Persons Of The Year???
By Tom Adkins (01/01/03)
There they are! The Persons Of The Year according to the esteemed editors of Time Magazine. Cynthia Cooper, Coleen Rowley and Sherron Watkins, whistleblowers to WorldCom, the FBI and Enron, America's new square-jawed superheroes. I couldn't help but wonder…when did Time suddenly appreciate the plight of whistleblowers?
We can only speculate, but you could almost see the editors of Time breathlessly drooling. Each woman certainly had their 60s feminist credentials in order: Overdriven, maniacally obsessive breadwinners, complete with a little man in the kitchen nurturing those inconvenient children as she climbed the career ladder…then single handedly assaulted the system by bringing down those evil corporate and investigative bureaucracies (during a conservative administration, please note), overcoming level upon level of decidedly uncaring male superiors. Why, a little more butch (like Hillary, perhaps), and they could have been named "The Three Greatest Women In The Universe" without blowing a whistle.
In the spirit of these three ladies, I took a stroll past the graveyard of media history, in search of the spirits of whistleblowers past. Let's consider three whistleblowers from a time not long ago.
GARY ALDRICH
Gary Aldrich's performance as a white-collar crime investigator vaulted him into the most prestigious FBI job in the nation, protecting the White House first under George Bush and then Bill Clinton. When Clinton was sworn in, red flags popped up like spring tulips. Besides the juvenile shenanigans of skirt-chasing and trashing out America's First Home, Aldrich discovered the Clintons were actively avoiding background checks on employees at every level, especially with concern to drugs. Later, it became obvious America's security institutions were being ignored and dismantled as well.
Aldrich weighed his options. Should he say nothing? Or for love of country, stand up, blow the whistle and face the wrath of the most powerful man on Earth and his battery of very corrupt staffers and goons? He'd seen the Travel Office scandal. He knew about the stolen FBI files. And he certainly knew the history of the Clinton political machine, leaving a 20-year trail of figurative and literal dead bodies. Yet Aldrich chose nation first, exposing the Clinton regime in his book Unlimited Access.
Immediately, the full weight of the renegade Clinton government was brought to bear. Aldrich was relentlessly libeled and slandered by a never ending procession of Clinton servants and thugs. George Stephanopolous repeatedly called Aldrich a "pathological liar." Mike McCurry called the book "pure fiction" and a "piece of garbage." The doubts were sown. Instead of investigating, the media dutifully piled on. Pressure inside the FBI was exceptional as well, though Aldrich politely names few names. And his relatively insulated family life was gone forever. Aldrich became a pariah in a town that gives no quarter. After all, where does a scorned and soiled FBI agent get his next job?
And how did Time handle Gary Aldrich's noble stand? They repeatedly labeled Aldrich's claims as "unsubstantiated rumors," making sure readers knew he was "backed" by conservative groups funded by Newt Gingrich allies, his publisher sold books by a "Los Angeles police officer who beat Rodney King," and his publicist was connected to Bob Dole and Paula Jones. They even rumored Aldrich refused Congressional hearings to maximize book tour profits. Over the next few years, of course, virtually every aspect of Aldrich's book was proven true except for the name of the hotel Bill Clinton used to shag babes. He apologized for that one.
Aldrich did far more than reveal the Sex Toy Christmas Tree and White House bathroom nookie. He exposed a drug-infested bunch of constitution-trampling criminals, who should have been tossed out at the least, tried for treason and jailed at worst. His entire life was upended, and his reputation mercilessly attacked. Gary won't say anything, but the strain on his life, family and marriage could not have been greater. But ask him if he'd do it again, this noble man answers, "Of course. It was my destiny. It was my obligation. How could I do anything else?"
When Coleen Rowley came forward, the press escorted her on gilded lilies, leading the national applause. Aldrich? Time Magazine made sure Gary Aldrich felt the maximum pain for his sin of defiance. And he never made the cover.
LINDA TRIPP
When Linda Tripp discovered a list of dead Clinton associates placed on her desk, she knew it was serious. After all, only surviving Clinton associates had access to her office. As an accident of her job, Tripp had made the mistake of stumbling into the crossroads between Bill Clinton, Ken Starr, and the Kathleen Willey sexual harassment investigation. On one side, a federal prosecutor with sweeping powers could put her in jail for lying under oath. On the other, a lying law-breaking president on a daily assault upon the Constitution and anyone in his way by any means necessary. Starr's question was a simple matter of whether Clinton and Lewinsky had a sexual relationship.
Tripp was "Ground Zero for all the Clinton scandals": Travelgate, Vince Foster's suicide, stolen FBI Files, Kathleen Willey's "encounter." Like Aldrich, she knew how the Clinton's handled anyone who got in the way. A partial list was on her desk. Yet Tripp had remained loyally silent to Clinton until Starr compelled her to testify. Knowing Lewinskiy and Clinton were conspiring to brand her a liar, Tripp taped her conversations for protection. When asked to testify, Linda Tripp came forward with the truth.
Tripp may have expected some sympathy once the world learned of her plight. After all, John Dean was a hero. So was Daniel Ellsberg. But telling the truth against criminal Democrats meant leaping from the frying pan into the fire. The media instinctively rushed to Clinton's defense, viciously attacking Tripp at every opportunity. The Clinton administration had no shortage of flacks and hacks like James Carville and Paul Begala, who spent hours on political talk shows flacking and hacking an unending assault of lies and personal insults, turning the nation away from the truth and towards sympathy for a man who assaulted women. The Clintons even managed to get Tripp indicted under bogus wiretap charges by a sympathetic Maryland prosecutor. And Tripp, as a witness to a federal crime, could not speak.
For her brave honesty against a heinous administration, Tripp never became "Person of the Year." In fact, Time's vaunted Calvin Trillin wrote, "Just because your behavior calls to mind Victor McLaglen in 'The Informer,' there is no law that says you have to look like him as well. . . ." Funny…when a moral issue placed a truth-telling whistleblower against a lawbreaking Democrat president, Time had no appetite for moral crusaders. Instead, Time led the tidal wave of degrading insults, Tripp's reward for daring to tell the truth.
JUANITA BROADRICK
Like many rape victims, Juanita Broadrick came forward only when she couldn't hide any more. For 20 years, Broadrick kept her terrible secret to herself and a few close friends until compelled to testify by the impeachment investigation as one of Bill Clinton's five reluctant Jane Doe rape victims. Still, she said nothing until the press figured out who she was and began publicly speculating and spilling various details. Facing the impending revelations and the inevitable understanding that America might be better off knowing exactly what type of man they elected, Broadrick broke down and allowed NBC's Lisa Myers to conduct an investigation.
The sick truth quickly assembled itself. In 1978 Broadrick visited Arkansas Attorney General Clinton's campaign headquarters in Little Rock, to discuss nursing home issues. A Clinton aid directed her to Clinton's apartment. They arranged a meeting at the hotel coffee shop, but Clinton slyly suggested it was noisy, and recommended stopping up at her room. Within 5 minutes, he made advances that unfolded into a full fledged painful rape, severely biting her lips in the process. "This is the part that always stays in my mind, the way he put on his sunglasses. Then he looked at me and said, 'You better put some ice on that.' And then he left."
Later, friend Norma Rogers found Broadrick on the bed in a state of shock, with severely swollen lips and pantyhose torn in the crotch. "She just stayed on the bed and kept repeating, 'I can't believe what happened.'" Broadrick always questioned her judgment for allowing Clinton into her room, "But who, for Heaven's sake, would have imagined anything like this? This was the Attorney General, and it just never entered my mind."
But worst of all, who would have believed the media's reaction to her story? There was a short Clinton whisper campaign, including Clinton claims of consent and Time strangely claiming Broadrick insulting Tripp friend Lucianne Goldberg, calling her "crazy" along with a few other bizarre, unsubstantiated accusations. Otherwise, there was absolutely no follow up, no indignation, no demands for Clinton to come forward, and not a word from the entire spectrum of liberals across the entire United States.
NBC's research would have convicted any man in any court in America. Indeed, Myers told Broadrick the greatest trouble getting the story aired was that it was "too credible." But the media quizzing ended after a couple of tepid peeps at a Clinton news conference were cavalierly brushed aside. NBC didn't even follow up its own story.
Worse than Aldrich's national scorching, far more devastating than the insult campaign against Tripp, Broadrick's compelling, corroborated testimony on national television was met with deafening silence. Nothing. The self-proclaimed media watchdogs of American liberty simply ignored the most frightening horror any woman could imagine: testifying against a sick and powerful man acting with impunity. In fact, the press became silent conspirators.
After baring the awful truth hidden in her tortured, tattered soul, Juanita Broadrick was given nothing in return. And no, she was never on the cover of Time Magazine.
Alas, in the middle of the greatest world crisis in 60 years, Time chose Cooper, Rowley and Watkins to be the years most influential human beings. True, their "sacrifices" were noble, but let's point out a few things. First, WorldCom and Enron were already imploding. Fat salaried internal auditors warning their CEO about $10 billion financial irregularities are akin to flight attendants bursting through the cockpit, warning, "We're in a nosedive!!!" At that point, the guilty captain pretty much knows. And shortly, so will the rest of the world. Internal auditors suffer only if they join the conspiracy, never if they grab a parachute and glide away from the impending wreckage.
And Rowley's warnings were a mere echo from the two-decade din by conservative politicians, observers, pundits, and other government agents (including Gary Aldrich, incidentally) who asked similar alarming questions during Clinton's oblivious non-responses to major anti-American terrorist acts across the world. Plus, Rowley came forth during a conservative Administration and Congress who sincerely gave a damn, in the midst of creating a unified and effective Homeland Security Agency, something Democrats had been diametrically opposed to for 40 years.
The worst thing Time's bold heroes faced were the occasional cold shoulder from a few peers and losing a bit of retirement cash. Frankly, comparing their plight to Aldrich, Tripp and Broadrick is like comparing a deck chair ensemble to the Queen Mary.
The truth is other whistleblowers who risked much more and suffered far worse were relentlessly attacked and left undefended by the press, their eventual vindication never acknowledged. People like Roger L. Perry. Larry G. Patterson. Danny Ferguson. L.D. Brown. Kathleen Willey. Gennifer Flowers. Paula Jones. Labeled nuts and sluts, grudge-makers and troublemakers, they risked far more than crabby coworkers to tell their stories. They were regular people with regular families, making very average salaries. Their sin was daring to expose Clinton criminality. Their punishment? Husbands, wives, friends and children endured vicious and dangerous attacks not merely from the exposed Clinton criminals, but from the very institution that should have been protecting them. The media, led by Time Magazine, became part of the whistleblowers' nightmares, driving home the deterrence to any future dissidents who might defy a valuable Democrat ally.
So forgive me if I harbor immense cynicism towards Time's "Persons Of The Year" choice. Forgive me if I question the editor's motives. Forgive me if I still consider Time Magazine a piece of the Leftist Propaganda Garbage Machine.
In the big picture, Time's ladies walked a garden path compared to the torture of Aldrich, Tripp, Broadrick, and the others who withstood withering attacks and crushing blows, yet stood fast to a moral truth. They knew their lives were ruined the instant they stepped forward, yet did so anyway. And Time Magazine, Inc. was there to twist the knife.
I wonder, how many of them will read the Time cover, and seethe over the irony? Or could the greatest honor be in their omission?
(Printer friendly version) Email: Tom Adkins
