Turns out that the claim that someone yelled “Kill Him!” at a McCain rally (which the media insisted was targeted at The One) was based entirely on one reporter’s account. The Secret Service finds no evidence to back up the claim except for the account by the Scranton Times-Tribune (the paper the reporter worked for).

The agent in charge of the Secret Service field office in Scranton said allegations that someone yelled “kill him” when presidential hopeful Barack Obama’s name was mentioned during Tuesday’s Sarah Palin rally are unfounded.

The Scranton Times-Tribune first reported the alleged incident on its Web site Tuesday and then again in its print edition Wednesday. The first story, written by reporter David Singleton, appeared with allegations that while congressional candidate Chris Hackett was addressing the crowd and mentioned Oabama’s [sic] name a man in the audience shouted “kill him.”

News organizations including ABC, The Associated Press, The Washington Monthly and MSNBC’s Countdown with Keith Olbermann reported the claim, with most attributing the allegations to the Times-Tribune story.

Agent Bill Slavoski said he was in the audience, along with an undisclosed number of additional secret service agents and other law enforcement officers and not one heard the comment.

“I was baffled,” he said after reading the report in Wednesday’s Times-Tribune.

Did Singleton not count on the Secret Service actually paying attention to what was being said at the rally? If a reporter says someone yelled “kill him”, what’s the likeliness that the Secret Service — whose entire job it is to look out for such talk and behavior in order to protect McCain and Obama — didn’t hear it at all? Methinks that Singleton is full of crap.