Insisting he wasn’t present while a witness slammed Israel during recent Judiciary Committee hearings, Rep. Jerrold Nadler is demanding a retraction from the New York Post for a column that claimed he sat by idly.
"Was Jerry Nadler afraid of being booed live on C-Span if he’d raised an objection?" Eric Fettman had pondered in a June 23 op-ed.
Gathering a transcript, C-Span footage and the House voting record, Nadler said he could prove he was present at the start of a hearing on the so-called "Downing Street Memo," which casts aspersions on the administration’s motivation for the Iraq war, but left to vote in another part of the Capitol and later returned.
Nadler, a Manhattan Democrat, said he did not know until later press reports that former CIA analyst Ray McGovern testified that Iraq was intended to be "the logistical military base whereby the United States and Israel could dominate that area of the world." Nadler then promptly denounced the comments.
After Nadler’s protests, the Post printed a clarification stating that although "the transcript of the event suggests strongly that Nadler was present at the time, the congressman insists he was ‘in and out.’"
Now that he’s strung together his evidence, Nadler wants a retraction.
"I take my record of consistent support for Israel with the utmost seriousness," he wrote to Post editor Col Allen.
Fettman and Allan did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
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