OK, so now this is all mired up. I thought Karl's articles were the first source for any of this information on the talking point emails, while these articles assert that "Republicans" "leaked" Karl's summaries as quotes. Would one of you advocates please advise:
First, is my characterization of assertions in the articles to which posters refer accurate?
2nd, my understanding of all this is that Karl obtained summaries of the emails from a "source' at a time when the WH was refusing to pass on the actual emails. Right?
3rd, the reports quoted above claim that Karl's summaries were "leaked" by "Republicans" on Friday (May 10? can't be today) as email contents, or quotes, right? And I assume that by "Republicans" it is meant that these people were R congressfolks/senators/ operatives/spinmeisters, not that Karl's source is/was a republican?
What "Republican" did anything independently of Karl's summaries after the info was obtained by Karl, who is s/he? When the "quotes" were "leaked" by "Republicans", was the content of the "leak" explicitly sourced on Karl's reportage or was it not? or by "leaked" are we talking about event by which the info was provided to Karl by his source?
Is this a situation where a "Republican" read Karl's articles, and characterized as actual quotes what Karl clearly identified as summaries? or did someone simply say, 'this is what the emails say based on Karl's reportage'? IOW, will someone please point me to a source that identifies a Republican, or a Republican source, who did whatever was done on whatever Friday we are talking about. 'Cuz I'm not finding that either.
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The rest of the _Politico_ report, for those who care about anal insertion and "Worlds [sic] like "quote", "on record", "for attribution", "verbatim" and the like [which] have very specific meanings in press reporting [note: three of which apparently not having been used at all,even in the looney reporting done by some in this situation]:
So what's going on here? Tapper's "U.S. government source" is likely drawing attention to the discrepancy between Karl's summary of the email and the actual content of the email in order to discredit ABC's report and Karl's sources. Indeed, on Tuesday afternoon the White House accused congressional Republicans of fabricating the emails cited in Karl's report. One thing you'll learn if you study political communications: Nothing seems to work so well as using one small error in a report to discredit the entire report. CNN's "U.S. government source" must be overjoyed that Tapper used the word "inaccurate" four times** when referring to a report that is, for the most part, accurate.
UPDATE (4:50 p.m.): Karl has addressed the new email, which he says "helps fill out the portrait of the inter-agency deliberations that went into shaping the now-discredited talking points." He writes, in part:
The source was not permitted to make copies of the original e-mails. The White House has refused multiple requests – from journalists, including myself, and from Republican leaders in Congress – to release the full e-mail exchanges.
The differences in the two versions are being taken by some as evidence that my source sought to intentionally mislead about the extent of State Department involvement in changing the talking points. The version I obtained makes specific reference to the State Department, while the version reported by CNN references only "all of the relevant equities" and does not single out State. [...]
I asked my original source today to explain the different wording on the Ben Rhodes e-mail, and the fact that the words "State Department" were not included in the e-mail provided to CNN's Tapper. [...] This was my source's response, via e-mail: "WH reply was after a long chain of email about State Dept concerns. So when WH emailer says, take into account all equities, he is talking about the State equities, since that is what the email chain was about."
The White House could still clear up this confusion by releasing the full e-mail transcripts that were provided for brief review by a select number of members of Congress earlier this year. If there's "no 'there' there," as President Obama himself claimed yesterday, a full release should help his case.
To be clear, I believe that Karl's report contained errors. Karl stated in one paragraph that his report was based on "summaries" of emails, but elsewhere said he had "obtained 12 different versions of the talking points" and cited "White House emails reviewed by ABC News." Karl also stated unequivocally that Rhodes "wrote an email saying the State Department's concerns needed to be addressed," and put the summary in a quote was attributed directly to Rhodes. (Schneider told POLITICO that ABC News had not reviewed emails directly and said "Karl's report could have been even clearer" about that.)
But I also agree with Karl's source when he says that Rhodes email included State Dept. concerns, and I agree with Karl when he says that The White House could still clear up this confusion.
**UPDATE (5:46 p.m.): CNN has since removed three of the four uses of the word "inaccurate" from its report. The remaining use, like those that have been removed, refers to "the inaccurate information" in the leaked email summaries.
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Help
But don't allow any one source to color your thinking so strongly.
