Wheeler's Hill Hearing Prep Included 'Murder Boards,' Plans for Rapid Response

Wheeler used the process of “murder boards” to prepare ahead of his five March hearings, all held in under two weeks and before the Senate Commerce Committee, House Oversight Committee, House Communications Subcommittee, House Judiciary Committee and House Appropriations Financial Services Subcommittee. Senior FCC officials divided up different tasks for different staffers to help prepare Wheeler for the onslaught of lawmaker questions. The murder board phrase refers to simulating challenging oral examinations.

Louisa Terrell, an adviser to Wheeler, emailed 17 top agency officials March 11 to discuss “hearing prep,” her email title said. “Sara M and I will confer on E&C/Commerce murderboard prep but huge thanks to Roger who will handle auction/spectrum questions for the [sic] and Clete who will do privacy/cyber/data breach,” Terrell, a former chief of staff to Sen. Cory Booker, D-N.J., told her colleagues. The Roger on the email chain is Roger Sherman, chief of the Wireless Bureau and a former Democratic counsel for House Commerce. Clete Johnson is chief cybersecurity counsel within the Public Safety Bureau. The FCC’s office of media relations was tasked with pulling records from Wheeler’s media appearances from around May and June to November of last year and the legislative staffers were tasked with reviewing past Wheeler testimony. “All process reform questions will go to Diane and then Diane, Jennifer and others will cull and shape answers for a supplemental Q&A document,” Terrell said. Diane Cornell is special counsel to Wheeler tasked with leading internal FCC process overhaul efforts, and Jennifer Tatel is associate general counsel. Names of people identified by only their first names in the body of the emails were verified by checking the distribution list on the emails, which listed full names.

In a different March 10 email, Terrell noted “folks are working 24/7 on hearing preparations.” That email also stressed the need for murder board “details” and the Wheeler “paper” requiring assembling -- “cheat sheet on hot legislation, short list of other-than-OI [open Internet] interests for members of House Oversight, written testimony, Committee rules on oral testimony, swearing-in and the like,” she wrote. Sara Morris, who directed the FCC’s office of legislative affairs, thanked several agency officials for “everyone’s 150% efforts as we go into this crazy schedule of hearings,” in a March 10 email. Morris later circulated a “legislation cheat sheet,” including introduced bills and not drafts, to Wheeler’s senior advisers in a March 11 email.

'Tigers' Brace for Rapid Response

FCC staffers don’t want to get the facts or the frameworks wrong going into Hill hearings, said Blair Levin of the Brookings Institution, who was a senior FCC staffer under chairmen Reed Hundt and Julius Genachowski. He didn't find the details of Wheeler's hearing preparations especially unusual, simply "really different in terms of intensity," Levin remarked. The most important decision FCC chairmen face, Levin said, is, “How do I spend my time?” That allocation determines plenty, and it’s clear that these five hearings, a concentration higher than any other Levin could remember, took an “enormous” toll on the FCC staffers’ time, he believes. “It’s not clear to me what Congress got out of these five hearings,” Levin said. “In the fullness of time, do we really need five hearings?”

Before Wheeler and Commissioner Ajit Pai testified March 24 before the House Appropriations Financial Services Subcommittee, Morris laid out a strategy to a large group of FCC officials including aide Daniel Alvarez, Cornell, General Counsel Jonathan Sallett, Counselor Gigi Sohn, Terrell and Senior Counselor Phil Verveer. “Greetings, Tigers,” Morris wrote in a March 23 email. “Rapid response Q/A from the hearing attendees (Jill Pender, Sara Morris, Jon Wilkins) will flow through Dave Toomey to the appropriate FCC point (aka tiger). Answers to Q’s should be extremely brief and returned within 10 min or less wherever possible.” Wilkins is FCC managing director, Pender is chief legislative policy counsel and Toomey is an FCC office of legislative affairs deputy staffer.

A legislative assistant for Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., checked with Morris and Toomey March 12, less than a week ahead of the March 18 Commerce Committee FCC oversight hearing, featuring all five commissioners. “I expect the boss will want to want to [sic] talk about Lifeline modernization, Net Neutrality (of course), and maybe the Comcast merger, but we’re still working through the draft questions for his review,” Manchin aide Wes Kungel said. “I’ll send along some additional information about the specific areas of interest early next week. We will also have some QFRs [questions for the record] to submit on 911 location accuracy and RF [radio frequency] workers safety, but I do not expect the Senator to raise them in the hearing.” Kungel asked about the best contacts for FCC Commissioner Jessica Rosenworcel’s office and praised the net neutrality order: “Also- HOORAY for the release of the order!!!! Thanks for all the work y’all did to help get it out the door. I can’t wait to read every last sentence.”

Wheeler has spent time cultivating relationships with lawmakers, several told us earlier this year (see 1506080038). He was seen as adept at developing these private lines of communications, despite what many acknowledged were divisive and partisan telecom issues that embittered some individuals on Capitol Hill.

Eyes on Twitter

After the hearings, FCC staffers stayed watchful. Legislative office staffers made sure to acquire transcripts from all the hearings and eventually circulated them to Wheeler’s senior aides.

Brittany Stevenson, a new media associate at the agency, emailed a mix of senior Wheeler aides, bureau chiefs and agency spokespeople what she titled “3/24 hearing sweeps,” collecting what people wrote on Twitter. The FCC grouped the Twitter accounts it tracked -- “FCC Employees (Past/Current),” featuring tweets from commissioners and commissioner aides and those from Wheeler aide Sohn; “Elected Officials,” which in the email showed tweets from Reps. Marsha Blackburn, R-Tenn., and Jose Serrano, D-Calif.; “People,” encompassing a mix of journalists and advocates, including Communications Daily Executive Senior Editor Howard Buskirk, Free Press Policy Director Matt Wood and Public Knowledge Vice President-Government Affairs Chris Lewis; and “Publications/Organizations,” encompassing groups from Free Press and Public Knowledge to CTIA and Mobile Future.

Kevin Werbach, a former member of the Obama administration’s FCC transition team, saw little surprising in the FCC’s Hill engagement, saying three of the five commissioners are former Hill staffers, one is the daughter of a congressman and Wheeler “interfaced extensively” with the Hill for years as the leader of trade associations. “One would expect significant engagement with the Hill, even if the scope of FCC legal authority wasn’t such a hot topic,” said Werbach, professor at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School. When considering hearing preparation, he said “everything depends on the team in place, how Hill-savvy they are, and the political dynamics of the time.”

"High profile and contentious issues that trigger intense congressional oversight, like net neutrality, almost always stir up anxiety and activity among FCC staffers charged with making the chairman -- any chairman -- look good,” said former FCC Commissioner Robert McDowell, now with Wiley Rein. “Key advisors will have differences of opinion, and emails can provide a window into how strong passions may run. The intensity of discussions the emails reveal has probably always been conveyed among policymakers since pre-historic times. But now, with the permanent memory of digital communications, the American public has the ability to see direct evidence of the often-messy sausage-making process. Thank goodness for FOIA."