Schwartz’s story appeared in next week’s paper, which hit the newsstands Monday morning. “Unknown Corcoran Lover Revealed,” it said. “Now sick with AIDS, dying alone and forgotten,” was the subhead. There was a photo on the front page of Sally standing next to Corcoran in his Senate office, signed by the then-senator—a photo the goons hadn’t found in Scuzzy’s pants. Pretty tame stuff, especially compared to the photo the Enquirer got of Donna Rice sitting in Gary Hart’s lap that destroyed Hart’s political career. But for Schwartz it was enough—it proved Sally and the president knew each other and that backed up Whiteside’s claims.
Schwartz tried to kick up the volume on the story a bit. Stuffing himself with Advil to dull the pain of his beating, he began to hawk his story Sunday night. He blasted it on his paper’s website. Then he called the networks and of course the New York Post. He knew they’d pick it up. They loved that stuff. They always did advances on the tabs’ exposes. Good stories for them, good p.r. for the tabs. For the Post, it was great front page sleaze without the work. Maybe it’ll get me air time on TV on Monday, Scuzzy thought. He decided to stay in Washington to be available. Never know who’ll want a live interview. Besides, it was the middle of the summer. Slow news time, especially in Washington. Good time for a scandal.
Unfortunately for Scuzzy, the story didn’t make much of a splash. The nets and the cable stations ignored the story—even CNN!—and the Post only ran a small item on page two, not even the page one wood. At the daily news briefing at the White House, there was only one question about Sally Winters. It wasn’t much of a briefing, at that. With Corcoran on vacation in Wyoming, Seacrest was off and one of his deputies handled the daily chores. Most of the White House regulars in the press room were on vacation too. So when the deputy press flack deflected the mistress question – “I’m not going to dignify that trash with a comment,” she said. “Didn’t they report on UFO’s landing in Arizona last week? Next question” — there wasn’t even a follow-up.
Scuzzy didn’t get a single call, not from the nets, not from the tabs, not from the radio talk shows, not from anybody. Not much of a bounce for a scoop, he thought to himself, as he booked an evening flight to Kansas. His editor suggested he stop by a hospital to make sure he hadn’t broken anything in his encounter with the goons. But Scuzzy would hear none of that. This was his story and he was going to ride it out. Doctors could wait. Besides, now was the time to get back on the Sally Winters track. Maybe money could pry out her story too.
While Scuzzy’s story created few ripples, Jack McCord was not so sanguine. He had hoped the going-over Schwartz got from his men would give him some pause. Besides, without Sally’s letter, which the goons found in Scuzzy’s knapsack, what evidence did he have? So McCord was chagrined to learn that Scuzzy had gone into print anyway and outraged that his men had missed the photos. “How could they be such amateurs,” he screamed. “Didn’t they frisk Scwartz?” He ordered the letters and the knapsack burned and fretted that his cover-up could now start to unravel.
While none of the mainstream media picked up Scuzzy’s story, McCord was not fooled. He knew the article would raise antenna all over town. An ill president, now a sick ex-mistress surfaces suffering from AIDS. Was there a connection? The mainstream press wouldn’t rush into print or on air with it, McCord knew. But the connection would be obvious to anyone in Washington who had heard the scuttlebutt about the president’s health. It would now be hard to keep the press bloodhounds at bay. It was only a matter of time before the questions — the onslaught, really — began. Sooner or later, McCord knew, it would spill over from the supermarket tabs to blogs and social media, and then the mainstream press. Then it would be out of control. To make matters worse, this was August. The president was out of town. Washington was quiet. A feeding frenzy was about to begin, he feared. Where was a natural disaster when you needed one, he chuckled bitterly to himself.
What McCord didn’t know was how the frenzy would start—what spark would give the media the hook they needed to get their insinuations into print and on the air, to enable the story to jump from the scandal sheets to the mainstream media. McCord had been in Washington long enough to know that there was now enough electricity in the air that somehow, somewhere, something would break and once it did, there would be an avalanche no one could stop.
There is no book how long or how fierce feeding frenzies last. Each is different. Some, like Watergate, last for years until the ultimate suspect, the president, is felled. Watergate built slowly, from the day the Watergate burglars caved and started talking, through congressional hearings, indictments and impeachment proceedings, until Nixon finally resigned. Other scandals, like Billy-gate in the Carter administration or Debate-gate under Reagan, peter out and are quickly forgotten. Some just simmer along, slowly eating away at an administration’s confidence and credibility, but never coalescing into a major crisis. Whitewater was like that under Clinton — until Ken Starr stumbled upon Monica. Then her idle — and taped — chit-chat unleashed a year-long feeding frenzy that nearly got Clinton kicked out of office. This time, McCord knew, it would not end quickly, at least not until the press found out the real story behind the president’s health. This was the most serious threat to his cover-up to date and he was no longer sure how long he could contain it.
Damage control was McCord’s specialty, in politics and in the corporate world. Years ago, there had been a huge gas explosion at an Alabama plant run by one of his corporate clients. It happened during a union organizing fight. Dozens were killed and many more were hurt, homes and businesses were demolished, hundreds of jobs were wiped out in an instant. The corporate bigwigs were sure it was sabotage. They wanted to blame the union, close up shop and leave town. McCord persuaded them that that would be the worst thing to do. The image of a callous corporation walking away from its workers and their town would not only hurt the company’s image — and its products and sales — but drive down its stock price as well. A plunging stock could cost the suits their jobs and that helped McCord get their attention. Promise to rebuild, he told them, help the injured and the families of the victims, get the CEO on the scene — drag him back from a vacation, no less — to hand out food and clothing at shelters set up for the survivors. Let the police find out the culprit. It worked. The company dodged a bullet. Its image, a company’s most precious commodity, survived intact. And the execs kept their jobs.
So McCord knew the drill. Stay in front of the story. Get out as many facts as quickly as possible. Express sympathy, even remorse, if applicable. Don’t lie, don’t cover-up, don’t backtrack.
He knew all the rules and he was about to break every one of them. The trouble was, this president couldn’t survive total disclosure. He had to hold off the frenzy for as long as possible and hope it never turned into a critical mass. Without hard evidence, McCord told himself, this story may not blow up into a Red Alert, Def-Con Five Scandal. He needed to keep it a supermarket tabloid story and hope the nets and the mainstream media stay away. So this was his strategy: The president would stay calm. The detectives would stay on Schwartz and keep an eye on Kramer. If anyone in the mainstream press was going to break this story, Kramer—the Pulitzer Prize-winner—would be the one, McCord believed.
Reluctantly, the chief of staff called the president at the ranch and told him about the Schwartz story. He told him not to worry, just relax and stay out of the public eye. Actually, the president had been feeling better the last few weeks. His last T-cell test showed his count had actually risen, to 201, so, technically, he no longer had AIDS. His viral count was dropping again. If only the count would drop to zero, they could release the test and say he was HIV-negative. McCord knew from the doctors that that didn’t mean his body had rid itself of the virus, just that it wasn’t in the bloodstream anymore. But politically, it would be enough, he thought, to back off the media. Especially if the president stayed healthy.
Then McCord called Elsner. He told him desperate measures may be needed. If push came to shove, McCord told him, he might have to fabricate an HIV test that showed the president was negative.
“Jack, I could lose my license,” the physician said.
“Bernie, we could lose a president if you don’t,” McCord said. “It may not be necessary. I’m not sure how this will play out. But I don’t think we can say we lost the test anymore. It’s like saying the dog ate my homework. It won’t fly. We need to buy time — time for the drugs to work, time for the virus to go away—”
“Jack, this disease doesn’t just go away—”
“Well, let’s just say the test you release is a bit premature, optimistic. If the drugs are truly working — and they seem to be — it may actually turn out to be true. Besides, it may be the only way to deflect the press onslaught.”
“There’s no guarantee that the drugs will eliminate the virus, you know,” Elsner said.
“I know, I know,” McCord said. “But there’s no guarantee that they won’t, either. It’s been known to happen. We need time and you have to give us that time—give it to the president. You don’t have to do anything right away, but be prepared. I’m afraid a request for the test from the media will not be long in coming.”
McCord was right. Editors and reporters at mainstream papers claim not to read the supermarket tabloids, but the networks do. That means the tabs can sometimes drive national coverage — witness the Gennifer Flowers and Dick Morris scandals. Stories the major papers wouldn’t touch create a frenzy in the electronic media and social media. That in turn forces the mainstream print media to follow. So, just as McCord feared, Scuzzy’s story pricked up the ears of editors and producers all over Washington, indeed the country. There was now too much smoke to ignore, the newsroom bosses knew, something was wrong with the president, maybe it was AIDS, maybe it was something else. But they didn’t want someone else to break that story first.
The New York Times assigned its medical reporter and its top investigative reporter to the story. The Washington Post marshaled a platoon of reporters and told them to interview everyone who ever worked for Corcoran, from his Reagan days on. Even if they had been interviewed dozens of times before. The Philadelphia Inquirer called Buzzy Kramer. They knew he was working on a biography and wondered if he could be enticed back to daily journalism briefly to help with a big story.
And the networks — well, they follow print. Since nothing had appeared in The New York Times or The Washington Post, they had nothing to put on the air yet. Instead, they sent their crews and satellite trucks to Kansas. They needed video of a woman saying she’d had an affair with the president. Then they would be off and running.
So in early August, a great urgency seized the media that the general public knew nothing about. Reporters hit the phones and blanketed Corcoran’s friends, enemies, political acquaintances. Columnists speculated amongst themselves about the political impact. Political consultants made early lines on the presidential candidates who would emerge should Corcoran be forced not to seek re-election campaign. Pollsters drew up potential surveys on what the public would think of a president who had AIDS, of the impact on the Republican Party, of the impact on the Religious Right. And network chiefs and editors brainstormed on to do when an expose finally broke, what follow-ups there should be, what kind of specials they would run, which experts should be brought in to comment. None would break the story themselves, of course. It was just scuttlebutt so far. But once it broke — whoever broke it, be it tabloid or mainstream press — they would be ready. MSNBC lined up a week’s worth of guests — just in case. “Nightline” blocked out a possible hour special — reporters, doctors, even experts in journalism ethics — just in case. “60 Minutes” began researching a piece on disclosure of a president’s medical history — just in case.
But the mainstream media isn’t the only place people get information. And the people’s mediums — talk radio and social media — are not bound by traditional journalistic ethics. And that was where the story sprang to life. Liberal talk radio hosts had a field day speculating about the moral president’s morals while right-wingers commentators tried as they could to defend a president they couldn’t believe would so dishonor the conservative cause by getting AIDS. On chat lines, Twitter, Facebook and in bloggers’ columns, the questions flew — could Tom Corcoran really have had an affair? Was he sick? Did his one-time girlfriend really have AIDS? Does he? Web pages specializing in political gossip crackled with inside speculation of what was going on inside the White House. Even Matt Drudge reported a White House under siege. It was a fierce electronic national town meeting, yet nothing graced the evening news shows or the front pages. Instead, as is wont to happen when the media have no legitimate hook for the story they really want to write, they instead reported on the frenzy they themselves had created. They went to Topeka, Kansas.
First, it was just a local television reporter from the ABC affiliate in Topeka. He knocked on Claire Winters door for an interview, mentioned a story — he didn’t say where it had run — linking her daughter to the president. Mrs. Winters saw the microphone and the camera crew and the boom mike looming ominously on her porch steps and quickly said she had nothing to say and slammed the door in the reporter’s face.
Next came an NBC network correspondent based in Chicago. This time, Mrs. Winters didn’t even bother to answer the door. But the reporters and TV crews kept coming, parking their trucks on quiet Maple Street, their satellite antenna reaching toward the sky. Local radio and print reporters soon followed so that overnight a quiet suburban community became an electronic village of vans, antennas and microphones. It looked like the parking lot outside a national political convention or the Super Bowl, not a once somnolent suburban street in Middle America.
Soon, there were traffic jams all over Maple Street. Neighbors had trouble getting to their homes, people drove from miles around to see what all the fuss was about. Reporters did their stand-ups on carefully tended patches of lawn. Thick black cables snaked through gutters and carefully tended rose bushes, creating obstacle courses for youngsters’ tricycles and seniors out for an afternoon walk. And cops had to be called to keep traffic moving, help residents get in and out of their homes and break up shouting matches between TV crews and Mrs. Winter’s neighbors.
When Scuzzy Scwartz arrived on Maple Street early Tuesday morning and saw the commotion, his eyes lit up, a smile creased his face and he thought to himself, “All this I have created.” He put on pair of shades, donned a light leather jacket — summer was no reason to shed his uniform — and strutted down the street — no sore ribs would stop this victory stroll — introducing himself to TV producers and reporters along the way. It didn’t take long for a crowd to form. This was a pack of journalists hungry for news, for anyone willing to spout off into a microphone and Scuzzy — the star who had created the frenzy — was happy to comply.
He bragged about his interview with Whiteside, hinted he’d already talked to Mrs. Winters and her daughter, but deflected questions about the president’s health. “Wait till next week’s issue,” he said cockily. “More will be told. More will be told.”
He just wondered if he would be the one who would tell it.
The tumult on Maple Street gave the mainstream media the hook it needed. They couldn’t report the original tabloid story — that was beneath their journalistic standards, of course. But they could write about the hype created by the story they wouldn’t report on in the first place. In effect, they would write about the smoke regardless of whether a fire existed.
So stories appeared around in newspapers and on radio and television the country about the media stakeout at the home of the mother of a woman identified in a supermarket tabloid as the president’s former mistress. And there was a mystery. Where was Sally Winters? No one knew and no one knew who knew. It only fueled more stories. It wasn’t much, but the story had crept into print. And the media would find a way to keep it there.
McCord quickly learned about the frenzy on Maple Street, not from the media but from a frantic call from Dwayne Andrews, the president’s agri-business pal who had put Sally Winters in an Illinois clinic months ago. Sally’s mother had called his rep, saying she was terrified and surrounded by TV trucks. They were ruining her lawn, poking cameras into her living room, ringing her doorbell incessantly. She begged to be rescued.
“So save her,” McCord said. “Get an unmarked van in there and take her away, some place quiet, out of the way, where no reporter can find her.”
“In the middle of the day?” Andrews asked.
“No,” McCord said. “That would be too obvious. Do it late at night.”
“But she won’t answer her doorbell.”
“Well, let’s think,” McCord said. Do I have to think of everything myself? he said to himself. Then, out loud, “Have your people call her from a cell phone when the van is parked out front and tell her to come running out. Then get the hell out of there. Fast. Make sure the driver is an expert in losing a tail. Have some follow-up cars on hand to block any reporter types from chasing. Otherwise, an escape will become a caravan.”
“Thanks, Jack,” Andrews said. “I’m not used to these types of situations.”
That night, the plan went off without a hitch. Just before midnight Tuesday, a van picked up Mrs. Winters. It was so quick, none of the big TV vans could scramble fast enough to follow and the van soon escaped unto a nearby interstate. But Scuzzy, sleeping in his rented car, was quick enough to write down the license plate of one of the chase cars.
Not surprisingly, the Topeka stakeout and the midnight escape prompted questions at the White House briefing the next day. The first was innocuous enough. Had the president done anything to help Sally Winters get treatment? The president barely knew her, the spokesman said, she was a minor staffer in his Senate office and he didn’t even know she was sick.
Well, now that he does, has he tried to help her?
Well, yes, the spokeswoman fumbled, he had instructed his staff to reach out to her family to make sure she has the best possible care.
Does that include kidnapping her mother in the middle of the night?
The spokesman body stiffened. “This is absurd,” she finally said. “We know nothing about what happened last night in Kansas. We’re trying to run a government here.”
The president’s most recent physical didn’t include an HIV test, an unfamiliar voice said from the back of the press room. It was The Times’ medical reporter. Was there a test for HIV and could we get a copy?
“Sure, sure,” the spokeswoman said, eager to get out of the press room. “We have nothing to hide. Any test the president took is public information. The president’s health is fine — fine, as you can see from his latest physical.” Then he marched out of the press room.
But the questions were not confined to the White House press room. Out in Wyoming, the small contingent of reporters assigned to watch the president’s vacation began to grow. They wanted to speak to the president, see how he was doing, what he looked like. Under McCord’s instructions, the vacation White House scheduled only carefully selected photo-ops every day in order to get the president’s mug in print, and maybe on TV — inconsequential yet positive exposure. Pictured in the outdoors in the summer makes for great shots, McCord thought. It was a time-honored tradition. The president’s environmental record may not please the tree-huggers, but the pictures could soften his image with ordinary voters sympathetic to environmental issues. Image over substance. Let the left-wingers whine otherwise, McCord said to himself.
But the photo-ops were staged in a way to make sure Corcoran wasn’t too close to the cameras and he certainly wasn’t close to any microphones. No questions, please, McCord ordered, he’s on vacation. But the rumble had grown too loud. A brief statement and light bantering with the vacationing press was now needed, both Corcoran and McCord decided.
And what if they asked about Sally Winters? the president asked McCord. Show concern, the chief of staff said, but stress how little you remember her. The president agreed. “I’ll say I remember her slightly, nothing more than that,” he told McCord. “And I think I can get Lisa and the girls to pose with me.”
“I think you should pose with them, then get them out of the picture for the questions,” McCord told him. “You don’t want the cameras focusing on their faces as you’re asked about supposed marriage infidelities.”
“Yeah, good idea,” the president said. “By the way, did you get that latest HIV test back yet? If it’s down low enough, we could release that and get this all behind us.”
“Not yet,” McCord said. “I’m waiting for Bernie. Meanwhile, we might have to release an HIV-negative test to keep the wolves at bay. Hopefully, it will eventually be true.”
“I hope so too,” the president said.