n online provocateur of George W. Bush may soon sue the Texas governor's rich presidential campaign for defamation, with the ultra-conservative Rutherford Institute (www.rutherford.org) paying for his legal defense.

Like former Rutherford client Paula Jones, Zack Exley wants his powerful adversary to say he's sorry. 'I mainly just would like the Bush campaign to apologize," said the 29-year-old Boston computer programmer who has riled Bush since April with his parody Web site, gwbush.com.

Bush responded harshly to the site, which ribs the candidate for draft dodging and his alleged coke connoisseur days. At a May 21 press conference in Austin, Bush dismissed Exley as a "garbage man" and said "there ought to be limits to freedom." He then asked the Federal Election Commission (FEC) to declare the site a political action committee, subject to federal regulation.

Now the Bush camp is saying gwbush.com originally featured links to smut. "There were a set of links on that site that included links to pornography," Ben Ginsberg, attorney for Bush 2000, said last week. Those links included porn images posted at "analsex.com and fuckers.com."

The Bush campaign is "outright lying," Exley responded, adding, "I never did that."

To prove his point, Ginsberg provided to the Voice a printout of an apparent gwbush.com links page dated April 8, 1999. Indeed, "anal sex" and "fuckers"—but no actual Web addresses— are listed among several dozen hyperlinks.

Closer examination reveals that this links page is still up at rtmark.com/links.html, the site of RTMark, a San Francisco anti-corporate group that designed gwbush.com in April, but is no longer involved. The disputed links are two of many parody links: "Fuckers" actually links to "Slaveway Superstores," a genetically engineered food parody; "Anal Sex" links to www.ourfirstanalsex.com, a text-heavy parody of "Our First Web Sex," a widely talked about sex-cam hoax. The copy is indeed distasteful—"I hope we give the girls some good reasons to consider letting their boyfriend ream out their ass with cock"—but contains no graphic images.

"That sounds like RTMark's links page," Exley said. "As far as I know, that was never actually part of my page. These are not porn sites, and they are accusing me in the media of posting links to porn sites."

Ray Thomas of RTMark said neither his site or www.gwbush.com ever contained pornography. "Ginsberg refers to this as 'analsex.com,' which is a totally different sort of site. Apparently he just saw 'anal' and 'sex' and freaked out. What a silly, silly man."

When told the site did not link to the URLs he provided to the media, Ginsberg said it does not matter: Exley still used an image of Bush's home page (georgewbush.com) on a site that linked to "inappropriate" content. "Did we do the detailed research on each site, to slice the bologna to see if they were real or parody sites? In our minds, these were porn sites and completely inappropriate to have as part of our official Web site. We informed Zack of what the copyright or trademark rules are and asked him to stop."

Yet, Exley and his new defenders say Bush's pornography accusation goes too far. The Rutherford Institute said Exley did not link to or post pornography. "That is not true. We checked it out ourselves," said Rutherford chief litigation counsel Steve Aden, adding that his Charlottesville, Virginia-based civil liberties group wants to help him sue Bush 2000 for defamation and to defend his FEC case. "They knew. They either were disregarding the truth or recklessly disregarding the truth."

Rutherford legal coordinator Ron Risler said an article about Exley's David and Goliath fight with Bush first interested the group, which is headed by Christian civil libertarian John Whitehead. This would be Rutherford's first online-speech case. "We think it is a harbinger of Governor Bush's approach to civil rights that he feels one fellow's Internet site should be registered as a political campaign committee," Aden said. "I think it's a form of harassment."

Ginsberg laughed when told Exley is considering a lawsuit. "Zack can do what he does. It's up to them to decide how to move forward."

Exley said he is considering Rutherford's offer. "Just because they're conservative doesn't mean they support Bush," he said. "I really need their help." He said he wants "a seriously big law firm" to defend against Bush's expensive legal team, adding that he unsuccessfully appealed to the Boston chapter of the American Civil Liberties Unions months ago.

Aden said Exley's case may set a vital online precedent. "You shouldn't have your free speech chilled just because someone with a helluva lot of money wants to be president and will not stop at squelching First Amendment rights to do so."

Exley said he is not looking to share Bush's riches. "I wouldn't want to be a Paula Jones suing for millions of dollars. Maybe I'll ask for a donation and then give it to an antipornography/feminist organization."

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