Ron Paul the Conspiratorial

There is a story that has been growing for some time on Ron Paul and newsletters that were published under his name in the 80s and 90s.  The newsletters over that time contained such topics as "The Coming Race War" and, only three months before Waco, they offered advice to militia groups to "'Keep the group size down,' 'Keep quiet and you’re harder to find,' 'Leave no clues,' 'Avoid the phone as much as possible,' and 'Don’t fire unless fired upon, but if they mean to have a war, let it begin here.'"  James Kirchick has more in the coming edition of The Weekly Standard:

No conspiracy theory was too outlandish for Paul’s endorsement. One newsletter reported on the heretofore unknown phenomenon of “Needlin’,” in which “gangs of black girls between the ages of 12 and 14” roamed the streets of New York and injected white women with possibly HIV-infected syringes. Another newsletter warned that “the AIDS patient” should not be allowed to eat in restaurants because “AIDS can be transmitted by saliva,” a strange claim for a physician to make. 

Kirchick first reported on this story four years ago in The New Republic and this story has slowly been gaining traction since that time.  Here is Kirchick on Paul's somewhat close relationship with the conspiratorial Alex Jones:

In the four years since my article appeared, Paul has gone right on appearing regularly on the radio program of Alex Jones, the most popular conspiracy theorist in America (unless that distinction belongs to Paul himself). To understand Jones’s paranoid worldview, it helps to watch a recent documentary he produced, Endgame: Blueprint for Global Enslavement, which reveals the secret plot of George Pataki, David Rockefeller, and Queen Beatrix, among other luminaries, to exterminate humanity and transform themselves into “superhuman” computer hybrids able to “travel throughout the cosmos.” There is nothing Jones believes the American government isn’t capable of, from “[encouraging] homosexuality with chemicals so that people don’t have children” to blowing up the Space Shuttle Columbia, a “textbook psychological warfare operation.”

In a March 2009 interview, Paul entertained Jones’s claim that NORTHCOM, the U.S. military’s combatant command for North America, is “taking over” the country. “The average member of Congress probably isn’t a participant in the grand conspiracy,” Paul reassured the fevered host, essentially acknowledging that such a conspiracy exists. “We need to take out the CIA.” On Paul’s latest appearance on the Jones show, just last week, he called allegations that Iran had attempted to assassinate the Saudi ambassador to the United States a “propaganda stunt” of the Obama administration. In a January 2010 speech, Paul announced, “There’s been a coup, have you heard? It’s the CIA coup” against the American government. “They’re in businesses, in drug businesses,” the congressman added. 

Now it is important to note that Paul himself as always denied any influence over anything written in these newsletters.  He has maintained that it was his mistake that he did not more closely look at what was being sent out under his name.  In an interview with Wolf Blitzer who asked Rep. Paul about this, Paul responded that the it is the job of the editor to approve everything in the magazine and is the one "responsible for the daily activity."  Conservatives News, a blog, and The American Spectator has found that there may be clear evidence that Paul himself approved what was in these letters (go to the links here and here).  Who is named as editor in every magazine?  Ron Paul.