Ex Issa aide accuses MSM of offering to collaborate on partisan investigations of Obama

[sabra]

http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/newsdesk/2011/03/issa-and-his-aide.html

Issa and His Aide
Posted by Ryan Lizza

<snip>

The Politico story, which was broken by Marin Cogan and Jake Sherman, reported that Issa was investigating whether Bardella forwarded and blind-copied private e-mails to Mark Leibovich, a New York Times reporter who is writing a book about Washington. This afternoon, Issa fired Bardella. (Full disclosure: both Cogan and Leibovich are friends of mine.)

I’m somewhat mystified that Issa required an “investigation” to get to the bottom of this, because inside Issa’s office there was no secret about Bardella’s cooperation. When I was writing my profile of Issa, Bardella openly discussed his cooperation with Leibovich—and not just with me, but with his direct boss as well. For example, during a meeting with Bardella and Issa’s chief of staff, Dale Neugebauer, the three of us had a light-hearted discussion about how extensively Bardella was working with Leibovich.

...

While I was trailing Issa at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas in January, Bardella elaborated further on the kind of material he was sharing with Leibovich. Here’s a partial transcript of our interview:

...

This long back and forth was the lead-in to a Bardella quote I used in the piece:

(R)eporters e-mail me saying, “Hey, I’m writing this story on this thing. Do you think you guys might want to investigate it? If so, if you get some documents, can you give them to me?” I’m, like, “You guys are going to write that we’re the ones wanting to do all the investigating, but you guys are literally the ones trying to egg us on to do that!”

To me that last quote was one of the most important things Bardella told me. The rest of it—that offices clash over how to leak info and that bookers and reporters are competitive—is interesting but relatively well known, and not very relevant to a piece about Darrell Issa. But that Bardella accused reporters of offering to collaborate with Issa as he launches what will inevitably be partisan investigations of the Obama Administration seemed jaw-dropping. This is exactly the dysfunctional investigator/reporter dynamic that in the nineteen-nineties fed frenzies over every minor Clinton scandal. In his short-lived career, Bardella was witness to the fact that it was all starting over in 2011, now that there was again a Republican House and a Democratic President. From what I know of what Bardella shared, the beat reporters who cover Issa and engaged in this kind of game with Bardella will be the ones most embarrassed by the e-mails that Leibovich possesses.

Read more http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/newsdesk/2011/03/issa-and-his-aide.html#ixzz1FThDqDDG

[spanone]

1. k&r

[Bonhomme Richard]

2. It's called collusion. And we wonder why it is so difficult to....

get the truth out.

[malaise]

3. This is going to be good

ReTHUGS have interest in nothing other than power.

[Old and In the Way]

4. Corporate investigative journalism took an 8 year hiatus while Bush/Cheney

were breaking real laws. A bunch of gutless wonders who can take a fair share of credit for the mess that this country faces. Why Issa is still in Congress creating bogus investigations and not in jail is a story that the NYT ought to be pursuing.

[SoCalDem]

5. Media will call him a "disgruntled former employee who got what was coming to him"..move along

nothing to see here..:(

[Mojeoux]

6. Issa Invented Car Locks Because He Used to Steal Cars!!!

That all came out here in California, when he made his run for Governor and lost to Arnold!