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Here comes another Tony Snow press briefing from Wednesday, March 21. This one deals with the White house refusing to let transcripts be taken from testimony to Congress over the " purge " of prosecutors by Gonzales and company.
I now know why the White house hired Tony Snow. It was to make George Bush look smart. Click the link below for the entire briefing.
Q But, Tony, in the interest of getting at the truth, in the interest of accuracy, why not have an official, indisputable record of what was said -- a transcript?
MR. SNOW: Well, first, Jonathan, you're jumping way ahead and I think -- but let's lay out some of the things that go on. This is a decision that was made at the U.S. Department of Justice. What we have said is, all the key officials are available; sworn testimony, whole bit. Furthermore, the email traffic is available. You will also have available an exhaustive rendering of email from the White House on the outside. And you've got the fact basis there. The question you need to ask is what do you gain from the transcript? And the answer is, not much, because --
Q You gain accuracy.
MR. SNOW: No, no --
Q -- what was said, not a characterization of what was said, but you know exactly what was said.
MR. SNOW: Well, no, what you're trying to do is create a presumption of a hearing or a trial. And what we're saying is --
Q What we're saying is --
MR. SNOW: No, this is an attempt to get fact. These are, in fact, interviews. They will have specific fact questions. I don't know how you make this --
Q Tony, the Senator --
MR. SNOW: Let me finish the answer, Ed, and then I'll get to you.
You start with a decision made at the U.S. Department of Justice. This is where you've got the deliberations, the analysis, all these things taking place; you have full access to everything there. The question is, okay, do you have any further questions that may involve the White House? If so, then you also have external communications from the White House elsewhere. That ought to -- and if there are other specific questions of fact that have to deal with anything that's unresolved, you can ask. And, frankly, when it comes to a fact answer, people there are going to be able to get it right, just as I think you get it right when you take notes based on a conversation with me for your reporting, without a transcript.
Q But I'm pressing on a point that these are not actually interviews -- that's your word. The senators, like Senator Leahy, say they want testimony. Testimony, there is a transcript. This is not an interview. You want it to be an interview, but it's up to the Congress. They're the ones investigating, and they say they want testimony, not interviews.
MR. SNOW: Ed, what we're doing is we're trying to be accommodating to Congress by offering them extraordinary insight into a deliberative process. You also know that everybody who goes -- the President expects everybody who talks to Congress to tell the truth, and so does the law. And they know that it would be illegal not to tell them truth.
So the question you've got to ask yourself is, is this pressure on transcripts and everything, is this really something where somebody thinks that there's going to be a fact that they're not going to receive? The answer is, no. The question is whether you are trying to create a political spectacle, rather than simply the basis of getting at the truth. This, I think, is an important and crucial distinction, because, again, I'm not sure -- well, I think we can say with confidence that they're going to get every fact they need to find out what's going on.
Q Are you afraid that they'll be able to go through and find inconsistencies in testimony if there's a transcript?
Q Tony, how would a transcript make it a political spectacle? And what about a transcript would be not in keeping with amicable and --
MR. SNOW: Well, again, I think you've always got a temptation, somebody sort of waving a piece of paper -- let me reverse the question: Why would not an interview be conducive to getting at the facts?
Q Well, because if, then, the facts were then discussed, then it would be one person's word against another and facts might get muddled.
MR. SNOW: No, I don't think so. I mean, I think somebody asks a straight, factual question, you're going to have witnesses from both parties and from both chambers -- House and Senate, your going to have Democrats and Republicans, House and Senate. And you're going to have people who are responsive. And you know, if they don't think they've got it right they can ask over and over and over until they get it precisely right. So I don't think that's --
Q Why not have a record of these facts?
MR. SNOW: Well, again, the facts -- my guess is that there will be, that people are certainly going to be open to discussing the facts that they hear.
Q I'm just asking. Again, hearings have gone on for a long time, they've been televised on issues great and small. What makes this one more of a spectacle than the other times?
MR. SNOW: No, I don't think this makes it more of a spectacle. But I do think that this is a different kind -- what we've made is an extremely generous offer to make available for interviews key White House officials, documents from the White House to the Justice Department, to members of Congress, to interested outsiders, and at the same time -- you know, keep in mind that this is a decision and a decision process that was conducted out of the Department of Justice, and members are going to have a full opportunity to go through that.
Everybody seems to want to jump to a White House piece that may not even be necessary, because -- because, in point of fact, there are going to be opportunities, on the record and in front of cameras and everything else, to be talking -- well, I don't know about cameras, I don't know what they've negotiated -- but the fact is you're going to have the ability to have key officials from the Justice Department up there answering all the questions and providing all the documents. So I think if you take a look at some of the statements that have been made where there are attempts to single out people in the White House, it appears that there is more an effort to try to single out individuals, rather than to isolate the truth.
Q Well, the Congress wants testimony in public, and the Congress feels that it has been misled by the administration. How do you avoid the appearance of stonewalling if you don't send people up there to speak publicly?
MR. SNOW: I think -- well, that may be their argument; I hope it's not yours, because you have done reporting on this, and other people, in the sense of seeing thousands of pages of email responsive to a request produced, also the White House making available communications with the Department of Justice. Again, it is a peculiar form of stonewalling when anybody in the decision loop and any documents generated in the process of a decision will be available to members of Congress. And furthermore, members of Congress will be able to interview to their satisfaction the individuals who were involved. They're going to have access to all the facts, so I don't understand how that's stonewalling. It's just the opposite.
Q Well, the public doesn't have access to --
MR. SNOW: The public is going to have access to everything but interviews with White House officials, and there will be representations of that. They already have access to thousands of pages. They will have access to testimony from members of the Department of Justice.
What you're trying to do is to leap to conclusions about what may or may not be. I think -- again, this is an extraordinarily generous offer on our part, and I think what you need to do is turn it back and ask members of Congress, what is it exactly -- what fact would you not have access to? What piece of data would you not have access to?
Q So is it the White House's position then that the public should be satisfied with the representations of members of Congress about what administration officials testify?
MR. SNOW: Well, again, you're going to have the ability, if Congress accepts what we have offered, to get any communication -- those emails from the White House to the Justice Department and anybody on the outside. It seems to me that that satisfies pretty comprehensively.
Again, the question is, what the public wants to know is what's the truth. And we're making available every document and every individual who would allow Congress to render that judgment. And I think that's a perfectly acceptable way to do it. And furthermore, again, it not only preserves presidential prerogative, it also creates a dignified process. And what you're suggesting is that members of Congress then will run out and misrepresent things after they have had an opportunity to interview members of the White House, which would mean that you're insinuating that members of Congress are going to act in something less than good faith.
Q So, Tony, back when President Clinton was citing executive privilege to keep internal deliberations in that White House from being talked about in Congress, you wrote -- now famously --
MR. SNOW: I didn't say it was famous, Ed. I didn't get that kind of coverage at the time. (Laughter.)
Q Well, it's become more famous.
MR. SNOW: Is it making its way through the left-wing blogs?
Q It is. (Laughter.)
Q No, no. But you wrote quite eloquently about this. You said, "Taken to its logical extreme, that position would make it impossible for citizens to hold the chief executive accountable. We would have a constitutional right to a coverup."
MR. SNOW: Right. Now let me --
Q So why were you wrong then and right now?
MR. SNOW: Because this is a not entirely analogous situation. I've just told you what we have, in fact, offered to make available to members of Congress. And what we are doing is we are holding apart confidential communications between advisors and the President. And that is pretty standard practice in White Houses. But, again --
Q It's exactly what the Clinton administration talked about.
MR. SNOW: Well, I'm not so sure. And I'll let others do the legal arguing on that. But the important point here is we're maintaining the presidential prerogatives and, at the same time, we're making available exhaustive -- we're offering basically to give them, exhaustively, communications that bear on this issue and also make the key players -- at least at the Justice Department and the people they said they wanted to hear from at the White House -- they're all going to be available. That's not a coverup. That is, in fact, a very open offer to get all the facts into the hands of the people who, presumably, want to figure out what the facts are.
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