Chamber Of Commerce Lobbyists Ran Smear Campaign Against Opponents: Report

thinkprogress.org:

ThinkProgress has learned that the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the big business trade association representing ExxonMobil, AIG, and other major international corporations, is working with set of "private security" companies and lobbying firms to undermine their political opponents, including ThinkProgress, with a surreptitious sabotage campaign.

According to e-mails obtained by ThinkProgress, the Chamber hired the lobbying firm Hunton and Williams to spearhead this effort. Hunton And Williams' attorney Richard Wyatt, who once represented Food Lion in its infamous lawsuit against ABC News, was hired by the Chamber in October of last year. To assist the Chamber, Wyatt and his associates, John Woods and Bob Quackenboss, hired a set of private security firms -- HB Gary Federal, Palantir, and Berico Technologies (collectively called Team Themis) -- to develop tactics for damaging progressive groups and labor unions, in particular ThinkProgress, the labor coalition called Change to Win, the SEIU, US Chamber Watch, and StopTheChamber.com.

Read the whole story: thinkprogress.org

Comments

[Corners]

01:30 PM on 03/04/2011

a gang paying other people to take out your enemies. Sounds like a "RICO" case to me.

[AmeriGus]

07:16 PM on 02/19/2011

Kudos for the new AOL/HuffPo for linking to this story but it's a shame it's not getting headlined, frontpaged or anything more.

The Chamber is denying knowledge of the email but it's not exactly making it's records public either. For context, we should look back to November when HuffPo covered a legal complaint made against the Chamber on the grounds that it had channelled illicit donations to candidates. The Chamber told the judge in the case it would provide a list of donors for the court by election day. On election day, the Chamber used stall tactics and never provided a donor list.

[ProgressivesLoveAmerica]

08:05 PM on 02/13/2011

The Chamber of Commerce is the textbook definition of Fascism...

I'm not even exaggerating.

"Fascism should more properly be called corporatism because it is the merger of state and corporate power."- Benito Mussolini

[spinns17]

07:29 PM on 02/11/2011

still no jobs bill.wheres the jobs republicans

[logicalchoice]

07:24 PM on 02/11/2011

This is incredible. why is the Aterny General not looking into this? This is bigger than Watergate! This is paid espianage! Our country has been bought by the the Koch bothers who deam themselves our king! this is treason!!!!

[nitebat]

11:55 PM on 02/15/2011

The Attorney General. Who do you think set the whole thing up? Google hbgary chamber of commerce for the whole sorry affair. If you're brave google anonleaks too. But take care. Law firms are now slapping DMCA (google that if you have to) orders on every news porthole on American soil, so you may soon have to import the news of this story from... elsewhere.

[raven119]

04:25 PM on 02/11/2011

And these are the people who represent big business. Why am I not surprised?

As an owner of a business, I quit my local chamber after the shenanigans of the national chamber were exposed last year. I do not recommend the chamber nor do I support its activities in our town.

[charlesbaratta01]

01:32 PM on 02/11/2011

I keep coming across Aaron Barr this month in articles at various sites I come across. I mean the first story was his whole 'taking on anonymous' that blew up in his face and cost HBGary millions when they tried to sell their company. Even people within HBGary were telling him not to push evidence that he couldn't prove 100% certainty was factual against members of anonymous - that his analytical theorems where more 'gut feeling' than hard math. Threatening to divulge individuals names and family relations to the FBI - possible innocent names at that - just for a chance to get into the limelight. Yeah I would say he is arrogant. Hell he basically ruined HBGary reputation in his arrogance. But that probably is not a bad thing... though I can think of a few tech workers that will think differently because of losing their jobs for his idiocy.

I'm suspecting all this information about the Chamber are due in part to Aaron Barr being 'pwned' by anonymous by what I have been reading. Since they did circumvent emails etc. Not too sure about the legality of these documents, but frankly this kind of information needs to get out.

Charles Baratta
http://www.merchantloans.com

[nitebat]

12:01 AM on 02/16/2011

Legal smegal! If anon hadn't pulled hbgarys teeth (without anesthetic, I might add) we would have, yet again, been left in the dark. It's out there... period! We the People (the mega jury) will pass judgment as we see fit. Don't worry, my friend, this story will breach. Read and learn... then act!

[wakeupyouall]

12:28 PM on 02/11/2011

The next war will be between hackers. I love that they are bringing transparency to our democracy. They have taken over the job that was part of journalism. Journalist have failed to do their jobs as the forth estate.

[logicalchoice]

07:27 PM on 02/11/2011

They are the new journalists. do a dam better job and like what i read and want more of it. boring old talking heads are done.

[nitebat]

12:06 AM on 02/16/2011

It's way better than that! Someone on Twitter called WikiLeaks and AnonLeaks the intelligence agency of the people. The Peoples Intelligence Agency. The PIA! It has... a nice ring to it, don't you think?

[BillyClub]

12:17 PM on 02/11/2011

If a union was involved a grand jury would be empaneled! Why the double standard?

[chaya]

11:02 AM on 02/11/2011

Liberals engage in fisticuffs with a referee.

Rightwingers claw, bite, and kick below the belt.

Can we can ever win with fisticuffs? I don't know. But at least we can hold our heads up.

[Thomas Manaugh]

07:15 AM on 02/11/2011

Challenge the Chamber's support of the worst polluters in America. Sign the petition at http://www.dolphinblue.com/pg-Green-Chamber-Petition.html.

[UpFromLiberalism]

04:49 AM on 02/11/2011

headline: Chamber Of Commerce Lobbyists Ran Smear Campaign Against Opponents: Report

that's a change.

before the november , it was the left who "Ran Smear Campaign Against" Chamber Of Commerce

[rubygreen]

05:53 AM on 02/11/2011

Maybe you can't tell the difference between truth and smear?

[chaya]

11:03 AM on 02/11/2011

Capitals can be so difficult, can't they?

It would help if you would provide us with a citation or a link for that second imaginary headline.

[codemo]

04:22 PM on 02/11/2011

Perhaps a better name for the poster would be UpFromIlliteracy. That's definitely the direction in which they need to go.

[Counterglow]

02:40 AM on 02/11/2011

One of the security firms hired to help the US Chamber of Commerce smear honest folks got schooled when it tried to go after somebody who could actually fight back. HB Gary Federal went after the 4chan-based group, "Anonymous", after it targeted companies actively working to cut off Wikileaks' financing.

Bad mistake.

To quote e-mag Nakedsecurity, "Anonymous compromised the HBGary website and replaced it with an image explaining their motivation. In addition to the defacement, they downloaded over 60,000 emails from the company and posted them on The Pirate Bay.

"The Twitter account of HBGary's CEO, Aaron Barr, was also compromised and tweeted multiple offensive messages, as well as his home address, social security number and cell phone. According to Forbes, the LinkedIn accounts of other HB Gary executives were compromised "in minutes."

"Research, which HBGary was preparing to sell to the FBI and which allegedly contains names, addresses and other information on Anonymous, was also posted as part of the attack. Anonymous maintains the information is largely bogus and says they are providing it publicly to prove it.

"A writer for the DailyKos claims that, in addition to the other damages, Anonymous also deleted the firm's backups."

Proving once again that a lot of these security companies are great at busting some witless script-kiddie and blowing it up into the triumph of the century, but not so hot at hunting big game. Real hackers could pwn the FBI, if they wanted to. They don't.

[borisnatasha]

12:01 AM on 02/11/2011

They have used techniques to terrorize people and therefore qualify as a terrorist organization.

[PhilLosophy]

11:37 PM on 02/10/2011

U$A