PM's office says succeeding in portraying comptroller as a liar

[bemildred]

Great headline. Bushlike.

Officials at the Prime Minister's Office said Wednesday that their aggressive response to the state comptroller's criticism of Prime Minister Ehud Olmert has succeeded in portraying the comptroller as a liar who is obsessively trying to bring Olmert down.

The officials said their efforts to undermine the image of State Comptroller Micha Lindenstrauss were not just spin.

"It was an exceptional step," one of the officials said. "But there was no choice. It was clear that it's not possible to leave the arena to the comptroller without reacting."

In a tense meeting with the Knesset's State Control Committee on Tuesday, Lindenstrauss accused Olmert's office of either delaying the transfer of material necessary for the report on home front management during last summer's Lebanon war or not handing it over at all. Olmert's associates accused the comptroller of spreading lies.

Haaretz