More on O’Neill

From Reuters this morning:

Speaking on NBC’s “Today” show, the ex-Treasury Secretary said the documents were given to him by the Treasury’s chief legal officer after he requested them to help former Wall Street Journal reporter Ron Suskind write a book on O’Neill’s time in the Cabinet.

“I said to him (the general counsel) I would like to have the documents that are OK for me to have. About three weeks later, the general counsel, the chief legal officer, sent me a couple of CDs, which I frankly never opened,” said O’Neill, who resigned under pressure a year ago in a shake-up of Bush’s economy team.

A bit of perspective is probably called for at this point, too. Don’t be under the illusion that O’Neill is going to start doing ads for the Democratic party:

He described the reaction to Suskind’s book as a “red meat frenzy” and said people should read his comments in context, particularly about the Iraq war…

Asked about his comment that during Cabinet meetings Bush was like “a blind man in a room full of deaf people,” O’Neill said he regretted some of the language he used to describe his former boss.

“If I could take it back, I would take it back. It has become the controversial centerpiece.”

Pressed whether he would vote for Bush in the November presidential election, O’Neill said he probably would, but he said the American people needed to demand more of their leaders.

Kash