By Patrick
Investigative author Geoffrey Dunn, whose highly anticipated book "The Lies of Sarah Palin: The Untold Story Behind Her Relentless Quest for Power" will appear in bookstores on May 10, 2011, today published a detailed post about Sarah Palin's pregnancy with Trig in "Business Insider." In his article, which we expected to be published in Huffington Post, Dunn offers an alternative view of the questions surrounding Palin's pregnancy, filled with highly interesting details and containing stinging criticism directed at the reporting of the Anchorage Daily News (ADN).
Geoffrey Dunn first explains that he is not entirely satisfied with Prof. Brad Scharlott's paper, as it offers no conclusive evidence in his opinion for Palin's pregnancy hoax, that "it remains a premise, not a fact." But that is hardly surprising, as the aim of Prof. Scharlott's paper was to first of all point to the "spiral of silence" in the mainstream media - not to offer final proof for Palin's faked pregnancy.
Dunn then goes on to present for the first time in public some highly interesting new details which add to the number of serious doubts already cast on Palin's official birth story.
First, Dunn acknowledges a fact which has been discussed before on the blogs, but has never been acknowledged by the mainstream media so far: That the fake pregnancy rumors existed long before Sarah Palin's nomination by John McCain in August 2008.
Let me acknowledge that while researching my book I spent a considerable amount of time and resources trying to sort out the facts of Trig's birth. As with many elements of Palin's life story, there are disquieting discrepancies between what actually happened and Palin's version of events. Her capacity for deceit simply knows no bounds, and this duplicity has contributed significantly to the atmosphere of doubt regarding the details of Trig's birth. Contrary to Palin's contention otherwise, the rumors that Trig was not her son originated long before she was named as John McCain's running mate, commencing immediately upon her public acknowledgment, in March of 2008, that she was pregnant.
Geoffrey Dunn then adds new details from his own investigations which have never been published before:
Hoping to disprove the conspiracy theory when I initiated work on my book--and to put the story to bed once and for all--I interviewed several close associates of Palin's, including her friends and political allies. I was anticipating, perhaps even hoping, that they would tell me conclusively that Trig was her child.
I was shocked by the response. One close friend of Palin's--a widely respected woman who had given birth to several children as well and who had close contact with Palin in Juneau up until the time of Trig's birth--told me that "Palin did not look like she was pregnant. Ever. Even when she had the bulging belly, I never felt that the rest of her body, her face especially, looked like she was pregnant." When I asked her point-blank if she was certain the baby was Palin's, she said, "No. I don't know what to believe."
The news of Palin's pregnancy came as a complete surprise to Palin's State Trooper security detail Gary Wheeler, a well-liked, 26-year veteran of the Alaska State Troopers who worked under several administrations in Alaska state government, both Republicans and Democrats. Only two weeks earlier, in late February of 2008, Wheeler had accompanied Palin back to Washington, D.C. for a Republican Governors Association Conference, where she had just met John McCain and his campaign manager Rick Davis, who was to be in charge of the vice-presidential nomination selection process. Wheeler remembers that Palin had changed into jeans upon her arrival in Washington, with no apparent revelation of pregnancy.
Wheeler also said that his wife, Corky, actually made fun of him when the news came out because he was supposed to be a "trained observer." Wheeler simply shakes his head: "I had nary an idea she was packin'."
Geoffrey Dunn reveals that he spoke to two people himself who were very, very close to Sarah Palin in spring 2008 - and he actually expected both of them to confirm Palin's pregnancy. But he was in for a surprise: None of them did, because none of them actually noticed the pregnancy. This is big news and has never been discussed in the mainstream before.
Afterwards, Geoffrey Dunn mentions several damning details from Sarah Palin's so called "wild ride" from April 17, 2008. On the investigative blogs, these events have been discussed in great detail many times, but the "spiral of silence" in the mainstream media has prevented the American public from knowing about them. Geoffrey Dunn announces that there is much more to come in his soon-to-be-published book:
I cover the ensuing details of Palin's so-called "wild ride" from Texas back to Alaska in considerable detail in my book, but in short--according to information she gave at a news conference immediately following her return--Palin claimed that she called her physician in the middle of the night from her hotel room in Texas to discuss what Palin referred to as "amniotic fluid leaking." Despite the presence of this fluid--a strong indicator of impending birth and which potentially exposed Palin and her child to infection--Palin stayed in Dallas and delivered her speech later that day.
These events are by now certainly very well known to most of our readers and the readers of other blogs, but it should not be forgotten that the story about the "wild ride" has so far never been held up to scrutiny by journalists - despite the fact that it's Sarah Palin's own account, and all the details are readily available in news reports. Therefore up until now only a tiny minority of Americans have ever heard about the details of Palin's account of the hours prior to Trig's birth due to the "spiral of silence" that the mainstream media has accorded the issue. Geoffrey Dunn does an admirable job in the article at "Business Insider" when he describes some details of the "wild ride". This should be an eye-opener for many Americans, and we look forward to the additional description in his book with great anticipation.
Geoffrey Dunn's view on the response to Prof. Brad Scharlott's paper shows that he truly considers himself to be "independent" from the two main opposing "pro & contra" views:
The response to Scharlott's paper has been both troubling and predictable. On the one hand, those who continue to subscribe to the "hoax" theory have championed it as a work of academic brilliance. On the other hand, Palin's former flack Bill McAllister threatened to "slap" Scharlott and said that in "a different era," he'd have challenged Scharlott to "a duel." Salon's Justin Elliot used the occasion to take a cheap shot at Andrew Sullivan by describing him as a practitioner of "Trug Trutherism" -- the belief "that Sarah Palin faked her 2008 pregnancy because Trig is actually the son of Bristol Palin"--when, in fact, all Sullivan has ever asserted is the absence of "easily available and definitive" evidence that Palin is the mother of Trig.
And in what can be described only as pathetic response to Scharlott's paper, Anchorage Daily News columnist Julia O'Malley contradicted her own newspaper's body of work on this matter by invoking a "spiral of silence" perspective and demanding that "someone" should "Make. It. Stop." She doesn't say who and she doesn't say how. What she means is that she doesn't want the issue even discussed.
Perhaps O'Malley was too high on her horse to recall that in December of 2008, in the aftermath of the national election, the Anchorage Daily News tried to confirm once and for all--as did I--that Sarah Palin was the mother of Trig, only to be rebuffed by Palin herself. The ADN's executive editor Pat Dougherty assigned his fine reporter Lisa Demer to the task of investigating the rumor. But a story was never published.
On December 31, Palin sent Dougherty an email attacking him for the line of questioning:
And is your paper really still pursuing the sensational lie that I am not Trig's mother? Is it true you have a reporter still bothering my state office, my very busy doctor (who's already set the record straight for you), and the school district, in pursuit of your ridiculous conspiracy?
Dougherty's response should be of particular interest given O'Malley's commentary. He said that his goal was "to let a reporter try to do a story about the 'conspiracy theory that would not die' and, possibly, report the facts of Trig's birth thoroughly enough to kill the nonsense once and for all." Dougherty said that Demer received "very little cooperation" from Palin or her family. He killed the story. But he made a telling observation to Palin:
It strikes me that if there is never a clear, contemporaneous public record of what transpired with Trig's birth, that may actually ensure that the conspiracy theory never dies.
And there's the rub. O'Malley's own editor did not Make It Stop because Sarah Palin has never provided sufficient concrete evidence to put the conspiracy theories to bed. She hadn't in 2009, and she hasn't now. The problem is rooted not in the wild imaginations of bloggers, as O'Malley would have us believe, but in the calculated obfuscation of the issue by Sarah Palin herself.
A week after her email to Dougherty, Palin issued a formal State of Alaska press release from the Governor's office. "As a public official, I expect criticism and I expect to be held accountable for how I govern," Gov. Palin said. "But the personal, salacious nature of recent reporting, and often the refusal of the media to correct obvious mistakes, unfortunately discredits too many in journalism today, making it difficult for many Americans to believe what they see in the media."
Held accountable? Throughout her political career, Sarah Palin has been the master of the dodge. She has never held herself accountable. At one point she claimed that she had made Trig's birth certificate public; she did not. The hospital has never issued a formal birth notice. She said that she would make her health records public. She did not. It was another lie.
Geoffrey Dunn offers a lot of details in this revealing article, he discusses the Trig pregnancy openly and doesn't hold back, however, he still tries to take a "moderate" position, as the pregnancy hoax is not yet proven in his opinion. However he points out in great detail all the suppressed details about the "wild ride" and also sharply criticizes the Anchorage Daily News which have turned into a spin-machine as far as Sarah Palin's pregnancy is concerned.
Many of the facts mentioned in the article were already known to the readers of the investigative blogs, but the general public have so far been kept in the dark.
Now comes the "story in the story", and this is truly shocking: Despite the fact that Geoffrey Dunn doesn't even state that the faked pregnancy hoax is proven, just discusses the issue as openly and detailed as possible, Huffington Post, a publication that Dunn has written for as a regular blogger for many years, refused to publish this story. They turned him down - this is a confirmed fact. Huffington Post apparently has to stay Palin pregnancy free.
The "spiral of silence" which was described by Prof. Brad Scharlott is very real, and it continues to exist. This is simply outrageous, and although some of us won't fully agree with Geoffrey Dunn's conclusions in this article, he is to be commended for having taken a front role in breaking the "spiral of silence" about Palin's pregnancy - and "Business Insider" has to be congratulated for it's continued fearless reporting about Sarah Palin's pregnancy.
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Pre-order Geoffrey Dunn's book at Amazon HERE.
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Please also take a look at the third part of Laura Novak's interview with Prof. Brad Scharlott about Sarah Palin's pregnancy.
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UPDATE:
Excellent new, long article about the faked pregnancy in "The Moderate Voice":
Written by investigative journalist Shaun Mullen who was nominated for the Pulitzer Prize four times.
His conclusion:
One question remains: If there was a hoax, why did Sarah Palin perpetrate it?
While Palin used Trig as a stage prop during her vice presidential run and has used Trig and other family members similarly since then, she also has been fiercely protective of them. While Palin’s post-nomination popularity went through the roof in part because of the omnipresent Trig, claiming that she was the mother of Bristol’s baby may have been less an act of political opportunism than personal expediency, if not altruism.
I do lean strongly toward there having been a hoax, and in the end it comes down to this for me: If Sarah Palin was the mother of Trig, she would not have acted recklessly by bypassing hospitals in Texas, Seattle and Anchorage with neo-natal units capable of delivering premature babies. She simply would not have endangered Trig’s life.
Written by investigative journalist Shaun Mullen who was nominated for the Pulitzer Prize four times.
His conclusion:
One question remains: If there was a hoax, why did Sarah Palin perpetrate it?
While Palin used Trig as a stage prop during her vice presidential run and has used Trig and other family members similarly since then, she also has been fiercely protective of them. While Palin’s post-nomination popularity went through the roof in part because of the omnipresent Trig, claiming that she was the mother of Bristol’s baby may have been less an act of political opportunism than personal expediency, if not altruism.
I do lean strongly toward there having been a hoax, and in the end it comes down to this for me: If Sarah Palin was the mother of Trig, she would not have acted recklessly by bypassing hospitals in Texas, Seattle and Anchorage with neo-natal units capable of delivering premature babies. She simply would not have endangered Trig’s life.
Unfortunately the reference to a cushion under Palin's coat, in this otherwise "fine" article, is from a parody site.
Thanks to those who brought this to our attention.
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