Not that anyone will publicize this story on FOX News (the cable TV network), and not that I expect all the people who for whatever reason see Gore as the greatest personification of Evil other than President Obama, but a local Fox station in Oregon has come forward to call bull manure on the claim by a local masseuse that Al Gore “sexually abused” her in 2006:
PORTLAND, Ore. — A masseuse who accused former Vice President Al Gore of groping and kissing her at a downtown hotel in 2006 failed a lie detector test and had a history of falsely accusing people of mistreating her, according to a report in this week’s Portland Tribune newspaper.
And with that ironic bow to the fair and balanced folks let’s head over to the Portland Tribune story, shall we?
As the massage therapist sat under the fluorescent lights of a Portland Tribune conference room in August 2008, talking about that night with Al Gore, she unleashed her seeming bombshell: She had kept “the pants.”
The irony couldn’t have been more striking. It was, potentially, Al Gore’s own unwelcome version of “the blue dress.” […]
The licensed masseuse was alleging that Gore forced her to have a nonconsensual physical encounter with him in October 2006. She was alleging that, after she was called to Gore’s hotel suite to give him what she thought would be a traditional massage, Gore grabbed her hand and moved it toward his pubic area. She also alleged that, during the roughly three hours she stayed in the hotel suite, he repeatedly subjected her to unwanted sexual touches.
And, she said, she kept the black pants she was wearing that night — pants that she claimed contained a stain that may have occurred while Gore was standing against her in his bath robe.
But as quickly as that stain seemed like it could become damning and world-changing evidence against Gore, it faded away. After mentioning the stain, the massage therapist acknowledged she had it tested for semen, and the results came back negative.
Don’t you hate it when that doesn’t happen. No Monica Lewinski moment for Al Gore. But that was just the beginning of the many problems with this woman’s story that Al Gore was a secret sexual predator:
Soon after the Enquirer’s story broke, Portland police revealed that former Tribune reporter Nick Budnick had in early 2007 asked for and received a copy of a sketchy three-page police report on Hagerty’s allegations — filed by an unnamed lawyer representing an unnamed victim. Budnick’s request was part of what turned out to be an on-again, off-again, almost two-year Tribune investigation into that report and into [the accuser’s] allegations. It was an investigation that ended with the Tribune deciding — in November 2008 — not to publish any story. […]
Now, 3 1/2 years after [name deleted] had her lawyer file that first police report, after her account has been told and retold through a supermarket tabloid, through countless blogs and “news” websites, and then through the traditional media, larger questions remain.
How can you judge the credibility of a sexual assault charge when there are no witnesses and apparently no physical evidence? And should that be the media’s job in any case — to try to guess the possible truth of something before publishing, where the truth is impossible to know? But if that’s not the media’s job — trying to determine the credibility of the charges — then what accusations get published, get repeated? Are there any that don’t?
Yes how do you judge the credibility of this person who filed a police report of sexual assault 3 and 1/2 years ago which led to no charges being filed against Mr. Gore? Well here’s is what the Portland Tribune discovered as they investigated this story: that there simply wasn’t much there there:
The report indicated that a lawyer — whose name was redacted — had called police to tell them that someone — whose name was also redacted — had contacted him to tell him that Gore had made a “sexual assault” on her on Oct. 24, 2006, while he was staying at “a local upscale hotel” under the name of “Mr. Stone.” (Gore had made a global warming speech earlier that evening at the Rose Garden.) […]
The Tribune later obtained notes taken by a Portland police officer in a conversation with an Oregon State Police officer, in which the OSP officer indicated that the woman’s lawyer had called the state police and said that Gore had attempted to “molest and rape her” at Portland’s Hotel Lucia and that the woman “has semen sample.” Other OSP records indicated the person making the report was Portland lawyer Randall Vogt.
The Portland police report stated that the lawyer and woman, during the course of two weeks, made three appointments to detail the allegations to police in person and canceled each appointment. The report said that after the third cancellation, a person whose name is redacted told police that “the case was going to be handled civilly and they would no longer require the services of the Portland Police Bureau.”
The officer who wrote the report cleared the case because the person involved “refused to cooperate with the investigation or even report a crime.”
So, first this woman had her lawyer file a police report on her behalf. Then every time she and this lawyer made an appointment to meet with the police the woman and her attorney canceled each appointment. In the end they sent a letter to the cops saying we don’t need a police investigation after all, thank you very much. We’ll just handle this “civilly” instead. As the police report noted the investigation was closed because the primary witness “refused to cooperate with the or even report a crime.”
Now let me explain what that means: it means the lawyer found out his client had no physical evidence to prove that Gore had done anything illegal, and that the police were likely to look at his client and inform her that they weren’t going to file criminal charges. It also likely means that the lawyer had begun to doubt the credibility of his own client. In short, he looked at his client’s story and saw a lot of holes in it, the same holes the police would have seen if she had ever agreed to be interviewed and sign an affidavit under penalty of perjury that Gore really did do what she had originally authorized her lawyer to claim that Gore did.
Now despite the fact that Gore’s accuser refused to show to talk to the police about these serious allegations (sexual assault is a felony after all), either the lawyer was very gullible and still believed his client’s story, or he decided that maybe he could squeeze some cash out of Mr. Gore by promising not to file a civil lawsuit. I suspect the latter.
So what happened next? Well, surprise, surprise, no lawsuit was ever filed. And now back to the Portland Tribune story which provides us with the possible reasons why no lawsuit was filed against Mr. Gore:
Budnick [the Portland Tribune reporter investigating this story]contacted Vogt [the accuser’s attorney]. Other than saying his client seemed credible, then lost touch with him, Vogt said little. He would not name his client.
Budnick spoke to people at Hotel Lucia, who confirmed Gore stayed there on Oct. 24 and used an alias.
Budnick contacted Gore’s representatives, and sent them records he obtained from the police investigation.
Odd, the lawyer had “lost touch with his client.” Maybe she didn’t pay her bill. Or maybe either he or she had made the decision not to pursue a lawsuit. And then there’s the conspiracy theory possibility: Gore paid her off to shut her up. Hmmm. which one do you think happened?
Well, the Portland Tribune still didn;t know the name of the woman who claimed Gore had sexually assaulted her for 3 hours, but they kept investigating. They even sent what they knew to Mr. Gore about these allegations. However, while they awaited a response, Budnick, the reporter investigating this matter for the newspaper (after all Gore was major figure and this would be quite a coup for the Portland Tribune to break a major scandal of this magnitude), discovered some more information about the accuser, and it wasn’t very favorable to her, to put it mildly:
By coincidence, Budnick learned that he already knew professionally someone who, in turn, knew two acquaintances of the alleged victim who strongly questioned her credibility.
The source, with no allegiance to Gore, was credible and seemed to have no agenda as to whether a story appeared. The source would not name the alleged victim, but the source’s questions compelled the Tribune to do more reporting before publishing a story.
But the reporter didn’t quit there. He searched the official records of licensed masseuses and eventually tracked this woman down. At first she claimed she knew nothing. Claimed she didn’t know Gore, and didn’t know Mr. Vogt, her lawyer. However, after the Eliot Spitzer scandal broke she called the reporter out of the blue and agreed to an interview. And here is where the story about the story really gets interesting:
That phone call would be the first of dozens of conversations between Budnick and Hagerty over the next eight months —some on the phone and many in person.
(It turns out the Tribune was not the first publication [deleted] talked to, to see if it might be interested in the story — at least according to [deleted]. She said she talked to Michael Isikoff at Newsweek magazine, but he was only willing to print the accusations if they were on the record, with her name being published. When she said she was not willing, he wasn’t interested in the story. Isikoff, who now works for NBC News, did not return a message this week from the Tribune.)
In early conversations between Budnick and her, [deleted] did not reveal much of what she would eventually say happened that night. But she came off as sincere, compelling and smart to Budnick — albeit troubled and fearful.
So the reporter didn’t drop the story. She hadn’t given him many details of her story (the one the National Enquirer would eventually publish) but he gave her the benefit of the doubt. In short, he was still willing to be convinced by her that her tale was true despite the independent sources that had informed him she was untrustworthy, despite the police report that showed she failed to appear for scheduled interviews or “report a crime” and despite knowing that she had lied to him earlier when he had first approached her about whether or not she was the woman who had accused Gore of sexual assault through her lawyer.
In effect he went the extra mile. Was it because Gore was allegedly involved. Almost certainly. But then she met with him and others at the Portland Tribune …
She said she hadn’t reported the alleged assault immediately because of fear of the public spotlight that would follow. She said she hadn’t shown up for the police interviews because her lawyer set up the appointments without consulting her first.
She wanted the Tribune to explore whether there might have been other similar victims of Gore. If there were, she wouldn’t be a lone person making such allegations.
So the newspaper went looking for other masseuses who might have crossed paths with Gore by posting ads in Craigslist hoping to find others who would come forward with similar stories of Gore’ sexual shenanigans (apparently without much luck). And they kept talking to this woman who finally after five months sat down and gave them all the sordid details. She claimed Gore groped her, and forced himself on her, kissing her, fondling her breasts and her buttocks for three hours. She portrayed herself as a virtual captive of Gore because she was too afraid to leave the hotel. And why was that exactly?
She didn’t leave sooner, she said, because she was worried Hotel Lucia staff would no longer call her for such work if an important client was dissatisfied with the massage. Also, she said she feared that if she hurriedly left the suite, she would be “tased or shot … as a first and immediate response” by security personnel she assumed traveled with Gore.
She feared for her life! Gore might have had her shot! And she might stop getting business from the resort where Gore stayed, too!
Next she said she would only be willing to tell her story if her name wasn’t mentioned. She also claimed she didn’t sue Gore because she didn’t want to appear like a golddiger just in it for the money. The Tribune, to its credit refused her request of anonymity. So she dropped it, only to demand it again later. She still had “the pants,” but a negative DNA test made that a red herring at best.
And then the Tribune learned that despite claiming she wasn’t in it for the money, she had approached three other attorneys to take her case, each of whom … well, I’ll let the Tribune tell that part of the story:
After ending her association with Vogt, Hagerty tried to get three other Portland lawyers interested in taking her case — all of whom declined.
Before declining, one of them gave her a polygraph test, which she failed, she said. That fact alone would not have dissuaded the Tribune from publishing the story; polygraph machines detect physiological changes, not lies. Their findings are inadmissible in most courts. And, according to three polygraphers the Tribune contacted, the machines are least reliable when administered to sexual assault victims.
You know I don’t care that she failed a polygraph test. But I do care that she continually told lies to the reporters.
First she denied she had any involvement with these accusations against Gore or even knew Mr. Vogt who filed the police report for her.
Then she said, yes I was the one involved with Gore, but it was her first attorney Mr. Vogt who was at fault for filing the police report without her permission.
Then she says she’s only willing to talk to the Portland Tribune to stop Gore’s rapacious sexual molestations from reoccurring.
Then she seeks out three attorneys who each decline to take her case. But of she wasn’t in it for the money why did she approach three attorneys? You only do that if you wish to bring criminal or civil charges against someone.
Then she reveals she failed a polygraph test.
All this years after the original incident allegedly occurred and months after the newspaper first started talking to her. By this time I would have told her to take a hike, but the Tribune soldiered on:
At this point, the Tribune was contemplating an article about highly serious allegations by an unnamed woman who had flunked a polygraph and whose best ally able to vouch for her talking about the assault shortly after it happened was a local homeless man. We weren’t sure how credible the story would seem to readers.
Meanwhile, Budnick continued to make calls trying to track down information that could be used to check [the accuser’s] credibility. Many of those interviewed insisted that their comments be “off the record.” The calls, however, raised questions about the accuracy of her perceptions, and then we started to have those questions ourselves.
Gee, ya think? After all that evidence that this woman had a hard time telling the truth, the Portland Tribune finally began to question her credibility? I guess those liberal media types at the tribune were just too biased, eh?
But in the end, the Tribune didn’t publish the story and here’s why, in their own words:
Budnick had told her he wanted to talk to friends and associates and lawyers she worked with. At first agreeing, she later seemed to backtrack and tried to limit his access to key people. During some curt conversations between Budnick and her, she accused him of “bullying” her. In other conversations, she accused him of “screaming” at her. Audiotapes of the conversation show he never raised his voice.
Budnick and Tribune editors worried about a pattern. In earlier conversations, [the accuser] had accused a well-known Portland lawyer of mocking and bullying her and had said the polygrapher hired to administer the test to her had “screamed and screamed and screamed at me.”
In November, at a time when we hoped to be in the final stages of reporting the story, she began to again claim the Tribune had made commitments on the story’s content — commitments that the newspaper had explicitly avoided. All of this made us question her perceptions and her memory.
On Nov. 21, 2008, in his last conversation with her, Budnick told [deleted] that, absent a second alleged victim coming forward, the newspaper was unlikely to publish a story.
In short, they realized that despite their desire to break a big sex scandal involving Al Gore they were dealing with a person who had lied to them, who made rash accusations against other people who questioned her, and most of all, had accused their own reporter, who obviously had worked long and hard to find a way to publish her story in his paper of “bullying” and “screaming at her.” They had no other accusers who had come forward to make similar claims against Mr. Gore even though they had actively looked for them, and they no evidence of wrong-doing by Gore other than this apparently disturbed woman;s account.
So in 2008 they shut the investigation down. And now its 2010 and this woman finally found a media outlet to tell her story of sexual assault against Al Gore: The National Enquirer.
We don’t know if the Enquirer paid her for her story. They deny they did but one of their editors also claims she asked for money for her story through her newest attorney). So I guess she was and still may be looking for a pay day despite her claims to the Tribune that she wasn’t in it for the money.
We also know that she now claims the pants might have evidence of Gore’s semen on them, despite the past false test which she told the Portland Tribune about. We also know the story came out just after the Gores announced their decision to divorce, much like the alleged story of an affair between Laurie David and Al Gore surfaced after that divorce announcement.
I guess in this economy we can’t fault tabloids from running stories like this. After all, they are only reporting what someone else said, and under our defamation laws, there is a very high hurdle to meet for a public figure like Gore to prove libel by the Enquirer. But we can fault blogs and other journalists from running that story as if it were legitimate news simply because a tabloid printed it.
But that’s the world we live in. The Mis-information Age. Thanks Portland Tribune for coming forward and telling us your side of the story and why you didn’t run this malarkey the first time it came around.
Ps. Who knew even Michael Isikoff has standards (at least if his source isn’t a Beltway Buddy who, of course, is entitled to anonymity in the interest of maintaining a good working relationship)?
