1 Boring Old Man

Firings Had Genesis in White House

White House spokeswoman Dana Perino said that "it doesn’t appear the president was told about a list nor shown a list" of U.S. attorneys at any point in the discussions. She said White House political adviser Karl Rove had an early conversation with Miers about the idea of firing all chief prosecutors and did not think it was wise.

Bush mentioned complaints about voter-fraud investigations to Gonzales in a conversation in October 2006, Perino said. Gonzales does not recall the conversation, Justice Department officials said.

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Bush "believes informally he may have mentioned it to the AG during the meeting discussing other matters," Perino said. "White House officials including the president did not direct DOJ to take any specific action with regards to any specific U.S. attorney."

We’ve heard this kind of phraseology before. Careful wording that finds something that can be said that is, in itself, the truth but is used to tell a lie. For example, Karl Rove responded in the early invesigation of the outing of Valerie Plame that he never gave her "name" to anyone. The truth? He said Wilson’s "wife" or confirmed to reporters that she was a C.I.A. employee without using her specific name.

Now we have Dana Perino using careful, preplanned phrases, "it doesn’t appear that…" or "believes informally he may have mentioned it" or "did not direct DOJ to take any specific action." It’s doesn’t take an English Professor or a Psychoanalyst to parse this grammar. Each one is a way of disavowing some particular action that can’t be prosecuted as a lie, but obviously hides the real truth.

I’ve spent a year and a half jumping on each outrageous story that’s come out of Washington, in part to validate the obvious reality I [we] live with now. I don’t feel so compelled to prattle on about them any more. Finally, the newspapers are doing that for us again. And this story has their M.O. all over it: partisan political meddling; using some quietly inserted power to get around the Congress; careful covering of their tracks; nondenial denials, Administrative operatives avoiding their Constitutional responsibilities. Attorney General, Alberto Gonzales, and Bush’s Chief of Staff, Karl Rove, are embedded in this particular story up to their eyeballs.

This story "has legs" as they say, and in a chess game like this, the capture of a pawn and a bishop late in the game would be a cause for celebration!