I went to the White House press briefing twice this week, on Thursday and Friday, hoping to get a response to the recent revelation in the London Sunday Times that, eight months before the Iraq invasion, “intelligence and facts were being fixed” to support Bush’s war plan.

On Thursday, the reporters in the two-thirds-full briefing room were buzzing with the previous day’s exciting Piper Cub flyby and accompanying panicked evacuations. There were a healthy 13 questions asked on that topic, including one that puzzled over the odd fact that Bush’s retinue, not wanting to disturb his bike ride, failed to inform the President of the incident until 36 minutes after it was over. Two reporters managed to get called on twice during this discussion, and they repeated the same questions they had asked half an hour earlier. Not much light was shed, however, as Scott’s response to all was that “protocols established after 9/11 had been followed” and “Bush was satisfied.” There were a couple of questions about Bolton’s advance to the full Senate, but no one but me was interested in the UK memo, in spite of the fact that the Los Angeles Times had picked up the story that morning. At the end of the 45-minute briefing, I was the only person who still had my hand up. The question the White House did not want to answer:

Last week the Sunday Times of London published the minutes of a British cabinet meeting that took place on July 23, 2002. According to the accompanying article, during the meeting Sir Richard Dearlove, the head of British Intelligence, reported to Prime Minister Blair the results of a meeting he had recently had with CIA director George Tenet to discuss Iraq. Dearlove told Blair that the Bush administration saw military action against Iraq as inevitable, and that “intelligence and facts were being fixed” to support that policy. Does the White House have a response to the disclosure that in the summer of 2002 it was fixing intelligence to support a pre-existing decision to go to war in Iraq?

I figured, though, that it was worth taking another shot, so I went back the next day. Friday was a slow news day–the room was only half full. There were six questions on the Bolton nomination and four on base closings, but again, even though the memo story had reached the Washington Post by then, nobody dared ask Scott about it. This time, Scott, not wanting to single me out, I suppose, stopped the briefing when three of us still had our hands up.

Hmm…I understand that Scott used to call on Jeff Gannon all the time. Maybe I should shell out fifty bucks for that 2-day journalism course from the Leadership Institute.

Like this post? Share it!