Transparent, Yet Unreported

Meant to write something about this earlier. Remember last week when The New York Times published a long piece about the torture and killing of two detainees at Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan? President Hamid Karzai lashed out at the U.S., as he should have, in advance of his trip to meet with President Bush.

But then - surprise! - a day later, an anonymous U.S. official just happens to show The Times a secret memo that criticizes Karzai for the increased poppy production in Afghanistan (a country which, by the way, he has surprisingly little control over). SLAP! The papers are filled with stories about poppy production as Karzai lands in the U.S., taking the focus off the ugly fact that the United States tortures people.

That, my friends, is classic "crisis communications" that our White House has been so adept at in recent years. That's what happens when you fill your press and communications staff with people who come out of -- or go through the revolving door from -- corporate PR.

(By the way, Scott McClellan finally backed away from his claims about the Newsweek story's impact. That's also typical -- a week or so after milking some PR value from a lie, the WH quietly backpedals, and if it's reported, it's buried on page A-324234. Nice.)