Busted: Gore Blamed for Failure to Kill Bin Laden by Bogus e-mail

Some interesting news was find out when White House emails “missing” were retrieved from Bush administration records. This reveals that top Bush Justice Department officials circulated a memo falsely connecting Al Gore with Osama bin Laden. The apocryphal Osama-Al Gore-Oliver North story was forwarded internally to administration personnel by Deputy Chief of Staff and Justice Counselor, David M.Israelite.

Millions of emails from the previous White House administration disappeared despite rules for preserving presidential records. This email, spreading a false rumor, has not been reported before by the records.

The Justice counselor forwarded the fictional story to colleagues in Attorney Gen. John Ashcroft‘s office on Jan. 23, 2002. With punch titles like “For you historians” and “Do you remember?” it describes a 1987 video clip from Col. Oliver North’s congressional testimony in the Iran-Contra hearings. One anonymous narrative  – which first emerged in Nov. 2001 and has managed to survive repeated debunking – states that North warned US senators about Osama bin Laden but was ridiculed and shut down by then-Sen. Al Gore.

The story was infirmed by snopes.com.

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