Power Play
by digby
This is just creepy:
Last August, Jane Mayer wrote a long investigative article in The New Yorker about the Koch brothers, the conservative billionaires who bankroll a host of right-wing causes. Since then, she’s apparently become the victim of a disturbing, organized smear campaign. Mayer, who’s reported extensively on America’s use of torture during the “War on Terror” and co-authored books on Clarence Thomas and Ronald Reagan, is certainly no stranger to peals of right-wing outrage. But her work on the reclusive Koch brothers (whose official objections to the story are laid out in this letter) seems to have raised it to a new level. Sources tell us that rumors have been circulating for some time now that a private investigator was hired to dig up dirt on Mayer in the wake of the Koch brothers story. (Dirty business, but that sort of thing does happen.) Nothing’s been confirmed so far. But the circumstantial evidence does seem indicate that someone out there is planting (weak) negative stories about Mayer with any news outlet who might take them. There have been at least three efforts so far
Read on for the details.
If this is really happening to Mayer, it’s very ugly. But it wouldn’t surprise me. It’s one thing to take on the US Government, it’s quite another to take on the plutocrats. They have real power.
Update: I had just read this when I saw a tweet that said Eric Schneiderman, the new AG for new York, talked about the “rigged casino” of Wall Street. I hope he learned from Eliot Spitzer that you’d better be so clean you squeak if you’re going to take those guys on. They play for keeps.
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