White House tailspin.

Scott McClellan’s White House press briefing today was quite nasty. Virtually the entire 45-minute Q&A session was about the White House leak of the identity of a CIA operative, with the reporters asking the tough (and obvious) questions and McClellan squirming, obviously under strict orders to limit his statements within some pretty narrow confines.

The administration’s entire premise is that the media’s news about this leak is simply invalid — questionable, at best — and not of consequence to the White House.

MR. McCLELLAN: Well, we’ve got important work to do here in Washington, D.C. for the people of this nation. And the President will continue to focus on the priorities we are pursuing: the war on terrorism, strengthening the economy. There are a number of important priorities we are focused on. There are a lot of anonymous media reports that happen all the time. And it’s not our practice to go and try to chase down anonymous sources every time there’s a report in the media. If there’s specific information that comes to our attention, that’s another matter. But there has not been any information beyond what we’ve seen in just anonymous media reporting to suggest that there was White House involvement.

According to McClellan, there has been no inquiry within the White House. No staff members have been asked if they leaked this information. There has been no order to retain phone logs or e-mail records, there is no plan to meet with top administration officials to determine the source of the leak.

Q Will the President move aggressively to see if such a transgression has occurred in the White House? Will he ask top White House officials to sign statements saying that they did not give the information?

MR. McCLELLAN: Bill, if someone leaked classified information of this nature, the appropriate agency to look into it would be the Department of Justice. So the Department of Justice is the one that would look in matters like this.

Q You’re saying the White House won’t take a proactive role?

MR. McCLELLAN: Do you have any specific information to bring to my attention suggesting White House involvement?

Q If you would —

MR. McCLELLAN: I haven’t seen any.

Q Would you not want to know whether someone had leaked information of this kind?

MR. McCLELLAN: The President has been — I spoke for him earlier today — the President believes leaking classified information is a very serious matter. And it should be —

Q So why doesn’t he want —

MR. McCLELLAN: — pursued to the fullest extent —

Q Right, so why —

MR. McCLELLAN: — by the appropriate agency. And the appropriate agency is the Department of Justice.

Q Why wouldn’t he proactively do that, ask people on the staff to say that they had not leaked anything?

MR. McCLELLAN: Do you have specific information to suggest White House involvement? I saw a media report that said “senior administration officials.” That’s an anonymous source that could include a lot of people. I’ve seen a lot of “senior administration officials” in media stories.

Note that last bit — McClellan is actually trying to argue that because one story referred only to “senior administration officials,” without specifically stating “White House senior administration officials” (that’s the only administration to which one would refer in D.C. in those terms), that perhaps the accusation is not being leveled at senior administration officials in the White House but, instead, senior administration officials, in say, the Department of Agriculture. Here’s a bit more of McClellan’s efforts to use semantics as a stall tactic:

MR. McCLELLAN: The Department of Justice is the appropriate place to look into this. Where does it stop? I mean, the anonymous source quoted — was quoted as a senior administration official. That doesn’t say “White House” in and of itself.

Then there’s a bit more of the White House demonstrating a complete unwillingness to even perform the most basic self-examination:

Q Thank you. In the Enron — tag-teaming — in the Enron matter, the White House Counsel’s Office issued a request to all personnel to save their emails and phone logs and that kind of thing. That was proactive. Has that been done here? And, if not, why not?

MR. McCLELLAN: There had been some information there that we were pursuing to find out more about what contacts there had been. Again, there has been no information brought to our attention, beyond what is in the media reports, to suggest White House involvement.

Q So at this point there has been no request from the Chief of Staff’s Office, from the President, for White House personnel to save emails, to save phone logs, to recall and account meetings and —

MR. McCLELLAN: Again, if the Justice Department made a request of us, of course we would always cooperate. It is the appropriate place for the Department of Justice to look into this. I believe we did receive some request previously on that matter.

It’s not so much that they don’t think that questioning staffers would be a good idea as that it would just be so hard.

MR. McCLELLAN: But I think we could go down the White House directory of every single staff member and play that game. I’m not going to do that. What I’ve made clear is that if anybody has information relating to this, they need to report it to the Department of Justice, and the Department of Justice should pursue it to the fullest. It is a serious matter. But I’m not going to go down a list of every single staffer in the White House, when there’s not specific information that has been brought to my attention to suggest —

Even though the White House says that they haven’t talked to a single staffer about this, they’re quite certain that advisor Karl Rove didn’t have anything to do with it.

Q All right. Let me just follow up. You said this morning, “The President knows” that Karl Rove wasn’t involved. How does he know that?

MR. McCLELLAN: Well, I’ve made it very clear that it was a ridiculous suggestion in the first place. I saw some comments this morning from the person who made that suggestion, backing away from that. And I said it is simply not true. So, I mean, it’s public knowledge. I’ve said that it’s not true. And I have spoken with Karl Rove —

Q But how does —

MR. McCLELLAN: I’m not going to get into conversations that the President has with advisors or staff or anything of that nature; that’s not my practice.

Q But the President has a factual basis for knowing that Karl Rove —

MR. McCLELLAN: I said it publicly. I said that —

Q But I’m not asking what you said, I’m asking if the President has a factual basis for saying — for your statement that he knows Karl Rove —

MR. McCLELLAN: He’s aware of what I’ve said, that there is simply no truth to that suggestion.

[…]

Q Scott, just a couple quick clarifications. Weeks ago, when you were first asked whether Mr. Rove had the conversation with Robert Novak that produced the column, you dismissed it as ridiculous. And I wanted just to make sure, at that time, had you talked to Karl?

MR. McCLELLAN: I’ve made it very clear, from the beginning, that it is totally ridiculous. I’ve known Karl for a long time, and I didn’t even need to go ask Karl, because I know the kind of person that he is, and he is someone that is committed to the highest standards of conduct.

Q Have you read any book about him lately?

Q — have a subsequent conversation with Mr. Rove in order to say that you had this conversation —

MR. McCLELLAN: I have spoken with Karl about this matter and I’ve already addressed it.

Q When did you talk to him? Weeks ago, or this weekend?

MR. McCLELLAN: What I said then still applies today, and that’s what I’ve made clear.

[…]

Q Can you say for the record whether Mr. Rove possessed the information about Mr. Wilson’s wife, but merely did not talk to anybody about it? Do you know whether for a fact he knew —

MR. McCLELLAN: I don’t know whether or not — I mean, I’m sure he probably saw the same media reports everybody else in this room has.

Q When you talked to Mr. Rove, did you discuss, did you ever have this information, could you have talked to him?

MR. McCLELLAN: We’re going down a lot of different roads here. I’ve made it very clear that he was not involved, that there’s no truth to the suggestion that he was.

Q Well, I’m trying to ask how —

MR. McCLELLAN: And, again, I said I didn’t — it is not something I needed to ask him, but I like to, like you do, verify things and make sure that it is completely accurate. But I knew that Karl would not be involved in something like this.

Q And that conversation that you had with Karl was this weekend? Or when was it?

MR. McCLELLAN: I’m sorry? No, I’ve had conversations with him previously. I’m going to leave it at that.

In fact, they’re even doubting that a leak really happened, without even attempting to answer the question of how, in fact, Bob Novak got this information. Here’s one question along those lines:

Q But, Scott, something like this did happen, right? Bob Novak had information he should not have had, that he was not authorized to have. So something —

MR. McCLELLAN: Terry, all I can tell you is what I’ve seen in the media reports. And I’ve seen different statements in the media reports from, the CIA hasn’t confirmed or denied that this was a covert agent for the CIA; I’ve seen media reports to suggest that it was referred to the Department of Justice, and that — and comments the Department of Justice would look into it.

Does the White House know if this woman is really in the CIA? They don’t know — they haven’t even picked up the phone to call the CIA and ask.

Q All the President has to do is pick up the phone and call a meeting here and find out. And if they all say, we didn’t do it, he also can call the CIA. What is the big barrier?

MR. McCLELLAN: Because the Justice Department is the appropriate agency to look into a matter like this.

Whenever the questioning gets too tough, McClellan falls back on demanding that the journalists act as the investigators here, in lieu of the White House. He does this over and over again.

Q Are you doubting that the leak came from the White House directly? I mean, you seem to have been casting doubt throughout this whole conversation. I mean, you talked about —

MR. McCLELLAN: I’m telling you the facts. The fact is that we don’t have any information beyond what we’ve seen in the media reports to suggest White House involvement.

Q It seems like the White House — you’re sort of operating on an honor system, almost a do not — look, don’t ask, don’t tell system, when it comes to this.

MR. McCLELLAN: Well, if there is specific information that you have to bring to our attention, please do so. But —

Q That’s the core question. You keep on saying, you keep pointing the finger at us to step forward with information. I mean, you’re asking us to come forward and reveal things, but you haven’t asked the White House staff to —

MR. McCLELLAN: You’re a reporter and you recognize that there are stories written all the time, with all sorts of accusations and all sorts of allegations, a lot of times from anonymous sources. If we spent all our time going through all those stories and trying to track down information, we couldn’t keep our focus where it needs to be, which is on the people’s business.

McClellan insists over and over that any investigation — even as simple as asking the top dozens folks in the White House if they leaked this — is up to the Department of Justice. This is the DoJ that’s headed by John Ashcroft, a man that is currently on a tour of the U.S. campaigning for President Bush. The very idea that Ashcroft is in any way capable of independently investigating this is laughable.

Q Do you see any need to appoint a special counsel for this case, as some Democrats are demanding?

MR. McCLELLAN: At this point, I think the Department of Justice would be the appropriate one to look into a matter like this.

Q Can I follow up on that? Does that mean that you would say to the Attorney General, whose responsibility it is to determine whether a special or outside counsel is necessary, that you believe it is not necessary at this point?

MR. McCLELLAN: There are a lot of career professionals at the Department of Justice that address matters like this. I have made it clear that they’re the ones, that if something like this happened, should look into it. You need to direct that question to the Department of Justice. It would be a Justice Department matter; it wouldn’t be our place to get involved in that.

Q But wouldn’t you like to see all questions about the independence of any investigation taken care of by putting it in the hands of somebody who has no formal statements out there?

MR. McCLELLAN: Well, but I think we’re assuming certain things have happened.

All of this looks very, very bad for the Bush administration, of course. In no small part because this is the very opposite of what Bush claimed that his White House would be all about.

Q Scott, what do you say to people out there who are watching this, perhaps, and saying, you know, I voted for George Bush because he promised to change the way things work in Washington. And, yet, his spokesman —

MR. McCLELLAN: And he has.

Q — and, yet, his spokesman is saying that there’s no internal, even, questioning of whether or not people were involved in this and he’s just letting that be handled at the Justice Department, and letting it be more of a criminal investigation, as opposed to almost an ethical —

MR. McCLELLAN: Dana, I mean, think about what you’re asking. If you have specific information to bring to our attention —

If this situation seems familiar, it’s because the Clinton White House went through the same thing with Whitewater. There was the same clamor, similar complaints that Attorney General Janet Reno could not impartially investigate her boss, and the same dodge. Dodging the independent counsel was a big mistake, because it made it look like the White House had something to find. Ultimately, the Clinton White House capitulated, a special counsel was appointed and, of course, the Clintons were ultimately exonerated. But it looked really bad for a long time, because the initial reaction was to refuse to cooperate and to refuse to permit a special counsel to be appointed. One reporter dared make this comparison:

Q Scott, the statement you gave about why there shouldn’t be a special prosecutor was almost word for word what the Clinton people said in 1994 about why there shouldn’t be a special prosecutor in Whitewater. Why should it stand now if it didn’t stand then?

MR. McCLELLAN: Ken, I just reject that comparison.

Q You can reject it, but it is the same issue. Why is —

MR. McCLELLAN: Do you have specific information to suggest White House involvement?

Q No, but why —

MR. McCLELLAN: Do you have any information to suggest White House involvement?

Q My issue — the issue is the credibility —

MR. McCLELLAN: Well, bring it to my attention if you have information. But there’s no information we have beyond the media reports to suggest White House involvement.

The White House can claim to reject that comparison, but if they’re smart, they’ll start studying that comparison mighty closely. If the Bush White House distaste for the Clinton White House extends so far as to refuse to learn from their mistakes, then they’re headed for certain disaster.

Published by Waldo Jaquith

Waldo Jaquith (JAKE-with) is an open government technologist who lives near Char­lottes­­ville, VA, USA. more »