WHITE HOUSE REVENGE

From the AP via the Houston Chronicle:

The Treasury Department is seeking an investigation into whether a classified document might have been shown during a TV show in which former Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill spoke out against the Bush administration.

Treasury spokesman Rob Nichols said today that the department asked the Office of Inspector General to look into the matter. The request comes one day after a CBS "60 Minutes" segment aired featuring the blunt-talking O'Neill and the new book he is promoting, "The Price of Loyalty."

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Clearly, the Bush administration is in full punishment mode. Remember how senior White House officials leaked the name of a CIA agent in order to punish her husband for speaking out against Bush on the bogus Nigerian/Iraqi uranium deal? This is more of the same. This investigation is right up there on the sleaze scale with President Nixon's staff illegally obtaining Daniel Ellsberg's psychiatric records and leaking them in a nasty smear job over the release of the Pentagon papers. If there is any doubt that this is politically motivated, just ponder this observation made by Atrios:

Well, that was fast. How long did it take before an investigation into the "bogus" Plame incident began?

In fact, as Atrios further points out, this smear job started before the 60 Minutes interview even aired. From the official blog of the Democratic National Committe:

The moment the story broke that O'Neill was criticizing the Bush White House, the administration and its surrogates went into attack mode against the man who Bush described as "a straight shooter and an innovator."

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This investigation makes one thing clear: O'Neill must have the goods on Bush. Otherwise, the White House would have called him disgruntled and simply issued a denial; for some reason the Bush administration feels that nothing less than punishment will suffice.

Heh. I guess that means that Bush really is like a "blind man in a room full of deaf people."

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