Crisis-Mode Clinton Managed 'Tricky Balance'
Worked With Authorities, Hostage Families -- Offered to Talk to Hostage Taker, but Never Did
By KATE SNOW
Dec. 1, 2007 —
It was about 3 a.m. by the time Sen. Hillary Clinton finally made it back to her home in Washington this morning. Friday was a blur -- a terribly long day filled with gut-wrenching fear, frantic phone calls and crisis management.
When it was finally over, there was relief and perhaps even some amount of unanticipated political benefit.
"I am very grateful that this difficult day has ended so well," Clinton told cameras outside her home in Washington -- as the national evening news broadcasts scrambled to include her reaction to the abrupt ending of the six-hour hostage drama at Clinton campaign headquarters in Rochester, N.H.
Presidential campaigns are equipped to deal with all sorts of emergencies, of course -- bad poll numbers, nasty personal attacks, negative press. But this was different. Friday was the kind of day no campaign ever anticipates.
"Sen. Clinton did all the right things," said Stephanie Cutter, former communications director for Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry. "She took politics out of it, but demonstrated strength and showed empathy."
Clinton was at her home off Embassy Row in Washington, D.C. when she got a call from campaign manager Patti Solis Doyle telling her about the hostage situation in New Hampshire.
According to a senior campaign staffer, Clinton immediately changed her plans for the day and decided not to speak to a meeting of the Democratic National Committee in nearby Virginia.
In those first moments, three young Clinton campaign staff people, a young volunteer in her 20s and her baby were inside the Rochester office. The mother and baby were released early on.
One of Sen. Clinton's first comments was about contacting the young staffers' families.
"She said 'I want to get on the phone with the parents,'" the Clinton campaign aide said.
"It affected me not only because these were my staff members and volunteers," Clinton told reporters, "but as a mother, it was just a horrible sense of bewilderment, confusion, outrage, frustration, anger, everything at the same time."
But first, Sen. Clinton called New Hampshire Gov. John Lynch.
Clinton went into crisis management mode. She directed one group of aides to work on reaching parents of the hostages. Another team was talking to New Hampshire officials.
The senator herself stayed in touch with the police commander in charge, the governor, the Secret Service and the FBI.
"I knew I was bugging a lot of these people," she said, "it felt like on a minute-by-minute basis, trying to make sure that I knew everything that was going on so that I was in a position to tell the families, to tell my campaign and to be available to do anything that they asked of me."
Meanwhile, reporters heard nothing from Clinton's press shop. Calls and e-mails went unanswered.
The alleged hostage taker -- later identified as Leeland Eisenberg -- was asking to speak with Clinton.
Law enforcement officials were concerned that if the Clinton campaign issued any kind of statement or spoke with reporters, Eisenberg might be insulted that the senator was talking with the press and not with him, the Clinton aide said.
Clinton, the staffer said, was willing to speak with Eisenberg. But she was advised not to.
"She wanted to do everything possible to end the standoff, including talking to the guy or whatever it took to have him release her staff," the aide said. "But she deferred to law enforcement when they told her that her that meeting his demands would actually be counter-productive."
Ultimately, Eisenberg surrendered without ever talking with Clinton.
Clinton spent a lot of time on the phone with the parents of the hostages. She also wanted to bring them to a central location so that she could meet them in person and make sure that they could see their children safe and sound.
"She said, as a mother, she would want to see Chelsea immediately if she were in that situation," the Clinton aide said.
Clinton's staff found a jet to charter -- not an easy task at the last minute on a Friday night -- and by 10 p.m. she was meeting with the families and former hostages in a hotel room in Portsmouth, N.H. They hugged and snapped photos with the senator.
Shortly afterwards, she emerged to address the local television cameras -- just in time for the 11 o'clock news.
After the press conference, Clinton talked with staff at her Manchester headquarters.
"I thought she handled it in a very judicious manner and didn't seek to exploit it," said Democratic strategist Donna Brazille.
"It is always a tricky balance between being seen as exploiting a crisis for political gain and being seen as offering up the right levels of competence, confidence, concern, and compassion the crisis requires," ABC News political director David Chalian added. "It seems Sen. Clinton and her campaign have thus far quite skillfully struck that balance to their benefit."
In addition to the speech at the DNC meeting, Clinton cancelled just one previously scheduled event on her schedule -- a forum she was to have attended this afternoon in Iowa.
She is still scheduled to appear at the Brown and Black Presidential Forum in Des Moines on Saturday night.
Campaign veterans said that seemed like an appropriate scheduling response.
"She has to resume her campaign as soon as possible," Brazille said. "But this was a moment that required the campaign to suspend for a moment, to reassess the security and reassure the people in New Hampshire. It had to come from the top. It couldn't come from the staff. It had to come from the senator herself."
"It plays right into the greatest strength of their campaign," Cutter said, "which is experience. And experience allows you to do the right thing in a crisis in terms of taking charge of the situation. Handling crisis well is part instinct but it's mostly experience."
All in all, that translates into a positive message for a political campaign -- albeit a frightening way to get there.