Producer (20 page)

Of course, there is no such thing as closure when you’re dealing with such a far-reaching tragedy and with numerous pregnant
women being left to fend for themselves and children being orphaned or raised by one parent instead of two. The stories of
loss go on and on. But if I had to choose one story that personifies the odd serendipities that occurred surrounding this
time, I would choose meeting up with someone in a most unlikely situation.

It was two years before the attacks and before Al Qaeda became a household term. I was at a fabulous designer sale in New
York where women stood in line to get the latest name-
brand clothing at slashed prices. It took place in a hotel suite where crowds of us grabbed amazing pieces and tried them
on in a group. Modesty flew out the window as animated women tried on the finest clothing available at
almost
affordable prices. And there I was, in the group fitting room, connecting with a woman next to me.

Only women do this, as we try on clothes and become best friends in an instant, truthfully critiquing each other’s outfits.
“Hi, I’m Wendy,” I said. “That skirt is fabulous on you but the top isn’t quite right.”

She smiled, told me her name was Christy, and we began to help each other choose some great new clothes. It turned out we
were both in media, and when I finally left with my spoils, I was sorry we had not exchanged phone numbers. I just knew that
we could have been friends.

Fast forward two years to the 9/11 tragedies. Two weeks after the attacks, I got a call from Maureen Orth,
Vanity Fair
writer and wife of beloved Tim Russert who has since passed away. “Do you remember a huge designer sale you went to a couple
of years ago in New York?” she asked. “There was a woman there and the two of you hit it off?”

“Of course I remember,” I said. “She was great. I wish I’d gotten her number.”

“Well, her name is Christy Ferer,” Maureen told me, “and her husband, Neil Levin, died in the World Trade Center on 9/11.
He was the head of the Port Authority. I’ve known her a long time and she wants to contact Rosemary Altea, a British psychic
who appeared on your show. Can you get them in touch?”

I did it right away, and now Christy and I have become friends. There was so little anyone could do for people who had lost
their loved ones, I was happy to be able to offer someone a modicum of comfort. While we may be perfect strangers
to people around us, we have connections that may only become apparent in times of crisis. Since we are all human, we can
feel the gratitude and connectedness of being alive, right here, right now, and being there for someone else, when need be.
The decision is up to us. We can choose to walk away from tragedy and repress our feelings of loss and grief. But they will
rear their heads when we least expect it. Or we can choose to be grateful for each day as we join with others to say, “There
but for the grace of God go I.”

BE GRATEFUL EVERY DAY OF YOUR LIFE

Being grateful for everything in life helps you focus on what’s good and right, instead of what’s bad and wrong. When I hear
kids complaining about having a bad day, I would like to say, “No, the people in that Haitian earthquake had a bad day. You
are having some aggravation in your life.”

Remember the old cliché, Life is short. Why are you wasting time rehashing your problems when there is so much to be thankful
for? The key here is that gratitude needs to become a habit. I have heard it said that it takes twenty-eight days of a new
behavior to break a habit. So here again, make a list of all that you have to be grateful for and recite it each morning when
you wake up. I’ve been doing this long before it was considered fashionable and before the self-help shelves in the bookstores
were filled with books on gratitude. As a result, I can say from direct experience that it really does make a difference.

If you wake up in the morning with complaints and resentment, that is how your day will unfold. But when you remind yourself
to focus on the good instead of the bad, then that is how you will direct your day. It’s all about changing your mind-set
and building new patterns that will help make your life more productive and satisfying.

Gratefulness can be contagious. Have you noticed how quick we are to tell someone when we’re pissed off about something? But
what about when someone does something nice for us? If somebody has changed the quality of your day from negative to positive,
or if a child has behaved well, tell them. Give them the positive reinforcement that will encourage more of the same. It’s
a fine feeling to have someone say, “Hey, you made my day.” In this way, you are setting a foundation of gratefulness.

Since being grateful opens your heart and shows you ways to comfort yourself and others, gratitude can help get you through
some close to impossible situations. Let’s act like this is the last day of our lives, and feel grateful for all the beauty
that life has to offer. Crises will happen and so will loss. It is a part of the human experience. But so is being grateful.
Give it a try. You’ll like it.

I
wonder if the Clintons considered this question when they moved into the White House in January 1993. Whatever they were
thinking (or not thinking), they had a seriously shaky start with the press corps.

It is the prerogative of any new administration to target certain White House positions, fire the people who were hired under
the previous administration, and fill the jobs with those who worked very hard to get the new president elected. This was
the case when the Clintons first arrived at the White House in January 1993. Everyone understands that this is common practice
and it occurs with each administration. But there are some positions, such as White House chef, various secretarial jobs,
and certain nonpolitical and nonpartisan offices that work differently. The people who work in these positions serve whichever
president is in office, and they remain in their jobs from administration to administration, no matter who is elected.

That was the case with the White House travel office. From the time I began work as CNN’s White House producer,
I became attached to this group of highly skilled and caring guys who helped us in a major way during all of our trips, both
domestic and international. I sometimes wondered what we would have done without them. In fact, they did such a great job
for so long, I was completely stunned and upset when I got a call from Billy Dale, director of the travel office who had been
there since the Kennedy administration. “We’ve been fired,” he told me.

“Who was fired?” I asked.

“The whole travel office,” he said. “All seven of us. They fired us and asked us to clean out our desks.”

I could hardly believe my ears. These people had worked as hard as any of us, sacrificing holidays with their families and
flying halfway across the world with us to make sure we had everything we needed when we traveled. Over the years, the press
corps and the travel office had come to know each other’s names and families, and we considered each other friends. Barney
Brasseaux, one of the travel guys, had come to my wedding, I was so close to him.

Now, the Clintons were set on replacing this experienced, hardworking, egoless staff who had served us loyally for many years,
with friends of theirs whom they thought would do a better job. When we balked at these firings, the people in charge inferred
that maybe we didn’t get the whole story and how much more efficiently things could be run.

The truth was that the Clinton White House didn’t understand the press corps’ relationship with the long-standing travel office
staff. This was not like firing a group of anonymous people whom we barely knew. Quite the opposite. We had dealt with these
wonderful people on a steady basis for many years as they arranged our international as well as our domestic travel, including
chartering press planes, buses, booking
last minute hotels and conference rooms, and anything else we needed. They knew all of our idiosyncrasies and they always
did their best to make us as comfortable as possible. This was particularly important for me because I was not what you would
call a great traveler. I absolutely detested flying and my suitcase was so big, they called it “the suitcase from hell.”

This group also took a lot of abuse when things went wrong. If a plane was delayed or a bus didn’t get through on time and
someone missed a deadline, these men bore the brunt of that. But time after time, they kept their heads down and weathered
the rage and criticism without complaining. They just took it and moved on. Now, instead of being respected or even rewarded
for a hard job well done for many years, they were being replaced. On top of that, since they were not going quietly, it appeared
that the administration was leveling charges against them, focusing on Billy Dale, the director of the travel office.

Billy and his staff of six men were accustomed to booking what we needed, and then billing the costs back to the networks.
This is where Billy and I worked very closely. For example, I would call him, give him the particulars of an upcoming trip,
and ask him, “How much do you think this will cost?”

“Let’s see,” he would say, “first you head to New York, which will cost this much, and then it’s on to Paris, which will cost
this much”—and so on. He had extreme patience with me because he kept in mind that CNN had less money and had to justify the
expense of each trip.

One time, NBC reporter Andrea Mitchell said to me, “Wendy, you’re so lucky you don’t have an evening news deadline every night
like we do.”

I looked at her, amazed, and said, “CNN doesn’t have an evening news deadline like yours because every minute is a deadline.
We have them all day long and all night.”

In order to meet those deadlines, we had depended on Billy Dale’s travel office to make it all work, which required Billy
to keep a large amount of petty cash on hand, to tip the drivers and pay people along the way to do their jobs. For example,
if we suddenly needed to leave Budapest in the middle of the night, Billy would pay the appropriate people to make sure we
had a plane on the tarmac, ready to go.

But the Clinton administration was leveling charges that Billy had been skimming off the top in order to fund a lake house
he was building for his family. The fact that he had been saving for this house for many years did nothing to convince them
of his innocence. One of the main problems was that although Billy kept meticulous notes, he wrote them in pencil and entered
them into a ledger. No electronic data had been entered because Billy kept his files the old-fashioned way that had always
worked for him in the past.

In the midst of this turmoil dubbed Travelgate, in a related crisis, President Clinton was faced with the undoing of his White
House counsel and old friend from Arkansas, Vince Foster. Because Foster was defending Hillary in the travel office scandal,
he had been the target of several hostile
Wall Street Journal
editorials, and he was quite upset over the entire matter. A stickler for integrity, in early May 1993, Vince Foster had
given a commencement address at his alma mater, the University of Arkansas Law School. He said:

The reputation you develop for intellectual and ethical integrity will be your greatest asset or your worst enemy. You will
be judged by your judgment… There is no victory, no advantage, no fee, no favor, which is worth even a blemish on your reputation
for intellect and integrity… Dents to [your] reputation are irreparable.

Now, he feared being asked to testify at a Congressional hearing because he so disliked the public spotlight. Dedicated to
maintaining his personal integrity, he had considered resigning his position as White House counsel, but he feared facing
humiliation if he returned to Arkansas.

Now, a few months later, Larry landed an interview with President Clinton, which would be shot live in the library of the
White House. I rushed around doing my usual job as White House producer, doubly anxious to make the show run smoothly. I had
yet to become Larry’s executive producer, but I knew the job was coming available, I had my sights set on it, and I wanted
to make a good impression on him.

It was 9:10 p.m. on July 20, 1993, and I was watching the show on a monitor in a room across the hall from the library. All
was going fine until I glanced down the hall and noticed that some of the president’s aides, George Stephanopoulos, Dee Dee
Myers, and Mack McLarty, were whispering among themselves. I caught Mack’s eye and he motioned for me to come and join them.
As soon as I got there, Mack said quietly, “We have to end the show right now.”

“Why?” I asked.

“Off the record,” Dee Dee told me in a whisper, “we believe that Vince Foster just committed suicide. He was found dead off
the George Washington Parkway in Virginia. We can’t have you telling anyone else yet. We’re afraid someone will call in and
tell the president about Vince. That’s not how we want him to find out.”