Cavala: Espionage “Double Agent” For the N.R.A. Linked by Lobbyist to McCain Campaign

Spymaster in “Kitchen Cabinet”?

By Bill Cavala
A veteran of over 30 years in Sacramento

Her name is Mary Spone. She was a gun-control activist – a candidate for the National Board of the Brady group. But, according to a Mother Jones story last week, she was also a double-agent for the National Rifle Association – providing her employers with inside information as to the Legislative strategies of the gun control groups.

The Jones story tells us this spy was hired by the Assistant Executive Director of the Institute of Legislative Action, National Rifle Association. The ILA was then headed by James J. Baker. Baker is a partner in the “Federalist Group”, a wholly owned subsidiary of Ogilvy Government Relations. Baker is listed as Ogilvy’s “Managing Director”.

Ogilvy is a huge, world-wide advertising company with strong ties to the Presidential campaign of John McCain. Susan Nelson, a former Ogilvy employee, is now the campaign’s Finance Director. Wayne L. Berman, with Baker a partner in the Federalist Group, is McCain’s Campaign Finance Director. Executives at client firms of Ogilvy gave over $271,000 to McCain – last year.

Baker, a “safari club member”, publisher of the hunters “hotline”, was identified as one of McCain’s “kitchen cabinet” in an August 21st, 2006 article in the International Herald Tribune.

Baker’s response to the espionage allegation was to say, “I don’t have anything to say about vendors to the N.R.A….we got information from whatever sources we can” (sic).

So, the gun expert in the McCain campaign, while working for the NRA, hired a woman to spy on the private conversations of gun control groups.

Bill Cavala was Deputy Director of the Assembly Speaker’s Office of Member Services where he worked for over 30 years. He attended undergraduate and graduate school in the 1960’s and received a doctorate in political science at UC Berkeley. He taught political science at UC Berkeley during the 1970's while he worked part-time for the State Assembly.

Cavala left teaching at UC Berkeley and went to work for Assembly Speaker Willie Brown in 1981 until his tenure as Speaker ended in 1995, and he has worked for his five successors as Speaker. He now manages election campaigns for Democratic candidates.

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