Until this month, the man who is widely credited with starting the cyber-whisper campaign regarding Obama‘s religious background was a secondary character in news reports, with deep explorations of his background largely confined to liberal blogs where he is a bête noir.

But an appearance in a documentary-style program on the Fox News Channel watched by three million people last week thrust the man, Andy Martin, and his past into the foreground. The Fox program allowed Martin to assert falsely and without challenge that Obama had once trained to overthrow the government.

“Everybody uses my research as a take off point,” Martin said, adding, however, that some take his writings “and exaggerate them to suit their own fantasies.”

As to his background, he said, “I’m a colorful person, there’s always somebody who has a legitimate cause in their mind to be angry with me,” he is reported as saying in the International Herald Tribune. 

Read the full story here.