I don’t know whether Hewlett-Packard used its office in Dubai to transship items to Iran that could be used to build weapons of mass destruction. Point is, neither does the National Jewish Democratic Council. But that didn’t stop them from e-mailing me a press release that attempts to smear Republican presidential candidate John McCain through his chief economic advisor, Carly Fiorina, who headed HP 1999-2005. Here’s the release:

Senator John McCain’s Chief Economic Adviser, Carly Fiorina, was CEO of Hewlett-Packard (HP) when the company surreptitiously avoided the trade boycott of Iran. McCain, who recently urged further divestment from Iran, picked Fiorina to be his top adviser on the economy while she is also serving as head of the Republican National Committee Victory Fund. It was under Fiorina’s leadership as CEO that, according to an April 19, 2004, Forbes article titled “Trading With The Enemy,” HP traded with the Iranians.

Just don’t confuse me with the facts, please.

If you want to get around export controls, just sell the product to a front company in Dubai. The middlemen will take it from there … Hewlett-Packard, Dell and Microsoft, among many other U.S. companies, keep Dubai offices and are favorites these days among Iranian traders in Dubai. (Forbes, 4/19/04)

“The National Jewish Council (NJDC) has been arguing that we should judge candidates based on their voting records and public statements,” said Ira N. Forman, Executive Director of NJDC “However, McCain and his allies insist on using guilt by association when looking at Democratic candidates. If this is their standard, then we call on them to explain why McCain’s Chief Economic Adviser oversaw the evasion of the American laws prohibiting Iranian trade in her tenure as CEO of HP.”

The only mention of Hewlett-Packard in the article was excerpted above. Here’s the entire paragraph:

Halliburton is far from the only brand that shows up in Tehran. Hewlett-Packard, Dell and Microsoft, among many other U.S. companies, keep Dubai offices and are favorites these days among Iranian traders in Dubai. Reason? Strong demand for “anything high tech for military or oil services,” says Bolurfrushan of the Iranian Business Council. “In compliance with U.S. trade laws, it is Microsoft’s policy to not sell products to Iran from any of its offices,” says a spokeswoman for the software colossus. (Dell says it follows export controls, too.) To curtail the proliferations, the Department of Commerce is strengthening its regulation that punishes U.S. companies that send goods and know — or have reason to know — those goods could contribute to weapons of mass destruction.

The article insinuates a lot, but, like the NJDC press release, doesn’t prove a thing. But did that stop National Jewish Democratic Council’s Ira Forman from calling on McCain to explain something that is merely an allegation or just an insinuation or maybe not even that?

Where did this swiftboat distortion come from? Virtually the exact quote from the Forbes article can be found on McCainSource.com, run by Progressive Media USA, which was described this way in a story about 527 political influence groups on National Public Radio:

… a 501(c)4 called Progressive Media USA initially said it would spend $40 million bashing McCain on television. But now, a well-connected Democratic strategist says the group can’t raise enough money. Progressive Media’s head, David Brock, didn’t respond to NPR’s interview requests over several weeks.

Now I’m not a fan of John McCain, and I don’t want to see him become president, but I’m even less of a fan of swiftboating, regardless of the target, and this is just another example of that. Nowhere in the Forbes article did it say that Hewlett-Packard definitely traded with Iran, but how many people are going to read the whole four-year-old article to come to that conclusion?

Right, it’s much easier to read the National Jewish Democratic Council’s three-paragraph press release and let them draw your conclusions for you. Just don’t confuse me with the facts, please.

If this is an attempt to swiftboat John McCain, it’s a lame one indeed. But it’s relatively early in the campaign still, and maybe these 527 organizations are just testing the water, experimenting with malicious messages to track how much penetration they can get before they unleash a really significant — or more likely salacious — pack of partial truths or outright lies.

Hey, and let’s see if both John McCain and Barack Obama stick by what they’ve said and actively discourage the 527s from running negative campaigns.

Yeah, right, tell that one to Ira Forman, he’ll believe anything.