NBC REPORTER TO WHITE HOUSE SPOKESMAN: 'DON'T BE A JERK'
Tue Feb 14 2006 08:54:18 ET

NBCNEWS chief White House correspondent David Gregory warned President Bush's spokesman on Monday not to be a "jerk!"

The heated exchange came during a press gathering at the White House.

Gregory asked White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan about the Cheney hunting accident.

<b>'David, hold on, the cameras aren't on right now,' McClellan replied. 'You can do this later.'

'Don't accuse me of trying to pose to the cameras,' Gregory said, voice rising. 'Don't be a jerk to me personally when I'm asking you a serious question.'</b>

'You don't have to yell,' McClellan said.

<b>'I will yell,'' said Gregory, pointing a finger at McCellan at his dais.</b> 'If you want to use that podium to try to take shots at me personally, which I don't appreciate, then I will raise my voice, because that's wrong.'

'Calm down, Dave, calm down,' said McClellan.

'I'll calm down when I feel like calming down,' Gregory said. 'You answer the question.'

'I have answered the question,' said McClellan, who had maintained that the vice president's office was in charge of getting the information out and worked with the ranch owner to do that. 'I'm sorry you're getting all riled up about.'

'I am riled up,' Gregory said, 'because you're not answering the question.'"

.... Meantime, the incident provided a laugh bounty for gallows humorists, particularly those of the anti-Bush persuasion. Have at 'em, kids:

"Bush-Quail '06," cracked Democratic strategist Jenny Backus.

"The CIA assured Cheney that Harry Whittington was actually a pheasant," added Democratic speechwriter Jeff Nussbaum.

"The worst part is, he was aiming at the special prosecutor," contributed John Kerry spokesman David Wade.

Democratic staffers on the Hill could be heard singing a parody of Aerosmith's "Janie's Got a Gun," using the words "Cheney's got a gun." Or marveling at how "Republicans really don't like lawyers, do they?" or circulating a quote from Bush, in a 2000 interview with the Houston Chronicle, in which he hailed Cheney as "somebody who is going to shoot straight with the American people."

This was just a small sampling, taken from amateur jokesters willing to attach their names to the one-liners.

As for the professionals: On "The Daily Show" last night, Jon Stewart, speaking as a "concerned parent," urged viewers never to let their children go on hunting trips with the vice president. "I can't emphasize this enough," Stewart said. "I don't care what kind of lucrative contracts they're trying to land, or energy regulation they're trying to get lifted. . . . He'll shoot them in the face."

Likewise, David Letterman's Top 10 list was devoted to "Dick Cheney's excuses," which included that he "thought the guy was trying to go gay cowboy on me."

Tempers flare
As neither President Bush nor Cheney spoke publicly about the accident yesterday, it fell to White House spokesman Scott McClellan to suffer the media equivalent of birdshot. He was pressed repeatedly on why it took a day for the administration to acknowledge that the vice president had accidentally shot a man.

The most heated public moment occurred during McClellan's off-camera "gaggle" with White House reporters yesterday morning. It featured NBC's David Gregory, one of McClellan's most persistent inquisitors over the last year, who raised his voice while asking a question about the incident.
..........

The downturn in Mr. Whittington's health significantly changed the tone of the White House reaction to the hunting accident. In Texas, Carlos Valdez, the district attorney in Kleberg County, said a fatality would immediately spur a new report from the local sheriff and, most likely, a grand jury investigation.

Asked at a press conference for her reaction about how the White House has handled the incident, US Senator Hillary Clinton called the Bush administration's failure to be more forthcoming "troubling."

"A tendency of this administration -- from the top all the way to the bottom -- is to withhold information ... to refuse to be forthcoming about information that is of significance and relevance to the jobs that all of you do, and the interests of the American people," Clinton said.

"Putting it all together, going back years now, there's a pattern and it's a pattern that should be troubling," she said at a press conference calling for a more robust federal response to the Hurricane Katrina disaster.

The former first lady continued: "The refusal of this administration to level with the American people on matters large and small is very disturbing, because it goes counter to the way our constitutional democracy ... is supposed to work."

WASHINGTON (AllPolitics, Aug. 27,1996) -- The same day Hillary Clinton was scheduled to speak at the Democratic National Convention, newly released documents suggest <b>she was behind the 30-hour delay in releasing late White House counsel Vincent Foster's suicide note to authorities.</b>

How the White House handled Foster's 1993 death, and the possibility that administration officials improperly removed documents from his office or impeded an official search of it, has been the subject of intense scrutiny by congressional Republicans and the media.

<b>The newly released memo, written by White House lawyer Miriam Nemetz, quotes then-White House chief of staff Mack McLarty as saying Mrs. Clinton "was very upset and believed the matter required further thought and the president should not yet be told" about Foster's note.</b>

According to the document, Mrs. Clinton "said they should have a coherent position and should have decided what to do before they told the president."

That contradicts sworn testimony to the Senate Whitewater Committee from Clinton staffers that the first lady had no role whatsoever in the handling of Foster's note.