Evidence accumulates of Clinton campaign's ties to birther rumor

Washington Examiner:

...
One of Clinton's senior advisors on that campaign was Blumenthal. Clinton had wanted to take him with her to the State Department the next year when Obama nominated his old rival to serve as secretary of state. She was largely allowed to get her way on personnel decisions, but not this time. White House chief of staff, and current Chicago mayor, Rahm Emanuel, personally put the kibosh to that.

The New York Times reported in 2009, "Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton wanted to hire Mr. Blumenthal, a loyal confidant who had helped her promote the idea of a 'vast right-wing conspiracy' more than a decade ago. But President Obama's campaign veterans still blamed him for spreading harsh attacks against their candidate in the primary showdown with Mrs. Clinton last year."

It now looks like those "harsh attacks" that Blumenthal spread included birtherism. James Asher, former editor of McClatchy's DC bureau alleged Friday that Blumenthal had in fact directly brought the allegations to the newspaper chain in 2008 and asked them to investigate.

Blumenthal denied that he'd spread the rumor in an email to the Boston Globe. But later in the day, McClatchy itself made it clear that the charge has merit. In fact the chain sent a reporter to Kenya at Blumenthal's urging, to look into what he had to say "and that reporter determined that the allegation was false."

What I remember about the birther story is that it started during the Democrat primary season.  I also recall that the GOP nominee denounced the story.  This is another reason to believe that it is highly likely that someone in the Clinton campaign was pushing the story.  There were some conservative bloggers who also embraced the story.  I was not among them.