For two weeks, the White House hasn’t said a word, on the record, about the Plame scandal. Bush, Cheney, McClellan and others have been asked for comment about one aspect of the story or another, but there’s been a wall of silence. No comments about what happened, what was said, what might happen, or even opinions. No comment, no comment, no comment.
That is, until yesterday, when someone forgot to tell Attorney General Alberto Gonzales about the silent treatment. In fact, he had plenty of comment.
On CBS’s Face the Nation, host Bob Schieffer noted that this time gap would have “give[n] people time to shred documents and do any number of things.” Gonzales argued that he asked for and received permission from the Justice Department to wait until the next morning to order White House staff to preserve all documents regarding their contacts with journalists about Valerie Plame. But he did tell one person the night before…
Schieffer: Let me just ask you the obvious question, Mr. Attorney General. Did you tell anybody at the White House, get ready for this, here it comes?
Gonzales: I, I told one person, ah, in, in the White House of, of the notification, and, and —
Schieffer: Who?
Gonzales: and immediately — ah, I told the chief of staff. And immediately the next morning, I told the President and, shortly thereafter, there was a notification sent out to all the members of the White House staff.
As I said earlier, as a substantive matter, the Card notification doesn’t matter as much as the weekend beforehand. Nevertheless, Gonzales was commenting like crazy when it came to the Plame scandal.
Today, at the White House press briefing, Scott McClellan was asked why the Attorney General can comment but the press secretary can’t. Considering that he must have known the question was coming, you’d have assumed he could have come up with a better answer.
Q: I know that none of you are speaking about this because it’s an ongoing investigation. Can you explain why Alberto Gonzales would go on TV yesterday and do that, and talk about it?
McClellan: Well, what he said was already said from this podium back in October of 2003, and I don’t think he got into commenting in any substantive way on the discussion.
If that’s the new standard, McClellan has a problem. After all, reporters have been asking for two weeks about things “already said from [his] podium” — things such as McClellan’s belief that it’s “ridiculous” to suggest that Karl Rove was involved with the leak and assurances that Rove and Libby “weren’t involved” with this fiasco.
This exchange was also amusing.
Q: Do Karl Rove and Scooter Libby still have top secret clearance here, access to classified documents?
McClellan: You asked this question last week, and —
Q: I did. And I’m asking again.
McClellan: — the President has said what our answer is to these questions. We’ll be glad to talk about all these issues once the investigation is complete.
Q: Do they have a clearance?
McClellan: We’ll be glad to talk about all the issues relating to the investigation once it’s complete.
Q: Why can’t you talk about it now?
McClellan: Well, that question I addressed a couple weeks ago.
I don’t know which reporter this was, but I’d bet money it was Helen Thomas.