"Cone of silence" controvery grows - McCain refusing to directly answer the question. More from ABC

As you'll recall, Evangelical leader Rick Warren claimed last night that while Barack Obama was answering questions about his religious beliefs at the evangelical forum last night, John McCain was supposedly in a "cone of silence" where he couldn't hear, or be given, the questions in advance. In fact, this was a lie. McCain hadn't even arrived yet, and while McCain claims he didn't himself directly listen to the Obama (in order to find out the questions in advance), McCain isn't claiming yet that no one briefed him or in any way told him what Obama was asked. Like they didn't.

Jake Tapper at ABC, along with Ben Smith at Politico, has been some of the few journalists willing to ask obvious questions that the corporate media so often don't ask. Tapper is on the trail of the phony "cone of silence" from yesterday's religious forum, and the McCain campaign is looking increasingly shifty. Here's what Jake has to report:

Regarding the revelation that Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., was not in a "cone of silence" after all while Sen. Barack Obama, D-Illinois, answered questions from Pastor Rick Warren, a couple points….

1) The McCain campaign's vitriol against NBC's Andrea Mitchell is odder still when you consider that the McCain campaign's blogger Michael Goldfarb was quoting her very same reporting approvingly as evidence that the Obama campaign was a bunch of whiners.

2) The McCain campaign's responses so far are entirely focused on McCain's geography and whether or not he himself could hear and see Obama being questioned.

To wit: McCain adviser Charlie Black told CNN, "We were in motorcade until 5:30 p.m. ET; then a holding room in another building with no TV."

Nothing that I've seen so far from the McCain campaign touches on whether or not any aides with McCain were getting reports on their Blackberries or cell phones on the questions Obama was getting and then sharing them with McCain.

- jpt

UPDATE: ABC News' Ron Claiborne, traveling with the McCain campaign, reports that McCain senior adviser Charlie Black would not say whether people around McCain while he was en route to Rick Warren's forum had access to blackberries and cell phones from which they could have tipped off Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., about the questions.

"There's no reason we would do that," was all Black would say, though quite obviously there is a reason.

NOTE FROM ROB: Let's not forget that CNN is carried on satellite radio as well. Both Sirius and XM broadcast the live CNN TV audio. In addition to receivers in cars and homes, there are also mobile (iPod sized) receivers. I can't imagine that a campaign wouldn't have a device like this for media monitoring on the go.