The WaPo op-ed by Gonzales referred to by sysprog (http://letters.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2007/04/14/various_items/permalink/0aa4b74d5f5f34b28a8ead16020511b4.html) is somehow reminiscent of the WaPo op-ed written by Colin Powell in October 2003 in a desperate attempt to refurbish his tarnished reputation after his UN fisaco (http://malaysia.usembassy.gov/wf/wf1007_kayreport.html):

Before the war, our intelligence had detected a calculated campaign to prevent any meaningful inspections. We knew that Iraqi officials, members of the ruling Baath Party and scientists had hidden prohibited items in their homes.

Lo and behold, Kay and his team found strains of organisms concealed in a scientist's home, and they report that one of the strains could be used to produce biological agents. Kay and his team also discovered documents and equipment in scientists' homes that would have been useful for resuming uranium enrichment efforts.

What Powell neglected to mention was that the "strains of organisms concealed in a scientist's home" were found in the scientist's refrigerator where he had been keeping them for 10 years because he was responsible for them and he thought someone might want them some day (http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,2763,1057558,00.html).

As described by Jay Bookman in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution on October 9, 2003 (http://www.commondreams.org/scriptfiles/views03/1009-02.htm):

To justify their bizarre claim, Bush officials have pounced upon a handful of minor finds by Kay's group, in particular the discovery of a biological agent in the possession of an Iraqi scientist. What they found, of course, was not the tons of weaponry that Powell so famously promised in his speech to the United Nations. It was not pounds or even ounces of the material. It was one small vial.

That vial contained the B strain of botulinum, not the more deadly A strain. It did not contain botulinum toxin, the actual nerve agent known in this country as Botox, only the fairly common botulinum bacteria that can produce the toxin.

Most tellingly, the vial was given to the Iraqi scientist for safekeeping back in 1993, and it has sat untouched in his home refrigerator ever since. For the next 10 years, nobody in the Iraqi government showed the slightest interest in reclaiming that vial, not even after U.N. inspectors left the country in 1998.

The vial, in other words, is not evidence of a living, fire-breathing dragon that had to be slain before it could threaten our homes. It's a dinosaur bone, an ancient relic of a long-departed beast. All the spinning and hyping in the world can't change that.

The rest of Powell's op-ed is a similar exercise in straw-clutching, ballyhooing the significance of "WMD-related program activities". I bring this up, not in connection with WMD, which is deader than a dodo, but to show that Gonzales' op-ed follows a well-established administration MO — When the situation is becoming clear, muddy the waters as quickly as possible because transparency for this administration would be a disaster resulting in impeachment and jail time.

Third, a transcript, if accurate, is the true record of what was actually said. Perhaps you share this administration's contempt for them. Personally, I think they are important. And the idea that one can't comment unless one has seen the tape is ludicrous.

... but any linguist, semantician, or behaviorist will tell you that the actual words used form a very small percentage of what is being communicated in a spoken communication. The rest is conveyed by voice tone, facial expression and eye and hand movement. One study estimated that 93% of the total message is conveyed by non-verbal cues. Another indicated that the impact of a performance was determined 7 percent by the words used, 38 percent by voice quality, and 55 percent by the nonverbal communication (http://humanresources.about.com/od/interpersonalcommunicatio1/a/nonverbal_com.htm).

In such circumstances, a transcript may record the actual words used, but conveys very little of what was actually communicated, and basing your evaluation of an encounter solely on a transcript of the exchange may be very misleading.

If this is the case, why should we not accept the administration's offer of discussion of the USA firings, but with no transcript?

If transcripts only convey 7% (or so) of the informational content (data), what's the big deal with getting White House Officers on paper?

The transcript is important (I don't remember saying that it wasn't) because it does provide a record of what was said. Without that (or a tape recording), there is no evidence of what was said. My point was that what is said is a small part of what is being communicated. When someone is testifying before a court or a congressional committee they usually go to great lengths to eliminate nonverbal communication. If they don't, the judge or the committee chair may very well admonish them about it. In such circumstances nonverbal communication will provide a much smaller percentage of the total communication and most of the communication will be captured by the transcript.

However, in an interview, such as the one between O'Donnell and Leahy, nonverbal communication was in full swing. O'Donnell's nonverbals were aggressive and contemptuous. Leahy's were diffident and hesitant. Looking at the transcript, one sees none of this. Surely you must realize that the meaning of Leahy's "Oh, really?" depends entirely on the inflection and tone in which it is delivered.

When you read a transcript of a Bush speech, you might get the impression that an intelligent person was speaking. That is because you can't see the smirks, sardonic grins, and silent chuckles of his delivery.

The fact that verbal communication doesn't convey the entire message is the main reason for the development of emoticons for email communication. In spoken communication irony and sarcasm are marked by nonverbal cues. In written communications these are lacking and must be supplied if the communicant is not to be misunderstood.