Ari Fleischer on 'Taking Heat'

DATE March 8, 2005 ACCOUNT NUMBER N/A
TIME 12:00 Noon-1:00 PM AUDIENCE N/A
NETWORK NPR
PROGRAM Fresh Air

Interview: Ari Fleischer discusses his new book "Taking Heat"
about his years as White House press secretary for President Bush
TERRY GROSS, host:

This is FRESH AIR. I'm Terry Gross.

As White House press secretary during the first two and a half years of George
W. Bush's presidency, my guest, Ari Fleischer, delivered daily briefings at
which he responded to reporters' questions. Fleischer is handling questions
from the press again, but this time it's part of his book tour. He's just
published a memoir called "Taking Heat: The President, the Press, and My
Years in the White House." He joined the Bush team in 1999 during the
presidential campaign. He previously worked as communications director for
Elizabeth Dole, press secretary for Pete Domenici, and spokesman for the House
Ways and Means Committee. Fleischer says his new book explains why he did his
job the way he did, particularly during a time of war.

I bet when you took the job as White House press secretary, you weren't
expecting to become a wartime press secretary. Where were you when you first
heard on September 11th that the first plane had crashed into the tower, World
Trade Center?

Mr. ARI FLEISCHER ("Taking Heat"): I was with the president. I traveled with
him just about everywhere he went, and so I was in the motorcade. We'd just
driven out of the school in the motorcade to go to a school event in Sarasota,
Florida, and I was literally about six cars, five cars behind the president's
limo, and I got a page telling me the first tower had been hit.

GROSS: Was there any talk about possible calling off the event at that point?

Mr. FLEISCHER: Zero. Because at that moment, we all thought it had to be
some sort of terrible accident. The president didn't know what the weather
was in Manhattan on that day. He was in Florida. But his first thought was
it must have been a pilot error and bad weather, that flew off course. He
didn't know at that moment that it was a large commercial aircraft. So, no,
the event started and, in fact, plans were made with the president in that
small schoolroom to address the press pool that was gathered there to say that
federal resources would be made available to help New York deal with this
problem, thinking it was an accident.

GROSS: How did you hear about the second plane?

Mr. FLEISCHER: Second plane I got another page halfway through that event
with the president, was participating in a reading event with little children,
and it said the second tower's been hit. I knew instantly that it had to be
terrorism, and moments later Andy Card walked into the room--I was about 10
feet on the left of the president. Andy Card walked into the room and
whispered in the president's ear that, `The second tower has been hit.
America's under attack.'

GROSS: So many Americans are surprised, confused by the fact that the
president stayed in his chair...

Mr. FLEISCHER: Right.

GROSS: ...and kept listening to the children read after hearing America was
under attack. What you did actually was write a sign and hold it up to the
president.

Mr. FLEISCHER: Correct.

GROSS: What did the sign say?

Mr. FLEISCHER: I wrote a sign on the back of a note pad that said, `Don't say
anything yet,' because I thought until the president could get a proper
briefing, he should not say what he was planning on saying before, because now
this is not an accident, this must be terrorism, and the first words that the
American people get from the president shouldn't be something that he is not
yet armed with information. And I was very surprised that none of the press
shouted questions at him as they were let out of the room. Either they didn't
know the second tower was hit or they were too numb to ask questions, and my
experience, the White House press corps is never too numb.

GROSS: So was it you and Andrew Card, or was it the president himself, who
decided just stay where you are, pretend like nothing's happening, keep
listening to the children read?

Mr. FLEISCHER: Well, no, the president decides at that point we were gonna
cancel the event, so he left the smaller school room...

GROSS: Wait, wait. But he sat in the chair for, like, 11 minutes or
something like that...

Mr. FLEISCHER: OK. He sat in the chair for several minutes.

GROSS: ...you know.

Mr. FLEISCHER: I think it was seven.

GROSS: So whose decision was that to just...

Mr. FLEISCHER: That's the president's.

GROSS: That's the president's decision.

Mr. FLEISCHER: Absolutely. Andy whispered in his ear and nobody else was
talking to him. From that moment, he stayed there. And I know that a lot of
controversy...

GROSS: But Andy Card didn't say, `Second tower is hit, we're under attack,
don't move?'

Mr. FLEISCHER: No.

GROSS: OK.

Mr. FLEISCHER: No, Andy Card said just what I said he said.

GROSS: Yeah, yeah.

Mr. FLEISCHER: That's what Andy told everybody. So the president was sitting
there, and a lot of controversy was made, especially by Michael Moore...

GROSS: Yes.

Mr. FLEISCHER: ...in "Fahrenheit 9/11" about the president just sitting
there. And I think, frankly, Terry, that was some of the most unfair
criticism, particularly the way it was done in the movie. I think it
showed--a little scary music and splicing can make almost anybody look bad.
Nothing would have changed if he did bolt from his chair and leave, other than
if he had gotten off of that chair looking scared or spooked, I think it would
have scared and spooked the nation. He remained calm, left the room. Now in
those seven minutes, it allowed people to figure out what was happening to the
best degree we could, but still, no one knew about the other two aircraft, or
if they did, no one had passed that on to anybody who was in a position to
pass it on to the president. And so still we thought it was those two
aircraft, those two aircraft only.

So even seven minutes later we're in the holding room right next to the little
school room, classroom, and the president's working the phones, Andy Card is
working the phones, and an official from the National Security Council who
always traveled with us is working the phones trying to figure out what's
going on. Not a word about the other two aircraft, not a word about them
being hijacked. I don't know off the top of my head if they had been hijacked
yet at that very moment. And then the president made a decision that we were
gonna leave, go back to Washington.

He left then to go address a larger group that he was supposed to give a big
speech to, and said in a speech that several people said he looked nervous,
and he said in that speech that he was gonna leave, return to Washington, the
nation's been attacked, and you hear a lot of shock in the room. People
didn't know it, and that point we headed back into the motorcade to go to Air
Force One, presumably for Washington at that moment.

GROSS: But is what you're saying that the president was basically irrelevant
in the first few minutes after the second attack, that the president could
afford to not be in the loop? That other people were working the phones and
the president didn't matter, he could just stay listening? I mean...

Mr. FLEISCHER: Well, no, actually the president, too, was working the phones,
if I didn't say that. I'm just saying that...

GROSS: Well, no, during the minutes he was in the chair, which is the minutes
we're talking about.

Mr. FLEISCHER: Well, clearly not the minutes that he was in the chair...

GROSS: Yeah.

Mr. FLEISCHER: ...but keep in mind, also, the president is not the finder of
facts. The finders of facts are more along--lines, I'd put it, the colonels
and lieutenant colonels who work at the National Security Council and at the
Department of Defense or the Federal Aviation Administration. Those are the
people who are on the front lines who are in communication with what's
happening on the ground, and that information then filters up to the president
through either his national security adviser, Andy Card, or whoever it comes
from.

GROSS: But in a situation where every second counts, as we well learned that
day, why wouldn't the president want to immediately get to a secure phone so
he could immediately or as soon as he's ready or needed be on the phone with
whoever on his staff or in the military he needs to?

Mr. FLEISCHER: Well, it was just the president's judgment. He stayed in that
chair. Didn't talk to anybody about it. He just stayed there, and I think
showed a picture of calm to the country, which later was shown as the people
looked at that clip, and then he got up. But my point is he...

GROSS: Wait, wait, wait. I'm--yeah.

Mr. FLEISCHER: Let's just say he got up from the chair immediately after Andy
said what he said. It wouldn't have changed anything. It wouldn't have
changed the course of history. I don't think there was anything he would have
learned then that he didn't learn seven minutes later. There was nothing he
would have learned earlier that would have changed events. That was the fact
of what happened on September 11th and he sequence in which it happened.

GROSS: If you're just joining us, my guest is Ari Fleischer, and he was
President Bush's White House press secretary for the first two and a half
years of the Bush administration. Now he's written a memoir called "Taking
Heat: The President, the Press, and My Years in the White House."

How did the war affect your interactions with reporters during the White House
briefings? I mean, once the terrorists are attacking, then everybody's
wanting to know what are we doing about it, what's the military doing. Of
course, a lot of this stuff is going to be secret and it's your job to make
sure it stays secret. So like you always have a dual role when you're White
House press secretary.

Mr. FLEISCHER: Correct.

GROSS: You give information and you hold back information.

Mr. FLEISCHER: Exactly right.

GROSS: During war, was there more to hold back than to give?

Mr. FLEISCHER: Sure was. And September 11th led to a change in my
relationship with the White House press corps where--and by that I mean my
professional relationship. On a personal level, I like a lot of those people,
virtually every single one of them, and we got along pretty well. But on a
professional level, it created a lot more tension and led to a more splenetic
relationship, and that's because reporters are trained to break the next big
story. They are trained to ask the hardest, toughest questions and find out
what is the government going to do. At the same token, what the government
was going to do was military, and so reporters would literally ask me--there's
a chapter in the book called You'll Attack When?, and I simply reprint many of
my briefings with the press where I was literally asked after--on September
15th, I was asked, `Will you use nuclear weapons in Afghanistan?' I was asked
to confirm whether or not we had moved fighter aircraft to Pakistan a couple
of weeks later. Terry, those are questions that no press secretary should
answer. And I wanted to answer them, and it did lead to more tension in the
briefing room 'cause reporters thought I was secretive and tight-lipped, and
they were right.

GROSS: During the lead-up of the invasion of Iraq, you were asked a lot about
weapons of mass destruction...

Mr. FLEISCHER: Yeah.

GROSS: ...and one of the things you said, March 21st, 2003, `Well, there is
no question that we have evidence and information that Iraq has weapons of
mass destruction, biological and chemical. All this will be made clear in the
course of the operation, for whatever duration it takes.'

Mr. FLEISCHER: Yeah, and that sure is what we all thought, and it sure looks
like it turned out to be wrong. We all did believe that, and I said it
earnestly. It was the considered best judgment of the intelligence analysts
in the government, had been so for about 10 years. President Clinton had said
it earlier, Vice President Gore had said it, Senator Kerry interestingly said
it in a speech on the Senate floor in 2002. And it looks like we may all have
been wrong about it.

But when you get to the big picture, should we still have gone to war, I
happen to believe that we also found--it's not I believe--I know we also found
the weapons inspectors who declare that we may all have been wrong, David Kay
and Charles Duelfer, they reported that in 2003, Iraq was still hiding from
the weapons inspectors right before the war began and ongoing research and
development of biological and chemical weapons concealed in scientists' homes,
and they said he was six months away from being able to develop mustard agent
and two years away from being able to develop nerve agent in significant
quantities.

We never found the stockpiles that we were all certain that we would find, and
remember George Tenet said to the president, `It's a slam dunk,' the head of
the CIA. So we may have been wrong about that, but we weren't wrong about his
intentions.

GROSS: Do you feel that you participated in what some critics have called the
hyping of weapons of mass destruction...

Mr. FLEISCHER: Absolutely not.

GROSS: ...to generate more support for going into Iraq?

Mr. FLEISCHER: Absolutely not. I accurate--the job of the press secretary is
to faithfully articulate what the government is doing and why it's doing it at
the time it's doing it, and all you can do is work off of the best information
available at the time, and that is loyally what I did. I articulated
accurately what we thought and what we knew at the time. Now I wish we could
figure out what went wrong. I think that's what we need to do now, and there
is a commission doing that, but why were we wrong, and what does it say about
Iran and North Korea. Are we overestimating or underestimating those nations?
That, to me, is the lesson that has to be learned from the mistakes we made.

GROSS: Let me ask you about one of the many tough moments you had at a
briefing. This was February 22nd, 2003. You were asked about the--you know,
if President Bush was going to, like, make deals to get more allies on our
side as we went to war with Iraq, and you were asked specifically if Mexico
was being given special deals on immigration agreements like amnesty for guest
workers or things along those lines. So if we were cutting a deal with Mexico
to get their support, and you said, `You're saying that leaders of other
nations are buyable and that is not an acceptable position,' and then the
press corps laughed.

Mr. FLEISCHER: Right.

GROSS: I think they laughed because deals are always made.

Mr. FLEISCHER: They think the leaders are buyable.

GROSS: Well, that people got deals. What was your reaction when they
laughed?

Mr. FLEISCHER: Well, I think it's a good example of, in that case, where I
think the skepticism goes too far. Now the issue here was could we get
Mexico's vote on the second resolution at the Security Council to authorize
war, and we couldn't. Mexico would not have voted for us. We pulled the vote
before anybody knew, but we knew Mexico was gonna vote no. And I think it
shows that I was accurate, that leaders are not buyable. Now there are all
kinds of things, I think, below the level of a Security Council resolution
authorizing war where you do reach agreements with nations over policies and
trade and compromises, but not on the fundamental principal of will you
support a war or not, and that was the point I was making.

GROSS: Was that an embarrassing or an awkward moment for you, or did you just
think, `Well, another day, another White House briefing?'

Mr. FLEISCHER: Another day, another White House briefing. You have to have
thick skin to do the job that I used to do, and it comes with the territory.
And you also have to realize it's not personal. The White House press corps
is plenty sharp, plenty tough, plenty capable and plenty skeptical. Sometimes
I think too skeptical, but it's the way Washington can be.

GROSS: What's one of your most unfavorite moments that you'd be willing to
share?

Mr. FLEISCHER: Well, I think probably the biggest mistake I ever made in that
briefing room was a couple months earlier when reporters were talking about
the cost of going to war with Iraq, and I was asked how much it would cost,
and we didn't have any reliable estimates, and I said, `The cost of a one-way
ticket if Saddam were to leave would be less than, you know, $100 billion
cost, whatever the cost of war would have been,' and then I added--somehow I
said this, `That--and the cost would be even less than a one-way ticket, the
cost of one bullet would be even less than that if the Iraqi people took it on
themselves.' And all of a sudden all the White House reporters sat up and,
`Are you advocating assassination? Is that the policy of the United States
government?' And I spent the entire afternoon calling the reporters back. I
went right into the Oval Office afterwards and turned myself in to the
president, and he said, `You better fix that. That's not our policy.' And I
spent the afternoon calling reporters to say that what I said is not
Americans--the president's policy.'

GROSS: What inspired you to say it?

Mr. FLEISCHER: You know, there's just a tendency, when you're in that room,
to either be so buttoned down that you never say anything wrong, or sometimes
you just try to put out just a little extra, a little something to change the
tone of the briefing, and in that case I just went too far. I just said
something, trying to be a little cute, that really was wrong policy, number
one, and it was foolish, number two, frankly.

GROSS: My guest is Ari Fleischer, President Bush's former White House press
secretary. His new memoir is called "Taking Heat." We'll talk more after a
break. This is FRESH AIR.

(Soundbite of music)

GROSS: If you're just joining us, my guest is Ari Fleischer. He's written a
new memoir about his two and a half years as the White House press secretary
during the Bush administration.

The White House press corps, many of the members of the White House press
corps have been very critical of the Bush administration's tight control over
information, and its steadfastness in staying on point, on message. A couple
of quotes. David Gregory of NBC, "My biggest frustration is that this White
House has chosen an approach with the White House press corps, generally
speaking, to engage us as little as possible." Elisabeth Bumiller of The New
York Times, "Too often they treat us with contempt. In comparison, the Reagan
administration coddled us. This crowd has a wall up. They never get off
their talking points." Legitimate complaints?

Mr. FLEISCHER: Well, I don't think so. I think what really--there is
frustration in the press about the way the Bush administration deals with the
press. I think most of it stems from the fact that the press, again, are
trained to break the next big story, and that they break the news first before
the president does. The president said to me and to others in the White
House, he thinks his job is to make the news, and he doesn't want to read
about it in the newspapers or see it on TV before he, himself, publicly says
it. This president is surrounded by people who don't go out of a closed
meeting, give reporters tips and say, `Here's what the president is about to
do in two hours. I'm gonna do you a favor. I'm gonna give it to you.' We
try to treat all the press the same way, treat them fair, make the news at the
same time. The president is the one who wants to make the news, and that can
be frustrating for reporters.

GROSS: Well, I think they also want more than the official press release.
They want to know what people are really saying and thinking and what's going
on, and I think the complaint here was that information--the control of
information is really tight.

Mr. FLEISCHER: But I think they still get that. I mean, everybody knew that
Colin Powell initially had objections about the war in Iraq. That really came
through. People saw on the Arab-Israeli matters that State had a different
view than perhaps the vice president and others. It still gets out there.
The 20 years I've been in business, reporters have always had levels of
complaints about government and government information. In fact, in President
Bush's father's administration, nobody could keep any news quiet. Everything
was given to the press. One faction would fight against another faction, and
the press absolutely loved it. That's how they get a lot of good insider
tips, and then they write stories that said, `White House in disarray.'

You don't get any stories about a White House that say, `White House in
array,' but instead you get the flip side of it is the White House is
secretive, and I think it's part of the thesis of my book that the press is
always going to find something to cover that's conflict oriented, but they are
seldom to give praise.

GROSS: Dana Milbank of The Washington Post--and he covers the White House for
The Washington Post--he said, `The administration speaks with one voice
because officials have, quote, "talking points" that they e-mail to friends
and everyone says exactly the same thing. You go through the effort of
getting Karl Rove on the phone, and he'll say exactly the same thing as Scott
McClellan.' Legit?

Mr. FLEISCHER: Well, our job is to say what the president thinks, and unless
the president happens to think two things at one time, which he typically
doesn't--but like him or don't like him, he takes pretty clear stands and the
staff knows it, and so I don't think it should surprise people that the people
in the White House are saying the same thing. Now if one faction in the White
House is fighting another faction in the White House to influence the
president, that's how reporters used to get different, competing stories, and
they loved it. But that's not the case in this White House. You really--even
when you're fighting, you know, when factions go at each other, they keep it
inside the walls of the Oval Office so the president can hear both sides, but
then make a deliberative decision.

GROSS: Dana Milbank was talking about being frustrated 'cause everybody's on
the same talking points. How do those talking points get spread around?

Mr. FLEISCHER: Well, frankly, it wasn't talking points for me. It was being
in the meetings with the president. And I was in the same meetings as Karl or
Karen Hughes or the head of congressional affairs or the head of the Office of
Management and Budget. We would sit in the same mee--let me give you a couple
of--one example. The president was talking about the war in Iraq and the
price that we're paying when we lose servicemen and servicewomen every day,
the toll it was taking, and how hard it is to make the decision to go to war.
And he said, `I'm the one who has to hug the widows and the widowers,' because
he would go to military bases and have to do that. Well, a lot of us all
started talking about, you know, this is a difficult decision. The
president's the one who has to hug the widows and the widowers. None of us
needed talking points. We were in the meeting and we heard the president say
it.

So on the one hand, I think it's part of the skepticism and sometimes cynicism
of the press corps as they dismiss this as talking points, and also very well
may be that they are getting an accurate and full portrayal from the people
who heard it directly firsthand from the president who are serving history and
serving the public by passing it on.

GROSS: You know how President Bush sometimes misspeaks a little bit and...

Mr. FLEISCHER: I've noticed.

GROSS: Right. One of those, I think, was about the story you were talking
about. I'm not gonna remember the quote offhand, but in talking how he needs
to, like, hug the widows and hug the family, he made a little bit of a gaffe
in the way he said it. I don't know if you remember this quote, and I wish I
had a better memory and could quote it to you, but I was wondering if it
becomes your job on occasions where he has a little bit of a gaffe to fix it?

Mr. FLEISCHER: Oh, sure. Yeah, in fact, I remember once--this was on June
of 2003 and the president was in the Roosevelt Room and he was asked a
question--this is the aftermath of the war and we have guerrilla attacks and
the frequency of the soldiers dying started to increase. He was asked a
question about all the attacks on our troops, and he said, `My message to
those who want to attack or troops is bring it on.' And as we walked back into
the Oval Office, I said to him, `Mr. President, think of how that sounds to a
mother who's got a child fighting for us over there. I mean, bring it on?'
And he said to me that all he meant to say is he has so much faith in our
military, that if anybody wants to attack us, that bring it on, our military
is the best, and anybody who attacks us is probably gonna lose their life.' I
said, `But it didn't come across that way, sir.' And I think he got it and got
it instantly.

My job was to say to the president--it was easy to do--`Mr. President, I would
do it this way or that way,' and to help correct him in private. It didn't
mean that I would go out to the press and say, `Boy, did he screw up. Let me
tell you what he just did.' Sometimes a good adviser is a good adviser on the
inside, and a good president is a president who will listen.

GROSS: Ari Fleischer served as press secretary for President Bush from 2001
to 2003. His new memoir is called "Taking Heat." He'll be back in the second
half of the show. I'm Terry Gross and this is FRESH AIR.

(Announcements)

GROSS: Coming up, current controversies surrounding the Bush administration's
treatment of the press, including paying journalists to promote the
administration's agenda. We continue our conversation with former White House
press secretary Ari Fleischer. And critic at large John Powers considers the
career of CBS News anchor Dan Rather. He steps down tomorrow night.

(Soundbite of music)

GROSS: This is FRESH AIR. I'm Terry Gross back with Ari Fleischer. He was
President Bush's press secretary during the first two and a half years of his
administration. When we left off, we were talking about some of the conflicts
between Fleischer and the White House press corps.

Bennett Roth of the Houston Chronicle told Jake Tapper, when Tapper was
writing for Salon magazine, that he had pointed out that the president had
encouraged parents to speak to their children about drug abuse, in attempt to
stop their children from using drugs. And so Bennett Roth said to you at a
briefing, `How much does the president talk to his own daughters about both
drugs and drinking, and given the fact that his own daughter was cited for
drinking, isn't that a sign that there's only so much effect that parents can
have on their children's behavior?' And he says that you asked him to respect
the president's privacy, and that you later called him and told him that his
question had been, quote, "noted in the building."

Mr. FLEISCHER: Yeah. That was a bad choice of words on my part. What I
wanted to say to him was the president--this came from the president, because,
I mean, the president wanted to treat it as a private family matter when his
then-20-year-old daughter was cited for underage drinking, and I think that's
what every family would want to do, and probably what every family does. And
saying "noted in the building" was a bad choice of words. I should have just
said to him, `Listen, the president didn't appreciate your question.' But
yeah, it's a reporter's right to ask whatever they want to ask. But on a
question like that, I think I was proper in drawing a zone of privacy and
saying this is between the president and his daughters.

GROSS: But he wasn't--I mean, you could argue that he wasn't asking anything
private. He was just referring to something that had already been reported in
the news, and...

Mr. FLEISCHER: No, he...

GROSS: ...that his point was does the president's policy, does the
president's approach jive with reality? Does it even jive with the reality of
his own family? So, I mean, that's--I'm not sure...

Mr. FLEISCHER: The question...

GROSS: Is that invading his privacy?

Mr. FLEISCHER: The question was about what did the president say to his
daughters? The question did ask, `What did the president say to his
daughters?,' as I recall it, and it's not...

GROSS: That's not in the part of the quote I have, but you may be right.

Mr. FLEISCHER: Is that from the briefing itself? Was that from the story?

GROSS: This is a quote from the briefing, as far as I know.

Mr. FLEISCHER: OK. As I remember the briefing, it was a question about what
message did the president give his daughters, but even allowing for a second
part of that question, which is `And what does that say about the efficacy of
a parent talking to a child?,' in the context of big glaring stories and
headlines, which were earned because his daughters did get cited--one of his
daughters got cited. It's impossible to address that issue without, again,
bringing the daughters back into play, and I did not think it was my job to
talk about the daughters and the family and any of the problems that they may
have had. And I respected the press when they drew a real line around Chelsea
Clinton and honored her privacy, and I think the press corps was pretty good
about doing that with the Bush daughters, except when the Bush daughters did
things that were newsworthy.

But I really try to keep that zone of privacy, and again, when I think of the
way I said it to Ben, it was an awkward way to say it, and I should have just
said it easily and straightforward. The president himself didn't appreciate
it, because I thought he should know that. Now that's not said to a reporter
to make a reporter not ask questions or to intimidate, but it's because I
think reporters should know that there still is sensitive privacy zones, even
for people who are president.

GROSS: You write in your book that you think the media basically has a
liberal bias. You write, `The press are largely Democratic, and that fact
shows up in their work more often than most reporters like to acknowledge.'
What's an example of that?

Mr. FLEISCHER: Well, let me tell you a couple things if I can. First, I
wrote in the book and put it very prominently on the back that we are a
better, stronger country because the press get a thousand facts right every
day. And then I said within that context, my two beefs with the press are,
one, I think they are biased in favor of conflict. Secondarily, that there is
a subtle, ideological bias, particularly on policy issues and especially on
social policy issues where it's easy to be a Democrat than a Republican.
Here's a perfect example. When President Bush issued an executive order on
his first business day, saying that family planning groups that counsel
abortions overseas can no longer receive tax dollars, Bill Clinton on his
first working day issued the exact same executive order, except these groups
could receive tax dollars for family planning.

Dan Rather on the evening news in 1993 when Bill Clinton did it said that
`Bill Clinton honored a campaign promise today.' Eight years later when George
W. Bush took the mirror action, said they could not get the money, he didn't
say that he honored a campaign promise, even though it was one. He said that
`President Bush today quickly appealed to the right flank of the Republican
Party.' To me, that's a perfect example. ABC did the same thing. Peter
Jennings in 1993 said `honored a promise'; 2001, their correspondent said that
he was pandering to the--he didn't use the word `pander,' but, again put into
political context about appealing to the right wing, basically the Republican
Party.

To me, that's a classic example of a subtle, not so subtle bias on social
policy. Why is the pro-choice action labeled as honoring a campaign promise?
If you honor a promise, that's meritorious no matter what. But pandering to a
political base or appealing to a flank of a party makes it sound like it's a
political action. I think that was a classic example.

GROSS: So in your opinion, do the three broadcast TV networks have a bias in
their news?

Mr. FLEISCHER: Well, the way I put it is it's subtle, because I think
reporters really do work very hard and earnestly to cover the facts exactly
straight and say what the government does. But it's a labeling issue. Very
often, the conservative side is labeled as conservative, when the liberal side
isn't labeled as liberal. Very often, you hear the words `right-wing' thrown
around in the press. You seldom hear `left-wing.' `Tom DeLay is a right-wing
congressman.' You very seldom hear `Ted Kennedy is a left-wing Democrat.' The
labels are just different.

Protesters, when the protests took place against Mrs. Clinton's health care
reform proposal when she was the first lady, most of the stories read,
`Conservative protesters gather to protest Mrs. Clinton.' When President Bush
would travel and get met by protesters at the sides of the road, they never
said `liberal protesters.' It was activists. The labeling seems to be
different. The words are different.

A summary of President Bush's tax cut in 2003 that aired on ABC summed it up
by saying, `It's classic trickle-down economics.' That was the ABC
correspondent who said that. Trickle-down economics was a term used in an ad
by Walter Mondale against Ronald Reagan's tax cuts. It's a derisive way to
summarize tax cuts.

These are the subtleties I saw, and the reason I call it subtle is because the
press doesn't change the facts. They don't misreport the facts. It's just
these labeling issues and how issues quickly get summarized that it seemed, to
me, leaned in favor of one party and not with the other. And it's compounded,
because a story in The New York Times pointed out last summer, by 12 to one,
reporters from within the beltway thought John Kerry would be a better
president than George W. Bush. And that same story said that surveys show
that 80 percent of reporters vote Democratic. And I don't think it's malice.
I just think it's human nature. It seeps through no matter how professional a
reporter is in trying to stay right down the middle. Give me a newsroom that
is 80 percent Republican voters, and I think you'll see the opposite take
place. You'll see a lean to the other side. Not out of malice, but again,
it's just human nature.

GROSS: What do you think of FOX News coverage? Do you think that they're
fairer, that they're neutral or...

Mr. FLEISCHER: No, I think FOX is conservative. And I think if FOX is
perceived as conservative, the networks need to grapple with the fact that
they're perceived as liberal. And I think one of the reasons FOX is just
doing so well and is growing so much in a field where most media organizations
are shrinking is because there's a lot of dissatisfaction among people
center-center-right with the media.

GROSS: Can I point out a kind of obvious difference between FOX News and--you
know, if you're equating that, you know, network news is liberal and FOX is
conservative, let's just call a spade a spade. I mean, on FOX News, O'Reilly
starts and ends each show with an editorial. On FOX News, Sean Hannity and
Alan Colmes, their job is to give their opinions. But they're trying to
get--you know...

Mr. FLEISCHER: Yeah, I don't include those nighttime shows in that. I think
more about the six o'clock news with Brit Hume, which is their equivalent of
the 6:30 news with the anchors. Because nighttime cable TV is all opinion.
You can go to CNN. You can go to--well, CNN's less so in the sense they don't
have the provocateurs on the way FOX does and some of the others, MSNBC does.
Nighttime cable, "Crossfire" on FOX, they really have gone to that format.
And that's just opinion TV.

GROSS: I've heard that FOX was, like, the favored network within the White
House when they were watching TV. Is that true?

Mr. FLEISCHER: Yeah, I think that's probably fair.

GROSS: Why is that?

Mr. FLEISCHER: Because I think that FOX doesn't repeat those mistakes that I
was just describing, where one side is declared right-wing and the other side
is not given a label. I think FOX is conscious of that. They probably lean
on the other side of it, too. But there are also stories on FOX, that lead
FOX, that aren't on the other shows, involving controversies that Democrats
get into: Senator Byrd's floor speech about quitting President Bush's
judicial nominee tactics of how he's going to promote his nominees with Adolf
Hitler. I don't know if that was covered on the network news. I didn't track
it, but that was the lead story on FOX, for example.

GROSS: My guest is Ari Fleischer, President Bush's former White House press
secretary. His new memoir is called "Taking Heat." We'll talk more after a
break. This is FRESH AIR.

(Soundbite of music)

GROSS: My guest is Ari Fleischer, he was the White House press secretary
during the first two and a half years of George Bush's presidency.

Now we recently learned about several journalists who were being paid by the
Bush administration, including Armstrong Williams. His company was paid to do
ads promoting No Child Left Behind, but he was also paid to promote it
himself as a journalist.

Mr. FLEISCHER: And that's a mistake, unless you reveal it. That has to be
publicly disclosed.

GROSS: Do you think it would ever be acceptable for a journalist to take
money to express an opinion?

Mr. FLEISCHER: If it's his venue already. I think, in the case of Armstrong
Williams, I can't imagine he was anywhere other than on the side he came out
on school choice. But I think it'd be wrong if somebody got money and changed
their opinion. But if he was always for school choice, and then somebody
said, `We're going to give you a contract to help get that message out,' I
think as long as you disclose that and you say, `This is Armstrong Williams,
and I'm giving you a message on behalf of the Department of Education, on
behalf of school choice,' then it's consistent with your philosophy. You
should be personally comfortable with it, and it's publicly disclosed. That I
wouldn't have a problem with. But generally, the government should not be
paying journalists. Columnists are in a little bit of a different category,
but journalists should not be paid by the government. Draw a straight line.

GROSS: OK. So we had Armstrong Williams getting paid. Then Karen Ryan and
Alberto Garcia were paid to appear in stage reports promoting the president's
Medicare prescription drug plan, but those reports were packaged...

Mr. FLEISCHER: Packaged news.

GROSS: They were packaged to look like real reports, but they were actual
promotion spots.

Mr. FLEISCHER: Yeah.

GROSS: And then there was also two syndicated columnists who were paid by the
Department of Health and Human Services to promote the administration's
marriage initiative. And I think some people are concerned. OK, the Bush
administration, yourself included, criticizes the press for being liberal. Is
this what they want the press to be, people who are, you know, paid to promote
their message?

Mr. FLEISCHER: No, I disagree with paying reporters to promote a message.
That's a line that should be drawn, and it shouldn't be violated. As far as
the package news, where people look like reporters and they're kind of giving
a report, that's been standard fare of public relations agencies for probably
10 to 15 years now. It's been going on a long time. I think if people want
to object to that practice, I would have no problems with that. I also think
most people see through this kind of stuff. Most people can tell if it's
something that is packaged in opinion or if it's something they think is a
bonafide news report.

GROSS: How much of this happened on your watch?

Mr. FLEISCHER: Well, I never--I guess the Armstrong Williams thing, I don't
know what years it was happening. I didn't know anything about it until I
heard about it in the press, but I don't know when it began.

GROSS: How do you think this has affected the Bush administration's
credibility with the press and the public?

Mr. FLEISCHER: Well, I think less so with the press. I think that it's given
reason for a lot of liberal voters and people who are critics of the president
to say that this is an administration that's trying to manage the news. I
recognize that there's an appearance problem here, and they have to clean that
up. And the agencies have to be on the lookout not to give these type of
contracts out to people. But there's nothing that I ever knew about any of
that emanating from the White House.

GROSS: Let's get to James Guckert...

Mr. FLEISCHER: Yes.

GROSS: ...aka Jeff Gannon. OK. Now he worked for a conservative Web site,
GOPUSA, or Talon News. He sometimes asked questions that included strong
statements in praise of the administration. I've read that some of what he
published on his Web site was actually taken straight from Republican fact
sheets. He came to the White House under an alias. He was associated with
pornographic Web sites, worked as a male escort, and kept on as a White House
correspondent with day passes...

Mr. FLEISCHER: Right.

GROSS: ...day after day. He started while you were...

Mr. FLEISCHER: He started while I was the press secretary.

GROSS: ...press secretary.

Mr. FLEISCHER: Correct.

GROSS: What did you make of him?

Mr. FLEISCHER: Well, when I found out that he worked with something called
GOPUSA, I stopped calling on him, because I also draw a line that says,
`There should be a lot of latitude in determining who is a reporter.' I think
you have to be flexible on that, otherwise there's a real risk that government
is saying no to people who are bonafide reporters. But I draw the line that
if somebody works for a political party, then they're not a reporter, they're
an advocate for the party. So I stopped calling on him. He had his boss
called me, and his boss assured me that the name GOPUSA is a marketing
device, they were not affiliated with any party. So then I called the
Republican National Committee, and they verified that, that this group was not
affiliated with them. And so I resumed calling on him. That's where I would
draw the line.

The problem you get, Terry, is in this modern age, where you've got bloggers
and you've got talk radio, both the left and the right, who in the government
should determine whether somebody is, quote, unquote, "a reporter?" If Al
Franken were to show up in that room, from liberal talk radio, do I have a
right to bar him because he's a liberal? Or if he showed up in the Clinton
administration, would reporters say, `He's asking softball questions, you
should not allow him in the room?' This is the problem that you've got in this
modern age. What's a blogger? What's a reporter?

As for his private life, I would fear the day if ever the government, outside
the Secret Service for security purposes, but the government started looking
into the private lives of reporters. If somebody has questions in their
private life, like he surely does, the news organization should be responsible
for making a determination about whether that person should be employed or
not. And I have a lot of faith that anybody with his background who worked in
a mainstream outlet would not longer work there. But the government shouldn't
make that call. The news organization should.

GROSS: In terms of, like, who gets, you know, passes to the White House, who
gets credentialed to be...

Mr. FLEISCHER: Right.

GROSS: ...in the White House and who doesn't. Maureen Dowd, in a column--and
she used to be a White House reporter...

Mr. FLEISCHER: Right.

GROSS: ...and now she's a columnist, a liberal columnist. But she said that
it took her a long time to get credentialed to go to White House briefing, and
that it wasn't easy, she was denied at first, so...

Mr. FLEISCHER: Well, she had a hard pass. And for a hard pass, you undergo
a thorough background check by the Secret Service. They look at your history
and your background, etc. The day pass, they don't go through that type of
review, which is probably why this James Gannon guy, why he didn't want to go
for a hard pass. He knew his history would come out. So there are reporters
who can show up on that basis, but the issue still becomes, should he have
gotten a day pass to begin with. And as press secretary, I never got into
those issues. There are some 2,500 credentialed reporters, and the last thing
I wanted to do was deal with any of that. Where you have to deal with it,
when it rises up and becomes a problem, and then you have to focus on it.

The White House Correspondents Association looked at this whole issue in the
wake of this little scandal, and they determined that no changes should be
made in the White House policy. They think this is an isolated case, and I
agree with that. I think it's just odd. It is bizarre. I think it's also
isolated. And, like, it would be a lot easier for the press secretary if a
lot of these left-wing and right-wing fringes were removed from the room and
the room was just really your mainstream press. It might be easier for me,
'cause I'd deal with less wacky questions, but I don't think it's right. I
think you have to be prepared to deal with whatever's thrown at you in that
room.

And I would err on the side of being more inclusive about who's defined as a
reporter, 'cause I really fear that you chop off some bonafide reporting even
if it's at the fringe. Now that might not be the case with this guy, but I
think this guy's the exception to everything that happened, and people
shouldn't change long-standing traditions in the White House, where that room
has always been home to a lot of colorful characters on the left and the
right.

GROSS: A quote from Joe Lockhart who was press secretary in President
Clinton--to obtain a day pass during the Clinton administration, a reporter,
quote, "had to make the case as to why that day was unique and why he had to
cover the White House from inside the gate instead of outside." Quote from
Bruce Bartlett who worked with the first President Bush and the Reagan
administrations: Quote, "If Gannon was using an alias, the White House staff
had to be involved in maintaining his cover, otherwise, it would have been a
security breach."

Mr. FLEISCHER: Well, when he would show up for the security check at the
gate and had to give his name, then he had to use his bonafide name, otherwise
Secret Service wouldn't have had any records for him. Then he came into the
room, and I always knew him as Jeff Gannon, I never knew that he had a
different name. Now maybe there was somebody who worked for me who knew it,
but I wouldn't have known that.

GROSS: So, do you think there was any security breach here?

Mr. FLEISCHER: No, I don't, 'cause he walked through the same metal
detector...

GROSS: Do you think...

Mr. FLEISCHER: ...and the same search procedures as everybody with a hard
pass.

GROSS: Do you think that there was somebody on the inside who was kind of
working things for him?

Mr. FLEISCHER: No. I think the real question is: Was he a plant? And the
answer to that is emphatically no. And even the White House correspondents
who were in that room, who really never liked him, they've all said he's not a
plant. But this is what happens in politics today. The left sees it
particularly coupled with the Armstrong Williams episode, and they start to
think and fear the worst. In fact, I think that's a grassy knoll on the left.
The right has its own grassy knolls. We did a lot of that to Bill Clinton and
to his associates. But absolutely not, was he a plant.

GROSS: So how do you like life outside of the White House now?

Mr. FLEISCHER: Well, I love it. I loved what I did at the White House, but I
really enjoy now being in the private sector. My wife and I have a
10-month-old daughter, and we've moved to New York, and it's just a different
world. I still enjoy politics. I still follow it, but I follow it from the
private sector now.

GROSS: Do you watch the White House briefings every day?

Mr. FLEISCHER: You know, I read them every day, but I think I've only watched
one or two of Scott's briefings, but I read his briefings every day.

GROSS: Not your favorite television show?

Mr. FLEISCHER: Well, I remember the day after I left the White House, I was
on a treadmill, working out in the middle of the afternoon, getting back into
shape, and Scott's briefing came on TV, and my first reaction was, `Wooh, I
wouldn't want to be in that guy's shoes.'

GROSS: Air Fleischer, thank you very much for talking with us.

Mr. FLEISCHER: Thank you, Terry.

GROSS: Ari Fleischer served as press secretary for President Bush from 2001
to 2003. He now has his own public relations firm. His new memoir is called
"Taking Heat."

Coming up, critic at large John Powers considers the career of Dan Rather who
ends his tenure as CBS News anchor tomorrow. This is FRESH AIR.

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Commentary: Why Dan Rather will be missed
TERRY GROSS, host:

Tomorrow, Dan Rather relinquishes his anchor's chair at the "CBS Evening
News," where he's reigned for 24 years. He'll become a full-time reporter for
the weekday edition of "60 Minutes." Our critic at large John Powers tells us
why he's going to miss Dan Rather.

JOHN POWERS:

The first time I ever saw Dan Rather in person was during the 1988 Democratic
convention. I was covering a Jesse Jackson rally when the crowd suddenly
began buzzing. I glanced to my left, and there he was, looking exactly like,
well, Dan Rather, except for one thing. He was smaller in person than he was
in my head.

Seventeen years later, Rather is stepping down from his anchorman spot at CBS,
his departure hastened by the bad document scandal surrounding his report on
President Bush's National Guard service. He leaves plagued by low ratings, a
snippy New Yorker article which revealed that even Mike Wallace doesn't watch
the CBS newscast, and the glee of conservatives who have long considered him
the most unrepentantly liberal of the anchors. Why, there's even a Web site
named RatherBiased.com.

I can understand the complaints against him. I, myself, rarely watch his
newscast these days, and I do think he's a liberal, an old-fashioned Humphrey
Bogart liberal who instinctively takes the side of whoever he thinks is the
little guy. But, you know, I'm going to miss Dan Rather, and I'd wager the
folks at RatherBiased.com will, too. For he's been one of the most enjoyably
fascinating figures in our pop mythology for the last 40 years.

Although the right now treats him as part of the liberal elite, the Texas-born
Rather didn't come from privilege. He had a childhood that was actually far
harsher than, say, Bill O'Reilly's. And he attended far-from-elite Sam
Houston State Teachers College. He worked his way up as a hard-nosed
reporter.

He was brave in Vietnam. He got slugged on the floor of the 1968 Democratic
convention, and he became renowned for his verbal skirmishes with Richard
Nixon. `Are you running for something?' the president once snidely asked him
at a press conference. `No,' Rather shot back, `are you?' We don't have
press conferences like that anymore.

It was Rather's great dream to assume Walter Cronkite's mantle as the most
trusted man in America. That's one reason he notoriously went soft the night
Nixon resigned. He was trying to reclaim the mainstream. And in 1981, he got
the CBS anchor job over colleague Roger Mudd, defying the doubts of those who
thought he lacked the gravitas of Cronkite and Edward R. Murrow, the
presiding saint of CBS News.

Of course, it's habitual to assume that today's big media figures lack the
dimension of those who came before. I remember how my parents thought Johnny
Carson a soulless showbiz replacement for Jack Paar, and how Clint Eastwood
was once reckoned a well-built mannequin propped up by spaghetti Westerns. But
the years turned them into icons of grace and maturity.

Things didn't work out quite that way for Rather. It's the tragic comedy of
his career that he yearned for a role, the god-like voice of the nation, that
no longer existed. The '60s' attacks on authority were soon extended to
journalism. Cable rose up to challenge the big three broadcast networks, and
the networks' owners began slashing news budgets in search of more profits.
Rather, himself, played a part in all this. Even as he publicly groused about
management turning news into entertainment, he demanded and got the huge salary
of an entertainer.

But even if there were such a thing as most trusted voice in the news, Rather
would never have been it. For unlike canny self-possessed Tom Brokaw, who
skillfully wrapped himself in the triumphs of the greatest generation, Rather
was always, well, slightly batty. Who can forget Dan's greatest hits:
donning Gunga Din robes in Afghanistan, leaving six minutes of dead air in a
huff over a tennis broadcast, wearing those sweaters and ending his newscasts
with the word `courage.'

It wasn't Peter Jennings who inspired an R.E.M. song by being mugged by a guy
who asked, `Kenneth, what is the frequency?' And I'll bet you can't imagine
Walter Cronkite mouthing those delirious Ratherisms, like calling the Michigan
primary tighter than Willie Nelson's headband, or observing, and I quote, "If
a frog had side pockets, he's probably wear a handgun." Say what?

Part of what I've always loved about Rather is the way that the man who longs
to be the voice of the American people doesn't have a clue about how wildly
eccentric he actually is. Paradoxically, this makes him a touchingly American
fantasy figure, one of those oversized originals, like Orson Welles, Marilyn
Monroe or Dennis Rodman, whose talents and dreams don't comfortably fit in the
conventional slots the world has to offer.

Like him or not, Dan Rather has always showed us his soul, and without him,
CBS News is going to seem flatter than the Texas Panhandle after a twister
blows down the last outhouse. Courage, Dan. Courage.

GROSS: John Powers is film critic for Vogue, and author of "Sore Winners."

(Soundbite of music)

(Credits)

GROSS: I'm Terry Gross.
Transcripts are created on a rush deadline, and accuracy and availability may vary. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Please be aware that the authoritative record of Fresh Air interviews and reviews are the audio recordings of each segment.