Shorter Washington Post, on the White House's reaction to this morning's big New York Times story: "We might have told the CIA to destroy the interrogation tapes, but we definitely didn't lie about it afterward!" I'm not sure exactly how this is supposed to make the administration look better, although now that Perino mentions it, I guess it's true that most instances of Bush administration misconduct have been accompanied by efforts to mislead journalists.
It seems like Perino's really being overly defensive here--the Times didn't accuse the administration of misleading the press. It just said that the administration had yet to publicly acknowledge the extent of its lawyers' involvement in the discussions about whether to destroy the tapes. In any case, it's well worth reading the whole story. Bottom line:
At least four top White House lawyers took part in discussions with the Central Intelligence Agency between 2003 and 2005 about whether to destroy videotapes showing the secret interrogations of two operatives from Al Qaeda, according to current and former administration and intelligence officials.
This story isn't going away anytime soon.
--Josh Patashnik