Regaining Control Of The White House Press Room

 

One of the key elements of the White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan's reign was the fact that he had been constantly ambushed by the Press Corps with leaked information which either he had no knowledge of himself or knew to be classified. It is no small wander then, that he found himself constantly on the defensive, trying to regain a foothold in a quick sand infested terrain. Whilst Helen Thomas is reloading, the President may still have the last laugh.

The latest revelation regarding the firing of a CIA senior career officer Mary McCarthy, [my friend Tom Maguire retrieves the bio before it got deleted from the system] would have been a part of the Administration's aggressive internal investigation, with the priority being since January, to discover and eliminate unauthorized disclosure of secrets from within. Rick Moran investigates the possibility of a planned mole hunt, as the New York Times story reveals the same day that European investigators could not find any evidence that the detention camps in Europe did indeed exist. So was Mary McCarthy set up by DCI Porter J. Goss? Very possible, it is inconceivable that the Administration was going to remain the laughing stock of the world-wide intelligence community, with a Pulitzer Prize for the journalist to boot.

Dana Priest, who was at the receiving end of this prestigious "Pulitzer Prize For Treachery" award for the article which reported that the intelligence agency was sending terror suspects to clandestine detention centers in several countries, including sites in Eastern Europe, had to meet certain criteria: "to make the grade, one must have done at least one of the following: Betray national secrets; go after only Republican lobbyists; tackle only Republican corruption; blame the United States for everything wrong in the world: and the surefire attention getter; try to tear down the presidency of George W. Bush."

Priest certainly makes it perfectly clear that no laws have been broken: "Well, actually, the media is not breaking the law by publishing classified information. That’s still a safeguard we have in the law. The person/s who turn it over are breaking the law, technically.

But the courts and the body politic have always looked at this as the cost of democracy and that is one huge reason why reporters have not be pursued previously. It’s the trade off for having a free press. The alternative is prior censorship and government control of the media, a la Israel, China, Iran, etc."

I would like to take this whole issue a step further and suggest that this indicates to me, that whoever picks up the reigns as the White House Press Secretary, will be determined to put an end to this ridiculous dynamic. Regaining the control over information would indeed have the most significant and immediate impact on the White House's ability to lead the charge in explaining to the public the 'what' 'where' and 'why' of it's domestic and foreign policies. If the Administration and the Press Secretary as it were, can stop the opposition's constant ability to distort and smear everything the Administration does before it even gets a chance to explain and outline it's policies, then they stand a chance of saving their stronghold at Capitol Hill come November. To that end, regaining control of the White House Press Room is a very good start.

It didn't take long for the MSM to hit back... They must have been digging all night poor dears. Now they are even claiming she was framed! Well that and "selective punishment of politically damaging leaks". Meanwhile Ace is wandering "Did Mary McCarthy send Joe Wilson to Niger? (more on that here, via Flopping Aces), with Tom Joscelyn giving more on the al-Shifa link. My friend Gerard van der Leun takes time to "remember the real nature of journalism". Neo Neocon takes the historical perspective down memory lane to Vietnam and Watergate. Jeff Goldstein simply gives 'leaking' driven by partisanship zero tolerance, Are Senators Durbin and Rockefeller next? Hugh Hewitt reminds us "There is fame, fortune, and circulation in these stories. Reporters and editors know that."

More @ Michelle Malkin, Power Line, Protein Wisdom, Gateway Pundit, The Belmont Club, A.J. Strata, Poli Pundit, Wizbang, Vodkapundit, Flopping Aces, Liberty & Justice, Riehl World View, Dr. Sanity, Stop The ACLU, Ace of Spades, JunkYard Blog, Atlas Shrugs, Kesher Talk, California Conservative, Cold Fury, The American Thinker, ScrappleFace, Freedom For Some, Red State, Blogs for Bush, Sister Toldjah, QandO, The Glittering Eye, USS Neverdock, The Moderate Voice, Expose the Left, Iowa Voice, Small Town Veteran, Daily Kos, The Heretik, Confederate Yankee, Macsmind, BrothersJudd Blog, Dean's World, Kitty Litter (has the photo), News Hog, A Blog For All, Power Line (2), Gay Patriot, Prairie Pundit, Ace of Spades (2) The Jawa Report, Secular Blasphemy, Riehl World View (2), In the Bullpen, Ace of Spades(3), Anti-Idiotarian Rottweiler, Big Lizards, Ace of Spades (4), The Corner on National, Outside The Beltway.

SUNDAY APRIL 23RD UPDATE: Michelle Malkin has a great round up with fresh links, and our darling Anchoress is wandering where the MSM's staggering tendency toward the incurious comes from.

HOT OFF THE PRESS MONDAY APRIL 24TH: Michelle Malkin's fabulous new videoblogging site Hot Air has a great video presented by AllahPundit, don't miss it. He also posts a huge post with an incredible round up for those of you who may have missed the news in the first 48hrs. A.J.Strata has "McCarthy lawyers up". as she "denies and distracts".

Comments

[Saul Davis]

Martin: Great post; wishful thinking -- but I hope the White House would get your message AND implement it.

[Martin A. Knight]

The first order of business for the new White House Press Secretary is to confront and terminate this BushLied™ meme. It would never die in the feverswamps of the Left but it needs to die in the minds of the vast majority Independents who still get the vast majority of their news from the so-called mainstream Press. The reason the Administration is down in the polls has a great deal more to do with the success the Press and their friends in the Democrat Party have had in pressing forward the narrative that until the Bush Administration, no one had ever observed, thought, said, much less written anything that would have led anyone to believe;

• That Saddam Hussein possessed and maintained stockpiles of WMD.
• That Saddam Hussein sponsored, sheltered and provided training to terrorists.
• That Saddam Hussein's terrorist connections included Al Qaeda and a collaborational relationship was possible.
• That Saddam Hussein had a record of lying to and deceiving UN Weapons inspectors.
• That Saddam Hussein's hatred of the United States, taken together with the above, made him a significant threat to America's national security.

Apparently, all these obviously ridiculous notions sprang, fully formed, like Athena out of the top of Zeus' head, from the diabolically creative imaginations of the Bush Administration's voluminous cast of nefarious characters, who then proceeded to sell this hitherto unheard of idea that Saddam posed a threat to the United States to a gullible American public through a pliant American Press.

So today, we're treated to the thoroughly absurd spectacle of journalists publicly castigating themselves, slapping their foreheads and shedding hot tears, for "not doing our jobs" and "agressively questioning" the Administration's supposedly clearly false assertions about Iraq, Saddam, WMD, terrorism and everything else under the sun while they're at it.

But the fact is; even if given a thousand years, not a single one of the mendacious hacks wailing and gnashing their teeth about being "misled" by the White House on WMD and Iraq would ever have thought to question the Bush Administration's assertions about Saddam Hussein's ties to terrorists, his WMD programs and his willingness to attack American interests.

And that will be because most of them spent the 1990s writing and reporting things like this;

LINKS
• From CNN - February 13, 1999
• From ABC - January 14, 1999
  
• From The Guardian (UK) - February 6, 1999
• The Herald (UK)

HEADLINES

• US Government - Bin Laden and Iraq Agreed to Cooperate on Weapons Development - New York Times (November 1998)
• Iraq Has Network of Outside Help on Arms, Experts Say - New York Times (November 1998)
• U.S. Says Iraq Aided Production of Chemical Weapons in Sudan - New York Times (August 1998)
• Iraq Suspected of Secret Germ War Effort - New York Times (February 2000)
• Signs of Iraqi Arms Buildup Bedevil U.S. Administration - New York Times (February 2000)
• Flight Tests Show Iraq Has Resumed a Missile Program - New York Times (July 2000)
• Iraqi Work Toward A-Bomb Reported - Washington Post (September 1998)

Note first of all, that most of these articles were not written by Judy Miller. Secondly, note the dates. President Bush was not elected until November 2nd 2000 (not counting the recount episode) and he did not take the oath of office until January 21st 2001. So the Admnistration officials quoted in these pieces (both on or off the record) all happen to be officials of the Administration of one William Jefferson Clinton. All the American intelligence officials cited happened to be serving the Administration of William Jefferson Clinton.

Anyone with an ounce of honesty must therefore wonder; how come it is only the Bush Administration that is accused of "misleading" the American people on the threat posed by Saddam Hussein to the United States when we have Clinton Administration's CENTCOM Commander, General Anthony Zinni saying that "Iraq remains the most significant near-term threat to U.S. interests in the Arabian Gulf region ... Iraq probably is continuing clandestine nuclear research [and] retains stocks of chemical and biological munitions ... Even if Baghdad reversed its course and surrendered all WMD capabilities, it retains scientific, technical, and industrial infrastructure to replace agents and munitions within weeks or months." before a Congressional Committee in 2000? How come it is only the Bush Administration that is being accused of "misleading" the American people when it was the Clinton Administration's Justice Department that filed the indictment against Osama bin Laden that stated "... al Qaeda reached an understanding with the government of Iraq that al Qaeda would not work against that government and that on particular projects, specifically including weapons development, al Qaeda would work cooperatively with the Government of Iraq ..." in 1998?

The answer is simple. By meticulously embargoing any mention of anything ever said about, Iraq, Saddam Hussein, terrorism and WMDs prior to the start of the War in Iraq, and then purposefully ignoring anything afterward that would undermine the new narrative that Saddam Hussein was never considered a threat by anyone before President Bush came to office and "manipulated intelligence" to make it so. This would include any new articles, news programs, speeches and other public statements and documents.

Here's an example.

... it is incontestable that on the day I left office, there were unaccounted for stocks of biological and chemical weapons.
- Bill Clinton [Larry King Live (CNN) - July 22, 2003]

The similarities between what was asserted by the Clinton and Bush administrations are so similar as to make it impossible to successfully accuse the Bush Administration of lying without implicating the Clinton Administration ... and there is no subset of the American people more loyal to the Clinton Administration than members of the American Press.

An (or The) undisputed master at this has proven to be the New York Times; the newspaper that sets the agenda for the entire Fourth Estate, yet unfortunately a newspaper that lacks a single person of principle, honesty and decency in its entire editorial board and most of its reporting staff. Remember; this is the newspaper that advocated the abolition of the Senate filibuster throughout the 1990s only to abruptly change its mind just in time to prevent the confirmation of a Republican President's Supreme Court nomination. This is the newspaper that sought to open up the adoption records of John Roberts' children in order to find something it can use to hurt his family and nomination.

Couple the above with a constant barrage of misleading headlines and ledes; loaded phrasing i.e. "Domestic Spying Program"; the strategic positioning of exculpatory information to where it would be least likely noticed i.e. the 14th paragraph; the placing of the most scurrilous of charges on the front page and the subsequent corrections/recantations on page A19; repeatedly running damaging stories on the front page for weeks and then running the exonerating story once; and most importantly, carefully calculated omissions and it is a wonder, considering its horrible communications operation, this Administration is still standing.

Either way, today the New York Times and her fellow Left-wing cohorts have capitalized on the average American's ignorance of Intelligence matters and successfully pushed forward the story that;

• Prior to the Bush Administration, no Intelligence report ever contained any caveats.
• Prior to the Bush Administration, the Intelligence Agencies of the United States always achieved complete unanimity.
• Prior to the Bush Administration, majority and minority reports were given equal weight in Intelligence matters.
• Prior to the Bush Administration, America awaited a 100% certainty before acting in the interests of national security.
• No intelligence obtained prior to January 21 2001 was used in making the case for the War against Saddam Hussein's Iraq.

When the story of the Bush Administration is written, this should be considered one of its greatest failures. That this bastardized version of reality was substituted for what they knew to be true and they did nothing to put a stop to it. Unfortunately, it seems that there are still members of the White House staff, who resolutely hold on to the idea that there is nothing worthwhile in defeating this meme because it would be "re-litigating" the case for the War on Saddam Hussein's Iraq. This pose is a hybrid of arrogance, hubris and stupidity. The Bush Administration should never have conceded, through its silence, the WMD argument against Saddam Hussein.

This record of silence, and the Press' embargo of pre-2003 Iraq news is precisely what convinced Anthony Zinni that it was safe to lie straight through his teeth with this recent statement; "What bothered me ... [was that] I was hearing a depiction of the intelligence that didn't fit what I knew. There was no solid proof, that I ever saw, that Saddam had WMD."; conveniently forgetting what he said before Congress in 2000. Zinni knew that none of the major news organs (barring FOX - only paid attention to by rednecks) would bring up the fact that he said something entirely different when a Democrat was in the White House, and, more importantly that the somnolent slackers manning the communications stations at the White House would not lift a finger to point it out.

Whoever the new White House Press Secretary is going to be, the best thing he can do for the President is to confront the partisan hacks of the Washington Press Corps, re-litigate the case for War on Saddam Hussein's Iraq, and rehabilitate the President's credibility. If it means preparing individual dossiers for the White House Press Corps containing article clippings from the myriad of newspapers from all around the nation and the world that were published throughout the 1990s telling us about Saddam, his WMDs and his worrying relationship with terrorists and terrorism, then so be it. Dossiers on the Robb-Silberman Report, Duelfer Report, Butler (UK) Report, Iraq's 1990's UN Weapon's Declarations, the Senate Intelligence Committee Report on Joe Wilson's charges, etc. might also be helpful.

An excellent start is for him or her to stand behind the podium and immediately withdraw the White House's withdrawal of the infamous 16 words; "The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa." According to the Butler Report and the Senate Intelligence Committee report, they turned out to be true. The biggest mistake the White House did was refusing to stand their ground in defense of this statement ... this was the mistake that gave the Left its opening.

Furthermore, he/she needs to be sharp about spotting fraudulent challenges and not letting them go by. For example, whenever someone points out the fact that Democrat Senators and Representatives sitting on the Congressional Intelligence committees since before Bush's inauguration in 2001 reached the same conclusion about Saddam, WMDs and terrorism as the Bush Administration from the very same intelligence long before and after Bush was inaugurated, the Left and their friends in the Press are quick to counter that the Intelligence committees never had access to the Presidential Daily Briefings. This is a false counter-argument that says nothing about whether or not the President and Congress saw the same information but instead relies heavily on deliberate misdirection.

The key word here is "Presidential" i.e. the Congressional Intelligence Committees don't get the "Presidential" Briefings, but conversely, by definition, the President does not get the "Congressional" Committees' Briefings. Either way, all the evidence points to the fact that the information contained within both briefings are the same.

Something Scott McClellan never seemed able to do was to tout any of the Administration's accomplishments. This is another thing the replacement must be able to execute. For example, the economy is in remarkably healthy shape; GDP has grown by an average of 4% over the past ten quarters, incomes have risen faster than inflation, and unemployment is at the lowest level in decades. Yet a substantial percentage of the American people believe that the United States is in a recession. Despite all these indicators, we have reporters constantly describing the state of the economy as "troubled".

Contrast the Press' refusal to acknowledge the healthy state of the economy today to the constant frontpaging and hailing of it during the Clinton Administration. Especially during the Monica Lewinsky and Impeachment episode. There was no day during that time when the economy was not brought front and center on the newspages and on news programs. Ever wondered why the polls showed that even though the President's personal approval ratings were down in the gutter his job approval ratings were high up to the ceiling? Wonder no more.

In the end, the new White House Press Secretary must realize that it is not important that he or she is liked by the White House Press Corps. Scott McClellan obviously cared a great deal about that and all it got him were disrespectful and contemptuous harangues and diatribes as he stood at the podium and on his very last day, a hit piece by the thoroughly disreputable hack he was naive enough to grant an interview to.

The new Press Secretary should also seriously consider giving the smaller and more local newspapers and TV stations of the nation, more prominence in the future. An interesting suggestion going around the Internet at some point was that local reporters (and bloggers) should get to ask 90-100% of the questions at every single Presidential news conference, with the traditional and thoroughly out-of-touch establishment Washington Press Corps relegated to the role of mere spectators for the rest of the Administration's term in office.

I would suggest that ordinary Press Conferences with the Press Secretary should also regularly reserve the vast majority of the questions to local reporters and bloggers. An excellent rationale for this decision would be that the Administration now believes it should be talking to a more diverse set of people, rather than the same set of people each and every time.

This would of course make the Administration very unpopular with the White House and Beltway Press Corps. Witness the shrieks of outrage that a local newspaper got the Cheney shooting story before them. ... But then I wonder how can it be any worse than it is now? In the final analysis, there is virtually no downside to this but the potential pay-off in turning public opinion around could do wonders the Administration's effectiveness in moving an agenda forward. The fact is; it is far more important for the new Press Secretary to be respected and effective than liked, even if he ends up thoroughly loathed by the likes of David Gregory, Dana Milbank, Terry Moran, Helen Thomas and the New York Times editorial page.

[Alexandra]

Blackberry, (Incontro),

Interesting, not sure, I'll have to check that one out. Let me have those links if you still have them.

[igout]

gringoman,
Can't we string up one or two, pretty please? The Boston Tea Party, tar&featherings, frontier necktie parties, these are fine old American ways to deal with troublemakers. Sometimes the system gets constitpated, and we the people have to administer a good old fashioned purge.

[Stefan]

I am glad that Scott McClellan is to be replaced. Granted, White House Press Secretary is one of the toughest jobs you can possibly have, but I never thought he was effective. He always came across as being rattled, and uncomfortable. He didn’t have much of an air of confidence in his answers and he didn’t seem to be able to “push back” against the press corps in any meaningful way. I hope the new press secretary in more aggressive. Ari Fleisher was better because he seemed unshaken by the many of the aggressive (and silly) questions put to him and sometimes seemed to be mocking the really stupid questions by smiling and giving no sense of fear. This confidence is really important in the sound bite world and in the ability of the WHPS to deflect and disarm stupid and leading questions.

I am not convinced that the CIA leak of “secret prisons” is a sting operation. It is possible but nothing that clever has been done to date in dealing with rouge CIA or State Department personal. They have been allowed to run all over this administration. The Bush strategy of ignoring their enemies has been disastrous. They are always responding to attacks weeks and months after the story has been framed, fixed, and drilled home by the MSM. The response is always too little, too late. They have shot themselves (and by extension our war efforts) in the foot by not taking on these leaks relentlessly. Those who are sabotaging the administration from the CIA and State are not even required to be leaking true information. They are totally free to fabricate “secret” info because to the MSM, and those that love them, evidence is nice but completely unneeded. They are experts at getting incredible mileage out of rumor, allegation, and editorial “artistic license”. By the time the White House reacts it is accepted as fact by many and it is this unceasing “Chinese Water Torture” of bad stories that has eroded the public confidence in Iraq, Afghanistan, and possibly our resolve to deal with Iran. The strategy of the White house must change. It must get its message out everyday, every news cycle, in different ways, through top spokesmen, and they must be as relentless in the PR department as the MSM. Me thinks……

[Alexandra]

Whether it was a sting or not is neither here nor there, it's one blogger's viewpoint, but this link which I provide in the main text above is a report, (Fausta repeats it above) which indicates that despite 50 hours of testimony they have come up with no concrete proof of the existence of camps in Europe. This testimony includes human rights activists and people who claim they were abducted by the CIA.

The European Union's antiterrorism chief told a hearing on Thursday that he had not been able to prove that secret C.I.A. prisons existed in Europe. [...] A similar investigation by the Council of Europe, the European human rights agency, came to the same conclusion in January [...]"We've heard all kinds of allegations," the official, Gijs de Vries, said before a committee of the European Parliament. "It does not appear to be proven beyond reasonable doubt. [...]The committee also heard Thursday from a former British ambassador to Uzbekistan, Craig Murray, who said: "I can attest to the willingness of the U.S. and the U.K. to obtain intelligence that was got under torture in Uzbekistan. If they were not willing, then rendition prisons could not have existed.[...]He said he had witnessed such rendition programs in Uzbekistan.

Unfortunately until proven otherwise, everything else is a speculation. It would not be the first or the last time the activities of the CIA have been difficult to establish beyond reasonable doubt. The fact that in "general terms" this conduct exists is beond doubt, and confirmed by the ex-British Ambassador to Uzbekistan, the question right now is whether these camps indeed exist in Europe, which gives another twist to the claims, and is certainly not specified by Gerecht. This was interesting:

I have spoken to two European intelligence officials who have participated in interrogations at Guantanamo. Each of these men is linguistically and educationally what you would want in an intelligence official targeted against jihadists. Both came away from Guantanamo with the same impression: Most of the American interrogators they observed were ill-versed in their subject matter. This is not surprising, since radical Islam was uncharted territory for virtually everyone in the U.S. government before 9/11. It is, however, a shortcoming to be acknowledged.

Almost all of the American interrogators my informants observed required the assistance of interpreters. Rarely did the interrogations proceed in a rigorous manner, with details of detainees' personal histories or local attachments skillfully exploited, and digressions pursued, aggressively or kindly, to trigger the process of confession. These Europeans found the Americans too considerate in their efforts, allowing their subjects too much breathing space. The all-critical mission of surrounding detainees with disorienting loneliness didn't seem to be a primary objective. They did not, by the way, find the routines observed to be physically abusive. Indeed, one of the European intelligence officials, who comes from a country where physical pain is not an unknown tool in terrorist debriefings, thought the Americans were not using enough physical duress in their efforts, and were certainly not marrying well coercive methods with strictly mental seduction and intimidation. European hubris aside, the critiques of these observers are probably not far off the mark.

As for the US intelligence image abroad, it's pretty much shot, not only for all the reasons above, but as the foreign intelligence officials had already been humiliating Goss by accusing his agency of being incapable of keeping secrets. Goss obviously became determined to find the source of the secret-jails story, and the buck will certainly not stop with McCarthy, nor will his methods to oust others always remain squeaky clean.

[MarcH]

I’m skeptical of the meme that the “secret”, extra-territorial CIA interrogation centers never existed and were part of a “sting” to find a CIA leaker. Here are a few reasons, off the top of my head:

1. The topic of extra-territorial CIA interrogation centers has been separately covered at various times by a variety of media outlets and think tank analysts. For example, former CIA officer Reuel Marc Gerecht (http://www.aei.org/scholars/filter.all,scholarID.19/scholar.asp) of AEI discussed this topic in general (http://www.aei.org/publications/filter.all,pubID.22759/pub_detail.asp) but “matter of fact” terms.
2. Disseminating such a fictional story for the sake of a “sting” would have had the potential of doing terrible damage to the US international image and diplomatic efforts. The US image abroad is important to this administration (think Karen Hughes). Why risk it to catch a leaker when the same result could be achieved by other more prosaic security measures?
3. For the reasons given in (.2) above, such a fictional story would have had to have been discussed and signed off by many officials at many departments and bureaus (White House, NSC, DoS). What’s the likelihood that McCarthy would not have heard that some such tactic was in the works?

[gringoman]

Post reporter Dana Priest spearheaded the reporting on the "black site" prisons and was awarded a Pulitzer Prize last week for beat reporting. The Pulitzer board called her reporting on the prisons "persistent" and "painstaking." CNN
==============================================================

If Gijss de Vries' and the Council of Europe's findings are conclusive and credible--and I have no reason to believe they are not---what about the current ethical standing of WaPo, Dana Priest and the Pulitzer Board? Ethical? What about their legal standing? Will WaPo have the decency to return the Pulitzer awarded to DP? Will anyone be brought up on charges? Does anyone in Bush's DOJ have the will and cojones to defend the name and honor of the U.S. and do more than just "fire a C.I.A. employee" who betrayed her position on a matter that caused extreme embarrassment and problems with U.S. allies and that can easily affect future relations? Or will Libstream clowns just kiss it off and wait for everyone to go to sleep, like they did with Mary McCarthy's patron, the Clintonite Sandy Burglar who, instead of moving to Leavenworth, let alone a lethal injection, now walks free after his brazen theft of documents classified higher than Top Secret?

[Fausta]

Additionally, there is No Proof of Secret C.I.A. Prisons, according to an investigation by Gijs de Vries, the European Union's antiterrorism chief.
A prior investigation by Council of Europe also found no evidence of secret prisons.

[gringoman]

The WaPo prize-winner, Dana Priest, pleads innocent on grounds that she herself did not de-classify a state secret. She, we are assured, simply acted as a journalist, making use of what she was given by (apparently) the former Clintonite CIA worker Mary McCarthy. How does this line of "elite reasoning" differ from a common fence who handles stolen goods? Or the junkie who is only a "user" and not a dealer in illegal substances? Does a Washington byline in and of itself automatically raise you morally above a street punk? Are the concepts of collaborator, co-conspirator or accessory to the crime inapplicable to Pulitzer Prize candidates? For every elite point about "the people's need to know" there is obviously a counter-point about national security, waging a war and being taken seriously by friend and foe alike---not to mention the point that most Americans are no more interested in safe-guarding the civil rights of terrorists, even those who are technically U.S. citizens, than was Abraham Lincoln during another war. (Mary McCarthy, by the way, has already failed, according to reports, a lie detector test.) There are those who believe that the Libstream media has let it's ABS (Anti-Bush Syndrome)push it, like a drunk, over the line from a (presumably, allegedly, hopefully) honorable watchdog function to outright sedition, ignoring the harm it's doing to national security. They feign outrage over the meaningless "leak" of the name of a low-level CIA woman,Plame, yet turn tail in cases when leaking real CIA classified information results in national embarrassment, national insecurity and harm to the war effort. And they can do it with a chuckle or a smirk. Bush is hardly blameless, having moved so slowly and timidly with the Clinton-gutted CIA and military, and of course being a political metisse himself, i.e. part liberal, and unwilling even to get behind the stunning evidence of how pc Clinton-think led to 9.11, as with the FBI's infamous Phoenix Memo,(The "Wall") the Able Danger files, the "sensitive" approach to pursuing bin Laden etc. Question: Can the Washington culturati even draw a distinction anymore between national security and the political hustle, especially in a war that at least half of them don't really understand or want to fight anyway? Yes, hanging a few of the Mary McCarthys would be a bit extreme (with poor Dana Priest having to live with the guilt) It might not be in very good taste. But would it not begin to focus the attention---even in Washington?

[kitty]

I have posted what appears to be the only picture of Mary McCarthy, plus her background info.

[KnightErrant]

Expelling reporters for inappropriate questions would certainly make for entertaining television.

[Francis W. Porretto]

To regain control of the White House press room requires only one thing: the willingness to expel. Sergeants at arms must be told to expel anyone who either reveals classified information or violates the appropriate decorum among persons asking for information from the President of the United States.

President Bush himself stuck a toe into these waters by "demoting" Helen Thomas -- i.e., by refusing to take any questions from her for a long period of time, despite her seniority in the press corps. Scott McClellan could have shown that kind of resolve when David Gregory went on his now famous tirade, but he donned kid gloves instead. For this reason among others, the choice and empowerment of a new press secretary will be of vital importance to the Administration.