Memo to the Banking Industry: How to Kill Occupy Wall Street For $850,000

The response by mayors and police forces to the Occupy movement has underlined the strength of the demonstration, but now there’s evidence of just how unnerved the banking industry may be too.

According to the MSNBC show “Up w/Chris Hayes,” the Washington, D.C.-based lobbying firm Clark Lytle Geduldig & Cranford (CLGC) compiled a “secret” plan to undermine Occupy Wall Street for the American Bankers Association. For $850,000, the firm pledged to take aim at Occupy, which the memo says threatens to "have very long-lasting political, policy, and financial impacts on the companies in the center of the bullseye," particularly if it is embraced by the Democratic Party.

Two of the memo's authors, partners Sam Geduldig and Jay Cranford, previously worked for House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio. A third partner, Steve Clark, is reportedly "tight" with Boehner, according to a story by Roll Call that CLGC features on its website.

Even the Tea Party is scary, according to the memo, since "well-known Wall Street companies stand at the nexus of where [Occupy Wall Street] protesters and the Tea Party overlap on angered populism. […] This combination has the potential to be explosive later in the year when media reports cover the next round of bonuses and contrast it with stories of millions of Americans making do with less this holiday season."

As part of its effort to "undermine their credibility in a profound way, the firm outlined a plan to research activists' financial backgrounds and civil and criminal information, and monitor social media. That way, the firm could create "fact-based negative narratives" about Occupy Wall Street "for high impact media placement to expose the backers of this movement."

Looking at OWS’s financial connections, including possibly to George Soros, are also part of the plan. "It will be vital to understand who is funding it and what their backgrounds and motives are. If we can show that they have the same cynical motivation as a political opponent it will undermine their credibility in a profound way."

A spokesperson for the ABA told MSNBC, which broke the story, that the memo was unsolicited and “we chose not to act on it in any way.” ABA has been a client of CLGC previously, along with the Financial Services Roundtable, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, Fidelity Investments, and other financial institutions.

The memo also dismisses concerns about Democratic victories in 2012 and focuses instead on the effects the movement will have beyond the progressive sphere, and in shaping the national conversation around the country and in Washington. "(T)he bigger concern should be that Republicans will no longer defend Wall Street companies."

However delicious that concern may sound, and no matter the passion the Zucotti Park eviction may have inspired in the movement, one of Occupy’s biggest threats is itself – or its ability to make sense to America on television. One recent (and Democratic-leaning) public opinion poll indicates growing national displeasure with the demonstration – a result, they say, of the media shifting its blame cause inspiring the protests to the conflicts emerging within the protests themselves

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