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Sunday, April 30, 2006

PA-07: Loony Weldon Thinks CIA Is Out To Get Him

Posted by DavidNYC

Curt Weldon's batshittery knows no bounds. Last year, he claimed that the CIA was out to get him because he published a report critical of the agency. Now, his conspiracy theory (as they always do) has cast a wider net. Joe Sestak, you see, is just the latest minion to rappel out of a black helicopter:

Veteran Rep. Curt Weldon has a proclivity for calling out shady government doings that have him in mind as a principal target. A year ago, for example, after the No. 2 Republican on the House Armed Services Committee published “Countdown to Terror,” a frontal assault on the CIA’s track record before Sept. 11, he claimed that Clinton administration veterans with ties to the agency were out to get him.

So it’s not surprising that as Weldon girds for the most difficult re-election bid during his two decades representing the Philadelphia suburbs, his campaign is alleging that the CIA is probably abetting the opposition. Last month, his campaign manager Michael Puppio Jr. announced that Weldon’s expected Democratic opponent, Joe Sestak, a former Navy vice admiral, had taken campaign contributions from Mary McCarthy, the CIA operative recently fired for allegedly leaking secret information to the media. McCarthy, who was specifically accused of being a source for The Washington Post’s Pulitzer Prize-winning story on secret CIA prisons overseas, has denied that charge through her lawyer.

The media also has raised suspicions in the Weldon camp. The reporter on the Post article, Dana Priest, wrote a piece last year about Weldon’s book that the congressman viewed as critical.

It’s just a question of following the money, says Puppio. “What’s a CIA analyst doing giving money to a partisan political candidate?” he asks. “I’m not sure she violated any laws, but then when that analyst is alleged to have leaked information to a reporter who in turn is extremely critical of Curt Weldon, that raises some big questions.”

That last quote from Puppio, the campaign manager, is vintage conspiracist nuttery. No conspiracy is too attenuated, too poorly supported by the evidence, and too downright stupid for a bonafide conspiracy theorist. This reminds me of Ross Perot's lunatic assertion that GOP operatives were planning to disrupt his daughter's wedding, forcing him to drop out of the presidential race in 1992. Ross & Curt should hang out - they're both equally nuts and seem to share the same worldview, which shouldn't surprise anyone.

Posted at 03:32 PM in 2006 Elections - House, Pennsylvania | Technorati

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