Bonner's Dishonest Tactics Date Back a Decade Plus

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The D.C. astroturf specialist Bonner & Associates has been feigning innocence that its employees were forging letters to Congress in an industry-funded attack on the Waxman-Markey climate change bill. But DeSmogBlog researcher Nathanael Baker has turned up a 12-year-old article that shows this kind of questionable public manipulation is old hat in the Bonnerย offices.

The Ken Silverstein article, from a 1997 edition of Mother Jones, shows that Bonner has been duping American politicians on behalf of everyone from stale cigarette smoke-and-mirrors gang at Philip Morris to the coal barons of the Western Fuelsย Association.

Silverstein identified two particular tactics: the โ€œvirtual petitionโ€ in which people are induced to sign a statement (with a release in fine print) only to have their signature scanned and inked onto a petition; and the recruiting of โ€œwhite hats,โ€ in which Bonner engages influential people lobby for their clients without ever identifying the funder – sometimes without being completely open about the nature of the issue on which they wereย lobbying.

Silversteinโ€™s article is well-documented and shows a pattern of deception that, judging from Bonnerโ€™s own website, seems to make the company proud. The Bonner promise is, essentially, to make politicians think that people care about anย issue.

In a way, they have a point: if people really knew what Bonner was up to – and who was paying the bill – theyโ€™d careย deeply.

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