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Vicki Iseman: Blanket Defamation

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I’m looking forward to Vicki Iseman’s defamation suit against the NYT, if only because we’re bound to see an argument over whether or not Iseman asked McCain to share a blankie with her. And an argument about the proper role of a lobbyist.

Iseman alleges two counts of defamation:

The first defamatory meaning was that Ms. Iseman exploited an alleged personal and social friendship with Senator McCain to obtain favorable legislative outcomes for her clients, engaging in "inappropriate" behavior that constituted a conflict of interest and a violation of professional and ethical norms in breach of the public trust. This meaning was communicated through the literal words of the article and also by implication, by what was intentionally suggested and implied "between the lines."

The second defamatory meaning was that Ms. Iseman and Senator McCain had engaged in an illicit and inappropriate romantic relationship while Ms. Iseman was a lobbyist conducting business on behalf of clients before the committee chaired by Senator McCain. This was also defamation per se under Virginia law. This meaning was also communicated through the literal words of the article and by implication, by what was suggested and implicated "between the lines."

Focusing on the second allegation first, they’re going to be relying heavily on the "between the lines" meaning here, since the original NYT article clearly printed Iseman’s and McCain’s denial of an affair and instead focused on the appearance of close ties–of any sort–with a lobbyist.

Mr. McCain, 71, and the lobbyist, Vicki Iseman, 40, both say they never had a romantic relationship. But to his advisers, even the appearance of a close bond with a lobbyist whose clients often had business before the Senate committee Mr. McCain led threatened the story of redemption and rectitude that defined his political identity.

What was at issue in the article was the appearance of an affair, not an affair itself, and the beliefs of McCain staffers about that appearance of an affair.

By then, according to two former McCain associates, some of the senator’s advisers had grown so concerned that the relationship had become romantic that they took steps to intervene.

A former campaign adviser described being instructed to keep Ms. Iseman away from the senator at public events, while a Senate aide recalled plans to limit Ms. Iseman’s access to his offices.

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The Iseman Cometh

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vicki-and-john.jpgOnly, she says she didn’t. Ahem.

Now, after more than seven months of silence, [Vicki] Iseman, who just turned 41, has decided to speak out and aggressively defend herself. In a series of interviews and e-mail exchanges with National Journal, she said she and McCain had a "strictly professional" and cordial relationship.

"I did not have a sexual relationship with Senator McCain," she said in a three-hour interview last month in a seventh-floor conference room in the Ronald Reagan Building and International Trade Center. "I never had an affair or an inappropriate relationship with Senator McCain, and that means I never acted unethically in my dealings with the senator."

I love how Iseman believes the only unethical thing she could have done with McCain is to have fucked him–rather than to inappropriately influence him with gifts and money.

Curiously, though, Iseman knows precisely who might leak a story that she asked McCain to share a blanket with her once.

Iseman told National Journal that [John] Weaver was the unidentified aide who The Times‘ story said flew back to Washington on Paxson’s corporate jet with Iseman and McCain after the Florida fundraising event in February 1999. She says that The Times had asked her, in an e-mail, about an incident on the plane in which she reportedly asked McCain to share a blanket with her. Only Weaver, she says, could be the source for that allegation, which she heatedly denied. The Times did not publish the allegation, and Weaver strongly denies being the source of that information. [my emphasis]

This is what I don’t get. If she’s certain that only Weaver could be the source of the allegation, doesn’t that suggest she knows he–the only aide on the plane–was witness to something that only he would know? If she hadn’t asked to share her blankie with McCain, couldn’t anyone be the source for the allegation?

But Iseman doesn’t deny several other allegations the NYT made about her in its story. For example, she makes it quite clear that she plied McCain with money.

One of her principal assignments in the lobbying firm was to work the Senate Commerce Committee — and work it, she did. Read more →

Vicki Iseman’s Lobbying Career

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I don’t mean to pick on Vicki Iseman. I just got rather fascinated by the career of this woman who–at least in 1999, when John McCain was running for President–openly boasted of her ties to McCain, the Chair of the Senate Commerce Committee (in fact, this story started from a "second-hand report from a lobbyist"). Some of her clients seem to back up that boast. Given the prevalence of media, and more recently, defense/VA contractors, in her portfolio, I imagine such boasts helped her career.

What follows relies primarily on the data available in the Senate Lobbyist Database–which only goes back to 1999. I can’t tell you what happened in the (presumably) 9 years between the time she walked into her boss’ office (I’m guessing this is Hector Alcalde) asking for a chance…

[I] walked into my boss’s office [the president of the company] and said, ‘You don’t really know me, but I answer the phones. I’m a college graduate and I’d like you to consider me for a secretarial or an administrative position.’" He agreed to try her out for three months. Within a year she became his special assistant.

… And when, in 1999, she was a partner piling up relationships with media companies.

It appears that her big breaks happened in 1998, when clients like Paxson and Sinclair first started working with her. Though it wasn’t until later 1999 that she became the lead on the Paxson account (the first lobbying report for Paxson in 1999 still lists Alcalde as the lead).

By 1999, she was the lead on accounts with a number of media companies–Paxson, Sinclair, and CanWest, which I’ve posted about, as well as AMFM Inc and Capstar (which would get absorbed into Clear Channel with her help) and Telemundo (which would get bought by NBC with her help) and Hispanic Broadcasting (which then had ties to Clear Channel, and which would get absorbed into Univision in 2003 with her help). So in 1999, when Vicki Iseman was trading on McCain’s name as he ran for President, seven of her eight major clients involved consolidating media conservative media properties.

The exception is Computer Sciences Corp–which I’m going to have to come back to, for a variety of reasons (but if you want to kibitz in the comments, please do).

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McCain’s Favors for Iseman Involved Helping Far Right-Wing Families to Sustain their Shell Companies

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When I noted that John McCain’s lobbyist gal had represented the two networks that would, in 2004, show the anti-Kerry propaganda piece, Stolen Honor, I admitted I didn’t know precisely whether or how John McCain had helped the second of these two networks, Sinclair Broadcasting’s shell company, Glencairn Broadcasting. Today, the NYT makes it very clear that McCain used the same kind of inappropriate, pushy tactics for Sinclair as he had with Paxson.

In late 1998, Senator John McCain sent an unusually blunt letter to the head of the Federal Communications Commission, warning that he would try to overhaul the agency if it closed a broadcast ownership loophole.

The letter, and two later ones signed by Mr. McCain, then chairman of the Senate Commerce Committee, urged the commission to abandon plans to close a loophole vitally important to Glencairn Ltd., a client of Vicki Iseman, a lobbyist. The provision enabled one of the nation’s largest broadcasting companies, Sinclair, to use a marketing agreement with Glencairn, a far smaller broadcaster, to get around a restriction barring single ownership of two television stations in the same city.

I gotta say, "unusually blunt," coming from Mr. Straight Talk for Lobbyists Express is saying something. The article goes on to note that McCain was partnering with Conrad Burns on this matter–some real gutter diving for a guy who claims to be above corruption.

The NYT article suggests more about the relationship between Iseman and McCain.

For its part, Glencairn appeared to have been getting little support in Congress until it retained Ms. Iseman in 1998.

Edwin Edwards, who was the president of the company at the time, said in a recent interview that after retaining Ms. Iseman, he was able to get heard by Mr. McCain.

“We were pounding the pavement in Washington,” Mr. Edwards said. “We recruited help from as many people as we could. We knocked on every door just trying to get support.”

Labaton suggests–but doesn’t say it–that companies with business interests before McCain could hire Iseman as the best way to get entre to him. Buy Vicki Iseman and you get McCain. No wonder she was bragging about her access to him. Read more →

Paxson Refreshes McCain’s Memory

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Rut Roh.

Bud Paxson’s memory seems to corroborate that of McCain’s former aides and McCain’s signed deposition, both of which suggest that McCain met with Paxson–and Iseman–personally before he sent his letters to the FCC. Or, to put it another way, Paxson says McCain’s little promises yesterday were false.

Broadcaster Lowell "Bud" Paxson today contradicted statements from Sen. John McCain‘s presidential campaign that the senator did not meet with Paxson or his lobbyist before sending two controversial letters to the Federal Communications Commission on Paxson’s behalf.

Paxson said he talked with McCain in his Washington office several weeks before the Arizona Republican wrote the letters to the FCC urging a rapid decision on Paxson’s quest to acquire a Pittsburgh television station.

Paxson also recalled that his lobbyist, Vicki Iseman, attended the meeting in McCain’s office and that Iseman helped arrange the meeting. "Was Vicki there? Probably," Paxson said in an interview with The Washington Post today. "The woman was a professional. She was good. She could get us meetings."

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Did Iseman and McCain Enable Conrad Black to Commit Fraud with CanWest?

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canwest.jpg

On July 31, 2000, Alcalde & Fay–and their lobbyist Vicki Iseman–terminated their lobbying activities for CanWest, a big Canadian media company. That day, CanWest had achieved the goal Alcalde & Fay had been assisting with: the acquisition of much of Conrad Black’s media empire in Canada.

Iseman and her colleagues had been lobbying the FCC, the House of Representatives, and the Senate (including John McCain, with whom McCain’s advisors believed Iseman had an inappropriate relationship at the time) to win approval for the foreign purchase of American broadcast companies–that is, Conrad Black’s properties, which were headquartered in Chicago.

Iseman’s role in the deal is significant for a couple of reasons. First, the deal greatly contributed to the consolidation of media in Canada:

In the largest media deal in Canadian history, CanWest Global Communications, a company that started 20 years ago with a North Dakota television station, is to pay $2.36 billion for dominant dailies in 8 of Canada’s 10 provinces. Mr. Black is to gain a seat on the CanWest board and is to become the second-largest shareholder, after the family of the company founder, Israel H. Asper.

”The borders are gone, we have to grow,” Mr. Asper, Global’s chairman, told a news conference in Toronto today, comparing his acquisition to Tribune Media’s recent purchase of The Los Angeles Times. ”We don’t intend to be one of the corpses lying beside the information highway.”

Mr. Black said in a statement that his company, Hollinger International, ”believes this intimate association with a highly successful telecaster built by an entrepreneurial spirit compatible with Hollinger is the best possible assurance of the strength of the newspaper franchises.”

Like Conrad Black before them, the family running CanWest exerts a great deal of editorial control–going so far as to distribute corporate editorials to be run in all their properties.

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Did Vicki Iseman “Steal Honor” in THREE Presidential Elections?

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John McCain denies any honor was stolen–neither his nor Ms. Iseman’s. Or rather, he denies "the story," though it’s not clear whether he’s denying that his relationship with Iseman was inappropriate or that he did favors for her. So I guess I’ll leave it up to you to decide whether she stole McCain’s honor in both the 2000 and 2008 presidential elections.

For the moment, though, I’m more interested in the 2004 election–the one McCain didn’t run in. You see, I find it a mighty curious coincidence that two of the companies for which Iseman was lobbying John McCain in 1999 and 2000–the time of their potentially inappropriate relationship–also happen to be the two television companies that championed the Kerry smear, "Stolen Honor," in 2004.

Stolen Honor

Stolen Honor, you’ll recall, was a 45-long propaganda piece, repeating the allegations the Swift Boaters made against John Kerry. It came out in September 2004 (as Republicans have promised a smear against Hillary or Obama will come out at precisely the same time this cycle). Shortly thereafter, Sinclair Broadcasting ordered its stations to pre-empt normal broadcasting to play the "documentary." Sinclair also fired one employee who complained about the order.

After a blogswarm in response, Sinclair’s advertisers started pulling their advertising, which eventually led Sinclair to cut back its plans for the "documentary," showing clips of it as part of a program on Vietnam POWs on just 40 of its stations.

Friday night brings to a conclusion the fiercest media battle of the presidential campaign, when 40 of the Sinclair Broadcast Group’s 62 stations nationwide air a special program about the media and Vietnam War POWs. The show is likely to include generous portions of an anti-Kerry attack film, "Stolen Honor," that Sinclair executives had originally intended to air in its entirety just days before the election. In the face of lawsuits by stockholders, loss of advertising, questions about its abuse of the public airwaves and a falling stock price, however, Sinclair quickly cobbled together a revised program.

In the same time frame, Paxson Communications aired the entire "documentary" a number of times in the days leading up to the election, supported by NewsMax.

As FCC Commissioner Jonathan Adelstein described, the two companies were two disturbing examples of politicized broadcast policies.

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