Misdirection at the White House

The Treasury Department announced Wednesday that it had frozen the assets of Syria's military intelligence chief for aiding terrorism and for meddling in Lebanon.

At the daily White House briefing, spokesman Scott McClellan, reading from his notes, said Asef Shawkat "has directly contributed to Syria's support for terrorism, including the insurgency in Iraq, Palestinian terrorist groups given shelter in Damascus, and Hezbollah and other terrorist groups in Lebanon."

Officially blaming a senior Mideast government official with directly aiding the Iraqi insurgency seemed a bit unusual to some reporters, who questioned it later in the briefing.

"On Shawkat, you said," our colleague Peter Baker asked, "you talked about Lebanon, but you also mentioned that he contributed to the insurgency in Iraq. Can you elaborate on that at all, what he . . ."

"No, I didn't say he did," McClellan said. McClellan promptly issued a correction on the transcript. "*Correction: I did indicate he contributed to the insurgency in my opening statement. My apologies. If we can elaborate further, we will post it."

The Treasury Department statement, which documents at some length the case against Shawkat, and is the official word on what the U.S. government has on him, makes zero mention of Iraq.

Another White House spokesman, asked about how Shawkat was originally linked to Iraq at all, said: "We as policy people can offer a more robust description as to who the individual is."

Robust?

Failure to Communicate

Technology experts here are at a loss to explain how an item Wednesday -- about Washington lawyer C. Boyden Gray's not getting Senate confirmation as ambassador to the European Union -- failed to say that President Bush announced he was giving Gray a recess appointment to the post. Gray will be in Brussels -- sign up now for the guest bedrooms -- until the end of 2007.

The tech folks are talking about a synaptic failure of some sort. Snap, crackle, pop.

No Jamaica Farewell -- or Hello, Either

Meanwhile, we're told by the office of Rep. Lynn C. Woolsey (Calif.) that she was not among the Democrats on a recent jaunt to Jamaica mentioned in last Friday's column. The coordinating agency, the Inter-American Economic Council, apparently had included her on a list of those in the congressional delegation.