Dean's Campaign Hid A Civil War

washingtonpost.com: Divide and Bicker

The feuding and backbiting that plagued the Howard Dean campaign had turned utterly poisonous. Behind the facade of a successful political operation, senior officials plotted against each other, complained about the candidate and developed one searing doubt.

Dean, they concluded, did not really want to be president.

el-Kurtz's gossipy article on the chaotic struggle to control the campaign.

Added - Howard Dean - The quotes attributed to me by others in Howard Kurtz's gossipy rendition of the divisions in the Dean for America campaign are entirely false, as is the description of my reaction after losing the Iowa caucuses, before the famous speech. Moreover, it is ridiculous to believe that all of us would work so hard - and spend over $50 million dollars - if we didn't believe that I could become president and that we could change America.

The danger of using unattributed sources as Kurtz and so many others do, is that the veracity of the informants can not be evaluated. In this case Kurtz included a significant amount of material which was not true, and produced a story which was greatly exaggerated.