Monday, April 30, 2007
EVOLUTION OF A QUOTE
US author Jeffrey Krames appeared four years ago on ABC radio to discuss Donald Rumsfeld:
On September 7th, 2001, the very influential Washington Post was starting even to name successors to the Defense Secretary, having already written him off, and of course then with the horrific events of September 11, came and proved Rumsfeld right on many ways. And on the morning of September 11th at 8am, Donald Rumsfeld was hosting a breakfast in the Pentagon in which he said, “Sometime within the next 2, 4, 6, 8, 10 months, something so horrendous is going to happen in the US that it will remind people why it’s important to have a strong and healthy Defense Department”. And it was something like 20 minutes later that a huge jet crashed into the Pentagon and of course the World Trade Center and also in Pennsylvania, and it was a chilling prediction of course, that he made that morning, which became of course true that very day.
Reader Gary S. recalls Phillip Adams mentioning that broadcast on Adams’ own ABC program. Subsequently, in late 2004 Adams wrote:
Before September 11, there was unrest in the Bush team. Take Donald Rumsfeld. The White House was energetically undermining him. The Washington Post was one of many papers receiving leaks and backgrounders from the White House, including names of the candidates most likely to replace him. Rumsfeld knew he was for the chop and told his confidantes that only a major terrorist attack could save him.
One year later Adams refined that paraphrased quote:
The word was out - via White House leaks - that Rumsfeld was for the chop. When poor Donald was forced to read the names of likely replacements, he said he’d need a Pearl Harbor to save him. Osama bin Laden obliged.
Last month Adams quoted Rumsfeld directly:
The appalling Donald Rumsfeld observed shortly before the attack on the twin towers that political survival “needed a Pearl Harbor” ...
Not according to any online records, he didn’t. Will Adams survive what seems to be another quote-doctoring scandal?