Posted on 07/30/2002 10:06:39 PM PDT by glorygirl
At Tuesday afternoon's daily White House news briefing, WND asked Presidential Press Secretary Ari Fleischer:
WND: A Princeton University admissions officer has been caught intruding on a confidential Internet message of the president's alma mater, Yale, in search, among others, of the record of the president's niece, Lauren. And this intruder has been merely suspended with pay. What was the president's reaction to this? And a Bush policy is that anybody from the Bush administration caught intruding on a confidential Princeton Internet message would be fired. Isn't' that true, Ari? FLEISCHER: Actually, Lester, this is not something I've talked to the president about, so I don't know what his reflections are.
This Ivy League hacking and intrusion into confidential material relating to the president's own niece at the presidents alma mater has been widely reported in the major media.
WND also asked Fleischer:
WND: Both the L.A. Weekly as well as WorldNetDaily report that our government is ignoring or hiding an Oklahoma City connection between Zacarias Moussaoui and 9-11 skyjacker Mohamed Atta because it might raise questions about the rush to close the books on the Murrah Building bombing, which was charged exclusively to Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols. And my question: Will the president ask the FBI to investigate reports that McVeigh and several Iraqis were guests at a motel just outside Oklahoma City just before the Murrah Building bombing in 1995? FLEISCHER: Lester, I'm not aware of any of these reports, and these matters are handled by the investigators.
WND: I'd be glad to send you statements on that, if you would take that question and get back to me, Ari.
FLEISCHER: I'm sure you will.
Fleischer did announce, to applause, Hearst reporter Helen Thomas' 60th anniversary of covering the White House. After the briefing concluded, there was a cake and champagne in honor of Helen, whom I asked:
WND: Who in your 60 years was the best of all the presidential press secretaries you have covered? HELEN: Ter Horst. He lasted just one month! (Jerry Ter Horst was President Gerald Ford's first press secretary, who resigned when Ford pardoned Richard Nixon.)
Kind of like when he was asked about the bentonite on the anthrax, you mean?
"It is protection for Saddam to have biological and chemical weapons, because, in the final analysis, if pressed, if he is surrounded in Baghdad, he will threaten to use them. He's capable of that. This is a sort of Samson complex--if you push me too hard, I'll bring the house down, on myself and on everyone else. Washington realizes that this is a possibility. For obvious reasons, it's not talked about openly. No one in Washington wants to tell the American people that Saddam is still capable of blackmailing us. They're acting as if he is capable of blackmailing them, but they are not going to admit it openly."
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