Since my article "Angry White Man" was posted on our website last Tuesday, many have asked who the author of Ron Paul's newsletters could have been. Published since at least the late 1970s--and at their most incendiary from 1987 to 1996--these newsletters have at times been filled with conspiratorial warnings about the Trilateral Commission and Bilderberg Group, animus towards black and gay people, and sympathy for right-wing, anti-government militia movements. Many libertarian bloggers have intimated or concluded that the man chiefly responsible for this content was Llewellyn H. Rockwell, Jr., Paul's former congressional chief of staff and the founder of the Ludwig von Mises Institute in Auburn, Alabama. John Robbins, who succeeded Rockwell as Paul's chief of staff, released an "Open Letter to Lew Rockwell" on the Internet last week. "This week, for the third time, the puerile, racist, and completely un-Pauline comments that all informed people say you have caused to appear in Ron's newsletters over the course of several years have become an issue in his campaign," Robbins wrote. "Your callous disregard for both Ron and his millions of supporters is unconscionable." Rockwell, however, in an interview conducted before "Angry White Man" was published, denied that he had any role in writing the newsletters.
Hours after my article appeared on the TNR website, the Paul campaign released a statement. "The quotations in The New Republic article are not mine and do not represent what I believe or have ever believed," Paul said. "I have never uttered such words and denounce such small-minded thoughts." Moreover, he insisted that he didn't even know who wrote those words. On Thursday, two days after the statement appeared, Paul campaignspokesman Jesse Benton reiterated Paul's denial to CNN's Brian Todd. When Todd asked if Paul would attempt to find out who could have written the newsletters, Benton replied, "No, what's the point?"