At State, the News Needs No Muse

The Iraq Study Group report rocketed through town Wednesday, setting thousands of reporters off in search of foreign policy experts to opine about what it all meant.

Some agencies tried to make sure none of their people was caught talking out of school about the report, which, as White House spokesman Tony Snow gamely spun, was not in any way a "rebuke" of President Bush's policies.

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice laid down the rules early Wednesday. An e-mail "Watch Alert" from the department's operations center went out at 11:07 a.m., announcing that the report "has been released and is now available" at various Web sites.

Within minutes, all the folks in Assistant Secretary John C. Rood's Bureau of International Security and Nonproliferation got this e-mail:

All -- Strict guidance this a.m. from the Secretary that she does not want any public "musing" by State officers on the Iraq Study Group report. All public comments will be handled by PA[Public Affairs].

So be sure to keep your "musing" private -- or at least on background.

There's No Mess, but Clean It Up Anyway

Meanwhile, over at "PA," they were focusing like laser beams on the most important parts of the Iraq report, summarized by this topic headline in yesterday's press briefing: "Iraq Study Group Report is Not a Criticism of Rice's Efforts."

Study Group member Vernon Jordan couldn't agree more: "We don't look at how the house got put on fire," he told The Washington Post when asked about the report. "This is about how do we go forward from there" -- and put it out.

Gates: Gone Missing

How quickly they forget. A reporter asked a study group aide if incoming Defense Secretary Robert Gates, a study group member until he was nominated in early November, had been sent a copy of the report.

"No," the aide said. "We didn't know how to reach him anymore."

Billionaires for Blue Dogs?

All the political oddsmakers are looking to see which political candidates will generate that all- important "bandwagon effect," so the money, staff and endorsements will flood in and assure the candidate's nomination.

The same effect might apply to organizations. So we find that on Nov. 8, the day after the midterm elections, multibillionaire Bill Gates dropped $1,000 on the Blue Dog Political Action Committee. Sure, Microsoft's PAC has been a regular donor, but the chairman himself does not appear to have given before from his own wallet to that group of moderate and conservative House Democrats.