Romney says not involved in anti-Thompson Web site

BOSTON (Reuters) - Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney's campaign distanced itself on Tuesday from involvement in a Web site that attacked rival Fred Thompson in the 2008 White House race.

The Web site, PhoneyFred.org, had opened with the line: "Phoney Fred. Acting like a conservative." It was taken down on Monday after inquiries by The Washington Post newspaper, which found links between the site and Warren Tompkins, a South Carolina political consultant hired by Romney.

"The site has no direct affiliation to our campaign, and we had no knowledge of its development," Romney spokesman Kevin Madden said by e-mail in reply to questions from Reuters.

"Once we received inquiries about the site, we discovered it was created by an individual who parked the site temporarily on the company server space of a firm whose financial partner is a consultant to the campaign, Mr. Tompkins."

The site featured the "Latest Phoney Fred News" and the "Faces of Phoney Fred."

Thompson, a former senator and Hollywood actor who entered the race last week, dismissed the site as "the lowest kind of politics" and urged Romney to take responsibility for "high-tech gutter politics," said his spokesman, Todd Harris.

"While Thompson is working to bring our country together, an increasingly desperate Mitt Romney and his campaign are already hard at work to divide us, practicing the lowest kind of politics," Harris said.

Both Thompson and Romney, a former Massachusetts governor, are casting themselves as more conservative alternatives to front-runner Rudy Giuliani, the former New York mayor.

Thompson leads Romney in national polls, while Romney is ahead in the key early voting states of Iowa and New Hampshire where he has outspent his rivals in advertising.

Madden said Tompkins had "absolutely no knowledge about the development of the site or that it was temporarily parked on the firm's server."

"We made it clear that we did not approve of the site and asked for immediate action to make sure it was again in no way affiliated with the campaign," Madden said.