What, pray tell, is the purpose of the Man on the Street
interview? Judging by a local TV news poll of passersby in the
Times Square area, it must be to prove to the world that New
Yorkers are just as uninformed as the people giving idiot
responses on "The Tonight Show With Jay Leno." The
topic of the poll was Friday's indictment of I. Lewis Libby, Vice
President Cheney's chief of staff. One has to wonder how many
people were screened before those shown on air were selected and
why the only question asked was, "Do you think this is
serious?"
"Yeah, man, giving out the name of a spy, right? That's
terrible," one young, glassy-eyed man answered.
A better question would have been, "Do you have any idea
what this is all about?"
Perhaps that is what the local stations intended to ask, but gave
up after receiving too many blank stares.
Life goes on for most of us here in Gotham regardless of what
happens in Washington, D.C., but it was the response of the young
man that brought home the idea that this administration is simply
not very good at getting its message out. Its efforts to deny
blatant lies through the fourth estate have led to an indictment
and a continuing, drawn-out investigation.
Those blank stares I saw last Friday on the news are
understandable considering they're from stragglers coming out of
arcades or trying to watch live MTV shows on Broadway. Why don't
the local networks canvass the areas around the city's many
universities, museums, or theaters? This isn't a snobbish
question; it's a practical one: Is it because the interviewee
might give a remotely coherent response that might be longer than
the standard soundbite?
I did an unscientific phone survey of friends and relatives in
each of the boroughs: Rose in Queens, James in Long Island, Riki
in Manhattan, Maria in Brooklyn, Sal in the Bronx, all Democrats.
Their responses to my query about the Libby case ranged from
"And I should care about this because ... ?" to
"Scooter Libby leaked the name of a covert CIA spy to
discredit Joseph Wilson's negative report that there were no WMDs
in Iraq."
Rose in Queens was the only one who seemed annoyed at another
culprit. "The media is America's worst enemy," she
said. "All they're interested in is selling papers, not the
truth."
I wouldn't go as far as that, but one has to wonder why the big
questions aren't being asked. Why did Judith Miller of the New
York Times go to jail for months if Mr. Libby had already given
her permission to name him as her source? Why is the Times now
trashing her? Did "Scooter" Libby tell Ms. Miller that
there are rogue CIA operators who are trying to bring down the
president and his administration? Is that the big story that Ms.
Miller did not write because it would have discredited all the
Wilson stories the Times had previously published?
More questions that aren't being asked: Why was Mr. Wilson sent
to Niger? He had no WMD experience. The CIA director did not send
him. Who authorized it? Mr. Wilson was not asked to sign a
confidentiality document, which is, in itself, unheard of. Much
of what Mr. Wilson claimed in his Times article has been
discredited. Did he deliberately lie? How covert could Valerie
Plame have been when she was listed in "Who's Who in
America" as Mr. Wilson's wife? Besides, wasn't she already
outed by turncoat spy Aldrich Ames in 1994, and wasn't that why
she was given a desk job in D.C.?
As long as we're discussing outing spies, why wasn't Senator
Leahy, a Democrat of Vermont, indicted for outing an Egyptian
operative who was later killed? In a 1985 television interview,
Mr. Leahy disclosed information about a top-secret Egyptian
covert operation to hunt down the Achille Lauro hijackers.
Mr. Leahy had been the vice chairman of the Senate Intelligence
Committee and had allegedly threatened to sabotage classified
strategies he didn't like because he was displeased with the
Reagan administration's war on terrorism. As if this was not bad
enough, "Leaky" Leahy also leaked our plan in 1986 to
topple Libya's Moammar Qaddafi. That plan had to be aborted.
Mr. Leahy had to leave the committee when genuine investigative
reporters reported his leaks, but of course, he is still in the
Senate preaching about the need to investigate the Plame case.
Questions, questions, questions - and the answers won't come from
the man on the street but from journalists doing their job.