The back-and-forth between the Government Accountability Office and the Bush administration over publicly-funded propaganda has generated plenty of worthwhile attention, but a Senate staffer emailed me to point out a tidbit that seems to have been lost in the shuffle.
We know, for example, that the GAO said that it’s illegal for the administration to produce fake news segments without disclosing the government’s role in producing them. The Bush gang — specifically Joshua Bolten, director of the Office of Management and Budget, and Steven Bradbury, principal deputy assistant attorney general at the Justice Department — responded that they disagree with that conclusion and the administration will continue the practice to their heart’s content, ignoring the GAO’s concerns.
But a closer look at the Bolten/Bradbury memos shows that the administration also believes it can continue putting pundits on the government payroll, too.
Though the [Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel] memo deals exclusively with the legality of , an accompanying OMB memo takes what appears to be a preemptory shot at a potential GAO ruling on the legality of hiring journalists to promote administration initiatives.
“Any questions concerning the circumstances in which a department or agency may enter into a specific contract with members of the news media, for consulting or other services, should be directed to the general counsel of that department or agency,” wrote OMB Director Joshua Bolton in the March 11 memo to heads of departments and agencies.
This isn’t a coincidence. Congressional Dems asked the GAO earlier this year for an analysis of the legality of Bush’s contracts with hacks like Armstrong Williams. The GAO report is due out soon, no doubt prompting the administration to prepare its legal defense for this practice, as well as for the fake news segments.
But notice the administration’s answer here: the policy isn’t to stop contracting with pundits, it’s to direct questions about these contracts to the relevant agency’s general counsel.
That’s not what Bush said the new policy would be.
Indeed, the president personally described his intention to end the practice, not allow internal reviews on a case-by-case basis.
OMB’s advice to department heads appears to contradict Bush’s own stated goal of ending the practice of hiring journalists.
“I expect my Cabinet secretaries to make sure that that practice doesn’t go forward. There needs to be independence. And Mr. Armstrong Williams admitted he made a mistake. And we didn’t know about this in the White House, and there needs to be a nice, independent relationship between the White House and the press,” Bush said at a Jan. 26 news briefing.
That was the right answer, but as is too often the case, the president’s rhetoric is inconsistent with his administration’s policies.
With this in mind, it seems it’s only a matter of time before the Bush gang embraces “political payola” all over again.