CURIOUS WHITE HOUSE WEBSITE ERROR

Politico has been all over the Obama administration's response to the controversy surrounding its appointment of Rashad Hussain to the Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC). Hussain was quoted in the Washington Report on Middle Eastern Affairs (WRMEA) in 2004 as having made sympathetic remarks about convicted terrorist Sami al-Arian.

According the WRMEA editor Delinda Hanley, the quotes were extracted from the article on February 5th, 2009, eight days after Hussain took a job as associate counsel inside Obama's Department of Justice. Hanley also said that she was told that the quotes were mis-attributed to Hussain and that they were actually the words of al-Arian's daughter Laila.

On Friday, February 19th, Politico broke the story that after presenting the White House with an actual recording of the event, Hussain backtracked and admitted to making the comments.

Today, Josh Gerstein reported that Robert Gibbs - speaking on behalf of the White House - defended Rashad Hussain. The following is taken from the transcript of Gibbs' February 22nd press briefing:

Q On another issue, on Friday Rashad Hussain said, "I made statements to the panel" -- in '04 the White House has defended his appearance at -- "that I now recognize were ill-conceived, not well-formulated," this in reference to a man convicted of supporting -- or raising money for a terrorist organization. Were you misled? Do you maintain confidence in this man the President wants to be his delegate to the Islamic conference?

MR. GIBBS: We continue to have confidence. The statement says that the judicial process has concluded and that he has full faith in the outcome of that judicial process. This is an individual that has written extensively on why you have -- why some have used religious devices like the Quran to justify this, and why that is absolutely wrong, and has garnered support from both the left and the right. So we continue to obviously have confidence.

Ok, now for the curious part. When I went to the video of the February 22nd press conference in order to pull the aforementioned audio for my radio show, I discovered that the link pulled up the February 17th press briefing.

Here is a screen shot of the video. Note how the banner on the video at the bottom says, "February 17th" while the box in the top right says, "February 22nd".

DISCLAIMER: I am not accusing the White House of anything untoward. I am simply pointing this out because the story is one of the biggest un-reported stories out there. I am also bitter that I was unable to pull the audio for my show.