Another bedroom farce (2/21)

By Brendan Nyhan
[First published on Salon.com]

In the echo chamber of the 24-hour news cycle, lies and deception can quickly metastasize from rumor to conventional wisdom due merely to repetition. The latest example of this is a false claim that former Enron CEO Ken Lay stayed in the Lincoln Bedroom of the White House during the Clinton administration. Despite a complete lack of evidence that this took place, irresponsible or malicious journalists have repeated this lie so often that it is on its way to being accepted as fact.

The newest perpetrator of the claim is Patrice Hill of the Washington Times, who asserts in her story Thursday that "evidence of Mr. Lay’s links to the Clinton administration are ample and well-documented," including that Lay "at times was Mr. Clinton’s golf partner and slept in the Lincoln Bedroom."

Hill evidently failed to consult the original Clinton Lincoln Bedroom guest list from February 1997, the July 1999-August 2000 list or the OpenSecrets.org White House Coffee and Sleep-over Database. Ken Lay’s name appears on none of these lists.

If she wanted to do some actual reporting, she could have even called Julia Payne, Clinton’s spokeswoman, as I did, and she would have found out that, according to the White House archivist, Lay was never an overnight guest during the Clinton administration, though they did play golf together. Lay did, however, stay at the White House when George H.W. Bush was president.

The dissemination of the myth apparently began in a Jan. 13 Chicago Tribune story, which stated that "Lay was no stranger to the Clinton White House, playing golf with the president and staying overnight in the Lincoln Bedroom." Whether the reporters were deceived into believing that such a stay had taken place or merely inadvertently confused Lay’s stay during Bush 41 is unclear.

In any case, USA Today picked up on the claim the next day, Fred Barnes of the Weekly Standard repeated it on Fox News that night and from there it took on a life of its own, appearing intermittently in letters to the editor and editorials in newspapers nationwide over the last month or so. Gene Lyons of the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette is the only person to refute the claim in print thus far (on Feb. 13).

Because the facts are so obviously wrong, however, the Lincoln Bedroom myth didn’t reach critical mass until the past week, when it was given a new lease on life by two conservatives. As Spinsanity’s Ben Fritz pointed out, Barnes and GOP operative Alex Castellanos said Lay stayed in the Lincoln Bedroom under Clinton on separate cable talk shows on Feb. 14, and Castellanos made the same claim Sunday on ABC’s "This Week."

In a Feb. 15 letter to the editor in the Portland Oregonian, the myth was repeated, and it seems only to be growing, as even greater numbers of writers fail to check their facts.

Update 2/25/02 3:25 PM: Bob Somerby of the Daily Howler notes in a new article that the myth traces back to a Jan. 11 article by Matt Drudge. Also, the Washington Times issued a correction on Friday citing the Tribune story as the source of the claim. It further reports that a Tribune spokesperson confirmed the error, though the newspaper has not yet issued a retraction.

Update 2/26 10:44 AM: I've just learned that the Chicago Tribune issued a retraction on Sunday. Also, Greta Van Susteren of Fox News clarified the record last night after a guest on her show "On the Record" repeated the claim Friday.

Note: This story was corrected since it was first published on Salon.com.

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2/21/2002 08:48:49 PM EST |

Coming up Enron (2/20)

By Bryan Keefer
[First published on Salon.com]

As the Enron scandal progresses, opportunistic politicians are trying their best to turn the company's name into political shorthand to discredit just about anything. From Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle, who compared Bush's budget proposal to Enron, to Democratic Senator Carl Levin, who likened the administration's nuclear weapons policy to Enron's accounting practices, the company's name has become an all-purpose attack. Enron's transformation into a political weapon illustrates how sound-bite strategies discrediting opponents by association are increasingly replacing substantive debate over issues of national importance.

[This column was featured exclusively on Salon.com for two days. It is now available on our site. Please note that after an initial free period our articles will become part of Salon Premium, which requires a paid subscription of $6 a month, $30 a year or $50 for two years. We hope that you'll join through our affiliate link (also posted in the "Currently on Spinsanity" box) but you don't have to. After two calendar days, our content will always be available for free on our site.]

2/19/2002 08:05:44 PM EST |

New Enron lies target Clinton (2/18)

By Ben Fritz

In the ongoing rhetorical war over Enron, both sides seem to be trying to establish false tropes and hoping they'll work their way into the mainstream. Senator Ernest "Fritz" Hollings (D-SC) did it last week when he falsely alleged that Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill and Office of Management and Budget Director Mitch Daniels had been on the company's payroll. And now two conservatives are falsely stating that former Enron CEO Ken Lay was an overnight guest in the Clinton White House.

As the website Media Whores Online pointed out, the most recent example came when Republican political strategist Alex Castellanos said this on ABC's "This Week": "[Democratic consultant] Paul [Begala] forgot to mention that Ken Lay slept in the Lincoln bedroom in the Clinton administration, not Bush."

As Gene Lyons pointed out in the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette on February 13 in response to a reader letter, though, Ken Lay does not appear on the list of campaign donors who stayed in the Lincoln Bedroom during the Clinton administration (article available online only to subscribers). Clinton's office has said that Lay never stayed over. In short, there is no evidence to back up this accusation.

It's not the first time that Castellanos or others have made this charge, however. Last Thursday evening, both Castellanos and Fred Barnes of the Weekly Standard made the same claim on cable talk shows. On CNN's "Crossfire", Castellanos said, "[The Clintons] took everything but responsibility out of the White House ... Ken Lay, now we're finding out was part of all this. Ken Lay slept in the Lincoln Bedroom." And on Fox News Network's "Special Report with Brit Hume," Barnes falsely alleged that "Ken Lay not only played golf with Clinton, he stayed a night in the Lincoln Bedroom."

Whatever the reasons, it's remarkable that both Castellanos and Barnes planted the same false trope on the same night, and disturbing that Castellanos repeated it on Sunday. Surely there's enough to be worried about in the Enron debacle without false tropes entering the mix.

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Related Links:
-Fritzkrieg! A Democratic senator lies about Enron to smear Bush (Ben Fritz, 2/13/02)
-Unfair Enron comparisons continue (Bryan Keefer, 2/6/02)
-Enron association game continues unabated (Bryan Keefer, 1/16/02)
-The "Enronomics" offensive (Brendan Nyhan, 1/15/02)
-Scandalous Rhetoric Before the Scandal: The Growing Enron Debate (Ben Fritz, 1/14/02)
-Spin works its way into liberal harping on Enron (Ben Fritz, 12/13/01)

2/19/2002 10:39:16 AM EST |

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