Christopher Ruddy

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Christopher Ruddy is an American journalist. Ruddy is currently the CEO of NewsMax Media, an Internet media company he founded. He is known for his controversial writings about the death of deputy White House counsel Vincent Foster.

Contents 1 Background 2 Vincent Foster case 3 Ron Brown investigation 4 NewsMax 5 Publications 6 References 6.1 Footnotes 7 External links

[edit] Background

Ruddy grew up on Long Island, New York. He is the son of a decorated Nassau County police officer. ^[1] He earned his undergraduate degree in history, graduating summa cum laude from St. John's University, in New York City. He completed a master's degree in Public Policy from the London School of Economics, and also studied at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. He was named a Media Fellow at Stanford University's Hoover Institution on War, Revolution and Peace. He worked briefly as a high school teacher in the inner city.

Early in his career, Ruddy was editor of an alternative media publication known as the New York Guardian.^[2] While with the Guardian, Ruddy gained notice for debunking a story in the PBS documentary Liberators that an all-black army unit had liberated the Buchenwald and Dachau concentration camps.^[3] In an article that appeared on the Los Angeles Times wire, he called the documentary an example of "how the media can manipulate facts and narratives to create a revised history both believable and untrue."^[4] Ruddy's expose was later confirmed by an independent report of the American Jewish Committee. PBS later withdrew its support for the documentary. Ruddy then moved into more mainstream journalism with the New York Post, which he joined as an investigative reporter late in the summer of 1993. After initially writing about abuse of Social Security disability benefits, he focused on the Vincent Foster case, the subject of an ongoing investigation after Foster had died earlier that year.^[5]

[edit] Vincent Foster case

There have been three official investigations of the death of deputy White House counsel Vincent Foster, all of which concluded that he committed suicide.^[6] The first was by the United States Park Police in whose jurisdiction the original investigation fell. Due to Foster's position in the White House, the FBI assisted in the investigation. In December 1993, Ruddy began writing stories questioning the official conclusion that Foster had committed suicide. He was the first reporter to speak with police and paramedics who were first to the scene. Several expressed doubts about the official suicide ruling. In a continuing series of reports, Ruddy pointed to weaknesses in the Park Police investigation.

The paramedics talked about the relative lack of blood at the scene, and it was suggested, according to homicide experts Ruddy consulted, "that Foster may have been killed elsewhere and that his body was dumped in the park." Ruddy also pointed to tests that had not been conducted and other issues not accounted for by the investigation.^[7]

Ruddy’s articles began after Janet Reno, due to Foster’s connections to the Clintons’ business dealings and a White House travel office controversy, had been pressured into appointing an independent counsel to investigate what came to be known as Whitewater. The first independent counsel, Robert Fiske, and the FBI also investigated the circumstances of Foster's death and the White House response. In a report released June 30, 1994, Fiske concluded that Foster had committed suicide.

But critics of the official investigation had been tainted by political interference. Former FBI Director William S. Sessions told Ruddy that the FBI inquiry into Foster's death had been "compromised from the beginning". ^[8] The Post had already stopped publishing articles by Ruddy about the case in March 1994. Accuracy in Media, another organization that had been pursuing the story, criticized the Post for accepting Fiske’s conclusion, reportedly leaked to the media around this time, and pulling Ruddy off the story.

According to James B. Stewart, the Post did not want to pursue the Foster story and Ruddy and the paper had an amicable separation. Post editor Eric Breindel recommended him for a job at the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review owned by philanthropist and billionaire Richard Mellon Scaife.^[9] In November 1994, Ruddy was hired as a national correspondent for theTribune-Review.^[10] In between Ruddy’s departure from the Post and joining the Tribune-Review, he put out a report through the Western Journalism Center criticizing the Fiske investigation as inadequate. With the help of Scaife, the Center took out full-page ads in major newspapers to promote the report (Scaife gave $330,000 to the Center in 1994-95 before ending his support).^[11][12]

Ruddy’s report now claimed that the Park Police had misrepresented the official placement of the Foster crime scene in their reports.^[13] One of the officers named by Ruddy sued him along with the Western Journalism Center, seeking $2 million in damages for libel.^[14] The suit was dismissed as being without merit by two federal courts.^[15]

Ruddy later built on his work on the Foster case for his book The Strange Death of Vincent Foster by Simon & Schuster. In reviewing the book, Richard Brookhiser of the National Review called it "the St. Mark version of the gospel of the Foster cover-up: a plain narrative of the perceived failings of the official investigation, with minimal speculation."^[16] Shortly after the book came out, Fiske’s successor as independent counsel, Kenneth Starr, released his report from the third investigation into Foster’s death. Starr also concluded that Foster had committed suicide.

Once Starr's report was out, some conservatives distanced themselves from the controversy theories that had arisen about Foster’s death. One critic wrote a particularly harsh review of Ruddy's book in The American Spectator, a magazine to which Scaife was giving sizable annual grants. The Wall Street Journal commented about Ruddy, "He and a few allies are obsessive in refusing to accept the answers Mr. Starr now provides. But that does not mean his questions never should have been asked."^[17]

[edit] Ron Brown investigation

Ruddy followed up his book with an investigation of the circumstances surrounding Commerce Secretary Ron Brown’s death. Brown had been killed in a plane crash in Croatia in 1996. Citing the opinion of three medical examiners who were involved in the Armed Forces investigation, Ruddy raised the possibility that Brown had received a head wound from a gunshot. ^[18]

This notion was rejected by the medical examiner who did examine the corpse, who concluded that Brown died of blunt force injuries from the crash. An Air Force statement said there was no exit wound and explained that apparent "bullet fragments" were caused by defective x-ray film. Ruddy quoted noted forensic patholgist, Cyril Wecht, who reviewed the existing autopsy photos and x-rays, and concluded a strong possibility existed Brown did not die from the plane crash and a second autopsy was required. ^[19]

In defense of his reporting, Ruddy said, "I never offer any conspiracy theories. If I think there's something that doesn't add up or smells fishy and there's evidence to support it, I report it.".^[20] The coverage prompted White House press secretary Mike McCurry to name Ruddy when asked who in the press was a "hate merchant". Both McCurry and James Carville identified Ruddy as the #1 press critic of the Clinton White House. Ruddy responded that the White House was "panicking" over the attention the story had gotten.

[edit] NewsMax

In 1998, impressed with the way news of the Clinton Scandals circulated on the Internet, Ruddy decided to start an Internet news company. With financial support from investors, Ruddy founded NewsMax Media.^[21] The NewsMax.com website launched on September 16, 1998, with Ruddy serving as columnist and editor-in-chief. In addition to the website, the company publishes a monthly NewsMax Magazine. After starting NewsMax, Ruddy was identified in a January 1999 Newsweek cover story as one of the nation's 20 most influential new media personalities. ^[22]

Since its founding, NewsMax has become one of the most influential news websites, especially among Republicans. Ruddy himself writes occasional columns for the publication. While offering a generally conservative perspective on public policy, he has been iconoclastic. In 2004, he was one of the first conservatives to argue that President Bush's plan for Iraq was heading for disaster and that the administration should "bring the Iraq occupation to an end."^[23] Ruddy has also demonstrated an independent streak by calling for the release of Michael Skakel,^[24] the Kennedy cousin accused of murdering Martha Moxley in Greenwich, Conn.; has argued that Hillary Clinton has been a tough moderate on "war on terror" issues;^[25] Bill Clinton has done praiseworthy work relating to AIDS in Africa;^[26] and strongly supported Sen. Joseph Lieberman's race for the U.S. Senate in 2006 as an independent candidate.^[27]

[edit] Publications

• Books
  • Vincent Foster: The Ruddy Investigation (United Publishing Company, 1996)
  • The Strange Death of Vincent Foster: An Investigation (Free Press, Simon & Schuster, 1997. ISBN 0-684-83837-0.)
  • Bitter Legacy: NewsMax Reveals the Untold Story of the Clinton-Gore Years (NewsMax Media, 2002. ISBN 0-9716807-3-6.)
  • Catastrophe: Clinton's Role in America's Worst Disaster (NewsMax Media, 2002. ISBN 0-9716807-5-2.)
• Other
  • "A special report on the Fiske investigation of the death of Vincent W. Foster, Jr." (Western Journalism Center, 1997.)
  • "Internet Vortex", an online newsletter (published from 1998 to 2000)

[edit] References

• Moldea, Dan E. A Washington Tragedy: How the Death of Vincent Foster Ignited a Political Firestorm. Washington: Regnery Publishing, 1998. ISBN 0-89526-382-3.
• Poe, Richard. Hillary's Secret War: The Clinton Conspiracy to Muzzle Internet Journalists. Nashville, TN: WND Books, 2004. ISBN 0-7852-6013-7.
• Stewart, James B. Blood Sport: The President and His Adversaries. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1996. ISBN 0-684-80230-9.

[edit] Footnotes

[edit] External links

• Christopher Ruddy’s biography on NewsMax.com