WASHINGTON – If there were any doubts that the media
have the power – when they want to exercise it – to
turn the rusty wheels of justice in this town, look no
further than the Condit-Levy case.
Not until the national press quoted sources confirming
missing intern Chandra Levy’s affair with California
Rep. Gary Condit, did the D.C. police finally put the
screws to Condit, forcing him to confess his sexual
relationship.
He’d dodged the issue of an affair in two previous
interviews, and the cops let him, treating him with
the same kid gloves that most law enforcement do in
Washington when it comes to politicians.
But it was the steady drumbeat by the national media
– first started by Fox News Channel, and then picked
up by USA Today, the Washington Post and other
johnny-come-latelys – that pressured the cops to
finally do their jobs aggressively after months of
treating the married Democratic congressman, son of a
Baptist preacher, like royalty.
Local cops here are intimidated by elected officials
and tend to go easy on them when they get in trouble.
Federal cops, or at least their bosses, are worse.
Those who run federal law-enforcement agencies serve
at the mercy of politicians who appoint them and
confirm them to their positions of power. So when a
politician gets in hot water, they tend to pull
punches, and the powerful just end up protecting the
powerful.
That’s where the free press steps in.
As watchdogs on government, they have a duty to keep
its leaders honest.
The Condit case shows how they can lead an official
investigation that would otherwise languish out of
deference to a politician. If not for the doggedness
of Fox News, Condit probably could have just waited
this one out. Now he’s got some serious accounting to
do. Did his affair with the coed lead to her
disappearance and possibly her death?
Again, this story shows how the wheels of justice
really turn in Washington. The media make noise, and
politicians and government officials start to worry
what the public thinks. When they get worried, things
start to move. All of a sudden, hearings and press
conferences are held, sworn depositions are taken and
subpoenas fly.
Without the press agitating action, the powerful would
be content to continue protecting the powerful.
Too bad the national media didn’t get as worked up
about national security breaches under the Clinton
administration. They took a powder on one of the
biggest stories of our time: a communist power putting
an American president on its payroll.
The Washington press corps never personalized that
scandal the way they did Lewinsky. As with the Condit
case, apparently, sex is easier to write about.
Isn’t it a testament to the declining quality of
national journalism when Monica’s cigar act gets more
press attention than the treachery of transferring
missile technology to China?
Imagine how much closer to the truth we’d be right now
regarding the full scope of the Chinagate conspiracy
had White House scribes actually plied Clinton with
tough questions about his role at every turn.
In the rare occasions that they did quiz him, they
failed to follow up on his evasive answers. Instead, a
chorus of questions about totally unrelated subjects
would rise up after he finished his long-winded
dissembling (in contrast to their handling of Reagan
or Bush, who weren’t allowed to filibuster so about
Iran-Contra).
The press never really got the American people closer
to the truth about the Chinese funny money and never
held Clinton accountable for his role in taking the
illegal cash and giving China unfettered access to the
White House and U.S. weapons labs, as well as
appeasing it with relaxed controls on dual-use
exports, permanent trade benefits, and so on.
When four FBI street agents complained under oath that
political operatives at the Justice Department had
blocked them from following leads to the White House
in the campaign-finance probe, the Big 3 TV networks,
as well as CNN, blacked out their testimony.
When Beijing bagman John Huang testified before the
House, tying Bill Clinton to his boss’ scheme to raise
millions of dollars through foreign conduits,
Americans heard not a word of it on ABC, CBS or NBC.
In fact, the old media elite did everything in their
power not to whip the public into a frenzy over
this story – the opposite intent of their
round-the-clock coverage of Iran-Contra and daily
drumbeat over Watergate before it.
Here’s the typical pattern they’d follow in covering
new developments in the Chinagate story: The
Washington Times would break a major story, usually by
Jerry Seper or Bill Gertz, and the Associated Press
would pick it up, adding nothing to it except perhaps
White House spin. Then the Washington Post and New
York Times would take wire on the story, not even
assigning a staff reporter to advance it. And they’d
bury the AP story as a brief deep inside the paper,
with no follow up – until a week or so later, that
is, in the form of a story obviously fed by the White
House counsel’s office, dismissing it as “old news,”
or much ado about nothing, or a Republican distraction
from “the real issues that the American people care
about.”
And the old media still refuse to connect the growing
constellation of dots in the foreign
influence-peddling scandal.
The Condit case is the latest proof that the media
have the power to force justice – if they’re willing
to exercise it. Unfortunately, Chinagate does not
involve sex, which apparently is the only thing that
most journalists today care about, or think the public
can understand. Their continued silence on this
important story is a disservice not only to their
audiences but to their country.
The buried secret of the U.S. Senate
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