White House and State Department officials bypassed official diplomatic channels at least twice to obtain accurate data directly from embassy personnel to circumvent Milstein's filtering. The 36 year old aide, who is the stepson of commentator Mark Levin, reportedly questioned whether his colleagues were "pro-Israel" or "pro-Hamas." While senior administration officials expressed frustration over the skewed reporting, Ambassador Huckabee described the allegations as "farcical" without addressing the specific instances of alteration.
