WTO: `Long and Winding Cyberhoax: Political Theater

["mailijst" <mailijst@dds.nl>]

From:           	kees@stad.xs4all.nl (kees/ventana)

New York Times
January 7, 2001

The Long and Winding Cyberhoax: Political Theater on the Web

By THE NEW YORK TIMES

IT'S well known that some regions of cyberspace Internet chat rooms,
for  instance  are rife with poseurs and imaginary characters. But the
World   Wide  Web  is  also  a  breeding  ground  for  more  elaborate
deceptions,  as  demonstrated  by  the following cautionary tale about
gall and gullibility in the information age.

The  story  begins with www.gatt.org, which looks at first glance like
an   official   Web   site   of  the  World  Trade  Organization,  the
five-year-old  Switzerland-based  successor  to  the organization that
oversaw  the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade. Unfortunately for
the  organizers  of an October legal seminar on international trade in
Salzburg,  Austria,  a  glance was all they gave it before clicking on
the  "contact"  link  and sending a speaking invitation to Mike Moore,
the W.T.O.'s director-general.

Big mistake: it turns out the site is run by the Yes Men, a loose-knit
group  of  anti-free-trade activists that views hoaxes as a legitimate
weapon of protest.

Excerpts  of what transpired follow, culled from e-mail correspondence
and faxes posted at www.theyesmen.org/wto.

BARNABY J. FEDER

  *

It  didn't  take  long for the Yes Men to accept the invitation in Mr.
Moore's name, with a caveat:

Thank you for your kind invitation.

I  may not be able to attend personally, but I would like very much to
send  a  substitute.  Would this be possible? Please let me know and I
will begin the search process.

Thank you,

Mike Moore

The director of the seminar's sponsor was happy to oblige:

Dear Mr. Moore:

Michael  Devine  advises  me  that  you wish to send a staff member to
speak at the 26-29 October conference in Salzburg.

If  you will confirm name of the individual and contact information, I
will have further information sent.

Regards, Dennis Campbell

Center for International Legal Studies

At  this  point,  Charles Cushen, a computer programmer in Los Angeles
who  had been masquerading as Mr. Moore and "Alice Foley," Mr. Moore's
secretary,  created  Andreas  Bichlbauer  (choosing the name at random
from  a  Vienna  phone  book),  and  made  travel arrangements for Dr.
Bichlbauer  and  two  "security  agents,"  including  a cameraman. Dr.
Bichlbauer  raised  eyebrows with his speech, titled "Trade Regulation
Relaxation   and   Concepts   of  Incremental  Improvement:  Governing
Perspectives from 1970 to the Present":

Dear Ms. Foley:

We  were  somewhat  puzzled  by  Dr. Bichlbauer's participation at the
conference. . . .

The essential thrust of his speech appeared to be that Italians have a
lesser  work  ethic than the Dutch, that Americans would be better off
auctioning  their  votes  in  the presidential election to the highest
bidder  and  that  the  primary  role  of  the  W.T.O. was to create a
one-world culture.

In  the  late  afternoon, a cameraman (I think it was the same one who
filmed  Dr.  Bichlbauer's  speech) appeared at the hotel and sought to
interview  our  delegates.  He said Dr. Bichlbauer had been hit in the
face  with a pie outside the hotel and wanted to know if the delegates
thought Dr. Bichlbauer's speech had provoked the attack. . . .

Several  of  our  delegates  (including  work-ethic impaired Italians)
approached  me  to  express  concern about the speech, the alleged pie
incident   and  the  cameraman  who  sought  interviews  in  the  late
afternoon.

Your clarification will be appreciated.

Regards, Dennis Campbell

Alice Foley's immediate reply:

Indeed  you  are  correct,  Dr.  Bichlbauer  was  in fact "pied" after
speaking  at  the  Salzburg C.I.L.S. conference. At present we are not
completely  certain  of  all  the  details,  but  it  appears that the
cameraman  you  mention  had  something  to  do  with  it.  . . . This
cameraman  .  .  . seems to have essentially been an agent provocateur
who planned the pieing from the start. . . .

We  hope  you understand that this sort of incident reflects primarily
the  unfortunate  circumstances under which the W.T.O. must accomplish
its  work, and that our security can never be entirely adequate to the
situations we face.

After  another  message  from Mr. Campbell in which he reiterated that
some  delegates  found Dr. Bichlbauer's remarks offensive or flippant,
the doctor offered his side of the story:

I  was  disappointed  to hear from Alice Foley that some people in the
audience  on  Saturday disliked my lecture. . . . Those who were upset
by  the lecture were clearly unreceptive to any message departing from
the simple W.T.O. "party line" as it is presented in larger arenas. At
this  conference  we  hoped  to  examine  this  "party  line"  through
repackaging  in  a  clearer and more carefully delineated fashion, for
the  sake  of more lucid examination and a greater awareness of "issue
extremes"  for use in more politic descriptions those intended for the
consumption of larger blocs of the consuming public. . . .

  *

Two  days later, hoping to elicit further response, Mr. Cushen slipped
again into his Mr. Moore persona:

Dear Professor Campbell:

I  was  dismayed  to  learn  of  your  unfortunate experience with our
representative,  Andreas  Bichlbauer.  . . . I will recommend that Dr.
Bichlbauer  be  required  to  attend  a  refresher  course  on  public
speaking,  communication  and policy before any further appearances on
behalf of the W.T.O. . . .

However, having examined the presentation exhaustively, I am forced to
conclude  that never in any particulars do Dr. Bichlbauer's statements
.  .  .  depart  from  the  spirit  if  not  the precise letter of our
intentions  and  aims.  That  is,  while  we of course do not advocate
vote-selling  or  siesta-banning at the present time, it is quite true
that  efficiency  and  the streamlining of culture and politics in the
interests  of  economic  liberalization is at the core of the W.T.O.'s
programme,  and  such  practices  as  described  by Dr. Bichlbauer are
useful in clarifying the long-range interests of global development as
promoted by our organization and others.

On Nov. 1, Alice Foley had more bad news for Professor Campbell:

The  situation  has,  I  regret  to say, somewhat deteriorated from an
already  unpleasant  state of affairs: Dr. Bichlbauer has contracted a
rather  serious  infection from the pie, which forensic analysis shows
contained  an  active  bacillus  agent. It is not certain whether foul
play  was  involved. . . . I know that this question will sound harsh,
but  could  any  of  the lawyers present have been angry enough at Dr.
Bichlbauer's lecture to do this? . . .

On Nov. 6, using addresses collected in Salzburg, Alice Foley e-mailed
six  conference  participants with the message that Dr. Bichlbauer was
near death from his infection and concluding:

Please, please let us know if anything at the conference struck you as
strange,  or  if you can imagine anyone performing this masterpiece of
cowardice,  that  so threatens to delete Dr. Bichlbauer from our midst
in the prime of his usefulness.

A similar e-mail message sent two weeks later to 77 delegates elicited
a  range of responses, most indicating that the insult to Italian work
habits  had  made  the  biggest impression. Dr. Bichlbauer's death was
announced  via  e-mail on Nov. 27. The legal center's response on Nov.
29  provided  the first clear sign that it finally recognized the hoax
and  asked  the  Yes  Men  to  "let  it  rest." Alice Foley issued the
following pseudo-clarification to the delegates:

Those who found Dr. Bichlbauer's talk "peculiar," "puzzling" and so on
were  alert  to  a  situation  that  has  only now become clear to our
overcentralized  eyes:  Dr.  Bichlbauer was an impostor! . . . He, his
"security guard" and his "cameraman" . . . belong, it turns out, to an
anti-trade  cabal  called  "The  Yes Men," whose interests run exactly
counter to our own, and who will stoop to any level whatsoever to make
points.  (The  point  they were attempting to make with this trickery,
according  to  the  handwritten  letter  which  we  received  by  this
morning's  post,  had  something  to  do  with  "corporate  power" and
"democracy,"  though  the  syntax  and  handwriting of the letter are,
truth  be  told,  too execrable to make much of. . . . It is of course
extremely embarrassing to us that we can have been conned, like common
dowagers, in this way. . . .

  *

Postscript:   A  W.T.O.  spokesman  said  last  week  that  while  his
organization  deplored  the Yes Men's deceptive Web site and the hoax,
it respects the nature of the Internet as a forum for free expression.
Mr.  Cushen  said "Mr. Moore" had recently received an invitation to a
textile  conference in Finland and that his group was hoping to scrape
together  the  money needed to send a successor to Dr. Bichlbauer. "We
think the ethical thing to do is to represent the W.T.O. more honestly
than they represent themselves," he said.

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