THE INSIDER

Timothy Russert's imitation of New York Democratic Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan's voice was foolproof, down to the smallest nuance in speech pattern. But, more eerily, to the reporters to whom Russert frequently made prank calls pretending he was Moynihan, it seemed as if he had truly gotten inside the senator's head.

"He would say things Pat Moynihan would have indeed said if he'd made the call," recalls syndicated columnist Ray Herman, who was a political reporter for the now-defunct Buffalo Courier Express when Russert was Moynihan's chief of staff, a post he held from 1977 to 1982.

"I first learned about this imitation," Moynihan says, "when three reporters in a row I put a call through to said, 'Fuck off, Russert.'"

Those youthful calls, attributed by Herman to "Tim's lyrical Irish wit," have long since ceased. But if anything, Russert, who in the meantime has made the problematic move from politics to journalism and is now NBC News senior vice-president and Washington bureau chief, has become more adept at getting inside politicians' heads.

"The distinct advantage I have, I know what goes on inside the closed doors journalists stand outside of," Russert says. "You have to realize, fifty percent of a politician's day is spent either reading, watching, talking to, or preparing to talk to the media." Now he's on "the other side," he says. "When I'm interviewing someone, I know what exercise they've gone through, what points they're trying to make, what questions they're trying to avoid." Such intimate understanding of both worlds has proved useful to others who have made the switch, among them Bill Moyers (once Lyndon Johnson's press secretary), William Safire (Nixon's speechwriter), and, most recently, Patrick Buchanan (Nixon speechwriter to pundit to presidential candidate).

And, indeed, after right years in the profession, Russert's ability to come up with penetrating questions -- and tough follow-ups -- for politicians on Meet the Press is singled out as his strongest credential as a journalist. A reflection of the show's new energy is the network's recent decision to expand it to one hour. His second asset is his sources. In a town where politics is news and vice versa. Russert's tireless networking with the powerful has given him a useful database to feed to the correspondents he supervises as Washington bureau chief and to fuel his own performance as once-a-week pundit on the Today show and as Meet the Press moderator. "He knows where all the bodies are buried," says NB White House correspondent Jim Miklaszewski, "and he knows their phone numbers."

As NBC executive, he has skillfully turned what some called a "demotion" from New York to Washington into a personal triumph. Washington is now the hot spot in the network; stories from there have gone up from roughly 30 percent when he got there in 1989 to about 40 percent.

This has been good news for the stars of Russert's stable -- Lisa Meyers, Andrea Mitchell, Fred Francis, John Cochran, Robert Hager -- who give their chief high marks for his input, savvy, and support. It has been less good news for those reporting foreign and national stories, which frequently get a hurried read-through by anchor Tom Brokaw.

How long Russert will be able to use the Nightly News as a power base is an open question. The show remains marooned in third place and many insiders expect the news division to be sold of as a news service along the lines of Cable News Network within a year. President and c.e.o. Robert Wright and news president Michael Gartner continue to pare down staff, disband bureaus, increase pool coverage, and enlist affiliates as newsgathering partners. (In a recent memo, Gartner outlined his plan to use fewer correspondents and, instead, have anchor Brokaw deliver "more of the news" and "conduct interviews of newsworthy persons.") The creation of The News Channel, a video version of Associated Press, in Charlotte, North Carolina, has further streamlined the news operation, eliminating the "need" for expensive, experienced correspondents.

Russert, a big, bouncy six-footer, is very much at home in his corner office at NBC's Washington bureau, working a multi-buttoned phone, making calls to the Hill and the White House, to cronies, connections, and correspondents. Schmoozing is what everybody calls it -- newsgathering via cordial conversations.

Every morning, except Wednesday when he's in NBC's New York office, Russert is a vigorous if unseen participant in the conference call during which most of the story line-up of Nightly News and other NBC news broadcasts is decided. His disembodied voice resonates from a speaker phone in the large conference room where "a good deal of the braintrust gathers," explains executive vice-president Don Browne, who usually presides. Assembled are Gartner, Brokaw, and the executive producers, including Nightly News's Steve Friedman, along with director of foreign news David Miller, news manager Karolyn Lord, and Alex Benes and David Verdi, editors in charge of newsgathering, all of whom present their wares.

Russert's importunings aren't always heeded. When the Supreme Court ruled that the United States had a right to kidnap and bring foreigners to trial, NBC was the only network to bury the story in a "reader," even though Russert pitched a full-scale piece with Carl Stern reporting. For another Supreme Court decision, the long-awaited ruling on abortion, however, Russert got the go-head to produce an eight-minute "special interrupt" with Katie Couric substituting for a vacationing Brokaw as anchor and Carl Stern, Bob Kur, and Lisa Myers reporting.

That Couric and the Today show itself are hitting news stories harder (and regaining ratings) is cited as another example of Russert's broad reach within NBC. He takes full credit for putting Couric, his former Pentagon correspondent, in the co-host seat after the Deborah Norville fiasco. And when Jeffrey Zucker, twenty-seven, was suggested as executive producer, Russert lobbied vigorously for him despite concern over his youth. Under Zucker's regime, interviews of Washington figures, by Couric and Bryant Gumbel, dominate most of the show's first segments.

It is as an on-camera journalist that Russert himself is making his mark. "Tim has an enormous amount of power right now to make and influence [government] policy on Meet the Press," enthuses a former NBC producer. "His instincts are very good in selecting the person involved in the process and asking questions or getting panelists to ask questions which will either get the policymaker to move the process forward, or say something that will garner reaction that may move the process along." When Ross Perot appeared on the show in May, Russert was ready for him. He claims he read every interview and every speech Perot ever gave; he also called budget director Richard Darman "to check some numbers." He then challenged Perot's plans for cutting the federal deficit so effectively that the furious non-candidate turned his back on the media altogether.

Russert was brought to NBC in 1984 as deputy to news president Lawrence Grossman; at the time he was counselor to New York Governor Mario Cuomo.

Grossman, a former president of Public Broadcasting Service was also making the transition to news. The pair were introduced by Washington attorney Leonard Garment, who had been counsel to President Richard Nixon and to whom Russert had been talking about a job in the law. (He has a law degree from Cleveland-Marshall College of Law and is a member of the bar in both the District of Columbia and New York.) At that time, Grossman says, "NBC was dead from the neck up. Tim came along serendipitously. He was energetic and politically very astute. Since I had absolutely no direct experience in news and neither did he, I bit the bullet and offered him the job."

"There was a lot of skepticism," recalls Brokaw. "Here was Larry Grossman, who did not have a journalistic background, bringing in this guy from politics. We knew the thing that would sink him was if he came up with bloody hands from a political point of view," he adds, referringto concern about Russert's allegiances

"I think you're allowed one turn in the door," Russert says.

By the time Gartner replaced Grossman, inthe summer of 1988, Russert was heir-apparent to the NBC News presidency, a job he once said he'd like to have; but with his mentor gone, and a new regime mandated to cut expenses, all bets were off. Russert was packed off to Washington, where he was met with a less-than-welcoming crops of NBC correspondents and producers. "He replaced a popular bureau chief, Bob McFarland, my closet friend. I resented it," says Fred Francis, who has since become one of Russert's admirers. "And Tim was an outsider and not a journalist."

Within a year, Russert felt he had become enough of a journalist to critique the profession; he wrote a widely circulated op-ed piece, published in The New York Times, analyzing TV coverage of the 1988 presidential campaign and spelling out a number of preemptive journalistic strikes for regaining control of coverage from the candidates' handlers: among them, airing the candidates' stump speeches, avoiding the "photo ops" -- "video press releases" he called them -- and holding the candidate accountable for the accuracy of their commercials with "ad watches." One of the most challenging ideas at the time was to take top correspondents off the campaign planes, so they would have the distance and energy to do probing pieces rather than be "distracted by the flying side show."

Over the next three years draconian budget cuts, necessitated by large losses in the news division, forced Russert to cut his staff from 225 to 150. By all accounts, Russert has dealt with this painful process compassionately and creatively. He has offered what has been described as a "generous buyout program" to everyone on the staff, has reduced overtime, and, in the case of law correspondent Carl Stern, fought to establish a reduced schedule. Stern now assists "the correspondent du jour," in the words of a staffer, on Supreme court stories.

Russert hasn't won over everyone in the bureau. "The uneasiness about Tim may be because he is willing to work for Gartner," observes a former NBC staffer. "He has been successful so far in protecting his domain from being overrun, but by doing this he is still dealing with the devil." Others, some of whom are genuinely fond of him, are wary of Russert's naked ambition.

As you enter the NBC News corridor you see on the left wall a line-up of big full-color posters depicting NBC's news shows, beginning with Tom Brokaw as Nightly News anchor and ending with what seems to some to be an extra-large portrait of Russert as moderator of Meet the Press. The corridor breaks there, for rest rooms, then picks up with pictures of the bureau correspondents in alphabetical order.

"I don't think his heart is in being a bureau chief," says an NBC producer. "His heart is in being on Meet the Press, and on the Today political panel."

Rusert insists that his heart is in journalism -- at least as he defines it: "It is a vocation," he says. "I am Catholic and I understand vocations. Everybody has a purpose for being on earth. I am most comfortable and best at understanding public policy issues, trying to interpret them, analyze them, and inform the public about them."

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