Right Wingers Disrupt Gore Campaign Conference Call
...but will they be burned by their electronic "paper trail?"
by David J. Gonzo

Tuesday, Oct. 18, 2000 -- NEW YORK (APJP) -- He must have thought it was such a clever idea.

At 1:39 EST, "Politico2" posted the following to a message board at neo-fascist web domain Free Republic under the topic "Gore Conference Call NOW":

Politics/Elections Breaking News Announcement Keywords: GORE CONFERENCE CALL 
Source: AP
Published: 10-18-00 Author: Gore 2000
Posted on 10/18/2000 10:39:48 PDT by Politico2 

Hattaway and Ron Klain are hosting a conference call now!

call in: 877-506-5089

code: 20502 

Keywords: advisory political 

More messages followed within minutes: "I'm in!"... "Gore's conference call is being freeped !!!"... " This is definitely RUSH MATERIAL!!! I AM EMAILING HIM NOW!!!"

It looks like the self-styled "Freepers" were having a real blast.  A reporter from a Tampa paper reportedly quipped, “Is there anyone left on this line who is not either a Gore campaign staffer or a Bush saboteur?” 

"Whoever they were managed to get the conference call number," Doug Hattaway, a Gore spokesperson, told American Politics Journal.  "We suspect it was someone who managed to get onto our press list and posted the number to the Free Republic site.  A group of them disrupted the Q&A after what Ron [Klain] and I had to say about the campaign."

As a result of the disruption, Hattaway added that the Gore campaign is "looking at new screening procedures.  We hope it won't inconvenience members of the press, but we'd like to avoid similar disruptions."

American Politics Journal has also spoken to a telecommunications law expert who believes MCI WorldCom, the company hosting the conference call, is likely to act against the "crashers" whose unauthorized use of the conference call information resulted in loss of revenue to WorldCom.  According to this source, "MCI is unlikely to take this lying down.  They pride themselves on the quality of their teleconferencing service, and they won't like this sort of damaging publicity.... It's no big deal for them to do the research and differentiate between journalists who had been legitimately invited and the bozos who wreaked havoc.... You'd think the morons [who disrupted the call] had never heard of Caller ID or automated data aggregation -- not to mention being stupid enough to brag about their dumb stunt on the Internet."

Ouch!  Looks like a few over-enthusiastic Freepies might need a good attorney in the near future.

'Nuff said!