Striking Back

Jody Powell settles some scores

For cordial hostility, few relationships rival the unstable truce between Washington reporters, who chafe at having news doled out by the teaspoonful, and presidential press secretaries, who often view journalists as carping nihilists incapable of admitting they are wrong.

Journalists air their gripes in public, while political staffers dream of getting even.

Jody Powell, who as President Jimmy Carter's press secretary once poured a glass of wine over ABC News Correspondent Sam Donaldson, now has found a more poetic means of revenge.

In his memoir The Other Side of the Story, to be published by William Morrow in April, Powell does what he accuses journalists of doing: he makes no effort to be unbiased. He writes, "White House correspondents will look in vain for the scoops. What they will find are the stories that seem to me to be wrong and unfair."

He also attacks politicians. He claims that Senator Edward Kennedy "rehearsed" his chilly handshake with Carter at the 1980 Democratic National Convention, and depicts former New York Governor Hugh Carey and New York City Mayor Edward Koch as "ingrates.. . hat in one hand, shiv in the other."

Still, the main targets are journalistic: Columnist Jack Anderson, who according to Powell never proved his claim that Carter associates conspired with Fugitive Swindler Robert Vesco; ABC News, which Powell says refused to correct a false report that the FBI was wiretapping U.N. Ambassador Andrew Young; Syndicated Columnist Joseph Kraft, who is described as having sent back White House tickets to a Kennedy Center gala because the seats were in the balcony; the New York Times, which Powell claims had to "screen" its staff to be sure no drug users were assigned to investigate charges that White House Chief of Staff Hamilton Jordan had sampled cocaine. (The Times and Kraft deny the stories.) Powell also condemns TIME's failure in February 1981 to appreciate what he felt was the news value of a report TIME had that aides to Ronald Reagan had obtained Carter's 1980 debate briefing book.

Despite his distaste for journalists, Powell in 1982 became a columnist for the Dallas Times Herald and a commentator for ABC News. For the first time since he joined the ranks of reporters, Powell may once more become a major topic of conversation among them.