McCain Camp Vows to ‘Go to War’ with NYT

John McCain’s campaign promised to “go to war” against The New York Times Wednesday night after the newspaper posted its long-awaited story on McCain’s alleged relationship with a telecom lobbyist. Both McCain and the woman in question denied having a romantic relationship.

The story, word of which first leaked to the Drudge Report in December, relies on anonymous sources tied to McCain who said the lobbyist was warned to keep her distance to the senator in the run-up to his first presidential bid.

In the piece, McCain is quoted as telling Times Editor Bill Keller that he never did anything unethical. Top McCain advisers, including his former Senate Chief of Staff Mark Salter, also say on the record that there was nothing inappropriate done legislatively.

McCain told reporters Wednesday night when asked about the story: “I haven’t seen it yet, so I can’t comment.”

But campaign aides had read it and spared no time in blasting the newspaper.

“It is a shame that The New York Times has lowered its standards to engage in a hit and run smear campaign,” communications director Jill Hazelbaker said in a prepared statement sent about an hour after the Times posted their story online. “John McCain has a 24-year record of serving our country with honor and integrity. He has never violated the public trust, never done favors for special interests or lobbyists, and he will not allow a smear campaign to distract from the issues at stake in this election.
“Americans are sick and tired of this kind of gutter politics, and there is nothing in this story to suggest that John McCain has ever violated the principles that have guided his career.”

The McCain campaign is using a two-pronged attack to push back against the story. First, they’ll argue it was a thinly sourced piece of innuendo journalism. But McCain aides also will strike at the source, using the Times’ liberal reputation as a means of self-defense to draw sympathy from the GOP’s conservative base.

To this end, a top McCain adviser accused the paper of practicing tabloid journalism.

“It’s not every night I stay up to read the National Enquirer,” said Charlie Black, who was with other top McCain aides at the senator’s Arlington, Va., headquarters to mount the counterattack.

Black noted he had taken heat from some of his “conservative friends’ after McCain won the paper’s endorsement in January. “We’re going to go to war with them now,” Black said. “We’ll see if that hurts or helps.”

As part of their pushback, McCain’s campaign issued the detailed response they sent to the paper in December when the story was being prepared. McCain campaign officials said the paper did not sufficiently include these explanations in their story.

According to Black, the Times only went with the story now because The New Republic was set to run a piece next Monday about internal dissensions at the paper over whether to run the long-held article.

After the TNR reporter, Gabriel Sherman, began making phone calls to the Times and others outside the paper, they decided to publish, Black alleged.

The Times called the McCain campaign this afternoon to give them notice that they were going with the story and asked campaign officials if they wanted to say anything more.

“We said we have nothing else to say unless you’ve got new questions. And they didn’t,” Black said.

In a blog posting late Wednesday, TNR senior editor Noam Scheiber wrote: “The McCain campaign is apparently blaming TNR for forcing the Times’ hand on this story. We can’t yet confirm that. But we can say this: TNR correspondent Gabe Sherman is working on a piece about the Times’ foot-dragging on the McCain story, and the back-and-forth within the paper about whether to publish it. Gabe’s story will be online tomorrow.”

Black, who has been closely involved in talks with the paper, acknowledged that there would be initial damage from the story but predicted little long-term impact.

“I think we’re going to have a feeding frenzy for a day, maybe a day and a half, then it will go away because it’s a nothing story.”
Asked about the impact that the allegation of adultery would have among social conservative activists, some of whom still aren’t entirely sold on McCain, Black said they would see it as “The New York Times spreading rumors and gossip.”

“We’re going to war with the New York Times, so they’ll probably like it.”

Another adviser to McCain offered a similar defense. “Conservatives are standing up for us,” this source said.

Rich Lowry, editor of the National Review and a sometime critic of McCain, sided with the Arizona senator, suggesting the Times just used other elements as cover to print a sex story.

“Let’s be honest: This story is all about the alleged affair, and all the Keating Five and campaign finance reform rehash is window dressing,” Lowry wrote on his magazine’s blog.

Fox News talk show host Sean Hannity, who also had criticized McCain harshly at times, also was supportive on his show.

“I have read this New York Times piece now three times,” Hannity said on “Hannity & Colmes.” “And what I see here is nothing but innuendo, rumor. They want the reader to draw conclusions.”

Robert Bennett, the Washington lawyer McCain hired in December when in discussions with the Times, went even further on the show, likening the paper’s decision to publish to offering a megaphone to the same kind of now-famous dirty tricks that beset McCain’s campaign in the 2000 South Carolina primary.

“Now, I’m not suggesting that The New York Times has an agenda here,” Bennett said. “I will let others conclude that. But they certainly have allowed themselves to be a vehicle for a repeat of what happened in South Carolina. and I suspect it’s only because John McCain is winning so much that we are even reading this story.”

The four Times reporters primarily involved with the McCain story, along with top editors, were in lock-down Wednesday night.

Washington bureau chief Dean Baquet, when contacted by Politico, wrote in an e-mail: “I am going to pass for now. The story speaks for itself.”

Reporter David Kirkpatrick echoed a similar line when reached by phone: “I think the story speaks for itself. This one I can’t help you with.”

Executive Editor Bill Keller did not immediately respond to requests seeking comment. “Pass,” political editor Dick Stevenson said in an e-mail.

Reporters Jim Rutenberg, Stephen Labaton, and Marilyn Thompson — who’s leaving the paper — also did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

On Feb. 12, the Washington Post announced that Thompson would be leaving the Times and returning to the Post, her employer for fourteen years.

Rumors had circulated internally that Thompson had been working on the McCain piece and was dissatisfied it had not yet run, according to two Times staffers.

Politico asked Baquet if holding the piece had anything to do with her leaving the paper.

“I’m not going to go into stories that may or may not run in the paper,” Baquet said last week, declining to confirm or deny that there was such a story. “I had long conversations with Marilyn, and it’s about her regarding the Post as home.”

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Good for the NYT. You will be criticized in either case. You held the McCain story for quite some time and will be criticized for the delay in reporting it. You will also be criticized for releasing the story by the McCain campaign committee. My comment, and most Americans, would be… “If the news is fit to print and its factual, print it”. Let whatever falls out be as it may.