Changing the Subject -- Back

"MR. McCLELLAN: We have a responsibility to make sure that the investigation goes forward and comes to a successful conclusion, hopefully, and that the legal proceeding moves forward in a way that the individual can receive a fair and impartial hearing."

You probably didn't get a chance to read my column yesterday . Technical problems prevented its proper posting until late in the afternoon. But I wrote at some length about the ongoing White House stonewall. So go take a look.

McClellan's Credibility

Reporters are still insisting that McClellan explain to them why he assured them that Rove and Libby were not involved in the Plame leak -- when it is now clear that they were.

David Folkenflik reports for NPR: "In an interview, McClellan told NPR he's eager to talk, once the legal process in the leak case has run its course. And he says his credibility remains intact with reporters: 'The relationship that we've built over the last few years is one that they know is based on trust, and I think both of us have worked to earn that trust and have done that.'

"Some reporters say that kind of comment amounts to a wink and a nod from McClellan, signifying he wasn't intentionally lying, just passing on what Rove and Libby had told him.

"NBC White House correspondent David Gregory tells NPR that McClellan needs to correct the record: 'He's made suggestions that he was given bad information . . . but when he says something that proves to be demonstrably false, it's important that he own up to it.'

"Gregory says McClellan shouldn't expect questions about his credibility to go away any time soon."

The CIA'S Covert Prison System -- and Cheney

Dana Priest writes in The Washington Post that the CIA has been hiding and interrogating captives in a secret network of prisons around the world.

"Virtually nothing is known about who is kept in the facilities, what interrogation methods are employed with them, or how decisions are made about whether they should be detained or for how long."

Priest writes that "concern among lawmakers, foreign governments and human rights groups about the opaque CIA system . . . escalated last month, when Vice President Cheney and CIA Director Porter J. Goss asked Congress to exempt CIA employees from legislation already endorsed by 90 senators that would bar cruel and degrading treatment of any prisoner in U.S. custody."

In another instance of Cheney defending the right to use cruel and degrading treatment, Tim Golden and Eric Schmitt write in the New York Times: "The Bush administration is embroiled in a sharp internal debate over whether a new set of Defense Department standards for handling terror suspects should adopt language from the Geneva Conventions prohibiting 'cruel,' 'humiliating' and 'degrading' treatment, administration officials say.

"Advocates of that approach, who include some Defense and State Department officials and senior military lawyers, contend that moving the military's detention policies closer to international law would prevent further abuses and build support overseas for the fight against Islamic extremists, officials said.