by Jim Lehrer
“None taken, Mr. Howley. I am not a tabloid asshole.” I said it softly, but I said it. There was a limit to what I was prepared to take from this arrogant man in exchange for this interview!
He continued.
“These people yelled questions like—‘Hey, Howley, did you ever take a swing at your wife?’ ‘Hey, Howley, have you ever said “fucking” in public?’ ‘Hey, Howley, are you going to pick twelve disciples and start wearing sandals and a robe?’ ‘Hey, Howley, is it true the Greene campaign paid you a million bucks to do it?’ ‘Hey, Howley, is it true you were drunk that night?’ ‘Hey, Howley, are you on Prozac?’ Hey, Howley, you scum, you crook, you jerk, you thug, you bastard.”
He said the volume of calls, E-mail, faxes, mail, and other messages to and about him to the News was heavier than anything anybody could remember since the outpouring of emotion after the Kennedy assassination. “They brought it all in in huge gray canvas bags and tall stacks of pink call slips and audiotapes,” he said. “Our personnel department hired twenty-five people from some temp office to deal with it.”
He told me about Sam Rhodes—Henry, Joan, and Barbara had already told me all I needed to know about this man of Hollywood—and how he was now pushing a miniseries based on the Michael J. Howley story. It would begin with his early life, “wherever and whatever that was,” Howley quoted Rhodes as saying. The working title was “The Reporter.” Howley said he also listened to a voice-mail message from a man claiming to be Oliver Stone, a man Howley said he personally believed to be a Big Lie propagandist of Joseph Goebbels proportions and standards. “He said he wanted to make a movie about how most everything that happens to all Americans in all walks of life is controlled by seven or eight highly paid, highly visible people in the press like me—Mike Howley. He said he was sure he could get Costner to play me. Why Stone wasn’t laughed out of business years ago I do not understand.”
I bit my tongue again. Stone, lying propagandist or not, had a big following among people my age and younger. They believed his wild conspiracy theories, whether people such as Howley liked it or not. But I did not come all this way to have an argument with Michael J. Howley about Oliver Stone.
Howley said he put the alleged Stone call in the same category with those about sweatshirts and requests to name everything from sandwiches and lawnmowers (“the Williamsburg Ripper”) after him. He, like Joan, also had many serious proposals for sex, talk-show regularity, books, lectures, and honorary degrees, among other things.
He said one of the most unusual was from a men’s hairstylist in Beverly Hills who wanted permission to develop a “Howley cut” based on the way Howley wore his hair that night in Williamsburg. Howley said what the guy didn’t know was that he wore it that way because his regular barber in Washington, an Armenian from Lebanon, had gone back to the old country for a family vacation.
“I created a monster and it was me,” he concluded after an extremely long recitation of his post-Williamsburg annoyances and opportunities.
“On lectures,” I said, “I guess Williamsburg changed the rate for you in a major way?”
“My lecture-bureau guy told my secretary I can now get seventy-five thousand dollars a pop—maybe more,” he said. “Can you imagine being paid seventy-five thousand dollars for talking for less than thirty minutes about life inside the Beltway or some other such crap? It’s goddamn amazing.”
It was indeed. “That puts you in the high brackets with Ronald Reagan,” I said.
“No comment,” he replied. I could tell he hated the idea of being likened to Ronald Reagan. Too bad, Mr. Howley.
“Why is it all right for journalists to take large speaking fees from conventions and interest groups but not OK for members of Congress and politicians?” I asked.
“Good question.”
“What’s the good answer?”
“We need the money. They don’t.”
“Is the real answer—journalists think they are better and purer than politicians and cannot be bought like politicians?”
Howley glanced down at the clock on the table. So did I. Did I want to spend my valuable time here at the beginning in a discussion of journalism ethics? It was 12:10. Twenty-five minutes had already gone by. But ethics were important. They were part of the story. An important part of the story.
But I had to move on. I would return to ethics later in the interview.
I said: “If I could take you now back in time before the debate. Would you mind telling me where you were and how you were told of the invitation to moderate the Williamsburg Debate?”
I felt smart and extremely pleased when Howley seemed to let off even more steam and tension. He leaned back in his chair and, again, continued to talk fully and in detail.
He went through his lecture appearance in San Antonio, the flight back from Texas, the exchange with the American Airlines flight attendant, and his thoughts about 1980 and the press-plane obits. He even remembered what he ate and drank on the flight from Dallas to Washington National.
He told me about how and where he spent election night and a little bit about his late wife and how much he missed her and how he was sure she would have enthusiastically endorsed what he had done at Williamsburg. His description of the Majestic Theater in San Antonio, where he delivered his predebate lecture, was effusive. “It was built just before the Depression, right on the Main Street of town. The great ‘atmospherics’ theater architect of the time, John Eberson of Chicago, designed it with a Mediterranean plaza in mind. It had three balconies, total seating of twenty-five hundred, blinking lights like stars in the ceiling, which was sky blue, a cloud machine, a huge pipe organ, walls that were elaborate plaster replicas of Spanish and Moorish villages. The theater fell on bad times and some developer was going to tear it down, but the city of San Antonio—the mayor, I think it was Cisneros then—kept that from happening. They spent fifteen million dollars in city and private money to completely restore it, and they converted some old office space above it into apartments. The building is nineteen stories high.…”
I interrupted him. I simply did not care that much about a restored movie theater in downtown San Antonio, Texas.
There was so much to cover, to ask, to confront.
I moved him on to his phone conversation with Chuck Hammond of the debate commission and then to Jerry Rhome. The answers got much shorter when he talked about his walk and talk with Rhome. It was clear to me that Howley was annoyed when it became clear through my questions that Rhome had talked to me.
“Why did you want to moderate that debate so badly that you asked Rhome to change the News rules to permit it?” I asked.
“It was not a case of ‘want.’ It was simply that I felt I should,” he said.
“But why?”
“That’s my answer.”
“What’s your answer?”
“I felt I should.”
“For love of country?”
“That’s it, Chapman. You got it.”
Rhome had already told me about their final laugh over Rhome’s order to make sure “Meredith loses his ass.”
I asked Howley how he took that crack.
“The way it was intended—as a joke,” he replied.
“How did you know it was a joke?”
“Because I am an experienced listener to jokes.”
I asked if he met with or talked to any of the other three panelists before going to Williamsburg. I knew the answer, but I wanted his confirmation and I wanted to ask him:
“Why not? Why not at least call them?”
“There was no real reason to call them. There was nothing special to talk about. The debate format the commission and the candidates signed off on was the simplest—the most controlled. I thought about giving them each a call to welcome them to the foxhole, but I got busy and didn’t do it.”
“Busy doing what?”
“Doing my job, for one thing. I work for a newspaper, remember?”
“Do you still work for
that newspaper?”
“I’m on a long vacation now.”
“For how long?”
“For as long as it turns out to be.”
The enemy was approaching. The battle was now just over the ridge. I felt the quickened beat of hearts, the flow of sweat on arms and necks, the smell of gunpowder and quinine. Charge!
I asked my first attack question. I did so gently, almost offhandedly. “Didn’t you think the other panelists had a right to know beforehand that you had something very special in mind for the format and the candidates?”
“They would have had a right if that was, in fact, the case. But it was not, in fact, the case. All of that happened later, after we got together.”
All right, all right. It was only a quick, light thrust, a pat—in and out. Only the beginning. A taste of what was to come.
I asked him if he recalled his first reaction to learning the names of the three journalists who would be on the Williamsburg panel with him.
“I knew Joan Naylor—I saw her as a pro, no problem. I saw the other two as nonentities, selected no doubt because of the color of their respective skins.”
“Did that bother you?”
“Yes.”
“Did you raise that point in your conversations with the panel?”
Howley snapped his head away from looking at me toward the direction of the sea. “I am not talking about what happened in Longsworth D,” he said.
“Why not?”
“Because what happened there is private.”
“Not anymore it isn’t.”
The darkness that I had seen in his face when I showed up now returned.
“I do not believe any of the other three talked to you,” he said.
“You are free to believe whatever you wish.”
“Thank you, asshole.”
Now I looked away toward the sea. OK, OK, he called me an asshole. Twice now, he called me an asshole. So what. I am here to do a job. I am not here to take offense at being called an asshole. In fact, the madder he gets, the more I might get from him.
So. Do I press this Longsworth D point now? That is the question. Do I completely give away the fact that Joan and Henry and Barbara opened up to me on what happened in Longsworth D? No, I decided. Not now. I’ll come back to it later. Let him believe for a while longer that he might be safe on exactly what he said that Sunday afternoon in Williamsburg to get the other three to go along with his scheme to change the outcome of an election for president of the United States.
But it was time for another thrust—something more than a soft pat.
“Where did you get those women’s statements?” I asked.
“Who says I was the one who got them from anywhere?”
“I know you got them, Mr. Howley. All I want to know is where you got them.”
“No comment.”
“How can you say, ‘No comment’?”
He leaned across toward me and said: “Read my lips. ‘No comment.’ That’s how I can say it.”
“I assume you brought them with you to Williamsburg that Saturday afternoon?”
“You are free to assume anything you wish.”
“By the way, how did you come to Williamsburg?”
He told me about driving his own car and listening to tapes and CDs during the ride down from Washington. I asked him what he did on Saturday night and he brushed me off with a simple “Nothing worth mentioning.” It changed the tempo, at least, for a few seconds. But only a few.
I was right back at it. “I know who took the statements from those women.”
“Good for you.”
“They were taken by people on behalf of one of the campaigns.”
Howley shook his head and smiled. “Forget it, Chapman.” He glanced again at the clock on the table between us. “You’ve got less than five minutes left.”
There was no way I was stopping in five minutes. Maybe not in five hours.
“Was it Tubbs who gave them to you?”
“I said, forget it. There is no gold down that hole, Chapman.”
Like hell there isn’t, Howley.
“I know you talked to him that Saturday night before the debate.”
“Who?”
“Tubbs.”
“How do you know that?”
“No comment.”
Again, he was pissed.
I said: “Somebody—and I know who because he told me—from one of the campaigns gave those statements to somebody who gave them to you. It was Tubbs, wasn’t it?”
“Why is this so important to you?”
“This is not for me. It’s for … well …”
“The public? The American people? Give me a goddamn break.”
“Did you or did you not go to Williamsburg with a plan in mind to use the debate to derail Meredith by driving him crazy enough to lose it there in front of everybody?”
“ ‘Did you or did you not.’ Forget it, Mister District Attorney. I am not on trial.”
“Yes you are.”
“I was on trial. But the trial was over on Election Day. The American voters were my judge and jury. They saw and listened and they did not vote for Meredith. That is what this was all about and all it was about.”
“What were your thoughts when you opened that debate that night?”
“I don’t recall having any.”
“Not one second thought?”
“Nope.”
“Do you have any idea now of the magnitude of what it is you did?”
“Yes.”
“The outcome of a presidential election was changed because of what you did.”
“Right.”
“Are you proud of what you did?”
“Yes.”
“Journalism. What about what you did to your profession of journalism? Are you proud of what you did to it, too?”
“It was already headed over the cliff, thanks in part to people like you. All I did was give it a last-minute good purpose before it sailed off a cliff and died.”
“Died?”
“Died. Gone. Deceased. Passed away. Expired. Journalism, as something good little boys and girls should devote their dreams and lives to, died. What we are part of is the slimy rigor mortis that is setting in. You more than me, but I am part of it, too, with my lecture fees and TV appearances. We’re no better than the big-buck anchors who are treated as movie stars, not as journalists. They read ‘lines,’ not the facts. They are not expected to inform, only to be entertaining or sexy—”
There was a loud metallic buzzing sound. The alarm. The goddamn alarm was sounding!
Howley reached out with his right hand and turned it off.
“Don’t stop,” I said. “You were saying about your own role in journalism—”
“This interview is over, Chapman.”
“No, no, come on.”
“Yes, yes.”
He stood up. “Get your ass out of my house and out of my life.”
“We have just begun.” I did not stand up.
“We have just ended. Beat it.”
“You can’t be serious.”
“Never more so in my whole life, Chapman.”
I still did not move.
“I’m going to call the Greek cops,” Howley said. “I’m going to tell them you offered to sell me some crack cocaine that you smuggled into their country from the United States. I am going to tell them that when I said I did not want your poison and that I was going to call the police, you tossed your evil merchandise over the cliff in the direction of the donkeys. I will tell them that I hope the donkeys, bless their burdened but noble souls, do not by accident chew on a bite of crack cocaine. That would be terrible because it would probably affect their nervous systems and cause them to toss people and goods off of their burdened backs to their deaths or damage.…”
He started laughing. “Crack-crazed donkeys,” he roared. “That’s what you people were like after the debate.”
“You people?”
“
You people in the pressroom. Crack-crazed donkeys.”
He had that right, but I had another problem right now. I said: “You really would call the police?” I had heard all of the stories about the Greek and Turkish police and drugs. He had my attention.
“You bet your ass I would. They throw people in prison for twenty years without parole simply for possessing drugs in this country.”
Now I was on my feet.
“I have many, many more questions,” I said.
“Out, Chapman, out.”
“I am authorized by my publisher to pay you for your story, Mr. Howley.”
“You bastard! Go!”
“Seriously. Why shouldn’t you be paid for your story? You earned it the hard way.”
“Keep talking, Chapman, and I may throw you down to the donkeys where you belong.”
“Fifty thousand dollars—in cash.”
“No!”
“I can have it here in less than twenty-four hours.”
“Go!”
“Seventy-five?”
He made a move toward me. He really did. A step and then another. I decided to shut up. I had seen the men and women—the crack-crazed donkeys—of the American press at their violent worst in the Virginia Room. I had been known to throw an angry softball at an editor myself. There was seriously no telling what this man coming toward me now might try to do to me.
I said: “How about lunch? I’ll buy.”
“Out! Good-bye!”
Out, good-bye, it was.
Chapman v. Howley. I had imagined a round-the-clock marathon of strong, hot, smart words and emotions that would tax civility and intellects. I had expected to be spent, to be exhausted, to be used up, but to be bleeding joy and triumph, as did the warriors who battled in other times, in other places over other things.
Instead, it was over in an hour to the sound of an alarm clock. And I had been thoroughly defeated. He had wasted precious time off the clock with all of those details about that goddamn theater in San Antonio, the plane ride, and other irrelevancies. I thought I could push back the time. I started soft. I threw away my time. He was smarter than me.