The Man Behind the Byline Isn't Behind the Article. So, Who Is?

After a victory in the form of the recently passed housing bill, will the anti-Fannie-and-Freddie coalition FM Policy Focus decide its work is done? (By David Zalubowski -- Associated Press)

Dexter M. Wimbish, SCLC general counsel, played down LMG's role in the matter. "Based on our investigation, we don't see a reason to release a statement about LMG at this point," he said an interview yesterday. "LMG at this point has not been determined to be the entity that placed the op-ed."

Clearly, though, an outsider helped produce the article. "We have discovered that the op-ed that ran apparently was a draft . . . that had not been authorized by the president. That draft should not have gone out," Wimbish said. "The draft came from a third-party contractor and never got to the organization, and that's where the breakdown in communication took place. We're trying to determine who gave the authority to publish the draft."

All of this leaves a lot of questions unanswered. What exactly was LMG's role? Who is this mysterious contractor? Who placed the op-eds in the newspapers?

Editors of two Alabama newspapers that carried the article, the Tuscaloosa News and the Montgomery Advertiser, declined to comment.

Late yesterday, Wimbish said the organization was ending its probe into the origins of the problem. "Upon final review, we have discovered that the wrong draft of the op-ed was incorrectly submitted. The correct draft should not have referenced Wal-Mart or Home Depot," he said. "Any previous statements on this matter by SCLC or anyone associated with SCLC or President Steele on this issue are hereby moot," he added.

A Huge Housing Victory

Passage over the weekend of the wide-ranging housing rescue bill was a victory for a coalition of banks and mortgage insurers that has been fighting for nearly a decade to rein in the mortgage finance giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

FM Policy Focus, which was founded in 1999 as FM Watch, has had to battle uphill for most of its existence. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were once considered invincible lobbying machines, and the FM upstarts were nothing more than nippers at their heels.

The nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics reported that the two companies spent $170 million on lobbying over the past decade. Their executives and allies dumped tens of millions more into the coffers of powerful lawmakers.

When the dissident group started, "no one thought we had a chance," said W. Michael House of the law firm Hogan & Hartson, FM Policy Focus's executive director from Day One of the anti-Fannie-and-Freddie effort.

His group spent $3 million to $3.5 million a year on lobbying and began to give some of its own contributions as well. Eventually, its complaint that the companies were inadequately regulated began to gain traction when both firms faced multibillion-dollar accounting scandals and lawmakers publicly questioned the high pay of their executives.

After years of work, FM Policy Focus's position finally became the capital's consensus. Over the weekend, in fact, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac endorsed the creation of a tough new regulator, a position that House never thought he would live to see.