White House press secretary Scott McClellan tried today to distance the White House from a Pentagon report tying White House personnel to a scandal that has already seen a former Pentagon procurement officer sent to prison in connection with fixing a contract award to aircraft manufacturing giant Boeing.

Meanwhile, Vice president Dick Cheney told CNN’s Larry King in a May 31 interview that the Iraq insurgency is “in the last throes.” Cheney becomes the most recent in a series of administration and military officials to announce the impending doom of the insurgents, beginning with Don Rumsfeld and Paul Wolfowitz in June of 2003 and culminating, at least for now, in Cheney’s optimistic remarks.

Cheney also said he believed the fighting in Iraq would end before the Bush administration leaves office in January of 2009, three and a half years from now, contrasting with joint chiefs of staff chairman Richard Meyers’ assessment from three months ago, when he told a group in Los Angeles that historically, insurgencies have persisted on average seven to twelve years. Meyers in turn was contradicting his own more cheerful assessment from two weeks earlier, when he told the Senate armed forces committee that the future for the insurgents was “absolutely bleak.”

Myers spoke before an increase in insurgent attacks in April and May killed more than 130 US troops and more than a thousand Iraqi civilians, policemen and army troops. Cheney’s remarks came on the heels of that violence. US officials have often pointed at spike in the level of violence as evidence of “desperation” on the part of the insurgents.

On June 18 at a joint press availability with then-Coalition Provisional Authority chief Jay Garner, who was about to be sacked in favor of Paul Bremer, secretary of defense Don Rumsfeld said that “there’s no question but that in those regions where pockets of dead- enders are trying to reconstitute, General Franks and his team are rooting them out.”

Rumsfeld went on to compare the situation in Baghdad with street crime in Washington, D.C., saying that “if Washington D.C. were size of Baghdad, we would be having something like 215 murders a month. And it is — there’s going to be violence in a big city.” That same day, deputy defense secretary Paul Wolfowitz told the House armed services committee that “I think these people [the insurgents] are the last remnants of a dying cause.”

One thing almost every US official is agreed upon is that none of them know how large a force the insurgents are capable of fielding, or who exactly is involved in it. Ten American soldiers have died so far in June, including 19 year old Carrie L. French of Caldwell, Idaho.

In today’s White House press briefing, a question from a reporter regarding possible White House involvement in the air tanker leasing scandal prompted one of the more astonishing exchanges in recent memory between reporters and McClellan.

Q Scott, a question about this Inspector General’s report, involving the lease deal between the Air Force and Boeing. In that report, there are 45 references to White House officials that have been deleted in the Inspector General’s report. And that has to do with White House officials’ involvement in this particular deal as it was being negotiated and then became more controversial. The question is, would the White House object to these names — the names of the White House officials in this report being unredacted, being made public? And, if not, would it, in fact, invoke executive privilege to keep those names — the names of those officials secret?

MR. McCLELLAN: Well, I think it was understood going in that this is a jurisdictional matter. The Inspector General for any department only has jurisdiction over that particular department.

Q So what?

Q I’m sorry, I guess I don’t understand — what does that have to do with —

MR. McCLELLAN: It’s the Inspector General for the Department of Defense, in this instance. They only have jurisdiction over their particular agency. We worked to help facilitate the investigation by the Inspector General, but this is a jurisdictional matter.

Q Is that to say that the White House will not allow those names to be made public?

MR. McCLELLAN: It’s a jurisdictional matter, and like I said, it was understood. I mean, I think it –

Q Is that a “yes” or a “no,” Scott?

MR. McCLELLAN: I think it was understood —

Q How is it a jurisdictional matter, for god’s sake?

MR. McCLELLAN: — that that information would not be part of the report. But the Inspector General had access to the information he needed to complete his report.

Q So who in the White House was involved in putting pressure to make sure this deal went through? The Washington Post reports and names Andy Card as having some conversations about it, perhaps pushing for the deal. Is that accurate? Were other officials within the White House involved in pushing the deal forward?

MR. McCLELLAN: No, I wouldn’t describe your characterization as accurate. In terms of Andy Card’s involvement, I’ve talked to that previously. He served, as he does on a host of issues, simply as an honest broker to make sure that all views were represented and to make sure that it was completed in a timely matter, because it was relating to a national security need that was pressing. And that was the extent of his role.

Q Would the White House invoke executive privilege to keep these names, the names of White House officials — and I don’t know how many we’re talking about, you could tell us — to keep those names from becoming public?

MR. McCLELLAN: Look, a couple of points. I think, as I said, it was understood the jurisdictional matter that is involved here, that that information would not be part of the report. The Inspector General had access to the information. Now, in terms of this issue, there was wrongdoing, and the people who were involved in that wrongdoing are being held to account; people are serving jail time because of what they did and others are being held to account for what they did in other ways. The Pentagon canceled the project, they canceled the contract. There are oversight measures that are in place when it comes to issues like this, and in this instance, those oversight measures worked to catch this and it enabled the Pentagon to cancel the contract.

Q So you deny any — any — improper interference in this negotiation on the part of any White House official?

MR. McCLELLAN: There has not been any suggestion of that whatsoever.

Q Then in the interest of transparency, why not make all those names public?

MR. McCLELLAN: Well, we have worked to provide Congress with information. We worked to facilitate the DOD investigation and congressional leaders have been looking at this, as well. As I said, those who were involved in wrongdoing are being held accountable.

Q But if White House officials were also involved in the conversation, by making the names public you could then assure everyone that no White House officials were involved in trying to persuade people to push this deal through.

MR. McCLELLAN: That’s what oversight measures are for. There are oversight protections in place to look at all these issues, both from Congress, as well as internally, with the Department of Defense. And in terms of this issue, it’s not related to anything that you’re bringing up, it’s related simply to a jurisdictional matter.

Q No, but if you fall back on the excuse that jurisdictional concerns prevent those names from being made public, you let us wonder whether there was any connection between any of the White House names in that report and any of the wrongdoing.

MR. McCLELLAN: Actually, that’s all been looked into and continues to be looked into by members of Congress. It was looked into by the Inspector General. The Inspector General, as I pointed out, had access to this information so that he could look at it, and look at it in the overall context, as well.

Q You’re suggesting that jurisdictional matters would have prevented him from doing any of that.

MR. McCLELLAN: Well, maybe if you have something to bring to my attention, you ought to bring it to my attention, but –

Q I’m asking you why you don’t want to be more transparent.

MR. McCLELLAN: The people who were involved in wrongdoing are being held to account.

BTC News is attempting to identify the more exasperated of the reporters so we can recommend him or her for a public service award.

McClellan’s response can be boiled down to this: “The White House is powerless in the face of the Air Force inspector general, who is unable to release the names of White House officials because they don’t fall under his jurisdiction. Further, we are working to provide those names to the appropriate personnel on the appropriate Congressional oversight committees. I’m saying this to give you the impression that we don’t actually have the names because they’re redacted from the report even though we provided them to the inspector general so that he could redact them from his report. Thank you.”

Downing Street Memo news: one reporter asked president Bush and Tony Blair whether some of the statements in the meeting minutes were accurate. The question was badly framed, and both heads of state answered in the negative.

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