Sarah Palin’s “Not-So-Anonymous” Accuser

A man claiming on his blog, and anywhere else he can find people who’ll listen to him, to be the source of the recent Sarah Palin smears, has “outed” himself.  Other sources have “outed” him as the source of many other outrageous stories.   Still others claim he doesn’t exist at all.

Somebody calling himself Martin Eisenstadt, of the “Eisenstadt Group,” says he works for the John McCain campaign and is “proud” to be the one who leaked the information that Palin didn’t know Africa was a continent to Fox News’ Carl Cameron.  Eisenstadt has also, on occassion, claimed to represent efforts to have a casino built in Iraq.  He also blames another blogger, William K. Wolfram, for spreading the “lie” that he (Eisenstadt) doesn’t exist.  Whether or not Wolfram exists is unclear.

What does seem clear is that there is no Washington area think tank employing Eisenstadt, as he claims, called the “Harding Institute for Freedom and Democracy,” named after Warren G. Harding, supposedly America’s worst president ever.  There is a website for the institute, however, though it seems, that like everything associated with Mr. Eisenstadt, it’s part of an elaborate hoax.

Last week, the “Harding Institute’s” You Tube channel posted a video denying “BBC claims” made against him as part of “UK Sam’s” 10-part documentary, “The Last Republican.”  It’s okay if you’re not quite following all this, neither am I, to tell you the truth,  I’m just writing it up as it comes.  It’s hard to be sure if the videos posted are supposed to be part of the “BBC thing,” or Eisenstadt’s multi-part response to the “BBC thing.”

Some of Eisenstadt’s whoppers; John McCain and Michelle Malkin did not “do it,” as the “BBC documentary” claimed Martin claimed, Joe the Plumber “canoodled” a SNL cast member ,and something about a Photoshopped Iranian missile picture.  The Huffington Post ran the Palin story, and while they claim to know Eisenstadt himself is a hoax, they stand by the hope that the “stupid Palin/Africa” part is true.  They even make fun of MSNBC for falling for the hokum, but they quote Wolfram, who seems to me to be part of the scam.  His website is even subtitled, “Bill Wolfrum’s world of satire and commentary,” for gosh sakes.

Anyway, here’s Marty in his own words, from his blog, for whatever it’s worth:

So yes, to be clear, last week I was the one who leaked those things to a producer at Fox News who works with Cameron. Carl and his producers are good guys, and I don’t want them to have to worry about protecting their sources (and going through the wringer ala Judith Miller or Matt Cooper) on something like this.

As you know, I was one of the foreign policy advisers on the McCain campaign who worked with Randy Scheunemann to help prep Sarah on her debate with Joe Biden. Did we outright give her a geography quiz when we started the prep? No, of course not. But yes, in the context of the prep, it slowly became apparent that her grasp of basic geo-political knowledge had major gaps. Could she have passed a multiple choice test about South Africa or NAFTA. Probably. But it was clear that she simply didn’t have the ease of knowledge that we come to expect from a major party political candidate. Other slights came up, too: Not knowing the difference between Hezbollah and Hamas. Or the difference between the Shiites and Suni. Or when it came to international terrorist organizations, knowing that the IRA was in Northern Ireland, and ETA in Spain.

The real thing we had to constantly remind her was to never, ever compare herself in any way to Hillary Clinton, as she had at her announcement speech. We had it on good authority that Biden was prepping to unleash the inevitable line, “I know Hillary Clinton. Hillary Clinton is a friend of mine. And Sarah, you’re no Hillary Clinton.” Alas, Biden would have been right.

Hot Air, Zimbio, Celebgalz, and all manner of other websites have variations of the complicated story, but, to be perfectly honest, all these tangled webs make my head hurt.  As far as hoaxes go, I like Sammy Korir’s “Michelle Obama yelled at me” African Press International saga much better.  It’s a lot more fun, and much easier to follow, even though Sammy’s got a much smaller budget.