Scott McClellan's White House memoir remained the top media story in the country for another day. With former White House aides leading the charge against the book, McClellan emerged from the shadows to sit down for interviews with all three networks and several major newspapers only this time as a full-fledged critic of President Bush's policies. The story took a markedly political turn yesterday. In a sign of the former aide's political transformation, he told interviewers that he is "intrigued" by Sen. Barack Obama's presidential candidacy. ABC World News noted McClellan is "even considering voting for a Democrat." McClellan: "I'm intrigued by Senator Obama's message," but "I haven't made any decision." The statement was repeated almost verbatim in other interviews.
Meanwhile, the conservative Wall Street Journal editorial page this morning makes allegations that place the story squarely in the middle of this year's presidential election. The Journal writes, "You can tell the Democratic presidential race is all but over. Cable television has returned to 24/7 coverage of whether President Bush lied us into war in Iraq. The latest peg is the Texan-bites-Bush story of former White House press secretary Scott McClellan's memoir. ... We'd merely note that the book's publisher is PublicAffairs, an imprint founded by left-wing editor Peter Osnos and which has published six books by George Soros. PublicAffairs is owned by Perseus Books, which is owned by Perseus LLC, a merchant bank whose board includes Democrats Richard Holbrooke and Jim Johnson, who is now doing Barack Obama's vice presidential vetting. One of Perseus's investment funds, Perseus-Soros Biopharmaceutical, is co-managed with Mr. Soros."
Moreover, the Los Angeles Times editorializes this morning that "the person who needs to respond to McClellan's charges is not George W. Bush but John McCain." McCain's "ideas on how and when to end the war matter more now than his vote to give the president the power to wage it. But voters should know whether he believes the invasion was a strategic mistake." Adds the Times, "If McCain wants to be taken seriously as a more honest, competent and moderate Republican than Bush, he's going to have to answer some of the questions he has avoided," dealing with the run-up to war and the White House's treatment of "dissenters."
ABC World News noted McClellan said "his change of heart" about Bush "came after only a lot of soul-searching and truth-seeking." McClellan was shown saying, "This was a presidency that veered badly off course. It was something that all of us would have preferred didn't happen." Asked about his "loyalty" to Bush, the former aide said, "No one questioned my loyalty to the President when I was there," but now "it's a higher loyalty. It's a loyalty to the truth. It's a loyalty to the values I was raised upon." Of Bush, he said, "I have a lot of personal affection for him. I think, in terms of some of his policies, he was misguided." McClellan repeated the loyalty line on the CBS Evening News.
USA Today also conducted a phone interview with McClellan. McClellan "cited 'two defining moments' that led to his becoming 'disillusioned with the way the White House operated.' One involved claims by White House aides Karl Rove and Scooter Libby that they had nothing to do with news leaks about Plame. ... The second event occurred in April of 2006, just before his departure." Bush "told McClellan he had authorized the leak of parts of a secret intelligence report on Iraq, even though the administration had publicly opposed such selective disclosure of classified information." But the AP reports that in an AP interview, "McClellan said Bush 'still clings to the hope that history is going to vindicate him.'" He added, "I would welcome such a development."
That Was Then, This Is Now NBC Nightly News noted that "if the knock on McClellan is: 'why didn't he speak up sooner?,' it should sound familiar. Here's what then press secretary said four years ago when asked about counterterror adviser Richard Clarke's critical book about the President." McClellan was shown saying, "Why all of a sudden if he had all these grave concerns did he not raise these sooner? This is one and a half years after he left the Administration. Now all of a sudden, he's raising these grave concerns that he claims he had."
Yet yesterday Clarke was among McClellan's defenders, saying on Comedy Central's Daily Show, "It's like an echo chamber. I turned on the TV the other day and there were White House people saying he is a disgruntled ex-employee, that he is out of the loop. ... I think there is a little box in the White House that says, 'If anybody escapes from the White House and tells the truth, break this box and take out these talking points...say he is a disgruntled employee, say it is an election year and he is trying to sell books.'"
White House Criticism Cast As Orchestrated. Some stories this morning focus on the continuing criticism of McClellan. The New York Times remarks on the "kind of public excommunication of Mr. McClellan by some of the people he once worked most closely," whose "cries of betrayal from former aides served as a stern warning to other potential turncoats that, despite some well-publicized cracks, the Bush inner circle remains tight. Their language was so similar that the collective reaction amounted to a big inside-the-Beltway echo chamber." The Times adds, "All seemed to take their cues from Dana Perino, the current press secretary. Ms. Perino used the words 'sad' and 'puzzled' to describe the White House response, as if Mr. McClellan had undergone some kind of emotional breakdown, while making the case that if Mr. McClellan had problems with Mr. Bush he should have raised them while in the president's employ." And "all seemed to suggest that maybe Mr. McClellan had been hijacked by liberal New York book editors who prodded him to turn out a memoir that did not reflect his own beliefs." USA Today and Christian Science Monitor also touch on the White House response to McClellan.
The Washington Post, meanwhile, reports on McClellan's motives for writing the book, and concludes they may be warranted: "One wonders whether this book would have been written were it not for the deep resentment he harbors toward those involved, particularly Karl Rove and Scooter Libby but also the president and vice president, for allowing -- even encouraging -- him to stand in the White House briefing room and unknowingly give out false information." The Washington Post also reports, "There are a number of signs that McClellan's focus hardened over time. A book cover still depicted yesterday on Amazon.com, for example, had the subtitle ending with 'What's Wrong with Washington' rather than 'Washington's Culture of Deception.'"
USA Today reports May 2008 "has been one of the least violent months of the Iraq war." So far, "eighteen US servicemembers have been identified as having died in Iraq so far in May, according to the Pentagon. To date, the least deadly month of the five-year war was February 2004, when 21 US troops were killed in a 29-day period. The number of wounded also has fallen." And "overall, militant attacks in Iraq have dropped to levels not seen since spring 2004, US military spokesman Rear Adm. Patrick Driscoll said this week. Attacks are down 70% since President Bush ordered a US troop increase, or 'surge,' early last year."
That is not to say the situation doesn't remain volatile and violent. The New York Times reports "Sunni guerrillas struck several times in northern Iraq, killing at least 19 people in two suicide bombings. Gunmen near Tikrit also used a water tanker to attack an Iraqi checkpoint, but the Iraqi security forces repelled the assault and killed 14 attackers." And the Christian Science Monitor runs a dramatic story about rogue Shiite fighters terrorizing residents of the Risala neighborhood of Baghdad.
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The Washington Post reports on its front page, "Less than a year after his agency warned of new threats from a resurgent al-Qaeda, CIA Director Michael V. Hayden now portrays the terrorist movement as essentially defeated in Iraq and Saudi Arabia and on the defensive throughout much of the rest of the world, including in its presumed haven along the Afghanistan-Pakistan border." In "a strikingly upbeat assessment, the CIA chief cited major gains against al-Qaeda's allies in the Middle East and an increasingly successful campaign to destabilize the group's core leadership."
Also this morning, novelist and Fordham law professor Thane Rosenbaum writes in the Wall Street Journal, "With President Bush-bashing still a national pastime, it's notable how much international terrorism has been forgotten, and how little credit the president has received for keeping Americans safe. ... Terrorism is now largely off the table in the minds of most Americans," and "in gearing up to elect a new president, we are left to wonder how, in spite of numerous failed policies and poor judgment, President Bush's greatest achievement was denied to him by people who ungratefully availed themselves of the protection that his administration provided."
In an exclusive Web report, ABC News reports "senior US officials" tell the network "that in recent months there have been secret contacts between the Iranian government and the leadership of al Qaeda," a "development that has caught the attention of top officials in the White House, the Pentagon and the intelligence community." According to US officials "familiar with highly sensitive intelligence on this issue, the contacts are on the status of high-level al Qaeda operatives, including two of Osama Bin Laden's sons, who have been under house arrest in Iran since 2003." US officials "don't believe Iran will allow these operatives to go free, but said they don't know Iran's motivation for initiating the talks." One US official told ABC News, "Iran likely sees these individuals as major bargaining chips," but "how and when they're going to use those chips or whether they are going to keep them in the bank is part of an ongoing strategic discussion they are having internally."
Nuclear Development Reaches "Threshold." The story comes on the heels of reports that scientists and analysts believe Iran close to a "threshold" in its nuclear development. The Financial Times reports this morning "Iran's nuclear programme has made big strides in recent months and the country is on course to pass an important threshold for nuclear weapons capability next year, scientists and analysts say." The Times adds "several leading experts say that Iran is now twice as effective in enriching uranium than before, based on a report this week by the International Atomic Energy Agency, the United Nations' nuclear watchdog." They "add that during the course of next year Iran is likely to have built up a stockpile of enriched uranium that in theory could be turned into enough fissile material for a bomb in a matter of months."
Tehran Says It Could Talk With Next US President The Financial Times reports, "Officially only one of a number of advisers to Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Mojtaba Samareh-Hashemi is nevertheless described as the Iranian president's 'mentor' or at least his right-hand man." In a "rare interview," Samareh "suggests that Iran could talk to the US no matter who wins November's presidential polls -- but only on equal terms."
In a 5,800-word cover story, National Journal is reporting that "computer hackers in China, including those working on behalf of the Chinese government and military, have penetrated deeply into the information systems of US companies and government agencies, stolen proprietary information from American executives in advance of their business meetings in China, and, in a few cases, gained access to electric power plants in the United States, possibly triggering two recent and widespread blackouts in Florida and the Northeast, according to US government officials and computer-security experts." Tim Bennett, the former president of the Cyber Security Industry Alliance, "said that US intelligence officials have told him that the" People's Liberation Army "in 2003 gained access to a network that controlled electric power systems serving the northeastern United States." Bennett "also said that a blackout in February, which affected 3 million customers in South Florida, was precipitated by a cyber hacker" and China may have "played a role."
China Suspected Of Copying Commerce Department Laptop In a story published by at least 450 media outlets, the AP reports, "U.S. authorities are investigating whether Chinese officials secretly copied the contents of a government laptop computer during a visit to China by Commerce Secretary Carlos M. Gutierrez and used the information to try to hack into Commerce computers, officials and industry experts told The Associated Press. Surreptitious copying is believed to have occurred when a laptop was left unattended during Gutierrez's trip to Beijing for trade talks in December, people familiar with the incident told the AP."
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The New York Times reports, "Hoping to bring their party's presidential nomination fight to an end, the two top Democrats in Congress said they were pressing superdelegates who had yet to declare a preference in the race to make their choice public by the middle of next week." Party officials said Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid "had been contacting uncommitted superdelegates, encouraging them to prepare to go public and resolve any last question about the contest between" Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton.
The Washington Times reports Reid said, "By this time next week, it will all be over give or take a day." The AP reports Democratic officials "said Pelosi already has begun contacting uncommitted House members urging them to weigh in soon after the primary season ends. Numerous Democrats have expressed concern that a protracted nominating campaign could harm the party's chances of winning the White House in the fall." Slightly fewer "than 200 superdelegates remain uncommitted, including 64 members of Congress."
Despite Odds, Loyalists Stay With Clinton The Wall Street Journal reports the "political brawling between Barack Obama and John McCain is threatening to shunt Hillary Clinton aside even before the Democratic primaries are over. But her staunchest supporters still pack her rallies, swarm her rope-line for autographs and brandish signs urging her to keep running." The Clinton loyalists "tend to shrug off polls suggesting Sen. Obama is leading the last two Democratic primaries, in South Dakota and Montana on Tuesday."
The AP reports the Democratic presidential race "is heading into a fractious end game as supporters of Hillary Rodham Clinton mobilize for a protest Saturday to demand that the party count two outlawed primaries that favored her." Protesters "planned to rally outside the Washington hotel where the party's rules committee will tackle the vexing question of how to punish Michigan and Florida without completely disenfranchising Democratic primary voters from those states."
The Christian Science Monitor reports Democratic strategists "and other analysts foresee a resolution this weekend -- one that positions Obama to wrap up the nomination soon -- but there's always a chance Team Clinton opts to appeal to the party's credentials committee, which does not meet until summer. Its decision would then face ratification by the convention in late August, which opens up the possibility of a floor fight."
The Wall Street Journal notes that last year, Harold Ickes, "a Democratic Party rules committee member and key adviser to Hillary Clinton, voted to strip Florida and Michigan of their convention votes for holding primaries too early in the season." But when the rules committee "meets this weekend, Mr. Ickes -- still on the committee and still a Clinton adviser -- will argue the Florida and Michigan votes should be reinstated in a way that would give the New York senator a huge boost."
The AP reports John McCain is "increasingly uttering campaign trail criticisms, previewing likely themes and laying the foundation for an eventual full-blown effort to try to ill define -- and derail" Barack Obama. McCain's "sweeping claim that Obama is unprepared to lead the country and incapable of making necessary tough decisions reminds voters that the Illinois senator is in the midst of his first term -- and also insinuates that he's too young to be president at age 46." These days, "it's rare for McCain to pass up an opportunity to make the inexperience argument."
The Washington Post reports in a front-page story that after a "strong push from" McCain's "allies, the war in Iraq has moved back to center stage in the presidential election, with McCain attacking Sen. Barack Obama for making up his mind about the war without visiting the war zone and Obama charging that McCain has yet to learn the lessons of President Bush's mistakes." The Financial Times reports McCain "has stepped up his attacks against Mr Obama's plans for withdrawal" from Iraq "in recent days, as he attempts to transform his support for the unpopular war from a liability into an electoral advantage."
McCain Chose House Instead Of Admiralty The major dailies have begun running extensive profiles of John McCain, some of which are turning up interesting new facts about the GOP nominee-in-waiting. The New York Times reports in a front-page story that at a "meeting in his Pentagon office in early 1981, Secretary of the Navy John F. Lehman told Capt. John S. McCain III that he was about to attain his life ambition: selection for admiral." But McCain, "the son and grandson of revered Navy admirals, was having second thoughts about following his family's vocation." With Sen. John G. Tower's "encouragement, Mr. McCain declined the prospect of his first admiral's star to make a run for Congress, saying that he could 'do more good there.'" And the Los Angeles Times reports in a front-page story that when McCain arrived in Mesa, Arizona "nearly three decades ago, he was weighed down with enough negatives to sink most budding politicians."
The AP reports Barack Obama "said Thursday that he was 'deeply disappointed' by a supporter's sermon at his church that mocked Hillary Rodham Clinton." The Rev. Michael Pfleger, "a Chicago activist, also apologized for last Sunday's sermon at Obama's church, in which he said Clinton's eyes welled with tears before the New Hampshire primary because she felt 'entitled' to the Democratic nomination and because 'there's a black man stealing my show.'"
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The Politico reports Barack Obama's "favorability ratings among white women have declined significantly in recent months, particularly among Democrats and independents, presenting an immediate obstacle for the likely Democratic nominee as he moves to shore up his party's base." According to "a new report by The Pew Research Center for the People & the Press, half of white women now have a negative perception of Obama."
In his Washington Post column, E.J. Dionne says, "How much anger is there among women about how Hillary Clinton has been treated during this campaign? Some of the nation's leading female politicians will tell you: quite a lot." If there "is good news for Barack Obama in any of this, it is that the rage felt by Clinton's female supporters is directed in large part toward the media."
USA Today reports Barack Obama "released a terse health summary from his longtime physician Thursday that pronounced the Illinois senator in 'excellent health' as he struggles to quit smoking." The "six-paragraph statement from the Obama campaign contrasted sharply with last week's release by Republican presidential candidate John McCain, who allowed select reporters to review more than 1,000 pages of medical records." The release drew the attention of each of the networks. ABC World News said the statement "shows his blood pressure, cholesterol, and tests for prostate cancer, are all within normal limits. And there's no sign of heart trouble."
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Once again, the late-night talk-shows were re-runs last night.
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