Джозеф Хеллер - Maximum Impact

The Senate chamber occupies the second floor of the Capitol. Above it, on the third level, are balconies, called galleries, reserved for the media, visitors, and senators’ families. There was a time when a senator could see if he or she was being chronicled by glancing up at the press gallery and counting noses, but that was no longer the case. Many reporters preferred to sit in the comfortable third-floor press room behind the gallery and monitor the floor action via closed-circuit television, called C-Span II. And since C-Span was on cable television, reporters without other business at the Capitol could sit in their offices, or even at home, and report on the day in Congress.

But this day was one of the rarities. On this morning, the media and visitors’ galleries were filled. None of the business on the Senate floor appeared unusual, but Senator Harold Marshall had asked for five minutes during Morning Business. His appearance was gleefully anticipated. He was well known as the product of and the able spokesman for the Converse Corporation. After the long story in the morning’s Chronicle, it was almost inevitable that Marshall would have something to say and that his legendary temper would be on high burn.

Marshall had not yet taken the floor, and in the media galleries, reporters were studying copies of the Chronicle, trying to digest every nuance of Steve Pace’s story. It was bannered across the top of page one and was as astounding as some of the old Watergate stories.

The story disclosed that the NTSB’s laboratory found no trace of flesh, feathers, or blood on any of the fan blades broken in the accident and recovered away from the main body of the engine. Nonetheless, the engine was filled with bird remains. Investigators speculated that the evidence was planted. The story quoted one investigator, who was not named, as telling the NTSB he looked at the engine on the afternoon of the crash and saw no evidence of a bird strike. The story also disclosed that the leaders of the investigation were not informed until the day after the accident of a substance, believed to be the remains of a large bird, found inside the engine. That information was made public the same afternoon. The sudden new interest in the accident was another in a series of strange occurrences surrounding the crash.

In a sidebar, Pace retold the story of the deaths of Mark Antravanian and Mike McGill, bringing up to date the police investigation of both cases. He also wrote of Justin Smith’s death, reported as a murder earlier in the week by all the Washington media. But for the first time, the killing was linked directly to Smith’s suspicions that a cover-up clouded the investigation of the ConPac crash.

Officially, the NTSB, the Sexton Aircraft Corporation, and the Converse Corporation were declining comment. It was, all in all, a compelling read.

Steve Pace was not in the press gallery to cover Harold Marshall’s speech. He could have appropriated the story, but he and Paul Wister agreed he could accomplish more by staying in touch with the NTSB and the police. Julian Hughes was in the gallery for the Chronicle. She was fielding all sorts of questions from her dumbfounded colleagues, but she was able to add nothing to what her newspaper printed because she knew nothing more. She had no idea where Pace’s information came from or where he was going with it. Other reporters told her the NTSB was declining all comment on the Chronicle story. They were frustrated, and she understood. But she could offer no help and would not have done so in any event.

A murmur of “There he is” rolled along the gallery desks as Marshall strode onto the floor from the Republican cloakroom. Hughes knew Glenn Brennan, probably along with a few dozen other reporters, was stationed in the cloakroom to catch the Ohio senator both before and after his speech. She wondered if they got anything but bluster.

No one had the floor, so Marshall marched to his desk amid the other mismatched desks. With one exception, that of the senior senator from Delaware, all the desks were the originals that had come to the Senate chamber as each new state was admitted to the Union. Marshall’s dated back to the early nineteenth century. The old furniture was nonutilitarian at best, but that didn’t matter. Senators spent very little time at them and did no work there. Marshall clipped a small microphone to the breast pocket of his suit coat and asked to be recognized. The junior senator from Florida acknowledged the request and recognized Marshall for the standard five minutes. Had the Ohioan chanced to glance up, he would have seen that this was to be the best-covered piece of Morning Business of this Congress. But Marshall had no use for the media, not on this day.

“Thank you, Madam President. I rise this morning in a sense of outrage at the scurrilous accusations made in a newspaper I refuse to name. It deserves no publicity for its mendacious conduct in ignoring all relevant facts in order to score a cheap exclusive that bears no resemblance to the truth as we know it.” Marshall’s face was pinched in the same fury reflected in his voice.

A Utah reporter whom Hughes knew only slightly leaned toward her and whispered, “When you don’t like the message, you blame the messenger, right?” She waved him quiet.

Marshall continued. “There is no mystery about the tragic crash of ConPac Flight 1117 at Dulles Airport last month. I do not believe there is anyone here among us who would not take whatever action he could, at whatever cost, to go back in time and reverse history. But we cannot bring back the dead. That is not within the power of even this august body. It will not do anyone any good at all for the media to persist in sniping at the ghosts of some imagined conspiracy. It serves only to perpetuate the pain of those left behind by the victims of Flight 1117. And it impugns the integrity of one of the finest, most forthright industries in this great nation.

“The Converse Corporation has been one of the strongest vertebrae in the backbone of this country’s aerospace industry. It has been pivotal in the jet aircraft industry, which, I would like to point out, is one of the few endeavors in the world in which the United States still has technical dominance. Riding on Converse engines, the American aircraft industry has continued to swim upstream against the outflow of U.S. dollars and growing balance-of-trade deficits. To question the integrity of the industry or any of its components borders on the un-American. These new accusations are a travesty of justice. They represent all that is wrong with the media in this country. They do not wish to help the United States regain the economic health that once made us the most powerful nation on earth. They wish only to tear down the country for today’s black headline, to castigate honest men and women for some personal thrill, to drag a vital component of a vital industry through the mud just to sell newspapers. It’s enough to make me question the validity of the First Amendment to our precious Constitution.

“I know that is a startling and unpopular thing to say, but someone, somehow, has got to stop these people, to bring them to ground, to make them accountable for their indiscretions and baseless accusations. It is time—no, it is past time—to let the media of this country know we are watching closely, and we don’t like what we see and read. These are despicable, groundless, wicked lies, and they must be stopped. One way or another, I shall see that done. Meanwhile, on the chance someone missed my definition of these character assassinations, I repeat: They are lies, lies, lies, lies, lies, lies, lies!”