By Dan Eggen and Peter Slevin
Washington Post Staff Writers
Tuesday, May 20, 2008; A10

The White House launched an unusual attack on a national news network yesterday for its editing of an interview with President Bush, whose controversial speech comparing negotiations with Iran to the appeasement of Nazis has prompted debate in Washington and on the presidential campaign trail.

In a letter to NBC News President Steve Capus, presidential counselor Ed Gillespie complained that a report on the "Today" show distorted Bush's remarks last week to the Israeli Knesset and did not include the president's objections to questions from reporter Richard Engel.

"This deceitful editing to further a media-manufactured storyline is utterly misleading and irresponsible," Gillespie wrote, adding that NBC should air Bush's responses "in full."

NBC News said in a statement that the story "accurately reflects the interview" and questioned the White House's criticisms. "NBC News, as part of a free press in a free society, makes its own editorial decisions," the statement read.

The dispute illustrates the reverberations from Bush's speech on Thursday, in which he compared those who seek talks with Iran and radical Islamic groups to those who gave in to the Nazis before World War II. "We have an obligation to call this what it is -- the false comfort of appeasement," Bush said.

Although Bush did not mention Sen. Barack Obama (Ill.), the remarks were widely seen as an attack on the Democratic presidential front-runner, who has said he would be willing to talk with Iranian leader Mahmoud Ahmadinejad without preconditions during his first year in office. The presumptive GOP nominee, Sen. John McCain (Ariz.), said yesterday that Obama's willingness to talk with Iran reveals "inexperience and reckless judgment."

"It is likely such a meeting would . . . fail to persuade him to abandon Iran's nuclear ambition, its support of terrorists and commitment to Israel's extinction," McCain said.

Obama fired back that McCain was mimicking the policies of the Bush administration in which "anything but their failed cowboy diplomacy is called appeasement."

"For all their tough talk, one thing you have to ask yourself is 'What are McCain and Bush afraid of?' " Obama said in Billings, Mont. "I'm not afraid we'll lose some propaganda fight with a dictator. It's time to win those battles, because we've watched George Bush lose them year after year after year."

The sparring provided a likely preview of a general-election fight to come between McCain and Obama, even as Obama's Democratic rival, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (N.Y.), continued to prepare for primaries today in Kentucky and Oregon.

"We're going to keep fighting for the nomination," Clinton said in Prestonsburg, Ky.

The Obama campaign, which won the endorsement of five superdelegates yesterday, including Sen. Robert C. Byrd (D-W.Va.), sees the calculus differently. With the pledged delegates Obama is likely to win today, he will have won a majority with only three contests left. He must win more superdelegates to officially claim the nomination.

White House spokesman Scott Stanzel said that while the administration often criticizes media coverage, it felt that the NBC report "was particularly egregious."

Gillespie and other aides have denied that the speech was aimed at Obama and have characterized Bush's remarks as a restatement of long-standing policies. They have also said there is no gap between Bush and Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates, who said May 14 that the United States needs to "develop some leverage . . . and then sit down and talk with" Iran.

The main point of contention with NBC was a question from Engel: "You said that negotiating with Iran is pointless and then you went further. You're saying -- you said that it was appeasement. Were you referring to Senator Barack Obama? He certainly thought you were."

On the segment aired yesterday, Bush is shown responding: "You know, my policies haven't changed, but evidently the political calendar has." But that was just part of a longer answer that included Bush telling Engel, "You didn't get it exactly right, either," and noting that he was talking about al-Qaeda, Hezbollah and Hamas as well as Iran.

Gillespie also used the letter to complain about other aspects of NBC News coverage and to lodge a complaint about "blatant partisan talk show hosts like Christopher Matthews and Keith Olbermann at MSNBC," both of whom have come under attack from Republicans.

Capus, the NBC News president, said in a written response that Gillespie's criticisms were "a gross misrepresentation of the facts," adding that the full Bush interview has been on NBC's Web site since Sunday.

Slevin reported from Chicago. Staff writers Perry Bacon Jr. in Prestonsburg, Ky.; Howard Kurtz in Washington; and Matthew Mosk in Billings, Mont., contributed to this report.