Think Progress

McClellan: I Can’t Comment Because Harriet Miers Told Me Not To»

During today’s press conference, McClellan generally declined to discuss the leak scandal, including his assertion that Scooter Libby and Karl Rove weren’t involved. That was expected. More surprising was his explanation why:

I think I’ve indicated to you all that I would be glad to talk about this once this process is complete. And I look forward to that opportunity. But, again, we have been directed by the White House Counsel’s Office not to discuss this matter and respond to questions about it.

So McClellan can’t comment because Harriet Miers told him not to?




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50 Responses to “McClellan: I Can’t Comment Because Harriet Miers Told Me Not To”

  1. digger Says:

    Looks like Miers is back to work and doing a bad job with her current job. The american people deserve the truth! Speak the truth scottie!


  2. Ugh Says:

    Does anyone know what they’ve promised Scotty to keep him up there for so long? I mean really, any person with a shred of dignity would have quit by now. Maybe that’s the problem.


  3. Abort A Freepus 4 Christ Says:

    Does anyone know what they’ve promised Scotty to keep him up there for so long? I mean really, any person with a shred of dignity would have quit by now. Maybe that’s the problem.

    No one else wants the job?


  4. Ugh Says:

    No one else wants the job?

    Good one. But still, doesn’t mean he couldn’t quit.


  5. Zookeeper Says:

    Scottie has no dignity or integrity. Who would want him?


  6. Jury Says:

    The WH probably got wind of the morning shows plans and that caused them to do the announcement first thing.

    It did in fact become the lead. But all of the shows had damaging material for Bush.

    The most striking was Matt Cooper. His appearance was not dramatic, but he said that the person who told him Plame was a CIA agent was Presidential advisor Carl Rove.


  7. profmarcus Says:

    thanks for keeping your focus on cheney, libby and plamegate… i know alito is a big deal but i can’t help but feel we are once again victims of the change-the-subject manipulation scam… damn, it works so well too…!!


  8. Maggie Says:

    Ummm… isn’t that exactly what Will Bailey said on The West Wing last night?

    Seriously - are they now taking their strategy from prime time?


  9. Afterglow Says:

    Fancy contributing to the Libby Legal Defense Fun? According to today’s Washington Post: “friends [are] worried that the legal battle facing Libby would wipe him out financially. … ‘I would not characterize him as wealthy,’ said Jackson Hogan, a friend from Andover and Yale. … Some friends are planning to set up a legal defense fund to help Libby.” But then the New York Times reports: “While in private practice between stints in government, he represented clients including Fiat, NBC and United Parcel Service. When he left private practice, he was billing $535 an hour.
    But his most celebrated client was Marc Rich, the billionaire fugitive commodities trader and tax evader to whom President Bill Clinton later granted a pardon. Mr. Libby represented Mr. Rich on and off for 15 years, earning $2 million in fees.” If he is not wealthy, after earning $2 million in fees representing Marc Rich alone, then just who is wealthy these days?


  10. Ugh Says:

    If he is not wealthy, after earning $2 million in fees representing Marc Rich alone, then just who is wealthy these days?

    Talented criminal representation is extremely costly (if he was billing $535, he’s going to have to pay at least that for his lawyer, plus assorted expenses, associates, etc.). He’ll have to stick with the federal public defender.


  11. Average TV Viewer Says:

    Agree with profmarcus.

    Hatch wishes the SC were the hot topic. Ass clown.


  12. nowar Says:

    Poor Harriet.

    Now that she’s been run through the wringer, I wonder, Is dumbass George still the most brilliant man she’s ever met.
    Nowar


  13. Skid Says:

    Scotty knows the American public won’t hold him accountable for the lies he passes forth from the podium when it is all over. Then the big payoff and book deals will kick in. He will be quasi-celebrity. Enjoy it in this life Scotty, because the Devil’s got your ass in the next. Special spot on the Infernal mantle, right next to Dobson’s.


  14. scotus interruptus Says:

    When does the revolution begin?


  15. Ruling killer elite Says:

    All we want are your children. In exchange, you can sit back in big homes, watch your favorite shows on plasma tvs, take the family to baseball games and disney world, vacation in Cancun, get your cosmetics cut-rate at Wal-Mart.

    Not a bad deal. So what are you whining about? All we want are your children to fight in Iraq, then Syria, followed by Iran.

    Eventually, we will control the middle east, and you will be rewarded with even larger homes, and bigger tvs.

    Just be willing to give up one or two of your children to the State.


  16. Ruling killer elite Says:

    Addendum

    You need to realize that in Communist Russia, ALL your children went to the State. We only ask for one, or two, if you don’t comply.


  17. pigboy Says:

    STOP IT!!! I CAN’T STAND IT!!! Everytime I read a quote from Scottie I see his piggy little face and hear his stuttering, stammering, monotone voice!!! Gawd help me the little creep is in my head…… Help…..

    My question is. When shrub is impeached will Scottie go with him? They can stutter and stammer together in prison.


  18. dbeach Says:

    {Atilla }oops ..Alito SC news is a rover topic changer.

    rumor dept. :marc rich bribed clintons[not hard to do]

    via libby..and IF Fitzgerlad knows that..it would be real fun…


  19. Ruling killer elite Says:

    Bush won’t be impeached

    Not as long as you wimps are opposing him

    It would take strength of belief to bring him down and you lefties have nothin’


  20. AvengingAngel Says:

    “Ongoing Investigation” has dropped to #2 on this week’s The Top 10 GOP Post-Indictment Sound Bites.


  21. Ruling killer elite Says:

    The ongoing investigation is dead

    Long live the ongoing investigation


  22. engineer Says:

    This will keep going forever. The Republicans unleashed the war of special prosecutors and independent counsels. Now, it’s going on the other foot, and we’ll have one or more chasing after various Cabinent officials and WH staffers from now until 2009.


  23. Killer ruling elite Says:

    Going on forever, ending now, it makes no difference. Come on. Don’t you get it. It’s a joke. Libby will be pardoned, Bush will go on to 3 more years, the IRaq war will continue. And we will reap more profits and the economy will go to the wealthy. Yeah.


  24. engineer Says:

    I know good humor when I see it. This place makes for interesting political kabuki theatre with the actors not even noticing they’re being moved around, doesn’t it?


  25. WaltTheMan Says:

    My only prayer is that we do not inherit the wind. Hitler attacked weak nations like Poland, France, Hungary, Austria and Czechoslovakia. His mistake was taking on the United Kingdom, the Nordic countries and the USSR. W is following the same path - either Syria or Jordan are next on the list (they’re weakest). After that is Iran. After that is the last judgement.


  26. Andrew Says:

    mommy said don’t talk to strangers!


  27. Ruling killer elite Says:

    WalttheMan
    Hitler’s mistake was he didn’t pay his masters enough money - didn’t give them a big enough bite - it’s not nice to fool with the killer ruling elite


  28. engineer Says:

    #26. You worry about inheriting the wind? That is not to be our burden, I fear. Someone is likely to strike first — and we will not, now, be the one to do so. The cries of outrage and for revenge will be proportional to the number dead. 3000 was not enough to unleash our true capabilities.

    Everyone on this board has a thin veneer of civilization. We are all still primal and tribal. Should they wound but not kill, the veneer will be stripped away. The only reason that the tsunami and earthquakes have not produced revolutions is that they were naturally caused phenomenon. I can assure you, the death of 50-100k at the hands of man (not an incompetent, crooked company as in Bhopal) in a conscious act is not something that *any* nation-state or tribe can tolerate.

    The veneer will be gone, and your precious veneer of civilization — and illusion of immunity and security — will be shattered. Whether the means are nuclear or biological or both, it will happen. When you mourn the dead in the streets, there will no longer exist reason or rational behavior — and in doing so, the entire paradigm and worldview embraced by this entire board will be destroyed and shattered utterly beyond repair.

    The retailation will be something that only we are capable of doing — precise, calculated, meticulous, and utterly complete. We have the abilities from orbital assets and sea- and air-based platforms to target and perform real-time BDA and follow-up strikes.
    Liberals — like wounded animals — will scream for blood in their anger, and they will get it in spades.

    500 warheads in 20-30 minutes, with another 1000 from air- and sea-based platforms in follow-on strikes within 24 hours from ALCMs, Tactical Tomahawks, and gravity weapons. There will not be any grouping of more — or larger — than 20 people huddled together under a rock that will escape the vengence. Perhaps not even that. Remember in the Cold War everything had five-fifty warheads targeted to ensure its destruction. Believe me, the cities will receive 20+ warheads each in ladder-first strike patterns. The ground bursts and air bursts will be simultaneous to avoid warhead fratricide, with follow-on higher-altidude detonations to yield EMP. KH-11 and other orbital assets as well as UAVs/ UCAVs for real-time BDA against time-critical targets (e.g. cities) with follow-on against any groupings that might have gotten away. Tomahawks can have terminal IR guidance for W-81 detonation.

    Nothing survives that. Nothing. The thermal pulse and blast from the airbursts finish most things, and the fallout from ground bursts against buried targets will kill the rest. Follow-on strikes will finish the job against surface targets, and nothing those targets have (excluding India, China, and some small bit in Iran) are shielded against EMP. That’s the opening act of the last judgement.


  29. WaltTheMan Says:

    RKE - #28
    Ah, but he did pay his masters at BMW, Damlier (Mercedes Benz), Bayer, VW, Audi, IBM, NCR and Bushco(Prescott).


  30. The WB42 5:30 Report With Doug Krile Says:

    And Still More

    Still more good reading on the current topics of interest.


  31. WaltTheMan Says:

    engineer #28 -
    It is obvious that you have never visited two cities in Japan. The destruction was horrendous and the surface of the land was still radiating heat a year after the blasts in both Nagasaki and Hiroshima. I was there, as a child, in winter, and it was almost like walking on asphalt in the summer.
    This is a horror that I would not wish on anyone, but W has no concern for human life or it’s existance.



  32. engineer Says:

    You saw things that no child should be forced to see, then. I have no desire to see that inflicted on anyone. My comment was simply that I do not believe that our “targets” will take such actions sitting down. Indeed, we will be hoisted by W’s petard of preventative war.

    That first strike or action against us will probably be quite devastating — on the order of Pearl Harbor or larger. Our opponents aren’t stupid. More likely than not, we lose tens of thousands to tens of millions, and the facade of civility that covers these liberals will be destroyed, and they will scream louder than anyone for the utter destruction of the offending tribe. They will call for an example to be made — and in fact, our own doctrines call for it as well. For deterence to be effective, it must be acted upon, and the vengence will be total, swift, and complete.

    The selfsame liberals who here proclaim how their ideals prohibit the death penalty will call for genocide to a degree that will make every dictator, every pogrom and purge of the past could never have approached. The surface of an entire country or region of the globe will be glowing and radiating heat for decades as a result.

    Then they will get it.


  33. engineer Says:

    Neither the left nor the right have a corner on rank hypocrisy, but the right at least is honest in how it perceives the world.


  34. Average TV Viewer Says:

    Wrong, engineer.
    Bush has convinced many that muslims are strong. They are not. They are weak. We were unprepared. There is not enough money or flesh to contribute to your reasoned perception. Leave the muslims alone. That will prevent the “glow” you fear.


  35. Average TV Viewer Says:

    Reagan didn’t change the USSR. He just took the credit. Bush can’t change Islam.


  36. Susan Says:

    By reading the above comments I must repeat myself and tell all of America that there is only one solution to our nations problems.

    IMPEACHMENT

    Bush and cronies will have us at war for decades if we allow it.

    If we the People do not show our strength during the confimation hearings of Bushie’s latest neocon to the Supreme Court, we are telling BushCo we are weak.

    If we are too weak to stand up now admist the indictments and torture of the Supreme Court then impeachment is impossible.

    I for one am not weak, I say get busy now and write or call your representatives and Senators and demand impeachment hearings.

    Its the only solution.

    votetoimpeach.org


  37. Ryan Neat Says:

    “Neither the left nor the right have a corner on rank hypocrisy, but the right at least is honest in how it perceives the world.”DisEngineered

    Bahaha, that’s really funny. Bahahaha. Oh, wait, you were serious? Wow, you should really sell whatever you’re on - or did you buy it from Rove. Because, man, you’re tripping!


  38. Tank Says:

    Wow. So the the one thing McClellan has said every day of every month deserves two articles for the exact same statements at the exact same speech.
    And for earning his paycheck as the Whitehouse criticism deflector he provides an example of BOTH corrupt an incompetant establishment by deflecting criticism.

    WMDs, illegal invasions, chemical warfare violating international law, supporting terrorist regimes during a war on terror, world’s worst human rights abuser, bodies floating in the streets, the Bush Administration in shit up to it’s eyeballs and you’re dedicate not one line but 2 articles to the fact that like all administrations before them they have in fact appointed a press secretary.

    I really don’t know much about the funding of Thinkprogress other than the distict lack of advertising but if this Judd nimrod is getting paid theres 2 people need firing.


  39. SpudgeBoy Says:

    #40

    Ummm, TP is part of the Center for American Progress. It isn’t just some dudes website. Judd is a lawyer. And CAP gets their money through donations.

    I agree that two posts are too much. One could have been an update to the other.

    But, I also believe that Scott McClellen is an important part of the cover-up of an illegal war and so is Ari Fliescher.


  40. Susan Says:

    So you think its wrong for Judd to post the numerous lies from porkboy Tank?

    Thanks Judd for outlining today’s lies from the White House. Us real Americans appreciate it.


  41. SpudgeBoy Says:

    #42

    Susan,

    These guys think that we only care about what Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld and Rice do. They don’t get the fact that we know that it is a much bigger pie than that. It is a lot deeper and there are a lot more people involved in what is going on in this country. The snowball is pretty big now.

    And what do they do it for? Power. Can’t take that with you. Money? Can’t take that with you either. Fame? I wouldn’t want to be famous for what they have done. The Gloabal War on Terror. That will go down in history in the same book, next to the Global War on Drugs as a huge failure. Billions and billions of dollars spent, millions of people killed and imprisoned and the crime will continue to happen.

    Sooner or later, it will come to light that the Bush administration, if you could say they have adminitered anything, has started the Global Christian War on Muslims. WHen the world wakes up to that fact, it will be a sad day.


  42. dj Says:

    I’m sick of this so-called “CIA Leak” shit! When your toilet leaks you don’t call it a “sink leak”! It’s a “WHITE HOUSE LEAK”!!!!!!!! Get it straight people!


  43. Tank Says:

    @ Comment by Susan — November 1, 2005 @ 3:10 am
    “So you think its wrong for Judd to post the numerous lies from porkboy Tank?”

    WTF did I just say nimrod. I don’t think it’s wrong, I think its pointless. If you want to hear some more lies out of McClellan to the same effect call his answering machine and listen to the “I will call you back later”. He’s lying. He won’t. Likewise you can get the exact same answer each and every day of the week should you run short on scandals.

    You know… like if marines stop having deformed children from the DU. Nice to have McClellan saying “no comment” to fall back on.


  44. Amy Says:

    #40
    Actually, I think Scottie has used several different excuses in the past besides the White House Counsel’s Office to justify why he can’t comment on this case (except to issue denials) so this is noteworthy. In the past, he used the following excuses:

    “The prosecutors overseeing the investigation had expressed a preference to us that one way to help the investigation is not to be commenting on it from this podium.” (debunked by Think Progress)
    http://thinkprogress.org/2005/07/11/preference/

    “our policy is not to comment on an investigation while it’s ongoing…”
    http://thinkprogress.org/ 2005/ 10/ 18/ no-comment-except-denials/

    “…you’re trying to ask a question in the context of an ongoing investigation. The president has made it very clear that we’re not going to comment on an ongoing investigation.”
    http://thinkprogress.org/ 2005/ 10/ 14/ white-house-loses-confidence/


  45. The Witch Says:

    The key issue here to me is that he’s always said the special prosecutor’s office has been discouraging them from talking. Why now is he talking about WH Counsel? Has something new happened? Is he now being investigated for something that he wasn’t before?

    (I think I get the credit for being the first to notice this :dances: (see GD: HOLD THE PHONE! at DU))


  46. bushit Says:

    Scott Mc.Clellan should have marched into Karl Rove’s office and DEMANDED straight answer from the “anitchrist” himself. For two years, simple Scotty was played like a fiddle. If simple Scotty didn’t get the answers he was looking for, he should have resigned. But that would actually require a brain, and since we are talking about a White House who has none, simple Scotty deserved to be lied to.


  47. kjlovell Says:

    You’re doing a ‘heckuva’ job scottie.

    I just hope no one in the WH cleaning crew sprays raid around the place,

    or we will wake up one morning and find all the WH cockroaches tits up in their $2500 suits.

    But it would save all the time and expense of impeachment.


  48. Think Progress » McClellan On Libby Verdict: White House Needs To ‘Get Out There And…Talk About This’ Says:

    […] serving in the White House, McClellan orchestrated the White House’s stonewall on the leak story. Time and again, he claimed he could not answer questions about “an ongoing […]


  49. Kds Bbs Pics Underage Porn Kid Sex Says:

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