READ: Conspiracy Theorist Dick Morris Blasts Clinton Conspiracy Theorists in Unsealed ’95 Memo

Dick Morris.Tina Fultz/ZUMApress.com

Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters.


Dick Morris, the one-time adviser to President Bill Clinton, has carved out a strange, multi-faceted career in recent years, engaging in questionable political dealings, pitching misguided punditry (he predicted Mitt Romney would win in a landslide in 2012), and peddling conspiracy theories. On his website, Morris argues that the CIA, FBI, and the mob were behind the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. He co-wrote a book pushing right-wing conspiracy theories about the United Nations, international agencies, and the like. (“Black helicopters is the crazy word for the UN invading the United States,” Morris said in previewing the book. “But it’s really going to happen.”) He’s banged the IRS-scandal drum, insisting that Obama was secretly behind the agency’s supposed scrutiny of conservative groups. He pushed anti-Obama Benghazi theories. He backed Donald Trump’s birther talk.

Morris wasn’t always this, uh, unconventional. In fact, in a newly released memo from Clinton’s presidential archives, Morris advised the president to call out the conspiracy theorists of the 1990s and to combat the widespread right-wing paranoia of that time—the same sort of paranoia that Morris now exploits to make a buck.

Morris’ May 1995 memo offered comments on a speech Clinton was to give at Michigan State University. It was just two weeks after the Oklahoma City bombing, and Morris urged the president to take a tough line against the right-wing militia crowd and those conservatives who had been asserting that the federal government was encroaching on their lives and eviscerating their civil liberties. Such incendiary rhetoric had been on the rise for several years, and the Oklahoma City attack was seen by some political observers as the culmination of this anti-government campaign.

“I’d propose tougher language,” Morris wrote. He suggested these lines: “How dare you say that the government is in a conspiracy to take your freedom. This is the government you helped elect and you can change… How dare you appropriate to your paranoid ways, our scared national symbols… How dare you invoke the Founding Fathers who created the elective government you claim as you persecutor.”

Clinton ended up using several of Morris’ suggestions in his speech. “How dare you suggest that we in the freest nation on earth live in tyranny?” Clinton asked. “How dare you call yourselves patriots and heroes?”

Read the full memo:

 

AN IMPORTANT UPDATE

We’re falling behind our online fundraising goals and we can’t sustain coming up short on donations month after month. Perhaps you’ve heard? It is impossibly hard in the news business right now, with layoffs intensifying and fancy new startups and funding going kaput.

The crisis facing journalism and democracy isn’t going away anytime soon. And neither is Mother Jones, our readers, or our unique way of doing in-depth reporting that exists to bring about change.

Which is exactly why, despite the challenges we face, we just took a big gulp and joined forces with the Center for Investigative Reporting, a team of ace journalists who create the amazing podcast and public radio show Reveal.

If you can part with even just a few bucks, please help us pick up the pace of donations. We simply can’t afford to keep falling behind on our fundraising targets month after month.

Editor-in-Chief Clara Jeffery said it well to our team recently, and that team 100 percent includes readers like you who make it all possible: “This is a year to prove that we can pull off this merger, grow our audiences and impact, attract more funding and keep growing. More broadly, it’s a year when the very future of both journalism and democracy is on the line. We have to go for every important story, every reader/listener/viewer, and leave it all on the field. I’m very proud of all the hard work that’s gotten us to this moment, and confident that we can meet it.”

Let’s do this. If you can right now, please support Mother Jones and investigative journalism with an urgently needed donation today.

payment methods

AN IMPORTANT UPDATE

We’re falling behind our online fundraising goals and we can’t sustain coming up short on donations month after month. Perhaps you’ve heard? It is impossibly hard in the news business right now, with layoffs intensifying and fancy new startups and funding going kaput.

The crisis facing journalism and democracy isn’t going away anytime soon. And neither is Mother Jones, our readers, or our unique way of doing in-depth reporting that exists to bring about change.

Which is exactly why, despite the challenges we face, we just took a big gulp and joined forces with the Center for Investigative Reporting, a team of ace journalists who create the amazing podcast and public radio show Reveal.

If you can part with even just a few bucks, please help us pick up the pace of donations. We simply can’t afford to keep falling behind on our fundraising targets month after month.

Editor-in-Chief Clara Jeffery said it well to our team recently, and that team 100 percent includes readers like you who make it all possible: “This is a year to prove that we can pull off this merger, grow our audiences and impact, attract more funding and keep growing. More broadly, it’s a year when the very future of both journalism and democracy is on the line. We have to go for every important story, every reader/listener/viewer, and leave it all on the field. I’m very proud of all the hard work that’s gotten us to this moment, and confident that we can meet it.”

Let’s do this. If you can right now, please support Mother Jones and investigative journalism with an urgently needed donation today.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate