Following up on an earlier item, the NYT reports today that multiple White House lawyers, including luminaries such as Alberto Gonzales, David Addington, and Harriet Miers, were well aware of the CIA torture tapes, and were involved in discussion about whether the videos should be destroyed. It didn’t take long for the Bush gang to start pushing back fairly aggressively, including a detailed statement from Dana Perino.
Under direction from the White House General Counsel while the Department of Justice and the CIA Inspector General conduct a preliminary inquiry, we have not publicly commented on facts relating to this issue, except to note President Bush’s immediate reaction upon being briefed on the matter. Furthermore, we have not described — neither to highlight, nor to minimize — the role or deliberations of White House officials in this matter.
The New York Times’ inference that there is an effort to mislead in this matter is pernicious and troubling, and we are formally requesting that NYT correct the sub-headline of this story.
It will not be surprising that this matter will be reported with a reliance on un-named sources and individuals lacking a full availability of the facts — and, as the New York Times story itself acknowledges, some of these sources will have wildly conflicting accounts of the facts.
Apparently, what caught the White House’s attention, was not the revelation that the president’s lawyers were involved in discussions to destroy evidence, but that the NYT characterized the revelations in a way that hinted at Bush gang mendacity. The sub-head of the Times’ article said the White House’s role “was wider than it said,” and the story added that the lawyers’ involvement “was more extensive than Bush administration officials have acknowledged.”
The Bush gang’s defense, in a nutshell is, “We haven’t acknowledged anything, so revelations can’t be ‘wider’ or ‘more extensive.'”
Given the seriousness of the controversy, the White House’s push-back isn’t exactly reassuring. Indeed, Perino’s statement a) intentionally misses the point; and b) is by all accounts, highly misleading.
It reads like an overly-literal argument, documenting all of the many on-the-record questions she, the president, and Tony Fratto have received about the torture-tape controversy, and all of the many instances in which they’ve denied comment. “See?” the statement seems to be saying, “we can’t be misleading anyone if we’re not saying anything either way.”
But that’s silly. The NYT article referred to “Bush administration officials” — not just the president and two people from his communications office — and “administration officials” have been more than willing to dish on this subject, as long as they’re not quoted directly.
In fact, that’s really the key point Perino & Co. are missing here. After we learned about the torture tapes, the official White House line was that Bush’s lawyers urged the CIA not to destroy the videos. Apparently, because the advice wasn’t explicit enough, they were destroyed anyway.
And now the NYT has spoken to some officials who insist Bush’s lawyers actually did the opposite, and “there had been ‘vigorous sentiment’ among some top White House officials to destroy the tapes.”
This leads to all kinds of interesting questions about who knew what about the torture tapes, who made what recommendations to the CIA about preserving the tapes, and when White House officials knew about the videos’ destruction.
Perino, meanwhile, seems to be responding to a question that wasn’t asked. Her official White House statement effectively says, “In all of our on-the-record comments, we’ve stonewalled, and therefore didn’t lie.”
That’s great, Dana, but that’s missing the big picture.