PRESS BRIEFINGS BY MIKE MCCURRY (excerpts)
January 9 and 10, 1997
THE WHITE HOUSE
Office of the Press Secretary
______________________________________________________________
For Immediate Release January 9, 1997
PRESS BRIEFING BY
MIKE MCCURRY
The Briefing Room
2:53 P.M. EST
....
Q Mike, this 300-page report that Fabiani and DNC put
together -- what was the purpose of it? Why would the White House
waste its time putting together this "media food chain" theory?
MR. MCCURRY: It's not a waste of time. We were
actually responding to requests. This is the document we gave, Wolf,
CNN back in 1995, so you've had it for about over a year now.
(Laughter.) About every news organization in this room, in fact,
we've provided these materials because we wanted to refute some of
the very aggressive charges being made fallaciously against the
President, most often on the Internet coming from a variety of kind
of crazy, right-wing sources.
Now, what you're talking about is, in fact, a
two-and-a-half page cover sheet attached to about 300-plus pages of
information, most of them news clips written by news organizations
represented in this room, and also that the DNC research staff
prepared and passed out at press conferences that most of your news
organizations attended.
Q Let me see if I can clear something up. Does this
purport to show a conspiracy on the part of the news media?
MR. MCCURRY: No, absolutely not. It purports to show
that the conspiracy theorists who are very active on the subject of
Whitewater and other subjects very often plant their stories, plant
their information in various places, and then we kind of give you a
theory of how things get picked up and translated and moved through
what we call "the media food chain," or what others have called "the
media food chain." A good example of this: the Wall Street [Journal]
editorial page carries a column that mentions this deep, dark secret
330-page report that then gets picked up by The Washington Times and
written, and then gets asked here in the press briefing room. So, in
other words, in this Fellini-like manner, what we are doing right now
is proof positive of the kind of cycle that we're talking about.
Q So you're employing the very tactics that you say
the right-wing think-tanks employ to get stories in the mainstream
media?
MR. MCCURRY: You're suggesting that we planted this in
the Wall Street Journal editorial page so we could draw some
attention to the material that we're using to refute some of the
fallacious charges. That's an interesting theory. I don't know that
I buy that theory.
Q Like what, what particularly? What are the
fallacious charges?
MR. MCCURRY: They talk about stuff about some of the
work of a couple of so-called "media centers," a couple of wealthy
philanthropists that subsidize the work of organizations that present
themselves as news organizations -- they write stories, they get
picked up elsewhere on the Internet. Sometimes they get picked up
overseas, typically in London, typically by one particular reporter,
that stuff then gets fed back into news organizations here. There's
one news organization here in town that likes to -- they won't attach
their own bylines and their own names of their own reporters to the
stories they write, but they'll pick up stories, they'll put them in
their pages here, and then that triggers additional inquiries.
So what they did was, they basically took -- in response
to inquiries we got -- we got a lot of inquiries back in the summer
of '95 on the general subject of how does the Internet -- the arrival
of the Internet and discussions on the Internet, how does that fuel
the Whitewater story. And, in fact, we used to get a lot of
inquiries in Mark Fabiani's shop from news organizations that heard
this story that they really want to check out and want a White House
response to. And we say, wait a minute, this is the
same crazy rumor that's now chased itself all the way around in a
circle, and let us show you how this circle works so you can
understand the genesis of some of these stories.
So this is an effort, I think, that dates back now
almost July, August of 1995, an effort by Mark's shop to really help
journalists understand that they shouldn't be used by those who are
really concocting their own conspiracies and their own theories and
then peddling them elsewhere.
Q Mike, let me see if I understand. You believe this
is an accurate portrayal of the way the media food chain works? Is
that correct? You believe this is an accurate description --
MR. MCCURRY: I think it is accurate to say that there
area lot of groups that fund -- groups that are positioned on the far
right of the political spectrum that fund people who peddle
conspiracy theories, and that those then sometimes show up in
publications that represent themselves to be bonified sources of
news; that those then get picked up on the Internet; people start
recycling the material on the Internet; that sometimes we have
instances -- and we've had several just recently of one particular
reporter, one particular paper in London who writes things that are
just not true; in fact, in one case just recently who had to be
formally retracted -- that that then gets picked up and reprinted
here in the United States and then becomes the basis of inquiries
that some of you make here. So, in a sense, you get misled and
misused by people who really start off as -- with the goal of
actually planting information to do political damage to the
President.
Q With all due respect, I don't think I got an answer
to my question, which is, do you believe this is an accurate
portrayal of --
MR. MCCURRY: Do I believe what I just said is an
accurate portrayal of how this works? Yes.
Q No, no, do you believe this report prepared at
taxpayer expense is an accurate portrayal of --
MR. MCCURRY: Whoa, whoa, this was not a report prepared
at tax -- this was a two-and-a-half page cover memo that went on DNC
clippings. Most of this -- if you take a look at it -- and again, I
think most of your news organizations have had this material for
sometime now, but it's basically a compilation of newspaper clippings
that have appeared in the pages of many of the organizations
represented here, other materials, other samples of materials that
have existed on the Internet, plus materials that the DNC research
staff prepared to refute some of the fallacious charges that have
been made against the President.
Now, what we did -- what the Counsel's Office did here
was to just put a little two-and-a-half page summary on the top of
this thing so you could see how it worked.
Q Do you believe that summary is accurate?
MR. MCCURRY: I believe that summary provides -- that's
the material -- it supports the material -- it explains and describes
the material that is attached to it, sure. It's a summary. I
believe it's a summary of the material that is attached to it.
Q Why wouldn't you respond -- you're saying this is
in response to news media inquiries in the summer of '95 -- whose
idea was it to respond in this fashion, to compile it like this? Was
it Fabiani? Was it somebody else?
MR. MCCURRY: Well, it was his shop that did this. He
actually had one of his more junior staffers do this who was familiar
with the Internet. What had happened at the time, we began to see a
correlation between inquiries coming in from journalists and rumors
that were being circulated on the Internet. And so the causal link,
there was we'd better pay closer attention to stuff that's creeping
out on to the Internet because it's beginning to seep into inquiries
that are coming from legitimate news organizations. They hear
something; they then ask what our response is. And then our concern
was that the material was phony, that was showing up on the Internet
was going to get recycled into stories that said White House denies
x, and x was a rumor to begin with in some cases. And we document
that in the material -- material that came from the far right.
Your paper, in particular -- and we gave the Washington
Post this back in July of '95. So you've had this same document now
for some --
Q Is it the exact same document or just portions of
the document?
MR. MCCURRY: Yes -- no, the document.
Q All 331 pages?
MR. MCCURRY: Well, the 331 pages -- again, I'll tell
you it's this two-and-a-half page cover sheet attached to clips.
Now, much of it is clippings that came from some of the same news
organizations that we provided it to. But to show by the coverage --
how the coverage of the Whitewater story itself unfolded and how that
-- how various news sources manipulated things.
Q And James Carville was the one who first spoke of
this -- at least publicly -- of this media food chain a year earlier.
MR. MCCURRY: Back in April of '94, right.
Q So he came up with this theory by himself?
Carville?
MR. MCCURRY: He -- there are a lot of people who have
talked about this, a lot of people who have written about it. In
fact, there's now been a couple of scholars who have done papers on
how this all works. There's a scholarly paper I read not too long
ago that was done at some conference, as journalists look into how
these things have been covered.
Warren.
Q You folks have always denied that there's a bunker
mentality here, paranoia regarding Whitewater and these other issues.
Isn't that exactly what this looks like -- here are our enemies who
are out to get us?
MR. MCCURRY: No. This doesn't say enemies, it says
--it describes, Warren, pretty accurately how things were, of which,
admittedly, your news organization plays a role.
Q Well, how would you suggest a reporter find out
about, or pursue a rumor or a report, even if it comes from the
Internet, if not asking it here?
MR. MCCURRY: Well, in this case they call the Counsel's
Office; the Counsel's Office says, hey, wait a minute, before you
legitimize this rumor by putting it in print in your paper, take a
look at how this information circles, chases itself around in a
circle; so let us show you how these things spill over and become
stories before you write. And in many cases, I think it's fair to
say we prevented erroneous information from being reported and we
saved some journalists from not putting a lot of crazy stuff --
Q That's why the journalists ask. And if they get a
denial here --
MR. MCCURRY: And that's -- and we help them understand
it. I mean, the notion that it's a bunker mentality is -- basically,
we're responding to inquiries we're getting with the information that
refutes the charges and answers the charges that have been made.
Q Mike, in a cover story this week, Newsweek suggests
that the White House employed those tactics you describe, too, in the
other direction, in its favor, to discourage reporters from covering
what was a legitimate story -- the Paula Jones lawsuit. In this
case, you had Carville go out with statements about trailer parks,
then friendly reporters picked it up, then you sent reporters those
statements. And their suggestion is that then they were steered away
from stories that probably were legitimate. Do you think that's --
MR. MCCURRY: Quote, unquote "legitimacy" of that story
will depend, of course, on what happens in a court of law.
Q Well, it's before the Supreme Court tomorrow. I
mean --
MR. MCCURRY: What happens in a court of law if and when
the case goes to trial.
Q But we normally cover cases that are heard before
the Supreme Court. My question is, do you think that piece in
Newsweek is accurate, that the White House used these tactics that
you're describing in the other direction?
MR. MCCURRY: I think that it's certainly true that the
White House was aggressive in responding to false, fallacious,
damaging and politically motivated attacks on the President. And we
should be. We have a responsibility to the President to do that.
Q Mike, was the only purpose of this document to
advise news organizations, or was it provided to anyone else --
staffers? Was it provided to contributors?
MR. MCCURRY: Look, the people who are most familiar
with it and who used it to respond to journalists recall using it
mostly with journalists. I don't know -- a lot of the material was
material that originated from the DNC, and it was used at the DNC and
no doubt given to people who were out in the public defending the
President from some of the charges he faced. They were pretty
aggressive about getting people out particularly on talk radio and
others to respond to some of the charges that the President was
using. I'm sure the material circulated in that fashion, too. But
it was used here and, frankly, with the Counsel's Office, it was to
put a little summary sheet on the front so, knowing how busy all of
you are, we thought we ought to make it a little easier for you to
understand the big batch of clips that were provided.
Q Why didn't you provide it to everyone? Why wasn't
it released as a White House document?
MR. MCCURRY: It may very well have been.
Q No, it wasn't.
MR. MCCURRY: It may very well have been provided to
people -- I mean, it was provided to people who were working on the
Whitewater story. I don't have a full list of every news
organization that got it.
Q It was not made available to everyone who covered
the White House on a daily basis.
MR. MCCURRY: Well, it was used in response to
inquiries. I mean, we didn't do a formal release of this. We were
trying to help people who were asking about stories that they had
heard or rumors that they were checking out, and that's basically
what it was. I'm told that anyone who asked about this stuff, we put
the material together and sent it over to them. So maybe if you
didn't ask about it, you didn't get it, but frankly, we weren't
worried that you were then going to take a poisonous report and
repeat it.
....
Q Mike, going back to Fabiani, is this the only time
where we have had the taxpayer-funded Counsel's Office working with
the DNC, and can you address the propriety of that?
MR. MCCURRY: That is thoroughly appropriate for the
White House Legal Counsel's Office to provide information in response
to press inquiries, to use as the source of the information provided
material that comes from whatever source it comes from. In this
case, the bulk of the material comes from news reports, and that's
thoroughly appropriate, and they've got a DNC clipping service that
clips newspapers up there and they sent a batch of newspaper clips
over to us, plus materials that they had used, and it's perfectly
appropriate for the Legal Counsel's Office to use that in response to
media inquiries.
Q Is that a unique instance --
MR. MCCURRY: The -- quote, unquote -- "taxpayer
expense" -- here was a younger guy in the Legal Counsel's Office who
took the time to put a two-and-a-half page cover memo on the clips.
So there wasn't a lot of taxpayer expense involved. But, yes, it is
appropriate to do that.
Q Did that package go to the President at the time?
MR. MCCURRY: No, because the President doesn't have the
time to read -- look, this is basically the information that refutes
a lot of trash that was out in the semi-public domain about
Whitewater, and the President doesn't waste his time getting
mesmerized by that kind of information.
Q Was he aware of that project?
MR. MCCURRY: He was certainly aware that the Legal
Counsel's Office was making sure that people -- that we steer people
away from bad information. You know, he would expect us to do that,
and he has certainly expected us to respond to media inquiries.
Q He did not see the specific package?
MR. MCCURRY: I have no idea. There were a lot of --
look, there was a lot of material -- you could go to a press
conference that Chairman Don Fowler or someone would have in which
this issue would get raised, and they would pass this stuff out. You
could occasionally get it here when we wanted to save you folks time
and say, we don't have time to go up to the Hill or, we can't get
this stuff from the DNC, we sometimes hope you get it here through
that office. That, I hope, has happened on numerous occasions over
the past couple of years.
Q Mike, but is there another instance you can think
of where the Counsel's Office has worked on a project with the DNC
which is obviously political --
MR. MCCURRY: They can work -- we're working on one
right now in responding to the questions about financial
contributions, because sometimes there are issues in which there is a
DNC event, that there's White House participation and we have to make
sure that --
Q That's a little bit different because that involves
activities, whether things --
MR. MCCURRY: Well, it's in this case exactly the same
thing. It's responding to press inquiries and how do you make sure
that they're getting the answers to one part of a story that involves
them and we're getting the answers to stuff that involves us. So
they coordinate the effort to respond to press inquiries --
Q I don't think it is the same thing. You were using
the DNC basically as a research tool in the instance of this report,
and in the instance of the campaign finance stuff, they are
intimately involved.
MR. MCCURRY: Bill, the issue here is that we are
responding -- the DNC is using its research capacity to respond to
political attacks on the President. Now, it is more appropriate for
the DNC research division, paid for by the party's political funding,
to do that type of work to respond to political charges to the
President than it would have been for the Legal Counsel's Office to
do it. Now, the Legal Counsel has every right to have access to that
information and to help use that in responding to press inquiries.
Your suggestion by -- the implication of the question is somehow or
other we should have used taxpayer resources to assemble the research
material to be used. That would not have been proper.
Q No, the implication of the question was that your
previous answer was disingenuous when you compared the two things and
said that they were essentially the same.
MR. MCCURRY: I was trying to describe -- the question
was, are there instances in which there is cooperation in something
like this, and I said, yes, when you're responding to media
inquiries. The DNC and the Legal Counsel's Office have been in
contact. That's been happening regularly, and most of your news
organizations have been pursuing the story know that.
Q -- talk about the false and fallacious charges in
regard to Paula Jones, does the President believe that the media
should not be reporting about the Paula Jones story, or --
MR. MCCURRY: No. Look, the Constitution of the United
States is called into question in one respect in regards to that
case, and it's going to be argued in front of the United States
Supreme Court, and coming pretty soon. That's obviously a news
story, and it's going to be covered, and no one would suggest
otherwise. That is a legitimate story, of course, because of the
constitutional issues that are involved, that the Court has decided
to hear.
But what we're talking about is -- look, everyone in
here knows there's a fair amount of nut-case material that floats
around with respect to Whitewater, and some of it, unfortunately and
tragically and very, very painfully, has to do with the death of a
former White House staffer. And that stuff gets peddled, and
sometimes -- in fact, in the summer of 1995, all too often was coming
back at us from a lot of news organizations that, frankly, should
have known better. So we would say, wait a minute, you guys are
chasing a story that has very, very suspicious roots and let us
document for you how this stuff gets out into the news flow, so that
we can protect you and protect your readers and protect the American
people from bad information.
Q Mike, so to make sure that I understand -- the use
of the term "conspiracy" --
MR. MCCURRY: Yes, these are conspiracy theorists.
These are the conspiracy -- it's called in the document "the
conspiracy commerce." These are the guys who are the conspiracy nuts
who have been peddling this stuff for years and years.
Q That refers to the initial -- the nut cases, to use
your term, and not the process --
MR. MCCURRY: That's the reference -- have you read this
little cover that I'm talking about?
Q Yes. And not the process by --
MR. MCCURRY: That's what it is.
Q -- which it reaches the bulk of the American
public.
MR. MCCURRY: The process by which -- that's called
really more kind of the -- what did he call it "the food chain," It's
called more "the media food chain" than that.
Q I just want to make sure that the food chain itself
is not a part of a conspiracy in the belief of the White House.
(Laughter.)
MR. MCCURRY: No, but there are plenty of examples of
how this stuff gets fed back in to news organization and then sort of
gets picked up. Look, you all have written about this, and this has
been written about over and over again. You can pick up every other
issue of The Columbia Journalism Review and see exactly the same
subject covered. I just read a pretty interesting academic paper on
this that's been done by a scholar. You know, this is part of it.
Warren, equal time for The Washington Times.
Q Thank you. About six months ago, Hazel O'Leary
spent a bunch of taxpayers' money to rate how reporters covered her
department, whether they were favorable or unfavorable. At the time,
you were quite clear in saying that was inappropriate use. Can you
explain to me what the difference is between that and this?
MR. MCCURRY: The difference here is we're trying to
protect reporters, not rate them. We're trying to protect people
from getting a bunch of bad stories in their papers.
Q Does that include The New York Post, The Washington
Times and The Wall Street Journal?
MR. MCCURRY: Look, the New York Post and The Washington
Times are specifically identified as two news organizations that pick
up some of these erroneous reports, very often coming from London,
and reprint them without having the courage of putting their own
bylines on them. And I believe -- certainly it has happened in the
case of The Washington Times.
Q -- my paper has broken a lot of stories, important
stories, on all these subjects we're talking about, Mike.
MR. MCCURRY: Right. But you've also -- that was a
story that you had to retract because it was then retracted by the
paper in question.
Q I wonder if I could read you something by Steve
Hess, who I think we all agree is a respected presidential scholar
and not a nut case. He said that this thing is the sort of stuff the
Christic Society used to put out, that if Ronald Reagan had talked
about a liberal media conspiracy like this it would have been laughed
at on the front pages of major news -- let me just finish.
MR. MCCURRY: Deborah, I read this quote.
Q -- of paranoia, if not dementia in the White House.
MR. MCCURRY: I read his quote. You send him my
transcript from this briefing and ask him if he wants to revise and
amend those remarks. And just ask him. And then if he stands by the
remarks at that point call me back and I'll answer you.
....
THE WHITE HOUSE
Office of the Press Secretary
______________________________________________________________
For Immediate Release January 10, 1997
PRESS BRIEFING BY
MIKE MCCURRY
The Briefing Room
1:45 P.M. EST
....
Q Mike, I'd like to ask a question about the food
chain.
MR. MCCURRY: The food chain.
Q You made the case --
MR. MCCURRY: You guys went to town. You had a lot of
fun with that story. (Laughter.)
Q We love this story. And you presented what you
thought was evidence that a conspiracy does exist, and you also said
that the President was fully aware of what was going on. The
President is asked about it today, and he says no.
MR. MCCURRY: No, not about --
Q He was asked, is there a right-wing cabal in the
press.
MR. MCCURRY: In fact, I think to the contrary. When I
went through this yesterday, I said he was not -- he didn't follow
all this, the production of this document or anything like that. The
question was -- and nobody has suggested there was some media
conspiracy. We said that there were a group of people who have got
their own conspiracy theories who traffic in this stuff. That's all
that says. It's not a conspiracy by the media and we didn't suggest
it and the President doesn't believe that, as he told you today.
Q But presumably, conservative newspapers, outfits,
are part of this food chain.
MR. MCCURRY: No, I don't think we said -- we said that
they are part of -- they become part of the commerce in this stuff
and become, maybe unwittingly, and seeing some of the comments of
people in the papers today, certainly in a discombobulated fashion,
as some of them say, that they might unwittingly become prone to pick
up some of these remarks. We're not saying that that -- they're not
in conspiracy with the people who are producing these things,
although in some cases we see -- you can see a direct transfer of the
information over.
Q So the President believes there is a conspiracy; he
doesn't believe --
MR. MCCURRY: No, you asked him a question; you said no.
He doesn't think the press is involved in some big conspiracy. He
thinks that some of this material shows up in the way we described it
yesterday.
....
Q Mike, going back to Paul's question about the
feeding chain, you said it's not a conspiracy by the media. Who is
it a conspiracy by?
MR. MCCURRY: We did that at such great length
yesterday, I don't think we need to go back to it now.
Q I don't think I came out with a clear answer,
though, Mike. If it's not a conspiracy of the media, who is it?
MR. MCCURRY: Go back and take a look at yesterday's
transcript. I think we did that subject at great length yesterday.
....