Pioneering blog celebrates a year in the White House

In March of 2005, BTC News succeeded in gaining access to the White House press room for Eric Brewer, who instantly became our senior White House correspondent. Since then, he has attended perhaps two dozen briefings and asked some of the best questions posed by anyone in the room, knocking White House press secretary Scott McClellan off balance and off message on a few occasions, and getting some actually revealing answers on a few others.

Eric was the first reporter in the press room to bring up the Downing Street Memo, the minutes of a July, 2002 meeting among senior British officials who described a Bush administration determined to invade Iraq regardless the evidence or the outcome of diplomatic efforts. He managed to elicit a non-denial about the accuracy of the British take on the situation from McClellan.

He has twice queried McClellan (here and here) about the increase in worldwide terrorism incidents during the past two years — something other reporters seem to have little interest in exploring — and, in one of the most comical moments of his brief career, got McClellan to insist that there was no conflict between the claims by Bush and intelligence czar John Negroponte that Iran is arming Iraqi insurgents with sophisticated roadside bombs and the statement by joint chiefs chairman Peter Pace that there’s no evidence Iran is doing any such thing.

Eric’s first question, on April 1 of last year, attracted the notice of Washington Post columnist Dan Froomkin.

The second blogger allowed into the White House briefing room became the first blogger to actually ask press secretary Scott McClellan a question last week.

Eric Brewer, a scientist by trade and one of a handful of contributors to a small, liberal blog called BTC News, got his chance toward the end of Friday’s briefing.

The question he asked was a good one, on a topic that’s probably of great interest to an awful lot of people.

It’s also precisely the kind of question your typical full-time White House correspondent doesn’t ask anymore — because there’s simply no point. You’re not going to get an answer.

Here’s the question Brewer asked, by his own account in a shaky voice:

“Back to the report on the botched WMD intelligence, have the massive intelligence failures documented in the report caused the President to rethink his policy of preventive war?”

It’s a good question because the doctrine of preemption is one of the most defining and precedent-shattering elements of the Bush canon. The apparently sorry state of the U.S. intelligence apparatus makes it entirely unclear whether the doctrine is still in effect — and under what circumstances it could again be called into service.

In fact, it’s a question that not only many Americans, but also many people across the world, would probably like answered.

But the response, such as it was, was classic McClellan. In fact, it could literally have been stitched together from previous McClellan responses to similar questions.

Here’s what McClellan said, from the transcript. You can click on each phrase to see how many times he’s used those same words before in previous briefings [see the Froomkin story for the links - ed.].

“You know, September 11th taught us a very important lesson, and that lesson was that we must confront threats before it is too late. If we had known of those attacks ahead of time, we would have moved heaven and earth to prevent them from happening. This President will not hesitate when it comes to protecting the American people. And in the post-September 11th world that we live in, the consequences of underestimating the threat we face is too high. It’s tens of — possibly tens of thousands of lives.

Brewer followed up: “What about the cost of overestimating?”

McClellan: “Are you talking about the Iraq situation?”

Brewer: “Going into Iraq, yes, with bad intelligence.”

McClellan: I think we’ve talked about this before.The world is safer with Saddam Hussein’s regime removed from power. The Iraqi people are serving as an example to the rest of the Middle East through their courage and determination to build a free future.”

And at this point, Hearst columnist Helen Thomas piped in:

“The ones that are alive, you mean?”

Of course that question has additional resonance today, given the rapidly escalating war of words between Iran and the US over the former’s nuclear research program, and given what we now know to be the singular lack of regard for, or perhaps conversance with, reality that characterizes the Bush administration’s approach to foreign policy.

McClellan has the habit of refusing to call on Eric for a week or two after an annoying question, which most of them are. Despite that, Eric persists in showing up armed with good questions that, one way or another, inspire a response that’s worth reporting. It’s been a good year, and we’re looking forward to another.