[Isaac]

In this week’s Times Literary Supplement, the usually engaging Niall Ferguson has a long review of a new, generally sympathetic Henry Kissinger biography. In addition to recommending the book (which, despite a few questionable assertions, appears to have some interesting stuff on Kissinger’s childhood), Ferguson poses his review around the following question:

Has the ferocity of the criticism which Kissinger has attracted perhaps got something to do with the fact that he, like the Rothschilds, is Jewish?

Before returning to this particular topic, it’s worth mentioning a few things about the rest of Ferguson’s piece. It’s a vigorous defense of Kissinger, and also a critique of Kissinger’s critics, among them Seymour Hersh and Christopher Hitchens. Ferguson starts off very shakily, with a notably weak plea for leniency:

It would in fact be much easier to implicate a number of Kissinger’s predecessors in civilian bombings, coups d’état and support for murderous regimes. Unlike the case of Chile, to give a single example, there is no question that the Central Intelligence Agency had a direct hand in the coup that overthrew an elected government in Guatemala in 1954. It also played an active role in the subsequent campaign of violence against the Guatemalan Left. Many more people (around 200,000) died in this campaign than were “disappeared” in Chile after 1973 (2,279). In any case, Richard Nixon was not the first President to seek to influence Chilean domestic politics. Both of his immediate predecessors did so. Yet you will search the bookshops in vain for “The Trial of John Foster Dulles” or “The Trial of Dean Rusk”.

There are two responses to this. The first is that it is not a ringing defense of the former secretary of state (only 2,279 people killed under Pinochet!). And the second is that if someone did write a book about Guatemala called “The Trial of John Foster Dulles,” you can be absolutely sure that Niall Ferguson would be the first person to accuse the author of hyperventilating and reducing a “complicated” period in American history to a “naïve and simplistic” bill of wrongs.

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When Scott McClellan resigned as Press Secretary on April 19, 2006, his White House officials colleagues heaped praise on him:

President Bush: “And I thought he handled his assignment with class, integrity. He really represents the best of his family, our state and our country.” [4/19/06]

White House Counselor Dan Bartlett: McClellan “served this country and this White House very well during very difficult times.” [On Hardball, 4/19/06]

Former Press Secretary Ari Fleischer: McClellan enjoyed “the trust and confidence of the president” and “was flawless in his performance, especially when you read the transcripts.” [4/20/06]

Yet news of McClellan’s tell-all book seems to have soured White House officials’ impression of him. Current Press Secretary Dana Perino said McClellan was obviously “disgruntled,” while Fleischer said he was “heartbroken,” and Bartlett called the book “total crap.”

MSNBC’s Kevin Corke reported this afternoon that White House officials, on background, went even further, calling McClellan a “traitor” and likening him to Benedict Arnold. He said the White House was “upset,” substituting that word for a word he said he could not repeat on television:

CORKE: I have heard on background they are upset. I’m using the word upset because that’s not the word they used, and it is not the word I can say on TV. Another person said they are flat out angry about what transpired here. I heard the word “traitor” and “Benedict.” I think another person said to me, not far from here, it was like a shot to the gut when you are not looking. [...]

O’DONNEL: Quickly Kevin, a White House staffer said to you on background — they used the word “traitor”?

CORKE: “Traitor.” Absolutely. And I raised my eyebrows, and he said, It is what it is.

Watch it:

The right wing is circling the wagons to go on damage control. National Review’s blog, the Corner, insisted today that McClellan was a Hamas apologist. Michelle Malkin derides McClellan as a “turncoat,” and Commentary’s Jennifer Rubin calls the book “catty” and its author a “hack,” and dismisses McClellan as “probably the worst White House press secretary in recent memory.”

Last night, ThinkProgress accepted the journalism award for Best Blog from the Sidney Hillman Foundation. The event was held at the Millennium Broadway Hotel in Manhattan, where we were honored to share the stage with the other award recipients, including PBS’s Bill Moyers, Los Angeles Times photojournalist Luis Sinco, and the Writers Guild of America.

The New Yorker’s Hendrik Hertzberg presented ThinkProgress’s Faiz Shakir and Amanda Terkel with the award, who received it on behalf of the team. Afterward, Faiz gave a speech about the importance of blogs in challenging those in power. Watch it (two parts):

Below are a few photos from the evening:

In a memoir scheduled to be published next week, former White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan charges that President Bush was not “open and forthright on Iraq” and that the Bush administration engaged in a “propaganda campaign” to sell the Iraq war.

McClellan’s surprising revelations mark a drastic shift from his past rhetoric regarding the war. During his time as press secretary, McClellan repeatedly defended the conduct of the war, justified the case that was made to launch it and defended Bush’s handling of the war, once even referring to him as a “straight shooter” on Iraq:

– “There was a lot of debate going on about the pre-war intelligence that was used in the lead up to the decision to go into Iraq and remove a brutal tyrant from his position of power. There were irresponsible and unfounded accusations being made against the administration, suggesting that we had manipulated or misused that intelligence. That was flat-out false.” [4/07/06]

– “I’ve known this President a long time, and this President is someone I think the American people recognize as a straight shooter, someone who, when he says something, means it, and does exactly what he says he’s going to do…when it comes to Iraq, in terms of the intelligence the President is someone that laid all that information out before the American people.” [7/01/04]

– “[W]e’ve been very straightforward about where we are in terms of the theater in Iraq.” [8/20/03]

– QUESTION: [D]oes [Bush] feel he misled the American people? McCLELLAN: No. [7/16/03]

It’s a shame it took McClellan so long to acknowledge that his boss and his colleagues were misleading the country into what he called in his memoir “a serious strategic blunder.”

When asked to explain McClellan’s shift, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) said, “at some point, maybe the lies just got to be too heavy for him to carry.”

In an interview with MSNBC’s Dan Abrams yesterday, Rep. Debbie Wasserman-Schultz (D-FL) said that the House Judiciary Committee would be willing to arrest Karl Rove if he continues to refuse to testify about his role in the U.S. attorney scandal and prosecution of former Alabama governor Don Siegelman. The Hill reports:

“Well, if that’s what it takes,” she said. “I mean we really cannot allow the co-equal branch of government, the legislative branch, to be trampled upon by the executive branch. The founding fathers established three branches of government. We are a co-equal branch, and this is an administration that essentially has ignored and disrespected the role of the legislative branch for far too long.”

Watch it:

Earlier today, White House Press Secretary Dana Perino put out a statement bashing former press secretary Scott McClellan’s new book critical of the administration. She called McClellan “disgruntled” and said that President Bush was unlikely to comment on the criticisms:

Scott, we now know, is disgruntled about his experience at the White House. For those of us who fully supported him, before, during and after he was press secretary, we are puzzled. It is sad — this is not the Scott we knew.

The book, as reported by the press, has been described to the president. I do not expect a comment from him on it — he has more pressing matters than to spend time commenting on books by former staffers.

Evidently, Bush has less to do than Perino thought. CNN’s Ed Henry reports that aboard Air Force One today, Perino gave the “most detailed” response from Bush yet on McClellan’s book. According to Henry, Bush had seen a copy of the book in November, but hoped that it wouldn’t be so harsh once it was published:

HENRY: On the way to Utah, from here in Colorado, aboard Air Force One, Dana Perino told reporters that the President first read an excerpt of this book back in November at Camp David. At that time they were led to believe it was overwritten a bit and maybe it would not essentially be that harsh. She talked to the President yesterday obviously on Air Force One after it was becoming clear the book was going to be very harsh. She said the President’s reaction was, quote, “He was puzzled.”

He didn’t recognize the same Scott McClellan that he hired and worked with for so many years. She added he was disappointed and called it a sad situation.

Watch it:

According to Henry, Perino added that McClellan was “rewriting history” on the Iraq war.

AP reports:

Same-sex couples in some California counties will be able to marry as soon as June 14, the president of the California’s county clerks association said.

Stephen Weir, who heads the California Association of Clerks and Election Officials, said Monday he was told by the Office of Vital Records that clerks would be authorized to hand out marriage licenses as soon as that date, which is a Saturday and exactly 30 days after the California Supreme Court ruled that gay marriage should be legal.

The court’s decisions typically take effect after 30 days, barring further legal action.