In the maggots' realm, of course, Vince Foster was not a suicide but a murder victim. Explore the danker reaches of the realm and you'll find further surprises. Did you know that Vince Foster was a spy for the National Security Agency -- wait, make that the CIA -- no, the Mossad!
Is this just paranoid business as usual? No. Much of this is the product of an industry. These stories haven't just appeared as an act of paranoid nature: they've been carefully planted by right-wing "news" sources, many of which have been funded by just one man. This is an organized, politically motivated campaign of lies. Nothing new there, of course -- but this one has tormented a grieving family and recklessly spread baseless accusations against dozens and dozens of people, many of whom had only a cursory and accidental connection with Mr. Foster's life and death.
We need to pay attention to this. First, it's an alarming template for how information -- and lies -- is disseminated these days. Second, it's a demonstration of how unspeakably low the right is willing to sink -- and not just the professional scum-stirrers of the fringe-right. Members of Congress, including Newt Gingrich, have been involved in this activity. Finally, we need to be prepared to answer lies with facts.
The good news is that two years of maggotty free-riding may be coming to an end. Last Sunday (10/8), CBS's 60 Minutes did a segment debunking the most prominent Vince Foster conspiracist lies, and crucially, revealing the spinning gears of the industry. The show concentrated on the reporting of Chris Ruddy, a reporter for The Pittsburgh Tribune-Review. The Pittsburgh Tribune-Review is owned by Richard Mellon Scaife, heir to the Mellon fortune. It has printed a constant stream of Ruddy stories alleging "suspicious" irregularities in the investigation of Vince Foster's death, and implying that he was murdered and that his body was moved to the park where it was found.
Many of these same allegations have turned up in ads and sponsored by an organization called The Western Journalism Center. They've also turned up in videos sold by Jerry Falwell and by a newsletter called Strategic Investments. Ruddy himself appeared in the videos, and edited their scripts. Sixty Minutes delineated the glaring inaccuracies in Ruddy's articles and in the videotapes. But there's more to the story. The Western Journalism Center was set up with a grant from -- Richard Scaife. As for Strategic Investments, its co-publisher, James Dale Davidson, is also the recipient of Scaife money in his role as the head of the National Taxpayers Union. Another important promoter of Foster tales, the right-wing "media watch" organization Accuracy in Media (AIM), is funded by Scaife too. So is The American Spectator. And, by the way, GOPAC is a Scaife beneficiary. It's not too surprising, then, that Newt Gingrich has cynically parrotted some of the Scaife-subsidized Foster stories.
The Frank Rich column in the 10/11/95 New York Times recapitulates and expands upon many of the facts exposed in the 60 Minutes segment. And CNN may be working on a related story. So the maggots are finally being exposed to the light, and they don't like it. Prior to the airing of the 60 Minutes program, there was a flurry of "prophylactic" posting on AOL and in that oozing pit of Fosterloons, alt.current-events.clinton.whitewater, denouncing CBS in advance for participating in a Clinton coverup. It's the revelation of the funding connection that hurts them most, I believe. So keep an eye out for these names: Richard Mellon Scaife, Chris Ruddy, Western Journalism Center, Strategic Investments, AIM. When you hear what seems to be many voices agreeing on some piece of evidence or other, you're more likely hearing one voice coming out of many mouths. And the "evidence" is some piece of insignificance ripped out of context, or else an outright lie.
Oh, but that's just the beginning of the maggot saga. We haven't even gotten to the spy part yet, or to Ambrose Evans-Pritchard and the story of the Swiss bank accounts. Or why there may really be a Vince Foster coverup -- by the editorialists of the Wall Street Journal....
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