This post should have been the second part to a piece on Andrew Breitbart (part one is here), focusing not just on Breitbart but on his unhappy convergence with dying institutional media, which I think was something like a virus happening on a body destroyed by tuberculosis. It was by going through the various byways of that story, that I came across something else I think well illustrated how the press dealt with Breitbart, and finally this auxiliary case grew thick with its own material, an entirely separate pustule, an entirely separate post.
Benny Johnson is the new media editor for Buzzfeed, a site I have, at best, mixed feelings about. I try and get at these mixed feelings slantwise. Breitbart, in his paranoid ravings which appear modeled, if not plagiarized, from an old anti-semitic essay in a Lyndon LaRouche essay (again, that’s part one) would rant about a Democratic Media Complex, a separate and alien entity that had conquered his country. I think his reaction was born out of powerlessness, and if others related to what he said, it was not because of any shared political ideals – he had none – but they identified with this sense of powerlessness, of the sense that they were rooted to the ground while something like a free floating liberal spacecraft hovered above and gave out diktats. What Breitbart felt most of his life, I think, was insecurity and fear about his own socioeconomic status, which ended up being channeled into other avenues – racebaiting and hatred of a liberal elite – that others found convenient and profitable.
This post is not devoted to Breitbart, and I make this digression because this feeling of alienation that he may have felt is not uncommon among millions now, and I feel it when I flip through Buzzfeed. When I skim the site, I always move close to the metaphor that Breitbart moves towards in his own Righteous Indignation, that of an alien invasion, something like War of the Worlds, which wipes out a good chunk of the planet, and the remaining humans are quarried and sedated so that their vital elements might be extracted. While sedated, they are shown collections of happy memories or shared experiences or movies they liked. There is something automatic and machine-like to the collections, as these aliens are entirely unfamiliar with humanity, and these remembrances are simply extracted from earth records, then arranged in a way that suggests a consciousness that is like you, has seen the same movies, gone through what you have, though of course it is just a neat trick – machines of genius who are able to create a warm and inviting space, like a McDonald’s franchise where no one sells crack. What is conveyed by the site is non-homogenous homogenity – all experiences, however varied, strange, or difficult, can be fit into some listicle1. Everyone, male and female, gay and straight, all ethnicities are welcome. The very site design itself, simple and, frankly, a little ugly, is to convey the sense of a friend’s room rather than a sleek office space.
Buzzfeed might be the future of news; it just got millions from its investors to fund a news division2. So, that is in part how this post came about. Another part is that Benny Johnson was a fan of Breitbart’s and was involved in making a tribute video commemorating that man’s life, “Man Against the Mob”, a short film of him yelling at various people intercut with his roller skating among protesters. In his 2011 CPAC speech, he would describe those same protesters as animals, and joke about the protester women as worthless for being old and unfuckable (again, part one).
This film I came across via Yasha Levine’s excellent “Buzzbagger Ben”, a piece mainly devoted to Buzzfeed’s news division head, Ben Smith, but whose terminal paragraphs are given over to Johnson. The piece reminded me that I’d read, in January, Oliver Willis’s very good “22 Attacks On Obama And The Left From BuzzFeed’s Newest Editor”. I give kudos to both for their work, but I don’t think they reached far enough. This would be the third part of how this post came about: the desire to show how someone can put out some rather hateful material, then have that material immediately be forgotten about because it is convenient. This is apt when discussing Breitbart, because he could go ahead and destroy a service that helped out the indigent, or destroy someone hardworking and decent like Shirley Sherrod, and then have that malevolence forgotten about a few months later, because he was friendly with enough pressmen, and they were happy to act as a fountain of Lourdes. Johnson’s career arc is even more striking, from rabid partisan to cheery member of the happy welcoming Buzzfeed enclave.
So, Willis and Ames do excellent work, but they don’t go quite far enough. Benny Johnson actually made a very big appearance on the internet about six years ago, in the kind of Aleksey Vayner video that makes you ask, “This person actually exists?”
It was “Support the Troops the College Republican Way”. The point of ire towards the video was not that someone was helping the troops, but what felt like the utter remove from what was taking place, an attempt to heal something very grim with simple beef jerkey. Because this was the laugh line: “Beef jerkey. Love beef jerkey. That is the biggest thing. They just love it.”
There was also “UIowa College Republican Answers the Conservative Calling”:
A video called “Illegal Aliens Versus Cuban Cigars”:
Alright, presidential candidates I got a question for you. Here’s my Iowa driver’s license. Now. You’ll give these to illegal immigrants? Yet these illegal immigrants that are coming into our nation, getting driver’s license, and I can’t get a good Cuban cigar? I don’t see the connection here.
Andrew Breitbart wrote that liberals were more brutal, more evil than Al-Qaeda; a view happily shared by his fellow partisans, and again, indulged and forgiven by his press friends. Let the record show that when I came across these videos and their reaction, I didn’t want to put them in here. Others may have happily encouraged Breitbart’s sadistic impulses, and he showed them no restraint; I try hard to fight mine own. But after I came across the material in Benjamin Johnson’s later career, as one character might say, how could I resist?
There is nothing wrong with Johnson being misclassified in his orientation. I may lack Johnson’s looks, but I understand how we senstive types always get misfiled. There was a time when any woman without heavy make-up and any man who read poems outside a bathroom wall risked such misclassification. I am just surprised that he seemingly lacks empathy with those with whom he is miscategorized.
For instance, after this episode, he works for a while at the Family Research Council. The FRC was classified by the Southern Poverty Law Council as a hate group. There was a lot of back and forth over whether the designation was deserved, but the basis for the designation is undisputed. The FRC and its well-known leader, Tony Perkins, are virulently anti-gay. The entry on the Council at the SPLC website is here.
Here is a quote from a Tony Perkins fund-raising letter, taken from the SPLC site.
The videos are titled ‘It Gets Better.’ They are aimed at persuading kids that although they’ll face struggles and perhaps bullying for ‘coming out’ as homosexual (or transgendered or some other perversion), life will get better…It’s disgusting. And it’s part of a concerted effort to persuade kids that homosexuality is okay and actually to recruit them into that lifestyle.
This is Johnson while an intern at the FRC, advertising the benefits of the council for future interns:
Hello future Family Research Council intern. My name is Benjamin Johnson. I’m a current intern at the family research council and have been so for three months. And I am here to endorse this program and tell you that there is no better place to fight the battle of social conservatism than here in this beautiful building…uh…801 G Street, right across from the Smithsonian, right here in Chinatown, right here in the heart of our nation’s capitol. It’s a spectacular program. It’s totally worth your time. They’ll even make it worth your time, more so, by giving you free housing on Capitol Hill, a great living stipend, and if you play your cards right, there’s a real good chance you even get a free Family Research Council mug out of the whole deal. I don’t really see how you can pass that up. I just want to let you all know that there’s no better place to start waging your political battles against the leftist agenda, then right here in Washington, right here in the heart of our city. Hope you can join us soon.
Johnson also does work at the Heritage Institute and a “high ends arms manufacturer” in Switzerland. Who this might be, I can only guess. That “high end” is used suggests a consumer product, a luxury product, and so I guess maybe the high end pistol manufacturer Sig Sauer. The detail of his employment at Heritage is taken from his author bio at the Daily Caller, while the details of the high end arms manufacturer is taken from “Polanski’s Saviors: Hollywood, the MSM, and a Weak Obama”, an article published at Breitbart.com (Johnson’s articles at Breitbart). The articles by Benny Johnson at Breitbart, though without author photo, are most certainly by the same Benny Johnson as some of the articles overlap with those credited to Benny Johnson at The Blaze, which are accompanied by an author photo.
Johnson has also worked for Accuracy In Media, conducting interviews and putting together video segments. It is here that we might see what makes so much of Johnson’s work repellent – it is not that he presents ideas that one might disagree with, but that he seems to set up certain people as convenient targets. His persona in this and other videos might be described as “Every 80s villain, ever”. Pauline Kael once described John Glover’s Scrooged character as someone whose hair is always asking, “Tennis, anyone?” Benny Johnson’s hair asks the same question.
There is this video, “The REAL Congressional Black Caucus”, where he seems to clown eye just about everyone except Allen West, who is allowed to speak at length and without edits. There are certain tropes brought up here that can’t help but make me think he’s playing sly racial games, giving the clown eye to someone in traditional african dress and trying on pimp furs.
I don’t think I would have an issue with some iconoclastic comedian who had a sarcastic, nasty take on all peoples, whether they be the Black Caucus, the Catholic Church, whoever. The first rule is to be funny, the second rule is to be merciless. There is, however, a very strong contrast in attitude between how he acts in the Caucus video, and how he is with Ann Coulter, a figure who provides much for savage ridicule, but who he treats with complete deference.
He interviews her for a half hour and not once finds anything to make fun of in anything she says:
Johnson also appears in the AIM video “Dick Durbin LOVES $60 fees!”, a video about overdraft fees, which I found interesting for one detail. It includes a fairly lengthy excerpt of the theme music to Raiders of the Lost Ark. Given that this is a political ad, and given that Steven Spielberg is fairly protective about how his music is used, and given that Accuracy in Media promotes a conservative agenda that empahsises the importance of property rights, I can only assume that Accuracy in Media got the rights to the music and Spielberg is far more passionate about the issue of overdraft fees than I thought. The same goes for MIA, whose “Paper Planes” seems to be used at even greater length.
The attempt at simple provocation, at treating one group as an enemy, continues on in a piece written for The Blaze, “New Black Panther Field Marshal: Whites ‘Should be Thankful We’re Not Hanging Crackers By Nooses…Yet, Yet, Yet’”. The ostensible news value is that this marshal supposedly was involved in preventing white men and women from voting in the ’08 election. Its more specific purpose appears to be to quote the things this man has said in order to create a vile image to be hated by those who visit The Blaze.
From the piece:
“You should be thankful we’re not running around here hanging crackers by nooses and all that kind of stuff, yet, yet, yet.”
“Some of us, some of y’all – are even scared to have a wet dream about killing the g*ddamn cracker.”
“We’re raising men and women in this army, we don’t have time for punks. We don’t allow fa*gots and lesbians in this army– sorry, wrong army. This is for black liberation, not rainbow liberation.”
“Just imagine everybody listening right now, you walk outside on your block in your hood, and everybody on your block is now revolutionary. Everybody on your block is ready to bang on this cracker. Can you imagine what kind of community that would be? … That is the kind of community our ancestors would be proud of.”
“And we’ll really show this cracker a project that’s behind never wish he would have started. Turn them projects out, because a black power project and no crackers allowed up in here. So much to the point that then their developer will be scared to come in here; we’re taking it. Just like we took our land for our garden, G*damnit, the projects is next. We’re taking it back, block by block, house by house, street by street, hood by hood, town by town, city by city, state by state.”
“You can fight this white man– and I’m not telling you to go out there and attack nobody– but in self-defense it’s okay to fight back. We’re taught to send this cracker to the cemetery; when he put his hand on us, we send him to the cemetery in self defense. Again, I’m not telling you to attack anyone, but if they put their hands on you and if you are a [unintelligble], and in the name of your creator, and the name of our ancestors, we’re to kiss them goodbye, kiss ‘em goodbye, kiss ‘em goodbye.”
The article is very effective in generating a reaction. I take some of the quotes of the commenters, casually and without cherry picking:
If Barry had a son, he would probably look like BeeBop Shabazz Tideley Wink.
To Samir Shabazz
You are a punk. You talk and thats all you do. Bring your a$$ dwn to Port Orange Florida and I guarantee the crackers here will make sure you never walk again bitc*
This is one of Eric “The Red” Holders people.
What most whites are afraid to admit….and what Rev. Jesse Peterson will tell you is true….is that this kind of rabid hatred is common throughout black communities. Blacks are told whites are the basis of all their problems and failings and lack of ability to achieve in this society, so whenever they get a chance they think they’re evening the score.
Since the vast majority are not very bright, they can’t understand that beating an innocent white to death can’t be payback since the white did nothing to them and they haven’t suffered anything anyway. Whining about slavery two hundred years ago doesn’t even factor into the equation, since they were never slaves. They love to hate whitey and their abject hostility and animosity will only continue to get worse. It gives them an excuse to blame someone else besides themselves for their many failures and lack of achievement.
White racism is almost non-existent and slavery is a non-issue. Blacks can’t get ahead as a group…with or without AA gimmies…. because their group I.Q. average is only 85, and no racial group in the country has an average that low.
Somebody needs to convince them of that instead of pretending they’re victims of some sort, because they’ve already killed, beat, raped and tortured far too many whites already, and it is only going to continue to get worse as it has these last three years. Our families are at risk daily.
And this POS has been a guest of the Muslim in chief at the white house
Sorry I don’t think he will change. He does all black americans an injustice. Why doesn’t Holder go after these guys? Are they related? This is what the dem’s are all about.
It is, I think, boilerplate rabble rousing. I give lengthy excerpt:
Lets look at the five point international criminal precedent this administration has set-
Obama’s Newest Entitlement program; open to any Enemy of the State:
1. If you blow off your genitalia on Christmas day, we will read you your Miranda Rights before ever noting what you say.
2. If you shoot up an Army base killing 11 solders while yelling Allah Akbar, we will blame ourselves and our stressful wars of occupation, not radical Islam.
3. If you are the self proclaimed mastermind of the most successful plot to kill Americans in history, and over see its bloody completion, we will be sure to try you in a respectable downtown Manhattan civilian court.
4. If you attempt to kill thousands in Time Square, we will not even allow the words “Islamic Extremist” in the courtroom.
5. *Brand New!* If you are an admitted Russian Spy bent on scrounging as many states secrets as you can from liquored diplomats in cocktail lounges, we will give you a free trip home and wont even trouble you with a trial.
Sadly, this spineless administration has seen fit to open new chapters of naivety precisely when the World needs realism. Through this administration, we have demonstrated that our legal system is obtusely political and cripplingly agenda driven. Its laws are pulled by the shaky whims of an administration far more concerned with political correctness than constitutional or a national security. In this world filled with enemies, and criminals America needs a leader, not a man-child bent on winning three more Nobel’s.
The only way this administration can get a legal footing is to go after law-abiding states such as Arizona for enacting laws that 73% of America Approves of. The Democrats own Governors are disgusted by the move. The political condescension of which is unprecedented in American legal history.
A chilling and shockingly honest portrayal of poor immigration policy by CNN. This is a freak act of journalistic integrity aimed squarely upon the crippling policies of arch-tolerance and appeasement. CNN, for perhaps the first time I applaud you. In the light of recent events, let us not be too obtuse to the grasp that these people are taking dead aim at America.
If you are a peaceful Muslim, please comment on this. Let me know you find this equally offensive and confounding.
Apparently, Johnson divides muslims between those peaceful and non-peaceful. There are good and bad muslims, just as there used to be good and bad jews, and they must demonstrate clearly their allegiance. The issue does not appear to be immigration reform, but hysteria that the west is about to be over-run by radical muslims.
Chances are you’re in not in the 20% of Americans who support the blasphemous Ground Zero mega-mosque.
But guess what? You are currently paying for the Imam who wants to build it to visit Saudi Arabia, Dubai, Abu Dhabi, Bahrain and Qatar to raise money for it.
[this video now carries the message: "Obama Financing Imam's Tri..." The YouTube account associated with this video has been terminated due to multiple third-party notifications of copyright infringement.]
London-based Arabic-language newspaper that interviewed Abdul Rauf reported that he said he would also [on his State Department funded trip to the middle east] collect money from Muslim and Arab nations around the world — raising the possibility that the American government is helping him build contacts in oil-rich states.
This is yet another obtuse, politically cumbersome move made by an administration crippled by its need for multicultural adoration. Why not instead send the Imam to Pakistan where he can help shovel out drowning families, or to Somalia where he can persuade vicious Islamic Radicals to stop murdering in the name of his peaceful religion? Such a blissful stance toward the enemies of civilization has the potential for chilling consequences.
“Most Muslims love Osama Bin laden, like I love him myself.”
One can nod politely as our President lectures us on the evening of Ramadan, enlightening us as to how peaceful and beautiful Islam is, pleading with us to rise to his level of cultural relativism where we make no distinctions between Islam and Christianity, Ground Zero Mosques or Amish country churches, good or evil.
How enchanting an existence President Obama must have. It is yet another thing to actually live in reality, outside the cozy glow of your teleprompter, your 70-person secret security detail, and your princesses’ $75,000-a-day taxpayer funded Spanish beachside pleasure sprees. In the real world there are Islamic radicals who wish death to us and they widely support this Mosque.
The real question that most Americans are asking is, “Where is the outcry from those ‘peaceful Muslims’ we always hear about?” Where are the protests against these vile British Muslim activists that promise death to those that support the military? Where are the protests against the actions of Hamas or the insanity of this Mosque proposal? There is nothing but silence so far as I can hear.
When our POTUS raises a glass of non-alcoholic beverage in a toast to Islam, in the spirit of peace let us raise one with him. However when Obama defends the incendiary mosque on the grounds that it is legal, then let us protest. How cowardly is this President’s excuse. Of course it’s legal. The question is whether it’s right and what precedent does it set. If the project is indeed now righteously doomed than what has Obama once more proven? That this the administration has again acted against the will of the American people… with our own tax dollars.
The Breitbart articles were written in 2010; the Blaze piece on Samir Shabazz has a publication date of May 21, 2012. The last piece I look at, and one very much a part of this xenophobic trend of identifying an other and hating it, is again from The Blaze, and published May 18, 2012. It deals with overseas U.S. tourism advertising, and it’s called “Swamp People, Hippies, Hijabs, and a Gay Couple: See How the Obama Admin Is Branding America Abroad (& the LGBT Adviser Who’s Behind It!)”. I’d say of all of Johnson’s work, this is the one that really made me want to throw up.
From the piece:
Last week, President Obama made history by being the first sitting president to publicly support gay marriage. Now, his administration is the first to openly advertise homosexuality around the globe as an “American ideal.” The Blaze has uncovered documents that show how central gay rights themes have been to the administration and how they are being used by the administration to propagate a rebranding of America and its values.
Second, in a prominent scene, two gay men are shown riding a trolley together, one sleeping on the other’s shoulder. And the actors featured in the scene are a gay couple who were specifically recruited for a “homosexual presence” in the ad. According to an interview with Outsmart Magazine, the two actors, Edward R. Cox and Gideon Hodge, are to be “Face of Gay America to the World.” In the interview, the actors gushed over the role:
“They told us this was the first-ever travel commercial for America. And they wanted gay representation
in it!”
The direct connection from the administration to the controversial commercials has now come to light through Obama official John Connor. Connor presently serves as Obama’s Director of the Office of White House Liaison at the United States Department of Commerce. He is openly gay and was in charge of Obama’s LGBT outreach efforts in the northeastern United States during the 2008 Presidential campaign.
The accompanying pictures and their captions:
And of course, we’re gay friendly now.
Nothing says America…like Hinduism.
Apparel shopping?
She found one!
Norman American Traditions
I think it’s the Hindu Holi festival, but I don’t think that matters to the writer.
A dream come true!
American music!
More american music!
Yes! America!
Again, this piece was not done in some ancient history, but last year. I don’t think anything would justify such an ad, but I could understand the feeling behind it and Johnson’s other work if it was made by an older man, an uneducated man, perhaps worn down by the lack of opportunity, so that he would turn to this kind of vile, petty loathing. Johnson is a man in his twenties, a Magna Cum Laude graduate from the University of Iowa with a degree in organic chemistry and developmental psychology (“Benny Johnson Bio Campaign Tech 2013″). If I once felt anger at what he wrote, I now only feel exhaustion and despair, that someone who could do so much, creates such trash. It’s like stumbling upon a man of privilege and Princeton graduate tagging up a church wall.
That an amateur such as myself came across Johnson’s work makes me assume that the Buzzfeed news editor, Ben Smith, a professional journalist, and Jonah Peretti, widely considered to be brilliant3, have also come across his work and consider it of no consequence. Buzzfeed, whatever my objections to it, is inclusive. Their News site has been out front in support of same sex marriage. Their listicles include “28 Signs You Were Raised by Persian Parents”, “27 Signs You Were Raised By Immigrant Parents”, “27 Things You Had To Deal With As The Only Black Kid In Your Class”. You might find such insights made banal when they’re in listicle form, but they do not treat the subject as the outsider, as a thing. I can only assume that Buzzfeed is something like a restaurant where they serve everyone, yet where the waiters happily make fun of their customers’ funny names or clothing when they’re within earshot, indifferent to whether they hear or not. The customers are expected to abide this, that it is a joke, something of which it will be insisted, “forget it, let’s move on, okay?”, much as would be implied of Andrew Breitbart’s treatment of ACORN and Shirley Sherrod, and the customer will have no choice but to agree.
The second part of my Andrew Breitbart piece was to focus on the decay of the press, and how such a decay allowed for the brief ascendance of Breitbart. This decay is all affecting, and ever present every day, though we may not perceive it, as there is always a surfeit of news, just a question of what news. The news not covered does not involve a missing ideological perspective, so much as a people who are outside of reach of the national papers, and whose coverage would entail not simply a few hours of watching TV, or even interviews, but an in-depth commitment that most press organizations now lack the resources to make. Were I to pick one such story, it would be the fast food strikes in St. Louis and Detroit, which have been ably written about by Josh Eidelson (“Surprise fast food strike planned in St. Louis “ and “Fast Food Strike Wave Spreads to Detroit”), and few others. The men and women of those strikes fight harder for something than Benny Johnson has ever fought for anything in his life, and yet this man, who has had the easier path, has nothing better to do with his possibilities than make the most squalid, spiteful work. He appears to believe the news of the world is a rightful representation of the world, and those he insults don’t exist in actuality. Were I to ask this man why he did what he did, I can’t imagine a single answer that could not be likened to an irresponsible child, and I can’t think of an answer that would not move me from exhaustion to cold anger.
Absent a proper conclusion, I close with an excerpt from Chris Hayes’ essential Twilight of the Elites:
Though it’s obviously a far cry from the antebellum South, extreme inequality of the particular kind that we have produces its own particular kind of elite pathology: it makes elites less accountable, more prone to corruption and self-dealing, more status-obsessed and less empathic, more blinkered and removed from informational feedback crucial to effective decision-making. For this reason, extreme inequality produces elites who are less competent and more corrupt than those in a more egalitarian social order would. This is the fundamental paradoxical outcome that several decades of failed meritocratic production has revealed: As American society grows more elitist, it produces a worse caliber of elites.
The problem we now face is that there is a very real sense in which the winners of twenty-first-century America live on a different continent than everyone else.
FOOTNOTES
1 Some accurate insights into this disposable culture that creates a connection that is perfunctory and shallow, a kind of machine press friendliness, something very different from the brief unforced intimacies of the short essays on The Awl or The Hairpin, might be found in Dwight MacDonald’s classic essay, “Mass Cult and Mid Cult”:
Masscult is bad in a new way: it doesn’t even have the theoretical possibility of being good. Up to the eighteenth century, bad art was of the same nature as good art, rpodcued for the same audience, accepting the same standards. The difference was simply one fo individual talent. But Masscult is something else. It it not just unsuccessful art. It is non-art. It is even anti-art.
Masscult offers its customers neither an emotional catharsis nor an aesthetic experience, for these demand effort. The production line grinds out a uniform product whose humble aim is not even entertainment, but merely distraction. It may be stimulating or narcotic, but it must be easy to assimilate. It asks nothing of its audience, for it is “totally subjected to the spectator.” And it gives nothing.
[A] work of High Culture, however inept, is an expression of feelings, ideas, tastes, visions, that are idiosyncratic and the audience clearly responds to them as individuals. Furthermore, both creator and audience accept certain standards. These may be more or less traditional; sometimes they are so much less so as to be revolutionary, though Picasso, Joyce and Stravinsky knew and respected past achievements more than did their academic contemporaries; their works may be seen as a heroic breakthrough to earlier, sounder foundations that had been obscured by the fashionable gimcrackery of the academies. But Masscult is indifferent to standards. Nor is there any communication between individuals. Those who consume Masscult might as well be eating ice-cream sodas, while those who fabricate it are no more expressing themselves than are the “stylists” who design the latest atrocity from Detroit.
One might qualify this indictment by noting that quite a few of those Detroit atrocities are now mourned as a lost era in automobile craftsmanship; one might also note that the Buzzfeed’s archive of long form essays is enviable, the work there carrying all the qualities which I find absent in the business end of the site. “Why Did Jodon Romero Kill Himself On Live Television?” by Jessica Testa is a prime example of such, an essay dyed deep with the empathy and moral investigation in the lives of others, and of which Benny Johnson’s work is entirely dry.
Peretti’s giddiness stands in enviable contrast to the dreary news from more established quarters of the media. Time Inc. has been cut adrift, Newsweek is a magazine no more, and the Times has suffered through yet another round of layoffs. Meanwhile, BuzzFeed’s investors—which include venture funds, the Hearst publishing corporation, and Huffington Post co-founder Ken Lerer—put $35 million into the company last year. Those funds allowed the start-up, formerly little known to anyone over 25, to embark on a series of moves designed to grab adult attention. Peretti hired star political blogger Ben Smith to assemble a news operation, and Washington’s Twitter feeds soon filled with scooplets from a band of frenetic reporters. BuzzFeed has since added sports and Hollywood coverage and even long-form journalism to its sugary listicles.
Jonah Peretti was 29 and had already earned a reputation as something of a wise guy. He had been a technology teacher at a New Orleans private school when he was admitted to a graduate program at MIT. His plan was to study ways networks might foster communication among teachers, but got sidetracked midway through his master’s thesis. In 2000, Nike was inviting customers to create footwear with personalized wording. The company had been criticized widely for selling sneakers made by desperately poor people in impoverished countries. Peretti, tall, skinny and bespectacled, submitted his request: He wanted his sneakers emblazoned with the word SWEATSHOP. Nike declined. At which point, Peretti did a clever thing: he e-mailed.
Nike replied. Back and forth they went: Peretti pressing his request; Nike, grasping at excuses, going so far as to refuse on the grounds that “sweatshop” was slang and therefore not permissible. Peretti, citing Webster’s, insisted it was not. He ended the exchange with a final request: “Could you please send me a color snapshot of the ten-year-old Vietnamese girl who makes my shoes?” What happened next represents one of those moments in which the tectonic media plates experienced a subtle but profound shift: Peretti offered the e-mail trail to Harper’s. The magazine declined. So, on January 17, 2001, Peretti forwarded the e-mails to 10 friends. Those friends, in turn, forwarded the e-mails to other friends and before long, a lot people who had never heard of Jonah Peretti—some of them in Australia—were sending around his e-mail conversations with Nike.
To his credit, Peretti completed his thesis on teacher communication, but his mind was elsewhere, looking for ways to replicate the sensation he had experienced with Nike. He left Cambridge and moved to New York, where he started a laboratory for what he called “contagious media.” At Eyebeam Art & Technology Center, Peretti, together with like-minded friends including his sister, Chelsea, an aspiring stand-up comic, produced what would come to be regarded as early independent benchmarks of virality: blackpeopleloveus.com—in which white people try to ingratiate themselves with black friends in a manner so compellingly offensive that it earned a piece in The New York Times; and the “breakup hotline,” a telephone number and accompanying website for women attempting to rid themselves of unwanted suitors. “I was trying to have an impact on culture,” Peretti says.
(Some small aesthetic edits have been made since publication; the footnotes, and the details regarding John Glover’s hair, eighties movie villains, and the part about The Blaze piece on the appointment of John Connor making me want to vomit, were all added on April 22nd. For whatever reason, Glenn Beck’s website, The Blaze, had been italicized, and the italics were removed on the same date.)
(Excerpts from Righteous Indignation are transcribed from the audio book; I know that Andrew Breitbart has quite a few fierce partisans who will question whether it is an accurate transcript. I might make a paragraph break where there isn’t one, or a comma where there should be a semicolon, or a reverse of such; however, I may be a harsh judge, but I am a fair one, and I have made no convenient edits or removes to distort the text to a convenient meaning, and I encourage others to check my transcript against the written text of the memoir. Breitbart partisans might find other avenues of attack, but I would discourage them from wasting time on that one.)
The sort of minor figure that will inspire later historians to wonder why his brief moment received such attention, and why his death got such notice, just as it might be difficult to explain to a person outside an era why some plate juggler or quirky singer was an object of such fascination. I believe that a person often reveals themselves the most in the books that they write, and I had enough interest in Breitbart to read (or listen to) his memoir, Righteous Indignation, a book with several insights, though perhaps not the ones that the writer intends. Having read this book, I find that many of his epitaphs, often written by sympathetic or friendly reporters, or friends outright, ring utterly false. The best of the bunch, easily, one written without affection, is Alex Pareene’s “What Andrew Breitbart and What Made Him”, striking the proper of bored repulsion, and properly focusing on what drove this man. He barely had any interest in political policy, knew nothing about the marginal tax rate or chained CPI, but had a craving for fame and intellectual repute.
A good chunk of what I’ll write here will be speculation, but it will be speculation based as much as possible on what Breitbart said or wrote. That it is speculation does not mean it will be malicious. Though I think many details of his life are well known, many are given insufficient weight. Much analysis has been external, viewing Breitbart as he seemed to view others, entirely as a political actor, and by political I mean someone without inner life, only someone with a series of statements and acts of which you were in sympathy or opposition. I do think at various points in his life, the question of why he acts in a particular manner can be answered only with speculation, but diligent speculation at least. I stress again that a lot of the discussion about the man before and after his death conveys a very different man than I discern. The consensus is that he was a happy warrior, a man who gave good fight but respected and often liked the opposition, who made a slow but happy ascent in a new field of internet news, an ordinary joe happy in his skin. I see something different: a man who felt a violent hatred for opponents he considered subhuman, someone who envied the wealth and renown of the Hollywood elite, who craved the intellectual aura of academia, a man stressed out by a lack of professional and economic opportunity, an unimportant man who deeply wished to be important.
It might be assumed that any such analysis would be unreliable since, ideologically, I am supposed to hate this man. The qualities, good or ill, of the analysis lie with the analysis itself, but I do not hate Andrew Breitbart. I dislike him. I pity him and think he was pathetic. That is something very different from hate. However, make no mistake, Andrew Breitbart did hate his targets, intensely, virulently, violently, and this is a point cheerfully understated or ignored by the memories of his friends.
It was always funny to many of his friends that Andrew Breitbart, after he became famous, was probably most famous for being a 100 percent polarizing political lightning rod. The reason that was funny was two-fold: He didn’t actually have strong philosophical/policy beliefs – at all – and he was always perfectly comfortable and perfectly welcome in ideologically and culturally diverse settings. Like my L.A. backyard, dozens of times.
That doesn’t mean the guy stumbled accidentally into political conflict. He lived for it. He was genuinely, convincingly, overwhelmingly outraged at the workaday biases of liberal media, academia, and entertainment, and always positioned himself smack dab in the center of it.
I quote Breitbart’s own words, from Righteous Indignation, about his feelings towards what he labeled as the Democrat Media Complex, the collective of people who work in academia and media who supposedly hold great influence over political life. It’s a short excerpt, but I bold the most notable parts:
At the exact moment in my life when I was recognizing the strength of my anti-leftism, my anti-communism, at the exact point when I was seeing that my emotions and theories were unintentionally driving me towards an accidental culture warrior status, at the exact juncture when I was realizing that the most brutal, evil force I could imagine wasn’t Al-Qaeda or radical Islam – at least you know where they’re coming from – the brutality of their mission and their anti-Western, anti-classical liberal hatred, but the complex surrounding me 24-7 in the form of attractive people making millions of dollars whose moral relativism and historical revisionism and collective cultural nihilism were putting them in the same boat as the martyrs of radical Islam, rather than red state Americans. At the exact time when I was undergoing the fundamental recognition that my neighbors in West Los Angeles were acting to undermine national cohesion in a time of war which put me in a perennial state of psychic dissonance.
I’m going to stress again what he’s saying here: Brad Pitt, Susan Sarandon, Bill Maher, Michael Eric Dyson, whatever other luminary you choose, do not simply have an outsize voice, but ARE MORE BRUTAL, MORE EVIL THAN AL-QAEDA. I ask two questions: 1) Is it really a surprise that such a man would be polarizing? 2) Should such outrage be seen as convincing, or simply repellent, disturbing, lunatic?
There is no irony, no smilies, no happy winks around the excerpt that I have left out. It is simpleminded, brutal rage, speaking of these people as worse than those who buried thousands in the dust of New York. That quite a few of these people may have had friends and family who died on that day, who served in Iraq and Afghanistan only makes the statement more loathsome. It is not a thrown away remark at some public event, but one committed to print. Nor is it inconsistent at all with the violent contempt he showed at other moments.
We are assured by various writers, that however he might have appeared, Breitbart was a man without genuine malice for his adversaries. In his obit, Jack Shafer quotes the man,”They want to portray me as crazy, unhinged, unbalanced. OK, good, fine. Fuck you. Fuck you. Fuck you,” then goes on: “These sound like angry words from an angry man, but they weren’t. An F-bomb from Breitbart’s lips was a sort of Irish blessing, an invitation to get in the ring with him to see who was the champ and who was the chump.” Chris Beam’s profile, “What makes the conservative pundit tick”, ends on this note:
He used the spare moments before going onstage to sermonize into the camera of yet another liberal blogger. After the interview, the blogger turned his camera off and extended his hand to Breitbart. “What I will tell you is, I wish that I had your talent,” he said. “Because somehow you rose from-what-nowhere, and you’ve got a very big voice right now. So to that extent, you’re a kind of aspiration for me.” Breitbart grinned, adding: “Emphasis on the ass!”
The callous written declaration that his opponents are more evil, more brutal than Al-Qaeda tinges all these amities with falseness – the affect is not in the hateful gesture, but in the show of amity. The first is brutally sincere, the second is for show. His loathsome statement is not an isolated moment, but one of many.
Here he is at a Tea Party event where he speaks of his desire for a civil war – not a war of words, but an actual war. He wants this because he believes that since the military is on his side, they’ll win that war. Again, there is no irony here, no qualifying wink. He in fact stresses, “I’m not kidding”. He wants to wipe the enemy out.
The camera is directly on him, and the audio is clear. I transcribe the comments, and again bold the most notable.
BRING THEM ON. I must say, in my non-strategic…because I’m under attack all the time, you see it on Twitter, they’re intolerant and call me gay…they’re vicious, there are death threats and everything…and so, there are times where I’m not thinking as clearly as I should…and in those unclear moments I always think to myself: fire the first shot. Bring it on. Because I know who’s on our side. And they know that. They can only win a rhetorical or propaganda war, they cannot win. We outnumber them in this country, and we have the guns. (crowd laughter) I’m not kidding. (crowd laughter) They talk a mean game, but they will not cross that line. Because they know what they’re dealing with. And I have people who come up to me in the military (makes a gesture that the person has officer stripes), major names in the military, who grab me and go “thank you for what you’re doing”, and we’ve got your back. So…(very loud crowd laughter) They understand that. These are the unspoken things. We know. They know. They know who’s on their side. They’ve got Janeane Garofolo. We are freaked out by that. (laughter) When push comes to shove, they know who’s on our side. They are the bullies on the playground. And they’re starting to realize, what if we were to fight back? What if we were to slap back? You know, these union thugs, these SEIU union thugs…I’m just waiting. Bring it on. I’m sick of it. I am sick of this Trumka guy [Richard Trumka, head of the AFL-CIO], I am sick of this John Sweeney [former head of the AFL-CIO], I am sick of the SEIU. I’m sick of them going to people’s homes. Executives’ homes and showing up, and the media not…you don’t think they have a problem with that? KATIE COURIC. What if we went to Katie Couric’s house? What if the Tea Party showed up at Katie Couric’s house? And scared the living crap out of her teenage kids? And that’s what they do, because they know the mainstream media won’t cover it. And so…just a part of me that wants them to walk over that line.
You see where the public Breitbart persona came from. He feuded constantly with liberal watchdog site Media Matters, waging Twitter-based war with MM senior fellow Eric Boehlert. Boehlert’s avatar portrayed him smiling, standing in front of foliage, sporting a beard. Breitbart grew out his beard and took an identical photo of himself. He would retweet, without comment, the anti-Breitbart tweets of others. He irritated liberal activists to no end, a pastime that gave him untold amounts of pleasure. My favorite moment: Breitbart infiltrating a group of anti-Koch protesters in Palm Springs, Calif., his feet lashed to a pair of Rollerblades.
Breitbart speaks of this very moment in his 2011 CPAC speech, and he speaks of the people at the event, without affection, but as a group that are contemptible and subhuman. Again, these are clearly audible, public remarks.
In this excerpt, his opponents are not human, they’re mindless robots. This moment is at 8:50-9:50, from “Andrew Breitbart CPAC 2011 Part 1″:
We’re filming them and you can see them looking at each other…looking for direction…where’s our community organizer in chief to tell us what to do right now…because we were programmed to chant…and just look good on television, where ABC, CBS, and NBC would have just gone there with cameras and said…”Community organizing group is upset that their funding has been taken away from the government…” And then ABC, CBS, and NBC would have said “They’re a great organization! And these conservative activists did something really mean. The end.” And then they’d talk about…stuff. And that’s the template. So what happened is they started to realize that I’d poured water on their circuitry and they started to frazzle (makes contorted shape).
In this next excerpt, his opponents, who in the Tea Party speech, he wanted to destroy with the army in a civil war, who he hated because they will not cross the line, will not commit violence, he condemns now because they are violent. They are not americans, they are animals. That he takes them to Appleby’s is not some gesture of solidarity, it’s to demonstrate that they are corrupt, that they don’t believe in their principles. Again, they are not human. They are a herd (at 13:38-14:38, from “Andrew Breitbart CPAC 2011 Part 3″):
We got them saying they wanted to string up Clarence Thomas…that they wanted to kill Roger Ailes…that they wanted to start a bloody revolution…I said, you know what? I got all the content I need…to show these…”We are the left, ask us why”…I found out why. They’re not american, I’m sorry. They’re animals. (loud applause) They’re being organized by the rest to intimidate the mass from shutting up. To shut up. And so, I’m on my rollerblades…and it’s time to pull my bar trick. Okay? And what do I do? I said to the crowd…okay, guys, it’s been a great day, let’s all go to Applebee’s! And guess where they went. They went to Applebee’s, like the herd that they are.
However, my favorite moment from this speech I leave to the last, (this one from “Andrew Breitbart CPAC 2011 Part 3″ at 11:42-12:06), where this ravishing figure declares a bunch of women at the demonstration worthless because they are old and ugly:
The Code Pink ladies, they’re tedious at this point…you know, they’re boring…it’s not fun to watch them. They’re not even good-looking anymore. It used to be they were kinda slutty lefties (audience laughter)…”oh, I could imagine at a bar, I…” (more audience laughter) They’re getting long in the tooth…
I’ll just digress briefly: oh, to be a woman sexually desired by this jowly, balding beached whale of a man. When this guy drops money on the dresser, pay for play with some sporting girl, doubtless she has some hope that the rumors are true and the coke has limped out his dick.
That Breitbart was so polarizing is because of the manifestation of this hate, and though friendly journalists did attempt to soften this up, when he express himself in his memoir, the vitriol is explicit: Brad Pitt is worse than Al-Qaeda. That he was a man absent any strong “political” beliefs, by which we mean he has any views on any policy, is seen by Welch as a contradiction, but which I see as something going hand in glove with his poisonous attitude. It is belief in, and attempts to further, specific policies which often lessen animosities. The attempts to bring about immigration reform, same sex marriage, ending Guantanamo, ending the war on drugs, all these embrace diverse coalitions, and require those within to look past differences to common sympathies. Breitbart is entirely unmoored from this, looking to politics without wanting to reform or improve it, only as a theater for violence. It is well and aptly described by Breitbart’s bête noir, Saul Alinsky in Rules for Radicals as a state of madness:
Those who, for whatever combination of reasons, encourage the opposite of reformation, become the unwitting allies of the far political right. Parts of the far left have gone so far in the political circle that they are now all but indistinguishable from the extreme right. It reminds me of the days when Hitler, new on the scene, was excused for his actions by “humanitarians” on the grounds of a paternal rejection and childhood trauma. When there are people who espouse the assassination of Senator Robert Kennedy or the Tate murders or the Marin County Courthouse kidnapping and killings or the University of Wisconsin bombing and killing as “revolutionary acts,” then we are dealing with people who are merely hiding psychosis behind a political mask.
Breitbart views two specific groups as worse than Al-Qaeda: academia and Hollywood. These villains may be common among the right, but I don’t think they were adopted totems on his part – his anger towards these two was something innate. I’ll go first with his loathing of academia, and a detail in his life that’s sometimes mentioned but not, I think, looked square on. He writes in Righteous of his scattershot attention span, that he doesn’t have the patience to stay on a point for a few seconds, which makes the internet a suitable haven, while also exacerbating the malignancy. The symptom is made explicit in this interview, “Andrew Breitbart on Palin, Couric, Tina Fey, Glenn Beck and More” by Shushannah Walshe:
Q: Do you want Glenn Beck’s job, now that it is free?
A: I have ADD. But I have it worse than anyone that I know. And so when I’m on a set, I feel like I’m utterly constrained and feel like I need like an ADD drug like Adderall or something…if television could conform to my creativity and my desire to be out there in the field and having fun then I would be for it. But it seems kind of expansive for the 5 o’clock hour on Fox News.
This scattershot focus is treated as an amusing, eccentric trait, but I don’t know if this was necessarily true for the man actually living it. Breitbart was undistinguished in high school, and pulled in a 2.0 GPA at Tulane. He writes of his hard partying ways at his alma mater as the reason why he did so poorly at school, and speaks of it as either-or, you either do well at school or have a great time, when most students happily do both. You need one to deal with the stress of the other – the hardest drinkers at a school are always at the med school. The other excuse is that he was stuck reading critical theorists when he wanted to be reading american writers – “I wanted to read Mark Twain and Emerson and Thoreau” (from “Andrew Breitbart’s conservative Internet empire” by Rebecca Mead). It’s an incongruous passion; Breitbart is a man who was enraged at dissent during the Iraq war, and Twain was one of the fiercest critics of the war in the Philippines. Thoreau and Emerson were radical progressives, the very people he hated so much in his own life. The declaration of the names suggests an abstract mantra rather than writers he ever got around to reading.
So there are signs that his own mind stymied him from accomplishing what he truly wanted, and that his partying at Tulane wasn’t just simple fun, and not just an escape from the problem, but an excuse for his own failure – I failed at the task not because I lacked ability, but because I didn’t bother to try. That he wished to be seen as intelligent, that he was not indifferent to this, shows up in Righteous. He devotes an outsize chunk to his receipt of a Lincoln Fellowship at the Claremont Institute and his time spent there. It is portrayed as a certification of intellectual achievement from a distinguished institution, when it is nothing of the kind. The Institute is a hard-right think tank that awards fellowships to advocates for the cause, with non-witch Christine O’Donnell and radio host Mark Levin among those rewarded.
He happily sprinkles french phrases, like fait accompli, throughout his memoir, though I differ with him on the use of some. Referring to a forgotten Clinton era “scandal”, he writes of the desire of a widow to have her husband buried in Arlington Cemetery as a petite bourgeoisie affectation. I tend to associate this phrase with those in the lower middle class who wish for the trappings of wealthier respectability, while this woman was married to one of the wealthiest men on the planet and Arlington carries no economic distinction, only a military one. The behavior shown is simply the entitlement of the wealthy – they get to go wherever they want, in both life and death. There is also his use of non-french phrases like “cognitive dissonance”, which he brings out to convey what german intellectuals experienced when they settled in Santa Monica. This term, for me, describes a conflict of very strong feelings – while Breitbart is trying to describe the distance between European intellectual temperament and the sunny Cali landscape. The word he is looking for, I think, is alienation.
I do not bring up these examples to be petty, but to point out that his approach to language is exactly the opposite of the pose he often affects, of a simple, direct man who uses the simple, direct language of a man unconnected with the academy. Here, he appears to do entirely the opposite, using language not out of habit or for proper purpose, but solely to convey to the reader a semblance of intelligence – I know french words and abstractions. This, again, is speculation, but there is another part of the book, a chapter called “Breakthrough”, where the intent appears even more obvious.
“Breakthrough” stands out from the rest of the memoir, because despite Breitbart’s education, most of the book has no reference to theory, history, or philosophy, while this section is heavy with it. The positive reviews in the conservative press specifically single it out for praise.
Right smack in the middle of this volume is where Mr. Breitbart’s narrative takes off like a rocket. The chapter “Breakthrough” is in and of itself well worth the price of “Righteous Indignation.”
Mr. Breitbart fingers the people who later would aid and abet the importation of cultural and political poison to our shores. He “names names” of those in this drama who arguably were serious threats to the nation’s security.
The chapter’s 21 pages track an in-depth research on the influence of such intellectual rogues as Herbert Marcuse, Theodor W. Adorno, Wilhelm Reich and their ilk.
The second part of the book is a history lesson on the progressive/liberal movement in America. It’s not nearly as detailed as Jonah Goldberg’s amazing Liberal Fascism, but it doesn’t need to be, and doesn’t aspire to be. This isn’t a history book; it has a different mission.
Nevertheless, this section plainly and calmly lays out the basic facts of how the progressive left-wing agenda first came to these shores with the help of many establishment people such as the vaunted Edward R. Murrow. Breitbart tells the history of how the Frankfurt School spread their radical ideals throughout the country.
Of all the things Righteous Indignation does, perhaps its most important function is to pull back the curtain on the unholy alliance between all the cultural and media institutions and the left-wing industrial complex and expose how they fit together like puzzle pieces to advance an agenda. If you trusted the media or the entertainment industry before reading this book, your eyes will be opened. If you didn’t, you will know you are not alone.
This history of the influence of the Frankfurt school on american media, cited in these reviews as a keystone of the memoir, and built up within the memoir as its center, appears to be taken almost entirely, without attribution or mention in the main text, footnotes, or lengthy acknowledgements, from two essays, “Cultural Marxism” by William Lind and “The New Dark Age: The Frankfurt School and Political Correctness” by Michael Minnicino, which originally appeared in Fidelio, a magazine published by Lyndon LaRouche. “The Frankfurt School and Political Correctness” has had a heavy influence on far right thought, and many of its ideas show up also in the manifesto of Anders Breivik (PDF), the Norwegian mass murderer. Breivik gives proper citation of Minnicino’s work, Breitbart does not.
These are the footnotes for “Breakthrough” – they carry no mention of Lind or Minnicino. They appear to be almost entirely citations of quotes of the various philosophers sprinkled through the text.
The similarities are close enough that we might go through all four texts, side by side, to see the shared material. The section from Breitbart’s “Breakthrough” chapter devoted to the Frankfurt school will serve as a guide.
I color code it as follows.
Breitbart:
Frankfurt School
Minnicino:
Frankfurt School
Lind:
Frankfurt School
Breivik:
Frankfurt School
Here is the opening, which sets out the chapter’s intent, an attempt to explain how the Democratic Media Complex, a convergence of liberal academia and the entertainment industry which supposedly controls the political thought of the United States, came into being:
When you look at the history of the Soviet Union, what you see is the conversion of hundreds of millions to a corrupt and insidious world view via the overpowering propaganda of communism. Yes, they used force. But they also used every means at their disposal to control the culture, the everyday lives, the very thoughts of their citizens. When I was at Tulane, I saw the same cultural forces at work. The forces of the thought police, the cultural fascisti. People in positions of power who decided what was okay to think, and what to write. What words meant, and who was allowed to say them. Tribunals without oversight, kids thrown out of college for uttering the wrong sentiments. Looking back, I thank god every day that I partied to excess at Tulane, because it kept me from buying in to that worldview, from learning that language. If I hadn’t been busy having fun, I could have become a professor. Gotten tenure, and taught that cultural marxism. Propagated it for a living. I could’ve reinforced and propagated the complex, because it would have reinforced my position.
Later, I saw that the cultural marxism of Tulane wasn’t restricted to Tulane. It was everywhere. From the mainstream media, to Hollywood, to the educational system, to the government. And when I began researching the origins of that pervasive cultural marxism, I realized that this wasn’t a result of America’s suddenly and spontaneously embracing a rebellious counterculture in the 1960s. It started long before that. It started from the beginning.
This is Minnicino:
Our universities, the cradle of our technological and intellectual future, have become overwhelmed by Comintern-style New Age “Political Correctness.” With the collapse of the Soviet Union, our campuses now represent the largest concentration of Marxist dogma in the world. The irrational adolescent outbursts of the 1960′s have become institutionalized into a “permanent revolution.” Our professors glance over their shoulders, hoping the current mode will blow over before a student’s denunciation obliterates a life’s work; some audio-tape their lectures, fearing accusations of “insensitivity” by some enraged “Red Guard.” Students at the University of Virginia recently petitioned successfully to drop the requirement to read Homer, Chaucer, and other DEMS (“Dead European Males”) because such writings are considered ethnocentric, phallocentric, and generally inferior to the “more relevant” Third World, female, or homosexual authors.
This is not the academy of a republic; this is Hitler’s Gestapo and Stalin’s NKVD rooting out “deviationists,” and banning books-the only thing missing is the public bonfire.
We will have to face the fact that the ugliness we see around us has been consciously fostered and organized in such a way, that a majority of the population is losing the cognitive ability to transmit to the next generation, the ideas and methods upon which our civilization was built. The loss of that ability is the primary indicator of a Dark Age. And, a new Dark Age is exactly what we are in. In such situations, the record of history is unequivocal: either we create a Renaissance-a rebirth of the fundamental principles upon which civilization originated-or, our civilization dies.
This is Breivik:
Political Correctness now looms over Western European society like a colossus. It has taken over both political wings, left and right. Among so called Western European “conservative” parties the actual cultural conservatives are shown the door because being a cultural conservative opposes the very essence of political correctness. It controls the most powerful element in our culture, the media and entertainment industry. It dominates both public and higher education: many a college campus is a small, ivy-covered North Korea. It has even captured the higher clergy in many Christian churches. Anyone in the Establishment who departs from its dictates swiftly ceases to be a member of the Establishment.
Breitbart then presents the idea that Teddy Roosevelt, Woodrow Wilson, and FDR were a triumvirate who tried to bring about a socialist autocracy, with only the constitution standing in the way. Though I might address this part in greater detail in a later edit, most of the ideas appear taken entirely from Jonah Goldberg’s Liberal Fascism without attribution. He then moves on to the period after World War II, when there is renewed threat of a Marxist takeover of the United States, this time by the Frankfurt School:
Mostly the constitution was standing in the way of the grand Hegelian synthesis of government power in the name of socialism. Wilson felt that true democracy and socialism were not just compatible, they were indistinguishable. All individual rights were subject to the rights of the state. Men as communities are supreme over men as individuals. Both Roosevelt and Wilson were far less concerned with the rights of individuals or the value of Republicanism. It was the job of great leaders to hand down good governance. They thought great decisions should be made on high by men of high thought, and that the dirty process of democracy just blocked any chance of true change.
This philosophy paved the way for FDR and it echoes all the way down to Obama. Fortunately for America, after World War One, Wilson was extremely unpopular, and Wilson’s exit led off a decade of constitutional retrenchment. But in Europe, dirty business was afoot.
The chapter now turns to the rise of the Frankfurt school.
This is Breitbart:
Despite the fact that Marxism made headway in terms of policy in the United States and other western European countries in the early part of the twentieth century, orthodox Marxists had a major problem by the end of the 1910s. The actual worldwide Marxist revolution really hadn’t ignited. Not only hadn’t it happened, workers had spent the better part of five years murdering each other en masse in World War One. Marx’s dialectical prophecy had been proved false. But just because Marx’s dialectical materialism had proved false, and just because soon the new Soviet Union would be slaughtering its own citizens at record rates, didn’t mean that the Marxist intellectuals were going to give up on worldwide revolution.
That was where Antonio Gramsci and Gregor Lukacs came in. Gramsci was an italian socialist who saw tearing down society as the necessary precondition for the eventual victory of global Marxism. Marxism simply hadn’t won because men were weak; and men were weak because they were products of a capitalist society. “Man is above all else, mind. Consciousness”, Gramsci wrote in 1916. “That is, he is a product of history. Not of nature. There is no other way of explaining why socialism has not come into existence already.” Lukacs built on Gramsci. Deciding that Marx’s dialectic materialism wasn’t really a prophetic tool for predicting the future, it was a tool for tearing down society itself.
Simply destroying the status quo in the minds of the people would bring Marxism. Lukacs’s view was so influential that, for a time, he actually became deputy commissar of culture in Hungary, where he proceeded to push a radical sex ed program encouraging free love and rejection of judeo-christian morality. In that role, he tried to live out his ideology of destruction. “I saw the revolutionary destruction of society as the one and only solution. A worldwide overturning of values cannot take place without the annihilation of the old values and the creation of new ones by the revolutionaries.”
This is Lind:
Cultural Marxism began not in the 1960s but in 1919, immediately after World War I. Marxist theory had predicted that in the event of a big European war, the working class all over Europe would rise up to overthrow capitalism and create communism. But when war came in 1914, that did not happen. When it finally did happen in Russia in 1917, workers in other European countries did not support it. What had gone wrong?
Independently, two Marxist theorists, Antonio Gramsci in Italy and Georg Lukacs in Hungary, came to the same answer: Western culture and the Christian religion had so blinded the working class to its true, Marxist class interest that Communism was impossible in the West until both could be destroyed. In 1919, Lukacs asked, “Who will save us from Western civilization?” That same year, when he became Deputy Commissar for Culture in the short-lived Bolshevik Bela Kun government in Hungary, one of Lukacs’s first acts was to introduce sex education into Hungary’s public schools. He knew that if he could destroy the West’s traditional sexual morals, he would have taken a giant step toward destroying Western culture itself.
This is Minnicino:
In the heady days immediately after the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia, it was widely believed that proletarian revolution would momentarily sweep out of the Urals into Europe and, ultimately, North America. It did not; the only two attempts at workers’ government in the West- in Munich and Budapest-lasted only months. The Communist International (Comintern) therefore began several operations to determine why this was so. One such was headed by Georg Lukacs, a Hungarian aristocrat, son of one of the Hapsburg Empire’s leading bankers. Trained in Germany and already an important literary theorist, Lukacs became a Communist during World War I, writing as he joined the party, “Who will save us from Western civilization?” Lukacs was well-suited to the Comintern task: he had been one of the Commissars of Culture during the short-lived Hungarian Soviet in Budapest in 1919; in fact, modern historians link the shortness of the Budapest experiment to Lukacs’ orders mandating sex education in the schools, easy access to contraception, and the loosening of divorce laws-all of which revulsed Hungary’s Roman Catholic population.
This is Breivik:
Just what is “Political Correctness?” Political Correctness is in fact cultural Marxism (Cultural Communism) – Marxism translated from economic into cultural terms. The effort to translate Marxism from economics into culture did not begin with the student rebellion of the 1960s. It goes back at least to the 1920s and the writings of the Italian Communist Antonio Gramsci. In 1923, in Germany, a group of Marxists founded an institute devoted to making the transition, the Institute of Social Research (later known as the Frankfurt School). One of its founders, George Lukacs, stated its purpose as answering the question, “Who shall save us from Western Civilisation?” The Frankfurt School gained profound influence in European and American universities after many of its leading lights fled and spread all over Europe and even to the United States in the 1930s to escape National Socialism in Germany. In Western Europe it gained influence in universities from 1945.
Back to Breitbart:
Fortunately, the people of Hungary weren’t nuts. So they dumped him. That left Lukacs unemployed. But not for long. Felix Weill was a young radical from Frankfurt, Germany and a devotee of Marx. He, like Lukacs, saw the problems of implementing socialism, namely, that nobody really liked it very much, but like most of today’s lefty college students who live off their parents’ money while preaching the downfall of the capitalist system, he was rich. So he used his grandaddy’s money to fund the Institute for Social Research, which was really a precursor to John Podesta’s Center for American Progress, funded by George Soros.
To staff this new institute, which quickly became known as the Frankfurt School, Weill brought in, along with Lukacs, a Marxist philosopher by the name of Max Horkheimer. Lukacs didn’t last long. But Horkheimer did. At the Frankfurt School, he coined a term that would embody the whole corrupt philosophy of his fellow travellers’ mission to destroy society and culture using the Marxist dialectic: critical theory.
Critical theory was exactly the material we were taught at Tulane. It was quite literally a theory of criticizing everyone and everything, everywhere. It was an attempt to tear down the social fabric by using all the social sciences – sociology, psychology, economics, political science, et cetera. It was an infinite and unending criticism of the status quo. Adolescent rebellion against all established social rules and norms.
“Critical theory”, says Horkheimer, “is suspicious of the very categories of better, useful, appropriate, productive, and valuable, as those are understood in the present order.” So, if you liked ice cream better than cake, or thought a hammer might be more useful than a screwdriver in a particular situation, you were speaking on behalf of the status quo. The real idea behind all of this was to make society totally unworkable by making everything basically meaningless. Critical theory does not create; it only destroys, as Horkheimer himself openly stated: “Above all, critical theory has no material accomplishments to show for itself.” No wonder my thought upon graduating was that getting a job was selling out.
When Horkheimer took over the Institute in 1930, he filled it up with fellow devotees of critical theory, like Theodor Adorno, Eric Fromm, and Herbert Marcuse. Each agreed with a central idea of critical theory, namely, that all of society had to be criticized ad nauseum. All social institutions levelled, all traditional concepts decimated. Marcuse later summed up well: “One can rightfully speak of a cultural revolution since the protest is directed toward the whole cultural establishment, including the morality of existing society. What we must undertake is a type of diffuse and dispersed disintegration of the system.”
This is Lind:
In 1923, inspired in part by Lukacs, a group of German Marxists established a think tank at Frankfurt University in Germany called the Institute for Social Research. This institute, soon known simply as the Frankfurt School, would become the creator of cultural Marxism.
To translate Marxism from economic into cultural terms, the members of the Frankfurt School – - Max Horkheimer, Theodor Adorno, Wilhelm Reich, Eric Fromm and Herbert Marcuse, to name the most important – - had to contradict Marx on several points. They argued that culture was not just part of what Marx had called society’s “superstructure,” but an independent and very important variable. They also said that the working class would not lead a Marxist revolution, because it was becoming part of the middle class, the hated bourgeoisie.
Who would? In the 1950s, Marcuse answered the question: a coalition of blacks, students, feminist women and homosexuals.
Fatefully for America, when Hitler came to power in Germany in 1933, the Frankfurt School fled – - and reestablished itself in New York City. There, it shifted its focus from destroying traditional Western culture in Germany to destroying it in the United States. To do so, it invented “Critical Theory.” What is the theory? To criticize every traditional institution, starting with the family, brutally and unremittingly, in order to bring them down. It wrote a series of “studies in prejudice,” which said that anyone who believes in traditional Western culture is prejudiced, a “racist” or “sexist” of “fascist” – - and is also mentally ill.
This is Minnicino:
Fleeing to the Soviet Union after the counter-revolution, Lukacs was secreted into Germany in 1922, where he chaired a meeting of Communist-oriented sociologists and intellectuals. This meeting founded the Institute for Social Research. Over the next decade, the Institute worked out what was to become the Comintern’s most successful psychological warfare operation against the capitalist West.
Thus, for the Frankfort School, the goal of a cultural elite in the modern, “capitalist” era must be to strip away the belief that art derives from the self-conscious emulation of God the Creator; “religious illumination,” says Benjamin, must be shown to “reside in a profane illumination, a materialistic, anthropological inspiration, to which hashish, opium, or whatever else can give an introductory lesson.” At the same time, new cultural forms must be found to increase the alienation of the population, in order for it to understand how truly alienated it is to live without socialism. “Do not build on the good old days, but on the bad new ones,” said [Frankfurt school associate Walter Benjamin].
This is Breivik:
The Frankfurt School blended Marx with Freud, and later influences (some Fascist as well as Marxist) added linguistics to create “Critical Theory” and “deconstruction.” These in turn greatly influenced education theory, and through institutions of higher education gave birth to what we now call “Political Correctness.” The lineage is clear, and it is traceable right back to Karl Marx.
The parallels between the old, economic Marxism and cultural Marxism are evident. Cultural Marxism, or Political Correctness, shares with classical Marxism the vision of a “classless society,” i.e., a society not merely of equal opportunity, but equal condition. Since that vision contradicts human nature – because people are different, they end up unequal, regardless of the starting point – society will not accord with it unless forced. So, under both variants of Marxism, it is forced. This is the first major parallel between classical and cultural Marxism: both are totalitarian ideologies. The totalitarian nature of Political Correctness can be seen on campuses where “PC” has taken over the college: freedom of speech, of the press, and even of thought are all eliminated.
The second major parallel is that both classical, economic Marxism and cultural Marxism have single-factor explanations of history. Classical Marxism argues that all of history was determined by ownership of the means of production. Cultural Marxism says that history is wholly explained by which groups – defined by sex, race, religion and sexual normality or abnormality – have power over which other groups.
Another fact from that long-ago year, 1923, is equally significant: the intended name for the Frankfurt School was the Institute for Marxism. The Institute’s father and funder, Felix Weil, wrote in 1971 that he “wanted the Institute to become known, and perhaps famous, due to its contributions to Marxism as a scientific discipline…” Beginning a tradition Political Correctness still carries on, Weil and others decided that they could operate more effectively if they concealed their Marxism; hence, on reflection, they chose the neutral-sounding name, the Institute for Social Research (Institut für Sozialforschung).
Now back to Breitbart for a section that is almost entirely his own:
Again, where am I going with all this philosophical jabberwocky? Well, all of these boring and bleating philosophers might have faded into oblivion as so many marxist theorists have – but the rise of Adolf Hitler prevented that. With Hitler’s rise, they had to flee, virtually all of them – Horkheimer, Marcuse, Adorno, Fromm – were of Jewish descent. And they had no place to go. Except: the United States.
The United States’s tradition of freedom and liberty, its openess to outside ideas, and our highest value – freedom of speech – ended up making all of America vulnerable to those who would exploit those ideals. We welcomed the Frankfurt school. We accepted them with open arms. They took full advantage. They walked right into our cultural institutions and as they started to put in place their leadership, their language, and their lexicon, too many chose to ignore them. And the most dangerous thing you can do with a driven leftist intellectual clique is to ignore them.
We always feel that our incredible traditions of freedom and liberty will convert those who show up on our shores. That they will appreciate the way of life we have created. Isn’t that why they wanted to come here in the first place? We can’t imagine anyone coming here experiencing the true wonder that is living in this country and wanting to destroy that. But that’s exactly what the Frankfurt School wanted to do.
These were not happy people looking for a new lease on life. When they moved to California, they simply couldn’t deal with the change of scenery. There was cognitive dissonance. Horkheimer and Adorno, and depressive allies like Bertolt Brecht, moved into a house in Santa Monica on 26th street – coincidentally, the epicenter of my childhood. They had moved to heaven on earth from Nazi Germany, and apparently, could not handle the fun. The sun. And the roaring good times. Ingratitude is not strong enough a word to describe these hideous malcontents. If only they had had Ikea furniture, this would have made for a fantastic season of “The Real World”.
Brecht and his ilk were the Kurt Cobains of their day. Massively depressed. Nihilistic. People who wore full suits in eighty degree weather while living in a house by the beach. As Adam Cohen wrote in the New York Times, these were “dyspeptic critics of American culture.”
Several landed in Southern California, where they were disturbed by the consumer culture and the gospel of relentless cheeriness. Depressive by nature, they focussed on the disappointments and venality that surrounded them. How unnecessary it all was. It could be paradise, Theodore Adorno complained, but it was only California. Adorno was wrong; it was paradise.
To the rest of the world, America’s vision was a vision of paradise. And these marxists were here to try to destroy the best lifestyle man had ever created. If I could go back in a time machine, I would go back to kick these malcontents in their shins.
Except for the fleeing of the School to America, which is from Lind:
Fatefully for America, when Hitler came to power in Germany in 1933, the Frankfurt School fled – - and reestablished itself in New York City. There, it shifted its focus from destroying traditional Western culture in Germany to destroying it in the United States. To do so, it invented “Critical Theory.” What is the theory? To criticize every traditional institution, starting with the family, brutally and unremittingly, in order to bring them down. It wrote a series of “studies in prejudice,” which said that anyone who believes in traditional Western culture is prejudiced, a “racist” or “sexist” of “fascist” – - and is also mentally ill.
Back to Breitbart. He gives heavy emphasis on Edward R. Murrow’s involvement in getting the Frankfurt School into the country, and though Minnicino also suggests something sinister in the way the Frankfurt school was allowed in, neither he nor any one else makes mention of Murrow. Nothing in the chapter footnotes points to what basis there might be for Murrow’s key involvement.
Breitbart:
Members of the Frankfurt school had some American allies. Men who had accepted the Roosevelt-Wilson synthesis of Hegel and Marx, and who were not looking for the next step. The Frankfurt school had been sending mailers out to prominent fellow traveller sociologists in the United States for some years, and creating connections with them. Meanwhile, Columbia University’s sociology department was dying. They needed new blood, and they liked what they saw in the Frankfurt school. All the Frankfurt school had to do was to get into the country, and they’d take their place in the hallowed halls of American academia. Fortunately for them, there was an organization called The Institute of International Education, specifically devoted to helping fleeing scholars from Germany. The man who held the post of Assistant Secretary of the Emergency Committee in Aid of Displaced Foreign Scholars was one Edward R. Murrow, who helped ship in many of the Frankfurt School’s greatest minds.
Later, Senator Joe McCarthy would try to pillory Murrow in revenge for Murrow’s coverage of the McCarthy hearings by citing Murrow’s involvement with the Institute of International Education. But by then, McCarthy was finished. In any case, once in the country, the Frankfurt school was almost immediately accepted at Columbia University. It was a marriage made in hell. With their tentacles afixed to the institutions of higher education, the Frankfurt school philosophy began eking its way into every crevice of american culture.
Horkheimer’s critical theory became a staple of philosophy, history, and english courses across the country. Horkheimer himself took his show on the road, from Columbia to Los Angeles, to the University of Chicago. Meanwhile, Erich Fromm, one of the Frankfurt school’s main thinkers was pushing cultural marxism through psychology by blaming western tradition for the rise of Nazism and the rejection of Marxism. This was a fiction, of course. Convenient re-writing of science to meet a political agenda. Marxism is just as totalitarian as Nazism. So it would make sense that those who love communism quickly fell in love with Nazism in Germany. And those who resisted Communism, would resist Nazism. But Fromm had a convenient answer to protect the Marxists: Marxists had not gone Nazi, resisters to Marxism had gone Nazi.
Minnicino:
Part of the influence of the authoritarian personality hoax in our own day also derives from the fact that, incredibly, the Frankfurt School and its theories were officially accepted by the U.S. government during World War II, and these Cominternists were responsible for determining who were America’s wartime, and postwar, enemies.
At the same time, Max Horkheimer was doing even greater damage. As part of the denazification of Germany suggested by the R&A Branch, U.S. High Commissioner for Germany John J. McCloy, using personal discretionary funds, brought Horkheimer back to Germany to reform the German university system. In fact, McCloy asked President Truman and Congress to pass a bill granting Horkheimer, who had become a naturalized American, dual citizenship; thus, for a brief period, Horkheimer was the only person in the world to hold both German and U.S. citizenship.
In a period of American history when some individuals were being hounded into unemployment and suicide for the faintest aroma of leftism, Frankfurt School veterans-all with superb Comintern credentials – led what can only be called charmed lives. America had, to an incredible extent, handed the determination of who were the nation’s enemies, over to the nation’s own worst enemies.
Minnicino on Fromm:
In the 1930′s Erich Fromm had devised a questionnaire to be used to analyze German workers pychoanalytically as “authoritarian,” “revolutionary” or “ambivalent.” The heart of Adorno’s study was, once again, Fromm’s psychoanalytic scale, but with the positive end changed from a “revolutionary personality,” to a “democratic personality,” in order to make things more palatable for a postwar audience.
Nine personality traits were tested and measured, including:
conventionalism-rigid adherence to conventional, middle-class values
authoritarian aggression-the tendency to be on the look-out for, to condemn, reject and punish, people who violate conventional values
projectivity-the disposition to believe that wild and dangerous things go on in the world
sex-exaggerated concern with sexual goings-on.
From these measurements were constructed several scales: the E Scale (ethnocentrism), the PEC Scale (political and economic conservatism), the A-S Scale (anti-Semitism), and the F Scale (fascism). Using Rensis Lickerts’s methodology of weighting results, the authors were able to tease together an empirical definition of what Adorno called “a new anthropological type,” the authoritarian personality. The legerdemain here, as in all psychoanalytic survey work, is the assumption of a Weberian “type.” Once the type has been statistically determined, all behavior can be explained; if an anti-Semitic personality does not act in an anti-Semitic way, then he or she has an ulterior motive for the act, or is being discontinuous. The idea that a human mind is capable of transformation, is ignored.
Minnicino on “The Theory of the Authoritarian Personality”:
The Frankfurt School devised the “authoritarian personality” profile as a weapon to be used against its political enemies. The fraud rests on the assumption that a person’s actions are not important; rather, the issue is the psychological attitude of the actor-as determined by social scientists like those of the Frankfurt School. The concept is diametrically opposed to the idea of natural law and to the republican legal principles upon which the U.S. was founded; it is, in fact, fascistic, and identical to the idea of “thought crime,” as described by George Orwell in his 1984, and to the theory of “volitional crime” developed by Nazi judge Roland Freisler in the early 1930′s.
When the Frankfurt School was in its openly pro-Bolshevik phase, its authoritarian personality work was designed to identify people who were not sufficiently revolutionary, so that these people could be “re-educated.” When the Frankfurt School expanded its research after World War II at the behest of the American Jewish Committee and the Rockefeller Foundation, its purpose was not to identify anti-Semitism; that was merely a cover story. Its goal was to measure adherence to the core beliefs of Western Judeo-Christian civilization, so that these beliefs could be characterized as “authoritarian,” and discredited.
For the Frankfurt School conspirators, the worst crime was the belief that each individual was gifted with sovereign reason, which could enable him to determine what is right and wrong for the whole society; thus, to tell people that you have a reasonable idea to which they should conform, is authoritarian, paternalistic extremism.
Back to Breitbart, and a note on this section. It carries a footnote to Thomas Maier’s Doctor Spock: An American Life, for its source on Fromm’s philosophy influencing Benjamin Spock. There is no mention of Fromm in the cited pages, and no mention of Fromm in the book’s index. Freud is mentioned as an influence on Spock, but Freud was not part of the Frankfurt school. This is especially notable since Spock is mentioned as someone influenced by Fromm in Minnicino.
Here are the referenced pages from Thomas Maier’s Spock, pages 112 and 458, along with the index page for F where there might be a listing for Fromm or the Frankfurt School:
Breitbart:
Early on, Fromm embraced the ideas of Frankfurt School fellow Wilhelm Reich, who felt that psychological problems largely stem from sexual repression, and said that sexual liberation from societal morays could cure large numbers of people. Reich, whose psychoanalysis included disrobing his patients and then touching them, helped place the foundations of modern feminism, arguing that, the repression of the sexual needs creates a general weakening of intellect and emotional functioning. In particular, it makes people lack independence, willpower, and critical faculties.
“Marriage,” he wrote, “ruins lives. Marital misery, to the extent that it does not exhaust itself in the martial conflict, is poured out over the children.” Fromm also expanded on the parenting ideas of Lukacs, and John Dewey, who rejected parental authority, telling parents to stand by and let their children re-invent the wheel through experience. Fromm’s philosophy was imbibed by a young socialist student named Benjamin Spock, who would go on to shape a generation of parents, with his child-rearing book, The Common Sense Book of Baby and Child Care, which helped launch the self-esteem movement. At the same time, Frankfurt school scholar Theodor Adorno was sliding Marxism into the American consciousness by attacking popular trends in the world of art. First teaching at Columbia, then later at Princeton, he argued that television and movies were problematic, because they appealed to the masses. But television and the movies weren’t catering to the public tastes, they were shaping them, Adorno argued.
Popular art and culture had destroyed true art, which is always used for revolutionary purposes, he said. All popular art, therefore, had to be criticized as a symptom of the capitalist system. All art had to be torn down. Performance art and modern art found their philosophical foundation in Adorno. The long line stretching from Piss Christ to Karen Finley smearing herself with feces, to Susan Sarandon celebrating being hit with transsexual projectile vomit, all had its roots with Adorno.
This nihilistic influence in art reinforcing the destruction of cultural norms means that many grown adults have never experienced an epoch in which the transcendent and the innately beautiful have been celebrated as the artistic ideal. And it all started because a rat pack of Nazi fleeing depressives couldn’t appreciate leaving the world’s most oppressive place for the world’s most spectacularly free and beautiful place: Santa Monica. Google it!
Minnicino:
Thus, for the Frankfort School, the goal of a cultural elite in the modern, “capitalist” era must be to strip away the belief that art derives from the self-conscious emulation of God the Creator; “religious illumination,” says Benjamin, must be shown to “reside in a profane illumination, a materialistic, anthropological inspiration, to which hashish, opium, or whatever else can give an introductory lesson.” At the same time, new cultural forms must be found to increase the alienation of the population, in order for it to understand how truly alienated it is to live without socialism. “Do not build on the good old days, but on the bad new ones,” said Benjamin.
The proper direction in painting, therefore, is that taken by the late Van Gogh, who began to paint objects in disintegration, with the equivalent of a hashish-smoker’s eye that “loosens and entices things out of their familiar world.” In music, “it is not suggested that one can compose better today” than Mozart or Beethoven, said Adorno, but one must compose atonally, for atonalism is sick, and “the sickness, dialectically, is at the same time the cure….The extraordinarily violent reaction protest which such music confronts in the present society … appears nonetheless to suggest that the dialectical function of this music can already be felt … negatively, as ‘destruction.’ “
The purpose of modern art, literature, and music must be to destroy the uplifting-therefore, bourgeois – potential of art, literature, and music, so that man, bereft of his connection to the divine, sees his only creative option to be political revolt.
The dominant influence in the area came from Dr. Otto Gross, a student of Freud and friend of Carl Jung, who had been part of Max Weber’s circle when Frankfurt School founder Lukacs was also a member. Gross took Bachofen to its logical extremes, and, in the words of a biographer, “is said to have adopted Babylon as his civilization, in opposition to that of Judeo-Christian Europe…. if Jezebel had not been defeated by Elijah, world history would have been different and better. Jezebel was Babylon, love religion, Astarte, Ashtoreth; by killing her, Jewish monotheistic moralism drove pleasure from the world.” Gross’s solution was to recreate the cult of Astarte in order to start a sexual revolution and destroy the bourgeois, patriarchal family.
Discussion of women’s civil rights was forced into being just another “liberation cult,” complete with bra-burning and other, sometimes openly Astarte-style, rituals; a review of Kate Millet’s Sexual Politics (1970) and Germaine Greer’s The Female Eunuch (1971), demonstrates their complete reliance on Marcuse, Fromm, Reich, and other Freudian extremists.
Here is Minnicino on Fromm, making reference to Spock:
The Frankfurt School’s original 1930′s survey work, including the “authoritarian personality,” was based on psychoanalytic categories developed by Erich Fromm. Fromm derived these categories from the theories of J.J. Bachofen, a collaborator of Nietzsche and Richard Wagner, who claimed that human civilization was originally “matriarchal.” This primordial period of “gynocratic democracy” and dominance of the Magna Mater (Great Mother) cult, said Bachofen, was submerged by the development of rational, authoritarian “patriarchism,” including monotheistic religion. Later, Fromm utilized this theory to claim that support for the nuclear family was evidence of authoritarian tendencies.
In 1970, forty years after he first proclaimed the importance of Bachofen’s theory, the Frankfurt School’s Erich Fromm surveyed how far things had developed. He listed seven “social-psychological changes” which indicated the advance of matriarchism over patriarchism:
“The women’s revolution;”
“Children’s and adolescents’ revolution,” based on the work of Benjamin Spock and others, allowing children new, and more-adequate ways to express rebellion;
The rise of the radical youth movement, which fully embraces Bachofen, in its emphasis on group sex, loose family structure, and unisex clothing and behaviors;
The increasing use of Bachofen by professionals to correct Freud’s overly-sexual analysis of the mother-son relationship-this would make Freudianism less threatening and more palatable to the general population;
“The vision of the consumer paradise…. In this vision, technique assumes the characteristics of the Great Mother, a technical instead of a natural one, who nurses her children and pacifies them with a never-ceasing lullaby (in the form of radio and television). In the process, man becomes emotionally an infant, feeling secure in the hope that mother’s breasts will always supply abundant milk, and that decisions need no longer be made by the individual.”
Back to Breitbart:
It takes a sincerely deranged soul to want to deconstruct the good life and the optimistic citizenry in order to create mass intellectual and spiritual misery. But that’s exactly what they did. And as they constructed their philosophical dystopia, all the pieces of the modern leftist puzzle began falling into place. But all these major contributors to the Frankfurt school of thought paled in comparison with Herbert Marcuse, the founder of the New Left.
Marcuse was a former student of future Nazi philosopher Martin Heidegger, the father of deconstruction, the process by which every thought or writing from the past had to be examined and torn down as an outgrowth of its social milieu. Heidegger wasn’t shy about his intentions. He longed for the moment when the spiritual strength of the West fails, and its joints crack. When the moribund semblance of culture caves in, and drags all forces into confusion, and lets them suffocate in madness. Marcuse joined the Frankfurt school in 1933, and quickly became a leader of the movement. After he moved to the United States and became a citizen, he was hired by FDR’s Office of War Information to create anti-Nazi propaganda, despite his Marxism. He also worked in the Office of Strategic Services, the pre-CIA OSS, and the State Department, where he worked to prevent the United States from pushing Germany away from democratic socialism. He taught at Columbia, then Harvard, then Brandeis, and then, finally, at the University of California, in San Diego.
To contrast the lack of acknowledgement for the work of Minnicino and Lind, the details of this section by Breitbart on Marcuse and Heidegger are footnoted to the work of Jonah Goldberg’s Liberal Fascism, and the connection between Breitbart’s writing and the cited work is clear:
This was the ethos of Nazism that Heidegger wholeheartedly embraced and never forthrightly renounced, even decades after the extent of the Holocaust and other Nazi crimes were known. The Nazi critique of Western civilization was total. In his infamous rectorial address, Heidegger looked forward to the time–hastened by Hitler’s efforts–”when the spiritual strength of the West fails and its joints crack, when the moribund semblance of culture caves in and drags all forces into confusion and lets them suffocate in madness.”
Deconstruction’s indebtedness to the fascist avant-garde remains one of the most controversial subjects in academia today, precisely because that debt is so obvious and profound. Paul de Man, for example, was a Nazi collaborator in Belgium who wrote seething pro-Nazi and anti-Semitic articles for a fascist newspaper during the occupation. Herbert Marcuse, a protege of Heidegger’s, became the leader of the New Left’s academic brain trust. He attacked Western society mercilessly, arguing that “liberal tolerance” was “serving the cause of oppression”–an argument that echoed the fascist assault of the 1930s almost perfectly. Frantz Fanon, who preached about the “redemptive” power of violence, was widely seen as a direct heir of Georges Sorel, the pre-fascist theorist admired and emulated by Italian Fascists and Bolsheviks alike.
However, many of the details of this section – Marcuse’s joining the OSS and working for the state department, for instance – are nowhere to be found in Goldberg’s work, or the other cited books. They are, however, in Minnicino:
Part of the influence of the authoritarian personality hoax in our own day also derives from the fact that, incredibly, the Frankfurt School and its theories were officially accepted by the U.S. government during World War II, and these Cominternists were responsible for determining who were America’s wartime, and postwar, enemies. In 1942, the Office of Strategic Services, America’s hastily-constructed espionage and covert operations unit, asked former Harvard president James Baxter to form a Research and Analysis (R&A) Branch under the group’s Intelligence Division. By 1944, the R&A Branch had collected such a large and prestigious group of emigré scholars that H. Stuart Hughes, then a young Ph.D., said that working for it was “a second graduate education” at government expense. The Central European Section was headed by historian Carl Schorske; under him, in the all-important Germany/Austria Section, was Franz Neumann, as section chief, with Herbert Marcuse, Paul Baran, and Otto Kirchheimer, all I.S.R. veterans.
Marcuse remained in and around U.S. intelligence into the early 1950′s, rising to the chief of the Central European Branch of the State Department’s Office of Intelligence Research, an office formally charged with “planning and implementing a program of positive-intelligence research … to meet the intelligence requirements of the Central Intelligence Agency and other authorized agencies.” During his tenure as a U.S. government official, Marcuse supported the division of Germany into East and West, noting that this would prevent an alliance between the newly liberated left-wing parties and the old, conservative industrial and business layers.
Back to Breitbart:
He really hit his stride in 1955, however, with the publication of Eros and Civilization, the book essentially made Wilhelm Reich’s case that sexual liberation was the best counter to the psychological ills of society. Marcuse preferred a society of “polymorphous perversity”, which is just what it sounds like, people having sex every which way, with whatever. It wasn’t so much the freshness of Marcuse’s message that made the difference – it wasn’t a fresh message – as his timing. The kids brought up with Fromm and Freud and Spock were coming of age. The misplaced guilt of “The Greatest Generation” brought forth a new generation free to embrace Marcuse. While similar philosophies of sex had failed in the 1920s, 1930s, and 1940s, by the 1950s, the men and women who had suffered through the great depression and fought in World War II, were determined to raise privileged kids who would never have to actually fight for their country or work for their food. The result was a group of kids ready and able to participate in the sexual revolution promised by the Frankfurt school.
Marcuse excused sexual promiscuity as the fulfillment of the need for the people to rise up against western civilization and to free themselves of the sexual repression it created. Not a hard sell for teenagers. It was no wonder that in a very real sense his followers believed that they were doing something special when they made love, not war, a slogan attributed to Marcuse himself. They were using their sexual energy to bind the world together, rather than destroy it, as sexual repression would do. While Marcuse may not have been the most important intellectual force behind the Frankfurt school, he was its most devious and effective marketer. The advertising adage, “Sex sells”, was applied to selling a generation on the idea that their parents’ values and ideals were repressive and evil. Where, geographically, did Marcuse come to this nihilistic understanding? The picturesque cliffs of La Hoya overlooking the pacific ocean.
Lind:
After World War II ended, most members of the Frankfurt School went back to Germany. But Herbert Marcuse stayed in America. He took the highly abstract works of other Frankfurt School members and repackaged them in ways college students could read and understand. In his book “Eros and Civilization,” he argued that by freeing sex from any restraints, we could elevate the pleasure principle over the reality principle and create a society with no work, only play (Marcuse coined the phrase, “Make love, not war”). Marcuse also argued for what he called “liberating tolerance,” which he defined as tolerance for all ideas coming from the Left and intolerance for any ideas coming from the Right. In the 1960s, Marcuse became the chief “guru” of the New Left, and he injected the cultural Marxism of the Frankfurt School into the baby boom generation, to the point where it is now America’s state ideology.
Minnicino:
The founding document of the 1960′s counterculture, and that which brought the Frankfurt School’s “revolutionary messianism” of the 1920′s into the 1960′s, was Marcuse’s Eros and Civilization, originally published in 1955 and funded by the Rockefeller Foundation.
This erotic liberation should take the form of the “Great Refusal,” a total rejection of the “capitalist” monster and all his works, including “technological” reason, and “ritual-authoritarian language.” As part of the Great Refusal, mankind should develop an “aesthetic ethos,” turning life into an aesthetic ritual, a “life-style” (a nonsense phrase which came into the language in the 1960′s under Marcuse’s influence). With Marcuse representing the point of the wedge, the 1960′s were filled with obtuse intellectual justifications of contentless adolescent sexual rebellion. Eros and Civilization was reissued as an inexpensive paperback in 1961, and ran through several editions; in the preface to the 1966 edition, Marcuse added that the new slogan, “Make Love, Not War,” was exactly what he was talking about: “The fight for eros is a political fight [emphasis in original].” In 1969, he noted that even the New Left’s obsessive use of obscenities in its manifestoes was part of the Great Refusal, calling it “a systematic linguistic rebellion, which smashes the ideological context in which the words are employed and defined.”
One of the crowning ironies of the “Now Generation” of 1964 on, is that, for all its protestations of utter modernity, none of its ideas or artifacts was less than thirty years old. The political theory came completely from the Frankfurt School; Lucien Goldmann, a French radical who was a visiting professor at Columbia in 1968, was absolutely correct when he said of Herbert Marcuse in 1969 that “the student movements … found in his works and ultimately in his works alone the theoretical formulation of their problems and aspirations [emphasis in original].” The long hair and sandals, the free love communes, the macrobiotic food, the liberated lifestyles, had been designed at the turn of the century, and thoroughly field-tested by various, Frankfurt School-connected New Age social experiments like the Ascona commune before 1920. Even Tom Hayden’s defiant “Never trust anyone over thirty,” was merely a less-urbane version of Rupert Brooke’s 1905, “Nobody over thirty is worth talking to.” The social planners who shaped the 1960′s simply relied on already-available materials.
Breivik:
Marcuse may be the most important member of the Frankfurt School in terms of the origins of Political Correctness, because he was the critical link to the counterculture of the 1960s. His objective was clear: “One can rightfully speak of a cultural revolution, since the protest is directed toward the whole cultural establishment, including morality of existing society…” His means was liberating the powerful, primeval force of sex from its civilised restraints, a message preached in his book, Eros and Civilisation, published in 1955. Marcuse became one of the main gurus of the 1960s adolescent sexual rebellion; he himself coined the expression, “make love, not war.” With that role, the chain of Marxist influence via the Frankfurt School was completed: from Lukacs’ service as Deputy Commissar for Culture in the Bolshevik Hungarian government in 1919 to Western European and American students burning the flag and taking over college administration buildings in the 1960s. Today, many of these same colleges are bastions of Political Correctness, and the former student radicals have become the faculties.
Back to Breitbart:
Marcuse carried his critical theory in another destructive direction as well. While repeating the Marxist trope that the workers of the world will eventually unite, he saw the Third World’s anti-colonial movements as evidence that Marx was right. He recognised that in the United States, there would be no such uprising by the working class. He therefore needed a different set of interest groups to tear down capitalism using his critical theory. And he found those groups in the racial, ethnic, and sexual groups that hated the old order. These victimized interest groups rightly opposed all the beauties of western civilization with all the defiance and the hatred and the joy of rebellious victims. Defining their own humanity against the definitions of the masters.
Marcuse’s mission was to dismantle american society by using diversity and multiculturalism as crowbars with which to pry the structure apart piece by piece. He wanted to set blacks in opposition to whites, set all victim groups in opposition to the society at large. Marcuse’s theory of victim groups as the new proletariat, combined with Horkheimer’s critical theory found an outlet in academia, where it became the basis for the post-structural movement, gender studies, LGBT / queer studies, african american studies, chicano studies, etc. All of these blank studies brazenly described their mission as tearing down traditional judeo-christian values and the accepted traditions of western culture, and placing in their stead, a moral relativism that equates all cultures and all philosophies. Except for western civilization, culture, and philosophy, which are exploitative and bad.
Marcuse was widely accepted in the 1960s by the student movement, so much so that students in Paris during the 1968 uprising marched with banners reading “Marx, Mao, and Marcuse”. But he still wasn’t winning in America. Marcuse had a big, big problem. America’s founding ideology is still far sexier than that of the Marxists, who insist on a tyrannical state of equality, rather than freedom with personal responsibility. Even if Marcuse was promising unending sex, drugs, and rock ‘n’ roll, most Americans were more interested in living in liberty with their families. In a society that values virtue and hard work, rather than promiscuity and decadence. So Marcuse had to find a way to define the opposition. He found it, in what he termed, “repressive tolerance”.
In 1965, Marcuse wrote an essay by that name in which he argued that tolerance was good only if non-dominating ideas were allowed to flourish. And that non-dominating ideas could flourish only if dominating ideas were shut down. The realization of the objective of tolerance he wrote, would call for intolerance toward prevailing policies, attitudes, opinions, and the extension of tolerance to policies, attitudes, and opinions which are outlawed or supressed. America was experiencing a repressive tolerance under which dissenting viewpoints were stifled. What it needed was partisan tolerance. In other words, if you disagreed with Marcuse, you should be forcefully shut up, according to Marcuse. This made political debate very convenient for him and his allies. This totalitarianism is now standard practice on college campuses, in the media, and in Hollywood. The very places where the Frankfurt school sought to control.
The first amendment, the same instrument that allowed the Frankfurt school to land on our shores and express their pernicious ideas in freedom, was now curtailed by those who had benefited from it. Marcuse called for a tyranny of the minority, since the tyranny of the majority could not be overcome without a total shutdown. There’s another name for Marcuse’s partisan tolerance: political correctness. In fact, the term political correctness came from one of Marcuse’s buddies: Mao Tse-Tong. Mao used the term to differentiate between those who had, scientifically correct views, and those who did not. Those who did were termed “politically correct”. In 1963, just two years before Marcuse’s repressive tolerance, Mao came out with an essay entitled “Where do correct ideas come from?” In that essay, he argued that the marxist society determines correct ideas. And all incorrect ideas must be put out of their misery. Mao thought it; Marcuse thought it; and his ideological heirs thought it, and still think it. Hello, neighbor!
Lind:
To translate Marxism from economic into cultural terms, the members of the Frankfurt School – - Max Horkheimer, Theodor Adorno, Wilhelm Reich, Eric Fromm and Herbert Marcuse, to name the most important – - had to contradict Marx on several points. They argued that culture was not just part of what Marx had called society’s “superstructure,” but an independent and very important variable. They also said that the working class would not lead a Marxist revolution, because it was becoming part of the middle class, the hated bourgeoisie.
Who would? In the 1950s, Marcuse answered the question: a coalition of blacks, students, feminist women and homosexuals.
Fatefully for America, when Hitler came to power in Germany in 1933, the Frankfurt School fled – - and reestablished itself in New York City. There, it shifted its focus from destroying traditional Western culture in Germany to destroying it in the United States. To do so, it invented “Critical Theory.” What is the theory? To criticize every traditional institution, starting with the family, brutally and unremittingly, in order to bring them down. It wrote a series of “studies in prejudice,” which said that anyone who believes in traditional Western culture is prejudiced, a “racist” or “sexist” of “fascist” – - and is also mentally ill.
Most importantly, the Frankfurt School crossed Marx with Freud, taking from psychology the technique of psychological conditioning. Today, when the cultural Marxists want to do something like “normalize” homosexuality, they do not argue the point philosophically. They just beam television show after television show into every American home where the only normal-seeming white male is a homosexual (the Frankfurt School’s key people spent the war years in Hollywood).
Minnicino:
This popularization of life as an erotic, pessimistic ritual did not abate, but in fact deepened over the twenty years leading to today; it is the basis of the horror we see around us. The heirs of Marcuse and Adorno completely dominate the universities, teaching their own students to replace reason with “Politically Correct” ritual exercises. There are very few theoretical books on arts, letters, or language published today in the United States or Europe which do not openly acknowledge their debt to the Frankfurt School.
The witchhunt on today’s campuses is merely the implementation of Marcuse’s concept of “repressive toleration” – “tolerance for movements from the left, but intolerance for movements from the right” – enforced by the students of the Frankfurt School, now become the professors of women’s studies and Afro-American studies. The most erudite spokesman for Afro-American studies, for instance, Professor Cornell West of Princeton, publicly states that his theories are derived from Georg Lukacs.
Breivik:
The student revolutionaries were also strongly influenced by the ideas of Herbert Marcuse, another member of the Frankfurt School. Marcuse preached the “Great Refusal,” a rejection of all basic Western concepts, sexual liberation and the merits of feminist and black revolution. His primary thesis was that university students, ghetto blacks, the alienated, the asocial, and the Third World could take the place of the proletariat in the Communist revolution. In his book An Essay on Liberation, Marcuse proclaimed his goals of a radical transvaluation of values; the relaxation of taboos; cultural subversion; Critical Theory; and a linguistic rebellion that would amount to a methodical reversal of meaning. As for racial conflict, Marcuse wrote that white men are guilty and that blacks are the most natural force of rebellion.
The turning point in the academy came in the 1960s, when militant students launched a guerrilla attack on the traditions of Western culture and the liberal arts. Seeing that they could not gain lasting power through demonstrations alone, many of these militants opted to remain “in the system,” going on to become professors themselves. This generation of “Cultural Marxist radicals” has now become the establishment in the vast majority of our institutions of higher learning. As university head masters, deans, and department chairmen, they have set about hiring other ideologues in their own image and have instigated the repressive policies we know as political correctness. These politicised academics will be extremely difficult to dislodge from their current positions of power.
After this, Breitbart moves on to the influence of the Frankfurt school on Saul Alinsky, who supposedly helped implement their marxist plans; he goes through several of the rules listed in Alinsky’s Rules for Radicals, and explains how he attempts to employ them in a conservative counterstrategy.
What is striking about the comparison of the work of Breitbart, Minnicino, and Breivik, is how clearly they suggest a deeply paranoid mindset. The enemy is not simply corrupt or malicious, they are not simply well funded or have good lawyers; they are all powerful, all seeing and all controlling. They do not simply pay off politicos or have judges in their pockets, they are a tyranny. Breivik’s insanity is well known; Minnicino’s work was published by Lyndon LaRouche, a figure well known for his paranoid and lunatic view of the world. Following the killings in Norway, Minnicino issued a statement making clear that he had long renounced the opinions expressed in the essay, and gave his current perspective on the organization: “The LaRouche organization is a cult completely dominated by the deeply paranoid and mean-spirited personality of Mr. LaRouche and by his ill-informed conspiracy theories about science, philosophy, and history.” This statement, as well as his insightful note that it had been shamelessly plagiarized by dictators, conspiraphiles, and neo-nazis, can be found at Talk to Action, “Author Cited by Anders Behring Breivik Regrets Original Essay” by Chip Berlet.
Given this context, what is notable is that even though Breitbart makes adjustments to the text he is lifting, he very obviously does not change this paranoid tone. His perspective is as lunatic as Breivik’s.
Again, this is Breitbart:
When you look at the history of the Soviet Union, what you see is the conversion of hundreds of millions to a corrupt and insidious world view via the overpowering propaganda of communism. Yes, they used force. But they also used every means at their disposal to control the culture, the everyday lives, the very thoughts of their citizens. When I was at Tulane, I saw the same cultural forces at work. The forces of the thought police, the cultural fascisti. People in positions of power who decided what was okay to think, and what to write. What words meant, and who was allowed to say them. Tribunals without oversight, kids thrown out of college for uttering the wrong sentiments.
Later, I saw that the cultural marxism of Tulane wasn’t restricted to Tulane. It was everywhere. From the mainstream media, to Hollywood, to the educational system, to the government.
This is Breivik:
Political Correctness now looms over Western European society like a colossus. It has taken over both political wings, left and right. Among so called Western European “conservative” parties the actual cultural conservatives are shown the door because being a cultural conservative opposes the very essence of political correctness. It controls the most powerful element in our culture, the media and entertainment industry. It dominates both public and higher education: many a college campus is a small, ivy-covered North Korea. It has even captured the higher clergy in many Christian churches. Anyone in the Establishment who departs from its dictates swiftly ceases to be a member of the Establishment.
That Breitbart may have simply taken ideas from another text and placed it in his own book, has two unintended consequences, one hilarious, the other disturbing. Michael Minnicino writes his piece as someone impassioned by the loss of great art, despairing that we are stuck with ubiquitous monochromatic musical ugliness where there once was Beethoven, and Beethoven was listened to widely. This is the propulsive theme of “The New Dark Age” – not Adam Smith or the constitution – and it is almost entirely removed. Only at one point does Breitbart leave behind a brief reminder, in order to contrast the great art of the past with the degenerate performance art of today:
This nihilistic influence in art reinforcing the destruction of cultural norms means that many grown adults have never experienced an epoch in which the transcendent and the innately beautiful have been celebrated as the artistic ideal.
This is a sentence that carries through the theme of Minnicino’s essay, and is appropriate for someone who lives for great art. However, it stands strangely next to Breitbart’s earlier declaration of his love for eighties music like Aztec Camera and The Cure – the very music Menino hates, the unavoidable, ear clawing music that does not uplift or tranquilize, is made by some of Breitbart’s favorite bands. There is a later, even more ridiculous statement by Breitbart, given this context: “Frankly, John Waters’ movies and Johnny Knoxville’s Jackass series are more up my alley than Mel Gibson’s The Passion of the Christ.” The same man who mourns the loss of the transcendent and the innately beautiful, is a big fan of Jackass.
The other part is far more disturbing, some of which I think Breitbart was entirely indifferent to, and some of it an unintended effect of his numbskullery. I believe I detect the shadow of Oswald Spengler’s Decline of the West overcasting Minnicino’s essay, Spengler’s thesis of a pristine western culture corrupted by an alien jewish influence. LaRouche, among various hateful ideas, has various hateful ideas about jews; and Michael Minnicino, whose “The New Dark Age” bears such striking similarities to Breitbart’s work, gave a lecture containing many of the same ideas, “Freud and the Frankfurt School”, about the construction of an artificial jewish ethnic identity, at a LaRouche ideas conference. This conference also featured the lecture “America’s ‘Young America’ movement: slaveholders and the B’nai B’rith” by Anton Chaitkin, which presented the thesis that B’Nai Brith was something like the Illuminati, a hidden manipulative hand behind the Civil War and the assassination of Lincoln. “New Dark Age” carries some of these elements, positing that a group of jews fled to the United States, achieved extraordinary hidden political power, then manipulated their traditional pawn, the black man of the ghetto, against their aryan christian adversaries.
More explicitly, “New Dark Age” posits that anti-semitism is something constructed as a form of social control, that accusations of anti-semitism are a type of christian persecution, and that the idea of anti-semitism is a weapon employed to destroy western civilization. This thinking also served the immediate interests of LaRouche at the time: the tax fraud charges for which he served jail time were a result of this persecution, and an example of the hidden hand of hidden masters.
Horkheimer and Adorno firmly believed that all religions, Judaism included, were “the opiate of the masses.” Their goal was not the protection of Jews from prejudice, but the creation of a definition of authoritarianism and anti-Semitism which could be exploited to force the “scientifically planned reeducation” of Americans and Europeans away from the principles of Judeo-Christian civilization, which the Frankfurt School despised. In their theoretical writings of this period, Horkheimer and Adorno pushed the thesis to its most paranoid: just as capitalism was inherently fascistic, the philosophy of Christianity itself is the source of anti-Semitism.
The Frankfurt School devised the “authoritarian personality” profile as a weapon to be used against its political enemies. The fraud rests on the assumption that a person’s actions are not important; rather, the issue is the psychological attitude of the actor—as determined by social scientists like those of the Frankfurt School. The concept is diametrically opposed to the idea of natural law and to the republican legal principles upon which the U.S. was founded; it is, in fact, fascistic, and identical to the idea of “thought crime,” as described by George Orwell in his 1984, and to the theory of “volitional crime” developed by Nazi judge Roland Freisler in the early 1930′s.
When the Frankfurt School was in its openly pro-Bolshevik phase, its authoritarian personality work was designed to identify people who were not sufficiently revolutionary, so that these people could be “re-educated.” When the Frankfurt School expanded its research after World War II at the behest of the American Jewish Committee and the Rockefeller Foundation, its purpose was not to identify anti-Semitism; that was merely a cover story. Its goal was to measure adherence to the core beliefs of Western Judeo-Christian civilization, so that these beliefs could be characterized as “authoritarian,” and discredited.
When Lyndon LaRouche and six of his colleagues faced trial on trumped-up charges in 1988, LaRouche identified that the prosecution would rely on the Frankfurt School’s authoritarian personality fraud, to claim that the defendants’ intentions were inherently criminal. During the trial, LaRouche’s defense attorney attempted to demonstrate the Frankfurt School roots of the prosecution’s conspiracy theory, but he was overruled by Judge Albert Bryan, Jr., who said, “I’m not going back into the early 1930′s in opening statements or in the testimony of witnesses.”
Breitbart’s hatred of his liberal opponents, combined with his utter obtuseness and sense of melodrama, manages to take this problem in the original text and make it even worse.
This is how Breitbart’s section on the Frankfurt School begins:
Again, where am I going with all this philosophical jabberwocky? Well, all of these boring and bleating philosophers might have faded into oblivion as so many marxist theorists have – but the rise of Adolf Hitler prevented that. With Hitler’s rise, they had to flee, virtually all of them – Horkheimer, Marcuse, Adorno, Fromm – were of Jewish descent. And they had no place to go. Except: the United States.
The United States’s tradition of freedom and liberty, its openess to outside ideas, and our highest value – freedom of speech – ended up making all of America vulnerable to those who would exploit those ideals. We welcomed the Frankfurt school. We accepted them with open arms. They took full advantage. They walked right into our cultural institutions and as they started to put in place their leadership, their language, and their lexicon, too many chose to ignore them. And the most dangerous thing you can do with a driven leftist intellectual clique is to ignore them.
This, a lengthy excerpt, is how the section on the Frankfurt School ends:
And so Marxism came stealthily to our shores. Squatted here, planted its roots, and grew like a weed. All before we even noticed it. It happened at the university level, at the governmental level, and at the media level. We didn’t notice, because we couldn’t read the rhetorical garbage these jokers were spewing. And we didn’t think it was important. Our constitution survived a revolution and a civil war and two world wars. Why should we worry about a few german eggheads? Especially since America was economically thriving under such oppression.
The foundations of the complex had been built. But we still couldn’t see the complex itself. The complex was hidden under paragraphs of obscure text. And in college curricula, and in places like Tulane University, under the unlikely auspices of American Studies. Talk about a wolf in sheep’s clothing. It all seemed so benign. And we figured that if college students went off and had sex, and did drugs, and engaged in teenage rebellious decadence, ah well, they’d eventually come back to the Constitution just the way their parents had.
We slept while the other side armed. And while we snoozed, they secretly stole away our defensive weaponry. Our allegiance to the constitution, and to freedom of speech and opinion. It was only when they fired the first shots over our bow that we noticed we were unarmed. And that they had weaponized the cloudy bacteria of their philosophy into full bore ideological anthrax, ready to deploy on a moment’s notice.
The jews here are presented with every aspect of the Illuminati stereotype – invisible, all powerful, whose sole purpose is to undermine and destroy democracy. Marcuse is not simply a malign influence – he is omnipotent, able to shape the course of history with his hidden hand. That Marcuse works in the state department after the war is not a throwaway detail in Minnicino, but a key moment in his world-shaping influence – America had “handed the determination of who were the nation’s enemies, over to the nation’s own worst enemies”. While ordinary citizens try to go about their lives, the Frankfurt school plot treachery. The jews of Nazi Germany were portrayed as rats infested with lice; the jews of the Frankfurt school carry bacteria that they can develop into weapons to destroy their hosts. I don’t think the melodramatic aspect of Breitbart’s conclusion comes from any anti-semitic writing. It reminds me of nothing less than the opening prologue to an old movie, and I think Breitbart is trying to cop something of its style in order to give significance to himself and his struggle.
From the prologue of The War of the Worlds (though it of course share some phrases, the book’s prologue is quite different):
No one would have believed in the early years of the 21st century, that our world was being watched by intelligences greater than our own. That as men busied themselves about their various concerns, they observed and studied. Like the way a man with a microscope might scrutinize the creatures that swarm and multiply in a drop of water. With infinite complacency men went to and fro about the globe, confident of our empire over this world. Yet, across the gulf of space, intellects, vast and cool and unsympathetic regarded our plant with envious eyes. And slowly and surely, drew their plans against us.
Due to his depraved hatred of his liberal opponents, Breitbart’s essay implies an unintended depraved suggestion: if the Frankfurt school, a group of war refugees who were, in Breitbart’s words, virtually all jews, gave root in the United States to a force – again in Breitbart’s words – that is more brutal, more evil than Al-Qaeda, then maybe jewish refugees should not have been accepted in the United States in the first place. This man, who was adopted by jews, has ended up creating a vile piece of anti-semitic propaganda of jewish Illuminati, jews who are bacteria bearing vermin, jews who are malevolent world conquering aliens, entirely through clumsy accident.
It is because he leaves out another chunk of Minnicino’s essay that makes Breitbart’s claims of the control of the cultural elite especially ridiculous to a reader. What Breitbart leaves out of Indignation, is an equally irrational part of Minnicino’s essay, but at least it makes the thesis plausible, if you accept it. Breitbart has taken a story about a bunch of magicians or telepaths, and tried to edit it into a traditional detective story, so that plots that revolve around characters being directed by telepathic orders which might make sense in a science fiction world make no sense at all in a real one. What Breitbart leaves out of his essay is Minnicino’s idea that the Frankfurt school is able to shape political policy in the United States because they study techniques of mind control, and are thus able to control policy by manipulating the population.
It is for this reason that Minnicino stresses that Marcuse served in the pre-CIA OSS – what is incongruous in Breitbart is crucial in the original; the mind control experiments of the CIA, the overseas manipulation by the agency of other countries is to be applied domestically, in the United States. The context might be ridiculous and lunatic, but inside this context, Breitbart’s insistence that what happens in Hollywood is more important than what happens in D.C. at least makes sense, whereas without the context, it comes across as a moronic misunderstanding. The elite of the Frankfurt School will shape policy not through dissemination of ideas, but by brainwashing, through the methods of media, polling, and drugs.
A few excerpts from “The New Dark Age” should make the theme obvious:
Here, then, were some potent theories of social control. The great possibilities of this Frankfurt School media work were probably the major contributing factor in the support given the I.S.R. by the bastions of the Establishment, after the Institute transferred its operations to America in 1934.
In 1937, the Rockefeller Foundation began funding research into the social effects of new forms of mass media, particularly radio. Before World War I, radio had been a hobbyist’s toy, with only 125,000 receiving sets in the entire U.S.; twenty years later, it had become the primary mode of entertainment in the country; out of 32 million American families in 1937, 27.5 million had radios – a larger percentage than had telephones, automobiles, plumbing, or electricity! Yet, almost no systematic research had been done up to this point. The Rockefeller Foundation enlisted several universities, and headquartered this network at the School of Public and International Affairs at Princeton University. Named the Office of Radio Research, it was popularly known as “the Radio Project.”
Despite the official gloss, the activities of the Radio Project make it clear that its purpose was to test empirically the Adorno-Benjamin thesis that the net effect of the mass media could be to atomize and increase lability-what people would later call “brainwashing.”
The Radio Project’s next major study was an investigation into the effects of Orson Welles’ Halloween 1938 radioplay based on H.G. Wells’ War of the Worlds. Six million people heard the broadcast realistically describing a Martian invasion force landing in rural New Jersey. Despite repeated and clear statements that the show was fictional, approximately 25% of the listeners thought it was real, some panicking outright. The Radio Project researchers found that a majority of the people who panicked did not think that men from Mars had invaded; they actually thought that the Germans had invaded.
It happened this way. The listeners had been psychologically pre-conditioned by radio reports from the Munich crisis earlier that year. During that crisis, CBS’s man in Europe, Edward R. Murrow, hit upon the idea of breaking into regular programming to present short news bulletins. For the first time in broadcasting, news was presented not in longer analytical pieces, but in short clips-what we now call “audio bites.” At the height of the crisis, these flashes got so numerous, that, in the words of Murrow’s producer Fred Friendly, “news bulletins were interrupting news bulletins.” As the listeners thought that the world was moving to the brink of war, CBS ratings rose dramatically. When Welles did his fictional broadcast later, after the crisis had receded, he used this news bulletin technique to give things verisimilitude: he started the broadcast by faking a standard dance-music program, which kept getting interrupted by increasingly terrifying “on the scene reports” from New Jersey. Listeners who panicked, reacted not to content, but to format; they heard “We interrupt this program for an emergency bulletin,” and “invasion,” and immediately concluded that Hitler had invaded. The soap opera technique, transposed to the news, had worked on a vast and unexpected scale.
The efforts of the Radio Project conspirators to manipulate the population, spawned the modern pseudoscience of public opinion polling, in order to gain greater control over the methods they were developing.
Today, public opinion polls, like the television news, have been completely integrated into our society. A “scientific survey” of what people are said to think about an issue can be produced in less than twenty-four hours. Some campaigns for high political office are completely shaped by polls; in fact, many politicians try to create issues which are themselves meaningless, but which they know will look good in the polls, purely for the purpose of enhancing their image as “popular.” Important policy decisions are made, even before the actual vote of the citizenry or the legislature, by poll results. Newspapers will occasionally write pious editorials calling on people to think for themselves, even as the newspaper’s business agent sends a check to the local polling organization.
After World War II, Lazersfeld especially pioneered the use of surveys to psychoanalyze American voting behavior, and by the 1952 Presidential election, Madison Avenue advertising agencies were firmly in control of Dwight Eisenhower’s campaign, utilizing Lazersfeld’s work. Nineteen fifty-two was also the first election under the influence of television, which, as Adorno had predicted eight years earlier, had grown to incredible influence in a very short time. Batten, Barton, Durstine & Osborne – the fabled “BBD&O” ad agency-designed Ike’s campaign appearances entirely for the TV cameras, and as carefully as Hitler’s Nuremberg rallies; one-minute “spot” advertisements were pioneered to cater to the survey-determined needs of the voters.
This snowball has not stopped rolling since. The entire development of television and advertising in the 1950′s and 1960′s was pioneered by men and women who were trained in the Frankfurt School’s techniques of mass alienation. Frank Stanton went directly from the Radio Project to become the single most-important leader of modern television. Stanton’s chief rival in the formative period of TV was NBC’s Sylvester “Pat” Weaver; after a Ph.D. in “listening behavior,” Weaver worked with the Program Analyzer in the late 1930′s, before becoming a Young & Rubicam vice-president, then NBC’s director of programming, and ultimately the network’s president. Stanton and Weaver’s stories are typical.
The technique of mass media and advertising developed by the Frankfurt School now effectively controls American political campaigning. Campaigns are no longer based on political programs, but actually on alienation. Petty gripes and irrational fears are identified by psychoanalytic survey, to be transmogrified into “issues” to be catered to; the “Willy Horton” ads of the 1988 Presidential campaign, and the “flag-burning amendment,” are but two recent examples. Issues that will determine the future of our civilization, are scrupulously reduced to photo opportunities and audio bites-like Ed Murrow’s original 1930′s radio reports-where the dramatic effect is maximized, and the idea content is zero.
Drugs had always been an “analytical tool” of the nineteenth century Romantics, like the French Symbolists, and were popular among the European and American Bohemian fringe well into the post-World War II period. But, in the second half of the 1950′s, the CIA and allied intelligence services began extensive experimentation with the hallucinogen LSD to investigate its potential for social control. It has now been documented that millions of doses of the chemical were produced and disseminated under the aegis of the CIA’s Operation MK-Ultra. LSD became the drug of choice within the agency itself, and was passed out freely to friends of the family, including a substantial number of OSS veterans.
Timothy Leary, first heard about hallucinogens in 1957 from Life magazine (whose publisher, Henry Luce, was often given government acid, like many other opinion shapers), and began his career as a CIA contract employee; at a 1977 “reunion” of acid pioneers, Leary openly admitted, “everything I am, I owe to the foresight of the CIA.” Hallucinogens have the singular effect of making the victim asocial, totally self-centered, and concerned with objects. Even the most banal objects take on the “aura” which Benjamin had talked about, and become timeless and delusionarily profound. In other words, hallucinogens instantaneously achieve a state of mind identical to that prescribed by the Frankfurt School theories. And, the popularization of these chemicals created a vast psychological lability for bringing those theories into practice. Thus, the situation at the beginning of the 1960′s represented a brilliant re-entry point for the Frankfurt School, and it was fully exploited.
The concluding note on the comparison of these various texts I give over to Breitbart himself, with a comment he makes about a successful moment, as he perceived it, on “Real Time With Bill Maher”, that might give insight into this episode as well. The humble bold is mine:
I cut through the crap with pre-packaged talking points I had cribbed from the estimable Charles Krauthammer, whose work on the subject had seemed eminently plagiarizable.
It stopped them in their tracks. If they had asked one follow-up question, of course, I would have fallen to the ground in a puddle of water and curled up in a fetal position, and admitted I didn’t know what the hell I was talking about. But they didn’t.
We might return to the original intent of this lengthy examination, which has shown us the conspiratorial, lunatic basis of Breitbart’s world view, to why he hated academia so much. He envied their intellectual repute, an intellectual aura he tried for by misusing french phrases and theoretical terms. It is for this reason that he presents Minnicino’s work, without footnotes or acknowledgement, as his own – he wishes to be perceived as someone who can speak of philosophy and history with the ease of a scholar like Minnicino. He wishes for this intellectual repute while arguing that his being outside the academy is not simply the result of his debauchery, or his ADD, but a welcome event, that saved him from being a conspirator in this force more brutal and evil than Al-Qaeda:
When I was at Tulane, I saw the same cultural forces at work. The forces of the thought police, the cultural fascisti. People in positions of power who decided what was okay to think, and what to write. What words meant, and who was allowed to say them. Tribunals without oversight, kids thrown out of college for uttering the wrong sentiments. Looking back, I thank god every day that I partied to excess at Tulane, because it kept me from buying in to that worldview, from learning that language. If I hadn’t been busy having fun, I could have become a professor. Gotten tenure, and taught that cultural marxism. Propagated it for a living. I could’ve reinforced and propagated the complex, because it would have reinforced my position.
He could have been a professor, but his not being one is not a sign of his inability, but a good thing, a heroic thing; his non-complicity with this alien, conquering force. That he is resentful of the fact that he is not a professor, comes through in the ugliness, real vile racial ugliness with which he describes Michael Eric Dyson, who he debates on “Real Time With Bill Maher”:
I met professor Michael Eric Dyson, and I started to piece together what the show was going to be like. I knew who he was: “Hey that’s Cornel West, Jr. You’re the guy who speaks in iambic pentameter def poetry slam clichés. Pre-packaged speechifications that nobody understands. Oh, brother.” And I realized they weren’t even having a third panelist who could alleviate the tension with a joke. I recognized that Maher, with political correctness on his side, and as his chief weapon, was going to use Michael Eric Dyson to frame me as the racial other. As the oppressor himself, or at the very least, as the unwitting aider and abettor of the oppressor.
I won’t go into the specifics of his description, only to say that every detail describing the man, every one – Cornel West Jr., def poetry slam clichés, speechifications that nobody understands – connotes only one thing, and that is that he is black. When he says that Dyson speaks in iambic pentameter, it is another pretentious, wrongful phrase that carries none of its defined meaning, but is intended only to connote the same – Dyson speaks in rhythmic phrases that are like poetry, because, you know.
Breitbart describes one part of the back and forth with Dyson in his memoir:
You’re allowed to have independent thought in this country, [said Breitbart] and this type of intimidation by the black studies intelligentsia crowd that intimidates black people who are conservative, that’s why I became conservative. Dyson went on another iambic pentameter def poetry slam filibuster for the next three minutes. There was simply no way to stop him. Critical theory phrases flowed from his mouth like water from a fountain.
Dyson is part of the black studies intelligentsia, a professorship that, supposedly, Breitbart could never claim. What’s interesting is that even though “Real Time” will gladly provide a transcript to its participants, Dyson’s immediate reply to Breitbart’s statement here, which is very clear on the audio and does not use any obscure “def poetry”, or critical theory phrases, does not make it into Breitbart’s book. Though he mentions many parts of the exchange, he does not mention this, because it would make obvious that Dyson had a professor’s degree, not in the area of black studies, or some new post-Frankfurt School field, but an ancient and respected area of academia that Breitbart simply lacked the mental concentration to attain.
This is a clip of the argument:
This is the very first thing that Dyson says in reply:
I’ll defend the black studies professors; my Ph.D. is in religion from Princeton. That’s number one; number two, I teach sociology right now.
Breitbart describes his fight with Dyson as part of a war against a Democratic Media Complex that only he could discern. A viewer of this fight, even one skeptical of Dyson, might see something else: an argument between a man who clearly was a professor and a man who clearly was not. Whatever prisons that viewer might inhabit, it seems that Andrew Breitbart was trapped in a complex of his own.
(This concludes part one of this piece; I had no expectation that it would reach such great length when I started it. The second part will be done in a few days. War of the Worlds copyright Dreamworks and Paramount.)
(There is a great deal I want to write about now; this post, seemingly unconnected to immediate events, is the result of a gestation that was prolonged due to work. I say “seemingly” because it might be considered part of an informal, on-going series on the less than savory elite that is part of the networks of power (past posts would be “Maureen Otis: A Mystery Inside A Mystery” and “Angola, Namibia, South Africa, and a Tea Party Leader”), and Reed, even in the possible twilight of his career, still holds influence. This perhaps makes this target seem a little less arbitrary, and a few future subjects will have such immediate relevance that they will obviously be not arbitrary at all.
I first became interested in doing a piece like this after coming across the film “The Resurrection of Ralph Reed” on “Moyers and Company”, and the accompanying article “Ralph Reed in the Marianas Trenches”; to Bill Moyers and the makers of the film, I am indebted. Though I happened upon it only after reading other material, People for the American Way’s “Ralph Reed: The Crash of the Choir-Boy Wonder” was extraordinarily helpful in finding and organizing research by providing a through timeline of Reed’s career. I add a final thank you, giving kudos to Doug Monroe and Josh Latta for “The Book of Ralph Reed”, a short comic that gave me a good summary of Reed’s career while making me very aware of one specific detail unknown to me, his spokeswoman, Lisa Baron.)
The detail that everyone mentions is his eternal boyishness, birthing in you the image of this Christian activist as a street corner child evangelist. Imagining, perhaps, that his parents met in a small Baptist church where his father was an occasional pastor, that he led his church’s Bible Quiz team to the state championships, that during a period of brief delinquency his father might have believed his son were literally possessed by Satan, and held the boy down and tried to cast the devil out. That image, like many guesses you might make, or let’s be modest and not give every reader my flaws, which I made, would be very wrong. Those details are not from Ralph Reed’s life, but from that of the fascinating and incredibly accomplished Apollo Robbins, in the deservedly well-known profile by Adam Green, “A Pickpocket’s Tale”1.
His boyish features and short stature, the physical qualities always remarked on, are the result of his being born six weeks premature2. Just as the obvious result of dyslexia is the movement towards the visual, and blindness incites a heightened auditory awareness, this physical limit may well have provoked a migration to guile and intellectual game-playing. Though he was born in Portsmouth, Georgia, he spent most of his childhood in Miami, a not very devout member of a Methodist family3, only moving back to Georgia, to the small town of Toccoa, in his fifteenth year. Just as great height and bulk require no greater assertion, they are assertion enough, a smaller stature perhaps requires the opposite, a constant statement of confidence. In small town Georgia, Reed was an abrasive, fast-talking Miami smart aleck. Where a northern outsider might think of Reed as just another tree in a southern evangelical forest, within this habitat he was instead looked on as very much an alien plant4.
Though he would later reflexively chastise the north eastern elites5, he was very much a part of the top tier of intellectual life, receiving a Ph.D in history at Emory University. His dissertation, over five hundred pages long, dealt with the history of religious higher education in the South6. This, however, was an inconsequential moment in his academic life and biography – most writers give no mention of this scholarly achievement, and perhaps to better affect the pose of the aw-shucks rustic, Reed gives little or mention of it either.
No, there were far more important things which happened to Ralph Reed at university. First, he became involved in conservative political activism, joining the college republicans. Among his mediagenic public demonstrations, Reed organized a mock Sandinista prison camp and a celebration of the U.S. invasion of Grenada. He also made his conservative bones through the usual blooding, by trashing some sacred liberal figure, in this case Mahatma Gandhi. Reed had a regular column in The Red & Black, the University of Georgia’s newspaper, one of which was “Gandhi: Ninny of the 20th century”, wherein he condemned this formidable man as a quack, a fake, a manifestly colossal boob “whose basic teachings posed a threat to the survival of the human race.”7 It was a nasty, loud thunderclap from a young firebrand which had an unsettling quality to some hearers – they had heard this very sound of thunder, note for note, before.
A month before Reed’s piece had appeared, “The Gandhi Nobody Knows” by Richard Grenier, had been published in Commentary. “Every assertion of, every quote and several seemingly original Reed phrases may be found directly or in slightly modified form in Richard Grenier’s long review,” wrote a student who noticed the striking similarities, though there were a few small differences – only in Reed’s piece was Gandhi called a ninny, a boob, a quack8. Reed wrote a brief apology for not citing his sources, then attacked his accuser for making such thinly veiled personal attacks, which he considered shocking and profane. His editor thought this was disingenuous at best, and banned the iconoclast from ever writing for the paper again. Reed did, however, gain something from borrowing another’s words to indict Gandhi as a colossal fraud: “It was a valuable learning experience,” he would say two decades later, “I became a better person because of it.”9
Second: Ralph Reed became a devout Christian. This happened after joining the young Republicans, and this life-changing event is something whose sincerity supposedly cannot be questioned10, and yet whose context cannot help but provoke questions as to its sincerity. His conversion was very abrupt, taking place on a 1983 Saturday night in a D.C. bar, when he suddenly felt his conscience hinting that he should go to church more often. Where others find divinity in stained glass or a lover’s eyes, Reed found god in a D.C. bar’s phone booth: he picked a church at random out of its yellow pages. The next morning, he attended services at Evangel Assembly of God church in Camp Springs, Maryland, going up to the altar to be saved. This absent-minded, slightly bored approach to a major shift in religious outlook was related in his memoir and manifesto combo, Politically Incorrect. He would later add other causes for his Damascene path: he had gotten tired of drinking; he had made the shocking discovery of a congressman cheating on his wife11. The editor of the student newspaper which published Reed’s column, the one that ended with borrowed words to beat a martyred saint, had many enjoyable, energetic political arguments with Reed during the time he worked at the paper, the very year of his conversion – but never a single one dealing with religion12.
A skeptic might look at this absence of an explicit spiritual quest, and see only a possible political context. Here was a man interested in politics, a successful activist, a savvy operator who had already rigged a student election13, a man knowledgeable enough of politic history to know that a man alone is nothing, he must draw on some kind of network, some kind of base. There are the usual old school ethnic sects on which a big city pol might rely, and there is the well-known constituency an Old South politician might pull in. But Reed is a man seen as a Miami hustler by the very southern constituency he would have to attract – only a Yankee might mistake him as a man of the South. There is another possibility, and that is to make himself part of a constituency that has just played a major role in the ’76 election and an even bigger one in the ’80 race. All he needs to do is pledge himself to god. Pledge himself to god, and maybe, talk a little different.
When Frank Abnagale writes of impersonating an airline pilot in his memoir, Catch Me If You Can, he stresses the importance of getting the verbal codes of a profession properly. Once you get the verbal shibboleths right, you will be accepted as a member of that profession, both by outsiders and its own members. The anecdote which best illustrates this is where Abnagale gives himself away, before mastering the pose and blending in seamlessly as a captain:
“What’s Pan Am doing here at La Guardia?” he asked casually. Apparently, Pan Am did not fly out of La Guardia.
“Oh, I just deadheaded in from Frisco on the first flight I could catch,” I replied. “I’ll catch a chopper to Kennedy.”
“What kind of equipment you on?” he asked, biting into his roll.
My brains turned to ice cubes. I nearly freaked out. Equipment? What did he mean, equipment? Engines? Cockpit instruments? What? I couldn’t recall having heard the word before in connection with commercial airlines. I frantically searched for an answer for it was obviously a normal question for him to ask. I mentally reread the reminiscences of the veteran Pan Am captain, a little book I’d really liked and which I’d virtually adopted as a manual. I couldn’t recall his ever using the word “equipment.”
It had to have some significance, however. The TWA airman was looking at me, awaiting my reply. “General Electric,” I said hopefully. It was definitely not the right answer. His eyes went frosty and a guarded look crossed his features. “Oh,” he said, the friendliness gone from his voice. He busied himself with his coffee and roll.
Whatever, I knew I wasn’t sufficiently prepared to attempt a deadheading venture, despite all my prior work and research. It was evident that I needed a better command of airline terminology, among other things. As I was leaving the terminal, I noticed a TWA stewardess struggling with a heavy bag. “Can I help you?” I asked, reaching for the luggage.
She relinquished it readily. “Thanks,” she said with a grin. “That’s our crew bus just outside there.”
“Just get in?” I asked as we walked toward the bus.
She grimaced. “Yes, and I’m pooped. About half the people in our load were whiskey salesmen who’d been to a convention in Scotland, and you can imagine what that scene was like.”
I could, and laughed. “What kind of equipment are you on?” I asked on impulse.
“Seven-o-sevens, and I love ‘em,” she said as I heaved her suitcase aboard the bus. She paused at the bus door and stuck out her hand. “Thanks much, friend. I needed your muscles.”
Airline people manifestly loved to talk shop, and at the moment I obviously wasn’t ready to punch in at the factory. So equipment was an airplane, I mused, walking to my own bus. I felt a little stupid, but halfway back to Manhattan I burst out laughing as a thought came to mind. The TWA first officer was probably back in the pilot’s lounge by now, telling other TWA crewmen he’d just met a Pan Am jerk who flew washing machines.
That being Christian involves a mastery of a Christian pose, talking Christian, just as you might have to talk airline pilot in order to pass yourself off as an airline pilot, is conveyed in this interview on “Conversations With David Lewis” with Reed’s former communications director, a saucy party girl named Lisa Baron. Baron is Jewish, and often had to speak to devout Christians as part of her work as Reed’s spokeswoman, employing phrases of great significance to the evangelical community that had no personal significance to her. Here she speaks of using these phrases in the context of assuring other Christian leaders after Reed suffered a major political scandal:
DAVID LEWIS
You mentioned “talking christian”. Here you are, a nice Jewish girl, you’re out there working for Ralph Reed, politically, with his clients, and Christianity is obviously part of that…give me an example of having to talk Christian.
LISA BARON
I would say…I feel bad, because I’m not mocking…just repeating what I was hearing. I would have to go to meetings on behalf of Ralph, I would say “this is very unfortunate, but I know what’s in his heart, his heart is good, he may have strayed a little bit, but he’s come back to…I never said the Lord, or Jesus, but I would say he’s come back and wronged his ways, and he’s been humbled.
LEWIS
Well, I actually did a documentary for the Gospel Music Channel on Christian and gospel singers, and I did have to ask people, when were you saved by Our Lord Jesus Christ, and the first time it was really hard to say, but then I realized this is like saying “hello”.
BARON
Right.
LEWIS
In that world, it’s a completely…it’s not a remarkable thing at all. But yes, talking Christian, I’ve been there. Uncomfortable?
BARON
But it’s a bit disingenuous. I wasn’t uncomfortable, but it was a bit disingenuous. But I wanted to relate to people in a way that was relatable to them. I didn’t want to speak in my own voice. Cuz what would I say? “Oh, who cares! He’s [Ralph Reed] just a tangential figure! He’s gonna be fine!”
This reference to later political turmoil brings us to the third, and final, important effect of Reed’s academic career. It was at the University of Georgia, while involved in political activism, that he would connect with three other Republicans, two of whom would go on to great achievement and infamy. One was Grover Norquist. Another was Jack Abramoff. The last was already well-established as a subject of love and loathing: the giggling fanatic, Pat Robertson.
In January 1989, Robertson met Reed at a dinner for conservative students. Robertson had tried to run for president the year before, and though his campaign had lost badly, he saw the possibility of a great political force of devoted christian voters that, properly harnessed, could wield great influence. Robertson may not have won, but he had finished second in the Iowa primary, and he had scared the good Jesus out of the party chiefs – the first of many times when the Republican generals would go goggle eyed over the unelectable presidential candidate christian voters might be handing them, but whose christian votes they badly needed, nonetheless. There must have been something very impressive about this young man who’d just finished his history doctorate, because Robertson almost immediately asked him to head this political group of religious voters. Reed turned him down. Again, there must have been something very impressive about this young man; when, in September, Reed changed his mind, the offer was still outstanding. Reed would lead the Christians, in an organization called the Christian Coalition14.
The next few years were the lintel stone on which all of Reed’s later achievements would rest. The Coalition was founded as a tax-exempt non-partisan organization, but it was started with Republican money, and always ended up favoring Republican candidates. This boy wonder who was an emissary of the Prince of Peace wore knuckle dusters; “I want to be invisible”, he told Norfolk’s Virginian-Pilot, “I do guerrilla warfare. I paint my face and travel at night. You don’t know it’s over until you’re in a body bag.”15 Gandhi, after all, was a ninny. He had soon built the Coalition into an organization of over three million members with twelve million dollars to throw around, back when twelve million dollars in politics was – I apologize for the incongruous profanity in this piece on a man of god – back when twelve million dollars in politics was worth a damn16. The Coalition would hijack the 1992 Republican convention, so that its central point was the one made by Pat Buchanan, its most prominent speaker – we are engaged in a cultural war. The Republicans lost the presidential race, but the Coalition was considered vital for their mobilization of voters. When victory did arrive, two years later, when both congressional houses surrendered to Republican control, they were seen as essential17. Reed was given the imprimatur of a Time magazine cover, which, like twelve million dollars in politics, actually meant something then. Next to the lightning bolt yellow rubric, “THE RIGHT HAND OF GOD”, was a picture in Manichean tones of a boy squinting out, unsmilingly, from abyssinal darkness18. The Lord picked out his emissaries, all the way back to the Nazarene, from the shabbiest and most wretched of the earth, but even this portrait might have prompted some to ask: why does this divine messenger look like someone who might offer me dirty pictures of the Virgin Mary?
There is always something of illusion in politics, and there might have been something very illusory in Reed’s greatest political triumph. The coalition’s power may have lain in perception, rather than actual substance. It did not have three million members, as it claimed, but only a fifth of that. Voter guides printed up to harness this mighty fist were often found still bundled, thrown in the garbage19. Soon, there was something else. Benjamin Hart, a co-founder of the conservative campus paper Dartmouth Review and a former executive of Oliver North’s lobbying group, Freedom Alliance, had joined the coalition in 1992. Hart’s work put him in good stead with Reed, and though technically an outside contractor, he became a trusted confidante and his de facto lieutenant. “Any conflict that came up with Hart was going to go Hart’s way,” said one former associate. Hart’s ascension was due to the fact that, even in god’s work, you need to bring in the dollars, and Hart brought in the dollars: through his efforts, donations went from five million in 1991, to four times that in 1994. The key to the coalition’s expansion, and its influx of donations, was direct mail, and Hart was given full sway over this: he handled direct mail, telemarketing, the voter guides, and the bidding on the million-piece direct mail packages20. This last item was where the problem started.
The coalition’s marketing director noticed that the two firms used to handle the coalition’s mailings, Universal Lists (which rented mailing lists to the coalition) and Federal Printing & Mailing (which handled the group’s direct mail solicitations), were both owned by Hart Conover, Benjamin Hart’s own company. The man responsible for overseeing bids to the mailing list contract was awarding them to his own firm. The marketing director sent the coalition CFO, Judy Liebert, a warning memo: “This ‘closed circle’ of business provides Hart Conover with an extraordinary income stream. It doesn’t give us the benefit of a competitive bidding environment. Consequently, our ‘above the line’ cost for direct mail fundraising is astronomical (somewhere in the 50 to 70 percent bracket).”21 Liebert approached Reed with this accusation, but Reed dismissed it: he knew already about Hart’s ownership of the firms, and he assured her that Hart had sought out competitive bids from other firms. Liebert asked to see invoices of these competitive bids from other firms. Reed refused to show them22.
The coalition then underwent a scheduled internal audit. The auditor contacted Hart about auditing his firm, but was told such an audit was unnecessary, as he would be resigning his position. Hart then changed his mind and stayed on. Around the time of his possible resignation, Hart also tried to obtain the coalition donor database, a mailing list worth close to a million dollars. Hart’s request of the database was refused. Liebert, the coalition CFO, then made an additional charge at a specially convened meeting: Federal Printing & Mailing, which handled the coalition’s direct mail solicitations, only existed on paper. Hart’s company, Hart Conover, for all intents and purposes, wasFederal Printing & Mailing. Federal Printing & Mailing did no actual printing, and was located in the same set of offices as Hart Conover. Liebert believed that Hart had bagged the coalition for a million dollars or more, and she had contacted an attorney to determine if Hart’s actions were illegal. The Christian Coalition board took immediate action: Liebert was reprimanded for contacting outside authorities, suspended with pay, ordered to hand over all coalition property, and then six months later, officially fired23.
Yet something in Liebert’s accusations must have struck home. The coalition hired the accounting firm Coopers & Lybrand to do a specific audit of Hart Conover, whose results were kept secret. They found some “keypunch and arithmetic errors in billing”, said Hart’s lawyer. Hart Conover agreed to a payment adjustment. A minor adjustment, said Hart’s lawyer24. In the April after Liebert’s termination, Reed left the coalition. After this, the organization went into a steep decline and political eclipse. A decade after the Hart billing scandal, the coalition was buried in debt and lawsuits over unpaid bills, to landlords, direct-mail companies, lawyers and an employee seeking back pay. At the turn of the new century, it was sued by a group of African American employees who charged that they had to enter their offices by a back door and eat in a segregated area. That same year, Robertson resigned from the coalition25. Reed, however, would survive.
In 1997, the same year he left the Christian Coalition, Reed would start Century Strategies. This was a firm whose stated business was strategic business assistance, direct mail, fundraising management, public and media relations. It was “one of the nation’s leading public affairs and public relations firms”. It was not a lobbying shop. A lobbying firm has to, by law, disclose its clients and fees. A media relations firm does not26. He almost immediately pulled in a number of high profile clients for whom he was able to do very effective work.
He worked hard on behalf of Boeing and the Business Roundtable to persuade Congress to normalize trade relations with China. “We believe that human and civil rights and religious freedom and liberty should be at the center of our foreign policy,” he declared a year earlier, at a Christian Coalition press conference. This was, however, before Boeing was a client, and Boeing had $120 billion worth of planes to sell to China. A year, after all, is a lifetime in politics. A former Reed associate believes that Reed was critical in persuading conservative members of Congress of the importance of trade normalization, and recalls that he helped write ads arguing that trade normalization would bring about improved human rights. Reed also attempted to deal with China’s past human rights record through the efforts of the Alliance of Christian Ministries in China, a group of ministry organizations arguing for trade normalization in order to better spread the gospel in the ancient kingdom. The Alliance of Christian Ministries in China, however, did not exist, never existed, but were simply a paper group constructed by Reed for the purposes of this lobbying effort. At the same Christian Coalition press conference: “We believe that if the United States makes the center of its foreign policy profits rather than people, and money rather than human rights, then we will have lost our soul as a nation.”27 Profits: one, national soul: zero.
If he was able to look past Chinese human rights to lobby for Boeing, he could look past the smaller gomorrah of children’s commercials for another client. These ads were what conservatives hated about Channel One, the well-known in-school TV network which doles out ten minutes of news to schools in return for two minutes of advertisements which target pre-teens and teens. Channel One is the sort of frigid vacuity that makes you understand the appeal of heroin to those in high school – if this is all the world offers, why not? The opposition of the religious centered on the carnality of its movie trailers, and its rancid fast food ads. A few calls were made, where Reed stressed Channel One’s abstinence and anti-alcohol advertising; the Texas Board of Education halted its attempts to stop the barbarian invasion28.
It was a greater crime he had to look away from in the Marianas islands, but Reed had the resolution to look away. The Marianas were an island cluster north of Guam, which held warehouses that were something like prison factories, where Chinese women were brought in to do garment work, six days a week, sometimes twenty hours a day. Women started work in debt seven thousand dollars, plus up to twenty percent interest, to whatever recruiter brought them to the island, and had to work that off before they saw a cent. Every day had a quota, and a worker who did not finish their quota by the end of the paid work day had to work for free until her quota was finally completed. They were expensed for food and housing, and sometimes their employer decided to not pay them. The Marianas voted in 1975 to become a commonwealth of the United States, so clothing made there sported a “Made in the USA” label. With its commonwealth status, the Marianas became subject to most U.S. laws with two notable exceptions. It had no legal minimum wage in accordance with the Fair Labor Standards Act, so its hourly wage was three dollars five cents, with the possibility of lengthy unpaid overtime. It had no need to comply with the Immigration and Nationality Act, so those who worked at the Marianas were always guest workers, and they could be terminated at will, then deported back to China, without possibility of legal recourse. Guest workers on the island who got pregnant often got illegal abortions so they could continue to work, or were deported back to China where they were forced to have abortions there. Garment workers in need of money, and other women, falsely lured to the island for waitress and hotel jobs, were forced to work as prostitutes in the local sex tourism industry, the islands’ second largest business after clothing, until they’d paid back the debt to their recruiter29.
It was for these women, these brave souls, Ralph Reed now fought for. Wait – did I just say he fought for these women? No, my mistake: he fought on behalf of the islands’ local officials, against a minimum wage and improvement of the inhumane conditions. At least 29 different bills were put forth to raise the Marianas minimum wage, to close the immigration exemption, to abolish use of a “Made in the USA” label on Saipan-made clothing, by, among others, Frank Murkowski (R-Alaska), Ted Kennedy (D-Mass.), George Miller (D-Calif.) and David Bonier (D-Mich.)30 Every one failed, and Reed could take credit for the failure of some. It was a Reed owned mail order firm, Millenium Marketing, which instructed conservative Christians of Alabama to write their congressperson to vote against any such bills. To fight against bills that might ameliorate the inhumane squalor was a fight against liberalism, and a fight for Christian values. “The radical left, the Big Labor Union Bosses, and Bill Clinton want to pass a law preventing Chinese from coming to work on the Marianas Islands,” the mailer argued. Chinese workers who came to the Marianas, “are exposed to the teachings of Jesus Christ.” Chinese workers who came to the Marianas, “are converted to the Christian faith and return to China with Bibles in hand.”31
The 2000 presidential election was close by, and it was owing to it that Reed picked up two other clients. One was famous, one of the largest American companies at the time, and that was Microsoft. One was soon to be infamous, and that was Enron. The software giant hired Century Strategies in the wake of their unfavorable anti-trust ruling, with the specific mission of recruiting letters from around the country of influential Bush supporters, specifically those working at a high level inside the Bush campaign, to write the then presidential candidate that the government case against Microsoft was misguided, and the American people opposed it – without ever revealing they were doing so at the instigation of Microsoft or a firm in their employ. The ultimate goal, of course, was to have the Republican nominee speak out against the case, and, as it went through multiple appeals, abandon it if he were elected president. Regional contractors were to be paid $300 a letter that could be of use, a high price for such work32. When this lobbying strategy was revealed by an anonymous letter recipient who did not agree with the goals of the campaign, Bush spokesman Scott McClelland made clear that it was an unpleasant surprise. However, the matter was now closed and Reed would remain with the campaign. Veteran political columnist Mark Shields saw the stomaching of this misdeed as an example of the moral numbness of a money-besotted political culture33. Given all that would take place in the eight years of the administration Reed helped elect, it really was nothing at all.
Enron was another election season gift, awarded in the pre-season to Ralph Reed in order to hold him to the side of the Bush campaign during the main event. Reed was granted a lucrative consulting contract on the recommendation of Karl Rove, with a twofold intent. First, it would keep Reed loyal to the Bush team, warding off other suitor candidates who were seeking the endorsement of this Christian emissary. Second, by giving Reed this substantial plum, a consulting gig that awarded him ten to twenty thousand a month from September 1997 until the company’s collapse, rather than a paid position within the campaign, the Bush team was able to put forward a moderate compassionate conservative message, untainted by any close association with Reed or his hardline evangelism34. Both Rove and Reed denied that the consulting position was in any way a quid pro quo for Reed’s support of the Bush campaign; numerous Rove associates, however, affirm that the consultant position was granted for this very reason35. A quid pro quo where Reed was compensated in a roundabout way for work done on behalf of the Bush campaign, argues Trevor Potter, a Republican and former chairman of the Federal Elections Commission, may have been a violation of federal election law36. Again, given all that would take place in the eight years of the administration Reed helped elect, it really was nothing at all.
Officially, during the 2000 election, Reed was an unpaid consultant for the Bush campaign – the only open question, of course, is how you define “unpaid”. Reed’s firm, on the other hand, was openly paid for by the campaign for its direct mail and phone bank service37, and it is the use of this service in the Republican primaries which is part of one of the greater, unresolved mysteries of that pivotal election. In that year, George W. Bush was the presumptive front-runner, the man favored by the party elite, the expected nominee, before a surprise took place: Bush lost New Hampshire by twenty points to John McCain. The two men entered the next primary, South Carolina, with the expected nominee having lost a fifty point lead. Bush was now in desperate straits, but they would win this. They would play dirty, and South Carolina was the state to play dirty, because South Carolina was a dirty playing state. Lee Atwater, the cruel weasel adman whose signature achievement was the race-baiting Willie Horton ad of 1988, had been birthed here and honed his craft here, before the universe finally had enough of his happy-go-lucky callousness, and buried him down here again. The Bush team would win back this race, and they would do it by destroying John McCain, the decorated Navy pilot and former prisoner of war, any which way they could38.
Their allies were the local Campbell machine, a group of state bosses headed up by former state governor Carroll Campbell, along with other former Atwater associates and clients: Strom Thurmond, the segregationist who owed a re-election to the cruel weasel; local strategist Warren Tompkins, the cruel weasel’s boyhood friend; and Tucker Eskew, communications czar and cruel weasel apprentice39. There was another man, of course, along for the ride, a boyish smallish man, who aspired to be the Christian Lee Atwater. Years later, a respected Washington figure with solid ties to the religious right would say that he’d been told that the strategy in South Carolina would be an underground campaign involving all the heavyweights of the Republican and Christian right. They had picked their nasty back alley fight in the right nasty back alley: South Carolina was where the Christian Coalition was strongest. A rumor campaign could be done without difficulty through the network of the evangelical community, a network that a certain boyish smallish man could tap into with ease. They’d be able to disseminate any nasty, filthy stories through Christian whispering, and by the time the secular media would pick up on it and cry foul, it would be too late. Reed pledged to Rove that he could deliver, said the respected Washington figure, and by delivering, he would demonstrate his political power40.
There were the emails suggesting that McCain had had children out of wedlock. The whispers that McCain had slept with prostitutes in Viet Nam. That his wife, Cindy McCain, was addicted to painkillers. During a candidates debate, every parked car of the audience got a flyer in its windshield. The flyers had a McCain family picture, with a dark skinned girl in their midst, and a caption that suggested McCain had an out of wedlock child who was part African American. McCain’s deputy campaign manager would say of this: “I always figured that would sort of be the underground thing there. But, man, the child thing…I’ve seen the worst form of racist sons of bitches in the world in David Duke, but this was unbelievable.”41 The dark skinned girl in the picture was not part African American. She was Bangladeshi. She was John McCain’s daughter. When Cindy McCain was in Bangladesh as part of a relief mission, she had helped fly a girl with a cleft palate to the United States for surgery. She grew so attached to the girl in the flight over, that the family had adopted her42. There is a nasty phrase about good deeds never going unpunished, and I think we all know it too well.
All these rumors were further propagated by push polls, telephone polls that ostensibly were to ask a voter what would make them more or less likely to vote for a candidate, but were actually intended to further a rumor about your opponent, that their wife was hooked on pills or they had a child out of wedlock. An example can be made of the push poll used by then senator Caroll Campbell against his opponent Max Heller, a man who’d escaped the holocaust in Europe which killed off ninety relatives of him and his wife. In this 1978 senatorial race, voters were called up and asked if they were more likely to vote for “a native South Carolinian”, or a “Jewish immigrant”? They were also asked which characteristics best described the two candidates, and listed a series of traits, among which were “honest”, “A hard worker”, and “Jewish”. During one of Heller’s meets, a man came up and said, “Gee, Max, I didn’t know you didn’t believe in Jesus.” That was the tip-off of what was going on43. Heller lost the senator’s race. McCain lost the South Carolina primary. Ralph Reed’s firm, as said before, was hired to provide phone bank services.
You would think, given this extraordinary turnaround by the Bush campaign in this state, there would be no shortage of claimants of who was behind these lowdown tactics. Yet this success, which revolved around rumors of illegitimate paternity, defies the proverb and claims no fathers at all. Somehow this victory was both just politics as usual, yet something so toxic and vile that it cannot be touched. Lisa Baron, Ralph Reed’s spokeswoman, was often asked about her boss’s involvement, and alibied with a less disreputable activity: she would say that she had no idea, as she was too busy sucking Ari Fleischer’s cock44. Fleischer, a future Bush White House spokesman, recently complained that he would have to contribute a little less to charity because of hikes in the top tax rates45. It seems he was in a more giving mood that year.
Almost all others involved in this primary incident, even its victims, have kept a discrete silence. There is one other notable exception, and that is Meghan McCain. In her Dirty Sexy Politics, she speaks of this incident in detail, and describes the hurt that it caused her, her sister, and her family. Though it is her book and her perspective, I do not think she would write of a family matter such as this without her family’s consent.
I give lengthy excerpt, and bold the most striking and relevant parts.
This is where things become ugly and sad. What happened in South Carolina in 2000 is what caused me to reconsider everything, and draw away from politics. My father lost in South Carolina, but he didn’t lose fair and square. He lost as a result of one of the dirtiest political tricks ever played. A hate campaign was waged against him and our family-a campaign that spread lies and fear.
E-mails went around, and became viral, saying that my dad had “sired children out of wedlock.” There was mention of a “Negro child.” Pamphlets-thousands of them-were stuck under car windshields showing a photograph of all of us, my mom and dad; me; my brothers, Jack and Jimmy; and my sweet sister, Bridget, who was adopted by my parents from a Bangladesh orphanage when she was a baby. The pamphlets led people to believe that Bridget was the “Negro child” my father had sired out of wedlock.
Something called “push polls” were conducted. Republican voters were called at home and informed that my father was mentally unstable from his years in prison as a POW or a Manchurian candidate secretly planning to spread communism. There were mentions of the “Negro child” during the push polls, and my mother, who had struggled with a prescription drug addiction after back surgery six years before-and had talked publicly about it-was smeared as a drug addict.
It was sick, disgusting-and everything it will go down in history for being. And it was so dirty and secret that it became impossible to trace who was responsible, directly or indirectly, except to know the man who won that primary: George W. Bush.
For my family, it was devastating. My whole world, the people whom I loved most, my parents, and brothers, and baby sister, were suddenly at the center of ugliness and unwanted attention. To lose a race is hard enough. But to lose unfairly is brutal and haunting. I blocked out the pain, and tried to forget, but at the same time, it stayed with me-the way feelings do when you try to ignore them. Someday I’d want to know what happened, I figured, but not yet.
Three or four years later, when I was in college, I came across an article in Vanity Fair that went into explicit detail about the South Carolina primary, and I remember feeling really uncomfortable reading it. I wanted to know the details, but at the same time, I didn’t. My mom had explained a few things-but not too much.
She had been waiting until we asked questions, and were old enough to understand, except I don’t think there is a way to understand.
People in politics, and those of us raised in political families, are told not to take politics personally. But, of course, we do. We must. Otherwise the world of politics will become even more dehumanizing and impersonal. If we don’t take politics personally, we aren’t honoring what it means to be human-and risk winding up as cruel and unfeeling, as inhuman, as the ones who spread lies and win unfairly.
The trick, I think, is to remain human and just forgive.
My father moved on-that’s how he is, he moves forward, doesn’t look back, doesn’t get burdened by hate or the wrong actions of others. He leaves things for history to judge. But for my mom, and the rest of us who love him so much, it was impossible. Eventually, when I was in college, I asked my mother about South Carolina. And I guess my brothers, Jack and Jimmy, eventually did too.
But my little sister, Bridget, the youngest in our family, didn’t know anything about it until she was sixteen years old and, just for kicks, she happened to google her own name and found herself linked, in almost every item, to the South Carolina primary of 2000.
She called me immediately, extremely upset, crying, and-not understanding what had happened-she feared that somehow she, and the color of her beautiful skin, had affected the outcome of that election, and caused our father to lose the race. It was heartbreaking, so heartbreaking.
I told her a few things that I knew, mostly that it was sick, and screwed-up people did things like that. I told her that I believed in karma-and that what goes around comes around, and those events will live with President Bush and Karl Rove, his creepy campaign “mastermind,” and with the individuals from the Christian Coalition who had helped to orchestrate it and did the push polls.
I told her that I loved her and that it was our job to make sure that things like this didn’t happen in politics again, because it was wrong and terrible for our country.
“Does President Bush hate me?” she asked.
This was the saddest of all.
“No,” I said. “He can’t hate you. He doesn’t even know you.”
“Why did he do it?”
“He just wanted to win.”
For Reed, the presidential election was just a break from other action; he was pulling in dollars from corporate clients and becoming more involved in the state politics of Georgia. The rungs of the ladder could easily be discerned: become state GOP chairman, then win one of the smaller offices, like representative or lieutenant governor, then senator or governor, and then finally go for the holiest of holys. His mother once said that her son would end up either as president of the United States or Al Capone46. If a man like Reed has taught us anything, it’s that sometimes you don’t have to choose. It’s a little of column A, a little of column B. Maybe a lot of column B.
He was both very successful and very unsuccessful in the place he’d designated over Florida as his home state. Following his defeat of decorated veteran John McCain, he helped defeat another decorated veteran, Max Cleland. Cleland, a triple amputee, was attacked in campaign ads which interspersed his picture with that of Osama Bin Laden, declaring him soft on defense for having voted against various domestic security bills. This was accompanied by the election of Georgia’s first Republican governor in forty elections. This dual triumph in 2002 was either because it was the best election year for Republicans since Reconstruction, multiple visits to the state by then president George W. Bush, the use of a new state of the art voter targeting and mobilization system, or the strategic work of the boyish smallish man who was the new chairman of the state GOP47. It was a happy, or unhappy, contrast with Reed’s last major involvement at political consulting, in 1998.
That year, Reed attempted to put in power a phalanx of Christian candidates – congressmen, governors, senators, state representatives, lieutenant governors, even a labor commissioner, with Century Strategies acting as consultant to each – and almost every one lost. Reed lost every big ticket race, except for Georgia senator Paul Coverdell and Alabama senator Richard Shelby, and those two were expected to win anyway. He lost Governor Fob James’ re-election bid in Alabama, he lost Gex “Jay” Williams try for a House seat in Kentucky, he lost Gary Hofmeister’s bid to be an Indiana rep48. In Georgia, Reed’s campaign for Mitch Skandalakis, candidate for lieutenant governor, depicted his opponent as an inmate in a psychiatric and drug-treatment facility. Another Skandalakis ad played what might be discreetly called the “D.W. Griffith” card, charging Atlanta’s predominantly black political leadership with gross incompetence. Skandalakis was one more notch in Reed’s losing streak, defeated by Mark Taylor, and the incendiary ads may have been one more reason for the high black voter turnout, bringing victory to democratic candidates statewide. Because of the boy wonder’s political ads for one lieutenant governor, Republican operatives grumbled, Reed had managed to defeat their entire slate49.
In 2006, Ralph Reed took to another rung of the ladder, running for this same measly post of lieutenant governor, and it was around then that the devils of Gehenna – or perhaps an angel, with a capricious mercy for humanity – wrenched his hands from this celestial ladder and let him fall, to the humbling ground below. His hard descent was because of that massive defeat in 1998, and because of an old college friend, Jack Abramoff.
Since meeting as fellow college Republicans, Abramoff had had a varied, colorful, and even more financially successful career than Reed. After graduating from Brandeis, he would make the movie Red Scorpion, possibly with the assistance of the apartheid government of South Africa50, as well as found the International Freedom Foundation, a think tank which was covertly funded by the South African intelligence service to disseminate their propaganda, whether to defame Nelson Mandela or stop one of their protectorates, Namibia, from declaring independence, by putting out the false story that it had chemical weapons51. After the 1994 Republican congressional takeover by Congress, Abramoff was hired by lobbying shop Preston Gates Ellis & Rouvelas Meeds. “Can you smell the money?” wrote Abramoff in a later email; through his work at Preston Gates, and at later rival lobby shop Greenberg Taurig, the air from now on would reek of money. He charged seven fifty for an hour of his time, owned one of the most popular restaurants in D.C., and skybox tickets were as common in his pockets as lint in another man’s – though, of course, this dream life ended badly52. The name of Abramoff is now immutably bound to scandal, a scandal of which there are two plot points: both involve gambling. Plot A concludes in imprisonment and disgrace, Plot B finishes in imprisonment, disgrace, and murder.
Following the rout of Reed’s candidates in 1998, he needed to find another way to make money than giving election advice – who wants to be told how to win from a horse trainer with a stable filled with losing horses? The email where Reed asked Abramoff for client work is now reasonably well-known, as it became a piece of evidence in a congressional inquiry. The note from this man of god to his old friend was enthusiastic and to the point: “Hey, now that I’m done with the electoral politics, I need to start humping in corporate accounts! I’m counting on you to help me with some contacts.”53
It was through Abramoff that Reed was brought in to help out a longtime client, the Marianas islands. Channel One was another Abramoff client, and, of course, Reed helped out with that too54. Then he was brought in to help out with the larger, lucrative game that would destroy them all. Jack Abramoff worked with a series of Indian tribes, mainly related to the issues of casino ownership, and would promote the services of a company, Capitol Campaign Services (CCS), whether it be mailing lists, grass roots organizing, or a voter database. This company was presented as one owned by an Abramoff associate, Michael Scanlon, but one entirely independent and unaffiliated with Abramoff. In actual fact, as part of a pre-arranged deal, all fees paid to CCS were split evenly between Scanlon and Abramoff55. The prices of the services were always wildly inflated; the biggest ticket item was a voter database. This was sold as a tool that would allow tribes to co-ordinate their own casino campaigns through detailed knowledge of relevant voters. Scanlon would say these databases were valued at a million and a half dollars, when they actually cost about a hundred grand. Scanlon would brag to the tribes that their customized database was built by top quality people who spent day and night to set it up, working with a stable of graphic artists. In reality, the database was never customizable, and Scanlon just got it ready-made from a vendor, or had another vendor make a cheaper, less functional front end for this existing product. The databases were incredibly expensive, and usually they ended up going unused56. It was through these and other services that a group of five tribes ended up paying out close to $66 million to Capitol Campaign Services. Abramoff, a man who infamously referred to various tribesmen as troglodytes, morons, and idiots, received half57.
The Mississippi Choctaw were worried about competition to their reservation casino if next door Alabama legalized slot machines, so they recruited Abramoff to defeat the bill. Ambramoff, in turn, brought in his college friend Ralph Reed to rally the Christian troops against the bill, through mail, radio ads, and top name religious warriors like James Dobson. Reed guaranteed his fellow College Republican that “he would open the bomb bay doors and hold nothing back.” When a tribal spokesman brought up the fact that Reed was a hard-right ideologue, Abramoff answered (my emphasizing italics): “as far as the cash goes.”58 Of course, Reed could not be paid directly by the Choctaw to defeat the gambling bill, as this would look like what it was, a gambling interest manipulating sincere Christian sentiment in order to destroy their competition. At first, the payments went to Reed via Preston Gates, Abramoff’s lobbying shop. This was later changed, perhaps because the path was too obvious, and instead the money went through Americans for Tax Reform (ATR), and then onto Reed. Americans for Tax Reform was the political organization founded by Ralph Reed’s other prominent college friend, Grover Norquist59.
Here is Reed relaying to Abramoff the script of the ad they’ll be deploying:
This is Reed and Abramoff actively discussing the deployment of ads, and the use of an intermediary party, in this case, ATR, to get the money to Reed.
The Senate Indian Affairs Report, the result of the subsequent investigation into Abramoff’s dealings, relates the perspective of Nell Rogers, planner for the Mississippi Choctaw and a liaison between Abramoff and the tribe, on the reasons for the use of such in-between parties to pay Reed; from the Report, starting on page 45:
[Nell] Rogers did not speak with anyone at ATR about using ATR as a conduit. As far as Rogers knew, ATR was not involved and was not considering getting involved in any of the efforts the Choctaw ultimately paid Reed and others to oppose. Based on everything Rogers knew, ATR simply served as a conduit to disguise the source of the Choctaw money ultimately paid to grassroots groups and Reed. Rogers told Committee staff that she understood from Abramoff that ATR was willing to serve as a conduit, provided it received a fee.
The Choctaw’s intent and understanding was that the money would pass through ATR and ultimately reach either Reed or a grassroots organization engaging in anti-gaming activities. It was never intended as a contribution to support ATR’s general anti-tax work. As far as Rogers was concerned, ATR was serving as a conduit on a project that had nothing to do with taxes and that was designed to oppose gaming.
The question arises why the Choctaw paid money to Reed through various conduits, such as Preston Gates and ATR, rather than directly. Rogers told Committee staff, “I always assumed it’s because Ralph was more comfortable with that.” Rogers understood from Abramoff that “Ralph Reed did not want to be paid directly by a tribe with gaming interests. It was our understanding that the structure was recommended by Jack Abramoff to accommodate Mr. Reed’s political concerns.” Nevertheless, the work Reed and his company Century Strategies performed and for which they were paid through Preston Gates and ATR was on the Tribe’s behalf and for its benefit. The Tribe has no complaints about the quality of work Reed undertook on its behalf.
After Norquist got nervous about the use of ATR as a conduit, Arbamoff instead moved the cash to Reed via the AIC. The AIC, or American International Center, was a think tank that listed as its directors David Grosh, a lifeguard, and Brian Mann, a yoga instructor. The headquarters of AIC was a beach house. Mann could not remember Grosh doing anything during the time they were directors, except help him put a desk together. “If AIC was a think tank, I sure don’t know what we were thinking about”, said Grosh. AIC’s mission “was the global minded purpose of enhancing the methods of empowerment for territories, commonwealths, and sovereign nations in possession of and within the United States.” Grosh and Mann had no idea what that meant. It was a Potemkin think tank, with the usual portentous objective that sounded like dialogue from a wet dream of Thomas Friedman, but entirely non-existent, just a shell to funnel money to Reed and others60.
When a tribe refused to do business with Abramoff and Scanlon, the two men would have a new tribal council elected. We have here, in microcosm, the politics of the United States, now: politicians elected not to serve their constituents, but elected by lobbyists to serve them. After the Saginaw Chippewa decided to drop Abramoff and go with another lobbyist, Abramoff ousted the existing tribal leadership. He and Scanlon put together a slate of eight rival candidates, devised candidate strategy, paid all campaign expenses, and put out mailers and fliers, warning that “[t]he upcoming election may be the only chance for the disenfranchised, [sic] and beaten down members of this tribe to voice their disapproval.”61 Seven of Abramoff’s eight candidates won. Following their electoral victory, a mailer prepared by CCS was sent out, announcing that this was “the day the people of this tribe swept away the politics of the past, and started a new era of positive and responsible government.” Abramoff had emailed Scanlon shortly before the triumph: “Looks like you have it well in hand. I smell victory! I smell gimme five!!!” “Gimme give” was code for the under the table money Scanlon would pass on to Abramoff62.
Abramoff, Scanlon, and Reed happily fought on behalf of one tribe to close the casinos of another, then turned around and helped out the rival tribe, without ever disclosing that they were the ones who had shut down their casinos in the first place. The Louisiana Coushatta had a casino which drew most of its revenue from Texas gamblers. When another tribe, the Alabama Coushatta, planned to open a casino in Texas, Abramoff and Scanlon convinced the Louisiana tribe that if Texas allowed a local tribe, the Tigua, to keep their casino open, it would mean that gambling would become legal throughout Texas; the Alabama Coushatta would be able to build their casino, and Texans would gamble at home, rather than travel to another state. Abramoff and Scanlon were given the nod to do what was necessary, so they went down to Texas, and got the anti-gambling bill passed with the help of Ralph Reed’s Christian soldiers. When Reed told him that he’d heard the Tigua place would be closed by the next week, Abramoff emailed Scanlon, “Whining idiot. Close the f’ing thing already!!” When the Tigua tried to put forth a legislative solution, Abramoff and Scanlon had the lieutenant governor block it63.
The revenue generated by the Tigua casino had helped provide education to tribal children and health care to tribal elders. In desperation, the Tigua turned to two men who might do something, anything, to help them: Abramoff and Scanlon64. The tribe would pay the men millions, even pay for a junket that allowed Abramoff, Ralph Reed, and Congressman Bob Ney to go to Scotland and play golf, and all for naught65. Congressman Bob Ney was willing to put a provision in an election reform bill so that the casino would re-open, but Senator Chris Dodd, would be needed to support it – and Dodd wanted nothing to do with it. After this failure, Abramoff had one last idea for squeezing money from the tribe: he decided to try to set up life insurance for the oldest of the Tigua. Reed would try to introduce an equivalent program in some African American churches. Jack, summarized a former Reed associate, approached Ralph about mortgaging old black people. Reed may have had no compunction about this, but even for a desperate people this was too much; the Tigua tribal council turned the offer down. When it was all finally over, the principals in disgrace or in jail, the duplicities revealed, the Lieutenant Governor of the Tigua, Carlos Hisa, was asked how he felt about Abramoff and Scanlon: “A rattlesnake will warn you before it strikes. We had no warning.”66
Abramoff and Scanlon not only used Reed’s christian network for the benefit of tribal casinos, they used this same network to benefit one prominent non-native gambling venture: eLottery Inc., an internet company whose business revolved around helping states and other groups set up lotteries on-line. In 2000, it was facing two major problems, the collapse of the dot-com boom and the Senate passage of the Internet Gambling Prohibition Act, which would make it easier for states to stop online gambling sites. The company, in desperate straits, sold assets in order to raise the cash to pay for the work of Jack Abramoff. Abramoff brought in Reed, as well as another christian group, Lou Sheldon’s Traditional Value Coalition, who would rally the religious right to petition their congressmen to fight against the anti-gambling bill. Hold on: how would they get christian voters to fight against an anti-gambling bill? Easy. Abramoff found exemptions in the bill for jai alai and horse racing, and so the bill was presented as one that was actually pro-gambling. To further help out, Shandwick Worldwide, a company working alongside Abramoff’s team, hired an operative to get Florida’s then governor, Jeb Bush, to come out and say such a bill infringed on state’s rights. A letter saying the very thing, signed by the governor, was soon circulating Capitol Hill. The letter was a forgery, but it didn’t matter. Abramoff won again; the Senate may have passed the bill, but his efforts persuaded enough members to keep the House from voting on it67.
Reed would insist that he had no idea he was working on behalf of gambling interests, but he mentioned eLottery by name in several emails. In one, he sends a jokey warning to Abramoff about his place in the in-coming White House: “Tell your elottery friends that the next [technology] czar will be an anti-gambling [Pentecostal] Christian”. As usual, Abramoff paid Reed through intermediaries, the money going first to Norquist’s Americans for Tax Reform, which then sent it on to a group based out of Virginia Beach, the Faith and Family Alliance, who passed it on to Reed. This latter group was run by Robin Vandervall, a political operative who would later serve seven years for soliciting minors. It would also play a supporting role in a Republican congressional primary in Virginia. The Family Alliance was paid $100K to distribute pamphlets and make robo-calls saying that a certain primary candidate did not represent Virginia values, and that his opponent was the “only Christian in the contest.” The primary candidate that supposedly did not represent Virginia values, the non-Christian in the contest, was future Majority Whip Eric Cantor. “Politics,” Cantor would say of the incident, “is a very interesting business.”68
Before things finally collapsed, Scanlon and Abramoff would first turn against Reed. Though he constantly bragged of the incredible results he was getting, they had a feeling that players were getting played. Just as the Christian Coalition had far fewer members than actually claimed, Reed’s claims of the extraordinary efforts he was making to organize Christians to lobby against a competing gambling venture were soon met with skepticism by Abramoff and Scanlon. A good chunk of the money that he was supposed to be spending on radio ads and mail campaigns, they believed, were actually just being kept by Reed. The natives of the continent had been granted gambling palaces in exchange for stolen land, and layer upon layer of thieves, an onion of pickpockets, grifted that, while casually sliding their hands into each other’s wallets. When Abramoff had passed three hundred thousand to Reed via Norquist’s ATR, he was surprised that Norquist first took a slice of twenty five thousand before passing on the rest69. One is surprised that this worldly man would even be surprised.
In perhaps the most famous email exchange of the affair, Scanlon wonders if Reed will return any unused funds from his last grassroots efforts. Would we? asks Abramoff, one con to another. He cuts off the only oxygen breathed by Reed, no more money for him, and damns him with the ultimate compliment: he is a bad version of us!
When they stopped using Reed, Scanlon handled the grass roots activism himself, doing activism without activists. The Saginaw Chippewa paid money to be passed on so that a number of secular and christian grassroots networks – Concerned Citizens Against Gaming Expansion (CCAGE), Global Christian Outreach Network (GCON), and the Michigan Environmental Group – would fight the legalization of gambling that would compete with the Chippewa casino. These were organizations that existed in name alone, created by Scanlon. Most strikingly, the Indian Affairs Abramoff Report acknowledges that such ersatz grass roots organizations, created solely for a political purpose, are to be expected. An example might be the “60 Plus Association”: ostensibly a seniors advocacy group, it is one which gets no money from individual seniors. Instead, its funding comes entirely from pharmaceutical companies and other industries. The “60 Plus Association” is a seniors association that fought against legislation to reduce drug prices. It also fought against Obamacare, against regulation of greenhouse gases, and in favor of using Yucca mountain as a storage site for nuclear waste. These last ones might seem out of the purview of a seniors association, but were most likely motivated by funding the “60 Plus Association” received from the American Petroleum Institute70. Again, the problem the Indian Affairs Committee found was not that Concerned Citizens Against Gaming Expansion or the Global Christian Outreach Network was ersatz, the problem is that it did not conduct the ersatz activism you would expect when you contract for such an organization.
While using bogus groups in furtherance of grassroots strategies may be common, Scanlon and Abramoff’s use of them is distinguishable in that they were employed as part of Abramoff and Scanlon’s “gimme five” scheme. In an interview with Committee staff, former CCS associate Brian Mann said that he thought that, for example, the letter-writing and signature-gathering campaigns, many of which he helped lead or otherwise conduct in the name of such bogus organizations, were “fraudulent.” He described them as “flashes in the pan [that were designed] to appease [CCS'] clients.” He regarded them as exercises that “created face time” and “scuttlebutt” by “send[ing] a few people out there to show them that we exist.” With CCS associates collecting signatures “on K-Mart or Walmart parking lots,” Mann felt that those activities “didn’t amount to very much.”
This was the main plot of the Abramoff scandal, but there was also a subplot. In the late nineties, the owner of some casino ships that operated out of Florida was ordered to divest himself of the vessels. Konstantinos “Gus” Boulis was a son of a Greek fisherman, a sailor on the Merchant Marine, and a hard-working, incredibly successful businessman. He first moved to Canada where he started a submarine sandwich franchise that made him a multimillionaire before he was twenty-five; then he moved to Florida to retire, but ended up starting SunCruz Casinos, a fleet of eleven ships that docked in Florida and travelled into international waters so the passengers on-board could gamble without violating U.S. laws. The U.S. shipping code, however, doesn’t allow foreign nationals – Gus Boulis was a Canadian citizen – to own American commercial vessels. To avoid jail, Boulis would have to pay a fine and sell his boats. Boulis’s lawyer worked at Preston Gates Ellis & Rouvelas, and one of his co-workers, Jack Abramoff, knew someone who would be interested in buying SunCruz. The someone Jack Abramoff knew was Jack Abramoff. But, wait: Jack Abramoff was forbidden by company rules from entering into business deals with those represented by the firm. So, instead of Abramoff buying SunCruz, Adam Kidan would buy SunCruz for him. Gus Boulis’s life story was interesting, but Kidan’s story was even better71.
Kidan was from New York and had gone to D.C.’s George Washington University, where he joined the College Republicans, and through them, met and became friends with Abramoff. There was a law degree from Brooklyn Law School, and then he got to be president of the Four Freedoms Foundation, which appeared to be a think tank devoted to post-communist nations that was little more than a tax shelter. He then started a Long Island bagel franchise with a partner, Michael Cavallo, who in turn was an associate of Anthony Moscatiello, owner of a catering company and an associate of the Gambino crime family. He’d been indicted with John Gotti’s brother, Gene, for heroin trafficking, and accompanied him to court. Kidan would occasionally go to Anthony Moscatiello for business advice: this is someone, he would say, “who has experience in feeding large groups of people.”72
Despite the advice, the bagel franchise fell apart, so Kidan started a Dial-a-Mattress franchise in D.C. He made and announced the radio ads himself, so the Brooklyn nasal of “Leave off the last `S,’ that’s the `S’ for savings!” became briefly, and perhaps unmercifully, ubiquitous in the Capitol. Kidan said he’d sold a queen size sleeper to the Clintons in 1993. He’d also founded the New York based Dial-A-Mattress franchiser. He also was general counsel to the St. Maarten Hotel Beach Club and Casino. He was a former partner of Duncan, Fish, Bergen & Kidan. However: the Dial-a-Mattress franchise opened in D.C. in 1994. He was not a founder of the franchiser. There is no St. Maarten Hotel Beach Club and Casino. There’s no evidence that a law firm called Duncan, Fish, Bergen & Kidan ever existed. Soon, Kidan would declare bankruptcy, sell his franchise, get sued for theft, and be disbarred. When Gus Boulis resisted selling SunCruz, congressman Bob Ney, Abramoff friend and associate, entered remarks into the congressional record taking issue with card cheating and corruption on the ships. When Kidan was put in charge, Bob Ney entered remarks in the congressional record praising Kidan as a solid individual and a respected member of the community, with a reputation for honesty and integrity. What better man to run a casino?73
Abramoff and Kidan got the money to buy SunCruz from Foothill Capital. Kidan said he was worth over twenty six million, but was only able to account for 800K. The rest, he said, was in closely held corporations. Foothill agreed to loan them $60 million to buy the boats, if the two would invest $23 million of their own money in the venture. Kidan faxed Foothill a document showing a wire transfer of $23 million to SunCruz. Foothill gave them the loan. The wire transfer was discovered only later to be a forgery74. The only connection this subplot has to Reed is here, small and incidental. Kidan, in the movie based on these events, Casino Jack and the United States of Money, is shown as the kind of guy who tosses two hookers out of his condo, then throws a few bills at them afterwards75. “Know what I majored in in high school?”, the movie’s Kidan (Jon Lovitz, in maybe the best performance in the movie) asks the movie’s Abramoff (Kevin Spacey). Abramoff: “Pool?” Kidan: “No. Fucking.” Abramoff: “Really…how does it feel to get a C in that class?” Reed decided to set up his spokeswoman, Lisa Baron, on a blind date with this man. During the evening, Kidan told her he needed to go back to his hotel room to make a phone call. After they got there, Kidan stripped naked and lunged for her76.
Kidan would buy a thirty foot boat, a Mercedes S500, and rent a four thousand a month condo in the expectation of future success, but things were soon falling apart. In order to make the deal, Kidan and Abramoff had given Boulis IOUs for $20 million in exchange for Boulis remaining a silent partner – a violation of the very shipping codes that had required Boulis to sell the boat. Boulis now asked for the money, and got nothing. Boulis had brought in family members to work on the boat. Kidan fired many of them. Boulis and Kidan soon stopped speaking to each other. When a meet was set up to try to resolve things, it ended in a 911 call and Kidan filing a police report alleging that Boulis had stabbed him in the neck77. Kidan suggested to Abramoff a “concerted press effort” to paint Boulis as a criminal. Abramoff agreed, completely. Kidan bought an armor plated Mercedes, hired bodyguards, got a restraining order, and spoke to a reporter of how scared he was of Boulis. He also put Anthony Moscatiello on the SunCruz payroll, authorizing over $160K in cheques to Moscatiello and his immediate family. He sent over $130K in cheques to Moon Over Miami, a company incorporated by Anthony “Little Tony” Ferrari, a man who liked to brag that he was John Gotti’s cousin. Kidan said the cheques to Moscatiello were for food and beverage services. The cheques to Moon Over Miami, said Kidan, were for security operations78.
On February 6, 2001, 9:15pm, Gus Boulis drove away from a late meeting, when a car suddenly pulled in front, and blocked his path. The night was cool, so Boulis had rolled down his window. A black mustang drove past, and fired multiple times into Boulis’s vehicle. The car in front was now gone. The former owner of SunCruz casinos, a man who had built two fortunes through fierce will, managed to drive his car a few blocks before crashing it into a tree. Boulis was in cardiac arrest in the ambulance that picked him up, and a little over an hour after he left his meeting, he died on the operating table. It made no difference to SunCruz anyway. The Boulis estate sued Kidan for ownership of SunCruz and for conspiring to kill Gus Boulis. SunCruz declared bankruptcy, and Kidan sold his stake in exchange for an end to the civil suit79.
No one was arrested in the murder of Gus Boulis for years. Only when the other, main Abramoff plot had come to a close was anybody indicted. After Abramoff and Scanlon overthrew the Saginaw Chippewa leadership, these tribal leaders in turn were ousted from power. Abramoff’s contract was terminated, and the new sub-chief, Bernie Sprague, contacted another lobbyist, Tom Rogers. “Tom, we’re being threatened by our lobbyist,” Sprague told Rogers. He said Abramoff would sue them if his invoices were questioned, or if he was asked what he’d done to justify his huge fees. Rogers, a man of mixed Irish and Blackfoot ancestry, believed that the national media didn’t care a thing about native stories. He told Sprague and David Sickey, a member of the Louisiana Coushatta tribe, to collect the internal invoices and necessary documents, then first relate what happened to their local papers. Sprague then passed on these news stories, along with the relevant documents, to Susan Schmidt, a Washington Post reporter he chose to contact because of her past work on Native American clients being overbilled by Democratic lobbyists. When the Indian Affairs Committee would have their hearings, Rogers contacted them with the archive of invoices and documents he’d amassed80.
If we were to give this story the texture of melodrama, then we might give Ralph Reed a moment here where his mask fell and he gave a sudden fearful intake of breath. Because the head of the Indian Affairs Committee was, of course, John McCain. An ancient and warlike people once said that revenge is a dish best served cold; it is sometimes very, very cold in Washington, D.C.
Maybe the most notable testimony of the hearings was its most ridiculous, when David Grosh testified on being a director of AIC. It is listed on youtube as “Greatest Congressional Testimony Ever”:
A brief excerpt:
CHAIRMAN MCCAIN: [Michael Scanlon] approached you in some way?
MR.GROSH: A phone call.
CHAIRMAN MCCAIN: And said?
MR.GROSH: Do you want to be head of an international corporation. [Laughter] It is a hard one to turn down.
Reed was never called to testify, but it didn’t matter. Everyone fell like dominos. Scanlon co-operated in the case against Abramoff and got twenty months. Bob Ney served seventeen months in jail, sharing a prison with former “Survivor” contest-winner Richard Hatch, who’d failed to pay taxes on his TV prize. Abramoff served forty three months, and now owes over twenty million dollars in restitution to his victims. Kidan served three years for fraud related to the SunCruz purchase81. In 2005, the year of Abramoff’s fraud trial, James “Pudgy” Fiorillo, Anthony “Big Tony” Moscatiello, and Anthony “Little Tony” Ferrari were arrested for the killing of Gus Boulis. Fiorillo pled guilty to conspiracy, and will testify against Moscatiello and Ferrari in a trial now scheduled for August, 2013. No one has accused Kidan or Abramoff of any involvement in the Boulis murder82.
Reed heard about the Abramoff investigation during his run for lieutenant governor, and he warned his spokeswoman, Lisa Baron, that things might get a little rough. He had no inkling of how bad things would get, but she did, and started a back-up career as a sex and lifestyle columnist, describing the maneuver with her own inimitable metaphor.
LISA BARON
Jack and Ralph were best friends. I don’t know if guys do that BFF thing, but they were as close to BFFs as you can get. He said, you know Jack’s under investigation for taking money from Indian tribes and funneling it around, all this kind of stuff…I’m a tangential figure in this. My name’s come up because they – they being the FBI and a United States Senate committee – have requested all of Jack’s emails from all over the years, and Jack and Ralph have a lot of emails together. I heard that, I heard: Ralph Reed. Jack Abramoff lobbying scandal. Indian tribes, which equals gambling. And I thought to myself: oh, Ralph. This is not going away in four months.
So, I had to make a different plan. I had to take responsibility for my own career. I made a decision to keep working with Ralph. And be loyal, and give back, because he had given so much to me, but sort of get myself into a lifeboat. As I say, my vagina was my liferaft.
Her column had the expected tone. Rather than looking at sex with the calm eye you might observe the aches and pleasures of athletics or food, its perspective was that of a giggly fourteen year old. She wrote, in a way that was a little too wide-eyed, about her fantasy of having sex with someone non-white before she got married, or the shame of having oversize ladyparts83. As for Jack and Ralph, if they used to be BFF-y, after the scandal they weren’t BFF-y no more. When Grover Norquist got married, Reed didn’t go near Abramoff’s table. The then head of the RNC, Ken Mehlman, said of Abramoff that he wasn’t someone he knew much about. The Bush White House would insist that Karl Rove barely knew the man. Mehlman had eaten Sabbath dinner at Abramoff’s house. Rove had been a guest in Abramoff’s box at an NCAA game84.
The lieutenant governor’s race was supposed to be an easy step towards a destined appointment in an oval office, but the Abramoff scandal broke the campaign. When Reed spoke to the Georgia College Republicans, the place was only half full. He had to offer twenty dollars and a free overnight room to fill up an event at the Georgia Christian Coaliton85. About Reed’s disreputable dealings and disreputable clients, a Georgia republican voter would say, “He’s either an awfully cheap whore, or he’s diabolical.”86 Reed lost the Republican primary.
There are always second acts in American lives, and Reed has had one as well. He was even a member of John McCain’s Victory 2008 Team, helping to raise money, and a guest at a fundraising dinner – until the Obama campaign pointed out Reed’s still radioactive ties to Abramoff and McCain disinvited him87. Reed’s Century Strategies helped put out a video calling for the repeal of the Dodd-Frank financial reform bill, and Century Strategies was paid millions by cable companies to possibly set up ersatz grass roots groups to oppose net neutrality88. In 2009, Reed would create the Faith and Freedom Coalition (FFC), a sequel to the earlier Christian Coaliton. “Even though I’ve been doing other things, this is kind of like Steve Jobs returning to Apple,” he said89. Despite the past scandals, Reed and the FFC were brought in for the 2012 election to organize evangelicals to vote for Mitt Romney. Perhaps coincidentally, the Republican convention that year had a plank calling for the abolishment of the minimum wage in the Marianas islands. During the election, it was just like old times again, like that race against Max Heller, like that race against John McCain, as the Faith and Freedom Coalition put out a survey which push polled: “How much danger do you think liberty is in right now as a result of President Obama’s policies?” More serious than Nazi Germany, more serious than the Soviet Union, were the first two choices90.
We may live in forgetful times, but not as forgetful as that. A National Review cruise in 2012, guested by Reed and other stars of the right-wing firmament, was pre-scheduled as a post-election victory romp, but ended up a salve for the losers. It was a fin-de-siècle metaphor that would be ridiculously obvious in a book, but strikingly elegant in the clutter of the real; a wandering ship full of the dead who vainly argue that they’re still alive. A conservative luminary on board opined, “I like Ralph Reed, but he’s done.”91 Though perhaps not yet; the Faith and Freedom Coalition would be holding a convention in July, where it would convey the Nazarene’s message of humility and charity through guest speaker Donald Trump92. Ralph Reed would be around for a little while longer, and maybe if you’re one of the blessed, you’ll one day meet him, this man of god in ostrich skin boots, and gaze on his face. A friend of Reed’s has said that he thinks only two questions pass through the man’s mind when he meets someone, questions that are primeval and essential, irrespective of color, creed, or ethnic division. The questions that go through Ralph Reed’s head are: 1) Am I hungry? and, 2) Are you of a size that I can consume you?93.
(Small edits for clarity and aesthetics have been made since initial publication; the material on eLottery and Eric Cantor was added on May 5th, 2013.)
Robbins was born in 1974, in Plainview, Texas, but grew up mostly in Springfield, Missouri. His parents, Larry and Betty, met at a small Baptist church in Enid, Oklahoma, where Larry was a sometime pastor. Betty, a widowed nursing student with three children, attended services. Larry and Betty describe the birth of their son as “a miracle of the Lord.” As they tell it, Betty’s doctors discovered tumors in her uterus and warned that she would probably die giving birth, and that the child, if it survived, would likely be crippled and brain damaged. The doctors urged an abortion, but Larry and Betty refused. Larry told me, “I realized that God had a special purpose for my son.”
Robbins likes to say that he grew up in an oxymoron, with his pious father on one side and two larcenous half brothers on the other. His half brothers, who were in their teens by the time Robbins was born, learned the basics of shoplifting and picking pockets from an uncle and later graduated to more serious crimes. They passed their knowledge and their world view on to Robbins, who began shoplifting when he was in junior high (while also leading his church’s Bible Quiz team to the state championships). Once, after stealing a pack of cigarettes from a convenience store, he was confronted by the manager. Feigning innocence, he hid the pack under his arm while the manager searched him. Then he let the pack drop into his hand and, while the manager’s attention was distracted, slipped it into the pocket of the man’s apron. Around this time, he started running away from home and skipping school. Robbins recalls that his father, convinced that his son was possessed by Satan, held him down and tried to cast the Devil out.
Although Reed has spent most of his adult life in Georgia, he did not move there until 1976, when his family settled in the small town of Toccoa, in the northeastern part of the state. Reed was in high school at the time. Georgia was the fifth state, and Toccoa the seventh town, he had called home.
Reed also has to make himself look just as authentically Georgian as his opponent, which might be the toughest trick of all. At every campaign stop, in every piece of campaign literature, Reed repeats the new mantra of his embattled campaign: “Growing up in the North Georgia mountains, I learned the values that matter most–faith, family, freedom and hard work.”
But Reed did not grow up in the North Georgia mountains. As he writes in Active Faith, “It all began in Miami, where I grew up. My childhood was hardly spent in the Bible Belt.” Reed’s family didn’t move to Georgia until he was in his mid-teens. And when they did, as Nina Easton reports in Gang of Five, Reed was considered a “fast-talking Miami smart aleck” in Toccoa, the tiny mountain town where they settled. Even his best friend there, Donald Singer, remembered Reed showing “no demeanor of civility,” his abrasive personality constantly clashing with the native Southerners around him.
Reed loved political organizing. He loved political theater. But in the fall of 1985 he gave it all up to pursue a doctorate in history at Emory University. His dissertation, finished in 1991, weighs in at 515 pages and is entitled “Fortresses of Faith: Design and Experience at Southern Evangelical Colleges, 1830-1900.” As the title indicates, Reed’s study examined the history of religious higher education in the South. Besides the fact that it was written at all, the dissertation is notable for the way in which Reed chastises the institutions of higher learning he writes about for their racism.
No, it wasn’t an American Indian that Reed chose to ridicule. Instead, on April 14, 1983, Reed attacked an Indian from India, Mohandas K. Gandhi.
Reed’s column carried an unforgettable headline: “Gandhi: Ninny of the 20th century.”
Reed was reacting to the Best Picture Oscar awarded the movie Gandhi. He started off by saying Gandhi, among other things, had urged the Jewish race to commit collective suicide and had rolled around in bed with naked teenage girls to test his celibacy.
Reed asked readers what they would say about such a man and then answered: “You’d probably say that such a man was a quack, a fake, an eccentric and an immoral and manifestly colossal boob whose basic teachings posed a threat to the survival of the human race.”
He said the Indian government helped finance the movie, which he contended should have had the disclaimer, “The following is a paid political announcement by the Indian government.”
William Reid Jr., a graduate student in political science, wrote a letter to the Red & Black pointing out the similarities between Reed’s column and “The Gandhi Nobody Knows” by Richard Grenier in the March 1983 issue of Commentary, a conservative Jewish intellectual magazine. “Every assertion of, every quote and several seemingly original Reed phrases may be found directly or in slightly modified form in Richard Grenier’s long review,” Reid wrote.
The claims about Gandhi urging Jews to kill themselves and about rolling around in bed with teenagers came from Grenier’s piece, Reid charged, as did the phrase about “a paid political announcement.”
The grad student compared a Reed statement about Jewish collective suicide with Grenier’s words.
Ralph Reed wrote, “By cutting their own throats or hurling themselves from cliffs, Gandhi asserted, millions of dead Jews would ‘arouse public opinion’ against Hitler.” On the same subject, Grenier wrote, “If only the Jews of Germany had the good sense to offer their throats willingly to the Nazi butchers’ knives and throw themselves into the sea from cliffs would they arouse world public opinion.”
Reid’s letter landed on the desk of the Red & Black‘s editor, a student named Chuck Reece.
“I looked it up and, sure enough, it was distressingly similar,” Reece says. “It was clearly, in my view and in the view of other people who held positions of responsibility on the Red & Black staff, enough to be considered plagiarism. Ralph argued that. We printed Ralph’s response. We had to discontinue his column. We never ran another one by him.”
Not all of the piece was plagiarized, however. The words “ninny,” “quack” and “boob” were Reed’s.
Reed’s response in the Red & Black was a harbinger of things to come from a new generation of Republicans. He attacked the student who exposed his plagiarism.”I sincerely apologize for not citing my sources, including the article in Commentary mentioned by Mr. Reid, in my column of April 14. However, my failure to cite fully each and every source was merely an oversight, not a deliberate attempt to deceive, as Mr. Reid implies,” Reed wrote in his response. “Mr. William Reid’s thinly veiled personal attacks on my character are a poor substitute for the truth.” To imply that he committed plagiarism, Reed wrote, “is the most shocking, profane form of personal attack I can imagine.”
Looking back at Reed’s response, Reece says, “I thought it was disingenuous at best. Honestly, I didn’t understand why Ralph wouldn’t admit that he was wrong. I didn’t think he would actually plagiarize somebody. I was surprised. I was absolutely surprised. I just wanted him to fess up. I never understood why he wouldn’t and that said something about his character.”
UGA is a much more conservative place today. The Red & Black interviewed Reed two months ago and didn’t mention the plagiarism scandal until the next to last paragraph, which said Reed “was banned from writing after not citing his sources in a column about the movie Gandhi.”
“It was a valuable learning experience,” Reed told the paper. “I became a better person because of it.”
The one thing everyone says about Ralph Reed is “You can’t question his faith.” People who like him say it, people who dislike him say it, and people who respect his political skills but otherwise don’t have an opinion one way or the other say it, too. It’s not exclusive to him, of course, but rather more of a general rule, a commandment by which polite (and even impolite) society has agreed to abide.
Fair enough. Private faith is a mysterious thing-much like marriage-and the republic would be better served if reporters kept their snouts out of both. A person’s true faith is impossible to know, anyway. If, to use a convenient example, a man repeatedly calls gambling immoral and then takes millions of dollars to work surreptitiously for the benefit of casinos, those are merely two conflicting actions that evidence hypocrisy. They prove nothing about what he believes. (Though they do suggest he suspects the Almighty is a forgiving deity.)
Reed had been raised a Methodist, but he wasn’t particularly devout. Then, one Saturday night, he was sitting in a bar on Capitol Hill called Bullfeathers when, as he wrote in his 1994 book, Politically Incorrect, he “felt a gentle tugging in my conscience that I should start attending a local church.” He went to a phone booth, opened the Yellow Pages, and picked a church at random. (That’s the sum total of pre-church introspection revealed in Politically Incorrect. In later interviews, the story would expand to include Reed’s being tired of partying and, even later, his witnessing a married congressman stepping out on his wife.)
The next morning, Reed attended services at Evangel Assembly of God church in Camp Springs, Maryland. As a random choice, it made sense: Randy Miller, who was an associate pastor at the time, remembers that Evangel had placed a display ad in the phone book, and Assembly of God would have been in one of the first church subcategories. After the sermon, pastor Jack Cain gave a call from the altar “for people I described as not walking with Christ” to come up and be saved.
Reed’s bellicose comments and shady tactics stirred whispers about the sincerity of his Christian conversion. (Like Tom DeLay, he told a sketchy story of being “born again” in the mid-1980s, just in time for the rise of Christian right politics.)
At the Red & Black, [editor Chuck Reece] enjoyed arguing with Reed about the columns the young conservative contributed. This was at a time when most students were liberal.
“It was always entertaining to have Ralph writing for us,” Reece says. “Even though I didn’t agree with Ralph’s politics or his political views generally, I did not believe he would do something like this.”
Reed was born again in 1983, according to Time magazine. But Reece never had a discussion with Reed that involved religion – “To my recollection, his politics were not at the time driven by religion.”
13 From “The Devil Inside” by Bob Moser, during a speech for Congressional Republicans at the University of Georgia, made in his failed run in 2006 to be the state lieutenant governor:
This is vintage Reed, the incorrigibly boastful, smooth-talking operator who long dazzled–and blinded–evangelical Christians, big-money Republicans and mainstream journalists. Now 44, he still looks like a million bucks, his elfin face perma-tanned to a brick red, his pencil-thin body subtly bulked out by a well-tailored suit. Only one thing is missing: applause. Maybe some CRs [Congressional Republicans] know the real history of that 1980 mock election from Nina Easton’s book Gang of Five, in which Reed’s first big political triumph is revealed to have been rigged–his first notable act of mass deception. Maybe they’re just waiting for Reed to finally offer a satisfying explanation of his star turn in the Abramoff scandal. But his mea culpa smacks more of false piety than genuine gut-spilling.
In January 1989, at a Students for America dinner in Washington, D.C., Reed met Christian broadcasting magnate Pat Robertson, who had just run a failed presidential campaign the year before.
Robertson’s campaign wasn’t a total failure, actually–he came in second to Bob Dole in the 1988 Iowa caucuses, scaring the bejeezus out of the Republican establishment–and he wanted to start an organization devoted to bringing social conservatives into Republican politics. After dinner Robertson asked Reed if he wanted to run the group. At first Reed demurred; he returned to Georgia and his schoolwork, but soon found he couldn’t support a wife and child on a doctoral candidate’s income. In September he accepted Robertson’s offer and moved to southeastern Virginia, home of Robertson’s television evangelism empire.
The Christian Coalition was incorporated as a nonpartisan, tax-exempt nonprofit. But its political allegiance was always clear. In October 1990 the National Republican Senatorial Committee gave the Coalition $64,000 in what Reed would later call “seed money.” The seeds sprouted and grew like crazy.
Read press accounts from the Coalition’s early history, and you find that, when he spoke to the press, Reed would use the same language he had used a decade earlier at College Republicans. In 1991, in a quote that has been hung around his neck ever since, he bragged to Norfolk’s Virginian-Pilot: “I want to be invisible. I do guerrilla warfare. I paint my face and travel at night. You don’t know it’s over until you’re in a body bag.” In 1992 he told the Los Angeles Times: “It’s like guerrilla warfare. If you reveal your location, all it does is allow your opponent to improve his artillery bearings. It’s better to move quietly, with stealth, under cover of night.”
Within a few years under Reed’s leadership the Coalition became, as Nina Easton describes in her book Gang of Five, “a $12 million-plus lobbying machine” that boasted “250,000 dues-paying members” and “1.6 million potential allies.”
And it was effective. After starting with a scant $3,000 and a mailing list of 134,325 names from Robertson’s failed presidential bid, Reed built the Coalition into a dominant force for conservative politics. It was never as large as he boasted-according to Nina J. Easton’s book Gang of Five, he once claimed the Coalition had up to 3 million followers, about five times the dues-paying members-but that was Reed’s gift, his magic: Through stagecraft and bluster, he made the Christian right appear to be the ascendant and inevitable future of American politics. In 1992 the Coalition, along with other religious and culturally conservative groups, shape-shifted the GOP convention, which was both impressive (they hijacked a convention, after all) and inept: The resulting circus scared the bejesus out of half of America. The 1994 Republican takeover of Congress was in part credited to Reed and the Coalition as well. By 1995, Reed was powerful enough, or perceived to be, to get his mug on the cover of Time.
It was never as large as he boasted-according to Nina J. Easton’s book Gang of Five, he once claimed the Coalition had up to 3 million followers, about five times the dues-paying members-but that was Reed’s gift, his magic: Through stagecraft and bluster, he made the Christian right appear to be the ascendant and inevitable future of American politics.
It was widely suspected that Reed grossly exaggerated both the coalition’s membership numbers (apparently closer to 600,000 at its peak, rather than the 1.7 million he claimed) and the distribution of its voter guides (often found discarded in bundles).
When Benjamin Hart arrived at the Christian Coalition in 1992, he seemed an ideal fit for the upstart religious group, which was just beginning to flex its political muscle. With an almost perfect conservative background (co-founder of the Dartmouth Review, director of lectures and seminars at the Heritage Foundation, and executive director of Oliver North’s Freedom Alliance), Hart became Reed’s close confidant in the expansion of the coalition. And donations rose from $5.3 million in 1991 to $21.2 million in 1994.
Although technically an outside contractor, Hart quickly became known as Reed’s No. 2 man. “Any conflict that came up with Hart was going to go Hart’s way,” says one person who worked closely with Reed, “so we had to bend over backwards to make him happy.” Not only did Reed defer direct mail decisions to Hart, he also allowed Hart to coordinate the group’s telemarketing projects, print its voter guides, and oversee the bidding on its million-piece direct mail packages. “Things were handled loosely from the beginning,” says a coalition employee. “[But] Hart was always bringing money in. As long as he was bringing money in, everyone was happy.”
Hart’s problems at the coalition began in the fall of 1995, when the coalition’s marketing director, Donald Black, discovered that Hart’s firm, Hart Conover, actually owned two of the vendors it was using to handle the coalition’s mailings: Universal Lists (which rented mailing lists to the coalition) and Federal Printing & Mailing (which handled the group’s direct mail solicitations). In a memo to coalition CFO Judy Liebert, Black wrote, “This ‘closed circle’ of business provides Hart Conover with an extraordinary income stream. It doesn’t give us the benefit of a competitive bidding environment. Consequently, our ‘above the line’ cost for direct mail fundraising is astronomical (somewhere in the 50 to 70 percent bracket). Even if this relationship is legally justifiable, it reflects an appearance of impropriety.”
According to a memo Liebert wrote to the Christian Coalition board, when she approached Reed with this information in the fall of 1995, he said he knew Hart owned the firms and assured her that Hart had sought out competitive bids. However, when Liebert asked Hart for copies of the bids, he refused to supply them.
Then in late May, Liebert approached a coalition board member with her concerns about Hart and informed him that she had spoken with a U.S. attorney in order to determine whether the apparent markups might be unethical or even criminal. A special board meeting was called, at which Liebert presented evidence suggesting Hart had been ripping off the coalition. Liebert’s case, fleshed out in her memo, was that Federal Printing “appeared to be, for all practical purposes, a ‘paper’ company that Hart Conover used for contracting out our printing and through which we were billed for printing and mailing services. Federal Printing apparently did no actual printing and was co-located with Hart Conover and Universal Lists in the same small suite of offices.” Overall, Liebert estimated, Hart may have bagged the coalition for a total of “a million or more dollars” since 1994.
The coalition’s leadership sprang into action — but not against Hart. On May 30, two days after the board meeting, a coalition security guard showed up at Liebert’s house with a sharply worded letter from board member Richard Weinhold. The letter stated that Liebert’s documents were “insufficient” to support her claim of improper billing, reprimanded her for contacting outside authorities, and informed her that she was suspended with pay “effective immediately.” She was asked to turn over any coalition property — including “files, documents, and all building keys” — immediately. After a six-month “vacation,” Liebert was officially fired in December.
Hart’s fate has been less clear. Following Liebert’s accusations, the coalition hired the accounting firm Coopers & Lybrand to undertake a specific audit of Hart’s operation — but both he and the coalition have insisted on keeping its results secret. Hart’s lawyer, Steven Chameides, would only say that “the audit found nothing more serious than some keypunch and arithmetic errors in billing.” As a result, Hart Conover agreed on a “payment adjustment” with the coalition in December, the specific terms of which Chameides and the coalition have also refused to disclose — except to describe the payment as “minor.”
In April, Reed announced he would leave the coalition to open a political consulting firm. Hart, meanwhile, faces allegations of unethical billing practices and of marking up the coalition’s invoices. As a result, he has been targeted by federal investigators for possible mail fraud.
Widely regarded as instrumental in the Republican takeover of Congress in 1994 and the White House in 2000-and a vehement backer of anti-choice legislation-the conservative lobby group founded in 1989 by televangelist Pat Robertson is but a shadow of its former self. According to its 2004 tax return, the most recent available, the group’s annual revenue has shrunk twentyfold, from a peak of $26 million in 1996 to 1.3 million. It reported a negative net worth of $2.3 million, and has faced at least a dozen lawsuits since 2001 from landlords, lawyers and other creditors trying to collect unpaid bills.
Now its state chapters are starting to abandon the sinking mother ship. The Iowa chapter disassociated itself from the national organization in March and the Maryland chapter followed suit in April. The Iowa chapter described the Coalition’s national leadership as “mired with dissent and distrust,” “riddled with lawsuits and unpaid bills” and “more interested in ‘looking good’ than ‘being good.’”
After Reed’s departure, the coalition became enmeshed in a whole new series of legal problems. In 2001, 10 African American employees filed a racial-discrimination lawsuit alleging that they were forced to enter the office by the back door and at lunch in a segregated area. The suit was settled for about $300,000, according to several published reports.
That same year, Pat Robertson resigned from the Coalition, saying he had decided to get out of politics. He was succeeded as president by Roberta Combs, head of Robertson’s South Carolina campaign, who closed the Washington office and now runs the organization from a small office in Charleston.
The Christian Coalition, the onetime powerhouse of the religious right founded by Pat Robertson, is struggling to stay afloat.
The group’s annual revenue has shrunk to one- twentieth of what it was a decade ago – from a peak of $26 million in 1996 to $1.3 million in 2004 – and it has left a trail of unpaid bills from Texas to Virginia. Among the creditors who have sued the coalition for nonpayment are landlords, direct-mail companies, lawyers and at least one former employee seeking back pay.
According to its website, http://www.censtrat.com, Century Strategies is “a full-service firm providing Strategic Business Development Assistance, Organizational Development, Direct Mail and Voter Contact Services, Fundraising Management, Research and Analysis, Creative Media Planning, Public and Media Relations, and List Management and Procurement.” The firm has two offices–one in Atlanta and another in Washington–it has 10 employees, and it has, according to a spokeswoman, “around” two dozen clients. As “one of the nation’s leading public affairs and public relations firms,” i.e., not a lobbying firm, Century Strategies does not have to disclose its clients or its fees. But the names of some of those clients have surfaced over the years.
While the Abramoff scandals are plenty damning on their own, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution has uncovered a pattern of similar instances in which Reed “tapped into his vast network of conservative religious activists” to do the bidding of big-money clients. In one example from 1998 Reed concocted the Alliance of Christian Ministries in China, a group of missionary organizations supporting favorable trade status for China purportedly to benefit efforts to spread the Gospel there. But the alliance turned out to be an empty shell, serving the interests of Reed clients, including Boeing, which hoped to sell $120 billion worth of airplanes to China. Like his efforts on behalf of the Indian casinos, Reed’s pro-China lobbying was not just dishonest but hypocritical to boot. Just as he often preached against the “nationwide scourge” of gambling, Reed had spoken out consistently against favorable trade status for China. “We believe that human and civil rights and religious freedom and liberty should be at the center of our foreign policy,” he piously declared at a 1997 Christian Coalition press conference, just one year before setting up the phony alliance. “We believe that if the United States makes the center of its foreign policy profits rather than people, and money rather than human rights, then we will have lost our soul as a nation.”
Reed also helped a powerful coalition of business groups, including Boeing and the Business Roundtable, to convince Congress to normalize trade relations with China — over the objections of many conservatives, who criticize China’s dismal record on religious freedom. Brian Lunde, a public relations executive who worked with Reed on the China issue in 2000, recalls that Reed was instrumental in persuading conservative members of Congress to support permanent normal trade relations with China, and that he helped write ads aimed at conservatives arguing that a closer economic relationship with China could improve human rights
Among Reed’s clients is Channel One, a company that provides television equipment to schools in exchange for airing 10 minutes of news and 2 minutes of commercials daily. Prominent conservatives have blasted the company for exposing children to junk-food ads and explicit movie promos. In response, Channel One turned to Reed, who in 2002 helped the company deflect a proposed Texas Board of Education resolution that would have urged schools to jettison Channel One. Reed, who points out that Channel One also runs ads promoting abstinence and anti-alcohol messages, phoned several board members and dissuaded them from voting for the resolution, much to the dismay of conservatives like Phyllis Schlafly, a longtime critic of Channel One. “I’m surprised that any conservative would work for it,” Schlafly said. “They’re all advertising things that I wouldn’t want my children to buy.”
The whir of hundreds of sewing machines reverberates in the thick, dusty air at the RIFU garment factory. Inside this large warehouse, behind a guarded metal fence, 300 employees-most of them Chinese women-cut, sew, iron and fold blouses with such efficiency and focus that they seem like machinery themselves. From piles of orange and pink fabric, the workers will produce over 15,000 garments today for J. Jill, Elie Tahari and Ann Taylor. These name brand companies don’t own the factory; like Liz Claiborne, The Gap, Ralph Lauren and others, they subcontract production to factories like this, scattered around the tiny Micronesian island of Saipan.
Counters above the sewing machines indicate how many pieces the women have completed. According to workers, if they can’t finish a set quota of garments in a day, they may have to stay later and work for free, or they won’t be eligible for future overtime opportunities-which they desperately need.
Coming from rural villages and the big city slums of poor Asian countries, these garment workers began their sojourn in the Marianas with a huge financial deficit, having paid recruiters as much as $7,000 to obtain a one-year contract job (renewable at the employer’s discretion). Many of them borrow the money-a small fortune in China, where most are recruited-from lenders who charge as much as 20 percent interest.
In a situation akin to indentured servitude, workers cannot earn back their recruitment fee and pay annual company supplied housing and food expenses of about $2,100 without working tremendous hours of overtime. Before being able to save her first dollar, a worker who owes, say, $5,000 to her recruiter has to work nearly 2,500 hours at Saipan’s current minimum wage-which equals six more 40-hour workweeks than exist in a year.
And that’s assuming she gets paid. Increasingly, workers are filing formal complaints that they have not received their wages, with some women going without paychecks for over five months. Still, workers at RIFU and other Saipan garment factories labor six days a week, sometimes up to 20 hours a day.
The American consumers who wear the clothes these women produce probably have never heard of Saipan or the 13 other islands that comprise the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands (CNMI). Located just north of the U.S. territory of Guam, the islands were seized from the Japanese by U.S. military forces during World War II and served as the base for sending atomic bombs to Hiroshima and Nagasaki. After the war, the islands became a United Nations territory, administered by the United States.
Then, in 1975, the islands’ indigenous population of subsistence farmers and fishermen voted to become a commonwealth of the United States-a legal designation that made them U.S. citizens and subject to most U.S. laws. There were two critical exceptions, however: The U.S. agreed to exempt the islands from the minimum wage requirements of the Fair Labor Standards Act (allowing the islands to set their own lower minimum wage, currently $3.05, compared to $5.15 in the U.S.) and from most provisions of the Immigration and Nationality Act. This has allowed garment manufacturers to import thousands of foreign contract guest workers who, ironically, stitch onto the garments they make the labels “Made in Saipan (USA),” Made in Northern Marianas (USA)” or simply “Made in USA.”
Despite the squalid living conditions, the young guest workers want to stay at their jobs long enough to make their sacrifices worthwhile. But if they happen to get pregnant while working in Saipan, they’re faced with a new nightmare. According to a 1998 investigation by the Department of Interior Office of Insular Affairs, a number of Chinese garment workers reported that if they became pregnant, they were “forced to return to China to have an abortion or forced to have an illegal abortion” in the Marianas.
These days, pregnancy is still highly problematic for guest workers. Many believe that if they get pregnant their employers will not renew their contracts for another year. That’s essentially what happened to Chen Xiaoyan, the former RIFU worker. Two years ago, she became pregnant while visiting her boyfriend back in China. RIFU, although ostensibly responsible for workers’ medical care, told her they would not renew her contract unless she provided them an affidavit saying she would pay for all pregnancy-related medical expenses. When she refused, Chen was fired.
With few economic options, pregnant workers often feel they have no choice but to visit one of Saipan’s underground abortion providers. At least four acupuncture clinics offer pills to induce abortions, according to a local translator and former garment worker.
“I’ve driven four Chinese women to get abortions here,” he says, pointing to an inconspicuous cement building with red Chinese lettering and an English sign that reads “Acupuncture, Herbs, Massage Oils.” “I see girls whose bleeding did not stop, and on two incidents I had to take the girls to the hospital.”
Teeming with strip clubs and massage parlors, the red-light district of Saipan has a magnetic draw for Asian businessmen, and for U.S. Navy sailors on three-day furloughs from duty stations in the Pacific and beyond. “Every time a ship arrives, they want women,” says a local taxi driver. “They say, ‘I want a nice fuck tonight. Give me a nice lady.’”
There are no reliable statistics, but an estimated 90 percent of the island’s prostitutes are former Chinese garment workers, who sell sexual favors for about $50 a night. Women recruited to work in Saipan as waitresses, or in other legitimate jobs, often end up being forced to become strippers or prostitutes, according to Timothy Riera, director of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission’s Honolulu office.
“I thought I was coming to work as a dancer,” says a young Filipina woman, her voice barely a whisper as she speaks behind a curtain of her hair. “I was so surprised on the first night in the club when they told me I had to strip. The only way to get tips was by picking up the money with your breasts and your vagina. And there was a VIP room in the back where people could have sex.”
The guest worker system inherently denies rights to foreign employees, and this, paired with a lack of government intervention, creates a “breeding ground for slavery,” says Jolene Smith, executive director of Free the Slaves and an expert on human trafficking.
Beginning in 1995 and continuing to the present day, at least 29 different bills-some to raise the minimum wage, some to close off the immigration exemption, and some to deny use of the “Made in USA” label on products of the CNMI-were introduced by Sens. Frank Murkowski (R-Alaska) and Ted Kennedy (D-Mass.) and by Reps. George Miller (D-Calif.) and David Bonier (D-Mich.). Twice-in 1995 and again in 2000-the U.S. Senate voted unanimously for Murkowski’s wage and immigration reforms only to have the bills die in the House Resources Committee.
In August 1999, political organizer Ralph Reed’s firm sent out a mailer to Alabama conservative Christians asking them to call then-Rep. Bob Riley (R-Ala.) and tell him to vote against legislation that would have made the U.S. commonwealth of Northern Mariana Islands subject to federal wage and worker safety laws.
Now those seven-year-old words are coming back to haunt Reed, the former executive director of the Christian Coalition and a candidate for the Republican nomination to be Georgia’s lieutenant governor.
“The radical left, the Big Labor Union Bosses, and Bill Clinton want to pass a law preventing Chinese from coming to work on the Marianas Islands,” the mailer from Reed’s firm said. The Chinese workers, it added, “are exposed to the teachings of Jesus Christ” while on the islands, and many “are converted to the Christian faith and return to China with Bibles in hand.”
Corrupt local officials hired the firm of infamous lobbyist Jack Abramoff — for more than four million dollars — to try to stop the reforms proposed back in Washington. Abramoff, in turn, hired Ralph Reed and his political direct mail company, Millennium Marketing, to conduct a phony grass roots campaign urging Alabama Christians to write their local congressman to oppose the reforms.
Of course, Reed didn’t tell those Christians he was being paid to help keep running sweatshops that exploited women. Instead, he told them the reforms were a trick orchestrated by the left and organized labor. Limits on Chinese workers would keep them from being “exposed to the teachings of Jesus Christ.” His company explained it was just trying to encourage “grass roots citizens to promote the propagation of the Gospel” and that many of the workers were “converted to the Christian faith and return to China with Bibles in hand.”
The Microsoft Corporation has quietly hired Ralph Reed, a senior consultant to Gov. George W. Bush’s presidential campaign, to lobby Mr. Bush in opposition to the government’s antitrust case against the software giant.
Microsoft’s aim, the company says, is to curry favor with the apparent Republican presidential nominee, hoping he will speak out against the government’s case — and, perhaps, take a softer approach toward the company if he is elected president.
Today, Mr. Reed declined to talk about his company’s contract with Microsoft, saying, “We have a policy of not discussing our clients.” Another executive of his company, speaking on condition of anonymity, said Microsoft had hired Century Strategies to lobby other political candidates as well.
One obvious goal, while the antitrust case drags through a year or more of appeals, is to convince the next president, Congress and the public that the case should be abandoned. But the current campaign by Mr. Reed’s company is much more closely aimed at the Bush campaign.
A series of e-mail messages from John Pudner, senior project manager for Century Strategies, laid out a detailed plan by Mr. Reed’s staff and his contractors to recruit senior Bush supporters from around the country in an effort to undermine the government’s suit.
The Bush supporters — and the e-mail showed that Mr. Pudner is screening them carefully to make sure they are influential within the campaign — are being asked to write letters to Mr. Bush saying they believe the government’s case is misguided, and that the American people oppose it.
Mr. Pudner’s e-mail messages instruct “state operatives” of the firm to send him biographical information about Bush supporters who could help influence the Bush campaign.
Only after he has verified that the supporters are sufficiently influential are the regional lobbyists, working on contract for Century Strategies, authorized to solicit more letters.
He said that the company intended to gather the letters through the end of this month. “We will reject letters that are not from someone” the company counts as influential, he wrote.
The e-mails were made available to The New York Times by a recipient who did not agree with the goals of the campaign. One lobbyist said Century Strategies was offering the regional contractors $300 a letter — a high price for this sort of work.
According to the Reed company’s internal documents, the mission was to identify and recruit prominent Bush supporters to personally write and lobby Bush to back Microsoft, the losing defendant in an antitrust suit brought by the Justice Department. It’s not a bad deal if you’re Reed. First, you get paid to develop the no-holds-barred — and winning — South Carolina primary campaign strategy for Bush against Sen. John McCain, which included phone banks branding McCain as untrustworthy on abortion and for being a little too cozy with gays. And second, Microsoft compensates you handsomely for conducting a secret lobbying campaign with your own candidate. Double dipping for a double agent.
When this conflict of interest was exposed and Reed was embarrassed by The New York Times, the former Christian Coalition director’s consulting company said in a statement, “We should have been more sensitive to possible misperceptions, and it is an error that we regret.”
Bush campaign spokesman Scott McClelland reported that neither Bush nor anyone else in his campaign had been lobbied on Microsoft by Reed or any of his company employees (which, of course, was not the company’s stated mission) and that Reed would remain with the campaign, adding, “The matter is closed.” McClelland told me: Reed’s Microsoft contract “was an unpleasant surprise for us.”
That Ralph Reed was not immediately dropped like a bad habit for compromising the campaign of the presidential candidate by whom he was paid is further evidence of the moral numbness that has polluted our money-besotted politics. Can anyone seriously imagine a Robert Kennedy showing mercy to a “fifth columnist” on his campaign who was being overcompensated to lobby RFK’s position on an issue? Not for a New York minute would such an individual have been stomached. Where is the moral outrage of the Reformer with Results?
Eventually, in 2006, Microsoft would drop Reed’s firm as a lobbyist.
The Microsoft Corporation said on Friday that it had severed ties with Ralph Reed, a Republican lobbyist and former leader of the Christian Coalition who is running for lieutenant governor of Georgia.
“Ralph Reed is no longer on retainer with Microsoft,” said a company spokeswoman, Ginny Terzano.
The move came a month after liberals, upset that Microsoft had withdrawn its support for a gay rights bill here, urged the company to stop using Mr. Reed as a political consultant.
Karl Rove, President Bush’s top political adviser, recommended the Republican strategist Ralph Reed to the Enron Corporation for a lucrative consulting contract as Mr. Bush was weighing whether to run for president, close associates of Mr. Rove say.
The Rove associates say the recommendation, which Enron accepted, was intended to keep Mr. Reed’s allegiance to the Bush campaign without putting him on the Bush payroll. Mr. Bush, they say, was then developing his “compassionate conservativism” message and did not want to be linked too closely to Mr. Reed, who had just stepped down as executive director of the Christian Coalition, an organization of committed religious conservatives.
At the same time, they say, the contract discouraged Mr. Reed, a prominent operative who was being courted by several other campaigns, from backing anyone other than Mr. Bush.
Enron paid Mr. Reed $10,000 to $20,000 a month, the amount varying by year and the particular work, people familiar with the arrangement say. He was hired in September 1997 and worked intermittently for Enron until the company collapsed.
In interviews today, both Mr. Rove and Mr. Reed said the contract with Enron had had nothing to do with the Bush campaign. But Mr. Rove said he had praised Mr. Reed’s qualifications in a conversation about the job with an Enron lobbyist in Texas.
“I think I talked to someone before Ralph got hired,” Mr. Rove said. “But I may have talked to him afterward.”
“I’m a big fan of Ralph’s,” Mr. Rove said, “so I’m constantly saying positive things.”
Mr. Reed said he had been hired mostly to help with an Enron campaign in Pennsylvania to win a central role in the state’s electricity market, which was being restructured. He said he had had no idea that Mr. Rove or anyone else had spoken on his behalf.
Karl Rove, President Bush’s top political adviser, recommended the Republican strategist Ralph Reed to the Enron
Corporation for a lucrative consulting contract as Mr. Bush was weighing whether to run for president, close associates of Mr. Rove say.
But a friend of Mr. Bush recalled a discussion in July 1997 in which Mr. Rove took credit for arranging an Enron job for Mr. Reed. “Karl told me explicitly of his concerns to take care of Ralph,” this person said. “It was important for Karl’s power position to be the guy who put this together for Ralph. And Bush wanted Ralph available to him during the presidential campaign.”
Mr. Rove was concerned, this person also said, that Mr. Reed not have a prominent public role in the campaign because “Ralph was so
evangelical and hard right, and Karl thought it sent the wrong signal.” Another Republican said: “It was basically accepted that Enron took care of Ralph. It’s a smart way to cut campaign costs and tie people up” so they do not work for other candidates.
“If Karl Rove was partly responsible for him getting the job at Enron, it illustrates the close relations between the Bush political world and Enron,” said Trevor Potter, a Republican who is a former chairman of the Federal Election Commission. “If it was done for the avowed reason to keep Reed satisfied and out of someone else’s political camp, it illustrates what everyone in the Republican world has known for years: Enron has been an important source of political power in the party.”
Mr. Potter said Mr. Reed’s hiring could have been a violation of federal election law if it turned out that “it was a backdoor way of getting him extra compensation for the time he was spending on Bush activity.”
Around the time that Mr. Reed worked out his deal with Enron, he made clear to the Bush team that he was supporting Mr. Bush for president. Mr. Reed once recalled that at a meeting in 1997, he told Mr. Bush, then the governor of Texas: “I hope you go. I hope you run. And if you run, I’ll do everything I can to help get you elected.”
From then on, Mr. Reed was an unpaid consultant to the Bush organization, though after the race was well under way his firm was paid by the campaign for direct mail and phone banks.
On February 2, 2000, John McCain arrived in South Carolina red-hot, a 19-point-upset victor in New Hampshire over George Bush. In the final days there, some of Bush’s aides had pressed him to turn aggressively negative. Bush had resisted. His political guru, Karl Rove, overconfident for too long, had agreed.
Now, in South Carolina, Bush had lost close to a 50-point lead. With just 17 days before the vote, his back was firmly against the wall.
“Desperate people do desperate things,” Warren Rudman, the 74-year-old former New Hampshire senator and one of McCain’s national chairmen, told me. “When you look at a lot of campaigns, not just that one, when front-runners suddenly fall behind, their campaign consultants just go off the deep end…People going down for the third time, they grab on for anything they can get ahold of, and if it happens to be something nasty, rotten, and false, that doesn’t make much difference.”
At a meeting of Bush’s top staff that first day, the signal went out “to take the gloves off,” Time magazine reported at the time.
In 2000, George W. Bush was the clear choice of the state’s bosses-known as “the Campbell machine,” after Carroll Campbell, governor from 1987 to ’95 and still popular. It could as easily have been “the Atwater mafia,” since Atwater and Campbell, as a team and starting virtually from scratch, had all but achieved one-party rule for the G.O.P. in South Carolina.
Besides Campbell himself, the Bush team was chockablock with Atwater debtors: Senator Strom Thurmond, who owed him his tough 1978 re-election; local strategist Warren Tompkins, who had been friends with him since the fourth grade; and communications czar Tucker Eskew, who’d apprenticed under him. From the religious right there was Robertson, who’d gone to Atwater’s hospital bedside shortly before his death in 1991 to try to clear up any bitterness left by the ’88 race. (He believed Atwater had been behind the leak of the sex scandal involving fellow TV preacher Jimmy Swaggart; it broke days before the South Carolina vote and damaged Robertson by association.) And there was Coalition executive vice president Roberta Combs, an old South Carolina pal, and Reed, who used to say that all he ever really wanted to be was a “Christian Lee Atwater.” In 1997, Reed left the Coalition for Enron. (It’s been alleged that Rove arranged it, to keep him loyal to Bush; both Reed and Rove deny this.) He then set up his own political-and-corporate-consulting firm in Atlanta, which in 2000 had a multi-million-dollar contract to mobilize voters for the G.O.P. (Reed declined repeated requests to be interviewed.)
“I always knew that if Bush got in trouble he’d push the doomsday button,” a respected Washington figure with solid ties to the religious right told me, asking that his name not be used. He said he’d been told the strategy called for an “underground campaign” by all the heavyweight groups of the Republican and Christian right, a campaign that would be modeled on Ralph Reed’s infamous, Atwater-like boast about his Christian Coalition work: “I paint my face and travel at night. You don’t know it’s over until you’re in a body bag. You don’t know until Election Night.” Luckily for Bush, the source said, the showdown was in South Carolina, where the Christian Coalition had its greatest strength. They’d work through word of mouth in the evangelical community, and it’d never be picked up by the media. “Reed had pledged to Rove that he could deliver. Ultimately, it was all about power. They were all attaching their fates to Bush.”
Nancy Snow drove all night from New Hampshire to volunteer in McCain’s office in her old hometown of Greenville. Then an assistant professor of political science at New England College (she’s now at Cal State Fullerton), Snow had invited John and Cindy McCain to speak at her school and was sold.
“We were starting to get wind that this was going to be a very different campaign,” she said from her parents’ home in Birmingham, Alabama. “There was this sense that everything was turning negative. People were walking into the office with copies of this particular e-mail and asking us about it…It was so revolting.”
The “revolting” e-mail-alleging that “McCain chose to sire children without marriage”-was from Richard Hand, a professor of the Bible at Greenville’s Christian-fundamentalist Bob Jones University, Bush’s very first campaign stop, on February 2.
“This whole thing, it was orchestrated by Rove, it was all Bush’s deal.… It was pretty rank,” said Fletcher, “and they had an institution that was peddling all that shit, and it was a university, Bob Jones University. I’m telling you, if there was a campaign headquarters in South Carolina, there it was. Hand was part of it, but Hand wasn’t the only one.”
Mark Carman, who owns the Capitol City News & Maps store, told me of going to a candidates’ debate in Columbia, “and when we got back to our car, there was a flyer under the windshield wiper saying something about McCain having a Negro child. My wife is African-American-she just tore it up.”
Kevin Geddings, a prominent South Carolina Democratic consultant now based in North Carolina, told me someone had faxed him “a kind of cheesy Kinko’s pamphlet” with a photograph of the McCain family. “It was just so obvious,” he said. “It was one of the few shots you’ve ever seen of the McCains that so prominently featured that particular girl.”
McCain’s closest aides were so stunned by the angle of the attack that at first they tried to shield him from it. “We expected one thing, and it was quite the opposite,” said [deputy campaign manager Roy Fletcher], who personally saw the “Negro child” flyers “all over every car” at the debate. “We figured they would go after him on some sort of philandering issue. McCain had pretty well knocked all that down [by admitting in his 1999 autobiography that, at some point after his five and a half years in a North Vietnamese prison, he'd been unfaithful to his first wife], but I always figured that would sort of be the underground thing there. But, man, the child thing…I’ve seen the worst form of racist sons of bitches in the world in David Duke, but this was unbelievable.”
The girl in question is Bridget. In 1991, when Cindy McCain was on a relief mission to Bangladesh, she was asked by one of Mother Teresa’s nuns to help a young orphan with a cleft palate. Flying her to the U.S. for surgery, Cindy realized she couldn’t give her up. At the Phoenix airport, she broke it to her husband, and they eventually adopted the child. But few people knew that story. In the words of McCain’s national campaign manager, Rick Davis, a smear doesn’t have “to be true to be effective.”
[Max] Heller was about to turn 85 when I met him. Stately and gracious, he told me how he had fled Austria in 1938 and that he and his wife had lost 90 relatives in the Holocaust. By 1946, he had started his own clothing business in Greenville.
“Here’s a guy,” [Mark Shields, Heller's campaign manager] told me, “who had been enormously popular, enormously successful as mayor, but beyond that he had just been the ultimate employer. When he sold his factory, he spent all his time making sure that all his employees were placed…I was doing several other races that year, [but] there was nothing that engaged both my heart and my spirit as much as Max.”
His opponent was Carroll Campbell, a young state senator who’d earlier led an anti-busing march but whose blow-dried looks reminded Atwater of Robert Redford in The Candidate. Although his main task that year was getting Strom Thurmond re-elected, Atwater was there as an informal adviser; an ex-partner, Sam Dawson (who in the 90s served as executive director of the National Republican Congressional Committee), was the campaign manager. Tompkins was also involved.
Early on, Campbell commissioned a poll (one that remained secret for years): Are you more or less likely to vote for, among other choices, “a native South Carolinian” or “a Jewish immigrant”? And which characteristics best describe the two candidates: “a. Honest; b. A Christian man; c. Concern for the people; d. A hard worker; e. Experienced in Government; f. Jewish.”
“Max started to pick it up at plant gates as he was campaigning,” Shields recalled. “?’Gee, Max, I didn’t know you didn’t believe in Jesus.’ That was the tip-off. The best we could reconstruct, it was push-polling.”
LISA BARON
When people find out that I worked for Ralph Reed, during the 2000 Republican presidential primary in South Carolina, they always ask the same thing: was it true that Ralph told voters that Senator John McCain fathered a black child? My answer is always the same thing: “How would I know? I was in a Greenville hotel room giving Ari Fleischer a blow job. Now, oral sex with anyone, particularly the aforementioned former George W. Bush White House press secretary is typically not the sort of physical activity one brags about. Or broadcasts. Or, for that matter, inserts into the opening pages of her first book. In fact, some girls are loathe to admit to hovering over a man’s shaft for any extended period of time. An activity, from an aerial view, looks like you’re bobbing for apples…and losing.
So, why then would I accept one-eyed flesh monster in my mouth during a road trip through the 2000 South Carolina presidential primary, with the former director of the Christian Coalition, Ralph Reed? Because back in those days I was a fearless, frisky, and tenacious twenty-six year old press tart with starry eyes, a short skirt, and a passion for civics. To be able to say “I’m with the such-and-such campaign”, or “I worked with Senator so-and-so” is to us political junkies what I’m With The Band is to Pamela Des Barres.
My remarkable encounter with Ari, in that unremarkable hotel room perfectly summed up my groupie like relationship to politics at that time. I wanted it, I worshipped it, and I went for it.
The 2000 South Carolina Republican primary would provide the backdrop for my third meeting with Ari. Tensions were running high in the two horse race between Bush and United States Senator John McCain. The primary war in the South had become civil. And when you pit brother against brother, things can get downright ugly. Rumors had begun to circulate about McCain’s adopted child, suggesting that the kid was conceived a la Strom Thrumond style, with a black woman. No one is sure where the rumors came from, and more than once I’ve had to remind people that no, I don’t know if it was Ralph who had planted the seed, because at the time I was too busy helping Ari Fleischer spread his seed.
When he wasn’t smiling and shaking hands, Ralph was taking emails and calls from Karl Rove. And I’d be taking calls from Ari. Turns out we were all staying at the same hotel. By further coincidence, Ari’s room was right next to Ralph’s. Come knock on my door when you get back, said Ari. As soon as I was sure that Ralph and his wife were in their room for the night, I tapped on Ari’s door. I had had a cocktail, or maybe three? Sometimes it’s the only way to wind down after a long day on the campaign trail. Ari and I started kissing, and I think I felt giddy. Giddy about the primary race, and high on the inappropriateness of the moment. I will say this: I was not keen on getting that room-a-rockin’ as I did not want Ralph or his wife to come-a-knockin’.
As much as I knew politics could be a rough and tumble business, Ralph and his wife were right next door, and, well, Ralph had always been so good to me. Even though I didn’t share his beliefs, I respected him, as an upholder of family values, as a brilliant speaker and academic, and as a boss I trusted to take my career where it needed to go. Since audible sex was clearly out of the question, I immediately headed south and took care of business. With each bob of my head, I considered my future options. I won’t sleep over, I said to myself, as my head descended. Okay, I will sleep over, but I’ll leave before Ari wakes up, I said on the ascent. But I will leave, while Ari is asleep , I promised, on a more rapid decline. When it was clear that my job was done, if you know what I mean, and I think you know what I mean, I fell asleep and awoke as early as I’ve ever gotten up, around 5:30 am, only to find Ari already up out of bed scanning the day’s newspapers to prepare himself and his candidate, the future president of the United States, for the day.
I increased donations to charity in 2012. This deal limits my deductions so I, & many others, will likely donate less in 2013.— Ari Fleischer (@AriFleischer) January 01, 2013
Word that Ralph Reed plans to seek the lieutenant governorship of Georgia signals what friends say is the former Christian Coalition executive director’s ultimate ambition — 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.
A Bush White House favorite, Mr. Reed would have to give up his lucrative campaign-consulting business in order to run for a relatively minor office in his home state.
Associates say Mr. Reed, 43, whose picture first appeared on the cover of Time magazine nearly 10 years ago, hopes to use the lieutenant governor’s job to position himself to run for Georgia governor. Friends also say the Atlanta-based consultant’s long-held ambition is ultimately to win for himself the Republican presidential nomination that, as a campaign adviser, he has helped others to seek.
“First, he’s got to get his foot in the door” of electoral politics, a Republican friend of Mr. Reed’s confided, adding that the political calendar in Georgia dictates that “his move has to be next year.”
If Mr. Reed can win the No. 2 spot next year, by 2010 he would already have a campaign organization, a donors list, a campaign kitty and four years of statewide elected office experience.
As in many other races, national security was a central issue. Mr. [Saxby] Chambliss, 58, went straight for the jugular, accusing his opponent — who lost two legs and his right arm during a mission in Khe Sanh, Vietnam — as soft on defense.
One of the most provocative commercials flashed pictures of Osama bin Laden and then blasted Mr. [Max] Cleland, 60, for voting against the president 11 times on domestic security.
Democrats called the bin Laden advertisements shameless. A Republican strategist, Ralph Reed, said the issue ”was not Max’s war record but his voting record.”
Reed’s next move was to get himself elected Republican chairman in Georgia, just in time to get the keys to test-drive a high-tech, state-of-the-art GOP voter-targeting and mobilization system–piloted in Georgia in 2002 and deployed to marvelous effect nationally two years later–and to preside over the best Republican election year since Reconstruction.
Nevertheless, over the next four years Reed helped do for the Georgia Republican Party something much like what he’d done for the Coalition-organizing and rebuilding it from the ground up. He was elected state party chairman in 2001, and in 2002 the Georgia Republicans won a historic upset. Sonny Perdue became the first Republican in thirty-nine gubernatorial elections to win, and a Republican congressman, Saxby Chambliss, defeated the Democratic senator Max Cleland. Georgia’s other senator, Zell Miller, is a Democrat in name only, who has already endorsed George W. Bush-so in practical terms Georgia was fully Republican. “What happened in Georgia in 2002 was a once-in-a-decade performance,” says the political analyst Charlie Cook.
Even if it had many causes (not least the tremendous appeal of the President, whose visits in behalf of Republican candidates Reed leveraged to maximum effect), this startling success testified to Reed’s enduring skill as a political strategist.
In June 1997, Ralph Reed left the Christian Coalition to open his own consulting shop, Century Strategies, just outside Atlanta. His plan was to get “pro-family” candidates elected across the country-congressmen, governors, senators, state representatives, lieutenant governors, even Georgia’s labor commissioner-and he started rounding up clients. Former associates say he was “a fantastic salesman,” promising neophyte candidates that he’d raise three times more money for them than he’d charge in fees, that he’d leverage his celebrity contacts, that he’d rake the grass roots for votes. That was the appeal, Reed’s political juice. But those same associates say he didn’t provide much beyond the salesmanship part. “He’d say, ‘We’re gonna sign up 10,000 people and make 25,000 phone calls,’ “says one, “but he knew nobody’s going to go back and count how many phone calls we actually made. That was Ralph all the way.”
Three of Century’s candidates lost their primaries (though one had dismissed the firm before voting day), and a fourth dropped out of a California race. In November, Century lost at least six more races. In an e-mail to Abramoff six days after the election, Reed noted that he’d lost Governor Fob James’s reelection bid in Alabama, Kentuckian Gex “Jay” Williams’s run for a U.S. House seat, and Gary Hofmeister’s campaign in Indiana’s Tenth Congressional District. Given the national tide, those were probably not in the cards, he wrote, but we fought like dogs.
Hofmeister, who still considers Reed a friend, doesn’t quite remember it that way. Four months before the general election, he wrote a letter to Tim Phillips, Reed’s partner at the time, wondering when the cavalry would be coming. “Even apart from my friendship with Ralph, I was rather amazed that I received no congratulatory call from Ralph after the primary nor on anything else,” he wrote. “My point is definitely not that I want to change horses…but only that as the president of the firm, I would think he should have at least a bit of contact with his clients.” After the letter, Hofmeister says now, “I pretty much got back zero.”
That was a pattern, former associates say. “We lost nearly every big-ticket race,” one says, “except for [Georgia senator Paul] Coverdell and [Alabama senator] Richard Shelby, who weren’t going to lose anyway, but we claimed them as victories. The fact is, across the board, if the races weren’t premier, Ralph simply wasn’t there.”
In the autumn of 1998, Georgians were jolted from their armchairs by television ads run by a Republican candidate for lieutenant governor with the nicely onomatopoeic name of Mitch Skandalakis. One commercial played what political writer Josh Marshall later described as “the D.W. Griffith card,” charging gross incompetence on the part of Atlanta’s predominantly black political leadership. Another featured an actor who resembled Skandalakis’s opponent, state senator Mark Taylor, shuffling down a hallway at a well-known psychiatric and drug treatment facility near Atlanta. The ads were arresting, but they backfired. Skandalakis got stomped by Taylor, while a surprisingly high turnout among African Americans helped produce a victory for Democratic gubernatorial candidate Roy Barnes and other Democrats running statewide.
The Skandalakis campaign’s top consultant was one of Georgia’s most famous living sons–Ralph Reed. The former executive director of the Christian Coalition had left the financially troubled organization the previous year and launched a much-ballyhooed political consulting firm based in Atlanta called Century Strategies. The 1998 election cycle was supposed to be Reed’s chance to prove that his political skills could stand on their own. But the reputation he developed wasn’t the one he had hoped for. Republicans grumbled that his dirty tactics in the Skandalakis campaign were responsible for bringing down the party’s entire state ticket. What’s more, that campaign didn’t seem to be the exception to Reed’s modus operandi, but the rule. “Most [of Reed's clients] started out strong,” wrote Marshall after the election, “with heavy appeals on moral issues (something Reed strongly advocated), faltered in the stretch, and, finally, resorted to a blizzard of low-ball (sometimes racially tinged) tactics before stumbling toward defeat.”
With Citizens for America disbanded, and law school done, Abramoff moved to Los Angeles. He came up with the premise for “Red Scorpion” and hired Arne Olsen, a young screenwriter with no credits to his name, to write it. The Abramoffs told Olson they wanted to base the fictional African country in the film, Mombaka, directly on Angola, and the rebel leader on [ostensibly anti-communist Angolan warlord Jonas Savimbi]. Olsen said he churned out a baldly propagandistic script.
Initially, the movie was set to shoot in Swaziland, but at the last minute Abramoff moved the production to Namibia, which was occupied by South Africa’s apartheid government. Congress had passed (over Reagan’s veto) the Comprehensive Anti-Apartheid Act in 1986, making it very frowned-upon, when not illegal, to do business with South Africa or its proxies. This did not seem to bother Abramoff, who planned to use South African Defense Force vehicles and equipment on the set and soldiers as extras. By 1988, when shooting started on the film, Abramoff likely had connections in the South African government.
The movie seemed like an opportunity to turn a buck – if not win any awards. “There’s some fish for eating and some fish for buying and selling,” Glickenhaus said. “This was a fish for buying and selling.” In typical Hollywood tradition, Glickenhaus threw a party for the film at Cannes, his feelings about its quality notwithstanding. The Abramoff brothers came, but, he said, they “looked totally out of place.”
The actor Carmen Argenziano, who played the villainous Cuban colonel, said he knew that many of the men playing Russian and Cuban soldiers were actual SADF soldiers. There were also rumors going around the set that some of the funding for the film, not just props and extras, was coming from South Africa.
In the late 1980s, some conservatives in Washington saw P.W. Botha’s apartheid government in Pretoria as the last bulwark against communism in Africa. Certain Reagan domestiques had even gone to work for it. “The South African government was the only one that was, shall we say, anti-communist,” said Stuart Spencer, who’d help run Reagan’s 1980 and ’84 campaigns and later became a lobbyist for Pretoria.
Abramoff seems to have shared the sentiment. In 1986, he founded the International Freedom Foundation, whose stated goal was “to foster individual freedom throughout the world by engaging in activities which promote the development of free and open societies based on the principles of free enterprise.” More specifically, among the IFF’s aims were to oppose the Anti-Apartheid Act and other sanctions and to urge greater support in Washington for Pretoria and less support for the African National Congress, the party that would come to power in 1994 under Nelson Mandela. At its height, around the time “Red Scorpion” was released, the IFF employed about 30 young ideologues in offices on G Street in Washington, Johannesburg, London and Brussels. Churning out reports and presentations (for one such presentation on the Contras, it borrowed the slide show that North had used to raise money for his arms-deal network, according to Pandin), the IFF attracted notable members such as Sen. Jesse Helms, R-N.C., and Rep. Dan Burton, R-Ind.
The IFF, however, could not claim impartiality on the subject. It was, in fact, clandestinely funded by the SADF’s military intelligence arm, according to former U.S. officials, ANC documents, and reports published in U.S. and U.K. According to a 1995 Newsday report, the IFF received up to $1.5 million a year from the SADF from 1986 through 1992, as a part of Operation Babushka, a smear campaign meant to discredit Mandela and the ANC by portraying them as allied with communist regimes. An SADF intelligence chief also told the Newsday reporters that the SADF helped fund “Red Scorpion.”
“We knew that the IFF was funded by the South African government,” Herman Cohen, who ran Africa operations for the National Security Council, told Salon. “It was one of a number of front organizations.”
It was December 2001, and he was a kingpin of Republican Washington, one of the city’s richest and best-connected lobbyists. His former personal assistant had gone to work for Karl Rove, the new president’s top political adviser; he was close friends with the powerful Republican congressman from Texas, Tom DeLay, a relationship most of his competitors would kill to boast of. He was making millions on fees of up to $750 per hour; he was the proprietor of two city restaurants; and he was even a man of good works — a charitable giver and the founder of a private religious school in the Maryland suburbs. Dressed in expensive suits, he moved around the capital in a BMW outfitted with a computer screen, often headed to one of the countless fund-raisers he gave for Republican congressmen and senators at Redskins and Orioles and Wizards games in his private sky boxes. Jack Abramoff was a man in full.
In Beltway lobbying, as elsewhere, diversification is the key to success. It is essential for a lobbyist like Abramoff–who boasts of his passion for ideology–to stretch his conservative arguments over as wide a variety of clients as possible. Channel One, the for-profit TV channel that pumps commercial-laden programming into public school classrooms, hired both Reed and Abramoff in the late 1990s to defend it against conservative criticism. Abramoff dismissed the channel’s right-wing opponents for pursuing “an anti-free-market, anticommercial agenda.” The textile industry in the Marianas islands, a U.S. protectorate, hired Abramoff when congressional Democrats tried to impose U.S. labor regulations on its sweatshops, where low-wage workers imported from China and the Philippines produced garments marked “Made in the USA.” Abramoff arranged trips to the islands, where there was also a nice golf course. Among other congressional Republicans and Democrats, DeLay toured the sweatshops and pronounced the islands “a perfect Petri dish of capitalism.” Before 9/11, Abramoff lobbied for the dictatorships in Pakistan and Malaysia. After 9/11, according to National Journal, he signed up as lobbyist for the General Council for Islamic Banks and Financial Institutions, a consortium of banks that operate according to sharia, or Islamic law.
Abramoff quickly brought in clients such as the government of Pakistan and, most important, the Northern Mariana Islands, an American territory in the Pacific whose exemption from certain American labor laws-factories there could pay their workers a pittance but still label their products “Made in the U.S.A.”-was for Abramoff a classic case of free enterprise at work.
After (or at the same time when) several Tribes hired Abramoff as their federal lobbyist, Abramoff urged some of them to hire Scanlon to provide grassroots support. Abramoff, however, failed to disclose that he and Scanlon were partners. Evidence obtained over the course of a two-year investigation indicates that Abramoff and Scanlon had agreed to secretly split, between themselves, fees that the Tribes paid Scanlon from 2001 through 2003. Abramoff and Scanlon referred to this arrangement as “gimme five.”
As a general proposition, the scheme involved the following: getting each of the Tribes to hire Scanlon as their grassroots specialist; dramatically overcharging them for grassroots and related activities; setting aside for themselves an unconscionable percentage of what the Tribes paid at a grossly inflated rate-a rate wholly unrelated to the actual cost of services provided; and using the remaining fraction to reimburse scores of vendors that could help them maintain vis-a-vis the Tribes a continuing appearance of competence. One example of this fee-splitting arrangement arises from a payment of $1,900,000 from the Saginaw Chippewa Tribe of Michigan. On or about July 9, 2002, Scanlon assured Abramoff, “800 for you[,] 800 for me[,] 250 for the effort the other 50 went to the plane and misc expenses. We both have an additional 500 coming when they pay the next phasem [sic].” Indeed, on July 12, 2002, after that payment arrived, Scanlon made three payments to Abramoff, including a payment of $800,000.
Typically, the most expensive element of Scanlon’s proposals to the Tribes related to a purportedly elaborate political database. But, in all cases, it appears that the degree to which Scanlon marked-up his actual costs was unconscionable. For example, while Scanlon told the
Coushatta Tribe of Louisiana that their “political” database would cost $1,345,000, he ended up paying the vendor that actually developed, operated and maintained that database about $104,560. The dramatic mark-ups were intended to accommodate Scanlon’s secret 50/50 split with Abramoff.
Scanlon’s proposed use of elaborate databases was also prominent in political programs that he proposed to the Saginaw Chippewa, called “Operation Redwing.” According to drafts of this proposal that he likely presented to the Tribe, “Our first step [to developing a successful political strategy] is to tap into your natural political resources and integrate them into a custombuilt political database.” The proposal went on to describe a “grassroots database”: [CCS] will gather lists of your vendors, employees, tribal members etc. (if you approve, customer lists), and we will import those lists into your new database. Our computer program will match the individuals or businesses with addresses, phone numbers, political registrations and e-mail addresses, and then sort them by election districts. The districts run from U.S. Senator down to school board and once completed, you can tap into this database and mobilize your supporters in ANY election, or on any issue of your choosing. Regarding a “Qualitative [that is, opposition] Research Database,” the proposal stated the following:
This custom built database acts as the information center of Operation Red Wing. [sic] Over the next six weeks, our team will gather
qualitative information on any entity who can be classified as opposition and enter it into this database. The research will include
nearly every piece of information on the opposition as you can imagine. Once gathered, it is then sorted by subject matter and made
retrievable by a phrase search. The information can then be instantly disseminated to any audience we choose such as our universe of
supporters, the press, third party [sic] interest groups or other interested parties.
Scanlon apparently designated his “right-hand man,” Christopher Cathcart to serve as his point of contract with the Tribe. Working with Cathcart on the Tribe’s [Saginaw Chippewa] behalf was Tribal spokesperson Marc Schwartz. Schwartz believed that he may have had as many as 20 to 25 conversations with Cathcart. In his interview with Committee staff, Schwartz recalled Cathcart had described the database as “very customized.” He also recalled that Cathcart had said that Scanlon had “six people working day-and-night to get the system up-and-running” and a “stable” of graphics artists. Schwartz also remembered asking Cathcart how many people were working for Scanlon’s company. In response, Schwartz recalled, Cathcart said “dozens” and described Scanlon’s company to Schwartz as “absolute studs.”
After having seen the database subsequently, Schwartz considered it “extremely unremarkable.” In his view, there was “no way” that the database required “six people working day-and-night” or that “the database was worth millions.” But, the Tribe had already paid CCS $4,200,000.
In truth, Scanlon’s company neither built nor designed these databases. In fact, Scanlon merely licensed a database actually created by a vendor named Democracy Data & Communications (“DDC”). In instances where CCS charged Tribes for DDC’s databases, DDC developed them to help CCS conduct grassroots campaigns on the Tribes’ behalf. In these cases, CCS supplied DDC with information, such as membership rosters and vendor information, that CCS obtained from its Tribal clients.268 Then, using its own proprietary software and network design, DDC helped CCS use that information for grassroots purposes-to create mass emails, letters, faxes, etc.
In other words, DDC, rather than CCS, built, updated and maintained those databases, for which CCS charged its tribal clients millions of dollars. Typically, Scanlon charged each of the Tribes at least $1,000,000 just for putting the database together; this was called the
“organizational phase.” But, in truth, all the work that DDC did on each of the databases it developed, cost Scanlon a fraction of that amount. For example, all the work that DDC did for the Louisiana Coushatta’s database (from May 2001 through December 2003) cost CCS only $104,000. Notably, in his interview with Committee staff on the Tigua, Scanlon’s right-hand man, Christopher Cathcart, admitted that the Tribe “got nowhere near [the] $1.8 million [it paid] for the organizational phase.” He also conceded that the Tigua’s database was not customized.
DDC President B.R. McConnon testified that, when compared with DDC’s other clients paying similar prices and using similar services, there was actually “a very low level of activity” on the CCS account that were maintained for CCS’ tribal clients. Generally, McConnon observed, customers who have such a low level of usage tend to shut off the account. McConnon recalled that CCS used DDC’s services so sparingly, “it got to be a running joke in the office.”
In cases not involving DDC databases, it appears that CCS took DDC’s proprietary network design; provided that design to another vendor, Visual Impact Productions (“VIP”); and directed VIP to develop databases designed to mimic DDC’s product. And, in those cases, it
appears that CCS charged those Tribes millions of dollars for the development, maintenance, and use of those databases.
Having examined VIP’s database, McConnon opined that it was far less capable than his company’s. In particular, McConnon noted that the quality of the data contained in the VIP system seemed inferior to DDC’s; its searching capability was far less extensive than DDC’s; its
presentation of information was very limited; it seemed not to contain as much information as DDC’s, which is important to implement a more targeted, efficient grassroots program; and the quality of the keypunching seemed very inferior. McConnon agreed that someone at CCS apparently showed the other vendor the “access page” of his company’s database. McConnon confirmed that this would be a violation of the licensing agreement that Scanlon executed with DDC.
For a version of this database, the Pueblo of Sandia paid Scanlon $1,857,000. That amount corresponds to elements of a proposal drafted by Scanlon for the Tribe relating to “acquisition and design of hardware and software, data matching, grassroots development, online applications and political modifications.” However, in actuality, Scanlon never provided those services. In the ordinary course of business, those services would have been provided-at a far lesser cost-by one of Scanlon’s vendors. In this case, McConnon opined that this database, apparently produced by VIP, was worth nothing near $1,857,000; it was probably worth, at the very most, about $20,000. Whether the database came from DDC or VIP, it appears that the representation that CCS “constructed” a database was false.
After an intensive two-year investigation-consisting of five hearings, 70 formal requests for documents, including subpoenas, resulting in the production of about 750,000 pages; and about 60 depositions and witness interviews, the Committee found that, as Scanlon’s secret partner, Abramoff received about half of the profit that Scanlon collected from the $66 million in fees he obtained from six of his Tribal clients from 2001 through 2003.
When the new Council failed to vote on the project, Abramoff was unreserved in his contempt: “The f’ing troglodytes didn’t vote on you today. Dammit.” Scanlon asked, “What’s a troglodyte?”
Continuing their exchange, Abramoff explained the Saginaw Chippewa’s failure to vote on one of Scanlon’s proposals: “They spent the whole time discussing the firings of late. I like these guys, and truly believe they are going to do the program, but they are plain stupid. They should have had you on board first and then done the firings. Morons.”
Furthermore, in an e-mail bearing the subject line “SagChip idiots”, Abramoff wrote:
“Someone leaked out the Operation Red Wing memo to the enemy up there. Petras told me this tonight. The PR guy, Joe?, is the enemy and – I did not know this – is a Sagchip, and is now going to run for council!! These mofos are the stupidest idiots in the land for sure.”
To [Saginaw Chippewa spokesman Marc Schwartz], Abramoff appeared to have the right credentials. Abramoff claimed to be a close friend of Congressman Tom DeLay. He also discussed his friendship with Reed, recounting some of their history together at College Republicans. When Schwartz observed that Reed was an ideologue, Schwartz recalled that Abramoff laughingly replied “as far as the cash goes.” Abramoff also mentioned his representation of the Mississippi Band of Choctaw Indians (“Choctaw”) and his ability to get appropriations for them.
By mid-April, things were moving. In an e-mail entitled “Disbursement on behalf of Choctaw Indians,” Abramoff assured Reed that the money was on its way. Using the Choctaw’s money, Reed paid for grassroots activities including, telemarketing (patch-through, tape-recorded messages and call-to-action phone calls), targeted mail, legislative counsel and local management, rallies, petitions, “voter contact, television and radio production, the remainder of phones, the statewide fly-around, the pastor’s and activist rally, the church bulletin
inserts, and other items.”
Reed also claimed that he was leveraging his contacts within the Christian community for the Choctaw’s benefit. Reed reported to Abramoff that there would be “a saturation statewide radio buy with a new ad by Jim Dobson that he will record tomorrow.” Reed assured
Abramoff, “We are opening the bomb bay doors and holding nothing back. If victory is possible, we will achieve it,” and, one day later, again promised, “All systems are go on our end and nothing is being held back.”
According to one document in the Committee’s possession, Abramoff described ATR as “an effective conduit of support for other groups which have provided assistance to Indian gaming’s efforts to fight the tax proposal.” There were a number of anti-tax grassroots groups in various states, and “it was ATR’s job to make contacts with those groups, to assist them in making contacts with members of the Ways and Means Committee or other committee members.”
By May 10, 1999, the Choctaw had paid Reed $1,300,000 through Preston Gates, with another $50,000 outstanding. For reasons unclear to the Committee, in late 1999 the Tribe discontinued paying Reed through Preston Gates. Rogers recalled that there came a time when either Reed or Preston Gates (or both) became uneasy about money being passed through Preston Gates to Reed. Abramoff thus searched for another conduit.
Abramoff turned to his long-time friend Norquist to have his group ATR serve as a conduit for the Choctaw money. Earlier, on May 20, 1999, Norquist had asked Abramoff, “What is the status of the Choctaw stuff. I have a $75K hole in my budget from last year. ouch [sic].” Thus, in the fall of 1999, Abramoff reminded himself to “call Ralph re Grover doing pass through.” When Abramoff suggested the Choctaw start using ATR as a conduit, the Tribe agreed.
Early in 2001, Scanlon called his long-time friend and fellow lifeguard David Grosh and asked him whether he wanted to serve as a director of an “international corporation.”
Between February and July 2001, “AIC had no office; AIC’s business address was the beach house that [Grosh] and [yoga instructor Brian Mann] rented” in Rehoboth Beach. In response to a question posed during a Committee hearing about what AIC did, Grosh responded
that during the four or five months when he was “involved” with AIC, “we only rented the first floor of a house and installed some computers”.
Referring to AIC’s being held out as an international think tank, Grosh quipped, “If AIC was a think tank, I sure don’t know what we were thinking about.” Mann could only recall discussing Scanlon’s acquiring, and his own cleaning, office space for AIC, and Grosh’s departure from the organization.
After Grosh left AIC, Mann was, as far as he knew, its only employee. In fact, according to Mann, no one other than Grosh and himself was ever paid by AIC as an employee. Moreover, the only time Mann recalled Grosh “ever doing anything was helping me literally put a desk together.” Otherwise, he had “no idea” what Grosh did.
In its final form, the website set forth AIC’s mission statement. It described AIC as “a Delaware-based corporation with the global minded purpose of enhancing the methods of empowerment for territories, commonwealths, and sovereign nations in possession of and within the United States.” In each of their depositions and interviews with Committee staff, Grosh, Mann and Cathcart said they had no idea what this meant.
The website also touted AIC as (1) “a premiere international think tank”; (2) “determined to influence global paradigms in an increasingly complex world.”; (3) a “public policy foundation”; (4) founded “under the high powered directorship of David A. Grosh and Brian J. Mann”; (5 )”[w]hile only recently incorporated … striving to advance the cause of greater international empowerment for many years”; (6) “using 21st century technology and decades of experience to make the world a smaller place”; (7) “bringing great minds together from all over the globe”; (8) “seek[ing] to expand the parameters of international discourse in an effort to leverage the combined power of world intellect:”; and (9) comprised of an “expert team.”
With that, the Tribe discontinued using Abramoff as its lobbyist. Likely having realized that the only way he could resume representing the Tribe (and getting the Tribe to hire Scanlon) was through a change in Tribal leadership, Abramoff came up with an idea.
Abramoff laid out his plan: “They have their primary for tribal council on Tuesday, which should determine if they are going to take over (general elections in November). I told him that you are the greatest campaign expert since . . . (actually, I told him that there was no one like you in history!). He is going to come in after the primary with the guy who will be chief if they win (a big fan of ours already) and we are going to help him win.”
Using a phrase the two coined to describe their financial relationship, Abramoff concluded, “If he wins, they take over in January, and we have millions. I told him that you are already in national demand and we need to secure you for them. He is very excited. GIMME FIVE lives.”
Scanlon replied enthusiastically, “THE PRICE HAS JUST GONE UP TO 10 MIL! Sounds good on the strategy – We should be wrapped up with the other camapigns [sic] soon, so I could run his general election to make sure we get or [sic] give me five!”
Apparently resolved to help Abramoff and Scanlon oust the incumbent tribal council, Petras recommended to a group (comprised of, among others, Maynard Kahgegab and Robert Pego) that they meet with Scanlon about their election campaign. That group became known as the “Slate of Eight.”
At least two batches of mailings were sent out on behalf of the Slate of Eight.61 Among the documents obtained by the Committee from Scanlon’s company, Capitol Campaign Strategies (CCS), is an undated draft mailer, apparently drafted for the Slate of Eight. It notes
that “[t]he upcoming election may be the only chance for the disenfranchised, [sic] and beaten down members of this tribe to voice their disapproval with the way people on the council like XXXX [sic] Jackson have run our tribal government.” Likewise, an October 26, 2001, press release, also apparently drafted by CCS, announced that the “Slate of 8 Will Run on Platform of Reform.” According to that release, “The Slate of 8 represents honesty, integrity and vision-something that the Committee for Responsible Government unfortunately completely lacks.” It also stated falsely that “[w]e organized the Slate of 8 ourselves and are asking the tribal members to vote for us so that we can put the scandal plagued [sic] politics of this tribe [sic] in the past.” In laying the groundwork for the Tribe to ultimately hire Abramoff and Scanlon, the release also described, as an issue on the Slate of Eight’s platform, “developing stronger ties in Washington D.C. [sic] and at the state and local level to advance tribal concerns.”
Not only did CCS draft mailers and fliers, it put together a call list; devised a campaign strategy, calendars, and time-lines; helped organize at least one event-a “candidates night”; and apparently recorded a radio ad. Other than $200 that some members of the Slate of Eight paid for a “candidates night,” CCS paid for all out-of-pocket expenses. While the value of those expenses is unclear, the Tribe has seen some estimates as high as $100,000. Responding to the Tribe for Scanlon, Scanlon’s lawyer, Stephen Braga, explained that “[t]his $100,000 number was a value reflected estimate that included the time value of individuals working on the campaign” and that “actual dollars would be less.” He however agreed that, while “there is no way to tell exactly how much was spent,” CCS was never reimbursed for its costs.
On November 6, 2001, all but one member of the Slate of Eight prevailed. A draft mailer, apparently prepared by CCS, dated November 15, 2001, announced the victory: “The election on November 6 was an historic event for the Saginaw Chippewa Tribe. It was the day the people of this tribe swept away the politics of the past, and started a new era of positive and responsible government.”
Abramoff and Scanlon’s mutual client the Coushatta Tribe of Louisiana (“Louisiana Coushatta”) long understood that legalized gaming in Texas would erode its casino’s customer base and revenue. The majority of the Louisiana Coushatta casino’s customers are from Texas, particularly the Houston area.
While the State of Texas was pursuing its case to close the Tigua’s Speaking Rock Casino, press reports indicated that another tribe, the Alabama-Coushatta, was considering opening its own casino in eastern Texas. Abramoff and Scanlon were insistent with the Louisiana Coushatta Tribal Council that Texas was on the verge of legalizing gaming. Abramoff and Scanlon said that if the Tigua succeeded in its efforts to keep open its casino, the State of Texas would have no choice but to allow the Alabama Coushatta to have a casino. The Tribe therefore authorized Abramoff and Scanlon to pursue anti-gaming efforts in Texas against the Tigua and the Alabama Coushatta.
While the trio worked to support the State’s legal efforts, evidence also suggests that Abramoff, Scanlon, and Reed worked behind the scenes in Texas to quash the Tigua’s attempts at a legislative solution. In 2003, Abramoff boasted to a colleague: A bill is moving (HB809) in the Texas state house which will enable the Indians in Texas to have totally unregulated casinos. It passed out of the house Criminal Jurisprudence Committee by a 6-2 vote. The current Republican Speaker Tom Craddick is a strong supporter. Last year we stopped this bill after it passed the house using the Lt. Governor (Bill ratcliff) [sic] to prevent it from being scheduled in the state senate.
In fact, former Texas Lt. Governor Ratliff did refuse to schedule the legislation for a floor vote in the previous session, the state’s legal efforts succeeded, and the Tigua officially closed its casino on February 12, 2002.
It was a low point for the Tigua. According to Tribal representatives, the revenue generated by the Speaking Rock Casino had helped the Tribe lift its members out of poverty, had enabled the Tribe to provide education for its children and health care for its elders. It created hope where there was none. Into their desperation and despair entered Abramoff and Scanlon.
Although Abramoff and Scanlon’s efforts on the Tigua’s behalf were failing, it apparently did not stop Abramoff from soliciting funds from Tigua for a golfing junket to Scotland. On May 15, 2002, Abramoff advised his close friend Ralph Reed that “[t]he package on the ground is $4K per person. that [sic] covers rooms, tee times and ground transportation. One idea is that we could use one of my foundations for the trip-Capital Athletic Foundation-and get and make contributions so this is easier. OK?”
Reed responded, “OK but we need to discuss. It is an election year.”
About a week later, Rudy informed Abramoff that “Ney may want to do Scotland.”
Almost two weeks later, as details of the trip were coming together, Abramoff told Rudy, “We need to lock. Try to nail 2 stars to go with us: ney [sic] for sure!”
66 The overview of the failed back and forth to get the casino provision into the Election Reform bill is in-depth and complicated in the Indian Affairs Report; I direct interested readers to pages 178-196 of the report.
The Tiguas, who are more formally known as the Ysleta del Sur Pueblo Tribe of El Paso, had basically one source of income: the Speaking Rock casino. The state, through then attorney general John Cornyn, had been trying to close it down on general principles since 1999, arguing that casino gambling was illegal in Texas, and by late 2000 the matter was still crawling through the courts. The Louisiana Coushattas-clients of Abramoff and, by extension, Reed-also wanted Speaking Rock closed to eliminate the competition.
Reed’s job was to monitor Cornyn’s office, keep tabs on the legal timeline, and whip up support for the attorney general and opposition to the casino. Which he did for more than a year, both through contacts in Cornyn’s office and with the help of a megachurch preacher named Ed Young (incredibly engaged and excited, Reed wrote in one e-mail). The monitoring was important because Abramoff’s timing had to be perfect: When Reed e-mailed Abramoff that a judge would order Speaking Rock closed on February 11, Abramoff and Scanlon made sure they were in El Paso on February 12…promising the panicked Tiguas they could get their casino reopened for a fee of $4.2 million.
In layman’s terms, this is called a con. The idea was to buy off a congressman (Bob Ney) and a senator (Christopher Dodd), who would sneak language allowing Speaking Rock to reopen into a totally unrelated bill. No one would even notice.
Only Senator Dodd didn’t go along with the plan. In fact, he was mightily pissed his good name had gotten dragged into such a scam, a point he made quite clear during an Indian Affairs Committee hearing.
After the failed effort on Election Reform, Abramoff continued hounding the Tigua for more money. He proposed that the Tribe take out life insurance policies on its elders, with the proceeds to be paid to the Eshkol Academy, the all boys Jewish school that Abramoff had established. Abramoff intended the program, which he called the Elder Legacy Program, to generate lobbying funds to pay for Abramoff’s continued representation of the Tribe and provide funding for Eshkol. When Duane Gibson, an Abramoff associate at Greenberg Traurig
working on the Project, reminded Abramoff that he could not use the insurance proceeds to lobby, Abramoff’s solution was to have the school use other funds to pay the lobbying fees. Gibson told the Committee that the Elder Legacy Program was trying to leverage funds for Indian tribes, but mostly charities, by acquiring life insurance policies for the tribe or charity. The original pool of insureds were Indian tribes, Alaskan Natives, and black church elders.
Abramoff told Gibson that Ralph Reed was going to be the entree for the black churches, because Reed “knows the Southern Black Christian community.” Apparently, Abramoff pitched the idea to Reed, who thought it was viable.
According to Gibson, Abramoff said that the Tigua were “indebted to him because I [Abramoff] saved their asses and they want to do this for me.” Gibson believed “the whole Tigua thing was a perversion of the original purpose.”304 Although he was scheduled to meet with [tribal spokesman Marc Schwartz] in El Paso about the program, the meeting never took place. The reason: after initially, internally approving the idea, the Tribal Council decided not to move forward on it. [Tigua Lt. Governor Carlos Hisa] met with the Tribal elders, who rejected it.
The failed con took more than a year to play out, by which time the Tiguas were pretty much broke. So Abramoff came up with a way for his marks to continue paying him: the Tigua Elder Legacy Project. Abramoff would arrange, at no cost to the tribe, a life-insurance policy for every Tigua 75 or older. When those elders died, the death benefits would be paid to Eshkol Academy, a private school Abramoff had founded near Washington. Eshkol, in turn, would then pay Abramoff’s fee to continue lobbying on behalf of the surviving Tiguas. Morbid opportunism disguised as charity: Each dead Tigua would be cash in the lobbyist’s pocket.
The Tiguas declined the offer. “It felt uncomfortable,” a Tigua official told the Senate committee last November.
The Tigua-death-fund offer had been made in March 2003. Four months later, Abramoff was pitching Reed-his connection to Christians-the Black Churches Insurance Program. There was only one difference: It would be huge, to use Abramoff’s word.
“Yeah,” a former associate of Reed’s says, “it sounds like Jack approached Reed about mortgaging old black people.”
During the Committee’s November 17, 2004, hearing, when asked how he felt upon learning that the Tribe had paid for a golf outing for the man who had worked to shut down the Tigua casino, Lt. Governor Hisa replied, “A rattlesnake will warn you before it strikes. We had no warning. They did everything behind our back.”
Like many Internet companies emerging from the overheated 1990s, eLottery’s money was drying up in the spring of 2000.
The company was founded in 1993 on the gamble that even a small fraction of the market for helping states and others put lotteries online could be worth a billion dollars a year. But the company faced many obstacles.
In 1998, the Justice Department had used existing gambling laws to force eLottery to shut down its first online lottery venture, with an Idaho Indian tribe. ELottery had not earned a dime since.
The Senate had passed the Internet Gambling Prohibition Act in late 1999, aiming to make it easier for authorities to stop online gambling sites. With a companion bill by Rep. Robert W. Goodlatte (R-Va.) advancing in the House in the spring of 2000, eLottery was desperate to ramp up its Washington lobbying. It had to sell off assets to stay afloat and raise cash.
In May, eLottery hired Abramoff’s firm, Preston Gates & Ellis LLP, for $100,000 a month, according to lobbying reports. In the following months, Abramoff directed the company to pay hundreds of thousands of dollars to various organizations, faxes, e-mails and court records show. The groups included Norquist’s Americans for Tax Reform; Sheldon’s Traditional Values Coalition; companies affiliated with Reed; and a Seattle Orthodox Jewish foundation, Toward Tradition.
Arrayed against eLottery were many leading groups on the religious right who were pushing to ban Internet gambling, including the Moral Majority and the Christian Coalition. James Dobson, influential leader of Focus on the Family, praised the bill in an opinion piece for the New York Times.
Still, according to his strategy e-mails, Abramoff thought he could turn conservatives in the House against the bill. He seized on some compromise language in the bill making exceptions for jai alai and horse racing.
Abramoff’s plan: argue that the legislation and its exemptions would actually expand legalized gambling.
Still, the Abramoff team was worried about the vote. So the eLottery forces pressed the argument that the Internet bill was an unfair infringement of the right of individual states to sell lottery tickets online. Amid the frenzied lobbying, a potentially influential letter making that case began circulating on Capitol Hill. It was purportedly signed by Jeb Bush.
“While I am no fan of gambling, I see this bill as a violation of states’ rights and I am looking to prevent this encroachment,” the letter said.
A surprised Hill staffer called the Florida governor’s office, and the letter was exposed as a forgery.
Months later, a little-noted investigation by Florida authorities resulted in a confession from a Tampa man hired by a division of Shandwick Worldwide, a public affairs company. Shandwick was working on the eLottery account with Abramoff’s team. The Florida man, Matthew Blair, told authorities in a plea bargain agreement that he was hired to get letters opposing the bill from the governor and others. He said he created the forged letter on his own after he was unable to obtain one from Bush’s office.
Brian Berger, then a Shandwick official, said his firm had been hired to produce the letters by Abramoff associate Michael Scanlon, a former DeLay press aide. Berger said in a recent interview that although he and Scanlon knew Blair, they did not sanction the forgery. “Essentially, we had a bad operative,” Berger said.
On July 17, the House debated for about 40 minutes. Rumors continued to fly about the Bush letter. Some members remained confused about the bill’s contents. About 30 did not vote. “There was a lot of misinformation,” said a congressional staff member who worked on the bill.
Still, Goodlatte had reason to be optimistic because nine out of 10 bills on the suspension calendar pass.
But Abramoff’s efforts had eroded just enough votes. The roll call — 245 in favor, 159 against — left Goodlatte 25 members short. The bill failed.
But Sheldon’s campaign in conservative districts had the desired chilling effect on GOP leaders. That became clear on Oct. 24, when House Republicans met to discuss their year-end strategy.
What happened at the meeting was relayed to Abramoff by a former associate, David H. Safavian, who was then a lobbyist for a coalition of online gambling companies and who this month was indicted for allegedly lying to federal investigators in the Abramoff probe.
DeLay, Safavian wrote in an e-mail, “spoke up and noted that the bill could cost as many as four House seats. At that point, there was silence. Not even Rep. Dick Armey (R-Texas) — our previous opponent — said a word.”
When Congress prepared to adjourn in 2000 without revisiting the gambling bill, Safavian was ecstatic. He sent his clients an e-mail, which was posted on the Web site of the Fantasy Sports Trade Association.
“Relax a bit,” Safavian wrote. “Policy beat politics once again. (Maybe the American system isn’t really that bad.) The good guys won.”
Abramoff asked eLottery to write a check in June 2000 to Sheldon’s Traditional Values Coalition (TVC). He also routed eLottery money to a Reed company, using two intermediaries, which had the effect of obscuring the source.
The eLottery money went first to Norquist’s foundation, Americans for Tax Reform (ATR), and then through a second group in Virginia Beach called the Faith and Family Alliance, before it reached Reed’s company, Century Strategies. Norquist’s group retained a share of the money as it passed through.
According to the e-mails, Reed provided the name and address where Norquist was supposed to send the money: to Robin Vanderwall at a location in Virginia Beach.
Vanderwall was director of the Faith and Family Alliance, a political advocacy group that was founded by two of Reed’s colleagues and then turned over to Vanderwall, Vanderwall said and records show.
Vanderwall, a former Regent University Law School student and Republican operative, was later convicted of soliciting sex with minors via the Internet and is serving a seven-year term in Virginia state prison.
In a telephone interview, Vanderwall said that in July 2000 he was called by Reed’s firm, Century Strategies, alerting him that he would be receiving a package. When it came, it contained a check payable to Vanderwall’s group for $150,000 from Americans for Tax Reform, signed by Norquist. Vanderwall said he followed the instructions from Reed’s firm — depositing the money and then writing a check to Reed’s firm for an identical amount.
“I was operating as a shell,” Vanderwall said, adding that he was never told how the money was spent. He said: “I regret having had anything to do with it.”
Ralph Reed has said he didn’t know it until last year, but emails suggest he was informed that eLot – a firm then in the online lottery business – was behind his effort to fend off a ban against internet gambling in 2000.
The e-mails passed between Reed and Jack Abramoff, the now disgraced Washington lobbyist. Abramoff was lobbying for eLot Inc. of Connecticut, parent company of eLottery Inc., against a bill in Congress that would have banned most online betting. ELottery opposed the bill because it wanted to help states sell tickets online.
Reed, a lifelong opponent of gambling, said last year that he did not know in 2000 he was actually working on behalf of eLottery.
But e-mails obtained by The Atlanta Journal-Constitution show Reed was offered the name of the company at the beginning of his involvement in the campaign, in May 2000. The e-mails emerged as dozens of federal investigators have increased their focus on events surrounding the defeat of the Internet gaming ban.
Abramoff included the company’s name – referring to “the elot project” – in an e-mail he forwarded to Reed, as the two worked out details of Reed’s contract for the campaign.
In the Jan. 30, 2001, e-mail, Reed teased Abramoff when the lobbyist asked about the White House’s choice for a new “technology czar.”
“Tell your elottery friends that the next czar will be an anti-gambling [Pentecostal] Christian whose main interest in life is banning smut from the Internet,” Reed wrote.
The facts from the investigation by both the Washington Post and Hotline point to Jack Abramoff and Ralph Reed and Grover Norquist as the major figures behind the scenes manipulating a shadow 527 named the Faith and Family Alliance of Virginia Beach, Virginia. Faith and Family Values used up to $100,000 to distribute pamphlets and make robo-calls to constituents to say that Eric Cantor did not represent “Virginia values” and that his opponent was the “only Christian in the contest.”
Cantor won by a few hundred votes in June 2000.
Cantor knew nothing of the generation of Faith and Family Values at the time. He especially did not know that Jack Abramoff used Faith and Family Values to launder internet gambling money (eLottery) to finance a cynical and successful lobbying effort to defeat a Congressional ban on internet gambling, and that the laundering process not only involved Reed and associates but also another major Republican op, Grover Norquist. The Black Hundreds character at Faith and Family Values who actually handled the checks in and out of the shell, Robin Vanderwall, is now serving a seven-year sentence for internet sex crime.
Cantor’s unnecessarily humble response when prompted how he felt about the smear at the time, how he feels now to learn that Abramoff , Reed, Norquist were responsible in a labyrinthine fashion for maintaining (and probably funding) the Faith and Family Alliance, was to say, “Politics is a very interesting business.”
Out of the Choctaw’s $325,000, ATR apparently kept $25,000 for its services. According to [Choctaw planner Nell Rogers], Norquist demanded that he receive a management fee for letting ATR be used as a conduit:
But I remember when we discussed needing a vehicle for doing the pass-through to Century Strategies that Jack had told me that Grover
would want a management fee. And we agreed to that, frankly didn’t know any other way to do it at that time.
On February 17, 2000, Abramoff advised Reed that “ATR will be sending a second $300K today.” This money, too, came from the Choctaw. Norquist kept another $25,000 from the second transfer, which apparently surprised Abramoff.
BILL MOYERS: Reed’s e-mails to Abramoff were insistent – he needed money and he needed it now. At one point, Abramoff responded:
JACK ABRAMOFF: Give me a number.
E-mail from JACK ABRAMOFF: Give me a number. RALPH REED: $225K a week for TV; $450K for two weeks of TV.
E-mail from RALPH REED: $225K a week for TV; $450K for two weeks of TV.
E-mail from JACK ABRAMOFF: Ralph, they are going to faint when they see these numbers.
BILL MOYERS: But Reed claimed he was worth it:
E-mail from RALPH REED: We have over 50 pastors mobilized, with a total membership in those churches of over 40,000…
MARVIN OLASKY: We have one of our reporters based in Dallas who did a lot of calling around and just asking pastors, “Well, were you involved in this?” And lo and behold, no one was.
BILL MOYERS: Marvin Olasky is editor-in-chief of WORLD, the leading national journal of the evangelical right. The magazine spent seven months investigating Reed’s involvement with Abramoff.
MARVIN OLASKY: There was a lot of fooling going on — that Abramoff, in a way, was manipulating Ralph Reed, Ralph Reed was manipulating others, but perhaps Ralph Reed was manipulating Abramoff and saying, “I’m accomplishing these things,” whereas he wasn’t. So, you know, there were millions of dollars changing hands, there were actually hundreds of millions of dollars at stake in this whole thing.
LOU DUBOSE: You know, there’s something ironic and amusing in all that, is that while Abramoff was shaking down these Indians, it’s quite possible that Ralph Reed was shaking down Jack Abramoff.
Mr. Abramoff wrote to his business partner, Michael Scanlon, saying: “He [Reed] wants a budget for radio in the state. I’m inclined to say yes, so we can get this Dobson ad up. He asked for $150K. . . .” Six days later, Mr. Abramoff asked Mr. Reed: “where are we with Falwell, Robertson, Dobson, etc.? we need to see some action in D.C. That’s what I sold them for $100K.”
Tom Minnery, a senior vice president at Focus on the Family, told WORLD it’s possible Mr. Reed asked Mr. Dobson to write a letter to Gale Norton, but he said Mr. Reed did not ask Focus on the Family to produce a radio ad in Louisiana. He added that he was “98 percent sure” Focus never produced a radio ad on the issue, though he was still searching his records at press time. He said Focus did produce radio “drop-ins” on the subject-non-commercial, short spots incorporated into Mr. Dobson’s daily show. Mr. Minnery said Focus had never taken money from Mr. Reed or Mr. Abramoff.
Mr. Minnery responded to the e-mails about Mr. Dobson by speculating that “it sounds like these guys were trying to take credit” for work Focus was already doing. He said Focus on the Family works on dozens of similar issues across the country each year, and that the organization had not become “an unwilling dupe of Jack Abramoff.” Though Mr. Minnery said Mr. Reed “did the wrong thing by taking gambling money to fight gambling,” he declined to comment specifically on Mr. Reed’s participation in the e-mails about Mr. Dobson.
60 Plus is well-known in Republican and conservative circles. And like other corporate-funded P.R. operations, it often takes on causes that you wouldn’t logically connect to their stated purpose. The 60 Plus Association, which again, bills itself as a seniors advocacy group, they took on a subject they want us to believe is near and dear to the hearts of seniors.
Back in 2003, it was the issue of nuclear waste, urging Congress to, quote, “move forward and approve the safe storage of nuclear fuel at Yucca Mountain.” Because seniors love nuclear waste being stored in Nevada. Old people love that.
In addition to lobbying, the drug industry spent more than $100 million in 1999 and 2000 to create a supposed grass-roots group called Citizens for Better Medicare. Led by PhRMA’s former marketing director, Tim Ryan, CBM flooded the airwaves with commercials accusing congressional Democrats of “playing politics” by backing legislation to reduce drug prices.
Also, the industry awarded unrestricted “educational grants” — declining to disclose the exact amounts — to two supportive groups, United Seniors and 60-Plus. In this election cycle, United Seniors has bought $12 million worth of ads, according to consultants working for the Democratic Party, while 60-Plus has spent $595,000 on radio ads in seven battleground congressional districts.
Konstantinos Boulis was born in Kavala, Greece, in 1949. His father was a fisherman, and his family was poor. In 1968 the young Boulis joined the Merchant Marine. It was an escape route. Boulis jumped ship in Nova Scotia that year. He settled in Toronto, where he took a job as a dishwasher at a Mr. Submarine sandwich shop. Within five years he had bought the shop and had become Mr. Submarine’s CEO. Eventually, under Boulis’s leadership, the chain grew to over 200 stores. The sale of the company in the mid 1970s made Boulis a multimillionaire. He was 25.
In 1978 Boulis moved to Florida. At first he thought he was moving south to retire; but by 1983 he had started to put his fortune to work, buying another sandwich franchise, Miami Subs, and also buying property throughout south Florida, including apartment buildings and hotels and restaurants. Boulis started SunCruz in 1994, and sold Miami Subs–which had grown to over 150 franchises throughout the United States–to Nathan’s fast-food company in 1998. The price: $4.2 million. That sum probably seemed like small fry to Boulis, whose net worth then hovered around $40 million. His was, needless to say, a success story, an example of the plasticity of American life–Boulis could reinvent himself at will, from Greek to Canadian to American, from restaurateur to Ft. Lauderdale Donald Trump to casino impresario, rising from dishwasher to powerbroker in a few decades.
But there was a problem. Boulis was not a U.S. citizen. On August 3, 1998, he was indicted on charges of violating the U.S. shipping code, which forbids foreign nationals from owning American commercial vessels. Boulis had clashed with the authorities before. SunCruz boats had been raided by police, who argued that gambling had occurred in Florida waters. And community activists in Hollywood Beach, Florida–midway between Ft. Lauderdale and Miami, where Boulis had a home–had fought the basing of a SunCruz boat in their community. Boulis had won those battles.
Not this time. It took over a year to reach settlement with the government, but Boulis was able to work out a deal in which he would pay a fine, sell his interest in SunCruz, and thereby escape a jail sentence. So that Boulis’s selling position would remain uncompromised, the deal with the feds would be kept a secret. It was January 2000. Boulis needed a buyer.
He discussed possibilities with his attorney, Art Dimopoulos. Dimopoulos worked at Preston Gates Ellis & Rouvelas Meeds, a megafirm in Washington, D.C. One day in the winter of 2000, Dimopoulos discussed his client’s plight with the firm’s star lobbyist, the vice president for government affairs, Jack Abramoff. Abramoff mentioned to Dimopoulos that he might know someone who would be interested in purchasing the casino line.
That person was him. Abramoff had represented Indian gaming interests for some time; why not get in on both ends of the action? After all, casinos held a lot of profit for little work, and Abramoff had many contacts in the industry. Besides, his most recent venture, Potomac Outdoor Advertising, a small company that placed ads on Potomac River water taxis, had sunk like a rock. The casino line seemed much more promising.
But there was a catch. Preston Gates ethics rules prevented employees from entering into business deals with entities represented by the firm. SunCruz Casinos was such an entity. Abramoff’s solution was to not tell his employer about the deal. Instead he floated the idea to his partners on the water taxi scheme, Adam Kidan and Ben Waldman. Both had known Abramoff since his days as national chairman of the College Republicans, and both were enthusiastic.
[Adam Kidan] grew up in New York, and went to college at George Washington University in Washington, D.C. He was a young conservative. At GW he joined the College Republicans, and got to know the group’s national chairman, Jack Abramoff, who was studying law at Georgetown. The two became friends.
After graduation, Kidan returned to New York, and began taking classes at Brooklyn Law School. He seems to have known exactly what he wanted to do in life: go to school, get good grades, work in politics, make a whole lot of money. He volunteered on George H.W. Bush’s presidential campaign, got his law degree in 1989, and took a job as president of the Four Freedoms Foundation, a New York City-based nonprofit or “private sector initiative” meant to “assist Eastern Europe and other democratically emerging nations around the world.” The foundation appears to have been a tax shelter disguised as an exercise in conservative benevolence. “Government cannot be expected to bear the financial burden of assisting countries that have chosen to adopt democratic principles,” Kidan said in the February 14, 1990, press release announcing the venture. “The private sector must assume some responsibility if these countries are expected to compete in today’s world market.”
Kidan’s association with the foundation was short-lived. In the early 1990s he went into business for himself, starting a chain of bagel joints in ritzy neighborhoods on Long Island. Kidan’s partner in the bagel business was one Michael Cavallo, now deceased. In October 2005, NYPD officials told the Miami Herald that Cavallo was “an associate” of known gangsters. In all probability one of those known gangsters was Anthony Moscatiello, aka Big Tony, who began to frequent Kidan’s bagel shops. “I had advice from him occasionally because I was in the food business,” Kidan told lawyers for the Boulis estate in a 2001 deposition. Moscatiello owned a catering company, Gran-Sons Inc., in Queens.
“This is someone I know who has experience in feeding large groups of people,” Kidan has said of Moscatiello. In fact some of the large groups of people that Moscatiello had experience feeding were members of the Gambino crime family, including legendary mob boss John Gotti, who would often hire Big Tony to cater family weddings. Moscatiello has a relationship with the Gambinos going back at least two decades. On August 23, 1983, he was indicted on charges of heroin trafficking, along with several others, including Gotti’s brother Gene. Gene went to jail. The charges against Moscatiello were dropped.
It was a stormy friendship. But the two persevered. In 1991 Moscatiello was photographed accompanying [Gene] Gotti into court.
On February 14, 1994, a few months before the Republicans took over Congress, Dial-a-Mattress announced the opening of its first Washington, D.C., franchise–Adam R. Kidan, proprietor. The press release marking the occasion is notable mainly for Kidan’s use of exclamation points and lame puns. “I went to school at the George Washington University and always dreamed of coming back to D.C. to work. Now, I’m actually helping other people dream a little easier with a good night’s sleep!” Kidan said. “We knew the D.C. area was a great choice. This was a decision we didn’t have to sleep on!”
Kidan did his best to become a local celebrity. He cut his own radio advertisements, 30-second-long exercises in commercial sadism in which Kidan would holler at potential customers and repeat, mantra-like, the Dial-a-Mattress slogan: “Leave off the last ‘S’–that’s for ‘Savings’!
That this story was in all likelihood apocryphal was beside the point. It satisfied a dual need: Kidan’s need for press, and the press’s need for stories that made the Clintons look cheap. He reappeared in McCaslin’s column on March 14, 1997, peddling another fiction:
Adam Kidan, the chairman and chief executive officer of Dial-A-Mattress, tells us that the queen-size Serta Perfect Sleeper his company sold to the White House in January 1993 for $549 is obviously holding up well for all the wear and tear.
“When the White House called our 800-number, they told us it was for the Lincoln Bedroom and Mr. Clinton’s mom would be sleeping on it,” Mr. Kidan reveals.
He quips: Dial-A-Mattress’ slogan “has always been ‘Leave off the last S, that’s for savings,’ but maybe it should be changed to ‘Leave off the last S, that’s for solicitations.”
Note the date. There was no Dial-a-Mattress franchise in Washington when the Clintons moved into the White House in 1993.
What may seem like a small error or a little white lie is in fact indicative of a broader truth: Kidan’s public demeanor was increasingly at odds with private reality. Behind the press mentions and charity drives, behind the appointments to the Greater Washington Urban League and the D.C. Chamber of Commerce Political Action Committee, behind the radio commercials and the speeches to undergraduates at George Washington and the rose-tinted business projections, by the end of the ’90s Kidan was mired in litigation, and his business was at risk.
In 1995 Kidan had filed a 29-count lawsuit against the Dial-a-Mattress franchiser in New York. He lost. In 1995 Kidan had declared personal bankruptcy. In 1999 he was forced to sell his Dial-a-Mattress franchise, and his online mattress company, eMattress.com, collapsed. The same year, Sami Shemtov sued Kidan for stealing $250,000 from a business deal as well as the $15,000 Shemtov had put up as reward money after Judy Shemtov was murdered. Kidan was forced to repay him. In 2000 New York state had Kidan disbarred.
Kidan told people that he had founded Dial-a-Mattress. He had not. Kidan told people that he had been a “principal” in and “general counsel” to the St. Maarten Hotel Beach Club and Casino. No such establishment exists. Kidan told people that he was a “former partner” at the law firm “Duncan, Fish, Bergen & Kidan.” I have found no evidence that there was ever such a firm. Kidan told people that his friend Anthony Moscatiello was a graduate of the Culinary Institute of America. Moscatiello was not. Adam Kidan is a bold and unapologetic liar.
ONE DAY IN MARCH 2000, Michael Scanlon, who had moved on from his job in DeLay’s office to a job with Abramoff at Preston Gates, approached Ohio congressman Bob Ney. Would Ney mind inserting some comments into the Congressional Record, Scanlon asked? Ney agreed. This is what Ney entered into the Congressional Record on March 30, 2000:
One such example is the case of Suncruz casinos based out of Florida. Florida authorities, particularly Attorney General Butterworth, have repeatedly reprimanded Suncruz casinos and its owner Gus Boulis for taking illegal bets, not paying out their customers properly and has had to take steps to prevent Suncruz from conducting operations all together. In fact, a few years ago the Broward County Sheriffs Office, under the supervision of Mr. Butterworth, raided Suncruz ships, seizing their equipment.
There was more:
Mr. Speaker, how Suncruz Casinos and Gus Boulis conduct themselves with regard to Florida laws is very unnerving. But the consumer rights issue is even more disheartening. On December 1, 1998, the Broward County Sheriffs department announced that they had uncovered evidence that dealers on SunCruz ships were “cheating passengers by using incomplete decks of cards.” This type of conduct gives the gaming industry a black eye and should not be tolerated.
But he did see, a few days later, the following statement, which Rep. Bob Ney entered into the Congressional Record on October 26:
Since my previous statement, I have come to learn that SunCruz Casino now finds itself under new ownership and, more importantly, that its new owner has a renowned reputation for honesty and integrity. The new owner, Mr. Adam Kidan, is most well known for his successful enterprise, Dial-a-Mattress, but he is also well known as a solid individual and a respected member of his community.
Kidan said that he was worth $26 million. But Kidan specifically accounted for only about $874,000, and said the rest of his money was in “closely held corporations.”
Such errors seem to have been intentional. The indictment alleges that Abramoff and Kidan repeatedly misled representatives from Foothill Capital and Citadel Equity. The indictment specifically mentions an August 8, 2000, meeting in New York City at which Abramoff told the bankers that he was a partner at Preston Gates (he was not) and Kidan claimed to have had experience in running a casino (he had none).
But none of the money lenders knew that. On September 18 there was another meeting in New York. There, Foothill Capital and Citadel Equity agreed to extend a $60 million loan if Abramoff and Kidan put up $23 million of their own money.
On September 26 Kidan drew up another “closing statement” that read, in part, “CASH FROM BUYERS in the amount of $23,000,000 . . . has been received by the Sellers,” which “closing statement” Kidan then faxed to New York City. And which “closing statement,” it now appears, was only one part of an elaborate fraud. The next day, according to the indictment of Abramoff and Kidan, “the defendants” forged a document purporting to show evidence of a $23 million wire transfer from an account at Chevy Chase Savings bank in suburban Maryland to Boulis’s account at Ocean Bank in Miami Beach, and faxed that forgery to Foothill representatives in Boston. The forgery was titled, clumsily, “Funds Transfer Notification.”
But no such transfer occurred. No such funds existed. Nothing had happened–nothing, that is, except the transmission of forgeries and two flimsy IOUs.
Upon receipt of the forged documents, Foothill Capital and Citadel Equity released a $60 million line of credit towards the purchase of SunCruz Casinos. Jack Abramoff was in the casino business.
Given this opening, one might expect that Baron’s book, which comes out later this month, will be a gossipy tell-all packed with Republican secrets. It’s timing seems perfect, given that the pace of sex scandals has lately picked up faster than that of natural disasters. In fact, though, there’s not all that much dirt here. We do learn that Ralph Reed set Baron up with Jack Abramoff crony Adam Kidan-here called Jason, but very thinly disguised-and that, under the pretext of having to make a business call, he lured her to his hotel room on the first date, then stripped naked and lunged at her. More significantly, there are hints that it really was Reed who spread miscegenation rumors about McCain-at one point, he fumes, “If John McCain thinks I did a number of him in South Carolina, he hasn’t seen anything yet!”
On September 22, in secret, Abramoff and Kidan convinced Boulis to accept IOUs for $20 million in exchange for a 10 percent interest in the newly reorganized SunCruz Casinos. The deal was doubly illegal: Abramoff and Kidan were violating the terms of their purchase agreement with their financiers, and Boulis was violating the terms of his settlement with the government, which required that he separate himself entirely from his company.
It is hard to say how much involvement Abramoff had in the day-to-day operations of SunCruz Casinos. We know that he remained in Washington while Kidan moved to Florida. We know that Abramoff and Kidan began to pay themselves salaries of $500,000 a year, that Kidan bought a 30-foot boat and a Mercedes S 500 and moved into a condo for which he paid $4,300 a month. We know that SunCruz quickly hired Michael Scanlon as its “public affairs specialist” and spokesman, and that the company began to pay for Abramoff’s $230,000-a-year skybox at FedEx Field. We know that Kidan soon fired many of Boulis’s hires, members of the Boulis family and the larger South Florida Greek community who depended on their benefactor’s largesse. “We fired his friends, we fired his family, and he wasn’t happy with it,” Kidan would later tell the Ft. Lauderdale Sun-Sentinel.
We know that Boulis and Kidan did not get along. Boulis loudly voiced his opposition to his new partners’ way of managing the business, and on October 24, 2000, Boulis wrote a letter demanding those partners pay him the $20 million they had promised. The letter was a flop. Boulis never saw any money.
The SunCruz deal collapsed in the space of a few months. The company was fraught with infighting. By December 2000 Kidan and Boulis were no longer speaking. On December 5 Joan Wagner, Boulis’s lieutenant, called a meeting. All the principals attended except Abramoff, who was traveling overseas.
The meeting was a disaster. Witnesses later told police that Kidan began to scream, threatening and insulting Boulis and Wagner. Furious, Boulis assaulted Kidan. Someone called 911. Kidan filed a police report in which he accused Boulis of stabbing him in the neck with a pen.
After the December 5, 2000, meeting Kidan and Abramoff exchanged a flurry of emails. Kidan suggested a “concerted press effort” targeted at Boulis. “I was the victim of family violence before,” Kidan wrote. “Let’s use that in our favor (my mother wouldn’t mind) to show how we can’t tolerate violence and the likes of criminals. Let’s get the protective order. By painting the picture we box him. The negative is that his profile shows that he will retaliate against me.”
Abramoff replied: “I agree with this completely.”
Then Abramoff sent an email to Boulis’s attorney Anthony Damianakis: “It is my belief that Gus and Adam need to resolve the issue of what Gus is owed and Gus needs to move on out of the company.”
Kidan began to behave as though his life were in danger. He obtained the restraining order against Boulis that he had mentioned to Abramoff. He hired bodyguards. He purchased a $180,000 lease on an armor-plated Mercedes. And in his emails to Abramoff, Kidan began to refer to a “friend in NY,” who he said was “acting out of concern for my safety.” “By sending security I am afraid it will make things worse,” Kidan wrote Abramoff, somewhat cryptically. “And I will ask him today to remove them. I appreciate his efforts, but the situation is at a critical point.”
Meanwhile, Kidan’s media strategy took shape. When he obtained the restraining order against Boulis in January 2001, Kidan made sure to contact Jeff Shields, a reporter at the Sun Sentinel covering SunCruz. “This guy is violent–he’s sleazy,” Kidan said. Later, describing his December 5 fight with Boulis, Kidan would tell Shields, “If someone’s going to jump across at me in a business meeting, that’s when someone shows they’re violent–they don’t care. That’s when what happened with my mother hits home with me.”
Around this time Kidan put Anthony Moscatiello–presumably his “friend in NY”–on the SunCruz payroll. In December 2000 he sent $20,000 in checks to Jennifer Moscatiello, Big Tony’s daughter. Between December 13, 2000, and June 8, 2001, Kidan authorized $145,000 in checks to Anthony Moscatiello’s daughter and his company Gran-Sons Inc. Also in December 2000 Kidan sent $40,000 in checks to Moon Over Miami Beach, a mysterious company incorporated by one Anthony “Little Tony” Ferrari, who was known around town for bragging that he was John Gotti’s “cousin.” Ferrari had been arrested several times, most recently in 1999 for attacking a lawyer who had brought suit against his business partners, Frank J. and Thomas L. Pepper. Between December 7, 2000, and March 29, 2001, Kidan authorized $95,000 in checks to Moon Over Miami Beach, which amount does not include the $10,000 in free poker chips Kidan provided Thomas Pepper and three associates on July 5, 2001.
Asked about the checks to Moscatiello in 2001, Kidan said they were for catering and “food and beverage” services that Moscatiello had provided. There is no evidence any such services were provided. Asked about the checks to Anthony Ferrari in 2001, Kidan said they were for security operations. There is no evidence that Kidan’s life was ever in danger.
The night it happened, February 6, 2001, Boulis had two meetings, one at 5 p.m., the other a few hours later. The first was in Hollywood Beach, where Boulis had a few business properties. This meeting was about acquiring one more. In Hollywood he sat and talked with Joe LaBarca inside LaBarca’s restaurant, Ruffy’s Restaurant and Marina. LaBarca wanted a buyer; Boulis wanted to bulldoze the restaurant and use the land as a parking lot for a hotel he was hoping to build. Noncommital, Boulis left Ruffy’s, right along the water, and drove to Ft. Lauderdale, to an office building he had purchased some time before. There he had his second meeting. It lasted a few hours.
By the time that meeting was over, around 9:15 p.m., night had fallen, and Boulis was ready to go home. He said goodbye to his business associate, left the office, and walked outside to where his BMW was parked. He took out his keys, unlocked the door, and got behind the wheel. He pulled out of the lot and turned south, heading home. It was a cool night, and there was a breeze off Lake Mabel, and Boulis rolled down his window.
A few blocks later, at the corner of Miami and 20th, a car pulled in front of Boulis, so he had to slow down, then stop. The car in front of Boulis didn’t budge.
He waited. And as he waited, another car–a black Mustang in the oncoming, northbound traffic–pulled alongside him without stopping or even slowing. The Mustang’s driver had opened his window, too. Boulis turned to look at the driver. Whereupon he made the grim discovery that the man in the Mustang was pointing a gun at him, and that raising your hand in front of you is not enough to stop three hollow-tip bullets–the man in the Mustang fired many more, forensic evidence shows–from burrowing deep into your chest.
Suddenly the car in front of Boulis sped away. The black Mustang was gone into the night. Bleeding and barely conscious, Boulis pressed the accelerator, headed south a few blocks, then turned a corner . . . and then, mid-blackout, lost control of his car–spinning across the median into oncoming traffic, and finally crashing into a tree next to a Burger King.
The first ambulances arrived in minutes. They took Boulis–who, the paramedics determined, was in cardiac arrest–to nearby Broward General Medical Center, where he died on an operating table. It was 10:20 p.m.
Boulis’s death did nothing to slow SunCruz’s unraveling. Lawsuits continued to multiply, with the Boulis estate first suing Kidan for ownership of SunCruz, then suing him for conspiring to kill Boulis. On June 22, 2001, SunCruz filed for bankruptcy. Abramoff and Waldman signed over their stake to the Boulis estate, making Boulis’s heirs the majority shareholders. Kidan was left with 20 percent. But not for long. On July 9, Kidan cut a deal in which he would give up his stake in exchange for $200,000 and an end to the civil suit against him. Almost as quickly as they had entered the casino industry, Abramoff and Kidan made their exit.
In early January 2003 Rodgers was up past midnight, watching a recap of his beloved Pittsburgh Steelers playoff win when he got a fateful call that both startled and intrigued him.
“Tom, I was told I could trust you,” the voice on the phone said.
Rodgers listened intently as Bernie Sprague, the subchief of the Saginaw Chippewa of Mount Pleasant, Mich., told him about his tribe’s disturbing interactions with Abramoff.
“Tom, we’re being threatened by our lobbyist,” Rodgers was told.
Rodgers responded, “What do you mean, threatened?”
Sprague informed Rodgers that Abramoff was going to sue him because he was questioning the invoices and what he was doing to justify the millions of dollars in fees.
Sprague needed to know if Rodgers could help him.
In the months and years that followed these exchanges, Rodgers worked with members of the Saginaw Chippewa tribe, the Alabama Coushatta and their cousins the Coushatta tribe of Louisiana to gather internal invoices and documents and slowly and strategically leak them to the media after first contacting the BIA.
“We were told [by the BIA] that it was an internal affair,” Rodgers recalled. “I turned to [Vice Chairman of the Louisiana Coushatta tribe David Sickey and Sprague] on a conference call one night and said, ‘Now we need to go another way. We’ve accumulated the data; we have all the information we need. We need to leak it.’ “
Aware that the national media tended to give scant attention to Native American issues, Rodgers first advised Sprague and Sickey to contact their local press, the Mt. Pleasant Morning News, the Lake Charles American Press and the Alexandria Town Talk.
After these initial local articles appeared, Rodgers said he sent 14 manila folders with a one-inch packet of the articles, invoices and other documents to several good-government groups, as well as the National Journal and The Washington Post’s Susan Schmidt, who would go on to win a Pulitzer Prize for her series on the Abramoff scandal.
His ability to keep his identity secret for so many years is a testament to the insular world of Native Americans; Rodgers isn’t afraid to stand out in a crowd.
Usually clad in an all-black matching shirt and sport coat, his unusual combination of high cheekbones and deep-set green eyes illustrates his mixed Blackfoot Indian and Irish heritage.
Michael Scanlon, a business partner of disgraced former lobbyist Jack Abramoff, was sentenced today to 20 months in federal prison for his role in the scandal that helped bring down former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-Texas).
The prison sentence handed out by District Judge Ellen Huvelle marked the end of long fall from grace for Scanlon, a one-time DeLay aide who made enormous sums working with Abramoff, only to see it all fall apart.
This weekend former U.S. Rep. Bob Ney will be a free man after serving 17 months of a 30-month federal sentence.
WHAT ABOUT HIS FELLOW INMATE?
When Bob Ney arrived at the Federal Correction Institution in Morgantown, W.Va. on March 1, 2007, “Survivor” television game show winner Richard Hatch had already served seven months of a 51-month sentence in the Morgantown facility for failing to pay income tax on his $1 million prize.
Ney, who was sentenced to 30 months on federal corruption charges, served nearly a year in prison and was released in February into the custody of a halfway house.
According to the Federal Bureau of Prisons, Hatch is due to be released on Oct. 7, 2009.
“People ask me, ‘How can we believe you?’ And my answer to you is, first of all, I am a changed man,” says Abramoff, who served 43 months in the federal pen as the central figure in last decade’s Washington corruption scandal involving Indian tribal gaming establishments and influence peddling. “But I am not going to be able to convince you I am changed any more than somebody can convince you that they love you. You have to look at people’s actions.”
And, let’s not forget, also to make some money. Abramoff-who has little hope of paying the $23 million in court-ordered restitution to his victims, especially the Indian tribes that were his ill-treated clients-wants to generate income by giving paid speeches.
Anthony “Big Tony” Moscatiello, Anthony “Little Tony” Ferrari and James Fiorillo, all of whom have been connected to the Gambino crime family, were arrested six years ago and face the death penalty if convicted. For now, Moscatiello is out on $500,000 bail. Bail was set for the other two defendants as well, but they were unable to post the amount and remain in the Broward Main Jail.
Neither Kidan nor Abramoff has been accused of involvement in Boulis’ murder. Kidan has maintained for years that he hired Moscatiello, now 71, for protection because of his mob connections and because Kidan feared Boulis would become violent. But Kidan says he never wanted his business rival killed.
An admitted conspirator in the 2001 slaying of a prominent South Florida businessman described Tuesday how he conducted surveillance before the mob-style hit and later helped dispose of a handgun and car used in the crime.
James “Pudgy” Fiorillo, 34, did not witness the Feb. 6, 2001 killing of Konstantinos “Gus” Boulis, founder of the Miami Subs restaurant chain and onetime owner of the SunCruz Casinos gambling fleet. But Fiorillo said he was deeply involved in the plot and its aftermath, including a phone call made the night of the killing by suspect Anthony “Little Tony” Ferrari after the two watched a television newscast.
FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. – Trial is off until late summer in the 2001 mob-style slaying of the former owner of the Miami Subs restaurant chain and SunCruz Casinos gambling fleet.
A defense attorney’s required knee surgery led a Broward County judge on Monday to delay the trial of two men until Aug. 12. The trial had been scheduled to start next week.
Konstantinos “Gus” Boulis was killed by a gunman who pulled alongside his car on a Fort Lauderdale street. Facing the death penalty if convicted are Anthony “Big Tony” Moscatiello and Anthony “Little Tony” Ferrari. Both have pleaded not guilty.
83 The Sunday Paper which used to host Baron’s column has gone south, if you know what I mean and I think you know what I mean: it’s defunct, like Buffalo Bill, so it can only be found on the wayback machine web archive (a grateful hat tip to the blog, Chamblee54).
My big cavernous pit of love
By Lisa Baron
I swear I don’t have a big vagina, but over the Thanksgiving holiday, I told my father-in-law I did.
That’s right, I told him right to his face that his daughter-in-law, the woman his beloved first born son chose for a wife comes with a big cavernous pit of love.
I’m not frickin’ kidding either. And I committed this transgression against myself without even saying a word, I signed it. I held up my hands, connected the fleshy base of my palms together and separated them to form the letter V. Then I turned, smiled and showed it to my father-in-law. I wish it weren’t true, oh do I wish it weren’t true.
And it’s not like I go around talking about my vagina either. The only people I talk about my whoo-ha with are my best friends and Debbie, the bikini waxer. And as far as Debbie goes, we only discussed it once-to decide on what was to be eliminated. And I’ve only ever mentioned my netherworld to my own dad-and mom-once.
The princess and the prostitute
By Lisa Baron
I’m downloading gangsta rap into my iPod-a gift from Jimmy’s boss. Strange gift from the general manager of a radio station. Sort of. He gave one to me, Fred’s wife, Fat Kid’s wife and Wally’s wife. He wants us to listen to our iPods instead of the station’s morning show. If we’re not listening to the morning show, then we don’t hear our husbands clamoring on about the desperate state of affairs in their homes. And if we don’t hear them whining, they are spared the shrill squawks of done-wrong housewives. So now I have an iPod and Jimmy gets to complain without retaliation and everyone is happy. Sort of.
“My inner slut was snuffed out well before her time.”
Anyway, I’m shoving Eazy-E and the 2 Live Crew into the spores of my iPod and somewhere between “Eazy-Duz-It” and “Me So Horny,” a prickly heat rises through my body, finally breaking into a cool, mellow mourn over the lost chance of ever being with a black man. Or a yellow man, for that matter, or the golden hue of the honey-brown Italian or his first cousin, the dreamy Spaniard. In my monomaniacal pursuit of finding “the one,” I selflessly worried about keeping my numbers low before marriage; totally screwing myself in the process. This insane logic (everyone lies about their numbers, anyway) has left me mentally and numerically low.
Ralph Reed’s race for lieutenant governor of Georgia has foundered since it was disclosed that Reed, who says he opposes gambling, accepted gambling money from Abramoff on a lobbying job, then insisted he hadn’t known about it. The two are now estranged; when Norquist got married last year, Reed steered clumsily clear of Abramoff’s table.
Just to cite one typical example, the head of the Republican National Committee, Ken Mehlman, said in an interview, “Abramoff is someone who we don’t know a lot about. We know what we read in the paper,” even though, according to documents obtained by Vanity Fair, Mehlman exchanged e-mail with Abramoff, did him political favors (such as blocking Clinton-administration alumnus Allen Stayman from keeping a State Department job), had Sabbath dinner at his house, and offered to pick up his tab at Signatures. (According to a spokesperson, Mehlman does not recall the e-mail exchange, “because he was often contacted by political supporters with suggestions and ideas,” or the Sabbath dinner.)
Then there’s presidential adviser Karl Rove. He has not spoken of his relationship with Abramoff, but the White House insists Rove, too, barely knew him, acknowledging only that they met at a political event in the 1990s. “He would describe him as a casual acquaintance,” a White House spokesman said. But Abramoff was Rove’s spiritual heir at the College Republicans in the 1980s; both men headed the group, and the two met from time to time in connection with it. After George W. Bush took office, Susan Ralston, Abramoff’s administrative assistant, took the same position with Rove at the White House, where Abramoff met with Rove at least once. (An eyewitness also recalls seeing Abramoff emerge from a car near the White House and have what looked like a pre-arranged, street-corner meeting with Rove; Abramoff says he can’t recall that.) Rove dined several times at Signatures and was Abramoff’s guest in the owner’s box at the N.C.A.A. basketball playoffs a few years ago, sitting for much of the game by Abramoff’s side. Recently, three former associates of Abramoff’s have told how he frequently mentioned his strong ties to Rove, and one described being present when Abramoff took a phone call from Rove’s office.
Ralph Reed is going to own this room. Granted, it’s only a standard-issue campus auditorium at Emory University, half filled at best for the annual Georgia College Republicans convention. But to the former boy wonder of evangelical politics, it looks like heavenly shelter on this drizzly February morning. The Christian Coalition co-founder’s first campaign for public office–lieutenant governor of Georgia, a position Reed and his fans envision as a stepping stone to bigger things–has turned into a waking nightmare. Every week brings a new revelation about the millions in dirty money Reed earned by duping his fellow evangelicals into putting their political muscle behind “Casino Jack” Abramoff’s gambling clients. Reed’s huge leads in both popularity polls and fundraising have almost disappeared. Instead of making his triumphant debut as a politician, the man Time magazine called “The Right Hand of God” is fast becoming the new poster boy for Christian-right corruption.
The Georgia CRs finally give Reed a polite hand for his creative stab at self-redemption. A few awkward minutes later, Reed is climbing the steps toward the exit, wearing an iron-willed smile while making an elaborate show of “gripping and grinning,” even though only a few hands reach out to him. It’s one more sign of his mounting desperation to project the air of a winner–a desperation that led to embarrassment in January, when Reed’s campaign offered $20 and a free hotel stay to supporters who would attend the Georgia Christian Coalition’s annual convention and cheer for the man who invented the coalition.
Maurice Atkinson says he will not question Reed’s faith, because Atkinson is a Christian, and Christians don’t do that. He believes in grace, believes that all men fall short of the glory of God, believes he shouldn’t be picking specks from another man’s eye when he surely has a timber in his own.
Reed could have worked for anyone he wanted to, could have lent his considerable talents to any number of Christian organizations, real ones, too, the kind that existed before Reed needed some preachers to front for his corporate clients. But Enron? Indian casinos? “He’s either an awfully cheap whore,” Atkinson says, “or he’s diabolical.”
Last week, news broke that Ralph Reed, former Christian Coalition director and crony of Jack Abramoff, would be helping to raise money for Sen. John McCain’s (R-AZ) fundraiser in Atlanta. Reed “touted himself as a member of McCain’s ‘Victory 2008 Team’ in an e-mail that solicited donations on McCain’s behalf,” and public watchdog organizations called on McCain to denounce Reed. The Wall Street Journal now reports that Reed was a no-show at tonight’s Atlanta fundraiser.
ABC News’ Ron Claiborne reports: The Obama campaign is continuing to hammer Republican Sen. John McCain for former Christian Coalition director Ralph Reed’s involvement in a McCain fundraising event in Atlanta.
Reed – who didn’t show up to McCain’s fundraiser tonight – was implicated, but not charged, in lobbying deals involving Indian casinos with disgraced Washington lobbyist Jack Abramoff. McCain participated in the congressional probe of Abramoff’s lobbying. Abramoff is now serving time at a minimum security federal prison in Maryland.
On a television set up at the booth, a video played on loop claiming Wall Street reform is an “unconstitutional takeover of the U.S. economy.” The video, set to scary attack ad music, argued that Tea Party activists should be as angry at financial reform as they were against President Obama’s health reforms:
NARRATOR: From the same people who brought you Obamacare comes a controversial sequel: Dodd Frank. Last year, President Obama and the Democrat-run Congress rushed through the sweeping overhaul of healthcare amounting to the unconstitutional power grab followed quickly by Dodd Frank Wall Street Reform And Consumer Protection Act. Just like Obamacare it created a massive, unconstitutional regulatory bureaucracy. The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau is a runaway regulatory machine completely unaccountable to the president, the Congress, and the courts.
Who is behind Dodd Frank Exposed? Although the organization is ostensibly hosted by the “Judicial Crisis Network” – a group that has no actual registration or office – Dodd Frank Exposed is actually run by two veteran astroturf lobbyists, Gary Marx and Robert Bork Jr. Marx is a vice president at Ralph Reed’s lobbying firm Century Strategies. Bork runs his own public relations company called the Bork Communication Group.
Marx, on the other hand, did not return any of our calls. His firm, Century Strategies, has a similar history as Bork. Century Strategies created Christian-themed front groups for Enron to lobby for energy deregulation, launched a religion-based direct mail campaign to maintain sweatshops in the Mariana Islands, and was caught up in a money laundering scheme with Jack Abramoff for his casino clients. Although Marx lists companies like Walmart among his clients, it is not clear who is paying him for his new Tea Party group pushing to repeal financial reform. Notably, the Dodd Frank Exposed website applauds litigation sponsored by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, which is funded by banks like Citigroup and Bank of America, for challenging the constitutionality of Wall Street reform.
According to documents obtained by ThinkProgress, the National Cable and Telecom Association (NCTA), a trade association that represents cable providers like Comcast and Qwest Communications, has provided Reed’s lobbying firm with at least $3,462,117 worth of contracts in the last three years alone. Century Strategies, the firm founded by Reed and fellow astroturf lobbyist Tim Phillips in 1997, received the contracts for what NCTA deemed “legal and advertising” services. View a screenshot of the relevant documents here and here.
Around the same time the cable industry paid Reed over $3 million, cable companies across the country were battling a regulation known as “net neutrality” – a rule that allows Internet freedom by ensuring that Internet providers, like cable companies, do not discriminate based on content or bandwidth speeds. The NCTA, Reed’s cable trade association benefactor, lobbied aggressively to prevent Congress or the FCC from enacting net neutrality rules. The trade association, along with member companies like Comcast, ran ads and hired many lobbyists.
Mysteriously, around the time of the NCTA million-dollar contracts to Century Strategies, Reed’s old business partner Tim Phillips took up the charge of defeating net neutrality. His group, Americans for Prosperity, pushed conspiracies that net neutrality has something to do with communism. As the FCC continued its deliberations over the rule, AFP launched a $1.4 million ad campaign with Tea Party-themes against net neutrality.
Ralph Reed believes conservative voters of faith need a Christian Coalition 2.0.
And the man once dubbed the “right hand of God” by Time magazine is returning to the arena where he had his greatest success to try and make it so.
“This is not going to be your daddy’s Christian Coalition,” Reed said in an interview to describe his new venture, the Faith and Freedom Coalition. “It has to be younger, hipper, less strident, more inclusive and it has to harness the 21st century that will enable us to win in the future.”
“Even though I’ve been doing other things, this is kind of like Steve Jobs returning to Apple,” Reed said.
Three years ago, Mr. Reed formed the Faith and Freedom Coalition and began assembling what he calls the largest-ever database of reliably conservative religious voters. In the coming weeks, he says, each of those 17.1 million registered voters in 15 key states will receive three phone calls and at least three pieces of mail. Seven million of them will get e-mail and text messages. Two million will be visited by one of more than 5,000 volunteers. Over 25 million voter guides will be distributed in 117,000 churches.
White evangelicals are a crucial voting constituency, 26 percent of the 2008 electorate and overwhelmingly Republican in recent presidential cycles, exit polls show. With so few truly undecided voters left, bumping up evangelical turnout in swing states like Colorado, Florida, Iowa, Nevada, North Carolina and Ohio would almost certainly help Mr. Romney.
As the sun slowly sets over the Republican National Convention in Tampa, we settle back in the chairs that nice Mr. Eastwood just gave us and ponder some of the other oddities of the week. Like this item in the official GOP platform pointed out by Brad Plumer of the Washington Post:
No minimum wage for the Mariana Islands. “The Pacific territories should have flexibility to determine the minimum wage, which has seriously restricted progress in the private sector.”
A conservative religious group is sending its members a ‘survey’ that compares President Obama’s policies to those of Nazi Germany, and asserts that the President has “communist beliefs.”
The mailer, a product of the Faith and Freedom coalition, is titled the “Voter Registration Confirmation Survey.” But its questions have little to do with registering to vote. Rather, the survey asks a host of leading inquiries into how its members view the President’s record.
As Mother Jones, who obtained the survey, points out, the Faith and Freedom coalition and particularly its head Ralph Reed are leading the effort to turn out Evangelical voters for Mitt Romney’s presidential campaign. The group plans to spend over $10 million for this purpose.
Under the shade of some palm trees, Ralph Reed took off his shirt and fed an orange to a giant iguana.
Day five, Friday afternoon, and we were on a white-sand beach in Honduras, biding our time until a boat would take us offshore to snorkel over the shipwreck. Even Reed, among the youngest people on the cruise, was in a way a figure from an earlier time. Rob Long, the right-wing Hollywood writer, told me the night before, over cocktails on the midship deck, “I like Ralph Reed, but he’s done.”
“Forasmuch as ye know that ye were not redeemed with corruptible things, as silver and gold, from your vain conversation received by tradition from your fathers; But with the precious blood of Christ, as of a lamb without blemish and without spot.” What a crock of shit.
Not the New Testament verse, mind you-which the ostensibly evangelical Faith and Freedom Coalition posted on its Facebook page Wednesday. It’s a sublime notion that neither earthly wealth nor stodgy tradition can save the believer-that humans of all economic and social castes are essentially equal in damnation, and in their potential for salvation. What a beautiful universe that is: no sin is too big to overcome, no pile of money is big enough to save you. This is the cornerstone of Christianity, of its highest expressions through voluntary charity and acts of love for all.
But that verse’s Facebook posters, who in recent decades have secured a vertical monopoly on Christianity in the American public sphere, are the farthest, awfulest thing from this Christian ideal. They are a money-sucking, dogma-spouting, people-hating puddle of inane defecate, stacked up and sculpted into a Jesus on a cross. And they proved it Thursday by inviting Donald Trump to come speak at their June shindig. If this is what “Christian evangelism” means nowadays, Christian evangelism has no meaning.
The other day, sitting in an office lined with framed photographs from back in the heyday – here with President George W. Bush at a White House Christmas party, there with Pope John Paul II at the Vatican – the preternaturally youthful evangelical operative, 51, propped his black ostrich cowboy boots on a coffee table and made what he admits seems an audacious prediction: that record numbers of socially conservative evangelical Protestants will turn out for the first presidential election in history without a Protestant on the Republican ticket.
A few days earlier, a fellow Republican, someone who actually likes him, had told me that Reed “would be the quintessential reptilian character. With Ralph, it’s not a question of ‘Do I like you?’ It’s a question of ‘Am I hungry? And if I am, are you of a size that I can eat you?’”
I had always thought of Donald Trump as someone who had once been very rich, has lost a great deal of money, and now tried to pass off his fractional fortune as the bounty of a Midas. This ancient article, “All of the People, All the Time” from the valuable Spy magazine archive puts that idea to rest for me. This creature was always a nuisance, and never rich.
I excerpt the beginning, three interesting points, and its conclusion.
The opening:
YOU CAN FOOL ALL THE PEOPLE ALL THE TIME
How Donald Trump Fooled the Media, Used the Media to Fool Banks, Used the Banks to Fool the Bondholders and Used the Bondholders to Pay for the Yachts and Mansions and Mistresses
by John Connolly
With his bluster and his extravagance and his tabloid love life, Donald Trump has always been a source of considerable entertainment. If we’re honest, we all have to admit that after his every achievement in greed or vanity we’ve said to ourselves, Heck, you’ve gotta love that guy! Like some funny, impossibly venal puppet in a Punch-and-Judy show, Trump has always given us a good laugh. In fact, Trump’s image as a buffoon is just another example of how the press has protected him from real scrutiny for so long. While one would prefer not to be considered a joke, that is not so bad if it distracts people from seeing what one really is: a charlatan, a liar, a cheat. But if Trump has thrown the press and public off his trail during the last year, he has not managed the same trick with law enforcement. SPY has learned that Trump’s 1988 sale of Resorts International to Merv Griffin is now the subject of two criminal investigations, one by the FBI. “We are looking into the organized-crime [side of it],” says a law-enforcement official. Furthermore, John Sweeney of the New Jersey Division of Gaming Enforcement confirms that his agency is also studying Trump’s participation in the Resorts deal.
A former…well, top Trump executive told SPY he considers Trump “evil incarnate.” A mobster who knew Trump socially said of him once, “He’d lie to you about what time of day it is – just for the practice.” And indeed, a close study of Trump’s actions over the past few years reveals a man addicted to deception, a man who invested like a fool, a man who shaved from deals and bled failing companies of cash so that he could live with absurd excess, a man who borrowed huge amounts from credulous banks and investors, a man who not only is not now a billionaire but never had $1 billion or $500 million or – very possibly – even $100 million and who has been strapped since 1987. Donald Trump is not just some cartoon character, a guy with a comb-over and a press agent and a board game named after him; he is and always has been a real and fairly treacherous human being.
In the history of finance, Donald Trump will be known for one brilliant innovation. No one before Trump had used the press so cunningly to give himself legitimacy with creditors. Trump made the media his balance sheet. Reports of Trump’s wealth in newspapers and especially in sober business magazines such as Fortune and Forbes and Business Week were the basis upon which banks lent him money and the public bought his bonds.
A spokesman for Arthur Andersen, Trump’s accountants until 1990, admitted to SPY that they had never conducted a financial audit of Donald Trump. Andersen did conduct “financial reviews” – the term for a very superficial analysis of management and procedures, a once-over quite unlike an audit, which would include the accountants’ solemn opinion of the finances under examination. Sources at Chase Manhattan and Citibank – from which Trump borrowed $290 million and $990 million, respectively – say that although Trump may have given the bank audited financial statements for certain specific properties, they never had an audited statement of Donald Trump and his finances generally. Bankers Trust – which has lent Trump more than $100 million with no collateral – declined to comment for this article. Manufacturers Hanover – which has lent Trump $160 million – also declined to comment.
Two of the most powerful banks in the world report that no one ever audited Donald Trump. Some of the loans that the banks made to Trump even had provisions stating that if his net worth fell below a certain level ($600 million, for example), Trump would have to pay back the loans immediately. Very prudent – except that the banks never insisted that Trump verify his net worth by audit.
So, without audits, often without collateral, how did Trump manage to borrow all that money? Well, every one knew that Donald Trump was a billionaire, and who wouldn’t lend money to a billionaire? Banks are in the business of making loans, and in the overheated eighties, a banker couldn’t wait to make a loan to Donald Trump. The banks and the people who bought Trump’s bonds were influenced by the news accounts of Trump’s billions.
If Trump had told the press the truth, or if the press had held his claims up to even a rudimentary level of scrutiny, then Trump might not owe the banks $2 billion on which he has suspended interest payments, and he might not have sold $1.277 billion in bonds that are now worth only $493 million. But Trump didn’t tell the truth, and the media were pathetically gullible. Even the press reports of Ivana’s prenuptial agreement are wrong – it is for $10 million, not $25 million. The information presented below is not based on hindsight – if journalists had been inclined to look, they could have found out the truth at any time.
Interesting point one:
Trump Tower and the Grand Hyatt were Trump’s first major projects. Both were initiated when New York was still reeling from the fiscal crisis of the mid-seventies and was willing to make any deal with any developer, just as long as he developed. As New York’s economy took off in the early eighties, the deals made Trump look like a winner. What the media have ignored for purposes of assessing Trump’s wealth and ability, though, is that neither project was Trump’s alone. The Hyatt, a renovation of the 64-year-old Commodore Hotel, is half owned by the Pritzker family of Chicago. Equitable Life holds the mortgage to the hotel, and since the Pritzkers presumably really are worth about $5 billion, Equitable probably felt safe entering a deal with them. What did Trump bring? He knew his way around city government, so he won the tax abatements that made the Hyatt a success.
Equitable then agreed to be Trump’s partner in Trump Tower, putting up half the money. Equitable sold those condos at the height of the market and then wanted out of the market and then wanted out of the retail and commercial space. Trump bought them out with a $75 million loan from Chase Manhattan. He has come to them with other plans, but they have decided to pass on these ventures.
It is difficult to determine exactly what value to place on Trump’s equity in the Hyatt and Trump Tower. One popular misconception is easily remedied, however: Donald Trump in no sense owns Trump Tower. The condominiums that make up all but 19 floors of the building are owned, of course, by the people who bought the apartments. Trump owns only the retail space and his apartment and office. He surely made some money on those condominiums, with Equitable’s help, and the Hyatt continues to be profitable. But like a movie star with a couple of early hits, Trump traded on those successes for a decade.
Two:
During our look into Trump’s stock transactions, we came across an interesting item. In 1986, Trump, the “billionaire,” needed $31 million to meet a margin call for his purchase of Bally Corporation stock. The funds to meet the margin call came from his Holiday Corporation stock profits; a credit line from Bankers Trust; a distribution from Trump Equitable 5th Avenue Corporation, which is the agent for Trump Tower commercial space; miscellaneous credit lines from other banks; and a 1985 federal income tax refund. All this desperate scrounging by a top-of-his-form billionaire for a measly $31 million.
“[Trump] had the accounting firm of Arthur Andersen & Company do a special audit. The CPAs declared Trump had cash assets of $700,125,00 as of November 30, 1988…So much for Trump’s not being as big as he says he is”
- “The Unmaking of a Documentary,” New York, September 4, 1989
Ah, yes, “So much for Trump’s not being as big as he says he is.” In some ways, his use of the Arthur Andersen letter is Trump’s most elegant deception. The accountants’ carefully worded letter did say – perfectly accurately – that on the specified date Trump had $700,125,000 in cash, cash equivalents and marketable securities. Having seen the lengths to which Trump was driven in order to raise a mere #31 million back in late 1986, we may be surprised to learn that on a typical day in 1988 he had 20 times that in liquid assets. Fortunately, a simple explanation presents itself: if one interprets it properly, which the Trump-adoring editors at New York were in no way inclined to do, the Andersen letter actually demonstrates that on November 30, 1988, Donald Trump was $20 million in the red.
The date of the review was not the end of a fiscal year or quarter, but neither was it arbitrary. It happened to be eight days after Merrill Lynch had given Trump $651 million in cash specifically for the purpose of building the Taj Mahal. The money had been raised through a junk-bond offering. The accountants’ letter made only passing reference to the possibility that any of the $700 million was earmarked for specific projects. It also failed to explain that the marketable securities were shares in Alexander’s department stores – stock that Trump had borrowed $69 million from Citibank and Bear Stearns to buy.
Andersen stated that Trump had $700 million in cash and stock. Deduct the $69 million owed on the stock, and that leaves Trump with $631 million. But Merrill Lynch had just given Trump $651 million for the Taj Mahal, so, in fact, he was “overdrawn” for $20 million.
The conclusion. The Castle referred to is the Trump Castle Casino, an Atlantic City casino, now called the Atlantic City Golden Nugget.
A fool and a liar and a deadbeat Trump may be, but no one can say that he doesn’t have touching, human qualities. Take his solicitude to his aging father. In January, The Wall Street Journal reported that Trump had surreptitiously borrowed $3 million from Fred Trump to help him make an $18.4 million Castle Casino bond payment. A week before Christmas, Trump had Howard Snyder, an attorney for his father, walk into the Castle, go up to the cashier’s window, buy $3 million in chips and leave with those chips. With that $3 million, Trump had the money he needed to make the bond payment.
The CCC requires that all loans be reported. Needless to say, Trump did not advise the Commission of the loan from Fred. “We found out about [the transaction] the next day. We began to look into it right away,” John Sweeney, the new director of the New Jersey Division of Gaming Enforcement, told SPY. “We sent a letter to the Trump Organization saying, ‘We are treating it as a loan.’” This is what things have come to for Donald Trump. The boy from Queens had to go back to Queens for a bailout.
Occasionally, one comes across an old story, an obscurity, that is like a small rock launched at fine glass, the spiderweb of cracks traveling out from the initial impact, all the way to the edges of the frame. It is marring, and destructive, yet we are held agape at the reach of this forgotten moment. The auguring incident is a magnet for any writer, so much so that a now extinct magazine Spy made fun of this technique, with its Ten Years Ago in Spy Today, where it would approvingly quote a decade-old story from its pages unerringly anticipating contemporary events; Spy was a magazine full of vicious satire, and these decade old stories were always made up. The necessary repetition involved in writing is too frequently unacknowledged, and I am by no means the first to cite this feature in an introduction; James Traub, a Spy veteran1, did so effectively in “The Way We Live Now”, and he gives a more succinct intro to this feature: “There used to be a column in Spy magazine, Ten Years Ago in Spy, which featured astonishing and, of course, completely fictitious acts of journalistic foresight. ‘NASA’s enthusiasm notwithstanding, the space shuttle is a potentially deadly hodgepodge of untested technologies,’ ran one breathless article. ‘High on the list of suspected components are the enormous flexible gaskets…’”
I give some extensive mention to this, because it is in the pages of this magazine that we can find the epicenter of one such quaking event. This magazine is ancient, this magazine is extinct – an ad makes you think, “Oh, these are the people Patrick Bateman killed” – but its tremors reach us even now. The story is diligent, quality reporting – Spy‘s alumni are widely spread and fertile spores, its writing a shaming standard to the low watermark that’s attempted now – but very much a back of the book, short feature, its ominous qualities impossible for the writers of the time to discern, but obvious to most readers now. We go back not ten years, but twenty two, to August 1990, the magazine’s cover featuring a weeping pseudo-billionaire still very much with us, and inside is “Fooled on the Hill: How some die-hard Cold Warriors and a Belgian con artist tried to change U.S. policy in Africa”, by David Aronson and David Kamp.
The piece opens with the tumult around the inauguration of the president of Namibia, a country sharing borders with both Angola and South Africa. The nation was beginning its transition to independence, after decades of being the vassal state of apartheid South Africa, the ruthless segregation policy of that country imposed on Namibia as well. For this transition to independence to take place would require UN supervision, which would require funding from wealthier nations, including the United States. Many hard-line conservatives, however, did not want this independence to take place, people like the notorious senator from North Carolina, Jesse Helms. They tried to stop it from happening through legislative chicanery and deception. I quote extensively from the piece, because it tells the story better than I can paraphrase it, and I begin such quoting now:
Four months earlier Helms and his right-wing allies had managed to put the United States in a position of disapproving of Namibian independence by sneaking a rider through a budget bill through Congress. The rider authorized the president to halt U.S. funding for a United Nations team, called UNTAG, that was overseeing Namibia’s peaceful, carefully negotiated secession from South Africa. As we shall see, the basis of Helms’s legislative gambit was bogus, a fabrication that might have been revealed had Congress administered some rudimentary tests before enacting the bill into law.
Helms, like most of Capitol Hill’s extreme conservatives, never wanted an independent Namibia, a country whose dominant party (SWAPO) is aligned with Moscow. Neither do Helms and his ilk hold much affection for Namibia’s friendly neighbor, Angola, whose Marxist government is backed by Cuba and is fighting a civil war against Jonas Savimbi’s U.S.-supported UNITA (National Union for the Total Independence of Angola) guerillas. In December 1988, Angola, Cuba, and South Africa signed an agreement in which Cuba promised to withdraw its troops from Angola by mid-1991 and South Africa agreed to allow Namibia’s independence. This deal was not universally approved; Duncan Sellars, chairman of the conservative International Freedom Foundation (IFF) in Washington, says that after the agreement was signed, right-wingers thought of it as “a sellout of [South Africa-controlled] Namibia and a sellout of UNITA.”
This group then goes into action:
Helms and a platoon of right-wing operatives (the lobbyists at Black, Manafort, Stone & Kelly, who represent UNITA, and the think-tankers at the Heritage Foundation and the IFF) coalesced around a piece of legislation – the rider to the budget bill – that would have given President Bush an excuse for withholding Washington’s funding for the UN team in Namibia if any evidence was found that the Cubans were using chemical weapons to support their Marxist pals in Angola. In other words, the bill said that if the Commies misbehaved in Angola, we couldn’t help pay for Namibia’s transition to independence.
We are then told the genesis for this action:
The idea for the bill was born during a trip taken to Angola in March 1989 by Michael Johns, the Heritage Foundation’s policy analyst for African affairs.
There he met Andries Holst, a West German who claimed to be filming a documentary about Cuba’s use of chemical weapons in Angola. Johns brought Holst to Washington where the German filmmaker was introduced to Helms, State Department officials, lobbyists and other conservatives likely to be moved by his footage, which purported to show the horrors of chemical warfare.
The filmmaker’s evidence, however, does not persuade, so another tact is tried:
For whatever reason, Holst did not impress, and Hems’s bill foundered. To salvage the effort, the IFF’s Duncan Sellars refocused attention on a scientific report Holst had commissioned from Aubin Heynrickx, a toxicologist from the University of Ghent in Belgium, which substantiated Holst’s claims. In July, Sellars brought Heyndrickx to Washington to tour the same conservative network Holst had earlier traveled. The difference: Heyndrickx’s opinions carried the heft and credibility of science.
And this time, it works.
While Heyndrickx held forth, Helms rallied his allies on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee to lash the rider to a vital appropriations bill and Black, Manafort’s lobbyists hit the Hill. And son of a gun, with the boost Heyndrickx provided, the plan worked: on November 21, George Bush put his signature on a bill containing the Cuban-chemical-warfare provision.
There is a caveat:
But what might look like a model of parliamentary maneuvering is more likely an instance of ultraconservative fraud. For as it turns out, Holst is an impostor with no serious journalistic or filmmaking credentials, and Heyndrickx, on whose reports the rider was entirely predicated, is a publicity-seeking showboat.
The evidentiary foundation of this bill, the evidence of use of chemical weapons, is soon revealed to be bunk:
Heyndrickx’s examination of Holst’s bomb fragments and environmental samples showed that chemical weapons were used. Other chemical-weapons experts – one is tempted to say real chemical-weapons experts – disagree. Finland’s Marjatta Rautio, who is perhaps the world’s preeminent expert in this field, examined Heyndrickx’s data and reports. “I don’t see the connection between the results and the conclusions,” she says. Julian Robinson, senior researcher at the University of Sussex, doubts Heyndrickx’s descriptions of the victims’ medical conditions. And André De Leenheer, Heydrickx’s overseer at Ghent, is frankly contemptuous. “I’ve been studying everything in detail that has been written,” De Leenheer says of Heyndrickx’s findings. “It’s a real joke.” De Leenheer says he would kick out any student who handed in a similar report.
A toxicologist claims that a soviet journal gave high marks to Heyndrickx’s work, but it turns out that the source for this commendation is Heyndrickx himself. The lobbying firm behind this whole effort, Black, Manafort, Stone & Kelly, gave no scrutiny whatsoever of the work of this supposed expert. When Heyndrickx passed the material on to the state department, their tests came back negative for any evidence of chemical contamination. A representative of UNITA, the Angolan military group that helped shepard Heyndrickx’s work to those in the U.S., claimed that he had discussed the work with other experts at “a university of chemical warfare” in Switzerland. When a swiss embassy is contacted, the reporters are told that no such studies are undertaken at any swiss university, and no such university in Switzerland exists. The article puts it best: “this significant piece of legislation was passed with no credible substantiation whatsoever.”
The article ends with a definitve putdown: “Is Heyndrickx a charlatan?” A chemical weapons expert at the state department responds, “I have no doubt about that,” adding, “That’s for sure.” Of course, this is not the story’s true end, but part of a larger picture. Anyone who reads this piece now sees immediately its unconscious prescience for the war in Iraq: poorly examined evidence passed to the U.S. by third parties with a vested interest that such evidence prompts the U.S. into action, all helpfully co-ordinated by a lobbying group that has no problem representing a murderous dictator, but has no interest in anyone working minimum wage. Then, the price would have been Namibian independence, in Iraq, it was death and maiming for hundreds of thousands. So, this small story (though not small at all, especially if one is from Namibia) holds that illumination, but it holds other light as well, by simply examining some of the players in the context of what a brief two decades of extra knowledge can give us.
At least one of the participants, the film-maker Andries Holst, has seemingly disappeared from the eye of history. Aubin Heynrickx, the ridiculed toxicologist, shows up again during the lead-up to the trials over the massacre of Kurds in northern Iraq, “In Iraq chemical arms trial, scientists face many burdens of proof”. He is described as “somewhat of a maverick in the field”, Heynrickx asserting that the Iraq army used cyanide and biological toxins, an assertion which most in his field disagree with2. No mention is made of his sorry involvement in the attempt to block Namibian independence. The best known members of the lobbying powerhouse Black, Manafort, Stone & Kelly are Charlie Black, Roger Stone, and Lee Atwater. Atwater, a man best known for his use of the infamous Willie Horton ad during the 1988 election, died, thankfully, very young. Roger Stone, a Nixon campaign alumnus, would go on to stage the Brooks Brothers riot in the 2000 election in order to stop vote counting in Miami3, help destroy the Reform party in that same year in order to eliminate a third-party threat on the right4, as well as fund and co-ordinate Al Sharpton’s 2004 presidential run in order to hurt the eventual democratic candidate with black voters5. Other notable incidents included his work as a liaison for the ill-viewed NXIVM cult6, flogging the possibility of a Michelle Obama “whitey tape”7, and a consulting venture with Scott Rothstein, the man behind the largest ponzi scheme in Florida history, now serving half a century in prison8. After a New York campaign in which he backed distribution of a flyer accusing a libertarian candidate of being a pedophile9, he would go on to run the campaign of the libertarian federal candidate, Gary Johnson, either out of devout libertarian belief, financial need, or perhaps again manipulating a third party or outsider candidate to arrange for a republican win10.
Charlie Black would continue to be a man of incredible power and toxic clientele. His list of clients would include Ahmed Chalabi, the Iraqi exile behind most of the bunko evidence of biological and chemical weapons, as well as the mercenary firm Blackwater, which he called “a fine company that’s provided a great service to the people of the United States and Iraq”, along with Phillipine dictator Ferdinand Marcos, Congolese dictator Mobutu Sese Seko, and Phillip Morris11. He would retire from lobbying when he went to work in the 2008 race for the crusading anti-lobbyist candidate John McCain; following the campaign, he un-retired from lobbying, and went back to work at his old firm12. During that same campaign, Mitt Romney criticized McCain for having so many lobbyists as associates. When someone pointed out that Romney had plenty of lobbyists in his campaign as well, the candidate insisted that they were not involved in his campaign, but simply informal advisers13. In 2012, Black would join Romney as an informal adviser as well. Not that he was actively participating in any way: “No formal role in the campaign. Just offer advice occasionally.”14
These men, however, were well known already for their ignoble work. There was one player, crucial in the incident, that was behind a veil, and this was the International Freedom Foundation. I re-quote again their first appearance in the story: “Duncan Sellars, chairman of the conservative International Freedom Foundation (IFF) in Washington, says that after the agreement was signed, right-wingers thought of it as ‘a sellout of [South Africa-controlled] Namibia and a sellout of UNITA.’” The IFF was a think tank started by Jack Abramoff, the disgraced lobbyist who served half a decade in prison15. This, however, is not the chief notoriety of this organization; its chief notoriety is that a substantial amount of its funding secretly came from the apartheid government of South Africa, for the purpose of opposing sanctions, defaming its opponent, the ANC, and the ANC’s leader, Nelson Mandela. The funding of the IFF within the South African intelligence service was sometimes referred to as “Pacman”, and sometimes as “Operation Babushka” – a babushka is one of those wood russian dolls which contain another doll within16. This operation was handled by Craig Williamson, an intelligence agent who was also behind the assassination of Ruth First, Joe Slovo, and other anti-apartheid activists17. The South African interest in this case was that the country very much wanted to remain in Namibia, where it could continue its apartheid policy. Namibian independence would end all that.
This information all came out a half-decade after the Spy magazine piece, during South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission. Here is the foundation as described in volume two of the commission’s summary report:
An overview is provided below of certain projects undertaken by the South African Defence Force (SADF), South African Police (SAP), National Intelligence Service (NIS), Department of Foreign Affairs and Department of National Education, as presented to the Kahn Committee, the Ministers’ Committee on Special Projects and the Secret Services Evaluation Committee.
Most projects appear to be related to the establishment of front organisations or actions aimed at counteracting the activities of the African National Congress (ANC) and its allies, primarily in the sphere of information, communication, disinformation, propaganda and counter-propaganda. Other projects were aimed at circumventing sanctions.
South African Defence Force (SADF)
The SADF secret projects covered a range of activities such as publications, front organisations, and support to surrogate groups.
Two of the more costly projects were Pacman and Byronic. Pacman was the code name for the International Freedom Foundation, which had offices in Johannesburg, Washington, London, Brussels and Bonn. Its objectives were described as the combating of sanctions and support to constitutional initiatives through publications, lobbying, conferences etc. It specifically supported Mr Jonas Savimbi and UNITA. Leading personalities in government circles in Europe and the USA were involved, with half of its funds coming from abroad. Pacman’s annual budget for 1991/92 was listed as over R10 million. In late September 1991, the Minister of Finance agreed to a one-off payment of R7 million, approved by Minster of Defence, “to enable the country to withdraw from the enterprise”. This payment was vested in a trust controlled by trustees appointed by SADF.
All those who had any connection with the IFF, or might have had any connection with the IFF, denied knowing of the south african funding. “This is nothing I ever knew about. It’s something that I would have resigned over or closed the foundation over. I would have put a stop to it,” said Sellars, now a Virginia businessman18. Jesse Helms, the senator who put the rider in the original legislation, would deny even having knowledge of the group, through his then spokesman, Marc Thiessen: “Helms has never heard of the International Freedom Foundation, was not chairman of their advisory board and never authorized his name to be used by IFF in any way shape or form. We never had any relationship with them.”19 Thiessen would go on to be a speechwriter for George W. Bush, and would write a book defending the administration’s use of torture, Courting Disaster. In her review, “Counterfactual: A curious history of the C.I.A.’s secret interrogation program”, Jane Mayer, author of the definitive torture history The Dark Side, would write that the book “downplays the C.I.A.’s brutality under the Bush Administration to the point of falsification.”20
Abramoff also denied knowing of the source of funds for his organization, though another Abramoff venture makes this less credible. The IFF was only one Abramoff project which involved Africa; another was a symbolic meeting of anti-communist unity, the Democratic International, organized in Jamba, Angola, of various cold war anti-communist leaders: contras, afghan mujahaiden, Angola’s UNITA, among others. None of these groups spoke each other’s language, they soon ran out of food, the pact of co-operation signed there had no meaning and led to nothing21. The only one to benefit from this meaningless ceremony was Abramoff, who was approached to make a movie of Jonas Savimbi, the leader of UNITA, a man who was later to be charged with war crimes, before being killed in battle22. “Nobody watches documentaries,” replied Abramoff, and instead he made Red Scorpion23. Scorpion is a too little examined movie which is ostensibly anti-communist (cuban and russian military are the main villains), but whose chief purpose appears to serve as South Africa propaganda24. Its hero is a russian defector who does not look slavic at all, but resembles nothing less than the aryan ideal of a blonde superman. This man helps the black insurgents against their true oppressors, the soviet alliance, much as south africa tried to set up allied governments in Namibia and Angola which fought against anti-colonial movements that had soviet support. The movie ends with a triptych that illustrates how a white south african military man might see himself during that struggle – the aryan ideal flanked by his allies, an unctuous american reporter and a black rebel leader. That the movie strongly suggests south african propaganda is not an accident – Williamson, the south african intelligence agent would say that Scorpion was funded by “our guys”, and that they also provided military equipment for the production25. Russell Crystal, an adviser to F.W. DeKlerk, South Africa’s president, was an informal producer on the film26. After Swaziland fell through as a filming location, it would be shot in Namibia, then the protectorate of South Africa27. Abramoff planned on using South African Defense Force (SADF) troops and equipment; Carmen Argenziano, the actor playing the villainous Cuban colonel, confirms that many of those playing russian and cuban troops were SADF soldiers28.
That South Africa was heavily involved in such ventures, a connection seemingly unknown to so many, was seemingly known very well to others. “We heard that very right-wing South African money was helping fund the movie,” said Argenziano, “It wasn’t very clear. We were pretty upset about the source of the money. We thought we were misled. We were shocked that these brothers who we thought were showbiz liberals – Beverly Hills Jewish kids – were doing this.”29 Chester “Chet” Crocker, assistant secretary of state for African affairs from 1981 to 1989, did not think there was any way the Democratic International could have been organized without help from the SADF.30 “We knew that the IFF was funded by the South African government,” Herman Cohen, who ran Africa operations for the National Security Council during the Reagan era, would tell Salon magazine. “It was one of a number of front organizations.”31 When asked about South Africa’s involvement with the IFF and Scorpion in 1995, at the time of the Truth commission revelations, Abramoff called them “outrageous.”32 When his brother, Robert, was asked about the allegations in 2006, after Jack’s arrest, he would say, “It’s a family matter and I prefer not to comment on anything.”33
The exact influence of the South African government on the conservative movement is difficult to discern exactly, because they often seem to move in lockstep, without dissent or question, whether it be opposition to sanctions, support for South Africa in Naimbia, support for the South African proxy in Angola, Jonas Savimbi’s UNITA, harsh criticism of Nelson Mandela, or strong support for Madela’s rival, Mangosuthu Buthelezi. A good way of getting insight into this is by looking at the writings of Michael Johns, then an africa specialist for the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank. It is Johns, remember, who is the seed of the Namibian chemical weapons story. I quote again the relevant section:
The idea for the bill was born during a trip taken to Angola in March 1989 by Michael Johns, the Heritage Foundation’s policy analyst for African affairs.
There he met Andries Holst, a West German who claimed to be filming a documentary about Cuba’s use of chemical weapons in Angola. Johns brought Holst to Washington where the German filmmaker was introduced to Helms, State Department officials, lobbyists and other conservatives likely to be moved by his footage, which purported to show the horrors of chemical warfare.
Johns was a passionate supporter of Jonas Savimbi, the head of Angola’s UNITA – as mentioned already, a man later indicted as a war criminal and killed in battle. After Angola’s independence from Portugal, UNITA would break away from the coalition which fought for this independence, and wage a long civil war; it fought entirely out of self-interest, colluding with the former colonial power of Portugal34. UNITA had nothing like the support of the other political parties in the country, and would not have been able to wage its long struggle without military support and funding from South Africa and the United States35. Savimba was fluent in four languages, an educated man, a brilliant tactician, an opportunist, and a sociopath36. Chester Crocker described him as “a brilliant military warlord who operated by the gun, lived by the gun, and died by the gun.”37 Don Steinberg, ambassador to Angola during the first Clinton administration, on Savimbi: “He was the most articulate, charismatic homicidal maniac I’ve ever met.”38 He recruited children into his armies, he burned women for being witches, he specifically targeted medical workers and school teachers for killing39. When he suspected top members of his command of betrayal, the men who were his ambassadors to the United States, he had them and their families killed. UNITA, according to one survey, was responsible for the majority of the landmines in Angola, supplied by the United States, and placed in fields – a measure which had a devastating effect on agriculture and triggered a famine40. He was seen as an anti-communist by the U.S., but those within his movement say that Savimbi ran UNITA like a communist organization41. After a long, bloody war, there were finally elections in 1991. When Savimbi lost at the ballot box, he went back to living by the gun42. The campaign of maiming, killing, and mining by UNITA continued for another decade, funded by blood diamonds43. In 1999 he was indicted for war crimes, and then, finally, out of some strange mercy, he was killed in battle, and Angola’s civil war ended. Angola is still recovering from this time of horrors: it is a hideously inequitable place, the most expensive country in the world, its economy designed around guest workers for the oil industry and the ruling elite, who get swimming pools, nightclubs, and underage girls, while most citizens get shantytowns44.
It is in this context that we can read Johns on Savimbi. In 1990, after the end of the Cold War, he argues for continuing aid to this man so that he might finally take power. In the essay, “With Freedom Near Angola: This Is No Time To Curtail UNITA Assistance”, he charges that the obstacle to freedom and democracy in Angola lies not with Savimbi, but his opponents:
Since it began arming UNITA in 1986, Washington has made a substantial investment in UNITA’s bid for a democratic Angola. American support for UNITA has discouraged Soviet and Cuban military involvement in southern Africa. Indeed, having been defeated in battle, some 65,000 Cuban troops in Angola are now headed back to Havana as a result of a negotiated settlement reached in December 1988.
American support for UNITA since 1986 has also helped advance the cause of democracy in Angola, raising hope that the 15-year conflict can be settled without further loss of blood. Angola’s Marxist regime took power in 1975 promising free and fair multi-party elections; it has yet to hold them. Since 1975, UNITA leader Jonas Savimbi has been demanding that the Angolan regime keep its promise. George Bush has supported Savimbi’s objective, promising last January that UNITA will receive American support `until genuine national reconciliation has been achieved.’
Ted Kennedy, the usual conservative bogeyman, is the enemy in all this for his opposition to more aid for Savimbi. Kennedy’s action, Johns warns, will lead to a longer war:
In Angola, where a civil war has raged for 15 years between the country’s Soviet-backed Marxist regime and an American-supported resistance movement, peace and freedom are now within sight. Unable to achieve a military victory, the Angolan regime of Jose Eduardo dos Santos is at last considering resistance demands for multi-party elections. These elections would allow a cease fire in the Angolan civil war. An obstacle to this has appeared not in Angola, but in the U.S. Congress. There Senator Edward Kennedy, the Massachusetts Democrat, intends this week to attach an amendment to the defense authorization bill that would end American military assistance to Angola’s democratic resistance forces, known as the National Union for the Total Independence of Angola (UNITA). Kennedy thus would remove all incentive for Angola’s Marxist regime to continue negotiations, and would likely encourage that regime again to seek a military–rather than diplomatic–solution to Angola’s civil war.
It ends with this vision of what would take place if military aid to Jonas Savimbi is ended:
It would open the door for further militarism on behalf of the Angolan regime, and close the door on the democratic aspirations of the Angolan people.
We also have this piece, again by Johns, “Namibian Voters Deny Total Power to SWAPO” read into the congressional record by Indiana congressman Dan Burton, in reaction to the vicious smear of Savimbi by those who wanted an end to U.S. aid for this man. Again, it is Savimbi fighting for democracy and good government, ideals blocked by his opponents:
Over the past 12 months, an estimated $1.5 billion in Soviet military assistance has arrived in Angola with the sole intention of driving the Angolan freedom fighters into the ground.
But Jonas Savimbi is still standing. His forces operate in every Angolan province, and over one-third of the country is firmly in their control. All this from a movement whose every survival remains nothing short of miraculous.
In resistance terms, Savimbi is clearly correct. UNITA has won the war. In political terms, however, the struggle for Angolan freedom remains even elusive. The Angolan regime shows little sign of agreeing to the free and fair elections it promised in 1975, leaving Savimbi with little alternative but to continue his battle for freedom.
In Washington, the picture is no prettier. The Angolan government had launched a propaganda campaign intended to discredit the Angolan freedom fighters among its Washington supporters.
Last week, the Angolan government purchased advertising space in the Washington Post and the New York Times in which it quoted from an August National Review article that described Savimbi’s intentions as fighting to extend `his autocratic grip on the people within his domain.’ Despite Savimbi’s consistent support for democratic values, the author described UNITA as `a highly centralized, Leninist organization.’
The radical organization TransAfrica, which has received donations from the governments of Cuba and Angola, is also weighing in against the freedom fighters. Last week TransAfrica director Randall Robinson held two press conferences in one week to denounce UNITA, and in an apparent effort to overturn any diplomatic gains made by Savimbi’s Washington visit, his organization invited Angolan dictator dos Santos to visit Washington to press his case for a termination of UNITA aid.
We can discern a strong contrast with the way in which Johns views Savimbi and Nelson Mandela. While Savimbi’s murder of civilians goes unmentioned in Johns’ writing, Mandela, though praised sparingly for his work combating apartheid, is described as a terrorist, the head of a communist affiliated terrorist organization, the ANC, and a man who deserved to spend decades in prison. From “For Mandela’s Visit, Some Words of Caution”, written after Mandela was released from prison, just prior to his first visit to the United States:
It is appropriate that one of apartheid’s most heralded resistance figures, Nelson Mandela, will be welcomed to the U.S. next week. Mandela will meet with George Bush on Monday. He will address a joint meeting of Congress the following day, joining the ranks of Winston Churchill, Charles de Gaulle, Douglas MacArthur, and more recently Vaclav Havel and Lech Walesa.
Americans nevertheless have reasons to be skeptical of Mandela. First, Nelson Mandela is not a freedom fighter. He repeatedly has supported terrorism. Since Mandela’s release from prison and his subsequent refusal to renounce violence, the Marxist-dominated ANC has launched terrorism and violence against civilians, claiming several hundred lives. Further, the ANC, in which Mandela serves as Deputy President, has tortured and executed its own members when they have refused to tow the party line, a fact Mandela conceded in a press conference on April 14. ANC dissidents who escaped to Kenya in April contend that at least 120 political prisoners are being detained and tortured in ANC camps in Angola and Uganda. Because of its support for violence against civilians, Mandela’s ANC was labeled a “terrorist” organization last January in the U.S. Defense Department’s Terrorist Group Profiles.
He then goes on to paint Mandela as a potential communist dictator:
Second, though Mandela has spoken out against apartheid, he is not likely to support economic and political freedom if he or the ANC takes power in South Africa. At the very moment communism was collapsing in Eastern Europe, Mandela praised the South African Communist Party in his first speech following his release from prison. Mandela said in Cape Town on February 11: “We are heartened by the fact that the alliance between ourselves and the [communist] party remains as strong as it always was.” Mandela also continues to propose the nationalization of South African industry, even though this failed policy has been rejected not only throughout Europe, Latin America, and Asia, but increasingly in Africa.
Johns appears to have a strong preference for Mandela’s rival, Mangosuthu Buthelezi, instead:
In forming its South Africa policy, Washington must now decide what sort of political system it wants in South Africa. Partly because of its terrorism and alliance with South Africa’s communist party, not all South African blacks support the ANC, and many have sought political alternatives. Foremost among these is the Zulu-dominated Inkatha movement, led by Chief Manosuthu Buthelezi, which represents some 1.5 million black South Africans.
Part of the reason the potential dangers of the Namibian independence process, most notably, the rise of a Marxist-Leninist dictatorship in Namibia, receive so little attention in the U.S. is that there is a general feeling that South Africa knows about Namibia – that South Africa has carefully weighted the potential benefits and costs of granting Namibia independence, and if South Africa views the independence process as acceptable to their security interests, there is little reason for the U.S. to have further concern. Our questioning South Africa’s Namibia policy is viewed a little bit like South Africa questioning our Mexico policy.
This lecture was made in 1989, after the U.S. had imposed sanctions on South Africa with overwhelming public support. The apartheid state was viewed as utterly evil; yet here Johns is arguing that the common sense U.S. perspective is that this same apartheid state should have full sway over the government of its neighbors. Note that this is not simply his perspective, it is supposedly the general feeling in the United States, at a time when the public was strongly supporting sanctions, that South Africa should have such sway, and that it is expected for such rule to go unquestioned.
Equally insightful is a review of After Apartheid: The Solution for South Africa by Leon Louw and Frances Kendall (“Swiss Family Buthelezi”). Though the anti-apartheid struggle involved the collective effort of people from many native tribes, as well as south-east asians, Johns opens his review by portraying the country as a place of ethnic strife, where prejudice of white against black is just one conflict of many, and as if that hostility is equal to both sides, and between parties of equal power:
South Africa is a rich and beautiful land where many people hate each other. The hostilities are not simply betwen black and white, or Zulu and Xhosa, or Hindu and Moslem, or Afrikaner and Anglophone. Sometimes the bloodiest conflicts are between rival political organizations within the same ethnic group, especially between radical blacks in the townships associated with the African National Congress (ANC) and the leaders of tribal homelands with strong rural power bases.
We have the continued defamation of the ANC:
It has long been the aim of the South African Communist Party, which exerts significant influence on the ANC, to take control in a unitary state, destroy the power bases of the country’s independent black leadership, and assume totalitarian control. And in pursuit of this objective they have accepted and actively sought the support of the Soviet Union. Occasionally, the ANC might try to cover these facts with cosmetic remarks and there may even be differing viewpoints toward Marxism-Leninism within the organization, but it remains clear that the ANC leadership is, in fact, wedded to terrorism and violence, and very much aligned with Soviet ambitions in southern Africa.
[If] there has been one common characteristics to ANC rhetoric and actions since its 1969 Morogoro conference, it has been that total uncompromising power in South Africa is their only objective, and they have seldom spared any level of violence to achieve this end.
Another figure is brought in to deal with this book’s primary flaw of its insufficiently critical look at the ANC. The man is Warwick-Davies Webb, and I award no points for guessing which think tank he’s from. I will also make the small observation about a strange quality of this review of a South Africa policy book: the only people quoted in the review on the feasibility or commendability of a canton type government appear to be members of its white minority.
However since the ANC cannot thrive without Soviet and other external assistance, why not insert a meaningful constitutional provision that would outlaw foreign intervention in South African affairs? “The book does not take into consideration the possible exploitation of the system by totalitarian groupings,” says Warwick Davies-Webb of the International Freedom Foundation’s Johannesburg office, a group committed to individual liberty and free-market values. The totalitarian threat, Webb thinks, would probably be greatest during the transitional phase. “By bringing in the SACP, ANC, and PAC (Pan-Africanist Congress) into the transitional phase, Leon [Louw] fails to take into account their nature and their short term expedient tactic of accepting co-option into the system in order to further their own political agenda,” he says.
This might be one of the only times where I have seen a book, and its review, refer to the apartheid state as a product of both right and left prejudice, of apartheid as a problem of statism, and most strikingly, one characterized as implicitly racist – if there is any system whose defining, explicit purpose is racist, it would be apartheid.
Again, from the review:
The book contains a brilliant analysis of how apartheid has thrown the South African economy into near shambles. While mineral wealth has kept the country alive, regulations on who can buy and sell goods, who can own property, and who can be employed have generally crippled economic growth. Before “grand apartheid” was enacted by the National Party in 1950, apartheid laws were intended to protect white farmers and workers from black competition. And this is a shame, Kendall and Louw argue, because the South African black tradition – back to the 1800s when the Mgengus and Ngunis were successful herdsmen and farmers – falls solidly in the entrepreneurial tradition. “There is an extraordinary implicit racism in all of this,” remarks Louw, “from the Left and the Right, but especially from the Left. The Left regard blacks as welfare cases, disabled people, for whom the only hope is a masssive paternal welfare state.”
Today South Africa is swamped with a whole array of white-sponsored statist laws that discourage individual initiative and disrupt free enterprise, including minimum standards regulations, extensive licensing laws, discretionary laws regulating the opening of new businesses, and large levels of government ownership over the means of production. South Africa remains perhaps the most overregulated economy in the non-Communist world, and the dead hand of bureaucracy is most stifling for blacks.
The problem is not primarily apartheid, but a strong state. The state must be weakened, for the greater economic benefit of South Africa, to avoid the dominance of a white minority by a black majority, and to prevent the outbreak of ethnic strife warned of in the first paragraph.
The “one man, one vote” unitary state proposed by the ANC and its front organization, the United Democratic Front (UDF), would be unacceptable to Afrikaners and other whites who fear being governed by a black majority, to smaller black ethnic groups who fear oppression of tribal minorities so typical in much of the rest of Africa, and to homeland leaders who fear they would lose their local political authority. The most pressing political challenge for the nation, then, is to find a way of broadening democratic participation while at the same time preventing any one racial, ethnic, or political group from dominating the others.
The book’s solution, one that Johns commends, is for a federal, decentralized state:
For a number of years, many South Africans have argued that strong local government – federalism – is the only democratic system that realistically could replace apartheid. With power decentralized, each group would have the opportunity to govern itself in the areas where it composes a majority. The struggle for national power would become less important if each group knew it would be protected in its own area; national conflict would therefore be diffused.
Johns presents this solution as one equally opposed by the ANC and the pro-apartheid National Party, which is a little unusual, since this federal solution seems uncannily like the one put forth by the same National Party during negotiations over the post-apartheid state, and described by Nelson Mandela in his memoir Long Walk to Freedom, as apartheid in disguise:
Despite [F.W. De Klerk's] seemingly progressive actions, Mr. de Klerk was by no means the great emancipator. He was a gradualist, a careful pragmatist. He did not make any of his reforms with the intention of putting himself out of power. He made them for precisely the opposite reason: to ensure power for the Afrikaner in a new dispensation. He was not yet prepared to negotiate the end of white rule.
His goal was to create a system of power-sharing based on group rights, which would preserve a modified form of minority power in South Africa. He was decidedly opposed to majority rule, or “simple majoritarianism” as he sometimes called it, because that would end white domination in a single stroke. We knew early on that the government was fiercely opposed to a winner-takes-all Westminster parliamentary system, and advocated instead a system of proportional representation with built-in structural guarantees for the white minority. Although he was prepared to allow the black majority to vote and create legislation, he wanted to retain a minority veto. From the start I would have no truck with this plan. I described it to Mr. de Klerk as apartheid in disguise, a “loser-takes-all” system.
The Nationalists’ long-term strategy to overcome our strength was to build an anti-ANC alliance with the Inkatha Freedom Party and to lure the Coloured Afrikaans-speaking voters of the Cape to a new National Party. From the moment of my release, they began wooing both [Mangosuthu] Buthelezi and the Coloured voters of the Cape. The government attempted to scare the Coloured population into thinking the ANC was anti-Coloured. They supported Chief Buthelezi’s desire to retain Zulu power and identity in a new South Africa by preaching to him the doctrine of group rights and federalism.
The use of Inkatha and Buethelezi to divide and conquer is another example of the striking lockstep in the attitudes of the hardline conservative intellectual class of the U.S., including Johns, and the government of South Africa. We have seen this already in the way Johns gives far more sympathetic treatment to Buthelezi than Mandela in his writing. Buthelezi, along with Savimbi, were both invited to speak at Johns’ think tank, the Heritage Foundation45. The other side of this wicked arrangement took place in South Africa, again, like the funding of the International Freedom Foundation, behind a veil. For even though he was thought to be an independent actor, Buthelezi, just like the IFF, had received secret aid from the South African government. Some of this was both to sustain his party, the Inkatha, while the more nefarious involved collusion and training between Inkatha members and the South African Defense Force, collusion which resulted in the Inkatha instigating ethnic violence, the very violence that Johns cites as a reason for why a strong, single state would be impossible.
This is a controversial subject, so I quote at length from the relevant notes on Buthelezi from the Truth commission – on his attraction for conservative whites overseas, his collusion with the apartheid government, as well as the violence and autocracy which characterized KwaZulu, his tribal region (note: Buthelezi refused to co-operate with the Truth commission and did not offer testimony which might have qualified or refuted any testimony against him). All the following excerpts are from volume two of the commission:
During the latter part of the 1970s, Chief Mangosuthu Buthelezi became vocal in his opposition to protest politics, economic sanctions and the armed struggle being promoted by the ANC in exile. This, together with his calls for investment and a free-market economy and his embracing of constituency politics, won him increasing support from the white business and white community at large. However, it placed him at odds with the ANC’s leadership in exile. The leaders of the two parties met in London in October 1979 to discuss their differences. At the London meeting Chief Buthelezi accused the ANC leadership of being hypocritical and of having deserted black South Africans.
Following the 1979 meeting, Chief Buthelezi faced growing hostility from an increasing number of Zulu-speaking people in Natal and the KwaZulu homeland for his rejection of the ANC’s strategies and, in particular, for his decision to participate in the homeland system, to work through the tribal authorities, the KLA and the black urban councils. The two organisations’ differing approaches to opposing apartheid laid the basis for the bitter and bloody political conflict that ensued.
Note that the roots of the conflict between these groups is not ethnic, as Johns states, but over political beliefs.
During the early 1980s, Chief Buthelezi still had high standing in the international community and amongst South African (white) businesspersons. Part of this was due to Inkatha’s official and international rhetoric of non-violence. This was indeed true of Inkatha’s stance towards the South African government and the white electorate. Inkatha supporters did not bomb shopping centres or defence force installations, or kill black Security Branch members. However, Inkatha members clearly employed violence against the ANC/UDF and against other extra-parliamentary opponents of the state, as did members of the UDF. The following quotes from speeches made by Chief Buthelezi at Inkatha meetings or in the KwaZulu Legislative Assembly during the early 1980s indicate an increasingly militaristic tone emerging in his addresses to his constituency:
I believe we must prepare ourselves not only to defend property and life but to go beyond that and prepare ourselves to hit back with devastating force at those who destroy our property and kill us.
I have stated that our commitment to peaceful change does not take away the inalienable right which every individual has to defend himself or herself…We cannot, just because we are a peaceful movement, lie down so that people can trample on us or destroy us without lifting a finger.
There are many examples of such violence; one of the more prominent was the Umlazi Cinema massacre:
On 1 August 1985, Victoria Mxenge, an UDF executive member, was murdered at her home in Umlazi, Durban. A memorial service was held in her honour in the Umlazi Cinema building on 8 August 1985. Whilst the service was in progress, hundreds of Inkatha vigilantes armed with assegais, knobkieries and firearms burst into the cinema, and began randomly stabbing and shooting at the mourners. In the attack, fourteen people were killed and many others injured. Witnesses allege that the attackers included Inkatha vigilantes recruited from the adjacent shack settlements and from Lindelani, north of Durban. The soldiers and police were allegedly still present but did not act to prevent the attack. This was the worst incident yet of clashes between Inkatha and UDF.
The following excerpts provide some illustration of the co-operation between Buthelezi, Inkatha, and the South African government:
An Inkatha-supporting and state-sponsored vigilante group known as the A-Team was set up with the help of the SAP [South African Police] Riot Unit, in 1983/4 in the Chesterville township, Durban. Statements made to the Commission allege that the A-Team was responsible for the perpetration of human rights abuses in the township between 1985 and 1989. These included at least ten killings, several cases of attempted killing and many incidents of arson and severe ill treatment.
The picture painted by witnesses who gave evidence at public hearings of the Commission in Durban was that this group established a reign of terror in Chesterville over a number of years. They took over Road 13, illegally occupying houses in that road and burning surrounding houses in order to make a safe area for themselves. They also allegedly brought in Inkatha youths from other townships to bolster their power-base. Their sole aim was to target members of youth and other UDF-linked organisations. This they did with the active complicity of the SAP, including the Riot Unit and the Security Branch.
In his application for amnesty, former member of the Durban Riot Unit, Mr Frank Bennetts, gave evidence of the extent of the Security Branch’s involvement in and collusion with members of the A-Team. He described the A-Team as:
a group of Inkatha supporters who were acting in their capacity, or so I believed, in assisting the police in the curbing of the growth and support of groups and organisations opposed to the government and the order of the day.
According to Bennetts, the A-Team assisted the Riot Unit by identifying alleged perpetrators and UDF activists to be detained. They also served as informants, passing on information to the security forces. In return, the Riot Unit offered them protection by putting extra patrols into the street where they lived, and giving them escorts in and out of the township if and when they required it.
Bennetts told the Commission that the A-Team members were never detained under the emergency regulations, although there was good cause to detain them. He said that had the police arrested the A-Team members, the incidents of violence in Chesterville would have been reduced “by 99.99%”. In his words, ‘[The A-Team] wrecked half the township”. Nevertheless, the Riot Unit openly and blatantly sided with the A-Team, perceiving the gang as a legitimate ally in their struggle against the UDF.
The latter 1980s: Collusion with the South African security forces
By 1985, Inkatha supporters found themselves increasingly under attack by virtue of the positions they held within local government and homeland structures. Threats of assassination against Chief Buthelezi in 1985 prompted the Inkatha leader to turn to the South African government, in particular to the SADF, for assistance to take on the ANC/UDF. Contact with the central government had of necessity to be secret given Chief Buthelezi’s public stance towards the South African government. During the latter half of the 1980s, Inkatha began to draw increasingly upon the support of the South African government, and to rely more heavily on the South African and KwaZulu government’s infrastructure and resources. In the process, its aggression turned away from the apartheid state and became directed at those who were advocating alternative structures and thus threatening its power-base.
The South African government not only welcomed but also actively promoted this covert alliance with Inkatha, as it fell squarely into its response to what it saw as the total revolutionary onslaught against it. Covert logistical and military support to UNITA in Angola, RENAMO in Mozambique and to the Lesotho Liberation Army (LLA) was a critical part of the South African government’s counterrevolutionary strategy. Although these operations were external, the State Security Council resolved in 1985 to establish such groups internally, in addition to those it was already supporting. Inkatha was seen as being able to play the same counter-mobilisation role inside the country as their external surrogates (such as UNITA) had played, and had become a “middle force” between the South African government and its political enemies. A common feature of the external and the internal operations, was that in both cases training and weapons supply were undertaken by the SADF’s DST, and by Special Forces personnel.
Furthermore, the media images projected of white policemen assaulting and shooting at black demonstrators were clearly unacceptable internationally, and there was a feeling that repression should as far as possible not be carried out by state security forces, but by black surrogate groups. Part of the government’s strategy was to characterise the political conflict in the country as “black-on-black” violence.
One of the first instances of covert military assistance between Inkatha and the South African government was Operation Marion, the SADF Military Intelligence project set up in early 1986 in order to provide assistance to Inkatha and the KwaZulu government. During 1985, Chief Buthelezi was alerted by Military Intelligence to alleged assassination plans against him. This prompted him, in late 1985, to approach Military Intelligence with a request for various capabilities, including an offensive paramilitary capacity, in order to take on the ANC/UDF.
Flowing out of this was what has become known as the Caprivi training, the clandestine training in offensive action of some 200 Inkatha supporters conducted by the Special Forces arm of the SADF in the Caprivi Strip, South West Africa/Namibia in 1986. Secret military intelligence documents make it clear that the project was undertaken as much to further the strategic aims of the South African government and Defence Force, as it was in response to a request from Chief Buthelezi. Planning for this project took place in circumstances of utmost secrecy, and involved the highest echelons of the State Security Council and Military Intelligence on the one hand, and Chief Buthelezi and his personal assistant, Mr MZ Khumalo, on the other. The defence force was at pains to ensure that the entire project was covert, and that the funding of the project could not be traced back to its source.
The trainees were controlled and supervised by a political commissar, later to become their commander, Mr Daluxolo Wordsworth Luthuli. Luthuli was a former ANC guerrilla fighter who had recently joined Inkatha after being released from a lengthy term of imprisonment on Robben Island. His appointment was authorised by Chief Buthelezi.
Luthuli was unequivocal concerning the purpose of the Caprivi training. He told the Commission that the training was aimed at equipping Inkatha supporters to kill members of the UDF/ANC. According to Luthuli and other Caprivi trainees who spoke to the Commission, this is what they were explicitly told by their SADF instructors. They knew that they were being trained as a hit squad.
With their deployment in various parts of KwaZulu and the former Natal, the trainees were partly responsible for the dramatic escalation of the political conflict in the region, and fundamentally changed the political landscape in the former KwaZulu homeland, the repercussions of which are currently playing themselves out in this region. Their modus operandi, their mobility, their access to infrastructure and sophisticated weaponry exposed large numbers of people and vast areas of the province to their activities. As a result, they were responsible for facilitating the easy and quick resort to violence as a means of settling political scores and greatly enhanced the development of a culture of impunity and political intolerance that is so well established in the province at the present time.
The Commission heard evidence of the involvement of Caprivi trainees in the KwaMakhutha massacre on 21 January 1987 in which thirteen people, mostly women and children, were killed and several others injured in the AK-47 attack on the home of UDF activist Bheki Ntuli. A large number of people including former Minister of Defence General Magnus Malan and MZ Khumalo of the IFP, were tried for murder in 1996 in the Durban Supreme Court. Although the accused were acquitted, the Supreme Court found that Inkatha members trained by the SADF in the Caprivi were responsible for the massacre and that the two state witnesses, being members of the SADF Military Intelligence, were directly involved in planning and execution of the operation. The court was not able to find who had provided backing for the attack.
With the end of the Cold War, Johns leaves the Heritage Foundation, goes to work for Eli Lily, health care lobbyists S.R. Wojdak & Associates, then Gentiva Health Services, and for the past decade, work as an executive at Electric Mobility Corporation46. Electric Mobility sells Rascal scooters, motorized wheelchairs which allow the elderly and disabled to travel with greater ease; it is an interesting company. Prior to Johns tenure there, it was fined close to a quarter of a million dollars by the state of New Jersey and signed an agreement with the state’s attorney general to cease hard-sell practices, such as misinformation on medicare reimbursements47. Michael Flowers, the president of the company, objected to the reporting of this as a fine. Electric Mobility was not fined, he wrote: “Electric Mobility entered into an Assurance of Voluntary Compliance with the State of New Jersey. By doing so, we believe that we have set the industry standard for ethical sales practices.”48 This same Consumer Affairs site now lists 69 complaints about Rascal scooters. I include some of the more notable, from 2005 through to December of last year, all after Johns had joined the company:
I have Rascal 115 scooter that quit working. I called Rascal in February 2012 and was directed to service center Watkins & Riggs in Ocala, FL. I was called a couple days later and was told speed controller was bad and was on backorder. After three weeks, I called service center to find they were still waiting on parts. So I then called Rascal and left message as directed but never got a call back. A month later, I called Rascal again and call got redirected to new owner who in just a few words told me that they just purchased Rascal and any problem before the buyout two weeks ago was not their problem. Again, I called service center who again told me parts are still on backorder. What good is a product that you need but cannot get parts?
Bought Rascal 600 scooter. It worked for about 6 months then just stopped working. Was taken to an authorized repair shop, they didn’t know what was wrong & why it stopped. After having it at their shop. Weekly calls on when it would be fixed, was told someone would call. Finally had to stop at shop. They would try to find what was wrong. Repeated calling again, I took it home worked for couple of months, stopped again-took back to same shop for help. Both times had to pay for shop time & was not told what the problem was.
I am 83 years old-diabetic neuropathy both legs and feet. Can’t walk. Has caused mental/emotional distress! My lifestyle is limited. Very unhappy with performance! Help. Medicare will not let me get another & I am on limited income. I would like to live the rest of my life enjoying the outdoors and being mobile again! I would like to have this “Lemon” scooter replaced! Can I sue for damages or another option? Please help me!
I was looking at numerous electric mobility scooter, and I chose the “Rascal 600 B”. The representative came to my home to show me how the “rascal 600 B” looks and operates. I was told that the Rascal company would file with Medicare all papers that I provided to him at the time of purchasing. He told me that I would be getting 80% of my money back. I had all the correct paper work that he needed to file my claim on 5-27-10. Since then I’ve been turned down by Medicare, stating that the forms & codes were improperly filed.
I have contacted and informed the Rascal company regarding this matter. I have stage 4 lung cancer and cannot walk short or far distances without the help of this scooter. I have neuropathy of both feet & legs and some in my hands. Using this scooter has improved my living skills in my home and outside, where I could not walk w/o pain. I’m asking that someone check into this claim. If I don’t get any compensation for this scooter, fine, but I was told that I would get 80% back. No consequences, I’m using the scooter for self well being. It’s just that I was lied to and nothing can take that away. If I’m not going to get some money back, don’t tell me such.
I just found your site and read complaints from buyers of the Rascal Scooters. My parents, in their 80′s at the time, were also scammed by the saleswoman, promising Medicare would reimburse the cost of the Rascal Scooter. I contacted the Rascal Company and the creditor to no avail. I contacted the saleswoman and she claimed she never said any such thing, and that there was nothing she could do for them now. Unfortunately, my father suffered a massive stroke and never even used the thing. I ended up paying off the remainder of the bill, just to relieve some of the stress in the months following my father’s death. It now (2 1/2 years later) sits in my driveway with a For Sale B/O sign. I know we’ll never get near the full purchase price. Oh well, live and learn. Do not trust the Rascal sales reps!
My 82-year-old mother received an unsolicited high pressure sales call today from a salesman named Mike who insisted he had an appointment for a scooter demonstration and said he would not leave unless she agreed to a demo. When she said she had not requested an appointment and did not want a demo and was not able to participate in a demo because of her health, he became very hostile and repeatedly said he would not leave until she agreed to a demo. She said she was going to call the company and demand to know who said they scheduled the demo. The salemand [sic] physically jerked his business card from my mothers hand and left.
The hostile and high pressure sales tactics including refusing to leave when asked threatened my mother who is recovering from hip replacement surgery with complications from a staff [sic] infection.
I was told by Jerri, telephone sales, that I could get a new scooter by having an Orthopaedic Surgeon order one for me. Mine gave me a prescription for one, but she sent papers for a power chair to him. He filled them out and I received a power chair INSTEAD of the scooter, which I needed. I was told by Lauren, who made the delivery, that it was a power chair or nothing!
I did not want it, but was afraid to refuse it, since I don’t know when I may get worse. I have serious heart trouble and, being preoccupied with my other disabilities, I just let the chair sit unused until October when I began to try to get it exchanged for a scooter.I was told by another dealer that Electric Mobility pushed the chairs because they made 3 times as much on them as on the scooters. Tim called me last week and said that my family physician could now request a scooter for me and, if he filled out the papers, EM would pick up the chair and bring me a scooter.
Today I was called by an arrogant motor-mouth named Steve who would hardly let me get a word in edgewise. HE said Tim was wrong about the family physician, etc., and pretty much told me I was out of luck. He would not allow me to talk with a rational representative and kept threatening to terminate this conversation until I finally gave up and hung up. I refuse to believe that I have to be run over and mistreated by Electric Mobility and that they have a license to steal from Medicare and Blue Cross. They billed around $6,000 for a useless chair; I have seen scooters for sale at Costco for $1,200! Something doesn’t smell right! Do you agree?
They seem to figure that all older people who have trouble walking are also brain-dead. They assign a fast-talking slick,sleazy spokesman to out-talk and put off the old folks. Since my brain still works, I want to see that this abuse is corrected.
This is Johns’ vocation, but he has a far more distinctive avocation. Of all those involved in the Namibia chemical weapons scam, Charlie Black is the most powerful, but Johns is the most visible. He has not vanished from the earth, in fact is more prominent than ever before. He is the national chairman of The Patriot Caucus, a three thousand member strong Tea Party organization, listed in National Journal’s “12 Tea Party Players To Watch”. By virtue of his leadership of this group, he’s also listed on “The Top Conservatives to Follow on Twitter”, in the coveted intellectual acreage between Michelle Malkin and John Boehner. He’s there speaking at the March for Liberty, Washington D.C. (part one and two); the Dallas Tea Party, same day (part one, two, three); a Philadelphia Tea Party rally; a softball Katie Couric interview with Tea Party patriots; he has a blog devoted to freedom and prosperity, and a twitter feed devoted, presumably, to these same.
Johns is Janus-like in his promotional work; with Couric, he affects a congenial, open-minded pose. At tea party rallies, his voice is almost always an uncontrolled, angry shriek, so he resembles no one so much as Chris Farley’s lunatic motivational speaker. His rhetorical approach at these meetings is simple, beginning with a premise that few would consider controversial (we differ on many issues, but we still have shared beliefs) and then moving on to the supposed shared belief, which is more than a little controversial – Hillary Clinton is a traitor, America is inherently a christian nation, etc.
Let me say this: America has a unique standing in the world. And we may differ over issues here and there, but I know we are united on one. This state department, under Mrs. Clinton, is surrendering american autonomy to international bodies…they are surrendering our constitutional rights to form our own foreign policies, to make our own national security interests [sic], the message needs to go out to Washington, MR. OBAMA, WE WILL DEFEND AMERICA, NOT THE UNITED NATIONS!
Let me just say, as we gather today, republicans and democrats, liberals and republicans, independents, third party members, many members of the Ron Paul movement, maybe there is a new coalition emerging right now. Maybe this is the beginning of something truly exciting. Maybe we can put aside whatever petty differences that have kept us from working together and start anew, and build a new resistance in this country that is rooted in the belief of the american people [sic], in a free market enterprise system, in our democratic processes, and our national autonomy.
I want to be clear on one other comment. Mr. Obama was in Europe. Made a very controversial statement. Said this is not a christian nation. (audience loudly boos) The message needs to go forward to Washington, Mr. Obama every historical document signed in Philadelphia, every founding document of this nation, has cited our creator, that is the basis on which we distinguish ourselves from the world (audience cheers). That is the foundation of our liberties, and our god-given freedoms. AND THEY ARE GOD GIVEN FREEDOMS. A nation that denies its creator, and rejects its principles will not long endure. And we need to re-unite today with an understanding of the principles, start with Sam Adams, start with the bravery of these men and…who led this great initiative which has started and begun the most powerful nation in the world. The time has come to defend those principles, THEY ARE BEING ERODED!
When America stops being a christian nation, it will end up living in a van down by the river.
Most of his writing is the expected angry boilerplate. “Release the Birth Documents Already”, demands one blog post; “Van loads of Somalis being transported to #Ohio polls, instructed to vote straight Dem ticket. goo.gi/qLVv“, warns a tweet49. When a Marvel comic pokes fun at the tea party movement, by suggesting they are slightly less than heterogeneous in skin color, he is alert, active, and involved, demanding why Marvel didn’t issue an apology the moment they saw the comic panel50. “The Tea Party movement has been very reflective of broad concerns of all Americans,” says Johns, who appears to live in a different universe than I do, “Membership is across ethnic, religious and even political lines.” He was an unambivalent supporter of the Iraq war; in 2007, he defends the cruddy intelligence that got the U.S. into the war, then waves the point away, insisting that whatever started the war is irrelevant, since Iraq is now the central point of the war on terror, then demands an apology from Harry Reid for having the audacity to call the Iraq war a failure51.
There is a foolish game that someone outside Africa can play, and I’m certain I’ve played it, where, as if by a magic trick, the people of the continent are made to be either people or as inanimate as sticks, depending on one’s convenience. When one wants to feel warmth over some compassionate act, they are human; when one feels guilt over some neglect, or the possible horror that a politician one supports has inflicted on a country there, they are suddenly sticks again. When one wishes to grief an enemy over the harm they’ve caused some place on the continent, they are human, and when this griefing is returned in kind over one’s own misdeeds, the continent’s people are suddenly sticks again. For me to invoke the dead of Angola for the sole purpose of an argument is to diminish them, and as someone outside Angola, I cannot demand an apology on their behalf. So, my curiousity is my own, and my curiousity is this: whether this man, Michael Johns, who demands apologies of so many, for so many slights, has ever felt the impulse to ask forgiveness for the thousands dead from the civil war unleashed by Jonas Savimbi, the man he abided, abetted, and encouraged. The head of Zambia’s government, which gave support to Savimbi during the long civil war, gave apologies for this support52. I know that the dead of Angola are not an important issue – nowhere near as important as a panel in a Marvel comic – but I can only hope that they are important enough that what took place there would be remembered, prompt some questions of why it took place and how to keep such a thing from ever happening again – might prompt something other than the simple dictum that african life is cheap. That african life is viewed cheaply is beyond dispute, but that other lives can be viewed as cheaply, that there is nothing inherent in those who live on the continent that renders it cheap, is not beyond dispute either. The lives of Angolans were thrown away easily. The independence of Namibia was almost thrown away just as easily. Ten years later, the lives of americans in Iraq were thrown away very easily as well. That Iraqi life was extinguished with even greater ease is another indisputable. That all these lost lives once had great political significance, their fight of great political convenience, and their deaths now incredibly inconvenient, something that must be forgotten as soon as possible, so that we might all move on to the next frame of the movie, to a place without horror – this is a horrific truth as well.
On February 27th, 2008, William Buckley died, and Johns eulogized him as if he were a messiah: “There was the time before him and there was the time after him…We will not likely see his type again.” (“Walking the road that Buckley built”) It is in this modern messiah that we might have the rosetta stone of why conservatives were so pliant before the efforts of South African intelligence, why their approach was often indistinguishable from official policy in South Africa. In 1957, the public conflagration over civil rights only kindling, Buckley’s National Review would feature an editorial, unsigned – though most likely written by the messiah himself – which asked, “whether the White community in the South is entitled to take such measures as are necessary to prevail, politically and culturally, in areas in which it does not predominate numerically? The sobering answer is Yes–the White community is so entitled because, for the time being, it is the advanced one.” Then: “If the majority wills what is socially atavistic, then to thwart the majority may be, though undemocratic, enlightened. It is more important for any community, anywhere in the world, to affirm and live by civilized standards, than to bow to the demands of the numerical majority.”53 Thirty years later, National Review would ask whether the South African majority were “intellectually and practically prepared to assume the social, economic, and political leadeship in a highly industrialized country?”54 Africa was across the ocean, and Africa was here as well. Just a few short years before apartheid was destroyed, Buckley would advise the U.S. to forget about the “one man/one vote” business over there55. Various states are now weighing measures so that rural votes count for more than urban ones56. George Will praised the idea of deterring “potential voters with the weakest motivations”57. The day after Barack Obama’s re-election, Johns’ former employer, the Heritage Foundation, declared war on the president58.
In 1989, the year before Namibian independence, the article “Young Bucks”, by Bob Mack, a very good writer perhaps best known as editor of the greatest magazine in the history of journalism, appeared in the now extinct Spy. “Young Bucks” dealt with the going-ons at the National Review. One staff meeting, headed by Buckley, discussed the issue of the week before, one featuring a provocative cover story titled “Blacks and the G.O.P.: Just Called to Say I Loved You”, on the difficulties the republican party had attracting black voters. Buckley was a man known for his sterling silver wit, and he had just the bon mot for this provocative cover. “Maybe,” he began, the brilliant, rare wine of a yacht and windsor knot mind about to be poured, “Maybe it should’ve been titled ‘Just Called to Say I Love You, Niggah.’”59
For 18 years, Dr. Aubin Heyndrickx has tended the sealed jars containing strands of hair and scraps of clothing he gathered from a dead woman’s body. Collected in Halabja, one of many Kurdish towns in northern Iraq that were attacked with chemical weapons by Saddam Hussein’s army in 1988, they have sat in a blue plastic drum in his lab ever since, waiting.
Now, as prosecutors prepare to try Saddam in Baghdad for genocide against the Kurds, Heyndrickx would like the material to be analyzed. “May I insist these proofs are mentioned at the trial?” the doctor asks.
He is one of a small group of doctors, scientists and Middle East experts who have studied chemical weapons use by Iraq against its Kurdish citizens in the 1980s. Now, they are dusting off evidence and attempting to collect new data in an effort to define the scope of a distant tragedy that is only now to come under scrutiny in court.
Near the very end is a brief reference to his maverick quality:
Because of the lack of hard data and the imprecise testing there is some disagreement about how many people were affected and what chemical compounds were used.
Heyndrickx, somewhat of a maverick in the field, believes that the Iraqi Army also used cyanide and biological toxins, although most other scientists disagree.
Still, he was one of the few Western experts on the ground in Halabja just after the attack, and the samples in his lab – particularly the clothing – could still provide valuable clues if they were properly sealed and stored, Hay said.
3 From a profile of Stone, “The Dirty Trickster” by Jeffrey Toobin; Stone’s role in the riot is disputed.
A substantial contingent of young Republican Capitol Hill aides, along with such congressmen as John Sweeney, of New York, who had travelled to Miami, joined in the protest. Thanks to this delegation, the events at the Clark center have come to be known as the “Brooks Brothers riot,” but Stone disputes that characterization. “There was a Brooks Brothers contingent, but the crowd in front of the courthouse was largely Spanish,” he said. “Most of the people there were people that we drew to the scene.”
At one point on November 22nd, Stone said, he heard from an ally in the building that Gore supporters were trying to remove some ballots from the counting room. “One of my pimply-faced contacts said, ‘Two commissioners have taken two or three hundred ballots to the elevator,’ ” Stone said. “I said, ‘O.K., follow them. Half you guys go on the elevator and half go in the stairs.’ Everyone got sucked up in this. They were trying to keep the doors from being closed. Meanwhile, they were trying to take the rest of the ballots into a back room with no windows. I told our guys to stop them-don’t let them close the door! They are trying to keep the door from being closed. There was a lot of screaming and yelling.” (In fact, the Gore official in the elevator, Joe Geller, was carrying a single sample ballot.) The dual scenes of chaos-both inside and outside the building-prompted the recount officials to stop their work. The recount in Miami was never re-started, depriving Gore of his best chance to catch up in the over-all state tally.
As is customary with Stone, there is some controversy about his precise role. “I was the guy in charge of the trailer, and I coördinated the Brooks Brothers riot,” Brad Blakeman, a lobbyist and political consultant who worked for Bush in Miami, told me. “Roger did not have a role that I know of. His wife may have been on the radio, but I never saw or heard from him.” Scoffing at Blakeman’s account, Stone asserts that he was in the trailer; he said that he had never heard of Blakeman. (Rule: “Lay low, play dumb, keep moving.”)
Well, as one who, I think, either helped kill, or killed the Reform party, because I believe they cost us the White House in 1992 and 1996…their lack of any ideology at all…it was a hodgepodge of vegetarians, goldbugs, and a few libertarians, and gun people, and gun control people, there was no consistency there other than people who couldn’t make it in any other party.
On Sharpton’s attacks on the front-runner, designed by Stone himself:
While Bush forces like the Club for Growth were buying ads in Iowa assailing then front-runner Howard Dean, Sharpton took center stage at a debate confronting Dean about the absence of blacks in his Vermont cabinet. Stone told the Times that he “helped set the tone and direction” of the Dean attacks, while Charles Halloran, the Sharpton campaign manager installed by Stone, supplied the research. While other Democratic opponents were also attacking Dean, none did it on the advice of a consultant who’s worked in every GOP presidential campaign since his involvement in the Watergate scandals of 1972, including all of the Bush family campaigns.
On the Sharpton campaign as part of a larger Bush strategy:
The Washington Post recently reported that the Bush campaign was planning a special advertising campaign targeting black voters, seeking as much as a quarter of the vote, and any Sharpton-connected outrage against the party could either lower black turnout in several key close states, or move votes to Bush. Both were widely reported as the consequences of Sharpton’s anti-Green rhetoric in 2001, [Mark Green, democratic candidate for New York City mayor, beat Fernando Ferrer, the Sharpton backed candidate in a bitter primary race]a result Sharpton celebrated both in his book and at a Bronx victory party on election night.
Stone has a nice life in Miami. He gets out to kayak quite a bit, enjoying the year-round good weather. He and Nydia have five grandchildren. A power law firm based in Fort Lauderdale, Rothstein Rosenfeldt Adler, recently brought him on to head their burgeoning public affairs side. The firm’s head, Scott Rothstein, is a pitbull litigator with a taste for Bentleys and $150,000 watches. He shares Stone’s operating philosophy, telling me that he tells all his lawyers, “Get into the game, or get the f– out of the way.”
This grossly false and damaging flier, accusing Libertarian gubernatorial candidate Warren Redlich of being a dangerous “sexual predator” and credited to “People For A Safer New York,” is being circulated in the Capitol Region and perhaps beyond. Redlich, as you can read below, has naturally condemned the material.
I am admittedly late to the game on this one, and it’s frankly because I struggled with whether to write about this at all. Redlich, by nature of his candidacy, is a public figure, but this is extreme, to say the least. (The usual reminder: I am not a member of any political party and I do not support any candidate for any office, financially or otherwise.)
The backstory is that this seems to come out of a comment Redlich made on his “Stop Wasting Money” blog about the “hubbub” over racy pictures of Miley Cyrus, which reads, in part, “If you look at literature like Shakespeare, and at some historical figures like Sir William Johnson (a prominent pre-revolutionary leader in New York), you get the impression that it used to be normal for men, even much older men, to be interested in teenage girls.”
I asked Roger Stone, a self-avowed political dirty trickster and Davis’ campaign manager, if he knew about the mailer. (The sex predator flier came from a group called “People for a Safer New York” that I can’t find a record for.)
“I’ve seen both mailers, I think that they’re both accurate. People for a Safer New York is called a first amendment group,” Stone told me by phone. “I’m in touch with them. Who are they? They’re a first amendment organization I urged them to do this, this is a first amendment issue.”
He defended the flier, even though he declined to claim credit for it when I asked him. (Or otherwise characterize how heavily involved with this he is.)
“Let’s be very clear: everything here is 100 percent legal, everything here is 100 percent accurate,” Stone said. “As somebody who has two granddaughters, I really find Redlich’s advocacy and defense of sex with underrate girls disgusting and repugnant, and voters need to know about it prior to voting on Tuesday.”
Blackwater, he says over steak salad at the Morton’s off the K Street lobbying corridor, “is a fine company that’s provided a great service to the people of the United States and Iraq.” Saudi Arabia, another client: “a great ally.” Mr. Savimbi, the brutal Angolan leader whom President Ronald Reagan promoted as a freedom fighter but many Democrats derided as an ally of apartheid South Africa: “a great pleasure to work with.”
In addition to Savimbi, Black and his partners were at times registered foreign agents for a remarkable collection of U.S.-backed foreign leaders whose human rights records were sometimes harshly criticized, even as their opposition to communism was embraced by American conservatives. They included Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos, Mobutu Sese Seko of Zaire, Nigerian Gen. Ibrahim Babangida, Somali President Mohamed Siad Barre, and the countries of Kenya and Equatorial Guinea, among others.
Mr. Black has worked for some of the city’s most controversial clients (Jonas Savimbi, Philip Morris, Blackwater) and with the baddest boys of Republican politics (he cut his teeth on Jesse Helms‘s campaigns, and was a mentor to Lee Atwater). But he has managed to stay ahead of controversy himself.
That year was the last moment when Black was able to stay outside of controversy; during the election, a MoveOn.org ad would specifically target the list of reprehensible men the super-lobbyist had taken on as clients.
Black has retired from lobbying, having left BKSH & Associates recently. But he says he has no intention of leaving the campaign and is unapologetic about a lobbying career spanning 30 years and seven presidential campaigns. He said his firms never represented foreigners “without first talking to the State Department and the White House and clearing with them that the work would be in the interest of U.S. foreign policy.”
During 2008, Mr. Black resigned from the lobbying firm he founded, BKSH while he traveled with Mr. McCain. He returned to the firm after Mr. McCain lost to President Obama. The firm has now merged with another company and is called Prime Policy Group.
Four years ago, Mr. Romney assailed Mr. McCain for having close ties to big-time Washington lobbyists like Mr. Black.
“I don’t have lobbyists running my campaign,” Mr. Romney said at the time. “Somebody doesn’t put the kind of financial resources that I have put into this campaign and the personal resources I have put into this campaign in order to do favors for lobbyists.”
When a reporter pointed out at the time that Mr. Romney had lobbyists who worked on his campaign, Mr. Romney insisted they were merely informal advisers, and were not paid to run his campaign.
In an e-mail to The Caucus, Mr. Black said he and his wife, Judy, decided to support Mr. Romney about six weeks ago, but he said he was not actively participating in the presidential campaign.
“No formal role in the campaign. Just offer advice occasionally,” Mr. Black said. “The right man to be president.”
In 1986, [Jack Abramoff] founded the International Freedom Foundation, whose stated goal was “to foster individual freedom throughout the world by engaging in activities which promote the development of free and open societies based on the principles of free enterprise.” More specifically, among the IFF’s aims were to oppose the Anti-Apartheid Act and other sanctions and to urge greater support in Washington for Pretoria and less support for the African National Congress, the party that would come to power in 1994 under Nelson Mandela. At its height, around the time “Red Scorpion” was released, the IFF employed about 30 young ideologues in offices on G Street in Washington, Johannesburg, London and Brussels. Churning out reports and presentations (for one such presentation on the Contras, it borrowed the slide show that North had used to raise money for his arms-deal network, according to Pandin), the IFF attracted notable members such as Sen. Jesse Helms, R-N.C., and Rep. Dan Burton, R-Ind.
16 This material comes from an important Newsday article, “Front for Apartheid: Washington-based think tank said to be part of ruse to prolong power” by Dele Olojede and Tim Phelps, that has almost entirely vanished from the web, except for Lexis-Nexis. It can be found in full at the disreputable conspiracy site bilderberg.org, though its most shocking points are re-iterated in the AP story, “Report: Conservative Think Tank Was Front For Apartheid”. The post “Apartheid Regime” by Joe Amato at the Crooks and Liars blog also contains many relevant extracts.
The relevant excerpt about the IFF:
The International Freedom Foundation, founded in 1986 seemingly as a conservative think tank, was in fact part of an elaborate intelligence gathering operation, and was designed to be against apartheid’s an instrument for “political warfare” against apartheid’s foes, according to former senior South African spy Craig Williamson. The South Africans spent up to $1.5 million a year through 1992 to underwrite “Operation Babushka,” as the IFF project was known.
“We decided that, the only level we were going to be accepted was when it came to the Soviets and their surrogates, so our strategy was to paint the ANC as communist surrogates,” said Williamson, formerly a senior operative in South Africa’s military intelligence, who helped direct Babushka. “The more we could present ourselves as anti-communists, the more people looked at us with respect. People you could hardly believe cooperated with us politically when it came to the Soviets.”
I re-post the article from the bilderberg site, making only the small correction of Thiessen’s name (they had it as “Mere”).
FRONT FOR APARTHEID
Washington-based think tank said to be part of ruse to prolong power
Sunday July 16, 1995
This article was reported by Dele Olojede in South Africa and Timothy M. Phelps in Washington, and was written by Olojede.
JOHANNESBURG, South Africa A respectable Washington foundation, which drew into its web prominent Republican and conservative figures like Sen.. Jesse Helms and other members of Congress, was actually a front organization bankrolled by South Africa’s last white rulers to prolong apartheid, a Newsday investigation has shown.
The International Freedom Foundation, founded in 1986 seemingly as a conservative think tank, was in fact part of an elaborate intelligence gathering operation, and was designed to be against apartheid’s an instrument for “political warfare” against apartheid’s foes, according to former senior South African spy Craig Williamson. The South Africans spent up to $1.5 million a year through 1992 to underwrite “Operation Babushka,” as the IFF project was known.
The current South African National Defence Force officially confirmed that the IFF was its dummy operation.
“The International Freedom Foundation was a former SA Defence Force project,” Army Col. John Rolt, a military spokesman, said in a terse response to an inquiry. A member of the IFF”s international board of directors also conceded Friday that at least half of the foundation’s funds came from projects undertaken on behalf of South Africa’s military intelligence, although he refused to say what these projects were except that many of them were directed against Nelson Mandela’s African National Congress.
A three-month Newsday investigation determined that one of the project’s broad objectives was to try to reverse the apartheid regime’s pariah status in Western political circles. More specifically, the IFF sought to portray the ANC as a tool of Soviet communism, thus undercutting the movement’s growing international acceptance as the government-in-waiting of a future multiracial South Africa.
“We decided that, the only level we were going to be accepted was when it came to the Soviets and their surrogates, so our strategy was to paint the ANC as communist surrogates,” said Williamson, formerly a senior operative in South Africa’s military intelligence, who helped direct Babushka. “The more we could present ourselves as anti-communists, the more people looked at us with respect. People you could hardly believe cooperated with us politically when it came to the Soviets.”
The South Africans found willing, though possibly unwitting, allies in influential Republican politicians, conservative intellectuals and activists. Sen. Jesse Helms, now chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, served as chairman of the editorial advisory board for the foundation’s publications. Through a spokesman, Helms said that he did not know anything about the foundation.
“Helms has never heard of the International Freedom Foundation, was not chairman of their advisory board and never authorized his name to be used by IFF in any way shape or form. We never had any relationship with them,” Marc Thiessen, a Helms spokesman, said.
Rep. Dan Burton, who was the ranking Republican on the House subcommittee on Africa, and Rep. Robert Dornan were active in IFF projects, frequently serving on its delegations to international forums. Alan Keyes, currently a candidate for the Republican presidential nomination, also served as adviser. (He did not return a call seeking comment.) The Washington lobbyist and former movie producer Jack Abramoff, and rising conservative stars like Duncan Sellers, helped run the foundation.
All those contacted denied knowing that it was controlled and funded by the South African regime.
Although there are strong indications that U.S. laws may have been broken some IFF officials have admitted in interviews that they knew that South African military intelligence money helped pay for the foundation’s activities in Washington there is no clear evidence that the politicians associated with IFF either took campaign contributions or otherwise directly benefited financially from the foundation .
Under U.S. law, anyone who represents a foreign government or acts under its orders, direction or control, has to register with the Justice Department as a foreign agent. Asked if a “think-tank” sup up and supported by a foreign government has to register, a Justice official said, “If the foreign [government] has some say in what they are doing and, obviously, if they are funding it they probably do then they probably do have to register.” Violation of the law carries a fine up to $10,000 and a prison term of up to five years.
Several key figures involved in the IFF and contacted by Newsday denied any knowledge that the foundation was a front for the political agenda of a foreign government. Duncan Sellers, now a Virginia businessman, said, “This is nothing I ever knew about. It’s something that I would have resigned over or closed the foundation over. I would have put a stop to it.”
“The Congressman didn’t know anything about it,” said a spokesman for Dornan, Paul Morrell. “This is all news to him if it is true.” Morrell described Dornan’s impression of the IFF as simply “pro-freedom, pro-democracy, pro-Reagan.”
Phillip Crane, another U.S. representative listed as an IFF editorial adviser, joined the board in 1987 at the request of Abramoff, said an aide, and by 1990 had quit. “He never attended a board meeting that he can recall,” said the aide, Bob Foster. “He had no idea that any such situation [intelligence connections] existed.”
Williamson said that the operation was deliberately constructed so that many of the people would not know they were involved with a foreign government. “That was the beauty of the whole things guys pushing what they believed,” he said. Helms for example, voted against virtually every punitive measure ever contemplated against South Africa’s white minority government, however mild. And Burton was nearly hysterical in arguing against sanctions that a large bipartisan majority passed in 1986 over President Ronald Reagan’s veto, at one point warning that “there will be blood running in the streets” as a result.
But in some cases, such as Abramoffs, the relationship with the South African security apparatus was more than merely coincidental, according to Williamson and others. A former chief of intelligence, now retired, said emphatically that the South African military helped finance Abramoffs 1988 movie “Red Scorpion.” The movie was a sympathetic portrayal of an anti-communist African guerrilla commander loosely based on Jones Savimbi, the Angolan rebel leader allied to both Washington and Pretoria. Williamson also said the production of “Red Scorpion” was “funded by our guys,” who in addition provided military trucks and equipment – as well as extras.
Abramoff reacted with anger when told of the allegations Friday, saying his movie was funded by private investors and had nothing to do with the South African government. “This is outrageous,” he said.
Details of South Africa’s intelligence operations in the last years of apartheid have begun to rapidly emerge with the imminent establishment of a Truth Commission by the Mandela government. The commission will elicit confessions of “dirty tricks” by apartheid’s foot soldiers and their Commanders, in exchange for immunity from prosecution. Williamson, for instance, recently revealed that he was involved in the assassination of Ruth First, wife of the ANC and South African Communist Party leader Joe Slovo, and other anti-apartheid activists.
In South African government thinking, the IFF represented a far more subtle approach to defeating the anti-apartheid movement. Officials said the plan was to get away from the traditional allies of Pretoria, the fringe right in the United States and Europe, “some of whom were to the right of Ghengis Khan,” said one senior intelligence official. Instead, they settled for a front staffed with mainstream conservatives who did not necessarily know who was pulling the strings.
“They ran their own organization, but we steered them, that was the point,” Williamson said.
“They were very good, those guys, eh?” said Vic McPheerson, a police colonel who ran security branch operations and participated in the 1982 bombing of the ANC office in London. “They were not just good in intelligence, but in political warfare.”
Starting in 1986, when Reagan failed to override comprehensive U.S. economic sanctions, the South African government began casting about for ways to survive in an international environment more hostile to apartheid than ever. A very senior official in South African military intelligence, to whom IFF handlers reported at the time, said the operation cost his unit between $l million and $1.5 million a year. The retired general said the funds represented almost all of the IFF’s annual operating budget, although the foundation gained such legitimacy that it began to attract funding from individuals and groups in the United States.
On at least one occasion, the IFF had trouble accounting for its money. It was unable to comply in 1989 with a New York State requirement that it provide an accountant’s opinion confirming that its financial statements “present fairly the financial position of the organization.” It was eventually barred, in January, 1991, from soliciting funds from New York. According to financial records provided by Jeff Pandin, the foundation’s last executive director in Washington, IFF revenue in 1992 dropped by half of the preceding year’s, to $1.6 million. It just so happened that President Frederik W. de Klerk ended secret South African funding for the foundation in 1992, in response to pressure from Mandela to demonstrate that he was not complicit in “Third Force” activities. Pandin expressed shock that much of the organization’s money had been coming from clandestine South African sources. “I worked for the IFF from Day One to Day End,” he said. “This is complete news to me.” He said he once had met Williamson when he was in Mozambique, but was unaware of any official links.
On the surface, the IFF’s headquarters was in north-east Washington, D.C., , at 200 G Street, next door to the Free Congress Foundation, another conservative institution. From that base, it launched campaigns against communist sympathizers and perceived enemies of the free market. It broadly supported Reaganism, and its principal officers ran with the Ollie North crowd. But it always paid special attention to ANC. When Mandela made his first visit to the United States in 1990, following his release from prison, the IFF placed advertisements in local papers designed to dampen public enthusiasm for Mandela. One ad in the Miami Herald portrayed Mandela as an ally and defender of Cuba’s Fidel Castro. The city’s large Cuban community was so agitated that a ceremony to present Mandela with keys to the city was scrapped.
The IFF published several journals and bulletins, in Washington and in its offices in Europe and Johannesburg. One of its contributors was Jay Parker, an African-American who was a paid public relations agent of successive apartheid regimes throughout the 1970s and 1980s. People like Henry Kissinger were invited to IFF seminars to deliver keynote speeches. The foundation brought together the together the world’s top intelligence experts at a 1991 conference in Potsdam, Germany, to mull over the changing uses of intelligence in the post-Cold War world. Among those in attendance was former CIA director William Colby and a retired senior KGB general, Oleg Kalugin. The IFF also waged a major but not surprisingly futile campaign for U.S. retention of the Panama Canal. But its main purpose was always to serve the ultimate goals of the South African government, according to those who helped nudge it in that direction. The former senior South African military intelligence official said he traveled to the United States and Canada in 1988 as a guest of the IFF. But the real reason for his trip, he said, was to try to strengthen South African intelligence operations on the ground, at diplomatic posts and the North American offices of Satour, the country’s tourism promotion agency.
“I was surprised at the kind of access the IFF operation provided us,” said Wim Booyse, who went by the title of Senior Research fellow at the Johannesburg office of the IFF. Booyse said when he visited Washington In 1987 to attend IFF-sponsored seminars, part of the propaganda training he and other visitors received came from a disinformation specialist at the United States Information Service, an official he identified as Todd Leventhal. Leventhal said in response that he remembered meeting with Booyse and possibly a few other IFF people, but gave no formal talk and talked to them only about countering disinformation, not spreading it
Far from being a mere branch of the IFF, the Johannesburg office was in fact the nerve center of IFF operations worldwide. According to Martin Yuill, who served as administrator of the “branch,” he began to realize that perhaps Johannesburg was not just a branch office after all, since it was always deciding how much money the other offices, Including the Washington headquarters, should have. “I guess one would have to conclude that that was the case,” he said.
Although he insisted that the IFF was no clandestine operation, Russell Crystal who ran the Johannesburg office, said it was vital to the foundation. He said Friday in an interview that “jobs” for South African intelligence provided at least half of total IFF revenue, and that he sometimes asked military intelligence to send the fees from these “jobs” directly to the Washington office of the IFF.
“The military intelligence, there were certain things they wanted done — tackling the ANC as a terrorist-communist organization,” Crystal said. “The projects we did for them, they paid for. ” He added that it was not impossible that South Africa accounted for far more than his estimated 50 percent, of IFF revenues.
As an example of this “tackling,” Crystal cited the targeting of Oliver Tambo, whenever the late exiled leader of the ANC traveled around the world. Once, when Tambo visited with George Shultz, then-secretary of state, the IFF arranged for demonstrators to drape tires around their necks to protest the “necklace” killings of suspect ed government informers in black townships in South Africa.
“The advantage of the IFF was that it pilloried the ANC,” said Williamson. “The sort of general western view of the ANC up until 1990 was a box of matches [violence] and Soviet-supporting — slavishly was the word we latched on. That was backed up with writings, intellectual inputs. It was a matter of undercutting ANC credibility.”
By 1993, the IFF effectively shut down after de Klerk pulled the plug on many politically motivated clandestine operations. But the IFF did not go down before one final parting shot.
In January that year, the foundation financed a investigation into alleged human rights abuses during the 1980′s at ANC guerrilla camps in Angola. Bob Douglas, a South African lawyer, concluded there was evidence of torture and other abuses, forcing the ANC to acknowledge some abuses. Douglas said Friday he did not believe that the IFF worked for military intelligence. “I did a professional job for which I charged professional fees,” he said crossly. “I did my job of work, I finished my work, and had nothing to do with it since then.”
17 From “Front for Apartheid: Washington-based think tank said to be part of ruse to prolong power” by Dele Olojede and Tim Phelps:
Williamson, for instance, recently revealed that he was involved in the assassination of Ruth First, wife of the ANC and South African Communist Party leader Joe Slovo, and other anti-apartheid activists.
18 “Front for Apartheid: Washington-based think tank said to be part of ruse to prolong power” by Dele Olojede and Tim Phelps:
Several key figures involved in the IFF and contacted by Newsday denied any knowledge that the foundation was a front for the political agenda of a foreign government. Duncan Sellers, now a Virginia businessman, said, “This is nothing I ever knew about. It’s something that I would have resigned over or closed the foundation over. I would have put a stop to it.”
19 “Front for Apartheid: Washington-based think tank said to be part of ruse to prolong power” by Dele Olojede and Tim Phelps:
“Helms has never heard of the International Freedom Foundation, was not chairman of their advisory board and never authorized his name to be used by IFF in any way shape or form. We never had any relationship with them,” Marc Thiessen, a Helms spokesman, said.
“Courting Disaster” downplays the C.I.A.’s brutality under the Bush Administration to the point of falsification. Thiessen argues that “the C.I.A. interrogation program did not inflict torture by any reasonable standard,” and that there was “only one single case” in which “inhumane” techniques were used. That case, he writes, involved the detainee Abd al-Rahim Nashiri, whom a C.I.A. interrogator threatened with a handgun to the head, and with an electric drill. He claims that no detainee “deaths in custody took place in the C.I.A. interrogation program,” failing to mention the case of a detainee who was left to freeze to death at a C.I.A.-run prison in Afghanistan. Referring to the Abu Ghraib scandal, Thiessen writes that “what happened in those photos had nothing to do with C.I.A. interrogations, military interrogations, or interrogations of any sort.” The statement is hard to square with the infamous photograph of Manadel al-Jamadi; his body was placed on ice after he died of asphyxiation during a C.I.A. interrogation at the prison. The homicide became so notorious that the C.I.A.’s inspector general, John Helgerson, forwarded the case to the Justice Department for potential criminal prosecution. Thiessen simply ignores the incident.
In the summer of 1985 Abramoff helped plan and organize an event that, as Abramoff told me, inspired Red Scorpion. Abramoff joined forces with Jack Wheeler, another anti-Communist activist, to create the “Jamboree in Jamba”–known more formally as the Democratic International. The pair approached Lewis Lehrman, a conservative benefactor who made a fortune off his Rite-Aid drugstores, with the idea: For years the Soviets had been sponsoring what amounted to supervillain summits, where Sandinistas, African Communist insurgents, and representatives of the PLO and Cuba convened presumably to stroke their fluffy white cats and update their arms-dealer Rolodexes.
Abramoff convinced Lehrman that this put the “good guys” at a comparative disadvantage–the Nicaraguan contras, the Afghan mujahedeen, Savimbi’s rebels in Angola, and other freedom fighters needed a meeting of their own. Congress was in the process of cutting off aid to the contras, and anything that could be done to bolster the group’s public reputation would be politically helpful to Reagan. Lehrman agreed to fund it, and Rohrabacher was brought in to help muster support from inside the White House. Abramoff and Wheeler would handle the details on the ground.
According to Abramoff, the event was a goat rodeo from the start. Hardly a government in the world was enamored of the idea, and simply deciding where to hold the event was no small affair. Only two governments were publicly supportive: South Africa and Israel, and for PR reasons it was quickly decided that neither country was a suitable venue.
So they settled on Jamba, Angola, the home base of Savimbi’s UNITA movement (National Union of Total Independence for Angola), which was fighting the Cuban troops that propped up the Soviet-backed Angolan government. Not exactly the most hospitable locale.
Logistically, the event was a nightmare. Simply trying to get the attendees into the Angolan hinterland provoked international incidents. Pakistan blocked some Afghan rebels from leaving, and skittish Thai officials almost stopped Laotian anti-Communist leader Pa Kao Her from departing Bangkok.
Facilities consisted of little more than grass huts and an airstrip, and managing the various cultures and egos proved challenging, as demonstrated by Abramoff’s deft and hilarious impersonation of a frenzied Afghan warlord who insisted on ranting and raving for 45 minutes, long after the translator who had been procured on his behalf proved worthless. Not only was Abramoff’s mimicry compelling, he gestured wildly with his hands in a way that caught me totally off guard, making me laugh harder. He clearly wasn’t afraid to embarrass himself, a quality that was endearing, considering I had started out the evening somewhat intimidated. I also became aware of how carefully he was gauging my reaction to his tale. He didn’t care about impressing me; it was obvious he had little to prove. But he did tell his story in a generous way–he wanted me to enjoy it, and I did.
The final insult in Jamba was running out of food. Abramoff, who keeps kosher, had packed all his own provisions into the African jungle. Upon leaving the event early, he stood on the stairs of the plane auctioning off his remaining cans of tuna for as much as $20 to ravenous members of the press who had yet to leave.
The jamboree itself ended up being largely ceremonial. Everyone pledged to share intelligence, and Lehrman read a letter Rohrabacher had drafted on Reagan’s behalf, expressing solidarity with those struggling against the Soviet empire. The Time reporter on the scene concluded that the meeting marked the beginning of “a new lobby to urge Congress to support the Nicaraguan contras and other anti-Communist guerrillas.” Considering the improbability of the thing coming together at all, everyone involved considered it a success.
The Angolan Government has issued a warrant for the arrest of Unita leader, Jonas Savimbi.
Late on Friday state radio broadcast a statement from the national department for criminal investigations.
Rebellion, sabotage and the use of explosives are among a long list of crimes alleged to have been committed by the Angolan rebel leader.
The announcement comes seven months after the Prosecutor General labelled Savimbi a war criminal, shortly after a fresh outbreak of war in the battered southern African state in December.
Under Angolan law, the Unita leader is accused of committing a myriad of crimes, ranging from murder and assault to the trafficking of war material.
Indeed, there is no shortage of allegations against Dr Savimbi.
Aside from official testimonies given by victims of Unita, hundreds of thousands of Angola’s displaced recount similar tales of massacres in their rural villages. More often than not, they blame Dr Savimbi for the deaths of their relatives and friends.
Jonas Savimbi, who was killed yesterday by Angolan government soldiers, spent more than 35 years in the African bush battling first for Angolan independence and then for personal power.
At least one conservative mourned the death of this man, even after all the blood on his hands, and this was Howard Phillips.
Savimbi told conservative leader Howard Phillips and me last March during a visit to Savimbi’s headquarters in the Angolan bush, `there are a lot of loopholes in that agreement. The agreement is not good at all.’
On the event of Savimbi’s death, Phillips and his son, David, issued a statement via Newsmax, “Angolan Christian Rebel Leader Assassinated”, mourning the rebel’s death and blaming it on the collusion of George W. Bush, the state department, Chevron, and the Angolan government.
From the statement of David Phillips:
My family and I have spent the weekend grieving the loss of a longtime friend and heroic Christian leader, Dr. Jonas Mahleiro Savimbi.
Savimbi was the leader of the only organized opposition to the totalitarian rule in Luanda. He sacrificed his life for more than 40 years in pursuit of liberty and self-determination for his people. He had a following in Angola up until his death because he personified hope for the most marginalized and downtrodden segment of Angolan society, the indigenous non-assimilated African people.
The son of an evangelical pastor and railway stationmaster, he relied on his Christian faith for strength, courage and wisdom to wage a lifelong struggle for the freedom of the Angolan people.
Africa has lost one of its best Christian leaders and America has lost one of its most faithful Cold War allies.
From the statement of his father, Howard:
Dr. Jonas Savimbi was a great Angolan patriot, truly a man who served as a loving, self-sacrificing father to those of his countrymen who shared his love of freedom and who were willing to die to escape the bonds of Portuguese colonialism and Communist tyranny.
In the war against Soviet imperialism America had no more faithful and courageous ally.
In 1992, Savimbi won a popular election, which victory was stolen from him even more blatantly than Mayor Daley stole Illinois for John F. Kennedy in 1960.
[With] no fear of rebuke from those who govern the New World Order of socially respectable international opinion, the Angolan Reds targeted Dr. Savimbi to be hunted down and murdered.
His death is a tragic loss.
His blood is on the hands of the government of the United States, as well as on the hands of the Angolan gangster government which directly gave the orders.
But for Abramoff, the pivotal moment in Jamba came when he was approached by someone trying to secure funding for a documentary about Savimbi. Abramoff scoffed. Rambo: First Blood Part II had just been released in theaters three weeks earlier, becoming the first film to open on more than 2,000 screens. “Why would you want to make a documentary? Nobody watches documentaries,” he told me. “I said to the guy, ‘You should make an action film.’”
YOU CAN ALSO SAY THIS for Abramoff–the man has a gift for making wild ideas a reality. Jack revisited his movie idea in an entertainment law class he took while finishing his degree at Georgetown a few years later. He sketched out a story based loosely on what he knew about Savimbi’s plight and the Soviet operations in that part of Africa.
24 The movie opens with the credits featuring a name that is now indissolubly linked with D.C. scandal:
It is a movie about a russian fighter who, after seeing the plight of africans under russian siege, defects to their cause and fights on their behalf. His appearance, that of a blonde, muscular uberman, is the aryan ideal; his identity is inextricably linked with being a warrior. He is a member of the spetsnaz – russian special forces – and, over and over again, this is how he identifies himself: “I am spetsnaz.” After defecting, he is re-captured, and his captors humiliate this man by exiling him from this group: “you are no longer spetsnaz.” One of his last lines is declaring that he still belongs to this military ideal, while no longer belonging to the soviet state: “I am still spetsnaz, but I am no longer you.” This man fits the aryan ideal, but the fascist ideal as well, a man for whom belonging to the military group is more important than his belonging to the larger society.
That this man defects from a colonial group, then ends up fighting against it, is analogous to the Boers of South Africa, who came as colonizers to the continent, and then ended up fighting against Europe itself. The National Party which took power after World War II was pro-Germany and opposed to South African involvement on the side of Britain. The Red Scorpion title character fights against the colonizers of which he was once one, becomes a savior to african freedom fighters, and possibly, the true heir to africa. This man’s transformative moment is to meet the chief of a group of Kalahari San (they are also called the Bushmen, which I believe is considered a pejorative), who burns on this man a tattoo signifying membership in their tribe. The Red Scorpion hunts with an african spear as well or better than the chief, and the chief gives this man his spear, a gesture which I read as signifying tribal membership, access to tribal hunting grounds, and status as an african warrior.
It is impossible to watch the movie without thinking immediately of Susan Sontag’s “Fascinating Fascism” which found links between the aryan ideal of the Nazis and the warrior ideal of the Nuba tribe. Even though the Kalahari are not the Nuba, the Kalahari’s culture distinct and dissimilar from that of the Nuba, what is striking is that all the features Sontag cites as a crucial part of the warrior ideal celebrated by Leni Riefenstahl in both Europe and Africa are in Red Scorpion: the celebration of the physical over the mental – the title character never solves a problem through ingenuity, only strength or marksmanship – and the sublimation of the self into some larger martial force, in this case, the spetsnaz. The Red Scorpion moves from being a warrior in a soviet military force to being a warrior in a tribe of hunters – the same warrior character is never altered, only re-directed towards a different enemy. There is also an important distinction. When Riefenstahl traveled to Africa, the Nazi warriors were either dead or elderly, while the Nuba still had youthful devotees to their ideal. The Red Scorpion, on the other hand, is the youngest member of the cast, and the youngest, fittest man compared to any of the Kalahari, whose chief is elderly, and played by an actor in his nineties; the implicit message is that the future of Africa lies with the Red Scorpion, not the Kalahari.
The movie ends with an image which might embody how a white south african military man might see himself: the aryan ideal, flanked by a sycophantic american journalist, their conservative allies in the U.S., and an african anti-Soviet freedom fighter, someone like Jonas Savimbi, to whom the South African government gave so much financial and military aid.
25 From “Front for Apartheid: Washington-based think tank said to be part of ruse to prolong power” by Dele Olojede and Tim Phelps:
A former chief of intelligence, now retired, said emphatically that the South African military helped finance Abramoffs 1988 movie “Red Scorpion.” The movie was a sympathetic portrayal of an anti-communist African guerrilla commander loosely based on Jones Savimbi, the Angolan rebel leader allied to both Washington and Pretoria. Williamson also said the production of “Red Scorpion” was “funded by our guys,” who in addition provided military trucks and equipment – as well as extras.
[Jeff] Pandin [an Abramoff associate] recalled that Abramoff enlisted Russell Crystal, the head of the IFF’s Johannesburg office and an advisor to F.W. DeKlerk, to be an informal producer on “Red Scorpion” (whether this meant Crystal helped fund the film, Pandin did not remember).
Initially, the movie was set to shoot in Swaziland, but at the last minute Abramoff moved the production to Namibia, which was occupied by South Africa’s apartheid government.
The actor Carmen Argenziano, who played the villainous Cuban colonel, said he knew that many of the men playing Russian and Cuban soldiers were actual SADF soldiers.
“We heard that very right-wing South African money was helping fund the movie,” [Carmen] Argenziano said. “It wasn’t very clear. We were pretty upset about the source of the money. We thought we were misled. We were shocked that these brothers who we thought were showbiz liberals – Beverly Hills Jewish kids – were doing this.”
By 1988, when shooting started on the film, Abramoff likely had connections in the South African government. For a decade, after all, South Africa had been Savimbi’s main backer, and according to [Chester] Crocker and others, Abramoff would not have been able to put together the Democratic International without extensive help from the SADF.
“We knew that the IFF was funded by the South African government,” Herman Cohen, who ran Africa operations for the National Security Council, told Salon. “It was one of a number of front organizations.”
32 From “Front for Apartheid: Washington-based think tank said to be part of ruse to prolong power” by Dele Olojede and Tim Phelps:
Abramoff reacted with anger when told of the allegations Friday, saying his movie was funded by private investors and had nothing to do with the South African government. “This is outrageous,” he said.
After Jack returned to Washington, Robert Abramoff stayed in Los Angeles and continued to produce films. He is now a full-time lawyer. Reached at the offices of Burgee & Abramoff in Woodland Hills, he refused to speak about his brother or “Red Scorpion.” “It’s a family matter and I prefer not to comment on anything,” he said.
During Angola’s war of independence against the Portuguese in 1961-1974, Savimbi was an impressive guerrilla leader, but his movement, the National Union for the Total Independence of Angola, or UNITA, was far weaker than Neto’s Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola, or MPLA.
In February 1972, Savimbi proposed to have his forces cooperate with the Portuguese to “eliminate” the MPLA. The Portuguese responded favorably, and for the next 18 months Savimbi was their ally. But in late 1973, Lisbon broke the agreement and attacked UNITA. And so Savimbi became known, much against his will, as a “freedom fighter,” even though he was still trying to forge a new alliance with Lisbon when the Portuguese regime was overthrown in April 1974.
By 1977, the story of Savimbi’s betrayal of the Angolan independence movement was public knowledge in Western Europe. In 1979, the mainstream Lisbon weekly Expresso concluded: “The fact that Savimbi collaborated with the Portuguese colonial authorities has been so amply proven that no one can question it in good faith.”
No one, that is, but Americans.
Savimbi’s betrayal of the independence struggle has been overlooked in the thousands of press reports and scores of books written about Angola, and, even now, in the articles about his death.
Within weeks of the collapse of the Portuguese dictatorship, Savimbi approached the white rulers in Pretoria for help in the impending civil war in Angola. If he won, he promised to maintain friendly relations with the apartheid regime. How tempting, particularly when the MPLA vowed that there would be no peace in southern Africa until apartheid had been defeated.
In July 1975, with Washington’s blessing, South Africa began its covert operation in Angola to support Savimbi.
Yet Savimbi was not a South African puppet. He was simply being true to himself. He was a warlord whose overriding principle was absolute power, and if this required an agreement with Portuguese colonial authorities first, and then a dalliance with apartheid, so be it.
In October 1975, with Washington’s urging, South African troops invaded Angola. Crashing through MPLA resistance, they would have taken Luanda, the MPLA stronghold, had Fidel Castro not sent Cuban soldiers to Angola in early November. Contrary to U.S. reports of the time, Castro did so without consulting Moscow. He was no client. “He was probably the most genuine revolutionary leader then [1975] in power,” Kissinger writes in his memoirs.
In late 1983, the UN Security Council demanded that South Africa withdraw from Angola. Shortly afterwards, Angola and South Africa signed the Lusaka Accords, under which South Africa agreed to withdraw if Angola ceased support for SWAPO. However, South African withdrawal was extremely slow, and was reversed in 1985 when another invasion was launched, in support of UNITA which was facing defeat against a full-scale attack by FAPLA with Cuban support. The government clearly believed that if South African support for UNITA was withdrawn, it would be able to achieve a military solution to the conflict.
Jonas Savimbi, a member of Angola’s largest ethnic group, the Ovimbundu, was born and raised in the southern Angolan province of Moxico. A bright, charismatic, former doctorate student, Savimbi became fluent in more than six languages–including Portuguese, French, and English. His knack for learning languages boosted his credibility among the various groups with whom he negotiated. His gift in European languages facilitated his dealings with political opponents, diplomats, and foreign reporters, while he switched into Umbundo when rallying his followers among the Angolan people.
Friend and foe acknowledged the abilities and charisma of Jonas Savimbi, the Angolan rebel leader who was killed by government troops last month.
“Savimbi is very intelligent,” Lucio Lara, a senior aide to his bitter rival, Agostinho Neto, once admitted.
Savimbi also never deviated from his overriding goals or principles. It is odd, however, that Americans have failed to appreciate what these goals and principles were.
During Angola’s war of independence against the Portuguese in 1961-1974, Savimbi was an impressive guerrilla leader, but his movement, the National Union for the Total Independence of Angola, or UNITA, was far weaker than Neto’s Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola, or MPLA.
We might end this note on Savimbi’s formidable intellectual abilities with a contrast in how he is portrayed in the videogame Black Ops II; from “Call of Duty: the recall of Jonas Savimbi” by Sean Jacobs:
Black Ops II paints Savimbi as some kind of brute with his halting English and screams. But he was, in fact, a consummate media figure and understood the power of western press on public opinion. Three clips – the first in French (with Portuguese subtitles), the second in Portuguese, and a third in which Savimbi answers questions, in English, at a surreal “Unita News Conference with Republicans” – provide a brief contrast to his depiction in Black Ops II. He spoke many languages fluently. His English speech and diction was refined – not the kind of brutish bush English they give him.
[Chester] Crocker described Savimbi, who was killed in 2002, as “a brilliant military warlord who operated by the gun, lived by the gun, and died by the gun and ultimately had a failure of judgment, like warlords often do.”
Others are less charitable. “He was the most articulate, charismatic homicidal maniac I’ve ever met,” said Don Steinberg, ambassador to Angola during the first Clinton administration.
By the end of the 1980s his proxy army, supplied and funded by the CIA and aided by numerous South African invasions, had sabotaged much of Angola. Swathes of the countryside were cut off from agriculture by minefields, mine victims and malnourished children swamped the hospitals and tens of thousands of children were also kidnapped by Unita troops and taken to Unita-controlled areas in the south around Savimbi’s capital at Jamba.
Appalling rites, such as public burning of women said to be witches, characterised the reign of terror in which many of Savimbi’s close associates were imprisoned or killed on his orders.
For decades, Savimbi’s forces fought Angola’s MPLA government, which was supported militarily by the Soviet Union and thousands of Cuban troops–and was recognized by every country in the world except South Africa and the United States. In order to instill terror in the population and to undermine confidence in the government, Savimbi ordered that food supplies be targeted, millions of land mines be laid in peasants’ fields, and transport lines be cut. As part of this destabilization effort, UNITA frequently attacked health clinics and schools, specifically terrorizing and killing medical workers and teachers. The UN estimated that Angola lost $30 billion in the war from 1980 to 1988, which was six times the country’s 1988 GDP. According to UNICEF, approximately 330,000 children died as direct and indirect results of the fighting during that period alone. Human Rights Watch reports that because of UNITA’s indiscriminate use of landmines, there were over 15,000 amputees in Angola in 1988, ranking it alongside Afghanistan and Cambodia.
40“The dragon of death who had to be slain”, an account by Fred Bridgland of Savimbi and the murder of one of Savimbi’s closest associates, Pedro “Tito” Chingunji, and Chingunji’s family:
With Savimbi that day was a tall, slim 19-year-old guerrilla with soft, intelligent eyes, wearing a beret set at a jaunty angle. Pedro “Tito” Chingunji was to become my closest African friend; in due course, Savimbi would execute him and his entire family, including his one-year-old twins.
Later:
Then Tito asked me to fly to meet him in Washington on a matter of life or death. It was the most disturbing conversation I have ever had.
His mother, father, three brothers and a sister had been executed by Savimbi. His wife and children were being held hostage at Savimbi’s bush headquarters, Jamba, to ensure that Tito continued to perform diplomatic miracles in Washington.
The slaughter of his family was only part of the horror, said Tito. Savimbi had also ordered the public burning on bonfires of dissident women and their children.
On his next visit to Jamba, Tito was arrested and put on trial for trying to open a dialogue with the MPLA, for allegedly trying to overthrow Savimbi and for allegedly having had an affair with one of Savimbi’s many wives and concubines.
I never saw Tito again. We now know that he and his wife and children were executed shortly before Angola’s first election in 1992. Savimbi narrowly lost the election. With Tito and a whole range of other second-tier leaders he either executed or forced to flee, Savimbi might have won.
In Africa Watch’s 1992 survey, among a total of forty-five, six said that FAPLA [Forças Armadas Popular para a Libertação de Angola, the Angolan army] was to blame (including one soldier blown up by a mine his colleagues had planted earlier), twenty-seven said UNITA, and twelve said that they did not know. Many of the “don’t knows,” particularly the six who were interviewed in Luanda, may have been reluctant to mention FAPLA.
The 1990 ICRC survey came up with a similar result. Eighty-three blamed UNITA (73.5 percent), fourteen blamed FAPLA (12.4 percent), one blamed the Cubans (0.7 percent), and fifteen said that they did not know (13.3 percent).
The war was fought in a manner that reduced much of Angola’s population to a state of famine. There were no recognized front lines, and fighting raged backwards and forwards over large areas of the country. As a result, a very large proportion of the population was directly affected by the war, and an even larger number of people lived with the pervasive fear that fighting could come to their locality at any time. The widespread use of land mines, especially on roads and paths, was a crucial factor in creating famine. The threat of land mines prevented free movement of people and commerce, and proved a serious obstacle to relief efforts.
During 1990, serious food shortages threatened much of the country. According to estimates by the US Office of Foreign Disaster Assistance, up to 10,000 people died in the first four months of the year. In September, the United Nations estimated that about 1.9 million Angolans in nine central and southern provinces faced famine. About three quarters of those at risk were in areas made inaccessible for relief. About 1.2 million people were in the central Planalto of Huambo and Bíe provinces and the neighboring areas. This, the most fertile and densely populated part of Angola, was the center of UNITA’s war effort. UNITA aimed to destabilize the government by preventing it from exercising any form of authority in these provinces. This strategy, together with the shifting battle lines, meant that the delivery of relief to the Planalto by establishing tranquil zones or safe passage agreements would be possible only if UNITA dramatically revised its military strategy.
The United States government and Congress have been significant though inconsistent supporters of UNITA, and have provided financial and military support. At least seven types of US-manufactured mines are present in Angolan soil. Major Cox of the British army noted that “the mines laid by UNITA forces were mainly from the USA.” He did not, however, say who was the immediate supplier of mines to UNITA. His fellow British officer, Col. Griffiths also declined to characterize the US as a major direct supplier of mines. At this writing, the United States government has not accepted that it bears any responsibility for the large number of US-manufactured mines in Angola.
Whatever the case, Savimbi certainly showed his skill as a political chameleon. In 1988, several former UNITA members reported to the Portuguese newsweekly, Espresso, that UNITA’s political elite all followed the precepts of Savimbi’s Practical Guide for the Cadre, which was described as “a manual of dialectical materialism and Marxism-Leninism with a distinct trait of Stalinism and Maoism.” The UNITA dissidents claimed that the Guide was taught in a room filled with Lenin and Mao Tse-Tung busts, where the anthem of the Communist International was sung every day. These former UNITA members denounced as fraudulent Savimbi’s widely publicized pro-Western ideology and defense of democracy. They pointed out that there was a huge discrepancy between what UNITA claimed abroad as its objectives (i.e., negotiations with the MPLA, reconciliation, and coalition) and what the Guide taught. The Guide, said to be written by Savimbi, was considered a secret book accessible only to the political elite of UNITA.
US pressure brought the Angolan government to accept a peace agreement at Bicesse in 1991 that required both sides to disarm and demobilise before a UN-monitored election in 1992. Washington was confident that Savimbi would win the election. But in February 1992 his oldest associate, Antonio da Costa Fernandes, and another leading Unita cadre, Nzau Puna, defected, declaring publicly that Savimbi was not interested in a political contest, but was preparing another war. However, so strong were US ties to Savimbi that those warnings and others were disregarded.
He launched a catastrophic new war when he lost the election in late September, and came close to seizing power in the following months.
Jonas Savimbi, who has died aged 67, was, for 20 years, a figure as important in southern Africa as Nelson Mandela, and as negative a force as Mandela was positive.
For the past 10 years, using the proceeds of smuggled diamonds from eastern and central Angola, he fought an increasingly pointless and personal bush war against the elected government in which hundreds of thousands of peasants were killed, wounded, displaced, or starved to death.
Aihameselle Mingas beckons me inside his house. He wants to show me his new architect-designed kitchen, with its floor-to-ceiling fridge, and its architect-designed sitting room with its Italian furnishings. Each room has a plasma home-entertainment screen. “Come see the marble. It’s from Brazil,” he says.
I have seen conspicuous consumption in London, Moscow, New York, and Paris, but never a contrast such as this. Outside the high walls of Aihameselle’s house stand two dilapidated tower blocks. The holes in the road resemble lunar craters. Dozens of bored youths stand around, their eyes blank. And the stench. The shit is, literally, floating down the street.
Luanda was built for less than half a million folk. The war drove the population up to four million people, fleeing as the two sides – the communist government backed by the Soviet Union and Cuba, and the rebel UNITA forces supported by America and apartheid South Africa – fought out one of the most vicious conflicts of the Cold War. That is why you have such fast urbanisation. That is why everywhere you look, you see shanties, shacks in fetid and treeless slums that stretch for miles to the horizon. That is why the city suffers power cuts, why traffic doesn’t move and why sanitation has collapsed. When it rains, the polluted Bengo river overflows; the water merges with the garbage-strewn banks, producing yet another bout of cholera.
By night, people party – hard, until dawn. Then, before they return home (drivers have been sleeping in the car park), they gather for one last time to eat fish soup. A popular night-time venue for drink and watching bands play Kuduro music, is Miami. This is a younger, more local and hipper crowd, a far cry from the sad middle-aged men I see at another place down the road, accompanied by their catorzinagas, 14-year-old escorts.
For the rest, life consists of eking out a miserable existence, working on construction sites, if you are lucky, or hawking anything you can find. Life expectancy is 42. Angola has one of the highest infant mortality rates in the world. Three quarters of the population earn less than a dollar a day – the UN definition of absolute poverty. Some 50 per cent of people have no access to clean water; 24 percent of children under 14 are forced to work.
Michael Johns is a health care executive with extensive experience in leading medical device, medical supply, home health, pharmaceutical and specialty pharmaceutical revenue and market share growth. His industry expertise includes executive management, sales and marketing management, operational management and efficiencies, Medicare, Medicaid and private insurance contract and reimbursement management, investor and public relations, the development and implementation of organic and acquisition-oriented growth strategies and other industry functions.
As Divisional Head and Corporate Vice President for Electric Mobility Corporation, a global medical device company, Mr. Johns drove top-line sales from $3.8 million to $30 million, increased divisional profit contribution by 150 percent, and reduced Medicare, Medicaid, and managed care DSO by 75 percent. He launched a national clinical sales force of 200 from scratch and developed over 250 managed care contracts. Prior to this, he was Vice President and a member of the senior management team of Gentiva Health Services, the world’s largest home health care company.
Prior to beginning his health care management career in 1994, Mr. Johns was a White House speechwriter to the President of the United States, a senior aide to the Governor of New Jersey and a U.S. Senator, and a policy analyst and editor at one of the nation’s most influential public policy research institutes.
Electric Mobility has agreed to pay more $225,000 in fees and consumer redress after an investigation by the state of New Jersey. The company also agreed that it distributors will prominently state the conditions under which Medicare is likely to pay some or all of the purchase cost of a motorized wheelchair.
The company also agreed to clearly disclose the requirements for transporting the scooter in the consumer’s personal vehicle, including the need to disassemble the device or to use a ramp or other accessory that must be purchased separately.
Mr. James R Hood
Editor in Chief & President
Consumer Affairs.Com
400 N Capitol St., NW Suite G-50
Washington, DC 20001
Dear Mr. Hood,
Once again, I have viewed, with great concern, the misinformation you have posted to your website concerning Electric Mobility Corporation. Electric Mobility was not fined $225,000 by the State of New Jersey as your website erroneously reports.
Electric Mobility entered into an Assurance of Voluntary Compliance with the State of New Jersey. By doing so, we believe that we have set the industry standard for ethical sales practices. It is also important to note that this was an amicable agreement and that Electric Mobility voluntarily cooperated and agreed to this Assurance of Voluntary Compliance. Furthermore, the agreement resolved and settled all issues in controversy without any findings of law or fact. Moreover, the agreement, executed by the Attorney General of the State of New Jersey and me, specifically acknowledges “Electric Mobility admitted no wrongdoing and the fact that Electric Mobility promises to act in specific ways or not to act in specific ways does not constitute an admission that Electric Mobility has acted any differently in the past. Indeed, Electric Mobility contends that it has always been in compliance with the laws and regulations of New Jersey.”
The majority of the provisos contained in the Agreement have been in place for many years. Medicare coverage criteria is a complicated issue—one that we have always addressed during our sales presentation. Whenever customers do not meet this criteria, we have had the customers execute an Advance Beneficiary Notice, as required by Medicare regulations. We have taken additional steps to change our documentation to assure that all Medicare beneficiaries now acknowledge, in writing, that they have received both the Medicare coverage criteria and the fee schedule amount applicable to their state of residence.
Electric Mobility paid the amount specified in the Agreement for “attorney fees, investigative costs and future consumer initiatives” and to establish an escrow fund. After resolution of any previous consumer concerns, the remaining balance of the escrow fund will be returned to the company. Nowhere in the agreement is the there any mention of “fines” as purported in your website.
We believe that we have always upheld high ethical standards in our industry. We voluntarily entered into this Agreement to assure our customers and all persons associated with the company are aware of the standards to which we are committed.
Van loads of Somalis being transported to #Ohio polls, instructed to vote straight Dem ticket: goo.gl/qiLVv— Michael Johns (@michaeljohns) October 27, 2012
In issue No. 602 of Captain America, “Two Americas, Part One,” the title hero and The Falcon, a black superhero from New York City, stumble upon a protest rally in Boise, Idaho. They see scores of protesters carrying signs that say “Stop the Socialists!” and “Tea Bag The Libs Before They Tea Bag YOU!”
Captain America says the protest appears to be an “anti-tax thing,” and The Falcon jokes that he likely would not be welcomed into the crowd of “angry white folks.”
Ed Brubaker, who wrote the story, told FoxNews.com he did not write the “Tea Bag The Libs Before They Tea Bag YOU!” sign shown in the edition, insisting that the words were added by someone in “lettering or production” just before being shipped to the printer. It will be changed in subsequent editions, he said.
“I don’t know who did it, probably someone who thought it was funny,” Brubaker wrote in an e-mail. “I didn’t think so, personally. That’s the sign being changed to something more generic for the trade reprint, because I and my editor were both shocked to see it.”
But the change may come too late to placate a chorus of critics who noticed the apparent jab at the Tea Party movement and who accused Marvel of making supervillains out of patriotic Americans.
Michael Johns, a board member of the Nationwide Tea Party Coalition, said he felt the “juvenile” dig will ultimately do more damage to Marvel’s brand than to the Tea Party movement. He also disputed the insinuation that the growing movement lacks diversity.
“The Tea Party movement has been very reflective of broad concerns of all Americans,” Johns said. “Membership is across ethnic, religious and even political lines.”
Johns accused Brubaker of “blame-shifting” and questioned why an apology or retraction hadn’t been issued as soon as the writer or Marvel executives noticed the politically charged signs.
Disturbingly, there is an emerging consensus among the Democrat-led United States Congressional leadership that the war in Iraq is “lost.” The most recent example that this thesis has worked its way into official party talking points was offered by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, the Nevada Democrat, who pointedly stated last month that “…this war is lost and the surge is not accomplishing anything….”
Setting the obvious contrarian politics aside, could there be a more defeatist, demoralizing and undermining statement at this time?
Clearly, one hopes that is not a message Congressional Democrats want to be sending al-Qaeda and America’s enemies in the region at this juncture, and I think it would be unfair to assign any member of Congress such malicious motives. But it’s already becoming very clear that driving the Republicans from the White House will first mean ensuring no 2008 Republican candidate can run on the coattails of a Bush-led victory in that nation. Putting politics ahead of national security, this nation’s Democratic leadership knows all too well what the prolonged nature of the Iraq War has done to President Bush’s national popularity. It has set the table for the Democrats to reclaim the Presidency in a mere 20 months.
If it is not politics that is driving the Democratic inclination to label the Iraq War “lost,” then Senator Reid’s course of action should be clear: He owes this nation, its deployed troops and their families an apology because this conflict has been anything but “lost.”
This demand for an apology from Reid for calling the Iraq war “lost” is especially interesting given the veneration Johns has for William F. Buckley. From “Buckley Says Bush Will Be Judged on Iraq War, Now a `Failure’”, by Heidi Przybyla and Judy Woodruff, a year before Johns made his demand:
William F. Buckley Jr., the longtime conservative writer and leader, said George W. Bush’s presidency will be judged entirely by the outcome of a war in Iraq that is now a failure.
“Mr. Bush is in the hands of a fortune that will be unremitting on the point of Iraq,” Buckley said in an interview that will air on Bloomberg Television this weekend. “If he’d invented the Bill of Rights it wouldn’t get him out of his jam.”
Lusaka – Zambia has apologised to neighbouring Angola over the Frederick Chiluba-led Government’s support to late rebel leader Jonas Savimbi, President Michael Sata confirmed today.
Savimbi, who waged an almost three-decade-long civil war against President José Eduardo dos Santos’ regime, died in combat aged 68 in 2002.
Speaking at State House in Lusaka when he received credentials from Angola’s new Ambassador to Zambia Balbina Malheiros Dias Da Silva on Wednesday, President Sata said he had sent Zambia’s founding father, Dr Kenneth Kaunda, to apologise to President José Eduardo and Angolans.
President Sata, a long-time ally of the late Chiluba – Zambia’s president between 1991 and 2001 – and key leader of the then ruling Movement for Multiparty Democracy (MMD), said the MMD was “very treacherous” during Angolan Government’s battle against Savimbi.
“I apologise on behalf of Zambia that what our colleagues in MMD did was fraudulent, was greed,” said President Sata, 74, who is less than one month old in power.
“As I am talking, our first president Dr Kenneth Kaunda is in Angola. I sent him as my envoy to go and personally apologise to the President.”
53 This editorial, along with much National Review archive material has been pulled by the magazine from the internet. I am deeply grateful to Bradford DeLong who preserved a copy in his post “From National Review’s Archives”, and I re-paste it here.
National Review editorial, 8/24/1957, 4:7, pp. 148-9: The most important event of the past three weeks was the remarkable and unexpected vote by the Senate to guarantee to defendants in a criminal contempt action the privilege of a jury trial. That vote does not necessarily affirm a citizen’s intrinsic rights: trial by jury in contempt actions, civil or criminal, is not an American birthright, and it cannot, therefore, be maintained that the Senate’s vote upheld, pure and simple, the Common Law.
What the Senate did was to leave undisturbed the mechanism that spans the abstractions by which a society is guided and the actual, sublunary requirements of the individual community. In that sense, the vote was a conservative victory. For the effect of it is–and let us speak about it bluntly–to permit a jury to modify or waive the law in such circumstances as, in the judgment of the jury, require so grave an interposition between the law and its violator.
What kind of circumstances do we speak about? Again, let us speak frankly. The South does not want to deprive the Negro of a vote for the sake of depriving him of the vote. Political scientists assert that minorities do not vote as a unit. Women do not vote as a bloc, they contend; nor do Jews, or Catholics, or laborers, or nudists–nor do Negroes; nor will the enfranchised Negroes of the South.
If that is true, the South will not hinder the Negro from voting–why should it, if the Negro vote, like the women’s, merely swells the volume, but does not affect the ratio, of the vote? In some parts of the South, the White community merely intends to prevail on any issue on which there is corporate disagreement between Negro and White. The White community will take whatever measures are necessary to make certain that it has its way.
What are the issues? Is school integration one? The NAACP and others insist that the Negroes as a unit want integrated schools. Others disagree, contending that most Negroes approve the social separation of the races. What if the NAACP is correct, and the matter comes to a vote in a community in which Negroes predominate? The Negroes would, according to democratic processes, win the election; but that is the kind of situation the White community will not permit. The White community will not count the marginal Negro vote. The man who didn’t count it will be hauled up before a jury, he will plead not guilty, and the jury, upon deliberation, will find him not guilty. A federal judge, in a similar situation, might find the defendant guilty, a judgment which would affirm the law and conform with the relevant political abstractions, but whose consequences might be violent and anarchistic.
The central question that emerges–and it is not a parliamentary question or a question that is answered by merely consulting a catalog of the rights of American citizens, born Equal–is whether the White community in the South is entitled to take such measures as are necessary to prevail, politically and culturally, in areas in which it does not predominate numerically? The sobering answer is Yes–the White community is so entitled because, for the time being, it is the advanced ace. It is not easy, and it is unpleasant, to adduce statistics evidencing the median cultural superiority of White over Negro: but it is fact that obtrudes, one that cannot be hidden by ever-so-busy egalitarians and anthropologists. The question, as far as the White community is concerned, is whether the claims of civilization supersede those of universal suffrage. The British believe they do, and acted accordingly, in Kenya, where the choice was dramatically one between civilization and barbarism, and elsewhere; the South, where the conflict is by no means dramatic, as in Kenya, nevertheless perceives important qualitative differences between its culture and the Negroes’, and intends to assert its own.
National Review believes that the South’s premises are correct. If the majority wills what is socially atavistic, then to thwart the majority may be, though undemocratic, enlightened. It is more important for any community, anywhere in the world, to affirm and live by civilized standards, than to bow to the demands of the numerical majority. Sometimes it becomes impossible to assert the will of a minority, in which case it must give way, and the society will regress; sometimes the numberical minority cannot prevail except by violence: then it must determine whether the prevalence of its will is worth the terrible price of violence.
The axiom on which many of the arguments supporting the original version of the Civil Rights bill were based was Universal Suffrage. Everyone in America is entitled to the vote, period. No right is prior to that, no obligation subordinate to it; from this premise all else proceeds.
That, of course, is demagogy. Twenty-year-olds do not generally have the vote, and it is not seriously argued that the difference between 20 and 21-year-olds is the difference between slavery and freedom. The residents of the District of Columbia do not vote: and the population of D.C. increases by geometric proportion. Millions who have the vote do not care to exercise it; millions who have it do not know how to exercise it and do not care to learn. The great majority of the Negroes of the South who do not vote do not care to vote, and would not know for what to vote if they could. Overwhelming numbers of White people in the South do not vote. Universal suffrage is not the beginning of wisdom or the beginning of freedom. Reasonable limitations upon the vote are not exclusively the recommendations of tyrants or oligarchists (was Jefferson either?). The problem in the South is not how to get the vote for the Negro, but how to equip the Negro–and a great many Whites–to cast an enlightened and responsible vote.
The South confronts one grave moral challenge. It must not exploit the fact of Negro backwardness to preserve the Negro as a servile class. It is tempting and convenient to block the progress of a minority whose services, as menials, are economically useful. Let the South never permit itself to do this. So long as it is merely asserting the right to impose superior mores for whatever period it takes to effect a genuine cultural equality between the races, and so long as it does so by humane and charitable means, the South is in step with civilization, as is the Congress that permits it to function.
54 From Jacob Heilbrunn’s masterful “Apologists Without Remorse”, on the sorry history of conservative intellectual attitudes toward South Africa:
As [Chester] Crocker [undersecretary of state] told a South African reporter in October 1980, “all Reagan knows about southern Africa is that he’s on the side of the whites.” “To what extent,” asked the March 14, 1986, National Review, “is the vast majority of South African blacks intellectually and practically prepared to assume the social, economic, and political leadership in a highly industrialized country?”
Because the likelihood of any individual’s vote mattering is infinitesimal and because the effort required to be an informed voter can be substantial, ignorance and abstention are rational, unless voting is cathartic or otherwise satisfying. A small voting requirement such as registration, which calls for the individual voter’s initiative, acts to filter potential voters with the weakest motivations. They are apt to invest minimal effort in civic competence. As indifferent or reluctant voters are nagged to the polls – or someday prodded there by a monetary penalty for nonvoting – the caliber of the electorate must decline.
59 As this is a slightly controversial quote, I upload scans of the article portion where it’s featured, so there won’t be doubts as to its veracity. The anecdote begins on page 73 and continues on to page 74; I thought it was a distraction to mention in the main piece the insight of one of the Review editors that, “under a real government, Bishop Tutu would be a cake of soap.”
(occasionally, some supporting text and links are in footnotes)
While reporters have given their utmost attention to anecdotal points and gaffes of political candidates, Maureen Otis has passed invisibly among great events, given no notice, a figure of almost no possible consequence; she is something like an attractive woman whose face blends into the crowd, of small notice in a photo taken on the cusp of some national tragedy, except: she slowly develops an eerie presence as you flick through other pictures of historical significance, and there she is, always off to the side, in every one of them.
I enjoy looking out for interesting people on the fringes, yet it was only after I read the excellent “The Gary Johnson Swindle and the Degradation of Third Party Politics” by Marc Ames that I came across her name. Ames isn’t dazzled by this idiosyncratic candidate as others have been, bur disgusted instead at what he sees as a very dirty, nasty trick by a few powerful men. He notices something that the roving herd which must invest every Mitt Romney “golly” with existential significance doesn’t have time for: the filing papers for this clean hands third party candidate’s PAC, “Our American Initiative”, are signed by two long time conservative operators, James Lacy and the near invisible woman, Maureen Otis.
(the Our American Initiative registration documents can be found here; I’ve also uploaded them to sendspace)
Before we move entirely to Otis, a short note on Lacy will indicate why Ames was so disturbed at seeing his name on the filing document, as well as hinting at Otis’s own skills. Lacy specializes in direct mail, often employing mailers that are deceptive, cajoling seniors that some unrelated new proposition will cause medicare cuts, or say, convincing liberals to vote against a minimum wage law by sending out a flier that has a panel of prominent democrats with the directive to vote against the new law1. The politicians whose likenesses are used, are all in support of the law, and have no knowledge of the fliers.
Otis shares some of the skill set of Lacy, but where Lacy is a contained virus, Otis is closer to a wide-ranging avian flu. She runs a firm in Stafford, Texas, called American Caging and the name may or may not have a malign connotation. Caging, in this possible sense, came to broader attention when Monica Goodling, former justice department counsel, testified that the deputy attorney general had not been fully honest about his knowledge of an appointee’s involvement with “vote caging” in the 2004 election. “What the heck is vote caging, and why does nobody care?”, asked Dalia Lithwick in Slate. She then gave a succinct, solid answer:
Vote caging is an illegal trick to suppress minority voters (who tend to vote Democrat) by getting them knocked off the voter rolls if they fail to answer registered mail sent to homes they aren’t living at (because they are, say, at college or at war).
The appointee, Tim Phillips, would pointedly disagree, in a short piece by Jane Mayer, “Bullets”:
“Caging is not a derogatory term,” he [Tim Phillips, the appointee in question] said, as soon as he got on the phone.”It’s a direct-mail term. It derives from caging categories of mail in steel shelves and files.” He said that the implication that he had run an operation to suppress African-American voters, which could be a violation of the 1965 Voting Rights Act, was “false and close to libelous.”
By contrast, the description that American Caging gives of its activities on its website leaves one puzzled. They appear to be involved in noble, charitable work for the betterment of those in urgent need, that has nothing to do with direct mail, with or without voter suppression, or elections at all:
Headquartered in Houston, Texas, American Caging is one of the leading providers of lockbox and data management services, founded in 1990. Since the company’s foundation, it has maintained its core focus for accurate, trustworthy and affordable lock box services.
Our first clients hired us, not because we were located in Washington, D.C. or because we had expensive processing equipment. They came to us because of the high level of customer service, our affordable pricing and because they trusted us to accurately process their contributions.
Over the years our company grew and expanded primarily because of referrals from existing clients who were part of the ACI family. In early 2001, the national headquarters of the American Red Cross joined ACI’s family. After the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001, ACI processed hundreds of thousands of contributions from around the world to the American Red Cross. In 11 years, we went from a very small operation with a handful of clients, to the caging company primarily responsible for handling contributions during one of our worst national tragedies. We are proud and honored to be a part of the effort to heal the nation.
(Because occasionally these things disappear on the internet, I’ve put up a screenshot of this web page.)
This description is a mild evasion of what American Caging has done for a decade and a half, and for what it is well known for. It handles fundraising and related direct mail projects for two types of non-profits, standard benevolent entities as well as hard-line religious and conservative organizations. There is, of course, a tricky game being played here – many of these entities appear to be lobbying groups set up for the interests of a particular group, when in fact they’ve been designed for issue advocacy. Of the many possible examples of this is the “60 Plus Association”, whose name implies an advocacy group founded by seniors for the interests of seniors. They are nothing of the kind – they receive a large chunk of their money from pharmaceutical companies, as well as the Center to Protect Patients Rights, an anti-Obamacare non-profit run by Sean Noble, an associate of the Koch brothers2. Other donors include the American Petroleum Institute and Karl Rove’s Crossroads GPS3. This group, whose name suggests it lobbies for the interests of seniors, has fought against Obamacare, fought against the regulation of greenhouse gases, fought to have Yucca mountain used as a storage site for nuclear waste, and demanded, in the wake of the Katrina disaster, not to sacrifice lower taxes in favor of disaster relief, but rather, to rely on market solutions to help Katrina victims4. Most strikingly, ersatz seniors advocacy groups such as these, fought against legislation to reduce drug prices5. Beyond the gains of misleading voters of their true intents, another advantage to a non-profit lobbying for political causes that is not an explicit political advocacy group is that it does not have to disclose its donors – these are 501(c)(4) entities, the dark money that’s shaped recent elections: “How Nonprofits Spend Millions on Elections and Call it Public Welfare”.
The “60 Plus Association” lists Maureen E. (the E is for Elizabeth6) Otis as a legal contact, but it is one of only many that do so. To give an idea of her prolific skills, I list all the non-profits, which can be divided between benevolent organizations (the most prestigious of which is easily the Mayo Clinic) and political advocacy groups, that have her as a legal contact from a 2006 charity list from the secretary of state’s office of Tennessee. Another list of non-profits which heavily features Otis as legal contact is at the State of New Hampshire’s Justice Department – there is heavy overlap between the two lists, though some groups are on one and not the other; the list below should not be considered exhaustive of all groups with an Otis association, but it serves the purpose of showing how wide-ranging her reach is.
?
We may find her as the legal contact for cancer charity Cancer Schmancer (affiliated with Fran Drescher)7, Dress For Success (affiliated with make-up artist Bobbi Brown)8, the troubled project of the National Women’s History Museum9, a PAC supporting Texas republican Louis Gohmert10, as well as conservative powerhouses The Club for Growth11, and The Richard Norman Company12. She is the legal contact for Jewish Voice Ministries International, whose stated purpose is “bringing the Gospel to the Jew first”13, the Corrie Ten Boom Fellowship, a christian zionist organization whose purpose is to share god’s love with the jewish people14, and Policy Issues Institute, also known as Impeach Obama Campaign, which also lists James Lacy’s law office as its address15. Otis is the legal contact for the Christian Research Institute, a religious advocacy group that views the church of latter-day saints and the jehovah’s witnesses as non-christian cults16. Otis’s name is there as contact for the National Vaccine Center, a controversial group that fights against early childhood vaccinations17. She’s also there for Californians for Population Stabilization, a group opposed to legal immigrants18. She isn’t listed as the legal contact for The Society For Truth and Justice Inc. – there the contact is infamous pro-lifer Randall Terry – but the mailing address is once again, “4850 Wright Road, Ste 168 Stafford, TX 77477″, the address of American Caging and the one she often uses when she’s the legal contact; the very same place that shows up as the address listing for the pro-republican Patriot PAC19. She is the legal contact for the Declaration Alliance (also known as Secure Borders), a part of whose website manifesto I quote here:
Whereas the United States of America is under relentless attack by foreign invaders who neither obey our laws nor honor our institutions; and
Whereas this foreign force now numbers up to 20 to 30 million people within the geographic boundaries of the United States; and
Whereas these invaders are bankrupting the United States by overwhelming our medical, educational, and judicial systems; and
Whereas the foreigners sneaking into the United States have no plans to assimilate and become Americans, but instead desire to see the southwestern states transformed into Spanish-speaking provinces of Mexico; and
Whereas members of radical Islamic terror groups (classified by US Border Patrol as “OTMs or Other Than Mexicans”) continue to execute a plan of infiltration of the United States mainland through incursions along the border with Mexico, for the purpose of establishing terror cells and training operations within our homeland;
Therefore, let it be resolved that we, the people of the United States, citizens by birth or naturalization, do hereby DEMAND that the Congress of the United States immediately secure our border with Mexico, enforce current laws by arresting and deporting all criminal illegal aliens, and block all attempts to pass any type of amnesty legislation.
(Because occasionally these things disappear on the internet, I’ve put up screenshot of this web page.)
Of more relevant note for this post, as well as for the recent election, is that she is the legal contact for True The Vote20, an anti-fraud vote group with Tea Party links, which was accused of harassment during the presidential election, and whose members were rejected as poll watchers in Ohio because names had been falsified on forms requesting observer status21. Those who attended a True the Vote training session spoke of being told to use cameras to intimidate voters and to do what was possible to prevent “questionable” voters from getting access to voting machines22. This may not fit the strict definition of “caging”, voter suppression through mail, but I think it unquestionably can be called voter suppression.
The place where Otis’s first achieves a mainstream prominence is not through her association with organizations clashing with those on the left, but those fighting amongst themselves on the right. In 2005, an anti-immigrant organization, the Minuteman Project, suffered a violent rupture when its two founders, Chris Simcox and Jim Gilchrist, fell into dispute with each other, with Gilchrist, along with many of his followers, leaving the group23. A major point of contention was what had happened to money raised by its members for construction of a private border fence that was intended to replicate that used by Israel against Gaza, with a six foot trench and bullet-proof cameras, but ended up being just a barbed-wire cattle fence, fencing that costs a hundredth of the projected high-tech barrier24. Gilchrist and others demanded to know what had happened to the donated funds, with Simcox refusing to give answers, dismissing those who continued to question him, and assuring critics that the funds were safely being taken care of by a reputable company, a reputable company called American Caging25.
Otis released a statement, making clear that “since the day MCDC [Minuteman Civil Defense Corps, the new name for the Minuteman Project after Gilchrist left] was incorporated, my company has acted as the comptroller and escrow agent for MCDC.”26 When the arch-conservative Washington Times did a story on the brouhaha, Otis could not divulge any figures to the paper, as she had not been given permission to do so by Simcox or members of the board27. That she handled donations for the group only hinted at the various ways she was interconnected with the story. She was the MCDC’s board secretary28; she was the legal contact for the aforementioned Declaration Alliance, which sometimes appears to be an arm of the former presidential campaign of Alan Keyes, and not only did the Declaration Alliance give substantial funding to the MCDC, but the MCDC’s website claimed that it was a project of the Declaration Alliance29; following Gilchrist’s departure, the MCDC contracted with Diener Consulting for public relations work – Diener Consulting was an American Caging client, run by Philip Sheldon, son of Louis Sheldon, founder of the Traditional Values Coalition (listed by the Southern Poverty Law Center as a hate group), for whom Otis was listed as legal contact30; Philip Sheldon was previously known for obtaining the names of donors to Terry Schiavo’s legal fund for the use of Response Unlimited, which provides mailing lists to conservative organizations. He now helped this same Response Unlimited obtain access to MCDC’s donor rolls for its own mailing list purposes31; Response Unlimited was, of course, an American Caging client32. This company, American Caging, was involved in all this at the same time the Texas state comptroller had listed them as “not in good standing” because of their non-compliance with state tax requirements33.
This tumult in 2006 is where Otis achieves her greatest personal prominence34, but she had already shown up, in a very brief cameo, at a much more important debate. The year before, when the Bush administration was attempting to push forward a program of social security privatization, private retirement accounts as a replacement for traditional social security. Given that a major opponent of the privatization move was the AARP, a lobby composed of seniors acting in the interests of seniors, a useful opponent to the AARP might be a lobby ostensibly designed to serve the interests of seniors, when in fact it was actually funded by interests attempting to craft their own legislation, in prescription drug laws and pension reform. We might imagine this entity to be something like the United Seniors Association, also known as USA Next, also known as Americans Lobbying Against Rationing of Medical Care (ALARM), USA, chaired by Charles Jarvis, a former aide to Iowa Republican Charles “Assume Deer Dead” Grassley and a former employee of James Dobson’s Focus on the Family35. Though incorporated in 1991 by Richard Viguerie, a conservative with a genius for direct mail, it was in that last decade of the twentieth century something ike a creature that barely moved above the ocean’s surface36. One of the few times that I’ve been able to come across its presence then was when Pete Stark, California congressman, submitted mail from the group to the federal postal inspector, arguing that the non-profit was committing mail fraud:
I wish to report a postal fraud by United Seniors Association, 3900 Jermantown Road, Suite 450, Fairfax, VA 22030 and urge your immediate action to impose appropriate penalties.
Enclosed are two mailings from the United Seniors Association (USA) urgently asking for money on the basis of false pretenses and representations. The USA letter contains innumerable inaccuracies and errors of fact. It is so blatantly wrong that it cannot be a simple act of stupidity, but is a calculated scheme to frighten Medicare beneficiaries out of money. In particular, in the letter of September 22, 1997, the paragraph on the first page which reads `Here’s what this appalling new law does: if you are a Medicare patient and you want to personally pay for a treatment which Medicare does not want to cover–it will be nearly impossible to do so. . ..’
This statement, repeated in numerous ways throughout the mailings, is false.
Medicare beneficiaries have always been able to contract privately with doctors for services which Medicare does not cover. Nothing in any law has changed that right. Under certain conditions, the new law actually extends that `right’ to services which Medicare does cover–a new right to be billed more than the Medicare payment rate by physicians, which did not exist before. See enclosed memoranda.
I also urge you to investigate for fraud the enclosed recent Seniors Coalition [yes, indeedy: Otis is listed as legal contact for this group] mailing (11166 Main Street, Suite 302, Fairfax, VA 22030). This mailing calls for `an emergency contribution’ to help fund a lawsuit on the private contracting issue. The cover letter is rather extraordinary in that it asks people to send money to help fight something for which the writer has `no time to explain.’ The statements in the letter over Mary Martin’s signature is false: `your health care will be rationed in a Clinton HMO.’ The enclosed news articles contain numerous errors and misrepresentations. I believe that this mailing may also be a mail fraud because it uses false statements in the cover letter and inaccurate or incomplete statements in the news articles to scare people into sending money to support plans for a lawsuit. I know of no such lawsuit or any grounds for it, and I ask your investigators to determine whether there is in fact such a planned use of the money bilked from the public.
It was in 2001 as prescription drug legislation was being crafted, that this organization achieved a higher profile. It received $1.5 million in donations that year from PhRMA, a trade association for U.S. drug companies, then received close to $25 million over the next two years from a group that can only be guessed at – because USA Next is a non-profit, ostensibly non-partisan organization, it does not have to disclose its donors, and it must be gleaned from what’s there in the IRS filings. The donor does begin with the letter “P”; its spokesman would neither confirm nor deny that the donor was PhRMA37. A 2004 article noted that though USA Next claimed a million members, its most recent tax return claimed zero income from individual member donations38.
In 2002, this organization spent over $14 million in ads defending republicans on how they voted on a prescription drug bill39. In 2005, they picked a fight with the AARP, which was opposed to the privatization of social security. “I’m trying to kill, destroy the bad public policy of AARP,” said Jarvis at the time40. It was this fight that gave the group greater prominence, causing Josh Marshall, of Talking Points Memo, to note that United Seniors Association was “affiliates” with O’Neill Marketing Company. It must be a very tight affiliation, Marshall noted, since USA Next listed as its address 3900 Jermantown Road, Suite 450, while O’Neill listed its address as 3900 Jermantown Road, Suite 450A41. Marshall then gave this succinct observation:
Despite my now living in New York I sometimes still feel the need to translate from Beltwayese into standard English. So in this case, in DC-speak we would say that United Seniors Association is ‘colocated’ with O’Neill Marketing Company whereas in standard English we would say that United Seniors Association ‘is’ O’Neill Marketing Company.
Other O’Neill clients were: Empower America/Citizens for Sound Economy, the National Republican Congressional Committee, the Republican Governors Association, and the Republican National Committee.
Jarvis, again at the time: “I’m very aggressively pro-free-market solutions.” He would continue: “I am very aggressively finding people who agreed with our rock `n’ roll free-market approach.”42 Part of Jarvis’s rock’n'roll approach was to try and use the cultural wars agains the AARP – they, USA Next, were for mainstream values. The AARP was not. This was the controversial ad they put out to make the difference clear, exposing the real agenda of the long-time seniors association. It caused an immediate and hostile backlash, not towards the AARP, but the craven opportunists who had created it:
USA Next was sued by the couple featured in the photo43. Jarvis, his rock’n'roll lifestyle undeterred, had no regrets about using the photo except for not obtaining permission first44. It was the Scaramouche Blog entry, “Agenda Makers & The Real Agenda” which noticed another important detail. I apologize for the melodramatic bold, but I think this warrants it:
So who is behind USA Next? According to a Whois search the site is registered to
William Brindley
3900 Jermantown Road, suite 450
Fairfax, VA 22030
tel. (703)359-6500
So who else shares that address with them? There is United Seniors Association, Inc. or USA, Inc, which morphed into USA Next. I ran another search on the phone number. Again, there is United Seniors Association, Inc. (USA, Inc.), also known, as ALARM -Americans Lobbying Against Rationing of Medical Care, USA (notice the lovely choice of acronyms) and I saw there is also Maureen E. Otis sharing the same address.
Now if you had had thriving business in registering fundraising groups in, lets say, the State of Washington you would most likely have a mention of that on your website. I can only speculate on why one would play that down unless various connections weren’t meant to be known. Otis is tied to The Richard Norman Company also which has carried on some fundraising activities for USA/USA Next Inc. and funneled quite sum of money [sic] to the Swifties.
The links, in this ever-changing web, no longer point to the same thing – Jarvis is now contact person for USA Next. Otis now always uses the Stafford, Texas address, not one in Virginia. What her previous ties to the Richard Norman Company were, I’m not sure. However, she is still named as the legal contact for this entity, which is listed as a commercial fundraiser. What charities have used the services of this fundraiser? The Alliance for Marriage, the Alliance for Marriage Foundation, Californians for Population Stabilization, the Club For Growth, the Declaration Alliance, the Monepelier Foundation, and True the Vote – all with, of course, I-think-you-can-guess as their legal contact.
There are no doubt many other points in recent history when Otis shows up – but I move forward to her next interesting moment that I came across in my brief investigation. In 2011, the National Organization of Women found itself envelopped in civil strife, with the traditionally liberal group taken over by a conservative national leadership, its state chapters in open revolt.
Angie King, the San Luis Obispo chapter co-ordinator for NOW, sent out an open letter on this last year. I quote the opening paragraphs, which give succinct summary of what was taking place45:
Since 2008, when the current national board of directors for the National Organization of Women was elected by only 8 votes, following a scorched earth campaign by the current officers, troubling news keeps leaking out of Washington, D.C., where national NOW has its headquarter offices. At first, the problem was that there was no news. The transparency of former administrations in keeping the grassroots membership informed of executive decisions ceased. Access to the board meetings was restricted. Dues rebates, the heart blood of the local chapters’ ability to maintain a presence, were cut off. Rumors circulated about illegal (or at least bylaw violative) financial accounting instituted by this national board.
Remember when Shelly Mandell introduced Sarah Palin in Los Angeles, calling herself “president of LA NOW” even though she had been forcibly dismissed some years earlier? Remember the Harpers (October 2010) article by Susan Faludi about the improper financial shenanigans at the national NOW level? Well, this is worse.
CA NOW has held numerous discussions among its members how to respond to the issues raised. In the beginning, we felt it better to continue the positive messages and actions we are known for, without airing our “dirty linen,” so to speak. With each revelation, however, came the realization that we can’t continue to maintain that silence when it comes to the underlying reason we belong to NOW.
The perception by state level organizations of NOW and many chapters (including our own) was that the national NOW had been subverted by a dedicated tight-knit group of anti-woman, probably anti-feminist, women committed to the goal of ruining the integrity of NOW in the public’s eye and thus, neutralizing all the years of advocacy on behalf of women and girls.
I now move to the letter where a certain figure shows up, again. I bold her appearance.
In June this year, CA NOW became the latest target for the cabal. There are many reasons why CA NOW has been targeted. We forced national NOW to acknowledge that Mandell was not president of LA NOW and to hold an election; we complained about the lack of dues rebates in a specially called meeting, which has caused the national organization to resume sending checks. Perhaps our defense of NOW alarmed the increasingly conservative national board, who sought to replace the long-standing infrastructure of CA NOW with a known right-wing anti-woman lobbyist, as the “official” contact in the state for NOW Foundation Inc.
First, CA NOW received a request from the executive vice president of National NOW in June requesting it agree to Maureen Otis as our state contact. National NOW had been unable to register in California due to a name conflict with CA NOW. Attached to the request was the letter from the Secretary of State rejecting the registration, addressed to the Law Office of Maureen E. Otis in Texas. We were confused because NOW has been registered in California for many years so this appeared to be a new registration, which didn’t make sense.
Obviously, CA NOW never gave permission to file for this new registration to do business in California because National NOW and the Foundation are already registered in the state. Despite already being registered, the California Secretary of State accepted the new filing with Maureen E. Otis’ name, contact information in Texas, and Melvin D. Green as the agent for process, with an address listed as 5466 Santa Monica Blvd. #106, Los Angeles, CA 90029. This National Organization for Women’s agent for service of process is a Dollar Discount Store. A people search fails to connect Melvin D. Green to the address above, and the only Melvin D. Green found in the Los Angeles area is deceased. A California Secretary of State website search shows Melvin D. Green’s name on a suspended corporation C0850195 filed and suspended in 1977 named NOW Incorporated with the same address sans the suite number. This search may explain where the name came from, but not why service for process for the National Organization for Women Foundation would be a Dollar Discount Store.
Since the letter from the Secretary of State to Maureen E. Otis in Texas was troubling to us, we began our research on Maureen E. Otis. What we discovered from a simple Google search on Maureen E. Otis is disturbing. We discovered that she is the acting secretary of Freedom Watch, a Minuteman group out of Texas as well as being legal counsel for the Franklin Center, both of which have ties to the Koch brothers. Maureen E. Otis operates her law office out of an organization she leads called “American Caging” where she has established charities for the Impeach Obama Foundation, Club for Growth, Alliance for Marriage Foundation, Border Fence Project, American Conservative Union Foundation, American Patriots for Conservative Action, Committee for Justice, Common Good, Leadership Institute, OUR America Initiative, the Minutemen Project and countless more right-wing organizations. Her own website (American Caging) lists such clients as the Declaration Alliance, Minuteman Civil Defense Corps, and the Traditional Values Coalition. The Declaration Alliance runs a petition on their website to disbar and impeach Supreme Court Justice Elena Kagan.
If that wasn’t bad enough, we were left speechless to discover that Maureen E. Otis also works for the Terry Family Trust whose purpose to is help Randall Terry, the founder of Operation Rescue, to recover from legal victories won by NOW and others.
I give a further lengthy quote from this letter as to what Ms. King thinks the motive behind the takeover strategy might be, and bold the most pertinent part:
As a side note, but related, a search on the Secretary of State’s website using NOW and National Organization for Women revealed that the conservative San Rafael law firm Nielsen Merksamer filed incorporation papers on June 20, 2011 for a “new” California NOW non-profit, with the purpose “to promote healthy public debate over the critical issues facing California, advance meaningful reform and hold public officials accountable.” Merksamer represents the American Legislative Exchange Council, an organization of primarily conservative members of state legislatures, and the Free Enterprise Coalition, a conservative organization. We take note of this new non-profit corporation using our brand because this occurred at or near the time that Otis was hired. Whether these are independent acts to corrupt the NOW brand or acts in concert is of no matter. The issue remains – the corruption of the NOW brand with right wing associations.
California NOW members, through California NOW, have no control over the National Organization or Women (NOW), the use of its trademark or the National Organization for Women Foundation and its trademark. That responsibility primarily resides with the National Organization or Women Board of Directors. It isn’t hard to see the advantage to the right wing if they can control the NOW logo. Our logo has become a trusted symbol of initiatives and candidates who support women. We must act decisively in order for that symbol to retain its meaning.
I digress briefly to an episode that does not involve Otis directly – a brief mention of a near successful attempt to do what was done with NOW, a takeover of a liberal organization in order to use its brand to advance a reactionary agenda. This would be the 2004 attempt to put into place an anti-immigrant leadership of the environmental group, the Sierra Club. It is described in these interview excerpts with J. Robert Cox, former Sierra Club president with the invaluable Southern Poverty Law Center Intelligence Report, “Former Sierra Club Director Discusses Hostile Takeover Attempt by Anti-Immigrant Activists “. I bold significant parts46:
INTELLIGENCE REPORT: What was your first personal contact with anti-immigration activists interested in the Sierra Club?
ROBBIE COX: When I was president of the Club for the first time. In 1996, volunteer leaders in the Club’s population program approached the board of directors to alert us that new members were coming into the Sierra Club wanting to push immigration as an issue. These leaders thought this was simply inappropriate for the Club, because we had no evidence that U.S. immigration was detrimental to the environment.
So we agreed that year to refine the existing policy by adopting a statement of neutrality on U.S. immigration.
COX: Once the board adopted the neutrality policy, it apparently motivated what we thought was simply a small group of Sierra Club members who began to object. The board held steadfast – we simply did not see the evidence. This group then initiated the ballot proposition process.
The Sierra Club is very open and democratic in its governing structure. It not only allows all its members, over 700,000 people, to elect its board of directors. It also allows members to put forward a ballot proposition, if they gather enough signatures, that can alter the Club’s existing policies.
So this group organized itself as SUSPS, or Sierrans for U.S. Population Stabilization, and began a petition drive to get their proposition on the ballot. This happened in 1997, and the election occurred in the spring of 1998.
IR: Do you know who the principals of SUSPS were then?
COX:One principal actor was Ben Zuckerman. Zuckerman had formerly been a director of an anti-immigration group called Diversity Alliance for a Sustainable America, which is a group whose name does not suggest its goal of restricting immigration into the U.S. Zuckerman was also an officer on the board of another group called Californians for Population Stabilization, or CAPS.
We frankly didn’t know some of the people working with him at the time. I think we underestimated how serious this was in 1998.
IR: In the next few years, anti-immigration candidates Ben Zuckerman and Paul Watson ran for the board – both of them unsuccessfully at first, but winning in the end. Did you realize then that the anti-immigration effort had not yet concluded?
COX: We weren’t aware at the time of an organized effort, either within the Sierra Club or stretching beyond it with some of the outside allies that we now know they have. But this began to change in the last two years.
In 2002, Zuckerman ran a second time and was elected. This time, he dramatically altered his ballot statement and began to speak of his concerns about the Club being more visible on college campuses and about funding for our conservation program.
He did mention population, too, but he never talked about immigration, as he had in his first campaign. He was elected that year.
IR: Since winning, has Zuckerman discussed immigration with the board?
COX: He has asked for time in many board sessions to make speeches to us about the importance of immigration, often citing non-environmental reasons to reverse our neutrality policy, most recently having to do with post-9/11 security concerns. He has also cited concerns about U.S. workers being displaced by immigrants.
At one point, we asked about the link between the environment and a story that he sent us about illegal crossings on the southern border. As far as I could see, the only documented environmental impact was that they were littering the desert with water bottles and trash – there was a photo of discarded bottles at a campsite.
Most recently, he sent to several of us on the board an article from VDARE.com that claimed that Hispanics were spreading disease and crime in the U.S., and that “Hispandering politicians” were allowing this to happen. I was quite upset by that.
IR: What happened after Zuckerman’s election in 2002?
COX:I think SUSPS realized they had a winning strategy.
The following year, 2003, they ran three more candidates, including Doug LaFollette, the Wisconsin secretary of state, and, once again, Paul Watson. They referred to many conservation issues and to population in general, but never mentioned immigration.
Two of them, LaFollette and Watson, were elected.
So by May of last year, we had begun to realize that we had an organized effort to put in place enough directors to take control of the board.
If Watson is to be believed, the intent is not only to seize control of the board, but also of the Club’s assets and credibility – the reputation of the Club itself.
IR: What ultimately is at stake here?
COX: I think the very identity and character of the Sierra Club is at stake if these outside forces succeed in taking it over. We will lose the historical values that have made the Club what it is – a grassroots-driven organization whose members care deeply about the protection of the wild places of the Earth, human health and the quality of the environment overall.
This takeover attempt would ultimately fail, with Sierra Club members alerted to what was going on, and the anti-immigrant candidates receiving only a fraction of the votes in the next election. The connection to Otis is indirect, but it is there: Ben Zuckerman, one of the principal actors in the takeover was an officer in the anti-immigrant group Californians for Population Stabilization, a group funded by anti-immigrant activist John Tanton, who also founded Federation for American Immigration Reform and U.S. English (FAIR), as well as being involved with the American Immigration Control Foundation (AICF) and California Coalition for Immigration Reform (CCIR)47. FAIR, AICF, and CCIR have all been designated as hate groups by the Southern Poverty Law Foundation. Californians for Population Stabilization, in which Zuckerman was an officer, has as its legal contact on its registration papers a Maureen E. Otis.
We now have the tactic of what was already done with non-profits, the 60 Plus Association or USA Next, these organizations outwardly appearing to be lobby groups for constituents, when they are in actual fact lobby groups for industry, taken to its next, logical step: grabbing an existing progressive brand, and transforming its function to one’s own ends. The brand persists, but its objectives are now those of whatever group conquers it.
This, I emphasize, is the next logical step – but not the final one. This piece ends where it begins, with my reading “The Gary Johnson Swindle and the Degradation of Third Party Politics” by Marc Ames: that article gives succinct, acerbic summary of the past works of Gary Johnson, Jim Lacy, and Maureen Otis – though because their focus is broader than mine, they do not quite give Otis the scope her story is due. One more character of crucial importance in “Swindle” I have made no mention of yet is Roger Stone, a former Nixon dirty trickster; I quote from a Matt Labash profile, “Roger Stone, Political Animal”, cited in “Swindle” of a trick he pulled during the 1980 presidential election to split the vote of New York state, delivering its electoral votes to Reagan:
Around the time [Stone] became northeast chairman of Reagan’s 1980 campaign, he had another awakening when he started working with the notorious lawyer Roy Cohn, former McCarthy henchman and also a Reagan supporter. “I’m still kind of a neophyte,” Stone admits, “still kind of thinking everything’s on the level. ‘Cause the truth is, nothing’s on the level.” At a 1979 meeting at Cohn’s Manhattan townhouse, he was introduced to major mobster and Cohn client Fat Tony Salerno. “Roy says to Tony, ‘You know, Tony, everything’s fixed. Everything can be handled.’ Tony says, ‘Roy, the Supreme Court’ Roy says, ‘Cost a few more dollars.’” Stone loved Cohn: “He didn’t give a s– what people thought, as long as he was able to wield power. He worked the gossip columnists in this city like an organ.”
Stone, who going back to his class elections in high school has been a proponent of recruiting patsy candidates to split the other guy’s support, remembers suggesting to Cohn that if they could figure out a way to make John Anderson the Liberal party nominee in New York, with Jimmy Carter picking up the Democratic nod, Reagan might win the state in a three-way race. “Roy says, ‘Let me look into it.’” Cohn then told him, “‘You need to go visit this lawyer’–a lawyer who shall remain nameless–’and see what his number is.’ I said, ‘Roy, I don’t understand.’ Roy says, ‘How much cash he wants, dumbf–.’” Stone balked when he found out the guy wanted $125,000 in cash to grease the skids, and Cohn wanted to know what the problem was. Stone told him he didn’t have $125,000, and Cohn said, “That’s not the problem. How does he want it?”
Cohn sent Stone on an errand a few days later. “There’s a suitcase,” Stone says. “I don’t look in the suitcase . . . I don’t even know what was in the suitcase . . . I take the suitcase to the law office. I drop it off. Two days later, they have a convention. Liberals decide they’re endorsing John Anderson for president. It’s a three-way race now in New York State. Reagan wins with 46 percent of the vote. I paid his law firm. Legal fees. I don’t know what he did for the money, but whatever it was, the Liberal party reached its right conclusion out of a matter of principle.”
I ask him how he feels about this in retrospect. He seems to feel pretty good–now that certain statutes of limitations are up. He cites one of Stone’s Rules, by way of Malcolm X, his “brother under the skin”: “By any means necessary.”
The details on Lacy, Otis, and Stone in “Swindle”, damning to the Johnson campaign in and of themselves, are there to put forward a thesis: that the Johnson campaign was intended to split votes just as the Anderson candidacy did, between a democrat and a libertarian, anti-security state, anti-drug war candidate, thus delivering the election to Mitt Romney. Though “Swindle” does not mention it, Stone was also involved in two earlier efforts to shape the vote through outsider candidates. In 2000, he worked to have Pat Buchannan made the head of the reform party, then made threats of revealing information on a possible out-of-wedlock child of Buchanan: whether the result of this or something else, Buchanan led a vapor campaign in the general election, leaving Bush without a third-party challenger on the right, while Gore had to give up some of his vote to Nader. In 2007, Stone would brag in an interview of helping to destroy the reform party, because, in his view, it had cost the republicans the white house in 1992 and 199648. In 2004, Stone backed Al Sharpton in the democratic primaries, with Sharpton pushing the message that the democratic party was unresponsive to the demands of black voters. The intent appears to have been to either dissuade black voters from voting that year, or maybe even move them over to vote for George W. Bush – both stories come from the diligent work of the Village Voice‘s Wayne Barrett, whose work on Sharpton and, especially, Stone, is invaluable, a reporter who exercises an aggressive insight this world can never have too much of49.
Here in the center of the Intermountain West, we have polls showing a nail-bitingly close race between the Democratic and Republican nominees for president. We have a chief election official, Secretary of State Scott Gessler, who has tried both to engage in mass voter purges and to block the mailing of ballots to eligible voters, all while openly saying a “good election” is one in which “Republicans win.” On the ballot, we also have a headline-grabbing ballot initiative about marijuana legalization and a popular former two-term governor of a neighboring state, Gary Johnson, running a Libertarian Party presidential candidacy.
The armchair pundits in Washington and New York typically write off these latter two factors as forces destined to aid the president’s reelection campaign. The conventional wisdom is rooted in oversimplified cartoons and caricatures of voter preferences. Essentially, the idea is that the marijuana measure will bring out liberal, Obama-loving hippies, yuppies and crunchies from Denver, Boulder and Fort Collins, while the libertarian candidate’s campaign will siphon conservative votes that would otherwise go to Mitt Romney, thus making Johnson the Republican “version of Ralph Nader,” as the New York Times predictably projects. But that kind of hackneyed red-versus-blue story line – so prevalent in the national media echo chamber – ignores how these forces are playing out on the ground.
This is particularly true considering the intersection of the pot initiative and the Johnson campaign. Despite the punditocracy’s narratives to the contrary, the former New Mexico governor has already been taking as much – or more – support away from Obama in Colorado as he has been from Romney, according to polls. And Johnson’s anti-Obama effect could become much more pronounced in the next few weeks, thanks to how his supporters are deftly leveraging all hoopla around the marijuana initiative to sharpen their candidate’s appeal and message to disaffected Democrats.
This message is not just word-of-mouth anymore; it has been elevated to the big leagues by a new voter outreach campaign. Indeed, a new automated telephone call focused on the pot measure and playing to liberal disappointment is right now hitting Democratic households in Colorado. Here’s what the message says (you can listen to the full audio below):
Hello fellow Democrat. Like you I was thrilled to vote for Barack Obama in 2008. In 2008, candidate Obama promised not to use the Justice Department to prosecute medical marijuana in states where it was legal. But the real Obama did just that, more than doubling prosecutions, putting people in prisons and shutting down medical marijuana facilities in Colorado. That’s not the change you wanted on health freedom. But you can still be a force for hope and change by voting for Gary Johnson.
Officially funded by the Libertas Institute50, the message is accurate in its factual broad strokes. Candidate Obama did explicitly promise to restrain the Justice Department from prosecuting medical marijuana offenses in medical marijuana states, and President Obama has nonetheless overseen an intense Justice Department crackdown on medical marijuana in those states, directly contradicting his pledge.
Sirota, however, is skeptical of any larger plan:
Is this a brilliant GOP conspiracy theory? In other words, is the libertarian candidate deliberately trying to help Romney, as Obama partisans will no doubt grouse? Almost certainly not, as Johnson is no fan of Romney, to say the least. He has run a consistently honest and principled campaign that has been equal – and equally harsh – in its criticism of both parties.
When I first read Ames’ piece I thought the most important revelation was the simple collection of very unsavoury characters this supposedly clean hands candidate had gathered round him. That there was some larger goal involved in the candidacy, I waved away. I am now, however, of a different mind.
I should preface the following by saying that I am not a conspiracy theorist: I believe that the evidence overwhelmingly supports the thesis that Oswald killed Kennedy. Shakespeare is not Marlowe or anyone else, but Shakespeare. The harmful propaganda surrounding the illuminati are insightfully discussed and utterly destroyed in Umberto Eco’s Six Walks in the Fictional Woods, Arthur Goldwag’s The New Hate, and Voodoo Histories by David Aaronovitch. I do not, however, think the third party thesis requires a terribly complex or all-encompassing conspiracy.
To address Sirota’s point, I don’t think that it necessary to dispute Johnson being at the same skeptical nexus as Nader, a man critical of both parties. I slightly dispute this idea – I do not remember Nader being as Janus-like as Johnson, who is both critical of america’s war machine and at the same argues for strike teams to Uganda, commits himself to something like continued drone warfare, and promises that if Iran were to test a nuclear warhead it would be wiped from the face of the earth51 – but I can concede this point without issue. I do not think that Mr. Sirota would contest the point that despite Nader’s bipartisan criticism, he ultimately had a far greater impact on votes cast to Gore than to Bush, that this asymmetry exists, despite Nader’s equal animus of both parties.
So, I think it can be agreed that in a tight election like 2012, a candidate equivalent to Nader would be very useful to someone who wanted Romney to win. The only issue then is whether the candidate must necessarily be a knowing participant, and I do not see why this is necessary at all. All that is required is that he take certain positions which will cause some to vote for him, rather than Obama, and we have a Romney victory. There is also, when invoking the word “conspiracy” the suggestion of a large group of people being involved, and I think this is equally unnecessary. All this tactic requires is the money needed to run a campaign, which is an extraordinarily small amount given what some billionaires were spending on anti-Obama ads, and a few people who might conceive a campaign and lightly design it52.
Who might implement such a campaign? A man who managed to get minimum wage legislation voted down because democrats could be made to misperceive that prominent democratic politicians were against it. A man who once placed a third party candidate on the ballot to win a liberal state for a republican president. A woman who has been involved in the creation of a seniors lobby which in actual fact lobbied for the interests of prescription medicine, receiving no donations from seniors. A woman who was involved in trying to take over California NOW, so that a progressive logo might be used to deceptively endorse anti-progressive, anti-liberal causes and candidates. Someone who is expert in achieving a political end by causing the voter to think that a group is for their interests, when this group is being manipulated so that this voter’s very interests are defeated. People speak of conspiracy, but why would a false front presidential candidate be any different from a false front lobby like the 60 Plus Association or USA Next? All it would require is a slightly vain candidate (and what presidential candidate is not slightly vain?) lacking the necessary funds for a run for office, which it would then receive from certain large donors – donors who might well appear to be supporting a libertarian candidate, but whose purpose was instead to elect Romney. This does not require the involvement of anyone else, the RNC, the supreme court, anybody – just a few political consultants and a chunk of money. What is so complicated about that? How is that any more difficult than the creation of USA Next or the takeover of a long-time feminist organization?
Two notable details might be mentioned in the final chapter of this story. The first are possible financial irregularities on the part of the Johnson campaign. The Johnson PAC, Our America Initiative, the one whose registration carries the names of Otis and Lacy, was suspended after it failed to file quarterly reports with the FEC listing its donors: “Johnson’s PAC suspended for financial reporting violation” by Peter St. Cyr. Given that it doesn’t show up on any FEC filings, or such sunlight sites as Open Secrets, this violation may have kept them from ever continuing in the general election. There is also the question raised in “Complaint filed with FEC questions Johnson campaign’s use of funds” by Maggie Haberman, for which I was unable to find any answer: who paid off Johnson’s primary debts, making it easier to run in the general election? However, the main focus of this piece is an FEC complaint filed by Addison Smith, arguing that Johnson’s monthly expenditure listings, which did not distinguish between expenditures for media, political advisers, and travel, violated FEC regulations53. A trouble-making email sent out that month raised a similar question, which tried to make the case that money was not being spent on media, but on advisers – that the campaign was a scheme to simply move money from donors to the consultants.
The major article that deals with this email, “Johnson Allies Reject Spending Charges” by Rosie Gray, makes clear that media buys were being made – though it also stresses that the campaign money seems to be going entirely to companies associated with campaign advisers. The article cites an expense for media which is the same mix of media buys, campaign travel, and, presumably, adviser pay, mentioned in the FEC complaint – all three mixed in a sum going to an entity labeled “Political Advisors”54. The Johnson post-election filing had $140K going for media, “FEC Disbursements by Purpose”, and almost twice as much,$277K, going to political advisers, “FEC Disbursements by Payee”. Both charges, the FEC complaint and the email, were dismissed by the campaign as political attacks – Addison Smith, who filed the FEC complaint, is a long-time republican, though without visible associations to the Romney campaign55. Roger Stone emphasized that he was working for the campaign on a volunteer, pro bono basis56. This may well be true; however, it should be stressed that Stone worked pro bono on Carl Paladino’s 2010 campaign for governor, a campaign whose expenses were ably dissected in “Carl Paladino: The Dirty Details in His Campaign Filings”, by Wayne Barrett, where he discovered huge sums being paid out to Stone associates Dianne Thorne and Michael Caputo, as well as payments associated with Stone from a previous lobbying effort57. He further cites the accounts given by Larry Klayman, the anti-gay hardline evangelical who ran for the Florida Senate with Stone as a consultant; Klayman says that Stone barely did any work and bled his campaign dry58. Caputo was not with Johnson, but Thorne was59. We may see here the possible mix of venality and practical purpose exploiting donors who think they are giving to the libertarian cause, when they are contributing to something entirely different, the salaries of sundry advisers, and not for the end purpose of furthering libertarian ideas, but to split the vote to obtain a republican victory. This might be seen as part of a larger tradition, brilliantly described by Rick Perlstein in “The Long Con: Mail-order conservatism”, with enthusiastic conservative donors gouged again and again, with only a fraction of the money sent to a conservative cause going to the cause itself, the healthy majority ending up in the grabby hands of consultants far richer than the donors will ever be. We might see this as well in the possible exploitation of the minutemen group, the money of the anti-immigrant faithful not going to any border fence, but to a clump of groups which all have one woman as their contact, the addresses of these generous zealots soon taken into their maw as well, for even more donations.
This, of course, returns us to our main character, and the other strange detail of this final part of the story. It comes from the twitter profile of Otis. She lists herself as owner of two businesses, one of which is American Caging. She lists, however, something else:
The blacked out portions, by the way, are family details only of relevance to Otis herself. If Ms. Otis ever reads this, and wonders why I took that step, it’s because of a concept unfamiliar to her, of having a conscience.
Back to the chase: in her profile, she says she’s the treasurer for Restore America’s Voice PAC. This is a PAC that worked exclusively against Obama. Why is someone who sponsors a third-party candidate, also treasurer of a PAC that works against only one of his opponents? This is leaving aside that many of the non-profit advocacy groups for which Otis is legal contact are entirely counter to libertarian ideas on immigration, whether it’s Californians for Population Stabilization, or the MCDC, for which she is not only legal contact, but on whose board she served. I ask these questions, wondering who is this mystery woman, and what is the mystery which surrounds her: was there an actual attempt this year to employ a third party stooge in order to elect a republican president? Here is a more mundane, rhetorical one: would anyone consider such behavior more outrageous than the voter intimidation of True the Vote, or the deceptions of USA Next?
I move towards a conclusion, with a piece on the “North Decoder” website from a year ago, “The Koch Brothers’ Slow Poisoning of America” by Chet (just like Nico, you get a pseudonymous four letters, and that’s it). The author of this piece writes passionately, despairingly, of the way press coverage of North Dakota is slowly being taken over by outside, well-funded conservative interests:
A story in the Grand Forks Herald originated with a Plains Daily blog post about the University of North Dakota using a UND Foundation aircraft to ferry people to and from Bismarck to (among other things) testify on issues relevant to the University. Plains Daily’s capitol beat “reporter” — the author of the UND plane story — is Kate Bommarito. Before becoming a fake “journalist,” Kate worked on Kevin Cramer’s 2010 Republican Party campaign for the U.S. House. She has been active in North Dakota Republican Party politics for quite a while. Her husband, I’m told, is Mike Bommarito, a former ND GOP executive director. When Kevin Cramer’s campaign for Congress was caught buying support of delegates to the GOP convention by paying convention fees a couple years ago, the Bommarito family name came up as the conduit for some of those payments.
He traces the source of the funds to an entity located in a small-town mini-mall:
One of the shops in the mini-mall is the Rushmore Mountain Taffy and Gift Shop. Like virtually every other retail store in town, the taffy shop closes when the Musical shuts down for the “Winter” right around Labor Day and will open back up again some time just before Memorial Day.
You wouldn’t know it by looking at the taffy shop from the outside — or inside, for that matter — but for several years now, it has been the legal home to “The Franklin Center for Government and Public Integrity,” a multi-million dollar right-wing non-profit set up for the sole purpose of facilitating indoctrination of Americans through the creative use of old-fashioned, right-wing misinformation and fake, slanted “news.”
The Franklin Center (FC) is a non-profit organization that uses a “post office box” in the United Parcel Service Store in Bismarck. The UPS Store provides a mail forwarding service to the folks at the Franklin Center. But the taffy shop, until very recently, was FC’s “official” mailing address. North Dakota law requires nonprofits to have a “physical address,” too, so citizens have a place to go if they want to ask for a copy of records nonprofits have to make available for public inspection, or to serve court papers on the organization.
Yes, dear reader, you know what comes next.
The Franklin Center was officially incorporated in North Dakota in January of 2009. The Secretary of State (SOS) 2009 filings list a Texas attorney’s address — actually a “caging” operation — as the organization’s mailing address and the local UPS Store mail-forwarding service PO Box as it’s physical address
The Texas lawyer/caging operation, coincidentally, also does legal work for “Club for Growth,” Alan Keyes’ “Declaration Foundation,” the CPAC sponsoring “Young Americas Foundation,” the “Minuteman” militia people, the “Traditional Values Coalition,” and a whole host of mostly far right-wing fringe organizations. It appears the lawyer — Maureen E. Otis — operates her law office out of an organization she leads called “American Caging.“
The Franklin Center raised about $3 million in its first year of operation, 2009.
You read that right.
For you headline-writing copy editors out there, here’s your headline:
“THREE MILLION DOLLARS raised by a little North Dakota non-profit based in a taffy shop in tiny town of Medora”
I conclude in this fashion, excerpts from a well-written piece by a pseudonymous writer ending in a picturesque taffy shop, to make clear a line of demarcation. It demonstrates that to control the news, all that is necessary is for the structures of journalism to decay and finally die, just as institutions that help the elderly, the vulnerable, and the worst off have been allowed to die. There have been two major profiles of Gary Johnson that I know of, which appeared in a prestige publication: “Pipe Dreamer” by Molly Ball and “The Zen of Gary Johnson”. Both are entirely light-weight, touching on none of the less sanguine details of Johnson’s political life or his campaign. To read about the seamy underbelly of political life, you would have to go to the fringes of the internet, the NSFW Corporation, the North Decoder website, or, I humbly submit, a post from an obscure blog that is something like this. I do not consider this media indifference some part of any larger conspiracy – it is simply a condition of mainstream journalism now that the most pressing questions are not asked. They leave it to others to shine a lantern on a nest of rats. And they consign themselves to irrelevance.
(Since publication, some edits have been made for aesthetic purposes; the section, with accompanying footnote, on Roger Stone’s involvement with the 2004 Al Sharpton campaign was added after initial posting; so was the footnote featuring a brief interview excerpt with Jim Gilchrist. The section on the takeover of the Sierra Club was added on January 3rd, 2013. On January 5th, the material on the strange financial details of Roger Stone’s past campaigns was added. The detail that Stone publicly admitted to destroying the reform party, and the video clip where he made the admission, were added on January 14th.)
Just before Election Day, [James] Lacy unleashed a series of slate mailings urging Santa Monica residents to vote for prominent Democrats who support liberal causes such as abortion rights and education. The same mailers also directed them to vote “NO on JJ,” a vote to kill the city’s living-wage ordinance.
Designed to lift minimum-wage workers out of poverty and reduce the burden on city social-welfare funds, JJ would have required downtown and coastal Santa Monica employers earning more than $5 million per year to pay employees $12.50 per hour, or $10.50 per hour plus health-care benefits. Although it led in polls up to Election Day, JJ lost by a tiny margin on Nov. 5.
The fact that registered Democrats in Santa Monica were flooded with thousands of misleading mailers in the last days of the race seems to be the best explanation for why that happened. One questionable mailer endorsed two prominent Democrats, Congressman Henry Waxman (D-Santa Monica) and Assemblywoman Fran Pavley (D-Woodland Hills). In massive bold type at the bottom of the page, the mailer states, “NO on JJ.”
While an asterisk next to those words informed voters that the mailer was paid for by an organization called Democratic Voters Ballot Guide, neither Waxman, Pavley nor the Democratic Party-all of whom publicly supported JJ-had anything to do with the mailer or the Democratic Voters Ballot Guide, which didn’t exist until a few weeks before the election. In fact, hotel owners paid for the mailer, and the so-called Democratic Voters Ballot Guide was just a front group consisting of a pair of career right-wing political consultants, including Lacy.
Lacy was also behind two other anti-Measure JJ mailers. One said, “Attention Pro-Choice Voters” and announced that “Santa Monica’s pro-choice leaders agree: no on Measure JJ.” A third bore the caption “Important Santa Monica Issues for Women, Our Young & Our Poor” and urged recipients to vote no on Measure JJ.
The Center to Protect Patient Rights (CPPR), the secretive Arizona dark money group tied to the movement of millions of dollars between political nonprofits, gave almost $15 million in 2011 to a number of groups that spent heavily on political ads in 2012, according to IRS documents obtained by the Center for Responsive Politics.
The CPPR, run by former congressional aide Sean Noble, spent $23.2 million in 2011, with $14.8 million given in grants to 19 other nonprofits. Bloomberg has previously reported that the CPPR contributed $55.4 million to other nonprofit political groups in 2009 and 2010.
Sean Noble, another top Koch operative, has been hired by Americans for Limited Government, another group that sources say received donations from Koch conference attendees for its efforts to attack Democrats during the 2010 midterm campaign.
60 Plus is well-known in Republican and conservative circles. And like other corporate-funded P.R. operations, it often takes on causes that you wouldn’t logically connect to their stated purpose. The 60 Plus Association, which again, bills itself as a seniors advocacy group, they took on a subject they want us to believe is near and dear to the hearts of seniors.
Back in 2003, it was the issue of nuclear waste, urging Congress to, quote, “move forward and approve the safe storage of nuclear fuel at Yucca Mountain.” Because seniors love nuclear waste being stored in Nevada. Old people love that.
In addition to lobbying, the drug industry spent more than $100 million in 1999 and 2000 to create a supposed grass-roots group called Citizens for Better Medicare. Led by PhRMA’s former marketing director, Tim Ryan, CBM flooded the airwaves with commercials accusing congressional Democrats of “playing politics” by backing legislation to reduce drug prices.
Also, the industry awarded unrestricted “educational grants” — declining to disclose the exact amounts — to two supportive groups, United Seniors and 60-Plus. In this election cycle, United Seniors has bought $12 million worth of ads, according to consultants working for the Democratic Party, while 60-Plus has spent $595,000 on radio ads in seven battleground congressional districts.
Mailing Address:
C/o Law Offices Of Maureen E. Otis, P.C.
4850 Wright Road, Suite 168
STAFFORD TX 77477
Street Address:
32 East 31st Street
7th Floor
New York NY 10016
Purpose Description
The mission of Dress for Success is to promote the economic independence of disadvantaged women by providing professional attire, a network of support and the career development tools to help women thrive in work and in life.
Mailing Address:
C/o Law Offices Of Maureen E. Otis, PC
4850 Wright Rd, Suite 168
STAFFORD TX 77477
Street Address:
10850 N 24th Ave
PHOENIX AZ 85029
Purpose Description
Jewish Voice Ministries International is dedicated to bringing the Gospel to the Jew first and also to the Gentile throughout the world. The Good News is proclaimed through television, radio and large scale Messianic Outreach Festivals. This is followed up by planting new and strengthening existing congregations to nurture and disciple new believers. We also partner with other ministries to establish and operate Messianic Bible Schools to train leadership for Jewish Ministries.
Christian Women of the Year
Jerusalem Prayer Team
Save Jerusalem
Mailing Address:
C/O Law Offices Of Maureen E. Otis, P.C.
4850 Wright Road, Suite 168
STAFFORD TX 77477
Street Address:
1527 W. State Hwy 114,
Suite 500
GRAPEVINE TX 76051
The founder of the Jerusalem Prayer team, Michael Evans, is a prominent christian zionist known for taking a hardline stance on middle east issues. From “How Israeli PM wooed, and lost, Christian dollars”, by Adam Entous and Ari Rabinovitch, in Reuters:
[Ehud] Olmert [former prime minister of Israel] was long a familiar speaker on the U.S. fundraising lunch and dinner circuit. Public records show that, for example, he attended a series of three meetings in churches organised by a group known as the Jerusalem Prayer Team, whose founder Mike Evans’s stated mission is “to protect the Jewish people … until Israel is secure and the redeemer comes to Zion”.
From 2002 to 2004, church fundraisers organised by the Jerusalem Prayer Team, including the one in Dallas, raised $239,300 for the New Jerusalem Foundation. NJF records say it spent its money on parks, charity meals and other programmes.
In January, Evans made clear his view of Annapolis [the Annapolis peace talks between Olmert and the palestinian leadership]: “I was completely outraged when I heard that Ehud Olmert, whom I have known for 26 years, stood next to President Bush and declared that he would work to fulfill the final status solution.
“This means the division of Jerusalem,” he wrote on his Web site. “I will do everything in my power to resist that.”
Street Address:
6295 Blakeney Park Drive
CHARLOTTE NC 28277-7007
A description of the Christian Research Institute can be found at wikipedia:
The establishment of CRI in 1960 is closely linked to Walter Martin. It represents one of the pioneering organizations in what is called the Christian countercult movement, but also relates to the wider history of Evangelical Christian apologetics in the mid-Twentieth century.
The christian countercult movement is described in this wikipedia entry:
The Christian countercult movement is a social movement of Christian ministries and individual Christian countercult activists who oppose religious sects thought to either partially abide or do not at all abide by the teachings that are written within the Bible. These religious sects are also known among Christians as cults. They are also known as discernment ministries.
Among other things, the founders of NVIC seem to suggest vaccines are toxic, full of ingredients that will harm your child, none of which has ever proved to do so. Founded in the 1980s, NVIC is the granddaddy of anti-vaccine groups (though they go to great lengths to claim they are not). In the words of Michael Specter, journalist and author of “Denialism: How Irrational Thinking Hinders Scientific Progress, Harms the Planet and Threatens our Lives,” NVIC is “the most powerful anti-vaccine organization in America, and its relationship with the U.S. government consists almost entirely of opposing federal efforts aimed at vaccinating children.” Taking what NVIC says about vaccines at face value is akin to believing Joe Camel when he tells you that smoking doesn’t cause lung cancer. The ad was created in conjunction with mercola.com, the website of Dr. Joseph Mercola, another anti-vaccinationist who espouses other out-of-step ideas. For more details see his blog on – where else – the Huffington Post.
“The Franklin County Board of Elections did not allow Election Day polling location observer appointments filed by the True the Vote group,” said board spokesman Ben Pisctelli in a statement. “The appointments were not properly filed and our voting location managers were instructed not to honor any appointment on behalf of the True the Vote group.”
There were charges yesterday that the candidates’ names had either been falsified or merely copied on forms requesting observer status for the True the Vote at several Franklin County polling places. Many are in predominantly African American neighborhoods.
Elections Director William A. Anthony Jr. said the group may be investigated for possibly falsifying documents after today’s election. The forms themselves warn that elections falsification is a fifth-degree felony.
One person told the elections board that she attended True the Vote training sessions and the observers were instructed to use cameras to intimidate voters when they enter the polling place, record their names on tablet computers and send them to a central location, and attempt to stop questionably qualified voters before they could get to a voting machine.
[Jim] Gilchrist and [Chris] Simcox publicly battled for control and camera time during the original Minuteman Project, when Simcox’s high-handed leadership style earned him the sarcastic sobriquet, “The Little Prince.” But following the conclusion of the month-long “citizens border patrol” operation in Arizona last April, the co-founders appeared to arrange an amicable parting and division of the public relations spoils. Gilchrist kept the Minuteman Project name and announced he was handing over “border watch” operations to Simcox, who would manage them as president of a new group, Minuteman Civil Defense Corps.
The pivot point on which [Chris] Simcox’s own kind turned against him is his refusal to account for the $1.6 to $1.8 million in private donations he estimates MCDC raised, including $600,000 for the “Minuteman Border Fence,” — a slick fundraising campaign with a stated goal of $55 million. Simcox pledged the money raised by the campaign would go to build a high-tech security barrier along 70 miles of private ranchland on the Arizona border. Mass-mailed MCDC solicitations and full-page color advertisements in The Washington Times since mid-April promoted the Minuteman Border Fence as an “Israeli-style” barrier “based on the fences used in Gaza and the West Bank.” Fundraising illustrations depict a 6-foot trench and coils of concertina wire backed by a 15-foot steel-mesh fence crowned with bulletproof security cameras. Estimated cost: $150 per foot.
Construction began Memorial Day weekend with much fanfare. Since then, MCDC volunteers erected just over two miles of five-strand barbed wire attached to short metal posts. What they built is a standard cattle fence, costing about $1.50 per foot, or about one one-hundredth the cost of the advertised “Israeli-style” barrier.
So far, in other words, the Minuteman Border Fence hasn’t come to much. “It wouldn’t stop a tricycle,” American Border Patrol’s Glenn Spencer posted in a recent online tirade
At press time, the MCDC had yet to begin constructing the “Israeli-style” fence. Also, [Chris] Simcox has denied all requests by current and former MCDC members and donors as well as journalists to release any MCDC financial records. He will not say where the money is, how much has been spent, or for what, and he lashes out at anyone inside or outside his organization who dares question his honesty or authority. Gary Cole, the MCDC’s former national director of operations, said he was fired last summer for “asking too many questions about the money.”
In his late July statement, released the same week as The Washington Times story, Simcox claimed “all donations which have been received have been recorded, processed, and banked by a highly reputable and responsible caging company which specializes in nonprofit accountability. Funds are safely and appropriately held in a secured bank account, overseen by a certified public accountant and a lawyer, disbursed by an authorized escrow agent only against approved, invoiced expenses.”
The “highly reputable and responsible” accounting company hired by MCDC to oversee donations is Houston-based American Caging, Inc. Maureen Otis, president of American Caging, released a statement confirming “since the day MCDC was incorporated, my company has acted as the comptroller and escrow agent for MCDC.”
A Texas firm that manages hundreds of thousands of dollars in donations to the Minuteman Civil Defense Corps says it has not been authorized to divulge a detailed accounting of the funds, despite assurances by the MCDC’s top official that it would do so.
Maureen E. Otis — president of American Caging Inc. in Stafford, Texas, an agency hired to collect, deposit and disburse donations to the civilian border-patrol group — told The Washington Times that neither MCDC President Chris Simcox nor the group’s board of directors had given her permission to “disclose any numbers.”
MCDC, for example, lists one Maureen Otis as its board secretary. Otis is president of a firm called American Caging, sharing MCDC’s address (from its 990), and MCDC paid American Caging $15,202 for “caging fees.”
Apparently, the Declaration Alliance has been a funnel for resources going to MCDC. The most recent 990 of the Alliance, for example, reports $739,353 in “program services expenditures” in support of MCDC, plus a direct contribution to MCDC of another $112,500. The Web site of MCDC claims that it is a project of the Declaration Alliance, and the first and last MCDC 990 reports $418,493 in revenue (almost $1.2 million less than Simcox’s public estimate of the public support his organization had received), including the Declaration Alliance’s $112,500, but the 990 made no reference to the Declaration Alliance’s other programmatic involvement or its expenditures on behalf of the Minuteman project.
While the Declaration Alliance is a “civic public policy and issues advocacy organization that aggressively defends the Founding principles of the American Republic,” its Web site appears to be more like an Alan Keyes presidential campaign arm. The heading at the top of the page is a link to “Alan Keyes on the 2008 Election,” which redirects to the site of a group called Renew America, another tax-exempt entity founded by Keyes. The Renew America Web site leads with a link to a group called “We Need Alan Keyes for President,” which calls itself a PAC. The Declaration Alliance Web site also devotes a page to Keyes’s share of the vote in the 2000 Republican primaries.
This omission of design specifics may have been the product of advice [Chris] Simcox received from Diener Consultants, one of the country’s largest right-wing political consulting and fundraising machines. At around the same time Simcox broke off from Gilchrist to form MCDC, he contracted with Diener, which is based in Chicago and led by Phillip Sheldon, son of Traditional Values Coalition founder and vitriolic gay-basher Rev. Louis Sheldon.
American Caging also handles other clients aligned with MCDC, Mr. Keyes and the Alliance organizations, including Diener Consulting Inc., which serves as the Minuteman group’s public-relations arm, as it did in Mr. Keyes’ unsuccessful presidential and senatorial campaigns; and Renew America, a fundraising organization founded by Mr. Keyes that provides a link for donations to MCDC through Declaration Alliance.
The younger Sheldon is known for brokering the ghoulish deal in which Response Unlimited, a direct-mail marketing firm, obtained a list of donors to Terry Schiavo’s legal fund from the brain-dead woman’s parents several days before her death in March 2005. Earlier this year, Response Unlimited — “the nation’s best and most comprehensive source of mailing lists for conservative and Christian mailers and telemarketers” — began offering for sale a list of 61,000 Minuteman Civil Defense Corps donors at a price of $120 per thousand names.
Other American Caging clients include Response Unlimited, which makes mailing lists — including the MCDC membership — available to conservative mailers and telemarketers and has an “exclusive contract” with Declaration Foundation; and RightMarch.com, which raised $500,000 for Mr. [Alan] Keyes’ 2004 senatorial campaign and helps raise Minuteman donations through a link on its Web page to Declaration Alliance.
The “highly reputable and responsible” accounting company hired by MCDC to oversee donations is Houston-based American Caging, Inc. Maureen Otis, president of American Caging, released a statement confirming “since the day MCDC was incorporated, my company has acted as the comptroller and escrow agent for MCDC.” But that may do little to alleviate the concerns of MCDC donors, since American Caging apparently has some trouble keeping its own books in order. The Texas Comptroller of Public Accounts office lists the status of American Caging Inc. as “not in good standing” because it “has not satisfied all state tax requirements.”
34 The details involving this split, including the presence of Otis, have almost entirely disappeared from national consciousness six years later. An interview with Gilchrist by Conor Friedersdorf does not bring up Simcox or Otis, and Gilchrist does not bring it up either, at least not explicitly, though he may making implicit reference in his last answer in the published interview. From “Friday Interview: What the Minuteman Project Taught Its Founder”:
Friedersdorf:
What if someone came to you and said, Mr. Gilchrist, I’m starting a grassroots effort on behalf of a cause that’s dear to me. Do you have any advice?
Gilchrist:
Be extremely careful of volunteers who say they want to help you because they’re passionate about your cause. Especially if there is fundraising involved. What I have found is that the same persons will attempt to steal your organization to get access to your money. I’m told that’s commonplace in a lot of activist groups. And be wary of some extremists trying to infiltrate the organization to exploit it for their own philosophical advantage, and ultimately destroying it.
Another group… had a rebellion in its ranks due to the fact that the fundraising company it was using was keeping all the money and not using it to bring people to the border. I think they made about $10 million over three or four years. Apparently not a penny of it got to people on the border. There are various reasons for people to get involved in activism. This is not just the immigration issue. It could be the abortion issue, the religious issue, whatever. Number one, the fundraisers want to make money off it, it’s not about the issue to them. It’s really about making money.
Gilchrist would be fired by his own Minuteman project in 2007, with the issue again missing funds; this episode in described in the Southern Poverty Law Center’s “Jim Gilchrist Fired By Minuteman Project” by David Holt:
The Minuteman Project, one of the country’s largest, richest and most influential nativist extremist groups, is in a state of crisis.
Its founder, Jim Gilchrist, was fired in February by members of the group’s board of directors amidst swirling allegations of embezzlement, gross mismanagement and fraud.
[Charles] Jarvis took USA Next to a different level when he assumed control in 2001. The board was stocked with influential Republican lobbyists and consultants with strong ties to the GOP congressional leadership and the White House.
A former aide to Sen. Charles Grassley (R-Iowa) who also served in the Reagan and Bush administrations, Jarvis was well-positioned for his organization to benefit from Republican control in Washington.
You can pick up the story on the United Seniors money mill from this July 2003 consumer bulletin from, of all places, the dreaded AARP.
One thing we learn from the AARP bulletin is that they apparently picked up USANext chief Charlie Jarvis from that notorious Spongebob-basher radical cleric James Dobson. Before he got the USANext gig, Jarvis was an executive vice president of Dobson’s group Focus on the Family.
United Seniors, the name by which USA Next is formally incorporated in Virginia, was started in 1991 by Richard Viguerie, a longtime conservative and direct-mail specialist.
In its first 10 years, United Seniors was a modest force at most, taking in $8 million to $11 million and spending nearly 50 percent of contributions on fundraising. It relied heavily on direct-mail solicitation of members and whatever larger donations it could attract, and it operated for most of its existence at a deficit.
In fiscal year 2001, records show, PhRMA gave United Seniors $1.5 million, 100 times the amount it had given the previous year. Pfizer gave $25,000 in each of those two years. PhRMA does not dispute the accuracy of the records.
In the next two years, just as Congress and the White House worked out details for a prescription drug benefit for Medicare, United Seniors received $24.8 million from a single source, records show. A redacted copy of the tax filing obscures the name of the donor, other than the first letter, “P,” in 2003. A $20.1 million donation was reported in 2002 from a single source, but that donor’s name is completely blacked out.
Asked whether PhRMA was the donor, Ken Johnson, a spokesman for the trade group, said, “I’m not confirming it or denying it.”
Then there’s the benignly-named United Seniors Association (USA), which serves as a soft-money slush fund for a single GOP-friendly industry: pharmaceuticals. USA claims a nationwide network of more than one million activists, but, just like Progress for America, listed zero income from membership dues in its most recent available tax return.
During the 2002 elections, with an “unrestricted educational grant” from the drug industry burning a hole in its pocket, the group [United Seniors Association, or USA Next] spent roughly $14 million–the lion’s share of its budget–on ads defending Republican members of Congress for their votes on a Medicare prescription-drug bill.
Now the group [United Seniors Association, or USA Next] has clawed its way into the Social Security debate with AARP as the primary adversary. To make its case, [Charles] Jarvis has adopted the scorching tactics of negative campaign advertising and employed some of the best practitioners of political dark arts to do it.
His group has benefited from donations and consultant work from operatives and donors associated with the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth campaign against Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry.
“I’m trying to kill, destroy the bad public policy of AARP,” Jarvis said.
41 From Talking Points Memo (though some of the links for this seven year old post are broken, I have included them anyway):
For [Charles] Jarvis, it is a convenient convergence. “I’m very aggressively pro-free-market solutions,” he said in an interview at the group’s office just off Capitol Hill. “I am very aggressively finding people who agreed with our rock `n’ roll free-market approach.”
United Seniors has shown lethal capacity. But its most notorious effort–an ad that showed two photos, one of two men kissing and the other of a soldier, with the not-so-subtle message that AARP supported the gay couple and not the soldier–may also be one that costs it dearly.
The couple in the photo recently sued USA Next and a subcontractor for $25 million, alleging defamation.
The couple in the photo recently sued USA Next and a subcontractor for $25 million, alleging defamation. Jarvis said his only regret is that his subcontractor didn’t get a proper commercial release of the couple’s photo.
45 The Susan Faludi piece, “American Electra: Feminism’s Ritual Matricide” can be found in pdf format on the author’s site; it provides an in-depth examination of the struggle between an older leadership and younger feminists, providing the fascinating context of a century old tension between women of different ages, going back to the division between suffragettes and flappers, the struggle always having the persistent undertone of a fight between mothers and daughters; a short piece on Shelly Mandell introducing Sarah Palin in 2008 can be found at Jezebel: “NOW L.A. President Shelly Mandell Endorses McCain/Palin”.
46 Doug LaFollette, of course, ran unsuccessfully for governor against Scott Walker in the 2012 recall election; that he would be helpful to anti-immigrant forces in a takeover does not imply that he was a knowing participant – it might have been expected, for instance, that he would vote favourably for proposals that ostensibly dealt with the issues of finite resources and an ever expanding population, but were in fact anti-immigrant. This ruckus was brought up when LaFollette ran again in 2006 for secretary of state: “Sierra Club dust-up draws fresh flak” by Bill Lueders. A good overview of the other candidates can be found at “Hostile Takeover: Race, Immigration and the Sierra Club” by the Center for New Community. An article written at the time on the possible takeover of the Sierra Club is “Immigration dispute spawns factions, anger in Sierra Club” in The Seattle Times by Florangela Davila.
Well, as one who, I think, either helped kill, or killed the Reform party, because I believe they cost us the White House in 1992 and 1996…their lack of any ideology at all…it was a hodgepodge of vegetarians, goldbugs, and a few libertarians, and gun people, and gun control people, there was no consistency there other than people who couldn’t make it in any other party.
Roger Stone, the longtime Republican dirty-tricks operative who led the mob that shut down the Miami-Dade County recount and helped make George W. Bush president in 2000, is financing, staffing, and orchestrating the presidential campaign of Reverend Al Sharpton.
On Sharpton’s attacks on the front-runner, designed by Stone himself:
While Bush forces like the Club for Growth were buying ads in Iowa assailing then front-runner Howard Dean, Sharpton took center stage at a debate confronting Dean about the absence of blacks in his Vermont cabinet. Stone told the Times that he “helped set the tone and direction” of the Dean attacks, while Charles Halloran, the Sharpton campaign manager installed by Stone, supplied the research. While other Democratic opponents were also attacking Dean, none did it on the advice of a consultant who’s worked in every GOP presidential campaign since his involvement in the Watergate scandals of 1972, including all of the Bush family campaigns.
Halloran works for free on the Sharpton campaign, just as Stone did for Johnson:
Halloran is a capable operative who claims he did advance work in the first Clinton campaign, and that he worked as a consultant in a statewide Democratic race in Georgia and as a volunteer for Al Gore during the recount battle. He has become so close to Stone over the last two years, however, that he stays at Stone’s 40 Central Park South apartment when he’s in New York working for Sharpton. Halloran and his wife celebrated Stone’s 50th birthday with him and his wife last year, and the two operatives talk virtually every day. By his own account, Halloran made so much money in the Golisano and Bermuda campaigns, he has so far worked for Sharpton since September 4 without receiving a single cent in pay.
The Golisano and Bermuda campaigns Halloran was involved in are described briefly:
Halloran was busy anyway with another Stone- arranged assignment-running the parliamentary campaign for the United Bermuda Party, ironically the white-led party seeking to unseat the island’s first black government. Halloran had also managed a Stone-run campaign in New York in 2002, spending nearly $65 million of billionaire Tom Golisano’s money and getting the Independence Party candidate a mere 14 percent of the vote in the gubernatorial race. Stone, whose firm represented the prior Bermuda government, did initial work in the 2003 race there and left, recommending Halloran.
On a possible future attempt to use Sharpton not simply to depress turn-out, but to split the vote:
Stone, whose Miami mob even jostled a visiting Sharpton during the recount, said recently in The American Spectator that if Sharpton were to run “as an independent” in the 2006 Hillary Clinton race, she would be “sunk,” implicitly suggesting that this operation may be a precursor to another Stone-Sharpton mission.
On the Sharpton campaign as part of a larger Bush strategy:
The Washington Post recently reported that the Bush campaign was planning a special advertising campaign targeting black voters, seeking as much as a quarter of the vote, and any Sharpton-connected outrage against the party could either lower black turnout in several key close states, or move votes to Bush. Both were widely reported as the consequences of Sharpton’s anti-Green rhetoric in 2001, [Mark Green, democratic candidate for New York City mayor, beat Fernando Ferrer, the Sharpton backed candidate in a bitter primary race]a result Sharpton celebrated both in his book and at a Bronx victory party on election night.
The attempt by the Sharpton campaign to qualify for matching funds by getting donations from at least twenty states, is notable for the presence of one figure. I bold the significant name:
In fact, the treasurer of the Klayman campaign, Paul Jensen, a top Bush administration transportation official, joined his wife, Pamela, in making $250 donations on December 30 to Sharpton, helping get him over the threshold in a third state. Jensen contributed to Sharpton, who favors a federal law certifying civil unions for homosexuals, even though the lawyer has filed suits in 16 states seeking to defrock Presbyterian ministers who’ve “violated their vows” by ordaining gays.
Jensen shows up again this year as Johnson’s attorney, sueing the FEC for not granting sufficient matching funds. From “Gary Johnson sues FEC for $750k” by Marc Caputo:
Johnson claims that, as a minor-party candidate, he’s entitled to a set amount of funds that are supposed to be distributed by the commission. The amount is set forth in a complicated federal formula that awards public funds to parties based on their candidates’ prior performances in other elections.
The federal law suggests in one place that a candidate such as Johnson “is eligible to receive pre-election payments” only if his party “received at least 5% but less than 25% of the total popular vote” in the prior election. But Johnson’s attorney, Paul Rolf Jensen said that 5 percent threshold doesn’t apply.
Another piece, citing Barrett’s excellent work, which re-inforces the idea of Sharpton as a chess piece of a larger game is Joe Conason’s “A GOP trickster rents Al Sharpton “:
To anyone familiar with the buccaneering careers of Al Sharpton and Roger Stone, their convergence in the 2004 presidential campaign is not quite as “unlikely” as the New York Times suggested in a headline last week. Indeed, the alliance between the conservative consultant and the pompadoured preacher makes perfect sense.
Whatever excuse each man offers to justify their embarrassing embrace, Stone certainly serves the Republican party by sustaining and promoting Sharpton. Ever since the reverend announced his candidacy, right-leaning commentators have gleefully predicted that he will pose “a major threat” to the Democrats in 2004.
52 One might see evidence of this design in the answers Stone gave in a far too deferential sketch by Mark Warren, “Roger Stone to GOP: Payback’s a Bitch”; my bolds:
[Roger Stone:] “Johnson is polling at 9 percent in Arizona [according to PPP], and it’s all gonna come out of Romney’s hide, and he’s at 6 percent in Wisconsin (according to the Reason poll), which is all out of Obama’s hide. I am helping Gary figure out where to put his emphasis.”
We may also see this as the motivation behind Stone’s criticism that Obama did not go far enough in his statements on gay marriage, quoted in a piece by Michael Musto, “Obama Actually Betrayed The Gay Marriage Cause”
That’s what one writer says.
Before you start screaming “foul” en route to resuming your gay-victory celebration, kindly check out the article by Roger Stone.
It makes some points.
“Once Gay Americans are through celebrating President Barack Obama’s ‘personal’ support of Gay marriage equality, they will learn that Obama’s ‘evolution’ changes nothing. Obama’s new position is a bullshit cop-out.
“This comes on the heels of a cynical Obama campaign pirouette where Team Obama trotted out first Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, then Vice President ‘Crazy’ Joe Biden to say they support gay marriage and imply that the President would too–after the election.
“Now, incredibly, Obama says Gay marriage is a state issue. That’s what they used to say about abortion and before that, slavery. Now the President says he believes that gay couples should be able to marry but he doesn’t believe they have a right to do so. Obama would leave the question to the states–in other words–the status quo. This is like saying that public schools ought to be integrated but if the people of Mississippi disagree, well it’s up to them.
“If Obama believes that marriage equality is a constitutionally guaranteed civil right, as former Governor Gary Johnson does, than it can’t be abridged by the states. Forty-four states currently ban gay marriage. Under Obama millions of Americans in most states will continue be denied the right to marry the person of their choice.”
“Barack Obama is playing a cruel and cynical game with peoples lives and happiness. He did nothing to establish that gay marriage is a right yesterday.”
Given how starry eyed Musto has gotten over this pronouncement, it might behoove readers to look at the other side of the balance: that Stone worked as a consultant for the anti-gay fanatic Larry Klayman in his Senate campaign, and that Stone’s close associate is Paul Jensen, who filed suit to defrock presbyterian ministers who’ve been so audacious as to ordain gays, mentioned by Musto’s Village colleague, and definitive Roger Stone chronicler, Wayne Barrett, in “Sleeping with the GOP: A Bush Covert Operative Takes Over Al Sharpton’s Campaign”. If that is not a cruel and cynical game to play with people’s lives and happiness, as well as a rankly hypocritical one, what isn’t?
On the FEC complaint, again from Haberman’s “Complaint”:
A Washington man who’s worked in Republican politics has filed a notarized complaint with the FEC about Libertarian presidential hopeful Gary Johnson’s campaign and the way his consultants have reported expenditures, raising questions about how huge chunks of the campaign’s coffers went to a single entity.
The complaint, viewable here, was filed by Addison Smith, a Republican who was part of the George W. Bush reelection effort in 2004, according to his bio, and is currently a VP at Sphere Consulting.
In addition to the fact that the expenditures aren’t labeled as primary or general election, there are major sums – in some cases as much as 120 percent, when debt is factored in – going to a single entity called Political Advisors, based in Utah. It’s listed in the filings as for a wide variety of things like media buys.
But it’s not clear from the filings exactly what the money was used for, as the FEC demands. For instance, things like campaign travel are lumped in as the same activities as media buys.
Asked to comment on the subtance of the FEC complaint, Johnson campaign counsel Alicia Dearn responded in an email suggesting a political conspiracy.
Dearn did not respond to the questions in the complaint about why the payments were conducted that way – including why debt was suddenly reported in the latest filing.
With just a few weeks before election day and his campaign making no significant progress, an email has begun circulating in libertarian circles accusing campaign manager Ronald Nielson of syphoning nearly 90% of the campaign’s $2 million to his consulting firm and charges Johnson has not paid for any radio or TV ads, direct mail or paid staff.
But the email’s claims are dubious: according to the campaign Johnson has several paid staffers and the campaign has distributed 60,000 yard signs, 165,000 bumper stickers, 670,000 brochures and flyers, and has aired almost 1,000 radio spots. The campaign has also been regularly sending out direct mail to voters and routinely organizes campaign events.
The email, which is signed by an apparently fictional person named Eric Stevens of Twinsburg, Ohio, also implicates Roger Stone, the longtime operative who became an advisor for Johnson earlier this year.
Still, the email does generally point to the fact that much of Johnson’s expenditures are in fact going to firms that appear to be connected to his aides.
According to Federal Election Commission reports, a large portion of the campaign’s disbursements went to “Political Advisors” or “Politcal [sic] Advisors,” with the address of 781 East South Temple Street in Salt Lake City.
No businesses are listed at 781 – but 731 East South Temple Street is the address of the Johnson campaign, according to its website, and also the address of Nielson’s communications firm. A call to the number listed for the building led to a voicemail for Natalie Dicou, a Johnson and Libertarian Party spokeswoman.
The September monthly report, for example, lists “Politcal [sic] Advisors” as receiving $229,563.42, by far the biggest expense that month. In the reports, the Political Advisors expenses are for “Media Buys. Candidate Travel and Advisory Services.” The report doesn’t itemize specific vendors for these services.
The complaint, viewable here, was filed by Addison Smith, a Republican who was part of the George W. Bush reelection effort in 2004, according to his bio, and is currently a VP at Sphere Consulting.
Smith declined to comment on why he did the filing when I reached him by phone. A source familiar with the effort said it arose from an exercise with intern training, and Johnson’s filings were used as an example – and they were surprised by what they saw.
Smith doesn’t work for a political campaign and is non-active this cycle, a source close to him said. His firm is represented by Patton Boggs, which employs Mitt Romney’s veteran campaign counsel, Ben Ginsberg, who is an alum of many national efforts, including both the Bush election in 2000 and the reelect. Romney aides said the complaint has nothing to do with them.
Mr. Stone says he has become so frustrated with the party’s attempts to shut down Mr. Johnson, whom he says he is advising at no charge, that he vowed in an e-mail last month, “Republican blood will run in the streets b4 I am done.”
Stone, a lifelong Republican, changed his affiliation to Libertarian in February 2012. He became involved with the Johnson campaign in March to help Johnson get federal matching funds, telling BuzzFeed at the time that he was a volunteer.
*Two companies controlled by Stone’s secretary Dianne Thorne, and registered out of her Miami apartment, have received a total of $84,320 so far from the campaign. The payments started in March, shortly after the campaign also made the first of $17,000 in payments to Thorne’s stepson, Andrew Miller, who listed a St. Peters, Missouri address. Miller was confounded when the Times told him he’d actually appeared on the payroll for four months longer than he was aware. Thorne, down on the beach, was described as Paladino’s “scheduler.” She actually once had a company registered out of the same address called Hype LLC.
*Caputo himself was paid $407,190 in the first six months of the campaign, a remarkable sum for a hired mouth, suggesting that he gets expletive bonuses. Since Stone recommended his former driver Caputo to Paladino, and Caputo and Stone have worked together on and off since the mid-90s (when Caputo handled the press response to Roger’s group-sex scandal), this largesse may not belong exclusively to the lien-laden Caputo. In any event, it was paid to Caputo Public Relations at an East Aurora address, a village near Buffalo. No such company is incorporated in the state, according to the secretary of state’s office. Caputo’s firm does have a website, listed at the address of Caputo’s father’s insurance company, as well as a Florida location. But Florida officials tell the Voice that the state dissolved the company on September 25, 2009 for failing to meet registration requirements. Even junkyards incorporate a petty legal requirement with large tax implications.
*These are hardly the only avenues available to Stone if he was seeking to supplement his charitable good works on Paladino’s behalf. The campaign has adopted the extraordinary new tactic of making major payments to a Paladino family real estate company, which, in turn, pays the wages of unnamed campaign workers. So far, it has hidden $62,278 in payments to this invisible staff, an apparent violation of state laws requiring the actual identities of people paid to work in campaigns. Paladino has also formed his own advertising firm for this campaign, Ellicott Advertising, which was paid $1.8 million by the campaign to do TV and radio ads. These insider deals make it all the easier to conceal Roger rewards.
*Stone simply moved his traveling troupe of “misfits,” as Caputo himself characterized the Paladino crew in an Observer piece, from a 2009 losing effort last November in Ohio. Stone was in Ohio as the “strategic consultant” to an anti-casino campaign, trying to defeat a referendum legalizing casinos in four cities. Having made a fortune in the Indian gaming business, Stone also opposes casinos when a casino interest pays him to, and that’s precisely what he was doing in Ohio. Stone, his onetime top client Donald Trump, and a third party were hit with a record $250,000 fine by the New York lobbying commission in 2000 over their similar effort to kill New York casinos that might compete with Trump’s Atlantic City empire.
[Larry] Klayman soon discovered that Stone was barely tending to business. He found him “sitting in an outdoor café salivating at the cavalcade of bodies, both male and female, marching up and down Lincoln Road” or in New York, “allegedly attending to his sick father.” By the time Stone and Klayman parted company that fall, “I had a campaign debt of several hundred thousand dollars, much of it on my own lines of credit.”
(Almost all supporting text and links, are done through footnotes, so a reader might quickly see the title of the article, as well as immediate supporting information, without having to hover or click on a link.)
A post prompted for a simple practical reason: over the next few months there will be a number of significant fights, the most important over gun regulation, and it will be valuable to perhaps give context to some intellectual partisans. I settle on Conor Friedersdorf first, because he is often perceived as someone outside of the traditional partisanship of left and right, a man devoted entirely to reason and honest discourse, and his opinions are often presented and re-circulated in this context, perhaps the most notable, “Why I Refuse To Vote For Barack Obama”, where his argument that his objection to the president’s abuse of executive power prevented him from further supporting the president, and why he was voting for Gary Johnson. He was perhaps the most high profile dissenter, that I know of, of voting for either major party this past election. No doubt, if he makes any pronouncements on any legislation on guns, or actions taken against the NRA, he’ll have equally lofty pronouncements, and they may well carry equivalent weight. For this post, I did my best to read everything written by him in The Atlantic from the past year and a half, with the purpose to both honestly inform, to provide a solid background of his work, as well as bluntly tactical: I do think providing such past context will demonstrate that Mr. Friedersdorf is clearly an ideological writer, cleaving first and foremost to libertarian priorities then the facts of any problem, and this will destroy some of the moral weight of his pronouncements. Further: I think the prominence of Friedersdorf as perhaps the only ideological radical in any centrist, mainstream publication, by which I mean a man who looks at every problem almost solely through the perspective of ideology, demonstrates something of the larger media context now, of what views are allowed to be radical, and what radical views a magazine might point to as a demonstration that it has a diversity of views.
I hesitated with writing this piece, as I am too often consumed with animus, and I do not think the world needs any more of it. The position of reader and a professional writer such as Mr. Friedersdorf, at this present time is one almost designed to generate this mutual feeling. The writer must produce endless content to satisfy the demand of perpetual, unending appetites. He is assailed in comments for reasons of ideology and technical flaws, which further distances the writer from the reader – rather than being able to imagine an ideal reader, they very clearly meet the unideal reader. The best, most convenient format for mass content is the authoritative think piece, an analysis or opinion on some current subject, and the attitude of such pieces, as opposed to journalism or fiction, ends up being a variation of “I will tell you what is the proper attitude according to my expert analysis”, and this itself creates an alienation between reader and writer, a teacher lecturing pupils. The reader expresses anger at the writer in the comments, and this further distances writer from reader, intensifies the feeling of isolation between the two, and reinforces the lecture posture, a well-behaved instructor telling the huddled masses what’s what. That one is lectured to on political issues only intensifies one sense of powerlessness – political institutions will not respond, and now you will be told how you are to blame, how your dissent is wrong, how you should all do with less by a writer who has a great deal more. I have been guilty of this as much as many, never issuing violent threats, but often replying angrily to the writer, out of the indignity of being lectured to, of being treated as a moral inferior, a less knowing creature – all these things. My most recent angry replies were to Mr. Friedersdorf’s blog post where he eulogized Ron Paul’s departure from Congress, and to one of his posts on the Newtown massacre. If I had greater strength of character, I would make some attempt at apology, but I lack it. I am to some degree a broken man: were I a landscape, I would be a frozen lake on which a broken rainbow casts its light, this prismatic line almost entirely an intense, bloody red, the other colors almost entirely greyed out. I wish simply to win certain fights, most notably on gun control – not for the purpose of humiliating anyone on the other side, including Mr. Friedersdorf, but for the material and social benefits of such fights. My post title is partly malign and partly not: I believe Mr. Friedersdorf to have relevance, but on a much more restricted, more partisan spectrum than assumed.
I will be very critical of Mr. Friedersdorf, so I will first praise him: as a journalist, he often conveys the attitude of a respectful and diligent listener. He did not observe #OWS from afar and cast judgement, but actively engaged with them1. When the legislative council handed down its points, he quoted them in full, gave each individual dissent, and did not just summarize them dismissively2. He spoke with equal respect to RNC delegates, treating them not as primal creatures who might be the source for quick caricatures, but simple folk, and by simple, I do not mean uncomplicated, but not as political ideas clothed in human skin3. He gave a thorough, diligent description of police brutality incidents that took place at #OWS, possibly the only thing of its kind in a centrist publication4. He gave equal attention to such incidents that took place at UC Davis5. His description of torture practices during the Bush administration and the effects of drone warfare are uncompromising and consistent, again one of the more radical, on-going critiques to appear in such a publication6 – Jane Mayer of The New Yorker, of course, writes on this subject as well, but less frequently, and more focused on journalism centered on specific instances, with Friedersdorf’s only equivalent in this regard Glenn Greenwald, formerly of Salon, now of The Guardian.
He describes as a libertarian, with his writing not devoted to any specific ideology7, but his concerns almost entirely map onto libertarian ones with regard to the coercive power and size of the state: an end to the drug war, gay marriage, the intrusive power of the NSA, the war on whistleblowers, the president not consulting congress for the libyan war, an end to federal subsidies for agriculture, greater sovereignty for individual states, the unconstitutionality of health care reform, entitlement reform and the debt burdens of greedy public sector unions.
At no point is an issue brought up that might not involve the libertarian concern for a smaller, less intrusive state. For instance, I would argue the most pressing issue of the last four years has been the level of unemployment and the amount of people who have dropped out of the workforce out of despair, and the poverty accompanying this lack of work. I think it is possible to write about this, raising the issues of why there is work lacking in that area, easily, in a manner that the impetus for writing on the problem is not a state or free market solution, but the urgency of the problem itself. One focuses on the issue not because there is a solution that your partisans could provide, there may be neither, but because the problem demands to be looked at. What is striking in Mr. Friedersdorf’s work, is that despite this long-term crisis, there is barely any mention of such poverty or unemployment, unless as it relates to size of the state issues. There are two pieces on how mandatory licensing keeps the unemployed from selling goods and services8, there is a post on how the drug war most directly affects the poor9, and a post on the possibility of financial compensation for organ donors10. There’s also a piece calling for an austerity budget, despite Paul Krugman calling such a move a disaster, and despite the horrific effects it would have on unemployment and the poor, for the simple reason that such budget cutting should not be put off11.
Were you to ask me in this past year the most pressing issues an american family would encounter over the next fifty years that overlap with state involvement (though this does not preclude private market involvement), I would put down energy projects and carbon taxes to deal with global warming; gun control; campaign finance regulation and reform; banking regulation and reform; runaway state legislatures passing xenophobic bills on self-deportation, gays, and muslims; runaway state legislatures passing bills restricting abortion and contraception; infrastructure repair and high speed rail; increased or more effectively targeted federal education subsidies; student debt relief; a rise in my state’s pollution and cutback in its services because of industry deregulation, a refusal to raise income taxes, along with low taxes and giveaways for any company that moved to the state. When Mr. Friederdorf gives an imaginary anecdotal list, they include your father being killed by a drone strike, getting beaten down by a cop, being deported after the NSA listens in on a phonecall, poor language skills due to low quality public sector teachers, and OSHA over-regulation of halal meat12.
There is, in fact, a hostile attitude towards relief of any kind in these difficult times, other than calling for an end to the war on drugs. Mr. Friedersdorf, a man who describes growing up in an upper-middle class Orange County neighbourhood, travelling to Europe and around the world, attending undergrad and grad school, does not quite speak from having known a life of need. He appears to mistake his life and those close to him for everyone else’s, writing of the possibility in “large parts of america” of being able, on a pure whim, to quit one’s job, borrow $100,000, and spend a year studying journalism13. His description of a typical grad student is someone who supports themselves at the Kennedy school of government by being a summertime yoga instructor14. The possibility of student debt relief is dismissed in his only post on the subject, “Pandering to a Privileged Class”: with the example of the Obamas cited as the only example. Here were two people at the top of their class, from excellent schools, who ended up at choice law firms. Yes, they had some difficulty paying their student bills starting out, but why should such people in such choice circumstances get relief? Aren’t most students with outstanding student loans like them? Money available for possible student relief should instead be spent on full scholarships15. To hand out money for student debt relief, according to Mr. Friedersdorf, in “a country with impoverished immigrants and struggling high school dropouts and hard-pressed single mothers” is perverse. This group, those in such need, are never addressed again by Mr. Friedersdorf. One can only assume they will be helped by the end of the drug war and being able to sell food on the streets.
The constitutionality of the Affordable Care Act is brought up, and Mr. Friedersdorf explains why it’s reasonable for some to view it as unconstitutional16. He never otherwise brings up the issue of medical bills or what should be done about health costs. He states why he thinks women’s contraception should not be covered under the government plan: doing so would be unfair to those who don’t use such contraception, such as lesbians, or those who don’t use it as much as the sluttier sluts (yes, dear reader, those are my words, not his)17. He gives no mention of why women should be singled out for this exceptional treatment, nor of any of the wide variety of people who, through various lifestyle choices, may incur higher health care costs than others18. He is deeply critical of catholic institutions being coerced to purchase contraception against their values – though he writes of an obvious distinction between a catholic affiliated institution and others, he gives no basis for why such an institution should have a right not to distribute such contraception (even though its employees may want it), while a business run by a fervent catholic does not have such a right (“Federal Court Rules That Hobby Lobby Is Not Exempt From Obamacare’s Contraception Mandate”, by Amanda Peterson Beadle), or whether catholic hospitals with or without government funding, should be able to refuse to provide contraception to rape victims, as Linda McMahon advocated in her 2012 governor’s bid (“Linda McMahon: Catholic Hospitals Should Be Allowed To Deny Emergency Contraception To Rape Victims” by Aviva Shen)19. These points, that lesbians should have to pay for contraception, and that catholic institutions should have to buy it, are cited as examples of liberal intolerance for values different from their own, comparable to those who refuse to let gay couples get married20. That these might be examples of something else, an intolerance of women exerting certain rights is not considered. There was no war on women, he re-assures us. There are simply some politicians who are pro-life, and some who had sound economic reasons for not subsidizing women’s contraception, and the democratic party exploited women’s fears over this21.
The growing income gap, the other major story of the past two years, gets only incidental mention. That there are different classes is conceded, but it is not, despite what Charles Murray says, defined by the beer they drink – “sometimes [it's] Charles Murrayesque elites who ought to step outside their self-imposed confines, other times it is the white working class that ought to do so”22. We are lectured on the folly that successful commerce builds on, or can be said to be dependent in any way with public projects, that, yes, an entrepreneur can claim to build something entirely apart from society, as the same public resources are available to everyone, the successful entrepreneur and everyone else23. When Mitt Romney says that he doesn’t care about poor people, Friedersdorf assures us that very rarely do politicians care about poor people. This is bad, and it would be good if it were different, but meanwhile, we should give Romney credit for speaking so honestly – “shouldn’t we prefer a political discourse where forthrightness of that kind isn’t treated as a fault?”24 The irrationality of the statements of the “47% tape” are addressed, but never how such callousness might influence Romney’s policies towards the poor and dependent25. We are also assured, without evidence, that Obama says equally contemptible things about his supporters behind closed doors – in a rather sloppy and dishonest misreading, this tape is described as equal to Obama’s “clinging to guns and religion” speech26. This rather astonishing moment when the class divide waas laid bare, does not bring about any discussion of the divide or any remedies. In his piece, “Why I Refuse To Vote For Mitt Romney, his lack of fiscal conservatism is brought up, but the man’s policies towards the middle class and the less well off go entirely unmentioned27.
The only mention those in the working class and the service industry get is through pieces lamenting the expense and power of unions28. They are blamed entirely for the bankruptcy of California – that effects of Proposition 13 are never brought up, nor the loss of tax revenue through the loss of federal defense work29. I do not suggest that Proposition 13 would necessarily be the sole culprit, only that it is given no mention whatsoever. The difficulties of the middle class are never made the specific focus of a post either, though attempts to claw back revnues from the very wealthy, such as Eduardo Saverin, who give up their american citizenship to avoid paying taxes, are given two posts30. A related middle class issue, such as debt collection practices against those who got credit cards and now make onerous payments at post-teaser rates, is never given notice.
I make this lengthy overview to make clear that Mr. Friedersdorf’s perspective is not entirely our own. He is like a man who sees certain spectra of light very well, and is entirely blind to others. He notes immediately, and is outraged, by drone killings and illegal wiretapping; the hunger, the poverty, the desperation in his own country do not appear to exist. That his reader might have had a very different life, with student debt, hospital bills, great difficulty finding work, seems to go unnoticed as well – the assumption is that you are of the same social class as he. Discussing one of Charle Murray’s ideas, he says “the conceit is that America’s ruling class, including journalists like me and cosmopolitan readers like you, exist in a cultural bubble.” As if having a curiousity to read, for ideas, for argument, that would cause you to read The Atlantic could necessarily be linked to one social and economic class.
This affects his approach to his work on drone warfare and executive overreach, which is good, though also limited, I think, by viewing it in the context only in ideological terms. It is extraordinarily repetitive, and I think unnecessarily so. The key points – that the libyan war was unauthourized by congress, the secret kill list, the war on whistleblowers, wiretapping – are reiterated over and over again, an example of the hubris of Obama in his seizure of such great executive power31. Despite his stating that he is a jaded man, Mr. Friedersdorf presents this as a manichean issue. Obama was good when he ran for president, then he acted badly when he took over the executive, the implication that executive power itself corrupts. Mr. Friedersdorf never gives us any hint or insight as to what may have happened – executive powers simply corrupt32. That Obama may have attempted the surge in Afghanistan because of the possibility of providing some secure protection for Afghans from the taliban after american forces leave is never brought up. That Obama may have wanted to stay in Iraq longer so that there would be time for certain native institutions to develop allowing for the Sunni and Kurd minorities to have some possibility of safety is never said. I am not saying those reasons are necessarily valid, or that they couldn’t be countered – I am saying that they go entirely unmentioned. Mr. Friedersdorf says that he is against absolutist thinking, but his thinking here is absolutist – Obama said he would begin the pull-out from Afghanistan at a certain date and he didn’t – this is a broken promise. He makes this same approach in another area which I find troublesome – he condemns Obama for not closing Guantanamo, though it is well-known that the president did make such an effort, and that the congress, especially the republicans, immediately reacted to this, often in the most reactionary and hysteric terms. There is nothing wrong with Mr. Friedersdorf arguing for closure despite this factor, but, as far as I can tell, he does not ever mention congress’s part in this, ever33.
It is when Mr. Friedersdorf argues in favor of two political candidates, first Ron Paul, then Gary Johnson, in reaction to these policies that my ire rises. He considers Mitt Romney, Paul Ryan, and the entire republican primary field except for Jon Huntsman and Johnson to be unacceptable, for reasons of fiscal policy and the war state. He considers the policies of Barack Obama utterly amoral, quite likely illegal, and questions the moral calibre of any person who accepts Obama given his policies in this area34. Leaving aside the racism of Ron Paul for the moment, an obvious, major obstacle that would keep many from supporting Ron Paul would be his utter destruction of the social safety net35. Mr. Friedersdorf never brings up issues of unemployment relief or medical bills in any part of his blog, and he doesn’t bring them up here – they simply do not exist. Where for many of his readers this would be a difficult balance – however much they want the drone program to end, can they afford to have the floor for their wages threatened? what if things suddenly go very wrong for their chronicly ill sister? would there be any medical relief whatsoever under a Paul administration? – these are of no concern to Mr. Friedersdorf, and he does not appear to expect such issues to be raised. After all, we are all cosmopolitans, members of America’s ruling class. Those anxious voters have nothing to fear, argues Mr. Friedersdorf – Paul will successfully end the drug war and overseas commitments, while his more extreme ideas related to gold and the fed will be stopped by congress36. Those who have seen how easily republicans eviscerate the social safety net, while affirming a strong defense and family values at home, may well believe that Mr. Friedersdorf has things very much the wrong way around. This one of the only times he touches on the extraordinary negative economic impact a Paul presidency might bring about – he usually prefers to repeat over and over the morality of Paul’s small state vision and the amorality of Obama’s security state. He has better things to think about than the evisceration of the safety net, and he does not expect his readers to think about it either.
A brief aside: this utter indifference to the social welfare of the most vulnerable of society is not exclusive to his enthusiasm for Ron Paul, but continues with his son, Rand Paul, as well. Rand is often celebrated in Mr. Friederdorf’s posts for his brave stands against the TSA, the surveillance state, and the war state37. Though Friederdorf extols “reason” and “civilized discourse”, he does not seem to make mention of when Rand compared the U.S. government to Nazi germany, when he compared the upholding of Obamacare to Dred Scot, or when he repeated claims about the National Weather Bureau stockpiling ammunition38. When Rand talks about how the Kentucky mining industry should be able to regulate itself, after he receives contributions from coal companies such as Murray Energy, which coerces its workers into donating to the company’s chosen candidates, and those same mines collapse and kill miners after numerous safety violations, don’t expect it to be mentioned39. When Rand blocks disaster relief, blocks relief for disabled and elderly refugees, or, most egregiously, Rand stops passage of a jobs for veterans bill because he didn’t get something he wanted, it will not be noted by Mr. Friederdorf40. A photo of a maimed veteran is useful as a show of anti-war piety, but when it comes to getting work for them, that has nothing to do with libertarianism, or the smaller state: they’re not cosmopolitans, they’re not part of america’s ruling class, and they can go fuck themselves.
We can now transition to the period where Paul’s racist newsletters were re-discovered, the public made well aware of their contents. Even if Paul was in some way responsible for the vile content of these newsletters, Mr. Friedersdorf argued, his desire to end the war on drugs, drone warfare, and other executive excesses made him the morally superior choice to Barack Obama. There was a small intellectual game being played here – any person who took over the executive while the drug war was on-going, while the war in Afghanistan was going, etc. became less moral than any man outside who sought the presidency and claimed they wished to end those policies, as the executive’s hands immediately became stained with the blood of the dead41. This rather cheap intellectual game might be played by anyone – a member of the KKK, a rapist, a pedophile, Charles Manson – might all claim moral superiority to the president, according to this calculus, because they had not killed as many people with their bare hands as had died from drones or the Afghan war. It is a cheap game, and a simple-minded one. That such newsletters might indicate the pathology of a disturbed man, and such a figure should not be anywhere near the power of the presidency went unmentined – the machinery of government itself, its ability to inflict war and coerce, was seen as an unconscionable evil separate from those who might take charge. As before, the effect of Ron Paul’s policies on the safety net was never brought into the calculus.
After this debacle, Mr. Friedersdorf’s attention now shifted to the libertarian candidate in the general election, Gary Johnson. Again, the music was the same as before: those who supported Barack Obama were morally compromised because of his war state policies, as opposed to those who voted for Johnson, who, as Mr. Friedersdorf reiterated again and again, would end drone warfare, would close Guantanamo Bay, would finally stop the process of endless wars.
This is where we might look more in-depth at Gary Johnson, who is far less known to the general public than Ron Paul. Mr. Friedersdorf wrote an early profile of the man, “The Zen of Gary Johnson”, and I excerpt its essence here:
Gary Johnson, 58, served as governor of New Mexico from 1995 to 2003, ousting an incumbent by a 10 point margin, and handily winning reelection four years later. In his first months in office, he vetoed outright almost half of all bills brought to his desk in order to cut spending. He announced his support for legalizing marijuana in his second term, becoming the highest ranking politician in the US government to take that controversial position.
We’ve got differences, but he’s a successful two-term governor, a fiscal hawk, and almost alone in advocating an end to America’s unaffordable wars (drugs, Iraq, Afghanistan, and now Libya). He seemed like a younger Ron Paul with executive experience and without the gold obsession or racist newsletter baggage.
“You’ll never go wrong by telling the truth. Never. I told my cabinet, it’s going to be the truth. If any of you get yourselves in a situation, that we’ve made a mistake or whatever, I don’t want us to ever make the statement that we can’t comment because of legal restraint. We all need to comment. We all need to tell the truth all the time. And we’ll let the lawyers catch up with the truth.”
“Letting the lawyers catch up with the truth” may be the most radical anti-establishment position in contemporary American politics. Would a president who actually always told the truth be a fantastic success? A dangerous failure? Personally, it’s a gamble I’d like to take.
I don’t think this deviates from the overall tone of the full piece. No further details of his governorship of New Mexico are given. I should note here that several times Mr. Friedersdorf chastises others for the sycophantic or sentimental attitudes towards the current president42.
This, however, is not the only profile of Johnson that was written. A far fuller, more complex, more disturbing, and far, far better one was put together just before election day by Marc Ames, for the Not Safe For Work Corporation: “The Gary Johnson Swindle and the Degradation of Third Party Politics”. Mr. Ames, along with his erstwhile associate Matt Taibbi, and the bete noir of The Atlantic, Moe Tkacik43, are to my mind, far truer radicals than Mr. Friedersdorf, critical of the president’s security state policies, as well as the disgusting abandonment of the worst off in society. They are of a very different sensibility than my own, but I greatly appreciate them for the same reason Lincoln praised Grant: they fight.
“Swindle” gives Johnson’s background fuller detail*: he cut taxes, cut social program spending, took a very hardline attitude towards crime, including drug related crimes, and promised to veto any bills that involved new spending for drug treatment centers. The major achievements cited by Johnson during his presidential run (none of the following are mentioned in the Friedersdorf profile) include cutting welfare spending by 30%, privatizing half the state prisons, and allowing non-union labor to be used in public construction. A notable public project was the widening of a New Mexico highway which ended up costing the state over $350 million dollars, requiring the governor to borrow the money through a federal bond. This project, again, goes entirely unmentioned in both “The Zen of Gary Johnson” or any subsequent writing by Mr. Friedersdorf on the man. The only specific legislative point mentioned is that, yes, in his second term, Johnson decided to legalize marijuana, though, again, unmentioned in Mr. Friedersdorf’s profile – he refused to give blanket pardons to anyone serving drug convictions in New Mexico jails.
More interesting than Johnson himself are the campaign associates this profile brings up. They include Maureen Otis, the woman heading “Our American Initiative”, the nonprofit backing Johnson, a figure with close ties to the hard-right anti-immigrant Minutemen movement, and who ran a company, “American Caging”, involved in minority vote suppression. Another associate, Jim Lacy, was involved in dirty tricks in California elections, sending mailers featuring pictures of liberal icons such as Robert Kennedy mixed in with conservative names so as to confuse democrats into voting republican. Lacy also backed minutemen groups, produced birther propaganda, and was involved in lawsuits to get Obama to release his birth certificate. There’s also Joe Hunter, a spokesman for anti-immigrant group “Utahns For Official English”, which managed to make english the only official language of the state. Rouding out the group behind Johnson was Roger Stone, a dirty trickster who started out with Nixon, and has helped various republican presidential candidates in the murkier, dirtier parts of a campaign. One achievement was his organization in 2000, of the Brooks brother riot, which disrupted the presidential vote count in Miami44.
More significantly, in 1980, he was involved in getting Roger Anderson, that year’s third party candidate on the ballot in New York, thereby splitting the democrat vote between Anderson and Carter, handing the state’s electoral votes to Carter. A similar strategy may have been planned in 2012 as well, with the democratic vote split between Obama and the pot-friendly Johnson, handing vital state votes to Romney. Though this story is well-sourced, none of this is mentioned, even simply to refute it, in Mr. Friedersdorf’s writing on Johnson.
This leads to other relevant details that I found through this excellent piece by Mr. Ames, none of which get mention by Mr. Friedersdorf in his writing on Johnson. Remember: he stresses again and again that the reason he can vote for a clean conscience for the libertarian candidate Gary Johnson is for his record on drones, closing Guantanamo, and an end to belligerence overseas. He cites the use of drones in Pakistan as his top dealbreaker in “Why I Refuse to Vote for Barack Obama”.
I quote his endorsement of Johnson from that piece:
There is a candidate on the ballot in at least 47 states, and probably in all 50, who regularly speaks out against that post-9/11 trend, and all the individual policies that compose it. His name is Gary Johnson, and he won’t win. [the link goes to a short profile of Johnson by The Atlantic's Molly Ball - it also contains none of the details of the Ames piece] I am supporting him because he ought to. Liberals and progressives care so little about having critiques of the aforementioned policies aired that vanishingly few will even urge that he be included in the upcoming presidential debates.
The following clips that I use here were all available, on the web, easily available for everyone to examine and make mention of.
Here is Johnson in an interview on Fox News with Andrew Napolitano. It deals with Guantanamo Bay.
NAPOLITANO: Governor, should we close Guantanamo Bay? Should they be either tried in federal district courts, or returned to their countries, or should we keep it open, and leave them uncharged for the rest of their lives?
JOHNSON: Well, when president Obama didn’t close Guantanamo Bay, and that was one of his promises, I really looked into the issue, and I had a lot of prominent libertarians tell me, if it weren’t for Guantanamo that we would have to create that situation somewhere else. So, I’ve kinda been sold on the notion that this is something we have to have whether it’s…if it’s not Guantanamo, it’s going to be somewhere else…that these are enemy combatants, and not U.S. citizens, I’ve been wooed over to the side that there’s a reason for keeping it open.
Now, Johnson in an interview with Jamie Weinstein of the Daily Caller,“Gary Johnson’s strange foreign policy”, on Afghanistan policy, drone strikes, and some very confused thinking on Iran:
Libertarian Party presidential contender Gary Johnson has been portrayed as an anti-war candidate, but that isn’t quite so clear.
Johnson sat down with reporters and editors from The Daily Caller last week, generously providing his time to answer any and all questions, no matter how difficult or ludicrous.
But when pressed on foreign policy topics throughout the interview, Johnson gave answers that didn’t always seem to add up and were often, at best, unorthodox positions for a man who has been painted as a non-interventionist.
Johnson said that while he wants to end the war in Afghanistan, that doesn’t mean he would necessarily stop drone attacks against terrorists in Pakistan or Yemen, even though he believes they create more enemies than they kill.
“I would want leave all options on the table,” Johnson said.
But if Johnson plans on leaving Afghanistan, how does he plan to leave the option of a drone campaign against al-Qaida elements in Pakistan on the table?
“So now you have the U.S. bases that exist in those areas, do we shut down those military bases? Perhaps not,” he suggested, taking an odd position for a supposed anti-war candidate.
“I would completely withdraw our military presence,” he further expounded. “Does withdrawing our military presence from Afghanistan mean that we would still have a base open in Afghanistan if they allowed us to keep a base open? Perhaps.”
On Iran, Johnson said that if “Iran launches a nuclear warhead they can be assured that they will no longer exist.”
“None of their country will be left to stand and that will be from Israel,” he said, confident that the threat of nuclear retaliation would prevent the Islamic Republic from using any nuclear weapon it obtained.
Johnson went on to say that he doesn’t think Iran has seriously been engaged diplomatically. So what would Johnson say that hasn’t been said to get Iran to reconsider developing a nuclear weapon?
“Look, ‘Don’t develop a nuclear weapon,’” he proffered.
You don’t think that’s been said, TheDC asked?
“’So if we open up trade with you all, we’d like to be a trading partner,’” he added.
Seriously, you don’t think that has been put on the table in negotiations, TheDC asked?
Johnson then pivoted and suggested that there wasn’t any evidence that Iran was developing, or ever wanted, a nuclear weapon.
“Am I not correct in saying that Iran has never voiced that they are developing a nuclear weapon, nor do they have any intention of using a nuclear weapon against the United States?” he asked.
“That’s never actually been voiced. I don’t know where that has come from, but it hasn’t been from Iran.”
So if he doesn’t believe Iran is developing a nuclear weapon or has any intention of developing a nuclear weapon, why is he even suggesting negotiations? Shouldn’t we just open up trade with Iran without asking for anything in return in that case?
“I would be in that camp,” he conceded.
Finally, with regard to ending wars overseas, here is Johnson on a Fox News panel shows, outflanking Obama on the right, arguing for a strike team to go into Uganda to kill Joseph Kony and the Lord’s Resistance Army. He argues this is different from Libya, because Kony is committing genocide. Like Charles Krauthammer, a guest on the panel, I am unable to understand the distinction between the Libyan rebels being wiped out and what’s taking place in Uganda. I should emphasize that these are simple interviews, and that Mr. Friedersdorf felt that Paul Ryan made clear that he was not qualified to be president based on his performance at a VP debate: “The VP Debate Cinches It: Paul Ryan Is Unqualified to Step In as POTUS”. Ask yourself while reading this, in terms of coherence and focus, how different this is from anything Herman Cain has ever said:
FOX NEWS GAL: So the president’s said that he’s sending a hundred troops to Central Africa, to combat the LRA, Joseph Kony. Would you support this if you were president? Is this something you would do?
JOHNSON: You know, in thinking about this, he signed legislation…Congress authorized that this is what needed to take place…he signed that legislation as president. If I were president, and I signed that legislation, I would have had an action plan ready to go immediately. From all appearances, this really does seem to be genocide. I mean, this really seems to be…these are really bad actors, a finite number of fighters…whatever that number is, I don’t know if I’d be sending advisers there, as immediately as after signing the legislation, sent a strike force to wipe them out.
KRAUTHAMMER: That’s very non-libertarian of you.
JOHNSON: Well, I’ve always said that genocide is something that none of us want to stand by and watch happen. From everything I can ascertain from this situaiton, this does qualify for genocide.
KRAUTHAMMER: What about the Qaddafi threat, when he was winning the war against the rebels at the beginning…to wipe out the people, his opponents in Benghazi. Would you have sent the army to go and prevent that?
JOHNSON: No, I would not have. I did not see a military threat from Libya. That’s another issue here with the Lord’s Resistance Army, is that this is their nation. We’re talking about a foreign dictator here. I don’t think there’s anything in the constitution that says because we don’t like a foreign leader we should go in and topple that foreign leader.
KRAUTHAMMER: But I’m not sure if I understand. Clearly the Liberation Army in Uganda is not a threat, to the United States. Yet you would say you would send a strike force. You can argue equally, whether Qaddafi is the leader of a country or not, he was a threat to the people of Benghazi, and you would not. I’m not sure I understand the logic.
JOHNSON: Well, uh, these are the questions that I…another thing I would do as president of the United States, I would be really transparent. Look, I’m signing this legislation authourizing wiping out the Lord’s Resistance Army, authourizing that legislation, on the other hand, going into Libya, I heard the transparency…I just didn’t see the military threat. And I did not see a military threat from the Lord’s Resistance Army. I do not see that as a threat to national security at all.
FOX NEWS GUY: There’s a lot of nuance.
JOHNSON: There’s a lot of nuance as president of the United States.
So, whereas those of us who vote for Obama vote for a man who was unable to close Guantanamo, engages in drone warfare, and has waged war overseas, Mr. Friedersdorf has cleaner hands, because he votes for Gary Johnson, the candidate who wants to keep Guantanamo open, has no problem with drone warfare, has no problem with Iran being wiped off the map if they develop a nuclear weapon, though he’s uncertain if they’ve even started working on one (hint: yes), and is willing to commit a Tom Clancy type strike team to Africa, where they’ll destroy an army of children, in a conflict that does not threaten in any way the United States. There are times when I would read Mr. Friedersdorf’s work and I would ask myself the question, and I ask it openly now: is there a hidden genius to this, is this writer plain ignorant, or is he a hypocritical opportunist? Here is a man has been steadily arguing that people should not vote for Obama because of his amoral, criminal policies, and who encourages them to instead vote for a candidate backed by noxious racists and con-men, whose policies violate the same principles which Mr. Friedersdorf ostentatiously waves like a proud flag.
I mentioned before that Mr. Friedersdorf’s perspective on politics is very manichean, with a bad Bush, a bad Obama, a good Johnson. His perspective on the country’s recent history is prelapsarian. He makes no criticism of any foreign policy after the Viet Nam war other than drug policy, after which the government was plunged into darkness by the two wars, indefinite detention, and the unwarranted surveillance of the Bush years, with the worst of such executive privileges continuing on under Obama.
He makes no criticsm of Reagan, who he cites as one of the only moments, other than Goldwater, that a movement conservative achieved success45. Reagan, of course, worked as an undercover agent while in Hollywood, reporting on communist activity to the FBI; then while president, placed troops in harm’s way in the Lebanese civil war; fought a war in Grenada; ran bombing raids without congressional authorization over Libya, killing one of Qadaffi’s infant children; mined the harbors of Nicaragua without congressional authorization or even notification; trained militias in Honduras and backed a government in El Salvador which certainly committed war crimes as well as mass murder46; and traded arms for hostages with Iran, violating congressional statutes, and which could well have led to his impeachment were it not for the grievous hurt such an action would inflict on the country fifteen years after Nixon’s dismissal. His successor, George H.W. Bush, who won via one of the most disgusting race-baiting ads in the age of TV election advertising, who Friedersdorf would have voted for if this man from 1988 had run in 201247, knew of the arms for hostages deal, and launched a war without congressional authorization in Panama.
So, let’s again re-iterate this case: Mr. Friedersdorf finds it unconscionable to vote for a man who wages drone warface and failed to close Guantanamo, instead voting for a candidate who has no problem with drone warfare, keeping Guantanamo open, and waging war in whatever random part of the earth he feels evil is done; furthermore, though he has deep, moral issues with Obama waging war without congressional authorization, he has no problem with Reagan engaging in several such wars without authorization, backing militias that engaged in war crimes, or selling weapons to enemies of the United States without congressional approval, nor does he have an issue with George H.W. Bush participating in such actions, or waging war without authorization himself – he, in fact, really really wishes such a man was running this year so he could vote for him. Again: genius, ignoramus, or opportunist?
As I’ve said before, I think Mr. Friedersdorf is of small relevance, rather than of no relevance, to a small spectrum of ideology. He has no appeal to republians right now, as they are entirely animated by tribal feeling, with a strong military remaining a sacred relic, a mark of america’s greatness. He has no appeal to the left, for they can find more in-depth investigations into the war state’s excesses in Jane Mayer, Seymour Hersh, countless marquee and fringe writers. His moral calls are utterly empty of appeal to any liberal who sees that his candidates are either a callous white supremacist or some right-wing loon who has no idea if Iran is building a bomb and wants to continue, or go further on many of the same policies that he calls “dealbreakers” – no progressive of some knowledge will concede to this pathetic bullying. There is only one group that might find some appeal in Friederdorf’s writing, and in this, he is the ideal radical of our time. In an era of a massive growing income gap, where the bonds of society are disappearing, Mr. Friedersdorf’s writing serves as useful affirmation to those libertarians at the top that not only is their credo more intellectual than those animals on the right, but they are more moral than those on the left, because they are for candidates who are against the surveillance and war state. That the candidates which Mr. Friedersdorf supports, Ron Paul, Rand Paul, Gary Johnson, are men who would do such damage to the safety net that only the wealthy could safely vote for such men with impunity, is not a liability but a virtue; Mr. Friedersdorf makes those in the top tier the most moral of men and women: because they are rich they can vote for those who tear apart the system for everyone but the rich, but because they are against the security state, they are the only moral ones who opt for the most virtuous choice. In this, Mr. Friedersdorf is the perfect radical of our dystopian culture, now, and his writing a helpful compass for an anthropologist of the future.
I near the end of this piece in the place where, a few days ago, something Mr. Friedersdorf wrote incited my anger. When he writes of the dead killed by a drone strike, they are an issue of moral outrage. When they are the dead of a mass shooting, and we are outraged, we are lectured that those angry over this constitute an elite, disconnected from the ordinary unrepresented gun owner (though I’ve heard of a gun lobby that does have some media connections), and those who are upset are the persecutors48:
There isn’t anything wrong with gun-control advocates lamenting what, by their lights, is a public that’s reaching wrongheaded conclusions on the subject and is trending in the wrong direction.
But too many pieces I’ve read make a mockery of robust debate in a pluralistic society by ignoring the fact that current policy is largely (though not entirely) a reflection of the U.S. public disagreeing with gun reformers. The average American is far more likely than the average journalist or academic to identify with gun culture, to insist that the Second Amendment confers an individual right to bear arms, to exercise that right, and to support various state concealed-carry laws. Perhaps persuasion can move the citizenry to favor a different status quo. That’s always a hurdle to clear in a democracy. Yet the ability to engage and persuade fellow citizens is undermined when public discourse obscures rather than confronts the relevant disagreements.
Opponents of gun control have been widely vilified in the past week. Very few attempts have been made to understand what motivates them — and given that they’re a subset of Americans with little representation in the national media, attempts at understanding would likely do a lot to inform the rest of the American public. For the most part, these people aren’t in fact motivated by selfishness, as so many critics have stated or implied in the last few days, and almost without exception, gun-control opponents are as horrified by the events in Newtown as anyone calling for a new assault-weapons ban or better background checks or a ban on ammunition.
The point isn’t whether they’re being treated fairly or not. It’s that a gun debate can only be productive in a country as pro-gun as this one when the folks on either side at least understand the deeply held disagreements at issue. So far, too many newly vocal reformers are operating under the conceit that if only America “finally” had a conversation about gun violence, everyone would immediately see the wisdom of the position reformers have advocated all along. One need only to reflect on the state of public opinion after decades of debating the issue to conclude that the conversational outcome many reformers presume isn’t at all certain.
If death and suffering is caused through state actions, it is an issue of public urgency. If it is the result of state neglect, there is sudden caution that we not do anything too drastic. A veteran in miserable condition is noteworthy as a reminder of the war state, and his condition should be given loud voice. That same veteran in utter misery because Rand Paul killed a veterans jobs bill is an inconvenience. We must be very careful, said Mr. Friedersdorf, that we do not infringe on the rights of gun-owners. Yes, just as the freedom of lesbians is curbed when heterosexual women are able to get contraception as part of their health plan, the freedom of people shooting an AK-47 everywhere they want is curbed when public space is set aside in which children shouldn’t be killed. I do not doubt that gun-owners have some rights to some weapons and their use; I do note that this is one of the only times that those affected by a political policy are brought up, whereas the needs of the poor, vulnerable, and elderly are never mentioned when discussing austerity or a candidate junking the social safety net.
Though Mr. Friedersdorf never brings up the context of a terrorist threat when discussing drone strikes, he brings up a bogeyman when there is a massacre: yes, there may well be the possibility that some legislation should pass, but he’s not sure he can trust gun legislation in the hands of Obama, a man who had such a penchant for uncontrolled executive power49:
Interpreted narrowly, I have no problem with Obama marshaling his power “to engage” his fellow citizens. I’d only add that this is a president whose general notion of presidential power extends beyond engagement to indefinite detention and secretly assassinating American citizens without due process. So if Obama ever tweaks his formulation slightly and promises to use “whatever power” his office has “to stop gun violence,” you’ll understand why I’ll shudder. I’ve seen what it means for American presidents to do “everything” in their power to stop U.S. children from dying in terrorist attacks: It has meant torture, dead innocents abroad, and attacks on due process. I’ve also seen presidents do “everything” in their power to keep drugs away from our children. What I wouldn’t give for a politician who promised to do “only the prudent things, and no more.”
Yes, it’s too bad Gary Johnson, a man who has no problem with drone strikes and who gets his foreign policy from a rejected Expendables screenplay isn’t in charge. So there is the inconvenience that these deaths were caused by state neglect, rather than state weapons, and there was an inconvenience that several members of the dreaded public services union had died valiantly trying to save children. This last also made me think of a post by an Atlantic colleague of Mr. Friedersdorf, Jordan Weismann, a man of our time as much as Mr. Friedersdorf, who wrote a recent post about “A Very Mean (but Maybe Brilliant) Way to Pay Teachers: A Freakonomics author and a ‘Genius Grant’ winner suggest that giving teachers bonuses, then threatening to yank them away, might be the key to classroom success.” Mr. Weissman, I can only those teachers of last Friday performed up to your standards. It’s too damn bad you weren’t able to make them do any better with any dirty tricks to play on them.
This piece ends here: a while back, Mr. Friedersdorf shifted his focus to the gunwalking scandal of “Fast and Furious”. He pointed to this issue as evidence of another of Obama’s duplicities, another example of his managerial incompetence50. He egged on the committee headed by Darryl Issa that was to go after Eric Holder, despite the partisan opportunism is always there, shrugged Mr. Friedersdorf51. Of course, Fortune magazine pointed out that there was no gunwalking scandal, that it had all been set off by some disgruntled employees52. Mr. Friedersdorf later compared the attention focused on the “Furious” scandal to the casualties of the mexican drug war, bemoaning the lack of leadership that would end this folly, and put an end to the violence53. In the Fortune piece, it is made clear the incredible ease with which you could buy a gun, and that drug gangs were buying them in Arizona, then transporting them easily over to Mexico, with the death rate in Mexico fueled just as much by the easy access to guns north of the border as it is by the demand for drugs54. It seems rather simple that all Mr. Friedersdorf needs to do to care as much about whether a pile of death is to be indifferent to whether it is the result of the drug war or gun sale deregulation. He often mentions how disappointed he is that president Obama didn’t take on the big lobbies that control Washington. Well, the president will soon be taking on a very big lobby in a few months over some dead children in a school. Perhaps, somehow, Mr. Friedersdorf can find some way to support, if not the president, that cause in the fight. This man likes to damn progressives in all sorts of ways, and so I return the favor in kind: if he cannot do even this because his ideology restrains him, then I think it’s quite clear he’s an utterly callous partisan hack. That is an incivility, but what does it matter? Those words cannot have been written, this piece cannot have been written, because it was written by someone from outside the cosmopolitans, outside the american ruling class, part of a group of people that do not exist to Mr. Friedersdorf, and therefore, they do not exist, and so this piece was never written, it was never written by a nothing man, by no one.
* I first heard of this story from a reddit link, “More evidence Gary Johnson was a scam” which focused on whether his ad spending indicated there was something ersatz about his candidacy; I did not focus on this and was uncertain of whether this claim was substantial enough. Many in the thread dismiss it, and they also argue about the “sketchiness” of the source publication in which the “Swindle” story originally appeared. However, all the claims made in the story appear to be solidly backed by linked material from other publications: an analysis of Johnson’s filing document, and the document themselves, listing Maureen Otis as the filer can be found at “Gary Johnson’s documents reveal puzzling trail” by Peter St. Cyr; his hardline stance on crime, and refusal to grant amnesty to those arrested on drug charges was first published in the Albequerque Journal; that Johnson brought private prison firms to New Mexico and received campaign funds from them is written about in the Santa Fe New Mexican, “Prison firms donate thousands to Richardson” by Steve Terrell; the expensive widening of U.S. 550, which had none of the intended impact on reducing accidents, is described in the Claims Journal, “Widening of U.S. 550 in New Mexico Didn’t Improve Safety, Economy”; some of James Lacy’s unsavory work is described in “Slate Nailer: Conservative James Lacy plays turncoat to sway elections” by Nick Schou, in the Orange County Weekly; the process of vote caging is described in “Vote Caging: What is Vote Caging and Why Should We Care?” by Dahlia Lithwick in Slate; Roger Stone’s account of getting Anderson on the ballot in New York state is given by Stone himself in “Roger Stone, Political Animal” by Matt Labash; the history of nasty tricks Stone has been involved in are described in the profile, “The Dirty Trickster”, by Jeffry Toobin, Rick Perlstein’s essential Nixonland and the definitive Roger Stone chronicler, Wayne Barrett, in such articles as “Sleeping With the GOP”, “Carl Paladino: The Dirty Details in His Campaign Filings”, and “The (Roger) Stone Around Carl Paladino’s Neck”;Johnson’s achievements, including the movement of state medicare cases to managed care, were on his old, now expired site, Johnson for America 2012 – they can still be found in his listing at the State Policy Network, a consortium of free market / libertarian think tanks. A supplemental note, Maureen Otis’s Twitter account (motislaw) lists her as treasurer of Restore America’s Voice PAC, listed at the Sunlight Foundation as having spent over a million and a half in expenditures opposing Barack Obama in the 2012 election. This PAC spent its money exclusively in opposition to Obama, and shows no expenditures in favor of Johnson.
(Following its initial posting, two major edits were made: a change was made to address catholic institutions as employers, rather than catholic hospitals accepting federal funds, regarding contraception and the universal mandate; the source links for the NSFW Corporation’s story on Johnson were added. These changes were made christmas day 2012.)
In concurrence with the creed of The Atlantic, I consider myself to be “of no party or clique,” and the best insight I can offer into my work is its premise: that a writer’s job is to strive for the truth, and to remember that he’ll sometimes be wrong. As a result, I am reticent to characterize myself politically on occasions when I’m really being asked, “Whose side are you on?” The answer to that question should never be “the liberal side” or “the conservative side,” unless the person being questioned is naive enough to think that one ideology or the other has a monopoly on truth.
In some ways, this childhood sounds a lot like my own. My parents are decent, hardworking people who tend to vote Republican. Raised in an upper-middle-class neighborhood – far less ritzy than Brentwood, but no less safe or comfortable – I always had everything that I needed.
When I was twenty I spent a summer studying in Paris. I’d somehow persuaded Florida State University to let me tag along on their summer abroad program. I ate little but baguettes and pasta so that I could afford a weekend trip down to Nice and Monte Carlo with some classmates.
Think of it this way. In large parts of America, a college graduate can inform his parents or peers or a woman he meets via Ok Cupid that he is about to quit his job in public relations, borrow $100,000, and spend it on a year studying journalism at Columbia University before returning home. Few people are likely to tell him that this is irresponsible.
For guilty young people intent on pleasing a certain kind of parent, grad school is one of the only socially permissible vehicles for work-life balance or opting out of the high status economy. Parents who’d be horrified by a child who was a yoga instructor think its romantic so long as it’s done during a summer between years at the Kennedy School of Government.
“If we think it more important to spend this dough on education,” says Will Wilkinson, “then we should hand out the $6 billion in the form of scholarships to deserving prospective collegians of modest means, to help them earn their degrees without having to take out any loans at all.”
Obama earned degrees from Columbia University and Harvard Law, where he was editor of the Harvard Law Review. His wife, Michelle, graduated from Princeton and Harvard Law School. Once you’ve done that it doesn’t matter how much you’ve borrowed. You’re in the one percent. The Obamas ought to have been writing those checks every month, because to subsidize couples with four graduate degrees from Ivy League schools between them — in a country with impoverished immigrants and struggling high school dropouts and hard-pressed single mothers — is perverse. That Obama offered up his own story in that way is a testament to our collective loss of perspective on this.
Of course, most people with student loan debt don’t have Ivy League degrees. They’re still generally better off than people without diplomas. And while decreasing the cost of college for those who’ve yet to attend ought to be a public policy goal, especially since educational subsidies have been structured in a way that helped to drive up costs to begin with, there is no good reason to subsidize not just hard up folks with student debt, but folks with student debt generally.
Including birth control (as distinct from contraceptives used for other purposes) in universally mandated health-care coverage has its own unique redistributive effect, one that seems more problematic in a pluralistic society than funneling resources from the healthy to the sick or malfunctioning. Mandating participation in an insurance risk pool that covers birth control redistributes resources based partly on lifestyle choices, values, and conceptions of what is fulfilling. For example, gays and lesbians have no use for birth control, but are being made to participate in risk pools that cover it, effectively leaving them with fewer resources as a result of their status as a cultural minority group, rather than a part of the majority that desires birth control.
Once birth control for the poor is covered, I wonder why so many on the left either don’t recognize or don’t object to the redistributive consequences of pooling contraceptive costs among everyone else, even people who could afford them on their own. Compared to a system that just took care of the poor (or even to a system that included only the cheapest kind of birth control), here is a more detailed but by no means complete look at the winners and losers:
- Those who are sexually active, especially over long periods, benefit at the expense of those who aren’t, whether by choice or for lack of opportunity. This sure seems non-materially regressive.
- Straight people, who benefit at the expense of gays and lesbians, who have no use for birth control.
But this series of legislative, judicial, and bureaucratic decisions, many of them defensible or even desirable on narrow grounds, add up to a health-care system that is unjust, for it needlessly privileges cultural majorities at the expense of cultural minorities, and obscures redistributive consequences that are sometimes regressive, especially compared to the alternative I suggest: subsidizing contraception only for the poor who can’t afford it. Individuals ought to decide what they find fun or meaningful enough to spend their money on. As progressives argue with social conservatives, whose positions on sex and contraception I too find wrongheaded, the progressives are unwittingly saying that subsidized birth control is desirable even when it involves forcing into the same insurance risk pools people who want little or no contraception with people who want a lot of it. Some claim that’s the only way our health-care system can avoid discriminating against women.
Originally, the footnoted sentence dealt exclusively with catholic hospitals distributing contraception – “while never mentioning the possiiblity that such institutions might do what they want by refusing federal funds”, and that such hospitals without federal funds would have greater leeway. The edited sentence deals with the broader issue of an institution refusing contraception for its employees.
There is no bright-line test for what is “reasonable,” or how burdensome an accommodation must be before government should no longer be bound to make it. But this contraception example seems easy. There are very few institutions in America with longstanding, obviously credible moral objections to contraception. Permitting these institutions to purchase health insurance for employees that doesn’t include contraception isn’t going to meaningfully interfere with the government’s ability to shape a functional health-care system. There are, additionally, the consequences for actual employees of institutions like the Catholic Church. Many share the position of their faith: they’re morally uncomfortable paying into a health-insurance system that doles out contraception.
This is but one example of my general discomfort with the attitude that both conservatives and progressives take toward minority groups and diversity. Both groups sometimes seek to impose their notions of what society ought to be like on everyone, and cite majority norms or expediency when doing so.
What I’d encourage is constant awareness that people have different values, morals, priorities, preferences, and approaches to pursuing happiness — an attitude that leads folks to happily accommodate diversity when possible, and to be regretful and limit the magnitude of coercion when it is necessary.
A straightforward bill to subsidize birth control for the poor might not pass Congress (even though I would support it). In order to avoid taking their chances on legislation of that kind, the Obama Administration pursued the path of least resistance: order employers to add this to their plans, even if doing so violates their conscience. This approach permitted them to hide the cost of providing birth control by bundling it into insurance premiums, mask the nature of who is being subsidized by whom, and build political support by offering a universal subsidy rather than one targeted at the poor.
What today’s compromise showed is that it there was never a need to choose between religious and contraceptive freedom. What was actually at odds was religious freedom and the ability of progressives to advance contraceptive freedom through the means they found most expedient. There were always lots of different approaches that would achieve the same ends. If the Obama Administration and its progressive allies were less casual about coercing people, they’d have discovered the current compromise — which they deserve credit for adopting — a lot sooner.
It’s perfectly legitimate to criticize the Blunt-Rubio bill and to set forth reasons why its passage would be bad for women. What’s objectionable is 1) the implication that the Republicans who voted for this bill are motivated by antagonism toward women and engaged in an aggressive campaign to war on them (the truthful motivation is some mix of concern for protecting religious liberty and pandering to religious conservatives and opponents of sweeping health-care mandates). 2) The sly invocation of the phrase “access to contraception,” as if what’s at issue here is the ability to buy condoms or birth control as opposed to a debate about who covers their cost.
As stated, the politically savvy see through the hyperbole and subtly inaccurate language. The true victims aren’t GOP political operatives, who engage in distortions of their own, but the class of women who don’t pay close attention to politics, hear these talking points, and erroneously conclude that if the GOP candidate wins the election birth control may disappear from commerce.
The so-called “war on women,” which largely concerns abortion policy, isn’t an area of politics that is particularly driven by political donations. It is a wedge issue that appeals to Republicans because a large part of its socially conservative base feels very strongly that abortion is murder.
Do rich entrepreneurs owe their success to their own efforts or the commonweal? James Joyner has a good answer. “Of course nobody got rich totally on their own,” he writes. “Of course the fabled ‘job creators’ rely on the infrastructure we built collectively, whether it be roads and bridges, an educated workforce, relative safety from crime, a reasonably functional judicial system and what have you. But those building blocks were in place for those who didn’t get rich, too, so of course those who did deserve the lion’s share of the credit for the fruits of their labor.”
That sounds more sensible to me than what President Obama said, and I’m presuming the charitable interpretation of his remarks. Consider an enterprise like this one.
It should perhaps make us uncomfortable that our government is mostly focused on relatively privileged citizens, and that we think little about the very poor aside from providing a safety net. But it’s true of every viable presidential candidate from both major political parties, and the vast majority of pundits too. All Romney can be faulted for in this instance is saying he’ll behave as everyone else does without acknowledging it openly.
Shouldn’t we prefer a political discourse where forthrightness of that kind isn’t treated as a fault? Romney’s statement may hurt him with voters. But it shouldn’t.
It is truly amazing what a different view of politics the donor class gets. Obama plays to rooms like this too. This cycle, he’s managed to keep his words from leaking (or perhaps, after his experience in the last cycle, he’s more careful about what he says). As such, expect the Obama campaign to start using footage from the hidden video to start attacking Romney any day now. And know that if you could hear what Team Obama says when they think no one is listening, it would likely be every bit as off-putting (if substantively different).
Josh Barro predicts that this will cost Mitt Romney the election. It certainly plays into the criticism that he doesn’t care about poor people and will govern on behalf of wealthier Americans.
But it also reminds me of Barack Obama’s infamous statement during the 2008 election that rural voters “get bitter, they cling to their guns or religion.” Those words were also said to donors at a private event, and broadcast only when a secret recording was made public. Rural voters aren’t 47 percent of the electorate, but folks who like guns or religion are a rather large demographic.
These sorts of remarks do double damage.
They needlessly insult some people whose votes the candidate would like to win. And beyond the particulars of what is said, they remind voters that candidate’s public persona is phony and affected.
Four years ago a lot of people felt they got a glimpse of “the real Obama.” They certainly saw a side of him that he hid when speaking to general audiences, as opposed to urban liberal supporters.
In April 2008, Obama spoke at a fundraiser in San Francisco. Here’s what he said, according to an audio recording published by the Huffington Post:
“Here’s what it is: In a lot of these communities in big industrial states like Ohio and Pennsylvania, people have been beaten down so long, they feel so betrayed by government, that when they hear a pitch that is premised on not being cynical about government, there’s a part of them that just doesn’t buy it. And when it’s delivered by—it is true that when it’s delivered by a 46-year-old black man named Barack Obama, then that adds another layer of skepticism. (Audience laughs.)
“But—so the questions you’re most likely to get are going to be: ‘Well, you know, what’s this guy going to do for me? What’s the concrete thing?’ And what they want to hear is—you know, so we’ll give you talking points about what we’re proposing: to close tax loopholes and roll back, you know, the top—the tax cuts for the top 1 percent. Obama’s going to give tax breaks to middle-class folks, and we’re going to provide health care for every American. You know, we’ll have a series of talking points.
“But the truth is that our challenge is to get people persuaded that we can make progress when there’s no evidence of that in their daily lives. You go into some of these small towns in Pennsylvania, Ohio—like a lot of small towns in the Midwest, the jobs have been gone now for 25 years, and nothing’s replaced them. And they fell through the Clinton administration and the Bush administration. And each successive administration has said that somehow these communities are going to regenerate. And they have not. So it’s not surprising then that they get bitter, and they cling to guns or religion, or antipathy toward people who aren’t like them, or anti-immigrant sentiment, or, you know, anti-trade sentiment [as] a way to explain their frustrations.
“Now, these are in some communities. You know, I think what you’ll find is that people of every background—there are going to be a mix of people. You can go in the toughest neighborhood, you know, working-class lunch-pail folks, and you’ll find Obama enthusiasts. And you can go into places where you’d think that I’d be very strong, and people will just be skeptical. The important thing is that you show up and you’re doing what you’re doing.”
Conservatives find Obama’s line about guns, religion, and immigration patronizing. They’re right. The recording exposes Obama’s assumption that blue-collar conservatism on these issues should be taken not at face value but as a psychological symptom or rationalization.
But notice what else the recording shows. Obama tells his audience not to write off any group. He recommends humility and openness. Even in the most unlikely neighborhoods, among “people of every background,” he tells his volunteers they’ll find supporters.
He also advises the volunteers not to write off every voter who seems unreceptive. The tough reception, he suggests, might be just a “layer of skepticism,” a “part of them that just doesn’t buy it.” Beneath that layer, the whole voter is more complicated.
In particular, Obama rejects the caricature of hostile white voters as racists. Instead of assuming that they just ”don’t want to vote for the black guy,” he asks his volunteers to focus on these voters’ economic concerns. He counsels empathy. “They feel so betrayed,” he says.
The whole thrust of Obama’s answer is persuasion. He calls guns-and-religion precincts “the places where we are going to have to do the most work.” He says “our challenge is to get people persuaded” in those neighborhoods. “The important thing,” he concludes, “is that you show up” and make the case, based on tax and health care policy.
A domestic agenda that he obviously cannot enact. As Romney tells it, he’ll cut tax rates 20 percent, repeal the estate tax, refrain from raising taxes on the middle class, refrain from cuts to Medicare, spend more on the military, possibly wage a war against Iran, and reduce the deficit. Doing all he’s promised is mathematically impossible. And the conservative wonks who say otherwise could be forgiven for their flawed analysis if it weren’t for the fact that every last one knows damned well that Romney is never in a million years going to keep all of those promises. If elected, he’ll most likely succeed in cutting taxes and fail at addressing the federal deficit. But it’s impossible to know for sure which promises he’ll break, only that it’ll be some of them.
Ever wonder what Ron Paul’s America would look like? Then read the budget outline that Paul released as part of his 2012 presidential bid. It promises to cut $1 trillion during his first year in office, balance the budget by 2015, withdraw us from all foreign wars and eliminate five Cabinet-level agencies in the process. Economists across the political spectrum say the impact of such drastic government spending cuts would be majorly disruptive and harmful to the economy in the short term.
By reducing the deficit from more than $1 trillion to $300 billion in just a year, Paul’s plan would upend the economy at a time when it’s already fragile, says Gus Faucher, director of macroeconomics for Moody’s Analytics. “That much deficit reduction in one year is going to be a huge drag on the economy . . . the reduction in spending is much greater than cuts in taxes,” says Faucher. “We’re seeing that impact in Europe right now, where severe fiscal austerity has caused big problems for the European economy.” While long-term deficit reduction is important, legislators need to make sure that the economy is strong before major cuts take effect, he adds, calling Paul’s plan “much more ambitious” than other Republican proposals to date. By comparison, the Congressional supercommittee is required to cut $1.5 trillion over a ten-year period—a feat Paul wants to accomplish in a little more than one year.
Liberal economists were even more dire in their assessments of the Paul budget. “This is almost having the economy fall off a cliff,” says Dean Baker, co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research, estimating that cutting $1 trillion in 2013 would prompt the unemployment rate to jump by 3 percentage points. Even if the $1 trillion in cuts were done over two or three years’ time, there would still be double-digit employment, Baker concludes. “This will make it extremely hard to balance the budget, since if the unemployment rate goes to 11 or 12 percent, then the budget picture will look much worse. If his response is still more cuts, then who knows how high he can get the unemployment rate.”
Michael Ettlinger, vice president for economic policy at the Center for American Progress, said Paul’s cuts would destroy the social safety net, as the plan would turn Medicaid and other low-income entitlement programs into block-granted programs that would depend on discretionary appropriations. “Your kids would be out of school, working or begging,” he concludes.
The program would also turn Social Security, veterans’ benefits and Medicare into voluntary programs that would allow younger workers to opt out of the entitlements, while fulfilling promises to present-day seniors and veterans. Both liberals and conservatives such as Baker say such changes could destabilize Social Security. “We will likely see a substantial number of young people take that option, especially if he scares them enough that it won’t be there,” says Baker. What’s more, “you will have high-income earners who opt out, and the people you have left are going to be low-income, which could cause problems” in terms of financing, explains Faucher, of Moody’s. All this could complicate Social Security’s long-term fiscal health, as it could end up losing a lot of revenue.
An opt-out option for Medicare would present similar problems, AEI’s Hassett says. He agrees that Medicare reform is critical to achieving long-term deficit reduction but thinks that an opt-out would destabilize the program. “The system taxes young people to pay for benefits for old people. If young people opt out, who will pay for the benefits?” Hassett says.
What’s the worst that Ron Paul could do? Try to get America back on the gold standard, only to find that he doesn’t have the votes in Congress to do it? I am not just being funny. Though Paul has some radical domestic policy ideas, I just don’t see any of them getting passed into law. And in foreign policy and national security matters, the areas where he would exercise the most unchecked discretion, he is the candidate you’d least expect to unwisely provoke or launch a war.
In an interview with Fox News’ Sean Hannity this week, Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) compared the federal government’s decision to reclaim some of its own property to Nazi Germany’s confiscations of Jewish-owned art.
In the wake of the recent Supreme Court decision, can you still argue that the Constitution does not support ObamaCare? The liberal blogosphere apparently thinks the constitutional debate is over. I wonder whether they would have had that opinion the day after the Dred Scott decision.
Think of how our country would look now had the Supreme Court not changed its view of what is constitutional. Think of 1857, when the court handed down the outrageous Dred Scott decision, which said African Americans were not citizens. Think of the “separate but equal” doctrine in Plessy v. Ferguson, which the court later repudiated in Brown v. Board of Education.
“The bottom line is: I’m not an expert, so don’t give me the power in Washington to be making rules,” Paul said at a recent campaign stop in response to questions about April’s deadly mining explosion in West Virginia…“You live here, and you have to work in the mines. You’d try to make good rules to protect your people here. If you don’t, I’m thinking that no one will apply for those jobs.”
In a surprising show of bipartisanship, 78 Senators voted against Sen. Rand Paul’s (R-KY) plan to offset disaster aid relief and FEMA funding with cuts to foreign aid. Only 20 senators voted for it. The stand-alone funding bill will provide $6.9 billion in emergency relief funds for fiscal year 2012. Paul demanded that the Senate use funds “from the coffers of our numerous nation-building programs overseas” rather than by “borrowing on the backs of our children and grandchildren.” The Senate proceeded to pass the relief package 62 to 37.
Politico is reporting that Paul is single-handedly holding up $36 million in benefits for elderly and disabled refugees.
Funding for the refugees ran out on Friday, but Paul refuses to lift his hold out of a professed concern that the money could be used to aid terrorists:
In a statement to POLITICO on Tuesday, Paul confirmed he was blocking the bill over concerns the money could be used to aid domestic terrorists. Two alleged terrorists, who came to the U.S. through a refugee program and were receiving welfare benefits, were arrested this year in Paul’s hometown of Bowling Green, Ky.
“This incident alone raises serious questions about the system through which they came to the United States, and I am insisting on a full investigation on our practice of providing welfare to refugees,” Paul said. [...]
The bill would extend funding for one year for about 5,600 elderly and disabled refugees from war-torn regions of the world, including Sierra Leone, Iraq and Afghanistan. Some are victims of human-trafficking or torture.
Senate Republicans prevented a veterans’ jobs bill from coming to a vote today by forcing a budget point of order vote. Democrats came up 2 votes short of the 60 needed to defeat the GOP’s budget measure.
The Veterans Jobs Corps bill — which is part of President Obama’s pushto secure jobs for veterans — would have provided $1 billion over five years to hire 20,000 young veterans for public lands jobs and prioritize vets for first responder jobs such as police, firefighter, or EMT. The measure would have also provided young vets access to the infrastructure with which to assist in job searches, such as access to computers, internet and career services advisers.
The Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America, a vets group that supported the legislation, called the GOP move “a huge disappointment,” adding, “Today, politics won over helping vets.”
Sen. Patty Murray (D-WA) said on the Senate floor today that “this bill is fully paid for and does not violate pay-go rules.” (The New York Times said Murray’s aides say “say the program will be paid for by recovering more money from tax-delinquent Medicare providers and forcing big tax deadbeats to pay up before receiving passports.”)
Murray even tried to include most of the provisions of a competing Republican bill but Democrats still ran into opposition. Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) said he would block the measure until the Pakistani doctor that aided the CIA in looking for Osama bin Laden was freed.
On the eve of the Republican primary, before the field of candidates was established, I found myself hoping that the eventual nominee would be someone whose bid for higher office I could support. President Obama’s transgressions against civil liberties and expansion of executive power were dealbreakers. I wouldn’t back him as I had in 2008. Nor would I vote for a Fox News Republican like Sarah Palin, Herman Cain, or Michele Bachmann. But a deficit hawk with a steady hand on foreign policy, like George H.W. Bush?
The Obama Administration’s efforts to create “green jobs” have fallen far short of what was promised, as Reuters reports in a detailed analysis that casts Solyndra as just one instance of failure. The Fast and the Furious scandal is surely going to come up in the course of the general election.
My thirst for answers is even more powerful than my aversion to partisan politics. I’d suggest anyone who feels otherwise is not in fact “a believer in sunshine and disclosure,” because there has never been a Congressional investigation in which the participants weren’t angling to score political points in one way or another. That’s just how the system works.
Quite simply, there’s a fundamental misconception at the heart of the Fast and Furious scandal. Nobody disputes that suspected straw purchasers under surveillance by the ATF repeatedly bought guns that eventually fell into criminal hands. [Darryl "Arson"] Issa and others charge that the ATF intentionally allowed guns to walk as an operational tactic. But five law-enforcement agents directly involved in Fast and Furious tell Fortune that the ATF had no such tactic. They insist they never purposefully allowed guns to be illegally trafficked. Just the opposite: They say they seized weapons whenever they could but were hamstrung by prosecutors and weak laws, which stymied them at every turn.
Indeed, a six-month Fortune investigation reveals that the public case alleging that [Dave] Voth [head of an ATF group charged with stopping the smuggling of guns] and his colleagues walked guns is replete with distortions, errors, partial truths, and even some outright lies. Fortune reviewed more than 2,000 pages of confidential ATF documents and interviewed 39 people, including seven law-enforcement agents with direct knowledge of the case. Several, including Voth, are speaking out for the first time.
How Fast and Furious reached the headlines is a strange and unsettling saga, one that reveals a lot about politics and media today.
Said Texas Governor Rick Perry, “We’ve had over 300 Mexican nationals killed directly attributable to this Fast and Furious operation, where they brought those guns into Mexico. A former Marine and a Border Patrol agent by the name of Brian Terry lost his life. With Watergate you had a second-rate burglary.”
There has been enough commentary of that kind that political satirists are starting to notice. Said Bill Maher on his HBO show, “First of all, let me just say, Republicans don’t care about dead Mexicans.” His comments spurred outraged posts in the conservative blogosphere. But the problem isn’t that he was wrong, so much as that his biting remark ought to have been broader. Democrats don’t care about dead Mexicans either assuming a reasonable definition of “care.”
Abstractly, do they regret it when foreigners die?
Sure. So do Republicans.
Does either party put forth any effort to change the American policy that results in more dead Mexicans than any other?
Nope.
They talk about how tragic it is that 300 Mexican nationals were killed by Fast and Furious. But they keep right on supporting the war on drugs.
Some call it the “parade of ants”; others the “river of iron.” The Mexican government has estimated that 2,000 weapons are smuggled daily from the U.S. into Mexico. The ATF is hobbled in its effort to stop this flow. No federal statute outlaws firearms trafficking within the U.S., so agents must build cases using a patchwork of often toothless laws. For six years, due to Beltway politics, the bureau has gone without permanent leadership, neutered in its fight for funding and authority. The National Rifle Association has so successfully opposed a comprehensive electronic database of gun sales that the ATF’s congressional appropriation explicitly prohibits establishing one.
[Dave] Voth’s [head of an ATF unit set up to stop gun smuggling in the southwest] mandate was to stop gun traffickers in Arizona, the state ranked by the gun-control advocacy group Legal Community Against Violence as having the nation’s “weakest gun violence prevention laws.” Just 200 miles from Mexico, which prohibits gun sales, the Phoenix area is home to 853 federally licensed firearms dealers. Billboards advertise volume discounts for multiple purchases.
Customers can legally buy as many weapons as they want in Arizona as long as they’re 18 or older and pass a criminal background check. There are no waiting periods and no need for permits, and buyers are allowed to resell the guns. “In Arizona,” says Voth, “someone buying three guns is like someone buying a sandwich.”
By 2009 the Sinaloa drug cartel had made Phoenix its gun supermarket and recruited young Americans as its designated shoppers or straw purchasers. Voth and his agents began investigating a group of buyers, some not even old enough to buy beer, whose members were plunking down as much as $20,000 in cash to purchase up to 20 semiautomatics at a time, and then delivering the weapons to others.
These are notes from a session of republican consultants of the 2012 presidential campaigns, part of the Harvard campaign decision makers conference that took place a week and a half ago. There is some information that is valuable, almost eternally, certain mathematical formulas, a poem of succinct genius – some of what’s said in this conference would have been given great attention had it been revealed during the course of the campaign, and is now entirely ignored. This allows us to see much political news properly for what it is, gossip, much as the first couplings of some famed and beautiful pair are newsworthy in the days following the eventful night, and of no interest at all a century after they’re in their coffins. I was struck by the fact that, allegedly, Chris Buck, a Newsweek photographer, told the Bachmann team that his editors had given the specific task of taking a photo of their candidate that made her look bad; that Newt Gingrich made his campaign decisions in conjunction with his wife; that the supposed alliance between Mitt Romney and Ron Paul did not exist, they simply were not competing for the same votes; that the states look at putting a name on a ballot as a shakedown measure by which they can extract as much money as possible from a campaign, this, again, according to a member of the Bachmann team.
All this is now considered bygone gossip, of no importance now that the parade has moved on, with the most important points at this time, shown equal inattention by news media, those dealing with the tumult in the republican party. In their detailing of the process, one can observe the obvious tensions between the conservative establishment and the populists who are the party’s true power base: those candidates unfavored by the establishment and moneymen, anyone other than Romney and Perry, had to struggle for finances, and were grateful for entry in the many debates, which gave them exposure that they otherwise barely had the money to pay for. Despite their meagre finances, at least one of these populist candidates, Rick Santorum, nearly took the nomination, and may have only lost his grasp at the ring because of the very well-funded super PACs on the side of Romney.
Though it is never explicitly said, the logical deduction to be taken from the conversation is that the republican establishment believes that a crucial factor in its loss for the presidency is lack of control over the process: in order to win in 2016, there needs to be tighter RNC grip on the debates, rather than handing off control to the liberal media, whose goals do not converge with the party’s (this Politico article points out that this process has already begun), and a shorter primary schedule that would give populists less of an advantage and less possibility of exposure, with money of course concentrating around the candidates most desired by the GOP mandarins. According to the consultants here, the major problem that the Romney campaign faced wasn’t a lack of ideas, but that they did not have enough money, leaving them vulnerable during the summer: this means, undoubtedly, that an attempted remedy for this will be even more big donor money flooding the race to guarantee a win. That states shake down campaigns for fees is of no concern for the party, as such actions will deter smaller, less will financed campaigns from coming close to victory. All this will help the preferred GOP candidate from moving too rightward from centrist positions to compete with rivals, positions which will later cripple their bid in the general, and keep the preferred candidate from using up too much money in primary fights.
There is only one major obstacle to this: the preferred candidate of the establishment is often not that of the populist heart, the party within the party, the tea party: Herman Cain, Rick Perry, Newt Gingrich, Michele Bachmann, and most especially, Rick Santorum, were all preferred to Mitt Romney by this group. However, if this populist voice can be fully suppressed in the primaries, then they will, of course, always vote for the republican candidate over the democrat with perhaps enough of a chunk of woo-able independents to win the general. This is what just happened in 2012: the tea party did not want Mitt Romney, they did not like Romney, but they were a reliable bloc of Romney voters, anyway. Whether this corralling can be fully successful is an open question: Dave Carney, Perry adviser, states that even though the establishment very much may want to change to a shorter primary schedule, the GOP base would never tolerate it. Carney makes another important point: the party will not be changed from the top-down, through the ideas of various conservative intellectuals, and the RNC leadership. The RNC, he stresses is a legal entity that does some fund-raising, some technical stuff, and that’s it: it is incidental to shaping the party. Voters shape the party. The beginnings of this attempt at populist suppression and the populist reaction to it might be found in this past year’s rules change at the convention, described by Michelle Goldberg in “Rules Change Sparks Grassroots Boos at GOP Convention”.
Those expecting foreshadowings of a dramatic ideological change at the GOP will be disappointed: the Obama coalition is viewed as one tied to Obama specifically. Better transmission of the republican message to latino voters is emphasised, rather than mentioning any change in GOP policies, in terms of amnesties or visa programs. Many consultants discourage the idea that they need to become more like democrats.
I have not made a full transcript – where the entire independent expenditures session was of interest, this only had select points of relevance. The structure of what follows is: a summary with each sentence giving a quick description of the transcript, with a footnote linking to the fragment (notable moments are accompanied by the audio, all fragments are accompanied by indicators of the approximate beginning and end of the fragment in the full audio of the conference). The conference fragments are given in chronological order, but they should be coherent in and of themselves. I encourage anyone finding any interest in this to go to the Harvard campaign decision makers conference for the full audio. I have transcribed sections of this, and the full independent expenditures conference as this is one of the few moments such consultant speak openly and frankly (or as frankly as one can expect from such a profession), without the specific purpose of advocacy for their candidate, and, in a major break from form, on the record with attribution.
The Players:
Moderators: Jonathan Martin (Politico) and Jan Crawford (CBS News).
Consultants, in no order (respective candidate is in parenthesis): Matt Rhoades and Stuart Stevens (Romney), Linda Hansen and Mark Block (Cain), John Brabender (Santorum), Matt David and Ana Navarro (Huntsman), Vince Haley (Gingrich), Rob Johnson and Dave Carney (Perry), Phil Musser (Pawlenty), Keith Nahigian and Brett O’Donnell (Bachmann), Trygve Olson (Paul), Carlos Sierra (Roemer)
The consultants are given a chance to ask each other anything, and there is silence1. Rhoades believes that the longer primary ultimately hurt the candidate2. Carney points out the conflict between what primary voters and the establishment want from the primary3. Brabender speaks out in support of the high number of debates, and helped to make up for their campaign’s lack of money4. O’Donnell is also thankful for the debates giving his candidate so much exposure5 (O’Donnell, a debate expert was, famously, let go by the Romney campaign for his outsize prominence in helping the candidate prep for these contests – this gets a mention in Robert Draper’s informative “They Retort, You Decide”, the main incident covered in “Mitt Romney splits with Brett O’Donnell” by Jonathan Martin and Maggie Haberman, the offending article: “Facing Second Loss to Gingrich, Romney Went on Warpath” by Jim Rutenberg and Jeff Zeleny). We’d like the debates better if our candidate was better at them, and they also tried to outflank each other on the right, says Navarro6. Hansen also stresses the benefit her candidate gained from the debate7. Stevens does not think the debates forced Romney to the right, but does think the debates were degrading to the candidates8. Musser does not think the debates, when conducted by the liberal media, are in the best interests of the party, but is unsure whether the RNC has the power to exert control9. Stevens further emphasises the lack of influence the campaigns have over the debates10. Musser says that the straw poll is a circus and a joke11. Carney and Johnson were originally with Gingrich, they explain why they left, and that the decisions of the Gingrich campaign were joint ones, of husband and wife12.
Carney and Johnson explain the sudden move of Perry into the presidential race, that the lack of prior long-term preparation hurt him13. Carney makes the point that Gingrich simply didn’t have the money for the extensive campaign that he wanted to run14. Johnson makes clear one of the reasons why Perry could enter the race – his access to a near unlimited amount of money from fundraisers15. Rhoades thought that prior to Perry’s entry, they felt their greatest threat came from Pawlenty, and that Perry’s campaign ended not due to his infamous gaffe (forgetting the name of a federal agency he wanted to get rid of), but because of the statements in his book Fed Up that social security was a ponzi scheme16. Carney goes into detail on how the absence of long-term prep prior to Perry’s entry ultimately doomed the campaign, then goes on a wild rant about the futility of candidate debates, then yells at Sierra because the debates were essential to his candidate17. Sierra hates the debates, because they were the near only chance for his candidate to get wide exposure and he wasn’t allowed in – now Martin yells at Sierra18. Hansen emphasizes the information value of the debates and questions whether the mainstream journalists are doing their proper part in this19. Olson complains of the way the debates ended up being Mean Girls, and speaks of the way Perry, with his regal motorcade, made himself into a target20. Carney again points to their lack of lead-up time as a factor in their inability to deal with attacks when they became a target21. Stevens believes the primary candidates were impressive, and many of them will be even more formidable in ’1622. Olson explains that Romney and Paul were sympathetic to each other, were not competing for the same votes, but there was no formal alliance23.
David emphasizes again that the format of the debates was to the detriment both of the candidates and the party24. Haley believes that Gingrich did well in every area, except in ads, where he was heavily outspent25. The pivotal moment when Gingrich swatted down a question about his marriage was unplanned, says Haley26. Stevens says that after they won New Hampshire, he was certain, whatever other states they lost, they would eventually win27. Stevens was not worried about Gingrich’s South Carolina win28. The moment that Gingrich angrily reacted to King’s question and the crowd broke out in cheers, Rhoades started concentrating on Florida29. Stevens explains a basic successful effective debate strategy, used by them against Gingrich: the most aggressive debater wins the debate30. Johnson talks about the major impact of Perry’s back surgery on his campaign31. Nahigian and O’Donnell talk about the double standard women candidates face when it comes to their appearance and health, and Nahigian argues that Iowa voters don’t vote for women in their legislatures, or for outside female candidates32. Hansen agrees that there’s a double standard33. Nahigian alleges that Chris Butler, a Newsweek photographer, before taking Bachmann’s picture for his magazine’s cover, revealed that his editors did not want him to take a good picture of their candidate34 (the cover was controversial at the time). Block says that they knew about the sexual harassment allegations against Cain before his entry into the race, and regrets that they did not dispel them through a press conference on Halloween35. Hansen emphasizes how important it is to prepare the candidate’s family for these things, because the media scrutiny during these scandals can be intensive36.
Brabender discusses the attempts to get Gingrich to quit the race, that the Gingrich campaign staff worked to get him to drop out of the race, so that a conservative would get the nomination, but Gingrich resisted this, and stayed in, perhaps an important factor in Santorum eventual loss37. Haley explains why Gingrich stayed in38. Haley explains that Gingrich took the attack ads personally, and wasn’t able to laugh them off39. Nahigian explains how getting on a state ballot now is a shakedown by the states for money40. Brabender says that they ultimately lost not to the Romney campaign, but to his super PACs41.Stevens explains how the noise of the primary ended up engulfing and tainting all the candidates42.
Rhoades talks about how you can only aim to win the primary, and then the general election43. Rhoades emphasises again the importance of the social security issue in defeating Perry44. When did the Romney campaign know their man was the nominee? Stevens says45. The burden of these campaigns on the candidate’s family: Stevens explains46. Why was Obama allowed to define Romney over the summer? Rhoades and Stevens give a detailed answer, with emphasis made on their lack of funds relative to the Obama campaign47. The Romney campaign stresses that they had no co-ordination with their super PAC, and that such organizations were both a gift and a curse48. Rhoades discusses the preparations made in anticipation of Bain Capital-related attacks, and the efforts to counter them49. Haley says that the “King of Bain” ad produced by the Gingrich super PAC was not, in fact, wanted by the campaign (this is a little surprising, since Gingrich had already attacked the Romney-Bain connection before the ad was produced, and Gingrich’s super PAC, Winning Our Future, got the funds to advertise the film from Sheldon Adelson, the main contributor to Gingrich’s campaign)50. Olson predicts that in ’16 all attack ads will outsourced to super PACs, to avoid any taint with the main campaign51. Stevens emphasizes again that the difference between the money their campaign and the Obama campaign had on hand was the reason they didn’t reply to the summertime attack ads52. David says that the Huntsman campaign did not succeed with moderate or conservative voters, nor did their super PAC provide them with the ads that they wanted, which, instead of portraying Huntsman as a moderate, played up his conservative credentials53.
David thinks that the republicans need to moderate somewhat, but that they lost this race because of technology and the difficulty of going against an incumbent president54. Musser does not think the Obama coalition will hold together, and stresses the importance of advertising on media that latinos watch55. Sierra thinks a more conservative candidate like Santorum would have resulted in more of an ass-kicking, Martin asks, so, someone like Bachmann, or…Sierra replies, more of an ass-kicking, Martin confirms: more of an ass-kicking56. Haley believes that making people’s lives better through conservative governing solutions is a winning message, with the policy to be more fully defined at a later time57. Carney believes that there is this misconception that a central party makes policy decisions, no: voters make decisions, the RNC is just a legal entity that does fund-raising 58. Johnson: Fox News is of incredible importance in terms of exposure during a republican primary 59. Nahigian believes republicans need to get back to small government conservatism 60. David thinks there’ll be at least one republican candidate in ’16 who’ll be pro-gay marriage 61. Brabender thinks there on dangerous ground if they try to be more like democrats 62. Olson believes the Obama coalition is not a long-term electoral coalition, and that the republicans need to take a less hawkish stance 63. Rhoades points to the incredible impact of the debates as his biggest surprise64. Stevens refers back to 2004, when it was believed republicans had a long-term electoral lock and argues that the current primary process is fundamentally sound and will serve them well in bringing about a republican nominee who will win the presidency four years from now65.
Jan Crawford: We’re going to actually toss out to you – because you were there from the beginning, formulating strategies, seeing what your opponents were doing. So we’re just going to say the first question, and the floor is yours. Come on, you guys. (Martin: what are the questions that have been on your mind ever since the primary (inaudible)?) (silence) (Martin: Dive in. Somebody dive in.) (laughter) (long silence) Come on, Keith.
Crawford: One of the things we were obviously tossing around was just the change in the rules to extend this campaign…the proportional voting. Any of you guys want to pick up on that one, what kind of impact did that have…did that draw out this campaign longer, ultimately to the nominee’s detriment in the general? Or did that as intended, allow for other candidates to come forward…Matt?
Matt Rhoades: Thanks Jan. Obviously, the process this time…this was why when we were doing our early planning on the Romney campaign, we never expected to win this early, because of the proportional allocation of the delegates…and early on, when the RNC was figuring out the rules, back in 2010, you know we knew that we didn’t want an extended calendar, we wouldn’t publicly say that, though…but behind the scenes, some of our supporters were focused on trying to keep the calendar a little less expansive, and…so we knew going into this, it wasn’t going to be…primaries aren’t easy, first off. (Martin: who was doing that?) There would be individuals such as Ron Kaufman, who works at the RNC, who were focused on that, but obviously, when the rules changed, publicly, we came out, and said we’re for it. Because, those are the rules. You can’t be against the rules. And at the end of the day, we knew we had to be patient throughout the process, and we knew there would be people who rose up to the top, and we would just have to stick to our strategy in the primary, but at the end of the day, we had to spend $87 million dollars, and we came out in April against an incumbent candidate who just had so much money, and maybe if it wasn’t an incumbent president we were going against, it would’ve been great for everybody, and I know a lot of people thought the Obama-Hillary Clinton campaign made Obama a lot stronger, and there were certainly parts of the primary that made governor Romney a better candidate, but at the end of the day, when we’ve spent $87 million dollars, and these are $2500 dollar cheques that we can’t collect, until after the convention, it was a disadvantage.
Crawford: So your bottom line is that that change ultimately hurt the nominee?
Dave Carney: If you care about primary voters than proportional’s the way to go, because 40% voted for somebody, and 30% voted for somebody else, those 30% should be represented at the convention…
Jonathan Martin: So you’re saying stick with it then?
Carney: No. No, I’m not. I’m saying if you care about what the primary voters have to say, then proportional’s a fair way to do it, if you care about let’s get this thing done, and cooked things get cooked, so we can go and try to fight the general election, then you want winner take all. (Crawford: Weren’t-) The establishment is let’s get this over, the guys with the money, people like you [journalists, the moderators] fondling over them every day, you want to get this over with. Everyone, in a year, everyone’s gonna know who…the conventional wisdom who our nominee’s gonna be in O-16, and that’s going to help drive that candidate, you know, pretty far. But primary voters, and our party is very small d democratic, I don’t think they would stand to go back to the kingmaker…what they perceive as the insiders telling them who’s going to-
Brabender: Representing Rick Santorum. Here’s…he spent between him and his super PAC about $27 million dollars. And went pretty darn far. Because of the way the system is set up, I’m guessing the nominee spent with his campaign and super PAC between the $120 and $130 million range. YET: we were able to have a continuous primary and not wrap things up after three states, which, I think for the party was a positive thing, I would even argue the prolonged debates was a positive thing and one of the reasons Mitt Romney won the first debate against the president. What I do think is a problem is when there’s inconsistency. Florida being a winner-take-all state, all of a sudden in the middle of nowhere, just changed strategies dramatically. Texas having to go to the end of the line because of changes down there, changed the system dramatically, so I think it needs to be more balanced and more consistent, but I would argue to many degree, the system worked.
Brett O’Donnell: The debates had a huge impact, both on the primary and on the general election this time.
Martin: Now, full disclosure, Brett, you’re a debate guy.
O’Donnell: I understand that, but I think that the airwaves were so crowded this time, that voters used the debates to make a lot of decisions about candidates, and that was seen in how the results bore out. I mean, Gingrich’s campaign came back twice on the back of debates. Our campaign was put on the map because of two debates. And Florida and South Carolina swung because of debates. I think debates matter, they give the public a chance to see candidates outside the paid media campaign, which I thought was pretty important.
Martin: Alright, what’s the downside of debates? I see Ana Navarro moving up to mike back there.
Ana Navarro: Maybe if our guy was better at debates, we would like them better. But since he wasn’t – I actually thought we had too many debates, and I thought it hurt in general-
Martin: What’s the downside?
Navarro: The downside was they tried to out-right wing each other, and we never got back to the middle in the general.
Linda Hansen: We feel the debates were very profitable, obviously the first debate especially helped Mr. Cain get on the map, shall we say? And help people understand who he was.
Crawford: If you guys remember, the focus group said that Herman Cain, who no one knew, was the winner.
Hansen: Not only that, but we didn’t have a lot of money, which was not secret. So the debates really helped to get out message out, but in a sense as well…I was just talking to someone from Minnesota who said, other than the debates, they really would never have seen the candidates at all. They said especially governor Romney…they said other than the debates, they never really had much contact. I feel that the debates, and the extra debates, are very, very helpful for citizens all across the country.
Martin: Matt and Stuart, did the debates push your candidate too far to the right you think, and hurt you in the general?
Stuart Stevens: No, I don’t think that’s the problem. I think these debates began with the best of intentions, then spun sorta out of control…the biggest problem from my perspective, and a lot of times when we talk here, we’ll be expressing our own opinions, not a unified opinion from inside the Romney campaign…we’ll have differences of opinions on things. My feeling is…having the news organizations sponsor these…began to give it a commercial quality…that at a certain point, became almost degrading to the candidates. And they should’ve been more serious, there’s something odd about this process…
Crawford: Can I interrupt? When you say degrading to the candidates, is there any moment or two that jumps out at you as examples?
Stevens: Well, I think the way the candidates are being introduced…it was sortof more of an “American Idol” kind of model, rather than a serious presidential debate, versus the way they’re doing the commission of presidential debates. They’re more serious. And there’s also something very odd about the branding of these debates, by large multi-national corporations, the CNN debate, the Fox debate, or the NBC debate. I think in an ideal world, debates would be put on, and news organizations would cover it, in the same way we do the rest of the campaign. We don’t have a CBS sponsored news conference, or a CBS sponsored rally. And I would like to think, ideally, in the future there would be some mechanism to control this.
Martin: Stuart, let me just follow up with you, if I could to the first answer that you gave, do you think the debates hurt your candidate in terms of how he ran in the general? The words “self-deportation” came out of your candidate’s mouth at the debate in Tampa. If it wasn’t for that debate, I don’t think Romney ever says that phrase. That wasn’t helpful for the candidate in the fall, was it?
Stevens: Listen, I think he was expressing an opinion.
Martin: But wasn’t that damaging to him in the fall?
Crawford: Going to Ana’s point, did the debates…and the media’s looking for interesting exchanges…did it push Romney to the right?
Stevens: I didn’t have a problem with it. I think when you run for president, I think you should expect to get asked tough questions. You should expect to be placed in a lot of situations where you’re going to be asked tough questions. And be that in an op-ed interview, or…wherever, there’s no gotcha quality, or ambush quality to the debates, everybody knows what they’re doing, they’re up there…so…that doesn’t…
Martin: But he wouldn’t have used that phrase (inaudible)…he wouldn’t have used that phrase in a print interview.
Stevens: I wouldn’t…make that assumption at all. He said what he wanted to say.
Martin: But there’s no pressure on that stage to outflank each other on the right, when you’re trying to get the republican nomination?
Stevens: Listen, if you go back, one of the advantages that governor Romney had in this process, in general, but in these debates, was having gone through these debates before. And one of the things we talked about, was that debates are never about the room. And you’re gonna get booed. And that was very true of the tea party debate in Orlando. Which is a very raucous event. And we were laughing about it before. We said, this is gonna be like rock’em, sock’em. They’re gonna boo everybody. And it happened. It was fun. It just happens.
Phil Musser: I want to turn your question a little bit forward looking, because you asked about 2016, and here’s what I think is gonna happen, because some of the viewpoints in this room are being reflected. I think you’re gonna find at the very beginning of this process, there was a good-faith effort to contain and limit the number of debates, and a lot of people in this room sat around the table, and said is this a good idea or a bad idea? The problem was, we all had different interests, right? John Brabender and the Cain people and the Pawlenty people to some, but differing degrees at the beginning of this race, were looking at the right goal for the party in the debates…I suspect, as you look forward, the republican party will probably re-introduce that…meaning, the chief rub is why are we out-sourcing control of the debates to liberal news media organizations, why are we not, Stuart’s point, putting some kind of framework around this that’s got common sense, and giving it to people that, frankly, are going to allow us to drive our message, as opposed to, play into the narrative that…the scripts of the major news organizations right [sic]. I think that process will be re-visited formally, in the next year, and it’s something you should look for, because there are probably too many of these things.
Crawford: Is that something the RNC would take control of?
Musser: Therein lies the rub, because structure of the national party committee, versus the tea party movement [Martin: Yeah.] versus the interests and needs of the candidates, are very different. But I just think that it’s something that’s clearly gonna be re-thought about again, and discussed with more seriousness.
Stevens: It was very, very difficult trying to deal with organizations on the debates. Because ultimately the only power you have is that you won’t show up.
Crawford: But is that much of a power-
Stevens: No, it’s not much of a power. It’s like, “Okay, don’t show up.”
Crawford: It’s held against you, presumably.
Stevens: Exactly. Which means you really don’t have any power. Which means…you end up showing up. Which means…you lose control. (laughing) So you end up doing twenty debates.
Musser: I hope that one of the legacies of the 2012 campaign is that, talk to your presidential candidates: don’t chase the shiny object in the straw poll. It’s a circus, it’s not a caucus. It’s a joke. And we made a fundamental strategic miscalculation about the level of investment we chose to deploy there, in part necessitated by the need to gain traction and momentum, and try to secure financial support, but ultimately, the straw poll, I think has run its course, in terms of the contest for Iowa, in that it’s unrepresentative of the broader contours of the caucus going electorate that turns out, and, interestingly, it’s really more of a celebrity contest…I’ve worked with Keith Nahigian in 1996, he’s probably the best organizer I’ve ever met in republican politics, and the fact that Michele Bachmann got into the race in May, and managed to win the straw poll in August, is amazing. Because it’s not just something you wake up and think about doing. It takes a lot of planning and timing.
Martin: We heard so much from Newt about the consultant driven campaign that he was forced to run in the early part of his bid…what exactly did he mean by that from your perspective, and what exactly did you guys want him to do that he pushed back on?
Rob Johnson: Well, first of all we couldn’t force Newt to do anything. So, if it was consultant…it was Newt driven…and…
Martin: Even back then it was Newt driven?
Johnson: Absolutely. And I think we were very honest when we…departed. That there’s just a fundamental, to use his words…frankly, there was a fundamental (laughter) difference of opinion on how to run a campaign. We-
Martin: What’d you want to do?
Johnson: I wasn’t a consultant, but the way. He was talking about Dave. I was the campaign manager.(laughter) But we felt like you needed to go to the states, and talk to the people, and do it more than a day at a time.
Martin: What’d he want to do?
Johnson: He wanted to go to the states and talk to the people, but a day at a time. He wanted to do television, he wanted to wait for the debates, and turns out, that was probably pretty good strategy.
Martin: How much of that was driven by Callista, his wife? The schedule?
Johnson: They were a team. (laughter) And so, I think, a lot was driven by the team.
Carney: For years…publicly, privately…he’s said he’s had no interest, didn’t want to do it. Thought he’d have a bigger role impacting the federalist movement, the tenth amendment movement from outside Washington, that was a very radical departure from everything he’d ever said and done over the years…to sortof position him to be a…try to help lead that states’ rights federalist movement, was designed to do that, and not designed to be a candidate for president, clearly. Had he given any sort of indication, frankly, “let’s think about it”, “let’s not rule it out”, “let’s wait and see”, I think there are hundreds of things that we could’ve done differently that could’ve better prepared to run. I think…when you talk to legislator, county chairmen, and political activists, in the early states, when you’re doing that days before getting into the race, and raising money, and getting up to speed on the issues, clearly that’s-
Crawford: So, did he have a grasp of how difficult it would be…getting in so late…when it dawn on him that playing catch up would be so hard?
Johnson: Before we answer that, I know that Matt and Stuart read the book…if he was going to run for president, he never would’ve written that book. [Martin: PONZI SCHEME] I mean, it’s what he believes, right, but you would have written that book later?
Carney: First of all, he’s a brilliant guy, and he has billions of ideas and he…he’s not somebody who’s looking for…he’s looking for help, he’s not looking for correction…but fundamentally, it comes down to finances. He did not have the resources, he did not have any financial infrastructure to support him…paying a bunch of consultants, hanging around, to implement a campaign that it wasn’t going to have the resources to execute. He wanted…originally we were going to…have a really aggressive, multi-million dollar effort, field operation, [Martin: Newt was.] Yeah, and we were going to do all of this new engagement, social media, and have basic, cutting-edge, sort of third way to run a campaign.
Johnson: And we always knew we could raise a lot of money out of Texas. Something else that was encouraging, I guess encouraging is the right word, in the latter part of July, we reached out to a national network, led by Peter Terpeluk, god bless his soul [Terpeluk, a former ambassador to Luxembourg, was involved in early Perry fund-raising, and died in August 2011). And...we would invite ten people, and a hundred people would show up in Austin, Texas. We were doing this three times a week. So, we were seeing three hundred national fund-raisers - bundlers - a week. And at the time, only one in five of the McCain elite donor bundlers were engaged in the race, so four out of five weren't. And they were showing up in Austin, Texas to meet Rick Perry, and it was very encouraging.
Rhoades: First up, up to governor Perry getting into the race, the candidate in the race we were most concerned about up to that point was governor Pawlenty. Because, to the point that Phil Musser has made and their strategy...if governor Pawlenty was able to get through the travails of the Iowa straw poll, and was able to go on and win the Iowa caucus, he was one of those candidates that could pull it off with his retail politic way, both Iowa and New Hampshire. And if we had lost Iowa and New Hampshire to governor Pawlenty, things would've been pretty bleak for our campaign. When governor Perry got into the race, certainly we had a lot of respect for his record when it came to jobs and the economy, because the way people were talking at that time, you would think that every job that was created, was actually created in Texas. And up to that point, we had put an onus...or an emphasis, excuse me, on running a campaign focused on jobs and the economy. And so we knew this was going to be an obstacle to us moving forward, and that's why, very quickly, during the course of governor Perry's entry into the race, you know, governor Pawlenty had left, we made it a point to contrast on governor Perry's record. And it included the initial debates, and the interactions, on those stages, and obviously, Rob, made a point about Fed Up, and I give credit to Stuart Stevens as the individual on the campaign who fell in love with Fed Up, we just kinda executed on the strategy behind it, but we made...with Stuart's guidance, we decided to put an emphasis on governor Perry's position on social security. And not go after jobs and the economy.
Martin: Did your polling show that was his biggest vulnerability, Perry's?
Crawford: What happened with that campaign? Why after jumping in, skyrocketing to the top, becoming the candidate the Romney guys were most concerned about...then it all fell apart. Why? Was it the debates, did he get in too late, was it never viable, the money drying up? What was it?
Carney: Well, I could talk to my therapist...I still haven't...(laughter) It's one of two things: we made a lot of mistakes.
Crawford: Like what?
Carney: Small mistakes. (Martin: like what?) The biggest, big tactical or strategic mistake...if he was gonna do this, he should've started years ago. Chairman of the RGA, governor of Texas, the legislature meets 140 days every two years, he has a lot of time on his hands, he could've been doing lots of things, you know, going to help people around the country, to meet people, become very helpful in Ohio, in Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina, some of these important states, meet donors and things like that, so we didn't have that luxury of time. Two, we should've waited. We should've waited, actually, longer.
Crawford: You mean waited longer-
Carney: To get in. Spent more time...when he decided, is there a possibility, what (inaudible) taught me...the three questions we tried to answer...and put a framework or a plan together...it was based on, we need to get in, or Romney was starting locking people up, more than he had, he had a lot of people locked up already, and start fundraising...we had unlimited ability to raise money. That was not, ever, a problem. It wasn't a matter of how to collect it. The problem was the political side: political support, and governor Romney's team was excellent and had a long head start, and it was locking people up, and a lot of people were waiting to see who was getting into the race, we were concerned...we should've waited, until November, maybe. Or maybe the middle of October, because of the Florida move up, you know the declaration by the secretary of state to be on the ballot. It would've given us more to be prepared, more time to do some of the groundwork that's necessary, get better prepared on the issues-
Crawford: You wouldn't have had the September debates. (laughing)
Carney: Listen, this is the craziest thing about debates. First of all...
Johnson: First of all, they're panels. They weren't debates.
Carney: Whatever, yeah, exactly. This is the crazy...THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES NEVER DEBATES! Okay? It's a skill that's unrequired! Unnecessary! It's not the fucking - uh, it's not the (laughter) prime minister, he doesn't stand there and take questions for half an hour! NOBODY EVER QUESTIONS THE PRESIDENT! In public. There's never...you know, Putin and he do not argue on the red phone! I mean, this is crazy! (laughter) Number two, the RNC's never ever enforced anything! The idea that the RNC, like last time, would fix this problem, that's crazy! The establishment candidate is not gonna want to do debates, the front-runner, and everybody who has no money wants to get on for twelve minutes...on national cable TV. Because it's their shot! And it's free! You know, the idea that you go from California, to Florida, to California with a holiday in-between, ten days, that's illuminating...whatever happened to town meetings? Matt's 100% right. Candidates have to run their own campaigns.
Martin: But the [Buddy] Roemer folks – the debates were your candidate’s only shot?
Carney: WHAT KIND OF CRAZY IDEA IS THAT?!? (laughter)
Carlos Sierra: We hated the debates. We really hated the debates. I think we do need some debate reform. I think Stuart made a great point that it’s basically corporate sponsored…you know, it’s very undemocratic. I know you guys-
Martin: You guys were pining to get into the debates! NOW YOU’RE KNOCKIN THEM?
Sierra: Huh?
Martin: That was your whole strategy.
Sierra: No, everyone had their time to shine. And it was cuz of the debates. You either…Michele Bachmann shined…Perry…
Johnson: We shined before the debates. (laughter)
Sierra: Exactly. So…like I said last night, part of our strategy was, were the debates, and unfortunately we never got in. I know Gary Johnson never got in. And I don’t know what’s…we do need debate reform though. But it’s sad though that two governors were not allowed in.
Hansen: One of the things that I think we need to remember about the debates is…who we’re ultimately trying to serve, and that would be the citizens of the country. That would be the voters who are looking for information, many of whom never get to live in Iowa, and see the candidates, breakfast, lunch, and dinner, but who do we serve? And as journalists, you know, what is your job? Your job is to give factual information to the citizens of this country. And so, we need to remember, what’s the purpose of the debates? And there’s positives and negatives about how many, where they were…you know, all that, and Stuart brought up a really good points, about who’s in charge of the questioning.
Martin: Trygve Olson, you are sitting next to Matt Rhoades, which is fitting to a lot of people in this room because there was much chatter about the Romney-Ron Paul-
Trygve Olson: I feel like Ron Paul at the CBS Foreign Policy Debate: sixty seconds. (Martin: Alright, alright.) But maybe we’ll be able to win another million dollars money-bombing.
Martin: What was the nature of the contact between the Paul campaign and the Romney campaign? Were you talking to Matt Rhoades-
Olson: No, I’m going to answer the- I’m going to use my own debate strategy, I’m going to answer the question I want to talk about rather than the- (Martin: I’ll follow up.) “This is typical media attacks”, to use a Newt Gingrich strategy. I think the thing with the debates, and there was some effort, and it started with a conversation between Jesse Benton and Ginsberg [Ron Paul campaign chairman Benton and Ben Ginsberg, Romney confidante], based off of 2008, to get all the campaigns together to talk about the debates, and try to impose a little bit of will back on. The problem with the number of debates is you can’t really get at it is because everybody has their own interests, so what ended up happening is “we’re not going over ninety minutes.” We don’t want to have a green room that’s six thousand miles away, so…Stuart [Stevens] and I have to ride around in a golf cart with a guy who gets lost because he doesn’t know where he’s going on the University of Tampa campus. And furthermore, why are Stuart and I are on the same golf cart because it only re-inforces the notion that we have an alliance from people like you? (Martin: No, but-) But: the important thing, one of the things that I think is missing from this conversation that matters, and the debates re-inforces this, and I don’t know how to refer to it any differently but there’s kindof a seventh grade girls, and I don’t mean any disrespect to s
