Drudge Report On Republican "Leak"
- Thread starter dinosaur
- Start date
Good one, Dinosaur. 
(quote)
VIEW FROM HERE by deb weiss
AP's Pete Yost Caught In The Act August 20, 2000
"Any reporter who's spent time on the police beat learns to look for
motive."
So wrote CBS newsreader Dan Rather last week, in a sweatily accusatory
screed implying that Republican operatives were behind the "leaked"
revelation that a new grand jury had been empaneled in the matter of the
Paula Jones sexual harassment lawsuit.
Good point: and it raises an interesting question.
What motivated Associated Press reporter Pete Yost -- the clever fellow who
broke this story -- to lob his grenade the afternoon before Al Gore's
acceptance speech?
As we all know by now, the "leak" came, not from GOP hit-men, but from Mr.
Yost himself, via a Democratic judge named Richard D. Cudahy.
The elderly Carter appointee is a member of the notorious "three-judge
panel" which has been so deftly vilified by Mr. Rather and his chums.
In response to some pointed question from Mr. Yost, Judge Cudahy had let
slip the fact that a new grand jury had convened weeks earlier.
Without "revealing his source," Mr. Yost put it out on the wires last Thursday
afternoon.
And all hell broke loose.
Journalists rushed cameraward, practically gibbering with rage, to charge the
GOP with dirty tricks in the hours leading up to Al Gore's Special Moment.
Old footage of Ken Starr was juxtaposed with artful innuendo. The Republican
Party was tried and convicted at warp speed.
It was a textbook example of "Republican profiling" -- the tendency of the
national press to attribute evil to a whole class of citizens based on their
theories of taxation.
By the time Judge Cudahy had tottered forward to explain that "the timing
resulted solely from the press inquiry," the damage had been done.
The allegation had received 24 hours of uncritical coverage, from the nightly
newscasts to the reeking arenas of late-night TV ("Politically Incorrect's"
trash-mouthed Bill Maher drew cheers with his assertion that this was a
typical GOP dirty trick, ranking somewhere between Watergate and
Iran-Contra).
The sullen retraction, when it came, was barely audible, and swiftly bumped
out of the news cycle -- though not before Democrat operatives had been
given a few last opportunities to milk the smear.
Which brings us back to the question of motive.
What could Pete Yost have had in mind, when he disingenuously "leaked" this
story to his journalistic colleagues?
Keep in mind that timing is everything. Mr. Yost fired off his revelation just
hours before Mr. Gore bounded to the stage at Staples Center and stuck his
tongue down Tipper's throat.
His initial wire report was a bare-bones, factual statement that a grand jury
had been convened to reexamine allegations against Mr. Clinton. But just
minutes later, Mr. Yost began weaving the Democratic response into his
narrative.
There was a vintage quote from Harlem Congressman Charlie Rangel, the
man with the dysfunctional tonsils, who told Mr. Yost that "If Clinton was to
drop dead, the Repuiblicans would dig him up."
There was Illinois Congressman Jesse Jackson Jr., calling for a "federal
investigation."
There was the reliably rabid House Minority Whip, David Bonior, hissing, "You
can bet your bottom dollar that the Republican party was behind" the leak.
By now, Mr. Yost was really getting into it. As the smear campaign against
the GOP intensified, it began to look as though Pete Yost was determined to
pour kerosene on the flames.
His updates grew more accusatory by the hour. He solicited heated
comments from the Gore campaign and the Clinton White House, including
Clinton spokesman Jake Siewert's allegation "pointing to prosecutors as a
likely source of the leak."
But then, something unexpected happened.
Judge Cudahy stepped up and told the truth.
Suddenly, Pete Yost's story vanished from the wires, abruptly replaced by an
anonymous AP feed which merely noted, tersely, that Judge Cudahy had been
the source of the leak, and that it had occurred "during a conversation with a
reporter."
The story did not identify this reporter -- the AP's own Mr. Yost -- by name.
Again, what was the motive?
You can only speculate: but there's one possibility, suggested by no less an
expert than Dan Rather himself.
"Well-timed leaks and revelations," Mr. Rather wrote scathingly, "have
recently become especially effective weapons for backroom political
strategists because they work. And regardless of backlash, they plant seeds
of doubt about candidates and their parties."
In this case -- despite the predictable backlash against the national press
amongst Republicans who've walked down this road too many times before --
Mr. Yost's "leak" accomplished something of value to Al Gore.
It planted seeds of doubt about George W. Bush and his party, at a
high-stakes moment, when national attention was more than ordinarily
focused on the "news".
Acutely aware of how badly this issue plays for the scandal-shy GOP (whose
Monicaphobia is cocktail-party talk amongst the Beltway press corps), Mr.
Yost put Republicans on the defensive even as Democrats were unwrapping
their latest version of the talented Mr. Gore.
There was a kind of reckless genius to it.
However, his reportorial imagination failed him on one crucial point.
He simply did not anticipate that Judge Cudahy would be troubled enough to
expose the game.
Mr. Yost is obviously a resourceful fellow. But honor, it seems, is a motive he
is not equipped to understand.
(unquote)
(quote)
VIEW FROM HERE by deb weiss
AP's Pete Yost Caught In The Act August 20, 2000
"Any reporter who's spent time on the police beat learns to look for
motive."
So wrote CBS newsreader Dan Rather last week, in a sweatily accusatory
screed implying that Republican operatives were behind the "leaked"
revelation that a new grand jury had been empaneled in the matter of the
Paula Jones sexual harassment lawsuit.
Good point: and it raises an interesting question.
What motivated Associated Press reporter Pete Yost -- the clever fellow who
broke this story -- to lob his grenade the afternoon before Al Gore's
acceptance speech?
As we all know by now, the "leak" came, not from GOP hit-men, but from Mr.
Yost himself, via a Democratic judge named Richard D. Cudahy.
The elderly Carter appointee is a member of the notorious "three-judge
panel" which has been so deftly vilified by Mr. Rather and his chums.
In response to some pointed question from Mr. Yost, Judge Cudahy had let
slip the fact that a new grand jury had convened weeks earlier.
Without "revealing his source," Mr. Yost put it out on the wires last Thursday
afternoon.
And all hell broke loose.
Journalists rushed cameraward, practically gibbering with rage, to charge the
GOP with dirty tricks in the hours leading up to Al Gore's Special Moment.
Old footage of Ken Starr was juxtaposed with artful innuendo. The Republican
Party was tried and convicted at warp speed.
It was a textbook example of "Republican profiling" -- the tendency of the
national press to attribute evil to a whole class of citizens based on their
theories of taxation.
By the time Judge Cudahy had tottered forward to explain that "the timing
resulted solely from the press inquiry," the damage had been done.
The allegation had received 24 hours of uncritical coverage, from the nightly
newscasts to the reeking arenas of late-night TV ("Politically Incorrect's"
trash-mouthed Bill Maher drew cheers with his assertion that this was a
typical GOP dirty trick, ranking somewhere between Watergate and
Iran-Contra).
The sullen retraction, when it came, was barely audible, and swiftly bumped
out of the news cycle -- though not before Democrat operatives had been
given a few last opportunities to milk the smear.
Which brings us back to the question of motive.
What could Pete Yost have had in mind, when he disingenuously "leaked" this
story to his journalistic colleagues?
Keep in mind that timing is everything. Mr. Yost fired off his revelation just
hours before Mr. Gore bounded to the stage at Staples Center and stuck his
tongue down Tipper's throat.
His initial wire report was a bare-bones, factual statement that a grand jury
had been convened to reexamine allegations against Mr. Clinton. But just
minutes later, Mr. Yost began weaving the Democratic response into his
narrative.
There was a vintage quote from Harlem Congressman Charlie Rangel, the
man with the dysfunctional tonsils, who told Mr. Yost that "If Clinton was to
drop dead, the Repuiblicans would dig him up."
There was Illinois Congressman Jesse Jackson Jr., calling for a "federal
investigation."
There was the reliably rabid House Minority Whip, David Bonior, hissing, "You
can bet your bottom dollar that the Republican party was behind" the leak.
By now, Mr. Yost was really getting into it. As the smear campaign against
the GOP intensified, it began to look as though Pete Yost was determined to
pour kerosene on the flames.
His updates grew more accusatory by the hour. He solicited heated
comments from the Gore campaign and the Clinton White House, including
Clinton spokesman Jake Siewert's allegation "pointing to prosecutors as a
likely source of the leak."
But then, something unexpected happened.
Judge Cudahy stepped up and told the truth.
Suddenly, Pete Yost's story vanished from the wires, abruptly replaced by an
anonymous AP feed which merely noted, tersely, that Judge Cudahy had been
the source of the leak, and that it had occurred "during a conversation with a
reporter."
The story did not identify this reporter -- the AP's own Mr. Yost -- by name.
Again, what was the motive?
You can only speculate: but there's one possibility, suggested by no less an
expert than Dan Rather himself.
"Well-timed leaks and revelations," Mr. Rather wrote scathingly, "have
recently become especially effective weapons for backroom political
strategists because they work. And regardless of backlash, they plant seeds
of doubt about candidates and their parties."
In this case -- despite the predictable backlash against the national press
amongst Republicans who've walked down this road too many times before --
Mr. Yost's "leak" accomplished something of value to Al Gore.
It planted seeds of doubt about George W. Bush and his party, at a
high-stakes moment, when national attention was more than ordinarily
focused on the "news".
Acutely aware of how badly this issue plays for the scandal-shy GOP (whose
Monicaphobia is cocktail-party talk amongst the Beltway press corps), Mr.
Yost put Republicans on the defensive even as Democrats were unwrapping
their latest version of the talented Mr. Gore.
There was a kind of reckless genius to it.
However, his reportorial imagination failed him on one crucial point.
He simply did not anticipate that Judge Cudahy would be troubled enough to
expose the game.
Mr. Yost is obviously a resourceful fellow. But honor, it seems, is a motive he
is not equipped to understand.
(unquote)