A letter to the editor in the Albany Times-Union makes an astute observation widely applicable to coverage of the Bruno-inspired drama in Albany:

Most of the New York media has been self-indulgent and lazy, choosing to focus obsessively on the childish feud between Gov. Eliot Spitzer and Senate Majority Leader Joseph Bruno.

Indeed. The laziness extends to media coverage of Emailgate, in which New York Progressive blogs conclusively proved that the so-called grassroots campaign of NYFacts.net and SpitzerFile.com is an astroturf operation launched and maintained by Joe Bruno's consultant Roger Stone. The evidence is startlingly clear, so let's take another look at it.

(X-Posted @ TAP)

First of all, we know that Roger Stone is sharing email addresses with the various offshoots of his campaign. That email list, incidentally, most likely didn't originate with republican address marketers, but with an open email blast by Ben Smith on January 23d, on which both Roger Stone, Phillip Anderson and myself were included, along with many of the top bloggers and journalists in this state. That alone should speak volumes, and the precise configuration of the recipient list, who's on it and how, makes clear that this is highly likely to have been exactly what happened.

All of the web sites in question were registered in exactly the same way, via GoDaddy.com and using a private registration service, Domains By Proxy. This is true of NYFacts.net, Spitzerfiles.com and GOP-Club.com.

Just a brief note about Domains by Proxy; their legal agreement stipulates that

Prohibitions: Domains By Proxy® will not do business with you, nor protect your identity, if you [...] Violate the law or infringe a third party’s trademark or copyright;

Shouldn't that include sending out copyrighted articles? It should, and maybe some enterprising reporter should follow up on it.

Now, take a look at some of the Internet headers of these messages. Long story short, they all originate with the same email service.

Return-Path: (update@nyfacts.net)
Received: from linkedcampaign.com (linkedcampaign.com [24.199.182.6])

Return-Path: (Stone@StoneZONE.com)
Received: from linkedcampaign.com (linkedcampaign.com [24.199.182.6])

Return-Path: (info@SpitzerFile.com)
Received: from linkedcampaign.com (linkedcampaign.com [24.199.182.6])

Return-Path: (WJMAHONEY@GOP-CLUB.COM)
Received: from linkedcampaign.com (linkedcampaign.com [24.199.182.6])

Linked Campaign is an email marketing service provided by a company called Vertical Response Self Service Direct Marketing in San Francisco, with servers in North Carolina.

Linkedcampaign.com appears to be a shell company, also registered via Domains by Proxy. The URL hosts a ripped copy of the web site of a legitimate email marketing company, Vertical Response. They adamantly and credibly deny any involvement whatsoever with Linkedcampaign.com.

What's happening here is very simple, and anyone who has ever run email campaigns knows it: all of these emails probably originate with one single account, using different reply-to addresses.

The hypothetical basic modus operandi seems to be this: Roger Stone sets up a web site, anonymously. Emails start going out, and people start asking questions; people being the Progressive blogs, because the mainstream media sure as hell doesn't understand what's going on. Then, some frontman is called in - Michael Caputo for NYFacts.net, one Sergio Rodriquez for the W.J. Mahoney GOP Club. Because of the various shielding mechanisms built into the design of the campaign, such as the private domain registration, Stone remains untraceable.

Well, except when he does stupid things like sending out emails to people that sign up for only one of his sites, because he's getting them confused.

And that's Emailgate for you right there, on a silver platter. I'll bet dollars to donuts that this is Roger Stone, consultant to Joe Bruno, single-handedly creating a faux grassroots movement, or more colloquially, astroturf.

That's all. Write your stories, guys.

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