Please, Hamilton, don't hurt us! About three weeks ago, I noticed Tom Kean and Lee Hamilton, co-chairs of the 9/11 commission, issuing Dick Cheney a warning in the pages of the NY Times about the Veep's insane effort to spin back the commission's conclusions that Iraq could not be shown to have had a collaborative relationship with Al Qaeda prior to 9/11. Pretending to take Cheney at his word that he knew something they didn't, Kean and Hamilton essentially told him to put up or shut up:

"It sounds like the White House has evidence that we didn't have," Mr. Hamilton said in an phone interview. "I would like to see the evidence that Mr. Cheney is talking about."

Mr. Kean, a former Republican governor of New Jersey, said in a phone interview that he was surprised by Mr. Cheney's comments and would be "very disappointed" if the White House had not shared intelligence information about Al Qaeda with the commission.

Philip Shenon and Richard W. Stevenson, "Leaders of 9/11 Panel Ask Cheney for Reports"

Just a week later, someone who seems to have had some link to the commission leaked the Times' Thom Shanker a document specifically referencing Cheney's claim that a (nearly ten year-old) Sudan contact between Iraq intelligence and bin Laden consituted an operational link of the sort the commission had denigrated. The clear implication of the article, which correctly noted how limited and inconsequential the contact was, being that the commission was in possession of exactly the same document Cheney was talking up as his own special intel.

Naturally, Cheney wouldn't take the hints. Today, Kean and Hamilton follow through with an explicit, public slap-down:

In a one-sentence statement, the panel's chairman and vice chairman said that "after examining available transcripts of the vice president's public remarks, the 9/11 commission believes it has access to the same information the vice president has seen regarding contacts between Al Qaeda and Iraq prior to the 9/11 attacks."

Philip Shenon, "9/11 Panelists Rebut Cheney on Information"

Of course, this is still a pretty subtle slap-down: the single-sentence length guarantees that it plays deep in the inner pages, as it does in the Times today. But that may be all that's necessary for this particular moment in the history of Vice-Presidential mendacity to have reached its endgame. Despite its rather weak bravado, the statement from Cheney's office in response today is essentially a capitulation, and a complete one. Give Kevin Kellems credit, he does all he can to pretend that the white flag he's waving is really Old Glory:

A spokesman for Mr. Cheney, Kevin Kellems, said on Tuesday that the White House welcomed the statement, calling it proof that the White House had fully cooperated in providing the panel all available intelligence relevant to its work.

"We are pleased with today's statement from the 9/11 commission, which puts to rest a nonstory," he said. "As we have said all along, the administration provided the commission with unprecedented access to sensitive information so they could perform their mission. The vice president criticized some press coverage of the draft staff report. He did not criticize the commission's work."

In other words, Cheney's people are admitting he lied when he claimed to have intel the 9/11 commission didn't.

Correction: While it's true (second graf above) that Thom Shanker's article appeared a week after Kean and Hamilton first reacted to Cheney's lie, the document he was reporting on had been provided him some weeks earlier. The Times spent the interim period attempting to verify the document's authenticity. Though the leak wasn't directly in reaction to the Cheney spin effort, as I noted in my original post, I think it's likely that it was made in anticipation of some such effort.

posted by michael  10:30:27 AM  
tell me about it []  

 

When all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail. Adam "Some Democrats Worry" Nagourney demonstrates the truth of the saying on A1 today. Negative framing is either a reflex with Nagourney, or a program; you make the call. Here's the start of his "analysis" of the Edwards Veep pick:

In John Edwards, Senator John Kerry selected a running mate who embodies the very attributes that some Democrats worry that Mr. Kerry lacks: a vigorous campaign presence, an engaging personal manner and a crisp message that stirred Democrats from Iowa to New Hampshire.

Mr. Kerry even took a risk or two in compensating for his own shortcomings, embracing a trial lawyer who has less governmental experience than any other major vice-presidential candidate in at least 20 years.

"Kerry Selects a Partner With Contrasts That Complement"

Remember, Nagourney's had a full day to "analyze" the Edwards pick, so this thin pap is the result, presumably, of his most considered efforts. Bonus RNC points for "embracing a trial lawyer": funny, I thought John Edwards was a U.S. Senator.

Is Kerry's choice meaningful in terms of electoral politics? You'll have a tough time finding out about it from Nagourney, for whom everything significant about the campaign has to do with style and symbolism: with the Kerry/Edwards brand, rather than the Kerry/Edwards ticket. You'll find better analysis on the comments boards of half a dozen blogs than you will on the front page of the NY Times.

posted by michael  8:55:56 AM  
tell me about it []