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CNN Saturday Morning News

Analyzing the Condit Interview

Aired August 25, 2001 - 09:32   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
KYRA PHILLIPS, CNN ANCHOR: Time now for your e-mail questions and comments about the Condit interview.

JEFF FLOCK, CNN ANCHOR: Joining us to answer your questions are, one, CNN's Bob Franken, our good friend, in Modesto, California; Mike Brooks on the set with us here in Atlanta, a CNN consultant and former D.C. police detective; and Seth Minookin of "Brill's Content," we just talked to him last hour. He remains with us again in New York.

Gentlemen, thank you.

MIKE BROOKS, CNN CONSULTANT: Thank you.

BOB FRANKEN, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Morning.

FLOCK: Good morning, to you all. Let's -- hey, Bob, you have been doggedly pursuing this all the way. Let's start the first one with you. This is a person coming to us from -- I'm not sure where this one's from, but "I'd like to know if we have a timeline of Condit's activities during the time between when he says he last saw her and when she was reported missing." Do we know what he had been doing through then? And the second part of that question, "Is there any evidence of past domestic violence or a hot temper on the part of Congressman Gary Condit?" Bob?

FRANKEN: Part two, no evidence. There of course have been rumors about everything, all of which we've checked out and found that there has been nothing to that. That's the part about the hot temper or domestic violence.

As far as the timeline between the time that she was last seen and when she was reported missing, we don't know in the media whether there is in fact complete evidence. The police, of course, have questioned him any number of times.

We do know that there was a timeline that was provided to police about the activities about the time she disappeared, but we should point out that the police, and I know that Mike will back this up, are not telling us everything. They're telling us as little as they can, as a matter of fact. So that they have some information that might help their investigation, it's not public.

BROOKS: That's true, that they're not going to give up everything again. As part of an investigation, there are some things that they can't tell the media, that they can't tell everyone. So again, that is true, what Bob's saying.

PHILLIPS: All right, we're going to take a phone call. Sheryl (ph) is on the line. Go ahead, Sheryl.

CALLER: Hi. My question is, do -- why do people -- why are they saying that Gary Condit is lying? Are they -- in the past I've always heard you could always tell by someone's body language whether or not they're lying, and I wondered if anyone paid attention to his body language or any movements that he had or anything like that that would suggest that he is lying. When I did see it, I saw maybe two, two things that I had question about, and I wondered if anybody else had noticed any cues or any body language in his talking.

PHILLIPS: Mike, you pay attention to things like that, right, as a detective.

BROOKS: Yes, I do. And also some speaking with law enforcement officials, some sources of mine in Washington, who were also watching it, they say that what he was saying, he wasn't lying, but again, he wasn't forthcoming as he was not forthcoming in the first two interviews with law enforcement, with the D.C. police.

It wasn't until the third and fourth interview where they really got questions for -- got the answers that they were looking for, where it could have been done in the first two interviews.

Whether he was lying or not, a lot of people, there was some college -- psychologist yesterday that were saying his eye movements would indicate, you know, down and to the right, that he was lying when asked certain questions, those kind of things. Again, those are just some tools you can use. Law enforcement doesn't believe he was lying, they just believe he wasn't as forthcoming as he could have been.

FLOCK: Seth, listen up on this one. Here's Pat Bacon (ph), Maitland, Florida, "Abbe Lowell had it exactly right, Connie Chung blew it by spending almost half the time trying to get Condit to utter the S-word. She also wanted to know how many times did Chandra visit Condit's apartment." That's for some -- that's for Mike, maybe, or Bob. But did they blow it, first of all, Seth?

SETH MINOOKIN, INSIDE.COM: Yes, I think Connie Chung spent too much time focusing on that one question. I mean, I don't think there's anyone who saw that interview who was left with the impression that Gary Condit did not have an affair with Chandra Levy. His bizarre, mantra-like repetition of, "I'm not a perfect man, I've been married for 34 years, I've made mistakes," I think answered the basic questions we all needed to know.

And at that point, Connie Chung could have said, Isn't the way you're answering me now one of the reasons that so many of your constituents and so many of the people in the country refuse to accept what's going on with you because you seem evasive and as if you're interested in yourself as opposed to the safety of a young woman who you say you were very close to?

FLOCK: And Bob, the second part of the question...

BROOKS: Well, first of all, well, well...

FLOCK: ... the apartment part of it, go ahead. Go ahead.

FRANKEN: Well, first of all, it took me a moment to figure out what the S-word was. But once I figured that out, that Connie Chung, Seth, had Connie Chung not repeatedly asked the question, she probably would have been accused of not being aggressive enough a reporter. It was one of those situations that once an interview is through, you always wish, I'm sure she always wishes, that something had been done differently.

But quite frankly, that is one of the fundamental questions about this, whether we like it or not. And the police say that it was important to them to try and determine how much information that Condit could give them.

So did she ask it too many times? Some will say yes, others will say that she didn't ask it well enough to get the answer. And of course others will say that there was no way that she was going to get an answer to a vital question.

BROOKS: I'll agree with Bob on that too, because investigators believe that someone who is intimate with someone will share certain information that they wouldn't share with their parents, with their other relatives, with their closest friends. And on the second half of the question, on how many times Condit visited her apartment, investigators and sources close to the investigation tell me that it was approximately two times a week that she would go over to his apartment.

MINOOKIN: I think Bob's absolutely right that Connie Chung, in some ways, was in a no-win situation, especially faced with the kind of answers that Gary Condit was giving. And either she was going to be seen as being too hard or too soft or not asking the right questions. And in fact, people said she had a lot to lose and probably came off pretty well at the end, certainly had no moments like she had with Newt Gingrich's mother, which she's trying to wipe from the history of her journalistic career.

So in that regard...

(CROSSTALK)

PHILLIPS: What's that, Bob?

FRANKEN: I'm sorry, Seth...

MINOOKIN: No, no, but...

FRANKEN: ... yes, I was just going to say, as a colleague, and -- as a colleague, I just wanted to say that frankly, I thought that she did a fine job.

MINOOKIN: Right. And people who, like me, who haven't done a live on-air interview, have -- sort of can't appreciate how difficult it is. I've done interviews where you have a limited amount of time with the subject, and it can be a very frustrating experience. And certainly she stuck to her guns for the entire time.

PHILLIPS: Well, I can tell you, knowing Bob Franken, he would have done even better job. Let's move on to a phone call. This one comes from Cape Cod. Go ahead, caller, tell us your name and your question or comment.

CALLER: My name is Heidi.

PHILLIPS: Hi, Heidi. What's your question?

CALLER: My question is, why isn't Gary Condit a major suspect? He was the last one to have any contact with her. And statistically speaking, it's usually the boyfriend or the husband that is involved in these type of crimes.

BROOKS: Well, that's what investigators were looking at, and that's why they were asking certain questions and were trying to get certain questions answered in the first two interviews, and it took four interviews.

But again, right now they do not look at him as a suspect, from their timeline that they've made up that they have now and also from doing a profile of Chandra, dealing with Representative Condit, and looking at all of the statements that had been taken, the polygraphs have been taken, you know, more than one polygraph was taken, Condit wasn't the only one who was polygraphed, even though that was his own private polygraph, there were polygraphs conducted by law enforcement, by the FBI.

And right now they do not look at him as a suspect.

FRANKEN: And point of fact, if I might suggest, and Mike knows this, of course, the police, at least as far as we know, believe that the last contact that Chandra Levy had was on April 30, and that was with the manager at the health club where she came in to terminate her membership. To the best of our knowledge, that man was the last contact.

FLOCK: Eddie (ph), here's another side of the coverage story. An e-mailer named Mary Thomas, Bob, for you as well as for Seth, "People may be tiring of it, but this coverage is absolutely essential to exposing the sleazy side of some of the politicians who are ostensibly serving the country." That's the other viewpoint, right, Seth?

MINOOKIN: I mean, that certainly is a viewpoint, and I think one of the reasons we're seeing the kind of blanket coverage is not only because this is a politician but, unlike Bill Clinton, it's not only about sex. There is a missing woman here.

I think I disagree with that comment, though. I don't think there's an enormous amount of questions about the fact that a lot of politicians are very sleazy, and we probably didn't need Gary Condit to reinforce that in our mind.

FRANKEN: Well...

MINOOKIN: So...

PHILLIPS: Go ahead, Bob.

MINOOKIN: Yes, Bob...

(CROSSTALK)

FRANKEN: ... you know, I'm sorry, I didn't mean to interrupt, Seth. But there is -- it's an easy thing to say that politicians are uniquely sleazy, and there probably are a few sleazes among them. But the general -- the consensus is that politicians pretty much are like the rest of society, pretty much, maybe at least the celebrities in society. There are sleazes, there's some people of high moral character, and all the rest.

Dick Gephardt expressed concern about that yesterday, saying that he was worried that this whole matter would paint all politicians as bums, as he put it. It's very easy to point the finger. I spend my time a lot with the politicians in Washington, and quite frankly, what has always struck me is how ordinary they are.

MINOOKIN: I think, I think actually Gephardt, Dick Gephardt, has a very good point, and if I was a politician, and certainly if I was a Democrat, I would want Gary Condit to go away very quickly, because he's reinforcing the most negative images about politicians that people in this country have. It would be as if, as a journalist, the only person you saw for months and months representing your profession was someone from the "Globe" or the "Star," one of the supermarket tabloids.

It's not the...

FRANKEN: But journalism, that's another story.

MINOOKIN: ... image that...

FRANKEN: Yes.

MINOOKIN: Right, right.

PHILLIPS: All right, this question comes from Michael in New York, gentlemen. The e-mail reads, "I'm curious to know what happened to the watch that belonged in the discarded watch box. Could it be that Mr. Condit got rid of it because he knows that Chandra's wearing it, wherever she is currently located? I'd like this question asked of Mr. Condit. The answer could be telling."

Mike, you want to take that one?

BROOKS: Well, the watch box, as we know, was discarded in a -- in -- along -- in a trash can in old town Alexandria a good ways away from Gary Condit's apartment and from his office. It was a men's watch. They -- law enforcement knew about the woman who gave him the watch before they even found the box.

So they knew about the watch. Where the watch is right now, it's believed that Mr. Condit still has the watch. It was a man's watch, so -- but it still doesn't, doesn't say that she couldn't have it. But I think if she did have it, law enforcement would know this, and they would be putting that out there looking for a man's watch, you know, such as this, if you saw a woman with a man's watch, going under the assumption, again, that she's somewhere that she doesn't want to be found.

FLOCK: Gentlemen, we're out of time. Sorry, those were good questions. Bob, I appreciate your dogged pursuit out there on the West Coast. Mike Brooks, thanks for your perspective here. And Seth in New York, thank you as well. Appreciate it.

MINOOKIN: Thank you.

BROOKS: Thank you.

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