Update - The picture that is emerging: After Ashley Todd called her friend at 8:56pm and then called 911 a half-hour later on Wednesday evening to report her story to the police, the story then made its way through her personal connections to the College Republicans. By Thursday morning or mid-day the McCain campaign was notified.

The crucial bit of information centers around the campaign pushing the story to the Pittsburgh media. Those initial Pittsburgh reports included the lines about McCain and Palin having already called Todd and expressing their concern for her well-being. This indicates that a McCain strategy had been formed, that the lines about "B is for Barack" and the attacker saying the things about the McCain sticker and that Todd would "be a Barack supporter now" are all part of a formed statement that was being pushed to the Pittsburgh television and print media by 4pm on Thursday.

The other crucial bit of chronology here is that once the Pittsburgh press was convinced to run with the story line that the McCain campaign was pushing, the McCain camp could then point to the Pittsburgh TV and news website reports as substantiated material that they could then present to the Drudge Report, Fox News, and perhaps the other mainstream media outlets like CNN, ABC, etc. Its the classic "plant a story in the press, then point to the press as giving legitimacy to the story" tactic.

Is the picture becoming clearer yet?

Brian Williams covered this somewhat last night. Video up on the Jed Report:

Now, thanks to Brian Williams, we know that once it was off the ground, McCain-land continued spreading the hoax to reporters, fueling the attention it got by publicizing phone calls from both McCain and Palin to the so-called victim.

updated 1:37pm, Saturday

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Interesting. Tonight on Keith Olbermann's Countdown on MSNBC, Keith made the following statement:

Tonight McCain spokesman Brian Rogers denied the campaign gave out those quotes, telling Countdown, "They came from the police and were attributed to the McCain camp because of sloppy reporting." An account that does not explain why two television stations both quoted the McCain campaign, or the fact that one of them, KDKA Pittsburgh, specifically followed the McCain quotes with the line, quote, "Police, however, have not confirmed that." And tonight Countdown asked the reporter from the other station, WPXI, to check his notes. He says he got those quotes first, 4:08 pm yesterday, from McCain's Pennsylvania communications director.

So before the police released any information, the McCain campaign was pushing this story to the Pittsburgh press. The story also appeared on Drudge Report around this time, and we all know that Drudge has his own source inside the McCain campaign.

Wasn't there also mention of McCain and Palin calling the "victim" late that afternoon? Wouldn't this, too, be before the story was pushed to the press? The details, this statement is from the Pittsburgh Tribune, are vague:

A McCain campaign spokesman initially said the senator called Todd and her family when the incident was first reported. And the Obama campaign released a comment Thursday sending "our thoughts and prayers."

The Obama-Biden campaign declined to comment yesterday. Calls to McCain-Palin spokesman Peter Feldman were not immediately returned.

This statement is from the WTAE-TV Pittsburgh report, that was originally posted to their website at 4:03pm on Thursday the 23rd, and has since been updated:

"The McCain campaign is aware of the incident involving one of its volunteers. Out of respect, the campaign won't be commenting. The campaign also confirms that Senator McCain and Governor Palin have both spoken to the woman," the McCain-Palin statement said.

So was this story relayed by Ashley Todd to her College Republicans friends and supervisors, who then sent the story up to the regional campaign manager, Peter Feldman? He appears to be the point man for then pushing the "details" of the story to the press, and possibly to Drudge Report and Fox, who then ran with it all night into this morning?

Police have no evidence Todd's friends were in on the Bloomfield attack story.

"I don't trust anything she told me," Garcia said.

Garcia said he met Todd among Republican circles in College Station. They were not close friends but had been virtual friends on the Internet site Facebook. Traveling around New York and Pennsylvania to campaign for the McCain-Palin ticket, she had spent the previous Friday and Saturday nights at his house, but Garcia said he had not seen her since then.

Todd called Garcia's cell phone at 8:56 p.m. Wednesday and asked if she could come over. When she arrived, Garcia thought the etched "B" looked like it could have come from the pin of a campaign button.

Garcia said he accepted her story, partly because Todd told him that she was a student at Texas A&M, where he had graduated in May. It was important, he said, to get out the message to other alumni and Republicans.

A Texas A&M official said Todd has never been a student at the school.

From the Pittsburgh Tribune story, Todd doesn't sound like a very reliable source:

Todd has a history of making up stories, said Dustan Costine, chairman of the Robertson County, Texas, Republican Party. He and Todd volunteered together on the failed presidential campaign of Rep. Ron Paul, R-Texas, a Green Tree native. Costine said Todd told supporters there that her car was vandalized because it had the candidate's stickers on it. He provided an e-mail from Todd in which she said her car tires had been slashed.

Costine said Todd had talked of running for Texas governor in 2006 as a write-in candidate. She said she had been undergoing treatment for cancer, had lost her hair and often wore a wig. Still, he said, she constantly smoked.

Todd, of course, is not the main issue anymore. Lots of questions remain, but central to all of this is the contradiction of the Pittsburgh reporters who claim they heard it first from the McCain people. If that's the case, the McCain camp is guilty of pushing this false, race-baiting story.

 A PDF copy of the police report can be read here:

http://www.wpxi.com/download/2008/1024/17795915.pdf