Reply #12: Here are Whitehouse's own words on this, [View All]

[Spazito]

re-reading this re-inforces how devastating Whitehouse's points were in relation to the comparison:

snip

So I asked my staff to take a look at what the difference was between those two in effect, and if you could.

This is in effect during the previous administration. This is the Clinton protocol. And there were four people -- the president, the vice president, the deputy White House counsel and the White House counsel -- who could participate in these kind of discussions about cases and matters and initiate them with the Department of Justice.

And on the Department of Justice side, the only people who were qualified to engage in those discussions were the attorney general, the deputy attorney general and the associate attorney general.

So they had narrowed very carefully the field of people who could have these discussions, which I think is a very important safeguard -- to narrow that porthole, to police it. It's almost like there's an airlock there for those communications.

Now, here's the result that I asked my staff to put together, if you count all the people who are eligible under the new program.

That, to me -- your staff can check on exactly how accurately we've done it -- but there are, I want to say, five -- what were the numbers?

(CROSSTALK)

WHITEHOUSE: 417 folks in the White House who are eligible to have these contacts and...

(CROSSTALK)

WHITEHOUSE: About 30-some in the Department of Justice.

And, again from a structural point of view, my question to you is, when over years this issue of White House to Department of Justice contacts has become so significant when, you know, even on the Republican side of the Judiciary Committee there's intense concern about this over the years.

End of snip

Page this testimony can be found:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/04/19/AR2007041902234_5.html