For Real

Ron Paul may be flying high in the Iowa polls, but his newsletters from the early 1990s continue to haunt him.

On Wednesday, the Republican presidential candidate stormed out of an interview with CNN when chief political analyst Gloria Borger pressed him on claims that he made disparaging comments about blacks and Jews, among other incendiary remarks found in the letters.

Though the newsletters were published under several names — including “Ron Paul’s Freedom Report,” “The Ron Paul Political Report,” “The Ron Paul Survival Report” and “The Ron Paul Investment Letter” — the Texas congressman has insisted that he knew nothing about the offensive remarks made in the newsletters.

“I didn’t write them, I didn’t read them at the time, and I disavow them,” he said before unclipping his microphone.

Paul did admit to making money from the newsletters that bore his name but he suggested that he didn’t pay any attention to what was written under his name on the newsletter masthead.

“I never read that stuff. I was probably aware of it 10 years after it was written, and it’s been going on 20 years that people have pestered me about this. CNN does it every single time. When are you going to wear yourself out?” he said.

And when Borger insisted, “These things are pretty incendiary,” Paul belittled their importance, saying: “Only because of people like you.”

The articles carried no bylines but often were written in the first person in newsletters using his name.

Among the hate-filled points made in the newsletters, which are alleged to have made Paul up to $1 million a year, were:

• Shooting is the best way to kill young blacks. “You should leave the scene immediately, disposing of the wiped-off gun as soon as possible. Such a gun cannot, of course, be registered to you, but one bought privately (through the classifieds for example)."
• Gangs of African-American girls were roaming the streets of New York in 1989 in a campaign to spread AIDS. “At least 39 white women have been stuck with used hypodermic needles — perhaps infected with AIDS,” the piece read. “Who can doubt that if the situation had been reversed, if white girls had done this to black women, we would have been subjected to a months-long nationwide propaganda campaign on the evils of white America?”
• The first attack on the World Trade Center could have been “a setup by the Israeli Mossad,” even after the first arrest had been made. “From my point of view, it’s hard to believe the perpetrators could be as stupid as the authorities maintain,” said an article in the April 1993 issue of “The Ron Paul Survival Report.”
• Order returned to the streets of Los Angeles after the 1992 riots only “when it came time for the blacks to pick up their welfare checks.”
• Martin Luther King was a “world-class philanderer who beat up his paramours” and “seduced underage girls and boys.” King even “made a pass at” fellow civil rights leader Ralph Abernathy.
• Martin Luther King Day was described as “our annual Hate Whitey Day,” and a short-lived campaign to rename New York City after King was ridiculed: “Welfaria,” “Zooville,” “Rapetown,” or “Lazyopolis” would be better names.
• Israel is “an aggressive, national socialist state.”
• Professors in Washington, D.C., were teaching that whites were committing genocide against blacks, and they had “invented crack and AIDS a part of The Plan.”
• Advice to anti-government militias issued just three months before the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing included suggestions such as, “Keep the group size down,” “Leave no clues,” “Avoid the phone as much as possible,” and “Don’t fire unless fired upon, but if they mean to have a war, let it begin here.”

The newsletters went out in the late 1980s and early 1990s at a time after Paul had decided to leave the House to return to work as an OB/GYN. He returned to the House in the 1996 election after 12 years away.