Conason: "The Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy is Back in Business" [View All]

http://www.salon.com/opinion/conason/2004/03/09/conspiracy/print.html

Those delightful people who brought you Paula Jones, Willie Horton and Whitewater are back, and this time they've got John Kerry in their sights.

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By Joe Conason


March 9, 2004  |  As strategists in both parties gird for what all expect to be an unusually nasty presidential election, the stage has been set by the revival of a conservative crew that might be called "the usual suspects" -- including consultants Floyd Brown, Craig Shirley and David Bossie. With new Web sites and fundraising vehicles already running, these veterans of the "vast right-wing conspiracy" against the Clintons are now launching the first wave of "independent" commercial attacks on John Kerry, the Democratic nominee-to-be.

At Citizens United, the boisterous Brown and his sidekick Bossie are raising money to air their latest video creation, which blasts Kerry for his expensive haircuts and his wife's wealth, tagging him as a "rich elitist liberal from Massachusetts who says he's a man of the people."

Meanwhile, Grassfire.org, a new "grass-roots" outfit overseen by Beltway insider Shirley, has produced an ad that claims Kerry is "more liberal than Ted Kennedy." Aside from "nonpartisan educational" groups like Grassfire, his clients have included the Republican National Committee, the Republican Majority Committee, the American Spectator, the Club for Growth, the Conservative Political Action Committee, the Federalist Society, the National Rifle Association, News World Communications and the Washington Times Foundation.

If the names of Brown and Bossie sound more familiar, they attained notoriety together during the Clinton era as indefatigable promoters of the bogus "Whitewater" scandal. They served as publicity agents for David Hale, the crooked and discredited former Little Rock municipal judge whose allegations against the Clintons forced the appointment of an independent counsel. Among mainstream journalists panting for a career-making Watergate-style scandal, Brown and Bossie found many a gullible mark. For nearly a decade they churned out junk night and day. For a while, Bossie went on the payroll of the Senate Whitewater Committee; later he worked for Rep. Dan Burton's House Committee on Government Operations investigating Clinton and Al Gore -- until he was caught distributing doctored tapes to the media.

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