The Solomon Scandals A Washington newspaper novel by David Rothman

The Jonathan Stone-David Rothman Q. & A.

Jonathan Stone, the reporter in The Solomon Scan­dals, grilled me for this Q. & A.—uncut. – David Roth­man

STONE: Why’s Scan­dals copy­righted in your name? Those are my news­pa­per memoirs.

ROTHMAN: Er, faux mem­oirs. With­out me, you wouldn’t even have been born…or have worked for the Wash­ing­ton Telegram…or have strug­gled to avert an IRS-CIA build­ing collapse…or lived through those quirky sex scandals…or the cor­rup­tion and black­mail from the Oval Office…or the gos­sip columnist’s suicide…or the death of the shark­like edi­tor in a car bombing…or your Hol­ly­wood direct­ing career or—

STONE: Thanks, but I’ve already read my book. Now what about the talk­ing Afghan Hound at the Cos­mos Club? Sure it doesn’t detract from my dignity?

ROTHMAN: But you’ve been dead for decades. Scan­dals is set mainly in the 1970s, but looks far beyond—via reflec­tions from your great-grand niece at the Insti­tute for Pre­vir­tual Stud­ies. Besides, Afghans are dig­ni­fied. I didn’t put this detail in the book, but Thack­eray II speaks in a won­der­ful bari­tone with a mid-Atlantic accent. I wish he could do my radio inter­views for me.

STONE: For late­com­ers, who’s this guy Solomon? And what’s he doing on my book cover with a build­ing in his hand?

ROTHMAN: Because he’s the king of the land­lords leas­ing office build­ings to the Gen­eral Ser­vices Admin­is­tra­tion, the government’s busi­ness agency. You might say he’s part of a crowd. A friend tears down row houses to make way for park­ing lots. The near-by homes go to pot, and then the Solomon crowd buys up the land for more high rises. You’re inves­ti­gat­ing Solomon. Is he based on some­one in real life? Late­com­ers can read on.

STONE: So peo­ple will know, just how real is the Wash­ing­ton Telegram?

ROTHMAN: Very authen­tic in many of the details even though the Telegram is not the Wash­ing­ton Post or any other real-life news­pa­per. I worked on a daily news­pa­per for four years, and, beyond that, I ben­e­fited from the advice of James Polk, a Puli­tizer win­ner for his Water­gate cov­er­age for the old Wash­ing­ton Star. Don’t blame Jim for any flaws in the book—he wasn’t con­stantly look­ing over my shoul­der as I wrote. But, yes, he was a big help. I myself did my share of inves­tiga­tive jour­nal­ism at the Gen­eral Ser­vices Admin­is­tra­tion. I looked through 400 leases, includ­ing a rather minor one that GSA had with the Wash­ing­ton Star—for some ware­house space, I believe.

When it comes to Free­dom of Infor­ma­tion issues involv­ing the GSA, you’re a lucky son of  a bitch. For plot pur­poses, I sped up the FoI process for release of the doc­u­ments. I myself spent many more weeks at it in real life. The CBS Evening News even used my case as an exam­ple of gov­ern­ment obsti­nacy, and I ended up hav­ing to lobby on  Capi­tol Hill when GSA tried to charge me thou­sands of dol­lars for the papers I wanted. Thanks, Sen­a­tor Kennedy (above photo) and staff. That’s the level I had to go to. Oh, to have it as easy as you did, Stone. Luck­ily I got help from a sym­pa­thetic CBS pro­ducer, but it still wasn’t simple.

Just keep  in mind the S word, satire. Despite all the gen­uine details, the Telegram in many ways bears about the same rela­tion­ship to actual news­pa­pers as the Union Broad­cast­ing Sys­tem in Net­work did to CBS, ABC or NBC. That said, the Telegram is closer to real­ity than either UBS in Net­work or the Daily Beast in Scoop. My novel broaches a num­ber of gen­uine issues, such as the influ­ence of busi­ness and gov­ern­ment on the con­tents of news­pa­pers and TV networks.

STONE: So you’re antimedia?

ROTHMAN: Only when they deserve it. I hate to see inves­tiga­tive report­ing cut back by the cur­rent ad drought. Talk about ways to make news­pa­pers wimpier! I won­der if many news­pa­pers today would give you the time to check out Sey­mour Solomon. Yes, you have your tan­gles with George McWilliams, the shark­like edi­tor; and he is of mixed mind—about your inves­ti­gat­ing his pal . But at least the Telegram has the money and spends it.

Money. That’s the real issue here. I’m not sure what the solu­tion is. Just how much down­siz­ing can news­pa­pers do? And you can’t instantly say good-bye to paper edi­tions in most cases—not when Net-related parts of news­pa­per con­tribute so lit­tle rev­enue. Per­haps tech­nol­ogy will help save news­pa­pers, both in terms of indi­vid­u­al­ized paper edi­tions, and in terms of terms of bet­ter giz­mos for read­ing them. See this YouTube video show­ing a new device from Plas­tic Logic. The Kin­dle and sim­i­lar gad­gets are just a hint of bet­ter machines to come.

STONE: But isn’t inves­tiga­tive report­ing hap­pen­ing on the Inter­net. Look at Josh Marshall’s site.

ROTHMAN: Do you really think blog­gers and the rest will have the same resources as the old media? Yes, small guys broke sto­ries like My Lai. But I’m talk­ing about sus­tained efforts. I don’t think that foun­da­tions like the San­dlers’ can bear the entire bur­den, and just as with reg­u­lar news­pa­pers, fun­ders will have to iso­late their pri­vate inter­ests from the activ­i­ties of the edi­tors and reporters they’re financ­ing. Noth­ing against good non­profit efforts. The Fund for Inves­tiga­tive Jour­nal­ism gave me grants to poke around GSA. But it wasn’t enough for per­ma­nent, day-to-day vig­i­lance. At the local level let’s hope that media like Voice­of­SanDiego can take off.

STONE: So did any­thing come of your investigations?

ROTHMAN: Actu­ally yes, as my story about the late Sen. Abra­ham Ribi­coff shows. Here’s a mem­ber of a GSA-related com­mit­tee who held an invest­ment of tens of thou­sands of dol­lars in a CIA-occupied build­ing leased through GSA. And he hid behind a trustee and denied hav­ing any government-related invest­ments. Then he con­tin­ued his busi­ness rela­tion­ship with the land­lord involved on other prop­er­ties. Jim Polk fol­lowed up on the NBC Nightly News and in the New Repub­lic. That’s the GSA build­ing itself in the photo.

STONE:  How’d you start dig­ging through those 400 leases and dis­cover that Abra­ham Ribi­coff was a hid­den investor?

ROTHMAN: An acquain­tance of a fam­ily friend thought that Ribi­coff and the busi­ness peo­ple involved were too chummy, and I acted on the tip. No one up to then had actu­ally doc­u­mented Ribicoff’s role as an investor in a gov­ern­ment leased building—he stead­fastly denied it. I got Ribicoff’s lawyer, the one behind the “blind trust,” to con­fess; too bad the Sen­ate ethics com­mit­tee kept doz­ing on.

More pos­i­tively, a con­gres­sional inves­ti­ga­tion resulted into the case of Miss­ing Cafeteria—where a $500,000+ cafe­te­ria went AWOL from the office build­ing hous­ing the head­quar­ters of the Envi­ron­men­tal Pro­tec­tion Agency. The lease called for one. But the cafe­te­ria never mate­ri­al­ized. The con­trol­ling owner was a well con­nected Mary­land Repub­li­can who moved in Spiro Agnew’s cir­cles. I broke the story in Fed­eral Times, and Bet­tina Gre­gory picked it up for a great lit­tle seg­ment on the ABC Evening News.

Of course, as is often the case, no one got pun­ished, just as no one does for the build­ing col­lapse in Scan­dals. At least the inves­ti­ga­tors gave GSA (photo) a good scold­ing for being so lax about includ­ing the names of all part­ners in leases involv­ing part­ner­ships. It promised to do bet­ter. Would that I have time to fol­low up—and see if the bureau­cracy has kept its word!

STONE: Didn’t you also write for the Wash­ing­ton Post about a guy named Solomon?

ROTHMAN: Joel Solomon, you mean—in a one-shot free­lance piece: it wasn’t as if I were a Post reg­u­lar. From the very start when I began the novel in the 1970s, I’d named my guy Solomon, and I wasn’t about to change it just because Jimmy Carter had the nerve to name a GSA admin­is­tra­tor with the same last name. The Post in this instance was most emphat­i­cally not the Telegram in the Scan­dals novel. Susanna McBee on the National Desk was ter­rific and let me tell the whole story—namely that Carter had nom­i­nated a GSA land­lord. In fair­ness to Carter and this Solomon, who is now dead, the own­er­ship ques­tion could have cut both ways. Maybe Solomon’s GSA con­nec­tions gave him more insight to fight cor­rup­tion. But we still needed to get the mat­ter on record. By the way, I doubt many peo­ple would have con­fused Joel with Sy. This Solomon came from Tennessee

STONE: So what do you think of GSA these days?

ROTHMAN: I love GSA. Again and again over the years, the scan­dals keep pop­ping up—to help your mem­oirs tran­scend time. Check out my thoughts on the agency. Where else in gov­ern­ment can you have peo­ple com­ing out against stricter safety stan­dards for high rises, in the event of another 9/11? But as I say else­where, I’m root­ing for the agency to enjoy a clean period under Obama. Fin­gers crossed!

STONE: Why do you make such a big deal of me being Jewish?

ROTHMAN: Great for the plot. Sy Solomon is a lands­man, in a gen­eral way—an East­ern Euro­pean Jew just like your mater­nal ances­tors. If he were Bud­dhist, it might be a lit­tle less chal­leng­ing for you to inves­ti­gate him. Your father, descended from old German-Jewish stock, is ask­ing the clas­si­cal ques­tion, ‘Is it good for the Jews?” Under­stand­ably. Your par­ents came of age at a time when, for pro­fes­sional advance­ment, it was use­ful to change “Faber­stein” to “Stone.” The main period in Scan­dals is the 1970s, but in many ways Herb and Lydia are still liv­ing in the ‘40s and ‘50s. News­pa­per life is the main show in the book. But along the way, Scan­dals turns out to be a North­ern Vir­ginia Jew­ish novel as well. Oh, a lit­tle more about your last name. I actu­ally gave it to you in honor of I. F. Stone, but as you can see, there’s a lit­tle more to the story than that.

STONE: And of course there’s the bank angle.

ROTHMAN: Exactly. Herb Stone just hap­pens to work for a PR and lob­by­ing firm rep­ping a bank that’s loaned mil­lions to Solomon and friends. Elton King, Herb’s boss, isn’t shy about drop­ping not-so-subtle hints. King’s a goy with enough nerve to invoke the bad-for-the-Jews argu­ment. And mean­while the bank angle leads to the heart attack angle. You worry your father will have another one.

STONE: You researched the car­diac details a lit­tle too well.

ROTHMAN: Yep, I didn’t expect to be fact-checking the med­ical scenes while in an ICU after a quad bypass. Three cheers for Dr. Rhee and his team at Inova Alexan­dria Hos­pi­tal. They made this Web site pos­si­ble through the sim­ple act of keep­ing me alive.

STONE: What about the build­ing col­lapse? You really had two pro­fes­sors advis­ing you?

ROTHMAN: Details here. Gor­don Bat­son and Kevin Parfitt really came through for me.

STONE: I can’t decide: are we speak­ing or e-mailing. I mean, do you really talk in hyper­links?

ROTHMAN: Who cares, Stone? That’ll just have to remain one of the mys­ter­ies of the Web.

STONE: Finally I need to ask you about that photo you’ve used at times for promo. Wasn’t it taken at least three or four years ago?

ROTHMAN: So your lat­est insults have aged me that quickly?

STONE: And I’m far more into the out­doors than you are. Why isn’t my photo up there? That way, the moun­tain back­ground would be hon­est. Look, maybe I should be doing your pub­lic­ity for you. For­get about Thackeray.

ROTHMAN: But never about you, eh? It takes a cer­tain amount of ego to do inves­tiga­tive report­ing. If noth­ing else, you’ve aced that part.

(Note: This page was started in Novem­ber 2008. Cur­rent ver­sion, with addi­tions, was com­pleted on March 21, 2010.)

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• The Solomon Scandals: A BRIEF video introduction
• Bio
• The Jonathan Stone-David Rothman Q. & A.
• Good-bye, Sen. Kennedy
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