The O's Mystery Meeting

[January 5th, 2005] Last month, Willamette Week reported that in 1986, The Oregonian’s editorial cartoonist, Jack Ohman, heard from a source that Neil Goldschmidt had sexually abused a minor while mayor of Portland and that Ohman had taken this information to Robert Landauer, who was then Ohman’s boss and the editor of the daily’s editorial page. The WW article, by Nigel Jaquiss, said that Landauer confirmed to WW that Ohman brought the tip to him and that Landauer had interviewed Ohman’s source and then met with William Hilliard and Peter Thompson, who were, at the time, editor and managing editor of the paper ("Who Knew," WW, Dec. 15, 2004).

The disclosure was important because since May, when WW broke the news of Goldschmidt’s crime, Oregonian editors have insisted they first heard of the rumors only six months earlier, not 18 years ago. The Oregonian didn’t report the abuse until after WW broke the story this spring.

A week after WW published the article about Ohman’s tip, Landauer, now a columnist, sent an internal email to Oregonian staffers saying Jaquiss got it wrong. We’d like readers to decide for themselves.

Below is Landauer’s email, followed by excerpts from the initial tape-recorded interview he had with Jaquiss during the week of Dec. 6 and a follow-up conversation later that week.

Note: The interviews have been edited for clarity and, in one instance, to remove a portion of the second conversation that was off-the-record. In addition, the second conversation extended a few minutes after the tape ran out. That part of the interview is not included.

Landauer’s email:

Colleagues:

My comments to a Willamette Week reporter recently may have led him to the erroneous conclusions published in the Dec. 15 WW story that focused on who at The Oregonian knew what about Neil Goldschmidt years ago.

Nigel Jaquiss, the reporter, asked me to confirm a story he had heard about an Oregonian staffer’s recollection of that time. I didn’t confirm it, but in the process of drawing out a hypothetical I may have led him to believe that I shared the recollection. That is not the case.

When the Goldschmidt story emerged earlier this year, newsroom editors asked me about the story of a meeting 15 years ago in my editorial office, and I said that I recalled no such meeting. I still do not.

Obviously, I did not make either point clearly enough with the WW reporter.

The result was a story that left some readers believing that The Oregonian covered up the information or did a poor job of investigating it. This harms the public’s faith in The Oregonian and its reporters and editors.

That distresses me more deeply than I can tell you, because this newspaper has been at the center of my cares and concerns for almost 39 years.

So I feel I owe all of you an apology for foolishly—make that stupidly—allowing myself to become a part of this story and leaving an incorrect impression.

^The first interview:

Nigel Jaquiss: Bob, as you probably know, over the last several months I’ve been working on several stories about Neil Goldschmidt. And in the course of my reporting, I had heard from three different people that in about 1986, an Oregonian employee had heard about Goldschmidt and the woman that he sexually abused, and had brought that information to his supervisors, and that you might have been one of those people that was alerted to this situation. In other words, this person heard the news, brought it upstairs, there was a meeting involving senior editors.

Robert Landauer: That’s correct.

And…

You know, I can’t give you the name of the person unless he/she volunteers to bring it forward. But, I had completely forgotten about it until I was reminded but the reporter or photographer or whatever other staff member reminded me of the circumstances, and it just conforms with what I know I would have done. And the simple answer, and you know I think at some point way back I wrote a memo to the effect of what I had done. But I don’t even know whether I kept it.

OK.

Mind you, I was editorial-page editor for 16 years. And so, situations in which innuendoes, implications, allegations about public servants’ behavior would come to me with great frequency.

I’m sure.

And my tactic, first of all, was to say, in my mind, does this have any relationship to public duties or public trust?

Uh-huh.

You know the context in which you’re talking about, Goldschmidt, my answer clearly would have been "yes." That would have been a no-brain call.

Right.

This person came forward to me and said, "I have heard this on reliable authority" and then described the situation. My memory of what happened, as I was reminded, I went back. His source absolutely swore that he could not be used. Which was a real complication.

Sure.

As I’ve reconstructed this, what I apparently did was I went back to the source, said that I would not reveal the name but that I was simply verifying the story as told to me by the staff member. That I wasn’t exaggerating it, distorting it, putting it out of context, anything like that. That in fact, that what the staff member told me was a very accurate representation of what he/she had told.

OK.

At that point, and this, I can’t remember, would this have been in the ‘80s?

I believe it was.

I think it would have been the mid-’80s, at which point I immediately asked the managing editor and the editor at the time, I can’t remember whether the editor…the editor then would have been Bill Hilliard, I think.

Who was the managing editor at that time?

Peter Thompson. I’m almost certain. And—um, I’m almost certain. At which point, um…

You…

Let me just finish.

Sure.

I said, "Here’s what’s been told to me. I’m looking at this, these charges, these allegations are serious. I believe they have to be pursued in some manner but they are sufficiently vague that it requires more staff than I can release from the editorial department. It seems like a news investigation."

Uh-huh.

And the reporter or staff member remembers that [Oregonian publisher] Fred Stickel was not there, which I don’t remember, but I believe, just knowing the way I operate. This is the kind of thing would have been institutionally, sufficiently important that I would have told the publisher, and that our relationship is such that simply on my word that this was important, he would have been there. So my suspicion, not my knowledge, was that he simply wasn’t in the office or was out of town when the meeting occurred, because let me tell you, when there’s something institutionally important, Fred Stickel knows about it.

Right, right.

Then I’d have to tell you, from my point of view, that this was clearly in the pocket of the news department. And again, this may sound very, very strange to an outsider, but there are investigations that are going on all the time and my typical statement would be "I don’t need to know anything unless I need to know." And by that I mean, "If you’ve got something going, give me enough of a signal that we won’t be writing an editorial that compromises the news or compromises the institution." Otherwise, it’s none of my business what the news side is doing. Because I mean it, news and editorial are separate.

Did you know what happened after you handed it off to news?

No, I didn’t, but you know…I oughtta stop right there. Because you can imagine that I’m gritting my teeth here. [Laughs]

Right.

You know, I have to say this. Of course it would sound lame to an outsider, but I have no second thoughts about my behavior. Personally, I think I did what was absolutely appropriate. The reporter says I had these people in my office within an hour of having heard this story.

These people meaning Bill Hilliard and Peter…?

The staff member says that they were there. That the editor and managing editor were there but there’s no memory of Fred Stickel.

OK. That’s very helpful. Bob, I appreciate you being so candid with me. My understanding is that the information came to you from Jack Ohman.

You’ve said that, and I won’t deny it. I’d also say that there’s the difficulty because Ohman, I think, feels obligated to some degree to protect the source, because the source’s career could be threatened.

Well, my understanding is that his source is…[Note: WW could not confirm that the name given here is accurate, so we are not publishing it].

I can’t answer that.

But you did talk to his source?

My memory is that I simply insisted that I can’t go with something as injurious to a reputation…look, my standard is no reporter has the right to promise confidentiality without the approval of a senior editor. And no senior editor whom I know would give that approval without knowing the name.

Right.

It’s not something casually given. Especially since this is the kind of thing that could end up in court cases. And we’re not just talking about the liability of the newspaper. You’re talking about reputations that, once damaged, can’t be mended. So that’s really my view of it. The other thing is that—and again this will sound very very strange—that it literally went out of my mind. Nothing happened. Almost all of these allegations about misbehavior, when investigated, most of them disappear in thin air. So it’s nothing unusual, and they slip out of mind because when you have information like that you don’t gossip about it.

Right.

And the way I don’t gossip about it is…um…what’s the word? I hit the…I hit the "delete" button until something is there to confirm it.

I understand. I haven’t been around nearly as long as you have in the business, but I understand that a lot of things come in under the transom and a lot of it is simply either not true or unprovable. That’s what somewhat confounding about this whole story. My information is that this came to you in ‘86 and in ‘86 there were no documents. There was no Washington County conservatorship, there were no documents in the Seattle rape case, so I….

Well, I don’t know what your story is, but here I was editorial-page editor. I had come to the editorial page from having been Metro editor, at which time I had a couple hundred reporters, photographers and others answered to me. That’s a much deeper pool to look into things. Now imagine yourself, with just that bare-bones information, but you’re Metro editor. Now, you don’t have any documents, but you’ve got something that clearly involves a major public figure. And pretty serious allegations. First of all, you’d be very worried that your institution was not engaged in furthering gossip that would be harmful to the reputation, unprovable, and potentially actionable.

Yep.

So you’d probably bring in your best political reporters and you’d say, "How do we approach this…well, you’re talking about a case, what, child rape, a child molester"—don’t pin me down on the vocabulary, ‘cause it’s not really my area. But you’d say, "OK, most of these situations occur directly in the family or among close friends, they involve access on a pretty regular basis." Right there, you’d start narrowing down the field.’

Right.

You’d look at family, you’d look at immediate staff members, you’d probably come up with a list of five to 10 initial suspects that you might narrow down into three, four or five prospects. I think that’s how you’d begin to have people start fishing, and you might rehearse them on a series of questions so as to minimize suspicions. I don’t know whether any of that was done, and it would have been out of place for me to ask.

So, Bob, I didn’t actually clarify that point with you. Ohman did not then give you the woman’s name?

No. I don’t believe I ever knew the woman’s name.

Did he tell you the woman was underage?

I’m pretty sure he did. If the woman were not underage, I suspect I would have wandered down to the managing editor’s office and said something like, "There are allegations of the mayor’s having sexual relations outside of marriage. I don’t know the name, I don’t have any information that this person is involved in city business or that there’s a sex-for-favoritism aspect, I don’t have any information that this is an employment power relationship…mayor versus city employee…but you might need to look into it in more detail." And I very likely also would, in that same casual way, have told the editor, but that would not be the kind of thing that I would have gone to the publisher with. There is no institutional connection, and he is uninterested in gossip as I was.

Right, so to your recollection it sounds like in that meeting there were you, Ohman, Bill Hilliard and Peter Thompson.

Hold on, let me look in my desk. I know at some point I wrote a memo on it but I’m not sure I filed one away. Um…I don’t see one around here. But you’ve…what’s essentially happened here is that you’ve asked me some questions and I have confirmed what you told me.

That’s correct. Bob, thank you very much for your time.

Feel free to call back. This is, as far as I’m concerned, one of the most unpalatable kind of things…I have no explanation or knowledge of what happened or what didn’t happen in the newsroom after that meeting. And I don’t know, now I’m sure Sandy Rowe has tried to dissect the institutional behavior. I just don’t know what she’s found. Or not found.

OK. Bob, thanks again for your time.

Take care.

Bye.

Bye.

^The second interview

Hey Bob, Nigel Jaquiss again.

Oh. Hi, how are you?

Fine thanks how are you?

Just fine.

Bob, I talked to Peter Thompson and Bill Hilliard. The reason I’m calling you back is their recollections differ from yours and I wanted to see if we could reconcile. Hilliard said he had no recollection of any such meeting or any such information ever coming to him. And Thompson was even more adamant. He said flatly that just did not happen.

Well, have you spoken, you raised Ohman’s name, right?

Yeah, I’ve got a call in to Jack and have sent him and email and hope to hear from him.

Well, my recollection came from Ohman. You know I had forgotten the whole issue. Ohman reconstructed it and it conforms with what I would have done.

I believe you said the other day that the meeting was held in your office?

That’s what I remember and I think that’s what Jack remembers.

Okay, and do you remember any other details, Bob? Time of day, anything like that?

No.

You mentioned when we spoke the other day that you may have written a memo

I haven’t even looked for it. Whatever I wrote would be just a summary of whatever I talked to Jack about. I don’t even know where I would have put it. You’re in this situation that either Jack will confirm or deny my, you know…

Bob I came to you because I had heard from multiple sources that this happened and I don’t doubt your story…

I’m just shuffling through a drawer here and let me see… What I think happened is that either I wrote it up or Jack wrote up a memo on what he… I’m not positive, but I think it was Sandy Rowe who began to look into this, as would be normal, because it came after her watch.

You mean wrote a memo up this year?

What I do remember is that Sandy Rowe came around certainly and asked me do I have any memory of this situation? I said, no I really didn’t. But I said…you know, I am trying to get the sequence here…either before or after she spoke with Jack Ohman. Jack had this memory, he reconstructed it, I think he wrote a memo and he gave me a copy of it and the memo very much is what I told you. The reconstruction has more to do with Jack’s memory as it does with mine.

And Bob, that memo, so I’m clear, would have been written this year after the story broke?

Oh yeah. I’m just going through a pile of things…and, I’m just not spotting it here.

I want ask you one other thing. We’ve spoken to [NAME OF OHMAN’S SOURCE] and he’s clearly in a very uncomfortable position.

Well you know I didn’t give you his name.

No, I know. I want to be fair to him. On the other hand I’m obviously asking you and a lot of other people who aren’t particularly thrilled about being in this story for their comments. Is there some professional reason that he has to fear this?

I would not be surprised.

This would lead me to think he’d breached a client confidence or a..

Well, I’m not sure. First of all I haven’t told you that this is the guy.

That’s correct.

Second of all, I’m not sure how, if it was he, that he learned of it. It may well be that he heard gossip…and how he heard gossip I don’t know. And then it could well be that he spoke injudiciously.

People have said that the way the series of events went, was that [SOURCE] told Ohman, Ohman felt it was his duty to tell you, you’re colleagues and superiors…that chain is important I think if…

I had told you yesterday that I can’t remember the name of the lawyer I spoke with is. I literally can’t. My reconstruction of this is that, that I almost certainly would not have taken Ohman’s word and gone with this because I insist on knowing sources.

Right.

Whatever the outcome was, it was sufficient that I went forward with a meeting. And that’s Jack’s memory and that would be and it conforms with what I believe I would have done. I’m not sure how helpful I’m being to you, but I just have a clear memory of Jack coming in and saying "I’ve gotta tell you, you did everything right."

Well that’s, again, my understanding.

I don’t know how this will come out. Whatever it is, I find this, my being included again, I personally find it embarrassing. But that’s a price of the jobs you have now and then. And I don’t feel any harshness toward you. I just wish you were doing something else.

Well , a lot of people share that wish. So soon I should move on to something else and stop bothering people. But thanks Bob very much for your time.