Edwards Admits He Had An Affair

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Edwards Admits to Affair, Denies Fathering Child

Former presidential candidate John Edwards is admitting to an affair while his wife was battling cancer. Edwards denies fathering the woman's child.

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Top aides to presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama declined to comment yesterday, but they had been moving to avoid having Edwards speak at this month's national party convention even before his admission, according to three sources close to the campaign, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss confidential deliberations. When a question was raised at a high-level meeting about the role of Edwards, who drew live network coverage for his May endorsement of Obama, campaign manager David Plouffe indicated that he would deal with the matter privately.

Edwards would not respond to questions from The Washington Post last week and did not return a call to his home yesterday. He told CBS's Bob Schieffer yesterday that he went public because "he just couldn't live with the constant pounding from the tabloids," as Schieffer put it. Schieffer added that Elizabeth Edwards had told him that "this is really, really tough."

The Edwards admission comes amid growing criticism of major news organizations for not reporting the allegations, even as they were debated on Web sites from Slate to National Review, in the North Carolina press and on Fox News, and were joked about on late-night comedy shows.

"We feel our reporting and our investigation have been vindicated," National Enquirer editor in chief David Perel said. "It took so long because Edwards was just so bold in lying about it."

A number of national news outlets had looked into the allegations but declined to publish them because of a lack of definitive evidence. There was also a wariness about the Enquirer, which has broken several major stories -- including a 2001 report on Jesse L. Jackson fathering a child out of wedlock -- but which sometimes pays for information, as Perel said the tabloid did in the Edwards case. The Enquirer also has a lower threshold than mainstream news organizations for publishing information from second-hand sources.

In denying the story in October, Edwards said: "I've been in love with the same woman for 30-plus years, and as anybody who's been around us knows, she's an extraordinary human being, warm, loving, beautiful, sexy and as good a person as I have ever known."

Numerous journalists said privately that their appetite for the story was dulled by sympathy for Elizabeth Edwards. Newsweek columnist Jonathan Alter said Elizabeth Edwards's health is an obvious factor, adding: "To say the journalists should not consider that is reprehensible. Journalists can be human beings."

Some conservatives have accused the media of remaining silent because Edwards is a Democrat. Fox News commentator Sean Hannity told viewers last month that "if this were Dick Cheney or Vice President Quayle or any Republican, I've got to believe there'd probably be more coverage than there has been here."

The story began to draw more mainstream coverage after the Charlotte Observer reported last week that the birth certificate for Hunter's baby lists no father. Edwards ignored questions from an Observer reporter after a speech in Washington. "He lost the luxury of being a private person when he ran for president," said Observer editor Rick Thames.

Brian Ross, ABC's chief investigative reporter, said he and colleague Rhonda Schwartz were piecing together the story while Woodruff, who covered Edwards's vice presidential campaign in 2004, pressed for an interview. "They felt the pressure that we were getting close to having it in a form we could report," he said.

Hunter was hired by Edwards's political action committee in 2006 to direct a series of behind-the-scenes films, which included footage shot in Africa and were posted on his campaign Web site. The first shows Edwards flirtatiously joking with Hunter about his effort to come across as authentic.

Little is known about Hunter, who acquired her last name through a marriage. She created a New Age Web site, called "Being is Free," that appears to be a few years old. In a section called "story of my life," she offers scant details about herself except that she was born in Fort Lauderdale in 1964.