Can a TV show win the war?
The White House has enlisted John Walsh and "America's Most Wanted" to bring the appropriate "scumbags" to justice -- and provide resources the government doesn't have.
By Jake Tapper
Oct. 20, 2001 | WASHINGTON -- The Thursday afternoon briefing proceeded normally, in what passes for normal in the new post-9/11 world. In the Postal Service Processing and Distribution Center in Washington, Postmaster General Jack Potter introduced three officials to discuss a $1 million reward for information leading to the arrest and conviction of those responsible for mailing anthrax.
The press briefing then turned to Potter's three-man team: Chief Postal Inspector Ken Weaver, FBI deputy director Thomas Pickard ... and John Walsh, the gritty host of "America's Most Wanted."
Walsh has emerged as almost an honorary Bush administration official in the last week, a deputy attorney general for tracking down scumbags. At a time of tension between the Bush administration and the media, Walsh has played an official role in two government events where the government -- desperate for any information in its various criminal investigations -- has sought help from the general public.
On Oct. 10, after Bush, Secretary of State Colin Powell and Attorney General John Ashcroft announced the list of 22 "most wanted terrorists," Walsh was drafted by the White House communications staff into rush-producing a special episode of "America's Most Wanted." And Fox Television, which had preempted all episodes of the show until November because of the Major League Baseball playoffs, bumped the premiere of one of its new dramas, "Pasadena," in order to broadcast the special show. A cynic could easily argue that of course the administration loves Walsh and his show, since all he does is provide a dramatized version of crimes from law enforcement's point of view, in this case, serving as little more than a mouthpiece for the Fed. But with crimes as clearly defined morally as terrorist attacks, and law enforcement so apparently befuddled, it's entirely possible that drafting Walsh to help fight the war on terrorism was one of the smartest media moves the Bush administration has made.
On another level, however, the very fact that Walsh has been brought in speaks volumes about the lack of preparedness of our federal government in reacting to terrorist attacks. Walsh was not brought in to air a special episode on anthrax mailings. Rather, Walsh had offered the Postal Service use of his show's tip line (1-800-CRIME-TV), with its 30 operators staffed to manage a barrage of phone calls. That's key -- because the U.S. Postal Service itself doesn't have the phone bank infrastructure to receive tips about the anthrax mailings.
"As many of you know," Walsh said on Thursday in his familiar, all-business, tough-guy voice, every salt-and-pepper hair in place, "last week a very unique partnership was formed. I think this was the first time that an administration and federal law enforcement had asked a television program to profile terrorists and interrupt regular programming."
More than 1,600 tips had come in since the Friday, Oct. 12 airing, Walsh said, "some of them even coming from the [United] Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia." The show is specifically broadcast in the United States, Canada, England, New Zealand and Japan. But the show's producers believe that it is seen in some parts of the Arab world since they know of other viewers with satellite dishes around the globe -- most famously a schoolteacher in Thailand who saw an episode and in August 2001 helped track down Eric Rosser, a former keyboardist for John Mellencamp who was on the FBI's Ten Most Wanted list for the production and dissemination of child pornography.
After last Thursday's press conference, the "America's Most Wanted" phone lines "were jammed for four hours," says Avery Mann, a spokesman for the show. An FBI spokesman said he couldn't comment on the quality of any of the leads, but "anything is better than nothing. There are probably a lot of them that will not go anywhere, but all it takes is one to lead you to the person."
