Fw: Smoke, mirrors and utter deceit-who can we trust?

[Guest guest]

M

Tue, 22 Feb 2005 22:05:31 -0600

 

 

 

 

[GranniesAgainstGeorge] Fw: Smoke, mirrors and utter

deceit-who can we trust?

 

--

 

 

 

Article published Feb 22, 2005

BAMBOOZLED BY BUSH

Smoke, mirrors and utter deceit

 

The Bush administration has handed out government contracts to at least

three

journalists who speak and write approvingly of administration policies.

 

The administration created phony TV newscasts, with actors pretending

to be

reporters, and shipped the tapes to local TV stations to be broadcast

as if

they were real reports.

 

The administration is straining to imprison journalists who refuse to rat

out

sources who blew the whistle on administration misdeeds and back-stairs

maneuvers but, as near as anyone can tell, has left unbothered the

journalist,

Robert Novak, who outed a CIA agent in order to embarrass an

administration

critic.

 

The administration has held " town meetings " to showcase President Bush

that

were actually political rallies with controlled attendance and pre-

screened

questions.

 

And now it turns out the administration infiltrated the White House press

corps with a specially credentialed " reporter " who was in fact an

operative

for a

Republican outfit and then used him to ask Bush softball questions

that were

really diatribes against Democrats.

 

This latest flap, over " Jeff Gannon, " is only the most recent in an

ever-lengthening string of dodges by which the Bush presidency has

tried to

bamboozle

the public in ways whose difference from fraud is only a legal

technicality.

Gannon, supposedly Washington bureau chief for Talon News, turns out to be

one

James Dale Gucket, a Republican cadre who was active recently in the

campaign

that defeated Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle.

 

Even under his supposed cover, Gucket was never more than a GOP plant.

Talon

News is an arm of GOPUSA.com, the political plaything of a group of Texas

conservatives. The administration greased his way into the White House

press

corps

with extraordinary daily passes, a rare privilege.

 

Every administration tries to get away with spinning matters to its own

advantage, but this one is running up something of a record in outright

deceitfulness.

 

It favored conservative syndicated columnists Maggie Gallagher and Michael

McManus with $21,000 and $10,000 contracts respectively, and columnist and

ubiquitous TV talking head Armstrong Williams walked off with a cool

$240,000 in

contracts. In effect, taxpayers were tapped to pay for their own

deception.

(And

what is more, wastefully: The three were Bush boosters in any event.)

 

The government's General Accounting Office has formally warned federal

agencies that the resort to video news releases that pass as real TV news

violates

laws against using appropriated funds for propaganda. The scam has been

used --

that we know of -- by the White House Office of National Drug Control

Policy

and, to tout the Medicare drug policy, by the Health and Human Services

Department's Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.

 

The " Karen Ryan " and " Mike Morris " you may have seen holding forth on Bush

policies were actors playing journalists, a real-world version of the

jokey

" I

may not be a doctor, but I play one on television " routine.

 

This White House is at once deeply secretive and aggressively

deceptive. If

you sometimes feel as though you've been hustled into a mirror maze,

that's

because you have.

 

COX NEWS SERVICE

 

 

 

Teepen is based in Atlanta. E-mail: teepencolumn

 

 

 

 

 

--