Last August, Jane Mayer wrote a long investigative article in The New Yorker about the Koch brothers, the conservative billionaires who bankroll a host of right-wing causes. Since then, she's apparently become the victim of a disturbing, organized smear campaign.Mayer, who's reported extensively on America's use of torture during the "War on Terror" and co-authored books on Clarence Thomas and Ronald Reagan, is certainly no stranger to peals of right-wing outrage. But her work on the reclusive Koch brothers (whose official objections to the story are laid out in this letter) seems to have raised it to a new level. Sources tell us that rumors have been circulating for some time now that a private investigator was hired to dig up dirt on Mayer in the wake of the Koch brothers story. (Dirty business, but that sort of thing does happen.)
Nothing's been confirmed so far. But the circumstantial evidence does seem indicate that someone out there is planting (weak) negative stories about Mayer with any news outlet who might take them. There have been at least three efforts so far