Scuzzy Schwartz wasn’t the only person who wrote down the license plate of one of the chase cars that helped spirit Claire Winters away. So did the reporter assigned to the stake-out by The Philadelphia Inquirer. The next day, with Mrs. Winters gone, the media circus broke camp and left Topeka to its normal calm. But it didn’t take much leg work to find out who owned the license plate. Trouble was, the name — Kansas Grain Inc. — didn’t mean much to either Schwartz or the Knight-Ridder reporter. Schwartz let it drop for the time being. But the Knight-Ridder reporter referred the information to his newspaper Washington bureau, where Buzzy Kramer was now in residence.
He checked several databases of Republican Party contributors and Kansas Grain popped up several times. It didn’t take much digging to connect Kansas Grain to Grain America, the multinational agri-business that blanketed the Sunday morning talk shows with its glossy commercials. Its chairman, Dwayne Andrews, had been a big GOP contributor for years and had already bundled several thousand dollars for Corcoran’s re-election campaign. Kramer had his hook. He was back in the ball game. This was no longer a supermarket tabloid story. It was about the hit the mainstream press.
The headline the next day was hardly earth-shaking: “Big Corcoran Backer Linked to Ailing Staffer,” it said. But the paper landed on McCord’s desk with a thud. This, he knew, could not be brushed aside. His cover-up was unraveling and questions could no longer be ducked by denouncing the tabloids. The mainstream press was unto the story and a cover line was needed. He quickly called Ruffalo and Greenberg.
Corcoran’s political advisors were worried that the rumors could be true, but McCord put them at ease. Exhaustion and allergies were his medical problem. A greedy sick boyfriend prompted the tabloid story. Nothing more. We need to get out in front of the story and it would fade away on its own, McCord told them. They agreed on a line of attack and then McCord called the president.
The president was plainly unnerved by the unfolding publicity. “It’s coming apart, isn’t it, Jack?” he said.
“Maybe, but we have an idea to contain it,” said the weary chief of staff. “I’ve talked to Mutt ’n Jeff and they agree. Admit concern for an ill staffer and her family. Don’t concede an affair, don’t concede any connection with your health. We should say you’re looking out for Sally Winters’ welfare. Sound okay to you?”
“Yeah, for now,” the president said slowly. “Should I come home?”
“No,” McCord said emphatically. “Under no circumstances should we show panic. This is a summer squall kicked up by bored reporters with nothing else to write about.”
“You hope.”
“Yeah, I hope.”
Some squall. The White House briefing that day was chaotic. Reporters smelled blood. They couldn’t prove what they suspected, so they decided to hammer away at what they knew — innocuous as it was — and hope something significant would get jarred loose. That was the way reporters worked when a scandal simmered just below the surface, when they didn’t have enough information to go into print or on the air with what they suspected. Report the tip of the iceberg and maybe something will surface from below the water line.
The president’s spokesman fended off the reporters as best she could. Yes, the president had asked a prominent supporter to help out Claire Winters. She had felt under siege. Yes, the president was helping Sally Winters get treatment. No, he would not say where. No, there was no special relationship. Just concern for a former staffer. He’d do the same for any former aide that needed help. No, he wouldn’t say where Mrs. Winters was. She was entitled to privacy. That’s why she left her besieged home. No, she didn’t know Sally Winters’ condition.
“Can you confirm that Sally Winters has AIDS?”
“I don’t know her exact condition,” she hedged. “But she’s getting whatever medical help she needs.”
“Is there any connection between Sally Winters’ sickness and the president’s health problems,” she was asked.
“The president doesn’t have any health problems,” the spokeswoman said sternly. “He is fine. He’s had adverse reactions to weight reduction pills and there are his allergies, which get worse in a humid place like Washington. And he’s been feeling better since he went on vacation.”
“Then why is he hiding from the media?”
“He’s not hiding,” she said. “He’s on vacation. And you see him every day.”
“But we can’t talk to him,” a reporter shouted. “He’s kept too far away. What are you hiding?”
“We’re not hiding a thing,” the spokeswoman said. “There’s nothing in the Constitution that says he has to respond to rude questions every day. Besides, a president should be able to get away from you all once in a while.”
McCord’s cover line may have blunted Kramer’s story for a day, but now the flood gates were open. Out of nowhere, stories began appearing in the papers about the president’s health. The network news began to run similar pieces. To the casual viewer or reader, it must have seemed odd. Why suddenly all these stories on the coughs and ails and weight loss of the president? But insiders could connect the dots if the general public could not. How long, McCord thought, before someone connected those dots in print? He knew he could not control Schwartz. But hopefully his little beating would make him a little gun-shy. But Kramer, McCord decided, should be treated more directly. It was time for a talk. He had to know what Kramer knew. It was a high risk gamble, but if anyone was going to break the story, it was Kramer, not Schwartz. Scuzzy would be onto the next Elvis or Michael Jackson story next week. Kramer wasn’t going away. Maybe Kramer’s questions would give McCord a clue as to what he knew.
McCord prepared for the interview more thoroughly than anything he had done since he headed the search for Corcoran’s running mate three years ago. He knew everything about Kramer’s career, his likes and dislikes, his girlfriend, the senator’s press aide, what movies he saw and which restaurants he ate at. The detective’s reports were invaluable. He even read one of Kramer’s books. Still, McCord didn’t know exactly what Kramer knew. Was he waiting to put what he knew in the book—and blow apart Corcoran’s campaign after he had won the nomination? Or maybe he couldn’t prove what he suspected and thus wouldn’t write it at all?
McCord not only talked to Corcoran about the interview, but with Lisa as well. She gave him a sense of his interview style, how he started with policy issues, lulled you into thinking his was a scholarly book, then slowly moved to the personal angle. More important, what would McCord say to the obvious questions about Sally Winters and the president’s health? Since it was now public that Corcoran was helping Sally, he could not profess ignorance about her condition. He told the president that he would confirm that she has AIDS, to say otherwise would look disingenuous, but deny the affair, say the boyfriend was looking to hoodwink a tabloid reporter for money.
The president didn’t want McCord to go this far. Acknowledging that Sally had AIDS, he argued, violated her privacy as well as opening a new door for investigation. But McCord was firm. He said he couldn’t see doing it any other way. To say he didn’t know her condition would be ludicrous since they had helped her mother and arranged for her treatment.
“It will give the story more legs,” the president said.
“The story already is running full-speed ahead on its own,” McCord said. “We gotta find out what Kramer knows. And the sooner the better.”
“It’s high risk, Jack,” Corcoran said. “This could easily backfire.”
“Better for me to say it than you,” the chief of staff replied. “You know you’ll be asked about it at your first press conference when you get back. You’ll look stupid if you don’t know the answer. This way, you can say the question has been asked and answered and you trust your staff to handle it.”
“Okay, but be careful out there,” the president.
“Yeah, right,” McCord said. “I’ll try.”
Like McCord, Kramer also spent a good deal of time preparing for his interview with McCord. He had been waiting months to get it and had been put off many times. But Kramer wasn’t surprised when the approval came. Corcoran’s presidency was in trouble and he suspected McCord wanted to know what he knew. His strategy: suggest he knew more than he could prove, thus lulling McCord into confirming what he, Kramer, suspected but could not yet prove. McCord was sharp, he knew, a former P.R. guy used to spinning reporters. Let’s see how he deals with this unraveling disaster.