Breaking: Conyers Calls Committee Back from Summer Recess to Investigate Suskind Allegations
by Ralph Lopez
Fri Aug 15, 2008 at 11:26:08 AM PDT
From Impeachment Left to Right
http://impeachmentlefttoright.blogspot.com/2008/08/conyers-calls-committee-back-from.html The 110th Congress isn’t over. We’re starting our work, and then we’re doing it in a period where the Congress is in recess. I’m calling everybody back. -- John Conyers on DemocracyNow, Aug.14,2008
REP. JOHN CONYERS: I don’t want to make that comparison. I was there, and you were on the case, as usual. And this is not—this is not a retrospective. The 110th Congress isn’t over. We’re starting our work, and then we’re doing it in a period where the Congress is in recess.
I’m calling everybody back. We’ve got a huge amount of work to engage in. And because I don’t have the appropriate radio to hear the program at 8:00 in the morning, I am happy to be invited on, because I don’t have to wait ’til this evening until the releases come out at 11:30 to read what all of you said. So this is a wonderful service to me, and I’m grateful to you for it. But I am not here to tell you what was—it was like with Iran-Contra, as I know you know it well. But this isn’t a history lesson we’re in.
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JUAN GONZALEZ: Well, we have about thirty seconds, but there was one other question that was forwarded to us:
How culpable was the media in persuading the American public to digest the talking points of the White House? And has there been any radical shift in the war coverage since the beginning of the war?
RON SUSKIND: Yeah, absolutely. The media has gone through a real therapy session on this, because, you know, on balance, everybody understands that the White House used a new method of sort of fear, anti-patriotic—you’re not patriotic for doing your job—intimidation on the media. It worked. Power works in this way, and the media is now trying to recover, step by step. But
the fact is, the White House operations for these sorts of things, as we see just in the last week, are still intact and operating to try to terrorize, to try to bring fear to sources. They’ve been hunting for sources for many reporters for years. It chills sources. It makes them fear for their families, for their future. And this is still going on. http://www.democracynow.org/2008/8/14/after_ron_suskind_reveals_bush_adminhttp://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2008/8/15/1440/40624/42/568471UPDATEUPDATE: Reader reports that Conyers now says he did not call committee back, but only "staff," whom I thought stayed on anyway while congressmen were on "District Work Period." Left message seeking clarification.