Imagine your job is to smear a front-running black candidate for president who was schooled overseas and has a funny name. You objective: to encourage as much distrust of the candidate as possible among as many voters as possible.

What lie could you invent and who might be inclined to believe it? More importantly, how could you disperse the lie to the largest possible audience while giving it maximum credibility?

The answers illustrate how the Far Right is using its propaganda machine to discredit Barack Obama. What I have learned is that the machine is actually many smaller ones, independently operated but networked together quite consciously. The plan is to cycle smears through multiple online, broadcast and print outlets of fringe media until they emerge in mainstream media with what might be called "plausible credibility."

In an earlier post, I published an email that described the results of my own investigation. Maybe the post wasn't clear enough.

I had sent the email earlier this year to reporters who have resources to pursue the story further than I did. But they declined to use those resources, and I understand why. The story might have been a little embarrassing to their publishers, because it would expose the mainstream media as complicit customers of the hidden system where political lies are invented, manufactured and disseminated. It would be like admitting the water served in your sparkling glass came from a sewer.

The effluent surfaces

Before I discovered TPM, I frequently sparred against anti-Obama comments on the Washington Post's website. One infuriating comment quoted the entire text of an article written by someone named Jim Kouri that was headlined "HOW'S THIS FOR PATRIOTISM? Laurie Roth Exclusive: Obama Connection to Terrorists Revealed by Talk Show Host."

Who was Kouri and who was Laurie Roth? I wanted to track them down and see where they got their lame innuendo.

Origin of a smear

It turns out Kouri's work can be found on multiple Far Right websites, where his bio has this to say: "Jim Kouri, CPP is currently fifth vice-president of the National Association of Chiefs of Police. He's former chief at a New York City housing project in Washington Heights nicknamed "Crack City" by reporters covering the drug war in the 1980s. In addition, he served as director of public safety at a New Jersey university and director of security for several major organizations. He's also served on the National Drug Task Force and trained police and security officers throughout the country."

Kouri was picking up on an installment of "The Laurie Roth Show," and a visit to Roth's site revealed her show is syndicated on 1,100 affiliates — including military stations — of the USA Radio Network. And Roth? She's definitely Christian Far Right. She has maybe a million or more listeners if the reception everywhere that night is good.

So, the smear comes to Kouri from Roth's show. But where did Roth get it?

It came from Doug Hagmann, who is now a weekly guest on Roth's show after he fed her the story that Obama funnels money to terrorists. He claims to run a private investigations firm called Northeast Intelligence Network out of Erie, Pa., and to use ex-military and ex-CIA investigators and consultants. NEIN is a group that is rabidly pro-Israel and anti-Muslim.

Reporter Michael Isikoff's employer, Newsweek, never mentioned any of this when it included Hagmann in its largely favorable 2005 piece on vigilante cyber-monitors of terrorism, but Sourcewatch.org has loads of info on Hagmann and his cohorts at NEIN here.

Other players

Following Sourcewatch links to individuals associated with NEIN, I found that they fit in the same mold of being anti-Muslim, pro-Israel. SOME of them are:

* Randy Taylor - Very difficult to find info on, but one of Hagmann's most extreme associates. His Zoom profile (listed under Randy Tayloris [sic], for some reason, states: "In addition to his senior analyst position with theNortheast IntelligenceNetwork, Randy Tayloris also an associate of Steve Emerson, globally recognized expert on Islamicterrorism, theauthor of five books, and a regular advisor to the White House,NationalSecurity Council, and many government intelligence agencies." (Steve Emerson has a VERY interesting profile on Zoom also, and probably lots of stuff on Google about him and his organization.)

* Lee Kaplan - He once impersonated a Congressional staffer and now leads an organization called Dafka that appears to exist mainly to counter pro-Palestinian influence from such groups as CAIR.

* Ryan Mauro - Something of a 19- or 20-year-old prodigy "volunteer analyst" who runs WorldThreats.com and whose writings about terrorism and Iraq have been widely circulated through his own books and articles and those of other authors. He is cited in "Jerusalem Countdown" by Pastor John Hagee, for example.

On the NEIN web site's Editorials page, you can read such pieces as:

"Planet of the Apes -- 2008 Version" in which a guest writer, Randy Taylor, compares Islam to the Sacred Scrolls of the "ignorant beasts" in Planet of the Apes and says "I'd have to say that the Muslims are the actual monkeys."

"Islamic State of America" which warns of "Democraps" (sic) allowing Muslims to impose the Islamic State of America as "we have Barack Hussein 'Osama' Obama aiming for the White House in November. Will the last American to leave Washington DC please take the flag with you?"

It's pretty sick stuff on Hagmann's site. I saw that every link on these sites led deeper into the heart of darkness, branching off into a network of thousands of twisted corridors that constitute an echo chamber of disgusting smears, revolting prejudices and just enough facts thrown in to fool a few people. Some sources of "information" sound almost credible.

Focus on the Lie

And then I found something else: Jim Kouri actually works for James Dobson. Yes, THAT James Dobson. Topping off his cop-about-town resume, Kouri is also a staff writer for The New Media Alliance, which is owned and funded by Heritage New Media, which is owned by Dobson. Kouri's Obama-as-terrorist article is among those listed on the NMA website.

If all this were just an echo chamber of nuts, that would be one thing. But then there's The New Media Alliance's mission statement, which lists these objectives:

* Originate and disseminate daily news and commentary
* Generate issue based media campaigns
* Make ourselves readily available to the media to address issues and provide new context/perspective on political and cultural matters
* Build and coordinate coalitions
* Provide funding for the conservative grass-roots community