Stonewalled: My Fight for Truth Against the Forces of Obstruction, Intimidation, and Harassment in Obama's Washington

by Sharyl Attkisson

  She tries another.

  “It just feels a little . . . boring.”

  I can’t help but think of how excited she was after she initially viewed the piece. When did it turn dull?

  “Besides,” she continues, adopting the Evening News’s line, “some Americans got jobs even if Koreans did, too. I’m just not sure there’s an outrage factor.”

  “The point isn’t to outrage viewers,” I argue. “They’re free to have any reaction they choose. But whatever their opinion, a huge component of our audience will find this story fascinating and something they didn’t know about.”

  But as with all conversations of this nature that I’ve had in the past year or so, the executive producer’s mind appears to be made up.

  I call Strickler to tell her about the change in plans. She’s equally puzzled. We both know this is a story of great public interest. We take the default position and publish the story on CBSNews.com. But what’s behind the effort to keep it off television?

  As I continue my reporting, I soon discover formidable internal opposition to the entire subject matter.

  | INTERNAL OPPOSITION

  “Internal opposition” can be a daunting obstacle.

  In mid-2011, I’m at an airport on a shoot when my cell phone rings. On the other end of the phone is a New York assistant for our anchor, Katie Couric.

  “Apparently you did a story a year ago on members of Congress and all the tax money they spent going to a junket at a climate summit in Copenhagen?” says the assistant.

  “Yes,” I agree.

  “I need an explanation for why you included [Congresswoman] Gabbie Giffords in the story. And what’s the backstory as to why you did the story.”

  I don’t understand the basis of the question.

  “I’m not sure what you mean. I was assigned the story, and it was a good one. There’s no backstory. Giffords wasn’t singled out among the others. Her name was included along with the twenty congressmen who went on the trip. Why?”

  “Well, Katie is trying to get the first interview with Giffords after her shooting. So I need to know the justification behind your story. Her [Giffords’s] staff is still really mad about it and it’s affecting Katie’s chances of getting the interview.”

  I still don’t understand how I can help. “Tell Katie just to blame me,” I tell her. “Just tell them ‘I have no control over what Sharyl does.’ ”

  “Yes, but that’s a little hard to do,” says the assistant, “because it’s Katie’s face and name on the broadcast and she’s managing editor. So you see, it’s difficult. Apparently Giffords’s opponent used a clip of your story in campaign ads and it made the election really close. Her staff is really upset.”

  When we hang up, I don’t think she received an answer that helped her, but I’m not sure what she had expected me to say. I’m sorry I did a truthful story and fairly included Giffords’s name with all the others. It won’t happen again. If you’ll just give Katie this interview, there won’t be any more nasty stories like that on the CBS Evening News?

  Diane Sawyer ends up with the first Giffords interview.

  When it comes to green energy investigations, I conclude that the internal opposition I face has its origins in the personal beliefs of those who decide which stories go on the air and which are kept off. The purpose of the stories I propose isn’t to examine the general merits or shortfalls of the technology, ideology, or movement. They’re financial stories delving into possible waste, abuse, and questionable spending of tax dollars. What I didn’t anticipate is that some colleagues and managers, unable to disconnect their personal viewpoints from their duty as journalists, would view this line of reporting as damaging to a cause about which they hold deep-rooted beliefs. Fearful that the stories would discourage rather than promote green energy, they want to prevent the public from seeing them at all. It’s a paternalistic attitude that results in de facto censorship. Simply put: they decide that it’s best for you to not hear a story at all rather than run the risk that you might see it and form the “wrong” opinion. (By that, I mean an opinion that differs from theirs.)

  I turn to CBS News president David Rhodes, who had expressed interest in trying to rejuvenate the news broadcasts’ interest in more original and investigative reporting. He agrees that the green energy topic is of significant public value. And though he’s seen as predominantly laissez-faire in his management approach, he exerts influence in this case to encourage the Weekend News to run my future reports. So for a few months, we’re on a serious roll.

  First, it doesn’t take a genius to figure out that if electric battery technology is experiencing so much difficulty, and if the demand for cars like the hybrid Chevy Volt is falling below projections, then the administration’s entire electric vehicle goal could be in jeopardy. It’s an important yardstick. In his January 2011 State of the Union address, President Obama had announced the objective of getting a million electric vehicles on the road by the end of 2015. And he earmarked $2.4 billion in tax dollars to help reach it.

  Finding out where we stand on that continuum isn’t easy. I search for records that will show how the White House projected its numbers. I find out that it counted on eleven models of electric vehicles to reach specific production figures year by year. All I need to do is compare those with the actual figures to date. Some of the automakers share their stats with me on background. For those that don’t, I turn to trade publications and well-respected auto industry experts who have their fingers on the pulse of production.

  What I find is that six of the eleven models either haven’t made their first delivery, have stopped production, or are already out of business. Others are nowhere near the government’s projections. Only one company, Tesla, is meeting or anticipates it will meet the administration’s production goals. But in terms of getting to a million total by 2015, there’s no way that’ll happen.

  For example, President Obama counted on 36,000 Fisker Karmas. But the newest projections say the reality will be closer to half that: 18,000. (In the end, as mentioned earlier, only around 1,800 were sold before the company went bankrupt.) Here’s the outlook for a few others:

  To reach one million electric vehicles by 2015

  Original, Obama Administration Projections

  New, Adjusted Projections

  Fraction of Goal That Will Be Achieved

  Solvent?

  Chevy Volt

  505,000

  62,000

  1/8

  Fisker Karma

  36,000

  1,800

  1/20

  Bankruptcy

  Ford Transit Connect

  4,200

  500

  12/100

  Bankruptcy

  Think City

  57,000

  263

  >5/1000

  Bankruptcy

  Using the industry’s most generous projections, I’m able to estimate that, at best, only around 300,000 electric vehicles will be on the road by the president’s self-imposed deadline. Considering the $2.4 billion investment, that means American workers would be spending a total of $8,000 for each car put on the road. Meantime, the president is already pushing a plan to spend $4.7 billon more on electric vehicle incentives.

  Meanwhile, my list of companies to watch is growing by the day. One dozen, then two. I circulate notes to colleagues and supervisors, updating the emerging concerns. It’s c
lear there’s a larger pattern—and billions of tax dollars are in play. I receive little direct internal feedback about my notes with the exception of sporadic comments from colleagues around the news division as well as the broader CBS corporation who say things like, This seems like a really important story—why isn’t it on Evening News?

  It’s not as if we haven’t dedicated ample airtime to positive clean energy coverage. We’ve done countless stories showcasing cool, next-generation electric vehicles; President Obama’s election year appearances campaigning for green energy tax credits; and Vice President Biden announcing new clean energy ventures and touting all the jobs that will be created. Some of the stories read almost like press releases, without evoking the controversies or failures to date. One of them uncritically trumpets a “new era of green energy” featuring a government-backed solar energy project that received a $1.6 billion federal loan guarantee. There’s an entire CBS News Web page called “powering the future,” with uplifting stories about cutting-edge green batteries, solar power projects, the future of electric energy, and Toyota’s futuristic hydrogen fuel cell cars.

  There’s plenty of room on the news table for these inspiring features. But surely there’s also a fair place in journalism to examine other aspects, such as deficiencies in the taxpayer-funded programs. Yet too many news gatekeepers seem eager to push the positive stories and intransigent when it comes to any other kind.

  A colleague provides me with this telling anecdote. Evening News executive producer Shevlin and a CBS News executive in New York were discussing those green energy notes I’d been circulating. Here’s the account as told to me:

  EXECUTIVE Attkisson’s green energy stories are pretty significant. . . . Maybe we should be airing some of them on Evening News?

  SHEVLIN What’s the matter, don’t you support green energy?

  The person relaying the conversation was concerned, as was I, that Shevlin appeared to be improperly judging the merit of this news story solely through the prism of her personal biases. We also felt consternation that she would use her position as gatekeeper to dismiss the story and prevent the public from hearing about it—as if it didn’t exist.

  Furthermore, it’s preposterous to conclude that it’s “anti–green energy” to question these tax investments. That’s as silly as accusing a reporter of being against “medicine” because he reports on pharmaceutical company fraud, or opposing charities because he exposes a fraudulent nonprofit, or being anti-education because he covers a school shooting.

  Though some view the green energy problems as a vulnerability facing Democrats, there’s plenty of Republican responsibility for the deals gone bust. After all, there’s bipartisan appeal to bringing federal tax dollars into local economies: politicians feel as if they’re helping the folks at home by capturing a share of “free money.” Sometimes, they receive campaign contributions and support from the special interests that benefit. And it can become all too convenient for the politicos to unquestioningly accept the positive prognostications.

  The Obama administration promised that a solar panel maker called Abound Solar would create a thousand full-time jobs and generate “several hundred million dollars in revenue.” So it received a $400 million federal loan guarantee and made the White House’s list of “100 Recovery Projects That Are Changing America.” Democratic backers included Senator Evan Bayh and Representatives Pete Visclosky, Baron Hill, Joe Donnelly, Brad Ellsworth, and André Carson. Republican boosters included Senator Richard Lugar and Representatives Dan Burton, Mark Souder, and Mike Pence.

  But in June 2012, Abound Solar collapses—leaving behind dashed promises, toxic waste in some of its plants, and a taxpayer loss estimated at $40–60 million. It turns out that, like Beacon, the company had a dismal, junk credit rating before the administration awarded the loan guarantee. It became the third failure, after Solyndra and Beacon, in the Energy Department loan guarantee program known as “Section 1705.” The green track record was beginning to look undeniably grim: more than one in seven companies that had won the enthusiastic full faith of the federal government had now gone bankrupt.

  But you probably didn’t hear much of this on the news. Nor did you likely hear that one of Abound’s primary investors was a Democratic donor who bundled funding for President Obama’s campaign. Or that emails later revealed that the White House allegedly had pushed for the Abound deal to go through even when the government’s own analysts had expressed concerns about the company.

  Could my judgment, and that of my producers on these stories, be exceedingly off the mark? Is this a phony scandal of interest only to anti-green energy forces? In 2013, peer judges in journalism validated the subject matter by nominating our series of reports for an investigative Emmy Award. As with Fast and Furious and Benghazi, this served as acknowledgment that, sometimes, the stories that meet with the most resistance are, in fact, the most significant.

  | “I DID A GOOD JOB”

  At a congressional hearing on March 1, 2012, Republican Paul Broun of Georgia evoked Solyndra, A123, Abound Solar, and Beacon when asking energy secretary Chu how he would grade himself on managing taxpayer investments. Chu answered that he felt he’d had a great deal of success.

  “There’s always room for improvement,” said Chu. “Maybe an A-minus.”

  As 2014 dawned, Fisker’s doomed battery supplier A123 had abandoned $120 million in untapped federal grant money and been bought out by a Chinese firm that renamed it B456, hoping for better days. And two Chinese companies were fighting over Fisker’s scraps.

  Odds are, you probably didn’t hear much about any of that.

  CHAPTER 4

  | Benghazi |

  The Unanswered Questions

  It’s July 29, 2013. I’m out somewhere in Northern Virginia leading my private life when a U.S. Special Forces officer approaches me unsolicited.

  “We were ready,” he tells me quietly, with no preface. No drama in his voice.

  He assumes I know what he’s referring to. And I do.

  I’ve been approached the same way on a regular basis since I began covering the September 11, 2012, terrorist attacks on Americans in Benghazi, Libya. Approached by men affiliated with the secretive world of military Special Operations. Men who know firsthand the abilities and capabilities of our elite teams and in extremis forces—so-called Tier 1 assets.

  They speak to me about the lack of an outside military rescue attempt as several dozen Americans were trapped, under attack, at a CIA annex about a mile from our unofficial embassy compound in Benghazi. Two Americans, U.S. ambassador Christopher Stevens and Information Officer Sean Smith, were already dead. Two more, former Navy SEALs Glen Doherty and Tyrone Woods, would die trying to help protect the rest of the Americans awaiting the U.S. military cavalry from outside Libya that never came.

  These men who approach me won’t speak on camera and can’t be quoted by name. And if they say too much, they’ll be arrested. They challenge the insistences made by the Obama administration, the military’s top brass, and the Accountability Review Board (ARB) that nothing more could have been done to come to the rescue. They tell me there were military assets all over the place. Assets that should have been spun up and dispatched at the outset of the crisis when nobody knew how far it could spread or how long it would last—one hour? Eight? Three days?

  They contend that for starters, a U.S. military plane should have gotten to Benghazi quickly and buzzed over the site. “The Libyans know that sound from the NATO missions” to oust Libyan dictator Muammar Qaddafi, says one source. “You should see ’em scatter when a plane buzzes in low! But we didn’t even try.”

  They also tell me that every Special Forces Group (Airborne) includes an element trained for Direct Action-Counter Terrorism missions. This element is called a Combatant Commander’s in-Extremis Force (CIF) company. The night of the Benghazi attacks, there was a Europe-based CIF a few hour
s’ flight away. They had access to an AC-130 gunship. It’s the same kind of plane special ops forces used to attack suspected al-Qaeda militants in Somalia and strike Taliban targets in the Afghanistan war.

  But instead of being poised to respond on the anniversary of September 11, 2001, the CIF and its plane were off on a practice mission in Croatia. It’s a sad irony: the CIF assaulters, breachers, and snipers were training for the very type of emergency unfolding that night but they couldn’t get there. Well, at least, they didn’t get there.

  According to the Pentagon’s timeline, Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta waited between two and a half and four hours before giving the order for the CIF to be ready to move. From Croatia, it’s a three-hour flight to Libya on an AC-130 with several fuel options along the way. Or it’s a two-hour flight to the U.S. Navy installation at Sigonella Naval Air Station in Sicily, Italy.

  But according to the Pentagon’s timeline, it was eighteen to twenty long hours from the time of Panetta’s call until the CIF landed at Sigonella. From Sigonella, it’s a relatively short five-hundred-mile hop to Benghazi, but they were far too late to help. It was all over.

  Why did it take close to a full day for the CIF to pack up and fly two hours to Sigonella? No explanation is provided. But my sources say the team should have been spun up immediately, in the first uncertain moments of the attack. That they could have had the chance to reach Benghazi before Doherty and Woods were killed. In fact, these sources say the CIF should have been staged hours before the Benghazi attacks . . . up to eight hours earlier when a giant mob of attackers descended upon the U.S. Embassy in Egypt with attackers climbing the walls. That should’ve put all the wheels in motion. Even if the United States had unwisely let its guard down on September 11, 2012, the Egyptian attack should’ve been the wake-up call that put every possible resource on full alert, spinning up and positioning in case of trouble anywhere else in the region. But that didn’t happen. Why didn’t the smartest military strategists on earth see the Cairo violence as the possible beginning of a string of attacks? And when the second in the series occurred in Libya, what made them conclude there wouldn’t be more in the region?