E-Mail: Former NYT Reporter Promised Hillary a Puff Piece With Veto Power Over Content (Updated)

July 1st, 2015 8:38 AM

T. Becket Adams at The Washington Examiner reports newly released e-mails demonstrate the pliant press Hillary Clinton counted on while she was Secretary of State. The most embarrassing e-mail concerned Leslie Gelb, one of those revolving-door liberals – former appointee of Lyndon Johnson and Jimmy Carter, and former New York Times correspondent and columnist.

Gelb wrote a fluffy profile of Hillary for the Sunday newspaper supplement Parade Magazine in 2009, and get a load of how he offered Mrs. Clinton a pile of fluff, even veto power over the content.  Longtime Clinton ally Lynn Forester de Rothschild e-mailed Hillary:

"I spent yesterday with Les Gelb on Nantucket. He had lots to say which might be of interest, but I thought the most important thing to tell you is to make sure you are aware of the Parade magazine piece he wants to do about you," she wrote in an email addressed to the now-Democratic presidential candidate. "He would like to do a day in your life, when you meet with members of Congress and international figures. He wants to show the impact you are having domestically and internationally."

She added in a passage that reflected poorly on Gelb, "He said he would give you a veto over content and looked me in the eye and said, 'she will like it.' Maybe you know this, but did not want it to fall between the cracks. Enjoy your vacation and love to all of you."

This underlines a vein of reporting that reporters don’t want explored: there's been a lot of "She will like it" profiles over the last 23 years. That’s one reason Hillary’s very stingy with press, to make them negotiate and offer her conditions, including veto power over questions, quotes and so on.    

Gelb's Parade piece began with a gush:

We’re going to work you to death,” Hillary Clinton promised me with a laugh. She was taking me—and PARADE’s readers—along on a typical day in the life of the U.S. Secretary of State. Our 24 hours together would prove both grueling and inspirational, full of diplomatic pageantry, big meetings with policy brainiacs, small sessions with trusted aides, a stream of time-consuming formal duties, and, of course, phone calls and more phone calls. The Secretary allowed me to be a fly on the wall for almost every minute, under the constantly watchful eyes of the Diplomatic Security Service. Having known her since her husband began his first run for the White House in 1991, I couldn’t stop myself from calling her Hillary. To everyone else, however, she was always Madame Secretary.

PS: Adams began with Buzzfeed editor Ben Smith, who back in 2009 was a Politico reporter. Smith tried to gain access to Hillary the opposite way, suggesting she wasn’t exactly special in her new job:

On June 22, 2009, Smith wrote [Hillary press aide Tommy] Vietor, saying, "[Thanks]. I've been successfully, mostly, talked out of that thesis."

Vietor responded with a simple, "Victory!"

Smith told the Washington Examiner that there's more to the story than the single State Department email suggests.

"I think I'd tried to get them to talk to me by floating the thesis that she was totally irrelevant," Smith told the Examiner. "Reporters' tactics are not always great."

UPDATE: The Parade magazine website has added this disclaimer to the old Gelb article: 

Editor’s Note: The following story was originally published in 2009. Parade was acquired by Athlon Media Group (AMG/Parade) in September 2014. While we cannot speak to the policies of prior owners, AMG/Parade does not promise favorable coverage or allow any story subject control of the editorial process.

In other words, when they gush over the "famously Catholic Kennedys" or insist Jon Stewart "tells the truth and attacks hypocrisy with surgical precision," they're sincerely oozing without giving their heroes a veto over the final story.