Campaign finance reform conspiracy.(INSIDER REPORT)

"I'm going to tell you a story that I've never told any reporter," stated Sean Treglia, a former program officer of the Pew Charitable Trusts, during a March 2004 conference at the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Southern California. "Now that I'm several months away from Pew and we have campaign finance reform, I can tell this story."

Speaking to an audience of the initiated, Treglia described how the crusade for campaign finance reform was "an immense scare perpetrated on the American people by a cadre of left-wing foundations and disguised as a 'mass movement,'" wrote New York Post reporter Ryan Sager. In a March 17 story based on a videotape of Treglia's presentation, Sager described how "Pew and other left-wing foundations plotted to create a fake grassroots movement to hoodwink Congress."

"Charged with promoting campaign finance reform when he joined Pew in the mid-1990s, Treglia came up with a three-pronged strategy: 1) pursue an expansive agenda through incremental reforms; 2) pay for a handful of 'experts' all over the country with foundation money; and 3) create fake business, minority and religious groups to pound the table for reform," recounted Sager.

"The target audience for all this activity was 535 people in Washington," recalled Treglia--435 congressmen and 100 senators. "The idea was to create an impression that a mass movement was afoot--that everywhere they looked, in academic institutions, in the business community, in religious groups, in ethnic groups, everywhere, people were talking about [campaign finance] reform." ...