The Tories and Lib Dems, too, put out unpleasant attack briefings.
In early June, the co-chair of Yvette Cooper's team felt forced to make a public vow that her team would not engage in anonymous attack briefings following a Daily Telegraph report that suggested sources close to Cooper and Burnham had described Liz Kendall as "Taliban New Labour", a claim denied by both camps.
The Republican Web site gop-usa.com — later the home base of "Jeff Gannon," the fake journalist who was a favorite softball pitcher at White House press briefings — attacked Soros as "a prolocutor in the congregation of Moloch," a "Hungarian-born descendant of Shylock," and, worse, a funder of "groups that support increased government spending".
Secretary of State John Kerry told Congress, in hearings on Tuesday and Wednesday, that the United States believes the Syrian military was responsible for the attack, and in classified briefings officials have pointed to Unit 450, which controls Syrian chemical weapons.
But they are "watching the numbers closely," said a military official who attends briefings on attacks.
"The army was attacking me with anonymous briefings," he alleges in the book.
During the voyage north, the airmen received detailed briefings on the attack plans and terrain around Kaafjord and were also issued with escape kits to use if they were shot down over Norway.
After a weekend of briefings about the attack on U.S. troops in South Sudan and the progress of health insurance enrollments under the Affordable Care Act, the Obamas scaled back their official duties over the holiday.
Mr Clarke had previously lauded the Bush administration's anti-terror policies before the attacks in off-the-record briefings, something he now dismisses as "a question of politics".
But the president did not feel the briefings on potential attacks were sufficient, one intelligence official told me, and instead asked for a broader analysis on Al Qaeda, its aspirations and its history.
In the last few weeks, Goldman has adopted an uncharacteristically public attack plan, which has included media briefings and on the record interviews.
