The Leading in a Crisis Podcast
What really happens when a crisis hits an organization—and how technology is influencing decisions and reputation impacts. Come hear what happened when experienced leaders were actually in the middle of a crisis—and capture the lessons before it happens to you. Email the show at Tom@leadinginacrisis.com.
Your host, Tom Mueller, is a veteran crisis manager and trainer with more than 30 years in the corporate communications and crisis fields. Tom currently works as an executive coach and crisis trainer with WPNT Communications, and as a contract public information officer and trainer through his personal company, Tom Mueller Communications LLC.
Our goal is to help you grow your knowledge and awareness so you can be better prepared to lead should a major crisis threaten your organization.
Music credit: Special thanks to Nick Longoria from Austin, Texas for creating the theme music for the podcast.
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The Leading in a Crisis Podcast
EP 14 What would you do if asked to lie to the media? Also, dealing with disingenuous politicians and feeding the media beast - with Adam Wine
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In this episode, we continue our conversation with Adam Wine, a 30-year veteran of the US Coast Guard. Adam discusses the frustration of being on the response team when politics get in the way and politicians seeking the spotlight lie to the public.
We talk about our experiences working the Deepwater Horizon oil spill response and our frustrations as PIOs dealing with disingenuous politicians (we're being kind here). It can be difficult getting information to the public in a timely fashion when your press releases are being routed to the White House for approval - far outside the normal unified command approval process. That happens. How do you deal with it?
In a surprising story, Adam shares how he was fired from the Deepwater Horizon spill response team in Louisiana by the White House. Yes, Adam tells us how political operatives in the Obama White House got him fired from his position leading communications in one coastal area of the spill response. This story came up as part of our conversation about the politicization of crisis situations, which has been going on for decades.
Tom, Marc and Adam discuss several incidents where politicians intervened in response communications, and Adam shares the story of why he was fired, and how he held his ground when asked to lie about the crisis response effort.
We'd love to hear from you. Email the show at Tom@leadinginacrisis.com.
Crisis Response and Political Interference
Tom MuellerHi everyone and welcome to the Leading in a Crisis podcast . On this podcast , we talk about all things crisis management , with a special focus on leadership . We deliver this through interviews , storytelling and lessons learned from experienced crisis leaders . I'm Tom Mueller , in Houston . I'd like to welcome my co-host , mark Mullin , who's joining us again from Bellingham , washington . Hey , Marc , hi Tom , happy to be here . Today's episode is a continuation of our conversation with Adam Wine , a 30-year veteran of the US Coast Guard and a well-respected crisis leader . Today we focus on what can happen when a crisis response becomes overtly political . Adam has several stories to share on that , including one where he says the government asked him to lie about what was happening in that response . Let's rejoin the conversation now .
Marc MullenSpeaking about adapting and overcome , my mind goes to a recent event on the West Coast that was basically taken over by the politicians . What do you do or can you share with us as an experience you had , where politicians basically tried to take over the response or take over the communication or assert their will over what the response was ?
Adam WineThe first time that it really occurred that I know this was do you remember the airplane that went down up in New England and it had the Kennedy kid on board ? Yes , okay . So the Coast Guard has a policy where , after you do a search and rescue mission and a certain amount of hours and expenditures have gone by and , based on what the people were wearing and the temperature , the water and the weather conditions , the chances of finding somebody alive at a certain point , they say okay , after this point in time the chances of that individual being alive are almost nil . We usually stand down to search and rescue and just go to . If anybody sees anything in the area , notify us because , well , we only have limited resources and there's always search and rescue cases going on around the country , so you can't have all that resource of being dedicated to one location because other locations suffer . We get dedicated to a lot of Coast Guard research vessels and aircraft and personnel to go search for this guy . We went past this time frame where we should stand down and the first time I saw political interference was when the president at that time said that we will continue this search because of all the sacrifices that that family had done for this country . I fell a little put off by that because we were conducting a search up on the Great Lakes that we just had to stand down and the guy was a World War II veteran from Normandy and I couldn't balance the two of them there . So what's going on ? Why is ? Because one guy's famous and the other guy actually had all of his buddies and friends killed landing on the beach . How come the one guy ? Because you know , I didn't see a parody there . Definitely this person's famous because and now we're going to spend more Coast Guard resources for searching for the individual . That was the first time I saw politics . Kind of flying is something I actually even called to find out what's going on . We're in violation of our own policy . Well , you know , the president is in charge of the military , so he could set that . So there wasn't any argument there . That's just how it went .
Adam WineShortly after that was a major oil spill in California and this is one where I think I've listened to some of your podcasts and somebody might have brought this up before . The response , the actual physical , operational response was fantastic . They actually had skimming vessels out on scene within a half an hour of the actual spill . Now I've been in national level spill response exercises where we deploy equipment and we know when this is going to occur and they can't get their equipment out that quickly . Okay , half an hour , it's incredible .
Adam WineHowever , the public affairs part of it was fumbled and it became , you know , a disaster for public affairs because there was a lot of mismanagement coming out and most of it was coming from political types saying that things weren't getting done and this wasn't happening .
Adam WineAnd now they were telling straight out untruths , they were lying through the public and the media and the statements they were making , but politically , for them it was beneficial and it became a . The bill is perceived as a disaster by the public , but it's an example of operational response that is still used and held up . As this is how you do operational response . I mean , how do you balance those two things ? I mean operationally , the actual job was done , the best it could be done , the best that it had been done in the world at that time . Yet it was being portrayed as a disaster by the political types , mainly because the crews out there did not use the ICS system , not the operational folks , the PIO liaison type . Folks did not want to do it that way . They had their own way of kind of doing things , which was pretty much not doing things , and it became a disaster .
Tom MuellerSo , adam , was it the case where the politicians , the elected officials , really weren't getting information that they wanted and needed Because the communications effort was failing ? Or was it really just more sort of political opportunism here , weighing in and taking advantage of this unfortunate event for their own publicity ?
Adam WineThe latter . There was definitely because it wasn't being done right . They could run with any meshes they were going because there was no coordinated meshes coming out for the response . So there was a . There was a hole in the poll . Politicians use it to their best advantage . Unfortunately , that trend with the politicians using things keeps growing , and that's what I saw towards the end of my career how much politics and politicians would begin to interfere with response .
Tom MuellerSo Adam , let me just build on that , because during the Deepwater Horizon response , we saw that frequently , you know parish presidents standing out in front of CNN cameras and talking to Anderson Cooper and saying the company's not here , they're not doing anything , yeah that was going to be my next one .
Adam WineI did Deepwater Horizon as well . I was in headquarters at that time and working as program manager for the Coast Guard's public affairs program and I was actually sending people to the response . That was part of my job , you know , to find available Coast Guard work . And I realized eventually it was going to go on long enough that I might as well self deploy and so I did end up self doing one myself . Down I was , I went to , I went to Mobile initially and we got down there and I was stood up a jig .
Adam WineThat was one of the times where I was the qualified PIO , but I used a junior person to be the PIO because they needed the experience as a PIO for advancement and I just served as how do I call it ? You could call it their deputy , but in fact I could kind of overrule anything he said or did , if he did something wrong . But I was just there to make sure and we , you know , and I made him go through and do all the things at best practices and we had a great jig team and we were out putting media out on boats and responding and stuff , and we're highly successful and we had the public on our side . The media in that area was getting all the things they needed . So you know , they could go out and see that boom was being deployed to protect the various parts of the coast or channels and they could get out on the helicopters and fly out and see all the equipment , everything going on and everything .
Adam WineWe were very , very well liked and the populace , the community , was happy with this . We had a good working relationship with the government officials because I would work with the liaison officer , who was a friend and he just basically worked with . He just worked in the jig with us and we'd set up the boats and go out and escort the VIPs out on site and take them out to whatever they needed to do A lot of dog and pony show , but that really goes a long way to making people feel good , very successful .
Challenges and Controversies in Crisis Response
Adam WineAnd then I got called by a guy from area command saying they were having a lot of trouble in Louisiana down near coca tree , and when I go out there to fix it , you know you got a lot of people . What do you need me for ?
Marc MullenYou know .
Adam WineHe says well , you know , you know all how to make all these things happen .
Adam WineI says , okay , but you know , you're asking me to go on and fix it . That means Chief Warrant Officer Wine going to go fix it and he says okay . So he says yeah . So I got a leave of absence from Mobile and I went out to Cocodrie and immediately put the media on the boats . We went out to the sites and started conducting briefings and got guys up in the helicopters and I had one media guy go . So you know , I've been here for two weeks , two weeks . What's going on ? I go , what do you mean ? He says I've been here for two weeks and suddenly in the last three days I've been on an airboat , I've been on a coast guard boat and I've been in a coast guard helicopter and I've got nothing , nothing prior to this time .
Adam WineWell , I was just doing the job and I was consulting with the local incident commander . What was going on was that the guys up at area command in the public affairs staff thought that they had to approve everything that at the incident level , not realizing that the area command staff is just the air commander's PIO staff and they don't oversee the JICs and the PIO that works for the incident commander . So I ran everything through the incident commander and he just let me go with it because , well , he was a responder and we knew each other from other responses and it was going really really well and essentially because it was looking really , really good and everything was going really really well , there was somebody I don't know who was not happy because it was starting to make it look like the responsible party was doing their job , which they were , and that the coast guard was on top of it and making sure that the responsible party was doing their job and that we were working together as a team and successfully doing what we needed to get done . Somebody didn't want that information going out that way and they basically stopped , put a stop to what we , or tried to stop what we were doing . Essentially , I ended up basically saying hey , no , that's not what's going on . This is what's going on , and I explained it to a AP reporter so that he could understand it , because he did .
Adam WineThere's a lot of interference that went on . This is the situation , this is going on and this is somebody stopping us , and there also we would put together news releases and they were beating us up and being stalled at the area command for no reason . I finally tracked down that the area command was bumping them up . So our news releases went to the area command for approval , which is not how it's supposed to be , and then the area command would bump them up to the next level . The next level above the area command , was Homeland Security .
Tom MuellerA lot of the press releases would be in bump to the White House .
Adam WineAnd eventually it went to the White House . That's what I figured out and that's what I reported . I said this is the process and this is what we're dealing with . This is why it's going so slow . I was just going straight to the incident commander making it happen , basically one of those things where I was doing it with following the rules and not following what these people kept saying you needed to do . Thank God , that's not how it's supposed to be done . So I was following presidential directive that says we followed NIMS ICS , where the other thing was all unofficial and there's nothing in writing . People just try to tell you so the telephone and anyway . So I got in trouble for doing that and was told that I needed to tell reporters that it wasn't going to the White House , and of course that was a lie and you're not allowed to tell lies in my position , and because of that I got fired by the White House from my job . Okay , so basically they removed me from the position and sent me to the area command to do nothing for a while , for a little bit , and I was kind of shocked . I'd never had that happen before . So I was like really put out . I didn't know what to do there .
Adam WineAnd then at dawn I was actually on loan from a different incident commander and I just went back they were telling me all about . I remember I actually had a showdown with a guy saying you know , well , you're in a lot of trouble . I says , how am I in trouble ? And he goes well , you know , you did this and you weren't supposed to do that .
Adam Wineoffset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-color: rgba(59,130,246, . 5); --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-blur: ; --tw-brightness: ; --tw-contrast: ; --tw-grayscale: ; --tw-hue-rotate: ; --tw-invert: ; --tw-saturate: ; --tw-sepia: ; --tw-drop-shadow: ; --tw-backdrop-blur: ; --tw-backdrop-brightness: ; --tw-backdrop-contrast: ; --tw-backdrop-grayscale: ; --tw-backdrop-hue-rotate: backdrop-sepia: ; background-color: rgb(252, 252, 253);"> </span><span data-v-ddf6351a="" class="transcript-element" data-mindex="19" data-eindex="147" data-key="19147I820 . 87" style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0 --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-pan-x: ; --tw-pan-y: ; --tw-pinch-zoom: ; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-ordinal: ; --tw-slashed-zero: ; --tw-numeric-figure: ; --tw-numeric-spacing: ; --tw-numeric-fraction: ; --tw-ring-inset: ; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-color: rgba(59,130,246, . 5); --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-blur: ; --tw-brightness: ; --tw-contrast: ; --tw-grayscale: ; --tw-hue-rotate: ; --tw-invert: ; --tw-saturate: ; --tw-sepia: ; --tw-drop-shadow: ; --tw-backdrop-blur: ; --tw-backdrop-brightness: ; --tw-backdrop-contrast: ; --tw-backdrop-grayscale: ; --tw-backdrop-hue-rotate: ; --tw-backdrop-invert: ; --tw-backdrop-opacity: ; --tw-backdrop-saturate: ; --tw-backdrop-sepia: ; background-color: rgb(252, 252, 253);">I</span><span data-v-ddf6351a="" class="transcript-element" data-mindex="19" data-eindex="149" data-key="19149said820 . 93" style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-pan-x: ; --tw-pan-y: ; --tw-pinch-zoom: ; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-ordinal: ; --tw-slashed-zero: ; --tw-numeric-figure: ; --tw-numeric-spacing: ; --tw-numeric-fraction: ; --tw-ring-inset: ; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-color: rgba(59,130,246, . 5); --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-blur: ; --tw-brightness: ; --tw-contrast: ; --tw-grayscale: ; --tw-hue-rotate: ; --tw-invert: ; --tw-saturate: ; --tw-sepia: ; --tw-drop-shadow: ; --tw-backdrop-blur: ; --tw-backdrop-brightness: ; --tw-backdrop-contrast: ; --tw-backdrop-grayscale: ; --tw-backdrop-hue-rotate: ; --tw-backdrop-invert: ; --tw-backdrop-opacity: ; --tw-backdrop-saturate: ; --tw-backdrop-sepia: ; background-color: rgb(252, 252, 253);">said</span><span data-v-ddf6351a="" class="transcript-element" data-mindex="19" tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-pan-x: ; --tw-pan-y: ; --tw-pinch-zoom: ; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-ordinal: ; --tw-slashed-zero: ; --tw-numeric-figure: ; --tw-numeric-spacing: ; --tw-numeric-fraction: ; --tw-ring-inset: ; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-color: rgba(59,130,246, . 5); --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-blur: ; --tw-brightness: ; --tw-contrast: ; --tw-grayscale: ; --tw-hue-rotate: ; --tw-invert: ; --tw-saturate: ; --tw-sepia: ; --tw-drop-shadow: ; --tw-backdrop-blur: ; --tw-backdrop-brightness: ; --tw-backdrop-contrast: ; --tw-backdrop-grayscale: ; --tw-backdrop-hue-rotate: ; --tw-backdrop-invert: ; --tw-backdrop-opacity: ; --tw-backdrop-saturate: ; --tw-backdrop-sepia: ; background-color: rgb(252, 252, 253);">,</span><span data-v-ddf6351a="" class="transcript-element" data-mindex="19" data-eindex="154" data-key="19154 821 . 191" style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: I said well sir, it says right here in our guidance that we have to tell the truth and that even if it's not , you know , beneficial to the Coast Guard we're public affairs specialists , not public relations . We are not here to guard the reputation of the Coast Guard . We are here to . Our reputation is to be guarded by the actions we do , and if something we've done is wrong or failed or incorrect , then it goes out to the public who we work for . We are a public servant . And I says and you can't lie because you are in violation of the law . And I says so , if I'm in trouble , sir , all this , I says we're just , I just take it to a court martial . And that's going to be really interesting when they come down and I say , well , yeah , I had to tell the truth , but this officer here kept insisting that I lie . I said sir , how's that going to go down ? And I said and I've got witnesses that well , everything I did , I've got the names and the numbers .
Tom MuellerSo fascinating story there at him , because that's the ultimate political intervention into a , you know , a major crisis response . And from the RP side we saw that clearly and you know , that press releases , just from the company side , were being routed to the White House from unified command , then we had to shut that process down and that just got in the way of you know , the cooperation within the unified command for that whole thing . So there was , yeah , so many things going on , but you know , where it really came into play was , you know , down on the coast and we're going out to do a press conference out on Dauphin Island and the Coast Cat is going to join us , along with the state rwith state s of labama ride out , the Coast Guard guy says , well , we can't appear with you , we can't appear with you in a press conference , we've been told that we cannot appear alongside you . So the whole unified command piece just crumbled . All right , adam , hey , thanks for Al a right , . I feel like we've just only scratched the surface of the stories that exist in your brain .
Tom MuellerA quick note for our listeners . That concludes this portion of our conversation with Adam Wine . On our next episode we'll continue the conversation and we're going to talk about the public information officer , the liaison officer , roles and how they cooperate in order to meet stakeholder needs for information . We're also going to discuss what happens when someone on your response team isn't working out . They aren't quite cutting it , so we'll talk to Adam and get his thoughts on how you handle that situation . Thanks for joining us for this episode of the Leading in a Crisis Podcast . If you'd like what you're hearing here , then please like and subscribe to the podcast and give us a five star rating , and please tell your friends and colleagues about us as well , and we'll see you again soon on another episode of the Leading in a Crisis Podcast .
