Mitt Romney's authorized biography is titled "The Real Romney" written by Michael Kranish and Scott Helman, 2007. You can find a used hard cover copy off Amazon for $10 plus shipping. Romney read every word, signed off, and agreed to putting a picture of his face on the cover.
We have spoken with Michael Kranish, now the deputy chief of Boston Globe's Washington bureau. Verification for Romney's tales related to France in the 1960s came wholly from Romney supporters. The result was publication of invented tales that Occupy Wall Street's Security oversight group was able to fact check, mainly within a six-week span.
Quotes from "The Real Romney" are cited and examined below the orange squiggly figure. You will be hard pressed to find clearer examples of political Team Lying this side of Orwell's book "1984."
These biographers were used dishonestly, similar to Romney's continued misuse of the Latter-day Saints. Good people are manipulated to echo lies. Today, Romney presents the GOP with two monstrous risks for embarrassment: the tax returns and this "Chappaquiddick in France." Political impacts are stunning.
In 2008 Obama beat McCain for popular vote by 51.9% to 45.7% with 63% participation. McCain had strong support from his party leaders. Between the tax returns and lying about the death of a 57-year old mother of four, Mrs. Leola Anderson, and lying about every policy issue from the Lilly Ledbetter Act to the federal debt ceiling, you'd think that Romney has created a less attractive situation for himself.
"The Real Romney" was researched, mainly, by interviewing people who already knew Mitt Romney and had handled political and personal questions for him for years. The story lines that went into the book were planned and rehearsed. Comparison with external source material requires obtaining that materail -- not always a one-week or two-week problem -- and then correlating known facts with what Romney's team had put out.
Let's review two brief selections available off the Internet under agreement at the site ontheissues.org.
-- http://www.ontheissues.org/...
On Principles & Values: 1966-68: Served as Mormon missionary in France
-- For 2-1/2 years, Romney lived under the strict missionary regime. Romney said he converted 10 to 20 people during his time as a missionary, but even that small-sounding number stood out among missionaries. Years later, Romney bluntly assessed the experience: "As you can imagine, it's quite an experience to go to Bordeaux and say, 'Give up your wine! I've got a great religion for you!' It was a good training for how life works. Rejection of one kind or another is going to be important part of everyone's life. Here I'd grown up as the son of a governor, and now I was on the street."...
Source: The Real Romney, by Kranish & Helman, p. 63-69 Jan 17, 2012
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On Principles & Values: Near-fatal accident at age 21; in coma for 3 days
-- In 1968 in France, a man had smashed into a tree and been thrown from his vehicle. Police were still on the scene. Romney stopped to remove a roof rack lying in the middle of the two-lane highway, then continued on. At that moment, a Mercedes passed a truck at high speed, and smashed nearly head-on into their car. The collision collapsed the front of the Citroen, thrusting the engine into the front seat. Romney was pinned between the steering column and the driver's door.
-- Romney's injuries appeared so severe that a police officer who responded to the scene made a grave notation in the young man's passport: "Il est mort"--"He is dead." In fact, Romney was unconscious in a coma for 3 days. One passenger died. Romney recovered quickly and without surgery.
-- By all accounts, Romney himself was driving cautiously that day and deserved no blame. For Mitt, the fatal accident was a turning point. He was still a young man, 21 years old, with a young man's sense of his own invincibility.
Source: The Real Romney, by Kranish & Helman, p. 80-83 Jan 17, 2012
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These four paragraphs present a constructed public image for Mitt Romney as a candidate for the American presidency. Item after item conflicts with original historical material, with recorded statements from Romney and his associates in 1968, and with statements from local witnesses.
• Romney said in 1968 that he had converted two people to Mormonism. This claim of "10 to 20" is astounding. The Guardian has both of those "baptisms" reverting out of Mormonism shortly thereafter.
• The Mercedes 180 was slowing down as it entered the southbound Left Turn lane of N524 across from the Beaulac post office.
• Total collision speed for the two cars was between 60 kph and no more than 80 kph at impact. Highway speed collisions destroyed these Citroen DS cars.
• Elsewhere Romney states that he didn't have time to hit his horn or the brakes. All or almost all of this total collision speed is attributable to Romney's Citroen.
• Romney was thrown from the Citroen to the roadway. At the same time based on multiple photos the steering wheel was pushed to the left -- almost all the way to the driver's side door frame. If Romney had been between the steering wheel and any other part of that car, his head would have been crushed.
• Mrs. Leola Anderson and H. Duane Anderson were the people who had to be "pried" from the wreck.
• We know from Mrs. Anderson's obituary the next day, that Monday, 17 June 1968, that Romney suffered a "minor head injury." He was alert, responded for photos, and had been assigned to a standard ward bed. There were no monitoring devices attached and no head bandage.
•Obviously there was no "three day coma." The picture of Mitt Romney, 21, in his ward bed was taken the morning of Monday, 17 June 1968. He spoke with the photographer, Andre Salarnier. Expectation was that he would be released as early as Tuesday, the second day after the accident.
The sentence that addresses invincibility gets us to a practical reading of how this incident affected Mitt Romney. There is a truth here: "For Mitt, the fatal accident was a turning point. He was still a young man, 21 years old, with a young man's sense of his own invincibility."
"Invincibility" -- yes, indeed.
Do almost anything. Lie to get away with having your bad driving kill a 57-year old mother of four. Lie about anything and everything.
And nobody says "Boo!"
Nothing happens until Occupy Wall Street put a priority to corporate lies and criminality. No one set out to apply quality control standards to Mitt Romney's presentation of his history. No one in the GOP, certainly. It took Occupy Security to attract appropriate resources to analyze the photos of the 1968 wreck and then to find Bishop Vilnet. Same for tracking the ever-changing lies that have attended this Romney cover-up.
Or possibly the research was done and then concealed for long-range goals. Democrats would save the information and hope to see Mitt Romney run for president twice. Republican power brokers would hold back the information to use it for blackmail, if Romney got elected.
Anybody think that Karl Rove would spend $200-million openly supporting the Romney campaign and not set a team of P.I.'s to digging under Romney's rock? Or that the 501(c)4 and (c)6 "hidden donor" pools would toss in upwards of half-a-billion stupidly?
"The public be damned" -- what else?
Here's the obvious in external source material. What is necessary for quality control.
Map of the accident site:
Both cars after the accident. Romney drove the Citroen DS:
Total collision speed was no more than 60 to 80 kph (not "mph.") Here is the Citroen DS depicting collapse of the driver side frame onto the steering column. In reports from the other passengers, Romney was thrown out of the car. His injury amounted to a "strawberry" abrasion treated with antibacterial ointment.
Mitt Romney on Monday morning, 17 June 1968. As reported in the obituary news report from Andre Salarnier that ran in the Ogden Standard-Examiner of that afternoon.
And the obituary:
Full text:
Wife of French Mission President Dies in Crash
Mrs. Leola S. Anderson, 57, wife of H. duane Anderson, president of the French Mission of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, was killed Sunday in a head-on collision near Bordeaux.
Pres. Anderson, 55, suffered eight broken ribs and a broken wrist in the accident.
Willard (Mitt) Romney, 21, son of Governor George Romney of Michigan, who is serving as a missionary in France and who was driving the car, suffered minor head injuries and torn ligaments to one elbow. He was expected to leave hospital in about two days.
IN THE WRONG LANE
A spokesman at the LDS mission in Paris said the party was traveling from Bordeaux to Pall (sic) on church business when their car collided with an auto that was traveling at high speed in the wrong lane.
The accident occurred in the village of Bazas, 35 miles southeast of bordeaux. Mrs. Anderson died two hours after the accident.
President and Mrs. Anderson were both professors at San Bernardino Valley College at San Bernardino, Calif., before he was named the French Mission president in May 1967.
Biographical information follows. They had been married in 1936. She was a BYU grad and did grad work at University of California (campus not identified.) Her academic specialty was English.
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Mitt Romney has fended off inquiries with objections that he cannot be held responsible for newspaper reports for which he no control.
Bad reporters !!
"The Real Romney" was written with full editorial review from Mitt Romney. He approved every version through the whole development cycle.
Too bad for him that Occupy Wall Street set out from the first day to oppose corporate corruption, to be our own leaders, and to press our democratic form of government to get to work and create jobs.
Occupy Security has done no better work than to run a solid backgrounder on this man.
Mitt Romney also believes that he is destined to lie and bully his way to the presidency. That is to fulfill an 1843 prophecy from Joseph Smith called the "White Horse Prophecy." But that's for another diary.