Cliff Kincaid just can’t stop peddling a lie. He writes in his June 14 Accuracy in Media column:
Congress gave Panetta a pass when he became CIA director and then Secretary of Defense, despite his long record of associations with identified communist Hugh DeLacy, who had connections to the Chinese government. Not surprisingly, the Soros-funded Media Matters came to Panetta’s defense, accusing conservatives of a “smear” for raising the inconvenient facts about his record, including opposition to President Reagan’s anti-communist defense policies. Media Matters has White House connections and specializes in intimidating the media when they dare to question the White House line.
Fortunately, the facts, including some of a personal nature, were included in a column by the courageous Diana West, who commented that the evidence showed that Panetta had “a cordial, long-term relationship in the 1970s and 1980s” with Hugh DeLacy, a Communist Party USA member elected to one term in Congress while pretending to be a Democrat in 1944. Incriminating “Dear Hugh” and “Dear Leon” documents were obtained by researcher Trevor Loudon at the University of Washington.
Unfortunately for Kincaid, as we’ve previously pointed out when he pushed this smear, that Media Matters piece tells the truth about the “long-term relationship” between Panetta and DeLacy: The correspondence between them is nothing more than that of a congressman and a constituent.
At no point does Kincaid make any effort to refute any of the specific claims made in the Media Matters piece, nor does he challenges its accuracy vis-a-vis the “facts” offered by West. Instead, he goes for a lazy ad hominem attack on the organization (disclosure: I’m a Media Matters employee).
Kincaid, by the way, is bringing up this false smear as part of suggesting that Panetta might be responsible for releasing information about President Obama’s counterterrorism efforts, or in Kincaid’s words, “betrayal of state secrets.” Kincaid goes on to claim that Panetta is among individuals in the Obama administration “who could not pass a basic FBI background check,” presumably because of his purported relationship with DeLacy.