I know this shouldn’t be shocking and that we all should expect these kinds of stunts from the Bush White House. But here I am, astonished nevertheless.
Dana Milbank has another in a long-line of disturbing stories in the Washington Post today, this time about the White House’s habit of “touching up” the administration online history to suit their purposes and hide their embarrassments.
White House officials were steamed when Andrew S. Natsios, the administrator of the U.S. Agency for International Development, said earlier this year that U.S. taxpayers would not have to pay more than $1.7 billion to reconstruct Iraq — which turned out to be a gross understatement of the tens of billions of dollars the government now expects to spend.
Recently, however, the government has purged the offending comments by Natsios from the agency’s Web site. The transcript, and links to it, have vanished.
This is not the first time the administration has done some creative editing of government Web sites. After the insurrection in Iraq proved more stubborn than expected, the White House edited the original headline on its Web site of President Bush’s May 1 speech, “President Bush Announces Combat Operations in Iraq Have Ended,” to insert the word “Major” before combat.
Since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, administration Web sites have been scrubbed for anything vaguely sensitive, and passwords are now required to access even much unclassified information. Though it is not clear whether the White House is directing the changes, several agencies have been following a similar pattern. The federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and USAID have removed or revised fact sheets on condoms, excising information about their effectiveness in disease prevention, and promoting abstinence instead. The National Cancer Institute, meanwhile, scrapped claims on its Web site that there was no association between abortion and breast cancer. And the Justice Department recently redacted criticism of the department in a consultant’s report that had been posted on its Web site.
Steven Aftergood, who directs the Project on Government Secrecy at the Federation of American Scientists, said the Natsios case is particularly pernicious. “This smells like an attempt to revise the record, not just to withhold information but to alter the historical record in a self-interested way, and that is sleazier than usual,” he said.
Even better, Milbank’s story quoted a USAID official explaining why the comments were removed from public view. As she explained it, Natsios’ comment about the small burden on U.S. taxpayers to pay for the war was from an interview with ABC News — and USAID didn’t want to pay for use of the transcript on the agency’s website.
“There was going to be a cost,” the USAID spokeswoman said. “That’s why they’re not there.”
True? No. Milbank asked ABC if the network charges government agencies for use of interview transcripts. It turns out the transcripts are free and that department use them online routinely. “We would have no trouble with a government agency linking to one of our interviews, and we are unaware of anybody from [ABC] making any request that anything be removed,” an ABC spokesman told the Post.
So the administration is not only trying to hide its record from the public, but it’s lying about doing so.
Is the White House web scrubbing more reminiscent of an Orwellian dystopia or Soviet-style censorship? Hmm.
Post Script — Dana Milbank has become the single most indispensable White House reporter in recent memory. What would we do without him?
Update: A Carpetbagger regular, let’s call him Chuck, reminds me of an earlier web scrubbing that’s just as offensive but wasn’t mentioned above.
On Sept. 26, 2001, just two weeks after the attacks of 9/11, then-White House press secretary Ari Fleischer offered this gem in response to a dumb comment from comedian Bill Maher: “There are reminders to all Americans that they need to watch what they say, watch what they do, and this is not a time for remarks like that; there never is.”
The fact that a White House official was warning Americans to “watch what they say” struck many as a heavy-handed reference to censorship. When the transcript was posted online of Fleischer’s briefing from that day, which is supposed to reflect every word uttered during the press conference, mysteriously the controversial warning was missing.
Initially, the White House said the missing phrase was a “transcription error.” (And if you believe that one, I know of a bridge I’d love to sell you…) But even after the “transcription error” was brought to their attention, Fleischer’s office didn’t correct the transcript until an audio version of the briefing was released, several days later.