THE PAPER OF RECORD FLACKED FOR CLINTON

Dick Morris may not be outselling former co-President Hillary Clinton in their book war, but he has to be winning the grudge match that their near simultaneous release has sparked. The other day, he accused Bill Clinton of trying to beat him up. Today, he's whacking away at the NY Times, accusing them of volunteering to work for Clinton's '96 re-election bid. Here's the tale:

While working for President Clinton in 1996, I got a call from the Lelyveld's office. Naturally, I agreed to a meeting the Times' chief to "get to know one another."

As Clinton's chief political adviser, I knew the request had something to do with the White House. But I was surprised to be asked by Lelyveld and a Times reporter to help them get an exclusive interview with the president. "We've tried for months and come up empty," the editor pleaded. "Can you help get it done?"

I spoke of Clinton's sensitivity to criticism from the Times and how he had bristled particularly at Raines, then running the editorial page. A worried frown clouded the editor's formerly sunny face. "You know," he assured me sotto voce, "we don't think that the public cares about what happened back in Arkansas."

So they basically sacked Whitewater--a scandal that the Times itself ignited on its own pages. Morris says the Times ran no stories on Clinton's myriad scandals for the entire two months leading up to election '96. Then, to make sure that Clinton would be presented in the best possible light, they advanced him the questions for an interview that would become the basis for a glowing profile.

Then my phone rang. It was the reporter who had sat with his editor in my hotel suite. I'd known him for some time, and he was calling to tell me that he would be conducting the interview. I congratulated him, and he invited me for a drink.

As I crossed through Lafayette Park to get from the White House to the Hay Adams Hotel to meet him, I wondered why he wanted to talk before the interview.

After some light chatter over drinks, he began, casually, to tell me the questions he was going to ask. "I'll ask him what are his proudest achievements, what he's most ashamed of, why he thought he lost the Congress [in the 1994 elections], what he proposed to do about Bosnia . . ."

A reporter briefing a presidential aide on the questions he was preparing to ask the president: This was about as common as it is for Nebraska to brief Miami on their football signals before the game. I couldn't believe my luck. Pushing my luck, I prompted him. "Why don't you ask him about . . . "

"Good idea," my obedient reporter/friend said as he jotted down notes.

The briefing before the interview wasn't even hard. Sitting on the couch with the president in his wing chair on my right in the Oval Office, I fed the reporter's questions to Clinton, and we worked out answers.

"What if he asks about Whitewater? Clinton wondered.

"He won't," I assured him. "He's told me exactly what he's going to ask."

Clinton couldn't believe his luck! Knowing what was coming, we came up with answers to hit the ball out of the park.

Folks, I've been both a journalist and a flack, and what the Times did here (if Morris is right) falls into the flacking game. It ain't journalism, or at least it shouldn't be called such. Advancing the questions gives the subject all the advantages of time and extended thought to prepare for them, and removes the element of surprise, which can lead to responses that are more revealing than anything that's canned or scripted. The resulting story is nothing more than a press release, but given the veneer of actual journalism it is much more powerful than any ordinary release. The Times deserved a paycheck equivalent to or even greater than the one Morris himself got paid to do PR work for Clinton, because that's exactly what it was doing.

Joseph Lelyveld, who both preceeded and has now succeeded the disgraced Howell Raines as the Times' executive editor, was according to Morris the man behind the Times' flacking gig. Lelyveld is largely responsible for pushing the Times onto the ideological road it has been on for some time now. He won't do anything to take it off that road. In fact, given the chance he'll probably find another Democrat to flack for in 2004. I assume John Kerry has already given him a call.