George Harleigh – Fake But Accurate Critic Of President Bush?

Most everyone is familar with the ‘fake but accurate’ memos about Bush’s National Guard service that were circulated by CBS, Democrats and others prior to the 2004 elections. In addition there has been serveral cases of what is called ‘sock puppets’ where leftists columnists and bloggers have posted comments under aliases that supporting their positions and castigating commentors and bloggers that have differing views.
Apparently not satisfied with those deceptions, the left has now taken to posting the quotes of fictious personalities slandering the character of president Bush. Such a made-up personality appears to be that of George Harleigh who is alleged to be a retired professor from Southern Illinoiis University and who allegedly worked in both the Nixon and Reagan administrations.
The first quotes from Harleigh appeared in Capital Hill Blue blog in 1999 with subsequent quotes posted over the past 6 years. Of course, these slanderous quotes have been picked up and repeated by most of the leftist blogs.
Recently Classic Values tried to check the bonafides of Mr. Harleigh and has come up empty, not only as to bonafides but also as to Harleigh’s actual existence. Now other bloggers are also getting in the search for Harleigh and so far have the same negative result. What is particularly damning is that Capital Hlll Blue is attempting to purge any and all mention of George Harleigh from its previous posts.
From Tacticus:

I just love a good mystery, and Eric Scheie at Classical Values has almost too much fun tracking down the identity of oft-quoted George Harleigh, said to be a retired political science professor from Southern Illinois University. Problem is, there is no evidence that the man exists. The “reporter” who used Mr. Harleigh as a source is Doug Thompson from Capitol Hill Blue. Interestingly, Thompson has been furiously trying to wipe all references of Harleigh from his website, but there remain caches where Harleigh’s name still lives.

Consistent with the premise that a lie repeated often enough becomes the truth and that any form of faked legitimacy adds weight to the lie, there are those Bush haters that will go to any measure to promote their slander and falsities.
Classic Values Where’s George? makes for a fascinating read. Check it out.
UPDATE:
Here is a post from Capital Hill Blues fessing up to the deception, sort of.

Recently, we received an inquiry from Southern Illinois University saying they were trying to locate the “George Harleigh” who claimed to have taught at their institution but said they did not have any record of a “George Harleigh” or even a “Harleigh” ever teaching at the university’s campuses in Carbondale or Edwardsville, Illinois. That inquiry led us to investigate further. We talked with other web sites that have used quotes from the same source and all, like us, received the quotes in an email newsletter format. The newsletter email currently traced back to a qmail account. We also posted inquiries on bulletin boards and other blogs. When we received today’s newsletter we immediately mailed back and asked for additional information. We did not receive an answer and followup emails bounced back as undeliverable.

Here is the expected ‘fake but accurate’ statement which almost makes one doubt their sincerity:

This raised enough questions in our minds to remove any quotes by or references to Mr. Harleigh from the 83 stories, including one published today. None of the stories originated from information supplied by him and, in no case, were his comments the central focus of the story, so we did not feel the need to remove any stories or mofidy their original intent so they remain in our archives without the quotes from “Harleigh.”