Posted on 02/28/2013 7:59:15 AM PST by Sub-Driver
Exclusive: The Woodward, Sperling emails revealed By: Mike Allen and Jim VandeHei February 28, 2013 08:30 AM EST
POLITICOs Behind the Curtain column last night quoted Bob Woodward as saying that a senior White House official has told him in an email he would regret questioning White House statements on the origins of sequestration. The official in question is Gene Sperling, economic adviser to the president. The White House has since pushed back, saying the exchange was far more innocuous than Woodward claims.
We have obtained, exclusively, the exchange. Here it is:
From Gene Sperling to Bob Woodward on Feb. 22, 2013
Bob:
I apologize for raising my voice in our conversation today. My bad. I do understand your problems with a couple of our statements in the fall but feel on the other hand that you focus on a few specific trees that gives a very wrong perception of the forest. But perhaps we will just not see eye to eye here.
But I do truly believe you should rethink your comment about saying saying that Potus asking for revenues is moving the goal post. I know you may not believe this, but as a friend, I think you will regret staking out that claim. The idea that the sequester was to force both sides to go back to try at a big or grand barain with a mix of entitlements and revenues...
(Excerpt) Read more at politico.com ...
[...you should rethink your comment...]
No one on the left ever had a problem with his ‘thought process’ when he wrote “All the Presidents Men” but when he scratches their thin skin he becomes a pariah.
Woodward is no fool, their innocuous statement to him really ended...or else.
Woodward is an opportunist. But if this round of publicity seeking results in a wider perception of this administration as the punks and gangsters they are, I’ll take it.
Woodward’s response is obsequious dreck.
TWB
My guess he did and got another abusive earful which is why he decided to go public.
keyboard spew alert
The emails aren’t the story. The alleged threats aren’t the story.
The real story is the reflexive way the media leaped to attack the heretic, before even waiting for any facts to really come out. Even if that heretic is a journalistic legend whom most of them would have fallen over themselves praising a week earlier.
It’s far more frightening that the media’s gut instinct is to defend the White House at all costs than some admin flunkie was trying to bully a reporter.
My cynical mind is reading this kerfuffle as nothing more than the White House and their sycophants in the SRM creating a big nothing burger to divert attention away from other, more serious issues, such as the release of criminal illegal aliens from federal custody.
+1
DING! DING! DING!
We have a winner!
So where are all those like an AF Four Star who a few decades ago stopped at an Air National Guard Base after they’d just crashed on of the first airplanes that went directly from the manufacture to the ANG Wing? After the accident briefing and before boarding his airplane to go back to Langley AFB, VA, he called the Wing Commander aside and quietly said, “You Son-Of-A-Bitch, if you lose another airplane I’m going to come to your house and burn it down...with your wife and kids inside”.
Whoops! Premature denial by the most transparent Administration.
“Who writes page-long emails after screaming on the phone for half an hour?”
Somebody who’s afraid. He’s probably just doing what the Oval Office told him to do.
Also worth emphasizing is the fact that the White House got caught lying about the sequester.
Another thing that galls me is the way Woodward called Sperling in advance of the story’s publication. Why? He wasn’t looking for a comment for the story, he was calling to warn them.
Did he do that with Nixon? Did Dan Rather do that with Bush in the 2004 TANG “fake but accurate” story? Did the National Enquirer do that with Clinton?
No! It’s supposed to be a surprise, a heads-up on a story like this is unethical because it allows the subject to set the spin in advance.
LOL! You know, as often as they "Deny" things, you'd think they wouldn't have such a problem... and yet?
“Apology for raising their voice is something a female might do...”
Why would the woman apologize, when it was clearly your fault she had to raise her voice. Always.
Funny how Mike Allen suddenly ended up with the original email...
Usually they do call to ask for comment, and I believe they did in those cases too.
Not in this case. Asking for comment is to get a quote for the story, and this story was already put to bed...no comment for the story because it’s post-deadline. Maybe for a follow up story, I don’t know.
But I get a bad feeling in my gut about Woodward’s call to Sperling. And the follow up email. And especially Woodward’s reply to the email.
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