The President took questions this week – from the public, from military families, and from members of the Washington press corp. And not just any member of the press – Helen Thomas got to ask a question, after three years of being purposefully ignored in the briefings. Why now? With ...

The White House spokesperson has briefed the press live on TV regularly since 1998 when Clinton Press Secretary Mike McCurry allowed CNN's cameras go live. The result is that the public can watch as reporters do the dirty work of trying to get answers from the spokesperson. Theatrics are a ...

CBS Pentagon correspondent David Martin this week offered a candid public explanation about why he pulled a story on Improvised Explosive Devices, or IEDs, in Iraq. Basically, it was because a senior military officer asked him to. And since it was very close to deadline, he did. Martin tells Brooke ...

Vice President Cheney was at the center of several serious stories this week. The one about how he shot his friend and didn’t tell the press definitely won the most coverage, but it also became a symbol for the other more complicated stories about cherry-picking intelligence in the lead-up to ...

Microsoft, Yahoo, Google and Cisco were called to Capitol Hill on Wednesday, accused of collaborating with a repressive regime, namely China. These modern, forward-looking companies are not used to being pegged as the bad guys – Google’s unofficial slogan is “don’t be evil.” But with people being jailed because Yahoo ...

When careful observers noticed Dick Cheney wearing mismatched shoes recently, they took it as a clue about the Veep's health. But don't expect straight answers from the White House - the executive branch has rarely been forthcoming about the health of our leaders. Dr. Robert Gilbert, author of The Mortal ...

The NSA’s warrant-less wiretapping program has generated the first of what are likely to be many legal challenges. The ACLU accuses the government of violating the constitutional rights of a group of academics, activists, and journalists, all of whom believe they may have been monitored. But lawyer Jonathan Turley tells ...

At the start of the 2004 Campaign, John Kerry’s military experience was a political asset. Then came the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, whose smears against the candidate’s military record were picked up and reported uncritically by the media. Last week, there was another attempt at swift-boating, as the GOP-connected ...

With lobbyist Jack Abramoff cooperating with a Capitol Hill corruption probe, lawmakers on both sides of the aisle are taking great pains to show they’re committed to ethics reforms. Because Republicans and Democrats benefited from the dirty lobbyist’s largesse. Or at least that’s what it would seem like from the ...

The cameras were focused squarely on Sam Alito this week. But if he's confirmed as Supreme Court Justice, the hearings will have been TV viewers' last chance to see him in action. Unless, of course, the current rules are changed to allow video cameras in the Supreme Court. C-SPAN founder ...

Leaks, part and parcel of the Fourth Estate, were and are a tremendous irritant to the Bush Administration. Back in the early days of the War on Terror, Bob produced this piece on the pros, cons and mechanisms of the ever-present, and indispensable, Washington leak.

In the last days of 2005 the Justice Department announced it was launching an investigation into who leaked that the President had authorized the National Security Agency to wiretap people in the United States without court warrants. Whether the source was a leaker or a whistleblower, a traitor or a ...

The money trail of indicted lobbyist Jack Abramoff last week led reporters to a couple of prominent Washington opinion makers. It turns out that for years, Abramoff has been paying two think-tankers, Doug Bandow and Peter Ferrara, to write op-ed pieces favorable to Abramoff’s clients. Bob talks to blogger Joshua ...

While excoriating the Times for disclosing the NSA’s surveillance program, President Bush trotted out an old chestnut about the danger of leaks. He cited a 1998 newspaper story that disclosed Osama Bin Laden’s use of a satellite phone, and claimed –as many have before – that the disclosure led Bin ...

In this new era of media transparency, many expected a fuller explanation from The New York Times about why it held its NSA spying scoop for more than a year. What we do know, however, is that editors routinely accede to government demands that they withhold certain information. Scott Armstrong ...

The Washington saga that has gripped journalism watchers for many months has taken another unexpected turn. Seems that storied scribe Bob Woodward may have been the first journalist contacted by the notorious Valerie Plame leaker. And he kept mum until this week. Brooke reflects on the transformation of Watergate Bob ...

The Washington Post reported last week that the CIA is operating secret terror-suspect detention facilities in eight countries around the world, including two Eastern European democracies. One immediate reaction from Republican leaders in Congress was not to express outrage at a CIA prison archipelago, but to find out who leaked ...

Since its passage after September 11th, the USA Patriot Act has become institutionalized in law enforcement, especially at the FBI. The Bureau relies on relaxed legal requirements for issuing National Security Letters, a form of secret subpoena introduced in the 1970s to track transactions of suspected terrorists. The Washington Post’s ...

Bob talks with Miller about weapons of mass destruction, erstwhile Capitol Hill staffer Scooter Libby and a heck of a lot more.

The White House tinkers with official transcripts of a press briefing.