Mafia Plan to Bomb Author

PAOLA TOTARO, EUROPEAN CORRESPONDENT
Sydney Morning Herald
16/10/2008

THE Neapolitan Camorra, the Naples-based Mafia, planned a massive motorway bomb to kill the bestselling writer Roberto Saviano, the author of a big expose on their activities, as he travelled with his armed Carabinieri bodyguards.

The plot, revealed by one of the Casalesi clan supergrasses, has resulted in a flurry of arrests and yesterday, asked by text message if he was OK, Saviano sent the Herald a simple, one-word return: "resisto" (meaning "I'm resisting" or "I'm still standing").

Saviano, 29, interviewed in secret in Naples by the Herald in June, has lived a nomadic existence in hiding for more than two years after he wrote his blockbuster exposé of the vicious Neapolitan Mafia. The book, Gomorrah, has been turned into a movie that won the Grand Jury Prize at Cannes this year and will be Italy's entry in the best foreign film category at this year's Oscars.

The bomb plot was revealed by the supergrass, Carmine Schiavone, who admitted that the book's revelations had infuriated the Casalesi clan bosses and a plan to blow up Saviano and his police escorts was expected before Christmas. ...

Story continues: http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2008/10/15/1223750129908.html?feed=fairfaxdigitalxml

OLIVER STONE - W ACTRESS/ANCHORWOMAN IN NEAR-FATAL ATTACK

www.contactmusic.com
10/21/2008

An American TV anchorwoman who appears in OLIVER STONE's new biopic W is in a critical condition after she was beaten and stabbed at her Arkansas home.

Reporter Anne Pressly was found unconscious in bed on Monday (20Oct08), bleeding from head and body wounds, according to police officials. Pressly was discovered by her mother who went to the home after Pressly failed to answer her daily wake-up call.

The 26-year-old acts as general assignment reporter at the station, and anchors the channel's Daybreak slot on ABC's Arkansas affiliate, KATV. She also plays a conservative broadcaster who supports Bush's Iraq campaign in Stone's forthcoming movie, which stars Josh Brolin as the Republican President.

She is currently receiving treatment at a local hospital.

Police spokeswoman Cassandra Davis has confirmed officials are investigating whether Pressly was deliberately targeted. Davis tells the New York Post, "It is possible that it is something other than robbery... she was a public figure... on the news, in the media."

http://www.contactmusic.com/news.nsf/article/w%20actressanchorwoman%20in%20near-fatal%20attack_1084185

Hitler planned 'Big Brother' style television to broadcast Nazi propaganda

"The laying of a broadband cable between Berlin and Nuremberg was begun ... Prototype programmes included the filming of executions of supposed traitors to the Nazis and an early reality TV show, depicting the wholesome Aryan life of a young German couple for the rest of the population to model themselves on. ... "

By WILL STEWART
www.dailymail.co.uk
21st October 2008

Adolf Hitler was on the verge of creating a 'Big Brother' style version of cable television to broadcast Nazi propaganda

Hitler was on the verge of creating a 'Big Brother' style version of cable television to broadcast Nazi propaganda around Germany.

The Nazis were preparing public TV screens, including sets installed in public laundries so housewives could tune in, across the nation, according to a Russian documentary based on papers and tapes found in his bunker.

Prototype programmes included the filming of executions of supposed traitors to the Nazis and an early reality TV show, depicting the wholesome Aryan life of a young German couple for the rest of the population to model themselves on.

The crude system would transmit the TV picture to a screen and the sound to a radio receiver.

The discovery came to light first in 1945, when dozens of boxes with tapes were found in the ruins of the Reich Council by Soviet soldiers, the programme claims.

Documents recovered from the Nazis show Hitler's plans were well advanced and showed German engineers were on the point of a technological breakthrough and had even recorded a series of taped programmes on news, sport and education.

A former SS officer, Curt Schulmeitser, told the programme how a relative of Hitler's mistress Eva Braun was filmed being shot after being caught trying to flee Berlin as the Soviet army advanced.

Schulmeitser said Hitler's deputy Heinrich Himmler authorised the filming and hinted it was being filmed for Hitler to watch.

He said: 'Himmler wanted somebody else in a different place to see what was going on.'

In another plan, Hitler wanted to inspire ordinary Germans to a live a pure Aryan life by setting up a fly on the wall reality TV programme called: Family chronicles: An evening with Hans and Gelli.

The actors were to depict a normal, wholesome, Aryan way of life that other Germans could emulate. presenting a common evening in a German family of a young couple.

Josef Hebbels, who masterminded the plan, told Rudolph Hess's sister Margaret ,who was also working on the scheme: 'We'll be able to show whatever we want. We'll create a reality, which the people of Germany need and can copy. Your task is to teach German women to live this way'.

According to the programme, a Nazi engineer called Walter Bruch was tasked to make 'people's television' a reality.

He tabled a document to Hitler called 'Plan to supply people's transmitter to German homes,' and the laying of a broadband cable between Berlin and Nuremberg was begun, it claimed.

Hitler early on realised the power of television propaganda. His address at the opening ceremony of the Berlin Olympic Games in 1936 was broadcast to system of bulky mobile TV stations where Germans could watch in town squares.

But the programme claims the Nazi leader and his scientists were planning a far more complex series of public TV screens before the allies overran Germany and he committed suicide in 1945.

His plan is eerily similar to George Orwell's novel 1984, where despotic figurehead Big brother looms out from public telescreens entreating the subdued populace to work for the state and telling them 'Big Brother is watching you.

The reality television show, Big Brother, in which contestants are under constant surveillance, is based on Orwell's concept.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1079415/Hitler-planned-Big-Brother-style-television-broadcast-Nazi-propaganda.html

Disgraced NYTimes reporter Judith Miller joins Fox News

WASHINGTON (AFP) — Judith Miller, whose pre-Iraq war reporting was faulted in a 2004 apology to its readers by editors of The New York Times, has joined the Fox News television channel as a contributor.

Miller, 60, "will provide commentary and analysis on national security issues, counterterrorism, and international affairs, including the Middle East on Fox," the cable news channel announced in a statement on Monday.

Fox News, which is owned by Rupert Murdoch's News Corp., said Miller will also write for FOXNews.com.

Miller, the author of several books, spent 28 years with the New York Times and was awarded a Pulitzer Prize in 2002 for reporting on global terrorism.

But she is perhaps better known for her reporting prior to the March 2003 US invasion of Iraq of claims by Iraqi exiles that Saddam Hussein had a weapons of mass destruction program, claims which subsequently turned out not to be true.

The Times apologized in 2004 for its pre-Iraq war coverage. Five of the six dubious articles cited by the newspaper were written or co-written by Miller.

Miller was also in the headlines in 2005 when she was imprisoned for 85 days for refusing to testify before a grand jury over the outing of an undercover CIA agent.

Miller was jailed by a federal judge for contempt for refusing to divulge the name of her confidential source who leaked the identity of CIA operative Valerie Plame. Her source turned out to be Lewis "Scooter" Libby, an aide to Vice President Dick Cheney.

Miller retired from the Times in November 2005.

Discussing Miller's hiring with The Washington Post, Fox executive vice president John Moody told the newspaper "she has a very impressive resume."

"We've all had stories that didn't come out exactly as we had hoped," Moody said. "She has explained herself and she has nothing to apologize for."

http://afp.google.com/article/ALeqM5j_V8-OHmKy1Edb5H0YFBDP33mP_Q

National Public Radio Contributor Tetra-Tech & Reinhard Gehlen's Man in Louisville (Saddam Hussein, too)

THE LATE JAMES CRITCHFIELD, PRESIDENT OF TETRA-TECH IN LOUISVILLE, KENTUCKY:

"Powerful CIA operative who as a spymaster, soldier and diplomat was at the heart of a half century of historic moments, who did everything from recruiting former Third Reich members to spy on the Soviets, to supporting the political party that put Saddam Hussein in power, and whose memoir will be published in 2003, died April 22 of pancreatic cancer in Williamsburg, VA at age 86."

http://www.lifeinlegacy.com/2003/WIR20030426.html
•••••••••••••
Irony of ironies ... look who's running TERROR DRILLS in Blue Grass country:

http://www.tetratech.com/service/
security/emergency_preparedness.asp

TETRA TECH developed implemented, and moderated a large-scale mock terrorism exercise in Louisville, Kentucky called Operation River City. The exercise lasted for 60 continuous hours and consisted of multiple chemical, biological, radiological, hostage, and explosive scenarios meant to simulate a nationally significant incident.

The Tetra Tech Board

http://www.tetratech.com/company
/execbios/smith.aspAlbert

Albert E. Smith

Chairman of the Board
Director since 2005

Mr. Smith has been a member of our Board since May 2005 and was elected Chairman on March 6, 2006. Mr. Smith is a former member of the Secretary of Defense's DEFENSE SCIENCE BOARD, serving from 2002 to 2005. He
was an Executive Vice President of LOCKHEED MARTIN and President of its Integrated Systems & Solutions business until 2004. From 1999 to 2003 Mr. Smith was Executive Vice President of Lockheed Martin's Space Systems Company. Prior to that, Mr. Smith was President of Government Systems at Harris Corporation. He has also worked for the CENTRAL INTELLIGENCE AGENCY, where he received the Intelligence Medal of Merit.

Hugh M. Grant
Director since 2003

Mr. Grant joined our Board in January 2003. He has been a business consultant since 1996. Prior to 1996, Mr. Grant spent approximately 38 years with Ernst & Young LLP ...

Richard H. Truly
Director since 2003

Admiral Truly joined our Board in April 2003. He is the former Executive Vice President of Midwest Research Institute (MRI). Prior to joining MRI in 1997, Admiral Truly was Vice President of the Georgia Institute of Technology, and Director of the Georgia Tech Research Institute, from 1992 to 1997. From 1989 to 1992, he served as NASA's eighth Administrator under President George H. Bush, and prior to that, had a distinguished career in the U.S. Navy and NASA, retiring from the Navy as Vice Admiral.

Admiral Truly was an astronaut with NASA and piloted the Columbia, commanded the Challenger and, in 1986, led the investigation of the Challenger accident. Admiral Truly was awarded the Presidential Citizen's Medal, has served on the Defense Policy Board and Army Science Board, and is a member of the National Academy of Engineering.

Dr. Li-San Hwang
Chairman Emeritus

Dr. Hwang retired from Tetra Tech on March 6, 2006 and serves as Chairman Emeritus for life in an advisory role. Dr. Hwang, joined our predecessor in 1967 and led our acquisition of the Water Management Group of Tetra Tech, Inc., an operating unit of Honeywell Inc....
•••••••••••••
TETRA TECH'S CIA/REINHARD GEHLEN CONNECTION
http://www.arlingtoncemetery.net/
jhcritchfield.htm
23 April 2003

Ex-CIA Official James Critchfield Dies

James H. Critchfield, 86, a decorated World War II Army officer who played a key role in the Central Intelligence Agency's controversial postwar alliance
with former German officials to spy on the Soviet Union, died April 22, 2003, at a hospice in Williamsburg. He had pancreatic cancer.

Mr. Critchfield, who retired in 1974, was the chief of the CIA's Near East and South Asia division in the 1960s and a national intelligence officer for energy as the oil shortage crisis began in the early 1970s. Later, as president of TETRA TECH International, he focused on Middle East energy resources, especially those in Oman, and did consulting work.

It was his part in the early days of Cold War intelligence that most recently catapulted him to attention.

Only in the late 1990s did the CIA begin to disclose, through an act of Congress, its collaboration with former Nazi spies in what was known as the Gehlen Organization. The network was named for Reinhard Gehlen, a German general who oversaw Adolf Hitler's anti-Soviet intelligence and became the first head of West Germany's secret service.

For many, Gehlen's work came to symbolize the moral compromises of the United States. Mr. Critchfield, often credited with recommending the CIA's union with Gehlen, defended the work, which supplied the West with an infusion of fresh intelligence material about the Soviet Union and Eastern European countries at the start of the Cold War. During the Berlin Airlift and other vital moments, such intelligence was hard to obtain, he said.

He added that many of the top Germans, including Gehlen, were far from Nazi ideologues and that many sympathized with those who tried to kill Hitler.

"I've lived with this for 50 years," Mr. Critchfield told The Washington Post in 2001. "Almost everything negative that has been written about Gehlen, in which he has been described as an ardent ex-Nazi, one of Hitler's war criminals -- this is all far from the fact."

As the size of the Gehlen group grew to several thousand, many in the organization were reputed to be Soviet spies, former Nazis and other unsavory types used as informants and for other purposes.

"There's no doubt that the CIA got carried away with recruiting some pretty bad people," Mr. Critchfield told a reporter....
•••••••••••••
Some Pretty Bad People

MXs Near Canada

http://www.peacemagazine.org/archive/v04n5p31.htm

... Last August, the USAF held hearings about the MX rail garrison proposal, mediated by Colonel Mike McShane, a U.S. military tribunal judge.

The meeting began with a talk by a Pentagon expert, Lt. Col. Walsh. He discussed the history of MX policy, and the controversial Draft Environmental Impact Statement (DEIS), a document detailing the potential impact of rail garrison on the local economy.

The report originated from an earlier set of hearings and from studies conducted by a private research company hired by the U.S. military, Tetra-tech. Tetra-Tech was once a Honeywell subsidiary. Speakers from the audience were given a three-minute limit. Comments were addressed to a panel, made up of: two airforce officers; a TETRA TECH representative; a pentagon expert, Lt. Col. Walsh; and a Pentagon scientist.

Andrew Klavan, Conservative "Victim" of Liberal Hollywood "Discrimination"

Andrew Klavan

Wiki: "Andrew Klavan (born 1954 in New York City) is an American author and screenwriter of "tough-guy" mysteries and psychological thrillers. Two of Klavan's books have been adapted into motion pictures — True Crime (1999) and Don't Say A Word (2001). He has been nominated for the Edgar Award four times and has won twice. Playwright and novelist Laurence Klavan is his brother. Identifying himself as a political conservative, Klavan has expressed the view that 'rightists' are the victims of discrimination in Hollywood."

Whose Propaganda?
www.washingtonpost.com
Letter to the Editor
October 19, 2008

Regarding Andrew Klavan's Oct. 12 Outlook commentary, "5 Myths About Those Tinseltown Liberals":

I am disturbed that Mr. Klavan would draw a parallel between conservatives wanting Hollywood recognition and the victims of centuries-old institutionalized racism and sexism. His comparison serves only to trivialize the protracted struggles of African Americans and women.

Mr. Klavan also accused "liberal Hollywood" of censorship and of creating propaganda. But later he wrote, "Making anti-war films while American troops are under fire is not patriotic." What does he want, then? For Hollywood to stop making these movies (censorship) or for Hollywood to make pro-war movies (right-wing propaganda)? Clearly, Mr. Klavan doesn't mind if the media have an agenda as long as it's in line with his own beliefs.

But most troubling was Mr. Klavan's labeling of critiques of the Iraq war and the U.S. government as "not patriotic." In fact, to remain strong, democracies need people who are willing to challenge the powers that be.

But this is old news: Most people acknowledge the dangers of blindly supporting authority in the name of the nation and realize that the media's unquestioning support for our leaders a few years ago is one of the reasons we are stuck in the quagmire of Iraq.

Finally, Mr. Klavan stated that anti-war movies fail at the box office because people don't care about or don't agree with the messages they espouse. I suspect the real reason people aren't flocking to these movies is that the war itself is a failure and people are tired of being reminded of that -- just as they are tired of hearing rehashed, inconsequential rants against "liberal Hollywood."

ANDREA SILEN
Bethesda

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/10/18/AR2008101801535.html
•••••••
ANDREW KLAVAN VERBATIM

Why Are We Whispering?
By Andrew Klavan
www.washingtonpost.com
August 9, 2008; Page A15

At a recent writers conference in Southern California, one of my colleagues on a screenwriters panel told the crowd of about 50 people that she hoped Barack Obama would win the presidency. A number of people applauded. When it was my turn to speak, I politely said that I disagreed with her politics and moved on to other topics. There was no applause for me, but several writers approached me afterward. Each dropped his voice to a whisper and, looking around to make sure no one would overhear, said, "Thank you for saying that."

Which raises a question for all conservatives in the arts: Why are we whispering?

It's true throughout Hollywood certainly. In filmland business meetings, the executives, producers and talent feel free to wax on about how stupid President Bush is, how evil American foreign policy is, even what awful human beings conservatives are. Hollywood rightists, meanwhile, are reduced to holding secret gatherings to confess their beliefs in sympathetic company.

The results of having a bold artistic left and a cowering artistic right are clear on both the big and small screens. It's not just the movies attacking the war on terrorism or rehashing Joe McCarthy's peccadilloes or sanctifying murderous communist thugs such as Che Guevara. Those are mere vanity projects bravely speaking leftism to leftists. Far more pervasive, and damaging to our society, are the off-hand leftist assumptions that underlie a vast majority of mainstream TV shows and films: American might is sinister, soldiers are criminalized by war, Christians are intolerant and hypocritical, housewives are desperate, corporations are evil, the environment is in mortal danger from wicked man and, in general, something is terribly wrong with mainstream society that only the wisdom of radical types can cure.

It's true that conservative values are sometimes hidden away in the fantasy worlds of films such as "The Lord of the Rings," "The Chronicles of Narnia" or "Spider-Man 3." But that only raises the question again: Why are conservatives whispering when the left is shouting?

There are practical answers, to be sure. Personally and professionally, the creative left rejects right-wingers with small-minded savagery. There may not be a blacklist in Hollywood, but there is a graylist that makes it far more difficult for conservatives to get hired and instigate projects. When good films that openly defy the left-wing party line do get made -- "The Passion of the Christ," "Not Without My Daughter," "Tears of the Sun" -- they are often excoriated by powerful lefty critics in reviews that frequently include personal attacks on the filmmakers and stars. (It's not just movies, either. My latest novel was deemed the work of a "right-wing crackpot" by the Associated Press.) Who can blame artists for not wanting to step out of the foxhole a second time?

But I believe there is a deeper, more troubling reason for conservative reticence. The left has somehow succeeded in convincing the rest of us that there is virtue in a culture of lies, that some truths should not be spoken and that if you speak them you are guilty of racism or sexism or some other kind of bigotry. Right-wingers may disagree philosophically with this sort of political correctness, but I think they may have incorporated some of its twisted values psychologically and walk in fear of seeming "offensive" or "insensitive."

Thus they sign on to a creative mind-set in which the depiction of reality is considered immoral and distortion becomes an act of political virtue. The threat of Islamo-fascism must never be shown without drawing some moral equivalence with the West (see: "The Kingdom" and "Iron Man"). It must never be suggested that men might be better at some tasks on average or that many women might prefer homemaking to business. Sexual promiscuity and illegitimacy are romantic or funny (à la "Juno") and not contributing factors to poverty, depression and suicide rates (à la life). And so on.

Whenever I raise these issues in public, someone says, "Well, Hollywood's all about money. They just make what sells." That sounds like cynical wisdom, but it's only half true. Artists want love, praise and respect, which money represents but which can also be found in reviews, awards and good publicity, almost all of which encourage leftist distortions and teach us to respond to plain speaking with outrage.

Conservative artists can't battle this state of affairs with silence or secrecy. They must create -- with courage, openness and honesty. These are the tools of both conservatism and art. With them, we can take the culture back.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/08/08/AR2008080802876.html

Andy Martin: The Man Behind the Whispers About Obama

" ... He prepared to run as a Democrat for Congress in Connecticut, where paperwork for one of his campaign committees listed as one purpose 'to exterminate Jew power.' ... [Martin] wrote of Mr. Obama, 'it may well be that his concealment is meant to endanger Israel.' He added, 'His Muslim religion would obviously raise serious questions in many Jewish circles.' Yet in various court papers, Mr. Martin had impugned Jews. ... ”

By JIM RUTENBERG
NYT
October 13, 2008

The most persistent falsehood about Senator Barack Obama’s background first hit in 2004 just two weeks after the Democratic convention speech that helped set him on the path to his presidential candidacy: “Obama is a Muslim who has concealed his religion.”

That statement, contained in a press release, spun a complex tale about the ancestry of Mr. Obama, who is Christian. The press release was picked up by a conservative Web site, FreeRepublic.com, and spread steadily as others elaborated on its claims over the years in e-mail messages, Web sites and books. It continues to drive other false rumors about Mr. Obama’s background.

Just last Friday, a woman told Senator John McCain at a town-hall-style meeting, “I have read about him,” and “he’s an Arab.” Mr. McCain corrected her.

Until this month, the man who is widely credited with starting the cyberwhisper campaign that still dogs Mr. Obama was a secondary character in news reports, with deep explorations of his background largely confined to liberal blogs. But an appearance in a documentary-style program on the Fox News Channel watched by three million people last week thrust the man, Andy Martin, and his past into the foreground. The program allowed Mr. Martin to assert falsely and without challenge that Mr. Obama had once trained to overthrow the government.

An examination of legal documents and election filings, along with interviews with his acquaintances, revealed Mr. Martin, 62, to be a man with a history of scintillating if not always factual claims. He has left a trail of animosity — some of it provoked by anti-Jewish comments — among political leaders, lawyers and judges in three states over more than 30 years.

He is a law school graduate, but his admission to the Illinois bar was blocked in the 1970s after a psychiatric finding of “moderately severe character defect manifested by well-documented ideation with a paranoid flavor and a grandiose character.”

Though he is not a lawyer, Mr. Martin went on to become a prodigious filer of lawsuits, and he made unsuccessful attempts to win public office for both parties in three states, as well as for president at least twice, in 1988 and 2000. Based in Chicago, he now identifies himself as a writer who focuses on his anti-Obama Web site and press releases.

Mr. Martin, in a series of interviews, did not dispute his influence in Obama rumors.

“Everybody uses my research as a takeoff point,” Mr. Martin said, adding, however, that some take his writings “and exaggerate them to suit their own fantasies.”

As for his background, he said: “I’m a colorful person. There’s always somebody who has a legitimate cause in their mind to be angry with me.”

When questions were raised last week about Mr. Martin’s appearance and claims on Hannity’s America on Fox News, the program’s producer said Mr. Martin was clearly expressing his opinion and not necessarily fact.

It was not Mr. Martin's first turn on national television. The CBS News program 48 Hours in 1993 devoted an hourlong program, See You in Court; Civil War, Anthony Martin Clogs Legal System with Frivolous Lawsuits, to what it called his prolific filings. (Mr. Martin has also been known as Anthony Martin-Trigona.) He has filed so many lawsuits that a judge barred him from doing so in any federal court without preliminary approval.

He prepared to run as a Democrat for Congress in Connecticut, where paperwork for one of his campaign committees listed as one purpose “to exterminate Jew power.” He ran as a Republican for the Florida State Senate and the United States Senate in Illinois. When running for president in 1999, he aired a television advertisement in New Hampshire that accused George W. Bush of using cocaine.

In the 1990s, Mr. Martin was jailed in a case in Florida involving a physical altercation. His newfound prominence, and the persistence of his line of political attack — updated regularly on his Web site and through press releases — amazes those from his past.

“Well, that’s just a bookend for me,” said Tom Slade, a former chairman of the Florida Republican Party, whom Mr. Martin sued for refusing to support him. Mr. Slade said Mr. Martin was driven like “a run-over dog, but he’s fearless.”

Given Mr. Obama’s unusual background, which was the focus of his first book, it was perhaps bound to become fodder for some opposed to his candidacy. Mr. Obama was raised mostly by his white mother, an atheist, and his grandparents, who were Protestant, in Hawaii. He hardly knew his father, a Kenyan from a Muslim family who variously considered himself atheist or agnostic, Mr. Obama wrote. For a few childhood years, Mr. Obama lived in Indonesia with a stepfather he described as loosely following a liberal Islam.

Theories about Mr. Obama’s background have taken on a life of their own. But independent analysts seeking the origins of the cyberspace attacks wind up at Mr. Martin’s first press release, posted on the Free Republic Web site in August 2004.

Its general outlines have turned up in a host of works that have expounded falsely on Mr. Obama’s heritage or supposed attempts to conceal it, including Obama Nation, the widely discredited best seller about Mr. Obama by Jerome R. Corsi. Mr. Corsi opens the book with a quote from Mr. Martin.

“What he’s generating gets picked up in other places,” said Danielle Allen, a professor at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, N.J., who has investigated the e-mail campaign’s circulation and origins, “and it’s an example of how the Internet has given power to sources we would have never taken seriously at another point in time.”

Ms. Allen said Mr. Martin’s original work found amplification in 2006, when a man named Ted Sampley wrote an article painting Mr. Obama as a secret practitioner of Islam. Quoting liberally from Mr. Martin, the article circulated on the Internet, and its contents eventually found their way into various e-mail messages, particularly an added claim that Mr. Obama had attended “Jakarta’s Muslim Wahhabi schools. Wahhabism is the radical teaching that created the Muslim terrorists who are now waging jihad on the rest of the world.”

Mr. Obama for two years attended a Catholic school in Indonesia, where he was taught about the Bible, he wrote in Dreams From My Father, and for two years went to an Indonesian public school open to all religions, where he was taught about the Koran.

Mr. Sampley, coincidentally, is a Vietnam veteran and longtime opponent of Mr. McCain and Senator John Kerry, both of whom he accused of ignoring his claims that American prisoners were left behind in Vietnam. He previously portrayed Mr. McCain as a “Manchurian candidate.” Speaking of Mr. Martin’s influence on his Obama writings, Mr. Sampley said, “I keyed off of his work.”

Mr. Martin’s depictions of Mr. Obama as a secret Muslim have found resonance among some Jewish voters who have received e-mail messages containing various versions of his initial theory, often by new authors and with new twists.

In his original press release, Mr. Martin wrote that he was personally “a strong supporter of the Muslim community.” But, he wrote of Mr. Obama, “it may well be that his concealment is meant to endanger Israel.” He added, “His Muslim religion would obviously raise serious questions in many Jewish circles.”

Yet in various court papers, Mr. Martin had impugned Jews.

A motion he filed in a 1983 bankruptcy case called the judge “a crooked, slimy Jew who has a history of lying and thieving common to members of his race.”

In another motion, filed in 1983, Mr. Martin wrote, “I am able to understand how the Holocaust took place, and with every passing day feel less and less sorry that it did.”

In an interview, Mr. Martin denied some statements against Jews attributed to him in court papers, blaming malicious judges for inserting them.

But in his 48 Hours interview in 1993, he affirmed a different anti-Semitic part of the affidavit that included the line about the Holocaust, saying, “The record speaks for itself.”

When asked Friday about an assertion in his court papers that “Jews, historically and in daily living, act through clans and in wolf pack syndrome,” he said, “That one sort of rings a bell.”

He said he was not anti-Semitic. “I was trying to show that everybody in the bankruptcy court was Jewish and I was not Jewish,” he said, “and I was being victimized by religious bias.”

In discussing the denial of his admission to the Illinois bar, Mr. Martin said the psychiatric exam listing him as having a “moderately severe personality defect” was spitefully written by an evaluator he had clashed with.

Mr. Martin, who says he is from a well-off banking and farming family, is clearly pleased with his newfound attention. But, he said, others have added to his work in “scary” ways.

“They Google ‘Islam’ and ‘Obama’ and my stuff comes up and they take that and kind of use that — like a Christmas tree, and they decorate it,” he said. For instance, he said, he did not necessarily ascribe to a widely circulated e-mail message from the Israeli right-wing activist Ruth Matar, which includes the false assertion, “If Obama were elected, he would be the first Arab-American president.”

He said he had at least come to “accept” Mr. Obama’s word that he had found Jesus Christ. His intent, he said, was only to educate.

Kitty Bennett contributed reporting.
••••••••••
This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: October 14, 2008

An article on Monday about Andy Martin, who has been a source of some of the false rumors about Senator Barack Obama’s background, referred incorrectly to an academic institution where a study of the rumors’ origins was conducted by Prof. Danielle Allen. The Institute for Advanced Study is located in Princeton, N.J., but is not part of Princeton University.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/13/us/politics/13martin.html?_r=1&pagewanted=print&oref=slogin

POSTCRIPT: " ... Meanwhile, cable television commentator Sean Hannity runs a hit piece on Obama and uses Andy Martin of Chicago as his primary source to accuse Obama of training for 'a radical overthrow of the government.' ... That would be the lawsuit-giddy, anti-Semitic, Holocaust-sympathizing, too-psychologically-questionable-for-admission-as-an-attorney-to-the-Illinois-Bar, chronic-candidate-for-public-office Andy Martin, according to multiple published reports. Did a Fox News that ostensibly wishes to be viewed as credible not vet Martin with anyone in Illinois at all? If Hannity's goal was to come off as shrill and desperate, he succeeded. ... "

http://www.pjstar.com/opinions/x1478355735/Our-View-For-Election-08-crazy-comes-out-of-the-closet