Suddenly, the White House Hates Secrets

The Bush Administration has an adorably ironic new strategy for neutralizing journalists it doesn't like: accusing them of being too secretive.

At a press conference earlier today, White House spokeswoman Dana Perino brushed off a reporter's question about Seymour Hersh's latest New Yorker article about the administration's plan for a war against Iran, criticizing Hersh for relying on anonymous sources. Here's Perino:

Every two months or so, Sy Hersh writes an article in The New Yorker magazine and CNN provides him a forum in which to talk about his article and all the anonymous sources that are quoted in it.... I'm not going to comment on any possible -- any possible scenario that an anonymous source continues to feed into Sy Hersh. I'm just not going to do it.

You may be wondering when Perino became a champion of transparency, considering how often she has taken to the podium to defend the administration's right to absolute secrecy. She was the one who had the awkward job of justifying Dick Cheney's refusal to turn over classified documents to the National Archives by claiming he was not a member of the Executive Branch. Unfortunately, this conflicted directly with the excuse Cheney had used to avoid disclosing the members of his Energy Task Force.

Apparently anonymity should be granted only to oil executives, not disgruntled generals.