The Breitbart spooks

In right-wingerland, it's Let's-Make-Brett-Kimberlin-Famous day, part 2. (A couple of posts down, we discussed the first Kimberlin Day.) Although this business may strike you as silly or overblown, comedies may become tragedies. And the most tragic outcome of all would be to give a Romney administration an excuse to spy on the left.

So attention, attention must be paid.

Basically, a lot of Breitbart-linked right-wing bloggers are claiming that they have been attacked by a conspiracy of left-wing terrorists. Supposedly, these Obama-loving bounders use Caller ID spoofing (a real thing) to bring the cops charging to the homes of innocent right-wing bloggers.

The Breitbarters are also claiming -- without offering any proof, so far -- that this conspiracy is led by one Brett Kimberlin.

As we noted in earlier posts, this Kimberlin fellow has become a right-wing bete noire. In the rightist imagination, this former con (and con artist) is a Leader of the Left -- even though actual left-wingers never heard of him. I'm not sure why the right has focused on this guy, although there does appear to be some sort of personal contretemps between Kimberlin and a right-wing lawyer. I haven't really followed the details of that.

Let's look at the timing. Then let's ask ourselves that famous question: Cui bono? Who benefits?

A few days ago, right-wing blogger Patterico -- a.k.a. Los Angeles prosecutor John Frey -- revealed that he had been victimized by a similar caller ID spoofing gambit at some point last year. Frey's column sent dozens and dozens of rightist bloggers into high dudgeon. En masse, and without evidence, they all insisted that this was the dastardly doing of Evil Kimberlin, funded by Evil Soros and Evil Streisand.

We're all familiar with the way right-wing writers all suddenly start saying the exact same thing at the exact same time, like robots. And that's how May 25 became Let's Make Kimberlin Famous Day.

Frey further said that the caller ID spoofing gambit is a common left-wing tactic called "SWATting." Where does that term come from? From the late Andrew Breitbart, supposedly. We're supposed to believe that Breitbart knew the terminology, sources and methods of the great left-wing terror conspiracy.

Then, just as the brouhaha over Kimberlin Day 1 died down, the cops showed up at the home of a Red State writer euphoniously named Erick Erickson. This attack followed just a little too closely after the great Day of manufactured frenzy. Which leads us to that famous question:

Cui bono? Cui freakin' bono, dudes?

How could anyone on the left possibly benefit from such nonsense?

The benefit to the right, by contrast, should be clear even to a child.

Now, maybe Evil Kimberlin (who is hardly my idea of gentleman) really did do it. Maybe he's Just That Crazy. Maybe he decided that he had nothing better to do than to give the right a propaganda triumph.

Or maybe -- just maybe -- the rightists decided to give themselves a propaganda triumph. Gee. Ya think?

Let's put it this way: Suppose a lefty blogger were "SWATted." What theory of the event would become immediately popular in BreitbartWorld?

Caller ID can be spoofed by pretty much anyone. That part's easy. Framing someone else takes more skill. I have reason to suspect that something of the sort is in the offing (see below), so right now I'm waiting for the other shoe to drop.

Spooked up. Many of you may not understand what we are dealing with. The Breitbart group is not just a propaganda network: They're spooks -- private spooks. They're in the business of covert ops.

Does that statement sound paranoid? Allow me to offer you some hard, irrefutable proof in the form of a document which comes from the team of Breitbart's dirty trickster James O'Keefe. (Also see here.)

As you may recall, O'Keefe has pulled a lot of shady stunts, including a Watergate-ish attempt to eavesdrop electronically on a senator. Andrew Breitbart claimed that O'Keefe was not an employee, even though he (Breitbart) paid him (O'Keefe) regularly. Hidden financing and plausible deniability are standard tactics for covert operatives.

You will have a very thorough understanding of the caller ID spoofing brouhaha once you've read how O'Keefe planned to fake out CNN. Here is his plan to "spoof CNN and get them to report on a topic that is entirely false."

Spoofing CNN

We should entice them with some video that they want to believe. The media has been in a frenzy for the past few years on a relatively small number of topics and subjects.

1. Tea party racism
2. Arizona racism
3. Sarah Palin
4. GOP leadership scandals

If we were to offer CNN evidence of racism, playing on these currently relevant issues, and produced enough supporting evidence to prove the claim we make, have them write a story and then prepare our allies to pounce, it could be a good way to undercut their credibility.

Things we could do to entice them:

1. False video evidence
2. False textual evidence and documents
3. False interviews

The false video evidence, for one, could be focused on the incident with Congressman John Lewis where he said he was called a "nigger" by tea party protestors, even though the video evidence disproved his claim.

Spoofing video evidence proving Lewis' claim, along with a good story that the tea party had suppressed such evidence, might be enough for CNN to report on the story.

The document goes on to describe exactly how the video evidence could be ginned up.

The danger is, of course, that the lie becomes the official truth, and so it would be necessary to immediately deconstruct this story on friendly networks and media outlets. The goal isn't to draw out the scandal after all, rather just to embarrass CNN by having them report a false story. So immediately reporting on the falseness of the story would be key...

Uproariously, O'Keefe calls his operation Project Veritas.

Obviously, what he is up to is not "investigative journalism." This is spook stuff, pure and simple. And I really must congratulate him: This document is a fairly professional job -- not up to CIA standards, but still rather better than his clumsy maunderings in the senator's office.

Again, read the whole document. Then look back at the Erickson/Frey claims of caller ID spoofing. Then ask yourself: Cui bono?

Get real: There is no left-wing terror organization, and any attempt to create that impression is straight out of the Frank Kitson playbook. There are no private left-wing intelligence operatives of any kind in the United States. If liberals had their own version of Project Veritas, I would have heard of it by now. You would have heard of it too. O'Keefe freely plays his games without any fear of being countered by an opposite force.

Some attention -- not enough -- has been paid to a related O'Keefe scheme in which he planned to "seduce" a CNN correspondent named Abbie Boudreau. But the conspiracy outlined above is more germane to our present discussion.

A long time ago, a reader wrote to me and said that Breitbart used the word "BIG" on all of his sites because the word is actually an acronym: Breitbart Intelligence Group. I didn't (and still don't) take that claim seriously. Nevertheless, I find the nomenclature amusing and will henceforth employ it. All in good fun.

Dragging me into this. The post you are reading right now is one that the Breitbart Intelligence Group probably wanted me to write. Earlier today, I got a comment which had a very familiar ring:

What a strange, hilarious spin you are putting on this Kimberlin thing! The people who have teamed up to defend the first amendment rights of a blogger by exercising their rights, *those* people are crazy. Uh-huh. If the shoe was on the other foot, you'd call them heroes. Hell, you're a blogger too, you should be joining them.

After being on the wrong side with Weinergate, you'd think you'd be a bit more careful. Now that there has been another "SWATing" incident, meaning another sheriff department can corroborate that it happened, are you still going to act confident that they're making it up? What if the police investigation concludes that it's real, what then?

After Weinergate, you should be more careful. They were right before.

This text reminds me of certain comments I got during the Weinergate affair -- specifically, of the time I was flooded with messages directing me to the work of the Mighty Seixon, a long-time GOP operative (posing as a "liberal," a la Lee Stranahan) who created an entire damned blog just to counter what I was saying. Roughly ten seconds after that blog was conjured into existence, I received comments informing me of Seixon's work. Throughout the scandal, I received other missives which, in essence, held out hoops that I was meant to jump through.

Basically, the comment reprinted above was meant to bait me into writing the very post you are reading now. In all likelihood, the BIG bloggers want to have some fun at my expense. It's not a major thing for them, just a sideline amusement.

C'est la vie. They can't harm me in any way. They simply refuse to understand that my motives are not their motives. I have no ambition, I write only to write, I don't ally myself with any cause or group, and I'm not playing the kind of games that they love to play. This blog will continue as always.

So why does this post exist? To give the Project Veritas memo wider publicity.

Something wicked this way comes. The comment contains one line which we may consider a slip-up: "...are you still going to act confident that they're making it up?" Until just now, I never expressed any confidence that the caller ID spoofing scandal was concocted. Indeed, in my previous post, I stipulated that the spoofed phone call was real.

Whenever the BIG righties pull a stunt like this, they always have one of those moments. You know -- like when Tony Perkins gets all jumpy as he starts talking to Janet Leigh about his mother.

I'm troubled by this bit of Noman Bates-y bean spillage: "What if the police investigation concludes that it's real, what then?"

Dude! You're talking too much. Learn to be more subtle.

It seems very likely that the Veritas gang wouldn't have initiated a stunt like this unless they have already concocted a plan to mislead the cops and make the charge against Kimberlin stick. How could they accomplish that trick? Right now, I can't guess. But the whole business is clearly engineered. (Remember, Breitbart had obtained all of the incriminating photos well before the Weiner scandal even broke; they knew the endgame before the opening moves.)

Maybe Project Veritas has confederates among the constabulary. That sort of thing has happened before: I used to live in L.A., and I well recall the Ramparts scandal. (There have long been rumors that the cops who showed up at the Watergate were somehow "in on it." I don't recall the details, and I don't know how credible those rumors were. Another post, perhaps.)

Keep in mind what Frey does for a living. He must have contacts. Just sayin'.