All Kidding Aside

Why have these signing statements gone largely unnoticed for so long? It's worth pointing out that, unlike virtually every other document made public by the White House, the press office does not actually send the signing statements out by e-mail to the press corps. Instead, reporters have to go look for them.

Secrecy Watch

Mark Silva writes in the Chicago Tribune: "As the Bush administration has dramatically accelerated the classification of information as 'top secret' or 'confidential,' one office is refusing to report on its annual activity in classifying documents: the office of Vice President Dick Cheney. . . .

"That is only one way the Bush administration, from its opening weeks in 2001, has asserted control over information. By keeping secret so many directives and actions, the administration has precluded the public -- and often members of Congress -- from knowing about some of the most significant decisions and acts of the White House. . . .

In Part Two today, Silva writes about the White House's "double approach" to secrecy: "clamping down on unauthorized disclosures while releasing documents on carefully chosen occasions." That, he writes, "illustrates how the White House has attempted to manage closely held government information since the terrorism of Sept. 11 made Bush a wartime president.

" 'It's selective secrecy for political control,' said Tom Blanton, director of the independent National Security Archive at George Washington University. 'Secrecy puts power in the hands of officials who then can abuse it. It also covers up the abuse.' "

Mission Impossible

CNN reports: "Three years after President Bush declared major combat over in Iraq, Americans have strong doubts that the United States will fulfill the promise of his 'Mission Accomplished' backdrop, a poll released Monday found.

"The CNN poll, conducted April 21-23 by Opinion Research Corporation, found that only 9 percent thought the U.S. mission in Iraq had been accomplished, while another 40 percent believed it would be complete someday.

"Another 44 percent said the United States would never accomplish its goals in Iraq, where American troops are still battling insurgents three years after the invasion that toppled former Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein. . . .

"Bush's May 1, 2003, victory speech aboard the aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln was a carefully managed piece of political theater, from his flight suit-clad arrival aboard an S-3 Viking antisubmarine jet to the 'Mission Accomplished' banner that hung from the carrier's bridge."

Greg Mitchell writes in Editor and Publisher about how the mainstream media at the time hailed it as a fitting moment of triumph.

Here's the text of the victory speech. Here's the video . And here's the  archetypal photo by Larry Downing of Reuters.

Bolten on Fox

Peter Baker writes in The Washington Post: "White House Chief of Staff Joshua B. Bolten made his television debut in his new role yesterday, describing his West Wing shakeup as an attempt 'to get our mojo back' at a time when a politically weakened President Bush faces election-year challenges over war, immigration and energy costs.

"Appearing on 'Fox News Sunday' just days after recruiting the show's former host to be the new White House press secretary, Bolten said he wants to foster 'a more open environment to the press and to the public.' But he forecast no shifts in the substance of Bush's presidency, defending the tax cuts and other policies that have been central to the administration. . . .

"Bolten's choice of Fox for his first interview since taking over as chief of staff April 14 provided fodder for critics of the relationship between the White House and its favorite news network."

Here's the transcript of Bolten's interview with Chris Wallace.

Rove Redux

Murray Waas of the National Journal and Michael Isikoff and Evan Thomas of Newsweek try to explain how it came to pass that Karl Rove testified before grand jurors for a fifth time last week.

Writes Waas: "It has been widely reported that Special Prosecutor Patrick J. Fitzgerald has been trying to determine whether Rove tried to mislead the FBI and the grand jury in the early stages of the leak probe when he failed to disclose that he had talked to Cooper about Plame three days before she was outed as a CIA officer. But it has not been previously known that much of the questioning of Rove on Wednesday also focused on the contradictions between Cooper's and Rove's accounts of their crucial July 11 conversation."

Write Isikoff and Thomas: "It is impossible to know if Fitzgerald will make a case against Rove. But it is possible now to trace how Fitzgerald came to suspect Rove of not telling the whole truth."

Meanwhile, Toni Locy of the Associated Press catches up with the federal judge who jailed former New York Times reporter Judith Miller for refusing to name her source during the CIA leak investigation.

"Thomas F. Hogan, chief judge of Washington's federal district court, said he made the right call when he ruled there was no First Amendment protection for reporters to keep their sources confidential, especially in criminal matters. Hogan spoke Friday at a meeting of the Maryland-Delaware-D.C. Press Association.

"Miller wasn't an innocent bystander, Hogan said. 'She was an actor in the commission of a crime,' he said. 'She was part of the transfer of information that was a crime.' "

Snow Forecast

Holly Bailey and Richard Wolffe write in Newsweek: "Snow is telegenic, supremely self-confident and quick with a zinger; the daily scuffles with the press corps will be easy. But those same qualities may make it hard for him to abide by the first law of flacks: relay the news, don't make it."

On CNN, Howard Kurtz asked Elisabeth Bumiller of the New York Times about Tony Snow's prospects as incoming press secretary.

"BUMILLER: Well, he'll get a bit of a honeymoon right in the beginning, I think.

"KURTZ: For a week?

"BUMILLER: Probably. We'll see. Until the really disastrous news happens."