Inside the spectacular fall of the granddaddy of right-wing conspiracy
sites
By Manuel Roig-Franzia
April 2, 2019 at 1:26 p.m. EDT
(Peter Strain/For The Washington Post)
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In the feverish heyday of the �birther movement,� conspiracy-hungry
readers swarmed to a website called WorldNetDaily for the latest on the
specious yet viral theory that President Barack Obama was not born in the
United States.
The site�s founder, Joseph Farah � a former newspaperman with a dense,
jet-black mustache and a cloak-and-dagger mystique � boasted in 2010 that
he was well on the way to generating $10 million a year in revenue. His
Northern Virginia-headquartered news site, known by the acronym WND, was
having its moment by stoking rumors about Obama.
But Farah � a conservative Internet pioneer who�d once been labeled by
the Clinton White House as part of a right-wing media conspiracy and was
known to sport a pistol on his hip in the office�saw bigger things. Years
earlier he�d launched one of the first large-scale digital newsgathering
operations; now he wanted to be a player in Christian-themed movies and
book publishing, churning out titles by big-name conservatives, such as
anti-feminist Phyllis Schlafly and future House Intelligence Committee
chairman Devin Nunes (R-Calif.).
He was building an empire.
A decade later, that realm is being sucked into a tornado of unpaid
bills, pink-slipped employees, chaotic accounting, declining revenue and
diminishing readership, according to interviews with more than 25 former
employees, shareholders, company insiders and authors associated with the
firm's flailing publishing units, as well as a review of hundreds of
internal documents, including emails and financial statements obtained by
The Washington Post.
Even though Farah claimed in WND columns and emails to supporters last
year to receive hundreds of thousands of dollars in donations �including
tax-deductible contributions � some former employees and contractors have
been laid off or had their deals canceled without being paid money they
say they were owed. Many authors who signed on with the site�s publishing
arm, including former Republican senator Tom Coburn of Oklahoma, are
fuming about allegedly not receiving royalties owed to them.
Coburn recalled in an interview that he had a �very frank and disturbing�
conversation last year with Farah about unpaid royalties for his 2017
book, �Smashing the D.C. Monopoly.�
�I accused him of not being honest,� Coburn said. �He doesn�t keep his
commitments. He doesn�t keep his word.�
Other authors, initially attracted to WND by the image Farah crafted for
himself as a devout evangelical Christian, have groused that they paid
WND�s pay-to-publish division thousands of dollars to have their books
printed but haven�t received the royalties they were promised or other
items, such as audio versions of their works. Their complaints, requests
for basic accounting statements and pleas for help were largely ignored,
according to emails and interviews with more than a dozen authors.
Reached by phone last week, Farah�s wife, Elizabeth � the site�s co-
founder with her husband � declined to discuss the accusations in detail,
but added that �the angst of a former employee does not impress me as to
the legitimacy of complaints.�
Joseph Farah, publisher WorldNetDaily, in a 2007 photo taken at the
Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC). (WENN Rights Ltd/Alamy
Stock Photo)
�It�s a he-said, she-said,� Elizabeth Farah said.
Less than two hours after she was contacted by The Washington Post, WND
posted a story saying Joseph Farah had recently suffered a serious,
previously undisclosed stroke.
Once a niche juggernaut with a devoted following and dozens of employees,
WND has undergone a dramatic transformation. The site has left behind its
upscale offices in Chantilly, Va., and now operates remotely via a small
group of staffers scattered around the country. Farah wrote in a WND
column in January that most of his staff is gone.
�We are struggling to survive,� he wrote.
For months, Farah has blamed his site�s troubles on a supposed cabal of
powerful technology companies that he believes are suppressing traffic to
WND and other conservative sites. He recently wrote that his company has
lost 80 percent of its revenue since 2017 and has stopped publishing new
books and making movies.
�There has never been a force like the combined power of Google,
Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, Amazon and Apple in the world before � at
least not since the Tower of Babel,� Farah wrote in a column earlier this
year. �I�m talking about real �collusion� � and having nothing to do with
Russia.�
(Amazon chief executive Jeffrey P. Bezos owns The Washington Post.)
But interviews and documents show an organization that existed in almost
constant crisis mode, chronically late in paying its employees and
vendors, and wrestling with internal allegations about questionable
spending by its founders and claims they were withholding information
from the company�s board and using company funds to support a comfortable
lifestyle in the Washington suburbs.
�Where did the hundreds of thousands of dollars raised by WND in 2018
from readers and other donors go?� said Felicia Dionisio, a longtime WND
news writer and editor who ran the books division before being laid off
last year. �It didn�t go toward author royalties, it didn�t go toward
rehiring any of the many loyal employees who were laid off, it didn�t go
toward providing accurate and timely paychecks, and it didn�t go toward
making those who suffered due to cutbacks at WND whole.�
Founding 'the compound'
In the pre-Internet era, Joseph Farah was a mainstream newsman, serving
as executive news editor of the Los Angeles Herald Examiner, a major
daily that competed with the much larger Los Angeles Times before
shuttering in 1989.
Later, as editor of the conservative Sacramento Union, he irked some
staffers by taking a pointedly antiabortion stance. He made headlines by
defending a decision by the paper�s publisher to ban advertisements for
movies rated NC-17.
�NC-17 films are nothing more than X-rated films with a polite new name,�
Farah told United Press International in 1990.
Farah�s tenure at the Union was less than two years. Unmoored from the
executive suite, he had a fallback. He wrote punchy columns � a chain-
smoking dynamo whose colleagues marveled at how fast he could spin out
prose.
Farah was known for his promotion of the theory that deputy White House
counsel Vincent Foster might have been the victim of foul play rather
than suicide. He founded a nonprofit called the Western Journalism
Center, then a for-profit venture, WorldNetDaily.
Farah�s new outfit seemed to some investors like a potential moneymaking
Internet play. At a time when traditional news operations were struggling
to grasp the power of the Internet, Farah was ahead of almost everyone,
carving a path occupied by few others beyond Matt Drudge.
Farah, now in his mid-60s, and his wife took an unusual route to cyber-
success. They leased a 250-acre ranch in a stretch of rural southern
Oregon known as �the imaginary state of Jefferson,� according to Farah�s
book �Stop the Presses!� They invited staffers to move there with them
and called their ranch, with its cabins converted into offices, �the
compound.� The Farahs lived across the road in a log cabin.
Farah was the face of the site. In 2000, he beat the world to the story
of Jane Fonda becoming a born-again Christian. He�s since described Fonda
as a �whacked-out traitor� for her anti-Vietnam War activism. He wrote in
his book that he�d served as a bodyguard for Fonda during a peace
campaign tour in 1972; in those days he, too, was a Vietnam War
protester.
A few years after the Oregon move, the Farahs decided to relocate to the
Washington area. It was a place he called �the belly of the beast.�
'Huge red flag'
Farah�s scoops and his site�s Clinton bashing attracted investors who
shared his philosophy. But his spending habits, and those of his wife,
were setting off alarm bells among some insiders who considered the
couple reckless and undisciplined, according to interviews and internal
documents obtained by The Post.
As the firm�s 10th anniversary approached, the Farahs planned a splashy
celebration. They signed a contract with the Washington Hilton in 2006
but were saddled with huge cancellation and other costs when they were
unable to generate enough interest to pull it off, according to an
internal memo. Executives turned to a wealthy donor to cover the costs.
�We needed 200,000+ to bail out the Hilton 10th Anniversary snafu,� the
memo said.
In 2008, Farah bought a book publishing firm, World Ahead Media, which
took the name WND Books. In the years to come, he would also launch a
filmmaking operation, complete with high-tech studios in Chantilly, and
host a film festival.
�They ran off in more than one direction,� said a shareholder and former
board member on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal company
matters. �The spending control was less than ideal.�
A change in corporate structure had stripped minority shareholders of
much power, which was further concentrated in the hands of the Farahs,
according to one internal document. Some complained that Farah needed to
be more transparent about how much he and the rest of his family were
being paid, according to emails and interviews.
The shareholders said they wanted Farah to focus on his core business:
the website, which was drawing up to 4 million unique visitors a month.
Obama�s election had given Farah the perfect foil: In 2009, the site dug
in on the birther theory, publishing hundreds of a rticles pushing the
notion that Obama�s birth certificate was questionable. PolitiFact dubbed
WND �the conductor of the Birther train.�
Attendees listen to speaker Joseph Farah at the National Tea Party
Convention in 2010 in Nashville. (Melina Mara/The Washington Post)
Then and now, Farah has attracted well-known figures to write for the
site, including Jerome Corsi, who wrote a book questioning Obama�s
eligibility to be president and is a key witness in the special counsel
probe of Russian interference in the 2016 election; and evangelical
Christian leader James Dobson. His daughter, Alyssa Farah � Vice
President Pence�s press secretary � wrote for WND briefly in 2013 and
2014.
Farah cultivated a secretive persona. He refused to meet at his office
for a 2010 interview with the Los Angeles Times, only agreeing to sit
down at a Starbucks in Virginia if the name of the town wasn�t given.
Inside the operation, troubles were percolating. A high-ranking executive
had been raising concerns about Elizabeth Farah�s spending on a company
credit card, citing charges made to a wine shop, a clothing store, a
cosmetics seller and a company that supplies materials for home-
schooling, according to an internal memo obtained by The Post that lists
each charge.
�How are these specifically work related?� an internal April 2012 memo
states. �Optically, these types of expenses look bad, especially when the
company is upside down in terms of cash flow and accounts payable.�
�Huge red flag,� the memo says.
In spring 2015, Floyd Brown, an Internet entrepreneur who served on WND�s
board, traveled to Missouri to tour the warehouse that shipped books and
other materials sold in WND�s online store, which still sells items
including survivalist gear, such as water filtration straws and �Russian
gas masks.�
He found pallets of unsold materials.
�Inventory is a stone around your neck,� Brown wrote in an email to a top
WND executive. �You need to increase your writedowns so the board
actually knows how that division is doing.�
When Joseph Farah found out about the trip, he sent an email to the
company executive who arranged it, accusing him of an �inexcusable breach
of confidence.�
�There is nothing materially new in the condition of the company�s
finances that would require alerting the board,� Farah wrote. �We have
been consistently behind on payables and obligations for years.�
Brown confirmed the substance of the exchange with Farah but added, �I
have the greatest respect and admiration for Joseph Farah and what he has
done at WND.com.�
'It's been a downhill ride'
In early 2017, an email landed in the inbox of the husband of a stay-at-
home mother of three in Wisconsin.
It was just what Diane Anthony thought she needed.
She�d been working on a novel titled �Supernova� about a worldwide
calamity that killed hordes of people but gave superpowers to the
survivors. The email offered a deal: World Ahead Press, a publishing arm
of WND, would publish her book for a fee, promote it for her and give her
a share of sales proceeds.
Anthony sifted through the different publishing options, each with a
different price tag attached.
�We thought that if we�re helping our fellow Christians, that seems like
a good road to go down,� she said in a recent interview. �We went for the
most expensive package.�
It cost $9,999.
At points scattered across the country, others reached the same
conclusion: They could trust WND because of its Christian values. In
Florida, Patricia Feijo dug into her dwindling savings for $9,999 to tell
her version of her husband�s imprisonment for promoting unapproved cancer
treatments through their ministry, Daniel Chapter One, in a book titled
�Called to Stand: How a Small Christian Ministry Courageously Stood Up to
Government Tyranny.�
In Virginia, Rita Dunaway � a lawyer who contributed columns to WND �
struck a more traditional publishing deal, in which she would receive
royalties but not have to pay for publication.
Each of the women would have their expectations shattered. Calls and
emails went unreturned. Anthony and Feijo said they hadn�t gotten
audiobooks they�d been promised. Dunaway felt she was getting excuses
about the months-long delay in publishing her book.
By January 2018, they got a clearer picture of what was happening. Joseph
Farah wrote a column outlining WND�s financial woes and saying his
company faced an �existential threat.�
�It pains me to tell you that many loyal WND staffers are working without
salary to pull us through a crisis,� he wrote. �I�m asking for the help
of those who recognize the unique role WND plays in reaching the God-
fearing audience that, like us, supports limited government, national
sovereignty and the traditional Judeo-Christian values that made America
truly great.�
Within a few days of his January call for help, he announced that he�d
raised $100,000. By March he�d announced that $200,000 had been raised in
a column headlined �Mission accomplished! Operation �Save WND�
successful.�
But before the month was out, payroll was late again, according to an
email Farah sent to staff. His wife notified the staff that dental and
vision insurance had been cut off. As the crisis worsened, Dunaway found
another publisher for her book �Restoring America�s Soul: Advancing
Timeless Conservative Principles in a Wayward Culture.� But not before
telling Farah by email that �I really am at a loss to understand this
kind of treatment at the hands of someone I considered to be a brother in
Christ.�
WND had a variety of publishing arrangements. Some of the better-known
figures such as Coburn did not pay to have their books printed. Instead,
they were promised royalties and in some cases received advances,
according to internal documents and interviews. Coburn, who says his
contract called for royalties but no advance, worked out a deal in which
WND sent him copies of his book in lieu of royalties that he said he was
owed.
�It�s been a downhill ride ever since it was published,� Coburn said.
�Everybody seems to have problems with them.�
'We're in crazytown now'
While his company was reeling, Farah kept coming up with new plans to
salvage it. In late 2018, he became entranced with bitcoin, the digital
currency.
In a staff meeting, according to Dionisio and another person who
participated, Farah outlined his plans to offer bitcoin to the public in
return for donations, and he suggested that employees get in on the deal.
�We couldn�t believe that here we were waiting for our paychecks and here
he is asking us to buy bitcoin,� Dionisio said. �We were like, �Oh my
gosh, we�re in crazytown now.� �
Bitcoin couldn�t save WND, either.
This month, Farah was once again asking for money and railing against the
tech companies he blames for his site�s troubles.

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