P
Pookie
Guest
Media Matters: Hillary's Lap Dogs
By John Perazzo
FrontPageMagazine.com | July 13, 2007
When Don Imus was fired in the wake of his April 4th "nappy-headed ho's"
remarks about the Rutgers University women's basketball team, a great deal
of attention was focused, appropriately, on the influence of Jesse Jackson
and Al Sharpton, each of whom expressed outrage over the broadcaster's
racial insensitivity and demanded that he be fired. The real guiding hand
over Imus' downfall, however, belonged neither to Sharpton nor Jackson, but
to Hillary Rodham Clinton. This is not widely understood, because Mrs.
Clinton's pristine fingerprints were kept off her victim by the intercession
of a velvet glove called Media Matters for America, the organization
responsible for setting in motion the chain of events that eventually
brought down Imus. The toppling of Imus was only a prelude to bigger things
for Media Matters, which, because of its strong ties to Mrs. Clinton, is now
aiming-just in time for the 2008 presidential election-to derail the careers
of a select group of influential broadcasters who, like Imus, have been
publicly critical of New York's junior Senator.
Media Matters had been building a dossier on Imus for some time, lying in
wait for an opportune moment to pounce on him. At 6:14 a.m. on April 4th,
Imus gave the organization that opportunity when he made his ill-fated
remarks, which were heard by a 26-year-old Washington, DC-based researcher
named Ryan Chiachiere, who Media Matters had assigned to monitor Imus'
program on a daily basis. Chiachiere promptly posted a 775-word blog along
with a video clip of the offending comments on the Media Matters website; in
addition, a news release was sent to hundreds of reporters nationwide. Imus'
subsequent apology was casually dismissed by the self-righteous Sharpton and
Jackson, and the broadcaster's fate was sealed for certain when his program's
major sponsors began to pull their ads from the show, fearful that they
would be subjected-by Media Matters and the likes of Sharpton and Jackson-to
a withering campaign of negative publicity as sponsors of a "racist"
program.
Established in May 2004, Media Matters identifies itself as "a Web-based,
not-for-profit, 501(c)(3) progressive research and information center
dedicated to comprehensively monitoring, analyzing, and correcting
conservative misinformation in the U.S. media"-particularly information
"that forwards the conservative agenda." The organization was founded by the
conservative-turned-leftist journalist David Brock, who says he created
Media Matters "to combat" what he characterizes as the largely successful
effort of "the right wing in this country" to "mov[e] the media itself to
the right" and to "mov[e] American politics to the right." Along the same
lines, Media Matters' Managing Director Jamison Foser wrote in May 2006:
"Time after time, the news media have covered progressives and conservatives
in wildly different ways-and, time after time, they do so to the benefit of
conservatives."
Obviously, Media Matters makes no secret of its animus for political
conservatives and its desire to publicly discredit them. That being said, it
is difficult, at first blush, to see why such an organization should have
wished to drive Don Imus, of all people, from the airwaves. After all, no
one could possibly have mistaken Imus for a conservative. His liberal-left
views were well known, and he had a well-established reputation for deriding
his conservative radio and television counterparts-calling Rush Limbaugh "a
fat, pill-popping loser" and "an undisciplined slob," and calling Tucker
Carlson "a bowtie-wearing *****," to cite just two examples. On another
occasion he called a Jewish reporter a "boner-nosed, beanie-wearing Jewboy."
Not even the mean-spirited crudeness of comments like these-a crudeness that
was standard operating procedure for Imus and his irreverent brand of
humor-had ever previously jeopardized his career. What, then, made the
"nappy-headed ho's" case different?
To answer this, we must understand that the Rutgers basketball players were
merely incidental to a larger, orchestrated campaign by Media Matters to
destroy Imus. The athletes just happened to be, from Media Matters'
perspective, "in the right place at the right time," as the saying goes. As
such, they furnished Media Matters with a convenient pretext for striking
hard at Imus.
To truly understand Media Matters' motives, we must look at the organization's
special relationship with Hillary Clinton, who has deeply despised Don Imus
for more than a decade. Hillary's contempt for the broadcaster dates back to
March 21, 1996, when Imus made a number of insulting, disparaging remarks
about Mrs. Clinton and her husband, who was then U.S. President, at the
Radio and TV Correspondents Association dinner in Washington, DC.
More recently, Imus had been particularly critical of Mrs. Clinton and her
presidential candidacy. According to Media Matters, the broadcaster had
"repeatedly and unapologetically" referred to the Senator as "Satan," Bill
Clinton's "fat ugly wife," a "buck-toothed witch," "the personification of
evil," and an individual who was "worse than" Osama bin Laden. Not
surprisingly, Imus steadfastly refused to invite Mrs. Clinton to be a guest
on his program. (It is noteworthy that in the wake of the "nappy-headed ho's"
incident, Mrs. Clinton disingenuously portrayed the fact that she had never
appeared on Imus' show as the result of a unilateral, righteous choice she
had personally made: "I've never wanted to go on his show and I certainly
don't ever intend to go on his show, and I felt that way before his latest
outrageous, hateful, hurtful comments," said Clinton.)
So far, then, we know for certain that Hillary Clinton loathes Don Imus, and
that Media Matters was actively engaged in trying to topple the broadcaster's
career, as evidenced by the assignment of Mr. Chiachiere to monitor every
minute of Imus' program. But how do we know there is a connection between
Hillary's antipathy for Imus and the deadly blow that Media Matters dealt to
his radio program?
We know because Media Matters' links to Hillary are at once intimate and
multitudinous, and the organization's devotion to her is nothing short of
profound. In 1996 (eight years before Media Matters' creation), the
then-conservative David Brock was commissioned (with a $1 million advance)
by the Simon & Schuster subsidiary Free Press to write a hard-hitting expose
of Hillary. But the book, completed in 1997, turned out to be nothing more
than a tepid, distinctly sympathetic account of the former First Lady's
life. That same year (1997), Brock publicly announced his political
epiphany, unequivocally recanting his previous negative writings about the
Clintons and embracing the liberal/Left cause. During this period, Brock
developed a close relationship with Neel Lattimore, Senator Clinton's openly
gay press secretary and close confidante. Brock would eventually hire
Lattimore as a director of "special projects" for Media Matters.
Brock's affinity for Mrs. Clinton grew over time, and vice versa. According
to Glenn Thrush of Newsday, Hillary "advised Brock on creating" Media
Matters in 2004, "encouraging the creation of a liberal equivalent of the
Media Research Center, a conservative group that has aggravated Democrats
for decades." Thrush reports that Hillary still "chats with [Brock]
occasionally and thinks he provides a valuable service . . ." "For her
part," Thrush adds, "Clinton's extended family of contributors, consultants
and friends has played a pivotal role in helping Media Matters grow from a
$3.5 million start-up in 2004 to its current $8.5 million budget."
Media Matters, Hillary, and the Center for American Progress
Media Matters and Hillary Clinton are further linked by their respective
relationships with three of the most influential leftist operatives in the
world-George Soros, Morton Halperin, and John Podesta. All three of these
men are intimately involved with a vital think tank called the Center for
American Progress (CAP)-which, according to Cybercast News Service's
research, "was instrumental in getting Brock's media group off the ground";
which helped launch Media Matters on May 3, 2004; and which maintains a
tight bond with Brock's organization to this day.
Soros and Halperin first proposed CAP's creation in 2002 to promote
generally the cause of the Left and the Democratic Party. But CAP's
overarching objective is considerably more specific than that: As an inside
source told reporter Christian Bourge of United Press International, CAP is
in fact "the official Hillary Clinton think tank." Not long after its formal
founding in the summer of 2003, Mrs. Clinton told reporter Robert Dreyfuss
of The Nation: "We've had the challenge of filling a void on our side of the
ledger for a long time, while the other side created an infrastructure that
has come to dominate political discourse. The Center [for American Progress]
is a welcome effort to fill that void."
According to Dreyfuss, CAP bears the distinct "imprint of the Clintons." "It's
not completely wrong to see it as a shadow government," he wrote in February
2004, "a kind of Clinton White-House-in-exile-or a White House staff in
readiness for President Hillary Clinton. Among senior staff and fellows at
the center are several former Clinton-era officials, including Robert
Boorstin, who was Clinton's national security speechwriter; Gene Sperling,
who headed Clinton's National Economic Council and who is now affiliated
with the DLC; and Matt Miller, senior adviser to Clinton's Office of
Management and Budget. The center's first director of domestic policy was
Neera Tanden, an aide to Senator Clinton, who has since returned to work for
Hillary. And the center's kickoff conference on national security in
October, co-organized with The American Prospect and the Century Foundation,
looked like a Clinton reunion, featuring Robert Rubin, Clinton's Treasury
Secretary; William Perry, his Defense Secretary; Sandy Berger, his National
Security Adviser; Richard Holbrooke and Susan Rice, both Clinton-era
Assistant Secretaries of State; Rodney Slater, his Transportation Secretary;
and Carol Browner, his EPA Administrator, who serves on the center's board
of directors. . . . Hillary Clinton . . . was also there . . ."
CAP is heavily funded by the aforementioned billionaire financier George
Soros, and in turn works closely with Media Matters to remove potential
roadblocks (like Don Imus) from Hillary Clinton's path to the White House.
According to Bill O'Reilly, some of the money Soros gives to CAP eventually
finds its way into the coffers of Media Matters, though Media Matters
disputes this.
Soros in 2004 spent some $26 million trying, unsuccessfully, to defeat
President Bush's reelection bid, a task Soros called "the central focus of
my life" and "a matter of life and death." He has likened Republicans
generally, and the Bush administration in particular, to "the Nazi and
communist regimes" in the sense that they are "all engaged in the politics
of fear." "Indeed," he wrote in 2006, "the Bush administration has been able
to improve on the techniques used by the Nazi and Communist propaganda
machines by drawing on the innovations of the advertising and marketing
industries." Soros elaborated on this theme at the January 2007 World
Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, where he told reporters: "America
needs to . . . go through a certain de-Nazification process."
Today Soros remains committed to ousting the Nazi-like Republicans from the
White House. And because Hillary Clinton appears to be the person most
capable of making his dream a reality, Soros is heavily invested in abetting
her quest for the presidency. He does this in part by funding the Center for
American Progress, with the knowledge that CAP will work synergistically
with pro-Hillary organizations like Media Matters.
Soros and Hillary have long held each other in high regard, as demonstrated
by Hillary's declaration at a 2004 Take Back America Conference in
Washington, DC: "Now, among the many people who have stood up and said, 'I
cannot sit by and let this happen to the country I love,' is George Soros,
and I have known George Soros for a long time now, and I first came across
his work in the former Soviet Union, in Eastern Europe, when I was
privileged to travel there, both on my own and with my husband on behalf of
our country..[W]e need people like George Soros, who is fearless, and
willing to step up when it counts." (Cited in David Horowitz and Richard
Poe, The Shadow Party, p. 53)
Morton Halperin is Senior Vice President of the Center for American Progress
and Director of the Open Society Policy Center established by George Soros.
On both counts, then, he is tied to Media Matters and its pro-Hillary
agendas. He also has an extensive history in Democratic Party politics, most
notably during the Clinton administration. President Bill Clinton appointed
him to several key positions: Special Assistant to the President, Senior
Director for Democracy at the National Security Council, consultant to the
Secretary of Defense, and consultant to the Under Secretary of Defense for
Policy. Halperin was given these appointments even though, as a May 2000
World Net Daily report revealed, he was, "according to a well-respected
former State official, . . . 'known . . . as a Soviet or communist agent'"
in the Cold War era.
When laying the groundwork with Soros for CAP, Halperin sought the input of
John Podesta, a former chief of staff in the Clinton administration who
today is the official President and CEO of the Center for American Progress.
Podesta, too, helped Brock develop Media Matters, going so far as to loan
office space to Brock's fledgling organization in Washington, DC.
Media Maters, Hillary, and Democracy Alliance
Media Matters has received additional assistance from another entity with
close ties to Hillary Clinton, Democracy Alliance, a self-described "liberal
organization" of at least 80 ultra-wealthy leftists-one of them being George
Soros-whose long-term objective is to raise some $200 million for the
political Left. As Newsday's Glenn Thrush explains, Democracy Alliance
members report that their organization, which "advises Democratic donors on
where to spend their political contributions," "steered more than $6 million
to Brock's group" between 2004 and 2006.
And who is the official leader of Democracy Alliance? None other than Rob
Stein, a former chief of staff at the Washington office of the Clinton-Gore
Transition, and thereafter an official in Bill Clinton's Treasury
Department. According to author Joseph Klein, Democracy Alliance has also
"received significant support from some of Hillary Clinton's most important
backers including Susie Tompkins Buell and her husband, Mark Buell, and
financier Alan Patricof." Moreover, Democracy Alliance reports that one of
its officials, Jonathan Adler, "served as Regional Campaign Coordinator for
Senator Hillary Clinton's successful 2006 Senate re-election campaign."
The current Managing Director of Democracy Alliance, Kelly Craighead, is,
according to Glenn Thrush, "one of the Clintons' closest friends." In the
1990s Craighead worked as an assistant to President Clinton and as director
of the advance team for Hillary, who was then the First Lady. The depth of
the friendship between Craighead and Mrs. Clinton is evidenced by the fact
that Hillary, acting as a justice of the peace, performed Craighead's 2001
marriage ceremony to political consultant Erick Mullen, a former aide to
Democratic Senator Charles Schumer of New York and a former informal advisor
to Mrs. Clinton's 2000 Senate campaign. Thrush reports that Craighead also
"served as one of Brock's top advisers during Media Matters' formation in
2004," a service for which "he was paid as part of a $202,781 contract
with . Erick Mullen's consulting company."
Media Matters, Hillary, and the Democratic Party
Hillary's ties to Brock's organization are further cemented by the largesse
of such donors to Media Matters as Susie Tompkins Buell (Hillary's close
ally and a co-founder of the fashion company Esprit) and James Hormel (a San
Francisco philanthropist who narrowly missed being named ambassador to
Luxembourg during the Clinton administration in the 1990s).
While Hillary is Media Matters' sacred cow, Brock's group also has many ties
to the Democratic Party generally. This only serves to increase Media
Matters' devotion to Hillary, because she clearly represents the Democrats'
best hope for recapturing the White House in 2008. Among Media Matters' 58
staffers and advisors are the following noteworthy individuals:
By John Perazzo
FrontPageMagazine.com | July 13, 2007
When Don Imus was fired in the wake of his April 4th "nappy-headed ho's"
remarks about the Rutgers University women's basketball team, a great deal
of attention was focused, appropriately, on the influence of Jesse Jackson
and Al Sharpton, each of whom expressed outrage over the broadcaster's
racial insensitivity and demanded that he be fired. The real guiding hand
over Imus' downfall, however, belonged neither to Sharpton nor Jackson, but
to Hillary Rodham Clinton. This is not widely understood, because Mrs.
Clinton's pristine fingerprints were kept off her victim by the intercession
of a velvet glove called Media Matters for America, the organization
responsible for setting in motion the chain of events that eventually
brought down Imus. The toppling of Imus was only a prelude to bigger things
for Media Matters, which, because of its strong ties to Mrs. Clinton, is now
aiming-just in time for the 2008 presidential election-to derail the careers
of a select group of influential broadcasters who, like Imus, have been
publicly critical of New York's junior Senator.
Media Matters had been building a dossier on Imus for some time, lying in
wait for an opportune moment to pounce on him. At 6:14 a.m. on April 4th,
Imus gave the organization that opportunity when he made his ill-fated
remarks, which were heard by a 26-year-old Washington, DC-based researcher
named Ryan Chiachiere, who Media Matters had assigned to monitor Imus'
program on a daily basis. Chiachiere promptly posted a 775-word blog along
with a video clip of the offending comments on the Media Matters website; in
addition, a news release was sent to hundreds of reporters nationwide. Imus'
subsequent apology was casually dismissed by the self-righteous Sharpton and
Jackson, and the broadcaster's fate was sealed for certain when his program's
major sponsors began to pull their ads from the show, fearful that they
would be subjected-by Media Matters and the likes of Sharpton and Jackson-to
a withering campaign of negative publicity as sponsors of a "racist"
program.
Established in May 2004, Media Matters identifies itself as "a Web-based,
not-for-profit, 501(c)(3) progressive research and information center
dedicated to comprehensively monitoring, analyzing, and correcting
conservative misinformation in the U.S. media"-particularly information
"that forwards the conservative agenda." The organization was founded by the
conservative-turned-leftist journalist David Brock, who says he created
Media Matters "to combat" what he characterizes as the largely successful
effort of "the right wing in this country" to "mov[e] the media itself to
the right" and to "mov[e] American politics to the right." Along the same
lines, Media Matters' Managing Director Jamison Foser wrote in May 2006:
"Time after time, the news media have covered progressives and conservatives
in wildly different ways-and, time after time, they do so to the benefit of
conservatives."
Obviously, Media Matters makes no secret of its animus for political
conservatives and its desire to publicly discredit them. That being said, it
is difficult, at first blush, to see why such an organization should have
wished to drive Don Imus, of all people, from the airwaves. After all, no
one could possibly have mistaken Imus for a conservative. His liberal-left
views were well known, and he had a well-established reputation for deriding
his conservative radio and television counterparts-calling Rush Limbaugh "a
fat, pill-popping loser" and "an undisciplined slob," and calling Tucker
Carlson "a bowtie-wearing *****," to cite just two examples. On another
occasion he called a Jewish reporter a "boner-nosed, beanie-wearing Jewboy."
Not even the mean-spirited crudeness of comments like these-a crudeness that
was standard operating procedure for Imus and his irreverent brand of
humor-had ever previously jeopardized his career. What, then, made the
"nappy-headed ho's" case different?
To answer this, we must understand that the Rutgers basketball players were
merely incidental to a larger, orchestrated campaign by Media Matters to
destroy Imus. The athletes just happened to be, from Media Matters'
perspective, "in the right place at the right time," as the saying goes. As
such, they furnished Media Matters with a convenient pretext for striking
hard at Imus.
To truly understand Media Matters' motives, we must look at the organization's
special relationship with Hillary Clinton, who has deeply despised Don Imus
for more than a decade. Hillary's contempt for the broadcaster dates back to
March 21, 1996, when Imus made a number of insulting, disparaging remarks
about Mrs. Clinton and her husband, who was then U.S. President, at the
Radio and TV Correspondents Association dinner in Washington, DC.
More recently, Imus had been particularly critical of Mrs. Clinton and her
presidential candidacy. According to Media Matters, the broadcaster had
"repeatedly and unapologetically" referred to the Senator as "Satan," Bill
Clinton's "fat ugly wife," a "buck-toothed witch," "the personification of
evil," and an individual who was "worse than" Osama bin Laden. Not
surprisingly, Imus steadfastly refused to invite Mrs. Clinton to be a guest
on his program. (It is noteworthy that in the wake of the "nappy-headed ho's"
incident, Mrs. Clinton disingenuously portrayed the fact that she had never
appeared on Imus' show as the result of a unilateral, righteous choice she
had personally made: "I've never wanted to go on his show and I certainly
don't ever intend to go on his show, and I felt that way before his latest
outrageous, hateful, hurtful comments," said Clinton.)
So far, then, we know for certain that Hillary Clinton loathes Don Imus, and
that Media Matters was actively engaged in trying to topple the broadcaster's
career, as evidenced by the assignment of Mr. Chiachiere to monitor every
minute of Imus' program. But how do we know there is a connection between
Hillary's antipathy for Imus and the deadly blow that Media Matters dealt to
his radio program?
We know because Media Matters' links to Hillary are at once intimate and
multitudinous, and the organization's devotion to her is nothing short of
profound. In 1996 (eight years before Media Matters' creation), the
then-conservative David Brock was commissioned (with a $1 million advance)
by the Simon & Schuster subsidiary Free Press to write a hard-hitting expose
of Hillary. But the book, completed in 1997, turned out to be nothing more
than a tepid, distinctly sympathetic account of the former First Lady's
life. That same year (1997), Brock publicly announced his political
epiphany, unequivocally recanting his previous negative writings about the
Clintons and embracing the liberal/Left cause. During this period, Brock
developed a close relationship with Neel Lattimore, Senator Clinton's openly
gay press secretary and close confidante. Brock would eventually hire
Lattimore as a director of "special projects" for Media Matters.
Brock's affinity for Mrs. Clinton grew over time, and vice versa. According
to Glenn Thrush of Newsday, Hillary "advised Brock on creating" Media
Matters in 2004, "encouraging the creation of a liberal equivalent of the
Media Research Center, a conservative group that has aggravated Democrats
for decades." Thrush reports that Hillary still "chats with [Brock]
occasionally and thinks he provides a valuable service . . ." "For her
part," Thrush adds, "Clinton's extended family of contributors, consultants
and friends has played a pivotal role in helping Media Matters grow from a
$3.5 million start-up in 2004 to its current $8.5 million budget."
Media Matters, Hillary, and the Center for American Progress
Media Matters and Hillary Clinton are further linked by their respective
relationships with three of the most influential leftist operatives in the
world-George Soros, Morton Halperin, and John Podesta. All three of these
men are intimately involved with a vital think tank called the Center for
American Progress (CAP)-which, according to Cybercast News Service's
research, "was instrumental in getting Brock's media group off the ground";
which helped launch Media Matters on May 3, 2004; and which maintains a
tight bond with Brock's organization to this day.
Soros and Halperin first proposed CAP's creation in 2002 to promote
generally the cause of the Left and the Democratic Party. But CAP's
overarching objective is considerably more specific than that: As an inside
source told reporter Christian Bourge of United Press International, CAP is
in fact "the official Hillary Clinton think tank." Not long after its formal
founding in the summer of 2003, Mrs. Clinton told reporter Robert Dreyfuss
of The Nation: "We've had the challenge of filling a void on our side of the
ledger for a long time, while the other side created an infrastructure that
has come to dominate political discourse. The Center [for American Progress]
is a welcome effort to fill that void."
According to Dreyfuss, CAP bears the distinct "imprint of the Clintons." "It's
not completely wrong to see it as a shadow government," he wrote in February
2004, "a kind of Clinton White-House-in-exile-or a White House staff in
readiness for President Hillary Clinton. Among senior staff and fellows at
the center are several former Clinton-era officials, including Robert
Boorstin, who was Clinton's national security speechwriter; Gene Sperling,
who headed Clinton's National Economic Council and who is now affiliated
with the DLC; and Matt Miller, senior adviser to Clinton's Office of
Management and Budget. The center's first director of domestic policy was
Neera Tanden, an aide to Senator Clinton, who has since returned to work for
Hillary. And the center's kickoff conference on national security in
October, co-organized with The American Prospect and the Century Foundation,
looked like a Clinton reunion, featuring Robert Rubin, Clinton's Treasury
Secretary; William Perry, his Defense Secretary; Sandy Berger, his National
Security Adviser; Richard Holbrooke and Susan Rice, both Clinton-era
Assistant Secretaries of State; Rodney Slater, his Transportation Secretary;
and Carol Browner, his EPA Administrator, who serves on the center's board
of directors. . . . Hillary Clinton . . . was also there . . ."
CAP is heavily funded by the aforementioned billionaire financier George
Soros, and in turn works closely with Media Matters to remove potential
roadblocks (like Don Imus) from Hillary Clinton's path to the White House.
According to Bill O'Reilly, some of the money Soros gives to CAP eventually
finds its way into the coffers of Media Matters, though Media Matters
disputes this.
Soros in 2004 spent some $26 million trying, unsuccessfully, to defeat
President Bush's reelection bid, a task Soros called "the central focus of
my life" and "a matter of life and death." He has likened Republicans
generally, and the Bush administration in particular, to "the Nazi and
communist regimes" in the sense that they are "all engaged in the politics
of fear." "Indeed," he wrote in 2006, "the Bush administration has been able
to improve on the techniques used by the Nazi and Communist propaganda
machines by drawing on the innovations of the advertising and marketing
industries." Soros elaborated on this theme at the January 2007 World
Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, where he told reporters: "America
needs to . . . go through a certain de-Nazification process."
Today Soros remains committed to ousting the Nazi-like Republicans from the
White House. And because Hillary Clinton appears to be the person most
capable of making his dream a reality, Soros is heavily invested in abetting
her quest for the presidency. He does this in part by funding the Center for
American Progress, with the knowledge that CAP will work synergistically
with pro-Hillary organizations like Media Matters.
Soros and Hillary have long held each other in high regard, as demonstrated
by Hillary's declaration at a 2004 Take Back America Conference in
Washington, DC: "Now, among the many people who have stood up and said, 'I
cannot sit by and let this happen to the country I love,' is George Soros,
and I have known George Soros for a long time now, and I first came across
his work in the former Soviet Union, in Eastern Europe, when I was
privileged to travel there, both on my own and with my husband on behalf of
our country..[W]e need people like George Soros, who is fearless, and
willing to step up when it counts." (Cited in David Horowitz and Richard
Poe, The Shadow Party, p. 53)
Morton Halperin is Senior Vice President of the Center for American Progress
and Director of the Open Society Policy Center established by George Soros.
On both counts, then, he is tied to Media Matters and its pro-Hillary
agendas. He also has an extensive history in Democratic Party politics, most
notably during the Clinton administration. President Bill Clinton appointed
him to several key positions: Special Assistant to the President, Senior
Director for Democracy at the National Security Council, consultant to the
Secretary of Defense, and consultant to the Under Secretary of Defense for
Policy. Halperin was given these appointments even though, as a May 2000
World Net Daily report revealed, he was, "according to a well-respected
former State official, . . . 'known . . . as a Soviet or communist agent'"
in the Cold War era.
When laying the groundwork with Soros for CAP, Halperin sought the input of
John Podesta, a former chief of staff in the Clinton administration who
today is the official President and CEO of the Center for American Progress.
Podesta, too, helped Brock develop Media Matters, going so far as to loan
office space to Brock's fledgling organization in Washington, DC.
Media Maters, Hillary, and Democracy Alliance
Media Matters has received additional assistance from another entity with
close ties to Hillary Clinton, Democracy Alliance, a self-described "liberal
organization" of at least 80 ultra-wealthy leftists-one of them being George
Soros-whose long-term objective is to raise some $200 million for the
political Left. As Newsday's Glenn Thrush explains, Democracy Alliance
members report that their organization, which "advises Democratic donors on
where to spend their political contributions," "steered more than $6 million
to Brock's group" between 2004 and 2006.
And who is the official leader of Democracy Alliance? None other than Rob
Stein, a former chief of staff at the Washington office of the Clinton-Gore
Transition, and thereafter an official in Bill Clinton's Treasury
Department. According to author Joseph Klein, Democracy Alliance has also
"received significant support from some of Hillary Clinton's most important
backers including Susie Tompkins Buell and her husband, Mark Buell, and
financier Alan Patricof." Moreover, Democracy Alliance reports that one of
its officials, Jonathan Adler, "served as Regional Campaign Coordinator for
Senator Hillary Clinton's successful 2006 Senate re-election campaign."
The current Managing Director of Democracy Alliance, Kelly Craighead, is,
according to Glenn Thrush, "one of the Clintons' closest friends." In the
1990s Craighead worked as an assistant to President Clinton and as director
of the advance team for Hillary, who was then the First Lady. The depth of
the friendship between Craighead and Mrs. Clinton is evidenced by the fact
that Hillary, acting as a justice of the peace, performed Craighead's 2001
marriage ceremony to political consultant Erick Mullen, a former aide to
Democratic Senator Charles Schumer of New York and a former informal advisor
to Mrs. Clinton's 2000 Senate campaign. Thrush reports that Craighead also
"served as one of Brock's top advisers during Media Matters' formation in
2004," a service for which "
with . Erick Mullen's consulting company."
Media Matters, Hillary, and the Democratic Party
Hillary's ties to Brock's organization are further cemented by the largesse
of such donors to Media Matters as Susie Tompkins Buell (Hillary's close
ally and a co-founder of the fashion company Esprit) and James Hormel (a San
Francisco philanthropist who narrowly missed being named ambassador to
Luxembourg during the Clinton administration in the 1990s).
While Hillary is Media Matters' sacred cow, Brock's group also has many ties
to the Democratic Party generally. This only serves to increase Media
Matters' devotion to Hillary, because she clearly represents the Democrats'
best hope for recapturing the White House in 2008. Among Media Matters' 58
staffers and advisors are the following noteworthy individuals: