Giuliani gets facts wrong in blast at paper

NEW YORK — For former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani, it was the perfect trifecta, a way to slam The New York Times, Hillary Clinton and the liberal, anti-war MoveOn.org group in one fell swoop.

All Giuliani needed was one bogus newspaper story and $64,575 in campaign cash, both of which the Republican presidential hopeful used Thursday to spawn a bonanza of free publicity in the conservative blogosphere.

Giuliani, a Republican presidential hopeful, began the day by accusing The New York Times of selling the Democrat-friendly MoveOn a "heavily discounted" ad Monday that cast U.S. commander Gen. David Petraeus as "General Betray Us."

The ad appeared on the morning of Petraeus' first appearance before Congress to testify about conditions in Iraq. The ad accused Petraeus of "cooking the books" for the White House.

President Bush expressed his displeasure with the MoveOn ad. If critics of the president "want to attack him, fine, but the generals, and by association the military, should be out of bounds from partisan attacks," White House spokeswoman Dana Perino said.

Republican candidates blasted the ad as an unpatriotic smear of a revered general, and on Thursday, Giuliani accused The New York Times, MoveOn and Democratic presidential foe Clinton — who has refused to denounce the ad — of engaging in "character assassination."

"What we should move on with ... is a civil discourse without name-calling," Giuliani said in Atlanta, after demanding that his campaign be given the same "discounted rate" to run a pro-Petraeus ad today.

But Giuliani's facts were challenged.

Any advocacy group seeking to place a single, full-page, black-and-white ad in The New York Times on "standby" over a seven-day period — the paper picks the day — pays what MoveOn did, $64,575, sources said.

The New York Post reported that The New York Times charges a higher rate, $181,692, setting up erroneous reports that MoveOn got a "lefty" discount. But the higher price is for ads guaranteed to run on a specific day, said New York Times spokeswoman Catherine Mathis.

By the end of the day — with Giuliani's challenge scoring huge points on conservative talk radio and Web sites — his campaign released its ad.

"These times call for statesmanship, not politicians spewing political venom," Giuliani says in his ad, just above a Web address for his campaign.

It was unclear, however, when it would run in The New York Times or how much it cost, but sources indicated it was the same $64,575 as MoveOn.org paid.

Clinton's campaign, meanwhile, noted that "Mayor Giuliani supports George Bush's Iraq policy and believes it is working. Sen. Clinton knows it isn't and will keep up her efforts to end the war."

Material from The Associated Press is included in this report.