This is a monster correction from the Washington Post that really deserves a retraction article on the front page.

An earlier version of this story about campaign donations that Florida businessman Harry Sargeant III raised for Sen. John McCain, former New York Mayor Rudolph Giuliani and Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton incorrectly identified three individuals as being among the donors Sargeant solicited on behalf of McCain. Those donors — Rite Aid manager Ibrahim Marabeh, and lounge owners Nadia and Shawn Abdalla — wrote checks to Giuliani and Clinton, not McCain. Also, the first name of Faisal Abdullah, a McCain donor, was misspelled in some versions of the story.

The correction came about because blogger Amanda Carpenter did something that, it seems, the original reporter nor any of his editors did: she checked OpenSecrets.org to confirm the donations (via memeorandum). It turns out that there weren’t any donations listed from Marabeh or the Abdallas.

In other words, the entire premise of the story - that John McCain was taking donations from a shady “bundler” who was getting his money from Arabs in America, wasn’t all that accurate. The lede of the story that’s there now is not what was there originally. Here’s how it orignally appared, as quoted by Carpenter:

The bundle of $2,300 and $4,600 checks that poured into Sen. John McCain’s presidential campaign on March 12 came from an unlikely group of California donors: a mechanic from D&D Auto Repair in Whittier, the manager of Rite Aid Pharmacy No. 5727, the 30-something owners of the Twilight Hookah Lounge in Fullerton.

It now reads:

The bundle of $2,300 and $4,600 checks that poured into Sen. John McCain’s presidential campaign on March 12 came from an unlikely group of California donors: a mechanic from D&D Auto Repair in Whittier, the manager of Taco Bell stores in Riverside, the owners of a liquor store in Colton.

So, three of the four people listed in the original lede weren’t McCain donors at all. Oopsie. As Glenn Reynolds put it:

Next time, do some research to confirm what the Obama operatives email you, before you run the story on Page One. It’ll work out to be less embarrassing in the end . . . .

But let’s get into the real meat of the story after the jump. The fact that the Washington Post could publish such a flawed article is one thing. What the article is really trying to do is quite another.

What is the actual story here? That John McCain has a “bundler” sending him campaing donations? That maybe he’s doing something illegal or unethical? That maybe Mr Straight Talk isn’t so straight? Here’s the nut of the entire article:

Harry Sargeant III, a former naval officer and the owner of an oil-trading company that recently inked defense contracts potentially worth more than $1 billion, is the archetype of a modern presidential money man. The law forbids high-level supporters from writing huge checks, but with help from friends in the Middle East and the former chief of the CIA’s bin Laden unit — who now serves as a consultant to his company — Sargeant has raised more than $100,000 for three presidential candidates from a collection of ordinary people, several of whom professed little interest in the outcome of the election.

That it. That’s the whole thing. Sargent uses the connections he has and the good reputation he’s built up with Arabs in America and elsewhere to raise money for political candidates. Some of the donors don’t much care how the election turns out, but people close to them do, so they donate to help candidates their friends and familiy members like.

Wowwee. Let’s call out Sherlock Holmes, Hercule Poirot, and Inspector Legrasse on that one. Keep Scotland yard on high alert. We may be looking at a major crime wave here.

The thing is, there’s a difference between what the Post says Sargent is doing and what Norman Hsu did for the Hillary Clinton campaign. Hsu actually broke the law by giving people money and having them donate it in his name. Sargent is getting donations from people under their own names, using their own money. That’s still legal and not even particularly distasteful, no matter how sleazy the Post makes it sound. McCain may be guilty of a lot not-so-straight talk, but this isn’t an example. It’s certainly not worth a story on the very front page of the Washington Post.

This sure smells of a hit piece, especially given that Mosk has tried the same tactic in a story about McCain before. Once may be just an honest mistake. Twice is a pattern starting to emerge. Will there be a third time? Well, Mosk wasn’t fired for a mistake that I know not to make even though I only took one college course in journalism, so there’s a chance.