Katie Couric circles the Clinton wagons

Katie Couric, interviewing former FBI director Louis Freeh:

Couric: "You know many people have viewed this book in reviews and, and newspaper accounts so far as your effort to settle scores with the President. Do you think, you obviously, there's no love lost between the two of you, that's very, very clear. Do you think your personal animus might be coloring your professional perspective so much that you can't be objective about what was really going on during the administration?"

Can one not pose the same question to Couric, that her "personal animus" may be "coloring [her] professional perspective"? Couric continues:

COURIC: "Well, in terms of technology, you write, 'We were in the Dark Ages.' When you say the administration would not put on a war footing, they didn't allocate the resources that your department needed, is that what you're contending?"

FREEH: Yeah, let me just talk about that for a second. You know, we had asked for $430 million in 1995 for computer technology. We got over the course of the next five years about $200 million. We asked for 1900 new resources, Arabic speakers, linguists, we got 76. We asked for $381 million. We got five. We asked for 894 people. We got 17.

The President proposed the budget, and the spineless (or clueless) GOP Congress went along with it. Well, Katie wasn't having any of that!

How can you honestly say that you believe the FBI really focused enough on potential terrorism in this country? You talk about the bureau being hamstrung. Is that what you're contending? Shouldn't you have raised a red flag earlier? A lot of people say you were never in those meetings. The president did push the Saudis, and you really don't know what you're talking about.

Emphasis mine. That's a journo's trick, using the ambiguous "some people" or "many" or "a lot of people", which translated, means "I haven't talked to a damned soul about this, and I'm injecting my view into the story, so I'll use the unverifiable 'some people say' line!"

Note the hostility in the questions. Hey, if she wants to accuse Freeh of making stuff up for the sole purpose of selling a book, that's fair game. However, one must question the consistency of Couric and her Today ilk.

After all, these people had Kitty Kelley on not once, not twice, but thrice, in order to hawk her tabloidal (and since discredited) book. You know, the one that said Sharon Bush (Bush's brother's ex-wife) said unflattering things about W? Problem is, Sharon said that she never said any of that. Yet here was Kelley, being showered with Couric affection like Monica was showered with Clinton man-juice!

Was Kelley's credibility impugned by Couric? Nope. What about Richard Clarke, who wrote an anti-Bush book? No credibility challenge for him, either, despite evidence that at least challenged Clarke's recollection (to say the least).

In summary: any book that is less than flattering towards the Clintons must necessarily be a work of fiction, and any book that is less than flattering towards the Bush administration must be "thoroughly explored and examined."

Nope...no liberal media bias.