News of the outcome concerning the search for Roy McGrath came Monday night as a shock.

Roy was a colleague over 20 years ago. We reconnected when he began frequent trips to the Eastern Shore as the head of the Maryland Environmental Service (MES). At no time over two decades could I have imagined an outcome like the one resulting in his death yesterday as a fugitive from justice.

For a time, Roy chose to become more engaged in activities on the Eastern Shore. MES serves the Eastern Shore in many ways from the rebuilding of Poplar Island to recycling. There are employees here in our communities and community engagement was something Roy sought.

He stepped away from MES to become Governor Hogan’s chief of staff, leaving that office when he found himself caught in what he always described as an unfair series of attacks surrounding his tenure at MES and his departure.

While there are surely facts to be discovered, I found myself thinking about this tragedy the way the aviation community thinks about aircraft accidents. As a pilot for over five decades, one of the things I learned was that there was never just one cause for a tragic outcome.  Furthermore, there is usually a case to be made that if just one or two elements along a tragic path had occurred differently, the tragedy could have been avoided.

I feel that way about Roy and the path he was on. He always presented himself as someone at the top of his game. Over many conversations, it was clear he was proud of the business-like way he was running MES.

If only he had fostered more allies inside.

If only upon his departure he had rejected a separation payment.

If only the board of MES had decided such a payment was unwarranted.

If only Roy, who never wavered in suggesting he was innocent of all charges, could have had his day in court before a judge and jury.

If only he had not fled from the trial before it began.

The path Roy chose and decisions he and others made lead to his death. I just cannot help but believe this could have turned out differently if just one or two factors could have been altered.

My thoughts are with Roy’s wife and family. It is a sad day, a sad loss, and regrettable that justice in this matter will be denied the chance to be done.

Craig Fuller served four years in the White House as assistant to President Reagan for Cabinet Affairs, followed by four years as chief of staff to Vice President George H.W. Bush. Having been engaged in five presidential campaigns and run public affairs firms and associations in Washington, D.C., he now resides on the Eastern Shore.

Please Standby….

So, imagine this.

FOX SPORTS COMMENTATOR #1:  ……Brady drops back. He escapes a sack and is running right. He has a receiver down field. He launches a long pass that could win the game….it’s going to be close….

FOX SPORTS COMMENTATOR #2:  Stay with us, and we’ll be back to share what happens right after a short break.

ASSOCIATED PRESS SPORTS HEADLINE:  Brady’s pass in the last 3 seconds wins the game!

FOX SPORTS COMMENTATOR #1:  We want to pick up with an analysis of just how this critical game has gone up to the last 3 seconds.  And, we will share the Associated Press report on the game’s outcome, when we come back from this commercial break….

OK, so this is something that would never happen, right? Who would tolerate a sports reporting network holding off showing the final pass of the game to hold its audience through commercial breaks and to extend its ratings?

Well, FOX SPORTS would never do this, but what about FOX NEWS?

Last week, Dave Wheelan at the Spy spoke with Al From and me in our weekly commentary segment about the impact on the Dominion suit against FOX NEWS for defaming the company and saying on air things the anchors and commentators knew not to be true based on recovered emails from the post 2020 election time-period.

My quip at the outset suggested that there might be two key questions about the FOX NEWS revelations:  1) was anyone surprised; and, 2) did anyone really care? 

While it was bad enough that Rupert Murdoch acknowledged that the news organization he owns had misled viewers, it seemed this story was destined to get worse. This past weekend, it did get worse when Peter Baker in the NEW YORK TIMES gained access to a Zoom conference held after the 2020 election with the FOX NEWS CEO and the leading anchors and commentators. 

The Zoom meeting was recorded and thus provides a revealing look into the words and thinking of FOX NEWS leaders.  And, the focus was how it was wrong in the 2020 election to call Arizona for then candidate Joe Biden first, even though it was the correct call from FOX’s own election desk that had invested millions of dollars to get election calls correct.

And, the reason for the angst by the “faces of FOX NEWS” was that three things had happened:  1) the election desk got the Arizona call right; 2) FOX was first to make the public announcement; 3) the FOX personalities were surprised and not given time to slow down the release of this news to keep their audience locked into the coverage and happy with FOX reporting.

What?

Are not the key metrics of getting it “right” and getting it “first” important for all news organizations?

It turns out, not at FOX NEWS.  There, getting it right and getting it first brought outrage from partisans who favored a different outcome.  Discussion focused on backing off the Arizona election call, which the election desk refused to do. It focused on the cost of ending the suspense early and how it would have been better to wait until other news organizations made the call.

Time was (admittedly long ago, I guess) when covering presidential elections carried great responsibility.  Networks brought their best to election nights, taking care to report on the play by play that occurs across the nation on a national election day. Reporting on exit polls to share what is on the minds of voters was backed by million-dollar investments in research.  And, actually calling election outcomes was not left to the “talent” sitting in the anchor booth, it was the work of trained statisticians and researchers to get it right and get it early.

If you doubt how much has changed, the sad outcome at FOX NEWS was that the leaders of the FOX NEWS election desk that had been calling election results correctly for over a decade were removed from those jobs and from the network in a strange case where getting it right was getting it wrong from a career standpoint!

While I remain doubtful that too many people care, we should!

The broadcast organization is not branded “FOX CHAT.” It calls itself a news organization. However, the Zoom meeting, the emails and Rupert Murdoch’s own under oath testimony suggest that the coin of the realm is, well, just that: coin!  They want ratings. They want people watching. They want to see the company’s stock price rise – a comment from a Tucker Carlson email.

Polling shows the growing mistrust of news organizations. This is something about which we should be concerned. Journalists work to sort through all the claims and competing points of view to share a balanced story for most of us who cannot or will not take the time to do the research on an issue ourselves. So, when people cannot trust journalists, how do we stay informed?

The Dominion vs. FOX NEWS story is bound to grow larger (unless you watch FOX NEWS). Hopefully, there will be lessons for other news organizations and we, the consumer of news reporting, will be more discerning. Perhaps in time news organizations will bring the same rigor to telling us important election stories as their sister sports organizations bring to showing us great sporting events.  I guess we can hope!

Craig Fuller served four years in the White House as assistant to President Reagan for Cabinet Affairs, followed by four years as chief of staff to Vice President George H.W. Bush. Having been engaged in five presidential campaigns and run public affairs firms and associations in Washington, D.C., he now resides on the Eastern Shore.

 

Closing days of nationwide elections always fascinate me. This year, the intensity of calling citizens to the voting booth seems greater.

It’s the division, I think. The idea of bringing people together in a common cause seems workable only on a bifurcated basis. Republicans hold one set of views and Democrats another on Biden’s performance, abortion, education, the environment, crime and a whole range of other issues. At least, this seems to be the case.

Over the weekend, I heard President Obama ask a crowd in Pittsburgh, “….who will fight for you.” It’s a good question to ask, but the answer varies considerably between members of the two major parties and independents.

No more clear evidence of this presented itself to me than in a recent national survey measuring the approval rating of President Biden. In this poll, the overall approval number was 43%. However, looking inside that number tells the story. 83% of Democrats approved of Biden’s performance. 35% of Independents approved, but think that the economy and crime are the most important issues mirroring Republican sentiments. And, only 9% of Republicans approved of Biden’s performance.

So, the President who announced after his election he would bring us together, seems to have traveled a path that has us further apart than ever.

It is very difficult to see how this week’s election will alter the current reality very much. In fact, a White House lead by one party with the Congress lead by the other party seems a formula for only greater division.

Indeed, in the House, the likely-to-be-next Speaker, Kevin McCarthy, is laying plans for investigations and legislation to rollback what President Biden has tried to do. Few Republican legislative initiatives running counter to the views of leading Democrats will survive the veto pen in the Oval Office; but, few initiatives from the Administration are likely to be accepted by the new Congress.

So, is there a better path forward?

Spoiler alert: Al From and I spoke about this in our From & Fuller predictions in The Spy commentary last week.

From my perspective, we need leaders to emerge and vitriol to be submerged.

One way to get there would be for President Biden, following the final results of the 2022 election, to determine whether or not he can successfully govern in the final two years of his term if he faces Republican majorities in the House or the Senate or both while simultaneously launching a national re-election campaign for the presidency.

I, for one, think it cannot be done. If, however, President Biden would withdraw from campaigning he would no longer be the largest target of Republican leaders. And, new leaders would need to step forward among Democrats who would be less likely to challenge a sitting President of their own party.

A set of new faces among Democrats would surely increase the number of Republican leaders stepping up challenging a return to the past (something that many of us would truly like to move away from).

Lastly, the number of voters who express dissatisfaction with both major parties may well be larger than in decades, maybe ever. There are quiet discussions about finding leaders of both parties to lead a national ticket; or, perhaps a leader who is less partisan.

There are paths forward if individuals step up. What will not soon get us to a better place is doing the same things over and over again, hoping for a different set of results (thank you Einstein).

I do remain optimistic that leaders are out there and they can rally people around them. Indeed, Maryland has stood for that. The outgoing governor, Larry Hogan, remains a popular Republican across the state. And, the likely incoming governor, Wes Moore, a Democrat, enjoys strong bipartisan support. I suspect both will play their own important roles in finding a better way forward.

One can only hope!

Since August 8th, when FBI agents entered former President Trump’s Florida residence in search of government documents that he had failed to return, much has been said about finding TOP SECRET documents among materials he and his lawyers had represented were not at the residence.

This is very serious on multiple levels….here’s why.

My point of view comes from handling, reading and protecting TOP SECRET documents for the eight years I served in the White House. Many of these documents carried the SCI label meaning they were deemed Sensitive Compartmented Information and thus were extremely sensitive to our nation’s national security. And, for the four years I was the chief of staff to Vice President Bush, I received and reviewed one of the most highly protected documents, the President’s Daily Briefing (PDB). It was provided by a CIA briefer six times a week to the Vice President and me and we returned every copy to them before they left the room.

The importance of the discoveries in Florida has nothing to do, in my mind, with politics. Had these documents, or even a fraction of them, been found at a staff member’s home, the individual would have been investigated, fired and most likely prosecuted.

Why?

Because the mishandling of classified information puts lives at risk and degrades our ability to gather intelligence. And, that means our nation’s leading decision makers from the Congress, through key agencies and up to the President and his staff will not get vital insights needed to make informed foreign policy and national security decisions.

As a nation, we invest billions of dollars a year and engage thousands of people, some whose lives are at risk every day, to ensure our decision makers have the best intelligence in the world about what is happening and likely to happen around the world. This protects us from terrorists. This allows us to reduce the threat of terrorism here and abroad because terrorists know we are highly likely to find, capture or kill those who plan and execute murderous acts.

The information analyzed and turned into intelligence comes from extraordinary technology and from extraordinary people.

One recent example, when the US made clear to Ukraine that Russia’s Putin was going to invade, it wasn’t guessing. It had knowledge from multiple sources and while leaders in Europe doubted Putin would go as far as an invasion, America’s leaders knew otherwise.

Among the people I met while in government, the intelligence analysts were among the brightest, most dedicated and most impressive of individuals. They provided classified briefings before every trip we took (and, I traveled with the Vice President to more than 60 countries in four years). All these analysts want to do is get it right for our nation’s leaders. And, they work to convey the information in ways that it will best be understood often tailoring presentations to fit the individual decision maker’s preference for reviewing the intelligence.

The reason we have a classification system is to protect what we know and how we know it. Once this is penetrated by any of the many actors across the globe who seek to know what we know and how we know it, the intelligence goes away.  And, because we depend upon people across the globe to share information with us, often at great personal risk, if those people have cause to doubt our ability to protect the information, the intelligence goes away.

For all these reasons, I and so many others who have handled and be “read in” to some of the nation’s most highly classified programs are horrified at the descriptions coming out about the documents found at a former official’s home. Aside from false statements about turning over all the documents (a violation of the law in itself), the low level of security and even no security around TOP SECRET documents causes irreparable harm. And, this is true even if nothing in the treasure trove of documents was shared with any individual because it creates a question about whether the US can be trusted. But, for me, it is hard to imagine information has not been shared. Why else would so much have been taken and retained, even when lawyers insisted everything was returned.

Perhaps the most stunning revelations came just a few days ago as details of what was found and where it was found were released by the court. While incredible in scope, the list of what was taken from the former President’s office is jaw dropping. I’ll grant it is probably a large office, but look at the list below and ask what in the world was someone thinking when they retained and refused to acknowledge they kept close at hand in their personal office the following:

2 documents marked confidential

7 documents marked top secret

15 documents marked secret

43 empty folders marked for classified document

28 empty folders marked “return to staff secretary/military aide”

Along with other government documents, magazines and newspapers

Of course, when added to thousands of other documents found in storage and other areas of the residence, the case just gets worse.

Because of the real threat to our national security, there are strict laws and punishments related to the mishandling of just one of the documents like those labeled above. And, for every “empty” folder, there were classified documents associated. Where are those? Were they recovered? We may never know.

I shared in a discussion taking place this past last month when asked why the FBI raided the former President’s home, that the FBI doesn’t really get to decide which federal law violations it investigates. The same rule applies to individuals. No one gets to decide which laws to obey and which they can violate; and if they elect to do so they assume a risk of prosecution for the violations.

Getting a full accounting of what damage has been done is vitally important. Sending a clear signal to those in government and those who help us around the world that we take this seriously is vitally important. At this stage, I, for one, do not see how we do all of that without prosecuting those who took, retained and misrepresented to federal officials that they returned what they had taken. Protect our nations! Put the cuffs on someone!

Craig Fuller served four years in the White House as assistant to President Reagan for Cabinet Affairs, followed by four years as chief of staff to Vice President George H.W. Bush. Having been engaged in five presidential campaigns and run public affairs firms and associations in Washington, D.C., he now resides on the Eastern Shore.

From the NY TIMES NYT Review of Documents taken August 8th

More on Sensitive Compartmented Information

 

 

It struck me recently that I didn’t really have a strong view one way or the other about whether Elon Musk should acquire Twitter. Mostly because I didn’t really know what Twitter had become. But, one thing I do know is that Twitter really is not anything like what I envision when I see the term, “town square.”

Traveling in Italy, one has the chance to view town squares – called piazzas – that matter to a community. They are places where people visit regularly to see friends over a meal, perhaps even a bit of Italian wine. Trust is built among people who find themselves discussing issues that matter in their lives. Those of us who come as tourists are tolerated as consumers of food and beverages; and, in some cases, we probably provide a form of entertainment to the locals who willingly strike up a conversation.

Historians suggest this centuries-old approach to exchanging views and enjoying the company of others found its way early into America when William Penn commissioned Thomas Holme in  1682 to design the city of Philadelphia. The rectangular grid pattern contained four small public squares, a concept designed by Penn and Holme to ensure citizens would have open places to walk, gather and engage with one another.

What caught my attention most in the current discussion about Elon Musk’s appetite for acquiring Twitter was his description of what he thinks it is:  “Twitter is the digital town square, where matters vital to the future of humanity are debated” says Mr. Musk.

Sorry, I just don’t think the designers of Italian cities or the team of Penn and Holme could embrace such a notion if they came back to see what Twitter is today. You just do not come to know and trust people with short bursts of phrases. You do not build personal relationships; in fact, Twitter seems one of the most impersonal of social media.

So, that brings me to the question of what is Twitter?

It was only 16 years ago, on March 21, 2006 that Twitter founder Jack Dorsey sent his first tweet. Today, Twitter claims around 400 million users around the globe. We in the United States continue to be the country with the largest group of users. But, of the 206 million global users who reportedly engage with Twitter daily, only 25% of those are in the US.

Another metric for Twitter relates to “monetizable daily active users.” These are users who login in a manner where Twitter can send them ads; or, in other words Twitter knows who they are. There are 187 million of these folks on the planet with 37 million here in the US, or just over 10% of the nation’s population.

 If a thoughtful individual were to sit with someone and visit about their lives and, as Elon Musk says, debate “the future of humanity,” would not that individual want to know how much they had in common with those engaged in the debate? I answer yes to this question!

Here are a few interesting and recent compilations about who is engaged with Twitter…

 With regard to gender, 68% are thought to be men…leaving less than 1/3^rd women.

In terms of age, 59.2% using Twitter are reported to be between 25 and 49 years old.  Twitter users over 50 years old account for just over 17% of users.

When asked to check off reasons for using Twitter, the most often checked reasons were to get the news (48%) and entertainment (48%). From these two top reasons, it dropped to 34% who use Twitter to stay in touch with friends and family.

As an aside, these numbers validate the concern a lot of us have about the propensity for younger people to get their news on Twitter and other social media platforms…but, that is another story.

However, if going to Twitter for the news is one of the highest priorities users have, you would expect news organizations to have secured a great number of followers. On the list of the highest Twitter users ranked by number of followers, CNN has 61 million. That earns them a 15^th place.

Here is what those who study these things recently found when it comes to worldwide followers (numbers in millions):

Barack Obama	129.9
Justin Bieber	113.9
Katy Perry	108.7
Rihanna	102.8
Christian Ronaldo	93.5
Taylor Swift	88.6
Ariana Grande	84
Lady Gaga	83.6
Ellen DeGeneres	77.9
YouTube	73.1
Narendra Modi	70.6
Kim Kardashian West	70
Selena Gomez	65
Justin Timberlake	63.4
CNN Breaking News	61.2
Twitter	59.5
Elon Musk	59.3
Britney Spears	55.5
Bill Gates	55.3
Demi Lovato	54.6

All I can suggest is that if Twitter really is the place “…where matters vital to the future of humanity are debated,” I am just not sure Twitter brings to the table the key players in the debate who I would wish to see selected for the task.

I still am a bit ambivalent about Musk’s acquisition of a company that has built a global platform for exchanging ideas. It has been a public company now with shareholders willing to sell. It is not a public utility.  Acknowledging that the numbers are large when you look at millions of people engaged on a national and global basis through Twitter, still other social media platforms have greater engagement.

What now seems most troubling is the intent of the new owner and how he hopes to raise the bar on Twitter, regardless of its limitations, connecting millions of willing information consumers who have relinquished many of the elements that have traditionally been part of trusted face to face conversation about news, weather and sports, not to mention the future of humanity.

Craig Fuller served four years in the White House as assistant to President Reagan for Cabinet Affairs, followed by four years as chief of staff to Vice President George H.W. Bush. Having been engaged in five presidential campaigns and run public affairs firms and associations in Washington, D.C., he now resides on the Eastern Shore.