The already leak-paranoid White House is at war against loose lips (the same ones that we were told sank ships back in World War II). Bush aides have told people like this guy–or gal–not to talk to the press. Others have been told that specific reporters are persona non grata.
Sources are more reticent than usual to talk, not so much out of fear of telling me something classified, but out of fear of the Wrath of W. Congress felt that wrath this week. When the president heard that some congressional members had shared a few intelligence-briefing tidbits with The Washington Post, he was livid. He immediately drafted a new policy: only eight members of Congress–the leadership and the chairmen and ranking members of the intelligence committees–will be privy to classified briefings by the White House from now on. “I want Congress to hear loud and clear that it is unacceptable to leak classified information when we have troops at risk,” Bush told reporters yesterday. The congressmen, predictably, balked, and Bush said he would expand the circle on a case-by-case basis.
Bush’s stern message was as much for reporters as for chatty members of Congress. This came two weeks after Press Secretary Ari Fleischer’s admonition that people need to “watch what they say.” The White House sometimes acts as if you’re not so much being a nosy reporter but unpatriotic by even asking certain questions. Last week, we wanted to know why evidence of bin Laden’s culpability came from Britain’s Tony Blair instead of our own government. Blair managed to present a good case without revealing classified information–something we’d been told the United States couldn’t do.
If Britain can show evidence, why can’t the United States? reporters wanted to know at a briefing last week. Fleischer dismissed the question, saying that only “the people in this room” (reporters) were interested in proof. “I’m not sure that there’s a clamor from the American people,” he said.
When did U.S. reporters stop being Americans? I wanted to ask.
I never thought I’d have to choose my profession over my patriotism, but I feel like I did just that recently. It came down to a simple symbol: an American flag lapel pin. I had picked one up outside chief of staff Andy Card’s office. His assistant had a basket full of them on her desk. I put one on. So did many reporters. Almost all of the White House staffers did, too. It was the week after the attack and overt patriotism was still brimming around the West Wing. By wearing one myself, I began to feel as if I were working for them. No one can appropriate the American flag, but I finally came down on the side of keeping my patriotism to myself.
The White House has been trying to control its “message” more than ever. Every week, all the press secretaries for all the cabinet members have a coordination meeting. Communications guru Karen Hughes said from the start that she thought there should be a constant presence of cabinet secretaries in the public eye. The White House now schedules its daily drum of press conferences, making sure they don’t overlap. That’s helped overtaxed reporters keep up. “I’m particularly proud of that,” Hughes says. Sometimes a secretary will deviate from the script–like Colin Powell suggesting that the White House would make the evidence against bin Laden public. Fleischer shot that down the next day. Many think that that was Powell’s attempt to get a commitment out of the White House.
Hughes has sought media-management advice from veterans of the gulf war, like Dick Cheney. “Do you usually put media on operations when you have them?” Hughes asked the vice president, who was a proponent of the loathed “press pools” that severely limited access during Desert Storm. “Yes. It’s been done a lot of ways … and nobody’s ever happy about it,” Cheney told her. Cheney actually has a few friends in the press corps. One of his former aides when he was Defense secretary, Pete Williams, even covers the Pentagon for NBC. Despite jovial relationships with individual reporters, President Bush does not count any reporters among his friends. But he seems to respect the importance of the press in times of crisis.
Last Thursday, about midmorning, national-security adviser Condoleezza Rice brought Bush some disturbing news: a man had been diagnosed with anthrax in Florida. They did not yet know if the case was isolated or terrorism related. A tense Bush summoned Fleischer to the Oval Office and got Hughes on the squawk box. One of his first thoughts was how to manage the press corps. “This is obviously a very critical moment,” Hughes says Bush told her. “We need to handle it in a forthcoming and sensitive way.” They decided to make Secretary of Health Tommy Thompson and his specialist in bioterrorism available at Fleischer’s briefing later that day. In this case, Bush wanted full disclosure. And Thompson, not your typical White House source, spoke on the record. The Bushies have realized that they have to feed the beast, not just try to lock it up.
