DC TURNS 'ANIMAL HOUSE': TIME REPORTER USED MOVIE JOKE IN ROVE EMAIL
Sun Jul 17 2005 18:48:33 ET

CNNWASHPOST HOWARD KURTZ: A lot of people have picked up on your description
in the memos to your bureau chief of that conversation -- "It was on double
super secret background." What did that mean?

TIME MATT COOPER: Well, Howie, I can now reveal that it was a joke. Karl
Rove, when we had the conversation, wanted it to be on deep background,
which I took to mean I could use the material but not quote it directly, and
certainly not attribute it, that I had to protect the identity of my source.
When I wrote the note to my bureau chief, just moments after the
conversation with Rove, in a slightly playful way, I echoed the line in the
movie "Animal House," where John Belushi's wild fraternity is put on double
secret probation. So it was a little bit of humor.

--
"Mine will be the most ethical administration in the history of the
republic!"
President-Elect Bill Clinton, November 1992.