Colorado: Mike Rosen

February 3, 2009 - 05:03 pm

Ritter responds to GOP on Gitmo: ‘They’re just making stuff up’

Gov. Bill Ritter’s office pulled no punches Tuesday morning in responding to a report that the communication arm of the Colorado Senate Minority Office edited a radio interview to make it seem as though Ritter had changed his position on housing Guantanamo detainees in Colorado. “They’re just making stuff up,” Ritter spokesman Evan Dreyer wrote in an e-mail to the Colorado Independent. “Nothing new for them, though.”

The spliced ColoradoSenateNews.com version of Monday’s interview with the governor on the Mike Rosen show is a 23-second audio clip that portrays Ritter as having capitulated to his critics, prepared to ship Gitmo detainees off to Pakistan.

February 3, 2009 - 10:12 am

Senate Minority Office ‘applauds’ mangled quote from Ritter on Gitmo

Colorado Gov. Bill Ritter speaks at a press conference on the campaign trail in September. (File Photo/Naomi Zeveloff)

ColoradoSenateNews.com is at it again. The partisan communications operation of the Republican Colorado Senate Minority Office issued a gleeful press release Monday applauding “Ritter’s change of tune on Gitmo detainees.” The release includes an audio clip that appears to represent Gov. Bill Ritter suggesting Guantanamo Bay prisoners should be sent to Pakistan rather than housed at the Supermax federal detention facility in Florence. Except that’s not what Ritter said on a radio broadcast Monday morning, and the audio clip included on the ColoradoSenateNews site — while presenting itself as a seamless statement from Ritter — edits out a lengthy discussion that narrows the topic considerably while also criticizing the Bush administration for bungling the cases against many of the Gitmo detainees.