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White House Official Caught Plagiarizing
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ShareFebruary 29, 2008 3:10 PM
A special assistant to President Bush has admitted lifting passages from a 1998 article he did not write and using them in his own newspaper column, as bloggers continue to uncover what they say are examples of further plagiarizing.
Timothy Goeglein, 43, of the White House Office of Public Liaison, admitted to lifting passages from a Dartmouth Review article by another author in a column published under his name in the Fort Wayne (Ind.) News-Sentinel. Goeglein has written for the paper since the mid-1980s.
Since then, readers at a freelance writer's blog have identified at least four other instances of what appear to be plagiarism, where Goeglein's columns mimicked passages from earlier articles from the Washington Post, the New York Sun, the National Review, and the Catholic magazine Crisis.
"We were just made aware about Tim's column and his actions this morning," said White House spokeswoman Emily Lawrimore. "Obviously this is not acceptable." Lawrimore would not comment on whether the president would ask Goeglein to resign, saying the White House was still "looking into the details."
As a special assistant to the president, Goeglein has served as a "virtual middleman" between Bush and conservative groups, according to a 2004 Washington Post article. The paper credited Goeglein with helping push "values" to the fore of Bush's presidential agenda.
The first instance of plagiarism was originally noted by Michigan-based blogger and freelance writer Nancy Nall. "I started to read [Goeglein's recent column] and a name jumped out at me -- 'Eugene Rosenstock-Hussey,'" Nall wrote on her blog this morning. The name "was so goofy, just for the hell of it, I Googled it," she said.
The search engine returned a 1998 essay by Jeffrey Hart which contained passages nearly identical to Goeglein's piece.
The News-Sentinel confronted Goeglein, who confessed. "It is true," the paper reported he wrote them in an e-mail. "I am entirely at fault. It was wrong of me. There are no excuses."
Since then, Nall's site, nancynall.com, has become a repository for further examples.
Update: Goeglein resigns, apologizes to President Bush. Total plagiarism count, according to the newspaper: 20 of 38 columns.
Photo of Timothy Goeglein courtesy of Fort Wayne News-Sentinel.
February 29, 2008 | Permalink | User Comments (34)
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Hello Larry,
I am a Hillary vote for her,
sorry I can not vote for a Obama candidate, Hillary is the #1 for me, sorry she is not like Obama he, Obama sponges off Hillary on all the debates. Obama is a sponge BOB he is not speaking the truth , nor the word, his church is paster Wright in Chicago is hiding the word or something , is it the church is some politcal extermist group OR RADICAL gruop why will Obama not respond to that???
Posted by: Gloria | Mar 2, 2008 12:38:01 AM
why do people keep pointing out the obama did the same thing...didn't clinton also do it...if you are gonna spin something make sure it goes all around.
Posted by: shadez | Mar 2, 2008 1:45:38 AM
Hillary speaks the word the and the truth, Obama hide the truth he hides the word his middle name he hides his church pastar for the most part his real identy
Posted by: Gloria | Mar 2, 2008 2:01:41 AM
Why do all these guys who work in the corrupt Bush Jr administration (this guy, Karl Rove, Alberto Gonzales, etc etc etc) ALL look like fat, pasty-faced lizards? Maybe they all come from some dark, slime-covered planet beyond our galaxy.
Posted by: wilder5121 | Mar 2, 2008 6:46:33 AM
Lets call it like it is...another liar in Washington! Obama you are a lying snake of a politician like the rest.
Posted by: vnvet68 | Mar 2, 2008 7:59:47 AM
OH, JESUS GIVE ME A BREAK.JOE BIDEN PLAGARIZED SOMETHING BACK IN THE MIDDLE AGES AND SHOT A HOLE IN HIS PRESIDENTIAL CAMPAIGN. HE HAS
BEEN REELECTED BY THE DEMOCRAT DIMWITS EVERY TIME HE HAS RUN.
HE ALSO RAN FOR THE NOMINATION THIS YEAR, HOWEVER CLINTON AND OBAMA LIE BETTER THAN HE AND EVENTUALLY HE DROPPED KNOWING HE WAS NO COMPETIION FOR THE OTHER TWO LIARS.
Posted by: aLBEE | Mar 2, 2008 5:20:08 PM
Compared to Cheney,Rove Rumsfeld,Gonzales etc,this guy is not that bad.
Posted by: AJ | Mar 3, 2008 6:15:16 AM
As a grant-writer, I believe in the power and beauty of words. What this pasty-faced minor bureaucrat did was not the same as Obama’s lifted speech… but it draws from the same sin – sloth or laziness. It was easy for both of them to cut and paste the works of others and pass them off as their own works. But in some ways, what Obama has done was worse. The speech was meant to extol the spoken word as having meaning, having power and life. When he said “just, word, just words”… we all knew he meant the opposite. We all took that to mean that words have changed the course of history, they comfort, they embolden and the make us proud. Too bad it is now just words to stir the crowd. It would have been an easy task to use those sentiments and turn them into an equally powerful speech, but he was too lazy to do so. Instead he turned “great words” into “just words”… that is disappointing from one who speaks so well. It is sad that authenticity does not come with great delivery.
Flunk them both… and make them write on the blackboard, one hundred times: “I will never again debase and cheapen the power of the word.”
Posted by: smartprimate | Mar 3, 2008 6:42:14 AM
I bet we won't see weeks of press coverage of the White House employee's plagiarism. Not like we saw of the press making so much fuss about Obama's use of his friend's words in his speeches.
The Democrats do anything, and it is weeks of harping and carping...the Republicans do it and the press barely mentions it as a footnote.
So much for the "liberal" news media bias that the lying conservatives keep whining about.
Posted by: consardestroyingtheUSA | Mar 3, 2008 10:20:46 AM
Smsrtprimate: you have the typical con double standard: it is always worse if a Democrat does something than when your own majorly corrupt party that put the USA into recession and bankruptcy does something. Why is it worse for Obama than this Republlican pillsbury dough boy to have done it? Only as a selectively outraged con could you say such a thing. You 'Pubs are the party of Boss Tweed. Any finger pointing by you is ludicrous.
Posted by: consardestroyingtheUSA | Mar 3, 2008 10:25:00 AM
We can plagerize all we wnat now , Obama said it was no big deal!
I just turned in an encyclopedia entry to my teacher using that exact same ideal. Hoping for a good grade! :)
Posted by: eleven22 | Mar 3, 2008 12:30:05 PM
earthisnotflat,
You need to look up the definition of plagerism, then correct your post.
Posted by: eleven22 | Mar 3, 2008 12:32:22 PM
Imagine if President OBAMA was elected...soon every colleges, including politicians will plagiarize all over the place. Reason for doing so: Well, if President OBAMA does it...why can't we??? OBAMA knew that very well what he was doing--lifting other's passages--yet he refused to credit the author. Only when he was caught did he say that he should have given credit to his friend. So, if he didn't get caught, he wouldn't credit his friend???
Lesson to Learn: You are plagiarizing only when you get CAUGHT!
Posted by: hrv | Mar 10, 2008 3:44:11 PM
he should join the Obama side then maybe he could get away with It.
Posted by: alex T | Mar 13, 2008 8:31:34 AM
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