David Corn is Washington editor of The Nation magazine, the oldest political weekly in America. He writes on a host of subjects, including politics, the White House, Congress, and national security.

He has broken stories on Bob Dole, Newt Gingrich, Oliver North, Colin Powell, Richard Gephardt, Hillary Clinton, Rush Limbaugh, Clarence Thomas, Senator Paul Laxalt, Senator Robert Bennett, the Central Intelligence Agency, the Pentagon, and other Washington players.

Corn has contributed articles, including political satire and book reviews, to The Washington Post, The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, The Philadelphia Inquirer, The Boston Globe, Newsday, Harper’s, The New Republic, Mother Jones, The Washington Monthly, The Village Voice, The New York Press -- which features his weekly column "Loyal Opposition" -- and many other publications. He also writes for several on-line magazines, including Slate, HotWired, and Salon.

He is the author of Blond Ghost: Ted Shackley and the CIA's Crusades (Simon and Schuster, 1994). The Washington Monthly called Blond Ghost "an amazing compendium of CIA fact and lore." The Washington Post noted that Blond Ghost "deserves a space on that small shelf of worthwhile books about the agency." The New York Times termed it "a scorchingly critical account of an enigmatic figure who for two decades ran some of the agency's most important, and most controversial, covert operations."

Corn was a contributor to Unusual Suspects, an anthology of mystery and crime fiction (Vintage/Black Lizard, 1996). His contribution to the book -- a short story entitled “My Murder” -- was nominated for a 1997 Edgar Allan Poe Award by Mystery Writers of America. The story was republished in The Year's 25 Finest Crime and Mystery Stories (Carroll & Graf, 1997).

Corn frequently is a guest on television and radio talk shows. He has been a panelist on CNN's Capital Gang, and he is a regular on C-SPAN. He has appeared on ABC News, CBS Morning News, Fox Television News, Fox New Cable, Crossfire (CNN), Washington Week in Review (PBS), Equal Time (CNBC), Tim Russert (CNBC), Tribune Television, MSNBC, and other shows and networks.

He was a co-host (with Pat Buchanan) of the nationally-syndicated radio show Buchanan and Company. He has appeared often on the syndicated Diane Rehm radio show, and provided commentary to National Public Radio. He is a featured guest on RadioNation, a nationally-syndicated show. He has contributed political commentary to BBC Radio, CBC Radio, Pacifica Radio, Australian National Radio, and has been a guest on scores of call-in radio programs.

Corn, thirty-nine years old, is a Phi Beta Kappa graduate of Brown University. Before joining The Nation, he worked for Ralph Nader's Center for Study of Responsive Law and Harper’s magazine.

Click here to read more of David Corn's Loyal Opposition.

Hyde, Seek, Destroy?

I had the Henry Hyde story first. I chose not to run with it. Here's what happened -- and why there is no basis to the GOP claim that Hyde, the Republican chairman of the House Judiciary Committee whose extramarital affair was exposed last week by Salon magazine, is the victim of a White House smear machine. My own role in this side-circus shows there is no cause for the FBI to accede to the Republican demand that it investigate the White House for obstructing justice by planting this particular story.

In late June, while I was visiting family in California, I received a call from a septuagenarian Nation reader named Norman Sommer, a retired sales manager who lives in Florida. He asked if I would be interested in an explosive story involving the personal life of a Republican leader. Sure would be, I said. He asked if he provided proof that Hyde had cheated on his wife with a married woman would I write the article. I said that depended on the particulars. He informed me that he had contacted Victor Navasky, the publisher of The Nation magazine, my home base, and that Navasky had not been enthused with this offer. Leave him to me, I said. Publishers are best dealt with once facts have been established. What's the story? I asked. Call me when you get back to Washington, he said.

Days later, I rang Sommer, and he told me more. Seven years earlier, he was hanging out at the tennis courts. During a court change, one player remarked that he once had owned a clothing store in Chicago and that Hyde had been a customer. Then another player, Fred Snodgrass, piped up: Hyde had an affair with my wife and broke up my family. For four years, starting in 1965, Snodgrass explained to Sommer, Hyde, a rising star in Illinois politics, had a sexual relationship with Cherie Snodgrass, a mother of a three and an attractive beauty stylist. Hyde was the married father of four sons at the time. In Snodgrass' eyes, the affair had led to his divorce from Cherie, and for decades he held a grudge against the man.

Sommer, a longtime liberal Democrat, sat on the information for years. He continued to play tennis with Snodgrass, and neither of them moved to unearth that ancient history. Until Kenneth Starr began pursuing Bill Clinton for lying about a sexual matter. Sommer saw Snodgrass' painful memory as ammunition to fire at the conservatives chasing after Clinton. Earlier this year, he began calling journalists and pundits, dangling his pal's tale. By the time he got to me, it was clear that he had tried other reporters. But he claimed that he had not yet placed anyone in touch with Snodgrass. Sommer was acting as the broker.

Sommer had an ambitious agenda. He believed this story could turn public opinion against the Republicans, expose the GOP as a cauldron of hypocrisy, derail the anti-Clinton jihad, and propel the Democrats to electoral victory in the November congressional elections. That is, all this could happen if the story was managed just right. He thought that from his home in Adventura, Florida, he could orchestrate a coordinated media blitz, in which a television news outfit, a newspaper, and a weekly magazine would all reveal Hyde's dirty secret simultaneously. Not until he had this blitzkrieg pre-arranged would he put anyone in contact with Snodgrass.

Through weeks of calls, I tried to make him realize that his dream was an impossibility. News outfits tend to be competitive. Any serious journalist would have to verify Snodgrass' story. That meant questioning friends and family members, including Snodgrass' ex-wife. To set more than one reporter on this trail could lead to a messy situation that might produce nothing usable. Of course, I was thinking of a Nation (and David Corn) exclusive. That's S.O.P. Still, I said to him that if the story proved true, then once it was disclosed, the rest of the media would spread it far and wide. (Guess I was right.)

Dealing with Sommer was not easy. I could not shake him from his grand notions. And he had very specific ideas of when and how the story should be played. I warned him that the impacts of news stories are usually difficult to predict. The most he could do, I said, was to make certain the story was handled in a responsible fashion. Then come what may. Despite our disagreements, we maintained a dialogue, during which he also asked if I, as a sign of good faith, could pass a movie idea to Paul Newman, who is a part owner of The Nation. (Sommer's pitch was for a movie that would address the subject of hatred, and his written proposal was rather vague. There was no plot line. I advised him not to send it to Newman or anyone else in the motion pictures business.)

In our discussions, Sommer kept asking if I would guarantee that The Nation would publish the story if he granted me access to Snodgrass. I repeatedly replied that I could offer no such promise. It all depended on what Snodgrass said, what could be confirmed, what his ex-wife might say, and, even, how Hyde would respond when questioned about it. Sommer noted that he was still talking to other reporters. He was frustrated that the L.A. Times and the Boston Globe, where reporters had shown interest, had decided not to proceed. Indeed, around Washington I ran into other journalists who had heard from him. I realized that Sommer had been working the entire city. But he had not hooked up a reporter with Snodgrass.

Regarding Henry

While my long-distance dance with Sommer continued, I spoke to Navasky and Katrina vanden Heuvel, the editor of The Nation. They both were disinclined to dig into Hyde's private life. Their line was, let's not sink to Starr's level, even Hyde deserves his privacy, unless there is a compelling interest otherwise. I was not unsympathetic to the argument, but without the details I did not want to reach any final conclusions. I wondered if one could make the hypocrisy case for publishing the story, should it check out. Hyde in the late 1970s and early 1980s came into prominence as the leader of the New Right/family-values set, and his name adorns the Hyde Amendment, a notorious piece of legislation severely limiting federal funding for abortions. With that law, hadn't he attempted to impose his pro-family morals on the rest of us? And as impeachment became a more likely possibility, the media increasingly portrayed Hyde, who will preside over any impeachment inquiry, as the model of judiciousness and probity. Might the public deserve material that would allow it to draw a more informed view of this powerful figure?

I put my assistant on the case, and he hit the library. He came back with an article written by Hyde in which the congressman claimed that "the norms of 'bourgeois morality' (which is drawn in the main from classic Jewish and Christian morality) should form the ethical basis of our common life" and that a "culture war" should be waged against those who would replace these norms with "a radical and thoroughgoing moral relativism." (Well, if Snodgrass was correct, Hyde had been rather relativistic once upon a time.) In another piece, Hyde pointed to the "family as the surest basis of civil order" and praised "the traditional family in sustaining a democratic order." He called for reaffirming "our public allegiance to the profound importance of the marriage commitment." When the House was debating gay marriage, Hyde claimed that such partnerships "demeans the institution of marriage," adding, "my marriage was never demeaned."

The problem was, all these words were written decades after the alleged affair. Is there a statute of limitations for a politician's personal sleaze? Perhaps the affair had somehow led Hyde to better appreciate his own marriage (which continued on) and what he calls the "institution" of marriage. Is it hypocritical to oppose abortion on moral grounds, if you once broke one of the Ten Commandments? I remained agnostic and pursued the story. In late August, I convinced Sommer to permit me to have a preliminary conversation with Snodgrass. Sommer indicated I was the first journalist accorded this privilege.

On the phone, Snodgrass was nervous and a bit sad, as he recounted the events of long ago. He told me essentially the same tale he later told Salon. But my impression was that his marriage to Cherie had been turbulent, and I questioned (to myself) if Hyde had been the cause of the marriage's dissolution or an escape path for Cherie. Snodgrass said that he continued to see Cherie after their divorce, while she was still fooling around with Hyde. He added that after Hyde ended the affair with Cherie (which occurred once Snodgrass told Hyde's wife about the relationship), Snodgrass and Cherie remarried. They then divorced for a second time about a year later.

Snodgrass came across as sincere. He gave me his daughter's number. I called her, and she confirmed he was telling the truth. I spoke to two friends of his, and they vouched for him. I believed him.

That made the decision harder, for I remained unsure that this old linen deserved waving in the public square. To slime, or not to slime. I spoke to other editors and journalists. I canvassed my friends. Most did not believe the old affair should be reported. A significant portion of my unscientific sampling said, I'd love to see it come out, but I wouldn't do the story myself. A distinct minority were unabashed, with one Washington friend proposing we post the story on a Web site called "First Stone."

Vacation time rolled around, and I left town. I told Sommer that I was still interested, but that I thought we should wait a short time and see how Hyde comported himself. If he attacked the President's behavior, he would be fairer game. Sommer said he thought that was wise, but he asked if we should involve Salon. I told him it was not necessary to bring Salon into the picture, since I occasionally contribute to Salon. (Hell, this is what reporters do when they're working on a hot story.) I promised him that, if for any reason, The Nation or I decided not to go ahead, I would share the information I had gathered with Salon. Then the editors there could decide what to do with it. But, I noted, my hunch was that they'd go for this. He agreed to hold off on connecting Snodgrass with anyone else. Off I went to Cape Cod, where I pondered over chowder.

Upon my return, there were urgent messages from the editors of Salon. I called them and discovered that Sommer had given them Snodgrass. They realized that I was already at work on the story and graciously proposed a joint Nation-Salon endeavor. But, they added, they were committed to publishing a piece on this -- assuming it passed their vetting -- within days. (Who knew what Sommer might do next? He had also been negotiating with the tabloid Star.) Would I hop on a plane, they asked, and eyeball Snodgrass?

I spoke to vanden Heuvel again, and she and Navasky discussed the matter once more. She called back with the same message as before: not interested. After all, when it was disclosed that Representative Dan Burton, the fierce Clinton- basher who called the President a "scumbag," had fathered an out-of-wedlock child, The Nation had opined, "To open up every public official to endless scrutiny of their private lives is a destructive game, even when it is directed at political careers deserving of destruction." When offered a juicy, sure-to-grab-attention story, Navasky and vanden Heuvel stuck to this position. Vanden Heuvel did invite me to argue the case for quickly publishing the story. I do not shrink from confrontations with editors (as she will attest). But my heart was not in it. The affair had been so long ago. Hyde had not yet become a self-righteous critic of Clinton. Did I want to contribute to -- and validate -- the Starrification of our public discourse. To me it was not a 50-50 call, more like 54-46. I decided to take a pass (or a dive, if you like).

It's all yours, I told Salon, and waited for the shitstorm. It came in force.

Now, few may care about my own cameo appearance. But my testimony is relevant to what has become a serious matter. As a first-hand witness, I can say definitively that the White House was not involved at all in the manner in which the Hyde story emerged or in the timing of its disclosure.

Once Salon posted the news, Republicans attacked the magazine with fury and accused the White House of managing a secret smear operation. Representative Tom DeLay, the Republican whip in the House, sent a letter to the FBI, signed by other Republican House leaders, urging the Bureau to investigate whether the White House was peddling dirt on members of Congress in order to intimidate them and obstruct the impeachment proceedings. Declaring the Clinton Administration the culprit behind the Hyde outing, DeLay ridiculously said, "I have no doubt who it is, I just don't have the evidence to prove it." Other Republicans attacked the White House in similar fashion, some accusing White House aide Sidney Blumenthal as the string-puller who had arranged the hit on Hyde. Representative Anne Northup said "the purpose of this is to chill people." Hyde, who grudgingly acknowledged the relationship with Cherie Snodgrass, asserted that the intent of the Salon piece was to "intimidate" him. (Oddly -- or maybe not so oddly -- two days before Salon's article appeared, Hyde sent out an incredible memo to the House Judiciary Committee noting that a person who disseminated derogatory information about a committee member could face an obstruction of justice charge. Does he consider himself an emperor?)

It may well be, as ABC News reported, that Clinton allies have been passing tips on a potential Hyde story to reporters (I heard second-hand about two Clintonistas -- but not White House officials -- who had advised reporters to look into a completely different story about Hyde). But the Clinton gang was not a party to this bombshell. Sommer had called White House and Democratic officials, but, as was par for the course, he got nowhere with them. No one at the White House -- and no Clinton operative or associate -- ever contacted me about this. Sommer had approached me because he reads The Nation. It was, I believe, my conversations with Sommer -- and my refusal to guarantee the story would appear in The Nation -- that partly spurred him to drop the Hyde story into Salon's lap. After the article appeared, DeLay blathered on about the suspiciousness of the timing of the posting, pointing out that it occurred just as the Republicans on the Judiciary Committee were preparing to release Clinton's grand jury videotape. But this disclosure had been months in the making. The timing of its release was as much a function of my vacation schedule as anything else.

Ugly Tactics

Was Salon correct to publish the piece? In retrospect, I still consider it a close call (one Nation columnist phoned me aghast that we had let this one slip through our fingers). Along with the article, Salon posted an editorial explaining and defending its action. The magazine said that although it had been critical of the Starr inquiry (the private lives of Americans "should remain sacrosanct"), Clinton's enemies "have changed the rules" and now "private lives of public figures are no longer off-limits." Since Hyde will sit in judgment of Clinton, it maintained, the public had the right to learn about his private life. The editorial conceded that Salon was "fighting fire with fire, descending to the gutter tactics of those we deplore." But, it added, "ugly times call for ugly tactics." The magazine hoped that publication of the Hyde story would expose the "utter absurdity" of the GOP/Starr assault upon Clinton.

I did not find the editorial wholly convincing. The use of the word "tactics" to justify a decision of journalistic ethics was curious. In ugly times, perhaps there is more of an obligation to remain non-ugly. Or, to put it another way, ugly tactics call for strong, swift, harsh -- but not ugly -- retorts. To use a crass analogy, it's as if Salon had dropped a nuclear bomb, while decrying the use of nuclear weapons and urging the end of nuclear warfare. But I won't get high-and-mighty about this. It was a tough decision, perhaps more a matter of taste.

Certainly, from a tactical perspective, Salon -- which is not a pro-Clinton outfit (I've written scorchingly of the President in its cyber-confines) -- helped the Republicans. It made it more difficult for the White House to negotiate with Hyde (the White House had to crawl before Hyde and claim it was not a co-conspirator in Sommer's operation). The article rendered it easier for GOPers to accuse the White House of being Dirty Tricks Central. Democrats felt compelled to blast the article, and Representative Martin Frost, who heads the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, immediately announced that the DCCC would not fund Democratic candidates who "initiate attacks of an 'intimate' personal nature." It looked unlikely that the piece would de-poison the national political media atmosphere and bring everyone to their senses.

Watching David Talbot, the editor of Salon, catching flak from all directions, I did not regret my decision. (Who wants to be on television with Larry Klayman?) But, admittedly, that's an easy way out. What was the right choice here? Damnit, I'm still not sure. I do feel fortunate in one regard. For while I passed on the chance to do Hyde, I will not have to sit around and wonder what might have happened if I had gone forward with the story. In recent days, I could turn on the television, pick up a newspaper, and see.

David Corn's Loyal Opposition is published weekly in New York Press.