In
1990, freelance writer Janice Potker wrote an 11,000 word profile on
Irvin Feld, the flamboyant businessman who rose from poverty to become
the owner of Ringling Brothers-Barnum & Bailey Circus. Feld had
died six years earlier and the circus was passed on to his son, Ken. A
flurry of lawsuits has since exposed a sordid plot by Ken Feld, who
hired former CIA agents to spy on Potker and two leading animal rights
organizations.
The story was uncovered by Jeff Stein and posted online in Salon magazine [http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2001/08/30/circus].
According to Stein, the plot began after Ken Feld read the part of
Potker’s article alluding to his father’s alleged homosexual
relationships. “Get dirt on her,” Feld reportedly demanded. “Spread
rumors. Throw dirt.” Feld and his associates discussed hiring “a
bodybuilder type” to seduce Potker and destroy her marriage.
Feld financed “Operation Preempt,” a covert campaign to prevent
Potker from publishing a book that would expand on her Ringling
revelations. The man hired to run the operation was none other than
Clair E. George, a former CIA deputy director for operations. “I was
responsible for the CIA’s covert operations worldwide,” George stated
in a court deposition. He also admitted that he had been “a paid
consultant to Feld Entertainment and its affiliates on international
issues.”
Over the next eight years, George said, he “undertook a series of
efforts to find out what Potker was doing” and reported his findings to
Ken Feld. In addition, George revealed: “I was assigned to make
arrangements with a publishing house to publish a book by Potker on
another subject to divert her from her proposed book on [Irvin] Feld.”
George also oversaw the work of another Feld spy team that was tasked
with countering “the activities of various animal rights groups.”
In 1993, George dispatched Robert Eringer, a freelance author with
ties to the CIA, to befriend Potker. Professing interest in furthering
her career, Eringer became Potker’s mentor, confidant and “editor.”
Eringer’s actual mission, as he noted in a memo to Feld, was to use his
position “to monitor her work closely and… collect intelligence on
her sources.”
Eringer pressured Potker to spend her time writing a different
book exposing the Mars candy family. Eringer boasted to Feld that
Potker’s “enthusiasm for exposing Ringling Bros. has been redirected to
exposing others.” Until she discovered the information in court papers,
Potker never suspected that the $25,000 advance she received for the
Mars exposé had actually been paid by Ringling Bros.’ Ken Feld.
Potker wasn’t the only target of Ringling’s spooks. In 1989,
Feld’s security team hired two agents, Julie Lewis and Douglas Martin,
to infiltrate the Performing Animal Welfare Society (PAWS). For three
years, the spies used their access to steal “thousands of pages” of
internal PAWS documents, including donor lists that they forwarded to
PAWS’ conservative opponent, Putting People First. Feld agent Julie
Lewis became such a trusted aide that she sat at PAWS director Pat
Derby’s side when Derby testified before Congress on animal rights
legislation.
In June 2000, PAWS sued Feld and Ringling charging that Martin had
tried to persuade PAWS secretary Edward Allen Stewart “to commit an
illegal act involving the theft of Ringling Bros. animals.” Feld paid
PAWS an undisclosed sum to settle out of court.
In 1999, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA)
publicized a government report that Ringling was mistreating elephants
at its Center for Elephant Conservation in Florida.
Joel Kaplan, a wiretap artist hired by Feld’s security apparatus,
testified that the team’s “major assignment… was to try to destroy
People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals.” Kaplan suggested that the
campaign against the animal rights group involved spying, break-ins,
surveillance and dirty tricks.
Kaplan also volunteered the information that circus life behind
the tents was rife with drugs, sexual assaults and disease (“about half
of the elephants in each of the shows had tuberculosis”).
In May 2001, PETA took action against Feld with a lawsuit that is still pending.
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