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So as to help B.O. look good at the press conference he scheduled at 12:45 on Thursday 5/27/10, the LA Times broke a “top-kill success story”, then a little later - an “Oops!:

‘Top kill’ effort stops flow of oil into Gulf of Mexico, Coast Guard admiral says
By Jim Tankersley
May 27, 2010 | 5:43 a.m.
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-top-kill-works-20100528,0,4282960.story

Excerpt:

[For the record, 6:39 a.m.: An earlier version of this story termed the effort “successful.” Officials clarified that neither government nor BP officials had declared the effort a success yet. They caution that only after the cementing is complete and the well is sealed can the top kill be called successful.]

Then a little later, the NY Times really lets the cat out of the bag - saying that the pumping had been stopped the night before:

NY Times

BP Resumes Work to Plug Oil Leak After Facing Setback
By CLIFFORD KRAUSS and JOHN M. BRODER
Published: May 27, 2010

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/28/us/28spill.html

BP officials, who along with government officials created the impression early in the day that the strategy was working, disclosed later that they had stopped pumping the night before when engineers saw that too much of the drilling fluid was escaping along with the oil.

[....]

In the morning, federal officials expressed optimism that all was going well. “The top kill procedure is going as planned, and it is moving along as everyone had hoped,” Adm. Thad W. Allen of the Coast Guard, the leader of the government effort, told CNN.

And Robert Dudley, BP’s managing director, said on the “Today” program on NBC that the top kill “was moving the way we want it to.”

It was not until late afternoon that BP acknowledged that the operation was not succeeding and that pumping had halted at 11 p.m. Wednesday.

After the resumption, Doug Suttles, BP’s chief operating officer for exploration and production, struggled to offer guidance on whether the latest effort was likely to succeed.

[......]