Steve Adubato didn’t know when to stop.

For his new book, "What Were They Thinking? Crisis Communication: The Good, the Bad, and the Totally Clueless," Adubato had assembled nearly two dozen chapters of "media mishaps." He delineated numerous examples of people in power — the corporate executives, the politicians, the Defense Department, the Roman Catholic Church — bungling their attempts to suppress or spin bad news.

As the Montclair resident sought to complete the book earlier in 2008, the publicity mayhem continued. The National Enquirer revealed that former Sen. John Edwards, one of the leading candidates for the Democratic presidential nomination, had perpetrated a romantic affair even as he espoused marital strength, and then Edwards initially denied his involvement.

"What was he thinking, and why couldn’t I get that into the book?" Adubato told The Times.

"What Were They Thinking?" teems with modern PR disasters, among them:

• The Glen Ridge rape case in 1989, when a group of Glen Ridge High School athletes raped and molested a 17-year-old mentally disabled girl. Adubato explores how the town’s leaders, and many residents, sought to minimize the crisis and how they failed to properly respond to a legal and moral outrage.
• The FEMA response in 2006 to Hurricane Katrina, when the administration of President George W. Bush failed to prepare for the consequences of a major hurricane sweeping into the Gulf Coast, and then proved incompetent in acknowledging its disastrous response to the disaster.
• Radio personality Don Imus in 2007 made "an insulting and totally inappropriate racial comment" about Rutgers University’s women’s basketball team, and then failed to apologize for his degrading words.
• The Roman Catholic Church’s ongoing and widespread scandals involving pedophilia, in which predatory priests molested boys or girls "for decades, shrouded and protected by the organization’s unwritten, apparent code of silence." Senior church administrators concealed the criminal priests, relocating them to other parishes or alerting law enforcement authorities.
• The death in 2004 of U.S. Army Ranger Pat Tillman in Afghanistan. "Officials in the U.S. Army and the Pentagon as well as in the Bush White House engaged in one of the most insensitive, bumbling, and worst of all, unnecessary cover-ups in American history." After 9/11, Tillman left his career as a professional football player and joined the elite Rangers. The Pentagon stated that Tillman was shot by enemy fire as he exited a vehicle and died in a field hospital. Tillman actually was a victim of friendly fire and died within moments. "It was a concerted media and political plan to sell the story," Adubato said. "What were they thinking?"
• Among the other crisis communication malfunctions cited in Adubato’s book are: then-New York City Mayor Rudolph Giuliani informing his family of his intention to divorce then-wife Donna Hanover in a public press conference; Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Barack Obama’s initial "atrocious" response to the revelations of his longtime Rev. Jeremiah Wright’s denunciatory comments about the United States; Fox News commentator Bill O’Reilly loudly proclaiming his innocence when his producer sued him for sexual harassment, and then quietly settling out of court; and, after promoting reporter Jayson Blair to a star position, senior editors of The New York Times sought to minimize their culpability when Blair was revealed to be a plagiarizing and deceitful journalist.

  And there were the many years that Major League Baseball ignored the obvious evidence that steroids and human growth hormones were enhancing baseball players’ performance.

  "Some crises in this book were self-inflicted," said Adubato, citing the 13 days it took for the chief executive officer of Exxon to visit the oil-damaged Alaskan coast after the Exxon Valdez ran aground, or the ongoing failure of Gov. Jon Corzine to release gubernatorial e-mails he exchanged Carla Katz, president of a state-employee union and Corzine’s former romantic partner.

  Adubato will discuss these and other publicity catastrophes and offer his insights for effective crisis communication at a book-signing appearance in the Montclair Public Library next Wednesday, Oct. 29.

  "There are some pretty standard rules in crisis communication," said Adubato. "Never, ever lie."

  "I’m big on privacy, but we live in a world of perception. These issues I talk about don’t get addressed in a court of law. They get addressed in the court of public opinion and perception," Adubato said. "I say, stand up and take the heat. … Disclose early and up front and fully, because it’s coming out in the end."

  Adubato dedicates "What Were They Thinking?" to the victims of 9/11, the Virginia Tech massacre and other tragedies and crises — and their family members: "Far too often, once the crisis is over and the cameras are gone, for many, the pain and the heartache just begin to set in.

  "For all of these victims and their loved ones — may we never forget."

  Contact Mark S. Porter at porterm@montclairtimes.com