Swallow This, Deep Throat

She was gathering some “background” that doubtless will be of use to the former officer in some forthcoming broadcast. The “backgrounding” she provides is quite different from that offered by the Bush administration — even when it comes from the president himself.

“Bush’s views emerged from an unusual 80-minute session in the Oval Office with five network correspondents who agreed that his comments would not be directly quoted or attributed to him,” noted journalist Mike Allen in a March 3 Washington Post story ( “In Private, Bush Sees Kerry as Formidable Foe”). In other words, Bush offered information with the proviso that the pretense be made that said information wasn’t coming from him. Kind of like a ventriloquist — with the press as the dummy.

A similar deal broke apart on March 24, when, in the middle of the hearings on the events of September 11, Fox News Channel, whose connections to the Republican party and the Bush White House are scarcely a matter of dispute, disclosed a transcript of a soundbite from a backgrounding session given by chief counter-terrorist official and present critic of the Bush administration Richard A. Clarke. In January of 2003, the late Michael Kelley provided a typical account of this very “backgrounding” — putting forth administration policy on Saddam Hussein without disclosing the fact that Clarke was the one delivering the White House “talking points” — thus creating the impression that he once personally supported an administration line he now criticizes.

For in his position as “backgrounder,” Richard Clarke was serving as the most hallowed of the unnamed — “sources close to the White House.” Administration after administration has utilized this shadow vehicle (comparable to the black-clad retainers in Japan’s Bunraku puppet theater), the better to make statements that it won’t be interrogated on — for a willing press has exchanged its voice for the “get” of the story.

That is until the pathologically resentful Bush administration elected to burn the bridges of tradition, the better to strike back at a perceived enemy.

“We asked them to lift the rules, and for obvious reasons they did,” Jim Angle of Fox News has remarked of the imbroglio. And since the “rules” were “lifted” and precedent was broken, it therefore means that now all bets are off when it comes to attribution. Because of what the White House has done to “punish” a “disloyal” ex-employee, there is no reason whatsoever for a reporter to pledge confidentiality about anything. Lou Grant and Mary Richards would certainly agree that nothing less than complete candor and specified attribution will do.

After all, it’s part and parcel of “the public trust.”