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The Clintons' 'conspiracy commerce' memo By HADAS GOLD | 04/18/2014 05:30 PM EDT
The famous Clinton White House document known as "the conspiracy commerce memo" has finally surfaced.
The memo, which details how right-wing conspiracy theories made their way into the mainstream press, was written in 1995 and first acknowledged by the White House in 1997. The idea of a “conspiracy” was also famously referred to by Hillary Clinton in 1998, when she cited a “vast right- wing conspiracy that has been conspiring against my husband since the day he ran for president.”
The memo, part of the latest trove of documents released by the Clinton Presidential Library on Friday, outlines “the communication stream of conspiracy commerce" — a “mode of communication employed by the right wing to convey their fringe stories into legitimate subjects of coverage by the mainstream media."
(Also on POLITICO: Clinton's 'Keep your plan' dilemma)
Examples include White House Deputy Counsel Vince Foster’s suicide and the sexual accusations against the president made by Gennifer Flowers, Paula Jones and Sally Perdue. A detailed timeline in the memo aims to connect Floyd Brown, co-founder of Citizens United, to curiously timed editorials in The Wall Street Journal.
The communication stream worked as follows, according to the memo:
First, a well-funded right-wing think tank would underwrite conservative newsletters and newspapers such as The American Spectator or the Western Journalism Center. Next, the stories would be “reprinted on the internet,” where they “bounced all over the world.” The stories would then reach the right-of-center mainstream media, including The New York Post, The Wall Street Journal and The Washington Times, one of two ways: either directly from the Internet or via a “blow-back strategy” through the British tabloids, which would publish the story and thus give American right-of-center media reason to publish as well.
(Also on POLITICO: Bill Clinton's 'letter' to Don Imus)
Finally, Congress would pick up the story line and say it should be investigated, which would give the story the legitimacy it needed to be covered by the remainder of the American mainstream press.
“The right wing has seized upon the internet as a means of communicating its ideas to people,” the memo says. “Moreover, evidence exists that Republican staffers surf the internet, interacting with extremists in order to exchange ideas and information.”
A great deal of the memo is devoted to Richard Mellon Scaife, the billionaire newspaper publisher and heir to the Mellon fortune. The memo accuses Scaife of fueling speculation surrounding Foster’s death and funding Newt Gingrich, who would conveniently question the circumstances of Foster's death. (Scaife would change his tune on the Clintons years later, supporting Hillary’s 2008 run for president and donating to the Bill, Hillary, and Chelsea Clinton Foundation.) “Scaife along with a handful of other wealthy individuals and foundations use their power to control the Republican Party's agenda and viewpoints," the memo states. "Scaife, in particular, is one of the major backers of Newt Gingrich. Interestingly enough, Gingrich's views on Vince Foster seemed to dovetail with Scaife's following Scaife's pumping of thousands of dollars into Gingrich's GOPAC's coffers."