Chapter 8

ZNN, Washington, D.C.

Mondays and Tuesdays were the 'weekend' days – days off – at ZNN's 'View from the Left with Alison Hartnet'. She was on Saturday and Sundays in the afternoon. Not a highly desired spot, but then again, Alison was only five years out of Berkeley's Journalism School. After a stint in England as a Rhodes Scholar, and getting her Master's, she landed at ZNN. After a year in the even less desirable spot of weekends at 6 a.m., she moved up to the weekend afternoons. And now, she was moving to weekdays prime time, after the new year and her holiday break – the best spot there was.

Her program was one of the few that was up front about the host's liberal – although she preferred 'progressive' – ideas. She was openly gay and was planning on a public wedding to her partner in the Spring. She'd attracted a loyal following and the right-wing commentators – Alison called them the right wingnuts – had started to notice her, taking her to task on anything and everything she said. For Alison, this was like tossing fresh antelope steak into the lion pit – she loved it. Now she really had something to chew on.

She constantly referred to one radio host as Rust Limberger – because his ideas were old and rusty and smelled like the odiferous cheese. He called her a 'FemiNazi.' She said she'd go on his radio show when he apologized and kissed her ass on her show. He said he'd go on her show when hell froze over. Neither was holding his/her breath. It was great political theater.

If Mondays and Tuesdays were off days, then as the weekend approached Alison and her staff got busy. Wednesday was the day for kicking around ideas and by Thursday they usually had several themes locked down for the weekend.

This Thursday, December 6, they'd locked down stories for several segments and were knocking them into shape – which would go on Saturday, which on Sunday, how long each segment was and so on – when the phone rang in the conference room where they held their production meetings.

Alison and her two producers were looking at the white board that was set up at one end of the room, and one of the unpaid interns picked up the phone.

"Hello, View from the Left. We're in a meeting, can this wait?" she said.

A male voice answered, "Not really. This is the Public Relations Office at the FBI. Can I talk to James Tibideaux, please."

The intern had fielded at least a dozen calls 'from the FBI' in the last two weeks, since Alison had gone on the air with her claim that the FBI had never had a shooting by an agent that was found to be unfavorable. This was probably another crank call.

"Can I have your name please? We'll call you back at the Hoover Building in just a moment," she said. That was usually enough to cause a hangup.

The powwow around the white board had stopped for a moment and the triumvirate looked her way. Since they were all silent, she pushed the speakerphone button. Alison reached over and hit the mute button.

"Oh ... like in 'The American President, ' huh? Okay. I'm Martin Destrie. Ask the switchboard for the Public Relations Office. Do you need the number?"

"No, thank you. We have it." She was a little unsure now. In fact, she was pretty sure she had the FBI on the line. She looked a question at Tibideaux.

"Nope. Call 'em back, like you said," he replied. The other producer, Valerie DuPont – no relation – said that Destrie was indeed the Assistant Public Relations Officer.

She said goodbye and hung up the phone. Then she looked up the number of the FBI's switchboard and called it. Jim took the phone from her and pushed a button to record the call. "Martin Destrie in Public Relations, please," he said to the FBI operator. "Jim Tibideaux returning his call."

"Mr. Tibideaux, thanks for calling me back. We all okay on identification, now?" said Destrie with a little laugh.

"Mr. Destrie, you're about the 25^th call we've gotten from people claiming to be from the FBI. So we take precautions. Okay if I record this so I don't have to take notes?"

"Uh ... Sure, okay ... hah, we're usually the ones recording phone conversations," Destrie said.

"Great. What can I do for you, Mr. Destrie?" Jim asked, the preliminaries done with.

"We are concerned about the series of stories you've been running on the FBI's Agent-involved shootings. We'd like to present our side of the issue. We can have a senior FBI officer available for an interview this weekend."

"That's terrific. You may note that we tried for FBI comment on this story when we first aired it. We'll be glad to have the FBI's position represented," Jim replied. "We'll need to know the agent's name and how long he can appear. One segment or two would be better."

"Just a moment, please." Destire muted the call from his end, and came back in a moment. "Mr. Fitzhugh says this is very important for a number of reasons. How much time do you want?"

Alison took the eraser and wiped out the whole schedule for Saturday. Tibideaux said, "We can change our schedule and devote the whole hour to an in depth interview if the agent is able to comment on a number of issues."

"I'm sorry. I wasn't clear. This won't be an interview of an FBI agent, per se. Mr. Fitzhugh himself wants to appear, if that's all right."

"Of course it's all right!" Jim tried to conceal his excitement at the prospect of a full hour interview with the Director of the FBI. Then he thought of the senior ZNN correspondents and their reaction. "I could arrange to have the Silver Fox – sorry I mean Ralph Belzer – participate. Or David Shelby. If you want..."

There was a pause from Martin Destrie's end. "No, it's Hartnet's story, and we don't want to muddy the waters with other participants."

Jim and Alison and Valerie were silently high-fiving. "Sure. We normally do a pre-interview with a producer – that would be me – but given the Director's time constraints, we can cut that, if you want."

"We'd appreciate it. We'll be there 20 minutes before your air time."

"That would make it 2:40 Saturday afternoon. See you then. We'll call your office about noon to confirm that nothing has changed, if that's all right."

"Fine. See you on Saturday." And Martin Destrie hung up.

The conference room was quiet for two beats.

"Okay," said Allison. "Half of Sunday will be a rehash and our take on the story he tells us, segment three will be the mess in Iraq and Syria, the last part will be on immigration."

Valerie raised a hand – a stop gesture. "We'd better go over what we've said in the three stories about the FBI with a fine tooth comb. I don't want to go into this and get torpedoed by some mistake we've made."

"And, uh..." Tibideaux said, "we'd better have more than one thing to talk to him about. Get on unresolved issues about the marathon bombing, and find something interesting to ask about the interviewing of that guy who got arrested in Algeria last month."

"Right," said Alison. She had never had a bigger smile.

A junior producer was tasked with getting the promo spots ready. Getting Fitzhugh was a coup.

Saturday at 2:40 in the afternoon on the dot, Thomas Fitzhugh arrived in the studio where 'View from the Left' was shot. He was greeted by Jim Tibideaux and by Alison Hartnet. The latter shook his hand, thanked him for coming, and left – she didn't even converse with guests, feeling that it would make the subsequent conversation stale.

She was primed, first with an announcement and then with several questions for the Director. At 3:00 she started her program with the statement that the Director of the FBI, Thomas Fitzhugh, was her guest for the whole hour. She reviewed her complaint about the FBI's investigation of its own agents and made a correction to the previous stories.

Her introduction to the subject: "We had said that in the past thirty years, over three hundred cases had been reviewed by internal investigators and all had been found to be 'righteous' shootings. That's not quite true and I apologize for the mistake. But the accurate news isn't much better. For the last twenty years, there have been publicly announced results of investigations all of which have exonerated the one hundred fifty agent-involved shootings. Prior to that, there were no routine announcements at all, only occasional high profile cases that came to the public attention."

She turned to her guest. "For the rest of this hour, we will have the pleasure of interviewing the Director of the FBI, Thomas Fitzhugh ... Mr. Fitzhugh, you've heard and seen our previous stories and heard what I've said tonight. What is the FBI's response?"

Thomas Fitzhugh was more than double Alison's age. He was a big man with mostly grey hair, wore wire rimmed glasses and had a generally dour expression. "Well, now that you've cleared up that very old information – some investigations that are over twenty years old..." Here, he took a 4x6 index card from his pocket and ripped it in half. " ... I guess we can move on to the newer data."

Alison Hartnet laughed out loud, which is something a serious TV host hardly ever does. Fitzhugh laughed a moment, then he went on. "First let me say that I have every confidence that the FBI's internal investigations have been honest and fair to both the agents who did discharge their weapons, and to the targets they were shooting at. I'd like to point out that we investigate every case where an agent fires his weapon, whether he hits his target or not."