Roger Ailes Used Fox News Budget to Finance ‘Black Room’ Campaigns Against His Enemies

[Hissyspit]

@johnjcook

so @gabrielsherman has confirmed that roger ailes spent news corp $ surveiling him, me, and @hamiltonnolan

http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2016/08/ailes-used-fox-budget-to-finance-campaigns-against-enemies.html

Roger Ailes Used Fox News Budget to Finance ‘Black Room’ Campaigns Against His Enemies

August 7, 2016 6:30 a.m.

By Gabriel Sherman

- snip -

But with Ailes gone, Fox executives are now looking closely at how Ailes spent Fox money. And what they are discovering is that, beyond the sexual harassment claims, Ailes was also able to use portions of the Fox budget to hire consultants, political operatives, and private detectives that reported only to him, according to a senior Fox source. Last week, according to the source, Fox News dismissed five consultants whom Ailes had hired to do work that was more about advancing his own agenda than Fox’s. One of the consultants, Bert Solivan, ran negative PR campaigns against Ailes’s personal and political enemies out of Fox News headquarters, a source said. A Fox News spokesperson confirmed: “Solivan was recently informed that his services were no longer needed.” Solivan, who had previously worked for Fox News as a general manager of the channel’s website, did not respond to requests for comment.

According to one highly-placed source, Solivan worked out of what Fox insiders called “the Black Room,” an operation Ailes established around 2011 to conduct PR and surveillance campaigns against people he targeted both inside and outside the company. The “Black Room” was located on the 14th floor of the News Corp building at 1211 Avenue of the Americas, a quiet part of the office that housed Fox News Latino and some marketing and promotions employees. Fox employees Ken LaCorte and Jim Pinkerton, veteran political operatives who’ve worked with Ailes since the 1980s, also worked with Solivan, the source said, adding that Ailes’s personal lawyer, and Fox contributor, Peter Johnson Jr. advised the team. (In an email, Peter Johnson denied any involvement in “Black Room” campaigns, saying, “The only online campaign I’m aware of is yours attempting to create a truth from a fiction with this account.”)

Targets of the campaigns included journalists John Cook and Hamilton Nolan, who have aggressively covered Ailes for Gawker. According to one source, private detectives followed Cook around his Brooklyn neighborhood and Fox operatives prepared a report on him with information they intended to leak to blogs. (According to the source, one proposed line of attack claimed that Cook — whose wife, Slate news director Allison Benedikt, is Jewish — was anti-Semitic.) “I’m honored to be among Roger Ailes’s enemies,” Cook said.

Fox operatives also targeted Joe Lindsley, the former editor of Ailes’s local newspaper The Putnam County News & Recorder. In April 2011, Lindsley had a falling out with Ailes and quit the paper along with two co-workers. Ailes assigned private investigators to follow Lindsley around Putnam County. He also asked Fox host Andrea Tantaros, whom Ailes had once seated next to Lindsley at a dinner party at Ailes’s home, to contact Lindsley and report back on his whereabouts, two sources said. Meanwhile, Solivan posted negative comments about Lindsley on blogs, a source said.

MORE AT LINK

[Tal Vez]

1. Now that Ailes has been separated from Fox News, I think that we will be learning

about a whole lot of things that went on there. We see the final product on our TV screens. A product that extreme does not come from nothing. There must have been a lot of craziness behind the scenes and a culture of silence to protect it. Those employees are no longer hostages.

[malaise]

2. Delish

Truth will out!

[GreatCaesarsGhost]

3. From 2014: Inside the Paranoid World of Fox News's Roger Ailes

Inside the Paranoid World of Fox News's Roger Ailes
Connor Simpson

snip

It did not go well, of course, but the story gives us an amazing glimpse into just how paranoid Ailes is. Like, perhaps, how he thinks liberals are constantly out to get him. He is the president of Fox News, the hated conservative news channel. So far as we know, his life hasn't been in jeopardy because of his job. But reading Sherman's excerpt, you get the idea Ailes expects a pack of commandos led by Chris Matthews to raid his home at any moment. For instance, Ailes' had security cameras installed all across their property in Philipstown so they could watch what's happening on the grounds at all times. When Ailes and family were out of town, his wife, Beth, phoned a team of landscapers and told them to move a tree they had just finished planting. She was not satisfied with its current location, which she could see because of the cameras:

“[Ailes] was said to have ordered the removal of all trees around his house so that he … had a 360-degree view of any leftist assault teams preparing to rush the house,” Leonora Burton recalled. Roger and Beth also bought up as many surrounding houses as they could. Security cameras were installed throughout the property. “A team of landscapers was, in the absence of the Ailes family, working on the grounds of the compound,” Burton later recounted. “They were planting a tree when the boss’s cell phone rang. It was the absent Beth. ‘No, no,’ she said. ‘That’s not where I want the tree. I insist that you move it.’ She directed them to the correct site. The landscapers were puzzled until they realized that the many security cameras on the grounds had captured them at work. Beth had been watching them from wherever she was and called to correct the tree planting.”

That doesn't even cover the bunker Ailes had installed underneath his house stocked with six-months' worth of supplies in case of a terrorist attack. But for immediate threats, Ailes has a security team, led by his dog, to protect his family:

“He worried about his kid and his wife and said he wouldn’t want anything to happen to them because of what he was,” Foley recalled. Roger told him his German shepherd, Champ, helped protect them. “He said, ‘I let the dog out of the car when we come here. The dog gets out first. He’s trained to patrol the whole grounds and report back before we get out.’?”


more: http://www.thewire.com/national/2014/01/inside-paranoid-world-fox-newss-roger-ailes/356819/

[lindysalsagal]

6. OK, who tattled about the "leftist assault teams"?

"Roger and Beth also bought up as many surrounding houses as they could."

"That doesn't even cover the bunker Ailes had installed underneath his house stocked with six-months' worth of supplies in case of a terrorist attack"

Flipping bats*%$ Howard Hughes crazy! Get this guy on anti-psychotic drugs asap, instead of running a news agency.

[GreatCaesarsGhost]

8. The dog reported back...

the only problem was it only spoke German.

[lindysalsagal]

9. and A iles only responds to dog whistles, not barks.

[n2doc]

13. Ailes expects a pack of commandos led by Chris Matthews to raid his home at any moment

The only thing Tweety is going to raid is his own refrigerator. Some leftist.

[lindysalsagal]

4. Why didn't these "Fox executives" know this was going on?

What do they get paid to do? Will anyone make them take responsibility for ruining america?

[Hortensis]

5. Well, sexual harassment was never why Ailes was

shown the door, of course, just an excuse. Thanks, Hissyspit. No doubt much of this...interesting sludge was known to the owners before, and much more.

[malaise]

10. Don the Con wasn't supposed to be cuddled by Fox

This was the last straw for Murdoch!!! I'm lovin' it. They are imploding and eating themselves everywhere.

[Hortensis]

11. Oh, lovin' it here big time. Did you check the

Doonesbury cartoon post for Fox's Roland Hedley's attempt to save 'ol Roger? Lol.

[malaise]

12. Will do now

Thanks

[Stuart G]

7. k and r...nt

[Overseas]

14. K&R. I hope this story gets wide coverage.