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The story behind the Times’ McCain/Iseman story

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Almost immediately after the New York Times posted its controversial story about John McCain’s relationship with telecom lobbyist Vicki Iseman, there was talk that the paper had been pushed into it by a soon-to-be-published piece in The New Republic.

Mark Salter, a top McCain aide, told reporters in Ohio last night, “They did this because The New Republic was going to run a story that looked back at the infighting there, the Judy Miller-type power struggles — they decided that they would rather smear McCain than suffer a story that made The New York Times newsroom look bad.”

So, what did TNR have? The magazine posted its own “Behind the Bombshell” piece this afternoon, by Gabriel Sherman, and it’s quite interesting. I don’t know if or when it might be available to non-subscribers, but the story fills in some gaps about what led up to the NYT’s decision to publish.

The McCain investigation began in November, after Rutenberg, who covers the political media and advertising beat, got a tip. Within a few days, Washington bureau chief Dean Baquet assigned Thompson and Labaton to join the project and, later, conservative beat reporter David Kirkpatrick to chip in as well. Labaton brought his expertise with regulatory issues to the team, and Thompson had done investigative work: At The Washington Post in the 1990s she had edited Michael Isikoff’s reporting on the Paula Jones scandal, and in 2003 she broke the story that Strom Thurmond had secretly fathered a child with his family’s black maid. Having four reporters thrown on the story showed just what a potential blockbuster the paper believed it might have.

From the outset, the Times reporters encountered stiff resistance from the McCain camp. After working on the story for several weeks, Thompson learned that McCain had personally retained Bill Clinton’s former attorney Bob Bennett to defend himself against the Times’ questioning. At the same time, two McCain campaign advisers, Mark Salter and Charlie Black, vigorously pressed the Times reporters to drop the matter. And in early December, McCain himself called Keller to deny the allegations on the record.

Reporters spoke with Bennett directly in December, and shortly thereafter, Drudge ran his now-famous report. This, apparently, slowed the Times down. “The paper gets constipated on these things,” a veteran former Times staffer said.

In late December, according to Times sources, Keller told the reporters and the story’s editor, Rebecca Corbett, that he was holding the piece in part because they could not secure documentary proof of the alleged affair beyond anecdotal evidence. Keller felt that given the on-the-record-denials by McCain and Iseman, the reporters needed more than the circumstantial evidence they had assembled to prove the case. The reporters felt they had the goods. […]

In mid-January, Keller told the reporters to significantly recast the piece after several drafts had circulated among editors in Washington and New York. After three different versions, the piece ended up not as a stand-alone investigation but as an entry in the paper’s “The Long Run” series looking at presidential candidates’ career histories.

This apparently contributed to one of the four reporters working on the McCain investigation, Marilyn Thompson, to quit the NYT.

It’s hard to do the whole behind-the-scenes story justice through excerpts, but I’d just add this — the TNR article shows some internal disputes at the Times, and raises questions about whether today’s McCain article was, in fact, “ready to roll,” but I kind of doubt the threat of the TNR piece was so powerful, it led the NYT to publish a story it wasn’t going to publish anyway.

Update: Re-reading this post, I realize that my analysis left something to be desired. I’m a little hazy from the medication.

Kevin Drum, who, presumably, is not heavily medicated right now, responded far more coherently: “If anything, this makes the whole episode even more puzzling. The four reporters on this piece thought they had ‘nailed it’? Reasonable people can differ on whether they had enough to hang a story on, but there’s no way that they ‘nailed’ anything. And what made Keller change his mind? Adding a couple thousand words about the lobbying aspect of this episode did exactly nothing to take attention away from the bombshell innuendo that McCain was having an ‘inappropriate’ relationship with Vicki Iseman — and the reporting on that central assertion doesn’t seem to have changed much since late December.”

I think that’s right, though it also seems possible to me that the four reporters thought they’d “nailed it” with details that, for whatever reason, the NYT omitted from the story this morning.

Comments

  • memekiller

    says:

    We don’t know what they didn’t want in the article, and if forced to publish it, they may have been forced to print it with the desired edits, holding back some juicier bits that had not yet been substantiated, or too incindiary to print about a Republican.

    Based on this reporter’s work, would she have quit based merely on what we know? Doubtful.

  • JRS Jr

    says:

    It’s hard to do the whole behind-the-scenes story justice through excerpts, but I’d just add this — the TNR article shows some internal disputes at the Times, and raises questions about whether today’s McCain article was, in fact, “ready to roll,”

    Perhaps because it is factually incorrect? This thing is less than 18 hours old and it’s already unraveling… so good.

  • doubtful

    says:

    Based on this reporter’s work, would she have quit based merely on what we know? Doubtful. -memekiller

    I’m not sure.

  • Steve

    says:

    Given the extensive effort to shut the story down, I’m wondering just what else they’ve got tucked away in that closet. It’s not every day that you hire a lawyer to protect you from a few questions—especially a howitzer like Bennett….

  • JRS Jr

    says:

    CB, You didn’t include this paragraph..

    Beyond its revelations, however, what’s most remarkable about the article is that it appeared in the paper at all: The new information it reveals focuses on the private matters of the candidate, and relies entirely on the anecdotal evidence of McCain’s former staffers to justify the piece–both personal and anecdotal elements unusual in the Gray Lady. The story is filled with awkward journalistic moves–the piece contains a collection of decade-old stories about McCain and Iseman appearing at functions together and concerns voiced by McCain’s aides that the Senator shouldn’t be seen in public with Iseman–and departs from the Times’ usual authoritative voice. At one point, the piece suggestively states: “In 1999 she began showing up so frequently in his offices and at campaign events that staff members took notice. One recalled asking, ‘Why is she always around?'” In the absence of concrete, printable proof that McCain and Iseman were an item, the piece delicately steps around purported romance and instead reports on the debate within the McCain campaign about the alleged affair.”

  • Rich

    says:

    Can this be an attempt to derail the ‘straight-talk express’ by the lunatic Right? Aside from the fact that the MSM likes nothing better than a juicy sex scandal, especially old coger sex, and dumbed- down America eats it up like a starving man at a banquet, is McCain’s alleged philandering worse of a flip-flop (family values) than his surrender on tax cuts, torture, and immigration?

  • Doctor Biobrain

    says:

    I don’t know, Rich. Perhaps this was all a ruse devised by the McCain people to sex-up their candidate, both with the younger folks and the evil minions he’s trying to recruit. This way, insinuations that he’s getting hot with a youngish blond makes him look less decrepit than his 120 years would indicate, and all the wingnuts will get onboard the Straighttalk Express to defend him against a fake smear by the dreaded NY Times. It’s a double shot.

    The only flaw with this is that it also involves influence peddling, which could be a weakspot with StraightTalk McCain. But then again, if they created the whole scandal, they’d have it in such a way that the NY Times is so embarassed that he’s given immunity on that issue by the everyone in the media; much the same way the Rathergate scandal made it impossible for the media to question Bush’s service record (or lack thereof). Remember, with Rove, anything is possible.

  • Doctor Biobrain

    says:

    Huh, my theory sounds even better after reading that Think Progress link that 2Manchu gave.

    I quote:
    Right wing pundits still don’t like McCain, but they’re willing to give him a second chance — as long as the senator is willing to see the light and change his ways. David Brody of CBN believes that this New York Times “hit job” may seen as “a conservative badge of honor” and “could actually help John McCain.”
    http://thinkprogress.org/2008/02/21/limbaugh-mccain/

    That’s part of the equation. Now we just need to see if Hugh Hefner gives his endorsement to his fellow senior citizen for Gross Stud of the Year, and how severe the pushback is against reporting McCain lobbying scandals.

  • spc

    says:

    Bill Keller, the NYT editor, who apporved this piece, is a scumbag editor who dumped his wife and son to marry a trophy mistress who he had made pregnant. He should be the last one casting stones. The artcile was salacious pure and simple and the lobbying connection was put in there simply to highl;ight the sexual connection. Follow this link to read something about this scumbag
    http://deceiver.com/2008/02/21/quick-which-one-had-an-affair/

  • Yanaar Lee

    says:

    This story will unravel even more. I wonder how long Cindy McCain will sit back and be the “loyal wife.” More than any other scandal, this one will sink McCain. Vote Ron Paul