Bags and Baggage
Greta Van Susteren Goes on the Record In Her New Book
By Howard Kurtz
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, August 26, 2003; Page C01
After the O.J. Simpson trial that propelled her to the pinnacle of legal punditry, Greta Van Susteren was on the phone trying to land the first interview with the disgraced football star.
Forty-five minutes later, she said: "O.J., can I have your phone number to call you back? I have to go pick up my husband, and if I'm late, he'll kill me."
She apologized after an awkward pause, one of the few times the mile-a-minute talk show host has been at a loss for words.
In her about-to-be-released book "My Turn at the Bully Pulpit," Van Susteren, 49, recounts her rise from loudmouth lawyer to plastic-surgery cover girl to cable news queen. Since defecting from CNN to Fox News last year, the former adjunct professor at Georgetown Law School has parlayed a no-nonsense interviewing style into a ratings bonanza, making her the most popular woman on prime-time cable.
But for all her success, Van Susteren says over a Diet Coke in her North Capitol Street office, she doesn't feel like a star and isn't sure how many more years she'll be on the air.
"I never thought of myself as a TV person," she says. "The shelf life of women on TV I didn't think was particularly long. I never thought it was forever. I still don't. I love my job, but it's a very fickle business."
Despite her Nielsens success -- her "On the Record" show drew an average of 1.07 million viewers in May, June and July, compared with 598,000 for CNN, 221,000 for MSNBC and 168,000 for CNBC -- Van Susteren doesn't spew opinions like her colleagues Bill O'Reilly and Sean Hannity.
"She kind of breaks that mold," says Fox Executive Producer Bill Shine. "The show isn't produced in an opinion type of way."
The program devotes plenty of attention to war and terrorism but also wallows in sensational crime stories, particularly the Kobe Bryant case and the murder of pregnant Laci Peterson. "Yes, we do way too much of it," Van Susteren says of the Peterson saga. "But I actually am fascinated by trials. Here's the good side: But for the Laci Peterson case, there would not be a discussion about making a national law for murder penalties for killing a fetus."
What about criticism that she interviewed Hustler's Larry Flynt about nude photos of Amber Frey, the girlfriend of husband Scott Peterson? "If she is out selling naked pictures, her credibility is diminished," says Van Susteren. "We established that Amber Frey had nothing to do with the photos, much like you'd do in a courtroom. . . . It makes sense because I actually have the background of trying these cases."
Perhaps, but why did her program flash the pictures, with Frey's breasts obscured? "Evidence," she replies. "It's a visual medium."
Not every segment is a winner. There was what she calls the "interview from hell" last October with Carl Jones, a Tacoma, Wash., neighbor of sniper suspect John Allen Muhammad.
"Carl, when did you first hear of or meet Mr. John Muhammad?
"I have never met him. . . .
"Did you ever become aware of him or know of him?
"Oh, I've seen him in the neighborhood. . . .
"Did he ever do anything unusual?
"Not that I seen."
In her book, Van Susteren recalls how her father, a judge who was Joe McCarthy's campaign manager in 1946, was suspended from the bench after being convicted of failing to pay his state taxes on time. After his death in 1989, Van Susteren won a ruling from the Wisconsin Supreme Court that her father, who often paid his taxes late, didn't intend to defraud the state.
When she signed with Fox, Van Susteren writes, "everybody went nuts. The conservatives hated me before they even knew me, and the liberals felt betrayed. Even people who had never seen me on television seemed to have an opinion. . . .
"I don't agree with everything said at Fox. I don't agree with everything my husband thinks, either, but I still love him."
The increasingly blond Van Susteren, who had never seemed to care much whether her hair was combed, famously changed her appearance when Fox hired her. She admits that she was viewed as a "bimbo" after undergoing surgery in an effort to remove the bags under her eyes.
"Foxy Babe," blared the New York Daily News. "Nipped, Tucked and Talking," said People's cover story. A USA Today column was headlined "Why Turn Brilliant Lawyer Into Barbie With Brains?"
Some of the criticism was surprisingly personal. "Greta is the last person I'd have expected to throw her lot with the bimbos," wrote Newsday columnist Robert Reno. "She and her husband are heavily into the Church of Scientology, which takes itself every bit as seriously as Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson preach their brand of fire-breathing Christianity."
Van Susteren insists she merely wanted to improve her middle-aged appearance: "It wasn't because I had some great genius," she says of the publicity coup. "It was pure dumb luck. It never occurred to me anyone would be interested in that." Best of all, Matthew Broderick, who had made a snide crack about the surgery, apologized by inviting her to see "The Producers" and meeting her backstage.
She scoffs at the notion that she has become glamorous, saying she lounges around the house in a ratty bathrobe with her husband and former law partner, John Coale, who sends her encouraging e-mails during commercial breaks.
Making no secret of her resentment toward CNN, which offered more than her reported $900,000 Fox salary in an attempt to keep her, Van Susteren says she enjoyed the place when it was "a mom-and-pop operation with Ted Turner in charge." When AOL Time Warner took over, "the big elephant stepped on us. It got to be no fun when it got destabilized by the chaos from above. CNN became like a committee. It felt like the Soviet Union." She is particularly angry that security guards escorted laid-off staffers from their offices. A CNN spokesman declined to comment on Van Susteren.
The self-described workaholic has a knack for controversy, drawing plaudits and ridicule for bringing Ozzy Osbourne to the White House Correspondents' Association dinner. She says she needed a guest on short notice and had just interviewed the Osbournes (who gave her a cat named Ozzy). "I did not anticipate the media frenzy that erupted," Van Susteren says.
Timesman Back in Town
Philip Taubman, who has been named as the New York Times Washington bureau chief, is looking for a harder edge.
"As someone who made my living in investigative journalism, that's a subject I'm interested in and hope the bureau can do more in that area," says Taubman, who did two stints in the bureau from the late '70s to the early '90s. "My own background in national security and intelligence leads me to want to see if there are ways to refine what we're doing there."
Taubman, now the deputy editorial page editor, beat out Washington editor Rick Berke, whose job Taubman had when the now-deposed Howell Raines ran the bureau here. Taubman also forged a friendship with the new executive editor, Bill Keller, when he was Keller's boss in the Moscow bureau. "When people are thrown together in those claustrophobic spaces," Taubman says, "they either become great friends or mortal enemies."
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