Lying about Gonzales's resignation

There will comment a-plenty on this resignation. But I found something that won't get much attention but interests me. It's in today's New York Times story, (at the end of course):

There had been rumblings over the weekend that Mr. Gonzales’s departure was imminent, although the White House sought to quell the rumors....

A senior administration official said today that Mr. Gonzales, who was in Washington, had called the president in Crawford, Tex., on Friday to offer his resignation. The president rebuffed the offer, but said the two should talk face to face on Sunday.

Mr. Gonzales and his wife flew to Texas, and over lunch on Sunday the president accepted the resignation with regret, the official said.

On Saturday night Mr. Gonzales was contacted by his press spokesman to ask how the department should respond to inquiries from reporters about rumors of his resignation, and he told the spokesman to deny the reports.

White House spokesmen also insisted on Sunday that they did not believe that Mr. Gonzales was planning to resign. Aides to senior members of the Senate Judiciary Committee said over the weekend that they had received no suggestion from the administration that Mr. Gonzales intended to resign.

As late as Sunday afternoon, Mr. Gonzales himself was denying through his spokesman that he was quitting. The spokesman, Brian Roehrkasse, said Sunday that he telephoned the attorney general about the reports of his imminent resignation “and he said it wasn’t true — so I don’t know what more I can say.”

In other words, during the 1½ days between Mr Gonzales submitting his resignation and Mr Bush accepting it, it seems that reporters who asked if the rumor was true was lied to or at the very least intentionlly misled. Not necessarily by the various spokespersons, but certainly by everyone who was giving them information. Mr Gonzales himself for one. And if not Mr Bush for another, he does an appallingly poor job of managing his staff.

Is it any wonder nobody trusts government or the media these days?