Quote Of The Day: Rudy's Nightmare Edition

"This is clearly a dirty trick. The voters are sick and tired of this kind of thing."
-- Sunny Mindel, Giuliani spokesperson

How exactly did Rudy's top-secret campaign strategy memo go missing? Spokeswoman Sunny (a great PR name if ever there was one!) Mindel lays out this scenario in today's NY Daily News, which earlier ran the content of the leaked memo:

Mindel said that while working on the 2006 campaign trail, a Giuliani aide lost a piece of luggage containing the paper.

"During one leg of his campaign travel, all luggage was removed from a private plane and later put back on," she said in a statement. "However, one staffer's bag was not returned.

"After repeated requests over the course of a few days, the bag was finally returned with the document inside. Because our staffer had custody of this document at all times except for this one occasion, it is clear that the document was removed from the luggage and photocopied."

Kudos to Mindel. She's created a backstory to the leaked memo that would be difficult to misprove (if it's not true to begin with), making her man the victim of typical political nastiness instead of a tool of big-bucks politics, as the memo painted him.

If the story's a fabrication, the only proof would have to come from all airlines working together to determine that no bags were ever lost on any of Guiliani's campaign trips. Not a chance.

If the story's true, it's not too far-fetched. In union town, most baggage handlers are rank and file union Dems. If a quick probe into a bag to see if there's a pawnable laptop aboard were to yield a confidential GOP campaign strategy, the scenario Mindel lays out is exactly what would happpen: The bag would be lifted, the contents copied, the bag replaced.

That the memo were leaked just as candidates are making their statements is evidence in favor of her story -- which, if you didn't notice, carefully avoids saying which party was likely responsible.

Here's a guess. Of all the cities Guiliani traveled through while campaigning, he touched New York the most. NY is a union town. Hillary Clinton is the Dem Sen from NY. The Clintons have been known to be politically nefarious. Hillary's been known to lift papers that belong elsewhere.

Too bad the story's virtually unprovable.

Hat-tip: memeorandum
Related Tags: Politics, Guiliani, Clinton, Hilary