FEBRUARY 2000
SECTION: Cover
HEADLINE: Flack Like Me: Jamie Rubin's Ego-System
BYLINE: Mark Francis Cohen
BODY:
AFTER KEEPING THE MEDIA WAITING FOR an hour, State Department spokesman Jamie Rubin charges to the podium of the second-floor press briefing room. He is, as always, behind schedule. But on this particular day, he�s brandishing a smirk and his blue-green eyes are twinkling in a way that suggests he�s very pleased with himself.
And why not? He�s not only the longest-serving flack in the Clinton Administration, he�s one of Secretary of State Madeline Albright�s most trusted advisers and closest friends.
With his brown, curly hair and angular face, Rubin, who has been confused (from a distance) with his late friend John F. Kennedy, Jr., looks decidedly dashing in a three-button navy suit and a perfectly-knotted, bright-yellow tie. The tie�s hyperactive color, Rubin later informs me is telegenic; it was a gift from his equally telegenic wife, Christiane Amanpour, the raven-haired correspondent for CNN who�s as famous for her safari jackets as Rubin is for his designer wardrobe.
�Greetings. Welcome to the State Department briefing�� Rubin says, carefully prying open a large, white binder filled with likely answers to every question reporters might pose.
No that long ago, the binder didn�t provide the right answer to a question about Russian military strategy, and Rubin became noticeably upset. Following the briefing, he walked over to his row of aides, who always sit in the front of the press room on plastic chairs, and squeezed the shoulder of one, James Foley, while growling under his breath: �You fucked up on Chechnya!�
Today, after running through, a brief statement about a Community of Democracies meeting in Poland, Rubin is asked if Russia will be invited.
�Russia is a democracy, yes?� he snaps. �They have an elected president the last time I checked.�
Though it�s his job to answer questions, Rubin often sounds exasperated with the queries he gets. But he has more invested in his work than the average government mouthpiece.
Described as a �bright, street-smart New Yorker� by one Albright biographer, and �the son [she] never had� by another, Rubin�s relationship to the woman he helped make the first female secretary of state is as unprecedented as the power he wields.
The 39-year-old Rubin works with Albright to shape U.S. foreign policy on everything from Kosovo to the Middle East. When he speaks, world leaders listen. As one foreign correspondent who covers the State Department puts it: �He is the voice of America.�
Rubin is also a master manipulator of the media. He can get stories planted on the front page of The New York Times or The Washington Post, or see to it that offending reporters hear about it when they cross him. He routinely browbeats journalists, trying to control what they write.
A reporter asks him to comment on the bad press coming out of the Middle East, where the U.S. investigation of the EgyptAir crash has come under increasing criticism.
�Yes, I�m familiar with bad press!� he replies, smiling to no one in particular, �It�s what I do for a living��
Someone else wonders if there�s any fear that, since the investigation has slowed down, the Egyptian government will be blamed for interference.
�It depends on how all of you write it!� Rubin thunders. �When you say it�s slowed down, that�s a misunderstanding of the investigative process� So will there be harm depends on whether people explain to the public and to the world in a way that�s accurate��
This line of questioning continues, and Rubin reluctantly calls on a journalist, whom he obviously dislikes, from The Catholic Reporter.
�Jamie, can you say��
�I really would have thought we would have covered most of the waterfront on this topic.�
�Oh, I don�t know. It gets more interesting as we go along,� the reporter says.
�Let�s keep swimming,� Rubin responds gamely.
The reporter plies him with a couple of questions, to which Rubin gives half-responses (�The speculation that you�re making is completely hypothetical and it doesn�t even fall into the realm of hypotheticals which I occasionally answer�). Finally, Rubin cuts him off by picking on a journalist in the first row who covers the State Department for Agence France-Presse.
Journalist: �I�m just wondering if you have anything new to say about the alleged promises made by Prime Minister Barak to the Syrians��
Rubin: �As you know�� [Thumbs through the binder for the answer]
Journalist: �If you don�t have anything new to say, don�t bother giving us the same old stuff.�
Everyone starts laughing.
Rubin: �You take all the fun out of my job!�
Journalist: �I don�t want to waste time hearing you rehash the same thing.�
Rubin: �Why don�t I say what I have to say and then you decide whether you think I have anything new to say� Isn�t it your job to decide whether it�s new? I certainly wouldn�t want to take that important responsibility away from you.�
I FIND MYSELF ON THE RECEIVING END OF Rubin�s micro-management style as soon as I propose to write a story on him and his wife, who is pregnant with their first child.
No way, his people say. If you want to do a profile, it�s going to be about him alone.
I make the necessary concessions, and a little after 3 o�clock on a Saturday afternoon, Rubin welcomes me into his cozy co-op apartment in Adams Morgan. He bought the place from his friend, Washington Post columnist Richard Cohen. The apartment is tidy, with hardwood floors, heavy furniture and mementos from trips abroad. Silver-framed wedding pictures of Rubin and a white-gowned Amanpour are arranged here and there. Opera is playing on the stereo.
As Rubin and I talk, he sits on a soft green couch and does lots of energetic fidgeting. He leans forward, crosses his leg, crosses his arms, looks out the window, purses his lips, widens his eyes as if he is doing an imitation of William F. Buckley Jr., and takes sips from his glass of Pellegrino resting on the coffee table.
Our conversation is being monitored by one of his aides, Kitty Bartels, who has a tape recorder running, and tells me she may or may not have a transcript of the interview made. Bartels, who is wearing faded denim overalls, is seated next to Rubin and spends the whole time looking rather bored, checking her watch and bouncing up to answer the phone even though Rubin tells her she doesn�t have to.
Why, I wonder, would the quintessential press handler require a press handler?
We chat about how Rubin spends a typical day, how the rigors of the briefings are wearing on him and how and his wife keep their jobs separate (�It�s easier than you think�) and what he�ll do next. With Clinton out of the White House in less than a year, Rubin will have to leave his post soon. Amanpour is due to deliver in late March. A few months ago, rumors were floated that he�d resign when the baby was born. He says that was baseless. Some who know his skills at leakage think Rubin himself created the rumors to let prospective employers know he�s going to be on the market soon.
Still, Rubin is counting down at the State Department. He has to decide whether he and Amanpour will live in Washington, New York or London. He says he�s open to new options, including going into the television news business. And given his profile, it�s easy to imagine him as the next George Stephanopoulos.
EVER SINCE HE WENT TO WORK FOR Madeline Albright back in her days as U.N. ambassador, Jamie Rubin has been polishing not only his boss�s image, but his own. During his six years at the State Department, he�s emerged as a dweebishly hunky celebrity whose doings make the pages of People as well as Foreign Affairs. Certainly his star-power far exceeds that of his predecessors.
How many people had heard of Mike McCurry before he left Foggy Bottom to become White House press secretary? Who remembers Nicholas Burns or Margaret Tutwiler, who handled State Department briefings during the Bush years? They may have been competent and respected, but how often were they mentioned on Page Six of the New York Post?
Nothing underscores the reach of Rubin�s fame like last year�s visit to a Macedonian refugee camp during the Kosovo bombing campaign. As he and Albright stepped into the camp trailed by a group of reporters, among them ABC�s Peter Jennings, dozens of forlorn evacuees started cheering �Albright! Albright!� At the same time, however, an even larger number began chanting: �Rubin! Rubin! Rubin!�
�He got more recognition than she did,� recalls veteran Associated Press reporter Barry Schweid, who has covered the State Department for the last 15 years. �It was amazing. It was like he was a football champ.�
In a shrewd move two years ago, Rubin used Schweid to preempt possible unfriendly disclosure of Albright�s supposedly unknown Jewish background. Washington Post reporter Michael Dobbs, then preparing a book on Albright, had confronted Rubin with rumors he�d heard in Prague. As Dobbs tells it, Rubin, �fearing the worst� from the Post, invited the unsuspecting Schweid to interview his boss, then encouraged him to ask questions about her family history that gave AP an exclusive.
JAMIE, AS HE�S CALLED BY JOURNALISTS, DIPLOMATS AND FRIENDS ALIKE, was born in Manhattan and grew up in the affluent Westchester County town of Larchmont. By the time he was at Columbia University acquiring his bachelor�s in political science and master�s in international affairs, he had a reputation for being flashy yet smart. He was a brash, cigarette-smoking member of the leisure class with an insatiable appetite for foreign policy issues, especially arms control.
Rubin was, for as long as anyone can seem to remember, a nerd in cool guy�s clothing. Not surprisingly, he skied and played tennis well and, when it was fashionable, would in-line skate (a la JFK Jr.) and bungee jump.
�He�s always had this glamorous image,� acknowledges long-time friend Jordan Tamagini, who recalls Rubin cruising around New York in his green Mercedes convertible. �He�s always been cool.�
After graduation, Rubin moved to Washington, where he landed a job at the Arms Control Association, a prestigious Beltway think tank. A few years later, he and Albright began talking when she was advising the Dukakis presidential campaign. Afterward, she invited him to come to one of her salons, where foreign policy heavyweights traded penetrating insights in her Georgetown living room.
A year later, he was hired as a consultant to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, which was then chaired by Sen. Joseph Biden. Rubin�s relationship with Albright, meanwhile, was becoming more chummy: In return for bringing him into her socio-professional circle, Rubin invited her to brief Biden and advise the committee on Eastern Europe.
They became even closer in 1992 when Bosnian Serbs stared executing and imprisoning the country�s Muslims. Rubin and Albright, both passionate people, felt direct military action by the United States was necessary to stop the atrocities. This was not a popular view among Democrats at the time, and their mutual hawkishness enhanced their rapport. It also eventually led to U.S. intervention in Kosovo, a conflict that�s been called �Madeline�s War.�
As soon as Clinton nominated Albright ambassador to the United Nations, Rubin began coaching her for confirmation hearings before the Senate Foreign Relations committee. The vote in her favor was unanimous. Once ambassador, she offered Rubin the job of spokesman. He accepted, but asked that he not be limited to press work. Albright complied by adding �special adviser� to his title.
REPORTERS AT THE U.N. GREW to dislike the modus operandi of Albright�s youngish prot�g� rather quickly. Right away, Rubin prohibited everyone in Albright�s office, other than him and his boss, from talking to the press without his permission. In addition, he played favorites, often providing off-the-record or not-for-attribution goodies to reporters from The Washington Post and The New York Times.
Stan Meisler, who used to cover the United Nations for The Los Angeles Times and has since retired, says, �As far as Rubin was concerned, The New York Times was number one, The Washington Post was number two, and everyone else was number nothing.�
Rubin would also leak stories to reporters covering the State Department in Washington. He would regularly telephone journalists at all hours of the day and evening (he worked all the time) to assail them for stories he didn�t like or thought contained incorrect information.
Meisler says he had never experienced that kind of persistent berating before. He recalls once having coffee with an old pal who worked for the U.S. delegation and who, under Rubin�s decree, was forbidden to talk to reporters. Seeing the two in the cafeteria, Rubin walked up to the table, glared at them for a few seconds without saying a word, and walked away.
There�s no doubt that Rubin was �and still is�unflinchingly loyal to Albright. During their years together in New York, Rubin always made sure she got lots of positive press attention.
In February 1996, Cuban pilots shot down two civilian planes off the coast of Miami. According to transcripts of radio transmissions, the pilots bragged repeatedly that they hit the Americans in their �cojones� �Spanish slang for testicles. Rubin and Albright decided to hold a press conference and release the transcript to discredit the Cubans. At the conference, Albright, wearing the face of straight-shooting ambassador, got up and declared, using words carefully fashioned with Rubin�s help, �This isn�t cojones, this is cowardice.�
�That sure stuck long in the memory of the President of the United States,� says former White House spokesman Mike McCurry. �He liked that.�
Rubin would become better known for his role in dethroning U.N. Secretary General Boutros Boutros-Ghali. He took the lead in bringing down the secretary-general, and many were surprised at how dirty the campaign got. Blaming Rubin for what happened some U.N. staffers called him �J.R.,� after the devilish soap opera character from Dallas. During one off-the-record press session, Rubin speaking of Boutros-Ghali, told reporters, �It�ll be a cold day before he gets another term.�
Sylvana Foa, the spokeswoman for the secretary-general at the time, always suspected a political motive behind Rubin�s tactics.
�As far as I was concerned, he was always trying to get Madeline to become secretary of state,� she says. �The reason they did Boutros was to have something to give Jesse Helms.�
Senator Helms, of course, chaired the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, and would have to confirm Clinton�s next pick for secretary of state. He also detested Boutros-Ghali. Regardless of whether the campaign against the secretary-general was done to curry Helm�s favor, two weeks after Albright cast the lone Security Council vote against Boutros-Ghali, which was enough to prevent him from another term, she was nominated to be the first woman secretary of state and confirmed by the Senate in a 99-0 vote. Soon afterward, she and Helms were photographed holding hands like two love-struck high-school kids.
ALBRIGHT�S SUCCESS HAS CATAPULTED Rubin to the top echelon of U.S. foreign policymaking. And he�s made the most of it, serving as a sounding board for Albright�s every move and even leading diplomatic missions to Balkans.
Rubin concedes that the war in Kosovo was also a hard-fought battle on the media front. While the bombing campaign was a solid success in his mind, he realizes that it wasn�t a critical success. He says he was disappointed with the abundance of negative stories that were published.
Those covering the conflict say Rubin was particularly ferocious in defense of Albright�s role in the war and it�s aftermath. In one instance, Rubin and reporters were sharing a plane back from Kosovo as the United States prepared to claim victory over Serbia. He seemed at ease until he received reports of Russian troops unexpectedly closing in on the airport in Pristina. This after Albright had supposedly been assured of the Kremlin�s cooperation in policing the war zone.
Suddenly, Rubin appeared at the rear of the plane lashing out at reporters for trying �to get Secretary Albright.�
Those within earshot were startled by the intensity and preposterousness of the allegation, since no one on the flight had written a single word about the Russian troop deployment.
But Rubin doesn�t routinely lose his cool�at least not in social situations. Sally Quinn invited him to a dinner party she was giving in the Hamptons. She sat Rubin, who was fast becoming a good friend (�We�re kindred spirits,� she says), next to her. Seated on his left was a woman with whom he had previously had a �contretemps.� Rubin asked Quinn to fix the error by moving him. As Quinn explains it, though, it was too late: The name cards were already on the table.
Sure enough, Rubin upbraided Rubin as soon as she had the chance. �You really have a hard job,� Quinn overheard her say to him, �and you�re doing it terribly!� Rubin kicked Quinn under the table. But for the few bruises to the lower legs during the night, Quinn was impressed by Rubin�s uncharacteristic self-restraint. He handled it, she was surprised to see, with grace.
From the moment he returned to Washington with Albright, Rubin, who had first met CNN�s Christiane Amanpour in 1993, fell for her in a big way while they sipped margaritas in a bar in Bosonia. Seven months later, the two were taking a late-night stroll along the beach in Tobago�they do get around�when he dropped to his knee and asked her to marry him.
The August wedding, which was preceded by an engagement party held at Albright�s Georgetown residence, was a gala event. Held in a Renaissance castle at a lake-side retreat in Italy, the VIP guest list included JFK Jr., his wife, Carolyn Bessette, Sidney Blumenthal, Leon Wieseltier, Richard Holbrooke and Albright. But to Rubin�s visible dismay, the secretary of state was a no-show because of the bombings of two American embassies in Africa.
Behind the scenes, journalists and government officials were worried that Rubin�s relationship with Amanpour might result in favoritism. But those fears were never realized, even as the newlyweds dined at the White House, slept in ambassadors� homes and were professionally involved in NATO�s bombing raids in Kosovo.
�There was concern that CNN would get better coverage,� McCurry says. �It never happened. He was scrupulous on that point.�
MANY REPORTERS, ESPECIALLY THOSE HIS OWN AGE, don�t like Rubin. They describe him as condescending, irascible and Machiavellian. During our interview, Rubin and I discuss his perceived arrogance. He assures me no one thinks that anymore. It�s really a holdover from his days at the U.N. when he was younger and more aggressive than expected, he explains. Actually, that�s not true. Many people, including his best man, journalist Peter Pringle, tell me they think he�s still arrogant.
But Rubin is far more bothered with another matter: my persistent questions about his reputation for being a clotheshorse.
�I used to joke that I spent all my money on clothes and restaurants,� he says. �Look, I�m not someone who�s unaware of one�s clothes. I�m not a mess. But I don�t think I�m obsessive or compulsive about it. It�s easy to overstate it in Washington where people are not particularly focused on their clothes, which is a well-established fact.�
Nice suits became important to him at the U.N. because Albright and other women would criticize him when he didn�t dress his best. It�s a result of being around a lot of women, he explains, adding that television puts an emphasis on his looks as much as anything he says.
�If you and I were in New York, I don�t think anyone would say I�m particularly focused on my clothes. They might say I dress well, but they wouldn�t notice it.�
Didn�t he make the best-dressed list in George magazine? And isn�t George based in New York?
�Good point,� he concedes with a chuckle. �I think John got a kick out of doing that. But I don�t know that. And I�ll never know that. But I suspect it was funny.�
Then he insists, �I�m not the kind of guy who has a closet full of sweaters� I don�t think I�m particularly on the highly stylized dress code. I don�t wear big bozo shoes and I don�t have all black suits and black shirts, which is what people in New York do if they�re stylized.�
Rubin looks me right in the eye as I prepare to leave and speaks in the crisp words I�ve heard him use numerous times with reporters at State Department briefings when he does not want some aspect of a story to become too prominent.
�I urge you,� he says firmly, �not to make too big a deal of this.� ?