The Yellowcake Follies

Morley Flaude

WASHINGTON, July 23 — President Bush’s deputy janitor today took complete responsibility for allowing faulty intelligence to appear in the president’s State of the Union address.

The janitor, Morley Flaude, apologized for “any inconvenience” his actions might have caused. Mr. Flaude is a critical behind-the-scenes player on the president’s team, charged with disposing of unwanted documents.

“I tossed out those warnings from State and the CIA all the time,” he told reporters at a hastily assembled press gaggle in the corridor outside his broom closet. “That was my job.”

Reminded that the faulty intelligence was not a warning but instead the subject of warnings, Mr. Flaude replied with a grin as he wiped off his chin, “Whatever.”

After a pause, he added, “Yeah, yeah, sure, that’s what must have happened. Everything on the floor that wasn’t a warning, my orders were to put it into the State of the Union.”

Mr. Flaude’s account shifted, however, after the White House director of janitorial services, Andrew Card, was seen to shake his head in negation.

“Or maybe it was the other way around,” Mr. Flaude amended. “My memory pretty much went flooey after my buddies and me blew up that chemical dump in Desert Storm.”

Mr. Card quickly corrected Mr. Flaude’s faulty memory, explaining that standing instructions for all White House janitors were to pick up any warnings of faulty intelligence found around the Oval Office and place them for safekeeping into the final draft of a State of the Union address.

Nodding hasty agreement, Mr. Flaude said, “Yassuh, boss, I sho’ nuff should have tucked that warning into the president’s speech with my own hand. I failed in that responsibility.”

Mr. Flaude, a career janitor who has a reputation for fanatical attention to detail, did not say if he had offered to resign when he talked to President Bush earlier today.

But Dan Bartlett, the White House communications director, said Mr. Bush, who was first informed of the yellowcake forgeries last Tuesday or maybe Wednesday while on a working vacation at his ranch in Crawford, Texas, had “expressed the utmost confidence” in Mr. Flaude, and was in fact planning to make him the next U.S. ambassador to NATO.

Asked whether it made much difference how one particular lie got into a speech that had, after all, contained dozens of other just as outrageous, Mr. Bartlett said:

“Cute, Pierre, very cute. Very Old Europe. Without accepting the premise of your idiotic question, let me say that indeed it doesn’t make much difference outside the beltway. The only thing that really matters to the voters of America is that Saddam’s sons are dead and the president has pulled down all their father’s statues, which reminds me of a joke — Knock, knock.”

“Who’s there?” a reporter obligingly replied.

“Osama.”

“Osama who?”

“Osama can you see, by the dawn’s early light?”

Except for the lucky Pierre, the press corps dissolved in peals of laughter at Mr. Bartlett’s quip and were never seen again.

Posted by Jerome Doolittle at July 23, 2003 03:45 PM | TrackBack

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