Cell-Phone Taping Missed Its Target

The Democrats are right. Their party really does listen to America.

A Florida couple, John and Alice Martin, recently intercepted the cellular-phone signal of Rep. John Boehner and taped what they heard. At the time, Boehner was chatting with other Republican leaders about how to respond to inquiries about ethics charges against Newt Gingrich.

The Martins offered their treasure to Rep. Karen Thurman, who referred them to Rep. James McDermott, ranking Democrat on the House Ethics Committee. He accepted the prize.

Somebody in Democratic circles then produced a transcript and mailed it to three presumably reliable periodicals - The New York Times, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution and The Hill, a Capitol Hill newspaper. The Times published a story alleging connivance on Gingrich’s part to evade a gag order imposed by the Ethics Committee, and it noted the transcript came from a Democrat hostile to the House speaker.

Evidently, nobody at the Paper of Record realized that federal law prohibits unauthorized recording and distribution of confidential telephone and cell-phone calls. The story, designed to wound Gingrich, could put the Martins in the slammer.

Prosecutors also may decide to throw the book at McDermott, who at a bare minimum handed the information over to a malefactor.

Democrats downplay the scandal, depicting Martin as a bumpkin janitor with a love of eavesdropping. But the easygoing, rough-hewn fellow also is former chairman of his county’s Democratic Party and a member of the state board of the National Education Association, and he’s enough of a player to have been invited to a celebration in Washington for Democratic members of Congress.

In any event, Martin says he and his wife listen to their hand-held 200-channel police scanner as recreation - you know, to overhear police calls, auto races, couples who rut near baby monitors - and record the events for others to enjoy.

So when they were driving down the road on Dec. 21 and heard the names Ed and Ed and John and Bill and Dick and Tom and - Newt!! - they pulled over, reached for a tape recorder that just happened to be in the car and a tape that coincidentally happened to be there, and started taping.

The two thought they would make history, and they did. They managed in one swoop to vaporize the liberal strategy of moral equivalence: Every time Democrats get caught in a scandal, they find some Republican version of the misdeed, explain that everybody does it - and call for changes in the law.

That tactic doesn’t apply here. There is no Republican equivalent to the Martins’ electronic wilding. Nor are there any recent examples of Republicans offering immunity - as the Martins say Democrats did - for handing over illegal tapes.

Rather than nailing Newt, the Martins zapped McDermott. There’s special irony in the McDermott case. The Washington Democrat has built a career out of portraying himself as a clean man in a cesspool. But he has played rough in the Gingrich probe. He tried to expedite hearings last fall to make the speaker an election issue, and now he wants to stall them to keep Gingrich on the spit. He spent 14 hours last week negotiating an agreement for holding public hearings, then trashed the deal in a press conference.

Now, in terms that must make the ACLU cringe, he says the illegal heist shouldn’t matter: Listen to the tape! But the recording doesn’t nail Gingrich or the GOP. It shows a group of men trying to wring as much as possible out of an agreement without breaking the deal - with a lawyer present to interpret the fine print. If anything, the story and subsequent revelations bolster Republican whining that Democrats are just out to get the speaker.

Finally, the Martins landed a haymaker on the press. The episode beautifully illustrates some reporters’ willing suspension of belief when it comes to shenanigans by Democrats. If Newt Gingrich tried to retail a purloined transcript, the headlines would scream: “Nixon lives! GOP peddles ill-gotten tapes.” In this case, The New York Times got suckered. It oversold an inconclusive transcript and ignored the felony implications. So did most of the broadcast networks.

But Democrats committed the worst gaffe. They had Gingrich on the ropes with a series of nothingburger allegations. The public was ready to lynch.

Then, the McDermott armies fell under the spell of their righteousness. In their desire to put away the hated Newt, they released transcripts that not only destroyed hopes of calm deliberation in the Gingrich affair, but also made Jim McDermott - who wisely has recused himself from the probe - a leading candidate for the coveted title of congressional criminal of the week.

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