[iwar] [fc:Pentagon.Spokeswoman.Torie.Clarke,.Learning.About.War.Firsthand]

From: Fred Cohen (fc@all.net)
Date: 2001-10-15 17:19:02
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Date: Mon, 15 Oct 2001 17:19:02 -0700 (PDT)
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Subject: [iwar] [fc:Pentagon.Spokeswoman.Torie.Clarke,.Learning.About.War.Firsthand]
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In the Line of Fire
Pentagon Spokeswoman Torie Clarke, Learning About War Firsthand
    
By Howard Kurtz
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, October 15, 2001; Page C01

Torie Clarke, the Pentagon's chief spokeswoman, freely admits that her
previous knowledge of the military was "next to nothing."

In fact, she had only started briefing the press a few days before the
Sept.  11 attacks that destroyed part of her building.  Now she's the
key official in deciding how much information and access journalists are
given in the war on terrorism -- and winning reasonably high marks in
the process. 

But the veteran campaign strategist knows how to play hardball -- such
as refusing to discuss a USA Today report last month that U.S.  special
forces were operating inside Afghanistan. 

"We're not going to get in the business of winks and nods," Clarke says. 
"If you say this part is correct and this part is not correct, you've
produced a very clear picture of what you're doing, which is very
helpful to the enemy.  If we took the time to wave on or wave off
everything that popped up, there would be no time in the day to do
anything else."

Unlike Pete Williams, her predecessor during the Gulf War, Victoria
"Torie" Clarke, 42, is not a fixture on television (and agreed only
reluctantly to be interviewed).  She's been sending out her boss,
Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, who's done 18 news conferences and 28
interviews since Sept.  11.  ("He's happy to do it -- I wouldn't go so
far as to say 'eager,' " Clarke says.) She also nudged Rumsfeld into a
90-minute off-the-record session with reporters while flying from Turkey
to Belgium -- on a day he was visiting four continents. 

Clarke made a rare appearance at the podium Thursday to dispute Afghan
claims that U.S.  bombs had killed 160 civilians.  " 'Ground truth' is
hard to find," she says. 

Given the inherent tensions between the two sides, Clarke will never
have the press singing her praises.  Despite the initial deployment of
40 journalists to U.S.  aircraft carriers, media types say she isn't
delivering much. 

"I think she's fighting the good fight, but the military is really
clamping down," says Time defense correspondent Mark Thompson.  "She's
obviously our conduit to the military, and if they go from an oil
pipeline to a drinking straw, that's what comes out the other end."

Says Knight Ridder bureau chief Clark Hoyt: "I appreciate the fact she
says at every opportunity that the journalists she works with are
sensitive to security concerns and act responsibly.  She's been
reasonably accessible so far, but I'm not entirely satisfied with the
results we've gotten."

Not that Clarke is losing much sleep over the matter. 

"The most fabulous thing about Torie Clarke," says Mary Matalin, Vice
President Cheney's counselor, is that press criticism "bounces way off
of her.  She's unaffected by it.  She's a naturally feisty person."

Clarke had not known Rumsfeld -- she was a White House pick -- but
insiders say she's been drawn into his inner circle since the crisis
began.  She was in the Pentagon's Command Center when the hijackers'
plane struck the building -- "We felt this big thump and a boom" -- and
assumed it was a bomb until Rumsfeld returned from outside and explained
what had happened. 

Clarke initially hesitated to take the job, and Margaret Tutwiler, now
ambassador to Morocco, told her that dealing with the brass would be "a
real challenge." Indeed, after being confirmed in May, Clarke
encountered a military culture that often distrusts journalists. 

"The further you get away from Vietnam, the more you have a sense that
there's an advantage to working with the press," she says.  "But it's
the same thing in the private sector.  You have 40-year-old
multinational corporation CEOs who don't want to deal with the media and
don't think it's important."

Clarke understands that world, having served at the National Cable and
Telecommunications Association, as president of Bozell/Eskew advertising
and, most recently, as manager of Hill &amp; Knowlton's Washington
office. 

The onetime Washington Star reporter and photographer got her political
start as a press assistant for then-Vice President Bush in 1982.  She
left because Bush's "absolute number one rule was: We are here to
support President Reagan.  We were in the business of tamping down any
interest in [Bush]."

That was hardly the case when Clarke -- after stints with John McCain
and the U.S.  trade representative's office -- became press secretary
for Bush's 1992 reelection campaign.  In a losing atmosphere, says
Matalin, "she kept people pumped up."

She also talked herself into trouble by declaring: "There's a dearth of
Republican men you'd want to date -- I call them the galoshes and C-SPAN
guys." Clarke solved that problem by marrying a Democrat, Bradley
Graham, now a Fannie Mae executive. 

The war has torn Clarke away from her three young children (she boasts
of limiting her weekends to eight-hour work days).  One day her husband
called to say that their van had been stolen, shortly after their Chevy
Chase home was burglarized.  She told him to handle it: "I'm taking off
for the Middle East in a few hours." Clarke returned to find that Devan,
4 1/2, had given 3-year-old Charlie a haircut so awful that they had to
shave his head, military style. 

Conflicts with the media are likely to intensify once the ground war
begins, especially if Clarke sticks to her plan to cut back to two
Department of Defense briefings a week.  Clarke, meanwhile, is learning
to curb her tongue. 

Back in 1992, she cracked about Bill Clinton: "You say B-52s, here's a
guy who still thinks of the rock group." Now she's dealing with real
B-52s. 

"There's no fooling around in this job," says Clarke.  "You screw up,
there can be very serious consequences." Media Morsels

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