By Fraser P. Seitel
In 1983, President Ronald Reagan’s White House press secretary Larry Speakes asked National Security Advisor John Poindexter if the U.S., in response to a reporter’s query, was on the verge of attacking the Caribbean nation of Grenada.
Pointexder’s answer, which Speakes dutifully reported to the White House press corps, “Preposterous.”
Twelve hours later, the U.S. staged “Operation Urgent Fury,” the invasion of Grenada.
With his credibility shredded, Speakes immediately threatened to resign if he was ever lied to again. He wrote later, “Admiral Poindexter had hung me out to dry, and I didn’t even know it. I was still out of the loop and not completely trusted.”
Today, Barack Obama’s press secretary Jay Carney faces a similar crossroads.
Immediately after the September 11 attack in Benghazi, Libya, that killed the American ambassador, Carney tied the carnage to the viral spread of a sophomoric, California-produced, anti-Muhammed internet video:
“We have no information to suggest that it was a preplanned attack. The unrest we’ve seen around the region has been in reaction to a video that Muslims, many Muslims find offensive. And while the violence is reprehensible and unjustified, it is not a reaction to the 9/11 anniversary that we know of, or to U.S. policy.”
Then, when Mitt Romney was advised – bone headedly – to leap to denounce the administration’s apologetic statement about the video, Carney berated the candidate for “shooting first and aiming later.”
One month later, with the State Department furiously backtracking about the video and acknowledging the apparent well-planned attacks in Benghazi that led to the killings, it is the Obama Administration that looks guilty of “shooting first and aiming later.”
And it is Jay Carney who apparently has been “hung out to dry.”
The White House press corps is furious about being deceived. And the target of their blood lust is the spokesman who, wittingly or un, fed them false information.
The President’s press secretary occupies the second most difficult job in Washington. Like PR practitioners in industry, the White House press secretary must walk a fine line between on one hand, representing the best interests of his boss – the President – and on the other, being honest with the public.
As former NBC newsman and President Richard Nixon’s press secretary Ron Nessen once put it, “A press secretary’s first loyalty is to the public, and he should not knowingly lie or mislead the press.”
To accomplish this difficult task, a press secretary must be an Administration “insider,” trusted by the President to speak in his name, without fear of being second-guessed.
This is the status that Obama’s first press secretary, the self-assured and glib Robert Gibbs, enjoyed with his long-time associate, Barack Obama. But from all reports, former reporter Carney enjoys no such trust in the Oval Office.
Carney, a former reporter who worked for Joe Biden, isn’t an Obama confidante like Gibbs. Where Gibbs – reminiscent of George W. Bush’s fiercely competent press secretary Tony Snow – was confidently feisty and self-deprecating on the podium, Carney is painfully halting and measured; appearing to walk on eggshells with every response.
In the case of the Libya fiasco, Carney was either a) given just part of the story b) out-and-out lied to by his superiors or c) understood the facts but chose to fudge them.
Either way, Carney’s reputation as an honest broker lies in tatters.
In 1974, Jerald ter Horst, President Gerald Ford’s press secretary, quit after disagreeing with Ford’s pardon of Nixon.
In 2012, after suffering a mortal credibility loss over the incidents in Libya, Jay Carney faces a similar decision. |