Questions Abound About McCain Criticism of Obama Trip
By Michael D. Shear and Dan Balz
Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) has now joined his voice to the chorus of aides and campaign surrogates who have been alleging that Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) canceled his visit to a U.S. hospital in Germany because he couldn't bring a media entourage.
McCain said Monday on CNN's "Larry King Live": "I know that according to reports that he wanted to bring media people and cameras and his campaign staffers ... "
And the campaign released another statement this afternoon, this time from a former Sergeant Major who worked at the hospital, who said, "if Senator Obama isn't comfortable meeting wounded American troops without his entourage, perhaps he does not have the experience necessary to serve as commander in chief."
In fact, there's no proof that Obama ever sought to bring the media or any entourage.
In essence, the McCain charge is this: Obama cares so little for the welfare of wounded American soldiers that he canceled the visit when he was informed he could not bring reporters and television cameras to document it.
But there is no evidence that Obama ever planned to bring anyone to the hospital other than a single military adviser, whose status as a campaign staffer sparked last-minute concern among Pentagon officials that the visit would be an improper political event. The Obama campaign has cited those concerns as the reason for canceling Obama's visit.
After being asked repeatedly for the "reports" McCain was talking about on "Larry King Live," McCain's campaign staff provided three examples, none of which made the allegation that Obama had wanted to bring media to the hospital.
Instead, all three reports -- from Fox News, The Washington Post, and MSNBC -- mentioned that the Pentagon had informed Obama of the prohibition against media and campaign visits, leaving the readers and viewers to make the leap about Obama's motive -- as the McCain campaign clearly wanted.
Obama and his top aides have all denied that the campaign ever planned to take reporters or cameras or additional campaign staff to the hospital. "Absolutely, unequivocally wrong," spokesman Tommy Vietor e-mailed just moments after McCain's "Larry King" appearance.
That is supported by reporters who traveled with Obama.
The first indication reporters got that Obama was planning, or had planned, to visit the hospital came on Thursday morning shortly after the traveling entourage arrived in Berlin. On the seats of the press bus were schedules for Obama's stop in Germany and the final entry -- a Friday morning departure -- indicated that the senator's plane would fly from Berlin to Ramstein Air Base.
When a reporter asked Obama spokeswoman Linda Douglass that morning about the trip to Ramstein, she said the schedule was incorrect and out of date, that the trip had been considered but that Obama was not going to go there after all. At that point, the campaign provided no other information.
Later that night, after Obama's speech in Berlin, a campaign source talked on a not for attribution basis about the canceled trip. This official said that the original plan called for Obama to visit the hospital but leave the press on a chartered airplane on the tarmac at Ramstein. This official said that the trip had been canceled after the Pentagon informed a campaign official that the visit would be considered a campaign event.
Overnight the campaign issued two statements, one from senior official Robert Gibbs, the other from retired Air Force Major General Scott Gration, an Obama foreign policy adviser who was on the trip.
Gibbs's statement said the trip had been canceled because Obama decided it would be inappropriate to go to the hospital as part of a trip paid for by his campaign. Gration said the trip had been canceled because the Pentagon had informed the campaign the visit would be seen as a political trip.
Those two statements, while not inconsistent, left open questions as to the real reason the trip was canceled. Was it canceled in reaction to Pentagon concerns -- or did Obama simply make the decision himself out of concern for appearances? By this time the issue was blowing up back in the U.S.
On Friday afternoon, en route from Berlin to Paris, Gibbs briefed reporters traveling with Obama. Gibbs said the two statements were consistent: Gration had been informed on Wednesday night that the trip would be considered a campaign event and, on that basis, Obama then decided on the flight from Israel to Germany to cancel, Gibbs said, rather than to put wounded servicemen and women into an uncomfortable position.
Gibbs said the hospital visit had been on the schedule for several weeks and that Gration had been dealing with several military units to coordinate the stop. He added that officials at Ramstein and the Secret Service told them they needed prior approval to land a non-Air Force aircraft at the air base -- something known as a PPR (for Prior Permission Required) and that the campaign had received that PPR.
"Gration told them we would like to come -- not as a campaign event and without any press -- to make a visit," Gibbs said.
At one point a reporter asked Gibbs what the campaign had planned to do with reporters once the plane had landed at Ramstein. "You would have stayed on the plane," he replied.
Gibbs said today that the campaign had planned to inform the traveling press sometime on the morning of the flight to Ramstein that Obama was intending to visit the hospital but had made no plans to take any reporters -- including even the small, protective press pool that now accompanies Obama most places -- to the hospital.
Reporters, he said, likely would have been able to get off the plane but not leave an air base facility close by. "We had made absolutely no arrangements to transport the press to the hospital," he said. "I asked the advance guys today, 'Had we made any preparation to do that?' and they said, 'No.'"
Gibbs noted that Obama had visited with wounded soldiers several weeks earlier at Walter Reed in Washington, D.C., and at a combat support hospital while in Iraq earlier in the week -- both times without reporters.
At another point a reporter asked, "Why not just say it is never inappropriate to visit men and women in service -- what is your response to that?"
"Again, I would reiterate that we would not want to put anybody who had been wounded in service to our country in the potential position to be part of the political back and forth ... It is entirely likely that someone would have attacked us for having gone. And it is entirely likely -- and it has come about -- that people have attacked us for not going," said Gibbs.
On Saturday in London, Obama addressed the controversy during a press conference. He said Pentagon concerns about Gration's status triggered the decision not to make the visit.
"We got notice that he [Gration] would be treated as a campaign person and it would therefore be perceived as political because he had endorsed my candidacy but he wasn't on the Senate staff," Obama said. "That triggered then a concern that maybe our visit was going to be perceived as political, and the last thing that I want to do is have injured soldiers and the staff at these wonderful institutions having to sort through whether this is political or not, or get caught in the crossfire between campaigns."
Obama's explanation, which came after more than a day of controversy, was the clearest in noting that it was Pentagon concerns about Gration accompanying Obama to the hospital that forced Obama to reconsider and ultimately to cancel the visit.
He also noted that he had made previous visits to see wounded soldiers without reporters, and that while the visit to the hospital in Germany had long been on the schedule for the overseas trip, it had deliberately been left off the schedule given to the press for that reason.
Gibbs reiterated Obama's explanation again last night, saying on MSNBC that it was the Pentagon's concerns about Gration that prompted the cancellation.
"The Pentagon said that his participation would make that trip a campaign trip and we decided at that point, rather than put the men and women, who served our country and protected our freedom and had been injured, rather than put them in a political situation in the middle of a campaign fight, that we would just not go and not use them as props in this kind of fight," Gibbs said.
And he was more definitive today in denying the McCain campaign charge. "That's completely untrue and I think honestly they know it's untrue," Gibbs said.
McCain spokesman Tucker Bounds insisted again today that McCain's version of events is correct, and that Obama canceled the trip because of the inability to take reporters and cameras into the hospital.
"It is safe to say that according to press reports Barack Obama avoided, skipped, canceled the visit because of those reasons," Bounds said. "We're not making a leap here."
Nicolle Wallace, another spokeswoman for McCain, said the campaign's understanding of the event, which was "pieced together from public sources" was that "Obama was told he could go to see the troops as long as he wanted to. At some point, the campaign apparatus" was raised as an issue. "When you say 'campaign apparatus,' it's staff, pool, protection, whatever. That's what our understanding of what campaign apparatus is."
Wallace said at this point the actual details of the incident are less relevant because "This is what it is. People know this. People will draw their own conclusions."
"It probably wasn't enough to ruin the trip," she added, "but there is a very worrisome Obama narrative shaping up" in which he's ignoring the advice of military officers such as General David Petraeus and he's not fully paying attention to "the importance of seeing the troops, no matter how logistically challenging it might be."
Bounds later added in an e-mail: "The only reported stipulation was that Barack Obama had to leave his celebrity entourage at the door, but he skipped on the injured troops anyway, so it's fair to question his judgment and we'll keep doing it."
Washington Post Staff Writer Juliet Eilperin contributed to this report.
Posted at 4:37 PM ET on Jul 29, 2008
No comments:
Post a Comment