Dan Froomkin - Cheney's Rules for the Press - washingtonpost.com

Cheney's Rules for the Press

By Dan Froomkin
Special to washingtonpost.com
Wednesday, February 28, 2007; 2:26 PM

After nine days of almost completely ignoring the small pool of reporters who diligently followed him around through seven countries, Vice President Cheney yesterday finally agreed to a short group interview. But only on one condition: The reporters would have to agree not to tell anyone that the person they talked to was him.

Cheney's insistence on being identified as a "senior administration official" -- even when the transcript shows he spoke in the first person -- is in some ways laughably trivial.

But in other ways, the vice president's decision to extort reporters into a ridiculous agreement reflects the contempt Cheney has for the press corps.

Chicago Tribune reporter Mark Silva, for instance, filed a slew of informative, detailed and richly textured pool reports about the trip -- most of them reposted on the Tribune's Washington-bureau blog, The Swamp.

In one pool report last week, Silva slapped down as absurd rumors in the blogosphere that an earlier briefing he described as being from an administration official had actually been from Cheney himself. "I do not use that term when describing the vice president," Silva wrote.

But yesterday, when Silva and others were summoned to the front of Cheney's C-17 cargo plane on the flight out of Afghanistan, he found himself forced to change his policy.

"Sometimes, the rules in which we are confined by the White House throw all good reason to the wind," Silva wrote in an e-mail to me early this morning. "I had two options, not to report what the SAO said or to report it by the rules. Felt it was more important to report what was said."

As it turns out, this particular case was so absurd that some reporters -- who weren't directly a party to the agreement -- have blown Cheney's cover sky high.

David E. Sanger writes in the New York Times: "Vice President Dick Cheney, thinly veiled as a 'senior administration official,' told reporters on his plane on Tuesday that it was not correct that he 'went in to beat up on' the Pakistani president, Gen. Pervez Musharraf, for failing to confront Al Qaeda and the Taliban.

"'That's not the way I work,' said Mr. Cheney, violating the first rule of conducting a background interview: never refer to yourself in the first person, when it makes it obvious who is talking. 'The idea that I'd go in and threaten someone is an invalid misreading of the way I do business.'"

Terence Hunt writes for the Associated Press: "Who was the mystery official on Vice President Dick Cheney's plane? There were plenty of clues about his identity if you read a transcript of his remarks. . . .

"The transcript did not spell out why the official on Cheney's plane would not be quoted by name."

In his final pool report from the trip, Silva wrote that when Cheney's plane stopped for refueling in Great Britain, the reporters who had taken part in the interview were finally able to read the transcript released by the White House. That led Silva "to admire the integrity of a great, soon-departing stenographer who produced the script in dedicated devotion to truth with the reporting of a simple pronoun: 'I' . . .

"Check it all out -- it's an interesting finale to a trip that carried many restrictions on press coverage in the name of security. It's worth the read."

Silva has more to say about "hiding behind titles" in his latest blog post (which also includes some great pictures).

Excerpts

Other beauts from the transcript:

"I've often spoken and would reiterate again today, when you think about the debate at home, some of my friends on the other side of the aisle arguing that we need to get out of Iraq, then you go spend some time with our allies in Afghanistan and Pakistan, you can't help but be convinced that that would have a devastating impact, devastating consequences for what they're trying to do, what they've agreed to do in terms of their ongoing efforts with us as allies in these struggles in this part of the world."

Indeed. See Cheney's Feb. 23 interview with ABC News's Jonathan Karl.

"Q You've spoken also, though, about some of the things that Speaker Pelosi and Representative Murtha have said how that does play to the hands of --

"SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: I was asked by one of your colleagues."

(That would be Cheney's Feb. 21 interview with Karl.)

"Q But your answer was very articulate.

"SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: I responded very carefully.

"Q And you suggested that they make -- they lend comfort to terrorists, essentially.

"SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: No, what I said was that that the al Qaeda strategy is based on the notion that they can break the will of the American people. They know they can't beat us in a stand-up fight. But they do believe -- and I think there's evidence to support this -- that they can, in fact, force us to change our policy if they just kill enough Americans, create enough havoc out there. And they cite Beirut in 1983; Mogadishu, 1993, kill Americans, America changes its policy and withdraws. And Osama bin Laden and Zawahiri believe this. They talk about it. It's not a mystery.

"And my point was that if we follow what I believe Speaker Pelosi really wants to do in terms of withdraw, that that would validate the al Qaeda strategy. I was very careful in those words I selected. I didn't say 'give aid and comfort to terrorists.' I didn't say 'unpatriotic.' I said it would validate the al Qaeda strategy."

The transcript then shows a "****" which typically means that the interview went even further on background -- most likely off the record -- before resuming. One can only imagine what was said there.

Dan Froomkin - Cheney's Rules for the Press - washingtonpost.com