Media that reported Lieberman's hacking charge against Lamont supporters have yet to report FBI found "no evidence of (an) attack"

Despite having reported the August 2006 allegation by Connecticut Sen. Joe Lieberman's re-election campaign that supporters of Ned Lamont, then his rival in the Democratic Senate primary, had "hacked" Lieberman's campaign website, numerous media outlets -- including ABC, CNN, and CBS -- have yet to report that an FBI investigation reportedly concluded before the November 2006 general election that there was "no evidence of (an) attack." To the contrary, according to an April 9 article in The Advocate of Stamford, Connecticut, an October 25, 2006, FBI email indicated that the FBI had found Lieberman's website "crashed because Lieberman officials continually exceeded a configured limit of 100 e-mails per hour the night before the primary." Thus, despite coverage of the Lieberman campaign's allegations against the Lamont campaign, ABC, CNN, and CBS have yet to report that the FBI not only exonerated the Lamont campaign, but that it was reported this month that the FBI concluded the website crash was the fault of the Lieberman campaign itself.

CNN reported the Lieberman campaign's allegations repeatedly on August 8, 2006, and a total of nine times from August 8, 2006, to September 8, 2006. As late as February 23 of this year, CNN correspondent Josh Levs reported on CNN Newsroom that "back in 2006, Joe Lieberman's campaign website went down. You remember this campaign. It was a big deal, him against Ned Lamont. Well, at the very end of his campaign, his site just pretty much disappeared, and his campaign is convinced it was an attack."

On the August 9, 2006, edition of ABC's Good Morning America, senior national correspondent Jake Tapper reported: "Lieberman's campaign complained to law enforcement that its website was hacked yesterday by devious anti-Lieberman forces. Lamont said he knew nothing about the hacking. But the incident was symbolic of the tornado of anti-war liberal Internet writers, called bloggers, that Lieberman faced." On the August 8, 2006, broadcast of the CBS Evening News, then-correspondent Trish Regan reported that Lieberman supporters were "nervous not only because of this race, but also because Lieberman's campaign website was hacked into and shut down today. They're pointing the finger at the Lamont camp."

A search* conducted by Media Matters for America on April 29 turned up no instances of CNN, ABC News, or CBS News programs reporting on the FBI's reported findings as of 11:59 pm ET on April 28. By contrast, MSNBC host Keith Olbermann, who reported the Lieberman campaign's allegations on the August 8, 2006, edition of Countdown, covered the reported results of the FBI investigation on April 9, 2008.

Lieberman's campaign website went down on August 7, 2006, the day before the Democratic primary. Quoting from the October 25, 2006, FBI email it obtained via a Freedom of Information Act request, The Advocate reported:

A federal investigation has concluded that U.S. Sen. Joseph Lieberman's 2006 re-election campaign was to blame for the crash of its Web site the day before Connecticut's heated Aug. 8 Democratic primary.

The FBI office in New Haven found no evidence supporting the Lieberman campaign's allegations that supporters of primary challenger Ned Lamont of Greenwich were to blame for the Web site crash.

Lieberman, who was fighting for his political life against the anti-Iraq war candidate Lamont, implied that joe2006.com was hacked by Lamont supporters.

"The server that hosted the joe2006.com website failed because it was overutilized and misconfigured. There was no evidence of (an) attack," according to the e-mail.

A program that could have detected a legitimate attack was improperly configured, the e-mail states.

"New Haven will be administratively closing this investigation," it concluded.

[...]

The Lieberman campaign alleged it was the target of a "denial of service attack," which can involve bombarding a Web site with external communications to slow it or render it useless.

"Our Web site consultant assured us in the strongest terms possible that we had been attacked," former Lieberman campaign spokesman Dan Gerstein said in December 2006.

According to the FBI memo, the site crashed because Lieberman officials continually exceeded a configured limit of 100 e-mails per hour the night before the primary.

"The system administrator misinterpreted the root cause," the memo stated. "The system administrator finally declared the server was being attacked and the Lieberman campaign accused the Ned Lamont campaign. The news reported this on Aug. 8, 2006, causing additional Web traffic to visit the site. The additional Web traffic then overwhelmed the Web server. ... Web traffic pattern analysis reports and Web logging that was available did not demonstrate traffic that was indicative of a denial of service attack."

On April 10, The New York Times also reported that, according to the FBI email obtained by The Advocate, "it was not angry bloggers or Mr. Lamont's insurgent campaign workers who rendered the site inaccessible, but sheer technological ineptitude." The April 9 Advocate report was also published in The Greenwich Time; both newspapers are owned by Gannett Co.

After losing the Democratic primary to Lamont, Lieberman ran for re-election to the Senate as an independent. Shortly after Lieberman defeated Lamont in the November 2006 general election, The Advocate reported that the U.S. attorney's office and state attorney general in Connecticut had "cleared" the Lamont campaign and its supporters of any wrongdoing. ABC, CNN, and CBS ignored that report as well. From a December 20, 2006, article in The Advocate:

The U.S. attorney's office and state attorney general have cleared former U.S. Senate candidate Ned Lamont and his supporters of any role in the crash of U.S. Sen. Joseph Lieberman's campaign Web site hours before last summer's Democratic primary.

"The investigation has revealed no evidence the problems the Web site experienced were the result of criminal conduct," said Tom Carson, spokesman for U.S. Attorney Kevin O'Connor.

State Attorney General Richard Blumenthal confirmed the joint investigation "found no evidence of tampering or sabotage warranting civil action by my office." Both men declined to provide additional information, such as what might have happened to the site.

According to an April 22, 2008, Advocate article, the office of state Attorney General Richard Blumenthal said it "never saw or read the [October 25, 2006] FBI e-mail until its contents were reported by The Advocate" on April 9.

"Even when we work cooperatively, the FBI never shares such internal documents with my office, a practice and policy we respect given our very different roles and responsibilities," Blumenthal said.

Blumenthal, a Democrat, said his investigation into the joe2006.com crash "was active and ongoing" until December 2006.

"Throughout the investigation there were discussions between my office and the U.S. attorney's office regarding the direction of the federal investigation but not any conclusion until after the election," Blumenthal said. "To have made any premature public predictions before our investigation ended... would have been irresponsible and improper."

Thomas Carson, a spokesman for the U.S. attorney, said in a statement that the office updated the Lieberman campaign and Blumenthal on the investigation in late October 2006.

"In accordance with our usual practice ... the Lieberman campaign, as the alleged victim, and the office of attorney general, which had been conducting a contemporaneous investigation ... were provided with limited information," Carson said. "The investigation was administratively closed several weeks later."

Like the December 2006 and April 9 articles before it, the April 22 Advocate report has also been ignored by the major media outlets mentioned above that covered Lieberman's allegations against Lamont and his supporters.

From the August 9, 2006, edition of ABC's Good Morning America:

TAPPER: Lieberman said he'd continue his run as an independent.

LIEBERMAN: For the sake of our state, our country and my party, I cannot and will not let that result stand on.

TAPPER: One reason things turned out this way: the Internet. Lieberman's campaign complained to law enforcement that its website was hacked yesterday by devious anti-Lieberman forces. Lamont said he knew nothing about the hacking. But the incident was symbolic of the tornado of anti-war liberal Internet writers, called bloggers, that Lieberman faced. They roused activists and influenced public opinion against him. Lamont even put one blogger from the popular Daily Kos website in a campaign ad.

And in his victory party last night, he had a special suite for his blogger friends. Lamont credits them for taking him seriously when the establishment media did not. Early on, posting information about where he'd be speaking next.

LAMONT: And all of a sudden, we had not 25 people, but 125 people, and that was the beginning of something.

TAPPER: Lieberman blames them for ugly rhetoric. Anti-Lieberman and pro-Lamont videos, more than 60,000 of them, were posted on YouTube exaggerating Lieberman's sometime alliances with Bush and his flaws.

[end video clip]

TAPPER: Lieberman, of course, continues his race running as an independent for the Senate. Bloggers now having proven themselves a potent political force, it'll be interesting to watch other Democrats try to cozy up to them and avoid the fate that befell Joe Lieberman -- Diane.

From the 1 p.m. ET hour of the August 8, 2006, edition of CNN's Live From ..:

KYRA PHILLIPS (anchor): Let's go straight to the newsroom. Betty Nguyen working details on a developing story -- Betty.

BETTY NGUYEN (anchor): Yeah, this is an interesting one. On the day of the Connecticut -- it's the Senate primary -- Joe Lieberman says his website has been hacked and that it's causing major disruptions, not only with the website but with its email. And he blames his challenger, Ned Lamont, for causing these problems.

Let me just read you a statement from the Lieberman campaign, this from the campaign manager, saying, "For the past 24 hours, the Friends of Joe Lieberman's website and email have been totally disrupted and disabled. We believe that this is the result of a coordinated attack by our political opponents. The campaign has notified the U.S. attorney and will be filing formal complaints reflecting our concerns."

Also goes on to say, "This type of dirty politics has been the staple of the Lamont campaign," referring to Ned Lamont, the challenger, "from the beginning, from the nonstop personal attacks to the intimidation tactics and offensive displays to these coordinated efforts to disable our website."

After this website was attacked, the Lieberman campaign called the Democratic state party chair and asked that the Lamont campaign call off its cyber allies.

Now, all of these claims, mind you, Kyra, coming from the Lieberman camp. Again, on -- today, the primary, where voters are, you know, placing their votes on who they want to represent them, whether it be Joe Lieberman or Ned Lamont.

We do have to tell you that CNN has tried to contact the Lamont campaign. We're making those calls as we speak -- this information just coming to us now. We do have correspondents on the ground to get to the bottom of this.

Lieberman says Lamont is responsible for this website attack, shutting down not only the website but the emails. We'll see if that's true or not. As soon as we get that information in, we'll bring it to you.

PHILLIPS: All right. Thanks, Betty.

From the 2 p.m. ET hour of the August 8, 2006, edition of CNN's Live From ..:

NGUYEN: Yeah, Kyra, we were following this, and, boy, it gets more interesting by the minute. Basically, the situation is: Joseph Lieberman is saying that his website was hacked and that there are major problems with it. People can't even access it, especially on voting day. Today is the primary.

People are headed to the polls to determine if they want Joe Lieberman or Ned Lamont to win this, and for those who wanted to go to joe2006, Lieberman's website, well, you can't. And if you go there now, you'll see an error message that says, "This account is under construction."

But we checked out a blog a little bit earlier that pulled a quick little still from this website earlier today, obviously because it's not the same message that's on it now, but it says, "This account has been suspended." At the bottom it says, "Please contact the billing and support department."

This is from the Daily Kos blog site.

Well, the Joseph Lieberman campaign heard about the accusation that they didn't pay their bill and they issued this statement, a statement which I have right now, that says, "Friends of Joe Lieberman, it's completely paid in full" -- referring to the website -- "The screen that showed yesterday is a default image from the server."

This has been down since last night around 7 p.m. and is still down. And it goes on to say, "Once we were able to isolate all the site files for study, we were able to add the appropriate one-page maintenance message," which is the message that you see right now when you try to go to Joe2006.com.

Now, the Lieberman campaign says this is not because of an error in paying their bills. They point the finger at the Ned Lamont campaign saying it's dirty politics and you're disenfranchising voters because today is the time for them to get information and head to the polls. They can't even access the site.

So, it's a tit for tat. Fingers are pointing everywhere. And Ned Lamont, as you well would assume, says he has nothing to do with it. There's no tampering of the website. So, we'll see.

PHILLIPS: All right. We'll monitor that developing story, also that intense rescue that's under way out of Phoenix, Arizona.

From the August 8, 2006, edition of the CBS Evening News:

REGAN: Supporters of Lieberman are expected here later tonight to watch the election results come in. They're nervous not only because of this race, but also because Lieberman's campaign website was hacked into and shut down today. They're pointing the finger at the Lamont camp. Now, Lieberman has said he will run in this election, in the general election, even if he has to run as an Independent. He has until tomorrow to file -- Harry.

HARRY SMITH (anchor): Trish Regan, thanks so much.

*A Media Matters Nexis search of "CNN Transcripts," "ABC News Transcripts" and "CBS News Transcripts" sources using the terms "Lieberman w/100 (website or webpage or internet or (web w/2 (site or page))) and Lamont" beginning August 8, 2006, did not yield any reporting by CNN, ABC, or CBS on the results of the FBI or other investigations exonerating Lamont and his supporters. A Factiva search for "Lieberman /n100/ (website or webpage or internet or (web /n2/ (site or page))) and Lamont" beginning April 21 did not yield any coverage of the FBI or other investigations exonerating Lamont and his supporters in the following Factiva sources: CBS' 60 Minutes, Evening News, Evening News-Saturday, Evening News-Sunday, Face the Nation, Morning News, The Early Show, The Saturday Early Show or on ABC's Good Morning America, Good Morning America-Sunday, This Week, World News Saturday, World News Sunday, and World News with Charles Gibson. Media Matters found no coverage during the April 27 broadcasts of CBS' Evening News with Russ Mitchell and CBS News Sunday Morning, or during the April 28 broadcast of ABC's Good Morning America.