It is clear today that in Pennsylvania Hillary Clinton intends to attack once again on the Goolsbee memo. With many thinking it had an affect in Ohio it is time for everyone to take a step back and arm themselves with the facts of this absurd situation.
The best roundup of the entire situation, the one with the least spin I've seen, comes from the CBC
http://www.cbc.ca/...
Choice sections for the lazy:
The initial tip from Ian Brodie to CTV's Tom Clark was about Clinton:
Both candidates were talking about re-opening the agreement and renegotiating certain sections in order to toughen its environmental and labour standards.
When a group of reporters from CTV quizzed Brodie about what such declarations meant to Canada, he apparently replied that Ottawa was not worried. Hillary Clinton's people had been in touch, he said, reassuring Canadian officials that they should not take such campaign rhetoric seriously. A CTV reporter privy to the conversation would later publicly confirm what Brodie said.
But an offhand remark by a political staffer is just a starting point so CTV brought Tom Clark, the network's bureau chief in Washington, into the picture. Clark is known to be on friendly terms with ambassador Wilson.
In short order, Clark contacted Wilson, putting to him the tip from Ottawa. We know this because the embassy later confirmed the call. The actual conversation between the two men remains a private discussion, but by the time Clark went to air Wednesday night, his angle was no longer Clinton. It was Obama.
The memo was created 5 days after the Goolsbee meet:
When Goolsbee saw the paragraph about how "messaging" in Ohio is merely "political positioning," he objected. That, he said, was not his language.
So the Canadian officials took a closer look. DeMora, it turned out, did not write his summary until five days after the discussion had taken place. And he had no direct quotes to support his characterization of Goolsbee's remarks.
The summary's self-congratulatory aside about Goolsbee agreeing with the consulate's own analysis also raised eyebrows.
One former diplomat said it sounded like "a classic case of the wish becoming the father of the thought."
The embassy admits they were wrong about this whole thing:
So, the embassy apologized directly to Goolsbee and accepted his contention that he had been misrepresented. When the Obama campaign demanded a public denial, the embassy complied.
We may never know the full answers of Clinton's involvement or lack thereof, as the government and embassy have fallen mum:
I asked Sally Southey, the Canadian embassy's spokeswoman in Washington, how it could be that CTV began with a tip about Clinton's campaign, but after a conversation with Michael Wilson, wound up reporting a distorted version of an Obama adviser's remarks.
That, she said, is a good question. But, she added: "All conversations the ambassador has on background with journalists are private."
There is more in this excellent article if you are interested about the nature of the leak and forthcoming investigation, however for the sake of how it affects the Clinton/Obama race, these elements must be spread to disallow continued distortions on this whole mess.