"Don't recall" ... or "CAN'T recall"?

A contributor to Kos named niemann has this great observation about the testimony coming from the Republicans these days. As a lawyer but not one who has ever had to deal professionally with matters of perjury and lying under oath, I have always been puzzled by the notion that “I don’t recall” is some kind of magic potion a witness can sprinkle over his or her testimony. If there is the slightest hint of a memory nugget related to the question, then that answer is, in my way of thinking, a lie. In that sense, I disagree with the statement in this blurb to the contrary. But there are those who have no doubt deconstructed this for years, and I would defer to them – at least long enough to listen.

Regardless, though, I love the suggestion for someone addressing it head-on:

So, technically, "I do not recall such-and-such" really means "I choose not to call that event back again from the past." No wonder they all say it. I can readily believe that at that moment, sitting in front of Congress under oath, corrupt Republicans choose not to call certain events back again from the past.

When they say "I don't recall ..." to an investigative committee, that does not mean that Rove, or Gonzales, or Bush, or Cheney, or any other administration officials can't re-call certain events back. They just don't. They choose not to -- while sitting in front of an investigative panel.
Thus, when they say, "I don't recall [something]," they may well not be lying under oath, technically speaking. And that particular truth-telling also has the added benefit of sneakily implying that they don't remember, when they may actually remember perfectly well. (And if you believe they haven't thought through their responses to this degree of legalistic word-parsing ... Well, I'm just sad for you.)

I would love to see someone on the investigative panels spell out this difference and then follow up by asking, "Yes, Attorney General, I can understand that, sitting here, you DON'T recall attending that meeting. But CAN you recall attending it? COULD you recall it if you wanted to? Do you have a MEMORY of that meeting?"

Since witnesses have been pulling this maneuver for a long, long time, someone must have thought of such probing before. So what gives, why doesn’t anyone do it? Is it one of those little tacit understandings that our solons honor as kind of a back-scratching, “there-but-for-the-grace-of-God-right-now” thing?