Presswatch/House Foleys
Eastland, Terry
HOUSE FOLEYS by Terry Eastland T n early June the communications I director of the Republican National Committee distributed a memo designed to instruct Republicans on how to talk about Tom...
...Chief congressional correspondent Andrea Mitchell did the first report—a piece on something called the Aspin Procurement Institute...
...Not coincidentally, the RNC memo attacking Foley fell into reporters' hands on that same day...
...What about the Foley thing...
...Give Mitchell credit for a job well done in reporting another perfectly legal way of life on Capitol Hill...
...Gingrich required merely that she not talk to the media again, else she'd be fired...
...Its official mission, as Mitchell described it, is "to help Wisconsin get more Pentagon contracts' ?—in the past fifteen months some seventy-seven contracts in all, valued at a half million dollars, and creating more than 5,000 new jobs...
...Meanwhile, Democrats not opposed to Foley but nonetheless worried about the spreading rumor decided to try to track it down...
...q • • • O n June 2, NBC Nightly News began a new segment called "Capitol Watch," which anchor Tom Brokaw described as "a series of reports on how Washington really works these days...
...Democrats began trafficking in the Foley rumor as early as the final weeks of Wright's demise...
...Thus, the New York Times, after mentioning the memo and Frank's interpretation of it, included this brief paragraph disposing of the homosexual question: "Members of Congress, speaking privately with Mr...
...At least this poking occurred in private...
...Dan Rather's did not...
...This itself was irresponsible, a poking about on the basis of no evidence at all...
...In stories appearing Wednesday morning it seemed that the Republican party alone was guilty of a dirty deed...
...Finally, it bears noting that to spread a rumor on Capitol Hill means to mention it to reporters...
...Van Brocklin gave this sales pitch to numerous reporters...
...Question to Coelho: "[D]o you know of anything of an ethical-character nature that would prevent Tom Foley from being the next Speaker of the House if Jim Wright steps down...
...It wasn't...
...News & World Report discovered, the office of the House Sergeant-at-arms...
...There are a million ways to say it...
...Republicans had long since joined in...
...Now for the rest of the story, a remarkable one indeed...
...President Bush denounced the memo as Mark Goodin, its author, packed his bags...
...In case you didn't catch it, Congressman Les Aspin of Wisconsin started the institute, staffed it with former aides, and got a Pentagon grant to keep it going...
...Rumors of homosexuality on Foley's part had for weeks been circulating on Capitol Hill, and because Frank is an avowed homosexual, the memo was widely interpreted as an attempt to say Foley is gay...
...And even, as Gloria Borger of US...
...This was not the whole truth, of course, but truth was a casualty as reactions poured in Wednesday to the RNC memo, or at least its headline (the text could not fairly be seen as trying to suggest homosexuality...
...ranking House members (I'm told they were Democrats) asked him "pointblank [about the rumors...
...Its other mission is "not incidentally . . . promoting the political career of Congressman Aspin...
...The story more or less ended when President Bush, at his Thursday night press conference, said Atwater had looked him "right in the eye and said he did not know about [the memo...
...The headline on the four-pager was: "Tom Foley: Out of the Liberal Closet...
...Mitchell reported that the Pentagon denies favoritism in selecting Aspin's entity over others, and that the Pentagon maintains his name "does not make any difference in our evaluation process...
...Russ denies spreading the allegations, but he did tell Borger that highTerry Eastland political commentator for National Public Radio's 'Mil Things Considered" is author of Ethics, Politics, and the Independent Counsel, published this summer by the National Legal Center for the Public Interest...
...Newt Gingrich, who told Lars ErikNelson of the New York Daily News, "We hear it's little boys...
...Arguably, Mark Goodin suffered more heavily than he should have, and 32 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR AUGUST 1989 Karen Van Brocklin less than she should have...
...No one defended the "closet" language...
...Because someone had finally mentioned the homosexual angle in public, the media felt justified in dealing explicitly with the weeks-old rumor about Foley...
...It was too late...
...Aspin refused to be interviewed for the piece, but Mitchell showed that he is quite THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR AUGUST 1989 33...
...One was Rep...
...Now reporters asked Republicans and Democrats alike what they thought of the "smear" memo...
...The memo discussed Foley's liberal voting record, comparing it to that of a Democratic colleague, Barney Frank of Massachusetts...
...Once Wright did step down, there were Democrats who traded in the rumor for another reason'to bluff Tom out of the race," as Barney Frank put it to me...
...And that congressman is merely the chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, which appropriates money for the Pentagon, the primary supporter of the Aspin Institute...
...There are sixty-one taxpayer-supported institutes around the country, but only one is named for a congressman...
...Jack Murtha of Pennsylvania, who told Borger through an aide that he was interested in the rumor "in a clarifying sense...
...In our conversation, Frank said he told Democrats to knock off the rumor-mongering...
...On the May 28 Sunday edition of the CBS Evening News, in an interview with Tony Coelho, Rather said he'd been told that Tom Foley was someone "mentioned specifically" as having an ethics problem that might be "the worst of it...
...willing to talk about the institute in political commercials, in which he brags to Wisconsin voters that he has helped the state "get out of last place on federal contracts...
...Meanwhile, none of those Democrats who had been passing the Foley rumor paid any penalty, as Borger alone was correct to see...
...But he also should have emulated George Bush and taken Rather on by asking on what basis he'd ever pose such a question about anyone...
...That day, as Foley was elected Speaker of the House, Barney Frank made himself available to reporters, blasting the memo and decrying the use of sexuality as a weapon, even threatening to name gay Republicans whom he suspected of being involved in the rumor-mongering...
...This had two consequences...
...She also told him that the Washington Post was going to come out with "a bombshell about Foley...
...Politically advantaged by the resignations of Wright and Tony Coelho, Republicans were suddenly on the defensive as they were portrayed in much of the media as the ones responsible for smearing Foley...
...These "self-appointed vigilantes," wrote Borger, the only reporter to capture this part of the story, "thus became rumor-mongers themselves...
...Given the spotlight on Congress these days, I'll bet the majority of stories come from the Hill, where much of the scandal is 100 percent legal...
...And no one in the media—not even Borger —reported how Frank, whether intentionally or not, had forced coverage of the memo on his terms, effectively precipitating the almost universal denunciation of the memo, and of Republicans generally, that quickly followed...
...Foley, have been told by the Washington Democrat that he is heterosexual...
...You know what happened next: establishment Washington expressed outrage, the man who wrote the memo resigned, and Foley himself was forced to deny he is homosexual (even though no one had offered any evidence to the contrary...
...HOUSE FOLEYS by Terry Eastland T n early June the communications I director of the Republican National Committee distributed a memo designed to instruct Republicans on how to talk about Tom Foley, who would soon succeed Jim Wright as Speaker of the House...
...He has been married for 20 years...
...And, oh yes, he named it after himself...
...Democrats not satisfied with his resignation demanded Atwater's as well...
...Russert tells me the network will do ten or so pieces a year and focus on the other branches of government as well...
...and I told them what we had...
...Time saw it that way, and Time, the Washington Post, and the New York Times—among others—published editorials saying Lee Atwater, chairman of the RNC, should step down...
...This seemed to be the end of the memo story...
...rik-Nelson reported Van BrockL lin's comments (though not identifying her) on June 5, a Monday, the day before the vote on Wright's successor...
...There was no mention of the "out-ofthecloset" headline, no interpretation of the memo in sexual terms...
...Have you heard anything new about the Foley stuff...
...The purpose was obvious: to induce competitive fears that would cause the rumor finally to break into print, thus giving it the appearance of "news...
...This office handles security, and the man in charge, Jack Russ, told Borger that he had received some "wild and ridiculous accusations" involving Foley...
...Probably the most egregious gossip was Karen Van Brocklin, an aide to Rep...
...The other consequence of Frank's public comments was to reverse the political tide then running so strongly against congressional Democrats...
...Stories the next morning made a correctly subdued mention of the memo, reporting it in a paragraph or two, usually far down in the copy...
...And many reporters in turn raised it with members and staffers...
...This of course happened...
...This was not simply the story of a Democrat victimized by Republicans but one that also involved Democrats and the media...
...Democratic supporters of the embattled Speaker—my sources point to the Texas delegation— employed the desperate argument that it would be better to have the heterosexual Wright as Speaker than someone who may be homosexual (again, for the record, there is no evidence at all that Foley is homosexual...
...Coelho said he didn't know of anything...
...No one could...
...And give Tim Russert, head of NBC's Washington bureau, credit for creating the series for his network...
...Not everything needs a news peg, and showing how Washington works is a worthy goal...
Vol. 22 • August 1989 • No. 8
