Stonewalled: My Fight for Truth Against the Forces of Obstruction, Intimidation, and Harassment in Obama's Washington

by Sharyl Attkisson

  But instead of telling the TSA no, we dutifully rush our cameras to their offices as directed, and do the interviews in the order they determine in the time slots they assign, for the length of time that they determine, during which Pistole offers carefully prepared, well-vetted answers—and no new information. Then we clear a spot in the evening newscast for the resulting story and call it “news.”

  What’s just happened here? The TSA has dictated the terms of our coverage. When the media initiates a story worth covering, the government balks—but when they need us, we’re compliant. It’s important for us to resist this dynamic because we risk becoming little more than tools in their propaganda efforts: serving their interests rather than holding them accountable and serving the public’s interests.

  As an aside, for the same news report, I sought comment on the knife policy from members of Congress who lead the House Transportation Committee, but they declined. A spokesman for one of them said his boss had “no interest” in doing an interview. I was asking an elected official to fulfill his duty as the public’s representative on a key committee, but the request was treated as if I were asking for a favor.

  | SPINNING YOU—WITH YOUR OWN TAX DOLLARS

  That attitude in Congress is the rule rather than the exception. Many elected officials don’t seem to recognize that they work for the public and have an obligation to answer public controversies and speak to how they make their decisions and spend your tax dollars. Tax dollars even supply members of Congress with money to hire press officials who are supposed to be responsive to the media but often behave instead as if they’re privately paid public relations officers whose job is to spin the news media and run interference for their bosses.

  This is never more apparent than during my “Follow the Money” reports, circa 2007–2009, which question Congress’s awards of coveted, no-bid earmarks of tax dollars to corporate and special interests in their home districts. In some cases, there are questions of fraud. In other cases, it’s about waste, patronage, and conflicts of interest.

  With ample earmarks to examine and plenty of offenders, I split the targets of my inquiries between Democrats and Republicans. For Republicans: North Carolina’s Virginia Foxx gave generously of tax dollars for a new teapot museum building that never came to pass; California’s Jerry Lewis earmarked to improve neighborhoods suspiciously close to property that he owned, possibly increasing his own property values; and Alaska’s Don Young handed out $10 million that stood to benefit one of his supporters.

  Among Democrats it’s Congressman Rahm Emanuel of Illinois in 2008 (later to become President Obama’s chief of staff and then Chicago mayor). He agrees to an interview with me about one of his earmarks but he’s clearly annoyed about it. I’m asking about his part in a $1.8 million grant of federal tax dollars to subsidize the Shedd Aquarium in Chicago, which has just cleared $8 million after expenses, has several hundred million dollars in net assets, boasts 159 corporate donors, and pays its chief executive $600,000 in salary and benefits. Emanuel explains to me that he nonetheless supports the Shedd Aquarium with your tax dollars because it raises awareness about the Great Lakes. He goes on to suggest during the interview that the reason America is growing suspicious and wary of earmarks is that I’ve been doing a series of reports about them. He becomes so hostile toward me during the interview, I finally ask, “Is something wrong? Are you angry with me?”

  “You don’t really want to know what I think,” Emanuel barks back as we continue rolling the camera for editing shots. “I’m fully medicated!”

  As I make my way further down the list of equally resentful congressmen responsible for a seemingly endless list of earmarks, nobody owes taxpayers more answers than Senator Ted Stevens, a prickly, powerful Republican leader from Alaska. Nicknamed by some critics as the “emperor of earmarks,” he personally directed at least $3.4 billion in tax dollars to projects in his home state of Alaska. Yes, I said 3.4 billion as in: $3,400,000,000.00. A single billion is a pretty big number, let alone three. One billion minutes ago the Roman Empire was dominating the earth. One billion hours ago, we were in the Stone Age.

  Stevens’s controversial earmarks include major ones that appear to benefit his friends, donors, and family members. But he doesn’t think he has to justify how he’s spending your billions. Even when he’s the subject of several investigations. When I ask for interviews, Stevens’s press officer employs the nonrefusal-refusal that’s become so familiar. Here’s how it works: instead of declining the interview request outright, which would give rise to a phrase in the news story that says something like “Senator Stevens refused to do an interview,” the press officer never calls back with a final answer or he stonewalls with a list of excuses.

  Senator Stevens is just too busy.

  It’s not that he doesn’t want to do an interview. It’s just that he has to go straight from a meeting to a vote.

  He has to rush to the airport. There’s just no time. Not one spare second.

  On one occasion, I press the matter. I offer to come to Stevens anytime, anywhere, at his convenience.

  “I wish that were possible,” says the press aide, most sincerely. “But as soon as he votes, he has to rush to the airport for a flight back to Alaska.

  I call Evening News executive producer Kaplan.

  “If I can get an interview with Senator Stevens, will you give me the time to fly to Alaska to do it?”

  “Hell, yes,” says Rick, no questions asked.

  I call Stevens’s press assistant.

  “Since the senator is rushing back to Alaska, to make it convenient for him, I can come to Alaska and do the interview with him anytime this weekend,” I say.

  He’s at a loss. Then, I finally get a direct answer.

  “Sharyl, he’s not going to do an interview with you,” says Stevens’s spokesman.

  Sometimes, when members of Congress avoid me, I have to stake them out with a photographer and try to hunt them down on their own turf so that they will be answerable to public questions.

  They don’t like that.

  For one report, I need Democratic congresswoman Stephanie Tubbs Jones to explain why she earmarked $2 million in tax money to a well-to-do paint company in her Ohio home district: Sherwin-Williams. The earmark is to help Sherwin-Williams develop a biological repellent paint for the Defense Department. It sounds promising on its face—all earmarks do. Their descriptions are often creatively written to make it seem as though there’s a great deal of public benefit when there may not be. Experts tell me the paint idea actually has almost zero viability and that the earmark is just a $2 million favor from a member of Congress to a business at home.

  Tubbs Jones’s press representatives give me the runaround and eventually deny the interview request. So I stake her out near her office on Capitol Hill. When I see her approach from a distance, I walk down the hall toward her and offer a handshake.

  “I’m Sharyl Attkisson from CBS.”

  “Hi, Sharyl, how are you?” She takes my hand.

  “I’ve been trying to talk to you about the Sherwin-Williams earmark—” I begin.

  “Excuse me,” interrupts Tubbs Jones, her manner suddenly turning dark. She continues through gritted teeth. “Don’t you ever walk up like this . . .”

  I explain that I’ve requested interviews through her office but to no avail.

  “Ma’am, turn the camera off,” she commands, as if royalty to her obedient subjects.

  “You can’t order us to turn our cameras off,” I reply.

  “Well then, I can’t be forced to talk to you,” she says in an exasperated voice, waving an arm. Then, she flashes in anger and grabs me tightly around my right wrist. And squeezes.

  “Don’t play me like that. Don’t play me like that!” she says threateningly.

  It looks like we’re going to rumble. As a former judge and prosecutor, Tubbs
Jones knows better. She’s just committed battery. On a news reporter. With a camera rolling. I instinctively consider a defensive martial arts move. But instead, I touch the top of her grasp with my free hand and say, “Please take your hands off me.”

  This seems to jolt her back into reality. She releases her grip. “I didn’t mean any offense, okay?”

  With that, she says that if I’ll turn my camera off and give her a few minutes, she’ll do the interview. (For the record, she explained that she gave Sherwin-Williams the $2 million because they—the company—told her they’re the most qualified for the project. “They came with a proposal that looked good to me,” Tubbs Jones said. “They showed me testing, they showed me a video and I said ‘let’s go for it!’ ”)

  But perhaps the member of Congress who goes the furthest to avoid speaking to public questions on camera is legendary earmarker John Murtha, a Democrat from Pennsylvania. An unindicted co-conspirator in the ABSCAM public corruption scandal in the early 1980s, Murtha is notoriously camera-shy. But almost thirty years later, he’s said to be under FBI investigation again for his relationships with lobbyists, corporations, and donors. A firsthand, trusted source has described to me how Murtha’s staff shakes down defense contractors for campaign contributions as a quid pro quo in exchange for getting them government contracts. But Murtha doesn’t want to answer any such allegations or explain his earmarks on camera. So CBS News Capitol Hill producer Jill Jackson and various camera crews help stake him out on the Hill.

  He knows we’re looking.

  One morning, Jackson and our photographer spot Murtha boarding the small escalator leading from the underground electric train that shuttles members between the Capitol and the adjacent House office buildings. Murtha spots our camera. In an instant, he vaults over the divider from the “up” escalator to the “down” side, and quickly disappears into the Capitol bowels before the photographer can get his camera on his shoulder and hit the ON button. “I’ve never seen a seventy-five-year-old move so fast,” the cameraman would later marvel in relaying the account.

  As powerful people in positions of authority work to avoid us and dictate the terms of our coverage, we too easily buy into their spin without question.

  | THE POLITICAL-INDUSTRIAL COMPLEX

  Big corporations rule the world. You may choose not to believe it. That’s exactly what they’re counting on. They influence vast amounts of information we receive. They control some facets of government so effectively that the government has all but given up trying to resist it. And it’s the same whether we’re talking about Democrats or Republicans.

  That’s not to say that big corporations are evil. Of course many do positive things for their employees, shareholders, and the public. They’re engines that can power a healthy American economy. But when left unchallenged to control information so secretly and cleverly that we don’t even realize they’re doing it, they can get away with bad things. They can partner with the government and avoid meaningful government oversight. They can fool a complacent news media. They can hurt the economy. They can convince us that propaganda is the truth. They can prompt us to make decisions that are wrong, unhealthy, or dangerous.

  What’s even more dangerous is the fact that, today, government, politicians, and big corporations might as well be one and the same. Their self-interests are inextricably intertwined. Members of Congress serving on pivotal committees solicit contributions—legal payoffs—from the very special interests they’re supposed to oversee. It results in a perverse dynamic where Congress ends up protecting and defending those it should be watchdogging. Likewise, federal agencies view the companies and industries they’re supposed to regulate as “clients” or “stakeholders.” These agencies are largely bought and paid for. They act as partners working in tandem for a common purpose. They exchange information between themselves that they keep secret from the public, which actually owns the information. Big corporations write and approve press releases that the government issues. As allies, they hold closed meetings and make decisions about matters of public interest without the public’s input.

  And because they make the rules: it’s all legal.

  In the early 2000s the government is debating how to regulate the mortgage industry. Countrywide Financial—among the biggest offenders in the brewing subprime mortgage crisis—gets caught attempting to curry favor by offering politicians and regulators red-carpet treatment and sweetheart loans through a VIP program called “Friends of Angelo,” as in customers-referred-personally-by-CEO-Angelo-Mozilo. VIPs include Democratic senators Kent Conrad of North Dakota and Chris Dodd of Connecticut. Both helped oversee the mortgage industry; each got at least two VIP loans.

  VIP mortgages also went to President Clinton’s former housing secretary Henry Cisneros, President Bush’s housing secretary Alphonso Jackson, and Jackson’s daughter Annette Watkins. (An internal Countrywide email noted Annette Watkins’s father was expected to be confirmed by the Senate as secretary of housing and urban development.)

  Another example is the case of Dr. Julie Gerberding, who was head of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). She’s at the helm when the government secretly agrees to pay damages to the family of Hannah Poling, a child who developed autism after multiple vaccinations. The landmark case—which ultimately amounts to $1.5 million for Hannah the first year and $500,000 each year after—is ordered sealed, protecting the pharmaceutical vaccine industry and keeping the crucial information hidden from other families who have autistic children and also believe vaccines to be the culprit.

  After she finishes as head of the government’s CDC, Gerberding becomes president of vaccines for Merck.

  Think about it. The very government that we pay to serve us and protect our interests ends up marginalizing us, working against us, or even leaving us out of the equation entirely.

  Months before health-care industry lobbyists wrote the fine points of Obamacare to their own advantage, there was the Bush administration’s $700 billion Troubled Asset Relief Program, or “TARP” for short—brought to you by the Wall Street banking industry.

  It’s September 24, 2008, and Secretary of the Treasury Hank Paulson is fervently lobbying members of Congress to pass TARP into law. It’s a tough sell. I’m at a Washington, D.C., restaurant, meeting with Republican senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina over iced tea. Our talks are interrupted by the important business of TARP. I get to be a fly on the wall for some important legislative discussions as they unfold.

  Graham is acting as the intermediary between Secretary Paulson and Republican presidential nominee John McCain, who’s on the campaign trail. Paulson calls Graham’s cell phone making the pitch for TARP. Graham calls McCain’s cell phone to relay information. McCain responds to Graham. Graham calls back Paulson. And so on.

  In between calls, Graham relays to me the justification Paulson is giving for TARP. How tax dollars will be used to buy up so-called toxic assets in the subprime mortgage crisis. How, if this exact thing isn’t done now, the U.S. economy—perhaps the world economy—will fall apart. Nothing short of the American way of life is at stake. Eventually, for the good of the nation, McCain is sold and so is the Democratic presidential nominee, Barack Obama. They set aside politics and issue a joint statement supporting TARP. Congress passes the TARP legislation on October 3, 2008.

  It’s not long before I break the news that Treasury secretary Paulson has quietly redefined TARP’s mission out of the public eye. It’s now a cash program for banks, not consumers. Instead of buying up so-called toxic mortgage-related assets, the TARP tax dollars will purchase massive amounts of the banks’ preferred shares, giving them wide freedom to spend the money how they choose. Including acquiring other banks. I spend the next few days doing more research and then share the findings with Senator Graham, double-checking to confirm my understanding of how Paulson had originally sold the TARP concept to him and to Congress.


  “Paulson fucking lied to us,” Graham responds flatly, in his opinion.

  I don’t know if Paulson sold Congress a bill of goods because he figured they’d never approve a big bank bailout. Or if he did a genuine about-face as soon as TARP became law. I only know that the banks were clued in well before the American public was.

  And what America got was fooled.

  But there’s no better exemplar of the political-industrial complex at work and the damage that it can do than the aftermath of the Deepwater Horizon oil rig explosion in the Gulf of Mexico on April 20, 2010. Eleven workers are killed instantly. The explosion itself is thoroughly covered in the media. But in the early days, the massive oil spill that follows doesn’t generate commensurate interest among the news media.

  Three weeks into the disaster, CBS Evening News executive producer Kaplan asks me to turn my attention to the story. I get up to speed and am surprised at the lack of enthusiasm over this environmental disaster from many in the traditionally environmentalism-friendly news media.

  My first question is an obvious one: Where’s the video?

  Logic and experience tell me that BP would have undersea cameras watching and recording everything. Unbelievably, three weeks into the spill, there’s no record of any other reporters yet seeking the video. When I raise the question with BP, the company refers me to the Coast Guard, as if the Coast Guard is acting as BP’s press agent. (The government-corporate partnership—starting to sound familiar?)

  I come to learn that after previous environmental accidents, government initiatives were put in place to hold oil companies more responsible for cleaning up their own messes. But with the Deepwater Horizon disaster, a perverted implementation of these rules leads to a bizarre relationship in which BP calls the shots, and the Coast Guard and U.S. Department of the Interior act, in some respects, as the oil company’s agents, defending it rather than holding it accountable.