Interview With Charley James on Sambogate

The other day I had chance to speak to Charley James, the author who broke the ‘Sambo Beat the Bitch’ article for the LA Progressive. During our conversation, I came to believe he was telling the truth and was an honest, legitimate journalist. This guy was not a Washington Insider with an anonymous source, but a journalist who had a friend in Alaska who knew someone who overheard Sarah Palin say something in a restaurant.

I’m amazed how the right wing has attacked him over the fact that he won’t reveal his source. Robert Novak, wouldn’t reveal his sources even when under investigation. The New York Times writer Judith Miller went to jail before she revealed her anonymous source. Woodward and Bernstein wouldn’t reveal the source they used to take down Nixon—for years, even after he died. To this day, Bob Woodward still has anonymous White House sources. How come the right wing never asked for Novak or Miller to reveal their sources even when it dealt with war and criminal activities but are demanding James reveal his source for ‘Sambogate’?

Can I stand by his story 100%? No. I wasn’t there. Is it believable to me? Yes. I wasn’t surprised when Jesse Jackson made the infamous “nuts” comment or when President George W. Bush referred to a New York Times reporter as a “major league asshole.” Nor was I surprised when I heard about all the rude things Republican presidential candidate Senator John McCain has said over his long career in the senate. Politicians are human beings who often are very different people when there are no cameras on them (or they think there aren’t). Does it surprise me that the Governor of Alaska would refer to Senator Barack Obama as “Sambo” or Senator Hillary Clinton as a “bitch?” Not really. McCain laughed it off when a supporter called Senator Clinton a bitch so the fact that a GOPer called Clinton the same isn’t really that crazy. As for “sambo,” I’m not surprised about that either. Maybe the woman said it as a joke. Given the things I’ve heard on right wing talk radio, “sambo” is one of the least offensive things I’ve heard Obama been called.

At the least, let this interview be the basis for a follow-up investigation. The right wing has been following into every “Muslim,” “whitey” and “Ayers” connection to Obama so Governor Palin should be up against the same scrutiny. I’m not telling you what to believe. Read the interview and decide for yourself…

CG: Mr. James, let’s start with your background as a journalist. Where have you worked, what have you done?
CJ: I’ve been a journalist pretty much full-time most of my professional life. The first political campaign I covered was the Nixon-Humphrey race in 1968. So what is that? 44 years ago?

CG: 44 years ago? Wow. So what organizations have you worked for?
CJ: I’ve worked for local newspapers, local broadcast TV, and radio stations.

CG: Could you give me some of the names…?
CJ: I could but I’d hate to open them up to attack.  Because they had nothing to do with any of this.(I’ve done some research to find that he has worked for local broadcast TV, local newspapers)

CG: Okay. In your professional career, has any story or source been discredited?
CJ: Yea. You can’t practice journalism for 44 years and not have a discredited source from time to time. And any journalist who answers that question “no” is lying.

CG: How often has it happened?
CJ: It’s happened. In absolute numbers, I’d say that it’s happened four or five times over 40 plus years.

CG: And how many stories would you say you’ve done over those 40 plus years?
CJ: That’s like asking how many rings are in a tree? (laughs)

CG: Somewhere in the high thousands?
CJ: Somewhere in the thousands, yes.

CG: Review for us how you came about going to Alaska, meeting waitress Lucille…
CJ: Well, first off I didn’t go to Alaska. This was all done by phone.

CG: All done by phone?
CJ: When I was 10 years old, I played playground baseball with a guy that became a lifelong friend. We went to different high schools , but then went to university together. I went off into journalism. He went off to years and years of graduate school. He’s always been a wilderness kind of guy that likes the outdoors. So when he finished graduate school, he moved to Alaska to teach. We’ve always kept in touch so when rumors of Palin’s appointment began circulating around the 20th of August, the Friday morning before the convention, I shot off an e-mail to him asking ‘Who is this woman?’ Nobody had ever heard of her before. But she’s about to become Vice President, or nominated for Vice President. So he wrote back a really long nasty e-mail about her, along with a link to a 63-page dossier on Palin. He said that the Democratic Party of Alaska put it together. I referenced that in my follow-up piece.

CG: I read that. Yes.
CJ: So I wrote back to him asking ‘Do you know anybody who I could talk to because I think there’s a story here…’? He sent four maybe five names, including the infamous Lucille. And he knows her because she’s cleaned his family’s home every other week for a long time.

CG: Right
CJ: Her full-time job is as a waitress. So I called Lucille, who was very nervous about talking to a reporter, saying ‘Look I know you may be leery about talking to a reporter. You don’t know me. I call out of the blue. You can call my friend to verify me, our mutual friend and, I’ll call you back in fifteen minutes.’ After thinking about it, she said, ‘No I’ll talk to you.’ And because she’s obviously not sophisticated in the ways of the news media, and I didn’t want to trap her, I asked her if I could use her name. She said ‘just my first name.’ And I said that’s all right. I don’t want you to get into any trouble because you’re talking to me…

Shortly after Obama locked up the nomination, but the Democratic Party primaries still had to be completed, she was sitting at a restaurant table Palin was sitting at for lunch one day. That’s when she heard Palin make the remark, and it stuck with her because it just didn’t seem like something a governor of a state ought to be saying. It sounded odd. As I talked with others through the course of my reporting, a number of people said they also heard Palin make what could be construed as racist or sexist or bigoted comments, including the term “mukluk” and “arctic Arabs.” I asked one of them, ‘Isn’t her husband part-Eskimo?’

CG: I don’t know if Todd Palin”looks” Eskimo at all. I’m not sure what percentage he is.
CJ: I think he’s one tenth.

CG: Are you concerned that people will now find and/or try to intimidate the waitress, Lucille?
CJ: I don’t know. I’ve received a number of inquiries from media outlets ranging from NBC News to the National Enquirer about her. I’ve given every one of them the same answer. If you want, I will pass your name and phone number on to her. Whether or not she calls you is her decision. I’m not her agent. I’m not her handler. I just happened to stumble into her.

CG: Why do you think this story has been discredited so much by the mainstream media?
CJ: Take a guess…It is a typical Republican — I won’t even say Republican. It’s a typical right-wing maneuver to try to discredit the messenger rather than dealing with the reality of the message.

CG: So you’re standing by your story 100%? You’re standing by your source 100%?
CJ: Yes. As I said in my follow-up, do I wish more people would’ve spoken on the record? Absolutely. Do I regret writing the story? Absolutely not. I mean Woodward and Bernstein would not tell either their editor or their publisher at the Washington Post about Mark Furlin.  Anonymous sources are a necessary evil in journalism. I stand by my story and my source 100%.