Perino Defends Bush’s Lie: ‘The President Was Being Truthful!’
December 6th, 2007During the White House press briefing today, Press Secretary Dana Perino attempted to defend President Bush’s lie about when he first learned that Iran had halted its nuclear weapons program.
Recall, Bush originally stated that Director of National Intelligence Mike McConnell came to him in August “and said, ‘We have some new information.’ .” But last night, he was told that Iran’s program “may be suspended.”
White House reporters repeatedly confronted Perino about this discrepancy in the press briefing this afternoon. Perino tried to claim that when Bush said he didn’t know what the information was, he actually meant, “he didn’t get any of the details of what — what the information was, in terms of what the actual raw intelligence was.” When reporters pressed her on this, an exasperated Perino said:
OK, look. I can see where you could see that the president could have been more precise in that language. But the president was being truthful.
Watch it:
During the briefing, Perino was also asked about the timeline of when Bush was briefed on the NIE. As ThinkProgress earlier this week, The New Yorker’s Seymour Hersh said that Bush spoke to Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert about the NIE on Monday, Nov. 26.
CNN’s Ed Henry asked Perino: “How could he brief Olmert on Monday about a report that he found out about on Wednesday?” Perino responded, “I don’t — I will check. I mean, it’s possible that he knew that there was information coming.”
Transcript:
Former White House adviser Karl Rove is “ that will kick off today and likely result in a seven-figure payday. How much Rove’s memoir will go for is still unclear, but one publisher predicted $3 million. Ashbel Green, a senior editor at Alfred A Knopf, said that to fetch “the multimillion-dollar contracts of former Federal Reserve chair Alan Greenspan or former President Bill Clinton.”


On Tuesday, President Bush said he was by the intelligence community that Iran had suspended its nuclear weapons program in 2003: