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Wednesday, May 10, 2006

The Party of National Security

Posted by on May 10 at 10:31 AM

Oops:

How much do you think Osama bin Laden would pay to know exactly when and where the President was traveling, and who was with him? Turns out, he wouldn’t have had to pay a dime. All he had to do was go through the trash early Tuesday morning.

It appears to be a White House staff schedule for the President’s trip to Florida Tuesday. And a sanitation worker was alarmed to find in the trash long hours before Mr. Bush left for his trip.

It’s the kind of thing you would expect would be shredded or burned, not thrown in the garbage.
Randy Hopkins could not believe what he was seeing.

There on the floor next to a big trash truck was a thick sheaf of papers with nearly every detail of the President’s voyage.

“I saw locations and names and places where the President was going to be. I knew it was important. And it shouldn’t have been in a trash hole like this,” he said.

The White House later reponded to the gaffe:

A spokesman traveling with President Bush says officials are still trying to learn more about the papers. The White House confirms the 9 News story and says many White House offices have “burn bags” that are used to discard sensitive documents like the schedule. However, it appears this one ended up in the general trash.

While it is marked official the Secret Service says it is NOT classified. But you don’t have to be in Presidential security to figure out the big mistake here.


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Tony Snow responds: "No, no, it's subterfuge! See, we deliberately leaked that in order to make the terrorists THINK they got one up on us. C'mon, haven't you guys EVER seen Spy Vs. Spy?"

I guess I'll have to stop pretending I'm working for Bush when I'm shredding documents. I'll have to switch to my retro-style Watergate fantasy.

The more pertinent question of course is: "Will whomever leaked this be fired or promoted?"

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