Helen Thomas to Tony Snow: You’re not speaking English

July 27, 2007

Today’s White House press briefing was a hoot. A few pesky reporters continued to push Tony Snow to rationalize what appears to be a fairly obvious lie from Alberto Gonzales.

Q: Are you saying it was not about the wire-tapping that had already been acknowledged?

Snow: I’m saying that acknowledged program, the program the president disclosed to the American people, was not something that was legally controversial.

Q: And you also said that whatever controversy there was was resolved. Can you say which it is?

Snow: Well, because, well, all I’m saying, what I’m saying is there was the discussion of the controversy, the controversy did not hinge upon this program.

Q: Controversy over what?

Snow: I thought I was pretty clear but maybe I’m–

Q: You’re not speaking English, really.

We’re well past the point in which Snow should be considered credible on any subject, but sometimes, I feel for the guy. Gonzales lied, so Snow has to lie to justify Gonzales’ lying. I suppose the honorable thing to do would be to resign and tell Rove, “There are some things that just can’t be spun.”

Snow wants the nation to believe the surveillance program “the president disclosed to the American people,” wasn’t “legally controversial”? Really?

Maybe he missed FBI Director Robert Mueller’s testimony yesterday on the “Terrorist Surveillance Program” that was at issue during the Card/Gonzales visit to Ashcroft’s hospital bed.

REP. SHEILA JACKSON LEE (D), TEXAS: . . . have an understanding that the discussion was on TSP?

“ROBERT MUELLER, FBI DIRECTOR: I had a understanding that the discussion was on an NSA Program, yes.

“LEE: I guess we use TSP, we use warrantless wiretapping, so would I be comfortable in saying that those were the items that were part of the discussion?

“MUELLER: It was — the discussion was on a national — an NSA program that has been much discussed, yes.

The amusing part is that Snow has a trump card he’s willing to abuse — when push comes to shove, the truth, he says, is classified. Sure, it looks like Gonzales was lying. And sure, it appears that Snow is foolishly talking nonsense, but that’s only because Snow and Gonzales claim to know things we don’t know.

Like what? They can’t say. Rest assured, what seems like obvious falsehoods are absolutely true, for reasons they, and only they, are aware of.

We’re just supposed to trust them and discount our lying eyes.

Meanwhile, just one day after essentially accusing Gonzales of perjury before the Senate Judiciary Committee, Specter once again backed away from taking action against the Bush administration and instead criticized his Democratic colleagues for “playing politics.”

For the details, see:
“Specter’s Latest Hamlet Act.”

  • He probably means that Gonzo, Ashcroft, Meiers, and Rove didn’t disagree on the legality of it. After all who else matters?

  • Don’t feel sorry for any of the Bush Inc.enablers. People are getting killed because of them. They are guilty as hell,and should go there forthwith.

  • They are trying to peddle the notion that the program that was finally revealed by the President was somehow separate from the program that Comey objected to, so Gonzo was being precise, not mendacious.

    I think that’s a little like saying the New York Mets have never won the World Series, because the team is substantially different now than it was in 1969. I mean, there is a completely different roster, and free agency, and drug testing. Completely different.

    Did they end the program Comey objected to, and start a completely different one, or did they just make changes to that program Comey objected to? I think that they’d just say, no, we ended the program Comey objected to, if in fact they had.

    I also think that whatever program Comey found acceptable is probably still illegal, despite the willingness of a bunch of GOP lawyers to OK it.

  • The thing that Bushies like about Tony Snow is that, unlike McClellan, they don’t have to pretend they’re not lying. He’ll tell a lie even when he knows it’s a lie.

    PS Bush fatigue

  • And whatever the secret is, it’s really funny! Tony Baloney seems to think questions about alleged violations of federal law are really funny.

    Ha ha.

    Cue the tape of Tony Baloney hyperventilating about Clinton lying about a blowjob.

  • I miss you Scott McClellan. *snif*

    You and that cute little cringe you’d make when you had to think up some way to answer a question that nailed your commander in chief squarely between the eyes. Somethign that was truthful, but didn’t quite admit your boss was gutter sludge.

    I like watching art.

    Snow isn’t worthy of wearing your tie.
    If this keeps up, my unhealthy pining for you may become a full-on man crush.

  • TPMMuckraker had a summary and discussion about this yesterday that I’d recommend — particularly the comment section after you get through the original post. Some interesting observations and speculations…

    …But a closer examination of Gonzales’ testimony and other public statements from the Administration suggest that there may be a method to the madness.

    There’s a lot of evidence to suggest that Gonzales’s careful, repeated phrasing to the Senate that he will only discuss the program that “the president described” was deliberate, part of a concerted administration-wide strategy to conceal from the public the very broad scope of that initial program. When, for the first time, Program X (as we’ll call it, for convenience’s sake) became known to senior Justice Department officials who were not its original architects, those officials — James Comey and Jack Goldsmith, principally — balked at its continuation…

  • And after the press conference (Cspan), Tony and David Gregory were together giggling like little school girls. I could imagine them saying to each other “Isn’t this all very silly?” Whatever the Snowman was trying to accomplish today with this fiasco, I guess, as Bill Maher would say, “he nailed it.”

  • I think Josh and his crew has it nailed. The disagreement was on on earlier version TSP, which was polished up to where it was no longer as controversial. Everyone is tap dancing around it, and the White House is pretending they are 2 separate programs – hoping no one forces them to disclose how far reaching, and how grossly illegal the earlier version was. Perjury for Gonzo is likely the far lesser crime.

  • There are a couple of questions I would like to hear asked of Snow. There was a program which Comey et al objected to in the spring of 2004. That program did not involve listening to phone conversations between known members of Al Qaeda overseas and people within the US. This much we know since we know from Gonzales, at least if we are to take his words a face value, that the program that was objected to was not the program which Bush acknowledged. And the program that Bush acknowledge involves listening to conversation between know members of Al Qaeda overseas and people within the United States.

    First question: Did the the objections to the unspecified program result in its end? Second question: If it did lead to its end, was it restarted once those who objected to it left government?

    I know that we won’t get straight answers from Snow, but these questions must be asked. If for no other reason than to watch him clumsly tapdance around the answer.

  • Excellent, Rege. Excellent. Screw Snow—put AG AG or somebody else (Comey? Mueller?) up on the stand and ask those questions under oath.

  • How illegal was the original program? Was it illegal to the point of wiretapping Democrat(ic) (sic) folks? Inquiring minds want to know how illegal it was. What was it that was so objectionable that top folks in the FBI and Justice threatened to resign?

  • Ever notice that ideologues either lie too easily, or don’t lie when threatened with death when it would be a good idea to lie.

  • Gerald: He’s using the Chewbacca Defense!
    Cochran: Why would a Wookiee, an eight-foot tall Wookiee, want to live on Endor, with a bunch of two-foot tall Ewoks? That does not make sense! But more important, you have to ask yourself: What does this have to do with this case? Nothing. Ladies and gentlemen, it has nothing to do with this case! It does not make sense! Look at me. I’m a lawyer defending a major record company, and I’m talkin’ about Chewbacca! Does that make sense? Ladies and gentlemen, I am not making any sense! None of this makes sense! And so you have to remember, when you’re in that jury room deliberatin’ and conjugatin’ the Emancipation Proclamation, [approaches and softens] does it make sense? No! Ladies and gentlemen of this supposed jury, it does not make sense! If Chewbacca lives on Endor, you must acquit! The defense rests.”[1]

  • Today’s White House Watch, by Dan Froomkin, makes a very good point about the “it’s classified” defense:

    The purpose of classification is to maintain operational secrecy for critical national security programs — not cover up governmental misdeeds. At least that’s the theory. (As I’ve noted before, Bush aides have repeatedly leaked or declassified secret intelligence findings that served their political agenda — while asserting the need to keep secret the information that would tend to discredit them.) If the White House believed that disclosing information about a now-defunct program would clear Gonzales, don’t you think we’d know it by now?

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