21. Moody, sitting Author interviews with senior Fox executives and producers.
22. The producers sitting around Author interviews with senior Fox executives and producers.
23. “Welcome back to Fox News” The descriptions of Fox’s coverage of the day of 9/11 can be found here: http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL3E8B2399764ABE7D.
24. Jon Scott “On Air Personalities,” Foxnews.com, http://www.foxnews.com/on-air/personalities/jon-scott/bio/#s=r-z, accessed Sept. 3, 2013.
25. “That means the second tower” Author interview with a person familiar with the matter.
26. “The country is at war” Author interview with a person in the room.
27. “Roger rallied” Ibid.
28. Barely twenty minutes Kat Stoeffel, “Ticker Taped: The 9/11 News Crawl,” “Our City Since” (blog), New York Observer, Sept. 11, 2011, http://observer.com/2011/09/ticker-taped-the-911-news-crawl/.
29. “Day of Terror” For video footage of this text, see http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pNk6jOXRfwo.
30. “A lot of guidance” Author interview with a senior Fox executive.
31. “They had this problem” E. D. Donahey, “Terrorism Hits America,” Fox News Channel, Sept. 12, 2001; video is available at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-1It_PsSENc.
32. On the night of September 13 Bill O’Reilly, The O’Reilly Factor, Fox News Channel, Sept. 13, 2001; video is available at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GUQSY4C6CwE.
33. “it was like a World War Two” Author interview with a senior Fox producer.
34. “I remember running” Ibid.
35. “What we say is” Jim Rutenberg, “Fox Portrays a War of Good and Evil, and Many Applaud,” New York Times, Dec. 3, 2001.
36. “smoke out” George W. Bush, “Remarks by the President Upon Arrival,” press conference, South Lawn of the White House, Sept. 16, 2001, http://georgewbush-whitehouse.archives.gov/news/releases/2001/09/20010916-2.html.
37. “dead or alive” Brian Knowlton, “ ‘We’re Going to Smoke Them Out’: President Airs His Anger,” New York Times, Sept. 19, 2001.
38. In January 2002 Matt Kempner, “Fox News Bests CNN in Viewers; Broad-Based Monthly Win Is First Ever,” Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Jan. 30, 2002.
39. “He told me having a kid” Author interview with former Fox News Channel anchor Bob Sellers.
40. At the time Alex Koppelman, “Did Fox News Chief Ailes Try to Protect Rudy Giuliani?,” Salon.com, Nov. 16, 2007, http://www.salon.com/2007/11/16/ailes/.
41. On the night of September 11 Author interview with a source with direct knowledge of the matter.
42. Later, an internal Leonard Levitt, “The NYPD: Indulging Mort and Roger,” NYPDConfidential.com, April 9, 2012, http://nypdconfidential.com/columns/2012/120409.html, accessed Oct. 8, 2013.
43. “After 9/11” Author interview with a senior Fox employee.
44. On the second floor Ibid.
45. About a year after the attacks Jo Becker, “Murdoch, Ruler of a Vast Empire, Reaches Out for Even More,” New York Times, June 25, 2007.
46. “Roger said this insane thing” Author interview with a person in the room.
47. As the evening wound down The information in the following paragraphs was obtained from author interviews with sources familiar with the incident.
48. In London, Sam Chisholm Mathew Horsman, “Sky: The Inside Story: Bowing Out to the Inevitable,” The Guardian, Nov. 10, 1997.
49. “On one level” Author interview with an executive close to Ailes.
50. “Don’t ever fucking fire” Ibid.
51. “Rupert is not” Author interview with a source close to the Murdoch family.
SEVENTEEN: QUAGMIRE DOESN’T RATE
1. “The only thing America” Chafets, Roger Ailes, 97.
2. “I wrote that letter” Author interview with a senior Fox employee. When Bob Woodward revealed Ailes’s memo to Bush in his 2002 book Bush at War, Ailes was defiant. He said there was not anything untoward about the head of a news organization offering a president military advice. Ailes defended it by complaining that CNN chief Rick Kaplan had been close to Bill Clinton in the 1990s, and he pointed out that Kaplan even bunked in the Lincoln Bedroom. “I’m not saying [Woodward] deliberately distorted it,” Ailes told The New York Times on November 19, 2002. “But he’s like Tom Clancy. They both make up a lot of stories, but Clancy does better research.” When I spoke with Karl Rove’s office, Rove declined to comment.
3. That’s why, he’d say Hoover Institution, “Fox and More with Roger Ailes,” interview, Uncommon Knowledge with Peter Robinson, Feb. 5, 2010; video available at http://www.hoover.org/multimedia/uncommon-knowledge/26681; transcript available at http://media.hoover.org/sites/default/files/documents/UK-Ailes-transcript.pdf.
4. Rove made sure Author interview with a senior Bush administration official.
5. “Roger was the bigger figure” Ibid.
6. “Ailes would call Karl” Ibid.
7. “It focused on” Ibid.
8. Around the time The information in this paragraph comes from author interview with a senior Bush administration official.
9. “Roger was afraid” Ibid.
10. “Someone has to speak” Author interview with a senior Fox producer.
11. Three days after 9/11 Bill O’Reilly, Special Report: America United, Fox News Channel, Sept. 14, 2001.
12. A year earlier, Mylroie Ibid.; see also Laurie Mylroie, Study of Revenge: Saddam Hussein’s Unfinished War Against America (Washington, D.C.: AEI Press, 2000).
13. “the Neocons’ favorite conspiracy theorist” Peter Bergen, “Armchair Provocateur,” Washington Monthly, Dec. 2003.
14. “No,” she said O’Reilly, Special Report: America United, Sept. 14, 2001.
15. Given the president’s Gallup, “Presidential Approval Ratings—George W. Bush,” Nov. 2–4, 8–11, and 26–27, http://www.gallup.com/poll/116500/presidential-approval-ratings-george-bush.aspx.
16. “Every story” Author interview with a senior Fox producer.
17. “From a marketing point of view” “Quotation of the Day,” New York Times, Sept. 7, 2002.
18. Twice each day Author interviews with senior Fox employees.
19. “It’s not easy” Author interview with a senior Fox executive.
20. In the network’s early days Author interviews with senior Fox executives.
21. During George H. W. Bush’s David Q. Bates Jr. interview with James S. Young and George C. Edwards III, Miller Center at the University of Virginia, http://millercenter.org/president/bush/oralhistory/david-bates.