Faulty hearing
FERGUSON, ANDREW
Faulty Hearing Dear Diary: You Won't Believe What I Had to Sit Through This Week By Andrew Ferguson Tuesday, July 8 Of course we presshounds deplore the corruption of news with the values of...
...Out in the hallway, during a break, some reporters cornered a pair of committee lawyers...
...The reporters' chagrin was unmistakable...
...I'm on background now," a White House official said to a clutch of reporters in the hallway...
...Normally, in decoding pol-speak, which is highly encrypted, I would take him to mean precisely the opposite of what he says—as another example of "lowballing," dampening expectations so that the revelations, when they do come, will seem all the more titillating...
...It's a "state of the art facility," with lots of camera stands and monitors and sound boxes and arc lights— all the appurtenances of a big TV studio...
...The other lawyer could sense our disappointment...
...Faulty Hearing Dear Diary: You Won't Believe What I Had to Sit Through This Week By Andrew Ferguson Tuesday, July 8 Of course we presshounds deplore the corruption of news with the values of entertainment—it trivializes serious issues, as you know, and endangers the creation of an informed electorate, without which no democracy can long survive—but mostly we like a really good show...
...Finance-scandal scholars have long assumed that the centerpiece of the committee's work would be to trace illegal campaign contributions, if possible, back to their Chinese source, maybe even (please God) through John Huang...
...With Bruce Willis...
...But Thompson has said all along—and repeated again today—that "these hearings are not trials where people are prosecuted...
...Wednesday, July 9 Day Two, and already I'm getting discouraged...
...About 150 chairs are set up in the back of the room, two dozen or so reserved for White House officials and party hacks, the rest for concerned citizens...
...One problem is the hearing room itself...
...No," said a lawyer...
...Minutes pass, then hours...
...And that was it...
...The pain, Mr...
...At every break in the proceedings, committee staffers and White House officials rush to the hallway to tell reporters what everybody just saw happen in the hearing room...
...He says the system just "atrophied...
...political process," Thompson intoned...
...But what about everybody else...
...But I think maybe the hearings have lost their way too...
...Sullivan is about to take the bar exam, after which he will make more money in a month than the congressmen for whom he worked make in a year...
...Apparently people figure something isn't worth seeing in person if you can't watch it on TV...
...This is a man who has acted with Sissy Spacek...
...During the Clinton administration we've seen the birth of a corollary: If it's already been in the newspaper, it can't be a scandal...
...The hearings are being held in the sleek and bland Room 216 of the Hart Office Building...
...Though I can't reproduce the swoops and dips of the senator's faux-JFK delivery, his statement is worth quoting at length: "Forty years ago, another chairman of a congressional committee, a senator also from the state of Tennessee, convened an inquiry into wrongdoing in our country....It was only on a flickering television screen, but I will never forget it and even if I tried, my family would never allow me...
...Huang, we're happy to have him speak...
...My God, he really does mean it...
...Sullivan said they weren't fund-raisers at all...
...It was Estes Kefauver, and he left the American people with the unmistakable impression that because of the misdeeds of a few individuals [i.e., ahem, the Mafia], there was a general problem of the role of Italian Americans in the commerce of this country...
...In no way will we interfere...
...They will never get on MSNBC if they keep this up...
...One reporter ran off with this pearl safely recorded in his notebook, then quickly returned...
...The second is to inject identity politics into the investigation—to accuse of racism, preemptively, anyone who dares dwell upon malefactors with names like Huang and Chung and Trie...
...Key Points on What Happened in Today's Hearings," reads one handout I got this afternoon...
...He said that, owing to information acquired only in the last 24 hours, he had an opening statement to make before he made his official opening statement—a pre-opening opening statement, as it were...
...What we have here is a failure to communicate...
...With his rumbling Southern drawl and imposing physical dimensions—and, most important, with his many years of acting in Hollywood—Thompson can summon an impressive display of gravi-tas at will...
...This is the Democrats' first line of defense: Everybody does it, and the other guy does it worse...
...I'm a White House official, okay...
...No John Deans...
...Moreover, the FBI briefed the White House about the Chinese caper...
...But as a witness he's stolidly undramatic...
...Then Pete Domenici elbowed her aside, with quotes from Justice Brandeis, Walter Lipp-man, and Woodrow Wilson—three quotes in five sentences...
...He used to date Bianca Jagger, and for the first time I got a hint of why they broke up...
...It's a curious way to open a hearing—letting everybody know that they won't be hearing the juiciest bits...
...Young functionaries from both parties—budding Richard Sullivans—circulate among the presshounds continually, bathing them in paper...
...Was there some suggestion that this Japanese money really came from China, in furtherance of the Chinese Plan that Thompson had warned us about in his bracing curtain-raiser...
...Carl Levin pointed out that President Bush used White House stationery to announce fund-raisers...
...I will...
...Thursday, July 10 Sullivan was back today, as the committee's only witness...
...Apparently they wanted him to say that undue pressure was exerted on the DNC—from the president, the White House staff, and the Lippo Group—to hire John Huang...
...It's printed in bold-faced type...
...As the questioning of Sullivan meandered on, senators wandered in and out...
...Very one-sided...
...No scandal...
...It's been very partisan so far...
...No great earthshaking revelations...
...And if you want to barf, so be it...
...Since the Republicans want us all to infer that Huang may have been a Chinese agent, this bit of news would have been quite dramatic if it were uncorked in open hearings...
...But of course the hearings are also about scoring political points...
...A giant exercise in system improvement...
...And of course they've got a case...
...Reporters were still abuzz about John Huang's offer, made yesterday, to testify to the committee, if it grants him limited immunity from prosecution...
...No, said Sullivan...
...There was only one witness scheduled for today, the former finance director of the DNC...
...The Democrats, on the other hand, wanted him to agree that the Republicans were sleazier than the Democrats...
...The current cliche, endlessly repeated by clever people, is that in Washington the scandal isn't what's illegal but what's legal...
...We hate boring shows...
...By the end of the day, quotes had also popped up from Aristotle, Tom Paine, Allen Dulles, Harry Truman, W. C. Fields, and that old segregationist fraud Sam Ervin...
...The room has begun to look like a depopulated village after a great plague has passed through...
...And there was plenty of that as the morning wore on...
...Were the president's famous coffee klatches unseemly...
...The press tables have thinned out, too...
...He even has a pretty blond wife sitting supportively behind him, like Mo...
...He would...
...The wire transfer came from another shady operator...
...This is Spin Central...
...The entire session today was given over to opening statements, and the only interest lay in deciding whose statement was the most banal...
...Rather these hearings are about looking at a system, at how our government is working, designed at the end to make our system better...
...Should we be surprised by how natural he seems...
...Senator Nick-les was just wondering: Wasn't the DNC under extraordinary pressure to hire Huang...
...They wanted him to admit that the White House coffees were illegal fund-raisers...
...You see...
...In other words: "If you knew what we knew, you'd be amazed...
...There's no suggestion that some big guy choreographed all this...
...I want to assume one responsibility," he announced to his colleagues...
...We're just going to talk about it among ourselves...
...I will be charitable, and assume this chronic truancy accounts for the unbearable, the excruciating repetitiveness of the questions they ask...
...Would Sullivan agree...
...We're taking a wait-and-see posture," said the White House official...
...Which it is...
...For one thing, the committee's own leakers have been busy in the last week lowering expectations...
...They'll broadcast the Nevada boxing commission's hearings on the future of Mike Tyson instead...
...I've made a mental note to check how often the word "boyish" is used in tomorrow's papers...
...Excuse me...
...1) Nothing New in Morning Testimony—Huang Hiring Detailed Seven Months Ago...
...Ka-boom...
...He was staring in the mirror with such bedazzled infatuation that I felt embarrassed, as though I had interrupted a pair of mooning lovers...
...All agreed that these hearings into the unparalleled sleazi-ness of the Democratic party should proceed in a spirit of bipartisanship...
...But the photographers were out in force, and as always they rushed to capture Thompson as he lumbered into the hearing room and took his seat...
...The great majority of information about this matter cannot be discussed further in open session," Thompson said in closing...
...Unfortunately for the committee's story line, the money came from Japan, not China...
...Maybe he is another John Dean...
...I can imagine the hell he must have gone through every morning fighting Bianca for bathroom time...
...But doesn't that sort of undercut the idea that the Chinese were behind all this...
...A good show needs a bracing curtain-raiser, and immediately after the gavel fell this morning, formally commencing the hearings, chairman Fred Thompson tried to give us one...
...This isn't a prosecution...
...There's no suggestion that all these transactions were part of some grand plan...
...raiser at the Democratic National Committee...
...They wanted him to admit that the DNC's system for verifying contributions was dismantled for nefarious reasons...
...To pass the time, I busied myself reading handouts...
...Instead of wasting taxpayer money on hearings today, investigators could have got the same information seven months ago from a 60-cent newspaper...
...Not really...
...The ones from the DNC are the best...
...Now: If the lawyers can work out an offer with Mr...
...They are not soap operas designed to titillate...
...This involved pouring money into political campaigns, apparently, which is against the law...
...But Sullivan didn't agree...
...Where are our priorities in this country...
...I scoured the papers this morning and— more disappointment—found only one reference to Sullivan as "boyish...
...There's no case trying to be made here...
...Chairman, that many Americans felt on that day must not and will not be allowed to be visited upon Asian Americans in the coming weeks...
...Sullivan said no...
...I ran into him in the men's room this morning, during a break, as he delicately arranged his hair...
...I wouldn't expect any big smoking guns if I were you," one Republican senator told me...
...They do this every morning, and you can't help but wonder: How many pictures of him do they need...
...But now, suddenly, it's old news...
...Lanny," he asked the White House official, "the wait-and-see thing, is that on the record...
...The award for most shameless opening statement went, by acclamation, to Bob Torri-celli, the elegantly dressed, formidably tanned senator from New Jersey...
...The big celebrity is Lanny Davis, the White House counsel in charge of scandals (not his official title...
...When Estes Kefauver launched his pogrom against every olive-oil importer in America, he did it from the Caucus Room...
...Sullivan is a Washington type: the young political obsessive who graduates college to sign on with one political campaign after another, eats half his dinners from Dominos late at night with his pals in trashy campaign headquarters, gets dazzled and then bored driving Ted Kennedy or Alan Simpson to fundraisers, and careens toward total burnout a decade before middle age...
...Look," the lawyer said, exasperated...
...That's Bob Torricelli's challenge...
...Since when does a little nibble on an ear take precedence over Communist infiltration of our political process...
...That's Bob Torri-celli's responsibility...
...Affirmative, said Sullivan...
...Other Republicans quoted Deep Throat (the leaker, not the movie): "Follow the money...
...There's no conspiracy theory being promoted...
...I've been thinking so much about Tor-ricelli that I'm starting to sound like him...
...The Democrats, for their part, agreed that, in the interests of fairness, Republicans should be exposed as even sleazier than the Democrats...
...Crossfire...
...Already several events have conspired to make sure the Thompson hearings that begin today will be, at best, merely a pretty good show and, at worst, a boring show...
...And we've been hoping, desperately, that the Thompson hearings into the fund-raising abuses of the 1996 presidential campaign will be a really good show...
...Only slowly, very slowly, did it become clear what the Republicans wanted from him...
...The Committee believes that high-level Chinese government officials [have] crafted a plan to increase China's influence over the U.S...
...This raises questions about who in the White House should have known—or actually knew—of the Chinese plan and how it had come to be implemented...
...Normally such highprofile shows would be held in the Senate Caucus Room, a grand chamber that has served as the site for juicy Capitol Hill spectacles through the ages, from Teapot Dome to Army-McCarthy to Watergate and the Thomas-Hill hearings...
...Senator Levin wanted to know: Are the Republicans worse about fund-raising than Democrats...
...Surely you've seen him on Meet the Press...
...This too has been in the papers, after all...
...John Dean without the felony convictions, that is...
...Did President Clinton invite contributors to pajama parties in the Lincoln Bedroom...
...I feel like a guy who thought he was going to see an Arnold Schwarzenegger movie, only to discover his wife has brought him to The English Patient...
...But he's a gutsy guy—so gutsy, in fact, that he's not ashamed to admit it...
...The line of spectators waiting to get into the hearing room gets shorter every day...
...I have to, it's my job...
...It's already been in the paper...
...Stay tuned," he said, encouragingly...
...Yesterday, the day before the hearings began, was a day of dueling leaks...
...As a finance director, Sullivan may have been aces—and, except for that small matter of millions of dollars in illegal contributions, he probably was...
...TV reporters love the old Caucus Room because it gives them an obvious kicker—"Yes, Tom, these old walls have heard the question before: 'What did the president know and when did he know it?'" Not this time, though...
...Another reason the hearings may not contain any great revelations is that the White House and the committee's Democrats have been preemptively leaking revelations to the press—the way a bomb squad will detonate an explosive under controlled conditions so no one gets hurt...
...How about the hearings so far...
...Here at last was solid evidence of illicit foreign money being funneled into the presidential campaign...
...Levin mentioned a fund-raiser at Vice President Quayle's official residence...
...Senator Torricelli thought that, in the final analysis, Republicans are really much worse...
...He's Richard Sullivan, and he's 33, though he looks about 12...
...And then, suddenly, miraculously, there was . . . news...
...But so far I've seen the gallery full only once, briefly, on the morning of the first hearing...
...I read in John Carmody's TV Column in the Washington Post this morning that even MSNBC—even MSNBC—has declined to carry the hearings live...
...But that was in the New York Times, which is, after all, the newspaper of record...
...But you're never going to know what we know, because we're not going to tell you...
...Don't forget Haley Barbour, the chairman of the Republican National Committee, who brought in money from Hong Kong...
...Senator Collins wanted to know whether there wasn't extraordinary pressure applied to the DNC to get John Huang hired...
...That's on the record," said White House counsel Lanny Davis...
...With a dozen cameras whirring and flashing six feet in front of his face, he settled in, withdrew papers from a folder, and adjusted his microphone, doing an uncanny impression of a man who does not have a dozen cameras whirring and flashing six feet in front of his face...
...When I get tired of reading this stuff at the press tables in the hearing room, I can get it firsthand in the hallway outside...
...And on the big question about the Chinese plan to infiltrate our political process, he drew a complete blank...
...We're just trying to pull the curtain back on the system...
...Susan Collins of Maine took an early lead by quoting, inevitably, the catchphrase from Jerry Maguire: "Show me the money...
...He allowed as how that was true...
...But we may be out of luck...
...But the thought nags: My God, what if he really means it...
...Did the Democratic National Committee end up with foreign money...
...The committee released copies of an overseas wire transfer to someone called Yogesh Gandhi, a shady operator who was apparently broke but who nevertheless donated $325,000 to the DNC...
...The look on his face was almost pornographic...
...We, as a people, have lost our way...
...The New York Times had the best one: President Clinton himself, we learned, intervened to get John Huang hired as a fundAndrew Ferguson is senior editor of The Weekly Standard...
Vol. 2 • July 1997 • No. 44
