I Led 3 Lives

In the early 1950's, Richard Carlson starred as Herbert A. Philbrick in a television series called "I Led 3 Lives: Citizen, Communist, Counterspy".

This week, the Mother Jones [MOJO] online magazine published a similar drama in an article titled: There's Something About Mary: Unmasking a Gun Lobby Mole.

Unlike the adventures of Herbert A. Philbrick, however, this story is presented as a dark invective against the National Rifle Association [NRA], which private organization purportedly paid one "Mary McFate" upwards of $80,000 to spy upon "Gun Control Organizations".

According to MoJo, "Mary McFate" is one and the same as "Mary Lou Sapone", who worked as an employee of one or more private security firms.

As introduced in the MoJo article:

This is the story of two Marys. Both are in their early 60s, heavyset, with curly reddish hair. But for years they have worked on opposite ends of the same issues. Mary McFate is an advocate of environmental causes and a prominent activist within the gun control movement. For more than a decade, she volunteered for various gun violence prevention organizations, serving on the boards of anti-gun outfits, helping state groups coordinate their activities, lobbying in Washington for gun control legislation, and regularly attending strategy and organizing meetings.

Mary Lou Sapone, by contrast, is a self-described "research consultant," who for decades has covertly infiltrated citizens groups for private security firms hired by corporations that are targeted by activist campaigns. For some time, Sapone also worked for the National Rifle Association.

But these two Marys share a lot in common—a Mother Jones investigation has found that McFate and Sapone are, in fact, the same person. And this discovery has caused the leaders of gun violence prevention organizations to conclude that for years they have been penetrated—at the highest levels—by the NRA or other pro-gun parties. "It raises the question," says Paul Helmke, the president of the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence, "of what did she find out and what did they want her to find out."

Actually, it raises the question of what did she find out that the 'gun control movement' would have rather never be known by the public?

And the question that the MoJo folks would have you focus on is whether the NRA (and by direct quote " the gun lobby" which includes "The firearms manufacturing industry") acted illegally, or at least unethically, by slipping this hen into the fox-house.

Well, maybe so. One would be justified in considering this to be "Industrial Espionage". Both the "Gun Lobby" and the "Gun Control Lobby" have their espoused philosophical priorities, but both are firmly grounded in the profit motive. (Both groups will protest that last statement, and both will thereby reveal their basic hypocracy.)

But is the "Gun Lobby" any different from the"Gun Control Lobby"?

I don't think so.

One of the groups supposedly infiltrated by "Mary McFate" is the Violence Policy Center [VPC].

In 1999, VPC published an article ("Gold Medal Gunslingers") on their website which cited many 'insider' sources including the International Practical Shooting Confederation [IPSC], the United States Practical Shooting Association [USPSA] and an informal mail-list called "The Unofficial IPSC Mailing List".

In order to access these resources, it was necessary for VPC to 'join', or subscribe to, the various organizations or services.

Due to the subscription requirements, these resources might reasonably be considered 'private communications'. However, without either announcing their intentions or requesting permission to publish quotes, VPC quoted correspondents out of context and included comments designed to present these quotes in the most damning manner ... in the eyes of VPC adherents. Worse, the article included an index which identified the private participants by name. This served no journalistic purpose, but it did identify correspondents in a manner which left them vulnerable to condemnation for anyone who considered Gun Control to be a sacred obligation, and who might feel obliged to retaliate against these private individuals.

Which is worst? An Industrial Spy, or the intrusion on private correspondence?

MoJo will never address this question. They don't care. They did a good job of researching their article, even though they only presented one side of the issue, and they got the article published. And, they have received a lot of publicity in the past few days. See MarketWatch, and Philly.com (with an interesting poll here), and (this played BIG in Philadelphia!) at OutsideIn/Philly.

Mojo has never been shy about their support of Gun Control. Just witness their version of yellow-journalism in a previous article, "Semiautomatic for the People".

You will note that the actual link url is:
http://www.motherjones.com/news/outfront/
2008/07/outfront-bush-to-cops-drop-dead.html

Nothing biased about that reporting, eh?

I think I'll fisk this in the next article.