BobHarris.com - Fun with a White House day pass

Books! Actual books!

"A rollicking ride of intellectual discovery and emotional growth... his comic timing never fails"

-- The Wall Street Journal

"Pulls you in like a good sports story"

-- The New York Times Book Review

"Endearingly frank... jubilant... lighthearted and fast-paced"

-- New York Newsday

"A surprisingly touching memoir"

-- Entertainment Weekly

"Snappy and informative"

-- Associated Press

"Effortlessly funny and informative... tender, human, and very wise... A must for anyone who loves Jeopardy!, or has ever seen it, or is breathing."

-- Joss Whedon, creator, Buffy the Vampire Slayer

"I haven't seen Jeopardy! since I was a kid, and yet I was charmed and amused by Bob Harris's fascinating and surprisingly suspenseful book. Through sheer force of personality, he takes this brainy TV show and makes it funny and easy to relate to."

-- Ira Glass, creator and host, This American Life

"A surprisingly intimate, entertaining book."

-- Orson Scott Card, 4-time Hugo Award winner, author of Ender's Game

"Funny, enlightening -- and just might help you win a million bucks on Jeopardy!"

-- A. J. Jacobs, author of The Know-It-All

"A masterful job of describing the feel of Jeopardy! in the heat of battle... I knew Bob was a great guy and a fantastic Jeopardy! player. Now I've found that he's also a wonderful writer. I think I'm starting to hate him."

-- Brad Rutter, top money-winner in Jeopardy! history

Books I'm Getting

Who Hates Whom:
Well-Armed Fanatics, Intractable Conflicts,
and Various Things Blowing Up —
A Woefully Incomplete Guide™

“Revelatory... Harris's sly wit and infectious curiosity make understanding world chaos fascinating... witty, horrific, and necessary.”

— Boston Globe

"Brave... irreverent... charges into the thick of the globe's myriad simmering wars... hilariously relaxed."

— New York Observer

"Only Bob could make a user’s guide to our increasingly hostile world this absorbing, this breezy, and—ultimately—this hopeful.”

— Ken Jennings, author of Brainiac: Adventures in the Curious, Competitive, Compulsive World of Trivia Buffs

“Fascinating, enlightening, and surprisingly: NOT TOTALLY DEPRESSING. A gimlet-eyed look at the world we endure that’s also suitable for enjoying with a gimlet.”

— John Hodgman, author of The Areas of My Expertise
and correspondent for The Daily Show with Jon Stewart

"All three [presidential] candidates should read all three of these [recommended] books, but McCain gets first crack at Bob Harris's "Who Hates Whom“... a lighthearted overview of the insurrections and civil wars in the world today."

— Steven Pinker, author of The Stuff of Thought, in the New York Times Book Review

Main

Antiwar.com

Fun with a White House day pass

Tag it now -

Monday, 25 April 2005

Whoa.

You've already heard that the White House press corps recently included a softball-throwing online "escort" working not for an actual newspaper but for a GOP-partisan website.

There now seems to be a bit more to the story.

According to newly-released Secret Service records forced into view by a FOIA request by Democratic members of Congress, this "escort" acting as a journalist (despite having virtually no experience and having been denied a congressional press pass) not only received 48 consecutive temporary passes, but was admitted to the White House dozens of times... on days when there was no scheduled press briefing there.

Oh, my. Yes indeedy.

Also, on at least 14 various occasions, this individual was apparently in the White House, but either did not sign in or out (something about which the Secret Service is, um, a teensy bit picky).

On days missing a sign-out, the usual pattern, reportedly: enter with the press corps, then leave later... in circumstances that have somehow stayed out of the official record.

This is all post 9-11. Try to imagine that kind of security breach happening in the White House even once. Now imagine it happening over and over and over and over, all for one person, whose most extensive public professional background seems to be less about getting the story than administering the happy ending.

Golly, what on Earth can this possibly mean...?

Obviously, this is vastly less important than the outing of Valerie Plame, an act of security-sabotaging intentional treason by someone inside the White House which remains unsolved, little-reported, and all-too-forgotten. But this does involve the remotest whiff of sex. So there's a chance this particular tidbit of bizarrely unethical crap won't slide by so routinely unobserved.

This isn't about politics-of-personal-destruction, although gosh, that's sure fun while we're at it. This is about press manipulation; this is about a possible enormous security breach, opening someone working in the highest office to potential blackmail; this is about spectacular hypocrisy and recklessness from inside a political machine which serves a man who claims to speak directly to a reactionary God.

And this is probably about to get interesting.

Wondering now: exactly whose White House schedule matches up with these anomalous visits? Records which answer that question surely exist...