For related articles and more information, please visit OCA’s Politics and Democracy page and our CAFO’s vs. Free Range page.

“Why don’t we know who one of the most powerful people in America is? What he has done? Why ’60 Minutes’ called him Dr. Evil?” asks Saru Jayaraman, a leader in a growing national movement of restaurant workers demanding better pay and working conditions.

Dr. Evil is Richard Berman, a Washington-based lawyer-turned-hitman for Big Food who pioneered and still deploys many of the most intentionally deceptive, inflammatory and anti-democratic tactics used in corporate propaganda campaigns today. For nearly four decades, Berman’s attacks have tried to smear, discredit and destroy public-interest causes and groups by a toxic brew of industry front groups, distortion-filled attacks, ridicule and bullying to stoke prejudice and hatred as a means of turning the public’s attention and regulators away from his paymasters’ business practices.

Take his effort to cripple the Humane Society of the United States (HSUS) and defame the character of its CEO, Wayne Pacelle. He ran a television ad during the 2013 Academy Awards telling people not to give to HSUS. He created a YouTube video viewed 1.7 million times calling Pacelle “the Bernie Madoff of the charity world.” He set up a non-profit front group called Humane Watch to undermine donations intended for the HSUS and a website attacking its funding. He even threatened the Better Business Bureau to drop HSUS’ accreditation under the business group’s Wise Giving Alliance, and then attacked BBB when it refused to do so.

Astute observers have concluded that Berman is guilty of the sins he regularly accuses others of. Legitimate watchdog groups, such as CharityNavigator.org, have characterized his web of non-profit front groups, which take in millions in tax-deductible corporate donations, as the fake charities. Tax law experts contacted by Bloomberg.com said his operation was comparable to Madoff’s, a shell game of financial transfers enriching Berman that likely violated tax laws. Investigative reporters have even traced e-mails from front groups who deny they’re working with him back to his office.