Natural Born Liars (redux)

Last week, DB was awed by the reflexive nature of Andrew Card's lying:

COMEY: I took the call. And Mr. Card was very upset and demanded that I come to the White House immediately.

I responded that, after the conduct I had just witnessed, I would not meet with him without a witness present.

He replied, "What conduct? We were just there to wish him well."

And I said again, "After what I just witnessed, I will not meet with you without a witness. And I intend that witness to be the solicitor general of the United States."

Marvelous. Imagine the audacity of delivering a complete lie to a former New York criminal prosecutor, at that moment Acting Attorney General... Imagine calling him in anger over an incident and then denying the incident even occurred... Imagine denying the incident even though Comey himself had personally witnessed it only moments earlier... Imagine handing him this bogus account of their encounter in response to Comey's insistence that an objective third party be present at a future meetings.

Think how naturally one must lie to even try to pull that one off.

Now we learn that it gets even worse. Digby catches this item in Newsweek about the morning after:

Comey didn't tell the Senate panel that the bad feelings were stoked even more the next morning when White House officials explained the hospital visit by saying Gonzales and Card were unaware that Comey was acting A.G. (and therefore the only person authorized to sign off on the surveillance program), according to a former senior DOJ official who requested anonymity talking about internal matters. Top DOJ officials were furious, the source said. Just days earlier, Justice's chief spokesman had publicly said Comey would serve as "head of the Justice Department" while Ashcroft was ill. Justice officials had also faxed over a document to the White House informing officials of this. When a Gonzales aide claimed the counsel's office could find no record of it, DOJ officials dug out a receipt showing the fax had been received. "People were disgusted as much as livid," said the DOJ official. "It was just the dishonesty of it." A Gonzales aide at the time (who asked not to be ID'd talking about internal matters) said there was a "miscommunication" and "genuine confusion" over who was in charge.

Fantastic. The administration is a cadre of congenital liars. They couldn't tell the truth if they tried. And they never do.