I knew it would be only a matter of time before there was a blow up regarding the post I linked to earlier, White House congressional liaison is telling US House not to vote on DADT this year, about the information John Aravosis and Joe Sudbay received regarding the White House congressional liaison telling Congress that a DADT repeal provision should NOT go into the Defense Authorization bill this year (effectively killing DADT repeal in 2010).

Having been offline (and without my phone, dammit) for a few hours after work — and after putting up my own post — I come home to emails about the whole shebang, including one from the White House and that “unnamed official”:

“These rumors are blatantly false. The President has been clear in his desire to see Congress repeal Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, and the Department of Defense is already moving forward with its own review. The Office of Legislative Affairs continues to engage lawmakers, and at no time has the White House asked any Member to take this issue off the table.”

So I updated my post and surfed around. The matter had also been covered by Chris Geidner at Metro Weekly,”To Vote or Not to Vote: White House denies report that liaison office has urged the House not to vote on DADT repeal this year.” He reported:

A spokesman for Frank, who has been critical of the lack of action from the White House on DADT repeal in recent weeks, said of the report, ”We have heard no word of that whatsoever. From what I can tell you, that’s just wrong.”

This seems to only have muddied the picture further, since “from what I can tell you” is hardly a concrete refutation of the original charge. Now what it is like, quite frankly, is waving a red flag in front of a bull for a challenge, and I was not surprised in the least when John came right back with “White House issues odd statement on DADT, still refuses to call for repeal this year,” a blow-by-blow parsing of the entire statement by the “WH official” that is worth the click. What is true…

No one can really point to anything concrete being done by the White House to make repeal happen this year. That’s why the unnamed White House official refused to include in their statement the magic words “this year.” The White House doesn’t want DADT repealed this year. It’s no longer much of a secret. Over the weekend, Rep. Barney Frank told Karen Ocamb that Obama isn’t really for repeal of DADT including the line, “the President’s refusal to call for repeal this year is a problem.” Yesterday, Majority Leader Steny Hoyer said the House was waiting word from the Pentagon on what to do (the Pentagon works for the President). On February 22nd, Robert Gibbs was asked by the Advocate’s Kerry Eleveld, to simply say that they want DADT repealed this year. He wouldn’t. On March 25, even the Secretary of Defense said the White House agreed with him that there should be no legislative action until his study is completed. That’s expected to happen by December 1. Under that timeline, repeal won’t happen this year.

The evidence is clear, the White House is not interested in keeping its promise to our community this year. If it were, it wouldn’t be playing these games.

…The bottom line remains that Barney Frank, Chairman Levin, Steny Hoyer, SLDN, Servicemembers United, the Palm Center, and lots of other interested parties are all complaining about the lack of help they’re getting from the White House on this issue. We are on the verge of losing the opportunity to repeal DADT this year because of this White House and this President. And if we don’t get it this year, after the November congressional elections we may not get it for years to come.

If the White House thinks it’s a lie to say that they’re not on board, then there’s a really easy solution. Get a senior White House official, on the record, by name, to go public and tell us that President Obama wants to have the repeal legislation included in the Department of Defense authorization so that DADT is repealed this year. And, have Obama send that message to the Hill through his budget requests. Then, we’ll believe it. Otherwise, we’re sticking with our sources who have been consistently more reliable on LGBT issues than this White House or any of their apologists.

That’s the only way to do this, and to say when that decision was made and who else knows about it. Case closed.

If you read some of the stuff that hits my inbox, it’s pretty clear that DC functions on innuendo, finessing of the truth, half-truths and shameless self-promoting bullshite. Lying is not a word in the vocabulary of a lot of these folks — there are so many shades of gray, so many levels of confidentiality and leaking, that it’s crazymaking. So what you end up with are statements that aren’t attached to a human being – plausible deniability, lack of personal or professional responsibility. It’s a company town where there is great risk if you openly piss off a power broker who has no problem saying a variation on “You’ll never eat lunch in this town again” and acting on it (or at least threatening to). It is that cartoonish at times.

What I don’t get — and maybe it’s because I don’t live inside the Beltway and am not immersed in it 24/7 (it’s unhealthy, people) — is how this is a norm. You have to have the thirst for political bloodsport. How else can you explain a Rahm Emanuel?

Anyway, the fact that the WH felt the need to so quickly tamp down this reporting on Americablog suggests that something hit way too close for comfort. Otherwise why not just ignore it? The problem here is proliferation and slow unraveling of control of message.

All I’m saying is you have to read between the lines; these folks are professionals and every word that goes out, particularly squibs like this not attributed to anyone, has been massaged and approved up and down the food chain, chosen for maximum fuzziness while looking highly believable. So when I received it, I just added it without comment. Let it hang out there for a while.

Anyway, it’s quite apparent that readers didn’t find the WH statement compelling or entirely believable anyway. There have been too many signals that WH support for repeal that is feeble at best, and at worst never had any intention to do it this year.

BTW, I have plenty of sources as well, and I’ll trust those over WH well-crafted spin any day. Your tax dollars at work, people.