Do you get the anger that is out here?
Landrieu, stilted and robotic, sounded like she was reading from a script. “Anderson, I have the anger inside of me …”
Who are you angry at?
“I’m not angry at anyone …”
She never directly addressed the question of who was responsible for the failure in New Orleans.
“Being in a place like that, all the bullshit is stripped away,” Cooper told me. “It’s like the flesh is ripped off and everything is raw and exposed. I just got angry … it just seemed wrong. It just seemed inappropriate.” He had been listening for an answer and instead got evasion and excuses.
Cooper brought together firsthand knowledge of the story with a sense of moral outrage. His questions demanded accountability. Landrieu’s answers, which were shockingly unresponsive, only accentuated the ineptitude of government at a moment of crisis. Landrieu’s performance tarnished her reputation; Cooper’s performance elevated his. But Cooper’s approach highlighted a pillar of confrontational questioning: persistence. He interrupted when Landrieu tried to make an irrelevant speech instead of offering a direct response. He returned to his question and asked again. He applied righteous indignation to emphasize the moral certitude that motivated his questioning. In the end, Landrieu acknowledged nothing, but the record was clear.
Unintended Consequences
Even with extensive knowledge, preparation, and skin in the game, confrontational questioning can go off the rails. I learned this the hard way, in a very public setting, when I interviewed one of the world’s most controversial and charismatic figures.
It was one of the strangest interviews I’ve done. I “presided” at the prestigious Council on Foreign Relations in Washington, D.C., in front of a live audience and a cluster of cameras from around the world. My task was to ask Yasser Arafat, leader of the Palestinian Liberation Organization, a few questions and then open the discussion to audience Q&A. Some people still considered him a terrorist. Others viewed him as a freedom fighter. It was a challenging assignment.
As we gathered, the Mideast was again in turmoil. Another Palestinian uprising, an intifada, had ignited the territories. The world bore witness to the sad story of the region’s endless conflict and suffering—this time, through pictures of young protesters, children in many cases, throwing rocks and using slingshots against well-armed Israeli troops. In the most searing image, cameras captured the fatal shooting of a twelve-year-old boy, Muhammad al-Durrah, as his father tried to protect him with his bare hands while they huddled behind a metal barrel.
Mixed with the outrage directed at both sides were calls for Arafat to encourage Palestinian children to stay off the streets and away from the hostilities. But Arafat was silent. Israeli leaders and others accused him of actually wanting more victims, more incendiary images to wave around in an effort to pressure Israel and rally global opinion.
I wanted to ask Arafat about those children. They were too young to be dying in his streets, too young to be traded for propaganda points. I felt he needed to answer his critics.
Why had he been silent?
Why didn’t he protect his children?
How did he respond to criticism from around the world?
I knew he would bristle at the accusation. I had worked the phones, talking to people who knew Arafat and the Middle East to figure out the best way to frame the questions so he’d actually answer. Acknowledge his stature, the experts told me. Play to his influence and his ego. Invoke the protective instinct a father feels when his child is in danger. In a region so poisoned by history, frame the question to look forward, not back. Appeal to his sense of destiny. All of it was sound advice. None of it worked.
We were seated at the front of a room on a small platform that was just big enough for our two green-upholstered armchairs and a coffee table with two glasses and a pitcher of water. Arafat wore his trademark kaffiyeh, a checkered head wrap that draped nearly to his waist. The room was packed. USA Today described the crowd as the “crème de la crème of the U.S. foreign policy establishment.”
I began with some innocuous questions about Arafat’s meeting that day with President Clinton, the situation on the ground, and prospects for resuming negotiations with the Israelis. Just before I went to audience questions, I turned to the issue of the children. Reflecting the advice I’d been given, I credited Arafat with being the “longtime leader” of the Palestinian people. I sought to acknowledge his influence by invoking “many” in America and the Middle East who said he had an “opportunity” to act. I made reference to his authority and tried to connect it to the future and the children by saying he could call on people “to stand down …” I hadn’t gotten the full question out of my mouth when he erupted.
“We are animals?” he shouted at me. I continued, intent on getting a response to the question I’d asked.
“Specifically, the children …”
He leaped out of his chair, shaking his finger. “You want me to treat our people as animals?” He appeared to be on the verge of storming out of the room.
“Sir,” I asserted, “I merely asked a question …”
I crossed my legs and extended them to fill the space between that coffee table and us, blocking his most obvious escape route. After a few seconds that felt like forever, he sat down, glowering. We continued.
It was an especially awkward moment because I was meant to be both questioner and gracious host. Arafat was a “guest” of the Council, whose events were supposed to be thoughtful and dignified. But this question about the children had to be asked, and asked unapologetically. I should have pushed harder and worried less about civility and propriety. I didn’t want to lose him, though. By now, it was time for questions from the audience.
One person took up where I left off. He came from AIPAC of all places, the American-Israeli lobby. He asked my question again, this time employing a highly effective technique in confrontational questioning: He invoked an impeccable third party. This tactic shifts the burden of assertion from the questioner to someone with expertise, stature, or moral authority. In this case, the impeccable third party was the Queen of Sweden, who had very publicly commented on the use of Palestinian children in the uprising.
“As a mother, I’m very worried about this … the children should not take part,” she had said.
Q FROM AUDIENCE: Mr. Chairman, could you comment on the Queen of Sweden’s public condemnation of the use of children by the Palestinian leadership in fighting against Israel?
ARAFAT: Use of children?
Q: I said the Queen of Sweden’s public condemnation of the use by the Palestinian leadership of children in the fight against Israel.
ARAFAT: Use of the children? I cannot accept this statement. I’m not using our children. We are working very hard for the future … Are you against this? (Pauses for a moment.) You know, someone from AIPAC should have apologized for killing all the Palestinian children. This would have been the high road.
Arafat had no intention of addressing the question directly, whether it came from me or anybody else. But the encounter served an important purpose: it put him on the spot—and on the record—for the entire world to see. His supporters would see his anger as defiance; his antagonists would see petulance. I still believe it was an important exchange. It illustrated that confrontational questions set an agenda and create a historical record.