First, consider this particular page from the website. Titled "How You Can Stop Iggy", it provides a great deal of meticulous information on how work the delegate selection process at the riding level and in clubs and in commissions to block an Ignatieff win.
The work of Marsha Akman, Liberal foot-soldier, or of a top Liberal strategist? [Update: Maybe it was Akman's work after all.]
You see, I've been asking around, and people seem to share the opinion that Marsha Akman is not capable of this. That she hates Michael Ignatieff, no one harbours any doubts. But there is a feeling that she is the willing frontman for the real people behind the website. These people are behind a concerted effort to use dirty tricks to keep Michael Ignatieff from winning. These people, I have been told, work for a rival leadership campaign.
That's powerful stuff. As in campaign-toppling, career-ending stuff.
As for Akman, her name has only appeared on the registration of StopIggy.com in the last ten days.
Someone trying cover their tracks? Offer up a scapegoat before returning into the shadows?
So I spoke to a high level Liberal Party strategist about this. No, it's not Warren Kinsella. No, I won't tell you who it is. But here's what he's telling me.
First, the Michael Ignatieff campaign has lodged a formal complaint against the website. Not out of hurt feelings, nor over some dinky irregularity over website registration information. The complaint is based on the allegation that the StopIggy.com website used confidential email lists for mass emails sent out in August. This was the email in question:
From: Stop Iggy [mailto:info@stopiggy.com]
Sent: Tuesday, August 22, 2006 3:36 PM
To: ***********
Subject: Federal Liberal Leadership Race / La course d'investiture du Parti liberal du CanadaDear Liberal Party member,
We are a group of longtime active members of the Liberal Party of Canada who are disturbed about Michael Ignatieff's bid for the leadership of our party. A self-styled left-of-center Liberal, Michael Ignatieff is anything but. He supports both the war in Iraq and Missile Defence/Weaponization of Space, is an apologist for torture, and is against the Kyoto Protocol. In addition, he has suggested that he would privatize Medicare. Do we want a leader who is similar to Stephen Harper in so many ways?
Although his values are not traditional Liberal ones, Michael Ignatieff may nonetheless be elected leader of the Party. We doubt, however, that he can win the country in the next federal election. We invite you to visit http://www.stopiggy.com/ for further information on Michael Ignatieff and ask you to consider your vote for the new party leader accordingly.
We apologize to our francophone readers that the site does not have French translations of Ignatieff's writings, as we did not have sufficient resources to do translate these documents.
Please think carefully about your vote as it will affect the future of our party and our country.
The Stop Iggy Team
www.stopiggy.com
So far, you're thinking, so what?
Here's the thing. The email list used was very fresh, like less than three weeks old (see some of the comments on this post for a similar observation). Leadership campaigns that had purchased the list from the party as per the rules were the only ones that were supposed to have the list:
Yet each candidate was required to personally sign a declaration of confidentiality before the party handed over the coveted lists of members across the country.
In the declaration, candidates agreed to take "appropriate measures to protect the confidentiality of the personal information on the lists.'' They further agreed that they "will not disclose the lists to anyone outside the Liberal Party of Canada.''
This is where the Marsha Akman theory comes crashing down. Which campaign would dare trust such a sensitive piece of information with the likes of Akman? Some select reporters or pollsters is one thing. But a fringe-issue Liberal Party foot soldier? On the other hand, if the campaign team itself was running the website, then it makes perfect sense that they would have used their own copy of the list.
[Update: Re-considering Marsha Akman's role in this. She may indeed have played a larger part than thought by some people.]
But how can we know which campaign team leaked it?
Simple -- the lists were doctored!
According to my contact, each issued list secretly contained a number of faked names and email addresses, inserted in order to make each version of the list unique. If a list ended up in the wrong hands, the party could check for the unique fake names, and so know which leadership camp let their customized list slip out.
I can only presume that the corresponding email addresses were programmed to forward emails to the person running the list management operation for the party. The mass emailing of August 22 ought to have identified the camp that leaked the list. All that needed to be done was check which faked email accounts received emails and which ones didn't. That camp is presumably behind StopIggy.com.
My contact tells me this is all true.
But if so, and let's say it is true, then why haven't we heard about it? If the party has incontrovertible proof indicating which list was compromised, and so which campaign is playing dirty, why hasn't the hammer come down and hard?
[Liberal national director Steven MacKinnon] would not disclose the nature of the sanctions that could be imposed on candidates deemed to have broken their oath to protect the confidentiality of the lists. But party insiders said punishment options include a private reprimand, a public reprimand, a fine or even disqualification of a candidate, an unlikely option in this case.
"This case", by the way, involved a Globe and Mail poll conducted with lists allegedly supplied by Stephane Dion, Ken Dryden and Scott Brison.
So maybe a private reprimand was delivered with regards to StopIggy.com. Not likely, if only because the other camps, especially Ignatieff's, would demand a public disclosure, and in any case, StopIggy.com is still up.
Maybe the hammer is coming down soon, and I'm justing jumping the gun.
Or maybe the executive is worried that the damage to the Liberal Party if such a scandal erupted would be worse than the damage the would come of the cheating, even if the cheater eventually won. To me, that would make sense only if the guilty campaign was one of the large ones with a lot of high-level support. Untouchable, as it were.
What a story! Is Marsha Akman a willing stooge, with only limited knowledge of who is behind this? Is her involvement part of an attempt to cover the tracks of those who are really behind the site? If so, is it a pointless exercise, given the fact that email list has already identified the campaign running the site?
Is there going to some action taken? And will we know about it?
Updates:
Just how confidential is this list? I read this post and I wonder if I'm the only one who doesn't have at least one list! It is interesting though, that Ignatieff is the obvious target of two of the leaks. Winnipeg Grit thinks one campaign is behind most of these leaks:
All of this points strongly to the conclusion that at least one campaign is abusing the Liberal members list, either by sharing it with pollsters in order to get favourable polls or using it to play dirty tricks on opponents through the media.
