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To get a broader context of Eric Schultz’s rude, crude, and unacceptable behavior towards Ms. Attkisson, I think it is important to read the assessment of it by Keith Koffler in the White House Dossier blog. I mentioned this earlier today as it seems such behavior is not only common from the White House but is a practiced tactic used to bully reporters.
The rude, crude, and unattractive behavior exhibited by DOJ press flack Tracy Schmaler and White House Associate Communications Director Eric Schultz towards CBS News Investigative Reporter Sharyl Attkisson is part of a conscious effort on the part of the Obama Administration to bully reporters over their stories. This according to a blog post by Keith Koffler of the White House Dossier blog. Koffler has covered the White House since 1997 and is the White House correspondent for Roll Call.
Koffler says the bullying tactics used against reporters are part of the Obama Administration’s standard repetoire of tactics used to get them to spike negative stories.
Such tactics as this were rare in both the Clinton and Bush White Houses.
These Obama flacks are not just reacting with visceral anger to the story. They are specifically trained and encouraged to do this. Most of them are actually quite nice to be around when they’re not in Kill the Story Mode.
As Koffler notes, this tactic amounts to a suppression of free speech by this administration. He has written more extensively about it here.
Moreover, Koffler says it amounts to an admission on the part of the Obama Administration that the reporting on Operation Fast and Furious and Project Gunwalker “has legs.” Of course, any reader of this blog or Mike Vanderboegh’s Sipsey Street Irregulars or David Codrea’s National Gun Rights Examiner column knows that. Still he has some good advice for Sheryl:
If Ms. Attkisson understands it’s nothing more than a tool being used against her, it shouldn’t affect her.
Except in that she should understand there’s a good reason they’re doing it: she’s onto something big. The higher the volume of the screaming and the more sickening the language, the closer she’s getting.
As to the immature twits running press operations in this administration, frankly they need their mouths washed out with soap and should be sent to their rooms without dinner. It goes without saying that they shouldn’t be allowed their Blackberries or Xbox 360s either.
Sharyl Attkisson of CBS News had a report this morning on The Early Show about an earlier ATF operation called Operation Wide Receiver. It was run out the ATF’s Tucson office. The operation which began during the Bush administration also involved gun walking and Mexican drug cartels.
Kurt Hofmann, the St. Louis Gun Rights Examiner, does an excellent job in analyzing the differences between Operation Wide Receiver and Operation Fast and Furious. While they both involved ATF, Mexican drug cartels, and gun walking, Kurt notes some important differences.
Well, for one, four or five years ago, we didn’t have the administration (from the President on down), the mass media, and “gun control” advocates incessantly claiming that, “[Some variable, but invariably wildly inflated] percentage of seized Mexican crime guns come from the U.S.,” imposing on us the moral imperative to “strengthen” our “weak gun laws.”
We didn’t have a requirement in the southwest border states to report multiple long gun sales–a requirement for which “walked” guns ouf of “Operation Fast and Furious” were used as justification. Nor did we have guns “walked” from Indiana to Chicago used to attempt to impose extra reporting requirements on and Indiana gun dealer.
At this point, we don’t seem to have any evidence that earlier “gunwalking” involved the FBI, the DEA, DHS, the State Department, the IRS, and even the White House Security Council.
Kurt is correct that this should be investigated as well. He is also very correct in saying that the signs of failure of Operation Wide Receiver were known by 2009 and that it should have been a warning about going ahead with Operation Fast and Furious.
Jim Shepherd of the Outdoor Wire was writing about this failed program back in June and I had a post on it then. You can compare the newest story with what we knew in June.
In some of their more classy actions, spokespeople at both the White House and the Department of Justice have both cursed and yelled at CBS New’s Sharyl Attkisson. This was in response to her asking questions about the latest documents released and Attorney General Eric Holder’s testimony before the House Judiciary Committee in May.
Attkisson divulged their behavior in an interview with Laura Ingraham on Ingraham’s radio show today.
Tracy Schmaler is the Director of the Office of Public Affairs at the Justice Department and earlier in the decade worked for Sen. Pat Leahy (D-VT) at the Senate Judiciary Committee. She refused to put any clarifying information about Holder’s testimony on paper and continually yelled at Attkisson on the phone.
At the White House, Eric Schultz is the Associate Communications Director and is the one who not only screamed at Attkisson but cursed her as well.
This sort of behavior on the part of spokespeople for Holder and Obama indicates to me a high level of fear on their part. It is like a dog that is a fear biter – they don’t bite out of aggression but rather as a fear response. You have to wonder if it is because the truth is starting to emerge and it is much uglier than we could ever have imagined.
Rose Mary Woods was President Richard Nixon’s personal secretary. She was the one officially responsible for the infamous 18-minute gap in the Watergate tapes. Whether she was the one who accidentally erased the tape or whether it was really an accident will remain one of the unsolved mysteries of the Watergate affair.
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| Woods demonstrating how she accidentally erased the tape. |
Given the newest batch of recordings released by Sharyl Attkisson of CBS News of ATF Agent Hope McAllister and gun store owner Andre Howard, Attorney General Eric Holder is probably wishing that a Miss Woods or a modern equivalent had erased these tapes.
Sharyl Attkisson reported a few minutes ago that Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA) and Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA) have sent a letter today to National Security Advisor Thomas Donilon requesting e-mails and other information from three current or former White House staffers.
The staffers are: Kevin O’Reilly, former Director of North American Affairs, National Security Council; Dan Restrepo, Special Assistant to the President, National Security Council; and Greg Gatjanis, Director for Terrorist Finance and Counternarcotics, Counterterrorism Policy, National Security Council.
The information requests were made after revelations that ATF’s Special Agent in Charge of Phoenix during Fast and Furious, William Newell, “provided regular updates to Kevin O’Reilly” at the White House…”as early as the summer of 2010.” The emails indicate O’Reilly asked to share information about Fast and Furious with Restrepo and Gatjanis.
In addition to the new documents request, the Congressional Republicans also requested to interview O’Reilly by the end of this month.
The White House is denying all prior knowledge of Operation Fast and Furious according to a statement from an “unnamed” White House official.
“As has already been reported, the emails referenced in this letter affirm that no one at the White House knew about the investigative tactics being used in the operation, let alone any decision to let guns walk. To the extent that some NSS staffers were briefed on the toplines of ongoing federal efforts, so were members of Congress. The Washington Post reported that House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Darrell Issa received a Fast and Furious briefing in April of 2010. These types of top-line briefings would not include a discussion of the investigative tactics like gun-walking. These e-mail exchanges show nothing more than an effort to give local color to a policy initiative that was designed to give more resources to help with the border problem. They don’t even contain the name “Fast and Furious” until February 2011, after the indictment was unsealed.”
If you have been following Mike Vanderboegh’s reports on Sipsey Street Irregulars, you know that he has had Dan Restrepo in his sights since the Spring. Today he gave some more background on him from his time as a staffer for former Rep. Lee Hamilton. As Mike notes about Restrepo’s reputation,
He has been described by sources who know him as “ruthless,” “amoral,” and a “f-cking political thug” who would “sell his mother or stab his father” if he thought he could thereby get ahead.
Just the kind of loyal political functionary to carry out a sensitive, secret operation like the Gunwalker Plot.
Sharyl Attkisson had an updated report on the reassignment of Kenneth Melson and the resignation of Dennis Burke. Also revealed in this report is the ATF Senior Agent John Dodson is being transferred from Arizona to South Carolina. While not mentioned in the report, it is my understanding that three out of the four ATF Special Agents who testified before the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee have been transferred out of Arizona.
Sharyl Attkisson of CBS News has an on-air report on the changes at ATF today. One of the things she says towards the end of her report was quite interesting. An administration official told CBS that “nobody is naive enough to believe these changes end the controversy but the Department of Justice believes ATF has been bogged down by mistakes made over the past couple of months and desperately needed fresh air and a new start.”
In an article on today’s hearings into Operation Fast and Furious, CBS’s Sharyl Attkisson has this update on William Newell’s testimony.
Update, 2:40 p.m.: The special agent in charge of the Phoenix ATF office during gunwalking scandal, Bill Newell, testified early this afternoon that he discussed the program with a White House staffer.
Newell said he talked to his friend, Kevin O’Reilly, who is listed the White House’s Director for North America at the National Security Council.
This is, to my knowledge, the first direct indication that at least one staffer in the White House was aware of Operation Fast and Furious. There is no way to know currently whether he passed this information to others on the NSC or up the chain to the President’s office.
With every revelation in Project Gunwalker, it just keeps getting more and more interesting.
UPDATE: David Codrea examines the significance of the NSC’s Director for North America being in the loop about Project Gunwalker here.
What’s evident from today’s exchange is Issa’s committee has some degree of access to past Newell/O’Reilly email correspondence. How much is one question. Where following up on what they have will lead—and how high up—is another, and the most important one of all.
Sharyl Attkisson reported on-air on the CBS Early Show this morning about 2 AK-47 variants that were found at the scene of a shoot-out between Mexican police and narco-terrorist thugs implicated in the murder of the brother of the former Attorney General for the state of Chihuahua. She also discusses the firing of whistle-blower Vince Cefalu by the ATF as well as the “livesaving” award for ATF Agent Hope MacAllister.
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