Misleading e-mails target candidates

Some e-mails were unsigned and impossible to trace.

WASHINGTON POST

WASHINGTON — Campaign dirty tricks found a new outlet on primary day, as several misleading attacks on presidential candidates were spread via cautionary, last minute e-mails in mass mailings among friends.

Some of the electronic messages that flashed onto computer screens Tuesday were in circulation for weeks — including one that suggested, falsely, that Sen. Barack Obama had not affirmed Israel’s right to exist. But Monday night, those messages started arriving in many e-mail inboxes with subject lines such as “FW: Something to consider before voting tomorrow.”

A number of candidates were targeted in e-mails forwarded to The Washington Post. One e-mail attacked Republican Mitt Romney’s Mormon faith. Another described Sen. John McCain as a “Manchurian candidate.” An e-mail with the subject line “The truth about Hillary Clinton” said Clinton opposed the Civil Rights Act as a teenager — she didn’t.

Some were unsigned and impossible to trace. “Clearly, the speed of delivery has enabled these last minute attacks to become much more potent,” said Peter Pasi, executive vice president of Emotive LLC, a firm that specializes in online communication strategies.

Zephyr Teachout, who served as director of Internet organizing for Howard Dean’s 2004 presidential campaign and now teaches law at Duke University, said “what’s different, even from four years ago, is that across the board people are using e-mail to talk about the election. ... Because you’re getting them from friends, they take on an air of authenticity.”

Sherry Saffer, a Los Angeles attorney, said in an interview that she sent a group of Jewish friends an e-mail about Obama that she received from her aunt in New York. The message, from the Republican Jewish Coalition, criticized an interview Obama gave in the French publication Paris Match in which he proposes organizing a summit of heads of state in the Muslim world.

The coalition’s executive director then notes that, “Nowhere in the Paris Match article does Senator Obama affirm Israel’s right to exist. Nor does he condemn the repeated terrorist strikes against Israel — the only stable democracy in the region.”

A top foreign policy adviser to Obama, Denis McDonough, said Tuesday the suggestion that Obama does not support Israel is “baseless, groundless and without merit.”

“Barack has strongly condemned terrorist attacks against Israel, has strongly affirmed Israel’s right to exist as a Jewish state, and just last week was firmly on the record urging our U.N. ambassador to veto any resolution out of the Security Council that did not condemn missile attacks on Israel from Gaza,” McDonough said.

Saffer, who is not affiliated with any campaign and said she was already leaning toward supporting Clinton, explained that she “assumed anyone who gets an e-mail would make their own independent investigation into the accuracy or inaccuracy of it.”

As recently as two weeks ago, Obama was also the target of a widely distributed, unsigned and false e-mail message about his religion: “Obama takes great care to conceal the fact that he is a Muslim.” He is, in fact, a Christian. But the message circulated with advice that it was “something that should be considered in your choice.”

Teachout, who is an Obama supporter, said the e-mail presented the Illinois senator with the difficult task of trying to “battle a ghost.” “They’re very difficult to respond to, because you don’t want to engage the idea,” she said.

Teachout said such transactions are vexing to campaigns because they cannot track or combat a misleading message as it jumps around the country. “If you see a falsehood on television, at least you can go back to that same channel and try and correct it,” Teachout said. “Here the channel disappears. The waves wash up the minute the ideas have been written in the sand.”

An e-mail from Rosemary Dempsey, president of the Connecticut National Organization for Women, told members that Obama’s record during his time in the Illinois Senate included several instances in which he voted “present” instead of yes or no on abortion-related legislation — contrary to the group’s preference.