Jack Bonner

Last week, Jack Bonner blamed a "bad employee" for the fact that his lobbying firm had sent forged letters, purporting to be from local minority groups, urging a member of Congress to oppose climate change legislation. (It's since been revealed that Bonner's firm was working on behalf of the coal industry.) But a closer look suggests a culture at Bonner and Associates that makes such deception all but inevitable. As one former employee put it, at Bonner, distortion "was the norm rather than the exception." Internal Bonner documents obtained by TPMmuckraker, and interviews with former employees, shed light on the modus operandi of a firm that's known as the pioneer of astroturf lobbying -- that is, creating the illusion of grassroots support for corporate-backed positions, just as corporate-backed groups like Freedom Works are currently doing in their fight against health-care reform