Posts on Jerome Corsi

The Associated Press reports that Rick Santorum, Mike Huckabee, Ken Blackwell, Jerome Corsi, and others all make an appearance in a new anti-Obama DVD produced by Citizens United that is set to be included with newspapers in swing states just before the election:

Readers of Ohio's three largest newspapers, along with papers in Florida and Nevada, are finding an anti-Barack Obama DVD in editions this week.

Citizens United, a conservative advocacy group based in Washington, plans to release a 95-minute film in the five swing-state publications to highlight Obama's record on abortion rights, foreign policy and his past associations, including his relationship with former pastor Rev. Jermiah Wright. The group said it planned to spend more than $1 million to distribute about 1.25 million copies of "Hype: The Obama Effect."

"We think it's a truthful attack. People can take it anyway they want," said David Bossie, Citizens United's president.

Readers of The Columbus Dispatch received their copy Tuesday. The Cincinnati Enquirer, The (Cleveland) Plain Dealer, The Palm Beach (Fla.) Post and the Las Vegas Review-Journal are scheduled to receive them in coming days.

The film raises questions about Obama's political base in Chicago and questions the media's reporting on Obama.

Among those interviewed are conservative columnist Robert Novak, former Clinton strategist-turned-pundit Dick Morris and former Ohio Secretary of State Ken Blackwell. Former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee, former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum and discredited Obama critic Jerome Corsi also give interviews.

It seems that the big scoop Jerome Corsi uncovered before he was deported from Kenya is that Barack Obama “backed ruthless, foreign thug” in Kenya.  WorldNetDaily explains:

Sen. Barack Obama designated a personal aide as his direct contact for the 2007 Kenyan presidential campaign of Raila Odinga, who later was appointed prime minister after his election loss was followed by widespread, deadly violence that destroyed or damaged 800 Christian churches, according to e-mails obtained by WND senior staff writer Jerry Corsi during a trip to Kenya.

WND even provides concrete visual proof:

The e-mails, apparently sent by Obama himself, referenced the senator's aide, Mark Lippert. The e-mails were provided to WND by an insider in Kenya who fled Odinga's Orange Democratic political party and requested anonymity because of the danger of retaliation.

The e-mails, identified as coming from Obama's Senate office, are addressed to "railaaodinga" at a yahoo.com address.

A WND e-mail to the same Obama address generated an automated response and a list of contacts for Obama's offices. A WND e-mail sent to the Odinga e-mail address didn't generate a response.

One e-mail purportedly from Obama, dated Dec. 22, 2006, read, "I will kindly wish that all our correspondence [be] handled by Mr Mark Lippert. I have already instructed him. This will be for my own security both for now and in future."

It is reproduced here with the e-mail address of the person who forwarded it to WND redacted:

Well, color me convinced.  Since it is glaringly obvious that nobody could ever fake something as intricate as an email, I contacted Corsi’s media rep, Tim Bueler, as instructed to do at the bottom of the WND article, to pass on my congratulations regarding this amazing scoop.  I was shocked by Bueler’s totally authentic and in no way completely made up and forged by me response:

Current New York Times best-selling author and proven liar Jerome Corsi has been lavished with attention by the likes of Fox News and Rush Limbaugh for his slanderous new book about Barack Obama.

But before Corsi put Obama in his crosshairs, he plied his wares in the GOP presidential primary. Fox and Limbaugh treat Corsi like he’s a legitimate political commentator, so we’ll trust they’ll have Corsi back on to discuss his groundbreaking work on McCain:

Group tied to al-Qaida backs McCain for prez
March 02, 2008
By Jerome R. Corsi

McCain fortune traced to organized crime
February 26, 2008
By Jerome R. Corsi

Influence peddling claims dog McCain
February 15, 2008
By Jerome R. Corsi

John McCain funded by Soros since 2001
February 12, 2008
By Jerome R. Corsi

McCain aide touts 'Mexico first' policy
January 25, 2008
By Jerome R. Corsi

The AP's Nedra Pickler caught the right-wing website WorldNetDaily in particularly fine form yesterday while researching a story about Jerome Corsi, a serial liar and 9/11 conspiracy theorist who writes for the site:

"Corsi writes for World Net Daily, a conservative Web site whose lead headline Thursday was "Astonishing photo claims: Dead Bigfoot stored on ice."

[Right Wing Watch was first to report the Corsi/Bigfoot nexus yesterday]

Pickler also quoted an Obama spokesman, whose review of Corsi’s new book – if it even counts as a book – was less than positive:

"Jerome Corsi is a discredited liar who is peddling another piece of garbage to continue the Bush-Cheney politics he helped perpetuate four years ago," said Obama spokesman Tommy Vietor. "His is just one of what will likely be many more lie-filled books rushed to print this election cycle, which are cobbled together from debunked Internet sources to make money and advance a partisan agenda. We will respond to these smears forcefully with all means at our disposal."

If WorldNetDaily is any indication, there is apparently money to be made in running a debunked Internet source, especially when you run fabulous ads like these:

As anyone who has paid any attention to Jerome Corsi since his emergence on the right-wing scene a few years back knows, he’s little more than a third-tier hack prone to spinning out conspiracy theories with an overblown sense of his own importance.

But for those who didn’t already know that, The Politico has helpfully explained it: 

The folks behind “The Obama Nation,” the wildly successful but factually disputed new book trashing presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama, are casting it as a scholarly, thoroughly researched work.

But its author has left a trail of wild theories, vitriol and dogma that have called into question his credibility.

Jerome Corsi, who rose to prominence as the co-author of a book attacking 2004 Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry, penned another tome asserting oil is a nearly infinite resource that continues to generate naturally, and posted a series of online comments through 2004, including suggestions that Hillary Rodham Clinton is a lesbian and Muslims worship Satan.

…

Corsi is an unabashed partisan. In 2006, he mulled a run for president under the hard-right Constitution Party’s banner and last year he signed on as a senior strategist for a group that intended to become to the right what MoveOn.org is to the left.

But his outrageous assertions and fringe theories — which include allegations that President Bush worked to eliminate the borders with Mexico and Canada and the assertion that Kerry is a Communist — have hurt his credibility on the right, as well.

Corsi’s co-author on the Kerry attack book, Swift Boat Veterans for Truth spokesman John O'Neill, downplayed Corsi’s role after the left-leaning press watchdog group Media Matters exposed Corsi’s venomous postings in the conservative blogosphere.

On the blog FreeRepublic.com, Corsi wrote that pedophilia “is OK with the Pope as long as it isn't reported by the liberal press,” that “RAGHEADS are Boy-Bumpers as clearly as they are Women-Haters” and that Kerry is “Anti-Christian, Anti-American.”

Last year, Corsi released a book charging President Bush was secretly plotting to create a North American Union by merging the U.S. with Canada and Mexico.

Corsi’s primary professional gig is serving as a staff reporter for the notoriously reliable right-wing rag WorldNetDaily – the sort of “news” website that typically runs articles about how the Beltway Snipers were, in fact, al-Qaida-linked homosexual lovers and things like this article in today’s edition:

It is almost time again for the annual Values Voter Summit, the political conference sponsored by the Family Research Council, Focus on the Family, American Values, and others where right-wing activists gather to rant and rave, attack homosexuals, and suggest that the anti-Christ is gay while Republican presidential candidates fall all over themselves to pander for votes.   

Heading into this year’s event, FRC unveiled a new ad urging right-wing activists to attend or risk “losing America”:

Are we losing America? Radical activists redefine marriage. Your tax dollars put towards abortion providers like Planned Parenthood. Your parental rights erased. Your religious liberties expunged. Your basic freedoms eliminated. Are we losing America? Unless we act now, the answer is YES! That’s why this year’s Values Voters Summit in Washington, DC is so vital. This September, you’ll discover how you can make a difference. We’ll equip you to protect the tradition of marriage, the innocence of your children, and the sanctity of your faith. Join leaders like Newt Gingrich, Bill Bennett, Chuck Colson, and others for the Values Voters Summit September 12-14 in Washington, DC … Are we losing America? We don’t have to.

While the Values Voter Summit is one of the Religious Right’s premier political events filled with pomp and professionalism, the same cannot be said for the 9th Annual Freedom21 National Conference, which is taking place right now in Dallas, TX.  Whereas FRC can boast of heavy-hitters like Gingrich, Sen. Sam Brownback, and James Dobson, the best Freedom21 could do was land the likes of Rep. Michelle Bachmann, Jerome Corsi, Phyllis Schlafly, and third party presidential candidate Chuck Baldwin … and with third-rate entertainment and lackluster attendance such as this, it is not hard to see why:

When he was running for president, Mike Huckabee made no secret of his displeasure with the current leadership of the Religious Right, regularly chiding them for refusing to support his candidacy.  It was, at least in part, because of their glaring lack of support that Huckabee’s campaign eventually folded, forcing him to drop-out of the race and it looks as if Huckabee is not particularly prepared to let bygones be bygones:

Mike Huckabee can't definitively explain why he couldn't win the Republican presidential nomination, but he thinks the desire of Christian leaders to be "kingmakers," media coverage and Mother Nature all had something to do with it.

"Rank-and-file evangelicals supported me strongly, but a lot of the leadership did not," the former Arkansas governor says. "Let's face it, if you're not going to be king, the next best thing is to be the kingmaker. And if the person gets there without you, you become less relevant."

Religious broadcaster Pat Robertson backed Rudolph W. Giuliani; American Value President and former presidential hopeful Gary Bauer endorsed Sen. John McCain; and Family Research Council President Tony Perkins remained neutral, even as Mr. Huckabee was wowing their supporters and winning the values voter straw polls they organized.

Huckabee seems particularly galled by Religious Right’s allegations that he was weak on foreign policy issues and didn’t fully comprehend to threat posed to this country by “Islamo-fascism,” which he says was nonsense since he was the only one who really understood the true nature of the threat:

"I was the one person who talked about this being a theological war, not just a geopolitical war [because] it was unlike a traditional war over borders and boundaries," he says.

While Huckabee remains bitter over his inability to win over the Right’s current leadership, it appears as if various other right-wing outsiders are equally bitter over the prospect of having to support John McCain and are considering defecting to the Constitution Party:

[I]is 2008 the year when a third-party candidate would find some traction among those disaffected by the abortion, marriage and national security stances found in the records of the three front-runners left in the race?

Charles Lewis, national outreach director for Christian Exodus, is one of those behind the launch of the new Save America Summit website, and believes it's not only time, it's overdue.

Among those participating in this third-party-seeking Save America Summit are Flip Benham, Wiley Drake, Bill Federer, Gordon Klingenschmitt, Howard Phillips, Chris Simcox, as well as representatives of organizations such as Gun Owners of America, the Council for National Policy, and Stop the ACLU and others who are convinced that McCain, Obama, and Clinton all plan "an EU-style unification of America with socialist Canada and Mexico during the next administration."

Sadly for Huckabee, he can't seem to get any love from these right-wing activists either, since they seem to have already narrowed down their choices for president to four people: Alan Keyes, Roy Moore, Jerome Corsi, and former Sen. Bob Smith.

With the passing of right-wing luminaries such as Jerry Falwell and D. James Kennedy in recent months, coupled with the aging of many of the Right’s traditional leaders, the movement itself appears to be in flux and some are getting worried about just what will become of it in the future.  Just last week, James Dobson voiced these concerns while addressing the National Religious Broadcasters Convention:

“It causes me to wonder who will be left to carry the banner when this generation of leaders is gone. The question is, will the younger generation heed the call? Who will defend the unborn child in the years to come? Who will plead for the Terri Schiavos of the world? Who’s going to fight for the institution of marriage, which is on the ropes today.”

The emerging conventional wisdom is that the Religious Right is on the verge of being replaced by a “new evangelical” movement that shares the old-guard’s opposition to gays and abortion, but also cares about issues like poverty and the environment.  The standard-bearer of this “new breed” is Mike Huckabee who, as he puts it, drinks “a different kind of Jesus juice” than the traditional leaders and routinely says things like this: 

I don’t see [the right-wing movement] going into decline. I see it going into a maturing process. I think the issues are going to broaden and force Evangelicals to expand their horizons of concerns to poverty, disease, issues of education and homelessness. These are issues that I think are going to become increasingly important along with the environment as part of an overall focus that you’re going to see from - I would use a broader term - values voters - that would include not only Evangelicals but also Catholics and conservative Jewish voters as well.

Of course, just because a bunch of young upstarts think that caring about the environment is important doesn’t mean that the old-guard has any interest in broadening their agenda.  As we noted last year, when the National Association of Evangelicals started to voice concerns about the environment and global warming, right-wing stalwarts like Dobson, Tony Perkins, Don Wildmon, Gary Bauer, Rick Scarborough, and Paul Weyrich dashed off an angry letter essentially demanding that the NAE fire its own Vice President over it.

The NAE didn’t back down, but the Right didn’t give up.  Instead, they formed their own organization, the American Environmental Coalition, and now seek "to bring balance to the debate by being an alternative source of reliable information to Americans who seek the best way forward for our country.” 

Jerome Corsi hopes "that none of these [GOP] candidates gain traction and the whole contest is thrown into a brokered convention where we can have a floor fight. It opens up the possibility that we might even have some yet undiscovered candidate or some new candidate emerge as a true conservative who could go forward with the party banner in 2008."

After Minutemen co-founder Jim Gilchrist endorsed Mike Huckabee last week, other anti-immigrant border vigilantes rushed to repudiate their erstwhile comrade. Chris Simcox, who split with Gilchrist in 2005, dismissed the latter’s influence and criticized Huckabee’s “duplicitous” immigration program. The leader of another Minutemen splinter group called the endorsement “disturbing.”

A variety of anti-immigrant groups also came out of the woodwork to pile on Gilchrist in a letter distributed by Americans for Legal Immigration: “We denounce Jim Gilchrist's solo endorsement of a pro-amnesty and Open Borders candidate for President. Mr. Gilchrist does NOT speak for us!” Signatories included representatives of a number of local Minutemen franchises, a FAIR front group, Mothers Against Illegal Aliens, Save Our State, California Coalition for Immigration Reform, and many more.

This week, Gilchrist is facing heavy pressure from WorldNetDaily reporter Jerome Corsi, the premier advocate of the “North American Union” conspiracy theory. Corsi’s approach, rather than simply denouncing Gilchrist, was to confront him with the claim that Huckabee’s immigration program contained some element making it unacceptable to them. In response, Gilchrist “backtracked” on his endorsement, according to a Corsi article titled “Minuteman reconsiders Huckabee endorsement.”

The only problem with Corsi’s friendlier approach—helping Gilchrist along with his retraction of the endorsement—is that Gilchrist denies it:

But Gilchrist says Corsi's article is not accurate. "I am holding firm. I am endorsing Governor Mike Huckabee for president. I'm not wavering or waffling," he states.

And as for the WorldNetDaily report? "I have to say that Mr. Corsi really made me feel like he was interrogating me like a police investigator or a prosecuting attorney, rather than interviewing me," Gilchrist asserts. "He kept insisting that I was waffling -- and I did not say that; he kept saying that. And apparently he had an agenda."

But Corsi says he sticks by his story. "If Jim can't keep his story straight from one day to the other, ... I'll be happy to play back [for him] the recordings I made of him each day and Jim can listen to himself saying that he was going to reconsider the endorsement of Huckabee," he says.

What’s strangest about this exchange between Corsi and Gilchrist—with misunderstandings, hurt feelings, agendas—is that the two know each other very well. They wrote a book together on the Minutemen last year. Now, sadly, it seems they are no longer on speaking terms: Corsi’s latest article, which accuses Gilchrist of going soft, ends with the poignant line, “Gilchrist declined to comment.”

WorldNetDaily editor Joseph Farah writes of immigration and the Bush Administration’s alleged secret plans to create a “North American Union”:

It is, ultimately, about moving away from differences between nations that God Himself created for His own divine purposes. It is about following the path of Nimrod and all the others who have attempted to build super-states in defiance of God.

Farah believes God, like him, opposes immigration and NAFTA—not to mention a nefarious superhighway supposedly at the root of the administration conspiracy—but a report from Pat Robertson’s CBN finds a gay-fighting God using that same road as a prophetic highway of holiness.

The concept of a behind-the-scenes “North American Union”—persistently advanced by Farah’s WorldNetDaily, the John Birch Society, CNN’s Lou Dobbs, presidential candidates Ron Paul and Tom Tancredo, and others—is closely tied to the anti-immigrant sentiment that has struck right-wing politics over the last few years. But it has taken on a life of its own, thanks to vivid imagery like “the plan to build a huge NAFTA Super Highway, four football-fields-wide, through the heart of the U.S.” that was alleged in detail by Jerome Corsi last year. Corsi even provided a now-iconic picture, taken from a transportation-industry lobbying group:

In the picture, it appears as if almost all of middle America has been blanketed by some kind of yellow dust originating from south of the border and traveling up Interstate 35 like a swarm of killer bees. The “NAFTA Superhighway” and the “North American Union” may be “the quintessential conspiracy theory for our time,” as the Boston Globe recently discussed.

But what if Corsi and friends are wrong? What if the yellow cloud surrounding I-35 isn’t an “invasion” from Mexico but an “invasion” of God? That, apparently, is the theory of the youth-oriented church activists profiled on yesterday’s “700 Club,” who are running “purity sieges” at clinics and porn shops, where they claim to be “moving angels and demons” by, for example, “setting free” an inebriated young man from “the desires to be with men” through the laying of hands at a gay bar.

While the CBN report doesn't mention NAFTA or a North American Union, the suspicious highway is central to the story:

A number of Christians have come to believe, because of recent prophecies, dreams, and visions, that I-35 is the highway spoken in Isaiah 35, verse 8: “And a highway will be there, it will be called the way of holiness.”

… [Heartland Ministries’ Hill] believes God has an awesome plan that starts along I-35. “Let’s draw a line in the center of America, set people on fire, get young people saved, get moms and dads saved, get churches on fire, get holy, and watch how it affects the rest of America.”

“What do we expect to see?” [said Cindy Jacob.] “We expect laws to be changed in cities. We expect righteous leaders. We expect a movement, a reformation that will literally sweep the face of the earth.”

The Boston Globe examines the reality of a North American Union and the conspiracy-theorists, such as Phyllis Schlafly and Jerome Corsi, who are pushing it: "So how real is the NAU? In the literal sense, not very. Its underpinnings turn out to be a hodgepodge of mostly unconnected facts and suppositions. But the very existence of the theory is starting to have an influence of its own, and the concerns it represents suggest a new kind of anxiety that crosses traditional political boundaries."

The New York Times reports that several right-wing authors are suing their publisher, Regnery, over royalties supposedly lost to the company’s shell-game-like marketing strategy:

In a suit filed in United States District Court in Washington yesterday, the authors Jerome R. Corsi, Bill Gertz, Lt. Col. Robert (Buzz) Patterson, Joel Mowbray and Richard Miniter state that Eagle Publishing, which owns Regnery, “orchestrates and participates in a fraudulent, deceptively concealed and self-dealing scheme to divert book sales away from retail outlets and to wholly owned subsidiary organizations within the Eagle conglomerate.”

Some of the authors’ books have appeared on the New York Times best-seller list, including “Unfit for Command: Swift Boat Veterans Speak Out Against John Kerry,” by Mr. Corsi and John E. O’Neill (who is not a plaintiff in the suit), Mr. Patterson’s “Dereliction of Duty: The Eyewitness Account of How Bill Clinton Compromised America’s National Security” and Mr. Miniter’s “Shadow War: The Untold Story of How Bush Is Winning the War on Terror.” In the lawsuit the authors say that Eagle sells or gives away copies of their books to book clubs, newsletters and other organizations owned by Eagle “to avoid or substantially reduce royalty payments to authors.” …

The authors also say in the lawsuit that Regnery donates books to nonprofit groups affiliated with Eagle Publishing and gives the books as incentives to subscribers to newsletters published by Eagle. The authors say they do not receive royalties for these books.

Regnery’s strategy for boosting the sales of its books—often helping to land them on the best-seller list—is no secret: Anyone whose e-mail address is on a conservative list has likely received dozens of “special offers” from the Conservative Book Club, Human Events, or the Evans-Novak Political Report—all part of Eagle Publishing, the parent company of Regnery.

For example, yesterday the company offered a free copy of Laura Ingraham’s “Power to the People” in exchange for a subscription to the print version of Human Events. In September, well before the official release of Ann Coulter’s latest book, the Conservative Book Club had it at the low price of $0. The price range in these offers extends as high as $1 or even $3. While this model is similar to mainstream book club offers, in the case of a Regnery title, Eagle can sell it to its own book club subsidiary at cost, and then sell to customers “at, below or only marginally above its own cost of publication,” cutting the author’s royalties out of the transaction, according to the lawsuit.

While it’s hard to doubt the claim by Corsi and friends that these authors are not making money when their publisher is giving their books away for free, it’s an open question exactly how many of their timeless classics they presume they would have actually sold under normal conditions. The right-wing publishing industry already has a reputation for arranging bulk purchases to get its authors on the New York Times best-seller list; why is this any different?

Indeed, we can expect an ideological operation like Eagle Publishing to make a conservative argument in court: that selling these books for $0 to $3 merely reflects their market price.

With some on the Religious Right threatening to divorce the GOP and support a third-party candidate—as a way to punish Republicans if they nominate Rudy Giuliani—one has to wonder who exactly they would be endorsing. Pat Robertson and Pat Buchanan captured the far-right imagination in 1988 and 1992, respectively, but there don’t appear to be any big-name spoilers waiting in the wings this year. Even Alan Keyes, a perennial-favorite losing candidate, has thrown his lot in with the Republican field.

The third-party posturing has been led by Focus on the Family’s James Dobson, and his own love-hate past with the GOP gives us a clue. In 1996, unwilling to support Bob Dole, Dobson cast a “protest vote” for Howard Phillips, the nominee of the extreme-right U.S. Taxpayer’s Party (a.k.a. the Constitution Party). Phillips was also present by telephone at the Council for National Policy meeting that discussed the third-party strategy.

NAFTA, a superhighway, Social Security, "Senate amnesty bill" -- all part of secret plan to "integrate governments." Also: Corsi links "NAFTA superhighway" to Minnesota bridge collapse.