GLOMMING ON TO A HERO

By Kevin Fedarko

Having so dramatically fallen to earth, Scott O'Grady last week was thrown into the sun. The bright, hot rays of instant fame enveloped him: newspapers put him on their front pages and magazines on their covers; he appeared on all three network morning shows the very same day; and the Clinton Administration and the Air Force exploited his pluck and Gary Cooperish innocence, determined that he be asked no questions about the confused policy that had him flying over Bosnia in the first place. When properly combined, three volatile elements generate American celebrity: the media, the public and the spinmeisters who manipulate them. In the case of Scott O'Grady, the three achieved nuclear fusion. The danger was that in the process, a likable, humble man could be consumed.

Clinton and his advisers knew immediately that O'Grady would cause the country to shift into full hero mode. In the days before the pilot's rescue, the President and his top aides had been resolving the final points of a secretly planned address that would be given from the Oval Office. It was a crucial moment in Clinton's presidency: he was about to change course on fiscal policy, and the surprise move would accommodate Republicans while infuriating congressional Democrats. The speech was planned for the evening of June 8.

But early that day, shortly before 1 a.m., a call came in from National Security Adviser Anthony Lake. "Got 'im," Lake said, telling Clinton that O'Grady had been rescued. At the various White House staff meetings that morning, the O'Grady rescue was a featured topic. Clinton's top aides, many of whom wanted to delay the budget speech anyway, saw the potential for positive coverage of the President if he placed himself in the middle of the pilot's story. They decided to postpone the speech so its impact would not be swamped by the O'Grady frenzy.

The Administration carefully calibrated the President's meeting with O'Grady the following Monday. The instinct at the White House was to be extremely careful about seeming overly opportunistic. So while O'Grady was invited to the White House for a private lunch, a decision was made not to hold any kind of ceremony there lest Clinton seem too eager to share in O'Grady's good fortune. Instead speeches were given at the Pentagon. For the same reason, there was no photo opportunity with O'Grady and the President in the Oval Office and no transcript of their meeting. "It was good news for once from Bosnia," says a senior White House official. "We made a conscious decision not to overdo it."

O'Grady arrived at about 11:15 a.m. with a huge entourage, including his mother, stepfather, father, father's fianca, brother, sister, maternal grandfather, maternal grandmother, one cousin, four friends and the wife of one of his friends. They spent nearly an hour meeting privately with Clinton. After lunch, during the limousine ride to the Pentagon, O'Grady asked the President to pinch him "to see if this is real." The President declined, but the pinch was eventually delivered by Secretary of Defense William Perry. At the Pentagon O'Grady made some remarks, and Clinton said, "He gave us something more precious than we can ever give him: a reminder about what is very best about our country." (The President delivered his budget speech the following night.)

Clinton had a somewhat easier time getting access to O'Grady than most others who have sought him since his rescue. An aide of Dan Rather's hounded the crew of the U.S.S. Kearsarge, the ship O'Grady was taken to from Bosnia, and insisted repeatedly that he be put through to O'Grady's stateroom. The aide had no luck. Jane Pauley managed to persuade O'Grady to appear on Dateline NBC, but only after an endless series of phone calls and personal notes. And as O'Grady's father William says, "we're being contacted by everyone" for book and movie deals. So far, none has been struck.

The man deciding who in the ravenous press O'Grady talks to is Brigadier General Ron Sconyers, chief of Air Force public affairs. "We've set up a crisis cell here in my office," he says. "We're protecting him from the media." Three Air Force public affairs officers now work full time on O'Grady. A fourth officer is assigned to the pilot's mother and a fifth to his father (the couple divorced 11 years ago).

"Protect" may have been used loosely, judging by O'Grady's Tuesday morning TV schedule. Having taped some segments earlier, he could be seen on CBS's This Morning at 7:08 a.m., followed by NBC's Today at 7:09, ABC's Good Morning America at 7:10, Fox Morning News at 7:31 and CNN's Early Edition at 8:09. Asked what they thought the Air Force was trying to do to O'Grady, several public-affairs officers at the Pentagon volunteered the word exploit rather than protect.

O'Grady has been protected from hard-news shows and print journalists, however, and public affairs officials at the Pentagon say that is no accident. "If you're marketing a hero, at some point all the easy questions have been asked," explains a senior official, who calls last week's p.r. initiative The Scott O'Grady Show. "Then the hard ones start. 'So just how was it you didn't know this missile was there?' 'Is it right that you were flying up there without sufficient electronic countermeasures?' The Air Force doesn't want him to answer those types of questions. If it were me, I wouldn't let him near a pencil either. If I were trying to milk O'Grady but not get him burned, I'd keep him on TV. It's tougher to ask tough questions that way."

After his TV appearances on Tuesday, O'Grady was admitted to the hospital at Andrews Air Force Base. His feet were still raw and inflamed from six days of exposure in his soaked pilot's boots. Scott would remain "under lock and key" for what Air Force officials said was an indefinite stay.

Well, not quite. That night O'Grady resurfaced on Larry King Live with his father and sister Stacy. He took a call from Nancy Reagan. But the apprehensions of his Air Force handlers were demonstrated by his responses to King's seemingly innocuous questions about how high he was flying ("I shouldn't say"), whether he saw the missile ("No comment, Larry"), whether Serbs were shooting at him as he parachuted down ("Can't talk about that") and even his feelings about returning to his fighter wing ("Can't answer"). "What is this," King asked in frustration, "a KGB hearing?"

Marketing a hero requires some clever strategizing. Last week Air Force officials offered to put some of the Marines who rescued O'Grady on the David Letterman show along with him. "But we learned that the invitation to us for Letterman was only to sweeten the pot," a senior Marine officer said. "Because O'Grady already was slated to go on Leno, Letterman wouldn't take him unless the Pentagon could offer something extra, so the Air Force invited us to tag along to use as leverage to get Letterman to take him." The Marines refused to entertain the offer. It's gone that way all along between the two services as O'Grady's glory has been parceled out. The Marines admire the pilot himself but resent the Air Force's refusal to let them fly O'Grady from the Kearsarge to his home base in Aviano, Italy. Instead the Air Force insisted they bring O'Grady ashore, where an Air Force jet picked him up.

None of this ruckus was O'Grady's idea; this hero has his heart in the right place. He has repeatedly expressed his bewilderment at the treatment he has received and has given all credit to the Marines. Last Wednesday was the first night since his plane was shot down that he got a decent night's sleep. The attention "just kind of wore him out," explained his father. "He wants his identity back. He wants to be a normal human being." But the spinmeisters, the public and the media may not allow that, and they are harder to escape than the Serbs.

--Reported by James Carney and Mark Thompson/Washington

With reporting by JAMES CARNEY AND MARK THOMPSON/WASHINGTON