The New York Daily News Gets It Wrong (Surprised?)

The New York Daily News committed a big time disservice to their readers by reporting a version of events that conflicted with the official report regarding the Planegate matter. Thomas DeFrank and Kenneth Bazinet do not wrap themselves in glory on this one.

From the first paragraph, they get it wrong:

The White House aide who okayed the $328,835 Air Force One photo-op flight around the Statue of Liberty last week was sacked Friday.

Actually, Caldera, according to the official report, was not responsible for authorizing the flight.

Instead, the military office decided to react to media inquiries, not to make a prior announcement, according to the review by Jim Messina, White House deputy chief of staff.

There are a couple of things odd with this statement. For starters, the report was prepared for Jim Messina, he did not author the report. Secondly, the deputy director, George Mulligan, did not anticipate any media reaction to the flight which I thought was a newsworthy aspect that went un-reported. That's why they opted to react to media inquiries.

"The FAA warned the military office that the media needed to be advised of the flight," said an administration source. "There were red flags."

Why does the Daily News provide anonymity for the source? It's not clear. Moreover, the report does not indicate that the FAA raised any red flags about advising the media. This quote seems to be gratuitous unless it's meant to add to the criticism of Caldera.

Caldera's office insisted the flyover was a "classified" mission.

Actually details about the flight were considered to be "for official use only." This is simply a caveat -- it's not a classification. There are only three classifications: confidential, secret, and top secret. It wasn't classified.

A prominent Republican official who specializes in damage control said: "This is a message from [chief of staff] Rahm Emanuel that you won't be fired for a mistake or a policy disagreement - but you will be fired for embarrassing the President. That's a good, strong message that needed to be sent."

Again with the gratuitous anonymous source. Why does the "prominent Republican official" not want to have his or her name disclosed? Moreover, it's untrue. The President turned a blind eye to Tim Geithner, Linda Solis, Ron Kirk, and Kathleen Sebelius who caused the President a fair amount of embarrassment for their tax problems. (We'll leave aside Joe Biden's gaffes for the moment.) Moreover, how does this official know that mistakes or policy disagreements are not a cause for firing?

If they got this wrong -- what else have they gotten wrong -- without the benefit of an official report?