THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Wednesday, May 29, 1996 TAG: 9605280001
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: A9 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Opinion
SOURCE: Philip Terzian
DATELINE: WASHINGTON LENGTH: 83 lines
The suicide of Adm. Jeremy Boorda shares one thing in common with two similar incidents in modern American history: Post-mortem recriminations against the press.
In 1949, when former Secretary of Defense James Forrestal jumped to his death from his room in the Naval Medical Center in Bethesda, Md., columnist Drew Pearson, a relentless critic, was accused of contributing to Forrestal's distress. In 1993, when deputy White House counsel Vincent Foster shot himself in Fort Marcy Park, in Virginia, many in the media pointed the finger at the editorial page of The Wall Street Journal, which had chronicled Foster's work as a member of Bill Clinton's Arkansas mafia.
In one sense, the accusations were correct. Pearson's animus toward Forrestal was nearly pathological: He published all sorts of unsubstantiated rumors, and speculated wildly about things he didn't know. And Forrestal was evidently bothered by Pearson. We also know that Foster, who functioned as a fixer and one-man White House clean-up crew, was continually anxious about what might appear in the next day's Wall Street Journal.
Still, it is one thing to acknowledge that public figures may be bothered by what is written in the press, and another to find some cause and effect between coverage and suicide. Drew Pearson was a snake in snake's clothing, all right, but James Forrestal was a deeply tormented man, beset by numerous demons. And while Vincent Foster may have famously complained that laying siege to reputations is a ``blood sport'' in Washington, there is nothing to suggest that the Journal got it wrong, and much evidence that Foster - waist deep in Whitewater, Travelgate and other Clinton follies - had reason to worry.
In Admiral Boorda's case, things are more complicated. As is customary in these matters, perspective has fallen along partisan lines. Nearly everyone seems to regard the ostensible cause of his suicide - whether or not he was entitled to wear a valor pin on two campaign ribbons - as largely irrelevant, but finds his death symptomatic of something more profound.
Friends of the Clinton administration have gone to some lengths to describe Boorda as a ``sailor's sailor'' - which, as a diligent Navy politician, he probably was not - whose devotion to duty drove him to distraction. Enemies of the administration have focused on Boorda's relentless acquiescence to the Navy's antagonists inside Congress, the White House and the press.
Both, it must be said, have a point. Medals and ribbons aside, by falling on his sword for the honor of the fleet, Boorda may have hoped for a personal sacrifice with public consequences: an end, perhaps, to the cycle of recrimination, from all sides, against the Navy.
Yet there is a genuine hostility toward the military in general, and the Navy in particular, in Washington these days (Congress currently excepted) and the tone is set at the top. The president once said that he ``loathed'' the armed forces, and one of the earliest anecdotes from the Clinton administration was the famous rejoinder from a White House staffer to a pleasantry offered by Gen. Barry McCaffrey: ``I don't speak to the military.'' During the building of the 600-ship Navy during the 1980s, press/congressional criticism of new aircraft, vessels, expenditures and tactics was unyielding, which has led (in the '90s) to the cancellation of most modernization programs, breeding further problems.
Add Tailhook to the mix, with its seemingly endless witch-hunt ramifications, and obsessive coverage by the media, and the wonder is why there haven't been more suicides.
It is not for nothing that Boorda shot himself when he heard that Newsweek was on his case. More than most such publications, Newsweek suffers (in the words of its Washington bureau chief, Evan Thomas) from a ``demonstrable . . . liberal bias'' that translates, whenever the military is involved, into palpable antipathy. And few publications or broadcast outlets have mentioned the source of the medals controversy - the National Security News Service - or, if they have, suggest it is a strategic think tank, like the Brookings Institution.
Not at all. The National Security News Service is a seat-of-the-pants, two-man operation founded by veterans of the antiwar and nuclear-freeze movements, with ties to the old (KGB-run) World Peace Council and its allies in the West, notably International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War. It peddles rumors to newspapers and magazines, such as George Bush's alleged extramarital affair, and investigative tips to the television networks. Sometimes, these stories have unintended consequences - Jeremy Boorda's suicide - but the damage they do is extensive and deliberate. And more lethal than right-wing militias could dream of. MEMO: Mr. Terzian is associate editor of the Providence Journal, 400 N.
Capitol St. N.W., Suite 890, Washington, D.C. 20001. by CNB