At Citizens United, the boisterous Brown and his sidekick Bossie are raising money to air their latest video creation, which blasts Kerry for his expensive haircuts and his wife's wealth, tagging him as a "rich elitist liberal from Massachusetts who says he's a man of the people."
Meanwhile, Grassfire.org, a new "grass-roots" outfit overseen by Beltway insider Shirley, has produced an ad that claims Kerry is "more liberal than Ted Kennedy." Aside from "nonpartisan educational" groups like Grassfire, his clients have included the Republican National Committee, the Republican Majority Committee, the American Spectator, the Club for Growth, the Conservative Political Action Committee, the Federalist Society, the National Rifle Association, News World Communications and the Washington Times Foundation.
If the names of Brown and Bossie sound more familiar, they attained notoriety together during the Clinton era as indefatigable promoters of the bogus "Whitewater" scandal. They served as publicity agents for David Hale, the crooked and discredited former Little Rock municipal judge whose allegations against the Clintons forced the appointment of an independent counsel. Among mainstream journalists panting for a career-making Watergate-style scandal, Brown and Bossie found many a gullible mark. For nearly a decade they churned out junk night and day. For a while, Bossie went on the payroll of the Senate Whitewater Committee; later he worked for Rep. Dan Burton's House Committee on Government Operations investigating Clinton and Al Gore -- until he was caught distributing doctored tapes to the media.
Their scorched-earth campaign tactics were epitomized by Brown and Bossie's 1992 paperback broadside "Slick Willie: Why America Can't Trust Bill Clinton." Among the ugliest features of this little pamphlet was a chapter of unsupported and anonymous insinuations about Clinton's role in a female student's suicide. Their "investigation" was later called "an unusually brazen dirty tricks operation" in a report on "CBS Evening News." (In light of recent discussion of the president's National Guard service, the authors may now regret at least one of "Slick Willie's" chapter titles -- "Brave Men Died in Vietnam: Where Was Bill Clinton?")
http://www.salon.com/opinion/conason/2004/03/09/conspiracy/