Biden's office has never asked for a correction or retraction on the story. | Niko Duffy/POLITICO The Biden 'terrorist' story: How it came together

Vice President Joe Biden’s comparison of tea party negotiators to terrorists during the debt-limit crisis is still causing headaches for the White House — and on the campaign trail — more than two weeks after POLITICO reported Biden’s comments from a closed-door Democratic meeting in the Capitol.

President Barack Obama on Monday stood by the vice president’s denial, and then on Wednesday morning The Washington Post’s Glenn Kessler in his Fact Checker column took a shot at POLITICO’s reporting, saying he was “dubious” that Biden actually made such remarks.


For the record, POLITICO stands by the story and has done so since the moment it was posted on our website. Furthermore, the vice president’s office has never asked for a correction or retraction despite follow-up denials by Biden himself.

Setting aside the idea that it’s virtually impossible for one media organization to fact-check another media outlet’s reporting on what a public official said behind closed doors when there’s no known recording or transcript, we thought it would be fair to pull back the curtain on our reporting process and explain how the story came together.

Like many stories, it started with a tip from a source who was inside the tense Aug. 1 Democratic meeting with Biden as the debt negotiations reached a critical point. This is how much of the reporting works on Capitol Hill — reporters stand outside closed conference rooms, emailing people inside those meetings while waiting to buttonhole lawmakers as they leave. The best reporters have sources who reveal what goes on in these meetings, and we protect these sources.

After hearing from the first source, the two POLITICO reporters on the story, Jonathan Allen and John Bresnahan, quickly confirmed Biden’s words with three other sources who were in the same room. They also contacted a fifth source, who confirmed the basic reporting. The original tip came in at about 1 p.m. Aug. 1, and POLITICO spent the next few hours in contact with the vice president’s office, which was aware of what the story was going to say and had been given several hours to respond by the time the story posted at 4 p.m.

“We sought a response from the vice president’s office and after our interaction with Biden’s office, we were confident our story was accurate,” Allen said.

The original story was also clear about the context of Biden’s remarks, noting that he was responding to someone else. According to our reporting, Rep. Mike Doyle (D-Pa.) said “we have negotiated with terrorists,” and the story quotes Biden agreeing, saying: “They have acted like terrorists.”

To be clear, the quotes came to POLITICO from sources both in real time from the meeting and immediately after the meeting, so the comments were fresh from the sources involved.

Shortly after the story published, Biden spokeswoman Kendra Barkoff offered this quote, which was far from a denial: “The word [terrorist] was used by several members of Congress. The vice president does not believe it’s an appropriate term in political discourse.”

Nobody in House Democratic leadership — which sponsored the Biden meeting — has challenged the accuracy of the story.

All told, this was exactly what makes a great Washington scoop: It was an exclusive report that drove the political conversation — and continues to do so — on a major issue. The fact that we’re still talking about it, Obama is still being asked about it and The Washington Post is still fact-checking this 16 days later shows the story still has legs.

That gets us back to the fact-checking aspect of this. Kessler writes on washingtonpost.com today:

“If Biden had made a public statement like that, it certainly would have been newsworthy. But secondhand reports about comments made in private — which are then denied by the speaker — should be ignored as unverified tittle-tattle unworthy of public discourse.”

The last phrase is a definite tweak at POLITICO’s reporting on this — and that’s fine, we can take it. But to reiterate, some of the best reporting in Washington — from POLITICO, The Post, The New York Times and others — has often been constructed based on recollections of people in closed-door settings who have access to the most powerful people in the world.

The Washington Post’s media blogger Erik Wemple summed it up nicely in his own takeout on this story two weeks ago:

“Is this a classic Washington mystery? Nah. Until the vice president’s office delivers a scrutiny-withstanding denial, the ‘terrorists’ story appears fair game for recirculation.”

Martin Kady II is congressional editor for POLITICO and edited the story in question.