Does someone have it in for Adam Clymer? The congressional correspondent for the New York Times, known as one of the more sour members of the media, seems to have gotten on the wrong side of the Capitol Police. Following a May 1 press conference in the Capitol, Clymer was told by an officer not to traverse a particular area owing to the impending arrival of the Spanish prime minister. A spokesman for the Capitol Police told the Hill newspaper that “Mr. Clymer became belligerent and started using profanities. The officer’s supervisor stepped in in an attempt to explain the situation, Mr. Clymer again used profanities and left the area.”
The story was first reported in the Washington Times, and Clymer believes the paper was fed the information by the police. Revealing his contempt for both, he told the Hill that “a real police force would have talked to me before going to the Washington Times, of all places.”
Clymer is perhaps best known for having received and publicized earlier this year a tape of a purloined cellular telephone discussion between Newt Gingrich and other Republican leaders concerning the ethics charges against Gingrich. Clymer wrote the story up, and it made a big splash, though not the kind of splash he might have hoped, since it was chiefly Democrats who got wet. The taping was of course illegal, and the Florida couple who made the tape recently pleaded guilty to an infraction of federal anti-wiretapping law; the FBI investigation continues, presumably focusing on the actions of House Democrats like Jim McDermott, who resigned from the ethics committee after Clymer’s story seemed to finger him as the intermediary who made the illegal tape available to reporters.
Here’s hoping that the Capitol Police have in fact decided to launch an anti-Clymer vendetta. The alternative explanation — a generalized crackdown on reporters using profanities — might seriously deplete the Capitol Hill press corps.
