Presswatch: From Lake to Oceania
Cony, John
PR ESSWATCH by John Corry From Lake to Oceania A nthony Lake was a bad choice to begin with. Something about him did not feel right, and the thought of him heading the CIA made people nervous....
...He is a man in love with his own virtue...
...Enter the president now with his idea: tying the public interest in with the digital licenses...
...T he press agreed, at least at first...
...Commentators had explanations...
...it would also be the same as offering newspapers free newsprint and ink if they would run candidates' press releases without editing them...
...Clinton, of course, was trying to rise above White House fundraising scandals when he made the free-time proposal...
...Obviously this was the country's loss, and not his...
...Al Hunt, "The Capital Gang": Committee chairman Richard Shelby's "McCarthyite witch hunt...
...Obviously, Lake decided tonight he had had enough...
...Richard Cohen, Washington Post: "A good man was badly treated...
...Therefore we could not escape them...
...48 M ay 1997 • The American Spectator vations about Lake's handling of fundraising matters and the NSC...
...It said that, because of sound bites and 3o-second attack ads, "citizens feel cheated, grow cynical, tune out...
...noted, Lake "has been reluctant to admit that foes even exist...
...Clinton supported the deception, of course...
...As Heilbrunn44 Clinton showed no interest when offered free airtime last year...
...Anthony Lewis, New York Times: "The antecedent is Joe McCarthy...
...The broadcasters would give all federal candidates, not just presidential candidates, free time...
...perhaps it was because he also seemed self-righteous...
...Yet Clinton showed no interest when he was offered free airtime himself in the last election...
...Worse, he did not seem to know when pressure was being applied...
...He was a bad choice for CIA director, and the press never understood why...
...But the licenses are valued at up to $38 billion, and this would be a huge giveaway...
...Whether the NSC could have prevented this is doubtful—Clinton encouraged the visits —but Lake was caught in the mess...
...Most of the people who want free time for candidates, however, never liked Dole in the first place...
...The Federal Communications Commission plans to award licenses to provide digital high-definition television to existing broadcasters at no cost...
...Washington," it said, "was left to reflect on the brutal ways of public life...
...Watch out for the people who know what's good for you...
...Fox would have allowed him to prerecord it...
...T o point out the obvious: Clinton's recent proposal to give political candidates free time on television to "talk directly to the voters without gimmicks or intermediaries" was cynical...
...You could tell that from the favorable coverage of Clinton's proposal in the New York Times: a front-page story, along with the text of his speech and a sidebar on the group that is promoting free time...
...In the much-quoted phrase from his letter to Clinton, he said the confirmation process was "nasty and brutish without being short," and that he feared he might lose his dignity if the "political circus" continued...
...In a 1975 Washington Post op-ed, he wrote that Cambodia, like Vietnam, was in civil war...
...did not say how it knew this— organizations like this never do—but it claimed that it knew how to make things better: nightly appearances by candidates should be "roadblocked...
...What he might do if he burst was unclear, but it had to be something fearsome...
...Lake, it seems, had been abused by the senators, and as Koppel also said, citing an unidentified Lake pal as his source, he was beginning to feel "like a bear in a circus...
...She recommended that Tamraz, who is wanted for questioning in Lebanon in an embezzlement case, not be allowed to meet with Clinton...
...Jacob Heilbrunn described it in the New Re public: "Lake's view of the world...
...Lake has been wrong in his views more often than he has been right...
...There was, of course, an arms-control treaty a few years later...
...He stamped his feet, and had a snit, and insisted the fault wasn't his...
...Think of Orwell's Oceania under Big Brother...
...In a 1984 Foreign Affairs article he co-authored with Leslie Gelb, now the head of the Council on Foreign Relations, Lake said that the Soviets "seemed to be sending a message to the American electorate: there could be no genuine arms control while Reagan remains president...
...Then Tamraz donated at least $177,0oo to the national and state parties...
...that afternoon Lake withdrew, blaming a city that had gone haywire, and suggesting that Shelby and other Republicans had caused all the problems...
...It is that simple...
...The public interest, however, means one thing to the Christian Coalition, say, and quite another to the National Organization for Women, much less to anyone who watches Howard Stern...
...He called for an "immediate, peaceful turning over of power" to the murderous Khmer Rouge...
...How would Lake be able to oversee an intelligence community with 8o,000 people if he did not know about the problems within his staff of 151...
...Free TV etc...
...Bob Dole had a better idea when he said the federal government should auction off the digital licenses, and then do something sensible with the money...
...They are the people who know what's good for you...
...prepared a withdrawal letter even before it began...
...Consequently they do not want to vote...
...His shamelessness aside, though, Clinton was also promoting bad public policy...
...But the hearing had gone on only three days, and, according to the AP, Lake had JOHN CORRY is The American Spectator's senior correspondent...
...The candidates would be seen unfiltered and unfettered, free to say whatever they chose...
...Perhaps this was because he seemed soft...
...The phrase rescuing "our democracy from the grip of big money" had a nice ring to it...
...Thus the broadcasters would be operating in the public interest, and they would get the free licenses...
...Then John Donvan, ABC's White House correspondent, reported that sources had said "that Lake simply got fed up, fed up with the scrutiny, fed up with what he saw as an interminable and unfair examination of his private affairs and public career...
...Two days later he told the White House again...
...Apparently the Republicans only wanted to get even for Robert Bork and Clarence Thomas...
...Neither of these failings necessarily disqualifies anyone for anything in Washington, nor even both of them together, but they seemed ill-suited for a director of central intelligence...
...Nightline" opened with a film clip of Lake when he first appeared at his confirmation hearing...
...On the day he withdrew his candidacy, the Wall Street Journal published a story about the contacts between Roger Tamraz, a Lebanese-American oil financier, and a member of Lake's NSC staff...
...The Washington Post reported that White House staffers had been concerned about his well-being...
...The public interest is whatever anyone says it is, and FCC bureaucrats should not be allowed to define it...
...When the group —Free TV for Straight Talk Coalition—first surfaced last year, it took out a full-page ad in the Times that decried low voter turnout...
...Then, to get the CIA job, "which he did not really want," he had to submit to the Senate inspection...
...He did not even have to do it live...
...But the senators "wanted somebody to hurt," the Economist said, and so "they humiliated him viciously...
...Britain's Economist said that, as national security adviser, Lake had "worked around the clock, harming his health and his marriage...
...He said it "could help free our democracy from the grip of big money," and then went off that night to a $2.5,000-per-plate fundraising dinner...
...The Journal story was damning...
...If Reagan, say, had taken his advice, the Berlin Wall would still be standing...
...The group was organized by Paul Taylor, a former reporter for the Washington Post, and its supporters include Walter Cronkite, Hollywood celebrities, and a bipartisan collection of politicians who ought to know better, Senator John McCain among them...
...Or if not haywire, then pretty dam brutal...
...Said windbag analyst Mark Shields about the Republicans: "They're getting Tony Lake's scalp...
...The Economist was sketchy on how this was done, but assumed that everyone knew...
...But little of this touched on what many thoughtful people were concerned about, Bob Kerrey possibly among them...
...Washington," he said, "has gone haywire...
...From the beginning, there were ominous signs," Ted Koppel said...
...From Cambodia to the Soviet Union, from Bosnia to the Middle East, Lake's career-long penchant has been to evade unpleasant realities and elide the differences imposed by clear moral choices...
...His people did not even bother to reply to the Fox network when it said it would give him a free half-hour on election eve...
...Clinton had been selling access, and Chinese arm suppliers, shady Thai lobbyists, and convicted felons also had visited the White House...
...Certainly Lake did not hide his own indignation over how he had been treated...
...Lake cited the "unprecedented fashion" in which his nomination was politicizing the intelligence committee, and he said that even though he had enough votes for confirmation, the delays in confirming him were hurting the CIA and the National Security Council in ways he could "no longer tolerate...
...Lake had been unable to insulate the NSC from the fundraising pressure of the Democratic National Committee...
...A party line was laid down, and even when Kerrey went on the PBS "NewsHour" and said three times that he had reservations about Lake, he had a hard time being heard...
...Bob Kerrey, the ranking Democrat on the intelligence committee, told the White House he had reserA truly haywire world means being ruled by Big Brother...
...Lake has left a paper trail here...
...He was carrying around a grievance...
...That is, they should be "shown simultaneously on all network stations, PBS, and interested cable stations...
...is rooted in moral ambiguity and ambivalence...
...He seemed to have been fed up in advance...
...04 The American Spectator • May 1997 49...
...They were worried "he might burst with anger...
...The pounding began almost immediately...
...The Tamraz incident was not the first of its kind...
...Meanwhile White House spokesman Mike McCurry talked about a "witch hunt," and George Stephanopoulos told Ted Koppel that Lake was "a victim of political violence...
...The cycle of political destruction must end," the president said, and so should "political revenge...
...Apparently Lake was not aware of any of this...
...In 1977, as a State Department official, he wrote the speech in which Jimmy Carter worried about "the inordinate fear of Communism...
...But even Cohen noted that Lake "is a man who always seems to leave a muddle in his wake," and he is "not a spiffy manager...
...The broadcasters need only to satisfy the FCC requirement that they operate in the "public interest...
...Democratic fundraisers overruled her, however, and put Tamraz on the White House guest list...
...It was a chilling vision: all-channel, state-mandated programming, dulling us so with political speeches that we would no longer know, or care to know, one from the other...
...The press reacted as expected when Lake withdrew his candidacy—vindictive Republicans, of course, made him do it—even though he confirmed everyone's fears about him when he did...
...He still believed in public service, he said, and he knew he would have been good for the CIA, but he had been pressed beyond all endurance...
Vol. 30 • May 1997 • No. 5
