Tuesday, June 27, 2006

"We Are Going To Be Perfectly Circular With You Here:" Another Political Parlor Trick Exposed By The Perpetrators

If there was a second whitehouse beat reporter that I enjoy after Helen Thomas, it's Victoria (I don't know what her last name is. Does any one out there know?). Well, okay, except for Lester (also don't know his last name), for entertainment value, maybe.

You have to love it when the Press Secretary exposes himself in public and then identifies the political parlor tricks (for which the W, Rove and Co. claim to have such disdain)they will used to keep the American people in the dark. Enjoy:
Victoria.

Q I talked yesterday with somebody from the NSC about the telephone records being handed over -- by the telephone companies to the NSA. And they wouldn't confirm or deny the existence of the program.

MR. SNOW: Right.

Q Now, as far as the SWIFT financial records issue that was reported in The New York Times, you seem to have confirmed the existence of that program by the way that you've been talking from the podium.

MR. SNOW: That is correct.

Q So if that's the case, and the telephone records program was written about also in The New York Times and in USA Today, why not just go ahead and either confirm or deny the existence of this program and just lay the whole thing to rest?

MR. SNOW: Because we are neither going to confirm, nor deny. We are going to be perfectly circular with you here. But having neither confirmed, nor denied before, we're not going to do it. In the particular case with The New York Times, there was a concerted effort to lay before the newspaper the full facts and to try to make the argument that while it might make a good story, it's bad in terms of national security. As far as the other program, we just have never confirmed or denied the details.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...


Terrorists don't believe Bush either

On the link: Q One quick follow-up. Two weeks after 9/11, or approximately two weeks after 9/11, the President announced that the U.S., through the Treasury Department, was going to be reaching out to banks all over the world and trying to freeze terrorist assets, and also get all information they can. And if the banks did not comply, the U.S. would stop doing business with those banks. So is it not -- I mean, wasn't the message sent right then and there that --

You heard it here first, Department of:

The White House has a secret program to collect everyone's garbage.

That's right, White House operatives are going through your trash looking to connect you to Al Quaeda. When the New York Times exposes this secret program, will the White House confirm its existence? ''... having neither confirmed, nor denied before, we're not going to do it, but the US is safer now because your President has taken steps to protect you.''

Anonymous said...

I have this mental picture of Ving Rhames (the character he played in Pulp Fiction) saying, "I gonna get me some hard pipe-hitting politicos, and we're gonna go 'circular' on yo ass."