PalmBeach Post: US Elections - the dubious role of the Clarion Fund - The secret cell helping McCain - by Randy Schultz

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US Elections - the dubious role of the Clarion Fund - The secret cell helping McCain - by Randy Schultz

Last week, an ad for John McCain came with The Post. But it wasn't labeled as an ad for John McCain. The stealth ad is a DVD titled Obsession: Radical Islam's War Against the West. The film's premise - and this will shock you - is that groups such as Al-Qaeda and Hezbollah and their copycats are worth worrying about. Why, though, is this an ad for John McCain? To sound like one of the speakers in the film, it's a matter of connecting the dots.Distribution of the DVD, whose producers say it will "change the way you look at the world," was timed with the post-Labor Day start of presidential election season. About 95 percent of the papers that contained the DVD are in Florida, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan, Wisconsin, Iowa, Colorado, New Mexico, Nevada and New Hampshire. Notice a pattern? Right, those are the swing states that most analysts believe will determine the election. The issue on which polls consistently show John McCain ahead of Barack Obama is national security. One way to make voters worry less about the economy and more about national security would be to send out a DVD that opens with clips of 9/11 and includes scenes of Muslims chanting "Death to America!" Oh, and there's that lie recirculating on the Internet that Barack Obama is a Muslim. So, for good measure, the DVD went in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal and a suburban paper north of New York. All have many Jewish readers. The DVD went in the World Jewish Digest. The clear intent is to plant the idea that electing Barack Obama would be like putting Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in the Oval Office.The sponsoring group for Obsession is The Clarion Fund, based in New York. I left two messages for the media contact. Neither was returned. I e-mailed a request for an interview to a related Web site, radicalislam.org. I got no response.

The Clarion Fund was organized in 2006 as a 501(c)3, which grants it tax-exempt status as an educational nonprofit. But The Clarion Fund is not listed with Charity Navigator, which rates nonprofits based on efficient use of donors' money. You can find Planned Parenthood of South Florida and the Treasure Coast and United Way of Palm Beach County with the maximum four stars.

I called NSA Media in suburban Chicago. NSA placed the DVD with The Post, which - like the other publications - approved it after the usual review by the Advertising Department. NSA Media referred specific questions to The Clarion Fund. "It's all on their Web site." In fact, the Web site contains little information about The Clarion Fund. No names of directors. No sources of money. Just the mission statement, which includes this line: "Clarion Fund is helping Americans understand that the mainstream media is not adequately conveying the reality of radical Islam."