What did they know, and when did they know it?

[remfan]

http://markarkleiman.blogspot.com/2003_10_01_markarkleiman_archive.html#106538478578730087

snip

On July 22 Newsday had a story, sourced to "intelligence officials," that Plame was undercover. That was enough to force even Luskin into a graceless and half-hearted retraction. (Ten weeks later, the defenders of the White House were still insisting that we didn't know whether Plame's status was secret or not.) Assume you're inside the White House, and innocent. Wouldn't you have someone call the CIA and ask why they're throwing spitballs at the White House?

The same day, a reporter asked a question of Scott McClellan at the daily briefing, which he dodged by saying it was impossible to track down anonymous-source stories. (A proposition true in general and obviously false in this case, given the very limited number of "senior Administration officials" in a position to have known the central facts.) The question to McClellan wasn't a surprise to him; Newsday reports having called Claire Buchan before its story ran and being bucked over to the NSC staff, which didn't respond. That question was repeated a few days later, and he dodged again. (An alert commentator of Dan Drezner's points out that McClellan's first answer starts "I'm glad you asked that": i.e., it was indeed a question he was prepped for.)

How likely is it that McClellan never checked around to see if anyone had trouble on this and to get guidance about what he could and couldn't say? His readiness with an answer the first time, and its identity with his answer the second time, suggests that he had briefed himself on the issue beforehand, as he naturally would have when Buchan told him about the Newsday inquiry. Is it really conceivable that by then someone at the top hadn't become aware of the matter? How many times a week does someone credibly accuse two senior administration officials, in print, of committing aggravated felonies?

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