(BREITBART) When I lived in South Africa, I was accused by a senior government official of being a spy for Israel’s Mossad agency, simply because I publicly criticized that government’s policy towards the Jewish State. The office suite where I worked was bugged, and I suspected that my home telephone had been tapped.
That was the price of being an opposing voice–even in a new democracy with the world’s most “liberal” constitution.
So it is with some dismay that I note recent reports that the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) is collaborating with the George Soros-funded left-wing organization, Media Matters for America, to target critics of the Obama administration.
On pages 45-49 of documents obtained by the Daily Caller through a Freedom of Information Act request, Matt Gertz of the DOJ reports to his “handlers” that he has attacked one of my articles.
The article in question concerned a 1995 video that Breitbart News had unearthed in which Attorney General Eric Holder, then U.S. Attorney for Washington, D.C., unveiled a public campaign to “really brainwash people into thinking about guns in a vastly different way.”
The video was particularly relevant in light of the Fast & Furious scandal, in which the DOJ may have “smuggled” guns to Mexico to give impetus to gun control efforts. The price of that misguided operation–whatever its ultimate intent–was the death of U.S. Border Patrol agent Brian Terry, as well as hundreds of Mexicans who were killed by the weapons that the DOJ walked across the border without the knowledge of the Mexican government. Recent reports suggest that those weapons traveled as far away asColumbia. And the cover-up at DOJ has led to contempt charges against Holder.
Gertz’s attack on my article was rather feeble, suggesting that Holder was merely doing his duty in enforcing the law against handgun ownership in the nation’s capital at that time.
Clearly, that is not all Holder was doing. He was trying to change the way people–even children–think about gun ownership, which is a constitutional right. That goes far beyond the boundaries of government power. It is excessive, extreme, and indefensible.
Nevertheless, Geertz dutifully reported to DOJ Office of Public Affairs Director Tracy Schmaler that he had countered my article. In a follow-up email, he noted that the Fox Nation website had promoted my article. And I was only one of many writers on whom Media Matters and the DOJ were keeping tabs.
As the Daily Caller’s Matt Boyle notes:
Among others, Gertz sent Schmaler attack pieces he wrote about Townhall Magazine’s Katie Pavlich, who also authored a book on Operation Fast and Furious; Breitbart.com writers Joel Pollak and Ken Klukowski; Fox News Channel’s William LaJeunesse, Judge Andrew Napolitano, Megyn Kelly, Martha MacCallum, Bill Hemmer, Bill O’Reilly and Sean Hannity; Sipsey Street Irregulars blogger Mike Vanderboegh; DirectorBlue blogger Doug Ross; National Review’s Andrew C. McCarthy; and this reporter [among others].
It is perfectly legitimate for a government agency to note what opposition voices are saying. It is completely illegitimate for it to operate a surveillance operation using an ideologically-oriented third party organization that takes money from the government’s key political allies.
One of those allies is Soros, founder of the Open Society Institute. What Media Matters is doing with the DOJ today is poison to the open society ideal.
This is a copy of the article provided by the conservatives at Breitbart
