It was a quarter to three. There was nobody in the place, except Bill Clinton and me.
Well, not quite.
It was 10:15 p.m. last Monday and I found myself shooting the breeze with an obviously exhausted Clinton and being reminded about why he’s a one-of-a-kind politician.
It was an informal gathering after a White House speech on “The Perils of Indifference” by Holocaust survivor and author Elie Wiesel. About 100 people, including me and Tribune colleague Clarence Page, had been invited to the seventh in a series of “Millennium” lectures by deep thinkers.
Clinton had started his day early at a Louisiana military base and returned to learn that a Little Rock judge had found him in civil contempt for lying in the Paula Jones case. But he displayed his fabled compartmentalization, if not dignity, sipping a can of Diet Coke and playing the role of convivial host and policy wonk with ample nervous energy.
We spoke for 10 minutes, mostly on Kosovo and how modern media can alter public perceptions of, and a president’s response to, war. As advertised, he made good eye contact, creating the illusion that he was interested. Because it was clear, after having asked his minions at the function, that the White House wasn’t responding to the judge’s decision, I didn’t ask him.
He expounded in detail about the whole Balkans area, relations among the nations and the need for a long-term solution, including vast economic assistance to the region (including helping to rebuild what we’ve destroyed in Serbia). His thoughts on the role of media, and how images like those of the refugees can be double-edged swords for a politician, were interesting, if given to dispute.
Having discerned the awful body language between him and First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton during the formal part of the evening, I sensed that he’d have stayed there all night, if possible.
Maybe he did. Richard Holbrooke, the Bosnia/Kosovo trouble-shooter, was there and Clinton told him to call him later at the White House. Later? One imagined the two gabbing at 2 a.m.
And if one doubted that Clinton has a steel-trap mind, I listened as a woman mentioned that her boss had once sent him some present. This was apparently years ago, but when she mentioned the boss’ name, Clinton instantly recalled that it was a fancy bottle of Irish whiskey.
Hmmm. This from the guy who claimed to have trouble recalling key details of L’Affaire Lewinsky.
`Wizards of Oz’ exposed
It was classic Washington, where 80 percent of the reporters may cover 10 percent of the news.
The Senate Governmental Affairs Committee held a hearing last week on whether Congress should renew the law setting up independent counsels such as Kenneth Starr. The room was packed for testimony by Starr, even though (or, perhaps, because) the substance of his testimony had been leaked the day before.
When he was done, far more interesting testimony came from the secretive three-judge panel that oversees independent counsels. They just do not make public appearances. But nearly all of the three or four dozen journalists split, leaving a tiny cadre, notably USA Today, the New York Daily News, Congressional Quarterly and CNN.
They heard a lot, such as unsettling admissions from Presiding Judge David Sentelle, an aging good old boy from North Carolina and chum of Sen. Jesse Helms (R-N.C.), and Judges Peter Fay and Chicago’s Richard Cudahy on the loosey-goosey way they go about their business, including the chummy, old-boy network way of selecting (mostly Republican) independent counsels.
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Cudahy conceded the “ad hoc-ery” of selecting independent counsels. The only name he’s ever stuck on their master list was prompted by a letter from a lawyer “who happens to be the father of a friend of my daughter’s in school.” The lawyer would just love to be an independent counsel.
Both Committee Chairman Fred Thompson (R-Tenn.) and Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) said later to me that it was somewhat frustrating to see the room empty when the meaty stuff was playing out. As Thompson put it: “It was kind of like the Wizard of Oz, seeing what Oz looks like. It’s a rare occurrence to have the judiciary before Congress like that.”
Thompson thought the judges pointed out real weaknesses in the current law. And he learned that, before being elected a senator, he’d been listed in their “talent book” of possible independent counsels. Having now scanned it myself, may I please inform the following Chicago lawyers that they could be independent counsels one day:
Former federal Judges Nicholas Bua, Susan Getzendanner, Frank McGarr and Phil Tone; former Illinois Atty Gen. Tyrone Fahner; Maurice McCarthy and Mitchell Rieger; and former U.S. Atty. Dan Webb.
If any of you guys knows a daughter of somebody on the selection panel–or maybe their barber–you should drop a line.
Professional courtesy
Having gained some notice by bashing a moth-eaten Washington institution called the Gridiron Club, I never thought I could turn sympathetic to someone clamoring for the payment of his Gridiron dues.
The dues matter is an ancillary element in a sweeping discrimination lawsuit found in the Superior Court of the District of Columbia. It’s titled Carl T. Rowan vs. Chicago Sun-Times Inc. and cites race and age bias as catalysts behind the alleged termination of his contract and three-times-a-week column.
In 1965, Rowan began writing a column for the Chicago Daily News and, after its demise, the Sun-Times. It was agreed that the paper had to run the columns if they arrived in timely fashion. He became “the first nationally syndicated African-American columnist in the history of the United States,” according to his complaint.
His first contract paid $10,000 a year but it was agreed that an additional $40,500 in salary paid by the firm syndicating the column nationally would be passed through to the Daily News, then later the Sun-Times, as part of his newspaper salary and be part of the base used to calculate pension and other benefits.
Over the years, the ownership of the paper and syndicator changed, but his deal’s basics remained, says the suit. Yet, he says, life changed with the paper’s purchase by the Hollinger Group, owned by Canadian mogul Conrad Black, whose conservative views, Rowan notes, “are in stark contrast with . . . the liberal-to-moderate political philosophy publicly espoused by Mr. Rowan.”
After receiving written assurances that his $41,500 syndication salary would be passed to the Sun-Times as part of his annual pay, he signed a deal running from Nov. 1, 1995, through Oct. 31, 2000. His pay would be $76,000, $79,000, $82,000, $86,000 and $88,000 over the five years. In addition, there was the syndication salary and related fees.
Further, he was to get $5,000 a year in business expenses, $16,000 to cover the 1996 political conventions, and his Gridiron dues and expenses.
Things unraveled, he claims, when the paper started to not run his columns regularly, “substituting instead the columns of younger and more politically conservative columnists.”
In addition, he claims, he didn’t get his pay hikes, was told that the syndication pass-through would no longer be counted toward his pension and that the paper wouldn’t pick up his expenses at last year’s annual Gridiron Dinner (at which, I now recall, Black and the paper’s editor were both on the dais, sitting next to President Clinton and Atty. Gen. Janet Reno, respectively).
On June 30, 1998, Rowan stopped submitting columns, arguing that violations of his contract amounted to illegal termination. He says he’s owed $200,000, in addition to $2.5 million in compensatory and punitive damages.
Rowan alleges that the paper “brazenly took the position that it intended to get `Black images’ out of the Sun-Times.”
Bruce Sanford, a prominent media attorney who represents the Sun-Times, said that as far as the paper is concerned, Rowan retired June 30, 1998. “They would be happy to have him un-retire at any time and come back to writing a column.”
And I hereby offer to pick up the $300 Gridiron dues in case the paper is hurting.
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James Warren and Michael Tackett of the Tribune’s Washington bureau are hosts of “Unconventional Wisdom” at 7:05 p.m. Sunday on WGN-AM 720.