CAUGHT SHILLING FOR THE DRUG WAR, POLLSTER ATTACKS THE MESSENGER

Writing in The Hill, pollster Mark Mellman took me to the
cyber-woodshed yesterday, claiming that my post referencing his work
on a 1999 poll commissioned by defense contractor Lockheed Martin
provided an "inaccurate rendition of it" and reveals my
"schizophrenic" relationship with polls.

I beg to differ.

To get the whole story, read my original April 2000 column on the
commissioned poll -- but, in short, I wrote about how Lockheed Martin
had hired Mellman to conduct a poll that, lo and behold, just happened
to find that 56 percent of Americans (or at least the 800 Mellman was
able to keep from hanging up on him when he called) would support a $2
billion increase in funding for "tracking planes to be flown in drug
producing areas" -- a finding that helped provide cover for the
Clinton White House's proposal to send $1.3 billion in drug war money
to the human-rights-challenged government of Colombia.

According to Mellman, that wasn't the case. At all. Mellman claims
that Lockheed didn't hire him to further its economic interests and
get a chunk of drug war cash. No, it hired him to produce "a serious
study on the underexplored subject of drug policy." Very noble of Lockheed.

He castigates me for assuming "the question was tailor-made to serve
the client's interest. In fact, the opposite was true -- I insisted on
including the item, fearing that whatever support people might express
for interdiction in general might evaporate at the thought of vast
spending on airplanes." Yes, I'm sure that's exactly what happened.
Lockheed, the maker of P-3 radar planes used to track drug smugglers,
and a company that had been lobbying hard for more money for drug
interdiction efforts, was actually all about that "serious study" and
it was Mellman who "insisted" on asking voters about coughing up $2
billion for planes, lest their support for interdiction evaporate upon
seeing the ten-figure price tag.

But earlier in his piece, Mellman says that he was "personally
chagrined" that people favored interdiction efforts over policies that
favored treatment. So since he personally favored treatment why did he
"fear" that voters might turn off to interdiction (cutting off supply)
when they discovered that it is a far, far less cost-effective
approach than treatment (lowering demand)? Did someone say
"schizophrenic"? Or would it be fair to suggest that he "feared" his
deep-pocketed client might not like getting such a response?

Towards the end of his piece, Mellman delivers what he thinks is his
"Gotcha!" knockout punch, claiming "the airplanes weren't for
Colombia" at all. "They were for the U.S. -- a fact clearly stated in
the question .. And what of the tie between the poll and the lurid
tale of billions for drug wars in Colombia's jungles? Oops. There was
none. The poll was all about U.S. interdiction efforts."

Really? Let's review the finding of Mellman's study: 56 percent of his
polling sample would support $2 billion being spent on "tracking
planes to be flown in drug-producing areas." [emphasis mine].
"Drug-producing areas." Where exactly were the "drug producing areas"
in America the tracking planes were to be flown in, Mark -- Nebraska
and Wyoming?

And I was not the only one who made the Colombia connection.
Newsweek's Michael Isikoff and Gregory Vistica (along with Steven
Ambrus in Bogota), who first uncovered that Mellman's drug poll had
been commissioned by Lockheed Martin, connected the same dots,
reporting that the Lockheed-funded poll "prodded Clinton into action"
on his Colombian drug war aid package, after Mellman warned that drugs
were "an Achilles heel" for Democrats in the upcoming election. Oops.

Mellman wraps up his piece with this zippy zinger: "I don't expect a
correction from Arianna, though. As we've learned in our word-of-mouth
studies, exciting stories are much more fun than simple truths."

Especially when the "exciting stories" are spun by someone trying to
rewrite history -- and the "simple truths" are both embarrassing and a
tad sleazy, and leave one feeling more than a little personally chagrined.