BOTTOMFEEDERS VERSUS BACKBITERSDuring my tenures at CBS and CNN, I rarely ran into a producer working on a very sensitive story. If I had to tell you why, I'd say this: Getting a job at a network is hard enough because the competition is brutal, but keeping it -- especially since there's no job security and your contract comes up for renewal every two or four years -- is a skill that requires as much political savvy as journalistic talent. There's no point in looking for trouble or hard work by pitching a tough story. Network producing is an all-consuming job. The hours are horrendous. Investigative pieces in particular can wreak havoc on your mind, body, and family.On a story like TWA 800, as you saw with my experience at CBS, you can become a pariah among your colleagues as well as with government investigators if you persist with your politically incorrect investigation. But what's interesting about TWA 800 is the number of independent investigators who are, even to this day, working hard to get to the bottom of this disaster. This has angered government investigators.
James Kallstrom, who, as the Haitian expression goes, doesn't keep his "tongue in his pocket," seemed particularly upset by Oliver Stone's efforts: "The real facts are glossed over by the likes of Mr. Stone and others who spend their life bottom-feeding in those small, dark crevices of doubt and hypocrisy," he told the Associated Press's Pat Milton. Kallstrom was implying that independent investigators are "bottom-feeders" out to make a buck at the expense of the victims' families, who require our silence to achieve peace of mind and closure.
I don't know of one independent investigator or journalist who has made big bucks pursuing the truth in this matter. On the contrary, it is a tough row to hoe financially speaking. As for the families' peace of mind, I think Kallstrom implying that we should drop it for their sakes redefines the term "manipulative." With all due respect to the families, what about the peace of mind of all the living who get on planes every day to fly off the coast of Long Island?
Even worse, from my point of view, are those I call "the backbiters." They are the journalists who gratuitously attack other journalists working the unpopular sides of a story. I'm going to name names here because I find this practice insidious and a real discredit to our profession.
After leaving CBS, I felt that the best policy was to keep my mouth shut about what happened. I didn't really want to continue looking into the story, much less become the story. When the New York Observer's Philip Weiss called me for an interview, I told him off the record about what I'd experienced and then refused to say anything for public consumption. He asked me if I minded if he spoke to the people at 60 Minutes, and I told him to do as he pleased because I had no right to tell him whom he could and couldn't talk to.
The senior producer of 60 Minutes, Josh Howard, told Weiss that my "official relationship with CBS ended" before I had pitched the TWA story. Then he went on to say this about the proposal I submitted to him for a story on TWA Flight 800: "It sounded kind of wacky, and we said, 'No thanks.'" First, here's the "wacky proposal" or "blue sheet" (as it's called inside the network) that I submitted to Howard on March 18, 1997:
TWA 800: TROUBLE INSIDE THE INVESTIGATION
A retired cop turned journalist is on the run, wanted by the FBI for "stealing" evidence. The FBI seizes a copy of FAA radar tapes from a retired pilot who claims he got them from a source inside the investigation. A grand jury is convened for what appears to be an unprecedented purpose -- investigating leaks within the TWA investigation. Meanwhile, crash investigators called to the Hill have little progress to report; the NTSB's Dr. Bernard Loeb saying that there was evidence consistent with the plane being struck by a missile fragment only seemed to add to the confusion. At the same hearing, Representative Frank Wolf said, "the credibility of the U.S. government could be tarnished if this thing goes on much longer."
Indeed. So what is going on? What's going on between the FBI and the NTSB? Why are people inside the investigation leaking documents, forensic evidence, and key information to the press, including CBS's law enforcement consultant, Paul Ragonese, who secretly met with two members of the task force? Is Jim Sanders, now hiding from the FBI after announcing that the red substance he received from a source inside the investigation was fuel exhaust from a missile, a publicity-seeking flake or a credible journalist with an incredibly good source? Will the congressional subcommittee inquiries help or hurt the investigation?
60 Minutes focuses on the drama behind the scenes of this unprecedented investigation and looks for clues to the ultimate question: What really happened to TWA 800?
Now isn't that just the "wackiest" thing you've ever read?
As I mentioned before, Josh did not say "no thanks." If he had, the FBI would never have come calling at CBS. Also, my official relationship with CBS ended when they gave me notice. Prior to that, I was working on a month-to-month basis as my contract had ended and there was no documentary to assign me to at CBS Reports. During that time, as Josh Howard may have forgotten (and I have the memos to prove it), I was developing several stories for 60 Minutes, including one on child soldiers, another on former SAC commander General Lee Butler, and another on Korean alien smugglers.
CBS correspondent Bob Orr also took his best shot across my bow. In his interview with Philip Weiss for the New York Observer, Orr said that he was "never impressed by Ms. Borjesson," and then posed these rhetorical questions: "What was her level of access and expertise, and who did she talk to? Who were her sources? One, and he was alarmingly thin." I spoke to Bob Orr once and only briefly. He never asked me about my sources, "level of access," or "expertise." His assumption that I only had one source on this story was, to put it mildly, incorrect.
Besides misspelling my name (that would be Kristina with a K, Ms. Negroni, not a CH) Christine Negroni, an ex-CNN reporter and author of Deadly Departure, a book about the Flight 800 disaster, incorrectly described what happened with Sanders's sample when it reached CBS and then went on to incorrectly state that the reason The Press-Enterprise's David Hendrix and I had "much information in common," was because we were staying in touch with Kelly O'Meara. I didn't meet O'Meara until after I'd left CBS. I had no idea that we'd uncovered similar information until I met her later on.
Negroni, who seems to have had liberal access to James Kallstrom, quotes him implying that O'Meara was pushing "a conspiracy thing" in Congressman Forbes's office: "I was aware from people around the investigation that Forbes's office was part of this whole conspiracy thing to some degree .... A lot of people were concerned and puzzled by what his office was doing. I didn't know how much he was doing and how much was happening by some strong person [he's talking about O'Meara here] with a lot of leeway in his office." In the last paragraph of this chapter, Negroni writes that O'Meara and I had "convinced" Oliver Stone that "the investigation of Flight 800 was worth another look." As you read earlier, we didn't "convince" Stone of anything. Stone's producer, Tom McMahon, approached me and asked for a pitch. If anything, he had to convince me to wrap my arms around the TWA 800 tar baby one more time.
In all fairness to Negroni, I refused to talk to her, but that's no excuse for not getting her facts straight.
The most puzzling attack on O'Meara came from a highly respected Washington Post reporter, Howard Kurtz. She had recently received new radar information from the National Transportation Safety Board, so she asked for and was granted an interview with the NTSB's Peter Goelz and Bernie Loeb. Shortly thereafter, on August 23, 1999, Howard Kurtz wrote the following in the Post's Style section:
UNFRIENDLY FIRE
Peter Goelz, Managing Director of the NTSB was taken aback when he was interviewed by a reporter for Insight magazine, the Washington Times' sister publication. He says Kelly O'Meara was "extraordinarily antagonistic." O'Meara was questioning Goelz about secret government radar reports that she said showed plenty of activity nearby on the day in 1996 that TWA Flight 800 crashed. The government says it found no evidence to support theories that a missile downed the plane. Goelz quickly realized he knew O'Meara from previous incarnations. She had pursued the missile theory while working as chief of staff to Representative Michael Forbes, then a New York Republican who had questioned whether there had been a terrorist on the plane, and she had worked on an Oliver Stone docu-drama about TWA 800 that the filmmaker was preparing for ABC before the project was cancelled. "She really believes that the U.S. Navy shot this thing and that there was a fleet of warships," Goelz says. O'Meara did not return calls, but Insight Managing Editor Paul Rodriguez called her previous jobs irrelevant. "She has working knowledge of an issue, it's like saying someone who worked as a tax accountant has a bias towards tax accountancy. If anyone has questions about her bias, wait until they see a printed product finished. It's just carping about an aggressive reporter."
Goelz had contacted Kurtz within an hour of the interview, which was tape-recorded and leaves no doubt as to who raised the conspiracy issue (it wasn't O'Meara). Kurtz ran his piece within forty-eight hours of the interview -- days before O'Meara completed the article she was working on.I have several questions and comments about Kurtz's piece. First of all, I can't figure out what is newsworthy about it.
If a reporter being aggressive is big news, then we should be seeing articles like this everywhere all the time. Most reporters are pushy, whether they're asking the right questions or not.
It's clear that Goelz got in touch with Kurtz to write the article. Could it be that this high-caliber journalist stooped so low as to write a piece the sole purpose of which was to make another journalist look bad?Kurtz writes about O'Meara's "previous incarnations" as if they were big minuses in her current career. O'Meara's long experience with the TWA 800 story was the reason she managed to get the additional radar information in the first place. I disagree with Rodriguez that her previous jobs were irrelevant. Her previous jobs were utterly pertinent to covering the TWA story. (Why do you think CBS hired James Kallstrom as their law enforcement consultant after he retired from the FBI's TWA 800 task force? Same difference.)
She had more documentation on, and experience with, this story than ten regular reporters. I can't help feeling that Goelz used Kurtz to publicly bite back at her. Also, one correction, Mr. Kurtz: The Oliver Stone piece was not a docu-drama; it was a straight-up newsmagazine piece.
This concludes the Enquirer segment of this essay, but please, don't let the gossipy, backbiting tone distract you from the main point:
Don't let official sources use you as a mouthpiece to attack a fellow journalist -- or anyone else for that matter. As Ted Koppel put it, "Aspire to decency. Practice civility toward one another. Admire and emulate ethical behavior wherever you find it."