Friday, January 20, 2006

A tip for the cowardly press corps Scott "Stonewall" McClellan arrogantly insists on "specific" questions about Abramoff's ties to the White House. OK, here's one: Did Bush meet with the lobbyist on May 9, 2001? By Joe Conason Jan. 20, 2006 | One of the president's top fundraisers pleads guilty to felony fraud in a major Washington bribery scandal -- a scandal in which he plays the central role as a super-lobbyist handing out checks and favors to members of Congress. The crooked fundraiser is a close friend and associate of the president's top political advisor and deputy chief of staff, whom he has known for more than two decades. His former assistant now works in the White House as personal assistant to the deputy chief of staff. The fundraiser was awarded a place on the president's Department of the Interior transition team, and constantly exploited his White House connections to impress his clients. The fundraiser described above is of course Jack Abramoff, whose connections to the Bush White House, the president and Karl Rove may yet prove to be a crucial aspect of the lobbying scandal. To date, however, members of the Washington press corps -- from the New York Times bureau to the host of "Hardball"! -- have displayed scant interest in discovering how extensive those connections actually were. And so far, press secretary Scott McClellan has easily turned aside the occasional desultory questions about Abramoff's access to the president and the White House without providing any real answers. By now it is clear that he doesn't intend to provide full and candid answers, despite his promises to "look into" the questions. He has revealed only that Abramoff attended two White House Chanukah parties sometime in the distant past and met with "staff" on several occasions. Beyond that he has refused to provide details, photographs or any other information. On Tuesday, when reporters inquired again about "staff-level meetings" with Abramoff, the press secretary bristled. With his harsh retort to NBC correspondent David Gregory, which can be viewed at Crooks and Liars, McClellan tried to shut down further questioning on the subject. The first question on the topic, asked by another reporter, was whether McClellan had "an update for us on any records of phone calls or e-mails between staff members and Mr. Abramoff, or photos of the president with him?" "No," replied the press secretary. "As I indicated yesterday, we're not going to engage in some sort of fishing expedition. I know there are some that want to play partisan politics, and do so." In the brief exchange that followed, McClellan told members of the White House press that they would be getting no further information about Abramoff from him, unless they could give him a compelling reason for their questions. Declining to say whether the White House figures who met with Abramoff were "senior staff," or what they discussed with the lobbyist in those meetings, McClellan concluded with a slight smirk: "And if you have anything specific, I'll be glad to take a look into it." "He's pled guilty to some serious charges," ventured the questioner. "And so are you insinuating something?" barked McClellan. "We're just trying to find out the facts." "Well, if you've got something to bring to my attention, do so, and then I'll be glad to look into it." At that point, the exasperated Gregory broke in. "Scott, that's not a fair burden to place on us. This is a guy who is a tainted lobbyist, and he has connections -- we want to know -- with whom in the White House. You shouldn't demand that we give you something specific to go check it out. I mean, this guy is radioactive in Washington. And he knows guys like Karl Rove. So did he meet with him or not ... Don't put it on us to bring something specific. It's a specific question about a specific individual. Can you tell us if he met with Karl Rove?" Again McClellan claimed, "We don't discuss staff-level meetings." "Of course you do," Gregory interrupted, "whenever you want to discuss staff-level meetings. And if Karl Rove, who has ties to Ralph Reed, which he does, we want to know if he has ties to Jack Abramoff, and if they met." Finally, McClellan accused Gregory of "insinuating" that Abramoff had pursued "pending business," meaning issues of concern to his clients, with members of the White House staff. "There's been no suggestion of anything like that out of this White House," said McClellan.. "I'm just asking," Gregory replied, "I'm not suggesting." "No, you're insinuating," scolded McClellan. "Go ahead. This is a gentleman who is being held to account for the wrongdoing he was involved in. He is someone who, through himself and his clients, contributed to both Democrats and Republicans. And it was outrageous what he was involved in doing and he needs to be held to account, and he is being held to account by the Department of Justice." Nobody else spoke up, as they surely would if they cared about the question, and on the issue of Abramoff's dealings with the White House, McClellan has escaped accountability. Now under different circumstances -- for example, if the president were named Bill Clinton -- this sort of scandal stonewalling would only fan the firestorm of demands for information and charges of coverup. There is no doubt that McClellan could find out exactly when Abramoff had visited the White House over the past five years and whom he saw. The process of compiling that information should take less than a single day. Doesn't everyone still remember the logs kept by the Secret Service, which identify every White House visitor on every date? The press rightly demanded access to those records during the Monica Lewinsky investigation. Why not now? Actually, it would be surprising if McClellan and Rove had not requisitioned all those records already for their own purposes. The Bush operation is competent in nothing if not politics and communications -- indeed it seems competent at very few other functions of governing -- and no competent political operation would have failed to examine its own vulnerability on this issue long ago. McClellan, however, is still claiming not to know whether the disgraced lobbyist ever met with Bush. Two weeks ago, he claimed that the president "does not know [Abramoff], nor does the president recall ever meeting him." The president may not recall meeting with Abramoff, but others say they remember a meeting with him in the White House that the lobbyist arranged and attended. It was a very specific meeting, as McClellan might say, on a specific date. On May 9, 2001, as Lou Dubose reported last June in the Texas Observer, Abramoff ushered the chiefs of the Coushatta and Choctaw tribal councils into a 15-minute Oval Office meeting with Bush. They also had lunch in the White House. For this swift brush with the president, the tribal chiefs paid dearly, including $25,000 to Abramoff himself, an additional $25,000 to Americans for Tax Reform (the outfit led by Republican eminence Grover Norquist, a longtime associate of Abramoff's and Rove's) and millions more in contributions to political causes and "charities" overseen by Abramoff. According to Dubose, the Coushatta chief, a man named Lovelin Poncho, had initially denied visiting the White House with Abramoff. But under pressure from tribal opponents, he admitted the meeting last summer. Dubose has interviewed others present at the meeting who confirmed that Abramoff was there. In his Texas Observer article, Dubose reproduces several documents confirming the meeting and Norquist's role. Some brave soul in the White House press corps should ask Scott McClellan a "specific" question about that meeting on May 9, 2001, and suggest that he check the Secret Service's White House logs for the names of Abramoff and the tribal council chiefs. Someone should start asking the members of the Coushatta and Choctaw tribal councils about that date as well. The president meets with many people and cannot be expected to remember everyone -- even if they raised hundreds of thousands of dollars for him, perhaps. But the tribal chiefs are likely to remember the day they met George W. Bush in the White House, who brought them there -- and how much they had to pay for the privilege. -- By Joe Conason Copyright ©2006 Salon Media Group, Inc. 4:59:19 PM     comment []

Quote(s) of the Day   "You'd think the only focus tonight would be on destroying Osama Bin Laden, not comparing him to an American who opposes the war, whether you like him or not. . .You want a real debate that America needs? Here goes: If the administration had done the job right in Tora Bora we might not be having discussions on 'Hardball' about a new Bin Laden tape. How dare Scott McClellan tell America that this administration puts terrorists out of business when had they put Osama Bin Laden out of business in Afghanistan when our troops wanted to, we wouldn't have to hear this barbarian's voice on tape. That's what we should be talking about in America." --Sen. John Kerry, responding to Chris Matthews' dimwitted comparison of Osama bin laden to Michael Moore on Hardball   "A dictatorship would be a heck of a lot easier, there's no question about it" --George W. Bush, reflecting on the difficulties of his first 100 days in office, Spring 2001 10:24:40 AM     comment []

January 18, 2006 Op-Ed Contributor Purple Heartbreakers By JAMES WEBB Arlington, Va. IT should come as no surprise that an arch-conservative Web site is questioning whether Representative John Murtha, the Pennsylvania Democrat who has been critical of the war in Iraq, deserved the combat awards he received in Vietnam. After all, in recent years extremist Republican operatives have inverted a longstanding principle: that our combat veterans be accorded a place of honor in political circles. This trend began with the ugly insinuations leveled at Senator John McCain during the 2000 Republican primaries and continued with the slurs against Senators Max Cleland and John Kerry, and now Mr. Murtha. Military people past and present have good reason to wonder if the current administration truly values their service beyond its immediate effect on its battlefield of choice. The casting of suspicion and doubt about the actions of veterans who have run against President Bush or opposed his policies has been a constant theme of his career. This pattern of denigrating the service of those with whom they disagree risks cheapening the public's appreciation of what it means to serve, and in the long term may hurt the Republicans themselves. Not unlike the Clinton "triangulation" strategy, the approach has been to attack an opponent's greatest perceived strength in order to diminish his overall credibility. To no one's surprise, surrogates carry out the attacks, leaving President Bush and other Republican leaders to benefit from the results while publicly distancing themselves from the actual remarks. During the 2000 primary season, John McCain's life-defining experiences as a prisoner of war in Vietnam were diminished through whispers that he was too scarred by those years to handle the emotional burdens of the presidency. The wide admiration that Senator Max Cleland gained from building a career despite losing three limbs in Vietnam brought on the smug non sequitur from critics that he had been injured in an accident and not by enemy fire. John Kerry's voluntary combat duty was systematically diminished by the well-financed Swift Boat Veterans for Truth in a highly successful effort to insulate a president who avoided having to go to war. And now comes Jack Murtha. The administration tried a number of times to derail the congressman's criticism of the Iraq war, including a largely ineffective effort to get senior military officials to publicly rebuke him (Gen. Peter Pace, chairman of the Joint Chiefs, was the only one to do the administration's bidding there). Now the Cybercast News Service, a supposedly independent organization with deep ties to the Republican Party, has dusted off the Swift Boat Veterans playbook, questioning whether Mr. Murtha deserved his two Purple Hearts. The article also implied that Mr. Murtha did not deserve the Bronze Star he received, and that the combat-distinguishing "V" on it was questionable. It then called on Mr. Murtha to open up his military records. Cybercast News Service is run by David Thibault, who formerly worked as the senior producer for "Rising Tide," the televised weekly news magazine produced by the Republican National Committee. One of the authors of the Murtha article was Marc Morano, a long-time writer and producer for Rush Limbaugh. The accusations against Mr. Murtha were very old news, principally coming from defeated political rivals. Aligned against their charges are an official letter from Marine Corps Headquarters written nearly 40 years ago affirming Mr. Murtha's eligibility for his Purple Hearts - "you are entitled to the Purple Heart and a Gold Star in lieu of a second Purple Heart for wounds received in action" - and the strict tradition of the Marine Corps regarding awards. While in other services lower-level commanders have frequently had authority to issue prestigious awards, in the Marines Mr. Murtha's Vietnam Bronze Star would have required the approval of four different awards boards. The Bush administration's failure to support those who have served goes beyond the smearing of these political opponents. One of the most regrettable examples comes, oddly enough, from modern-day Vietnam. The government-run War Remnants Museum, a popular tourist site in downtown Ho Chi Minh City, includes an extensive section on "American atrocities." The largest display is devoted to Bob Kerrey, a former United States senator and governor of Nebraska, recipient of the Medal of Honor and member of the 9/11 commission. In the display, Mr. Kerrey is flatly labeled a war criminal by the Vietnamese government, and the accompanying text gives a thoroughly propagandized version of an incident that resulted in civilian deaths during his time in Vietnam. This display has been up for more than two years. One finds it hard to imagine another example in which a foreign government has been allowed to so characterize the service of a distinguished American with no hint of a diplomatic protest. The political tactic of playing up the soldiers on the battlefield while tearing down the reputations of veterans who oppose them could eventually cost the Republicans dearly. It may be one reason that a preponderance of the Iraq war veterans who thus far have decided to run for office are doing so as Democrats. A young American now serving in Iraq might rightly wonder whether his or her service will be deliberately misconstrued 20 years from now, in the next rendition of politically motivated spinmeisters who never had the courage to step forward and put their own lives on the line. Rudyard Kipling summed up this syndrome quite neatly more than a century ago, writing about the frequent hypocrisy directed at the British soldiers of his day: An' it's Tommy this, an' Tommy that, an' anything you please; An' Tommy ain't a bloomin' fool - you bet that Tommy sees! James Webb, a secretary of the Navy in the Reagan administration, was a Marine platoon and company commander in Vietnam. Copyright 2006The New York Times Company 8:36:23 AM     comment []

© Copyright 2006 Michael D. Zungolo. Last update: 2/1/2006; 9:24:14 AM.