1115.org

It’s funny how Bush has managed to remain so totally in the dark about key matters of national security. Both when it came to the Iran NIE estimate and the CIA torture tapes, Bush was the last person in the White House to be put in the picture.

A new NYT report on the torture tapes makes this nobody-ever-told-me-ha-ha defense look even more preposterous than it was looking already:

At least four top White House lawyers took part in discussions with the Central Intelligence Agency between 2003 and 2005 about whether to destroy videotapes showing the secret interrogations of two operatives from Al Qaeda, according to current and former administration and intelligence officials.

The accounts indicate that the involvement of White House officials in the discussions before the destruction of the tapes in November 2005 was more extensive than Bush administration officials have acknowledged.

Those who took part, the officials said, included Alberto R. Gonzales, who served as White House counsel until early 2005; David S. Addington, who was the counsel to Vice President Dick Cheney and is now his chief of staff; John B. Bellinger III, who until January 2005 was the senior lawyer at the National Security Council; and Harriet E. Miers, who succeeded Mr. Gonzales as White House counsel.

Bush was personally invested in Abu Zubaydah’s interrogation, yet nobody ever told him there were videotapes of the interrogation. Nobody ever showed them to him. Nobody asked him whether they could be destroyed. Nobody told him they had been destroyed.

Even his nearest and dearest aides in the White House, who were fully in the picture, never told him a word.

This is the President of the United States. The guy who receives a daily intelligence briefing designed precisely to inform him about stuff like this.

If he was really kept so totally in the dark about the torture tapes (and the NIE estimates), a hell of a lot of heads should have rolled. They haven’t.

*** Update, 7:36 am ***

The White House has reacted very strongly to the NYT story. In fact, Perino is totally pissed. So pissed that she totally forgot that she’s not allowed to comment on the story at all any more.

The New York Times today implies that the White House has been misleading in publicly acknowledging or discussing details related to the CIA’s decision to destroy interrogation tapes.

The sub-headline of the story inaccurately says that the “White House Role Was Wider Than It Said”, and the story states that “…the involvement of White House officials in the discussions before the destruction of the tapes…was more extensive than Bush administration officials have acknowledged.”

Under direction from the White House General Counsel while the Department of Justice and the CIA Inspector General conduct a preliminary inquiry, we have not publicly commented on facts relating to this issue, except to note President Bush’s immediate reaction upon being briefed on the matter. Furthermore, we have not described – neither to highlight, nor to minimize — the role or deliberations of White House officials in this matter.

The New York Times’ inference that there is an effort to mislead in this matter is pernicious and troubling, and we are formally requesting that NYT correct the sub-headline of this story.

A little later, with a straight face, she goes: “We will continue to decline to comment on this issue, and in response to misleading press reports.”

(Incidentally, she was so pissed that she lapsed into some really bizarre grammar:

It will not be surprising that this matter will be reported with a reliance on un-named sources and individuals lacking a full availability of the facts — and, as the New York Times story itself acknowledges, some of these sources will have wildly conflicting accounts of the facts. We will instead focus our efforts on supporting the preliminary inquiry underway, where facts can be gathered without bias or influence and later disseminated in an appropriate fashion.

You will not have failed to be surprised by the fact that as far as Perino is concerned there’s only a single inquiry under way. Or maybe she only meant that the White House will support one and obstruct all the others. Which, come to think of it, is exactly what they have been doing.)