"Sperling Admits Obama Misled in Debate: The President Did Propose the Sequester."

"We put forth the design of' the sequestration, Sperling finally admits after a long back-and-forth."



Here's the whole "Meet the Press" transcript. Here's the part about Bob Woodward:

DAVID GREGORY: Here was an e-mail from you to Bob Woodward that was released. In it: "I do truly believe you should rethink your comment about saying that the president asking for revenues is moving the goalpost. I know you may not believe this, but as a friend, I think you will regret staking out that claim." When you said "you will regret staking out that claim," what did you mean?

GENE SPERLING: I meant that, while the first issue of whose idea it was, the sequester, was one I disagreed with him on but I could see how honorable people could disagree. I was trying to explain to him, from a substantive point of view, that the idea that the president of the United States was moving the goalpost by asking for the type of balance of tax reform that raised revenues, that the Speaker Boehner himself, as you noted, had called for, as well as long-term entitlements, together, to get rid of the sequester, was not only not moving the goalpost: That was the whole idea of the sequester. And I think that e-mail was cordial. It was substantive. It was polite.

DAVID GREGORY: But you say, "You're going to regret it." I mean, does the president think that's a good idea to say to reporters, to challenge them that, "You're going to regret staking out that claim"?

GENE SPERLING: Well, David, I've had 20-year relationship with Bob Woodward. It's been friendly, it's been cordial. Those e-mails are very substantive. They're cordial, they're friendly. And his reply to me--

DAVID GREGORY: Why do you think he's gone public with it and made an issue of it?

GENE SPERLING: Well, David, I guess I'd ask people to look at his reply. His reply said, "Gene, you don't need to apologize." He said he welcomed my advice. So I can't really explain it. All I can say, David, is I hope Bob and I can put this behind us because I think it takes away the focus--

DAVID GREGORY: Were you threatening him in any way?

Later in the show, Gregory asked Tom Brokaw to opine on the Woodward/Sperling "threat" question, and he said:

I've known Bob a long time, going back to his seminal days as a Watergate reporter. And I'm confident that White Houses have made him a lot more uncomfortable than that e-mail over the course of the years when he's talked to them. Any reporter who's worked in this town has been yelled at by somebody in the White House or somebody on the Hill. It just comes with the territory.

This is a speck that became a sandstorm overnight, unfortunately, and I think it's really reflective of the kind of media environment in which we live now, in which everybody's looking to stir something up. When I was covering Watergate, there was a wise old bird who did commentary for The New Republic, and his named John Osborne. He was one of the great, great commentators in this town.

He took me to lunch one day, and he'd had a blowup with the White House the day before. And he looked at me and he said, "You know, Brokaw, the problem is that journalists, all of us, we've got glass jaws. We throw punches; when somebody swings back, we go down with the first punch, screaming foul of some kind." I think that's what we have to keep in mind.

Reading Bob between the lines here in his last appearances, I think he does believe it kind of got out of his control at some point. We've got to move on. The country doesn't care about this. This is about an intramural fight in a high school cafeteria; it should be over now.

Hear that? It should be over now.