(HOST) This morning, commentator Barrie Dunsmore looks at this week’s resignation of Attorney General Alberto Gonzales and finds a troubling pattern in the current ways of Washington when it comes to telling the truth.
(DUNSMORE) Call me old-fashioned. But I still believe that when a spokesperson for any department of the United States Government says something for the record — there ought to be some reasonable expectation that it is the truth.
The old saying goes, "Everyone is entitled to their own opinions…" — but they are not entitled to their own facts. In four decades of dealing with government officials, there were a few notable exceptions, but most of the time I found that, regardless of party, on simple matters of fact people in government could be believed. That no longer appears to be so.
Tae the Gonzales resignation case. According to a Bush administration official, who spoke after it was publicly announced, Gonzales offered his resignation to the President by phone last Friday. Mr. Bush didn’t immediately accept it but asked Gonzales to come to Texas to discuss it further on Sunday. According to the Washington Post, on Saturday night Gonzales’ press secretary asked the Attorney General what he should say to reporters who were asking about rumors of his resignation. Gonzales told the spokesperson to deny the reports.
On Sunday afternoon, after Bush had lunch with Gonzales and accepted the resignation, the Justice Department spokesman again called the Attorney General. Gonzales again told his spokesman to say that reports of his imminent resignation were not true.
Now, I know that every administration wants to manage the news, especially when it comes to hirings, firings and resignations; and I would normally cut them some slack. But in this case it seems to me that the notion that you don’t have to tell the truth to the news media, and therefore to the American people, has so permeated the system in Washington — that lying has become more the norm than the exception.
Likewise, words that should define a man and tell us something about him are bandied about so carelessly that they no longer have any meaning. Mr. Bush described the outgoing Attorney General as a man of "integrity" and "principle." Yet, based on his recent appearances before the Senate Judiciary Committee, not only did Chairman Patrick Leahy say he "did not trust" Gonzales — the ranking Republican member, Arlen Specter, said that he had "no credibility." These conclusions were based on the fact that Gonzales’ sworn testimony had been replete with a staggering number of claims of memory loss — whiloe what he did remember was challenged by two other Bush appointees — the deputy attorney general and the head of the FBI. The man of integrity was most fortunate he wasn’t charged with perjury.
When the history of these early years of the twenty-first century is written, I believe it willo be seen as a time when the national government consistently demonstrated, on matters great and small, an almost total disregard for the truth — while the national news media showed an almost total lack of itestinal fortitude in holding that government accountable for such irresponsible behavior.
Barrie Dunsmore is a veteran diplomatic and foreign correspondent for A-B-C News, now living in Charlotte.