News outlets, including FOX News, spend thousands of dollars a day just to travel reporters on a presidential campaign. Flights on a presidential charter can cost as much as $4,000 a leg per person, often with numerous flights a day. For the fare, reporters not only get the convenience of being able to cover all of the candidate’s events, but are also afforded some degree of access to the candidate and his staff.

Which is just one of the many reasons why Obama’s traveling press corps was downright frustrated when, after a rally in Northern Virginia, the campaign jet’s pilot announced we were ready for takeoff from Washington’s Dulles airport - without one passenger Barack Obama. The candidate, his national trip director, and body man, we were told, would return to Chicago on a separate jet.

As the Obama-less plane was set to taxi, Communications Director Robert Gibbs informed reporters that since the likely Democratic nominee won’t be in DC for awhile, he had scheduled meetings in the city. When asked the obvious - if he was meeting with Senator Clinton - Gibbs declined to discuss Obama’s plans and promptly retreated to the front of the cabin for takeoff.

Reporters furiously typed emails and made phone calls to inform colleagues of the development as the plane lumbered to and down the runway. Minutes later, we were airborne and without answers.

During the hour and a half flight, Gibbs attempted to placate the agitated press corps, but mostly repeated the line: “He had some time for meetings that he wanted to do, so we scheduled some meetings for him tonight and he’ll fly back to Chicago a couple hours after we do.” Gibbs would not discuss the location, nature, or participants of the meetings because “the meetings are private.”

One reporter wondered why we didn’t just wait for him on the tarmac. What was the rationale for leaving? “For us to get back to Chicago,” Gibbs responded.

“For your benefit?” someone enquired. “Not necessarily for my benefit,” Gibbs said with a laugh.

“Who needs to get back to Chicago? We need to be where the candidate is,” a reporter shot back.

As cameras and voice recorders rolled, Gibbs fielded questions from about a dozen reporters, each of whom questioned why there was a deviation from Standard Operating Procedure.

One veteran campaign reporter scolded, “Right now it is a general election – they’re treated the same way the president is. If the president goes bike riding, we go with him. If he goes out to dinner or goes to visit a friend three blocks up the road, we go with him in the motorcade, and that’s the expectation in the general election, and that’s the way with previous candidates…that’s the way it’s done. So why are we diverging from that?” she asked. “We would have been happy to sit on the runway. We didn’t have anything better to do other than to do what we’re paying for, which is to cover the candidate and he’s not here.”

Trying to defuse the situation, Gibbs asked that we write our grievances down and email him. “I understand your objections, and I will make sure that everyone is aware of that,” he said, while making the point that “it wasn’t an attempt to deceive in any way; it’s just private meetings.”

When the plane landed, reporters stranded in the air began receiving word that the meeting had in fact occurred. Gibbs wandered back to issue a statement:

done

Hours later when the candidate returned to his Hyde Park home, he was greeted by camera crews and reporters staking out his home. After all, privacy is hard to come by when you’re running for president.

It has been reported in the Canadian press that a senior economic advisor to the Obama campaign spoke with a Canadian government official to assure them that this was just campaign rhetoric. The Obama campaign has dismissed these reports as false over the course of the past two days, but the advisor in question has not yet issued a flat denial.

Today the Clinton campaign alerted reporters to a letter sent to Senator Barack Obama from two Ohio unions about the sincerity of the candidate’s campaign promise to renegotiate NAFTA as president. The letter from two union officials sent to Mr. Obama expresses surprise and disappointment that the advisor reportedly met in secret with the Canadian government.

“After a series of misdirections and half-truths, it’s time for you to come clean about your campaign’s communications with the Canadian government about NAFTA. Enough with the non-denial denials and the Washington double-speak,” the letter states.

The letter then asks Senator Obama five questions on the alleged incident and about his true intentions with NAFTA.

Later in the day, the pro-Obama union UNITE HERE fired off its own letter to Senator Clinton on the consistency of her position on the trade agreement. Obama spokesman Bill Burton forwarded the letter via email to reporters covering the Obama campaign.

“We were disappointed to see that you and your supporters continue to make desperate attacks against Senator Obama based on a story from a Canadian TV station that was debunked and retracted as fast as it was reported. Just as you know that this story is false and yet repeat it anyway, you also know that Senator Obama has consistently called for amending the flawed NAFTA agreement passed by the Clinton Administration – which you have called one of the most significant legislative accomplishments of the Clinton years.”

The UNITE HERE authors then ask Clinton two questions of their own, but are probably not expecting a response when they conclude, “We certainly wish it were true that you had been a critic of NAFTA from the very beginning – because if you had offered a single public criticism when it was being debated, or urged President Clinton to back away from it, you could have stopped NAFTA from happening to America. Sadly, the record of your long, strong and vocal support of this flawed agreement is painfully clear.”

Read both letters in full below the jump:

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