Joseph L. Galloway and James Kuhnhenn tell an interesting story in today’s
Philadelphia Inquirer:
Concerned about the appearance of disarray and feuding within his administration as well as growing resistance to his policies in Iraq, President Bush - living up to his recent declaration that he is in charge - told his top officials to "stop the leaks" to the media, or else.
News of Bush's order leaked almost immediately.
Bush told his senior aides Tuesday that he "didn't want to see any stories" quoting unnamed administration officials in the media anymore, and that if he did, there would be consequences, said a senior administration official who asked that his name not be used. ….
The infighting, backstabbing and maneuvering on such major foreign-policy issues as North Korea, Syria, Iran and postwar Iraq have escalated to a level that veterans of government say they have not seen in years. At one point, the senior official said, Bush himself asked how bad it was.
There’s a story within the story further down in the Inquirer’s report – about Bush as tough-guy in meetings with selected Reps and Senators over the $87 billion for Iraq - which dKos alumnus Steve Gilliard handily
dissects. (Scroll to "No loan, grant")
But let's stick to leaks.
Even reporters with the mostly finely adjusted antennae face difficulties parsing noise from reality when it comes to White House politics. No journalist worth a damn has any illusions that, at this level, if careless, she or he is as likely to become a tool of policy-makers as a chronicler of behind-the-scenes events. It becomes a game of you-use-me-I’ll-use-you, the reporter always hoping to get neither burned nor snookered.
Especially is this so when some of the foxes bite each other publicly, as happened over the announcement of the plan to reorganize the missions in Afghanistan and Iraq. Wary on one hand, yet eager on the other to pierce the secrecy and deliver something fresh and interesting, perhaps explosive, reporters must perform a delicate evaluation of leaks and the leakers every time something gets passed along.
What’s the source have to gain? How accurate has s/he been in the past? Is the leak a “leak,” a gambit? And if it is a gambit, whose gambit? The leaker’s? The leaker’s boss? The person the leaker would like for a boss? Ultimately, for the reporter, it boils down to getting the "truth" out without becoming any Administration’s "useful idiot." We can all point to this or that reporter who we think has entered the latter ranks. As well as others who seem to have gladly embraced the role of shill.
With longstanding White House fault lines apparently cracking open and Bush looking vulnerable for the first time since 9-11, the leaks and the “leaks” may well become increasingly bizarre. As consumers of this stuff, our efforts to discern what’s really going on will become, if not easier, a lot more fun.