CNN Interviews Student Used in Hillary’s Plant-Gate

November 13th, 2007 5:42 PM

As NewsBuster Mark Finkelstein reported Monday, the scandal surrounding Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign actually planting questioners at events is starting to grow.

In fact, CNN aired an exclusive interview with one of the plants Tuesday, while posting an article on the subject at its website.

What follows is a partial transcript of this segment from Tuesday's "American Morning" (video available here):

JOHN ROBERTS, ANCHOR: A college student who asked Hillary Clinton about global warming at a campaign appearance in Iowa says she was given the question by Clinton's staffers. The college student says she wanted to ask about energy policy, but was given a question on climate change instead.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

MURIEL GALLO-CHASANOFF, WAS GIVEN SCRIPTED QUESTION: On the way over there in the car, they asked me if I would ask the senator a question. I said, sure, you know? I'd love to ask her a question. And when we got there, we were there a little bit early. They brought me to one of the senior staffers and he asked me if there was any question I wanted to ask. And I kind of thought about it and IED, yeah, can I ask how her energy plan considers to the other candidates energy plan? He said, well, I don't think that is a good idea. He said I don't know how familiar she is with her plans. He showed me in his binder, he had piece of paper with typed out questions on it and the first one was planned specifically to a college student, said like college student. When I asked him how it worked, he said raise your hand when she asks for questions, raise your hand and she'll call on you. So, I mean, I don't know for sure that she knew in advance but there were like 200 people there and everyone is raising their hand. I was 1 out of 4. That doesn't seem random exactly.
(END VIDEO CLIP)

ROBERTS: Not exactly random. The Clinton campaign admits the staffer encouraged the question but insists that Senator Clinton wasn't aware of it, though she called on the student, 1 out of 4, she said. 

Kudos go out to CNN for this report. It will be interesting to see whether this video is aired during prime time this evening.

Stay tuned.