Transcript
BOB GARFIELD: From WNYC in New York, this is NPR's On the Media. I'm Bob Garfield.
BROOKE GLADSTONE: And I'm Brooke Gladstone. Finally this week, National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice appeared in Congress before the 9/11 Commission and the world. As Court TV, it was alternately dull, contentious and gripping.
RICHARD BEN-VENISTE: Did you tell the president, at any time prior to August 6th, of the existence of Al Qaeda cells in the United States?
CONDOLEEZZA RICE: First let me just make certain--
RICHARD BEN-VENISTE: If you could just answer that question, because I only have a very limited-- [BOTH SPEAK AT ONCE]
CONDOLEEZZA RICE: Well, first-- I, I understand, Commissioner, but it's important-- [BOTH SPEAK AT ONCE]
RICHARD BEN-VENISTE: --did you tell the president--
CONDOLEEZZA RICE: -- it's important that I also address-- [APPLAUSE]
BROOKE GLADSTONE: This weekend, various assessments of Rice's effectiveness in fending off the charges of former counter-terrorism chief Richard Clarke, but what about the overall impact of these televised hearings? Have they changed the media's and the public's view of the Bush administration, of the Congress? John Dean, former counsel to President Nixon, testified during the Watergate Hearings, and he watched them closely, just as he's watched the 9/11 hearings. Mr. Dean, welcome back to the show.
JOHN DEAN: Thank you. Pleasure to be with you.
BROOKE GLADSTONE: So could you compare and contrast these hearings with the Watergate Hearings as media event?
JOHN DEAN: There's no question that the Watergate Hearings were extensive, they were actually even protracted. There was massive media coverage. It was reality television before reality television, and it really was educational, and that was one of the aims of the committee. In later talking to Sam Dash about it, this is what they hoped to do --they built their case very slowly, and then went public with it.
BROOKE GLADSTONE:Sam Dash, of course, was chief counsel to the Senate Watergate Committee, and actually he told us that he carefully staged the hearings as a detective story, beginning with the burglaries, then bringing out the accusers, like yourself, and ending with the accused. Do you think that these recent hearings use that same structure?
JOHN DEAN: To some degree, there was some similarity in the structure, because Richard Clarke had met with several members of the Commission for I think something like 18 hours. Yet, they also had a number of documents that had been supplied, and in a sense, Richard Clarke is the accuser. He's accusing Mr. Bush of not really being very vigilant about terrorism until after 9/11. Condoleezza Rice's role was to defend that.
BROOKE GLADSTONE:If you look at the hearings as theater, certainly Rice's testimony was intended to be the climax. Did you get that sense of satisfaction as a viewer from watching it?
JOHN DEAN: Well, I think she was a good witness theatrically. She's very eloquent and well-spoken, and she managed to sit there for almost 3 hours and say almost nothing. She knew how to play the game. She'd been carefully briefed. She couldn't have done what she did in the hearings in a courtroom. A judge would have held her in contempt if she'd have tried to go on those extended answers, and at one point, as you'll recall, Senator Kerrey, Bob Kerrey, said "You're filibustering," and that's exactly what she was doing.
BOB KERREY: So-- [BOTH SPEAK AT ONCE]
CONDOLEEZZA RICE: Since we have a point of disagreement, I'd like to have a chance to address it-- [BOTH SPEAK AT ONCE]
BOB KERREY: Well, no, no - no-- actually there's going to be - we have many points of disagreement, Dr. Clarke, but we'll have a chance to just-- [BOTH SPEAK AT ONCE]
CONDOLEEZZA RICE: Sandy-- I think-- [BOTH SPEAK AT ONCE]
BOB KERREY: -- we'll have a chance to do in closed session. [BOTH SPEAK AT ONCE]
CONDOLEEZZA RICE: I--
BOB KERREY: You can't - please don't filibuster me. I, you -- it's not fair. [BOTH SPEAK AT ONCE]
CONDOLEEZZA RICE: Do you mean--?
BROOKE GLADSTONE: During the Watergate Hearings, they had as much time -- as many hours as they needed --to grill a witness. Here they were only given 10 minutes, so as long as she filled that with some measure of verbiage, she would be safe.
JOHN DEAN: And she knew how to play to the camera and force him back down. If this had been a closed hearing, he would have prevailed, and she would not have been able to embarrass him into letting her continue to filibuster. She knew that here was a commissioner couldn't be beating up on her and telling her to start answering the questions without looking like he was getting overly aggressive and being partisan, when he was just trying to use his time effectively, so she prevailed, and it was the cameras that really enabled her to do that.
BROOKE GLADSTONE: Once again, could you compare that with the way that the Watergate Hearings were conducted?
JOHN DEAN:There, there was no time limit. For example, I'd originally planned to go up and summarize my testimony in maybe a half hour on the first day of my appearance. Instead, they said no, we want you to read your testimony. So I had to read my testimony. It took 8 hours. With the 9/11 Hearings, given the fact they were constrained, she was effectively able to use the time.
BROOKE GLADSTONE:Here's what Sam Dash told us was the recipe for a satisfying viewing experience and also, I guess, a successful legal proceeding.
SAM DASH: I knew exactly what my questions were going to be, and I knew exactly what the answers were going to be so that I could put it in a form that this would come out like a story, and I think it succeeded in the sense that the American people were glued to their television sets, waiting for the next episode.
BROOKE GLADSTONE: Were you glued to the TV set when watching the 9/11 Hearings? Did it pay off for you?
JOHN DEAN: No. By no means did it.
BROOKE GLADSTONE: What do you think the principal lesson for the public has been so far?
JOHN DEAN:Well, what I took away from the hearings is that this is an example of secrecy. This is an example of putting forward what appears to be an open statement of what's going on, when in fact it really is not. No new information came out. The only thing the public learned was the name that was on the briefing paper that apparently the Bush administration is now reluctantly going to make available.
BROOKE GLADSTONE: The title that stated flatly that Osama bin Laden was looking to attack within the United States.
JOHN DEAN:That's correct. There may have been some other nuances and details, and it's clear that, because of the different position that Richard Clarke and Condoleezza Rice are taking, I think the Commission's going to sort this out and tell us what really is the truth.
BROOKE GLADSTONE:They were interesting and unlikely main characters for this drama, I think. We didn't expect Condi to appear at all, and Richard Clarke just seemed to emerge full-grown from the head of Zeus.
JOHN DEAN: Isn't that what makes theater most interesting, when characters walk on you don't expect.
BROOKE GLADSTONE: Thank you very much.
JOHN DEAN: Thank you.
BROOKE GLADSTONE: John Dean, former counsel to President Richard Nixon. His new book is called Worse Than Watergate: The Secret Presidency of George W. Bush.