Thursday, September 09, 2004

More Cover Up

I'm not particularly surprised by the fact that the White House was withholding documents, but I am surprised that they seem to have let themselves be caught doing it. Kevin Drum says:

Apparently so. In fact, the White House has now released their own copies of two of the memos and doesn't dispute their authenticity. So if I had to guess, I'd say that these are copies taken from the microfilm archives of the 111th Fighter Interceptor Squadron. How else would the White House have its own copies?

But that's just fluff. The real question now is: what other documents does the White House have? Obviously they've had these sitting around for a while, and just as obviously they've held them back even though they claimed in February that they had made available every known document related to Bush's National Guard record.

So what else are they hiding? And when are they going to approve AP's FOIA request to view all relevant microfilm records directly?

Kleiman says:

During the 2000 election season, the Bush campaign claimed that Bush had released all of his military records. That was false. Early this year, under pressure, the White House released another batch of records, claiming that it had now released all of Mr. Bush's military records. That, too, was false. Two days ago, under lawsuit from the AP, the White House released another batch of documents, claiming once again that all documents had now been released.
Yesterday, for reasons not publicly explained, the White House centralized authority over all responses to requests for Mr. Bush's military records. This seemed strange if all the records had already been released.

Tonight, after the 60 Minutes report, the White House released two of the documents 60 Minutes had just presented. Were they just copying CBS, or did they have those documents already? And what other documents do they have, or know about, that they're trying to prevent other parts of the government from releasing by centralizing authority to respond to FOIA requests?


Are the media going to wake up to the fact that they've been bullshitted about this for years? Are they going to care?


...Kevin Drum says the WH documents were just copies of what CBS had sent them.