Attack ad gives ex-spy Valerie Plame swastika eyes and calls her a ‘disgraced, racist millionaire’

The ad centers on a 2017 Twitter scandal. Plame shared an anti-Semitic article from the Unz Review entitled “America’s Jews Are Driving America’s Wars.” The article said that Jews “own the media,” should wear labels while on national television, and that their beliefs were as dangerous as “a bottle of rat poison.”

Neo-Nazi website the Daily Stormer and former Ku Klux Klan Grand Wizard David Duke praised Plame for posting the article, which the ad points out, featuring a KKK robe photoshopped over her head next to Duke.

After initially defending herself, Plame apologized and resigned from the board of a grant-making fund focused on preventing the spread of nuclear weapons. Plame said on CNN shortly after she announced her candidacy that she had not read the article. But in the space of three years, it was found that she posted nine Unz articles, including one titled “Why I Still Dislike Israel” and another about “Dancing Israelis” on Sept. 11.

“Valarie Plame promoted the bigotry of a hate site so racist, it even smears Mexicans as having a taste for sexually abusing children,” the ad says, careful to not say that Plame herself shared the Unz article that contains that argument.

Other portions of the ad show photos from the 2017 “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, that drew white supremacist groups.

Plame called the ad “disgusting” and “hate speech” in a statement to the Washington Examiner on Thursday.

“Part of being a leader is acknowledging when you have made a mistake and trying, as best you can, to make it right. When I inadvertently retweeted offensive material I apologized immediately on Twitter. I have since continued to apologize, from the bottom of my heart, in any way that I can to atone for this mistake. These advertisements are Republican smear tactics and have no place in a Democratic primary or anywhere in our democracy. This is hate speech pure and simple,” Plame said.

The ad was produced and promoted by the Alliance to Combat Extremism Fund, a 501(c)(4) “dark money” nonprofit group that does not have to disclose its donors but says it is funded “by a broad and diverse coalition of Americans who want to combat extremism in our politics, fight hate in our society, and rebuild trust in our Democracy.”

Federal Election Commission records show that the group spent $5,500 on producing the ad and $7,500 on Facebook ads, but it is just getting started.

The group told the Washington Examiner that it intends to spend “in the low six-figures over the next two weeks on many media platforms,” including radio and television, “to ensure that every New Mexico Democrat knows the truth about Valerie Plame” ahead of the June 2 primary contest.

A website created by the group, No Hate New Mexico, also says that Plame “is funded by holocaust deniers.” She accepted donations from former California Rep. Paul McCloskey, who referenced the “so-called Holocaust” during a 2000 speech to the Institute for Historical Review, which says it “does not deny the Holocaust,” but “has no ‘position’ on any specific event or chapter of history.”

Plame, 56, is one of seven candidates seeking the Democratic nomination for New Mexico’s third congressional district, a Democratic-leaning seat which encompasses the northern part of the state and the capital city of Santa Fe.

For some, the ad went too far.

Influential New Mexico political blogger Joe Monahan called the ad “beyond incendiary,” adding that “any TV station concerned with truth is going to have to swallow hard to take the money and give them an airing.”

Two of Plame’s primary opponents condemned the ad.

“This type of vilification has no place in our politics and I strongly condemn this video. My life’s work and my campaign has been about love, not hate,” lawyer Teresa Leger Fernandez said in a tweet on Wednesday.

“This new ad represents the worst of what dark money brings into politics,” said Santa Fe County District Attorney Marco Serna.

Ian Sugar, president of the Alliance to Combat Extremism Fund, defended the ad.

“Yes, the ad is hard-hitting, but every claim is 100% true,” Sugar said.

“Here’s the bottom line: Some people might think that sharing content from a white supremacist hate site at least nine times displays the type of judgment needed to be a Democrat in Congress. Some people might think that someone praised by David Duke that accepts contribution after contribution from Holocaust deniers is fit to serve in Congress. We disagree. We think white supremacy is disqualifying.”

The former CIA operative told the Washington Examiner that she will fight for campaign finance reform that requires dark money groups to report where their contributions are coming from.

Plame shot to stardom after conservative columnist Robert Novak revealed her covert identity in a 2003 column. Plame maintains that the leak of her name was “payback” from the Bush administration for her then-husband, former Ambassador Joseph Wilson, writing an op-ed about the Bush administration on its intelligence justification for the Iraq War.

Commonly called the “Plame Affair,” the scandal rocked the Bush White House and resulted in the 2007 conviction of Lewis “Scooter” Libby, former chief of staff to Vice President Dick Cheney, for perjury and obstruction of justice in connection to the leak of Plame’s identity. It emerged that former Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage was the primary source for Novak’s story, but he was never charged. President Trump pardoned Libby in 2018, saying he was treated unfairly.