Chasing catastrophe, p.4
Chasing Catastrophe, page 4
Many of these guys were members of the Joint Terrorism Task Force (JTTF), so when major incidents occurred, like a terror attack on a Jewish bodega in New Jersey or a bomb in a subway tunnel, I’d often hear about it from them because they were on the JTTF email chain.
Even if they weren’t tasked with responding to the incident, they at least had the initial reports in their phones and computers. When shit hit the fan, I immediately went to the contacts tab in my phone and searched for the guys I knew in that jurisdiction, and then branched out. Sometimes I didn’t even have to call because they called me first.
That’s what happened on that Sunday morning in September 2016. Just after 9 a.m., a good friend and one of my best, most reliable, sources, a very well connected and experienced member of a New York-area law enforcement agency, called me on my cell phone.
I answered, “Hey pal! What’s happening?” I loved talking to this guy. He always had great stories with good details and context, and he never steered me wrong, ever.
He asked, “Where are you right now?”
I was surprised by the question because I assumed he’d know. “I’m in our satellite truck in Battery Park, covering the 9/11 ceremonies. Why? What’s up?”
“You’re not gonna believe what just happened,” he told me. “I just watched Hillary Clinton nearly faint. She just left with her protective detail. I think she’s going to the hospital!”
“What?” I was incredulous. “Where? What did you see?”
He then described the series of events that unfolded in front of him. He was in uniform, positioned near the front of One World Trade, in a cordoned off protected area where dignitaries and elected officials arrived and departed in their motorcades. He told me he was surprised to see Hillary Clinton because no one was expected to leave for at least another thirty minutes or so, as the ceremony was far from over. He said he watched in amazement as she stumbled past, clearly in distress and needing help walking to the pickup area, white as a ghost and shaky on her feet.
He told me she had to stand and wait near the street for several minutes until her van and follow-on Chevy Suburban (for the rest of her security team) pulled up to the curb.
He told me she looked like she was in really bad shape and would have fallen had the agents with her not been holding her by each arm. When the van doors opened, she stumbled off the curb and almost did fall and had to be helped into the vehicle by the men holding her arms and a woman assisting from behind.
I was furiously scribbling his story in my reporter notebook, repeating some of the things he said and asking for more detail while my producer that day, Tamara Gitt, looked at me wide-eyed and curious. Tamara had followed Clinton for months during the early days of her campaign and knew everyone on her staff and was extremely skeptical of what I was being told.
When my source finished his story, I thanked him profusely, hung up, and looked at Tamara.
I shared everything my source told me and said, “This is incredible. I’m gonna report this.”
She urged caution as she searched her computer for any confirmation of what I’d just learned.
“There’s nothing on the wires about this,” she said. “We need confirmation!”
“My guy would never steer me wrong,” I told her. “He was right there and saw the whole thing! Just because no one else knows about this doesn’t mean it didn’t happen!”
She asked me to wait and then called her Clinton campaign contacts, but no one answered. She kept checking the wires, too, and suggested I wait. When I told her I didn’t want to, she asked me to call my guy back, so I did.
“Dude, I’m ready to report this, but we’re not seeing this story anywhere. Are you sure about this?”
I can still hear his voice in my head, answering the question.
“Buddy, I was fifteen feet away from her. She lost her shoe when she got in the van. One of the agents had to pick it up off the street and jump in the vehicle following her! This one hundred percent happened.”
I went through the whole thing with him again, just to make sure I had his story straight.
This was a huge moment for me. One of the biggest rules of reporting is that you need at least two sources on anything. If one person tells you something, you need to find another person to confirm it. Relying on a single source can be very dangerous, because if that source is wrong and you report it, your credibility is shot when the real story emerges. Most news agencies don’t allow stories to be reported unless they’re confirmed, but in rare circumstances exceptions can be made, depending on the story and the journalist and the person sharing the information.
I was convinced this was one of those occasions. At that point I’d been in the business for nearly thirty years. I was seasoned, well-traveled, and extremely confident in my source.
I was staking my career on it, but I wasn’t really worried. Well, I may have been a little nervous, especially because Tamara was really, really cautionary.
We didn’t have another live shot scheduled until 10:10 a.m. and I wanted to break the news, so I did it on Twitter, posting three tweets to report what I’d just learned due to the 140-character limit at the time. At 9:37 a.m., I tweeted in a row:
BREAKING: law enf source: Hillary Clinton just left 9/11 ceremony w/medical episode, appeared to faint on way into van, helped by security
Source tells me Hillary Clinton “clearly having some type of medical episode” & had to be helped into van by her protective detail
MORE ON #HILLARY per witness: “unexpected early departure”; she stumbled off curb, “knees buckled,” lost a shoe as she was helped into van
The tweets spread like wildfire, my most-viewed by a long shot, with thousands and thousands of retweets and comments, including this one from “tenmountainman”:
“If Rick says it. It happened. The man is a reporter, not a hack.”
I later learned that my tweets were actually shared with the future leader of the free world at the ceremony. It started with former NYPD Commissioner Bernie Kerik, whom I was friendly with and who followed me on Twitter. He was sitting with New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani, and Donald Trump. I was told that Kerik saw my tweets and showed them to Christie, who passed the phone to Giuliani, who showed it to Trump who also read them, and the men exchanged looks. The story I heard is that the men raised their eyebrows and quietly celebrated the early departure of Trump’s hated rival.
Then, at 10:10 a.m., I went live on Fox News Channel and broke the news to our viewers.
Anchor Jon Scott read his intro over live pictures of the ceremony and introduced me. He was expecting me to report on the ceremony itself and toss to a pre-recorded package I put together detailing the health issues suffered by first responders who were at the scene in 2001 and breathed the toxic air for days, weeks, or months after.
Jon Scott was also the anchor on air the morning of 9/11, and he watched the events unfold partially through the lens of the camera I was using on the streets near Ground Zero, where I was reporting almost nonstop that day just a few blocks from the smoldering towers.
“Our Rick Leventhal is in Lower Manhattan…he saw the attacks unfold fifteen years ago as well. Rick?”
I had no script. I just shared the story of what I’d learned:
Jon, before we get to that I want to bring our viewers up to date on a story that is breaking right now, that I just learned about within the last fifteen or twenty minutes. As you know there are many dignitaries gathered at the scene including Republican nominee Donald Trump and the Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton, who was at Ground Zero, was there for the ceremony and left, unexpectedly left early because of what appeared to be a medical episode.
I have a law enforcement source who was there, who was fifteen feet away from Hillary Clinton. He said she was standing on a curb with her protective detail waiting for her motorcade.
They were surprised to see her because she wasn’t supposed to be leaving yet so they had to wait for the motorcade two or three minutes…when it finally rolled up, my source said, she stumbled off the curb, appeared to faint, lost one of her shoes that wound up underneath the van…her protective detail I’m told helped her into that van and then the van took off, presumably in the direction of a hospital.
They grabbed her shoe and flagged down the rest of her detail. Her shoe was given to that detail who was following the other two vehicles, and they left Ground Zero early, just moments ago, because of an apparent medical episode that Hillary Clinton was suffering. It’s not terribly hot today Jon…warm, and it was certainly warm at the scene, but again, Hillary Clinton, my source was fifteen feet away said she appeared to be having some sort of medical episode, had to be helped into her van and left the, left Ground Zero early before this ceremony ended apparently because of a medical problem.
I then tossed to the report we shot and edited a few days earlier, and when it ended, I came back live and tagged with this:
One other note about the Clinton episode Jon, it happened in an area that was off-limits to the press…so the pool reporters that follow Hillary Clinton wherever she goes didn’t see it, they didn’t know about it, as far as we know there were no cameras at that location and as far as we know the Clinton campaign still has not confirmed that there was any problem with Hillary Clinton.
We still haven’t gotten confirmation of why she left early, but we have confirmed with a second source she did in fact leave early and apparently, according to my source who was fifteen feet away from the former senator, Jon, she was clearly having some kind of medical episode, stumbled, and nearly fell as her knees buckled and she came off that curb and then was helped by her protective detail into her van and left Ground Zero within the last thirty minutes.
Now I was out there all alone on an island. Tamara and I kept checking the Associated Press wires and the websites of other networks, and Tamara kept trying to get answers from Clinton staffers with no success. It was like crickets.
No one else was reporting or confirming or adding to the story. It was like it didn’t happen, and the more time passed without confirmation, the more nervous I got that maybe, just maybe, I’d made a huge mistake. I didn’t really think I had, but at the same time I was thinking, “What if…?”
Clinton staffers remained quiet for what seemed like an eternity, even as they were getting hammered with calls from every news outlet following up on what I’d reported. At around 11 a.m., spokesman Nick Merrill released a statement saying, “Secretary Clinton attended the September 11th Commemoration Ceremony for just an hour and thirty minutes this morning to pay her respects and greet some of the families of the fallen. During the ceremony, she felt overheated, so she departed to go to her daughter’s apartment, and is feeling much better.”
As Slate pointed out that day, “The statement notably does not say whether Clinton received any medical attention at Chelsea’s apartment, which is about a fifteen-minute drive from Ground Zero.”
It wasn’t until hours later, at 5:15 p.m., that the campaign admitted the candidate had been diagnosed with pneumonia on Friday, but her current health status wasn’t made public. The campaign then quoted the candidate’s doctor Lisa Bardack, who said, “She was put on antibiotics, and advised to rest and modify her schedule. While at this morning’s event, she became overheated and dehydrated. I have just examined her, and she is now re-hydrated and recovering nicely.”
Does anyone believe the campaign would have ever revealed she had pneumonia and was being treated for it or that she had an episode during the ceremony if I hadn’t forced their hand?
CNN reported the story on “Reliable Sources,” a show focusing on the press and coverage of major stories hosted by the network’s media critic Brian Stelter. CNN tossed to its correspondent outside Chelsea Clinton’s apartment after receiving the campaign statement, roughly ninety minutes after my tweets were posted and about an hour after I was live on Fox News Channel telling our viewers what happened.
From CNN’s transcript of “Reliable Sources” on September 11, 2016:
BRIAN STELTER (HOST): I do want to pause and go back to camera one and go to some news that Jeff Zeleny has. He’s joining me I believe on the phone. Actually, he’s on the line there in Washington.
Jeff, tell us about Hillary Clinton, the news developing this morning out of New York.
JEFF ZELENY, CNN SENIOR WASHINGTON CORRESPONDENT: Well, Brian, we do have a statement right now coming in just moments ago from Nick Merrill, a spokesman for Secretary Clinton about her appearance at Ground Zero this morning. I will read the statement to you right now.
It said, “Secretary Clinton attended the September 11th Commemoration Ceremony for just an hour and thirty minutes this morning to pay her respects and greet some of the families of the fallen. During the ceremony, she felt overheated, so she departed to go to her daughter’s apartment, and is feeling much better.”
So, again, this is coming on the heels of what’s been really unfolding in New York for about 90 minutes or so, Brian.
STELTER: Right.
ZELENY: She was seen by some law enforcement officials leaving abruptly. And then, we were not told exactly where she was. The statement now coming out from the Clinton campaign, from Nick Merrill, again, I’ll repeat to you. He said, “During the ceremony, she felt overheated and departed to go to her daughter’s apartment.”
So, she is at Chelsea’s apartment in the Flatiron neighborhood of Manhattan. That’s where she is now, Brian. Of course, this is all, you know, being discussed. There have been questions raised by her opponents about her health and other things.
But she was seen this morning leaving Ground Zero and the statement out from Nick Merrill saying she was fine, she was just feeling over-heated this morning. We also have some other reporting from our other colleagues here.
Let me look at this right now, Brian. It says she left the 9/11 event because she was not feeling well. Secret Service agents were helping her into her van in the motorcade. Someone saw that happening, a law enforcement official is telling CNN as she was helped in her van at Ground Zero and she was taken to Chelsea’s apartment, and she is at her daughter’s apartment right now in New York, Brian.
STELTER: Very worrisome news to hear, ob-viously, Jeff. As someone who covers the Clinton campaign, what can you tell us about how frequently Clinton may have any health issues, because obviously for years, there have been conspiracies online promoted by conservative websites, saying that she is secretly ill. The campaign has denied that. And her physician has said she is fit to serve as president.
ZELENY: Indeed, her physician has said she is fit to serve as president. She’s released much more medical information than her rival has, of course, but still has not released all records as others have over the years. Now, this, certainly, is going to prompt and renew and raise more questions about her health potentially here.
She is 68 years old. She will turn 69 in October, before Election Day. It has, you know, we have seen it a lot over recent weeks, you know, some selected images and pictures and video of her stumbling.
STELTER: Taken out of context.
ZELENY: Taken out of context. Yes.
And I can tell you, Brian, after, you know, I cover her a lot day in and day out on the campaign trail. Her schedule is very aggressive. We heard Donald Trump often saying, oh, she is taking a nap in the middle of the day. That’s not true. She has a very rigorous campaign schedule.
On Thursday, for example, I flew with her all day as she left the airport there in Westchester, you know, around 10:00 a.m. after doing a press conference, and we returned at 11:00 p.m. She had a couple of different campaign stops, a couple of different fund raising stops, and working along the way. So, she’s definitely keeping up a rigorous pace here. But there are going to be questions about her health.
In this incident, this episode, the situation this morning in Manhattan is just the latest example of that. But the fact of the Clinton campaign putting out this statement this morning saying she felt overheated at Ground Zero and was taken to her daughter’s apartment is the information we have right now at this hour—Brian.
STELTER: Jeff, thank you very much. Appreciate it. We will stay close to you and check back in. Let me turn back to our panel and ask David Zurawik a question about this.
David, full disclosure, this news happened earlier in the morning on Twitter, a FOX reporter reported this according to one law enforcement source. We and other news outlets have been waiting for confirmation, of course, reaching out to sources in the meantime. That’s how it should work in the news business.
I want to ask you what you think the media and the political implications of this are, especially how a story takes root online, how rumors spread before facts actually catch up.
ZURAWIK: Yes, let me tell you what I actually thought in my heart of hearts sitting in the green room when I found out about this and it was only FOX reporting it. It looked like it was one source, then it was a little fuzzy about the second source. But I thought, wow. They better be right about this because if they’re not, the possible implications of what they are reporting, if they are wrong, this is awful.
My feeling was, you—on something like this, Brian, you wait until you have at least two sources you are comfortable with. This is not something you go out there—it was also reported with details, alleged details I should say about the physical appearance of the candidate and as she got to the van.
