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July
17, 2003, 4:20 p.m.
The
TVC Scandal: An Update
Bribes can backfire.
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 his
morning, I reported
on a controversy that had developed in the House of Representatives. The
Traditional Values Coalition, a social-conservative organization, had
launched a mail campaign accusing at least 25 pro-life congressmen of
betraying the unborn. The organization claimed that these congressmen,
by supporting a bill to allow Americans to import drugs from Canada, were
voting to flood this country with RU-486, the "abortion pill."
The congressmen disputed this characterization, questioned why they had
not been contacted before being attacked, and suggested that TVC was doing
the bidding of the pharmaceutical industry. Other social conservatives,
whatever their views on the merits of the importation bill, condemned
TVC's campaign as scurrilous.
Today, Republican
congressmen took action against the TVC, and the evidence of links between
it and the pharmaceutical industry lobby, PhRMA, grew.
Conservative congressmen
declared that TVC would not be welcome at their Capitol Hill meetings
for at least one year. The House Values Action Team, an organization bringing
social-conservative congressmen together, sent the TVC a sharply worded
note to this effect this afternoon. Its chairman, Pennsylvania Republican
congressman Joe Pitts, opposes importation. Nonetheless, he writes that
TVC has shown "a lack of regard for the truth" and "a lack
of forthrightness." He also notes that "not one congressman
has argued that [TVC's suspension] is the wrong course of action."
Many demanded the suspension based both on TVC's "recent actions"
and its "overall reputation." Pitts concludes that he had wanted
to hear TVC's side of the story, but that its leaders had not returned
calls from his chief of staff or accepted an invitation to meet with him.
The Senate version
of the conservative caucus is expected to suspend the TVC, too.
This morning, I asked
a spokesman for PhRMA about its involvement in the TVC's campaign and
got this answer: "Unfortunately we have an ironclad rule and we don't
discuss strategy." This afternoon, the spokesman called back. "Because
this is such an important issue. . . we are breaking our ironclad strategy."
He said that "many individuals" had asked PhRMA whether the
importation bill would allow RU-486 in. "So we wrote a legal memorandum
that the answer is unquestionably yes. And we have supplied that memorandum
to people who have asked the question."
Did the memorandum
make clear that PhRMA was its source? The spokesman did not know. Were
the "many individuals" who requested and received the information
lobbyists paid by PhRMA, or employees of organizations paid by PhRMA?
"I think this is as far as we want to take it because we do have
an ironclad rule that we do not discuss strategy."
The TVC has sent
out several documents under its letterhead on the alleged link between
RU-486 and the importation bill. Because the documents were e-mailed as
Word documents, it was possible to discover their authors by looking at
their "Properties" (under the File menu). It turns out that
a set of TVC's talking points was written by a PhRMA lawyer, and a TVC
letter to congressmen by a PhRMA lobbyist.
The TVC is not letting
up. Today, it sent an "alert" to its supporters on the bill.
It refers to the controversy obliquely: "Now some members of Congress
are in denial because they are embarrassed that they have signed on to
a destructive bill which would open the floodgates for RU-486 and other
harmful drugs to enter America. For example, the FDA's ban on purchasing
RU-486 on the internet will be history if [the importation bill] passes.
Any 14 year-old with her Dad's or Mom's credit card is in business when
it comes to buying RU-486." No expert who is not directly or indirectly
on PhRMA's payroll, or strongly suspected of being on it, believes these
claims.
The TVC's alert does
not mention its relationship to PhRMA.
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