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Edited on Sun Oct-23-05 01:41 PM by tuvor
Well, it had me glued for a few minutes yesterday, anyway. ON THE STORY
CAROL COSTELLO, CNN ANCHOR, ON THE STORY: CNN is on the story. President Bush found his officials events this week interrupted by questions about the CIA leak investigation. Our White House correspondent Dana Bash is on that story. Take a look at her reporter's notebook.
DANA BASH, CNN CORRESPONDENT: This is a White House with a lot of political problems. Anybody you talk to inside the White House will ask (INAUDIBLE) What changed a little bit this week is, as we get closer to when we actually could have an announcement, could had indictments, is in talking to some of the people who are closest to Karl Rove, to Scooter Libby, people who really know them, you hear a lot more candid talk about how they're feeling, about the personal toll it is taking on them. This is a White House that is known for their ability to control, to control stories, to figure out how to maneuver the press and how to shake the story. They have no control over this.
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KATHLEEN KOCH, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Dana, I was just filling in at the White House last week and I felt and tell me if this is correct, but that the atmosphere, it's in the briefing room have gotten much more tense, much more combative, again on these issues of the leak investigation, Harriet Miers. I mean reporters just writing and writing and writing. Scott just putting up that wall, building it higher and higher.
BASH: Oh, absolutely and he actually had a comment I think it was this week saying look, we get it. I have a job to do. You have a job to do, sort of like trying to sort of pull the humanity out of everybody but I'll tell you, what's really interesting, not so much in the briefing room, but in making phone calls to sources, you know to sort of - standard thing is you make a call and you ask a question and they sort of read from the talking points or they give you the line that they're supposed to give you and then after a while, you try to break them down and get them to be a little bit more candid. It's like they don't even bother any more with the talking points (INAUDIBLE) talk to because they just know what's the point, the sort of the wait and everything that they are facing has just gotten to them and there's a lot more candor when you talk to people. I mean I talked to somebody at the end of the week who said point blank about the Miers situation, the reason why this is happening is because nobody is in charge. It was stunning. There's more at http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0510/22/tt.01.html
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