In intelligence work, a false flag operation is a mission launched by one country against another, but made to look like a third party was responsible. If the operation is discovered, the third country takes the blame and the actual aggressor, if not wholly protected, at least has plausible deniability.
Rusty Shackleford at The Jawa Report has gathered circumstantial evidence that a supposedly grassroots video campaign designed to smear Sarah Palin as a member of an Alaskan secessionist party was really created and orchestrated by a major PR firm associated with the Obama campaign: Hope, Change, & Lies.
Our research suggests that a subdivision of one of the largest public relations firms in the world most likely started and promulgated rumors about Sarah Palin that were known to be false. These rumors were spread in a surreptitious manner to avoid exposure.
It is also likely that the PR firm was paid by outside sources to run the smear campaign. While not conclusive, evidence suggests a link to the Barack Obama campaign. Namely:
- Evidence suggests that a YouTube video with false claims about Palin was uploaded and promoted by members of a professional PR firm.
- The family that runs the PR firm has extensive ties to the Democratic Party, the netroots, and are staunch Obama supporters.
- Evidence suggests that the firm engaged in a concerted effort to distribute the video in such a way that it would appear to have gone viral on its own. Yet this effort took place on company time.
- Evidence suggests that these distribution efforts included actions by at least one employee of the firm who is unconnected with the family running the company.
- The voice-over artist used in this supposedly amateur video is a professional.
- This same voice-over artist has worked extensively with David Axelrod's firm, which has a history of engaging in phony grassroots efforts, otherwise known as "astroturfing."
- David Axelrodis Barack Obama's chief media strategist.
- The same voice-over artist has worked directly for the Barack Obama campaign.
This suggests that false rumors and outright lies about Sarah Palin and John McCain being spread on the internet are being orchestrated by political partisans and are not an organic grassroots phenomenon led by the left wing fringe. Our findings follow.
While there is no direct evidence, the cumulative weight of the circumstantial evidence (including the scrubbing of the YouTube accounts soon after Shackleford's post went up – real subtle there, guys) is strongly suggestive of a professional "sliming" campaign designed to look as if it were "up from the people."
But the Prophet of Post-Partisan Politics, the Harbinger of Hope, Change and Waffles … He couldn't be involved in this, could he?
Nah. It's so unlike him.
(hat tip: LGF)
LINKS: More at Hot Air, Memeorandum, The Strata-Sphere, Michelle Malkin, Patterico, Dan Riehl, and Fausta.
UPDATE: Ace on the videos' disappearance and who may have ordered it.
UPDATE II: Rusty Shackleford posts a press release from Ethan Winner of Winner & Associates, taking the blame for the videos. He did it all by himself with only his own money. Yeah, right.
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