Finding Chandra by Scott Higham & Sari Horwitz

Author:Scott Higham & Sari Horwitz
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Scribner

16

Prime Time

Gary Condit and Connie Chung

After the FBI’s top cold-case agent dismissed Gary Condit as a credible suspect in the Chandra Levy case, Abbe Lowell decided that the time had come to salvage what remained of his client’s political career. Condit’s son and daughter, Chad and Cadee, two of his closest advisers, believed that their father needed to launch a public relations campaign to put the past behind him. His colleagues on Capitol Hill agreed, and so did Lowell. Without an act of contrition and an explanation of why he had stayed silent in the face of the ferocious media pack all these months, there was no way he could ever retain his congressional seat.

Condit stood on the precipice of political ruin. Voters in California were losing their faith, and his hometown newspaper, the Modesto Bee, was calling for his resignation. The Bee had endorsed Condit in every political contest dating back to his days as the mayor of Ceres, but on August 12 the paper’s editorial board declared that the congressman had “violated the public trust” and “knowingly hindered” the police investigation into Chandra’s disappearance. “His self-absorption has been a lapse not only of judgment, but of human decency,” the editorial board concluded. In what Condit perceived to be an act of betrayal, a former staff member considered running against him in the Democratic primary eight months away. At forty-two, Dennis Cardoza had once served as Condit’s chief of staff in Sacramento and won a seat in the California State Assembly after Condit was elected to Congress. Cardoza had said he would not run for Condit’s congressional seat unless his mentor retired, but the political landscape had suddenly changed.

Deep down, Condit didn’t want to conduct a public relations campaign, but as distasteful as it was, he thought that his children, his political advisers, his party’s leaders, and his lawyer might be right. Only one question remained: Which national newscast should he choose to carry his plea for political salvation? The nation’s top anchors and media personalities clamored to provide Condit with a platform: Diane Sawyer, Katie Couric, Ed Bradley, Connie Chung, Barbara Walters, Stone Phillips, Rita Cosby, Larry King. The anchors and their producers and bookers behaved like lobbyists, pleading with Lowell, cajoling him, penning personal notes, making their pitches for why they should be the one to get the exclusive interview. They made many of the same claims: Their own network was the best, the most watched; their program was fair, the others were not. Condit was sickened by the spectacle. He had come to despise the news media, first for eviscerating him and now for their groveling. It was unseemly, but he knew he needed at least one member of the pack to be on his side if he were to have any chance of remaining in Washington.

Of all the anchors and the media personalities vying for the interview, Connie Chung made her way to the front of the line. Since her days as a local television

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