No-News Conference

KTSA provided live coverage of the Ashcroft-Mueller no-news conference yesterday. It was a news conference based on the Seinfeld Formula— a news conference about nothing.

The Attorney General and FBI Director said nothing new at all.

General Ashcroft claimed Al Qaeda intends to "hit the United States hard" in the next few months, but we don't know who's involved, what's being planned, where it might happen, and we don't know when. That is what Ashcroft called "a clear and present danger." What is clear about that?

They showed some mug shots that you already saw months ago. They announced formation of a committee, except that they called it a Task Force. They promised that Washington will try to cooperate better with state and local authorities, as if we'd never heard that a thousand times.

On and on they went with no news. So why was a national news conference called? Skeptics note that America went all the rest of the day with no mention of negative Iraq news, record-low presidential approval ratings, stuff like that. But I cannot believe the no-news conference was called as a wag-the-dog tactic.

I think the administration was just trying to act like it is on top of the terrorism threat, but had nothing to say, and took a half-hour to say it.