Fred Thompson is set to kick off his official announcement week on the Tonight Show tonight... but it could be overshadowed by more turmoil to come in the Thompson campaign.

When Thompson appears on Jay Leno tonight it will mark the campaigns complete repudiation of a new media campaign strategy and announcement plan that the original Fredheads had designed over several months and finalized in August.

More resignations of key founding Fredheads are coming. Soon NONE of the people who got the buzz started in March may remain.

Thompson did Leno in June and numerous senior aides said at the time he would "never return to Hollywood to announce -- that's what McCain did! We won't use video, that's what Hillary did. We will let Fred be Fred. We are launching from the (Grand Ole) Opry then hitting New Hampshire and Iowa." Now they are copying both McCain and Hilary by appearing on Leno and a video.

The original Fredheads are no longer angry or frustrated; most have been fired already or given up. The remaining originals say they will quit, "as soon as the check clears to Jim Mills' account."

Mills, a long-time Capitol Hill producer for FOX News, was told he was being let go on Friday. A little over a month earlier, Mills was personally recruited and hired as spokesman by Fred and Jeri Thompson at their dinner table.

He has signed a "no comment" departure deal, and is waiting on a check designed to keep him quiet. Others will speak up once they depart. It will be very ugly.

Mills was told he was being let go by Bill Lacy, Thompson's new campaign manager, who ran Thompson's 1994 Senate race and was later an ad consultant for Bob Dole's 1996 presidential campaign before being fired himself.

Lacy is filling Thompson’s team with mostly old school GOP staffers from 1994 and 1996. Todd Harris, the new communications director, is a veteran of McCain 2000. He is a pro and knows exactly what's happened.

The ousted original Fredheads call it "subconscious self-sabotage", speculating that all the missteps and U-turns are really being caused by Fred's inattentiveness and some deep seated disinterest or lack of motivation for running.

A month ago Thompson had a speech ready and the historic Ryman Auditorium on hold to announce yesterday. The speech was written by Matt Scully. Two weeks ago Lacy tossed out the speech and plan and replaced it with the video announcement and plans to skip tonight's FOX News debate at the University of New Hampshire.

The video remarks were written largely by adviser Spencer Abraham, a former one term Michigan who was installed as Energy Secretary in the Bush Administration when he lost his reelection bid.

Instead of running a "new kind of media strategy" it's now "pretty corporate" according to insiders.

There are more major resignations of founding Fredheads now looming over the way the "new media strategy" was supplanted by a "corporate" and "predictable" aproach. They are also protesting the way so many people have been treated by the candidate and spouse.

As one insider said of Mills' departure, "he was recruited and hired by the candidate and his wife and they did not have the guts to let him go themselves. They have wrecked his life and it's totally wrong."

Mills has become the biggest victim, but there are literally a dozen people who also left successful careers in Washington and elsewhere who now find themselves out of work -- and many are suspicious that they were misled.

Coupled with dissent in New Hampshire for skipping the debate, this is not the kind of backdrop Thompson wanted for his long awaited official entrance into the race.

http://www.update08.foxnews.com/

This man stabs those "friends" working for him in the back. WHAT WILL HE DO TO THE REST OF US WHO ARE NOT HIS FRIENDS?

Oh, that's right! He's a pusher of shamnesty and CFR'r!!!!