Mark Dankof to Howard Phillips: A Violation of the 8th Commandment Requires a Public Apology

Pastor Mark Dankof in the 1990s.

     I am reminded today of the spring of 1969, when I was confirmed in a traditional German Lutheran Church in Dayton, Ohio, after two years of catechetical instruction.  In those days, the class had to memorize many Bible passages, and entire sections of Luther’s Small Catechism.  This rigor included the memorization of the 10 Commandments, and the brief written expositions on the meaning of each provided by the 16th century Father of the Reformation.

     The 8th Commandment, and Luther’s subsequent explanation, are simply as follows:

     “Thou Shalt Not Bear False Witness Against Thy Neighbor. [8th Commandment]

     “What Does This Mean? [Luther’s posited question]

     “We should fear and love God that we may not deceitfully belie, betray, slander, nor defame our neighbor, but defend him, speak well of him, and put the best construction on everything. [Luther’s Answer]”

     In the annotations provided by Edward W. A. Koehler in the version of Luther’s Small Catechism published by Concordia Theological Seminary Press in Fort Wayne, Indiana, we read the following supplementary comment on Luther’s exposition:

     “False witness is making an untrue statement and making it with the intention of harming a reputation.”

     With this in mind, Howard Phillips, the founder of the Constitution Party and the Chairman of Washington’s Conservative Caucus, has borne public false witness against me in an article penned by Zionist sock puppet Kenneth R. Timmerman in the ironically named Accuracy in Media (AIM).  Timmerman’s piece, entitled “Tehran TV Loves Ron Paul,” is clearly directed against Press TV/Iran, and against American conservatives who have appeared on that network to publicly state their opposition to an Israeli-provoked American war with that country.  Philip Giraldi, Paul Craig Roberts, Paul Sheldon Foote, Mark Glenn, and I are among those Mr. Timmerman has in his gun sites.  But most interestingly of all, Timmerman has drawn Howard Phillips into participation in a hit piece designed to hurt the Presidential candidacy of  Congressman Ron Paul of Texas (R-TX).  Why?

     The public professional and political connections of Kenneth R. Timmerman may explain exactly why. The online news service, The Newshoggers, informs readers that:

     “Mr. Timmerman is also Executive Director of the Foundation for Democracy in Iran, an organization which he co-founded with Project for the New American Century (PNAC) founding member Peter Rodman, who is currently United States Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security Affairs and some prominent Iranian dissident figures. As such, you might expect (and you would be right to do so) that this Foundation has the ear of the Bush administration, GOP members on the Hill and prominent neoconservative thinkers. The Foundation has a distinctly secular bent, unsurprising given Mr. Timmerman’s negative opinions of the Islam in that country, and is dedicated to assisting regime change in Iran.”

     “More surprising, perhaps – and not mentioned in any official bio – is his presence on the Advisory Board of the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs (JINSA) – an honor he currently shares with Rep. Eric Cantor, Michael Ledeen, Jack Kemp and Richard Perle. Past Board members include Vice President Dick Cheney, US ambassador to the United Nations John Bolton, and Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Douglas Feith. A heady and powerful grouping. JINSA, it has been alleged, is closely allied to neoconservative advocates of pre-emptive regime change and to the AIPAC group which is currently embroiled in a spying scandal.

     “It appears, then, that Mr. Timmerman and his Foundation for Democracy in Iran are very well placed indeed to gain a great measure of influence and power should the US institute force regime change in Iran. Iranian members of his organization could reasonably expect high political office as appointees of any occupation authority in the same way that Ahmed Chalabi and Iyad Allawi were in Iraq. The parallels are obvious – providing shaky evidence and allegations of a WMD program to help foment a war that catapults them into political office.”

     This is neither the first, or the presumably last time that Howard Phillips has been in the unmistakable service of an obvious asset of the Israeli Lobby in the media arena.  In the run-up to the 2008 elections, Phillips was publicly promoting Dr. Jerome Corsi as the best Presidential candidate available to the Constitution Party to run in that cycle.  Corsi is the author of “Atomic Iran:  How the Terrorist Regime Bought the Bomb and American Politicians,” and a Harvard-educated pundit connected to Joseph Farah’s Neo-Conservative/pro-Zionist World Net Daily.  Corsi dropped out of contention for the nomination of Phillips’s party only a handful of weeks after appearing on my old radio show on the Republic Broadcasting Network.  There, Corsi spoke openly of his regular trips to the Zionist State, and his regular consultations with his “political advisors and friends in the Israeli Knesset.”

     Kenneth R. Timmerman and Jerome Corsi are two of the most identifiable figures in the American Neo-Conservative Press working with The Lobby and The War Party.  Yet Howard Phillips, the founder of a political movement originally rooted in the disenfranchised Pat Buchanan wing of the Republican Party, is a provable player and participant in their activities, even as Phillips has a longtime track record of rhetorically attacking “The Neo-Cons” and “The Globalists” in a shopworn public profile as an America First patriot.  That record includes membership in the shadowy Council for National Policy (CNP), the Trilateral Commission of the American Right.  The Internet trail on this is extensive, including Jackie Petru’s observations on Phillips in a piece entitled, “Wolves in Sheep’s Clothing.”

     To purloin Pat Buchanan’s turning-of-a-rhetorical-phrase at the Republican Party National Convention in Houston in 1992, it would appear that Phillips has pulled off the greatest instance of “. . . cross-dressing in American political history.”

     At least until now.  When it comes to my U. S. Senate race in Delaware in 2000, Phillips and Kenneth R. Timmerman publish palpable falsehood in the following way:

      “But what about his credential as a former U.S. Senate candidate? Dankof claims on his website that he was the “nominated candidate of the Constitution party” in Delaware in 2000. It turns out, however, that the Constitution Party never held a formal nominating process or a party primary, and that Dankof essentially nominated himself to run in that year’s U.S. Senate race.

     “‘Anybody can be a candidate just by filing the forms’,” said Howard Phillips, Conservative Party founder and long-time standard bearer. “‘Mark was never anointed by the Constitution Party; he decided to run by himself.’”

     My response is simply as follows.  Howard Phillips is a liar.  He has violated the 8th Commandment.  He owes me a public apology.

     For the record, 1)  Phillips called me personally at my apartment in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania in January of 2000 to ask me to run for the U. S. Senate seat in Delaware in the fall of that year.  When I decided to run, against my better judgment, Phillips met me at his Washington, D. C. office on a number of occasions to plan out strategy for the operation.  This included a move to Claymont, Delaware [across the border from Philadelphia, PA] and a change in drivers license to legally permit me to make the race.  2)  There was, in fact, a public caucus of existing Constitution Party activists in Dover, Delaware (an event mentioned in their media in one location at the time), which formally recognized me as the standard-bearer that year.  Howard Phillips was in physical attendance at the public caucus, and spoke on my behalf.  The papers which were subsequently filed on behalf of my candidacy after the public caucus were filed either by Phillips himself, his staff member Alison Potter at Constitution Party of Virginia headquarters, or the State Chairman of the Constitution Party of Delaware at their behest.  I did not file them.  3) Howard Phillips asked Pat Buchanan to formally endorse two Constitution Party candidates for the U. S. Senate that year, in states where the Reform Party had no one on the ballot.  One was in Michigan.  Mark Dankof in Delaware was the other.  4)  At the National Convention of the Constitution Party in Baltimore in 2000, nationally televised by C-SPAN and chronicled in their archives for DVD sale, Mark Dankof’s 30 minute address to all of the National Convention Delegates from the podium was featured along with speeches by Larry Klayman of Judicial Watch, Christopher Ruddy of NewsMax, and Mr. Phillips himself.  5) Howard Phillips’ nationally distributed Issues and Strategy Bulletin formally acknowledged my candidacy in 2000 in a word of expressed appreciation to me as well as his other candidates for Federal offices, after the election was over.  6)  As a quid pro quo for my agreeing to run, Howard Phillips issued me a written agreement as an Independent Consultant to research and ghost-write his nationally distributed Senate Roll-Call Report under Conservative Caucus auspices, for remuneration for a period not to exceed one year.  This was designed to cover my loss of income in 2000 when I agreed to devote myself to running, even as I suspended my theological studies at Westminster Theological Seminary in 2000 at Phillips’ request, to do what I thought was a favor for a friend.  Now an ex-friend.  7)  In 2000, Howard Phillips’s national television show on public access channels, Conservative Roundtable, chose only two Constitution Party national candidates to showcase as featured guests in the Washington, D. C. studio connected to Morton Blackwell’s Leadership Institute.  Lou Wein, the Constitution Party candidate for the U. S. Senate in New York was one.  The other was the Constitution Party candidate for the U. S. Senate in Delaware—Mark Dankof.  The published archives for the show reveal that I was interviewed by Phillips in July of 2000, show episode 237.

     Steve Farina, a System Engineer and System Programmer in Delaware in 2000 (now in Massachusetts), also has a different memory of what happened there in 2000 from that of Howard Phillips.  Mr. Farina, and his wife Liz, hosted a meeting in their home in The First State to promote my candidacy and organizational efforts for the Constitution Party.  Steve recently commented on Timmerman’s smear in Accuracy in Media on LinkedIn by stating that:

     “I sat in my den with Mark [Dankof], Howard [Phillips], Jim Clymer [the National Chairman of the Constitution Party in 2000], and some Constitution Party supporters from around Delaware in 2000.  There is no doubt that Howard [Phillips] and all involved recognized Mark [Dankof] as the ‘anointed’ candidate for the U. S. Senate seate in Delaware.”

     Saved e-mails, official letters under Phillips’s signature sent to me, as well as what is in the public record from 2000, will also corroborate who is telling the truth, if the issue is pressed.

     As for my ex-friend, I reiterate my request.  I demand a public apology for publicly uttered untruth issued with clear malicious intent.

     There is a simple second second request.  If you desire to continue working with War Party stooges to promote World War III on behalf of Israel, Central Bankers, and the New World Order, please cease and desist with your Political Cross-Dressing as an America First patriot and Constitutionalist.

     It’s time to be honest and Come Out of the Closet, Howard.  To quote John Lennon in Imagine, “It’s Easy if You Try.”  It should be especially easy when you’re about to hang it up.

Postscripts:  The interview I did with Howard Phillips at his Conservative Caucus headquarters in Washington in 1998 for the German Lutheran weekly Christian News, was re-posted by World Net Daily and is ironically entitled “The Last Honorable Politician.”

     Richard Mellon Scaife is the chief financial backer of Accuracy in Media. Check out the Rense listing for “Israel Moles Behind 9-11 and Iraq War:  The Pollard Affair Never Ended  which reposts the work of the Executive Intelligence Review. It tells us that:

On July 8, 1996, Richard Perle, now the Chairman of the Defense Policy Board, an advisory group that reports to Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, presented a written document to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, spelling out a new Israeli foreign policy, calling for a repudiation of the Oslo Accords and the underlying concept of “land for peace”; for the permanent annexation of the entire West Bank and Gaza Strip; and for the elimination of the Saddam Hussein regime in Baghdad, as a first step towards overthrowing or destabilizing the governments of Syria, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, and Iran. The document was prepared for the Jerusalem and Washington, D.C.-based Institute for Advanced Strategic and Political Studies (IASPS), a think tank financed by Richard Mellon-Scaife. The report, “A Clean Break: A New Strategy for Securing the Realm,” was co-authored by Perle; Douglas Feith, currently the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Policy; David Wurmser, currently special assistant to State Department chief arms control negotiator John Bolton; and Meyrav Wurmser, now director of Mideast Policy at the Hudson Institute.

Richard Mellon Scaife is number #2 among those financing Islamophobia in the United States at the behest of the Zionist State, according to the Center for American Progress (CAP).  Edward Spannaus’s expose on Richard Mellon Scaife for the Executive Intelligence Review is also revealing.

Mother Jones gives its spin on Howard Phillips.

Howard Phillips has announced his retirement from the Conservative Caucus.  See the Conservative Times story.

Mantiq al-Tayr weighs in on Howard Phillips, Kenneth R. Timmerman, Larry Klayman, Morton Blackwell, William A. Rusher, Paul Weyrich, Marvin Leibman, Chris Bedford of the “New Guard” Magazine of the Young Americans for Freedom (YAF), and other Zionists and Zionist-fellow travelers in an essay entitled, “Stealth Zionism.”  This piece chronicles the briefing of Howard Phillips and his Conservative Caucus entourage in Israel by Benjamin Netanyahu himself.  . . .