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WASHINGTON,
D.C. – U.S. Representative Jan Schakowsky (D-IL) issued today’s “Bush Administration’s
Misstatement of the Day” following on honesty and integrity in government.
While
campaigning for the White House in 2000, then Governor George W. Bush often
pledged that he would “restore honesty and integrity to the White House.”
However,
the Washington Post today (White House Web Scrubbing, 12/18/03),
reported that the “Bush administration has been using cyberspace to make
some of its own cosmetic touch-ups to history,” purging “offending comments”
by Administration officials, and “has done some creative editing of government
Web sites.”
For
example, the Washington Post reported that comments made earlier
this year by Andrew S. Natsios, U.S. Agency for International Development
Administrator, about the cost to reconstruct Iraq have "vanished" from
the agency’s Web site. Earlier this year, Natsios stated that U.S.
taxpayers would not have to pay more than $1.7 billion -- "which turned
out to be a gross understatement of the tens of billions of dollars the
government now expects to spend."
White
House Web Scrubbing
Offending
Comments on Iraq Disappear From Site
By
Dana Milbank
Washington
Post Staff Writer
Thursday,
December 18, 2003; Page A05
It's
not quite Soviet-style airbrushing, but the Bush administration has been
using cyberspace to make some of its own cosmetic touch-ups to history.
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.
Since
the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, administration Web sites have been scrubbed
for anything vaguely sensitive, and passwords are now required to access
even much unclassified information. Though it is not clear whether the
White House is directing the changes, several agencies have been following
a similar pattern. The federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
and USAID have removed or revised fact sheets on condoms, excising information
about their effectiveness in disease prevention, and promoting abstinence
instead. The National Cancer Institute, meanwhile, scrapped claims on its
Web site that there was no association between abortion and breast cancer.
And the Justice Department recently redacted criticism of the department
in a consultant's report that had been posted on its Web site.
Steven
Aftergood, who directs the Project on Government Secrecy at the Federation
of American Scientists, said the Natsios case is particularly pernicious.
"This smells like an attempt to revise the record, not just to withhold
information but to alter the historical record in a self-interested way,
and that is sleazier than usual," he said. "If they simply said, 'We made
an error; we underestimated,' people could understand it and deal with
it."
For
months after the April 23 Natsios interview on ABC's "Nightline," USAID.gov
displayed the transcript. "You're not suggesting that the rebuilding of
Iraq is going to be done for $1.7 billion?" an incredulous Ted Koppel asked
Natsios.
"Well,
in terms of the American taxpayers contribution, I do," Natsios said. "This
is it for the U.S. The rest of the rebuilding of Iraq will be done by other
countries who have already made pledges, Britain, Germany, Norway, Japan,
Canada and Iraqi oil revenues. . . . But the American part of this will
be $1.7 billion. We have no plans for any further-on funding for this."
A
White House spokesman, asked later about these remarks, responded vaguely
that he had not seen the statement in question. Then, sometime this fall,
USAID made it easier for the administration to maintain its veil of ignorance
on the subject by taking the transcript off its Web site.
For
a while, the agency left telltale evidence by keeping the link to the transcript
on its "What's New" page -- but yesterday the liberal Center for American
Progress discovered that this link had disappeared, too, as well as the
Google "cached" copies of the original page.
USAID
spokeswoman Lejaune Hall, asked about this curious situation, searched
the Web site herself for the missing document. "That is strange," she said.
After a brief investigation, she reported back: "They were taken down off
the Web site. There was going to be a cost. That's why they're not there."
But
other government Web sites, including the State and Defense departments,
routinely post interview transcripts, even from "Nightline." And, it turns
out, there is no cost. "We would not charge for that," said ABC News spokesman
Jeffrey Schneider. "We would have no trouble with a government agency linking
to one of our interviews, and we are unaware of anybody from [ABC] making
any request that anything be removed." |
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