Did presumptive Democratic Presidential nominee Sen. Barack Obama’s campaign plant a fake story accusing itself of campaign finance irregularities, in order to portray itself as victims of right-wing allegations about the campaign’s successful Internet fund-raising?

In a July 8 2008-article "Bogus Dowd Column spreads quickly" PolitiFact, a project of the St. Petersburg Times and Congressional Quarterly, reported that blogs and chain e-mails were spreading a Maureen Dowd New York Times column that claims the Obama campaign got suspicious contributions from Iran, Saudi Arabia and China. "But the column is a fake," reports PolitiFact. The New York Times also disowned the Dowd column as a fake.

According to PolitiFact, "It's not clear who wrote the column. One of the early appearances of the column was when it was posted June 29 on a blog on AZCentral, the Arizona Republic newspaper site, by someone identified as Thomas Moore." The post appeared Sunday, June 29, 2008 at 07:38 P.M.. The blog biography depicts Moore as "a retired journalist/technical writer/illustrator" and an avowed Barry Goldwater fan.

PolitiFact then reports that another blogger, David Lane, a self-proclaimed Obama supporter, got into the fray challenging the authenticity of Moore’s blog entry. Lane’s comments appear on an Obama website sponsored "Community Blog." In fact, PolitiFact reported that on the morning of Monday, July 7, 2008, it found the fake Dowd column posted on only a few blogs, one being Obama’s own campaign blog, "Fight the Smears," under the headline "Maureen Dowd spoof spreads." The Obama campaign website naturally discredited the column. However, on the evening of July 7, 2008 the Dowd spoof column appeared on eight blogs, but by the following morning, it "had grown to at least 30 blogs."

That the Dowd column is a fake is without dispute. But who created this fake column attacking the Obama campaign? We suspect that the Obama itself is responsible for the fake column, planting it to appear as a post of a far-right blogger, in order to discredit the underlying allegations as nothing more than a GOP, right-wing conspiracy.

While the main stream media hasn’t caught on, most politically Internet savvy people are fully aware of "viral communications," the strategy of posting entries on blogs in favor or in opposition to a candidate or campaign. Viral communication is, in essence, the Internet version of an organized letter to the editor campaign.

But planting false stories in the midst of campaigns? First, such campaign tactics are not new. Thomas Jefferson planted scores of scandalous stories about John Adams.

However, the fake Maureen Dowd column has certain attributes which only persons intimately familiar with the Obama campaign would normally have privy to. The allegations in the fake Maureen Dowd story required the expertise of persons familiar with Internet technology. There are hundreds, indeed thousands of people who would have such IT expertise. But the allegations also require expertise of persons familiar with obscure provisions of Federal campaign finance regulations. Find me one person among the general public who would have intimate knowledge of Section 103.3(b) of Title 11 of the Code of Federal Regulations. It was this fake column’s inferences to a specific Federal Election Commission promulgated regulation that raised my suspicions.

Moreover, the appearance of the fake Maureen Dowd story rapidly materialized on the Obama website long before "it had feet" appearing on multiple web sites and blogs throughout the nation. How did an Obama campaign worker criticize the Moore posting and thereafter the Obama campaign post a response on its "Fight the Smears" website long before the spoof was circulated throughout the blogosphere?

Finally, it is politically savvy to insulate oneself against misconduct charges by dismissing such as merely the product of right-wing fanatics. Should a legitimate Republican entity make such allegations about Obama’s campaign finance misconduct, the Obama people can readily dismiss the attacks as the GOP following the rants of a conservative blogger. In most instances, the "mainstream" media will be disinclined to follow such a story because Obama has already stigmatized it as the product of a right-wing fringe conspiracy.

I know that at least two daily newspapers have investigative reporters working on this story. Whether someone inside the Obama campaign will have the honesty and integrity of becoming a Deep Throat to expose the Democrat’s campaign trickery remains an open question. But apparently, the age of dirty trickers and "plumbers" has materialized in a new form for a new medium, the Internet. Personally, I sense David Axelrod’s fingerprints all over this fake Maureen Dowd column. If this is what Obama means by "hope" and "change" then I’m terrified about the future of this campaign.