Presswatch / The Leak That Fizzled

...Still, they do not explain the motives of the leakers, which journalism, in the interest of encouraging and protecting key sources, is generally loath to examine...

...John Warner, a Ryan supporter who, though not a member of the Banking Committee, had requested time to help his man...

...Leaks of this nature fly in the face of the Senate's formal rules, which state that all "confidential communications made by the President of the United States [and therefore the FBI materials] shall be by the Senators and the officers of the Senate kept secret...

...of the New York Times reported: "The dominant sentiment is that the drug issue was unlikely to sink his candidacy immediately and might well not be the paramount issue...

...And here is Senator Riegle, speaking on April 4 from the Senate floor: "I heard all of the debate today...

...Yet on March 30, the only day that counts in the search for motive, that's not the way it sounded on NBC's Nightly News...

...ABC News had one senator among its sources...

...The penalty forthe wrongdoing is as stiff as the Senate prescribes—expulsion, no less...

...A fair question is whether NBC was bamboozled on March 30...

...None of us knew anything about this," another reporter told me...

...The drug aspect of the Ryan story was put at the end of Mitchell's piece, which itself appeared midway through the newscast...

...To my knowledge, this is the first time that a leak involving a nominee's use of cocaine has ever made news...

...John Danforth formally requested an ethics committee investigation of the March 30 leak...

...Bob Graham, a Ryan opponent, ask Banking chairman Sen...

...On April 4, Sen...

...No, I wouldn't want to begin that one," one of the reporters who covered Ryan told me...

...And that any such "documents and papers shall be considered as confidential, and shall not be disclosed without leave of the Senate...

...Riegle deplored the leak...

...Brenner's March 31 account in the Post gave the same negative spin...

...Within a 1 single day, as we know from the Times account, the drug matter had proved nothing worse than a wash, so far as Ryan's confirmation chances were concerned...

...Will it tell us who leaked...

...By itself, this would not have given Mitchell much to work with, but after the vote her suspicions grew further when she heard Sen...

...I do not regret havingvoluntarily disclosed this information...

...We know the rules...

...rr he Warner and Graham statements 1 help to account for the sudden journalistic interest in Ryan's past...

...A politics standard of relevance is less objective than a job-related one...

...At least the network felt some reluctance in reporting this "news...

...The "same information that members of this committee have had access to" could refer to one of two things: the nominee's financial disclosure forms, or the FBI's background investigation...

...I don't doubt that it did, at least on April 4, the day the full 28 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR JUNE 1990 Senate voted...

...By April 4, all those "troubled" Senators had vanished...

...Will it grill the senators and their aides...

...Mitchell was reluctant to discuss motives...

...So it goes with the Fourth Estate...

...Ryan, who admitted he knew little about the savings and loan industry, had a rocky confirmation ride, barely winning committee approval before the full Senate okayed him, 62 to 37...

...ABC News had the same information, also from Senate leakers, but chose not to go with it...

...committee vote in favor of the nominee...

...A s readers of this column know all too well, reporters would just as soon quit their jobs as rat on their sources, and Andrea Mitchell was not about to divulge hers to me...

...And that any senator"who shall disclose the secret or confidential business or proceedings of the Senate shall be liable, if a Senator, to suffer expulsion from the body...

...So far as journalism is concerned, the Senate did not embrace such an understanding view of Ryan's past until the next day...

...11...

...In regard to reporting personal matters, the media generally follow a so-called rule ofrelevance...

...Let's go to the tape for Friday, March 30...

...As an ABC reporter told me, "They always talk...

...Joel Glenn Brenner of the Washington Post said that Graham's remarks "sent everyone digging...

...Will journalism serve as the watchdog...

...rr his time the leak fizzled...

...Now "senators" is plural, which means two or more...

...And you can bet there were talky legislative aides, at least two of whom conversed with ABC...

...Here is NBC's Andrea Mitchell, reporting that day's 11-to-10 Terry Eastland is resident scholar at the National Legal Center for the Public Interest...

...And plainly, there was a violation of the rules...

...Mitchell told me that NBC finally concluded that it should report the drug story on grounds of its relevance to Senate deliberations...

...In addition to Ryan's lack of experience [which she had summarized], senators told NBC News they are troubled by information in his FBI file—occasional use of cocaine two decades ago...

...The operative rule in today's confirmations is that whatever is told the FBI may be told the media—by senators...

...Mitchell told me that she first became curious as a result of remarks made before the vote by Sen...

...The reporters who assembled in the hearing room on March 30 for the committee vote did so as blank slates...

...The news stories prior to March 30 gave no hint of any drug use in Ryan's past...

...30 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR JUNE 1990...

...I did not hear anybody raise THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR JUNE 1990 29 While failing to take out its target, the leak did cause considerable personal pain for Ryan (his eight-year-old daughter heard about daddy's drug use at school...

...The relevance that decided the issue inside NBC was not job-related, as in whether Ryan's past drug use might affect his ability to do the job, but politics-related, as in whether the number of senators taking the drug issue into account was large enough to trigger a story...

...Those are the basic facts, and given the nastiness of the leak, they invite some of those basic questions of journalism, such as who leaked, how and why, and to what effect...

...But she did say that "a significant number" of senators told her that the FBI's findings were affecting their deliberations—if true, these admissions suggest senatorial complicity in the leak of a considerable magnitude...

...Don Riegle: "If this committee does send this nominee to the Senate floor, would all members of the Senate have access to the same information that members of this committee have had access to, information which for some of us has been a factor in our decision...

...Indeed, there is some support for the notion that Mr...

...So did other senators...

...and indeed what he said was true: he had, on his own initiative, previously told the White House and the FBI of his past drug use...

...they now had on-the-record news from the best source of all, along with his gloss on the matter: "I regret this mistake," Ryan said...

...So there were at least two leaking senators, maybe three, maybe more...

...It was a warning shot, too, at anyone hoping to work in an executive branch position requiring Senate confirmation...

...To me, that puts the imprint of unquestionable honesty on this individual...

...Again, from the tape: "In addition to Ryan's lack of experience, senators told NBC News they are troubled by information in his FBI file . . . " I don't think "troubled" means the same thing as "pleased...

...The leak was not the product of searching journalism...

...PRESSWATCH THE LEAK THAT FIZZLED T he headless and hopefully named 1 Office of Thrift Supervision finally received a head and maybe some hope when in early April Washington lawyer Tim Ryan was officially confirmed as the agency's director...

...The March 31 print coverage led with Ryan's statement, noting the NBC report high in the story...

...We know senators leaked...

...Nor was I able to tease the information out of ABC...

...No mention there of how it might add a positive note to the floor debate...

...Well, we know the rest of the story: Ryan was confirmed on April 4. But what are we to make of the curious shift in coverage that one day reported senators were "troubled" and the next day said they were not...

...As soon as Graham spoke, recalled Mitchell, "we [reporters] were all buzzing...

...After all, we have seen this kind of politics-by-leak before, in the Tower case last year...

...Seven paragraphs later Brenner's story included an anonymous comment from one of those talky Hill aides: "A Senate staffer said last night that Ryan's inexperience was at the root of the opposition, and that his acknowledged drug use two decades ago 'didn't help.' " There followed no balancing suggestion—no anonymous quote—to the effect that Ryan's voluntary admission of past drug use should count as a "plus" in his difficult confirmation battle...

...Reporters covering the breaking story would not have to rely on leaks...

...That same evening Ryan issued a statement admitting that in the early 1970s he had smoked marijuana "on a few occasions" and tried cocaine "once, maybe twice...

...Is there a conflict of interest here, or what...

...In case of a leak, Ryan had been prepared to make this statement...

...Mitchell emphasized to me that she relied not on Senate staffers but, as she said in her original piece, on senators themselves...

...The fifth paragraph of her story noted that the "public disclosure of Ryan's drug use by NBC News last night . . . could add an embarrassing note to the floor debate on the nomination...

...the network was still seeking White House confirmation when its airtime came and went...

...Something else must have happened...

...NBC might have been gulled by wily senators and staffers, yet its standards were low enough to allow it...

...Between votes Ryan was the subject of a news leak to the effect that he had used cocaine in the distant past...

...A few reporters suggested to me that the leak left some senators positively disposed toward Ryan, in that Ryan's volunteered admission of past drug use spoke well of his integrity...

...I had no idea at all," said Mitchell...

...In the course of praising Ryan's integrity, Warner observed: "This committee possesses information, knowing full by Terry Eastland well that he had the courage to disclose everything about his life...

...Now here's a question for journalism...

...Of course, official confirmation came soon enough...

...And we saw how revelations of past drug use (marijuana only) can undo a nomination, in the Ginsburg case of 1987.that issue [drug use] as a substantive matter with respect to the suitability of this nominee to otherwise be eligible for this job...

...Thus, on Sunday, April 1, Robert D. Hershey, Jr...

...Mitchell dug deepest first, learning from senators about the contents of supposedly confidential FBI files...

...Graham's formulation was critical...

...Ryan's candor in disclosing it to the [FBI] . . . might outweigh negative reaction...

...My speculation is that those opposing Ryan got the news story they intended, hoping that it would create the kind of controversy that engulfs a nominee and leads to his rejection by the full Senate, if not withdrawal beforehand...

...Note what this means...

...How did the leak affect the Senate's deliberations...