Anonymous YouTube creator unmasked
Posted: Wednesday, March 21, 2007 7:52 PM by Mark Murray
Filed Under:
Democrats
From NBC's Mark Murray
The maker of the much-talked about anti-Hillary Clinton "1984" YouTube video has been unmasked. His name is Philip de Villes, and he was an internet strategist for Sherrod Brown's 2006 Senate campaign last year and worked (until now) at the Democratic internet firm Blue State Digital, which had been under contract with the Barack Obama campaign.
De Villes' identity was first uncovered by the liberal blog Huffington Post.
Obama spokesman Bill Burton released this statement to NBC News: "The Obama campaign and its employees had no knowledge and had nothing to do with the creation of the ad. We were notified this evening by a vendor of ours, Blue State Digital, that an employee of the company had been involved in the making of this ad. Blue State Digital has separated ties with this individual and we have been assured he did no work on our campaign's account."
Thomas Gensemer, the managing director at Blue State Digital, issued this release: "This afternoon, an employee at our firm, Phillip de Vellis, received a call from Arianna Huffington of 'The Huffington Post' regarding the '1984' video currently circulating online. Initially, de Vellis refused to respond to her requests. He has since acknowledged to Blue State Digital that he was the creator of the video. Pursuant to company policy regarding outside political work or commentary on behalf of our clients or otherwise, Mr. de Vellis has been terminated from Blue State Digital effective immediately."