NPR has started running a clip on their hourly news about a probable assassination attempt in Denver with Obama as the target. I ran this through Google News and came up with only one reference -- to a TV station in Portland, OR. Their report, quite detailed and graphic, was posted late yesterday evening. Early morning, in the rest of the country.
"Local police in Aurora, Colorado say it started with an overnight traffic stop early Sunday. A police sergeant pulled over an erratic driver. That driver, 28-year-old Tharin Robert Gartrell, had a suspended license so the officer looked closer: in the rented Dodge Ram truck were two rifles - one of them apparently stolen in Kansas - as well as ammunition, bullet proof vests, and drugs.
"That 1:30 a.m. arrest Sunday led to two other arrests early Sunday:
33-year-old Nathan Johnson, arrested 4:30 a.m. Sunday in a Denver hotel; and 33-year-old Shawn robert Adolf, arrested at 5 a.m. at a hotel in Aurora. Adolf jumped from an upper-story window trying to get away, and injured himself; he was caught a couple of blocks away. When he later told police that he and his friends 'planned to kill Barack Obama', the alarm went out to the FBI, the CIA, Colorado State Police and a host of local agencies."Another suspect, a woman, is also being held and questioned by the FBI, and other arrests may follow. Aurora Police say the suspects have given federal agents several other names to check out.
"What is unclear is whether they could have actually pulled off their attempt. One of the suspects told police their plan was to kill Obama during his Thursday night acceptance speech. If so, it's not clear how, or if, they planned to get a rifle inside the convention hall."
New York Times has nothing on this at this hour. Nor does McClatchy. The Washington Post had a small piece yesterday and a fuller one today but it was buried on A26. The Feds are on it, but they're not saying anything, so far.
Occasionally when something like this comes up, I'll try to keep an eye on the sequence of news reports, if any. Is the news in this case being kept low-key because it's the option which offers Obama greater safety from copy-cats? Is it because, also in Denver, some weapon-laden nuts also tried to get into Nancy Pelosi's hotel, thus showing that this happens all the time and we should continue to "A26" news of this kind? Maybe TV news has been playing and replaying this for 24 hours, but I don't have access to that and it's how the allegedly more responsible press handles news that's the most interesting..
