The Rob Ford Crackstarter—our crowdfunding campaign to raise enough money to purchase and publish a video of Toronto Mayor Rob Ford smoking crack cocaine—has passed $90,000 on its way to our goal of $200,000. And we're adding new perks! (None of them are crack.)

As you may recall, last week we took a trip to the welcoming, livable city of Toronto to view a video of Ford—who has a long and illustrious history of erratic behavior and inscrutably racist statements—smoking crack cocaine. We returned empty-handed, sadly, because the owner of the tape wanted more money than Gawker could offer. So we've thrown open the bidding to the miracle of crowdfunding. Since Friday afternoon, we've raised nearly half the money. (We don't get any of it unless and until we hit the $200,000 goal.)

Ford, for his part, was in hiding over the long holiday weekend in Canada (happy belated Victoria Day!) and emerged this morning to attend a Toronto city council meeting. Despite the fact that his crack habit is basically the only thing Canadians have been talking about for the past four days—and despite the fact that his aides leaked news this morning that he would forcefully deny ever having been taped smoking crack—he was silent on the issue. Who knows what he's thinking. Here's a picture of him, from Twitter, hanging out with a Toronto supporter last night. Looking good.

Chatted it up with Rob Ford @tomayorford last night �� twitter.com/Kouklaaaa/stat…

— koukla benzito (@Kouklaaaa) May 21, 2013

But it's becoming increasingly clear that Rob Ford is going to try to bear down and get through this whole "Rob Ford Smokes Crack Cocaine" issue, which is why we'd like to encourage everyone again to chip into the Crackstarter to settle it once and for all. (As we've pledged, if for some reason we raise the money but the deal goes south, we will donate it to a Canadian nonprofit that addresses substance abuse issues.)

Also! The good people at House of Anansi Press have reached out to offer everyone who donates $5 a free electronic copy of The Little Book of Rob Ford, by "Unknown Torontonian." It's a handy compendium of all the bizarre, stupid, racist shit that Ford has said over the years. And 100 lucky $25 contributors will receive a hard copy of the book (offer only valid in Canada). You should follow House of Anansi on Twitter at @houseofanansi or on Facebook here.

So go here to contribute to the Crackstarter and get yourself a book of all Rob Ford's stupid shit. Don't do crack.

(And if you think we're awful or this is stupid or don't care, please go here and support the Red Cross in its efforts to help the people of Oklahoma.)

[Image by Jim Cooke]

As you may have heard, Rob Ford, the mayor of Toronto, smokes crack cocaine. We've seen a video of him smoking crack cocaine, and the people who have the video would like to sell it. Through the miracle of crowdfunding, you can help. Please consider donating to the Rob Ford Crackstarter.

How Much Do We Need? $200,000. That's what the owners of the video want. That sounds like a lot of money. The good people at Indiegogo believe that, with the appropriate amount of virality, that goal is achievable.

Christ, That's a Lot of Money. Yes, it is. But they've got the video! And it's not all about greed, though of course most of it is. The owners of this video fear for their safety, and want enough money to pay for a chance to get out of Toronto and set up in a new town. Their fear is not entirely unwarranted. Rob Ford is a powerful if buffoonish man, and he was wrapped up in a drug scene that purportedly involved many other prominent Toronto figures.

What Will We Get? A crystal clear, well-lit video of the mayor of Toronto smoking crack cocaine, published on Gawker for the world to see. We will also be throwing in some perks, for specific donation amounts. But the main thing is the video of the mayor of Toronto smoking crack cocaine.

How Does This Work, Exactly? We're using Indiegogo. We've set a target of $200,000, to be reached within 10 days. If we reach the target, we get the money. If we don't reach the target, you get your money back. If we do reach the target, we will pay the money to the people who have the video. They will give us the video. We will publish the video. You will watch the video.

What If This Whole Thing Goes South? We are mindful that people who hang out with and surreptitiously record crack-smoking mayors may not always be reliable. The people we've been dealing with have so far honored every commitment they've made. And they have pledged to sell it to us for $200,000 if this Crackstarter works. But if they disappear, or sell it elsewhere, we will donate every penny we receive to a Canadian non-profit that helps people suffering from addiction and its consequences.

So go here and sign up. Be a part of (Canadian) history! And I promise you—this is a pretty great video of a mayor smoking crack cocaine.

Update: The Crackstarter has just reached $19,000 and is steadily climbing to our goal. Be part of the dream.

Update: Make that $45,000. Don't do crack.

Update: As of the morning of Sunday, May 19, with nine days to go, we've raised $63,500.

Update: This is an exciting one. We have just updated the Crackstarter to include some new perks, depending on how generous you're feeling. They are:

For $75: A Public Thank You. We'll publicly thank you from the Gawker Twitter account, unless you'd like to remain anonymous. All your friends will know how cool you are!

For $150: Signed Canadian Flag. Every $150 donor gets a Canadian flag defiled by Gawker owner Nick Denton's signature. Own a piece of history. (Only available if the video purchase is consummated.)

[Image by Jim Cooke.]

Rob Ford, Toronto's conservative mayor, is a wild lunatic given to making bizarre racist pronouncements and randomly slapping refrigerator magnets on cars. One reason for this is that he smokes crack cocaine. I know this because I watched him do it, on a videotape. He was fucking hiiiiigh. It's for sale if you've got six figures.

It began like this: We've made fun of Ford before for his bizarre pronouncements and nude pictures. Last week, we got a tip from someone claiming to have a videotape of Ford smoking crack. Would we like to buy it?

Update: Go here to contribute to the Rob Ford Crackstarter. We are crowdsourcing $200,000 to buy and publish the video.

The tipster made the following claims:

• Toronto Mayor Rob Ford smokes crack cocaine.

• There is a video of Rob Ford smoking crack cocaine, taken within the last six months.

• Rob Ford purchases his crack cocaine from a crew of Toronto drug dealers that service a veritable who's who of A-list...Torontonians? Torontites? Anyway, a lot of prominent people in Toronto purchase and enjoy crack and powder cocaine, and they all buy it from the same folks. The same folks Ford buys it from. Ford's longtime friend, people on his staff, his brother, a prominent hockey analyst, and more.

As evidence of his claims, our tipster provided the photo above. It shows Ford hanging out with a number of people. The gentleman standing to his right, flipping the camera the bird, is Anthony Smith. Smith, a 21-year-old college student, was killed two months ago outside a Toronto nightclub in a gangland-style shooting. A photo, from a CBC story on his murder, is at left. Smith was, according to our tipster, a kid from the same neighborhood as the dealers who service Ford, and the photo was taken while Ford was going to the neighborhood to purchase and smoke crack cocaine.

If you're curious about the photo's veracity, at left is another photo, from the National Post, of Ford wearing the same sweatshirt.

Needless to say, the story intrigued me. I asked the tipster for a screengrab of the video to verify that he had what he claimed to have. He refused. If I wanted to see the video, I was going to have to go to Toronto. He sounded confident enough. Certain things that he told me checked out. So off I went.

Toronto is lovely. Our first effort to meet up, at a Toronto bus station at night, fizzled. The tipster was there, but the person who actually had possession of the video was a no-show. The tipster and I retired to a coffee shop to talk Toronto politics and Rob Ford's curious history—his rise as a sort of oddly drunken, brazenly honest conservative voice in a decidedly liberal and polite city. It was a nice night, but I was beginning to worry I'd been had.

The next morning, I connected again with the tipster. He was going to locate the owner of the video, he told me. Last night, there had been a mix-up. The video was being stored in a safe place, but the person who had access to the safe place had briefly disappeared, and so the owner couldn't get access to the safe place to get the device on which the video was stored. By the morning, however, the tipster and the owner had located the person who had access to the safe place. This was going to happen.

Checkout time was at noon. My flight was at 7:30 p.m. I loitered around downtown Toronto, checking out the mall, until I got the text: We were to meet up at a chain restaurant near the airport. The tipster picked me up from the restaurant and drove me to a housing development. The owner of the video would meet us there.

We sit idling in his car, making small talk. The tipster calls the owner and talks in language other than English. "He'll be right down," he says. Fifteen minutes pass. "Waiting for the elevator," he says. Ten minutes pass. A young gentleman opens the rear door of the car and gets in. The two men speak in a language other than English. The young gentleman immediately exits the vehicle. No video.

The tipster looks at me: "The battery is dead." The young gentleman—the owner of the video—needed to go back upstairs to charge the battery on the device that contained the video. We wait. More small talk.

The owner of the video returns. He thrusts a device, a phone with a touchscreen, in my face. "Can I hold it?" I ask.

"No."

I crane my neck. It plays.

Here is what the video shows: Rob Ford, the mayor of Toronto, is the only person visible in the frame. Prior to the trip, I spent a lot of time looking at photographs of Rob Ford. The man in the video is Rob Ford. It is well-lit, clear. Ford is seated, in a room in a house. In one hand is a a clear, glass pipe. The kind with a big globe and two glass cylinders sticking out of it. In the other hand is a lighter. A slurred voice off-camera is ranting about Canadian politics in what sounds like an attempt to goad Ford. "Pierre Trudeau was a faggot!" is the one phrase the lodges in my mind. Ford, pipe in one hand and lighter in the other, is laughing, and mildly protesting at the sacrilege. He seems to keep trying to light the pipe, but keeps stopping to laugh. He is red-faced and sweaty, heaving with each breath. Finally, he finds his moment and lights up. He inhales.

Update: The Toronto Star, whose reporters have also seen the video, say that it's Justin Trudeau—Pierre's son and the leader of the Liberal Party in Canada—and not Pierre getting called a "faggot." It's hard to keep all these Canadians apart. The Star also has Ford himself, and not the voice off-screen, making the "faggot" remark, though that's not how I remember it.

In one move, the owner stops the video and draws the device back into his pocket.

"You took this?" I ask.

"Yes."

"When?"

"Within the last six months."

"You're sure it's crack?"

"Yes."

"You've seen him smoke crack before?"

"Yes. Gotta jet."

And he is gone.

So: That was a video of the mayor of Toronto smoking crack. The trouble is, the owner wants money. More money than I am willing to pay. The tipster has already reached out to one other news outlet, a Canadian organization that he refused to name, which offered $40,000. The owner rejected that. He thinks he can get six figures. It's unlikely he's going to get six figures.

But I am going to try. The tipster wants this video out. Rob Ford needs to be held to account. The owner just wants money—preferably enough to get out of town after this blows up, since he doesn't think it will be safe for him. The tipster and I both fear that the owner will try to sell the video back to Ford. That would be a shame.

So if Gawker can't come up with enough money to ring this owner's bell, perhaps we can find a partner. This isn't just the mayor of Toronto smoking crack cocaine, after all: This is Toronto Confidential. There are a host of important local officials wrapped up in this drug ring. 60 Minutes? No. Dateline NBC? No. Inside Edition? No. National Enquirer? No. CNN? Maybe!

Well, no. But when I emailed an acquaintance at CNN this afternoon, laying out much the same information I've offered above and asking for discretion and confidentiality lest we screw up a pretty fucking great story about the mayor of the fifth-largest city in North America smoking crack cocaine on camera, he forwarded the email to his producer. The producer, in turn, asked CNN's Canada reporter about it. The Canada reporter—and this was a pretty fucking big mistake—called a source who used to work in Ford's office. Within 40 minutes, word had gotten back to me that "CNN called Ford's office asking about a crack tape."

And so here we are. The owner still hasn't found a buyer with pockets deep enough to meet his demands. But word is out around Toronto now that the tape exist, and Ford's circle knows about it courtesy a CNN reporter. So, with permission, I am laying out everything I know about the Rob Ford Crack Tape in the hopes that a) everyone knows that Rob Ford, the mayor of Toronto, smokes crack, and b) this knowledge might hasten the arrival of the Rob Ford Crack Tape on the internet or broadcast television, because really, it is something to behold.

If you want to buy it, let me know. I can put you in touch with a guy.

Ford's office did not immediately respond to an email.

Update: We've received an email from Dennis Morris, a gentleman with a hotmail.com email address purporting to be Ford's attorney. Here is the message. We haven't corrected its formatting.

Greetings;I am a lawyer,and have been contacted by Mayor Ford's office in reference to your indicating you will post a photo of Mayor Ford smoking crack cocaine. Mayor Ford denies such took place,and if such posting occurs,it is false and defamatory,and you will be held legally accountable.In reference to the photo,you wish to publish, Mayor Ford has his photo taken daily,sometimes with others.

If the person you mention is now deceased,it is sad,regardless of his alleged background.

Please govern yourself accordingly.

Dennis Morris.

To contact the author of this post, email john@gawker.com.

[Images via National Post and CBC]

Rupert Murdoch is thisclose to finally cleaving his entertainment properties from the dying, scandal-ridden newspaper side of the business. Today he announced a new logo: A pair of chopsticks on a plate? Two lasers streaking across a black sky? A broken saucer?

In a memo to his soon-to-be-former News Corp. employees, Murdoch said the logo "serves as a powerful symbol of the inspiration and high bar set by our company. Like our name, the logo reflects the rich creative heritage of Twentieth Century Fox and signals the promise of the 21st century and our restless drive toward the future." There's also a pointless animation. Excelsior!

Joe Muto, the former producer for Bill O'Reilly who did a short-lived star turn as "the Fox Mole" here on Gawker about a year ago, will plead guilty today in a Manhattan criminal courtroom to misdemeanor attempted theft and attempted computer tampering charges.

The agreement, in which the Manhattan District Attorney's office has pledged not to file harsher felony charges in exchange for Muto's guilty plea on lesser offenses, stems from unaired, behind-the-scenes Fox News footage that was published on Gawker last year in posts attributed to the Fox Mole.

The Manhattan DA has been investigating Muto since April of last year, when it raided his apartment and confiscated his laptop, cell phone, and iPad. The agreement calls for Muto to pay a $1,000 fine, to forfeit the $5,000 "fruits of his wrongdoing"—Muto was (reportedly!) paid $5,000 by Gawker for his posts—and to serve more than 200 hours in community service at a nonprofit.

After he outed himself, Muto—whose work here was accompanied by, among other things, footage of Mitt Romney chatting about his dressage horses with Sean Hannity during commercial breaks and a picture of Bill O'Reilly with a topless woman—secured a reported six-figure book deal with Dutton. That book, An Atheist in the FOXhole, is due out next month.

In his terrible, error-filled authorized biography Roger Ailes: Off Camera, Ailes acolyte Zev Chafets described the internal reaction at Fox News to Muto's gambit. At one point, Ailes's bodyguard Jimmy, a former NYPD detective, suggested to Ailes that a criminal case could be made.

"You know," said Jimmy, whose career in the NYPD was spent investigating organized crime and drug dealers, "if this Gawker paid for stolen goods, it could be part of the crime, same as if somebody hires a hitman."

There was a pause and then Ailes said to Brian [Lewis, his chief flack], "We should have legal look into that." A few weeks later, the New York district attorney's office sent detectives to seize Joe Muto's files and notebooks.

More than a year ago, we filed a Freedom of Information Law request with the district attorney's office seeking any communications with Fox News or News Corp staffers over the past several years. It still has not complied with the request.

Our professional advice to Muto is to do his community service time at Media Matters for America.

But like I said, maybe you're right. Maybe the influence it exerted over a movie that will come to define its most important high-profile operation in 50 years was motivated by a reverence for truth. Either way it's noteworthy the extent to which its wishes—whatever the motivation—were accommodated by the filmmakers.

I don't know, but it's worth knowing that the CIA requested that Chastain's character not be shown torturing, and that the filmmakers complied. I also know that Alfreda Bikowsky, the chief of the CIA's "Global Jihad" unit, travelled to witness the torture of Khalid Sheikh Muhammed for shits and giggles. Did she throw her hand in while she was there? Who knows.

Same thing with the dog. The CIA wasn't saying "the event you are depicting didn't include a dog." It's saying "we wouldn't use dogs." Again: Maybe it's interested in being portrayed accurately. Or maybe it's interested in being portrayed slightly less monstrously.

A couple years ago, New York City Mayor Mike Bloomberg did a laughably stupid thing and named Cathie Black, a rich lady-about-town who ran a bunch of magazines and newspapers as president of Hearst, as his new schools chancellor. Since Black had no qualifications for the job aside from being a rich friend of Bloomberg's, some folks objected and Black resigned after 95 humiliating days. Back in 2010, former Gawker intern Sergio Hernandez thought it might be fun to read the email traffic between Black and City Hall prior to Black's appointment, so he filed a request under New York's Freedom of Information Law. Because Bloomberg is a secretive, entitled, arrogant prick, it took more than two years and a court battle to get them.

So what's in them? Almost nothing! Hernandez's request sought email traffic between Black and city officials while she was still employed by Hearst—emails that wouldn't be shielded by exemptions that cover some internal deliberative communications. They were unambiguously subject to New York's Freedom of Information Law. But Bloomberg denied the request, and then denied Hernandez's appeal. When Hernandez sued City Hall with the help of Yale Law School's Media Freedom and Information Access Clinic, Bloomberg defended the suit rather than finding a way to settle. When he lost, he appealed that decision. When he lost the appeal, he tried to appeal again—a highly unusual step for a routine FOIL case. Last night time ran out, and he released the records he fought so valiantly to protect.

There's basically nothing there. They are fairly routine strategy and planning emails. The most interesting exchanges show Black and and City Hall officials frantically trying to get public support from Oprah Winfrey. That's funny but not too surprising, since Winfrey's magazines are published by Hearst and the two women had worked together. And Oprah did indeed come out in her favor. Black's pitch to Oprah—an email attempt to put words in her mouth—is an exquisite document of shameless self-regard:

“Tremendous leadership, excellent manager, innovator, mother of two and cares about the future of all children,” Ms. Black wrote in an e-mail to Ms. Winfrey on Nov. 17, 2010. “Grace under pressure.” She ended the message: “I owe you big time.”

There's also an amusing moment when, as the embattled officials are trying to assemble a list of powerful women to endorse Black's candidacy, Black pitches her friend, reality TV star Ivanka Trump, as a potential candidate. "I think she would do [it]," Black wrote. Bloomberg's legislative director wrote back: "I would skip."

Why would Bloomberg fight tooth and nail—as far as he possibly could in the legal system, despite setback after setback—to keep these harmless, mildly amusing conversations secret? Who knows. Because he resents even the most trifling impositions on his authority. Because he's an imperial asshole. Because he could.

In a final insult to Hernandez, who had refused to let the issue drop for nearly three years, the city decided to blast the emails out to the media rather than hand them over to the man who had initially asked for them. So he didn't even get a momentary exclusive. Fuckers.

[Image via Getty]

Two years ago, the New Yorker's Mattathias Schwartz documented the brutal massacre Jamaican security forces undertook when they entered the notorious slum Tivoli Gardens to arrest—at the insistence of the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency—drug kingpin and local hero Christopher "Dudus" Coke in 2010. They didn't find Coke, but they managed to kill 73 civilians in what the Jamaicans claimed was a pitched street battle with Coke's partisans. After it was all over, they found six guns.

One of the things Schwartz learned was that an American surveillance plane, dispatched by the Department of Homeland Security, was flying over the siege and relaying intelligence to the Jamaicans the whole time. DHS refused to release the video under the Freedom of Information Act, though, and Schwartz had to sue to get it. He prevailed, and he published portions of it yesterday on the New Yorker's web site.

The video is inconclusive—it shows "momentary flashes that could be gunfire or rays of sunlight reflected by windows" and the occasional "cluster of red pixels that might or might not be a dead body." It also appears to show Jamaican officers picking up shell casings from the ground, perhaps to mask the extent of firepower unleashed. But it also was taken over a six-hour period just before before the worst violence that Schwartz documented took place. DHS insists it doesn't have any more.

But given the U.S. government's reluctance to acknowledge its role in helping the Jamaicans, its not clear whether it's holding back. In internal State Department emails about the operation that Schwartz also obtained via FOIA and posted on his web site, an embassy official warns his colleagues to keep quiet about the U.S. involvement: "I'm sure that the [Jamaicans] would like us to be more supportive publicly, but I think we should let the smoke clear over its actions in Tivoli before we go on the record with our support of its actions."

The smoke is still clearing.