The White House claim of ‘doctored e-mails... to smear the president’ (WaPo declares it a lie)

http://www.washingtonpost.com ^ | may 21, 2013 | Glenn Kessler

[lowbridge]

“That’s a very serious offense that happened where Republicans on the Hill, we voluntarily provided these e-mails to, took one of them, doctored it and gave it to ABC News in an attempt to smear the president.”

— White House communications director Dan Pfeiffer, appearing on CBS’s “Face the Nation,” May 19, 2013

“I think one of the problems that there’s so much controversy here is because one of the e-mails was doctored by a Republican source and given to the media to falsely smear the president.”

— Pfeiffer, on Fox News Sunday, May 19

“They received these e-mails months ago, didn’t say a word about it, didn’t complain ... And then last week a Republican source provided to Jon Karl of ABC News a doctored version of a White House e-mail that started this entire fear. After 25,000 pieces of paper are provided to Congress they have to doctor e-mail to make political hay, you know they’re getting desperate here.”

— Pfeiffer, on NBC’s “Meet the Press,” May 19

When a White House aide uses the same word — “doctored” — on three television shows, you know it is a carefully crafted talking point. On top of that, he says that this was done to “smear the president.”

These are strong words concerning the 2012 attack in Benghazi, Libya, that resulted in the death of the U.S. ambassador and three other Americans. But is this a case of the White House communications chief taking liberties with the facts?

[MarkL]

But is this a case of the White House communications chief taking liberties with the facts?

No, most normal people would call him a "lying sack of $#it."

I've got a feeling that before too much longer, people are going to start getting fed up with the lies from politicians.

Mark

[McGruff]

Sunday Amateur Hour with Dan Pfeiffer

[ArmstedFragg]

Sort of hard to doctor e-mails that the White House won’t give you. They wouldn’t let the reporters have the documents, so one of them made an error in transcription. Then they pull out the original document and try to play “gotcha” games with it. They forced the error, now they’re complaining about it.

And, in fact, it’s a side issue.

When can we expect to hear them decrying the real case of doctoring on the Zimmerman tapes? What was that old Mathis song? Oh yeah, “The Twelfth of Never”.

[livius]

No. The article even states that it did not occur. There were apparently slightly different versions circulating, but the different versions were quite similar to each other. Remember that the reporters were only allowed to look at the e-mails, not take notes, so possibly there was some inexactitude, but not over the essential facts (the e-mails seen by the reporters mentioned the State Dept, the need to keep the information from pointing to the State Dept., and the need for further work on the talking points).

If anybody doctored anything, it was whoever in the WH produced this supposedly authoritative e-mail, which is so doctored it says nothing and was obviously just done for the occasion.

[RoosterRedux]

It seems like they are going so far as to throw their media lapdogs themselves under the bus.

What could possibly be gained by that?

[NEMDF]

They were hoping that enough of the media lapdogs would run with the story that Republicans doctored the emails before the media realized they were being thrown under the bus. It almost worked.

[don-o]

All right. Who put the LSD in the Post’s water cooler?

[MestaMachine]

Put de lie in de coconut...

Anyone wanting on or off this ping list, please advise.

Benghazi Index

[freeangel]

““That’s a very serious offense that happened where Republicans on the Hill, we voluntarily provided these e-mails to, took one of them, doctored it and gave it to ABC News in an attempt to smear the president.”

Nobody has to try and “smear” this pos, poseur presbo-—he loves wallowing in the poop he has created.

[glock rocks]

“Have you seen anything like it before?”

Um yah, Something about a You Tube video?

(Tell him what he’s won, Jay.)

[GOPJ]

The burden of proof lies with the accuser. Despite Pfeiffer’s claim of political skullduggery, we see little evidence that much was at play here besides imprecise wordsmithing or editing errors by journalists. Three Pinocchios

Whoa! Three? The Washington Post just about called the guy a liar... Looks like one paper wants their credibility back... Defending conservatives will destroy their chance of winning a pulitzer... takes guts.