Harry Browne responds to Jacob Hornberger

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Original thread: Harry Browne, CNN

Can One Person Bring Down the LP and the Presidential Campaign?

I have avoided writing this letter for three years.

I would do almost anything to keep from causing dissension within the Libertarian Party. We should be fighting Democrats and Republicans, not each other. And so I have always kept quiet in the face of personal attacks against me. We are not like Republicans and Democrats; we treat words seriously, we don't bloody each other and then kiss and make up. So I didn't want to do anything that might encourage Libertarians to fight each other, and thereby divide a party that's already too small.

But one individual is trying desperately to bring down my campaign and even bring down the leadership of the Libertarian Party. His attacks are causing some supporters to have doubts about the campaign, and even to hold back some of the funds we could expect to receive from campaign donors.

And so I am reluctantly writing this letter to let you know the truth before the mud-slinging campaign goes any further.

I apologize for the length of this message, but it's necessary that I respond to a number of the allegations that have been made. And it's easier for a person to convince the world my sister is a prostitute than for me to prove I don't even have a sister.

In November 1996, at the conclusion of the presidential campaign, I received a letter from Jacob Hornberger praising me for running an outstanding campaign. He said, "You helped raise the positive image of the LP and helped bring it to the attention of thousands of new people."

However, in February 1997 I told him I was considering running for the LP presidential nomination again in 2000. Almost immediately, he began attacking me. He produced articles, letters to publications, and speeches in which he called my 1996 campaign an embarrassment, a campaign based on "compromise and concealment" and "a watered-down, pragmatic, compromised form of libertarianism."

He asserted that Social Security was my favorite government program, and that I loved taxes. He said, "Come clean, Harry: Are you willing to give up your favorite taxes if it means you never have to kill a Libertarian?"

These attacks didn't register very well with Libertarians, because most of them had heard my views on radio and television, read "Why Government Doesn't Work," and knew that I hadn't compromised anything.

However, parts of his attacks seemed to be absorbed unconsciously by many Libertarians. For example, many people have asked whether I intend once again to limit my campaign to radio shows from my home in Tennessee -- as I presumably did in 1996. Where would they get such an idea? Mr. Hornberger promoted that thought in his attacks.

Actually in the 1996 campaign I traveled to 37 states, gave speeches throughout the country, appeared in televised third-party debates, and was on the road almost continually during the final four months of the campaign. You can see the campaign schedule by going to the 1996 campaign website (http://www.lp.org/elections/p1996/hwp.html).

Eventually Mr. Hornberger changed his attacks to claim that I had won the 1996 nomination by bribing and corrupting members of the Libertarian National Committee (LNC) and employees at LP headquarters.

These accusations also failed to resonate with very many Libertarians. Most of them knew what Mr. Hornberger apparently didn't realize -- that the LP candidate is chosen by delegates at the national convention, and that neither the LNC nor the headquarters staff has any control over their selection. "Lining the pockets" of the LP leadership to win the nomination would have been a senseless waste of my time and of the funds I had worked hard to raise.

He also accused me of such things as conspiring with the LP leadership to keep him from publishing an article in LP News in 1998, keeping him from getting a new bylaw introduced at the 1998 convention, and preventing him from speaking at the 1999 California LP convention.

Of course, he has appeared in LP News frequently, spoken at numerous state conventions, and is free to introduce any bylaw he wants. Obviously, I have no power to prevent him from speaking or writing anywhere. If I had such power, I would be foolish to exercise it. And if I were so foolish, my foolishness would have shown up in other areas of my activities.

Despite his periodic outbursts, I have remained silent about his attacks for the past three years. Jacob Hornberger has done an excellent job of preaching to the choir, of inspiring Libertarians to press on for the cause we believe in. And he is an eloquent writer. In many ways, he has been an asset to the Libertarian Party. I admire much of what he has done. For a long time I also assumed he was my friend.

Unlike him, I have no desire to divide the party. I don't see how we can be a successful party if mud-slinging drives away half our members.

But now the attacks have begun again -- through the medium of a three-part e-mail article.

He is doing a great deal of damage. First, he is causing some people to distrust not just me, but some of the finest people in the Libertarian Party. His attacks are spreading outside the LP, and could easily discourage potential new members from joining the party. And the attacks can be used against us by other parties.

I have no way to read his mind and know why he has decided to cause dissension again at this critical time in the campaign. One strong possibility is that he wants to completely discredit me and the LP leadership in hope of becoming the dominant force in the party -- perhaps in preparation for a presidential run in 2004.

So, very reluctantly, I believe I must take time away from the presidential campaign to try and correct the harm Mr. Hornberger has done.

Conscious Deception

Mr. Hornberger knows the allegations he makes are false.

Because the LP leadership assumed Mr. Hornberger's earlier charges were a result of misinformation, National Chairman Steve Dasbach and National Director Perry Willis spent eight hours with him at LP headquarters in 1997 -- showing him documents and other evidence that refuted his charges. He ignored all that he saw and continued making exactly the same charges.

Because I respected Jacob Hornberger, and even believed he was a good friend, I thought he must have been misinformed about the way I campaigned in 1996. So I sent him extensive material from the 1996 campaign that demonstrated that his accusations were untrue. He never acknowledged any of it, never attempted to refute anything I said, and simply continued making the same allegations.

He has frequently been corrected by individuals who have pointed out mistakes in his statements. He has ignored all this evidence, and gone right on with his mud-slinging.

I can come to only one conclusion -- that he knows that virtually everything he says about me and the LP leadership is false.

Improper Relationship?

Mr. Hornberger claims I've been too close to the leaders of the Libertarian Party, and that this relationship is improper. But the truth is that, like you, I want to help the party.

For example, in the middle of my last campaign I worked with Perry Willis (then the National Director) to raise $100,000 for the Libertarian Party.

This money came from individuals I knew in the investment world. These people had never supported the LP before, and they probably wouldn't have done so without my participation or without the arguments Perry provided about the party's worthiness.

That money helped complete the 50-state ballot status for 1996, as well as furthering other important LP goals. None of the money went to my campaign, and all our actions were consistent with the LP policies of the time.

Our activities were, of course, known to the Libertarian National Committee (LNC) and are in the minutes of LNC meetings. If this fund-raising activity was wrong, someone could have asked that the funds be returned, but no one did.

The fund-raising project was a boon to the LP, but Mr. Hornberger has tried to make it seem sordid.

Project Archimedes -- Good or Bad?

Mr. Hornberger asserts that the LP's Project Archimedes (a membership recruitment project) was a scam. He says that it brought in only 10,000 new members, and that "an estimated $1,000,000 of donor money spent on the campaign has gone down the drain."

The truth is that Project Archimedes brought in 15,635 new members to our party. And the entire $1 million has come back in new dues and donations. So the net cost to the LP was zero. It was not a scam, nothing went down the drain, and we are much better for the project -- even if it didn't achieve everything we once hoped it would.

Project Archimedes has given us the best growth spurt in the history of the party -- putting us in the much stronger position we're in today. It is one of the most valuable long-term projects the LP has ever undertaken. The new members will provide additional millions of dollars and thousands of hours of volunteer labor far into the future -- unless Mr. Hornberger's allegations cause them to lose confidence in their new party and desert us.

Again, Mr. Hornberger has managed to make a valuable activity appear to be disreputable -- making the entire LP look bad.

But the attacks he has made against productive activities are not nearly as underhanded as the attacks he has made against decent individuals.

Money-Grubber or Hard-Working Libertarian?

Mr. Hornberger has scoured the FEC reports from the LP and the 1996 campaign, looking for ways to make various people appear disreputable. Two of his favorite tricks are to treat expense reimbursements as if they were salary, and to lump together multi-year payments in order to shock you with large numbers.

He has gone to great lengths to slander Perry Willis, former National Director of the LP and now my campaign manager. He paints Perry as a money-grubbing con artist. The truth is that Perry has always shown more devotion to the LP than to his own bank account.

He asserts that Perry earned more from the combination of doing consulting work for the LNC and working for my campaign than he had earned as National Director. The truth is just the opposite.

Today Perry is earning about half of what he made as LP National Director. He left a higher-paying, permanent position to take a lower-paying, temporary position. And, unfortunately, Perry has gone without pay many weeks so that my campaign can continue its activities without slowing down.

Mr. Hornberger alleges that Perry billed the LP through his company, Optopia Productions, in order to hide the fact that he was the one doing the work for the LP. If Perry were hiding anything, he wouldn't list his home as Optopia's address. And do I have to explain to Jacob Hornberger, a libertarian lawyer, the tax and liability benefits of working as an independent contractor, rather than as an employee?

Mr. Hornberger charges that Perry Willis had a conflict of interest working as a consultant both for the LNC on Project Archimedes and for my exploratory committee. But this kind of arrangement is quite common in any small organization with a limited talent pool. Such things have happened many times before, and undoubtedly will happen in the future.

The question is: Did Perry's work for my committee damage the LNC? Or did his work for the LNC help my campaign at the expense of other contenders for the nomination? Mr. Hornberger provides no evidence to demonstrate any conflict or favoritism. Not only was there no such conflict, it is hard to even imagine any way such dual activities could favor me at the expense of the LP.

The truth is that Perry spent most of his time working on Project Archimedes, to the slight detriment of his work for me. I was comfortable with this arrangement because I believed, and continue to believe, that membership growth is vital to the future success of the party. I am not alone in this belief. The LNC agrees, as do the thousands of contributors who have supported Project Archimedes with their hard-earned money.

Even this, however, is some kind of covert scam to Mr. Hornberger. He insinuates that Perry was working on Project Archimedes in order to meet some secret goal of mine. As though I'm the only one in the LP who wants a larger membership that will have the strength and resources to make the party more visible and more influential.

Project Archimedes would have continued even if I didn't exist. The only role I played in it was to raise money for the project's direct mail effort. In Mr. Hornberger's eyes, that's shameful.

Are other candidates for the LP presidential nomination suffering because Project Archimedes has brought in 10,000 new members? Are the state affiliates worse off? Or the local chapters? Mr. Hornberger wants you to assume that because Perry Willis and I were both involved, it must have been a shady deal that hurt the LP.

Archimedes was Perry's creation. He began work on it in November of 1996, while he was still National Director. After he left as National Director, the LP retained him to write and manage the direct mail program because he was more experienced, more knowledgeable, and more talented in this field than anyone else available.

If Perry had been removed from Project Archimedes at that point, it would have scuttled the entire program. That might have delighted Mr. Hornberger, but I doubt that you'd be pleased if our membership were still where it was three years ago.

Project Archimedes began to show diminishing returns in late 1998. At that point, Perry donated all his recruitment material to the LP, removed himself from the project, and waived $5,000 in billings. He did this to save the party money. These are hardly the actions of a money-grubbing con artist.

Perry Willis is enormously talented. But he has devoted almost his entire adult life to the LP, deferring the opportunity to profit from his talents. One reward for his dedication to the LP is to be slandered by Jacob Hornberger.

No Good Deed Goes Unpunished

Mr. Hornberger also has used cheap tactics against Sharon Ayres, who was my campaign manager in 1995 and 1996. He mentioned her 16 times in his latest attack, and over and over (six times in fact) he states that she "received more than $100,000 from Harry Browne."

Obviously, the $100,000 figure is meant to shock you. But the truth is that Sharon's salary was half that, and she actually went without pay for months at a time. She paid many bills with her credit cards, and was then reimbursed by the campaign. All this was duly reported in our FEC (Federal Election Commission) filings -- where Mr. Hornberger discovered that she "received more than $100,000 from Harry Browne."

Is Mr. Hornberger's mistake an honest one? Unfortunately, no. The circumstances have been explained to him numerous times, but he has continued to spread false information.

It should also be noted that Sharon left her home in California and lived in Washington, D.C. for the final six months of the campaign -- away from her husband and her personal life. In addition, she took a 20% pay cut to make more money available for outreach in the final months of the 1996 campaign.

Sharon Ayres worked long hours under difficult circumstances. I will be indebted to her for the rest of my life. She has also been a heavy contributor to the LP for more than two decades. She is one of the party's most important benefactors.

Her reward for all that is to be slandered by Jacob Hornberger.

Front Organizations?

Mr. Hornberger has also attributed something sordid to the LP's use of my book "Why Government Doesn't Work" and David Bergland's book "Libertarianism in One Lesson" as premiums for new members.

He claims that Mr. Bergland's publishing company, Orpheus Publications, and the publisher of my books, LiamWorks, are front organizations through which the LP can funnel money to Mr. Bergland and to me without our names appearing on the FEC reports.

The truth is that I haven't netted a penny from the books the LP uses as premiums. I sign and send them to new members and donors to the LP, and the LP pays the publisher a nominal amount. I am glad to help the LP's membership recruitment efforts.

The LP has used Mr. Bergland's book as a premium for more than 15 years. Its small size and low cost make it an ideal premium. Should the party stop using this excellent tool just because Mr. Bergland is now the LNC chair?

These relationships are entirely above board and beneficial to the party, but Mr. Hornberger tries to make them appear dirty.

David Bergland was the LP's vice-presidential candidate in 1976. In 1984 he stepped in to save a fractured party by agreeing to be its presidential nominee, a job he knew would be thankless -- because the party didn't have nearly the resources to run the successful campaign it had waged in 1980. Since then he has served on numerous LP committees. He has performed dozens and dozens of services to the party -- spending untold amounts of money from his own pocket, in addition to donating considerable sums outright.

But now thousands of people are being told that David Bergland is a shady, corrupt character -- thanks to Mr. Hornberger's slander.

Who Else Can We Defame?

To correct all the slanders in Mr. Hornberger's diatribe would take far more words than you'd want to wade through. But I believe you can see that his accusations are misleading and mean-spirited. And he knows that. This isn't an honest misunderstanding. It is deliberate slander.

And the slanders have been directed against several more people.

In his tirade, he also defamed Steve Dasbach, Bill Winter, Jack Dean, James Lark, and an attorney named Douglas C. Herbert, whom I've never even met -- implying that all these people are somehow in on the conspiracy or corruption.

And by further implication, he indicts everyone on the Libertarian National Committee -- all of whom supposedly know about the conspiracy but have failed to speak out against the LP leadership and me.

Mr. Hornberger accuses all these people of being party to a racket that is raking in hundreds of thousands of dollars. Yet every one of them is deliberately giving to the LP far more than he could possibly get back. Unlike Mr. Hornberger, they don't get paid for their activities.

Their reward for their personal sacrifices is to be slandered by Jacob Hornberger.

Improper Use of my Ideas?

Mr. Hornberger has been unable to show any way in which I could profit from helping the LP leadership. The party leaders don't select the presidential candidate, and there's nothing meaningful they can do to influence the nominating process.

So he has implied that I and others must be getting rich. However, that won't wash either, since everyone associated with me seems to get poorer and poorer.

He has implied that the party launched Project Archimedes to satisfy me, which is an absurdity and he knows it.

So what have I gained from all my indecent activities?

According to Mr. Hornberger, some of the Archimedes letters "promoted Browne's plan to save payments for Social Security recipients (a position different from that in the Libertarian Party platform) and Browne's Republicanesque plan to gradually downsize government." Of course, my name wasn't mentioned as the author of the Social Security plan, and as far as I know nothing else unique to my proposals was ever mentioned. But this subtle brainwashing apparently was intended to plant a trigger in every LP member's mind whereby he or she would robotically vote for me at the 2000 convention.

How valuable was this ploy?

According to Mr. Hornberger: "Thus, by having his exploratory-committee coordinator and the writer of his fundraising letters also crafting the LP's Project Archimedes prospecting letters that were promoting Browne and his political positions, Harry Browne was able to receive an indirect subsidy to his presidential exploratory committee equivalent to possibly more than $1 million in funds that were spent on Project Archimedes."

Did you get that? Subtly planting my Social Security proposal in an Archimedes recruiting letter was the equivalent of a $1 million subsidy. You might want to read that paragraph a second time.

Of course, there was nothing secret about the use of my Social Security proposal. Mr. Hornberger even confirms that in his tirade: "In fact, two months before he resigned, Willis openly admitted in an LP News article entitled, ‘LP Membership Drive to Reach Millions,' ‘We use Harry Browne's basic presidential campaign platform to illustrate the kinds of things a Libertarian would talk about.'"

So what was secret?

Mr. Hornberger ignores another aspect of this. The LP's bylaws require the party's presidential nominee to submit a campaign platform to the delegates at the nominating convention. This document then becomes the party's official presidential platform for the next four years, until a new nominee is chosen. Thus, the use of my presidential platform by the LP was perfectly natural.

I apologize if the truth isn't as exciting as the slander.

Secrets?

These examples are typical of Mr. Hornberger's method of attacking. He takes positive contributions by good Libertarians and uses sly insinuations to make them look disreputable. He also has used this technique to make our proposed challenge of the campaign finance laws appear shady.

As I wrote in my email to you regarding the FEC challenge, our lawyers have advised us that filing now with the FEC might weaken the basis for our case. That's why we've delayed our FEC filings at least until we decide whether we'll proceed with the challenge. In my letter I pointed out we would almost certainly incur small fines. Beyond accepting those fines for late filing, we have made no further decisions about how far we will go to challenge the law. The first step is to do thorough research regarding the possibilities -- not accepting what other people have read about previous cases. I was very clear about this in my email letter.

So why does Mr. Hornberger insinuate otherwise -- implying that we are putting the LP and you at risk?

And why has he written to the FEC to call attention to the fact that we haven't filed reports yet and that we are in violation of the law (his letter to the FEC is at http://www.JacobGHornberger.com/fec.asp)?

All along, we have collected the information required to file FEC reports, we have refunded all over-limit contributions, and all our fundraising materials (including the one concerning the FEC challenge) contain the disclaimers the FEC requires. And we will continue to do all that, no matter what. We are prepared to comply completely with the law if it becomes clear that disobeying it would provide no positive benefit. We are proceeding in a prudent, cautious manner.

All this was very clear in the email letter. And most people who read the message had no trouble understanding these points.

The LP platform calls for the abolition of the FEC and I am proposing a specific, although personally risky, step to make that happen. If we go forward and fail, Perry Willis and I will be the first people to be in trouble. In other words, we're putting our personal freedom where our mouths are.

Mr. Hornberger has held himself up as a man of uncompromising purity, and he misses no opportunity to attack me as a man of "compromise and concealment" (to use his own words). And yet he wants you to believe that what we're doing is shameful -- that we are actually putting ourselves at risk in order to hide what we've done with the money you've contributed.

Does that seem likely to you? Or is it more likely that we believe in what we're doing?

We've intended all along to post on the campaign website a rundown of how we spend your money. We will do so in the coming weeks. This was our intention even before the FEC suit became a possibility -- and long before Mr. Hornberger's latest attack.

In my email letter I pointed out my reasons for attacking the FEC reporting requirements. Surprising for a libertarian, Mr. Hornberger attempts to add my defense of privacy to his list of my crimes. But what is wrong with any organization keeping its finances private?

Does Mr. Hornberger publish the names of all the donors to his Future of Freedom Foundation? Does he tell you how he spends his donors' money? Does he publish the amount of money he makes speaking at LP events? Of course not.

And why should he? You aren't interested in how he spends the money he receives or how much money he personally makes. You're interested in results. If you like what he's doing, you can contribute to his organization. If you don't like what he achieves, you won't contribute -- no matter how much you might admire his fiscal rectitude.

So why is he so concerned with our finances?

If you needed a reason to understand why we think it's wrong to give the FEC so much information, look at what Mr. Hornberger has done with the FEC reports from the LP and my 1996 campaign. Anyone can take that raw data and put any spin he wants on it -- slandering innocent people in the process.

We don't think that's right. And neither does Investors' Business Daily -- which published an editorial on March 20 that praised our campaign for considering a challenge to the law.

The Consequences of Slander

As a result of our email letter on the FEC, we received a number of contributions, although not enough to completely fund the research. In addition, many people expressed interest in violating the contribution limits if the risks do not appear too great.

There were very few negative comments -- far fewer, in fact, than we had expected.

But now all that has changed.

Mr. Hornberger's reckless allegations have put the entire campaign organization in a bad light. Our public reputation has been damaged, contributions are drying up, and even some long-time supporters have become critical.

We have nearly 50,000 fund-raising letters about our FEC proposal printed and ready to mail, but Mr. Hornberger has so muddied the waters that this mailing could be a complete waste. His slanders may force us to bow to the will of the FEC without even being able to complete our research.

And not only is the FEC challenge in danger, so is the progress of the entire campaign. We cannot afford to have a single failed fund-raising appeal. Like most campaigns we operate month to month. One significant disruption in the flow of funds and all our projects might have to be cut back.

That means:

* The money you've contributed to produce our 30-minute TV show could be for naught, because we might not have the resources to broadcast it.

* We might not have the resources to provide more videocassettes of the show, turning the current copies into limited edition collectibles instead of campaign tools.

* We might have to fire our public relations firm. Newman Communications helped generate 32 interviews in the first four days of my campaign. This included three national television shows and an extensive AP article (something we've never had before), published in more than 80 daily newspapers.

* The campaign might not be able to afford to send me to your state.

* Four adults and three children have moved to the D.C. area to work on this campaign -- all of whom might have to be laid off, without severance, without insurance, and without any immediate prospects for future income.

* The jobs of the rest of the staff could be in jeopardy.

* The campaign might continue, but a lot of what we've prepared for and planned on could be unavailable to us. The result will be a campaign more like what the fledgling LP had to run in 1972, rather than the plans we had for 2000.

And all because of the over-active ambition of one reckless person.

What Are We Going to Do?

After many years of hard work, it is disheartening to see so much damage done by one man with a careless mouth and a disregard for anyone else's life and reputation.

However, I didn't give up my career in the financial world and embark on this journey -- just to have it derailed by one irresponsible person.

One way or another, the campaign will continue. One way or another, the LP will survive and grow stronger -- in spite of malicious attacks.

It is obvious that what I've said here won't stop Jacob Hornberger from repeating his charges or inventing new ones. Nothing before has -- not knowledge of the truth and not the steady loss of support he once had. No matter what I do or say, he probably will continue his campaign of vituperation.

Knowing this, I am not going to let myself be drawn into spending the rest of this year in a food fight, as though this were a game or a high school debate. I have said my piece here, and I am returning to the campaign.

If we drop what we're doing everytime he (or anyone else) chooses to make accusations, we will be at the mercy of anyone who wants to prevent us from running a successful campaign.

Each time someone got it into his head to attack me, I would have to stop doing interviews, stop traveling, stop writing material for the website, stop raising money. The surest way for our campaign to fail would be to halt everything everytime someone who doesn't like me decides to make up new charges.

I have work to do. And I am not going to let Jacob Hornberger or anyone else interfere with that work. When the next slanders come, I trust you'll remember what you've read here because I've said all I'm going to.

We are in the best period in the Libertarian Party's history. The party is bigger, stronger, more influential, better financed than ever. And our presidential campaign has already achieved many things we weren't able to accomplish in the entire 1996 campaign. I hope you are excited by this.

If you're not, if you don't think I should be the nominee, support one of my competitors. Don Gorman, Barry Hess, and David Hollist are running clean, constructive, positive campaigns, and I respect them for it. They know how to compete without throwing mud.

But if I have been running the kind of campaign you want, if you _are_ excited about what we're doing, please help me now. Make sure that those who heard the slanders also hear the truth. And because donations to the campaign have declined sharply since the attacks, I especially need your financial help right now.

If we have to scale back the campaign, it means that Jacob Hornberger has won. It means that one irresponsible person can undo what so many others have worked to achieve. I'm determined that this won't happen.

But above all, understand that this campaign is not a game for me. I am in it because I believe we have a chance to reverse a century of political damage before the end of this decade. I am deadly serious about what I'm doing, I am dedicated to this job, and no one is going to divert me from it.

I am not going to neglect the most important task of my life in order to get down in the mud with anyone.

Thank you for reading this.

With best wishes,

Harry Browne

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Answers

First of all, I do not think Browne effectively refutes all of the attacks. The LP leadership seems rather incestuous. Second, the LP party has no chance of even influencing the presidential debate. The only way the LP party will ever gain influence is through state and local candidates. Harry Browne is a relatively smart fellow (who happened to call Y2K correctly). The presidential bid is more an ego trip than anything else.

-- Ken Decker (kcdecker@worldnet.att.net), March 23, 2000.

Whew, that was a long scroll.

-- (nemesis@awol.com), March 23, 2000.

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