The Last Debate

by Jim Lehrer

  I liked Richard Fisher. Maybe the foxhole rule is real. Maybe difficult experiences do bond people together quicker and firmer than all others. Whatever, I found myself talking to him like we had known each other for years.

  After a while he asked me what I was up to and I told him. I told him all about my assignment, all about how I was trying to piece together the many parts of the what, how, and why of the debate. I talked a lot more than I should have and revealed a lot more than I should have, violating a working-press rule against telling another reporter anything you would mind seeing in/on that other reporter’s newspaper, magazine, newscast, or whatever.

  But with this man, this man whose life I had saved, I forgot myself. I told him about my need to find out where those women’s abuse statements came from. Richard Fisher, without a second’s hesitation, said: “Ask them.”

  “Who?”

  “The women. Somebody had to approach them and interview them.”

  In retrospect, I think it is fair to say that it is more than likely that I would have eventually arrived at that simple—and obvious—approach on my own. But sitting there at that moment in my office, I saw the man in front of me, Richard Fisher of The Kansas City Star, to be a journalistic genius of some kind.

  The way I saw it at that moment, he had returned the favor. He had saved my life.

  Richard Fisher of The Kansas City Star was barely out the door before I went to work with Jennifer Gates and our ever mounting files of clippings, transcripts, notes, and other material. We assembled a list of fourteen names of women, mentioned during the debate directly or by apparent inference, who had made statements of one kind or another about the violent outbursts of David Donald Meredith.

  Seven, according to what we could glean from picking through the reams of follow-up interviews and other material, lived in the Charlotte, North Carolina, area. Another was in Asheville, North Carolina, and the rest were spread around the country.

  Within an hour we had phone numbers for several of them, and I asked Jennifer to stay on the task of finding the numbers of the others while I placed the first call. It was to Jonell Jane Hampstead of Charlotte, who allegedly saw Meredith strike his then fourteen-year-old daughter.

  The phone was answered on the second ring by the recorded deep voice of a man with a very southern accent. He said: “Hello, this is Kenneth L. Dixon. I am an attorney here in Charlotte. I represent Mrs. Hampstead. If you are calling about something personal, by all means, leave your name and a number after the beep and someone will get back to you. But if you are from the news media or otherwise involved in inquiries related to the Williamsburg Debate, then I would ask that you call my office. My number is area code 704-555-3556. My secretary’s name is Norma. Thank you.”

  I dialed the number for the second woman on my list. She was Terri Anne Cloverdell, who alleged Meredith slugged her for being slow to retrieve a book. She also lived in Charlotte.

  On the second ring I heard: “Hello, this is Kenneth L. Dixon. I am an attorney here in Charlotte. I represent Miss Cloverdell.…”

  He was also there for Yolanda Dinkins, a former Meredith neighbor with the story about Mrs. Meredith’s crying after claiming she had been hit by her husband, for Isabelle Anne Mathews, the USAir employee who claimed Meredith struck her with his briefcase, and for three others on the list in Charlotte.

  So I called Kenneth L. Dixon. Norma told me Mr. Dixon was “dictating” but would be back to me as soon as he could. “Is it urgent, Mr. Chapman?” she asked in a voice that was a female version of Dixon’s. I assured her it was urgent.

  Dixon was back to me in a few minutes. I told him that I wanted to ask his clients some questions about their statements concerning Meredith.

  “Well, so do a lot of other people, Mr. Chapman,” he replied. “There are so many people who want to talk to them, in fact, that we have had to set some circumstances for such talk.”

  Circumstances? I wasn’t following him. I said: “All I want to know are a few details about who talked to them in the first place and took their original statements,” I said. “It won’t take more than a couple of minutes for each of them.”

  Kenneth L. Dixon laughed. “How many times have I heard that in the last few days?” he said.

  “What do you mean about circumstances?” I said. “What must I do in order to talk to them?”

  “Well, for one thing, you must keep in mind that these women are working women. The time that they spend talking to you is time they are not spending doing their work and thus not generating income.”

  Now I was following him. “They want to be paid for their interviews, is that it?”

  “That’s it, Mr. Chapman.”

  He gave me the price list: $1,500 for each interview of under fifteen minutes, $2,500 up to thirty minutes, $4,000 for thirty minutes. Anything more was “to be negotiated.”

  “I promise you I will not need more than five minutes for each,” I said.

  “Sorry, friend,” said Dixon, “but it wouldn’t be fair to all of the others to violate the minimums.”

  “What others?”

  “The other reporters who have come before you and will come after you.”

  “How about some kind of package rate for doing all seven?”

  Kenneth L. Dixon, an operator, was with me—probably even ahead of me. “What’s your offer?” he said.

  “Five thousand for five minutes from each of the seven.”

  “In person or on the phone?”

  “What difference does that make?”

  “It’s easier and we can make sure it’s a real five if it’s on the phone. We just hang up when the time is up.”

  “Phone.”

  “Deal. Payable in advance.”

  Within minutes I got an OK from Jonathan Angel and he authorized wiring $5,000 to Kenneth L. Dixon, Esq., Charlotte, North Carolina.

  Then the next morning beginning at ten, in accordance with a schedule his Norma worked out with Jennifer Gates, I called all seven of the women on the Charlotte list.

  I asked each only about how they came to give their original statement, the one referred to in the Williamsburg Debate. The only two consistencies in their answers were the timing—all were interviewed the previous May—and the fact that each was asked to maintain absolute confidentiality about having given her statement.

  The first said that the original contact came from a woman identifying herself as a “friend of the Meredith family” who was interested in “mending some family fences.” The interview itself was done by a second woman, “dressed like a lawyer,” who said she “took statements for a living.”

  Number two said that a man, flashing a badge the words on which she couldn’t read, said he was trying to run down for dismissal an old “rumor of assault against Mr. Meredith.” She assumed he was a policeman or FBI agent—maybe even with the CIA.

  The third was interviewed by an older man who carried a small black bag and “looked like a doctor.” He said that he was a psychologist looking for answers to questions about what prompted “violent behavior in men of power.”

  The fourth woman, a Catholic, said that a man in his mid-thirties dressed as a Catholic priest did the contacting and talking in her case. He said he ran a ministry in Raleigh—the capital of North Carolina—that “helped women recover from violent abuse.”

  The fifth, the wife of a Republican member of the North Carolina legislature, said only that she gave her statement “to somebody who lied to me about who he was.” She refused to say anything more.

  The sixth and seventh were even less forthcoming. One said: “It happened and it’s true. What else matters?” The other said: “I am not answering those questions. You ought to ask Dixon for some of your money back.”

  I had already had a similar thought.

  This transaction, of course, as well as several others of mine, has set off barrages of condemnation and censure from Howley (see Appendix) and others in the self-anointed “responsible�
� press. They accused me of practicing checkbook journalism, a charge to which I plead guilty and do so without remorse or apology. Please, please, answer me this: Why should those women in North Carolina give away their stories to reporters like me and our conglomerate-owned media employers who then use those stories to make money and careers? We do not force farmers to give away their wheat to bakeries to turn into bread and money. Why do we expect news makers and sources to give away their commodity?

  But at that moment the problem for me was not defending myself from the self-righteous and double-standard-ed. It was sorting through what the women of Charlotte had told me in search of coherent clues or scents. The sorting left me mostly questions.

  I carried the questions with me like a low-grade fever wherever I went.

  I returned to Williamsburg for three days and two nights. I walked the halls of the Inn, the Lodge, and the other buildings that had been part of the greater debate stage. And I was not the only one. Officials at Colonial Williamsburg, the masters of creating a view into eighteenth-century life in America, had been forced to set up special entrance and tour arrangements to accommodate the crowds of people who also wanted to see the auditorium and the other specific places involved in a more modern piece of history.

  I spent more than an hour in Longsworth D, imagining what it must have felt like to sit in there and eat and drink and, finally, plot an unprecedented attempt to influence the outcome of a presidential election. The Virginia Room, scene of the famous riot of American journalists, was full of people again. But this time they were there to participate in a forum on American antiques. I had meals at the King’s Arms and the Josiah Chowning’s taverns. I even ordered and ate some of the food the panelists did during their time together. All in the name of research, of course.

  I talked to many Colonial Williamsburg employees, the people who played the important parts of extras in the debate drama. They were friendly and helpful except for one important thing. None would talk about anything having to do with anything they might have seen or heard that concerned Howley or any other particular guest. Not even my offers to pay for some of the details changed any minds. As one of the room-service waiters, who I am sure could have used the extra money, said: “A person ought to be able to come down here and not worry about people like me talking about them.”

  But I was able to find a person—not a Williamsburg employee—who had a piece of important information. He/she told me of a conversation with a person who talked to a Williamsburg Inn room-service waiter. That waiter had made two separate trips to Howley’s room that Saturday night before the debate after Howley had suddenly left the Inn bar. The man said he delivered a Cutty Sark on the rocks to Howley’s room each time. The waiter told my source’s source that he saw papers, some of which looked to him like official documents, strewn all over the room. He also reported that he had the following exchange with Howley when delivering the second drink:

  “My, my, you are working hard tonight,” said the waiter. “You are going to really pin those two candidates against the wall tomorrow night, I guess.”

  “Only one of them,” the waiter quoted Howley as saying. Howley, according to the man, was looking around the room at all of the papers when he said it.

  There is little question that those papers were the women’s statements about Meredith’s various outbreaks of violence.

  I also picked up an important piece of information concerning Howley’s phone calls that Saturday night.

  All I knew before from the bartender at the Williamsburg Inn was that Howley had taken a call in the bar that caused him to hurriedly desert the bar and his freshly poured Cutty Sark on the rocks. Now I got the number of the caller. Once back in his room, Howley placed two calls to the same number. One call lasted forty-five minutes, the other fifty-seven minutes. It was an area code 202 number—Washington, D.C.

  In order to protect the innocent, it is important that I explain how I got this information. I went to a non-Williamsburg employee involved indirectly in the phone billing system at Colonial Williamsburg. I told the person I was a Bell Atlantic fraud investigator checking a series of calls on the night of October 14 to and from the Williamsburg Inn that had been billed without proper authorization to an AT&T MasterCard account. I am not particularly proud of my methods, but the search for truth is not always pretty.

  Back in Washington, I quickly discovered the number was unlisted. But I figured it would probably turn out to be that of a woman friend or somebody else who had love or some other kind of personal business to discuss with Michael J. Howley that Saturday night. I handed the job of tracing the number to Jennifer Gates while I went on with my interviewing.

  I had long sessions with Chuck Hammond, Nancy Dewey, and several other staff and members of the debate commission. At first most were reluctant to say much, but they gave in after realizing—correctly—that the magnitude of this event made keeping secrets impossible. The public’s interest and right to know every tiny scrap of detail overrode all natural and man-made secrecy agreements and inclinations. This is the driving force that makes it possible for outsiders to write insider books about Nixon’s final days, the Supreme Court, the CIA, and Desert Storm. The larger the event, the larger the need for all involved to tell their individual stories—for the record, for history, for their grandchildren. I believe this force, in fact, helped Henry Ramirez, Barbara Manning, and Joan Naylor decide eventually to cooperate fully with me.

  That force had no effect, interestingly enough, on two members of the news media—Jim Weaver of Continental Radio and Carol Reynolds of CNS News. They were no Jerry Rhomes.

  Weaver refused all of my requests for an interview about his predebate threats against Henry Ramirez. He finally agreed to receive questions in writing. I submitted seven questions that were based on Henry Ramirez’s account of what was said in the phone conversation and afterward. What I got back was a faxed statement from somebody named Jeffrey Walling, who identified himself as general counsel for the Continental Radio Network, West Hollywood, California. Here is that statement in its entirety:

  “Jim Weaver acknowledges that he expressed his displeasure with Henry Ramirez’s failure to consult with his supervisors in regard to the Williamsburg Debate panel invitation. Mr. Weaver categorically denies the tone and substance of everything else. The issues raised concern sensitive personnel matters that cannot be discussed without violating the privacy standards Continental Radio considers essential to a healthy and delicate employee-employer relationship. Mr. Weaver and all others at Continental Radio have the utmost respect and regard for the professional capabilities and personal attributes of Henry Ramirez. He is a credit to our network and to America.”

  Carol Reynolds would not speak to me about anything, including the process that led up to Joan Naylor’s selection for the panel. She acknowledged only that she was involved. “The rest is privileged inside information,” she said. I asked her how she as a professional journalist would react to someone who said that to her as a justification for not answering a legitimate inquiry. “I do not consider yours legitimate,” she replied.

  I spent an important afternoon with Brad Lilly.

  We met in his tiny half-furnished office in a large suite of offices on K Street in downtown Washington. The sign on the main door said FOUNDATION FOR THE STUDY OF AMERICAN POLITICAL HISTORY.

  “This has all the looks of a CIA front,” I said to break the ice.

  Lilly was in no mood for any jokes about his current station in life. “It beats sleeping on the grate outside,” he said.

  Then, speaking mostly in a tone of annoyed resignation, he told me everything I wanted to know. I took him through the panelist-selection meeting, the control-room chaos during the debate, and all of the other small predebate events with Greene that I thought were pertinent. I was impressed with his memory for detail, his feeling of responsibility toward helping to keep “the historical record straight.”

  I was surprised by his wil
lingness to tell me how he was fired. He said Greene did it to him during the ride in the limo from Williamsburg to the Newport News–Williamsburg airport right after the debate.

  He said Greene’s first words to him after the limo started moving away from the Lodge were: “I don’t want you to get on the plane with me. I want you out of this campaign, out of my sight.”

  “I was crushed beyond belief,” Lilly told me. “Here we were, the favored recipients of the most glorious gift in the history of presidential politics. I was higher than I had ever been before in my life. Political and personal sugarplums were dancing in my head like Roman candles. And here he hits me—bam! It’s all over. Good-bye, sugarplums. Good-bye, everything.”

  Lilly said he asked Greene why and he got a one-sentence answer: “I want no more of your loser mentality.”

  Greene would not even respond to Lilly’s protest that it was him—Greene—who had the loser mentality before the debate. “Let’s not talk about it anymore now or evermore,” said Greene.

  Lilly appealed to Greene’s decency and sense of fair play, saying: “This will humiliate me in front of the world. I will be ruined forever.”

  Greene did not respond. Lilly said he suddenly knew what it felt like to drive a Volkswagen into a six-feet-thick concrete wall. This man was not budging. There had been a crash and he—Brad Lilly, professional political campaign manager—was the crash-ee. So he turned to the details.

  He said to Greene: “What will you say to the press about me, about my leaving?”

  “I will say I want to take the campaign in a new direction.”

  “A new direction? The debate just did that! ‘Fucking’ just did that!”

  “You are a hired gun. Hired guns are hired and they are fired. And, please, don’t think I have forgotten about your book. Write what you want. You were going to anyhow. You were going to write that I was a loser, a fool, a whatever. Well, now you will be writing about the next president of the United States, so it will definitely improve your sales.”