The American Spectator

The Spectacle Blog

Responding to the speculation about Lew Rockwell writing the Ron Paul newsletters, Jamie Kirchick writes that he interviewed Rockwell for the story and he denied it:

He said that he was "involved in the promotion" of the newsletters, as well as, "writing the subscription letters" (maybe he wrote this ditty [PDF]?) and "writing mailing lists." Rockwell told me that there were "seven or eight freelancers involved at various stages" of the newsletter's history.

When I asked him who was in charge of the editing and publishing of the newsletters, Rockwell got cryptic. "The person who was in charge is now long gone ... He left in unfortunate circumstances." Ultimately, however, Rockwell says his role was "just to bring the money in."

Related: Timothy Virkkala wrote the other day:

Oh, so who wrote Ron Paul's newsletter? I have only hearsay and memory to go on. But really, most of us in the libertarian "industry" just "knew" who. I have four names in mind, I think all contributed at one point or another. But maybe it was only a subset of those names, maybe it was just one or two. One of the names is pretty damn obvious. And one of the names is not obvious at all; the style was abandoned for better things, later on.

I'm guessing Rockwell's name is the "pretty damn obvious" one, seeing as I was able to come up with it. And now I'm wondering if the "not obvious at all" name belongs to the "now long gone" person that Rockwell mentions. I do have a thought, but I'll keep it to myself; I don't think it would be appropriate to accuse a dead man of slinging bigotry based on pure speculation. (Speaking of dead men, Virkkala suggests in a footnote that Bill Bradford would happily clear this all up if he were still alive. One more reason to miss him.)