Note: The following article is being web-published by The Media Awareness Project of DrugSense as an exception to policy and by request.  Headline by MAP.  See also the High Times interview with Dan Forbes at: http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v00.n1655.a05.html

Referenced: The Salon special report ( in two parts ): http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v00/n043/a09.html http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v00.n046.a04.html

Fighting 'Cheech & Chong' Medicine: http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v00/n1059/a03.html

Bookmarks: MAP's links to articles by:

Daniel Forbes: http://www.mapinc.org/forbes.htm

Barry McCaffrey: http://www.mapinc.org/mccaffrey.htm

And to ONDCP Media Campaign items: http://www.mapinc.org/campaign.htm

DAN FORBES DETAILS THE BREAKING OF THE ONDCP INCENTIVES STORY

Given the personal nature of White House attacks on my work, some colleagues advised against any interview with High Times.  But, as this essay explains, when the government dangles a muzzle, call its bluff and talk to all and sundry -- especially the likes of High Times. 

This past January, I was lucky enough to detail in Salon how the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy ( ONDCP ) provided hundreds of thousands of dollars of financial incentives per TV episode to the networks, the incentives rewarding government-vetted and, even in some cases, government-dictated anti-drug scripts.  I quoted consultants on the ONDCP payroll who promulgated specific changes in specific shows at the government's behest.  Then this March, I revealed that the same financial-credit-for-content paradigm was in place at some of the nation's most prominent nonfiction magazines as well. 

Requesting an interview with ONDCP on the magazines story tipped my hand, and though the agency refused to speak, it did blunder into action just before publication, essentially seeking to persuade Salon's editors that alleged bias on my part, whatever it might be, should prevent me from writing ever again on drug policy -- or certainly not without a White House caution flag attached. 

I describe my physical encounter with ONDCP assistant director, Robert Housman in the High Times interview ( or rather, his with me ).  In his letter to Salon just prior to the magazines story appearing, he informed my editors that "...your outlet has an affirmative obligation to your readers to ensure that [my] biases are disclosed so that your readers can weigh them in making their own decisions....  However, your publication has yet to require him to make the appropriate disclosures of bias and interest.  I raise the bias issue in particular at this time as I understand that Mr.  Forbes may now be in the process of preparing another missive [sic] about the [Media] Campaign for Salon.  I would consider it the bare minimum of fairness and objectivity for Salon to make a full review and accounting to your readers of the concerns I have laid out here before proceeding with any further reports on the subject."

And ONDCP's evidence? My work had been linked to by a drug policy site, the Media Awareness Project ( www.mapinc.org ).  But MAP had, by then, some 35,000 articles in its database, pretty much everything written on drug policy published in English around the world.  If mere inclusion on MAP is the standard, then ONDCP director Barry McCaffrey himself is rampantly biased, with more than two-dozen articles credited to him therein. 

Mr.  Housman also cited my Senate testimony critiquing some of the more authoritarian TV shows credited by ONDCP, including the one that required a patient to submit to a drug test before receiving potentially life-saving surgery from the best doctor available. 

Salon took this tripe, including the attempt at guilt by association in regard to MAP, for what it was worth and published the story on the magazines' involvement. 

Furious at this White House attempt at censorship, my livelihood under attack for having my work appear on a web site where many? most? of the articles actually endorse administration drug policy, I consciously agreed to the interview with High Times.  Contrary to some colleagues' warnings -- thumb my nose at 'em by going to the mother lode.  And since their reporter, Ken Krayeske, researched the heck out of the topic beforehand, it was a pleasure to talk to him. 

In fact, though I'd remained tight-lipped with several reporters previously, Mr.  Krayeseke adroitly got me to spill the beans that might otherwise have remained bottled up on why, entirely at my own initiative, I withdrew the story from Mediaweek where I had initially brought it.  As I told Mr.  Krayeske, Mediaweek told me, "We want to run this story, but we don't want to be critical of the government and we don't want to be critical of the networks...."

Well sure, but given the seriousness of the disclosures I had -- as reflected by next-day front pages coast-to-coast, ONDCP's immediate though slight change in policy, a recent award from the Northern California chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists, a nomination from the Online News Association/Columbia University ( the award pending ) and invitations from House and Senate subcommittees to testify -- ain't that kind of like having a beauty contest where looks don't count?

This was shortly after Twentieth Century Fox withdrew thousands of dollars in advertising from Mediaweek's sister publication, The Hollywood Reporter, after the editor expressed her personal distaste -- in an opinion column -- for the violence in the Fox film, "The Fight Club." Sources confirm the advertising loss, which Fox flatly denies. 

Mediaweek's strictures were expressed on a Friday.  After stewing over it all weekend, I withdrew it Monday morning.  I approached Rolling Stone, and in a series of phone calls ( guarded on their end, though the freelancer has to show his cards ) learned they were working on the very same story.  So the race was on. 

The New Yorker expressed real interest when I contacted them right before Christmas, but with the holidays and all, could not publish for several weeks at least.  With my call obviously having alerted Rolling Stone, how to preserve my scoop, one I'd been pursuing on spec for the better part of a year? Voila: the Internet, and why not start at the top, with Salon. 

And the bigger picture? As I was lucky enough to reveal this past summer, the whole ONDCP Media Campaign sprang from the basest of motives: an attempt to influence the American electorate in an entirely partisan way.  Detailed in "Fighting 'Cheech & Chong' Medicine" ( Gen.  McCaffrey's phrase by the way ) in Salon this July, the whole magilla arose to large degree as a response to the passage of medical marijuana initiatives in California and Arizona in 1996.  The campaign was to help ensure that the other 48 states didn't sanction medical marijuana and perhaps even to roll back the two referenda that had just passed. 

It was engendered at a meeting convened by Gen.  McCaffrey nine days after the '96 election.  In attendance were two White House officials, the then head of the DEA, representatives of the FBI, Justice, HHS, Treasury and Education, along with state law enforcement personnel and the president of the private Partnership for a Drug-Free America.  As records of the meeting I obtained indicate, they discussed the need for tax payer-funded propaganda to thwart potential medical marijuana initiatives in the other 48 states and perhaps even roll back the two that had passed.  As one participant told me, "The reason for the meeting was to organize the effort for the other 48 states." And with lightning speed by Washington's standards, a $2-billion, five-year media campaign was born. 

Interpret the word "partisan" correctly to include attempts to influence state ballot initiatives contested in every election since, including this year's and it's likely that the campaign violates its own enabling legislation.  Nailing it to the wall, one critic told me these were "public officials on the public payroll in a public facility conspiring to commit actions to undermine an election." And thus your tax dollars covertly at work.