Dear Glenn Thrush of Politico.com: Did Linda McMahon Campaign Plant Your Story on Her Steroid-Doc Memo?

As the following email text to Glenn Thrush of Politico.com — sent earlier today — was being posted, he had not replied to me.

Mr. Thrush:

Below are links to posts on my blog – one today, the other a couple of weeks ago:

http://wrestlingbabylon.wordpress.com/2010/04/30/is-linda-mcmahon-just-like-ronald-reagan-or-fatty-arbuckle/

http://wrestlingbabylon.wordpress.com/2010/04/10/did-linda-mcmahon-obstruct-justice-2nd-in-a-series-%E2%80%93-%E2%80%98the-day%E2%80%99-after/

My unflattering opinion of the depth of your coverage of the Linda McMahon campaign is just that: an opinion.

What is a question of fact is whether you were – as I have written I suspect – a conduit of a McMahon-planted “Friday evening bad-news dump” of the exclusive that Ted Mann of The Day in New London was preparing for publication on Sunday, April 11. The piece revealed an unredacted 1989 internal office memo by McMahon in which she told another wrestling executive to tip off their Pennsylvania ring doctor, and wrestlers’ illegal steroid connection, that he was under federal criminal investigation.

Let me just say that news organizations compete with each other, and if you did the complex investigative work to dig this document out of court archives, then confronted Linda McMahon (and forced her hand to publish and explain the previously redacted portion of it), I tip my hat to you. However, I see no such strain of shoe-leather investigation in your other work for Politico. Hence my question.

I’ll publish my message and any reply by you later today – conveniently, on Friday evening in case the upshot is in any way embarrassing to you. My contact info is below. Thanks for your time.

Irv Muchnick