You would think practice would have made them perfect by now, but White House and State Department spokesmen are still having trouble smoothly pulling off false denials of media reports containing truths they are not allowed to admit to.
Ehud Olmert‘s yanking of Bush/Rice‘s chain over the U.N. Security Council resolution, and his juvenile bragging about it later, provides a perfect example.
The spoke-squirming started on Friday, after Rice abruptly abstained from voting on the Security Council resolution, but before Olmert bragged about how he has the President of The United States in his pocket.
Sean McCormack, State Department spokesman, spent a good long time at his daily press briefing on Friday trying to fend off criticism that the spin he was trying to give to Condi’s failure to vote for the resolution she had worked so hard to put together made no sense at all. Finally, he just seems to have thrown up his hands (this excerpt comes at the end of a long, futile run-around):
QUESTION: Well, what kind of message are you trying to send –
MR. MCCORMACK: The message we’re trying –
QUESTION: — with this abstention?
MR. MCCORMACK: The message we’re trying to send, Matt –
QUESTION: If you’re trying to confuse people, you’ve done a good job.
MR. MCCORMACK: We want an effective resolution to the situation on the ground, so that’s what we want.
QUESTION: So when the Secretary comes out, and you come out, and you say we support this resolution, we support the language in it, we support the goals, why – what message does it send when you don’t vote for it? I mean, it just – it’s completely inconsistent.
MR. MCCORMACK: Matt, well, you’re certainly welcome to your interpretation.
Yesterday, White House spokesmen got into the act. The best punch Gordon Johndroe could throw was: “I’ve seen these press reports, they are inaccurate”. He was unable to explain what part of them was inaccurate.
Deputy Press Secretary Tony Fratto went through the same unconvincing motions (but even more unconvincingly) at the morning press briefing:
Q Tony, President — Prime Minister Olmert says that it was a phone call from him to President Bush that forced President Bush to ask Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice to change the U.S. position on the resolution working its way through — on Gaza at the U.N. Security Council. Is that –
MR. FRATTO: Look, I think I’ve seen some of the reporting on this. I want to say that some of what we’ve seen is not accurate. I’m not going to get into discussing — I know the State Department has done that and Secretary Rice was asked about it last night. And I don’t really have more to add to it. But there is –
Q When you say reporting on this, I mean, these are actually Olmert’s words. I mean, he actually said this.
MR. FRATTO: Yes, there are inaccuracies.
Q In what Olmert said?
MR. FRATTO: Yes. (At this point Fratto was rescued by an unrelated question.)
He’s seen some of the reporting, and some of what he’s seen is not accurate? So Tony, is the some of the parts greater than the hole (the one you kept wishing would open up at your feet)?
Sean McCormack was grilled about Olmert’s statement yesterday at the State Department’s daily press briefing. His action plan was evidently to hypnotize reporters by repeating the phrase “100 percent” over and over again:
QUESTION: Yeah. Given Prime Minister Olmert’s comments yesterday, why should – why should anyone still – or why should anyone not believe that Israel is controlling U.S. foreign policy as it relates to the Middle East?
MR. MCCORMACK: I did see the reports of his comments, and let me just start off by saying I don’t know the context of the comments. I don’t know if they are reported accurately. I don’t know if the Israeli Government would say, yes, that is an accurate quote.
What I can tell you is that the quotes as reported are wholly inaccurate as to describing the situation – just 100 percent, totally, completely not true. And I can – you know, I can vouch for that, having been up there at the United Nations the entire time, witnessed Secretary Rice’s deliberations with her advisors. …
[...]
… that afternoon, all that afternoon, Thursday afternoon, Secretary Rice’s recommendation and inclination the entire time was to abstain, for the reasons that she described both during the Security Council session and subsequently in interviews. So I can tell you with 100 percent assurance that her intention was 100 percent to recommend abstention. She, of course, consulted with Steve Hadley at the White House as well as with the President. I’ll let the White House describe any interactions between the President and Prime Minister Olmert. But – so this idea that somehow she was turned around on this issue is 100 percent, completely untrue.
Somehow what’s 100% missing in all of the vague denials is anything resembling a direct statement (by anyone) that Olmert never said to Bush what he publicly crowed about saying. But McCormack didn’t even have his heart in the vague denial he had offered. Pressed on how Olmert could say what he did if it isn’t true, McCormack’s final statement was:
And again, I can’t – you know, I can’t posit and vouch for the – whether those remarks are accurate.
So apparently he can’t 100% vouch for the quotes as reported being “just 100 percent, totally, completely not true.”