To make sure Newsweek-Daily Beast secured the first interview with the maid allegedly sexually assaulted in New York’s Hotel Sofitel by former International Monetary Fund President Dominique Strauss-Kahn, editor-in-chief Tina Brown offered to provide housing to the woman, crude checkbook journalism that one of her top editors feared would discredit any news they got.
On three separate occasions, Brown offered to put the accuser, Nafi Diallo, in her house or one owned by an editor, if that would speed up the interview. At the time, Diallo’s lawyer warned that if she went public about the May 14, 2011 event, the New York District Attorney would kick her out of the Westchester house his office was paying for.
When told by Diallo’s lawyer of the housing problem, Brown told him, “We could put her up for a few weeks if that would help,” according to a new book about the affair from former Newsweek investigative reporter John Solomon. But in DSK: The Scandal that Brought Down Dominique Strauss-Kahn, Solomon said he pushed back and Brown withdrew her offers when he warned, “We don’t want any semblance that this is a checkbook journalism exercise or people will not trust the interview.”
Still, he reveals, the celebrity editor repeatedly tried to undercut his efforts to land the interview, which Solomon ultimately succeeded in doing. On one occasion, as he was negotiating a deal with Diallo’s lawyer, Kenneth Thompson, Brown wrote the lawyer offering to have the interview conducted by Harvard’s Henry Louis Gates, famed for his run-in with a Cambridge, Mass., cop that led to the “beer summit” on the South Lawn with President Obama.
“I was blindsided, and felt undercut,” writes Solomon in the book provided to Secrets.
He described Brown as overly eager to get the interview, which was a Newsweek blockbuster, and in need of some hand-holding and control. In fact, he called in a top editor to help and eventually Brown left it to Solomon to nail down the deal.
“Waiting patiently isn’t easy for Tina, especially when a big scoop is near at hand. By phone and by BlackBerry, she pinged me often to see if there was any word,” he wrote in the book set to hit stands June 5.
The case against Strauss-Kahn was eventually dropped, though he faces similar allegations in a new case.
