Exclusive: The “independent fact-checkers,” who have been shielding Mitt Romney from questions about Bain Capital’s off-shoring jobs and closing factories, are growing more isolated as the New York Times and other news outlets call for Romney to disclose more, reports Robert Parry.

By Robert Parry

Mitt Romney is refusing to answer questions about contacts with his Bain Capital subordinates after he took a partial leave of absence in February 1999 to work on the Winter Olympics. Instead, he’s sticking to sweeping denials that he had any role in managing the company as it off-shored jobs and shuttered factories.

Increasingly, Romney’s defense relies on self-styled “independent fact-checkers,” Brooks Jackson at Annenberg Center’s FactCheck.org and the Washington Post’s Glenn Kessler, who have issued quarrelsome denunciations of President Barack Obama’s campaign for connecting Romney to Bain’s activities from 1999 to 2002.

Yet, these “fact-checkers” acknowledge that they are operating with a limited body of facts, i.e. what has so far been made public. In an interview on MSNBC on Monday, Kessler admitted that he had no access to internal information at Bain Capital regarding how often Romney was in touch with his company in those three years.