On Sunday's Meet the Press, New York Daily News Washington bureau chief Tom DeFrank made an extraordinary admission.
DeFrank said that four months before Richard Nixon's resignation, Vice President Gerald Ford told him that Nixon would soon leave office. It was a bombshell, directly contradicting Ford's public statements that Nixon was an innocent man and would remain in office.
According to DeFrank -- then a young journalist -- Ford was on-the-record. Nonetheless, DeFrank now admits he decided to cover-up Ford's stunning declaration.
Why? Why would a young, ambitious reporter with the scoop of a lifetime, choose to sit on it? It doesn't seem to make any sense.
Well, DeFrank's explanation will make your blood boil.
Here Tom DeFrank was, sitting with the Vice President of the United States of America, who was telling him that he would soon assume the Presidency. It would be the first transfer of power in the history of our nation from a healthy, sitting President to his Vice President without an election.
In short, it would be a rather important story.
But Tom DeFrank chose to sit on it.
What could his reason possibly be?
You might expect him to claim he was acting in the national interest, that somehow he felt the nation couldn't handle the truth, that he didn't want to disrupt an orderly transition between Ford and Nixon, that he was being a good, responsible citizen.
That answer would have demonstrated a certain kind of naivety and foolishness, but at least it would have been high-minded, an example of a journalist doing what he thought was right, an example of an American acting in what he thought was his nation's best interest.
But no. That wasn't DeFrank's reason for covering up one of the biggest stories of the Watergate years.
He covered the story up, he now says, because Gerald Ford was his "meal ticket."
Immediately after Ford made his admission, he realized that in his stray moment of honesty, he had screwed up. He pleaded with DeFrank to ignore what he had just said. He told DeFrank that he would never speak to the young journalist again if he wrote the story.
So DeFrank killed his scoop.
Why? Because if he had proceeded, then Ford would have cut him off, and if Ford cut him off, then DeFrank would have been removed from Ford's beat, and wouldn't have been posted at the White House four months later. He probably wouldn't have been sitting across from Tim Russert bragging about his exploits either, and he certainly wouldn't be writing a tell-all book about his deception. (Perhaps he would also have been less corpulent, but we'll never know. I think it's a fair assumption that he got a decent advance on his tome, however.)
Tom DeFrank's decision worked out wonderfully for him. He covered up important news to advance his career as a journalist. And now he's bragging about it on national television -- to sell a book. He is rich, fat, and powerful. Yay for him.
I've posted his apologia on YouTube.
Tom DeFrank's story is a perfect example of the problem with our ruling elite in Washington, DC. Their own personal ambition constantly gets in the way of doing what's right. It's hard to blame them -- they are only human.
Tom DeFrank's act of corruption may be trivial compared to what the warmongers like Judith Miller pulled off in the run-up to Iraq. But the principle is the same. Power corrupts. It corrupted Nixon. It corrupted DeFrank. It corrupted Cheney and Miller and Gordon.
There are always going to be corrupt journalists, just like there are always going to be corrupt politicians. The only solution is to limit the power of Washington, DC.
So far, all America has done is give them more power.
And now we are paying the price.
It's a good thing that we are finally fighting back.
Peace,
Patel1946
George Orwell wrote Politics and the English Language in 1946