Is the tormented ghost of Richard Nixon coaching the White House damage control team? Anti-Clinton "Conspiracy Commerce" by Jon Elliston Dossier Editor pscpdocs@aol.com "William Jefferson Nixon" read the title of a Washington Times editorial published on January 10, 1997. The commentary paired Slick Willy and Tricky Dick as leaders who viewed critical media coverage of their administrations through the distorting lens of presidential paranoia. Since the release of a Nixon-esque White House document describing a "media food chain" that amplifies anti-Clinton reporting, "it now seems the two men have far more in common than anyone realized, including an enemies list," the Times' editors wrote. The 331-page report, titled "Communication Stream of Conspiracy Commerce," was prepared in the summer of 1995 by Mark Fabiani, a lawyer and political adviser from the White House Counsel's Office, and based on research conducted by the Democratic National Committee. The bulk of the report consists of news-clips from print publications and internet sources, but a three-page cover memo by Fabiani contains the analysis that has evoked the comparisons to Nixon. The report begins by defining the odd terminology of its title: "The Communication Stream of Conspiracy Commerce refers to the mode of communication employed by the right wing to convey their fringe stories into legitimate subjects of coverage by the mainstream media." And just how does this transition from the fringe to the mainstream take place? Though an elaborate network of anti-Clinton activists, the report asserts: "First, well funded right wing think tanks and individuals underwrite conservative newsletters and newspapers such as the Western Journalism Center, the American Spectator and the Pittsburgh Tribune Review. Next, the stories are reprinted on the internet where they are bounced all over the world. From the internet, the stories are bounced into the mainstream media through one of two ways: 1) The story will be picked up by the British tabloids and covered as a major story, from which the American right-of-center mainstream media (i.e. the Wall Street Journal, Washington Times and New York Post) will then pick the story up; or 2) The story will be bounced directly from the internet to the right-of-center American media, which covers the story; Congressional committees will lock into the story. After Congress looks into the story, the story now has the legitimacy to be covered by the remainder of the American mainstream press as a 'real' story." Borrowing a term from the intelligence community lexicon, the report describes an alleged "blow-back" strategy, in which anti-Clinton groups in America provide material for British publications, whose stories are then recycled by "conservative American tabloids and mainstream American media." ("Blow-back" describes instances in which propaganda targeted at audiences abroad is unwittingly repeated by the media in the country where the information originated.) According to the White House Counsel's Office, such "blow-back" has resulted in rash, conjectural coverage of the death of Deputy White House Counsel Vince Foster. (Speculation about whether Foster actually committed suicide was the major reason the Clinton administration prepared the "Conspiracy Commerce" report, according to an unnamed White House official quoted by the Washington Times.) "For example," the report says, "recently the Washington Times reprinted Ambrose Evans-Pritchard's [London] Sunday Telegraph response to a Washington Post article on Vince Foster conspiracy theorists. Pritchard, who took offense to being lumped in with conspiracy theorists, has been a leading reporter of various conspiracies -- most recently accusing Vince Foster of secretly being a spy." (ParaScope's coverage of the controversy over Foster's death draws on several of the sources labeled "fringe" in the report.) Through convoluted routes such as these, the report argues, "sources without credibility" are injecting faulty news into coverage of various Clinton scandals. The Whitewater affair "is one of many issues originating with" such sources, the report claims, backing up the assertion with a chronology purporting to show how 1994 news on Whitewater flowed from conservative activist Floyd Brown to the Wall Street Journal, the London Times, Time and Money magazines, and NBC News. Online sources get special mention in the report. "The internet has become one of the major and most dynamic modes of communication," the report notes, because it "can link people, groups and organizations together instantly." Aside from allowing ordinary people to share their political ideas and theories, the report cautions that the internet "allows an extraordinary amount of unregulated data and information to be located in one area and available to all." Because the "right wing has seized upon the internet as a means of communicating its ideas to people," the report argues, Clinton has come under unfair attacks in internet messages. The White House is apparently alarmed by all the "unregulated data and information" about Clinton that appears online, and the report reaches its most hysterical point when it states that "evidence exists that Republican staffers surf the internet, interacting with extremists in order to exchange ideas and information." Though versions of "Communication Stream of Conspiracy Commerce" were first prepared in 1995, mainstream media discussion of the report did not erupt until early January, 1997, when the Wall Street Journal and the Washington Times ran articles and editorials discussing the White House conspiracy tract. The report then became the topic of extensive questioning by the White House press corps. Clinton press secretary Mike McCurry told journalists that the report was prepared to "document how this stuff gets out into the news flow, so that we can ... protect you and protect your readers and protect the American people from bad information." Most reporters were amused by the offer, and during the following week newspapers, magazines and online news outlets largely ridiculed the report. (For a sampling of media coverage and commentary on the White House report, see "Food Chain Reactions".) The reaction of New Republic columnist William Powers was typical. Powers commented sardonically on the report's conclusions: "Americans are trafficking in 'unregulated' information and exchanging ideas. Imagine." (c) Copyright 1997 ParaScope, Inc. Reactions to the "Media Food Chain" Report Read the "Media Food Chain" Report Sources The Clinton Scandal Archive Dossier message board: Share your views