We discussed this back in messages #285, #286 and #290. You are distorting facts again. That is NOT what he states in his book. What Ari Fleischer says on page 203 in his book "Taking The Heat" is this:
ABC's evening news was implying to millions of people that I would falsify information because the White House did not want to go after Saddam Hussein. I thought we were the administration that wanted to attack Iraq. If my statements were driven by the administration's alleged objectives in Iraq, I would have loved the ABC story. I wouldn't have denied it. I'd have let ABC blame Saddam for us.
My obligation was to tell the truth, and I provided it to ABC.
Later that night, I spoke to Jennings. I told him the story was wrong at its core. Our researchers, I said, had found no bentonite in the anthrax. He couldn't have been more polite and promised me he would look into it, and if ABC was wrong, they would correct it.
Over the next several days, I dug deep into the story. I spoke not only to officials at the NSC but to researchers themselves at the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology [AFIP]. They told me the Daschle anthrax contained silicon and oxygen but not aluminum. Since bentonite contains aluminum, if there's no aluminum, they said, there's no bentonite. They also informed me that when U.N. inspectors had analyzed Iraqi's anthrax stocks in the nineties, the the bentonite in the Iraqi anthrax contained aluminum.
No aluminum, they concluded, no bentonite. No bentonite, it's not Iraq.
I contined to badger a variety of people at ABC to see if they were going to correct the story. Finally, on October 31, six days after the story aired, ABC backtracked.
At the end of a story about the anthrax attacks, Jennings asked Brian Ross one of those scripted questions which had a scripted answer. "Brian, what's the latest we know about the additive called bentonite in the anthrax which made it allegedly dangerous?"
"Well, Peter, today the White House said that despite initial test results which we reported suggesting the presence of a chemical called bentonite, a trademark of the Iraqi weapons program, a further chemical analysis has ruled that out," Ross said. "The White House says there are chemical additives in that anthrax, including one called silica. Now, that's not a trademark of any country's weapons program, but it is known to be used, Peter, by Iraq, Russia and the U.S. in making a
So, Ari Fleischer said the anthrax contained silicon and oxygen. Brian Ross said the White House said the anthrax contained silica.
Why is it so difficult for you to get that correct? Is it because you cannot help but distort the facts because it's the only way you can justify your conspiracy theory?
Fleischer WROTE IN HIS book the words ABC broadcast. In your perverted world that means, of course, that Fleischer meant EXACTLY THE OPPOSITE.
The OFFICIAL Whitehouse position is that silica was found. And Fleisher repeatedly says he spent days getting this confirmed by having PERSONAL TALKS with AFIP scientists - repeatdely saying that it was the MOST IMPRTANT question he had ever been asked by the media. He wanted to make sure there was NO MISUNDERSTANDING. He certainly gave abolutely zero room for misunderstanding in his book. Except, of course, to a conspiracy theory fanatic like Ed Lake.