March 24, 2005

The ABC Memo Scandal

If you haven't been following Power Line's work on the ABC News memo purporting to be written by Republican operatives to exploit, for political advantage, the Terri Schiavo tragedy, you're missing what's becoming a significant scandal.

Power Line comments in several posts, beginning with this from Tuesday, which includes a copy of the unsigned document, many links, and a great deal of commentary. The Washington Post also covered the story on Tuesday.

This one from early yesterday morning, contains links to others who're investigating the story, including Jim Geraghty, who's now writing from Ankara.

Subsequent posts include this one from yesterday, and this. This morning, they report that the American Spectator's Prowler has picked up the scent:

It's Rathergate all over again, and the same vigilant entities that brought about to the collapse of CBS News could now also cause heads to roll among Democratic Senate leadership staffers and further shame multiple news organizations that would appear to have fallen for another document hoax.

Very quietly, Senate Republican leadership aides to both Sen. Rick Santorum and Sen. Mitch McConnell, as well as the Senate Republican Policy Committee, have been using the Senate recess break to reconstruct the purported distribution of a document that media outlets, including ABC News, the New York Times and a number of regional newspapers, identified as Senate "GOP talking points" on the Terri Schiavo fight that unfolded over the weekend.

And:

Republican leadership staffers now believe the document was generated out of the Democratic opposition research office set up recently by Sen. Harry Reid, and distributed to some Democratic Senate staffers claiming it was a GOP document, in the hope -- or more likely expectation -- that it would then be leaked by those Democrats to reporters. In fact, the New York Times stated that it was Democratic staffers who were distributing the "talking points" document.

Meanwhile, Michelle Malkin asks, "Did the MSM Learn Nothing from Rathergate?"

She has updates and also reports that John Hinderaker will discuss the story on Larry Kudlow's show on CNBC today at 5:00 pm EST.

— Winfield Myers

| Mar. 24, 2005 | 11:10 AM