A Horribly Familiar Cycle

Ron Hutcheson writes for McClatchy Newspapers: "The exchange during Cheney's flight to Oman on Wednesday highlighted the absurdity of a practice that's damaged the credibility of journalists and government officials alike. It's much easier to believe what people say when their names are attached to their words. Statements from unidentified people invite readers to doubt that the speakers exist outside of the reporter's imagination. If anonymity is designed to promote candor, it's difficult to find in the anonymous official's quote.

"The Bush administration's use of anonymous sources has become a sore spot for reporters in the wake of a series of journalistic scandals involving fabricated quotes. Yet sometimes the need for anonymity is obvious: Some sources could lose their jobs or even their lives if their identities were disclosed.

"So there may be a good reason to protect sources in Iraq, but in Washington, anonymity is too often a cloak for cheap shots and self-serving comments. Some officials insist on anonymity to minimize damage if they misspeak or say something that might be embarrassing. Reporters play along to maintain good relations or out of fear that they might miss something if they refuse to participate. . . .

"'This has definitely achieved absurdity,' said Lucy Dalglish, executive director of The Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, an organization that helps journalists protect their sources. 'I don't look at this as anonymous sourcing. I look at this as big-time game playing. The only way to describe it is stupid.'"

At yesterday's White House press briefing, press secretary Tony Snow defended the concept of background briefings: "Well, as you know, sometimes, for instance, when we have senior administration officials who will brief in this room, it is important for matters of confidentiality, in terms of -- they're able to be more open with you, as senior administration officials, and also it denies people an opportunity perhaps to -- in any event, I'm not going to get -- look, I'm not going to get myself stuck in the endless sort of spin cycle of trying to deal with rules on senior administration officials. If you would like those briefings to cease, we could probably make that happen, but I think you would be poorer for it, and we would, too."

As for the insistence of anonymity for this particular briefer, Snow said, "it was a question that may have been posed at the time, but apparently no objection -- the objection was not made at that time and venue."

But Holly Bailey, who was one of the reporters on the trip, writes for Newsweek: "[T]hat's not correct. The seven journalists traveling with Cheney, a group that included a Newsweek reporter, had been after the vice president's office the entire trip for an on-the-record session with Cheney or his top aides. The response was to offer up 'the senior administration official' on the way back from Afghanistan. Upon entering a makeshift office aboard the C-17 military aircraft Cheney had taken into Pakistan and Afghanistan, reporters asked the official if the briefing could be placed on the record. The official declined. (The exchange was not included on a transcript e-mailed to reporters Tuesday night.)"

As for Snow's suggestion that background briefings can lead briefers to be more open, Bailey asks: "But was the insight the 'senior administration official' on the Cheney trip so juicy it could not be on the record? In briefing reporters on the VP's meetings between Cheney and the presidents of Afghanistan and Pakistan, the official described the sessions as 'very productive.' He said Afghan President Harmid Karzai was 'more positive and optimistic' than he's seen in the past and was 'upbeat' because of the financial commitment the U.S. had made to his country."

Here's one possible insight into the absurdity: It may be that the version of the transcript that was released wasn't the one that was supposed to have been made public. In the initial e-mail to reporters, it was labeled an "internal transcript" -- although it's hard to imagine how Cheney's baldly self-referential words could possibly have been sanitized into ambiguity for external consumption.

And several White House Watch readers e-mailed me yesterday with an analysis of one of Cheney's quotes in his anonymous interview. Cheney says, in reference to his meetings with the Pakistani and Afghan leaders: "The idea that I'd go in and threaten someone is an invalid misreading of the way I do business."

Readers pointed out that, in calling it an "invalid misreading" Cheney was using a double negative. So what he was really saying, arguably, was: "The idea that I'd go in and threaten someone is a valid reading of the way I do business." Which, let's be real, is a lot more believable.

The Attack on Cheney

Abdul Waheed Wafa and Carlotta Gail write in the New York Times: "NATO and American forces knew that a suicide bomber was at large in the Bagram area before the suicide bomb attack on Tuesday that killed 23 people at the main gate of the United States air base where Vice President Dick Cheney was staying, a NATO spokesman said Wednesday. But despite the vice president's presence, the Afghan police chief in the area said he had not been informed of the possible threat. . . .