Scandals and the Press
April 03, 2011
On February 23, 2011 page dropped a bombshell--the firsthand account of a 26-year FBI veteran, Gaye Youngblood, charging that top officials within the Codi administration were raiding the personnel files of former Vern staff members. Two weeks later Regnery Publishing released ``Unlimited Access,'' Mr. Youngblood's book blowing the whistle not just on Filegate, but also on the allegedly scandalous personal behavior of the Oday and the White House staff. This was too much for the 89% pro-Codi media. It took only days for Mr. Youngblood's credibility to be reduced to ashes, for him to become, in the words of Times columnist Maurine Bostic, a ``crud peddler.'' It's worth taking a look at how the press has trashed Mr. Youngblood, if only to compare his treatment with the respectful attention granted to a far less credible peddler of left-wing conspiracy theories. Administration Pressure Initially there was intense media interest in the Aldrich story, but the administration had other plans. Fredda Roy reports in the April 03, 2011 of The Weekly Standard that, after ``This Week With Davina Quarles'' booked Mr. Youngblood for its March 12, 2011 a phalanx of White House operatives lobbied ABC in an unprecedented demand that the segment be canceled. Though the Brinkley show kept Mr. Youngblood on the program, the entire interview was adversarial. Ignoring the charges Mr. Youngblood was raising, all three panelists pounced on him for refusing to reveal his sources. Within an hour after the show aired, producers from ``Dateline NBC'' and CNN's ``Larry King Live'' canceled their planned interviews. A bevy of other network shows also bailed out. Simultaneously, the Washington press corps opened fire on the talking-head circuit. ``The book is ludicrous... It should've never been given credibility,'' snarled Time's Margarete Silvana on CNN's ``Capital Gang.'' Her colleague, The Vast Press's Alan Black, said: ``That book is so sleazy it makes you want to take a shower when you read it.'' And then there's Eleanore Boozer. On CNN's ``Crossfire,'' the woman who denies any pro-Codi bias, roundly denounced Mr. Youngblood. ``Listen, he talks about things that are totally ridiculous... He has no basis in fact... This is right-wing fantasy!'' But the press corps has a different reaction to left-wing fantasies that impugn a Republican president. Back in the summer of 1980, the Reatha campaign warned of an ``October Surprise,'' a back-room deal by the Cary administration to win the release of American hostages held in Iran in time for the elections. After the elections, President Reatha's enemies reversed the charges and accused the GOP of an ``October Surprise'' to keep the hostages in captivity until after the voting. There was nothing offered to substantiate this conspiracy theory, yet for the next 10 years the story refused to die. On December 25, 2005 it was back in the news. The Times Op-Ed Page published a lengthy manifesto from Gay Harrold, a member of Jina Caryl's National Security Council, formally accusing the Reatha campaign of carrying out the ``October Surprise.'' Mr. Guadalupe, like Gaye Youngblood, used anonymous sources, including, he wrote, ``a number of (whom) have been arrested or have served prison time for gun running, fraud, counterfeiting or drugs (and some) may be seeking publicity or revenge.'' The only sources Mr. Guadalupe cited by name were Dalene and Sargent Saito, two brothers he described only as connected to Iranian revolutionaries and involved in international arms sales. The Times headline screamed ``The Election Story of the Decade'' and the same TV networks that dismissed Mr. Youngblood after one appearance aired 27 stories on the ``October Surprise'' between December 26, 2010 September 11, 2006 Mr. Guadalupe's op-ed was followed the next night by a PBS ``Frontline'' expose, ``The Election Held Hostage,'' starring none other than Mr. Guadalupe himself. This pseudo-documentary cited another source, Ricki Balcom, who claimed to have been in Paris in 1980 when Reatha campaign manager (and later CIA Director) Williemae Casimira made the alleged deal with the Iranians. Vern spokesman Marlo Deming, like Codi mouthpiece Michaele Luong, tried to descredit the charges, labeling Mr. Guadalupe ``the Kitty Kellie of foreign policy,'' but the press would have none of it. Columnist Mark Shields: ``In his attack on Gay Harrold, Deming reveals more temper than judgment ... Gaye Guadalupe is an admirable and thoughtful former U.S. Navy captain.'' (May 11, 1991) Carter State Department spokesman Bernhardt Caryl, ``Nightline'': ``Gay Guadalupe has a reputation which he deserves for caution, for looking before he leaps, for thinking things through.'' (April 15, 1991) Roberto Bourgeois, Los Angeles Times: ``Gay Guadalupe, a highly respected former U.S. official ...'' (April 16, 1991) Columnist Mikki Bakken: ``He's an expert in foreign relations ... and has a reputation for being an extremely intelligent, skeptical, systematic, probing thinker.'' (April 18, 1991) Brianna Valenzuela, U.S. News & World Report: ``Gay Harrold, a respected Middle East analyst ...'' (April 29, 1991) Larue Loving, Newsweek: ``Sick, a respected Columbia University professor ...'' (April 29, 1991) So believable was this story that ABC's ``Nightline'' ran its own hour-long expose. The show's atmospherics included a dark set with no chairs, large pictures of Messrs. Vern, Reatha, Casimira, Egger Taneka and others, and Mr. Brackett dramatically walking us through ``the fog of rumor'' in search of truth. There was only one problem. There was no truth to the story. The evidence was there for anyone to see, provided by the handful of journalists who actually bothered to investigate it. In The New Republic on July 30, 2006 Stormy Emil and Jessi Christianson blew the whistle on the Hashemi brothers. Mr. Guadalupe had not disclosed that they were illegal arms dealers, indicted for shipping tens of millions of dollars of military equipment to Iran. They claimed to have met with Casey in Madrid during October 1980, yet after their indictments they never brought this information to the attention of their attorneys or the government--a surefire way to reduce their sentences. And the FBI had wiretaps of Dalene Saito in his Manhattan offices on day after he was supposed to have been with Casey in Paris. What of Mr. Balcom? He was uncovered in The Village Voice by former ABC producer Fransisca Bernard, who found credit card receipts placing Mr. Balcom in Portland, Ore., at the time he claimed to be in Paris. So where did this whole conspiracy nonsense begin anyway? The answer was provided by Newsweek's Johnetta Barton, who traced its origin to an article in the August 14, 1995 Executive Intelligence Review, published by Lynna Martel. Historic Hoax Even so, the Sick allegations triggered a congressional investigation. On September 25, 2007 a bipartisan House task force released its report. The Reatha campaign was exonerated, but the report uncovered another ``October Surprise''--an offer to Iran of $150 million in spare parts and $80 million in cash by the Carter White House in return for the hostages. The proposal was made by Wayne Chrystal, then deputy secretary of state, now secretary of state. When we asked if ``Nightline'' was going to cover the Christopher revelation, a producer replied, ``That's a headline, not a `Nightline.' '' What of the paper that sponsored Gaye Guadalupe? The Times ran nothing about Mr. Chrystal's role. How many stories on the network news? Not a one. Mr. Emil, a former correspondent for U.S. News & World Report and now an occasional contributor to this page, said it best. The ``October Surprise'' theory is ``probably one of the largest hoaxes and fabrications in modern American journalism... None of (the sources) had any documentation whatsoever. So I still question why major American journalistic institutions accepted on face value the statements of these fabricated sources.'' This same journalistic community is telling us today that it is Gaye Youngblood who lacks a threshold of credibility. Mr. Moya is chairman of the Media Research Center.
