My apologies if this has been diaried already, I looked but didn't see anything.
It would appear that Barbara Reynolds, an ardent Clinton supporter and long-time friend of Jeremiah Wright, was the point person for Wright's press event yesterday at the National Press Club.
Whether or not Reynolds got direction from the Clinton campaign or simply acted on her own is unknown.
The first mention of this was from a Daily News article, you can read that here: Is Jeremiah Wright a colossal disaster for Barack Obama or a press trick?
Then Michael Calderone picks it up at Politico, here and here.
Key points are:
Most importantly, Reynolds was listed as the contact back in '07. That's before Obama was the Democratic front-runner and anyone could have imagined Wright would be such a distraction. And it's before Reynolds wrote on her blog that she voted for Clinton in the Maryland primary.
An ordained minister, Reynolds, teaches at Howard University School of Divinity, and knows Wright personally. So she was the ideal contact person for Wright when the controversy broke in mid-March.
Smith said that Reynolds pitched Wright again as a speaker, and the speakers committee wanted him because he was far more newsworthy than two years earlier. Reynolds became the point person.
For each speaking event, one member of the organizing committee is assigned as the main contact. That person performs various tasks, from choosing who sits at the head table to drafting the NPC president’s introduction, according to Smith. And Reynolds was the point person for
Ms. Reynolds also wrote back in March about the Jeremiah Wright controversy, attacking Obama and defending Wright. I thought this nugget from that article was quite telling and familiar, made me wonder if Wright got his lines from Reynolds:
While Sen. Obama may have to distance himself from his pastor to play the game of politics, it is unwise for any of us to burn the bridges that brought us across.
Finally, the LA Times has picked up on this as well.