Ken Stewart, Hamilton’s deputy and Bishop’s direct boss, sits next to her. He had finished reading Bishop’s memo and story an hour ago. They’d made some changes, and he’d agreed to go to Hamilton. That was their deal. She would show Stewart first—but only a little bit—and he didn’t talk to Hamilton without her.
Stewart agrees to these terms, which would have been absurd for almost anyone else, because it is the only way Bishop will work and because, in reality, there are only about five reporters in the country who have the sources to consistently break major stories about national security. If you want to be precise about it, Bishop maybe has only one real rival she admits to, Roland Garth at the New York Times.
“How long will it take you to write this?” Hamilton asks.
“Already done,” she says.
“Of course,” Hamilton groans. “And don’t tell me: you wrote in a Word document, not in the system, right?”
“Of course,” says Bishop.
She hands him a flash drive.
Along with offering her memos only printed in hard copy, Bishop doesn’t believe in writing inside the company’s computer system. In the system, data administrators and other meddlers can violate the rules and access her stories and notes. The Chinese, Russian, and Korean governments had also hacked the Tribune’s computer system. She wouldn’t put it beneath NSA, either. She also doesn’t believe in using the company email. That is reserved for minor editing at the last minute.
You could go all the way back to Clark Mollenhoff in the 1960s, or for that matter Nellie Bly in the 1880s—Bishop’s personal hero—and find great investigative reporters all agreeing about this: don’t tell your editors what you’re working on until you have so much evidence it is hard for them to stop you. Bishop just took it a little further. Okay, a lot further. But it was the freaking digital age. The Web is a cesspool. Privacy took a lot of work.
Even then, the Tribune has screwed her over a few times during her twenty-plus years at the place. It almost knuckled under to Jim Nash’s predecessor, Jackson Lee, over publishing revelations of the government skirting domestic surveillance laws. Then the story won a Pulitzer—her third if you didn’t count the two that went to the paper because they were team projects. The Tribune failed her, again, when it parted ways with her on legal strategy defending the surveillance series. The judge offered her a compromise to get her to testify “just a little”—not identify her source but describe him in general terms. The paper, under previous management, had considered the deal worth taking. Bishop thought it was Orwellian. She found new counsel who worked her case pro bono for seven years. She kept the Tribune’s disgrace private—mostly. But there weren’t many places to go if this is what you do for a living, and she didn’t feel like having to break in a whole new group of idiots somewhere new.
Things at the Tribune were better now. The Lord family had sold a 51 percent interest in the paper to the Ralston brothers, two tech geniuses who thought the Tribune a data gold mine and media an interesting business problem. If they couldn’t solve it, they could afford to lose $50 million a year for a decade and never notice. That isn’t their plan apparently. Maybe they will figure it out. Here’s hoping. Raise a glass.
But they’d hired a new editor, Will Gordon. Some different folks had been promoted. Stiffer spines. As for Gordon, Bishop thought he believed in news, was twice as smart as most people she knew, and had the biggest balls of anyone still left in the business.
“Give me an hour to read your full story,” says Hamilton.
“But I get to be there when you talk to Gordon,” Bishop says.
An hour later, they are in the executive editor’s office. Gordon, who looks to Bishop like a tree that bent over for years to find sunlight, is sitting behind the same scarred, wooden desk every top editor at the Tribune has used from the 1940s to 2000. Gordon found it in storage when he arrived at the paper and brought it back. Nice instincts. Gordon’s long body seems to be draped from his chair and spilling under the desk.
Hamilton and Stewart sit on a fading black leather couch. Bishop sits in one of the tattered visitor chairs across the desk from Gordon. The shabbiness of the place is attributed to the fact that the Tribune is moving offices in six months—too much of the space is empty, and the real estate is worth almost as much as the paper itself. But in truth no one had spent money on the interior since 2005.
Gordon glances at Bishop’s memo and then holds out his hand. “Can I see the novel rather than the CliffsNotes?”
Hamilton hands him a printout of Bishop’s full story.
Gordon spends several minutes on it, a combination of reading and scanning. Then he stretches his long legs out to the side of his desk and narrows his eyes. You can’t tell if they are open or closed.
“So we’re saying the following,” Gordon begins. “The Tribune has unearthed evidence from intelligence sources that the deadly attack in Oosay appears to have been more serious, more premeditated, and possibly more preventable than the government has let on.” He looks up over his reading glasses. “So far so good?” He resumes his summary. “The particulars are as follows: The whole incident may have been a planned attack, not the outgrowth of a protest spun out of control, contrary to what some in the administration have suggested. There is some reason to think there was advance warning. And Roderick had an unusually small security detail for a general in a danger zone. In addition, the perimeter outer wall of the compound had not been strengthened, in violation of congressional instructions to do so at all U.S. installations by last September. Put it all together and it raises questions about whether the Nash administration did everything it could to be ready for and to stop what happened or was negligent and now whether it has leveled with the public.”
It is a better summary than Bishop had written.
Gordon looks up again to see if there are any objections. Then he continues.
“Then comes the Nash administration’s reaction to what happened. We don’t know if the president’s team intentionally misled people to obscure apparent mistakes or if the misstatements it made the next day were from lack of information. But the misstatements haven’t been corrected.”
Gordon pauses again. More silent assent.
“Then we have the following evidence to back up our thesis. First, you’ve got evidence from forensics tests that the gates at the Oosay compound appear to have been blown up, not overrun by a mob, as initially indicated.
“Second, there were substantial warnings in the intelligence traffic that something might happen in Morat and even in Oosay. Those warnings, some in the government say, anonymously, were ignored.
“Third, some intelligence sources think the protest that occurred outside the gates may have been staged as a diversion and not spontaneous at all, again anonymously.
“Fourth, a five-man security detail for a brigadier general is the bare minimum.
“Fifth, the height and width of the perimeter wall of the compound had not been upgraded.
“I miss anything, Jill?”
“That’s about it. But it took me four thousand words. You did it in about four hundred.”
“Is this Oosay facility CIA, State, army, or what?” Gordon asks.
“Not clear,” says Bishop. “The U.S. government bought the property, which was a colonial mansion, but recently built something new there. Maybe CIA. There is some speculation the new building was some kind of interrogation site. The fact that some of Roderick’s security detail were private contractors also suggests some kind of special op or intelligence thing. Straight military would be all uniforms. And officially we don’t have troops in Morat and that compound is a diplomatic mission.”
Bishop had done a series on the effects of outsourcing military functions to outside contractors.
Gordon’s eyes narrow again, a signal of his concentration. “And how do we know all this?”
Bishop regards him cautiously. He is asking about her sources.
“Interviews
with people inside government conducting the after-action inquiry on the incident, access to some of their investigative materials, and evidence from people outside government who were in Oosay that night.”
“I can read that much, Jill,” Gordon says. “I mean where’d you get it?”
She stares at Gordon longer this time.
She understands that editors need to know something about their reporters’ sources. But Will Gordon has insisted on knowing more about them than anyone for whom she has ever worked. And you have to be careful who you trust in this town. Too many people in Washington like to go to cocktail and dinner parties and make themselves look important by running their mouths. In this town indiscretion is a parlor game and a power trip.
How much could she trust Gordon? Or Hamilton and Stewart? In general, she has found it better to trust no one.
“If I don’t know the sources, Jill, I can’t publish the story,” Gordon says. “That simple.”
“No names,” she says. “Then we don’t have to share a jail cell.”
Gordon gives her a grin.
“I was allowed to read sections of a draft intelligence report on the incident. It was based on the interviews with people on scene. I was allowed to take notes, but I was not allowed to read the whole report or to make a copy. I have two other intelligence sources who are ‘familiar’ with the investigations going on in other agencies. The fourth agency source is not involved in the investigation but has spent a lot of time in Oosay. I have an NGO worker who was in the city the night of the attack and can talk about what she saw.”
“Where was the first tip?” Gordon asks.
Christ, Bishop thinks, this feels like a proctology exam.
She shifts in her seat and gives Gordon a look that makes clear she thinks this is enough.
“I heard thirdhand about evidence that the gates were detonated, not overrun. There was early forensics evidence on that, which I was able to confirm, after a joint trip with FBI, State, and those investigators from the White House—the Rena and Brooks team. Then I figured, if this was planned, there might be advance intelligence traffic. And there was. I leveraged that to get a look-see at sections of the debrief report of people who talked to people on the scene. Most of the rest of it is corroboration of the debrief report findings I saw.”
Bishop has worked the story the way good reporters always do, Gordon thinks. A piece of string here and another there. Press investigations are rarely “leaks” in the sense the public imagines. Usually a source offers a fragment that is little more than a tip and hopes someone else will provide the rest. Rarely does anyone offer a whole story. That’s how sources protect themselves and keep their jobs—by giving reporters only fragments of a story. Reporters then weave the pieces into stories like patchwork quilts. And you never print anything you can’t substantiate. The way you screw up is by publishing what you know to be true, even if you can’t quite prove it.
The hell of it is if you make a small mistake, you get caught, and that is hung around your neck for years as proof you are fake news.
“I think we’ve got a hell of a lot,” Ken Stewart, the deputy national editor, says in defense of his reporter. “Especially two weeks in.”
The man isn’t wrong, Gordon thinks. But having “a lot” isn’t proof of anything. You can have a lot of nothing.
“What’s the weakest part of the story?” Gordon asks.
The national editor Hamilton looks down at his copy of Bishop’s story and at the points he’d circled.
“Well, ‘they were warned’ is always soft,” he says. “There are warnings before any incident, all kinds of intelligence traffic—specific and general—and all kinds of reasons some of them are ignored.”
Bishop nods her agreement.
“But the bombing of the gates,” Stewart adds. “That’s solid evidence.”
“From what we report in our own paper, everybody in Oosay is armed all the time,” Gordon pushes back. “The idea that someone might show up to a protest with a hand grenade isn’t far-fetched.”
No one has an answer.
“And what about the guy with the binoculars, the so-called guy on the roof?” the editor asks. “Any more on that?”
“No. He seems to have vanished, if he was ever there at all. Three different groups have taken credit for the attack but none is considered credible.”
Gordon gives Hamilton a look saying the article needs some rewriting.
“Jill, go back to your sources, and see if you can get any more on the intelligence traffic. And let’s see if Suzanne Koble can work any of her diplomatic sources.”
Bishop tenses. Suzanne Koble is a foreign policy blogger turned reporter who has a large following and appears frequently on television. But Bishop thinks Koble is in the bag for the Nash administration. Many of these new kids, who make their name writing point-of-view analysis online and then get hired because they bring an audience with them, lack what Bishop thinks is the most important quality in a journalist: the cold eye to distrust everyone equally.
Gordon does seem to be able to weave these different types of reporters together by making them work collaboratively. And she has to admit Koble has good contacts—“a good Rolodex” in the antique parlance of having good sources. Her only worry is Koble tipping the Nash folks to their exposé.
“Is this competitive?” Gordon asks Bishop, meaning does any other news organization have any of it.
“Not yet.”
“Then let’s revisit Friday morning,” Gordon says. “It is Wednesday afternoon. If it can hold, I’d love to break Sunday night.” That would land in the print edition Monday morning.
“Not Sunday morning?” Hamilton says.
“Sundays suck in digital,” Gordon says. “And Saturday night is worse. If we break Sunday night, everyone starts their workweek chasing us. That means, Jill, ask for reaction from the administration Sunday midmorning,” Gordon adds. “All that will put the administration at a disadvantage, making it less likely that Nash’s team could act swiftly and try to preempt or blunt the story with some press conference of their own. I hope no one had plans for the weekend.”
The editor’s usually arid smile has widened into a delighted grin.
Fifteen
SUNDAY, DECEMBER 22
WASHINGTON, D.C.
Randi Brooks saw the Tribune news alert on her phone a half hour before George Rawls called her.
It wasn’t as if they weren’t warned. The machinery of the Nash White House began to move that afternoon when Jill Bishop called to ask for comment. But you never know what a story really is—or how much damage it might do—until you see the whole thing.
Brooks thinks the story will be a full-on disaster. Apparently Rawls’s thoughts are similar. “I think we better meet in my office tomorrow. Be there at eight thirty.” Even through the phone, Rawls’s deep staccato voice reminds her of gunfire—aimed in her direction.
In the Oval Office, the president is sitting on a floral sofa across from them, White House Counsel George Rawls next to him, and Chief of Staff Spencer Carr in a chair just a bit apart—as usual.
On a sofa facing the president sits National Security Advisor Diane Howell, another signal that, if Nash distrusts some of his national security team over Oosay, he still trusts Howell.
Spencer Carr, the president’s disciplinarian, speaks first, in a voice as welcoming as a traffic cop over a loudspeaker.
“We hired you two to stay ahead of this. Ahead of the press, ahead of Congress, ahead of leaks. You haven’t done that.” Carr’s narrow, angular face is in full glower, and he has glower down pat.
“Did your people leak to Bishop?”
Rena looks back defiantly.
“No.”
They exchange Washington power glares.
If Rena is wrong—if someone in their shop did leak—this moment will haunt Rena and Brooks. Carr, who derives much of his power from being both suspicious and retaliatory, will assume he has been lied
to knowingly, and he will make her and Peter pay for it for years.
Is Rena sure no one has leaked? Brooks can’t imagine anyone has, but it’s hard to know with certainty. During the Madison nomination, someone had leaked from their office, a new hire working as Peter’s assistant, which they discovered only at the last minute.
Bishop’s story, however, suggested the president had a bigger problem than a leak from Rena and Brooks’s office that didn’t happen. Bishop’s exposé appeared to come not from a single leak but from many sources interwoven throughout the intelligence agencies and military, from people unhappy with their bosses, including some who didn’t like the president.
That, Brooks knows, is the real issue—and Carr’s larger fear. The administration is springing leaks in too many places at once. Relations between the White House and FBI, in particular, had soured considerably in the last year, and it is no secret that Carr thinks sources in the FBI have begun to leak to Republicans in the House and Senate. FBI director Phil Hoskins is having trouble keeping control of his people.
If there are multiple leaks from different agencies, it is a sign of an administration fissuring from within. Unless it stops, Nash’s capacity to govern will be greatly diminished.
“I’m reading about preliminary investigations by my own agencies in the newspaper before I have them on my desk. And I’m learning in the media that my own aides may have lied to me and the public. Do you know why that happens?”
The voice is President Nash’s. He has unfolded his legs and is leaning forward, staring at them with those dazzling blue eyes.
“Our politics has become cannibalistic. We are so divided as a country, each party now engages in tactics that are slowly dismantling the system of government in which they serve. Once a party has power in Congress, it throws out the old rules to get what it wants because the other side won’t cooperate and the parties won’t compromise to get them to do so. When power changes hands again, there is no peace, only revenge, more rules tossed out. Once all the rules are gone, there will be nothing left to stop the devil. We are destroying our government from within. And our enemies abroad, whether they’re terror groups or formal states like Korea or Russia, are watching in delight.”
The Good Lie Page 8