The aide who abruptly ended Colin Powell/’s interview with Tim Russert is a former press flack for Tom DeLay. I knew the right wing had salted the State Department to undermine Powell/’s influence, but this is nuts.
An aide to Secretary Powell attempted cut short a taped interview with Tim Russert by moving the camera off the Secretary when the interview ran over time:
In the broadcast, aired several hours after the interview was conducted, Powell abruptly disappears from view. Briefly seen are swaying palm trees and the water, backdrops for the interview.
Powell can be heard saying to the aide, “He/’s still asking a question.” The secretary then told Russert, “Tim, I/’m sorry I lost you.”
NBC identified the aide as Emily Miller, a deputy press secretary. …
With the cameras still on the water, Powell can be heard saying, “Emily get out of the way.”
Emily Miller is the former press secretary to Tom DeLay, who freaked out on the Post/’s Peter Perl for his unflattering portrait of her boss:
The next evening, I got a phone call at home from DeLay/’s press secretary, Emily Miller, who burst into a scathing tirade. “You lied! . . . You betrayed him! You twisted his words! . . . We don/’t know you. You don/’t exist . . . You are dead to us . . .” I grabbed for a pencil to take notes, but she was speaking faster than I could transcribe. I was being shunned and cut off, with a sort of biblical finality. It was also the only time that Miller neglected to specify that her comments were for my background information, not for publication.
Pray tell: How does an apprenticeship for the wing-nut who calls the State Department “inadvertent servants of tyranny” and “neo-appeasers” qualify you to work as a deputy press secretary in Foggy Bottom? Only in Washington.
