Last week I called the Press contact for what is supposedly a combined FTC/FDA project calling itself “Operation Cure-All” and asked some basic journalistic questions, like; “Where are the offices of “Operation Cure-All? Who is the Director? If it has a committee, when does it meet? Can I get a copy of it’s mission statement? How is it funded? How many employees does it have? What’s the phone number? Who decides what companies get targeted?”
Opinion by Consumer Advocate Tim Bolen
After all, if you look on the internet on the Federal Trade Commission’s (FTC) web page, it certainly appears that “Operation Cure-All” is a re-incarnation of Elliot Ness’s assault on Al Capone in the 1920s…
Guess what the Press contact told me?
She, Glenda Mack, referred me to the General Counsel of the FTC, and indicated I would have to put my request in writing…
I’ve been around journalism a very long time, and I have to tell you – when an agency refers a journalist to their legal counsel it’s “cover-up” time. Everybody in journalism knows that. It’s a big red flag to a reporter. It’s the same as saying outright “you’ve caught us in a scam and we’re going into a defensive mode, and we’re going to hide the information from you as long as we can. Our lawyer will give you as much dis-information as we can possibly feed you…”
A legitimate government project can easily, and readily, answer each and every of my questions asked above. The reason, I suspect, that I was referred to the General Counsel is to give the FTC time to make something up that sounds plausible.
The reality of “Operation Cure-All” is, I believe, that it has NO offices, there is NO director, there is NO committee that meets, it has NO mission statement, there is NO phone number, and there is NO objective process to select who gets targeted… No accountability…
So-o-o-o… If it doesn’t have offices, a director, a committee, a phone number, etc., how is it issuing press releases about it’s accomplishments?
Hmmmm?
There’s a bad smell in the air.
Stay tuned…
Tim Bolen – Consumer Advocate