I was deeply saddened to hear this morning that Aaron Swartz had died. He was not a close friend of mine, I had only met him a few times, which made one particular instance of his help ever the more remarkable.

In October 2010, I wrote the most controversial story of my career. I uncovered how a group of well-regarded progressive activists — Melanie Sloan, Executive Director of Citizens For Reform and Ethics in Washington and Tom Matzzie, former Washington Director of MoveOn — were secretly working in conjunction with for-profit college lobbyists to slander the reputation of education activists pushing against predatory college lending patterns. Indeed, in an Orwellian twist, Matzzie and Sloan claimed that the education activists were secretly working on the payroll of Wall Street short seller Steve Eisman who was a for-profit college opponent.

I debunked Matzzie’s claims that people like Barmark Nassarian and Pauline Abernathy were secretly working for Wall Street speculators and showed that indeed the reverse was true. I had no doubt that highly regarded  progressive watch dogs Matzzie and Sloan were the ones working secretly with those who had a financial stake in defeating the regulations. Six weeks after my story exposing Sloan, she would accept a job with for-profit colleges’ top lobbyist, Lanny Davis. (To understand the implications of this scandal in the progressive community, see Reuters’ piece on the impact of my expose)