Background on Leslie Cauley, USA Today Reporter on NSA Phone Spy Story

Leslie Cauley, the USA Today reporter who last week "broke" the news that three major U.S. telecommunications companies were assisting the National Security Agency in building a database to more easily track any communications by potential terrorists, is listed as a donor to former House Minority Leader Richard Gephardt, according to a search of The Center for Responsive Politics Web site. A search found a listing for "writer and journalist" Leslie Cauley, indicating she gave $2,000 to Gephardt on June 30, 2003, when Gephardt was running for the Democratic presidential nomination. Before Cauley joined USA Today, she teamed up with former AT&T and Global Crossing executive Leo Hindery to write a book on business deals, Biggest Game of All. But Hindery is not just a businessman -- he's listed as a major donor to Democratic candidates and the Democratic Party, and was even mentioned by The Hill newspaper as a possible DNC chairman in late 2004.

The home page for the Center for Responsive Politics:

[This item, by the MRC's Rich Noyes, was posted Friday morning on the MRC's blog, NewsBusters.org: newsbusters.org ]

Cauley's link to a Democratic campaign seems likely to further cloud the credibility of her story. Two of the three phone companies Cauley fingered, BellSouth and Verizon, have since denied the accuracy of the May 11 USA Today story, and BellSouth yesterday went so far as to demand the newspaper "retract the false and unsubstantiated statements" made by Cauley in her piece. There have also been questions about the timing of the story, which was given huge play on USA Today's front-pages shortly before the former head of the National Security Agency, General Michael Hayden, was due to face confirmation hearings to be the next CIA director, and given the fact that many of the key points of the story were actually reported last December by the New York Times.

Cauley's Democratic campaign contributions seem not to be her only tie to liberal politics. Before Cauley joined USA Today, she teamed up with former AT&T and Global Crossing executive Leo Hindery to write a book on business deals, Biggest Game of All. But Hindery is not just a businessman -- he's listed as a major donor to Democratic candidates and the Democratic Party, and was even mentioned by The Hill newspaper as a possible DNC chairman in late 2004. See:

The two were apparently close, at least at one point. According to a

2005 write-up in Broadcasting and Cable, "Cauley and Hindery developed a close relationship during their book project, giving her access to his insights and many documents from that period." The magazine, however, notes that "their collaboration apparently ended very badly," with Cauley trashing Hindery in a later book, End of the Line: The Rise and Fall of AT&T.

According to B&C: "She [Cauley] calls him a 'carnival barker,' 'a junk-food addict with a waistline to match' and, in a particularly cheap shot, a 'Queer Eye for the Straight Guy makeover just screaming to happen.'" For the B&C article:

Friday's USA Today carried BellSouth's demand of a retraction on page

4A, below a more prominent story headlined "Senators challenge Hayden on surveillance," with partial transcripts of General Hayden being asked Thursday about the claimed NSA database program.

According to Friday's USA Today:

"BellSouth asked USA Today on Thursday to 'retract the false and unsubstantiated statements' about the company that it contends were in a May 11 story about a database of domestic calling records maintained by the National Security Agency.

"In a letter to the newspaper's publisher, Craig Moon, the company noted that the story said BellSouth is 'working under contract with the NSA' to provide 'phone call records of tens of millions of Americans' that have been incorporated into the database. "'No such proof was offered by your newspaper because no such contracts exist,' stated the letter, portions of which were read by spokesman Jeff Battcher. 'You have offered no proof that BellSouth provided massive calling data to the NSA as part of a warrantless program because it simply did not happen.' "Steve Anderson, a USA Today spokesman, said 'We did receive the letter this afternoon. We are reviewing it, and we will be responding.'..."

For the May 19 USA Today story:

The paper also included this background that seemed designed to justify their earlier publication:

"USA Today first contacted BellSouth more than five weeks ago. On the night before the story was published, the newspaper described the story in detail to BellSouth, and the company did not challenge the newspaper's account. The company's official response at that time: 'BellSouth does not provide any confidential customer information to the NSA or any governmental agency without proper legal authority.'"

Since the story broke, Cauley herself has made the rounds. The Washingtonian magazine's Harry Jaffe wrote a gushing profile applauding her "victory for beat reporting." He quoted Cauley as saying her USA Today "scoop" demonstrated the usefulness of unnamed sources:

"Like any reporter," she says, "one thread leads to another leads to another" in the "messy process of reporting."

"Part of the messy process was clearing the use of anonymous sources, on which the story was based.

"Says Cauley: 'This further validates the use of confidential, unnamed sources. They have a real value in our business.'"

For the May 16 Washingtonian magazine posting:

With the phone companies demanding a retraction and her own Democratic connections now revealed, the "value" of her unnamed sources seems increasingly dubious. Could Leslie Cauley may be on her way to becoming a print version of CBS's disgraced Mary Mapes?

END of Friday NewsBusters posting by Rich Noyes.

On Saturday, I posted the following update:

An editorial in Saturday's Washington Times highlighted the Noyes item first posted on NewsBusters. The May 20 editorial, "Spinning, Spying and USA Today," recounted: "With Verizon and BellSouth both challenging USA Today's report on their alleged participation in NSA's surveillance programs, it's not yet clear whether or to what extent the claims in the Gannett daily's much-discussed article are true. What's clearer is that USA Today reporter Leslie Cauley has ties to the Democratic Party, which the Media Research Center's 'NewsBusters' Web site unearthed yesterday. Searching through campaign-filing records, Rich Noyes discovered that Miss Cauley gave $2,000 to then-Democratic presidential hopeful Dick Gephardt in

2003. That's the type of activity that journalists normally avoid if they wish to be perceived as objective..."

The Washington Times also relayed another part of the Noyes item, noting "Cauley's collaboration with Democratic fund-raising heavyweight Leo Hindery, with whom she coauthored a 2003 book."

For the editorial in full:

Near the end of Friday's show, Rush Limbaugh briefly mentioned Cauley's donation and the

home page over the weekend featured a link to the Noyes item on Cauley. Right under the picture of liberal Senator Patrick Leahy holding up Cauley's front page story, Limbaugh had a link to NewsBusters: "USA Today Writer Has Ties to Democrat Campaign." Limbaugh's home page: [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Well, it would seem no one has their hands completely clean, does it? I only spent so much of last week printing articles about this incident because of its implications and relevance to telecom. Those of us who have _some little bit_ (or more) knowledge of the workings of ESS were not surprised to hear that producing telephone records these days is so relatively easy. But I did not expect this incident to have the political overtones which have developed. But then, why should that be such a surprise? PAT]