Earlier today
Thomas C wrote a diary entitled
The Nightmare is Just Starting in which he points out that the White House has tampered with the transcript of a press briefing on Oct. 31st. After reading his diary I decided to use my handy lexus/nexus account and see if anyone has reported on this. What I found instead was even more disturbing.
It turns out the Bush White House has been tampering with everything they could get their hands on from the word go, including, but not isolated to, White House press briefings.
I know you're shocked. Stunned. "Get out of Dodge!" you say. Tragically it surprises no one that Bushco would tamper with the press, but I thought it'd be nice to try and have a cohesive list of said tamperings so we all have some idea of just how many times they've done this and maybe inspire some MSM reporter with Cajones to actually write about it.
Starting from the top, before Bush was even'elected' he tried to scrub his record as govenor. From the
Austin Chronicle:
In January, while the eyes of the world were on recounts in Florida and the never-ending U.S. presidential election, a convoy of trucks left the state Capitol complex in Austin. The trucks were on a 110-mile trip to the southeast, to College Station and Texas A&M University -- specifically, to the George Bush Presidential Library on the A&M campus...[the transfer of documents] -- led to a legal struggle conducted behind closed doors. The final outcome, intended or not, may be to keep the record of George W. Bush's six-year term in Austin out of reach of historians and journalists -- and the public -- at least until Bush's term in the White House ends, and perhaps longer...In the case of the Bush papers, state archivists have never been permitted even to sort through the complete documents, or arrange or classify them.
And in September of 2001 via democrats.com:
If you listen to the recording of Ari Fleischer's press briefing on 9/26, you can clearly hear Fleischer answer the question about Bill Maher's remarks by saying: "they need to WATCH WHAT THEY SAY, watch what they do." But if you read the official transcript, "watch what you say" has been removed.[audio available at source]
In 2003 from WaPo:
White House officials were steamed when Andrew S. Natsios, the administrator of the U.S. Agency for International Development, said earlier this year that U.S. taxpayers would not have to pay more than $1.7 billion to reconstruct Iraq -- which turned out to be a gross understatement of the tens of billions of dollars the government now expects to spend.
Recently, however, the government has purged the offending comments by Natsios from the agency's Web site. The transcript, and links to it, have vanished....
This is not the first time the administration has done some creative editing of government Web sites. After the insurrection in Iraq proved more stubborn than expected, the White House edited the original headline on its Web site of President Bush's May 1 speech, "President Bush Announces Combat Operations in Iraq Have Ended," to insert the word "Major" before combat.
viaThe Memory Hole:
>>> When Bush gave his second prime-time press conference in two years (on 6 March 2003), in a flustered moment, he admitted that the production was "scripted." But in transcripts of the event, all media outlets, except one, have changed or removed that embarassing moment.
It happened when Bush was looking down at his notes to see which reporter he was supposed to call upon. The following excerpt is from the official transcript at the White House's Website:
The risk of doing nothing, the risk of hoping that Saddam Hussein changes his mind and becomes a gentle soul, the risk that somehow -- that inaction will make the world safer, is a risk I'm not willing to take for the American people.
We'll be there in a minute. King, John King. This is a scripted -- (laughter.)
Q Thank you, Mr. President. How would -- sir, how would you answer your critics who say that they think this is somehow personal?
You can confirm this for yourself by going to the transcript. The exchange is not quite halfway down the page. Also, you can listen to an MP3 of the exchange here.
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Now, let's look at how the media have preserved this moment for the historical record. Most media outlets ran a transcript prepared by eMediaMillWorks Inc., which was distributed by the Associated Press. I found this transcript on MSNBC, FoxNews, the Los Angeles Times, Baltimore Sun, New York Newsday, Minneapolis Star-Tribune, London Guardian, Rocky Mountain News, News & Observer (Raleigh, North Carolina), Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, Las Vegas Sun, FindLaw, and others. Here's what it says:
The risk of doing nothing, the risk of hoping that Saddam Hussein changes his mind and becomes a gentle soul, the risk that somehow inaction will make the world safer, is a risk I'm not willing to take for the American people.
King -- John King? (Crosstalk)
BUSH: This is unscripted.
Q: Thank you, Mr. President. Sir, how would you answer your critics who say that they think this is somehow personal?
As you can see, "scripted" has become "unscripted." Sure, maybe someone at eMediaMillWorks misheard "a scripted" as "unscripted." But no matter what the reason, a large number of news outlets ran the incorrect version.
Not to mention the hundreds of MSM reports that have been abandoned or dropped due to white house pressure, as well as the many FOIA requests illegaly denied by this administration. So the nightmare began a long time ago, but hopefully it's almost over.