Subject: RE: my letter to Dean Baquet
From: Christina Reynolds <[email-masked]>
To: John Podesta <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 28 Jul 2015 14:34:12 -0400

Yes, sorry!

*From:* John Podesta [mailto:[email-masked]]
*Sent:* Tuesday, July 28, 2015 2:28 PM
*To:* Christina Reynolds <[email-masked]>
*Subject:* RE: my letter to Dean Baquet

Was there supposed to be an attachment?

On Jul 28, 2015 11:14 AM, "Christina Reynolds" <[email-masked]>
wrote:

Here’s our current doc—we are updating this now to include some of the more
recent things. Here are the key points:

1)      The Times story was wrong on several fronts, based on inaccurate
leaks:

                                                               i.      There
is no criminal inquiry

                                                             ii.      Hillary
Clinton has never been the subject of the inquiry

                                                            iii.      The
State Department does not believe the emails are in question contain
classified material

2)      As their own public editor noted, the Times moved too quickly,
failing to secure key details in a race to be first—an effort that resulted
in too many corrections. As a result, the story and the Times website
alleged a criminal inquiry all day, with many other stories and social
media following their later-corrected and debunked story.

*From:* John Podesta [mailto:[email-masked]]
*Sent:* Tuesday, July 28, 2015 1:52 PM
*To:* Christina Reynolds <[email-masked]>
*Subject:* Re: my letter to Dean Baquet

Christina,

Amanda and I are on with women Senators this afternoon.. Can you shoot me
an email with a few points on NYT. Our aggressive pushback. Best responses
from other outlets, etc. thx.

On Tuesday, July 28, 2015, Christina Reynolds <[email-masked]>
wrote:

Brian and I were just talking—in addition to the letter, we can pull some
of the better columns (Ornstein is particularly good today, Ruth Marcus,
etc) and update the doc pushing back on the Times on the Briefing. Then we
can share both that and the story about the leaked letter with our big list
of talkers.

*From:* John Podesta [mailto:[email-masked]
<[email-masked]>]
*Sent:* Tuesday, July 28, 2015 1:36 PM
*To:* Varun Anand <[email-masked]>
*Cc:* Jennifer Palmieri <[email-masked]>; Brian Fallon <
[email-masked]>; Nick Merrill <[email-masked]>;
John Podesta <[email-masked]>; Robby Mook <[email-masked]>;
Christina Reynolds <[email-masked]>; Kristina Schake <
[email-masked]>
*Subject:* Re: my letter to Dean Baquet

I'm good but agree with suggestion to drop damage to the campaign language
and end with firestorm

On Tuesday, July 28, 2015, Varun Anand <[email-masked]> wrote:

Attached with that edit + copy edits:

On Tue, Jul 28, 2015 at 1:23 PM, Jennifer Palmieri <
[email-masked]> wrote:

That's a good thought - think we should just say "had a deep impact that
cannot be unwound." Varun - can you do?

Sent from my iPhone

On Jul 28, 2015, at 1:16 PM, Brian Fallon <[email-masked]>
wrote:

My only concern is stating the article inflicted damage on our campaign.
Certainly true but I worry that if we leak the letter, it could be
misinterpreted as us admitting the email controversy in general is hurting
us. Maybe we could soften it a bit by saying "...creating a firestorm that
had a deep impact and cannot be unwound."

On Tue, Jul 28, 2015 at 11:47 AM, Jennifer Palmieri <
[email-masked]> wrote:

Brian largely penned this very thorough letter to go back to Dean to
officially register our concerns and raise concerns they have not
addressed.  I made some edits (Brian will be disappointed that I toned it
down a wee bit).  Appreciate it if this group would take a look before we
send.  Also like views on what people think about making this public.  I
think we should.

Varun – would you proofread, too?

Thanks – JP

Dear Mr. Baquet:

I am writing to officially register our campaign’s grave concern with the
Times’ publication of an inaccurate report related to Hillary Clinton and
her email use.

I appreciate the fact that both you and the Public Editor have sought to
publicly explain how this error could have been made.  But we remain
perplexed by the Times’ slowness to acknowledge its errors after the fact,
and some of the shaky justifications that Times’ editors. We feel it
important to outline these concerns with you directly so that they may be
properly addressed and so our campaign can continue to have a productive,
working relationship with the Times.

I feel obliged to put into context just how egregious an error this story
was.  The New York Times is arguably the most important news outlet in the
world and it rushed to put an erroneous story on the front page charging
that a major candidate for President of the United States was the target of
a criminal referral to federal law enforcement.  Literally hundreds of
outlets followed your story creating a firestorm that instilled real damage
on our campaign that can never be undone.  This problem was compounded by
the fact that the Times took an inexplicable, let alone indefensible, delay
in correcting the story and removing “criminal” from the headline and text
of the story.

To review the facts, as the Times itself has acknowledged through multiple
corrections, the paper’s reporting was false in several key respects:
first, contrary to what the Times stated, Mrs. Clinton is not the target of
a criminal referral made by the State Department’s and Intelligence
Community’s Inspector Generals, and second, the referral in question was
not of a criminal nature at all.

Just as disturbing as the errors themselves is the Times’ apparent
abandonment of standard journalistic practices in the course of its
reporting on this story.

*First, the seriousness of the allegations that the Times rushed to report
last Thursday evening demanded far more care and due diligence than the
Times exhibited prior to this article’s publication. *

The Times’ readers rightfully expect the paper to adhere to the most
rigorous journalistic standards. To state the obvious, it is hard to
imagine a situation more fitting for those standards to be applied than
when a newspaper is preparing to allege that a major party candidate for
President of the United States is the target of a criminal referral
received by federal law enforcement.

This allegation, however, was reported hastily and without affording the
campaign adequate opportunity to respond. It was not even mentioned by your
reporter when our campaign was first contacted late Thursday afternoon.
Initially, it was stated as reporting only on a memo – provided to Congress
by the Inspectors General from the State Department and Intelligence
Community – that raised the possibility of classified material traversing
Secretary Clinton’s email system. This memo –which was subsequently
released publicly -- did not reference a criminal referral at all. It was
not until late Thursday night – at 8:36 pm – that your paper hurriedly
followed up with our staff to explain that it had received a separate tip
that the inspectors general had additionally made a criminal referral to
the Justice Department concerning Clinton’s email use. Our staff indicated
that we had no knowledge of any such referral – understandably, of course,
since none actually existed – and further indicated that, for a variety of
reasons, the reporter’s allegation seemed implausible. Our campaign
declined any immediate comment, but asked for additional time to attempt to
investigate the allegation raised. In response, it was indicated that the
campaign “had time,” suggesting the publication of the report was not
imminent.

Despite the late hour, our campaign quickly conferred and confirmed that we
had no knowledge whatsoever of any criminal referral involving the
Secretary. At 10:36 pm, our staff attempted to reach your reporters on the
phone to reiterate this fact and ensure the paper would not be going
forward with any such report.  There was no answer. At 10:54 pm, our staff
again attempted calling. Again, no answer. Minutes later, we received a
call back.  We sought to confirm that no story was imminent and were
shocked at the reply: the story had just published on the Times’ website.

This was, to put it mildly, an egregious breach of the process that should
occur when a major newspaper like the Times is pursuing a story of this
magnitude. Not only did the Times fail to engage in a proper discussion
with the campaign ahead of publication; given the exceedingly short window
of time between when the Times received the tip and rushed to publish, it
hardly seems possible that the Times conducted sufficient deliberations
within its own ranks before going ahead with the story.

*Second, in its rush to publish what it clearly viewed as a major scoop,
the Times relied on questionable sourcing and went ahead without bothering
to seek corroborating evidence that could have supported its allegation.*

In our conversations with the Times reporters, it was clear that they had
not personally reviewed the IG’s referral that they falsely described as
both criminal and focused Hillary Clinton. Instead, they relied on unnamed
sources that characterized the referral as such. However, it is not at all
clear that those sources had directly seen the referral, either. This
should have represented too many “degrees of separation” for any newspaper
to consider it reliable sourcing, least of all the New York Times.

Times’ editors have attempted to explain these errors by claiming the fault
for the misreporting resided with a Justice Department official whom other
news outlets cited as confirming the Times’ report after the fact. This
suggestion does not add up. It is our understanding that this Justice
Department official was not the original source of the Times’ tip.
Moreover, notwithstanding the official’s inaccurate characterization of the
referral as criminal in nature, this official does not appear to have told
the Times that Mrs. Clinton was the target of that referral, as the paper
falsely reported in its original story.

This raises the question of what other sources the Times may have relied on
in for its initial report. It clearly was not either of the referring
officials – that is, the inspectors general of either the State Department
or intelligence agencies – since the Times’ sources apparently lacked
firsthand knowledge of the referral documents. It also seems unlikely the
source could have been anyone affiliated with those offices, as it defies
logic that anyone so closely involved could have so severely garbled the
description of the referral.

Of course, the identity of the Times’ sources would be deserving of far
less scrutiny if the underlying information had been confirmed as true.
However, the Times appears to have performed little, if any, work to
corroborate the accuracy of its sources’ characterizations of the IG’s
referral. Key details went uninvestigated in the Times’ race to publish
these erroneous allegations against Mrs. Clinton. For instance, high in the
Times’ initial story, the reporters acknowledged they had no knowledge of
whether the documents that the Times claimed were mishandled by Mrs.
Clinton contained any classified markings.  In Mrs. Clinton’s case, none of
the emails at issue were marked. This fact was quickly acknowledged by the
IC inspector general’s office within hours of the Times’ report, but it was
somehow left unaddressed in the initial story.

*Even after the Times’ reporting was revealed to be false, the Times
incomprehensibly delayed the issuance of a full and true correction.*

Our campaign first sought changes from the Times as soon as the initial
story was published. Recognizing the implausibility that Clinton herself
could be the subject of any criminal probe, we immediately challenged the
story’s opening line, which said the referral sought an investigation into
Mrs. Clinton specifically for the mishandling of classified materials. In
response, the Times’ reporters admitted that they themselves had never seen
the IG’s referral, and so acknowledged the possibility that it was
overstating what it directly knew when it portrayed the potential
investigation as centering on Mrs. Clinton. It corrected the lead sentence
accordingly.

The speed with which the Times conceded that it could not defend its lead
citing Mrs. Clinton as the referral’s target raises questions about what
inspired its confidence in the first place to frame the story that way.
More importantly, the Times’ change was not denoted in the form of a
correction. Rather, it was performed quietly, overnight, without any
accompanying note to readers. This was troubling in its lack of
transparency and risks causing the Times to appear like it is trying to
whitewash its misreporting. A correction should have been posted promptly
that night.

Regardless, even after this change, a second error remained in the story:
the characterization of the referral as criminal at all. By Friday morning,
multiple members of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform
(who had been briefed by the inspectors general) challenged this
portrayal—and ultimately, so did the Department of Justice itself. Only
then did the Times finally print a correction acknowledging its
misstatement of the nature of the referral to the Justice Department.

Of course, the correction, coming as it did on a Friday afternoon, was
destined to reach a fraction of those who read the Times’ original,
erroneous report. As the Huffington Post observed:

“…it's unlikely that the same audience will see the updated version unless
the paper were to send out a second breaking news email with its latest
revisions. The Clinton story also appeared the front page of Friday's print
edition.”

Most maddening of all, even after the correction fixed the description of
the referral within the story, a headline remained on the front page of the
Times’ website that read “Criminal Inquiry is Sought in Clinton Email
Account.”  It was not until even later in the evening that the word
“criminal” was finally dropped from the headline and an updated correction
was issued to the story. The lateness of this second correction, however,
prevented it from appearing in the paper this morning.  We simply do not
understand how that was allowed to occur.

*Lastly, the Times’ official explanations for the misreporting is
profoundly unsettling.*

In a statement to the Times’ public editor, you said that the errors in the
Times’ story Thursday night were “unavoidable.” This is hard to accept. As
noted above, the Justice Department official that incorrectly confirmed the
Times’ initial reports for other outlets does not appear to have been the
initial source for the Times. Moreover, it is precisely because some
individuals may provide erroneous information that it is important for the
Times to sift the good information from the bad, and where there is doubt,
insist on additional evidence. The Times was under no obligation to go
forward on a story containing such explosive allegations coming only from
sources who refused to be named. If nothing else, the Times could have
allowed the campaign more time to understand the allegation being engaged.
Unfortunately, the Times chose to take none of these steps.

In closing, I wish to emphasize our genuine wish to have a constructive
relationship with The New York Times.  But we also are extremely troubled
by the events that went into this erroneous report, and will be looking
forward to discussing our concerns related to this incident so we can have
confidence that it is not repeated in the future.

Sincerely,

Jennifer Palmieri

Communications Director

Hillary for America

Cc:       Margaret Sullivan,

            Public Editor

New York Times

-- 

JP

[email-masked]

For scheduling: [email-masked]