White House press secretary Robert Gibbs let slip last week that Twitter is blocked on White House computers when asked during an interview on C-SPAN if he was personally using the popular social networking site. The irony of blocking Twitter from White House staff while simultaneously using the web site to promote the administration’s agenda seems lost on Gibbs, who dismissed it by saying that “people have a decent sense of what I’m doing, minus Twittering.”

This news should really not be a surprise. This is the government we are talking about, after all.

As we reported in March, Twitter and other popular social sites were blocked on Air Force bases – including the military’s own YouTube alternative, TroopTube. The Army uses Twitter as part of its recruitment campaign aimed at the web-savvy, while probably not telling those same recruits they won’t be able to use the site on Army computers.

Perhaps there are important national security reasons to restrict access to social networking sites for White House staffers and military members, but we suspect it has more to do with ignorance of their value and fear of their power to be distractions during the workday. One thing is certain, if Twitter and other sites are not deemed valuable enough to be available in these offices, then it seems unlikely any other government employer will think so either.