Wednesday, January 09, 2008

Spying On Obama?

By Bill Rappleye

So we’re at Obama’s headquarters in Manchester.  A two-story factory building with a for lease sign in front of it.  We interview a volunteer around the corner of the building, because we’re afraid some higher-up in the campaign will forbid him from talking to us.  We finish, and go upstairs, and actually get permission to shoot some pictures of the mob of college kids working the phones, as long as we promise not to speak to any of them.  We wrap up, and head back to our car snugged up against a snow bank in the helter skelter of cars tucked into every available space around the building.  Then Pho (photographer Don O’Sullivan) notices a trio of prominent Hillary supporters heading into a side door of the building.  I say the Clinton campaign must also be housed here.  We go over to check, but the sign on the door the group went in said Obama HQ.  What’s the deal, we wondered.  Are these people defecting?  That’d be a big story.  We wait.  They couldn’t just be spying, could they?  They come out, I confront them with an “Aha, we gotcha.  What are you doing?”  They were indeed, checking out the opposition.  You can’t let anybody know, they said.  I promised.  We saw them outside Clinton’s celebration later.  They noted…boy, that Obama operation was something else.  A lot more people than in Hillary’s.