Three Way News

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Thursday, October 18, 2007

RNC: Lying about Hillary (of course)

Here's the latest RNC fund raising pitch (email, no link):

If you needed further proof that Hillary Clinton will do anything to win, a Capitol Hill newspaper is now reporting that she eavesdropped on Bill's political opponents during his time as Governor of Arkansas.
What is most remarkable about this is that Hillary has spent this year fighting Republican efforts to give our intelligence services the ability to monitor terrorist calls coming into or out of the United States. In other words, the Clinton attack machine is apparently fine with listening in on phone calls if it bolsters her political ambitions -- but Hillary doesn't want to give America's intelligence agencies the ability to conduct surveillance on terrorists plotting to attack our nation.

To their credit, the RNC provides a link to the allegation. Sadly, the link does not support the RNC claim:

Republicans plan to seize on an allegation from the 1992 presidential campaign to tarnish Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.) on the red-hot issue of government surveillance.
...Republicans are focusing on an allegation in a recent book by two Pulitzer Prize-winning reporters, which suggests Clinton listened to a secretly recorded conversation between political opponents.
In their book about Clinton’s rise to power, Her Way, Don Van Natta Jr., an investigative reporter at The New York Times, and Jeff Gerth, who spent 30 years as an investigative reporter at the paper, wrote: “Hillary’s defense activities ranged from the inspirational to the microscopic to the down and dirty. She received memos about the status of various press inquiries; she vetted senior campaign aides; and she listened to a secretly recorded audiotape of a phone conversation of Clinton critics plotting their next attack.
...A GOP official said, “Hillary Clinton’s campaign hypocrisy continues to know no bounds. It is rather unbelievable that Clinton would listen in to conversations being conducted by political opponents, but refuse to allow our intelligence agencies to listen in to conversations being conducted by terrorists as they plot and plan to kill us. Team Clinton can expect to see and hear this over and over again over the course of the next year.”

The Hill does not report that Clinton did anything. The Hill simply reports that the RNC is using a book as a source to make allegations against Hillary. The Hill is basically reporting the RNC's attack. The RNC uses the report of the attack as proof for the attack.

The obvious reason for this is that The Hill doesn't have Gerth's credibility problem.

Labels: Hillary Clinton, RNC