered that question in a front page story...

...On March 10, 1983, a Judiciary subcommittee heard testimony from Olson...

...backs on consecutive days in March, but only the editorial page of the Wall Street Journal noticed what had happened to one of the nation's most powerful congressmen, who with his staff of more than 140 exercises prosecutorial and administrative powers in overseeing regulatory bodies...

...Over the next two years, three Judiciary staffers—aides to Democratic Terry Eastland is resident scholar at the National Legal Center for the Public Interest...

...The President, however, acting on advice given by the Justice Department, directed EPA Administrator Anne Burford to assert executive privilege...

...The 401-page document cleared Olson of any wrongdoing in testimony he gave to a congressional committee six years ago—a conclusion duly reported by the media...

...McTigue said the taping was authorized by the subcommittee's chief counsel, who denied he approved it...

...The Post didn't report the constitutional dimension of the story until Gray expressed his reservations, and even then it failed to do justice to the issues involved...

...Baker's desire for a compromise that he agreed...

...Gibbons was brought back on March 21, but not before he and his company decided to fight back...

...I do not believe further inquiry into your conduct is warranted," Dingell told Gibbons...

...Olson's testimony resulted in actual obstruction of the Judiciary Committee's inquiry...

...While Pear was doing the intellectual heavy lifting on separation of powers, the Post was heavy into the Baker line of "bipartisanship," celebrating in a headline that the agreement was halting years of wrangling between the White House and Congress...

...Kroll has worked both for and against Drexel Burnham, and a committee staffer, Brian McTigue, thought Gibbons had misrepresented himself in California as working for the committee...

...Especially if that person worked in the White House...

...Building his story with comments from Robert H. Bork and former Assistant Attorney General Charles J. Cooper—a bit of enterprising reporting also done by no one else—Pear now observed that this was "more than a legislative veto...

...At this point the story finally got play everywhere, not just in the Times, proving that once an issue is personalized, the media generally will pay attention...

...Typical was the coverage by the Washington Post...

...The first defeat came on Monday, March 20, with the public release of Independent Counsel Alexia Morrison's report of her almost three-year investigation into criminal allegations involving former Justice Department official Theodore B. Olson...

...And: "There is no evidence that Mr...

...Some of Jim's Teflon may be wearing off...

...But there is a catch: any of four congressional committees may veto sending money after November 30, 1989...

...For decades," Pear observed (as no one else did), "Presidents have tried to preserve executive power by resisting such arrangements...

...It was a measure of Mr...

...Dingell still tried to justify the legality of the taping, but said it was tainted by staff errors...

...A h well—that was Monday, March 20...

...Yes, Gray has been politically damaged inside the administration...

...The EPA coughed up some but withheld others that involved ongoing investigations and enforcement proceedings...

...Dingell's committee didn't have jurisdiction over the bad boys at the Justice Department, so the task fell to the House Judiciary Committee to look into the role Justice had played in the assertion of executive privilege...

...THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR JUNE 1989 41...

...According to the accord Baker negotiated with Congress, the administration can continue aid to the contras at the current rate of $4.5 million a month for food, clothing, shelter, and medical supplies through February 1990...

...To prove it, McTigue authorized a secret tape recording done of Gibbons...

...There was still an outstanding question: What did White House Counsel C. Boyden Gray think...

...Pear deserves credit for bringing to light the deeper implications of an agreement that too many in the media, like the Post, were willing to take at face value...

...But the final chapter in this story wasn't the one Dingell—or Rodino—wanted to see...

...This led to the "reassignment" of Merigue, who apparently did not meet what Dingell called "the higher standards which the subcommittee has always [except, of course, on this occasion] adhered to and will continue to adhere to...

...On March 13 Gibbons appeared before the committee and heard for the first time the charge of impersonation...

...Now this was a bizarre story, which wound up not on A-1 but in the business sections of the newspapers that cared to cover it...

...But where were the editorial writers at the Washington Post or at that self-anointed keeper of government ethics, the New York Times...

...He dropped the charges and admitted to Gibbons that the detective had been acting "in good faith...

...And what about abuse of congressional power...

...On December 5, 1985, committee Chairman Peter Rodino released the report, and followed it with a letter to the attorney general asking for an independent counsel to investigate, among other things, whether Olson had misled Congress...

...A while ago Dingell and his staffers became interested in one John Gibbons, an investigator for Kroll Associates, an international investigative company...

...Watch for fallout...

...Speaking on the record, Gray told the Times that he had not reviewed the agreement and in fact had asked for a copy only after reading about it "in the press"--probably in the New York Times...

...I t was the next day, a Sunday, that Baker, on ABC's "This Week," sought to put Gray in his place, denying that the agreement weakened presidential authority and maintaining, to the contrary, that it amounted to a "restoration of presidential power...

...Indeed, the latest flap between White House Counsel C. Boyden Gray and Secretary of State James A. Baker III—a flap over Baker's agreement with Congress on contra aid—can't be understood without reference to Pear's perceptive reporting...

...He believed he was innocent and had on his side a useful fact—one-partytaping is illegal in California...

...Indeed, why didn't the media go after this one as aggressively as they would a secret taping done by some administration staffer...

...Where were the enterprising reporters and fearless editorial-writers who might hold the Democratic leadership responsible for a meritless investigation that took almost three years and cost taxpayers more than $1 million (not to mention what it cost Olson in both financial and personal terms...

...Now, there was a difference for the media to explore...

...Wherewere the hard questions for Rodino, now retired, and especially for Dingell, the man whose subpoena started it all...

...But they didn't...

...Was there a crime here...

...In 1982 Dingell was in a battle with the Reagan Administration over toxic-waste cleanup...

...Dingell didn't like that, and neither did the Democratic leadership...

...No, the best explanation for the non-treatment of Dingell is the obvious one, actually one of the dirty little secrets of the news business in Washington: Dingell and his staffers are sources for stories, and reporters, dear reader, tend to protect good sources...

...The conventional wisdom now had it that Gray should never have spoken up, that he was an eccentric, a methanol enthusiast, and so on...

...So Dingell decided to subpoena the remaining documents...

...Newt Gingrich has scored in more ways than one might realize...

...And with one exception—the Journal's Paul Gigot, the only close Dingell watcher I know of—no one asked whether the taping was authorized by—dare I speak his name—Teflon John himself...

...But only the Journal's editorial page noted how the Morrison probe represented a loss for Dingell...

...And he dug out a new fact—that on March 16 the administration had formed a "working group" to combat the "erosion of Presidential authority...

...But what about further inquiry into the conduct of McTigue and other staffers...

...On March 25, when the news was officially disclosed, Pear wrote that Baker "and President Bush had to give to the congressional leadership unusual powers of review on executive decisions to gain Democratic support...

...On March 24, when news of this agreement unofficially broke, Pear was the only reporter who characterized it as "a legislative veto," noting that it would be "unconstitutional if it was formally put into law...

...When Gibbons appeared before the committee on the twenty-first, Dingell did a sharp about-face in public—a rarity for him...

...Wicker was incredulous that the Baker accord could represent any kindof restoration of presidential power, and Broder wrote that it was "a blow to both the Bush presidency and the authority any chief executive should try to preserve...

...At this point the story predictably changed, the question becoming how long Gray could stay in his job...

...I checked with him myself...

...The next day provided even more reason for the Washington press corps to descend upon Dingell, as the Michigan congressman dropped an investigation of a California private detective accused of impersonating a Dingell staff investigator...

...But he may have given himself up for a good cause—not a bad thing to do, even if unintended...

...Pear noted that the Justice Department had "vehemently objected to such arrangements" when written into legislation and reported—again, as no one else had—that Justice had not had a chance to review the Baker deal...

...Late that year, a House subcommittee under his direction began requesting planeloads of Superfund documents from the Environmental Protection Agency...

...The Wall Street Journal's Brooks Jackson is becoming to the Hill what Bob Woodward once was to the 40 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR JUNE 1989 executive branch, and the Jim Wright story is making most news organizations take longer looks at Wright and his colleagues...

...If he hadn't spoken out, Tom Wicker and David Broder, among other columnists, probably would not have written on the issue...

...Moreover: "None of Mr...

...it is a requirement for congressional preclearance...

...T here is at least one reporter who understands separation of powers controversies in Washington—the New York Times's Robert Pear...

...What is it about Dingell and the media that has enabled him to become Teflon John...

...Chief of Staff John Sununu rebuked Gray for going public, and press secretary Marlin Fitzwater got a laugh at Gray's expense by opening a news briefing with this: "First of all, I want to announce that Boyden Gray concurs in the constitutionality of the Easter Egg Roll...

...Baker, meanwhile, has been on the defensive, trying to explain why what he did is best for the President...

...Actually, Baker and company might as well have blamed Pear for reporting and analyzing an issue that they doubtless wanted handled precisely the way that everyone but Pear reported it...

...But there are signs that this is changing...

...In his story, Pear summarized his discoveries of the past few days, writing that the "congressional veto provision struck a raw nerve Friday among lawyers at the White House and the Justice Department, who strive to preserve presidential power against encroachments by Congress...

...members—put together a four-volume, 3,000-page report that served as the congressional bill of indictment of Olson and several other executive officers (all of whom, by the way, had long since left office...