Topic: WorldNetDaily
WorldNetDaily's Joe Kovacs runs to the defense of birther hero Tim Adams in in a June 28 article, portraying him as "the victim of a vicious smear campaign," which includes the allegation that he's a "racist." But Kovacs never address the core evidence to support that allegation.
After first quoting Adams saying that "I was, among other claims made by these 'concerned citizens,' a Nazi, a skinhead, a racist, and a host of other epithets" and that "I have never been a part of any racialist group, nor espoused any racist doctrines, not that that matters to them," Kovacs inserts a video from MSNBC's "Countdown" in which Keith Olbermann lays out the case of Adam's racist ties -- attending a convention of the openly racist Council of Conservative Citizens, where he was interviewed by self-proclaimed "pro-white" radio host James Edwards.
Suddenly, it's diversion time for Kovacs, who chooses to obsess over Olbermann's use of a plural instead of tackling the core issue:
"Oops! You're quoting white supremacists about a black president," Olbermann said. "Well done, WorldNetDaily!"
WND's story from which Olbermann was reading quoted Adams only based on WND's own, exclusive, hour-long phone interview with the former elections official, and mentioned no one else making any similar claim about Obama's hospital-generated birth certificate being non-existent.
Adams, did, however, initially make his allegation June 5 on a show hosted by James Edwards of WLRM Radio in Memphis, Tenn. The show's website describes Edwards – not Tim Adams – as having an "unapologetically pro-white viewpoint."
Kovacs' effort to divorce Adams from Edwards by claiming that Edwards' website didn't describe Adams as "pro-white" is as laughable as it is lame. It probably didn't describe Jerome Corsi that way either when he appeared on Edwards' show (not that Kovacs will mention that little nugget of fact anytime soon).
At no point in the article does Kovacs ask Adams to explain why he was at a CofCC convention (or even that he was there in the first place) or why he chose to be interviewed by a "pro-white" radio host.
Kovacs' cowardice continues: He notes that "if anyone is racist against blacks on this issue, Adams says it is those who suggest Obama is not eligible to hold office," but doesn't ask Adams if he thinks the birther kings at WND are racist.
Kovacs parroted once again Adams' story that he was a "senior election clerk" who "had a secretary, private office, two assistants and about 50 temp workers" working under him, and that he had access to "numerous government databases" and "unfettered Internet access, something else the workers didn't possess," but he ignored anyone who contradicted Adams' story. Like Glen Takahashi, whom Kovacs cited as verifying that Adams was a senior elections clerk. Dave Weigel wrote:
I checked with Glen Takahashi, the administrator of the Honolulu City Clerk's office, and while he verified that Adams worked there, he explained – gently making it clear he did not want to "call anyone a liar" -- that Adams never actually had access to information about Barack Obama.
"Our office does not have access to birth records," Takahashi said. "That's handled by the state of Hawaii Department of Health. Where he's getting that, I don't know. Put it this way: Barack Obama was not trying to register to vote in Hawaii. He is, as far as I know, not a registered voter here. So no one was looking that up."
Takahashi explained that the "senior elections clerk" job that Adams held was a low-level data entry position dealing with voter registration and absentee ballots -- Adams was one of dozens of temporary employees who staffed the pre-election rush. And he contradicted Adams's claims that Obama's lack of a birth certificate was an "open secret" or that voters contacted the office to ask about it.
"To be honest, I fielded no questions about that," Takahashi said. "Why would anyone ask us? We don't have those records."
That would seem to undermine Adams' story, but Kovacs doesn't want his readers to know about it.
Of course, telling lies and hiding the truth about Obama and his birth have been WND's modus operandi all along.
