Jeffrey Toobin, Hypocrite, Part III!
It's one of
those gifts that keeps on giving! New evidence of Jeffrey Toobin's hypocrisy
(in his book, A
Vast
Conspiracy ) arrives almost daily. Today's installment focuses on the
aspersions Toobin casts on Michael Isikoff, whose reporting of the Flytrap
scandal won a National Magazine Award for Newsweek .
Toobin
writes that "greed," in the form of a "desire to write books about the
president's sex life" motivated Isikoff and other Clinton "enemies ...to act as
they did." In a deceptively-crafted passage on pages 130-131, Toobin quotes a
September, 1997 Linda Tripp tape in which Tripp says that Isikoff was "working
on a book deal. He's doing an all-the-president's women kind of deal." Toobin
then flatly asserts, "Isikoff was using Tripp as a source for the [book]
project he had started with Glenn Simpson of The Wall
Street Journal , who had by this point dropped out of the project. Isikoff
had apparently even shared the working title of his volume with Tripp, as he
had with others"--the title, according to Toobin, being All the President's Women.
Toobin then
blasts Isikoff for trying to talk Tripp into cooperating with him. According to
Tripp, Isikoff told her, "If I were to, uh, work with you and, you know, allow
some of this to get out into the mainstream media, then that would set you up
for a [book contract]." Toobin writes:
If events
unfolded as Tripp said they did, this was dubious ethical territory for the
reporter. If Isikoff and Tripp were both stoking the story so they could profit
from it in the form of book deals--and not disclosing that fact to Isikoff's
readers, as he had not in his August story--that would have been inappropriate
to say the least. Likewise, it would have been wrong for him to advise Tripp on
how to position herself in the marketplace of Clinton sex books. In the book
that he did write on the case, which was entitled Uncovering Clinton , Isikoff claimed that Tripp "invented" this
conversation with him, If she did, it is curious that Tripp knew the precise
title of Isikoff's planned book; moreover, Tripp was obviously not lying about
her own interest in writing a book.
There are
many, many things wrong with Toobin's argument.
First, note
the clever use of the word "if" in the second sentence. "If" Isikoff had been
writing a book, he might be accused of mercenary motives. But Isikoff says he
wasn't writing a book. He confirms (in Uncovering
Clinton , and to me) that he had talked about co-writing a book with
Simpson, but says that they had dropped this idea over a month before the Tripp
tape, after Matt Drudge ran a screaming headline suggesting that Isikoff was
holding back juicy Kathleen Willey details (which even Toobin concedes he
wasn't) for a book . Indeed, Toobin himself, 17
pages before the above passage, writes that after the mid-summer Drudge
headline "Isikoff and Glenn Simpson decided to put All
the President's Women aside for a while."
What
evidence does Toobin have that Isikoff isn't telling the truth and that the
"while" had ended by September--with Isikoff back to "using Tripp as a source"
for a book, as opposed to reporting a possible article for Newsweek ? Well, Isikoff had told Tripp the "precise title"of his
book! Except that Toobin got the title wrong. The title of Isikoff and
Simpson's proposed book, according to both Isikoff and Simpson, was
Secrets and Lies , not All
the President's Women . "The notion that Mike and I would be so lame as to
use a cliché like All The President's Women is
perhaps the most insulting part of Toobin's mistake," says Simpson. (Simpson
also told me that after Drudge's report Isikoff "was fairly petrified that he
would be pulled into a conflicted situation" and that their book project was
"most emphatically" dropped.) Isn't it likely that Tripp had simply read the
Drudge Report and erroneously believed that Isikoff
was working on a book?
Given that,
what was so terrible about what Isikoff is alleged to have told Tripp? He told
her she shouldn't publish her story herself, but that she should let him have
it. In other words, he's trying to talk a source into giving a story to him,
and his employer. That's what reporters do, and what they're paid to
do.
What's so
terrible about writing a book anyway? As Isikoff says, "Any big story can
always turn into a book." A reporter would have to be a moron not to have that
thought somewhere in the back of his or her mind. Maybe Toobin is right to
think that "such incentives did not even exist a generation ago"--although I
suspect the incentives do more to bring out relevant truths than distort them,
and it's not at all clear that prior to Clinton the incentives even applied
"books about the president's sex life." (Bob Woodward got rich off Watergate.
But what journalist got rich writing about Nixon's sex life, or Ford's, or
Carter's, or Bush's--or Gary Hart's for that matter?) It's easy to believe that
Isikoff would have done exactly what he did even if his only possible
publication outlet was Newsweek (and his only
remuneration his salary) since all of his reporting was supervised and
supported by his Newsweek editors.
Toobin is,
of course, being massively hypocritical here, given that he too is now
profiting from enclosing his reporting in hard covers. How dare Isikoff write a
book, says Toobin in his book! Was Toobin's own judgment distorted by his
presumably large Random House advance? Has he donated the money to
charity?
In
fact , kausfiles has learned, after the Monica story
broke in early 1998 Random House approached Isikoff (who had no deal in the
works) to write a book about it, but then backed off because Toobin, a big name
Random author, was already interested in doing one himself!
It gets
worse. In May of 1998, according to Isikoff, when both he and Toobin had
publishing deals, Toobin actually proposed over lunch that he and Isikoff join
forces and co-author their Clinton books. At that
point, of course, most of what Toobin now criticizes in Isikoff's reporting
(including the role of Clinton's enemies in advancing the scandal) was
well-known. If Isikoff was such a disreputable sleazemonger, why would Toobin
want to write a book with him? A Newsday story on this incident reports that, "Toobin
said through a Random House spokesman ... that Isikoff had approached him."
Isikoff insists it was the other way around--he'd invited Toobin to lunch, but
only to pump him for info on Dennis Kirkland, one of Paula Jones' detractors.
He remembers being surprised when Toobin suggested they write the book
together.
I believe
Isikoff on this. (Neither Toobin nor Random House returned my repeated calls.)
Anyway, whoever suggested the arrangement, Toobin doesn't deny considering it
for at least a day. Why, if Isikoff's so bad? And shouldn't Toobin, by his own
standards, have disclosed his book dealings with Isikoff to Vast Conspiracy readers?
There's
more! Let's not forget that Toobin, the man who now decries the baleful
influence of book deals, first made his mark betraying Iran-Contra special
counsel Lawrence Walsh, for whom he worked as a lawyer, by quitting to publish
a book about the case before it was even over! There's not enough room on
Slate 's server to fully analyze Toobin's possible
psychological motives for indulging in the ridiculous innuendoes of
A Vast Conspiracy . But one is obvious: he's
projecting!
P.S.: Isikoff, as I've written earlier, is a friend of mine.
In my experience he's honest and conscientious. Am I motivated to criticize
Toobin in part by a desire to defend Isikoff from the slime in Vast
Conspiracy ? You bet. But I wouldn't do it if I wasn't
convinced Isikoff is right and Toobin wrong. I'm not that loyal a
friend.
