The Kerry 'Intern' Speaks

[WilliamPitt]

Raise your hand if you were one of the bucketheads who swallowed this 'story' hook, line and sinker. Go ahead, raise your hand.

http://newyorkmetro.com/nymetro/news/politics/national/features/9221/index.html

The Education of Alexandra Polier

Falsely accused of having an affair with John Kerry, the “intern” sifts through the mud and the people who threw it.



On the evening of Thursday, February 12, as John Kerry had just chalked up his twelfth state-primary win in his quest for the Democratic presidential nomination, I was at a dinner party in Nairobi, hosted by my friend Matthew Rosenberg, an Associated Press reporter based in East Africa. The male guests were discussing a recent poker game, while the women sat around trading recipes to give to their cooks. It promised to be your typical Nairobi night.

Five months earlier, I had quit my job at the AP in New York and moved to Kenya with my fiancé, Yaron Schwartzman, who’d grown up there. He had been offered a film-production job, and I wanted to try some foreign corresponding. That night the group included aid workers, diplomats, photographers, and the feisty AP bureau chief, Susan Linnee.

As we started dinner, I was dimly aware of Susan’s cell phone’s ringing. I didn’t know her well but was excited to talk to her in case a job in the bureau came up. She went outside to answer it, then came back and beckoned me to join her in the garden. “The New York office wants to talk to you,” she said, and then she dialed the number and passed me the phone.

“Hello, Alex,” said the familiar voice of my old boss, Tom Kent, one of AP’s deputy managing editors. He sounded brusque. “I hate to tell you this, but you’re on the Drudge Report,” he said, and then proceeded to read me Matt Drudge’s latest “world exclusive.”

...more...

[Name removed]

1. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[meg]

22. go look up the word

misogynist. I think you will recognized the definition.

[Andromeda]

24. Like that matters?

What's that got to do with anything? I think you're missing the point here.

[dedhed]

2. Drudge tried and tried and tried...

... but it went nowhere fast. Poor baby... better luck next time!

Ass-wipe...

:bounce:

[eyesroll]

8. And Drudge is still bitching that the mainstream media haven't

investigated (which, of course, is evidence of their liberal bias).

He does occasionally break a true story, mingled with all the gossip and out-of-context quotes and useless trivia. Throw enough crap around and some of it's going to stick, I guess.

[sui generis]

scary -

the part about hacking her e-mail account too. Wonder if that was "officially" sanctioned? Well, it sounds as if that old gossip-hag bug-eating-man-bitch Matt Drudge was making the news instead of reporting it, gollee gee why am I not surprised.

I am very happy that she got to tell her side of it -- a lot of people should be wearing egg on their faces.

[JayS]

3. If Kerry didn't have an affair with her...

...is he gay? :)

[billybob537]

4. There is no depth

to witch this scum admin. will not sink.
The beautiful part is the people and the media are starting to realize the truth.
:toast:

Edit: SCHWING

[WI_DEM]

5. hand up

I bought it at the time because I had heard Kerry was a ladie's man and thought that if he had a name there probably was something there. I was wrong, wrong, wrong and I admit it.

[JI7]

19. thanks, much of it is from before he got married again

so i don't think those things should be an issue. he was a single man at that time.

[rumguy]

6. A lesson in how the Murdoch/GOP slime-machine works

"Though my name wasn’t mentioned in the initial Drudge “exclusive,” it made its first appearance in the British tabloid The Sun on Friday, February 13. The article, by one Brian Flynn, referred to Kerry as a SLEAZEBALL in the headline and said I was 24 (didn’t I wish). It purported to quote my father at home in Pennsylvania discussing the senator, saying, 'I think he’s a sleazeball.' The article also claimed to quote my mother as saying Kerry had once chased after me to be on his campaign. My mother was not even home when Flynn called, and Flynn didn’t tell my father—who at this stage was unaware of the Drudge allegations—that he was interviewing him. Instead, he presented himself as a friend trying to get hold of me to talk about John Kerry. My father, a Republican, who believed Kerry had flip-flopped on various issues, said, ‘Oh, that sleazeball.’ ” Here’s how it reappeared in Flynn’s piece: 'There is no evidence the pair had an affair, but her father, Terry, 56, said: ‘I think he’s a sleazeball.’ ' Drudge quickly linked to The Sun’s interview."

If there's a hell Drudge and Murdoch are heading to it...

[ewagner]

10. I'm pretty cynical

but the misquote used by Murdoch even amazes me.

Slime! Absolute slime!

[nolabels]

7. Nice couple !

Polier with her fiance, Yaron Schwartzman.

From the link
http://newyorkmetro.com/nymetro/news/politics/national/features/9221/index2.html

Hope we get to send them wedding presents
http://www.findgift.com/Gift-Shops/streid-948/

[demnan]

9. This was debunked really quickly on DU, as I remember

Actually I suppose Kerry has been really careful with his private life. He saw the hell Clinton went through for his occasional dalliances. No man in his right mind would fool around and want to be the Democrat's candidate.

[MontecitoDem]

11. I admit it...

I believed it, but didn't care except that it would hurt our candidate with some people. People have affairs - not the end of the world, imo. Anyway, glad this won't be haunting Kerry.

[Mountainman]

13. Trying the same thing with Kerry that they did with Clinton should have

given you a clue.

That's what did it for me. The repubs aren't all that smart. Just look at the war in Iraq for starters.

They only have one play in their play book. Use sex to destroy someone. Conservatives think that all of us feel about sex the way they do so they use it.

[NewYorkerfromMass]

12. I am very impressed that she phoned Drudge

this woman has..... well she has whatever it is!

[capriccio]

14. Please note...

the role of slimeball DEM operative Chris Lahane in all this...(still a man hears what he wants to hear and disregards the rest, lie-de-lie....)

[Adelante]

15. Please note

"The Drudge item blaming Lehane quoted Craig Crawford, a former Democratic operative who now works as a consultant and columnist for MSNBC. Within 10 minutes after Drudge posted the Kerry intern item, Crawford sent a memo to his superiors that said the story was "something Chris Lehane (clark press secy) has shopped around for a long time." According to Crawford, someone at MSNBC promptly leaked his memo to Drudge. But when Lehane called Crawford with a loudly indignant denial, the MSNBC columnist quickly issued a public retraction. He said:

"The comments attributed to me are from a private email to television news associates based on conversations with Democratic campaign operatives. I did not consider any of it confirmed enough to report or publish. I can only verify that Chris Lehane's rivals in other Democratic campaigns made these claims and I have found no independent source to confirm it. Which is why we did not go with the story. But then someone sent my email to others, which is the only reason it got into the public domain." In other words, there is no proof that Lehane circulated the rumor, let alone that the rumor has any basis in reality."

Joe Conason, Salon 2/13/04

I agree with you, it was Democrats who used this crap and collaborated with Drudge, Democrats opposing Gen. Clark. Take your pick of Democratic candidates who ran in the primaries and their ops - they all had their own "Chris Lehanes" working.

Some day the truth of it will come out, I imagine, and we will know who those Democrats were and which candidate they worked for.

[goodhue]

16. Lehane was working for Clark when he shopped rumor (n/t).

[Adelante]

17. Read it again nt

[dae]

28. Thanks WesDem, I never read that explanation before. I was under

the assumption it was Lehane as well. Although a Clark supporter, I was just PO'd at his operative.
Again thanks.

dae

[goodhue]

37. Of course Lehane denies it, but his interaction with Polier is telling . .

* * *

As I continued to try to understand what had happened, I found that shortly after his first story, Drudge had posted a leaked private e-mail from Craig Crawford, a political columnist at The Congressional Quarterly, to some colleagues at MSNBC: “Drudge item on Kerry intern issue is something Chris Lehane has shopped around for a long time.” Drudge quickly dropped the posting, and Lehane complained to Crawford that it wasn’t true, but Lehane’s name was familiar to me. I knew he was feared by rival campaigns as a master of the black art of leaking political-opposition research. A former spokesman for the Kerry campaign, he had quit amid some acrimony and gone to work as a strategist for Clark.

He was a sufficiently controversial figure to have earned his own recent profile in the New York Times, in which he was described by some as a “devious communications strategist.” The piece quoted rival politicos complaining that it was one thing to attack Republicans but quite another to attack rival Democrats, “spilling blood in our house.” I wondered if Lehane had been the source, especially since he had switched horses mid-race. As Steve McMahon, a Dean media consultant, put it to me: “To work for someone and then walk across the street and work against them is beneath contempt. The one person who should hope John Kerry doesn’t become president is Chris Lehane.”

Joe Trippi, Howard Dean’s former campaign manager, told me he’d also heard Lehane had been shopping the rumor—presumably on Clark’s behalf.

* * *

Writing about Clinton recently in Vanity Fair, Robert Sam Anson added to my suspicion by suggesting that “Clinton types” in the Clark campaign had been vigorously pushing similar rumors.

I called Lehane himself, who, having backed the wrong team, is now running his own political PR firm in San Francisco. I asked him where he’d first heard the rumors about Kerry and me. He blamed political reporters. I asked him if he had used the rumors to try to help Clark. He denied it. “There are just so many media outlets out there now, Alex, that these kind of baseless rumors can easily get turned into stories,” he said smoothly, and then the phone went dead.

I called him right back, but he didn’t answer. I called again less than an hour later, and this time his outgoing message had been changed to, “Hi, you’ve reached Chris. I’m traveling and won’t be able to retrieve my voice mail.” I wondered how he was able to run a PR company without retrieving voice mail.

* * *

[Adelante]

38. "Of course Lehan denies it..."

The important point is Craig Crawford denies it and Joe Conason agrees there is no evidence that points to Lehane.

This is one of few things I'm having trouble with in the New Yorker article. Polier seems to rely on the same media she critiques to arrive at Chris Lehane as guilty, yet gives no actual evidence. I also wonder why she interviewed Dean campaign people so thoroughly yet interviewed no other opponent campaigns. I wonder what she may have learned. Maybe nothing, but I would like to have seen it for the sake of a more complete picture.

I would never say Lehane is not capable of this, but all campaigns have these oppo research people. It's part of the game. Edwards had his black ring binder in Ohio chock full of negative oppo research, as another example. Lehane himself worked for Gore and Kerry before he ever worked for Clark, doing oppo research. But it makes no sense at all for Lehane, even if he wanted to smear Kerry, to endanger Clark, since an operative's living relies on winning campaigns, not losing campaigns.

I believe that Polier wrote the truth of her personal sense of what went on when she called Lehane, but that doesn't make it an objective truth. She clearly had accepted what she'd read and heard before she ever spoke with him and, because he is a slimy sort, believed she'd had it confirmed. But there is still no evidence.

[Jai4WKC08]

32. Except there is NO evidence

that Lehane shopped the rumor. Except that "everybody" (probably a handful of media hacks) shopped the rumor that Lehane shopped the rumor. Lehane denies it. Until someone comes up with proof, that should be enough.

I agree with WesDem... the important question is, who originated the rumor that Lehane shopped the rumor? Remember whom the rumor was designed to damage: Kerry AND Clark. Gee, who would have benefited from Kerry AND Clark both going down? Who was still running (relatively) credibly against Kerry AND Clark back on Feb 9th? I remember; can you?

Personally, I think it was the RNC's work, butcha never know....

[dsc]

18. I had no idea if it was true or not

The only position I took then, and still take now, is that any person who decides to use the power of the government to decide who can and can't marry opens up his marriage as subject for public debate. I am glad, given he is our nominee, that the story wasn't true.

[Mayberry Machiavelli]

20. I always thought it was a fake Rove "stealth" rumor (i.e. couldn't be

traced back to the shrubco campaign), hence the "This story is from the Democrats, folks!" crap from Rushbaugh and company, trying to fob it off on Clark. Despicable. I never 100% discount the possibility of ANY story being true but I thought it pretty damn unlikely.

[Adelante]

21. I admire her

She's shown some grit here. :thumbsup:

[HalfManHalfBiscuit]

23. Definitely. And a sense of humor too.

Like changing her e-mail address to "Bushsucksdick".

[trumad]

25. I just read that line and spit some coke...

I love this gal....

[Adelante]

27. That was the best!

:7

[nothingshocksmeanymore]

26. I'm most impressed by her stellar GUTS confronting all the possible

brokers of the story...

[rasputin1952]

30. I agree 100%...

I like to call it "Character"....:)

:hi: :loveya:

[Dr Fate]

29. I never believed it, or cared. n/t

n/t

[iamjoy]

31. Alex Rocks!

n/t

[PopSixSquish]

33. Well Played Alex, Well Played!

I am struck by the fact that her "friend" seems to have helped the story along. Maybe the "friend" saw talkshows and book deals in the future.

If one of my close, trusted friends did something like that to me, I don't think I'd handle it as well.

[Philostopher]

34. No bucket here.

I have some minor gripes with Kerry, but his intelligence, forethought and ability to behave like an adult in his professional life don't enter into any of them. I'd figure with the smear machine he knew he was going to be dealing with, he'd have to have a hole in his head to do something like that, especially after the saga of the Clenis.

I admire the woman's tenacity -- instead of letting helplessness and depression overwhelm her, she switched into professional mode and went after what information she could find. I feel bad for her, in a way, having had to become involuntarily enlightened to her profession that way, though.

[FrenchieCat]

35. I wrote a letter to New York Magazine....

and asked that they forward it to Ms. Polier.....

Dear New York Magazine Editors,

I felt a lot of sympathy for the young woman, Alexandra Poiler, while reading her story of how she became the center of a nasty rumor linking her to Senator John Kerry. It appears that Ms. Poiler was the victim of a circular rumor mill which seems to include many offenders in the media as well as her very close friend (so sad). Additional victims to be included should be Senator Kerry and General Wes Clark. I include these two men, because it appears that they did not commit the deed(s) that they have also been accused of within the initial sordit rumor.

General Clark, who was fingered as the one to have started the spread of the rumor by Matt Drudge, is still being smeared to-date in the press for his unproven alleged participation. Although journalists who were present at the time of the off-the-record press conference with the General have indeed stepped forward to clear him of the claim that he spoke of an Kerry Intern problem, that rumor lives on. Ryan Lizza, one of those reporters, has since twice written that General Clark did not say what was reported by Drudge. Yet AP's Nedra Pickler and The Boston Globe's Peter Canellos both recently wrote about General Clark and this rumor (in Mid-May!). They were in good company apparently, as they only repeated what they had earlier read in other mainstream publications. Both Jonathan Alter of Newsweek and John Schuster of MSNBC had reported the rumor and that General Clark had spread it. Of course, they used no attribution or sources to back up their claim. Campaign Desk (a project of Columbia's Graduate school of Journalism which is keeping tabs on the accuracy and truth of this election year's political media reporters) investigated this story and it link to Kerry initially and then to Clark on four separate occasions. Both were vindicated; John Kerry of "Hanky Panky", and the General of "Rumor mongering".

Of course, both men have to deal with the fact that this rumor seems to be resurrected each and every month. I can only imagine that the taint of suspicion circling the air in reference to this subject is not a welcome event for either the Senator or the General.

I feel badly that the current day journalist could so enthusiastically report on such unattributed rumors while leaving out much of the facts surrounding the story. An unsubstantiated rumor is just that, and should never be touched by any mainstream media reporter with a 10 foot pole. I just can't understand why this is not a general journalistic rule of ethics. It seems that it would be one of the first lessons to be taught in Journalism 101.

Yours Truly,
<name, address and Phone# here>

PS: I would appreciate it greatly if you could forward this letter to Ms. Polier. I am linking my sources for her perusal in reference to who did what, when and the investigation results conducted by Campaign Desk, a project of the Columbia Graduate School of journalism. Maybe this will shed additional light to her research. Although she unfortunately suffered because of this rumor as an innocent, she was not the only one.

Campaign Desk, a Project of the Columbia Journalism Review at Columbia Graduate School of Journalism
The original Story about the "rumor"......"Drudge, Dickens and the Death Rattle (?) of a rumor"
http://www.campaigndesk.org/archives/000158.asp
In reference to Newsweek's Jonathan Alter's CW - Newsweek Didn't http://www.cjr.org/blog/archives/cat_fact_check.asp#000194
and again to Nedra Pickler "In the Dark on Wesley Clark" http://www.campaigndesk.org/archives/000543.asp
and most recently to Peter Canellos as an answer to his Boston Globe piece,
"the Drudge Report: the Gift that keeps on giving" http://www.campaigndesk.org/archives/000556.asp

Ryan Lizza, one of the reporters present of the New Republic initially: http://www.tnr.com/blog/campaignjournal?pid=1337
and Again Ryan Lizza, more recently: http://www.tnr.com/blog/campaignjournal?pid=1655

Nick Confessore of prospect offers his view: http://www.prospect.org/weblog/

as does AmySullivan of Political Aims http://gadflyer.com/politicalaims/index.php?Week=200407

[nolabels]

36. Bravo !!!

:kick:

[SCRUBDASHRUB]

39. Alex would be welcome here anytime. She rocks indeed!

[molly]

40. What would have happened had she not fought back?

"I started out as an ambitious young woman inspired by politics and the media. I’ve ended up disenchanted with both. If I had been an ambitious young man, this story would not have happened. I’m never going to know exactly what happened, but that matters less to me now. I lost a good friend and learned a few lessons. I am struck by the pitiful state of political reporting, which is dominated by the unholy alliance of opposition research and its latest tool, the Internet. Even the Wall Street Journal’s Website ran Drudge’s story, with only a brief disclaimer that his stories weren’t always accurate."

[Capn Sunshine]

41. Why aren't they chasing down ALL the false stories?

The "bimbo" affair came and went and only NOW we're seeing a serious refutation effort.

What about a counter offensive while the topic is still fresh and before the anti-Kerry meme gets burned into the collective unconscious?

Right now, there is a story being bruited about as gospel truth that Kerry "flipped the bird" to a vet athe the Wall.

Last week, the "$ 1000.00 haircut"

Someone who is a earnest Kerry Supporter and with research and journalist connections could spend a little time to refute these stories, which, because of their seeming inconsequentiality , add to the image currently being sculpted of Kerry by the right wing Wurlitzer.

But refutations of these six month old stories only serve to remind one of the original smoke=fire sentiment of those days. They do no good.

[Blue_Roses]

42. good for her!

I have so much respect for someone who tries to get to the truth! Kudos to her!

[snippy]

43. The republican semen sleuths will not abandon this "issue."

Other peoples' sex lives is an important issue to much of the republican base and it would be completely out of character for republicans not to lie. Other affairs will be alleged.