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October 02, 2003
It shouldn't be that difficult...
One issue in the Plame scandal that the press has been asking about is why, if Bush is so eager to "get to the bottom of this", it took him 2 1/2 months to start looking. Yesterday, the press corps peppered White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan with questions regarding when President Bush learned that a CIA operative's status as an undercover agent had been blown, allegedly by "two senior administration officials" (as cited by Robert Novak". McClellan said he'd look into it and post an answer later.
Well, today, he got asked again, and his response was a bit dodgy
McClellan said he could not say when Bush first learned of the leak. "I looked into it, and I just don't know," he said.Seems to me that, since Bush has acknowledged that leaking classified information is a serious matter, and since he's said he wants to find out who - if anyone - did this, it wouldn't be that difficult for him to remember when he first learned about the incident. Even if he doesn't know the exact day he heard about it, I'd think he'd be able to recall whether it was, say, last week when the story really broke wide, or two months ago, when Novak's original column was published.
Yet if McClellan is to be believed, the President can't seem to remember that - unless, of course, McClellan didn't ask the President when he learned of the leak. But that doesn't really make any sense either - I mean, if you were the President's press secretary, and you needed to report back to the press on when the President learned that a CIA agent - one working on the crucial issue of Weapons of Mass Destruction proliferation - had been burned, and suspicion was centering on someone within the White House, wouldn't you as the President? I mean "Mr. President, when did you first learn that someone had leaked Valerie Plame's status as a covert operative for the CIA?" would be one of the first questions I'd want to ask.
Unless I simply didn't want to know when the President found out about it because giving a firm answer - regardless of what that answer might be - would be embarrassing to the President. Think about it. If the President knew about it back in July, why didn't he pursue the identity of the leaker back then? And if he didn't learn about it until more recently, why didn't he know?
So for McClellan to say that he "just doesn't know" is more than a bit disingenuous. The more accurate answer would be that he just doesn't want to know - and the honest answer would be that he just doesn't want the American people to know.
Posted by thorswitch at October 2, 2003 05:12 PM
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