REPORTER RECOUNTS SAGA
CULMINATING IN DOWNFALL
OF REP. ERIC MASSA (D-N.Y.)
By Alan Z. Forman
It began with a phone call asking for help. A friend's “exemplary congressman” was in trouble.
The congressman was Eric Massa, a fine, upstanding, decent, honest member of the U.S. House of Representatives — a “too-good-to-be-true politician” — my friend said, who needed assistance right away: His unscrupulous teapartying Republican opponent was calling him a communist, slandering him unmercifully simply because he said the U.S. needed to get out of Afghanistan.
His opponent clearly tried to paint him as “some kind of Bolshevik revolutionary,” Massa said in a hard-hitting fundraising letter, which also told constituents the opponent’s charges were not only bogus but that the alleged praise for Massa in an article on the Communist Party website that the opponent referenced, did not in fact exist.
“My opponent hit a new low,” Massa asserted in his e-letter; “the mudslinging has begun.” Nobody even seems to be able to find the article praising him, he explained. The Republicans are “out to get me,” he said.
Less than a month later, Massa would charge the Speaker of the House of Representatives and the Democrats’ Majority Leader with being out to get him as well.
Massa had just signed on as one of 12 co-sponsors of a privileged resolution introduced in Congress by Ohio Rep. Dennis Kucinich, who wants to cut off all funding for the war posthaste. So Massa’s Republican opponent, the former mayor of his home town, Corning N.Y., sent out a press release criticizing the congressman for his actions.
Enter my friend, a lifelong liberal that I've known for both of our entire lives. His mother, now deceased, was the dearest friend I ever had, one of that rare breed of neighborhood moms you always wish your own mother could be like.
He had worked in both of Massa’s congressional campaigns and had contributed significant amounts of money, in the process coming to know the former Navy commander as a truly concerned and discerning politician, and a friend, with whom he got together socially with their wives.
If only he could expose the former Corning mayor as a mudslinging liar, he could help his congressman friend in a major way, he said. However, when he tried to contact both the mayor and the communists, he was met with resistance and refusals. Could I, he asked, help him expose this deplorable behavior by contacting the relevant parties and proving that the former mayor of Corning lied?
It was off the beaten track for Investigative Voice: We primarily cover Maryland and Baltimore, with an occasional article referencing Washington, D.C., although we have posted several stories about Afghanistan and are currently running a series involving an alleged assailant from Maryland who fled to Georgia, where he was apprehended and extradited.
But it sounded to me like a good story, and so, in consultation with I.V.‘s other editors, it was decided that the mission of Investigative Voice — as with all free press — should be to expose wrongdoing and corruption wherever it may exist, not just locally.
So I called the mayor of Corning, having been led by indirect contacts with Massa’s staff to believe he was a current officeholder. He did not return my calls. Nor did he respond to emails sent to his campaign website.
Perfect! my friend said. He’s got something to hide. (I believed it too.)
Next I emailed the commies — and got two responses back, assuring me that the article in question did not exist and had in fact never been on their website. I wanted to talk to the alleged author, who was quoted by name by the former mayor, but she did not return messages. However the spokesman for the Communist Party told me he had spoken with her personally and she had never written such an article.
SLANDERED, EVEN LIBELED
All pieces in place. The congressman had definitely been slandered, even libeled; there may also be a lawsuit here, I thought. So I told my friend I now needed to talk to Eric Massa or, failing that, at least one or two of his aides.
“Sorry, not possible till the middle of next week at the earliest,” my friend reported back after speaking by telephone with Massa. The congressman was “extremely busy.” Why? Because of the Presidents’ Day holiday coming up that Monday and because he had to attend one of the memorial services for Pennsylvania Rep. John P. Murtha, who had died the previous week.
Plus he needed additional time “to consult with his staff” regarding the red-baiting issue.
A red flag! Why the stalling tactics? One did not need to be a reporter to suspect that something wasn’t kosher in the Town of Corning. (Sorry, Shakespeare!)
So I redoubled my efforts to talk to the congressman’s Republican opponent and finally managed to reach his campaign manager, who not only stood by the former mayor’s accusations but gave me the url for the article on the Communist Party website — which does in fact exist and does in fact praise Massa and the other 11 co-sponsors of Kucinich’s resolution — exactly as the former mayor had said.
The campaign manager also explained that they were operating on a limited budget, with minimal staff, and the candidate was personally driving himself all around the district, putting more that 36,000 miles on his car in just over half a year.
That’s why I hadn’t heard back from them, he said. No one was in the campaign office.
In addition he denied that they had ever indulged in red-baiting or any kind of name-calling; asserted they had never branded Massa a communist or Bolshevik; and on the contrary, had great respect for his service to the country and the military. (Massa served 23 years in the U.S. Navy before jumping into politics to work in the failed presidential campaign of retired Army Gen. Wesley Clark, the former NATO supreme allied commander, in 2004. He then ran for Congress unsuccessfully in 2006, before winning in 2008.)
REPLETE WITH SCARE TACTICS
So I insisted on seeing Massa’s fundraising letter, which was replete with scare tactics, red-baiting of his own, and numerous places for supporters to double-click to send money — to defeat what he called “the George W. Bush branch of the Republican Party.”
A heavy-handed fundraising piece, based entirely on false charges of communist-baiting.
One lie of course often begets another. So I then decided to look more closely at Massa’s fundraising techniques.
My friend had long been favorably impressed by what he believed to be Massa’s refusal to accept corporate contributions to his campaigns. Massa had in fact repeatedly made it clear to his constituents and supporters that he accepted only individual contributions, primarily from people who lived in his congressional district.
That may have been true in 2006 and 2008, when corporations had a greater interest in maintaining the status quo by supporting the Republican incumbent. However once Massa was elected he did an immediate about-face and in less than a year raised over a million dollars, from corporate PACs (Political Action Committees) and other contributors from as far away as California.
It’s not unusual for that to happen. In another life I worked as press aide in an upstart congressional campaign for a candidate who had a lot of trouble raising money. However the day after the election the contributions began pouring in, in large amounts, in droves.
Even House Majority Leader Steny H. Hoyer of Maryland, whose office forced Massa to report the sexual harassment charges against him to the bipartisan congressional Ethics Committee, gave Massa $4,000, in two separate contributions last September.
I never did have the pleasure (?) of talking with Eric Massa. Although I had his personal cellphone number, his voice mailbox was often full and not taking messages, and the few times I did get to leave a message the calls were not returned.
ABRUPTLY HUNG UP THE PHONE
On one occasion however, late at night, he surprised me by answering my call — and then abruptly hung up on me when I asked a simple question.
His aides never returned calls either, nor did they answer emails.
Nor for that matter has Congressman Hoyer or his office responded to inquiries from Investigative Voice about Massa.
It happens — even to the best publications. In this past weekend’s Wall Street Journal, for example, in a Page 1 story about Microsoft employees’ use of rival Apple’s iPhone, the Journal reports: “A Microsoft spokeswoman declined to comment and declined to make executives available for this story.”
Not only that, “Apple CEO Steve Jobs referred an email asking about iPhone use at Microsoft to a spokeswoman, who declined to comment.”
And as if that weren’t enough, further on in the story a Microsoft software engineer who developed in his spare time “a racy application called Peekaboo” that allows people to ogle scantily clad cartoon women, “didn’t respond to messages seeking comment.”
I guess he didn’t want Bill Gates to know how he spends his leisure hours?
But if the WSJ can’t get the biggest companies to call them back, I guess I shouldn’t feel so bad when people fail to respond to Investigative Voice.
I.V. suggested in one story that Massa was “ethically challenged” and in another that he indulged in “mendacious maneuvers” to manipulate the media. Following his resignation from Congress he told Glenn Beck that the Democratic leadership was trying to force him out of office because of his vote against health care, then told Larry King it wasn’t true.
BECK APOLOGIZED TO VIEWERS
Beck apologized on air for wasting his viewers’ time with Massa.
Massa, who is married and has two children, resigned from office last week under fire for allegedly making unwanted sexual advances to a young male staffer from his Washington, D.C. office, although the former congressman maintains he left the job for health reasons only.
Suddenly he was front-page news, usurping media attention from the national health care debate and calling into question the military's proposed abandonment of the “don't ask, don't tell” policy regarding gays — all this, three weeks after Investigative Voice first raised serious questions about his veracity as a congressman.
Despite all the stories now surfacing about his sexual advances toward officers junior to him aboard ship, and by his own admission having playfully "tousled" the hair of one of his young aides at a wedding reception where there was an excessive amount of drinking, he maintains that he is not homosexual.
As for his apparent diagnosis of non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, a potentially fatal cancer, of which he claims to have had several recurrences — despite his assurance to constituents that he is “completely cured” — it’s hard to believe he could remain on active duty in the military for more than seven years after such diagnosis and recurrence.
Another close friend of mine, a young naval officer, jokingly told me last night at dinner: “They discharge people for having allergies; it's highly unlikely he could have remained on active service in the Navy with potentially terminal cancer.”
I deeply regret, however, never having had the opportunity to talk with Massa before he imploded, weeks after the initial I.V. story about his red-baiting, or even after. My friend says he must be having a nervous breakdown, and I would tend to agree, although neither of us is a trained psychiatrist.
I feel bad for my friend. It’s never a happy situation to learn that one’s idols often have serious feet of clay.
I didn’t like learning that about Thomas Jefferson or John Kennedy; or Bill Clinton, or Sheila Dixon or even Ed Norris (who I have come to know personally through a number of appearances on his radio show), although none of those last few is an idol in the truest sense of the word, nor is Eric Massa.
But despite having written quite a few critical stories for Investigative Voice about Mayor Dixon, I kinda like Sheila, even have admiration for the good work she did as mayor. I definitely like Ed. And if I ever get a chance to meet Bill Clinton I’m sure I’ll like him too.
I don’t think I would like Eric Massa.
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