John Dickerson (journalist)

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John Frederick Dickerson (born 1968[1]) is an American journalist. He is chief political correspondent for Slate magazine. Before joining Slate, he covered politics for 12 years for Time. His last four years was as the magazine’s White House correspondent.

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[edit] Background

A native Washingtonian, Dickerson is a son of C. Wyatt Dickerson and Nancy Dickerson Whitehead. He graduated from Sidwell Friends School in 1987. He holds a degree in English with distinction from the University of Virginia. On Her Trail,[2] Dickerson's book about his relationship with his late mother, Nancy Dickerson Whitehead, a pioneering television newswoman, was published by Simon and Schuster in 2006.

Dickerson appeared weekly on The Al Franken Show on Air America Radio on Wednesdays until Franken's show ended on February 14, 2007. He is also a frequent guest on NPR's Day to Day. He also appears on "The Gabfest", a weekly Slate magazine podcast with David Plotz and Emily Bazelon.

[edit] CIA leak case

Dickerson co-wrote (with reporters Matt Cooper and Massimo Calabresi) a July 17, 2003 Time article, "A War on Wilson?", which sourced the leak of Valerie Plame's CIA identity to senior Bush administration officials. Writing for Slate magazine in February 2006 ("Where's My Subpoena?"), Dickerson speculated about why Patrick Fitzgerald never called him as a grand jury witness for his "bit role" in the drama.[3]

On January 29, 2007, during the trial of Scooter Libby, former White House spokesman Ari Fleischer, testifying under an immunity agreement, named Dickerson as one of two reporters (including David Gregory of NBC)[4] to whom he revealed that Wilson's wife worked at the CIA on July 11, 2003 during a Presidential visit to Uganda, three days before her name was published by columnist Robert Novak. (Another reporter, Tamara Lipper of Newsweek, reportedly walked away before he spoke of Plame.)[5] Dickerson has refuted Fleischer's account[6], claiming that Fleischer urged him to look into who sent Wilson but that he did not mention Plame's name or CIA identity. In a second trial dispatch on the matter, Dickerson revealed a previously-undisclosed excerpt from his email that July afternoon which he said corroborated his account: "On background WH officials were dissing Wilson. They suggested he was sent on his mission by a low level person at the agency."[7] Neither Lipper nor Gregory has commented publicly about what Fleischer may have told them.

On January 31, 2007, former Time reporter Matt Cooper testified that Dickerson's Africa sources contributed information to the article "A War on Wilson?"[8] In addition to Ari Fleischer, Dickerson also spoke to White House Communications Director Dan Bartlett while in Africa.[9]

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[edit] Trivia

The Washington Post once wrote about his talent for asking questions: “The master of the game is John Dickerson of Time magazine, who has knocked Bush off script so many times that his colleagues have coined a term for cleverly worded, seemingly harmless, but incisive questions: ‘Dickersonian’.”

Dickerson (during April 13, 2004 press conference): “In the last campaign, you were asked a question about the biggest mistake you'd made in your life, and you used to like to joke that it was trading Sammy Sosa. You've looked back before 9/11 for what mistakes might have been made. After 9/11, what would your biggest mistake be, would you say, and what lessons have you learned from it?”
President Bush: “I wish you would have given me this written question ahead of time, so I could plan for it.”

On February 29, 2008, Senator Hillary Clinton released a "red phone" television ad suggesting that her opponent, Senator Barack Obama, was unprepared to be President. On a conference call with Clinton staff, Dickerson asked, "What foreign policy moment would you point to in Hillary's career where she's been tested by crisis?" The question prompted "pregnant pause," according to The Hotline, which wrote that "you could've knit a sweater in the time it took the usually verbose team of Mark Penn, Howard Wolfson and Lee Feinstein, Clinton's national security director, to find a cogent answer."[10]

[edit] References

  1. ^ John Dickerson
  2. ^ "On Her Trail: My Mother, Nancy Dickerson, TV News' First Woman Star" by John Dickerson
  3. ^ "Where's My Subpoena? Valerie Plame, Scooter Libby, and Me", Slate, February 7, 2006.
  4. ^ National Review online, January 30, 2007
  5. ^ Ari Fleischer testimony liveblogging, January 29, 2007
  6. ^ John Dickerson Slate article on Fleischer testimony
  7. ^ John Dickerson Slate article on Cooper testimony
  8. ^ Matthew Cooper testimony liveblogging, January 31, 2007
  9. ^ Wheeler, Marcy. Anatomy of Deceit, Vaster Publications, 2007. pp. 58-59.
  10. ^ Hotline On Call, February 29, 2008

[edit] External links