Roger Ailes: Off Camera Read online

  NONFICTION

  Double Vision

  Heroes and Hustlers, Hard Hats and Holy Men

  Members of the Tribe

  Devil’s Night

  A Match Made in Heaven

  Cooperstown Confidential

  Rush Limbaugh

  FICTION

  Inherit the Mob

  The Bookmakers

  The Project

  Hang Time

  Whacking Jimmy (as William Wolf)

  SENTINEL

  Published by the Penguin Group

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  Copyright © Zev Chafets, 2013

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the author’s rights. Purchase only authorized editions.

  PHOTOGRAPH CREDITS

  1: Richard Nixon Presidential Library and Museum

  2: George Bush Presidential Library and Museum

  3: AP Photo / Jennifer Graylock

  4: Patrick McMullan / PatrickMcMullan.com / Sipa USA

  5: Rob Kim / Getty Images Entertainment / Getty Images

  LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA

  Chafets, Zev.

  Roger Ailes / Zev Chafets.

  pages cm

  Includes index.

  Summary: “An illuminating look at the life, politics, and practices of Roger Ailes, founder and CEO of Fox News Channel. As a political consultant, he helped put Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan, and George H. W. Bush in the White House”—Provided by publisher.

  ISBN 978-1-101-60826-5

  1. Ailes, Roger. 2. Businesspeople—United States—Biography. 3. Executives—United States—Biography. 4. Political consultants—United States—Biography. 5. Fox News. I. Title.

  HC102.5.A35C43 2013

  338.7'6179145092—dc23

  [B]

  2012039790

  To Betty Chafets Miller, the Matriarch

  CONTENTS

  ALSO BY ZEV CHAFETS

  TITLE PAGE

  COPYRIGHT

  DEDICATION

  PREFACE

  INTRODUCTION: ZAC’S GAME

  1

  WARREN

  2

  THE MIKE DOUGLAS SHOW

  3

  POLITICS

  4

  1988

  5

  TELEVISION NEWS

  6

  LINEUP

  7

  CABLE WARS

  8

  GARRISON

  9

  FAIR AND BALANCED

  10

  THE BOSS

  11

  THE GIFT OF FRIENDSHIP

  12

  MINORITY REPORT

  13

  TAKING CARE OF BUSINESS

  14

  “THE MOST POWERFUL MAN IN AMERICA”

  15

  GOING TO CAROLINA

  16

  ZAC’S BOX

  EPILOGUE: ELECTION NIGHT

  PHOTOGRAPHS

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  INDEX

  Roger Ailes looked across his desk at me and said, “Some people say that I’m simple, and some people say that I’m complex. What do you think?”

  Good question. For months, Ailes and I had been meeting regularly at Fox News headquarters in midtown Manhattan, at his home in Putnam County, and at public and private gatherings. He allowed me to sit in on his meetings, introduced me to his family, and gave his inner circle the green light to talk to me. In that time I got a closer, more prolonged look at Roger Ailes than any journalist ever has. He was naturally curious about what I had concluded. Simple or complex?

  The answer itself isn’t simple. Ailes, in his years as a political consultant, created images for a living, and his own narrative is constructed from the sturdy materials of American mythology. In our first meeting, he said he had dug ditches as a kid and would be happy to go back to it if the whole media empire thing ever fell apart. Ailes is no more likely than I am to dig ditches (and a lot less likely to need to) but I got his point. He is a blue-collar guy from a factory town in Ohio who has stayed close to his roots. That day, and subsequently, I found him plainspoken, wryly profane, caustic, and anxious for me to know that he doesn’t give a good goddamn about fancy parties, political correctness, or the esteem of the Manhattan media bien-pensants. After I had known him for a while I asked what he would do if he were president of the United States. He said that he would sign no legislation, create no new regulations, and allow the country to return to its natural, best self, which he locates, with modest social amendments, somewhere in midwestern America circa 1955. In 2011, he won a Horatio Alger Award, and said, “People who believe they can win will eventually win.” What could be simpler than that?

  Still, Ailes is not another working-class stiff who got ahead through hard work and the power of positive thinking. For fifty years, he has navigated the waters of show business, national politics, and big-time media. He taught Dick Nixon new tricks, stepped in as Reagan’s emergency debate coach when the Great Communicator needed help communicating, and held George H. W. Bush’s hand all the way to the White House. He more or less invented modern political consulting and made a small fortune along the way. When he left politics, he talked his way into the number one job at CNBC and then convinced Rupert Murdoch to gamble a billion dollars, give or take, on an idea and a handshake. The gamble became Fox News, one of the most lucrative and influential news organizations on the planet. The last time they met, Barack Obama, not a Fox News fan, called Ailes “the most powerful man in America.” If a Machiavelli society gave an award, it would be on Ailes’s mantel, next to the Horatio.

  Writing about a man as wily and charming as Ailes is a challenging business, and from the outset we established ground rules. He cooperated with me, but the book is not authorized. I checked his quotes for accuracy (which is my practice in any case) but he had no control over the manuscript. When he said something was off the record (which he rarely did) it stayed off; everything else was fair game.

  Ailes opened up Fox News, which is usually about as reporter-friendly as Teheran. I spent time with Fox executives and on-air personalities, toured usually off-limits venues, and spent many hours with Ailes himself. He was open with me, although I never thought he was telling me everything. He intends to write an autobiography someday, and I imagine he is holding something in reserve. The result, this book, is not a formal biography. It is a record of almost a year spent watching Roger Ailes in action.

  My access came at a price. It always does. The dynamic between a writer and his subject, especially one as controversial and powerful as Roger Ailes, necessarily contains elements of mutual seduction and self-interest and sometimes mistrust. Ailes didn’t want to be eviscerated by a reporter. I didn’t want to get conned by a master image maker.

  Roger Ailes has his admirers, some of them surprising, and his detractors—entire organizations dedicated to discrediting him and all his works. I talked to a great many people on both sides. But Ailes is the main character, and I have left him
front and center, allowing him to speak for himself. Ailes is a fascinating man, full of contradictions and surprises. He has certainly transformed American media and political discourse. How has he done it? What will he do next? What stokes his competitive fires and occasional rages? How to reconcile his acts of exceptional loyalty and private generosity (even to rivals) with his impulse to present himself to the world as a nasty, ruthless leg breaker? What makes Roger run—and where, if anywhere, is the finish line? Is he, in the end, simple or complex? It remains an excellent question. As Ailes himself might say: I report, you decide.

  INTRODUCTION

  ZAC’S GAME

  In mid-January, Roger Ailes skipped out on his duties at Fox News to attend a basketball game. The contest featured his twelve-year-old son, Zac, who plays for his Upper East Side Catholic boys’ school. On weekends, the Ailes family is in Cold Spring, New York, on the banks of the Hudson River, but Ailes doesn’t like the education on tap in the local school, so they have taken a place in the city not far from Zac’s school.

  The gym was too small for bleachers, and the crowd too sparse to be a crowd. Just before game time, the only fans were Ailes, in a folding chair along the sideline and, at a discreet distance, his bodyguard, Jimmy Gildea, a retired New York City detective. A few more parents trickled in during the warm-ups. They nodded to Ailes in a friendly way, but didn’t stop to chat. If they were surprised to find themselves sharing a moment with the head of Fox News, they didn’t show it.

  Ailes was dressed in his work clothes—black suit, starched white shirt, gold tie clip, and matching cuff links. His hair was slicked back and a pair of bifocals perched on his nose. The overall effect was that of a small-town banker in a Frank Capra movie. Ailes is past seventy and looks it, especially when he tries to walk on his bum leg. The other parents were young enough to be his children. But Zac is his only child, and perhaps the only person who could lure Ailes away from his office on a Wednesday afternoon. This was the third game of the season, and he had been there every time.

  As we waited for the tip-off, Ailes ran down the roster. “Our guys,” he called them. Zac was easily the tallest kid on the team, and when the action commenced, his father encouraged him to take advantage of it. “Don’t get boxed out,” he hollered. “Use your height. Hands up on defense!” He waved his own hands to demonstrate. Zac looked over at his father and nodded. He had heard this mantra often. When Ailes was around Zac’s age, basketball was his game. He played at the Warren, Ohio, YMCA, where he compensated for his own lack of height with a competitive spirit and, thanks to his mother’s insistence on lessons, a trained dancer’s grace. He had been a decent point guard, but like any father he wanted his son to surpass him.

  Zac hit the first shot of the game, and Ailes clapped loudly and shouted his approval. But Zac’s team, wearing red, was no match for the other school. As they fell behind, Ailes grew tense, barking instructions at his son and the rest of the team, but the advice wasn’t helping. Zac came out of the game and took a seat at the end of a bench, away from the coach. Ailes caught his attention and motioned for him to move over and get closer. The boy dutifully complied. That was better. Ailes relaxed and resumed cheering. He made a point of calling encouragement to all the players, not just his son. When the other team scored, he maintained a stoic silence or called out, “Never mind. Go get ’em, boys!”

  Ailes’s old-fashioned clothes and pugnacious attitude reminded me of Red Auerbach, the great Celtics coach whose teams won nine championships. But not even Auerbach ever dominated his game the way that Ailes does. The redhead won nine championships, but it took him thirty years; Ailes, who founded Fox News in 1996, was already on his tenth straight year as number one and he was well on his way to an eleventh. During a time-out he extracted his BlackBerry for a quick peek at the standings. “Let’s see if Fox News is still on the air,” he said. “He studied the screen for a moment and smiled. “Yeah, looks like we’re okay. We beat CNN, CNBC, and MSNBC combined, in prime time and the twenty-four-hour cume.”

  Back on the court, Zac caught a stray elbow to the eye. “Shake it off,” Ailes hollered. “Rub it out! Back on defense! Get all over them! Come on, fellas, show some heart!” But sometimes heart isn’t enough. At the final buzzer the score was 29–10. The boys headed for the locker room, but Ailes motioned for Zac, who loped over. “You made a couple of mistakes out there,” he told the boy. “You threw that one ball away. And you missed an open shot underneath.” Zac nodded. “But,” Ailes said more gently, “you did a lot of things right. You played hard. You hustled. You scored 20 percent of your team’s points. And when you got hit you didn’t whine.” The boy smiled; meeting his father’s standard of toughness is even more important than winning.

  Ailes put his arm on Zac’s shoulder. “I’m proud of you, son,” he said. “Now, let’s get you home. You have schoolwork to do.” They walked out of the gym, Ailes’s arm still around his son’s shoulders. A black Lincoln was idling at the curb, waiting to drop Zac at home and take Roger Ailes back to the world where he can control the score.

  CHAPTER ONE

  WARREN

  In 2008, Roger Ailes, the most illustrious son of Warren, Ohio, was invited to speak at the dedication of the Trumbull County Veterans Memorial near Courthouse Square. Fifteen hundred people—some of them carrying signs reading Come Back, Roger, and Bring Jobs—turned up to hear his nostalgic, patriotic speech.

  Warren, Ohio, is a once great town, at least in the fond childhood memories of Roger Ailes. I have similar feelings about my own hometown, Pontiac, Michigan, another bustling industrial hub in the days of Ike and JFK, before the belt began to rust. Warren was an important town, the county seat, a place where every four years presidential candidates rolled through town in open touring cars, waving at the crowd. It had a grand courthouse, a thriving downtown full of movie palaces, self-important local banks, and even a fine restaurant, the Saratoga.

  During the Civil War, Warren was a Yankee hamlet of less than three thousand. But at the start of the twentieth century, things changed. Steel mills sprang up. Packard opened an automobile factory. There were jobs, and a flood of workers—Italian immigrants, white and black Southerners—to fill them. By the time Ailes was growing up there, in the forties and fifties, Warren’s population was climbing toward sixty thousand. Today, it is closer to forty thousand.

  Warren was more than manufacturing. It sits about halfway between Chicago and New York, which made it a stopping point on the booze highway during Prohibition—people sometimes called it “Little Chicago”—and it retained its raffish character after repeal. The Mafia became firmly established in the entire Mahoning Valley. Warren’s politics were rough-and-ready. Perhaps the region’s most famous statesman was Congressman Jim Traficant, who represented the valley for twenty years before getting busted on a bribery charge. He got a seven-year sentence, ran for reelection from his federal prison cell, and won 15 percent of the vote.

  The Mafia was an irritant in Warren, but during World War II the Nazis posed what appeared to be a greater threat. The Mahoning Valley, with its steel mills, mines, and factories, saw itself as the American Ruhr, which the Allies were bombing into uselessness, and there was widespread concern that the Germans would try to retaliate. The first years of Roger Ailes’s life were spent under blackout and curfew, enforced by air-raid wardens including Roger’s father, Bob. National security concerns didn’t dissipate after the fall of the Third Reich. During the Cold War, American kids everywhere were drilled on ducking under their desks in the event of an atomic attack, and the threat was taken with special seriousness in places like Warren (and in Pontiac). “People figured that as soon as the Russian missiles headed south across the Canadian border they would be aimed right at us,” Ailes recalls.

  Paranoia and civic pride coexisted in Warren, Ohio, during the Eisenhower years. The factories were hiring and at peak production. A Chamber of Commerce report, issued in 1955, de
clared Warren “well balanced industrially, with a great diversification of products from basic steel to finished consumer items. Endowed with a great deal of natural resources and strategically located between Cleveland and Pittsburgh, the future of Warren is assured.”

  Young Roger Ailes was exposed to the typical diet of midwestern media. As a boy he delivered the Youngstown Vindicator, a morning newspaper. “I used to go out at 5:00 a.m.,” he recalls. “It was dark as hell, and freezing in the winter. On the way out of the house, my dad would give me a chocolate bar and I’d stop halfway through the route, duck into a storefront to get out of the wind, eat that candy, and then do the rest of the route.” There was also a 5,000-watt AM radio station that featured local news and sports, and, due to the town’s fortuitous location, six TV stations out of Youngstown, Pittsburgh, and Cleveland, all of which offered the same homogenized network “news from nowhere.”

  The main entertainment in Warren was downtown, at theaters like the Robbins—old-fashioned movie houses where the owner and his wife would personally greet the patrons with a handshake on Friday nights. Ailes was a movie buff who especially loved John Wayne westerns, army movies like From Here to Eternity, and patriotic fare such as Yankee Doodle Dandy, starring Jimmy Cagney. He was close to his maternal grandmother, and they would often take in a movie, save half their popcorn, and then, after the show, feed it to the squirrels near the courthouse fountain.

  • • •

  Roger Ailes was the middle child of Bob and Donna Ailes, an ill-matched couple with strong personalities and very different ideas about child rearing. Bob grew up in Warren, raised by a single mother. His father, Roger’s grandfather, was a medical doctor with an additional degree in public health and a law school diploma to boot. Young Dr. Ailes went off to World War I and was killed in combat. That, at least, was the story his son grew up on. In fact, the story was less heroic. Dr. Ailes met a nurse in the army and never came home. He moved to Akron, fifty miles away, where he became a prominent physician. His abandoned wife was so bitter that she kept his existence a secret from everyone, including his son.