Why Iseman Won't Give Up Her 'NY Times' Fight

Lobbyist Vicki Iseman says The New York Times apologized to her for that story hinting she'd had an affair with John McCain. The Times says it did no such thing. Who's telling the truth?

It's possible they both are -- or both believe they are, at any rate.

Iseman settled her $27 million defamation lawsuit against the paper last month, but she's been unwilling to let the matter drop, taking to the CBS Early Show this week to air her grievances. She says Dean Baquet, the Times's Washington bureau chief, was not being honest when he said, in an internal memo, "We did not apologize." A confidentiality agreement that bars either party from talking about the negotiations that led to the settlement precludes her from going into detail. "It's untrue to say there was not an apology, but I'm a woman of my word," she says."

It appears, however, that the basis of Iseman's claim involves verbal regrets expressed to her by George Freeman, the Times Co.'s general counsel, in front of several other witnesses, during the settlement talks. I don't know just what Freeman said; he didn't respond to requests for comment, and a Times spokeswoman declined to comment on his behalf.

Baquet, for his part, says the language in his memo was accurate, regardless of what Freeman may have said. "There was no apology from the paper," he says. "I don't want to get into a fight with Ms. Iseman because I think she's obviously interested in keeping this alive and I understand why she might be doing that. But the agreement, the terms of what everybody agreed to has been made public...and I don't think anybody would look at that and see an apology or a retraction."

Baquet adds, "If somebody were to have said -- and I'm not saying this was the case -- if somebody were to have said, as a human being, after hearing somebody tell a painful story, that they felt for that person, that's another story. I'm not saying that's what happened. But [in any case] the paper did not apologize to Ms. Iseman."

Of course, it might be easier to judge who's in the right here if both parties were free to recount their versions of what transpired during those negotiations. Iseman wrote to Freeman on Feb. 21, asking him to release her from the confidentiality agreement in order to respond to Baquet's memo. "I regret that I was naive in my belief that your company would let the clear wording in your 'Note to Readers' and the joint statement stand on their own," she wrote, but received no direct response. (Iseman did not supply me with the full text of the letter, which also contained material covered by the confidentiality agreement.) The Times spokeswoman declined to comment on the paper's reason for denying Iseman's request.