Author: Brian Lambert

Now, with its own editorial page essentially echoing points made by one of its own columnists, more and more of us are wondering how long it will be before whoever is calling shots in the Star Tribune newsroom decides there is sufficient “linkage” in the US Attorneys “controversy”, (to use the Strib’s quaint description), for the paper to dare make a dent in the basic “hows” and “whys” of the Tom Heffelfinger-for-Rachel Paulose swap out here in Minnesota. The paper’s Saturday piece, hooked to a DC emissary trying to do damage control in the wake of three of Pauloses’s top deputies simultaneously demoting themselves, seemed to go out of its way to avoid making any of the connections being pointed out by blogger -gnats and the New York Times alike.

At the risk of belaboring the obvious, it doesn’t look good when the Times jumps on “connections”,(more Strib-ese), to a major drama unfolding barely six blocks from the Strib’s front door. Compounding the embarrassment is when TPT’s “Almanac”, on a budget of about $1.99, brings in credible local legal talent for both a historical perspective on the coordinated self-demotion/mutiny of three deputies AND linkage to the bigger story out of DC.

If the Strib needs any more flogging it can look to the Boston Globe, where the always-solid Charlie Savage has his go at the role of Pat Robertson’s previously unheard of low-pedigree Regent University and Monica Goodling, (according to KSTP’s Bob McNaney a close friend of Paulose), now resigned after previously taking the Fifth to avoid disclosing her role in the, uh, “controversy”. There is also Dalia Lithwick via Slate/Washington Post, and Max Blumenthal.

At a moment in its history when friends and foes alike are looking for early indications of the new Avista Capita Partners-owned Star Tribune’s commitment to the kind of journalism that builds crediblity and influence, this episode is not encouraging.

Those of us baffled by what the Star Tribune meant this morning when, in its first straight news staff-reported piece on Minnesota US Attorney Rachel Paulose and the widening scandal out of DC said, “No one has linked her to the controversy in Washington,” (with “controversy” being a bit of a dismissive euphemism, I’d say), might want to check out the story KSTP’s Bob McNaney is putting together beginning with this morning’s 11 am newscast on ch. 5.

For the moment, McNaney is the only local reporter to get the ironically reclusive Paulose on tape. (“Ironically”, since based on her gaudy investiture — the one that prompted McNaney’s first story — this particular US Attorney is not afflicted with excessive modesty.) He says he had planned another piece on Paulose, possibly involving the rather provocative connections between her and the “controversy in Washington” — like the part, says McNaney, where Monica Goodling, the top justice official who copped the Fifth Amendment rather than tell Congress what the hell has been going on, had been invited to speak at Paulose’s investiture.

McNaney says the 11 am report will be primarily a talker as he and his editors edit previously unused tape from their earlier story for ch. 5’s 5 and 10 pm newscasts.

Perhaps by 10:30 tonight the Star Tribune will re-examine the possibility of “connections” to the “controversy”.

Dean Singleton, the face of the new ownership of the St. Paul Pioneer Press was in town today, meeting with various employees in addition to an afternoon general newsroom gathering, where we are told, he expressed great umbrage at the behavior of his former publisher, Par Ridder, who as most of you may know by now scurried across town a month ago to take the same job with the (formerly)arch-rival Star Tribune.

Most interesting was Singleton, head of Media News, telling the PiPress troops that he had learned of Ridder showing interest in moving to the Star Tribune eight months ago — last August — long before former publisher J. Keith Moyer stepped down. Who approached who is not clear. But if what Singleton says is true, Ridder was at leasy considering switching teams long before he actually did.

Singleton also told his employees that Ridder had offered a total of eight current upper level PiPress managers jobs at the Star Tribune, including St. Paul’s editor, Thom Fladung, who declined. Two offers have been accepted. The names of the other six are not known.

Newspaper Guild officer, Brian Bonner, described Singleton’s speech as, “feisty in tone” and that Singleton seemed, “genuinely upset by the betrayal [on Ridder’s part].”

“He said [Ridder] took confidential data and that he, [Singleton], is going to stop him from using it.” The “confidential data” business refers to a laptop computer with proprietary company information in it, which the PiPress had to insist Ridder return to them, apparently the Monday after he left. (One of the St. Paul executives involved in getting the laptop back, Kevin Desmond, later accepted a job offer from Ridder and left the PiPress).

Bonner, who called the gathering, “One of the most dramatic meetings I’ve seen in my 24 years here,” was pleased to hear Singleton show some passion over the Ridder departure. Many in the PiPress building regard Ridder jumping ship as both graceless and disloyal.

Singleton took pains to describe Ridder as “a good steward” of the PiPress and felt they had a solid, professional relationship, up to the point Ridder left.

For the record, Ridder did not have a non-compete clause in his contract, and Singleton has previously said he doesn’t believe in restricting the professional growth of his people. (He is however threatening legal action against Jennifer Parratt, Ridder’s other Star Tribune hire, who apparently did have a non-compete … Singleton wants to fight over.)

How Singleton would ever prove Ridder was using proprietary PiPress information to the Star Tribune’s advantage is hard to imagine. But Singleton apparently wanted to rally the troops with a little sabre-rattling.

“We still expect [Singleton] to be a very tough negotiator over the next contract,” said Bonner. “He has a reputation for extracting pretty tough concessions. But I for one was pleased that he came in and said what he did.”

Greg Gordon and two other McClatchy correspondents — people whose reporting used to flow directly into the Star Tribune, but with the sale to Avista Capital Partners now flows elsewhere — have an excellent story up today connecting dots in the US Attorneys firing scandal.

Titled, “New US Attorneys Seem to Have Partisan Records”, the McClatchy team makes a point of noting that presidential advisor Karl Rove, in a speech last April to the Republican National Lawyers Association, (there’s something redundant about that, but I can’t quite put my finger on it), specified Minnesota among 11 states pivotal to GOP election prospects in 2008. They then note that Rove/Gonzalez/Sampson et al have overseen the replacement of US Attorneys in nine of those states … including Minnesota, where Tom Heffelfinger had, to the surprise of many, stepped down a couple months earlier.

In his column last Sunday, Nick Coleman laid out connections that you’d think would tantalize any major daily newsroom. Like some of the rest of us, Coleman had waited weeks for the StarTribune to commence any kind of reporting on even the possibility of a connection between a major national story, the sudden departure of a Republican US Attorney at least as moderate as any of those later fired, and/or the processes and connections that brought Paulose to her present job. I mean folks, the 33 year-old woman arrives here direct from Gonzalez’ office in D.C., where she served as senior counsel to Deputy Attorney General, Paul McNulty, the guy now infamous for asserting that the eight fired US Attorneys were whacked for “performance-related issues”. That is … questionable.

This isn’t a presumed guilty until proven innocent question. It isa matter of basic professional skepticism. The fundamental question of the US Attorneys scandal is whether this was done to advance the political purposes of the Republican Party by politicizing a highly influential office of the judiciary. It seems fair to ASK if there is any possiblity that is what happened here in Minnesota. Local media is forever falling over themselves grasping for the vaguest, most remote “Minnesota connectrion” to any national story. (JFK Jr. dies in plane crash! Once ate Cheerios! Quotes from General Mills spokesman to follow!)

But in this case, nothing? What ever happened to basic journalistic due diligence? The new Star Tribune may be strapped for resources and staff, both here and in D.C., but certainly at this point, what with provocative work done by Minnesota Campaign Report, (which doth protest way too self-righteously about a minor mistake in a complicated story), a piece in the Salt Lake Tribune, (which ironically was sparked by a call from Coleman), and now this latest McClatchy report, the time is overripe for the Star Tribune to run … SOMETHING … on this.

All the tedious tut-tutting about journalistic ethics and appearances of conflict of interest — Sid Hartman does a TV commercial! — start sounding a little hollow if the paper can’t do the fundamental work of looking in to something this intriguing and close to home.

For the record, the Star Tribune isn’t alone in seriously avoiding this story. As best I can tell, of the local TV stations, only KMSP, ch. 9 has run a story on any kind of Heffelfinger connection. That is other than KSTP-TV’s Bob McNaney story on Paulose’s grandiose investiture early last month.

For his efforts McNaney, nobody’s idea of a flaming liberal, has been ripped by both Powerline and Star Trib gossip columnist, C.J. . (By certain standards I guess the CJ rip rates as “some kind of reference” to the broader story.)

Caught on the run the other night, McNaney was still steamed about the shots from those two. He smells a coordinated effort. “If the US Attorney’s office needs to use CJ to protect themselves from me they’re in even worse shape than I thought. And you can use that.”

McNaney said he had to be careful about saying much more right now because, “We aren’t done with this story.” But he was not impressed by Paulose.

“Watch the entire interview. All the raw tape. It’s up on our site. This is one of coolest, most buttoned-down, refined characters you’ll ever meet, until I start asking about the ceremony and the ‘problem journalist’ list. Watch her body language. The only time she squirms is when I ask about that stuff.”

What you don’t want to think in this situation is that the Star Tribune and the rest of the Twin Cities newsrooms are hanging back on asking impertinent questions about Heffelfinger’s departure and Paulose’s arrival … because she is a minority female. Modern newsrooms are hyper-sensitive to such issues, usually for good reason. But by definition anyone in a US Attorney’s job is a big girl playing in the big leagues with large, bonafide public responsibilities.

If you’re in the news business it is your job to ask such people, or people who know such people, tough questions.

Interesting event the other night at William Mitchell. A panel discussion titled, “A Strange Bond: The CIA and the Cinema”, with two ex-CIA guys, the CIA’s current acting chief counsel, (he’ll soon have a formal confirmation hearing), uber-author, Mark Bowden, (“Blackhawk Down”, “Killing Pablo”, “Guests of the Ayatollah”) and Star Tribune film critic, Colin Covert.

The tone of the event, which filled Billy Mitchell’s auditorium, was one of fraternal bonhomie more than any searing examination of the CIA’s role in Iraq or other foreign adventure. Along with enjoying the sight of a newspaper guy more than holding his own among such a rarefied crowd, when it was over there was an opportunity to ask the CIA types for their assessment of the work of Seymour Hersh.

Hersh has been doing some of the best work of his long career digging out the “hows” of the manipulated intelligence that validated the Bush administration’s targeting of Saddam Hussein. His October 2003 article, “The Stovepipe”, remains, to my thinking, the most illuminative explanation so far of how the deal went down.

(Inside journalism, it is also worth noting that Hersh, whose stories out of he CIA and the Pentagon are dense with anonymous, unidentified sources — the sort of thing that would never pass muster at either local daily — has fared quite well under the test of time.)

As the panel broke up, I asked John Rizzo, the dapper, soon to be CIA chief counsel, and a lifelong CIA man, what he thought of Hersh’s work? Certainly if Hersh had blundered anywhere a legal guy/company guy like Rizzo would both know about it and be only too happy to set the record straight.

“Overall quite good,” was his capsule review. “It seems to me he is returning to the same sources over and over again. I have a problem with that, in that not everyone at CIA is as unhappy as his sources seem to be. But in general, good.”

There was no, “But Hersh really screwed up on … .”

One of Rizzo’s panel-mates was Paul Kelbaugh, a retired CIA chief legal counsel. “Pretty impressive,” was his take.

Both men were at CIA during the term of George Tenet, the Clinton-appointee/Bush holdover who fairly or not has been tarred with
CIA failures both in the period prior to 9-11 and then again with the whole weapons of mass destruction fiasco. Surprisingly, for a guy the Bush administration has maneuvered to look like a loser, both Rizzo and Kelbaugh speak highly of Tenet, Kelbaugh in particular. A terrific manager. Worked hard and spent the time to know his people as people. Regularly interacted with the staff, etc.

Based on the work of Bob Woodward, Tenet’s obituary will undoubtably include the phrase, “slam dunk”, which is how Woodward describes Tenet assuring George W. Bush about the existence of WMD in Iraq.

In his (excellent) book, “The One Percent Solution”, Ron Suskind paints a rather more sympathetic picture of both Tenet and the “slam dunk” comment. In fact, Suskind treats Tenet so sympathetically — echoing some of what Rizzo and Kelbaugh say — it is often presumed that Tenet was a primary source.

Not so, says Rizzo, who ought to know. “It wasn’t Tenet.” He says Suskind approached the CIA for permission to interview several people, and, as Rizzo describes it, “had possession of some sensitive information”, which he used to bargain for the people he wanted to talk to. But not Tenet, according to Rizzo.

In fact, Tenet’s own book on his CIA years, under Clinton pre-9/11, and under Bush pre- and post-Iraq will soon be published. As chief counsel Rizzo had to give it the security once-over.

“Quite the read,” he said with a thin smile that could almost be read as contented. “Quite a read.”

As I say, Colin Covert, the Strib’s film critic played well with the panel as they talked the CIA image in the movies. In fact, Covert got off the best line of the night when the panel’s moderator A. John Radsan, a former assistant counsel at the CIA and now an associate prof at Billy Mitchell, asked Covert if he had a question he’d like to ask anyone else on the panel.

Covert paused. Hmmm. Hollywood. The CIA. Together. “If you think of Hollywood working with the CIA as a pact with the devil,” he asked, “which one is the devil?”

Big laugh.

A calendar note: On April 17, Kerri Miller of MPR will moderate a panel on, “Islam and the West”. It will include Seyyed Hossein Nasr, professor of Islamic Studies at George Washington University. If his name is familiar, it may be because of recent glowing reviews for the book, “The Shia Revival”, written by his son, Vali Nasr.

These panels are free, but you must “register” to attend.

Sen. John McCain who stuck his polished loafer deep in his mouth when he said recently that Americans weren’t getting a realistic picture of the situation on the ground in Iraq — because of that damned negative media constantly obsessing over a few hundred truck bombings and a couple hundred tortured bodies flopping into the morgues every day — also said Baghdad was safe enough after that surge he wanted so badly a guy can now go for a leisurely stroll. Riiiiight. As long as you’re wearing a bullet proof vest, have a hundred GIs with rifles to help, you know, carry your shopping bags, and a couple Blackhawk choppers overhead.

How badly will he regret this?

My old compadre, the grizzled and venerable, Nick Coleman, asks the question I thought somebody in town should have asked at least a month ago. Namely, was U.S. Attorney Tom Heffelfinger’s abrupt departure 15 months ago in any way connected to the ever-burgeoning Rove-Bush-Gonzalez USA firings scandal?

Heffelfinger, a self-described moderate Republican, (remember those people?), says if he was targeted by Team Rove he has no awareness of it. Ok, fine. (If I was a moderate Republican attorney in good community standing and I had any basis for plausible denial, I’d say the same thing. There is no upside to getting dragged into this mess.) But as basic journalism goes with a story as big and nationwide as this US Attorneys thing shouldn’t someone at the Star Tribune have asked Heffelfinger the question before now … and published whatever he wanted to say? I’m not asking for much. Maybe 8″. Certainly nothing as long as the latest update on Sanjaya.

Coleman’s story plays nicely with Bob McNaney’s report on Heffelfinger’s successor’s rather over-the-top investiture a month ago. McNaney pushed the “misuse of taxpayer’s dollars” angle pretty hard. Maybe too hard. But there was an unmistakable air of pretension and grandiosity to the affair. Call it personal taste on the part of new USA Rachel Paulose, or call it no big deal, I am still left with questions — as Coleman asks — why Heffelfinger was not invited, what this “problem journalist” list that existed at some point in the investiture planning process was really all about, (I mean, come on, a “problem journalist” list? Who is running Paulose’s show, Erhlichman and Haldeman?), and finally, whether Paulose in any way owes her present position to the hyper-partisan connivery that has now managed to taint every USA in the country … who DIDN’T get fired.

But to get back to the top … does the Star Tribune mean to suggest that no one in the building thought to look seriously at the Heffelfinger departure until now?

Look, this has to stop. There are bigger issues out there. This US Attorneys things is starting to feel like the Oak Island Mystery, where every time you break through one layer of cover you dig a bit further and hit another. Now there’s this squirrely GSA business. (Thematic linkage: Throat-slitting partisan careerists politicizing every branch of government.)

But here in Minnesota we’ve got Par Ridder and the Star Tribune giving and giving and giving. Or maybe, “taking”, in this most recent case.

So Ridder, who preached all that spirit-raising teamwork and loyalty stuff at the Pioneer Press before getting a better offer from the evil enemy, (the Star Tribune), and jumping ship without so much as a teary cookies-and-cake farewell, seems to have walked off with a computer full of Pioneer Press secrets*. (*What secrets? Like how to cover high school football in Wisconsin?) The PiPress got the hardware back, but claims to be concerned about hush-hush stuff Ridder could have downloaded.

Obviously all that is goofy enough. Standard procedure in these matters would seem to be that you divest yourself of any and all proprietary information along with the executive men’s room key. But maybe Ridder just forgot. If he did, you’d think he’d simply say so — or tell his own newsroom before it got printed in the mousey rival paper and slapped on Romenesko, (all while most of Ridder’s peers/newspaper bigwigs are gathered together in D.C. for the American Society of Newspaper Editors … you gotta imagine the jokes going around that place).

I don’t know which part of the story I like best. The part where one of the guys the PiPress assigns to retrieve the computer ends up taking a job from Ridder — kind of like those Cuban baseball players who defect once they get two feet out of Castro’s waters — or the part where Ridder, a crack newsman don’t you know, didn’t bother to give his own reporters a heads-up that they were going to get scooped on what people in the newspaper business call an obvious “talker”.

I mean, this is so inept someone ought to check and see if Alberto Gonzalez is running the Strib.

As of 3 pm Friday the Strib still hadn’t put anything on the story up on its site. Nothing. Not even a half-credible glop of official-speak. Not even something on the order of, “Computer? What computer? I’ll ask my driver if he’s seen a computer.”

Word was that reporter Matt McKinney had been handed the assignment.

I have a lot of guilty pleasures, probably more than innocent ones, but among the guiltiest is redandnater.com a local broadcast message board. It is a place where usually anonymous broadcast professionals, very disgruntled ex-broadcast professionals and some appalling idiots re-staff, re-program TV and radio stations and spare nothing in insulting the talent of well, uh, on-air talent and the twits who hired them.

According to redandnater’s deep thinkers Joe Soucheray is mailing it in, Tom Barnard is a washed up hack/genius, John Hines, (based on his first day), is never going to cut it on talk radio, every sales manager on every local station is a putz and a bastard, so is every program director, (except KSTP’s former PD, Joe O’Brien, who is regularly proposed as the salvation for every programming screw-up the town has ever endured). It is also a place where “fecterated” (?) is an all-purpose slur.

If you know anything at all about the characters getting torched on redandnater you are also convinced that radio and TV are doomed in the Twin Cities market … if even half of the board’s contributors are actually employed in the business … because they appear to be utterly clueless about what to do to invigorate either medium other than re-creating personalities and formats that were hot in the ’80s.

Anyway … like every other unmoderated board, redandnater has been plagued by the usual wretched few who aren’t content just to sound profoundly stupid, but have to add a dollop of racism or porn-hound sexism for worse measure. So a few days ago, Eric Redlinger, the board’s co-creator/primary supervisor announced that he’d post the IP addresses of the worst offenders if they didn’t knock it off, pronto.

Outed for racist stupidity!? On the internet!? It’s the fall of friggin’ Rome!

Actually it’s more like one average guy’s stand for a little goddam civility. Maybe you can’t make people b e smart, but you sure can shame them out of transmitting their closeted phobias.

“I posted one, today,” Redlinger told me when we chatted this afternoon.

He says the board gets about 167 hits a day on 21 different topics. (Sample: “Tom Barnard’s Act Has Grown Old” — 46 posts.) And that in terms of cash flow, “We make very little, if none at all.”

For a day job Redlinger runs a production house, RedCommunications.tv. But he did a term at KFAN until getting canned five years ago, pretty much simultaneous with starting up redandnater. (The “nater” half takes the very low profile. In fact, “he may or may not exist”, Redlinger seems to like to say.) Last year Clear Channel regional capo, Mick Anselmo, memorably ordered his staff to lay off redandnater, at least on company time. (Anselmo’s sales honchos, a few select program directors and Clear Channel in general take a constant, merciless beating).

Redlinger’s personal guesstimate breakdown of knowledgeable broadcast professionals to blithering idiots is, “About 20/80, with the idiots leading the charge.” He believes his I’ll-post-your-IP threat has at least temporarily flushed out the most racist, sexist blitherers.

“That crowd wants nothing to do with having their identity
revealed in any way. I don’t like to do it. When we said we’d post everything and not censor anything, and we meant it. But when it gets as ugly and hurtful as some of that stuff was, it drives off the people you created the thing for, the people who want to exchange information or just gossip.”

It is spring in DC. Time for politicians and reporters to gather and reassure us and each that they are kindred souls playing the same game for the same team. For the Radio and TV Correspondents Dinner the kids at JibJab debuted their latest video. Check it out here.