Thursday, October 16, 2008

Secret Service Says 'Kill Obama' Report Is Unfounded



I wondered, from the very beginning of this story, why the Secret Service would let someone get by with yelling such a thing in any crowd. When my family and I went to the rally in Northern Florida earlier this month, we were very aware of the Secret Service presence there, and they paid VERY close attention to all that was going on around them. Turns out, they they didn't let anyone 'get by' with saying such a thing. It never even happened.






This story came to me from Newsmax today:


Secret Service: 'Kill' Obama Report Unfounded

Barack Obama asserted during Wednesday night's presidential debate that someone shouted "kill him" when the Democrat's name was mentioned at a Sarah Palin rally.

But the head Secret Service agent at Tuesday's Palin rally in Scranton, Pa., said: Never happened.

The Scranton Times-Tribune first reported the alleged incident on Tuesday in a story written by reporter David Singleton, saying that while congressional candidate Chris Hackett was addressing the crowd and mentioned Obama's name, a man in the audience shouted "kill him."

Other media outlets picked up the story, including ABC News, MSNBC, and The Associated Press, with most attributing it to the Times-Tribune.

During the debate Obama mentioned to John McCain "some of the rallies that your running mate was holding, in which all the Republican reports indicated were shouting, when my name came up, things like 'terrorist' and 'kill him,' and that your running mate didn't mention, didn't stop, didn't say, 'Hold on a second, that's kind of out of line.'"

But Bill Slavoski, the agent in charge of the Secret Service field office in Scranton, was in the audience at the rally, along with an undisclosed number of other agents, and he said not one of them heard the comment.

"I was baffled," he told the Wilkes-Barre, Pa., Times Leader after reading the Times-Tribune report.

He said the Secret Service conducted an investigation and could not find a single person to corroborate Singleton's allegation.

"We have yet to find someone to back up the story," Slavoski said. "We had people all over and we have yet to find anyone who said they heard it."

Times-Tribune Metro Editor Jeff Sonderman said on Wednesday: "We stand by the story."

But Slavoski insisted that Singleton was the only one to say he heard someone yell "kill him."

2 comments:

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Anonymous said...

Although that report is apparently "unfounded" (the shout from the crowd was "not "Kill him" but supposedly "Tell them"), the Secret Service is now investigating two other incidents at Palin rallies at which "Kill him" and "Traitor" were reported to have been shouted. One can never be too careful. Obama is an African-American candidate, this country has a history of assassinations, and there are some nuts out there (and by "out there" I'm not referring to the Palin crowds---I'm speaking of nuts who may watch the rallies on TV).