Who Do You Think is Behind the Palin Smears?

Follow the disappearing YouTube account…

The blogosphere is doing the job the MSM thinks no one else can do.

A collaborative investigative effort by our friends at The Jawa Report to expose an apparently astroturfed, anti-Sarah Palin smear campaign seems to have caused late-night panic in Barack Obama-linked p.r. circles. The bloggers digging into the provenance of anti-Sarah Palin smears on the web got results last night/early this morning while most elite journalists were still in their pajamas sleeping.

First, read this. Read the whole thing. Rusty Shackleford — with help from Jane of Armies of Liberation, Stable Hand, the Jawa team, Dan Riehl, Ace of Spades, and Patterico – traced a Palin-bashing YouTube video to a Democrat public relations firm, Winner and Associates, and one of its employees, Ethan S. Winner. They believe the voiceover for the ad — which spreads the lie that Sarah Palin belonged to a fringe third party, the Alaska Independence Party — was done by a professional whose voice they believe was also featured in several Obama ads and other spots produced by Obama top strategist and astroturfer extraordinaire David Axelrod’s firm.

The Jawa Report’s bottom line:

While not conclusive, evidence suggests a link to the Barack Obama campaign. Namely:

* Evidence suggests that a YouTube video with false claims about Palin was uploaded and promoted by members of a professional PR firm.

* The family that runs the PR firm has extensive ties to the Democratic Party, the netroots, and are staunch Obama supporters.

* Evidence suggests that the firm engaged in a concerted effort to distribute the video in such a way that it would appear to have gone viral on its own. Yet this effort took place on company time.

* Evidence suggests that these distribution efforts included actions by at least one employee of the firm who is unconnected with the family running the company.

* The voice-over artist used in this supposedly amateur video is a professional.

* This same voice-over artist has worked extensively with David Axelrod’s firm, which has a history of engaging in phony grassroots efforts, otherwise known as “astroturfing.”

* David Axelrod is Barack Obama’s chief media strategist.

* The same voice-over artist has worked directly for the Barack Obama campaign.

This suggests that false rumors and outright lies about Sarah Palin and John McCain being spread on the internet are being orchestrated by political partisans and are not an organic grassroots phenomenon led by the left wing fringe.

Now, here’s the juicy part. Within an hour of publication of the Jawa Report’s investigation, “eswinner” deleted the smear video that he had uploaded several times on September 11. Here’s a screenshot of the cached copy:

Let me underline that: At some point between approx. 12 midnight – 2am Eastern, “eswinner” logged into his account and tried to erase all traces of the deceitful, Palin-bashing ad.

And at 4:26am Eastern, here’s the message that appeared when attempting to view “eswinner’s” previously accessible account:

That was fast.

“Eswinner” didn’t just delete the Palin/AIP smear ad and his entire account. A related YouTube account, “Gocamerica,” that was spreading the lie has now also tried covering its tracks and has been closed. Ace and Dan Riehl are tracking the cover-up.

http://michellemalkin.com/2008/09/22/bloggers-sniff-out-anti-palin-astroturf-campaign-and-the-cover-up-begins/