Issue #12/67, June 17 - July 1, 1999  

The Thomas Jefferson Free Speech Medal: Tom Brokaw and Leslie Stahl

The Kosovo war was a forum for an impressively wide range of appalling press behavior, but there was no journalist or group of journalists anywhere in the world who came even close to matching the villainy displayed one night early on in the bombing campaign by Tom Brokaw and Leslie Stahl, 800-pound media gorillas of NBC Nightly News and CBS's 60 Minutes, respectively. On April 27, both of the high-profile New York-based network personalities arrived, as headline guests, at the $250-a-plate black tie Overseas Press Club Awards, a national journalism awards ceremony. They were joined there by the ceremony's keynote speaker-- U.S. special Balkans envoy Richard Holbrooke. Holbrooke, you may remember, was the man responsible for presenting to Slobodan Milosevic the Rambouillet agreement (which even Henry Kissinger called "an ultimatum") the NATO-Kosovo Liberation Army-signed "peace plan" whose rejection impelled NATO to start its bombing campaign. Since making this key contribution to the war effort, however, Holbrooke had been keeping a low profile, and had successfully avoided giving any interviews throughout the duration of the war.

At least two journalists in the audience were surprised by Holbrooke's presence at the event-- Jeremy Scahill and Amy Goodman of Oakland-based Radio Pacifica. The pair had come to the Hyatt to receive an award for their radio documentary on the Nigerian dictatorship, but were surprised to see journalists cozying up to a Clinton aide.

"It didn't make any sense," Goodman said later. "In the middle of the war,

Howdy there, guys 'n gals! I'm NATO's new official mascot, Kyle The Clusterbomb, and I just wanna thank all of you for not taking an active interest in this little campaign of ours in Yugoslavia. Aw heck, it was all too complicated anyway, what with Yugoslavs and Koservors and Albaners and whatever the heck else those people called themselves. Who needs the headache, huh? You didn't give a hoot, and thanks to you, that meant that we could keep bombing and bombing every hospital, school, playground, graveyard, and whatever the dickens we could find. Now that it's all over, you're prob'bly scratchin' your head and asking yourself, "Hey, Kyle, was it a success?" Good question, and here's my answer: you're darned tootin' it was a success! And best of all, they got to use me, Kyle The Clusterbomb, on every city, town and village in that weird foreign place. Now if that's not a reason to stand up and applaud, then doggonit, I don't know what is! Say, this is real fun, being NATO's mascot. You prob'bly won't believe it, guys 'n gals, but there were some real nuts out there who tried banning Yours Truly from warfare (some of these people even won Nobel Peace Prizes, showing you just how upside down this wild world is!). Then there was that pud, Jimmy Carter, who tried to write and call President Clinton to beg him not to use cluster bombs on civilian areas. But thank God, or rather, thank Clinton, cooler heads prevailed, and Clinton never even bothered to return the calls or letters. As for me, well, don't worry about missing me anytime soon. See, up to 30% of my little cluster bomblets never detonated. That's just how I work. It's how they designed me. Know what else? I'm cute as heck! And that means the fun goes on. What with all the tons 'n tons of clusters dropped on Yugoslavia, you can bet that curious li'l tykes will be picking up Kyle The Clusterbomb bomblets in empty fields for decades to come! Ka-boom! I don't know about you, guys 'n gals, but I'm callin' my broker and telling him to park my money in Serbian prosthetics limbs and coffin manufacturers. And pronto! Don't believe me? Welp, just look at little Laos, some weird poor Asian country where we dropped a whole lotta clusters to try to get rid of those pesky commies. Fact is, right up to this day, your pal Kyle is making top ramen out of 4,000 people a year. I've been doing that for over 25 years now. The really exciting part is that most of the deaths are kids--curious kids like you--who see how cute and cool I look, go to pick me up, and then... Ker-Blam-O! Welp, that's all for now. Hope you're there to see one of my little bomblets make its trademark Ker-Blam-O's and you see a little Serbian boy running around in circles with his head hanging off of his neck and his arms blown off. It's what I call "Just Desserts," guys 'n gals. They shouldn't have done that thing to those other people. I'm a believer in tough love, and for the next few decades, that's what they'll get from me. Tough love. Don't worry about me leaving you anytime soon. So long as NATO needs a mascot, I'll be on 24-hour duty! Ay-ay, sir!

journalists and the key players in a war effort shouldn't be fraternizing like that. It should be an adversarial relationship."

To underscore her point, Goodman approached Holbrooke prior to the start of the ceremony and started asking him about the war. "I asked him if he thought it was hypocritical of NATO to demand that Milosevic destroy his chemical weapons stockpile when NATO itself was bombing oil refineries and poisoning the environment. His answer was, 'I don't do the target list. I'm not the right person to answer that question.'"

It turned out that the Club had agreed ahead of time to Holbrooke's demand that he not be asked any questions at the ceremony. Goodman and Scahill were stunned; how could a club for journalists agree ahead of time not to ask an important public figure any questions? They'd scarcely had time to even consider the issue when the ceremony began on another shocking note, as the club president decided to open the ceremony by praising the alleged progress made by the Indonesian government in its treatment of journalists.

"Indonesia," the emcee began, "is the new ray of hope."

Scahill and Goodman looked at one another. They'd just recently returned from Indonesia, where they had filed a report about the government's routine beatings of journalists in East Timor.

"The tone for the evening had been set," Goodman said.

Soon afterward, Holbrooke advanced to the podium. His first move was to give his media brothers some love. "The kind of coverage we've been seeing from the New York Times, the Washington Post, ABC, CNN, CBS, NBC...it has been extraordinary and exemplary." As he stood at the mike, Holbrooke was flanked on either side by Stahl, Brokaw, CNN Pentagon correspondent J.D. McIntyre, a contingent from ABC... in other words, every organization he'd just mentioned.

Holbrooke then went on to announce that NATO had bombed the Serbian state television station in Belgrade. As he reported this, he looked over at Eason Jordan, president of CNN international, and added: "I know it's true because I heard it on CNN, and I believe everything CNN tells me."

Here was the official reaction of the 200-plus crowd of American journalists to the news that NATO had just bombed and killed some fifteen Serbian journalists and injured scores of others: it laughed.

Scahill couldn't take it anymore. In the middle of Holbrooke's remarks, he stood up and yelled out a question that had been on his mind. The question revolved around the Rambouillet agreement, which he'd recently read in full and discovered within its Appendix B a hitherto unreported clause. The clause specified that NATO under the agreement would have license to put an occupying force of soldiers not only in Kosovo, but anywhere and everywhere on the territory of Serbia. In other words, if Milosevic had signed Rambouillet, he would have been forfeiting his country's sovereignty. No matter how much he might have been wanted to or have been willing to compromise before Rambouillet, once it was presented to him he couldn't possibly have signed the deal without committing treason. Rambouillet was therefore more or less a declaration of war on the part of NATO--a fact that Holbrooke had not yet been forced to explain to the American public. Interrupting the cozy ceremony, Scahill tried to change that.

"Isn't it true," he yelled out, over cries of "Sit down!" and "Shhh!" from journalists throughout the hall, "that Rambouillet would have resulted in an occupation that no sovereign nation would accept?"

Holbrooke kept his mouth shut, letting the rising catcalls and hisses from the journalists in the audience speak for him. Scahill persisted, calling out for his "fellow journalists" to support him in urging Holbrooke to answer the question. No luck: all he got were more cries of "Sit down!" and "This isn't the right time to ask questions!" In a last-ditch effort to keep the moment alive, Scahill then directed his appeal directly at the biggest name in the room-Brokaw. "As a fellow journalist, I ask for your support, Tom Brokaw..."

As Stahl shook her head to express her frustration with Scahill, Brokaw stood up. "Dick said he'll speak to you later," he growled, adding: "Go sit down."

In the New York Post's famous "Page Six" column the next day, Stahl was quoted describing Scahill as the "Kosovo Crank".

In any case, after being shouted down by Brokaw, Scahill was escorted out of the hall by Hyatt security. Only when he managed to convince the security men that he had to be readmitted because he was due to receive an award was he let back in and allowed to stand in the rear of the room.

Soon afterward, Brokaw was called up to the podium to present the awards. He hastily read out the commendation for Goodman and Scahill's Nigeria documentary, and was in the middle of announcing the next award when Goodman interrupted him. She identified herself as the winner of the previous commendation, and then announced that she and Scahill were refusing the award in protest over the decision to keep Holbrooke insulated from questions. Brokaw again cut her off, saying: "Dick has agreed to answer your question after the event." This time even Holbrooke was audible, and he promised to answer the question after the ceremony. Skeptical but temporarily mollified, Scahill and Goodman let the issue drop and waited for the program to end.

It did, and the pair made their way back to Holbrooke to collect the reward for their patience. No dice. Holbrooke explained that he couldn't talk to them because he had to leave immediately and "bring his 89 year-old father-in-law home". As Goodman described it, Holbrooke was leaning on the old-timer more than the other way around. Scahill persisted, saying he understood that Holbrooke had to go home, but that he, Holbrooke, had promised in front of hundreds of people that he would answer the question after the ceremony, and that it was only fair that he keep his promise. Holbrooke was aghast and, still clutching his father-in-law, began shrieking, "Have you no respect!" Holbrooke then started making his way for the elevator; Scahill pursued. Finally Holbrooke relented, and agreed to answer one question. Scahill repeated the question about Appendix B of the Rambouillet agreement.

"I wasn't there, I don't know," Holbrooke snapped. "There, there's your question."

"No, it isn't," Scahill said. "That's not an answer. You've got to answer the question."

Holbrooke disagreed and disappeared with his father-in-law into the elevator. Finally Scahill gave up.

It came out later that Stahl drove Holbrooke home.

New York papers which reported the incident gave heavy play to a Stahl quote which defended the treatment of the two radio reporters. "This was an awards ceremony. It was neither the time nor the place to ask questions," she said. Goodman's response: "The time was in the middle of a war, during a bombing. The place was in a room with hundreds of journalists. If this is an inappropriate place and time, what would be an appropriate place and time?"

Hairy Balls Medal: Madeleine Albright

Nothing moved this woman at all. Not the sight of dead children. Not the sight of massive suffering. Not the sight of destroyed cities. Even vaporized Albanian refugees, victims of NATO missiles, didn't bother her. Why, how could that be? You ask.

NATO bureaucrats discovered the secret when Albright released pilotless aerial drone photos of her genitalia. To the shock and surprise of some, it turned out that she not only has a very large set of testicles safely encased in a thick epidermis of scaly, leathery flesh--in other words, a scrotum--but that the hair that covers and protects her scrotum is not only copious in quantity, but unusually thick and painful to the touch. Judges for the Hairiest Balls Medal who were allowed to inspect Ms. Albright's genitalia later described the hair on her scrotum as being "thorny," "like steel wool" and even "like barbed wire", by one judge who cut himself in several places. Some judges complained that it took weeks for the scratches on their hands and fingers to heal. Doctors attributed that to the natural abundance of bacteria that had collected in the folds upon folds of moldy flesh between her legs, which is thought to be a damp area, rarely washed or exposed to fresh air.

"It's an ideal breeding ground for all kinds of microrganisms, things we've never seen before except in fossil records," commented one doctor.

The Hairest Balls medal is a simple red, white and blue ribbon with a lock of hair donated by A.C. Green.

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