by Jim Lehrer
Barbara and Henry had planned to get together for a late-night drink among the ferns in the lush bar at the Four Seasons. But it did not come off, because both ended up having to spend the evening in their respective newsrooms. Neither had a real assignment other than to simply be there in their new famousness and watch it all on television with their less famous colleagues. Their deal with ABS was still a deep secret, but it was very much in the works and only days from being signed and announced. Each felt spending the evening at their old office was the least they could do before becoming Hank and Barb.
Mike Howley watched the returns by himself in the front room of his town house. His only companion was a bottle of Cutty Sark scotch.
He and the other three heard what was said on television after the 9:01 calls and every few minutes from then on. Pundit after pundit, anchorperson after anchorperson, campaign official after campaign official, said this election had been historic, incredible, unbelievable. Nothing like it had ever happened.
Both Brad Lilly and Jack Turpin made the rounds of the network election-night programs. Lilly spoke glowingly of what the four panelists had done at the debate, comparing them to “all warriors who have risked their bodies and souls for their country.” He was less glowing in describing his candidate, the president-elect. The world was to find out a week later what caused the restraint. Brad Lilly would not be going to the White House with Greene, as everyone had expected.
Turpin’s anger with Howley, Barbara, Henry, Joan, and the press generally had not abated. He said they were “the political equivalent of war criminals,” “no more than thugs who used words instead of guns.” He was asked about the state of mind of Meredith, but he could honestly say he had no idea. Meredith had fired him as campaign manager right after the debate.
Mack McLarty, one of the twenty-seven pundits appearing on ABS, spoke for most of his fellow pundits when he summed it all up at the 12:30 A.M., Eastern Time, sign-off this way:
“History is replete with times when the press of America was accused of deciding the outcome of a presidential election. This marks the first time such a charge is absolutely one hundred percent accurate, directly on the mark, and thus a remarkable milestone in the political and journalistic history of our still-young nation. Paul L. Greene was elected president of the United States today because four journalists made an unprecedented decision to act in an unprecedented fashion. I think, for the record, it is well to repeat their names. Michael J. Howley of The Washington Morning News, Joan Naylor of CNS News, Barbara Manning of This Week magazine, and Henry Ramirez of Continental Radio. Some are tonight, no doubt, calling them patriots, journalism heroes of a new kind. Others are calling them arrogant un-patriots, journalism villains of a new and scary kind.
“Whatever, those four individuals, as individuals, go to bed on this election night knowing that what they did was something momentous, something they must know with certainty will be the subject of debate—the debate about the debate—for a very long time. Maybe for all of time.”
Henry Ramirez told me that McLarty’s words, as well as others spoken on election night, only reaffirmed his belief and pride in what he had done.
Barbara Manning said she sat there in the Washington bureau of This Week in front of Mel Renfro and all of the other white boys and cried and cried and cried.
Were they tears of joy or pain? I asked.
“Both,” she replied.
Joan Naylor said her twins hugged her and said how proud they were of their mother. Jeff said the same thing. She admitted to me that it was late, more than two hours after they went to bed, before she went to sleep.
“I didn’t have second thoughts, really,” she said. “Call them dawning thoughts. It truly dawned on me at 9:01, Eastern Time, what I had been a party to. I had participated in the changing of the course of this nation in a way that most people as individuals never have the opportunity to do.”
Should four individuals have such power? I asked.
“Thinking about that was what kept me awake,” she replied.
I asked Howley what was in his mind at 9:01. His answer was dismissive. “I don’t recall having anything in particular,” he said.
I considered it to be a stupid and completely unbelievable thing to say.
No real or sane person in Michael J. Howley’s position that evening could have avoided having a lightning storm of conflicting thoughts crashing, cracking, smashing, banging around in his head.
My first major breakthrough concerning Mike Howley came two days after the election and from a most unlikely source—Jerry Rhome, the executive editor of and Howley’s boss at The Washington Morning News. I called him that Thursday morning almost in a perfunctory checklist way, not really expecting anything but stonewalling and difficulty. I was stunned when he took my call within seconds, said he knew and respected Jonathan Angel and his magazine, and then without hesitation agreed to talk to me.
He told me to meet him in the lobby of the News building in a couple of hours—at one o’clock—and we could walk a bit and then eat some lunch.
“They’re waiting for Howley,” he said as we passed a covey of television crews waiting on the sidewalk outside the News building. “Everybody’s waiting for Howley.”
Instead of turning left in the direction of Lafayette Park and the White House we went to the right, toward Massachusetts Avenue. We crossed Sixteenth Street at Logan Circle and passed right in front of the headquarters of the National Rifle Association. Jerry Rhome raised the middle finger of his left hand high in the air in the direction of the building.
“I despise those bastards,” he said, almost by rote.
We cut across Rhode Island toward Herb’s, the restaurant in the basement of the Holiday Inn on the corner of Rhode Island and Seventeenth Street. Rhome said Herb’s was a hangout for writers and others in what passed for the working arts world of Washington. He said it was his favorite place to have lunch because the noise, the company, and the price were all right.
“I hate being interviewed,” he said as we sat down. “The only thing I hate more are people like me—people in the business—who refuse to be interviewed.”
We were given a table—I had the feeling it was his whenever he wanted it—in a corner of a room with walls covered with autographed photographs, framed theater posters, and paintings and sketches by local artists. The table was right next to a large glass-enclosed bookcase full of books by Washington writers who came here for lunch. Two of Mike Howley’s “Campaign Diaries” books were in there along with the one he had co-authored with Pat Tubbs and five of the more recent and more famous ones written by Tubbs alone.
Rhome ordered Cobb salad. I ordered a turkey club sandwich on toasted wheat bread, and he asked me where I wanted to begin. He was a straightforward man of charm and edge, the kind most of us—particularly those of us in journalism—would love to be. I had no trouble understanding why he was admired, feared, and mythologized by the people who worked with, around, for, and against him.
I told him I wanted to start at the very beginning, with the decision of the News to change its policy on debates.
“Mike said he had been invited to moderate Williamsburg. I heard him out and we changed the policy,” he said. I then asked for and he gave me the details of his long walk to Lafayette Park with Howley.
“Did you know he was going to go after Meredith the way he did?” I asked.
“Hell, no, I didn’t!”
“He didn’t call you or talk to you to clear it with you?”
“Mike Howley does not clear things like that with me.”
“Do you wish he had?”
“I don’t know.”
“What would you have told him if he had asked for your OK?”
“I don’t know. Jesus.”
Our lunch arrived and his relief was obvious. I could tell that here was a man who was uncomfortable, who was doing this in much the same way he would have corrective gum or open heart surgery.
He said: “I think it could change journalism forever. I think the idea of people like you and me, Mike and those others, deciding the people don’t know what they’re doing is dangerous as hell. We’re accused of doing it all the time, but it took something like Williamsburg to make me realize we really don’t do it very often. I’ve got to think about it some more, to tell you the real truth. I really do. I’ve got to wonder if the pants were on the other legs, if Mike and them knew all of that about a good guy, would they have sprung it on him like that a few days before an election? I know the argument. I know no two cases, no two elections, no two candidates, are the same. Meredith really was a prick who definitely should not have become president of the United States. I might have moved to Venice or Paris, in fact, if he had. He was more than a prick, he was a menace to the country. He was all of those awful things all of us who have ever covered politics always worried would come along. Here in this one person were all of the worst traits of Perot, North, both Jesses, Farrakhan, Limbaugh, Dole, Brown, and Zhirinovsky, all rolled into one. I know all of that. But I wonder. I’ve got to think about it some more.…”
I tried to read what he said for anything more, any hidden agendas—personal or otherwise. I could find none. I had the feeling that he was merely answering a difficult question as truthfully as he could. I continued to be very impressed with Jerry Rhome.
“Is there an official News position on what Howley did?” I asked.
There was a flicker in his eyes—they were green—that signaled trouble.
“Sure,” he said. “It was in our lead editorial the next morning.”
“I mean on a more personal basis, say, with the Gerrards.”
There was another flicker. This time the message was clear. Oh, shit, it said.
Herman Gerrard was the owner-publisher of the News. His two sons, one niece, and two nephews worked for him as vice presidents and assistants to the president of the holding company that owned the News plus a discount bookstore chain, a discount beauty-shop chain, seven neighborhood health spas in northern Virginia, a flock of Wendy’s hamburger restaurants, and the Washington area’s largest charter and tour bus operator, called Vision Lines.
Rhome said: “Look, it was what you would have expected. At first they were appalled along with most everyone else, and then they were confused, and finally, now, they are proud. Right on, Mike, and God bless America.”
I asked what Howley’s status was with the News. He told me what I already mostly knew from reading the clippings. Howley was not allowed to write anything about the election between the debate and Election Day. The ban was ordered, said the announcement, to “avoid potential appearance problems.” It applied to straight news stories, analytical pieces, and even his column. He also agreed to a management request to avoid all outside interviews on television and radio as well as all print outlets. This meant he did not even take his regular slots on the NBS morning program or the opinion food-fight program on Saturday night.
“What happens now?” I said.
“He has a job at The Washington Morning News as long as he wants it.”
“Does he want it?”
“I’m sure he does.”
“You haven’t talked to him?”
“Not lately.”
“Where is he?”
“None of your business.”
The green eyes were full of play and mischief now. Anything else, young man? they said to me.
Yes, I had something else.
“Where did that stuff about Meredith come from?” I asked.
There was no change in his expression or eyes. He said: “If I knew I probably wouldn’t tell you, but I don’t know so it isn’t even a problem for me.”
“Have you asked Howley?”
“Nope.”
“Why not?”
“Because I didn’t want to know.”
Now he was mad. Not at me, I didn’t think, but at somebody else. Howley? Yeah, it had to be Howley. Why, why, why? Then I had the answer. The obvious answer.
I said: “I guess you must have wondered the same thing I did. If it came from Howley, then why hadn’t it all appeared in The Washington Morning News before that night in Williamsburg?”
“I’m not talking,” he said.
“One can’t help but wonder why he saved it for the debate instead of writing it up for his own newspaper.”
I had Jerry Rhome on the horns of several dilemmas. He took a long swallow of iced tea and fooled with a black olive on his plate and looked off at the bookshelf at Howley’s, Tubbs’s, and the other books.
I said: “I’m willing to go on background, if you wish. I use it but not attributed to you.”
“I’m a goddamn newspaperman, Chapman, not—to use Meredith’s word—the fucking deputy under assistant secretary of state for bilateral governmental intercourse or something. I don’t go on background with anybody.”
I shut up and let him fool with his napkin and rearrange the salt and pepper shakers and the saucer of little pink packets of sugar substitute there in the center of the table between us.
The waiter came and asked if we wanted some dessert and coffee. We both said no to dessert, yes to coffee. It bought Jerry Rhome some more time. I knew what he was doing. As a journalist himself, he was trying to imagine how what he was tempted to say would look in the cold type of The New American Tatler magazine. It is one thing to say something to somebody in a relaxed setting such as this, but he knew from his own hands-on experience on the other side that cold-type print is transforming. Innocent words can become something very different.
Finally, he spoke: “I am not going to dodge it. OK? Sure, I got hot watching that debate. I didn’t understand why with all of the great goddamn reporters we have working for my great goddamn newspaper we didn’t get that story. It doubled—tripled—the hot when I’m listening to the story of the presidential campaign being thrown out there in Williamsburg by my leading political reporter, a man who works for me, a man who draws a nice salary from me, a man who I thought understood that I get first dibs on all stories he comes across in the course of his exciting work as a famous journalist of our times. OK? I said it. OK?”
He said it, all right. But it didn’t make sense. Something did not add up.
“So I guess you really jumped Howley about that, right?” I asked.
“Nope, not really. Whatever I said is none of your business anyhow.”
“I’m confused.”
“Good.”
The coffee came and Jerry Rhome changed the subject. To me. He asked me questions about how I got into magazine writing and about Jonathan Angel and the Tatler. He told me how Jonathan had worked for him as a kid reporter and how he always read our magazine. Rhome was doing to another what he as a reporter had probably had done to him many times by people skilled in handling reporters. I am sure there is a rule among the smart, experienced interviewees: No reporter can resist the opportunity to talk about himself.
I resisted—almost. I told him only a little bit about growing up in Connecticut and going to Williams College. I said almost nothing about Jonathan and the magazine.
Then, as we walked out—he insisted on paying the check—I resumed my business.
“There is no real doubt that those statements were brought to Williamsburg by Howley, is there?”
“I have some doubt.”
“I don’t.”
He looked at me as if to say, OK, bud, stop it there. If I want to know anything more I’ll ask. We walked in silence back across Rhode Island. Rhome again shot the finger to the NRA building, and we headed toward his newspaper.
As we got closer to the News I realized that while with some of the others on my master interview list there might be second, third, and even fourth or fifth chances for follow-up and cleanup questions, this was probably it f
or Jerry Rhome. I either got it now or I didn’t get it.
I said: “So where do you think Howley would have gotten those statements?”
“If he had them, you mean. If he had them, he could have gotten them from the Greene campaign or from some other troublemaking Democrat. There are lots of places he could have gotten them.”
“But wouldn’t he have brought them right to you or somebody else at the News if it had happened that way?”
He closed his eyes, shook his head. We were past the waiting-for-Howley TV crews now and were only seconds away from parting. He was only seconds away from escape. I was only seconds away from getting a scrap of information that I was certain—still without knowing what it was—would be extremely important.
“I hear you,” he said. “But that’s all I do.”
“Could somebody from the News—another reporter, say—have given them to him?”
“Not and kept his balls if I ever found out about it.” His eyes reinforced his words. There was no question he would have personally de-balled such a person.
I walked away from Jerry Rhome convinced that he had either already found out about it or had a damned good guess about it. It meant, if my reading was right, I now also knew how those statements got to Howley. All I had to find out was the name of the News reporter who did it—and how and why it was done.
Go, Tom, go.
There was a man waiting to see me when I returned to the Tatler office that afternoon. It was the man from The Kansas City Star. I knew from reading accounts of the Virginia Room riot that his name was Richard Fisher and he was fifty-nine years old. He was holding a cane by his right side when he stood up to shake my hand, but otherwise he looked fine.
“I don’t think it’s exaggerating to say that you saved my life, Tom Chapman,” he said. “I came by just to say thank you.”
He gave me a copy of the first-person account of his experience in the Virginia Room that he had written for his newspaper. The headline was A SCRAPE WITH DEATH BY PRESS-ING.
In the story he gave full credit to me as his savior. He did not mention the former football player–SEAL from the Baltimore Sun. He said he didn’t know about any of that because by then he was completely out of it, but he would find the guy and thank him, too.
