Bossie, of course, has enjoyed a long and mostly successful career creating propaganda against Democrats. He and Floyd Brown, his mentor at Citizens United, lured dozens of Washington journalists into the Whitewater fiasco with unsubstantiated charges and misinterpreted documents. After the Republicans took over Congress, he moved into "investigative" posts on Capitol Hill, where he faithfully carried out the GOP leadership's policy of perpetually harassing the Clinton administration, with or without plausible evidence. In 1998, however, he overreached with the release of tapes of imprisoned former Clinton associate Webster Hubbell's remarks about Hillary Clinton. When it turned out that the tapes had been heavily edited to make them sound incriminating rather than innocent, Bossie was fired.

Hints of the Citizens United film project first emerged in early July, when Bossie warned what he and his organization would do if the Federal Election Commission dismissed their "Fahrenheit 9/11" complaint. "Citizens United becomes a documentary factory," he told the New York Post. "We'll make documentaries and we'll show ads for them. I'm in the production business ... I can put together a documentary very, very quickly."

Ironically, Bossie and Citizens United could find themselves facing the same legal questions they raised about "Fahrenheit 9/11," when they tried to stop TV advertising for the Moore opus. Their complaint to the FEC alleged that such ads constituted prohibited "electioneering communications" against Bush and violated federal restrictions on "soft money." Last month the FEC ruled in favor of the film's distributors because those ads appeared more than four months before the election, during a window when they were permissible.

But the Bossie film will be released within the 120-day pre-election period when such "independent" electioneering communications are prohibited, unless they fall under an exception carved out for commercial media endeavors. Unless "The Big Picture" is billed as a commercial movie intended to earn a profit, it could fall within the category of prohibited electioneering activity. And advertising for the pro-Bush documentary could pose the same questions raised by Citizens United about the promotion of Moore's film.

Even if the filmmakers behind "The Big Picture" have avoided any unlawful coordination with the RNC or the Bush-Cheney campaign, their movie may yet embarrass Bossie and Chetwynd's friends in the White House.

The structure of the film, assuming that it follows the outline obtained by Salon, will be a methodical and ham-handed refutation of the "Anybody but Bush" arguments attributed to Moore, from the issue of the "stolen" 2000 election to the debate over the failure to prevent the 9/11 attacks. The true villains in all those controversies, it claims, are Democrats Bill Clinton, Al Gore and, of course, John Kerry.

Among the familiar personalities mentioned as possibly appearing in the film are Solicitor General Ted Olson and his late wife Barbara; actor and former Sen. Fred Thompson, who has appeared in a previous Citizens United ad; syndicated columnist Charles Krauthammer; former CIA director James Woolsey; and Florida Rep. Porter Goss, recently nominated as the next CIA director. (A less familiar interview subject, apparently named Ivan Pedanski, is cited as a source on Iraq's disappearing weapons of mass destruction because he would say that the "stuff [is] buried in the ground in Syria.")

An earlier version of the script outline, titled "Initial Notes," promised a more vicious and possibly more comical film. Among the anti-Bush canards mentioned there but omitted from the later outline is that "Bush is a moron." It argues that the president cannot be both a moron and a "devious mastermind attempting to spread US hegemony worldwide" -- and claims that "Bush did well at Yale."

That version of the script indicated the film's second half would be devoted to "deconstructing John Kerry" -- beginning with the character assault mounted by the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, and mocking him as the "Knight of the Woeful Countenance." It also makes the false assertion that Kerry "never went on to post-grad work" after Yale. (Researchers hired by Bossie presumably will discover that Kerry graduated from Boston College law school in 1976.)

Exactly how "The Big Picture" was financed, and how much it will cost, remain mysterious. A tantalizing clue, however, showed up in a July 19 post on the right-wing Free Republic Web site, where someone nicknamed Smogger sought guidance from fellow Freepers about a political donation:

"Who is Dave Bossie and Citizens United?" asked Smogger. "I just gave them $50 that they claim they are going to use to create a movie to praise the efforts of George Bush and to counter Farenheit 911 [sic]. They said they were trying to raise $500,000 in 30 days for this effort. I assume they got my number from the RNC.

"Anyone else receive this phone solicitation? It's so hard to keep track with GWB and RNC calling every other day. I tried to access the Citizens United website but it appears down. I hope I did the right thing."

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