Tea Party Leader Urges "Agent Provocatuer" Plan to Disrupt and Discredit Protests [1]
Submitted by Lisa Graves [2] on
In an email sent this week, the "Tea Party Nation [3]" urged members to impersonate SEIU [4] organizers at upcoming labor rallies in an attempt to embarrass and discredit the union and the protestors. Former Tea Party leader Mark Williams urged the plan, according to Think Progress.
The plan includes signing up with the Service Employees International Union, wearing SEIU T-shirts, and then approaching television crews and camera operators with signs that say things like "You OWE me" and "Screw the taxpayer." It also urged tea partiers, in disguise, to make outrageous comments to reporters to make the gathering look "greedy," and undermine the protestor's credibility with the press.
The plan even suggested that it would not matter if Tea Party Nation's planting of operatives became public because "the quotes and pictures will linger as de facto truth."
The email added that "Tea Party Patriot groups and individuals are flooding me with emails vowing to participate and come up with their own creative ruses!"
Tea Party Nation and Mark Williams’ own site posted the plans on their sites and then removed them. The original documents are available here [5], here [6] and here [7].
Lisa Graves is President of the Board of the Center for Media and Democracy and President of True North Research. She is a well-known researcher, writer, and public speaker. Her research and analysis have been cited by every major paper in the country and featured in critically acclaimed books and documentaries, including Ava Du Vernay’s award-winning film, “The 13th,” Bill Moyers’s “United States of ALEC,” and Showtime’s “Years of Living Dangerously.”