News

David Corn

One Man Media Machine

BY MITCHELL TROPIN

Photo by Julie Wiatt

The President and most of Congress warn that Saddam Hussein poses a severe danger—perhaps a nuclear risk—requiring immediate and complete neutralization. There is not a second to lose, for at any moment he might develop a nuclear bomb—that is, if he hasn't already—and slip it to the operatives of Osama bin Laden's resurgent terrorist network. Meanwhile, the sluggish economy persists, and millions of unemployed workers will be walloped by a suspension in unemployment benefits during the holiday season. How does Congress meet its responsibilities in such a perilous period? It skips town. —"An Un-serious Congress," The Nation, 11/25/2002

On Capitol Hill, behind the Supreme Court, there is a converted apartment building that houses the The Nation magazine's Washington bureau. Inside is a one-man media dynamo: Nation editor and Takoma Park resident David Corn.

Corn does it all: articles and columns for The Nation (both its print and online versions); opinion pieces for tompaine.com and altnet.com, where his "Loyal Opposition" column appears; frequent appearances on television news programs on Fox, MSNBC, and CNN; and books—he has authored two published books and has another on the way.

Corn always seems to be writing something. He can file almost anytime he wants with The Nation online. For the print version, a weekly, he addresses a wide range of issues and subjects, from Steve Earle and his song about John Walker Lindh, the Takoma Taliban, to the current health of the anti-war movement; from Al Gore to post-September 11 conspiracy theories (which became a veritable hornet's nest for Corn).

Corn's parents were liberal but not politically active, he said. "The extent of my political instruction was an admonition from my mother to read a newspaper every day—and I did."

Growing up outside New York City in White Plains, the young David aspired to either play basketball for the New York Knicks or be a constitutional lawyer. But that all changed when Watergate brought investigative journalism to the forefront. Suddenly, becoming a journalistic watchdog became Corn's dream.

What made journalism so appealing to him was the notion that a reporter could participate in the larger public arena without being part of the establishment.

"You perform a public service that is not bound by rules of government," he said. "You can poke your nose in other people's lives; you have a license to ask people questions."

Corn enrolled in Brown University in Providence, R.I., and began writing for The Brown Daily Herald, the campus newspaper and the second largest publication in the state. Its preeminence attracted the attention of the city's mayor, Vincent A. "Buddy" Cianci, Jr., an old-style political boss. Cianci remained in office for 28 years, resigning in 2002, following his conviction for racketeering and being sentenced to 64 months in prison.

Corn said his amazement over the powerful Cianci taking time to schmooze with the school newspaper. "He came to every event, even if he wasn't invited," he said.

He said the mayor would get drunk, play piano, and complain about how student reporter Corn was always "busting his chops." During one party, the mayor sidled up to the young journalist, put an arm around his sholder, and offered him a job with City Hall.

"Isn't there a hiring freeze?" Corn asked innocently.

"Oh, there is always room for one more," the mayor replied with a wink. Such was the beginning of David Corn's political education.

Laughing about the incident, Corn said that he turned down the job. "If I had accepted, I would have been very rich—or serving time!"

After Brown, Corn went to work for Ralph Nader, starting Nuclear Times, which provides coverage of the grassroots peace and nuclear disarmament movements. For Corn, though, it sometimes felt like "two years of covering bad dreams about nuclear war. "

He arrived in Washington in 1987 as a writer for The Nation, America's oldest weekly magazine, begun in 1865. During that summer, Corn became immersed in the Iran-Contra hearings. He was fascinated by the "remarkably wacky and far out" testimony, which surpassed anything he could imagine.

The congressional staffers he hung out with would talk about how the Contras in Nicaragua were involved in drug trafficking to raise funds, but Corn could not believe this was happening. If the Contras were drug dealers, he reasoned, the media would be reporting this information. He came to discover, however, that "it turned out to be pretty much all true."

Equally amazing to him was the amount of information readily available.

"The congressional staffers were putting out all of these documents, hoping people like me would look at them. Thousands of pages of exhibits were handed out, but few reporters read the exhibits; they just covered the hearings," Corn said. "The regular reporters did not have the timeÉ[but] I would go home each night and read these several-inch thick documents...a treasure chest for journalists. It was a wonderful first year for me in Washington."

The Iran-Contra hearings would later draw Corn's attention to the covert side of the CIA and to one person in particular: Ted Shackley. This lead to Corn's first book, Blond Ghost: Ted Shackley and the CIA's Crusades, published in 1994. Blond Ghost is about Shackley, "the godfather of secret warriors," and 28-year career with the CIA, during which he rose to one of the top positions at the agency. He was involved in many of the central events of the cold war, including the effort to eliminate Castro, the Vietnam War, and the ousting of Chilean president Salvador Allende. Shackley died on Dec. 12, 2002.

Researching the book was hard, Corn said. He found it difficult to find information about a man who rose to fame by staying in the shadows. Over five years, Corn talked to about 100 people, including Shackley's daughter.

"She never believed I was only writing a book," Corn said. "She thought I had another agenda."

For a change of pace in 1999, Corn wrote his first novel, Deep Background, a political thriller. Set in Washington, the plot centers around an American president who is assassinated while conducting a press conference inside the White House. The murder thriller posed a challenge for Corn, who wanted to make sure everything in the book made sense. "No tricks or magic," he said, explaining that writing such a novel "is like constructing a crossword puzzle."

Corn has just signed a contract to produce a book about President George W. Bush. The tough part: Corn will only have six months to complete the book. He believes he is up to the challenge; he is comfortable writing "a couple of thousand of words a week."

Some of his other challenges are not so easily overcome. He did not anticipate the hailstorm of criticism he encountered in response to a column he recently wrote assailing post-9/11 conspiracy theories. When the article came out, presenting a simple explanation of the lack of logic or reason behind some of the more popular conspiracy theories, including one accusing the U.S. government of coordinating the attack, Corn found himself inundated by hundreds of angry e-mail messages.

In a follow-up column, he contended that the U.S. government is simply not evil enough, smart enough, nor organized enough to have pulled off and then covered up the Sept. 11 attack. He described the attack on the World Trade Center as being "far beyond the skill level of U.S. intelligence," and added, "anyone with the most basic understanding of how government functions, or does not function, realizes that the various bureaucracies of Washington—particularly those of the national security community—do not work well together."

In response, Corn was accused of being either a government lackey or a total fool. "Some accused me of being a sophisticated CIA disinformation agent. Others claimed I was hopelessly naive."

Rather than sink deeper in the conspiracy muck, Corn gave up. He "declared victory and moved on to the next thing." Still, he was taken aback by the extent of the protests.

"I was surprised by how many crazy people are out there," he said.

In recent years, Corn has been a frequent TV guest commentator, appearing on The McLaughlin Group, Washington Week in Review, The Capital Gang, and Meet the Press. In contrast with print journalism, Corn says, television creates notoriety—a mixed blessing, he concedes. He had a negative experience in 1996 Corn was attending a fundraiser in Texas for then-presidential candidate Pat Buchanan.

"Some woman started yelling at me for something I had said on C-Span. I replied, 'I don't remember saying that,' and then she started yelling at me even more for denying I had said it."

Despite frequent appearances, Corn has not become part of the Washington establishment.

"I still don't hang out with the typical Washington media crowd. Tim Russert doesn't call me and say, 'Hey, Dave, let's hang out.' Appearing on TV and arguing with Bill Krystal on CNN is not a life-transforming event," he said. "Of course it could well be that Pat Buchanan, Larry King, and Walter Issacson are getting together and deliberately not inviting me. I want to raise this as a distinct possibility," he adds with a smile.