Herbert M. Gahr, MD, an internist in private practice on the Upper East Side of Manhattan since 1962, does not have a single medical journal article to his name. He has never been quoted by any press. Google him and you get nada.

As far as can be determined, the only time Dr. Gahr's name has ever appeared in print was back in 1947 when the now-defunct Young American published his article opposing a peace time draft and the early 1970s when the New York Daily News profile the invention by his wife/office manager/secrerary/supreme commander to make kids feel more relaxed on examinations room tables.

Nevertheless, this veritable nexis nonentity recently earned his singular place in the annals of modern Washington as the only father of one party to a bitter political dispute ever telephoned, badgered and frightened by another party to the conflict.

The perp, still at large, is Michael Horowitz, a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute, who in recent years has cultivated an alliance between neo-cons like himself and the Christian Right.

Fearful that Dr. Gahr's journalist son might implode his cherished Kosher Coalition, Horowitz subjected his fellow Bronx native to a 20 minute harrangue one fine summer day; his primary weapon for his psychological bludgenoing of the good doctor was a stuffed chimp, the now illustrious Louis E. Chimpstein.

Say what?

Yes, that's right a stuffed chimp, whose given name now appears in nexis and the Washington Jewish Week archives.

The cliche that truth is stranger than fiction would be particularly misplaced if applied here. If you understand the context, it all makes a certain amount of perverse sense.

Horowitz, one of DC's best connected conservatives who previously held high visibility posts in the Reagan Administration engaged in his unique little outreach effort amid the nationwide firestorm that Dr. Gahr's journalist son Evan had ignited when he alone among neo-cons took exception to the declaration by Paul Weryich, a founder of the Moral Majority, that "Christ was crucified by the Jews."

The junior Gahr, then adored in conservative circles for his unique ability to turn liberal sacred cows into kosher read meat for the Jewish Right, reported Weyrich rehash of the Deicide charge that the Vatican long ago renounced for the American Spectator web site. When the Washington Post called for comment Mr. Gahr called Weyrich a "demented anti-Semite."

The quote quickly ignited a nationwide firestorm, with Jewish conservatives either silent or defending their Christian Right ally fo anti-Semitic remarks fare more venal than the crass stuff for which they regularly excoriate leftist blacks such as Jesse Jackson.

Concerned about the political fallout because of his close ties to Paul Weyrich, Karl Rove then had his underling make phone calls about Evan Gahr and the the whole Christ Killer fracas. Right after one of the White House phone calls Mr. Gahr was abruptly dismissed from his salaried job at the Hudson Institute, a federal contractor with clear financial incentive to maintain the good graces of the White House.

The American Enterprise Institute, home base of the war mongering Jews who wanted to make the America safe from WMDs, never offered a clear eplanation for the purge. The last full sentence which their magazine's well-respected editor uttered on the matter was "Fuck you with your lawsuit, Evan."

But, hey, at least Zinsmeister, who has published articles that lament the evisceration of manhood but literally can not stay on the phone with this writer for even 2 seconds, did not blame the chimp.

Not so, Hudson.

Hudson which has relied on government contracts since its inception and therefore has obvious financial incentive to maintain the good graces of Karl Rove insisted to the press that Mr. Gahr's dismissal was unrelated to his criticism of Weyrich. Rather, his offense was improper use of a stuffed chimp during a television debate with one of Weyrich's Jewish defenders, David Horowitz. David is acting like a big baby," Mr. Gahr said during the "Hannity & Colmes" face off, "So I brought a baby chimp." Hudson president Herb London, a founder of the National Association of Scholars, the organization devoted to protecting free expression on college campuses from feminists and uppity black studies professors, told the Washington Jewish Week that the chimp had reflected poorly on Hudson.

Why? How? Did he scratch under his arms?

"I don't want to answer that," Michael Horowitz said sheepishly to Mr. Gahr when he interviewed him the following month about Chimpgate. it was no mean feat to Bork the chimp--who Mr. Gahr named Louis E. Chimpstein.

But with it readily apparent that Mr. Gahr wouldn't keep quiet about the matter, like the Energizer Bunny with chutzpah he just kept going and going, Mr. Horowitz concluded that the only way he might stop would be if family obligations intervened.

One fine summer day Horowitz s subjected Dr. Gahr to a roughly 20 minute harangue during which he tried to convince the good doctor that his son had just been expunged from two key outposts of neo-conservatism, not for breaking ranks over the blatantly anti-Semitic outburst of their key Christian Right ally but rather, for taking a long leap off the deep end, hand in paw with Louis E. Chimpstein.

The black rotary phone on his desk, the same phone that was in the office when he took it over in 1967 from a doctor who went off for service in the Vietnam War, and answered, made its loud clunky ring.

"Dr. Gahr."

"Dr. Gahr, this is Michael Horowitz calling from the Hudson Institute in Washington."

He just said something along the lines of "yeah?"

"Dr. Gahr, if I thought Evan was fired for his ideas I would have resigned."

Horowitz, a graduate of Yale Law School, proceeded like a lawyer to build a "case" that would convince Dr. Gahr his son was actually fired for taking a long leap off the deep end, hand in paw, with Louis E. Chimpstein and if he didn't intercede quickly more trouble would ensue.

What Weyrich said was very bad."

Horowitz remained silent.

Horowitz: If I thought Evan was fired for his ideas I would have resigned.

Horowitz "Do you know what Evan did?

Do you know what Evan did?"

Dr. Gahr : What did he do?

Horowitz: "He used a stuffed chimp in a television debate."

Dr. Gahr: "I know. I saw it."

Horowitz: "What did you think."

Dr. Gahr: "I thought it was funny."

Michael Horowitz: "Did you see the whole thing?"

What a lawyerly response. Notice that Horowitz is not simply relying facts objectively his rhetorical devices are all designed to leave his quarry to conclude or at least wonder whether his son really did go cuckoo with the chimp. In other words this could not reasonably be construed as any kind of reasonable or real concern. Instead, he does his best to eviscerate the hostile witness argument.

Dr. Gahr: What Weyrich said was terrible.

Horowitz: silence

Dr. Gahr: MAYBE THE WHITE HOUSE HAD SOMETHING TO DO WITH THIS.

Horowitz: silence

Dr. Gahr: But they did call to complain about Marshall Wittmann [Hudson employee who embarrassed Bush Administration; phone call reported in TNR. Wittmann and Hudson later parted ways under mysterious circumstances; the Hudson VP who took the call was fired not long after it was reported by The New Republic]

Horowitz: silence

Horowitz: My wife read one of the letters Evan wrote. She said it [suggests Evan might go off the deep end]. You know, she's a doctor

Dr. Gahr: Is she a psychiatrist?

Horowitz: no

Dr. Gar: Then tell her to stick to her specialty.

Then Mr. Horowitz really went bananas. He hectored the good doctor, a Bronx native just like himself, bout a passage in the same letter in which Mr. Gar mocked his refusal to accompany him to a meeting that Paul Weyrich had requested.

The offending passage.

"If you're embarrassed to be seen in public with me you can wear a KKK hood to the meeting. After all [as you contended]saying the Jews killed Christ is not anti-Semitic. So [it follows logically] that a KKK hood is not racist.''

But Mr. Horowitz, not known for his sense of humor, took the jibe literally.

Horowitz: Do you know what Evan did? Do you know what Evan did?

Dr. Gahr: What?

Horowitz: He told me to go around in downtown Washington with a KKK hood

Dr. Gar: [I think he was joking]

Quite thorough, Horowitz was also determined to convince Dr. Gar that his son's expulsion from the American Enterprise Institute magazine, for which he had enjoyed a lustrous relationship prior to "Weyrich" since 1996, was unrelated to his ideas. Horowitz had consulted with Karl Zinsmesiter, editor of the magazine who blacklisted Mr. Gahr. Rather than express any skepticism of objections, Horowitz simply culled a number of utterly irrelevant "facts" from Zinsmeister which he then used to further advance and "substantiate" his one Jew flew over the Cuckoo's Nest argument.

"Karl said Evan seemed very stressed in Florida [which Evan, Karl and other TAE writers visited at the beginning of the year for a story on crime."

Dr. Gahr: Everybody gets stressed.

Around this time, Evan's mother, Beth, who doubles as the secretary, office manger and perhaps CEO of the practice picked up the phone but remained silent.

When she heard his voice Mrs. Gahr assumed there was some connection to the Hudson controversy because it lacked any trappings of New York City. She grew frightened as Mr. Horowitz proceeded on to Mr. Gar' next offense.

Do you know what else Evan did. Do you know what else Evan did.

At this point Mrs. Gahr grew frightened as Horowitz made is sound like her son had committed some kind of capital offense. As she recalled later, "I thought , oh no. Oh, no. What has he done."

What did he do?

He criticized another writer of the magazine.

Call Karl. Call Karl. (Horowitz had arranged for him to wait by the phone.)

Mrs. Gahr, picks up the extension: Who is this? Who is this?

Horowitz: silent

Mrs. Gahr: identify yourself

Dr. Gahr: that's Mrs. Gahr

Mrs. Gahr: Hang up the phone.

Dr. Gahr: [clunk]

Funny stuff. Endearing.

Just like John Wayne Gacy's clown mask until you look what's underneath.

"Dr. Gahr if I thought Evan was fired for his ideas I would have resigned."

Horowitz was lying, as he later conceded.

It was not a small lie that most people tell at one moment or another. It was not Clintonesque lies that depend on distinctions without a difference. Or telling only the partial truth, which amounts to perjury.

It was a big lie. It was libel.

Legally, libel obtains when the accused says something he did not really believe and the person who has been libeled suffers particular consequent due to the lie.

The Horowitz phone call meets those standards, and also the legally stringent requirements for intentional infliction of emotional distress, experts agree. That's two prima facie violation of civil statutes in just 18 or so minutes by someone who enjoys a stellar reputation in the media and conservative universe.

Horowitz, laweyrs say, had acted with malice and forethought.

"Dr. Gahr, if I thought Evan was fired for his ideas I would resigned."

Actually, he thought just that; the same day the dismissal became public knowledge Horowitz told a mutual acquaintance that he disagreed with Mr. Gahr's criticism of Weyrich but Hudson was wrong to fire him.

Horowitz yelped about the letter that contained the sardonic reference to the KKK, but he didn't read anotehr passage of the letter. It said outright that I know you're lying. You told a mutual acquitance Hudson was wrong but you go around saying they were right.

In other words, this was libel. Horowitz told a falsehood that he could not possibly believed was true.

What specific damage accrued? The phone call was frightening tempered perhaps by the buffonesh antics of someone desperate to blame an illegal dismissal on a stuffed chimp.

But the letter that Horowitz had delivered by FedEx the next day was far more frightening, and poisoned the minds of Mr. Gahr's father and mother.

Hammering home the point that their precious son was a mental case headed for big trouble, Horowitz included some letters that Mr. Gahr had written to a number of his Washington allies in the culture wars, such as Robert Bork at AEI and two National Review writers.

It was determined by subsequent investigation that both Bork and National Review knew full well what Horowitz planned to do with the material they were kind enough to provide him.

This further militates in favor of intentional infliction of emotional distress and quite possibly renders AEI and National Review legally culpable for the material they gave Horowitz to advance his goofy yet ultimately lethal lie that Dr. Gahr's journalist son had been fired not for his ideas but for taking a long leap off the deep end, hand in paw with Louis E. Chimpstein.

But the FedEx pack, as far as can be determined did not include one key letter.

It was the one which contained the sarcastic suggestion about wearing a KKK mask, the humor going over his head, which also provided evidence that Horowtiz really thought the dismissal was wrong but was saying the opposite publicly. In other words the letter would have made abundantly clear to Dr. Gahr that Horowitz was lying.

Because Horowitz deliberately omitted this letter and only read selective parts to Dr. Gahr he loses any possibility of "plausible deniability"--that he was as he initially tried to pretend just one concerned father talking to another.

Moreover, by extracting a promise of confidentiality from Dr. Gahr and reiterating it in the FedEx letter Horowitz seems to have been determined to pre-empt Dr. Gahr discussing the matter with his son, who could quickly show him the letter to demonstrate that Horowitz had lied.

The plain reality is that had manipulated facts and withheld crucial ones to mislead a loving, intact family into everyday worry that, to paraphrase him, their cherished son was "headed for trouble," which would leave pained and hesitant to loudly and aggressively investigate and expose Hudson and its fellow travelers.

It worked.

Horowitz is a malignant liar.

If he had simply lied that I was doing drugs or drinking too much that kind of stuff could be easily disproved by urine tests. But how do you disprove the fear that "you're headed for trouble?"

It's impossible.

He instilled utter fear in a selfless mother whose loving endeavors, wherever she has been, watching out for her brother at summer camp, teaching little black kids after college, looking after her parents when they grew old and feeble, always were focused on others not herself. When earlier this year she looked through pictures her son had just taken of ultra-cute granddaughter and said, pointing to one pic, "I want that," it was the only time her son could ever recall her asking for something for herself.

He terrorized a father--who like his son is considered brilliant at what he does but is utterly indifferent to the trappings of his prestigious profession and never wanted anything except to provide for his family and eat "dinna;" his two expressions being "How much money do you need" (whatever his kids wanted they got) and "what's faw dinna."

Unlike most scandalous Washington behavior there are no impassioned denials here. In September 2003, under fierce questioning he conceded he had lied.

Evan Gahr: I Know you lied. You told [two common acquiantances] was wrong. But you told my father it was justified."

Michael Horowitz : I have no comment.

Evan Gahr: I didn't ask you for comment. I know you're lying

THE REAL LINDA CHAVEZ

It's well to note that men can not do evil alone.

They need accomplices. In this case, the primary enabler of Michael Horowitz is Linda Chavez. Under fierce questioning from this journalist earlier this year, Chavez conceded that Horowitz had lied to her when he blamed the dismissal on supposed tensions with Mr. Gahr's immediate supervisor, yet she refused to publicly condemn him.

Horowitz told her that the Hudson dismissal was due to a frayed relationship with Mr. Gahr's immediate supervisor; he could not possibly believe any such thing since under questioning from Mr. Gahr just days before Horowitz conceded there was no evidence for any such claim.

One phone call to the New York Times from someone of her stature could quite conceivably prompt a news story about the whole "Chimpgate" matter that would bring opprobium on Horowitz, and probably forced Hudson to give Mr. Gahr back his job, which would lessen the horrific tensions in their family that have accrued since his little outreach effort.

But she won't do it. "This is between you and Michael Horowitz," she told Mr. Gahr when he explained the crucial need for her to speak out as loudly on Horowitz's lies as she did Clinton.

Au contraire, it's between YOU and Michael Horowitz. He lied to you about the actions of a government contractor that would have been under your purview if your nomination as Labor Secretary for George Bush in early 2001 had not imploded amid disclosures that you had previously harbored an undocumented immigrant and extracted cheap, tax free labor from her. (What did she clean the Chavez maison with? Spic & Span?)

If Chavez won't condemn these kind of shenanigans in her own ideological backyard why should anybody take her seriously when she rails against union abuses or complains that Mary Frances Berry, the right's favorite Negress punching baby, abuses her authority at the United States Commission on Civil Rights? Does she give other conservatives a pass on lying?

Or just Michael Horowitz?

To be sure, Chavez has recently offered unequivocal support for right-wing outlets, including JewishWorldReview.com and Adam Meyerson's Philanthropy roundtable that have blacklisted Mr. Gahr. But these blacklists, in contradistinction to conduct by her special friend Michael Horowitz that runs afoul of several civil statutes, norms of civilized behavior and even rules of the animal kingdom, are not necessarily illegal.

In any event, given that Michael Horowitz is a walking litigation explosion the refusal of Linda Chavez to condemn him for lying to her and Mr. Gahr's parents is decidedly curious.

How can somebody who goes on TV and gives speeches as intelligently engaged in the political process be oblivious to the plain reality that her bullying is legally actionable?

Informed early this month that Hudson, citing his communications with Michael Horowitz and others, had barred Mr. Gahr from attending its events that are otherwise open to the public, she refused to condemn either Hudson or Horowitz.

She seems determined to stand by her man to the bitter end.

So was Eva Braun.

MICHAEL HOROWITZ AND HIS PUTRID LITTLE SECRET

Washington, DC is a touchy-feely places these days but the following should give pause to anybody inclined to shake Michael Horowitz's hand the next time they see the great coalition builder around town.

Horowitz does not wash his hand after he does #1.

One fine day at the think tank now synonymous with anti-Simeanism, this writer was at the sink cleaning his hands when this ultra-hyper Jew walked by heading straight for the door.

Uh, don't you wash your hands?

No, need, he said proudly, "it is the cleanest part of your body."

Well, given what he does for Pat Robertson and Ralph Reed it's certainly much cleaner than his nose.

Evan Gahr EvanGahr@aol.com has written for the Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal, the New York Post, Washington Jewish Week and many other publications.