Ghostwriters should not become part of the story.
But in the high-profile federal investigations into President Biden and former President Donald Trump over their handling of secret documents, the authors who were supposed to escape the spotlight found themselves in the public eye.
In 2021, Trump showed a ghostwriter working on a memoir for his former chief of staff Mark Meadows a secret plan to attack Iran – as detailed in a federal indictment and records released last year. In 2017, Biden read to his own ghostwriter from notebooks he had at his home that contained classified material.
In most respects the situations are quite different. Trump was ultimately charged with federal crimes, but Biden was not. The documents Trump shared were meant to refute an account of his final days in office — and they were shared not with his own ghostwriter, but with someone else’s. For Biden, the critical line was a seemingly offhand remark: “I just found all the secret stuff downstairs.”
But both cases point to the particular dangers of White House memoirs and the unique creative partnerships in which the central task of one party – the ghostwriter – is to quietly shape the other party’s place in history. More broadly, it is about the impulse of powerful figures to burnish their legacy and tell their stories in their own way.
(In Biden’s case, federal prosecutors said they considered, but ultimately decided against, filing obstruction charges against the ghostwriter himself for deleting recordings he made as part of the book. Flatiron Books, which published the memoir , did not respond to a request for comment.)
“The exercise itself is a chance to get your version of events out to the public,” said Jim McGrath, who served as deputy press secretary to former President George H. W. Bush and helped Bush and other public figures write their memoirs. “As the cement begins to harden during your term,” he said, there is also the temptation to score points or demand vindication.
Robert Hur, the special counsel in Biden’s case, addressed the matter in his extensive report, which, somewhat strangely, veered into a bit of armchair psychology.
“Like many presidents, Mr. Biden has long viewed himself as a historical figure,” Hur’s report said. Biden preserved notebooks, papers and artifacts “to document his legacy and serve as evidence that he was a man of presidential talent.”
“The Monetization of the Presidency”
Douglas Brinkley, the presidential historian, said the gold standard of presidential autobiography is that of Ulysses S. Grant, whose autobiography was directed by his friend Mark Twain and published posthumously.
Brinkley notes that Richard Nixon began keeping notes of his meetings not only out of paranoia, but also in the hopes of one day writing a book about his time in office. “He tried to keep that nest egg and that cost him his presidency,” he said.
For presidents and other important political figures, Brinkley said, there is a point “where you move from leadership to legacy mode.” He also sees the drive to keep records and write blockbuster memoirs about one’s time in office as “part of the monetization of the presidency.”
According to Hur’s report, Biden documented a meeting in 2010 about a possible book about his vice presidency and noted that there were “three plausible reasons” for writing one: “1. Defense – others will write and I want a record. 2. Future – who knows about 2016. 3. Profit – retirement.”
While some officeholders write their books with the help of trusted aides, Biden ultimately hired a ghostwriter, Mark Zwonitzer, an author and documentary filmmaker who had worked with Biden on his previous memoirs. The book was primarily about the loss of Biden’s son Beau during his second term as vice president, but it also covered official matters he dealt with during that time.
Zwonitzer did not have security clearance. That’s not unusual. Madeleine Morel, a literary agent who represents ghostwriters, said she has never had to arrange such a release. “The onus is on the author to ensure that anything they present to their ghostwriter is unlikely to be secret,” she said.
Zwonitzer could not be reached for comment on Wednesday.
Ghostwriter security
McGrath said his experience as a writer has never involved confidential information. But he recalled that Jean Becker, who served as chief of staff after Bush left office, received all the necessary security clearances when she worked with Bush and Brent Scowcroft, his former national security adviser, on the 1998 book “A World Transformed.” worked that documented the collapse of the Soviet empire.
Becker even spent a few days going through files at the Central Intelligence Agency, McGrath said.
But Bush, who formerly headed the CIA, was particularly aware of these matters. “During his term as president, he often received briefings from the local CIA office, particularly before trips abroad, and only Jean was allowed to attend these briefings – and even then she largely withdrew,” McGrath said.
Bush also didn’t feel the need to write history on his own terms, McGrath said. “There’s no chest beating,” he said.
Ghostwriting Redemption
For Biden and Trump, the disclosures investigated by federal prosecutors were matters in which they sought some vindication or even redress.
In Trump’s case, the meeting with Meadows’ staff at his Bedminster club followed a New Yorker article reporting that General Mark Milley feared he would precipitate a crisis with Iran in the immediate aftermath of the 2020 election. The secret plan he shared, he told the author – who has not been publicly identified – was devised by Milley himself.
“He wanted to attack Iran,” Trump said of Milley, according to a recording of the meeting released last year. “These are the pages. That was made by the military and given to me.” Later he said with a laugh, “That completely wins my case, you know? Except it’s strictly confidential.”
The investigation into Biden focused on personal notebooks he kept after leaving the vice presidential office in 2017, which he said he had the right to keep, but also looked at secret notes stored in his office house were discovered.
Some of those records are of particular importance to Biden, the Hur report says, because they deal with Afghanistan: Biden had opposed President Barack Obama’s “troop surge” into the country in 2009, and, the report said , “He always believed in history.” would prove him right.”
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2024-02-14 23:21:05
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