ELIOT'S M.O.: THEY FIGHT DIRTY
By CHARLES GASPARINO
NEW YORK POST
Opinion
July 27, 2007 -- UNTIL recently, most of the elite media never got on Darren Dopp's bad side - or, to be more precise, the bad side of his boss, Gov. Spitzer. I did, and because I did, I have something in common with Senate Majority Leader Joe Bruno.
I first met Dopp in late 2001, when I began covering then-Attorney General Eliot Spitzer's investigation of Wall Street research practices, specifically, the use of hyped-up stock research to entice small investors into buying stocks during the bubble years. We got along great, until I hit the third rail in the world of Eliot Spitzer - that is, I had the audacity to report on stuff that he didn't like.
It began with a series of stories I did for The Wall Street Journal and then Newsweek about former New York Stock Exchange Chairman Richard Grasso. I was part of a trio of reporters at the Journal who first wrote about Grasso's pay package. Because the exchange was a New York not-for-profit corporation, Spitzer filed charges against Grasso to get him to return a chunk of the money.
Beyond Grasso, Spitzer charged only a single NYSE board member, Ken Langone. Most notably, he didn't pursue H. Carl McCall - who, as the compensation-committee chief, guided the board when it handed Grasso all the money. McCall, of course, is a prominent New York Democrat and a Spitzer political supporter. I wrote and said in several TV interviews that Spitzer was playing politics by cutting his supporter a break.
I didn't think that was such a wild observation, but Dopp did. He followed up with a phone call threatening to "cut me off" if I continued to make the Spitzer-McCall connection. After a spirited conversation, I told Dopp that the choice to cut me off was his, and I was going to continue my reporting.
Dopp did indeed cut me off. First, he wouldn't take my phone calls; later, he would only answer questions via e-mail. Then I wrote a story that called into question Spitzer's fund-raising practices by noting that Spitzer had asked a prominent hedge-fund manager for a campaign contribution while Spitzer was investigating the fund business.
What happened next was downright scary. Dopp called my editors at Newsweek demanding a retraction, saying that the hedge-fund manager, Stan Druckenmiller, had denied the story. Dopp then wrote a long letter to my editors detailing this and other alleged journalistic sins that he said I had committed. In the letter, he said that I recently had interviewed Spitzer, and the "tenor of my questioning and commentary was bizarrely confrontational," that I had challenged Spitzer "in an aggressive manner on matters of law." (Can you imagine someone more aggressive than Gov. Steamroller?)
Dopp said that, during our initial phone call, I had threatened him, not the other way around, and that I had said that if he "cut me off," Newsweek would "go to war" with Spitzer. He added that I "further implied" that the portrayal of Spitzer in my then-forthcoming book, "Blood on the Street," would suffer if the AG's office didn't "do what [I] desired."
Now, these were all serious charges that could have led to my dismissal - if they'd been true. The false claims also show how far Dopp would go to attack someone he saw as an opponent of Spitzer. And I wasn't even an opponent - just a reporter who questioned some of his actions and cases.
Needless to say, I didn't get fired from Newsweek. Dopp never got his retraction, either - because Druckenmiller's attorney, contrary to what Dopp said, ultimately went on the record to confirm my account.
But that didn't stop the Spitzer/Dopp attacks. Spitzer went on CNBC at one point and said I was now denying my own story about Druckenmiller. I called up CNBC the next day, and it corrected the record. Then a reporter covering last year's gubernatorial election called me, and I learned that Dopp's letter-writing campaign had continued: He'd written again, to try to get Newsweek to take me off the Spitzer beat.
I have no problem taking a little heat from public officials; it's part of the job. But these guys give the term "fighting dirty" new meaning. They don't just spin; they fabricate. At least, that's been my experience.
A final observation: One of the great things about covering Spitzer for so long is that I got to witness Dopp and Spitzer work with each other first-hand. One afternoon, I was interviewing Spitzer about a case he was bringing against a well-known Wall Street executive. Dopp at one point interrupted and said that everyone knew that the executive "was boning" his secretary. I said, where's the evidence, and why does it matter?
Spitzer just sat there before changing the subject.
Charles Gasparino is on-air editor at CNBC. His next book is "King of the Club: Richard Grasso and the Survival of the New York Stock Exchange."
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