See no Karl, hear no Karl

[maddezmom]

See no Karl, hear no Karl
Guess who the latest Bush administration officials stricken with amnesia are trying to protect in the U.S. attorneys scandal.

By Joe Conason

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Kyle Sampson, Karl Rove, Lurita Doan

March 30, 2007 | Why are high officials (and former high officials) of the Bush administration suddenly suffering from severe memory loss when they testify before Congress? On Wednesday, Lurita Doan, the chief of the General Services Administration, insisted that she "really didn't remember" much about a highly political and dubiously legal videoconference briefing at her agency last January, where a top White House operative outlined in painstaking detail exactly which House and Senate seats will be most hotly contested in the next election cycle. Then on Thursday, Kyle Sampson, the former chief of staff to Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, said again and again that he was unable to remember various events leading up to the firing of eight U.S. attorneys last year.

Taken together, the appearances of Sampson before the Senate Judiciary Committee and Doan before the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform were, as Robert Klein once said sardonically of the Watergate hearings, a "veritable festival of recollection."

"I do not recollect this," said Doan of the elaborate national videoconference, after which she allegedly urged her agency's employees to figure out creative ways to help GOP candidates win in 2008. "I honestly and absolutely do not recollect this." Sampson must have said "I don't remember" literally dozens of times.

It seems that Republican defense attorneys give roughly the same advice to every client who shows up in a congressional hearing room, despite the conviction of White House aide Scooter Libby for lying to a grand jury about what he did and didn't remember. Almost nobody listening to Doan and Sampson believed that their memories are so pathetically dim. But then nobody is likely to turn Doan and Sampson over to prosecutors for perjury investigations, either.

more:http://www.salon.com/opinion/conason/2007/03/30/partisan_government/index.html?source=rss

[MotorCityMan]

1. Great quote here...

"...this buttoned-down operative of the famously buttoned-down, tight-sphinctered Bush political machine.."

I love Joe Conason.