RE: India Saga

From:Denis.McDonough@ptt.gov To: Sonal.Shah@ptt.gov, Dan.Pfeiffer@ptt.gov, Chris.Lu@ptt.gov CC: John.Podesta@ptt.gov, Gayle.Smith@ptt.gov, Mona.Sutphen@ptt.gov, john.podesta@gmail.com Date: 2008-11-10 18:30 Subject: RE: India Saga

Sonal - Will you please out together such a draft statement for us to look at and work on? THanks, Denis. Denis, Chris and Dan: I am writing to get some guidance from you in managing the India press frenzy about my alleged right wing politics and terrorist tendencies. Denis since we last talked the stories have multiplied and gotten nastier, feeding on each other. Issue: There stories are in the Indian press, in general US and South Asia/US related blogs. In sum, they are accusing me of being a right wing Hindu fundamentalist and supporting the communal violence in Gujarat. See some of the articles below - the rest are more of the same. I generally would not worry about this stuff (they tried this before) except due to my position, it has gotten more intense and frankly crazy. There are hundered of blog posts and articles on this and without any responses, the rumors are feeding on each other. More interestingly, they were planning a public campaign to embarras the President-elect and have me resign. I had several calls from prominent folks in India saying the best way to counter the lies and rumors was to put something out there denying the allegations. Others suggested doing a controlled interview. Options: There are several options of what I could do: 1) continue to ignore 2) write a strongly worded statement clearly stating my position 3) do a controlled interview Next Steps: I would like to get your guidance on how to proceed with this. Personally think option 2 will put it to rest, but have less experience with this stuff. I suggest to get this done today, so we can get into the India news cycles for tomorrow and the let the surrogates (who are fully prepared to do) take over from there. Thanks! Sonal ________________________________________________________________________________ http://www.panasianbiz.com/2008/11/07/indian-american-sonal-shah-appointed-obamas-advisor/#comment-5387 http://www.expressindia.com/latest-news/Sonal-Shah-appointed-Obama-s-transition-team-adviser/382248/ http://3quarksdaily.blogs.com/3quarksdaily/2008/11/obamas-indian-t.html http://wordpress.com/tag/sonal-shah/ http://bodyontheline.wordpress.com/2008/11/08/more-on-divided-loyalties-this-time-its-the-economy/ http://freethedalit.blogspot.com/2008/11/obama-advisor-sonal-shah-has-rss-vhp.html http://letusbuildpakistan.blogspot.com/2008/11/yet-another-controversial-obama.html http://www.hindustantimes.com/StoryPage/StoryPage.aspx?sectionName=&id=c92bdef7-a366-47df-bf51-daae396caeec&MatchID1=4816&TeamID1=6&TeamID2=1&MatchType1=1&SeriesID1=1212&PrimaryID=4816&Headline=Obama+team+member%2c+Sonal%2c+has+VHP+links http://www.persecution.in/node/3462 http://my.barackobama.com/page/community/tag/VHP http://lucius-caesar.livejournal.com/28668.html http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/India/Will_Sonal_Shah_give_Modi_visa_power/articleshow/3690558.cms http://www.sepiamutiny.com/sepia/archives/005506.html http://my.barackobama.com/page/community/post/saints/gGxZfm http://www.dictatorshipwatch.com/2008/11/08/the-many-faces-of-sonal-shah-obamas-indian.html http://www.sacw.net/article257.html