MR. KOJO NNAMDIFrom WAMU 88.5 at American University in Washington, welcome to "The Kojo Nnamdi Show," connecting your neighborhood with the world. It's Food Wednesday. Later in the broadcast, immigration and food, we look at the explosion of restaurants serving Peruvian chicken in our region. But first, have you ever sent an e-mail that you wished you could take back, an e-mail that, in retrospect, you'd like to wipe off the face of the earth? That's the situation some Washington journalists are apparently in right now.

MR. KOJO NNAMDIThe spokesman for Congressman Darrell Issa has been forwarding his private e-mail exchanges with reporters to another journalist who's writing a book about the Congressman. What's in those e-mails? It's still not clear, but the Washington Post, Dana Milbank, has been following the story. And his guess is that we're going to find a whole lot of, well, sucking up on the part of reporters, reporters who are supposed to be maintaining a certain distance, if you will, from the politicians they cover.

MR. KOJO NNAMDIDana Milbank now joins us to talk about the brewing controversy. He joins us by telephone. Dana Milbank is a columnist with the Washington Post and the author of, "O is for Obama," and "Homo Politicus: The Strange and Scary Tribes that run our Government." Dana Milbank, good to talk to you again.

MR. DANA MILBANKGood to talk with you, Kojo.

NNAMDIDana, this is a fairly complicated story. For people who have not been following it, explain first, if you will, what exactly Congressman Issa's spokesman Kurt Bardella was doing with these e-mails and why?

MILBANKWell, sure. I mean, the details are complicated, but it's very much the -- a new version of the old Washington story of, sort of, the people in power behaving in this incestuous and clubby way. And, basically, what's happened here is the spokesman for this guy who's not just any old Congressman, he's a chairman of the committee that's, basically, in the House. It's, basically, a charter investigating the Obama administration so a lot of reporters are looking to know what this guy is doing.

MILBANKSo they are sending all kinds of flattering e-mails to his spokesman, trying to suck up to the chairman in hopes that they'll get a scrap of news or a tidbit of news. Unbeknownst to the reporters who are following this common procedure, the spokesman was sharing the -- a large number of the e-mails with Mark Leibovich, who was a friend of mine who works for the New York Times and is writing a book about the culture of Washington that gets at sort of the incestuous-ness and so it's sort of acted itself out right there in front of him.

NNAMDISo how did we find out that he was slipping these e-mails to reporters?

MILBANKWell, it came out -- it sort of bubbled up. They weren't apparently making much of a secret of it. Ryan Lizza, when he wrote about the Congressman for the New Yorker, heard about what was going on. Didn't write it up because it wasn't directly relevant to the story he was doing at the time, but mentioned it to people, word got around town. It's -- I call it -- it's a journalistic pillow talk. And eventually that it found its way to Politio, which is a new publication in town. And they had it and been in a couple of the larger offenders of sending these e-mails to that office and they got very unhappy about it and raised a stink and then it became a big public to do.

NNAMDISo do we know, yet, the content of those e-mails? Why do you think, as you put it in your columns, those e-mails are going to show reporters acting, like well, sycophants?

MILBANKWell, I mean, I'm somewhat informed on the subject, but I think you don't need to read e-mails to know this sort of thing because this is, of course, what reporters do all the time. And I think that's sort of my criticism of the media culture, that everybody's so interested in beating the competition by five minutes to get some little incremental tidbit that they're going do what they can. To me, that's not journalism, that's just, sort of, regurgitating what the powerful are doing.

MILBANKSo -- but this is how it works now because of the competition, because of the accelerated news cycle. Everybody wants to just tweet out the latest tidbits. So they go to people like this spokesman and -- or anywhere else at the White House, anywhere else in the Capital, saying, can I be the first to get this tiny little bit of news from you, even if that news is self-serving to your -- to the person you're representing? And, you know, so we sort of replaced, I think, the journalistic detachment and skepticism with this race to get whatever crumbs the powerful will throw at us.

NNAMDIWe're talking with Dana Milbank. He's a columnist with the Washington Post and author of the books, "O is for Obama," and "Homo Politicus: The Strange and Scary Tribes that run our Government." If you'd like to join this conversation on coziness between Congress and the press corp, call us at 800-433-8850 or go to our website, kojoshow@wamu.org. Dana, Kurt Bardella was fired for his actions, which I guess for you is a real shame because it's my understanding that he could give some pretty colorful quotes.

MILBANKHe was a -- he was quite good at his job. Only 27 years old. And I think he was sort of on thin ice to start with anyway because in that New Yorker profile that I had mentioned, he had sort of spoken about how it is his role to turn Darrel Issa into a major political figure, sort of suggesting that this young man is, in fact, the power behind this empty suit of a Congressman. Now, obviously, the Congressman wasn't too pleased with that. And then, obviously, when this sort of thing came out, it made it impossible for him to stay on the job.

MILBANKBut there are many good quotes and good operatives up there on Capitol Hill. And you know the dirty little secret, Kojo, is you can actually get good quotes from these guys without sucking up.

NNAMDIYou've written books yourself about Washington's political culture. Have you ever been in the situation that Mark Leibovich finds himself in now in terms of having information that may put the press corp, his colleagues, maybe some of his friends in a less than flattering light?

MILBANKWell, you know, everybody, at some point, you know, comes into private information that was leaked to them. I can't say it was necessarily private information about journalists and more often if you do have such information, you tend to look the other way because, you know, perhaps it's just going to embarrass somebody without any real important public value. Now, in this case, Mark's book won't be out for a year or more so it's possible we will have forgotten this whole controversy by then.

MILBANKAnd, you know, we will have moved on from this point, but -- so I suppose that the offenders in this case are perhaps lucky, but it's still a reminder to, you know, be careful about the way we do our jobs.

NNAMDISpeaking of things that might upset Congressman Issa, you talked about Ryan Lizza's piece in the New Yorker that says that -- it described the Congressman's history as a car thief. I suspect the Congressman is likely to say, hey. those charges were dropped. It was a case of mistaken identity. How dare you identify me as a car thief?

MILBANKYeah, yeah, yeah, right.

NNAMDIHave you heard from -- have you heard from him as yet?

MILBANKCongressman Issa had, let's say, a very colorful background and, yes, I call him a car thief in the best possible way. But, no, he's -- I think he himself would say he had a rather checkered past and I think that contributes to making him such a colorful figure, evolved in the head in terms of seniority to get this important job investigating the administration, running this House Oversight Committee. And I suspect we're going to be hearing a lot more from him over the next couple of years.

NNAMDIYour column today is really about the incestuous nature of Washington politics. You're friends with a number of the key players in this controversy. Does that make it hard for you to do your job covering this town? How do you keep that journalistic distance, if you will?

MILBANKWell, Kojo, I just don't get invited to any parties. That's actually partially true, but I -- either generally I'm not writing about journalists. First of all, I don't think journalists are the most interesting people in this town. It's the people who have the actual power, who make the laws, the people who work in the White House and we are really observers. So, in general, I try to, you know, focus on aggravating people who are in actual positions of power as opposed to the journalists.

MILBANKBut sometimes the journalists are the story and I may have aggravated a couple of people who I really like and admire, but, you know, that's sort of how it goes.

NNAMDII was about say to you...

MILBANKI'll probably make it up to them the next time.

NNAMDI...if you didn't, you wouldn’t be doing your job. Here is Rick in Adams Morgan, hi, Rick.

RICKHi, Kojo.

NNAMDIHey, Rick.

RICKHi, yeah, I'm on the air.

NNAMDIYou are, Rick.

RICKOK, great. Yeah, listen. I just had a quick comment to make about the nature of what we would assume to be personal comments or comments that are basically off the record between people using e-mail. You know, I worked about 10 years ago as contractor on a government project that wasn't going so well. And I couldn't get truth out of anybody on the record, that is by e-mail. The only way you could get it was face to face over a cup of coffee or something like that.

RICKI ended up writing software that allows people to say, you know, this conversation really is just between the two of us. You can't forward it, you can't print it. You can't archive it. And it found a lot of adoption between -- amongst human rights defenders, activists, bloggers and things of that worldwide. And I'm just thinking, you know, gosh, this -- part of this could be avoided.

NNAMDIAfter this episode, Dana Milbank, do you think that there will be numbers of Congress looking for that kind of software?

MILBANKOh, they can try whatever they want, but there's -- there'll be a defying human nature. And, you know, look -- off the record is actually a very technical term in our business, but is the truth is, nothing's off the record and everything eventually gets out into the light of day, at least, you know, except for the things we don't know about. But really, it's just a matter of time 'til people really find things out so I don't think anything in this particular instance that was forward (unintelligible) .

NNAMDIIn other words, Rick, software-schmoftware , this is Washington. Dana, what do you think the fallout from this controversy is likely to be? Is just -- this just a blip in the news cycle or likely to be something big?

MILBANKOh, no, I don't -- I think it's barely even a blip. I mean, I wrote about it not because it's important as a news event but because it was a window into our culture. And I think that's why you're interested in it as well. I mean, I'm sure the young man who lost his job will find gainful employment somewhere else. And the journalists will survive, but, you know, hopefully it will get people to think about their roles and whether the people writing about the powerful are too close to the powerful.

NNAMDIIndeed, Dana Milbank is the author of, "Homo Politicus: The Strange and Scary Tribes that run our Government," also author of the book, "O is for Obama," columnist for the Washington Post. Dana, thank you for joining us.

MILBANKOh, my pleasure, Kojo.

NNAMDIWe're going to take a short break. When we come back, food Wednesday, Peruvian chicken, pollo, everybody. I'm Kojo Nnamdi.