Some wag, during discussion over projected political moves, said that getting Libertarians to agree is like herding cats.
But then, that is not difficult on a temporary basis: throw a stinking fish in the direction you favor and they’ll rush toward it just as if they were a herd of lemmings. After all, Independent Thinkers of whatever political stripe are first, and foremost, human, and thinking dinner tastes right because it seems just what one expected is a universal trait. Perhaps it is all too easy to herd these cats, and maybe not very desirable after all.
Bring up the left-wing bias of the MSM, and all the fuzzy heads will nod together. Show how a lie is propagated and expanded by the MSM and see the necks work in tennis-match unison. Throw anything they are predisposed to believe, and beware the stampede. But what to make of propagations and expansions committed by those decrying that practise by the MSM?
Two such cases recently appeared, and the so-called Liberty-minded and Independent Thinkers rushed to judgement as thoughtlessly and ignorant of the facts as any the so-called “sheeple” have ever done. The blogs SENATE BURGLARY: CIA DOMESTIC BLACK-OP TEAM ARRESTED (Jan 30, about the arrest of journalist James O’Keefe and team), and The personhood of corporations (Jan 21, about the SCOTUS ruling striking down the BRCA, aka McCain-Feingold) were repeated verbatim without question on so-called conservative and libertarian sites such as the Wall Street Journal, The Daily Paul, MoveToAmend.Org, etc. Google either of those titles and witness the hundreds of sites reprinting those stories with loud approval – and without checking their facts. In addition, a raft of derived editorials (including at least three here on RagingDebate and TheBurningPlatform were spawned decrying the awful CIA and the terrible SCOTUS.
The problem, of course, is that both stories were fundamentally flawed, mainly made up, and fact-poor. At best, those stories were misleading; less charitably, they were disinformation.
Regarding such disinformation regarding James O’Keefe, here are two recent pieces from one of the few real journalism sites still out there.
From BigGovernment.com:
Once Again, James O’Keefe Strips Away the MSM’s Mask of Neutrality, Revealing the Bias Below
by Hannah Giles
This past week marked one of the strangest periods of my life. And yes, the arrest of my friend and colleague James O’Keefe had a lot to do with it. James found himself, once again, in the middle of a raging media battle all because he wanted to shine a little light on public corruption. Let me tell you something, he certainly rang in the New Year with this one. As James said:
My goal is to expose corruption and lack of concern for citizens by government and other institutions…
Target: Mary Landrieu. Why: she’s been taking legal “bribes” in the form of the “Louisiana Purchase” in exchange for her vote on Sen. Harry Reid’s healthcare bill, and ignoring phone calls from her outraged constituents. Bold, dirty, rude politics at its finest.
Putting his head down, and plowing ahead, James was off to New Orleans working on a new project. A project that would hopefully raise questions, demand answers, and spur people to action.
The complication: James and three of his colleagues were arrested in the process. (Although now the U.S. Attorney in charge of the case has recused himself, a sure sign that the case is rapidly crumbling.)
For 48 hours, rampant rumors of phone taps, possible felonies, rash behavior and the phrase “Watergate Jr.” spread like wildfire. No one knew the reality of the situation. Even I was very concerned by the initial reports. I had no inkling of this project and once again found myself a victim of the MSM’s filthy, desperate and fact-free drive-by reporting. As Galileo famously said:
All truths are easy to understand once they are discovered; the point is to discover them.
The truth eventually began trickling out and it appears Mary Landrieu’s office vastly exaggerated the situation, and yet the MSM ran with it. Rachel Maddow of MSNBC could barely contain her glee:
Note to everyone: throwing out words like “wiretapping” in regards to a federal phone system is the equivalent to screaming “bomb” on an airplane….Don’t say it unless you mean it. Or else, all the attention will zero in on you and things will quickly get complicated.
In fact, Landrieu’s overreaction to O’Keefe’s video project ought make the public wonder what the heck is actually going on in the office that her constituents are permitting her to occupy for at least a little while longer. But instead we had ACORN’s CEO, Bertha Lewis, using the incident as an opportunity to, once again, excuse her employees’s behavior in our “ACORN Housing helps underage sex slave” videos. We saw inappropriate and vicious attacks from the MSM, and watched some members of a movement turn its back on a man they considered a hero less than a week ago.
What I’ve learned is this: the MSM is the primary force of the Democratic Party. If the MSM is lying to you, guess who else is? Someone has to feed them stories. Time and time again the MSM has been caught in a self-created web of lies, and the vast majority of these reports do one thing, and that is mask the true, ugly face of liberalism.
Listen, the MSM is officially beyond biased and slanted reporting. Right now, it is on the “bold dishonesty” level. They are essentially pelting the public with hot, stinky manure, and it is completely insulting.
Fortunately, there are ways around the MSM’s nonsense. Andrew Breitbart has made the new media trendy, and after the ACORN videos everyone and their conservative dog was on the new-media campaign bandwagon. “Yay, yay we are back to save the day. Glory and victory all the way!” But then, the second things got a little spicy, POOF, they’re gone.
For instance, Michelle Malkin, a once avid supporter/defender of James and all his work, called for anexample to be made out of him, and instructing other young journalists to not follow in his footsteps. Again, this was before she knew his side of the story.
The bottom line is, conservative elites are afraid of the MSM. They are constantly two-steppin’ to stay in their good graces while secretly cursing them beneath their breath. It is no wonder they’ve had their rear ends handed to them so badly in past elections. I’m telling you, if conservatives don’t put on their game faces and strap on their big-boy boots, our nation’s demise is imminent.
“Victory at all costs, victory in spite of all terror, victory however long and hard the road may be; for without victory there is no survival.” – Winston Churchill
Why do I think the MSM and the Liberals were so perversely obsessed with the possibility of James being a wannabe “Watergate Jr.?” They lie, because despite all their money and power, they are scared. Not of the Republicans or Conservative movement, but of citizen journalists who hold truth in the highest regard. These people are at large, and on the rise. Which means some major power players have a lot to be afraid of.
And, from BigJournalism.com:
James O’Keefe vs. Max Blumenthal: How the Left Distorts, Invents and Lies
It started with a blog post at something called One People’s Project, in which someone named Daryle Jenkins claimed:
(In 2006) ..there was this white supremacist forum that we had called attention to and eventually attended that featured American Renaissance’s Jared Taylorand National Review’s homophobe extraordinaire John Derbyshire. It was originally supposed to be held at the building of the conservative activist organization Leadership Institute until it was forced to move to another location…..
There was also a photographer there, and lo and behold this picture has surfaced of a now familiar face attending the forum - James O’Keefe.
O’Keefe was manning a table at a forum of suit-and-tie Nazis.
A DC area photographer snapped a photo of O’Keefe as he maintained a literature table near the panelists.
The photograph that One People’s Project shows as its proof (above) is cropped and just shows O’Keefe from the shoulders up. It doesn’t show that he is sitting at all, let alone at a table, let alone “manning” the table at the event apparently hosted by the Robert Taft Club.
Max Blumenthal — son of Clinton apparatchik “Sid Vicious” Blumenthal — at Salon.com picked up on the story and extrapolated even more:
According to One People’s Project founder Daryle Jenkins, O’Keefe was manning the literature table at the gathering that brought together anti-Semites, professional racists and proponents of Aryanism.
But Salon wasn’t happy with the headshot that OPP ran, so they cropped his face and photoshopped him in a white suit (surprised it wasn’t a hood and robe):
Within an hour or so the Village Voice got really creative on its media blog and added a little more to the mix:
James O’Keefe, the videographer famous for taking down ACORN (and infamous for trying to take down Senator Landrieu), organized a speaking forum for white supremacists, and was even photographed manning the event’s merchandise table.
That’s right, we’ve gone from O’Keefe attending the event to O’Keefe manning a literature table to O’Keefeorganizing the entire event!
This is what the Left does. This is how they do it.
We would think that Mr. Blumenthal at Salon or Stephen Thrasher at the Village Voice, as responsible reporters, might have called Mr. O’Keefe to get his response to the allegations made in an obscure blog. But no. Instead they ran the story and (in the case of the Voice) actually added new and juicy lies to the myth.
Well, here at Big Journalism we think it’s a good idea to actually seek the truth.
So we spoke with James O’Keefe today. This is what he tells us:
- He was not “manning a table” at the event
- He was not involved with the organization or operations of the event.
- He attended the event with many of his Leadership Institute co-workers since it was right across the street from their building in Arlington, Va., and it was organized by other LI associates.
- The organizer who is being called a “White Supremacist” is half Jewish and half Korean.
- One of the panelist was an African-American named Kevin Martin.
- The event was forced to move to a Georgetown University building in Arlington, not at a cross-burning.
We know all this because we called Mr. O’Keefe and asked him. Which is more than other media outlets have done.
We also spoke with Daryle Jenkins of One People’s Project, the man who started this entire legend. We asked if he had a photograph that actually showed O’Keefe “manning the table” as has been reported, and he said that this cropped photo was all they had. His claim that Mr. O’Keefe “manned” the table of literature is based on eye-witnesses who were at the event.
We are supposed to believe that four years after the fact these eyewitnesses remember O’Keefe being there, remember what he was doing, and even remember what was on the table in front of him.
Mr. Jenkins only produced the name of one witness: David Weigel who, at the time was a reporter with ReasonMagazine. We called Mr. Weigel and he denied ever telling Mr. Jenkins that Mr. O’Keefe was “manning the table.” Indeed, he has already gone on record denying he said that.
Here is the story they actually have:
James O’Keefe attended a forum years ago that dealt with race and politics. The forum was located at a Georgetown University building (that’s right, a 21-year-old man attended an event on a college campus). The forum had as one of its three speakers a controversial figure, Jared Taylor, with a track record of making racist statements. He was being debated by two other people including Mr. Martin (taking issue with the racist figure). Mr. Taylor has also appeared with Phil Donohue, Queen Latifa and Paula Zahn on their TV shows to debate race. Are the audience members of the Donohue show racist for sitting and watching that debate?
Honestly, that isn’t much of a story. But… you put Mr. O’Keefe at a table full of racist literature and you say that he was manning the table. And you say you have a picture proving it. And you make it sound like he was one of the organizers of this event. And you call the event a “White Supremacist Conference”. Well… now you’ve got a story.
Only problem: It’s all a lie.
39 Comments
SanDiegoGuy
Thanks, TC. I've been watching this story closely since the ACORN dust-up occured a few months ago. I think it will be used in the history books to explain the demise of the MSM.
StuckInNJ
A similar thing is happening with the Toyota sudden-acceleration story.
By now we've all seen and heard the horrible story of the 9-1-1 call and the aftermath -- all 4 people killed.
However, the story behind the story is that the official accident investigation report -- performed by an engineer -- was that there was ZERO problems with the accelerator. The springs and other devices were functioning perfectly. Indications are that the owner replaced the standard Lexus floor mats with Lexus floor mats meant for another type Lexus -- and the pedal subsequently jammed underneath it. However, one media outlet after another ran the story as Toyota's fault --- and even Toyota got caught up in the hype and acted out of necessity to show it-was-doing-something. There is still no clear cut evidence of a real problem. Billions and billions of miles driven ... and almost all of the terribly few incidents involved drivers older than 70. Something smells fishy here.
And, of course, some Senator or Congressman called for people to stop driving their Toyota's. Well, that's what you get when the government owns a car business ... a little smearing of the competitor, justified or not, never hurts.
Flyguy
I am sure the folks at Government Motors have not tried to make it that much harder for Toyota to fix the problem. See the problem?
One hand of the government is running GM and the other is telling Toyota how big this problem is and warning people to not drive their Toyotas at all until it is fixed. No conflicts of interest there.
Anonymous
i dont care if the fucking fenders fall off my (made in america) tundra, its still a hundred times better than that 2003 f 150 i traded in. rather have a paid for recall any day than a pile of shit transmission replacement at 48000 miles. tundra has never been in the fix it shop in 78050 miles. buddies new government model shit-o let,w/ less than 8000 mi has been repaired 4 times now for the same problem. THATS THE "JUNK IN BOX CRAP" THAT SHOULD BE RECALLED! its still not fixed. and now its off to arbitration.
ragman
Exactly correct, Stuck. The stink eminating from the District of Corruption is so vile we can smell it here in Fl. These "people" have no honor and they will stoop to unbelievably low levels to control us. Who cares what the facts are! Toyotas are built by non-union workers, they compete with govt owned GM and Chrysler......soooo lets use this trajedy to discredit Toyota any way we can. In the mean time what's left of our "country" is going down the shitter at an ever accelerating rate, but the crooks in DC will do nothing about that.
Alessandro
So I don't understand, then refute the allegations. Was O'Keefe and three of his "associates" masquerading as telephone repair men or not?
There is a difference in pretending to be a pimp, a known illegal activity, and pretending to be a telephone repair service person, which is a legal profession. So quit the lecturing and where can I read what actually happened?
debohun
You've explained a lot about spin and dishonesty, most of which anyone who has worked in Washington already knows to be "business as usual," but you haven't told us what Mr. O'Keefe was actually doing in Mary Landrieu’s office. The legal accusations appeared to be pretty specific. If those accusations are incorrect, which ones are untrue, and what was occurring instead? This laundry list of "the other side's" naughtiness tells us very little. Since you know O'Keefe, perhaps you can provide some non-heresay input into what really occurred. Did they misrepresent their identities and intent in a Federal office building? Did they actually handle Landrieu's office telephone? Did they ask for directions to the telephone closet? I can appreciate the efforts of any patriot in uncovering corruption, but there is a risk and price for such endeavors if done illegally. It isn't really reasonable to whine about it after getting caught. What is more reasonable is to appreciate that, at least for the time being, the situation in America is still such that they didn't disappear into political prison, or worse yet, get shot outside in the street twenty minutes after getting caught.
TLaCour
A recent update found using a google search of [Okeefe arrest]:
Update on James O'Keefe - 19 hours ago
Posted by Michael Laprarie
Published: February 3, 2010 - 9:24 PM
You may remember that a couple of weeks ago, James O'Keefe (the young filmmaker who exposed ACORN corruption) and three associates were arrested inside the New Orleans offices of Sen. Mary Landrieu. O'Keefe and his buddies were posing as telephone repairmen when they were arrested, and were allegedly attempting to unlawfully gain access to the telephone system in Sen. Landrieu's office.
After his release, O'Keefe published this explanation of his behavior:
I learned from a number of sources that many of Senator Landrieu's constituents were having trouble getting through to her office to tell her that they didn't want her taking millions of federal dollars in exchange for her vote on the healthcare bill. When asked about this, Senator Landrieu's explanation was that, "Our lines have been jammed for weeks." I decided to investigate why a representative of the people would be out of touch with her constituents for "weeks" because her phones were broken. In investigating this matter, we decided to visit Senator Landrieu's district office - the people's office - to ask the staff if their phones were working.On reflection, I could have used a different approach to this investigation, particularly given the sensitivities that people understandably have about security in a federal building. The sole intent of our investigation was to determine whether or not Senator Landrieu was purposely trying to avoid constituents who were calling to register their views to her as their Senator.
After this statement was released, Allahpundit noted that it is a federal crime to "attempt" or "conspire" to "willfully or maliciously" interfere with any public, private, or military communications system. Apparently O'Keefe foolishly risked federal criminal trespass and conspiracy charges in order to pull off a rather meaningless and juvenile stunt.
But was it really meaningless?
On Monday it was revealed that the Jim Letten, U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Louisiana, and the top Federal prosecutor in the state of Louisiana, recused himself from the case a day after O'Keefe's Jan. 25 arrest. No reason was given for the recusal, but O'Keefe's "big boss," blogger Andrew Breitbart, told Fox News:
"James O'Keefe sat in jail for 28 hours without access to an attorney, while the U.S. attorney leaked the information about his arrest, helping the media frame it as 'Watergate Junior,'" Breitbart said.... "The panty bomber on Christmas was given -- you know, this guy's from Al Qaeda, and he's not even an American citizen, and he's given access to an attorney right away," Breitbart said. "I believe that this was a concerted effort, this is just my opinion, to allow for the media to frame the issue to put James O'Keefe in a very bad position."
Breitbart said he though the U.S. attorney's effort was part of a payback scheme against O'Keefe, who posed as a pimp and prostitute with another citizen journalist to enter ACORN offices around the country and ask advice on how to apply for federal housing grants for a brothel.
"It's tied to the Justice Department. And we've been very aggressive in asking (Attorney General) Eric Holder to investigate what's seen on these ACORN tapes and he's ignored it," Breitbart said.
The Politico's Michael Calderone also reported that MSNBC led the "Watergate Jr." charge, devoting 12% of its news coverage for the week of Jan. 25 - 31 to the O'Keefe arrest story. O'Keefe's arrest also made the front page of the New York Times for Sunday Jan. 31.
Yet when O'Keefe's undercover investigations into ACORN malfeasance first broke on September 10, 2009, it took the New York Times eight days to cover the story; they eventually published an article about O'Keefe (not the actual ACORN scandal) entitled "A Political Gadfly Lampoons the Left via YouTube" in the US section of the September 18 paper. And MSNBC waited five days to report on O'Keefe's ACORN investigation, only briefly discussing it in an article entitled (no joke) "Republicans Try To Crush ACORN."
Jim Treacher thinks that Breitbart and O'Keefe are playing the Justice Department and the mainstream media for suckers, with an old-fashioned "rope a dope." The night-and-day difference between the MSM's virtually non-existent reporting of alleged ACORN wrongdoing, in contrast to their breathless trumpeting of O'Keefe's own arrest, seems to support that theory pretty well.
When I originally wrote about O'Keefe's arrest I wondered if this wasn't actually part of something a whole lot bigger. I suspect we'll find out what it is soon enough.
ADDED: More liberal dopes get roped -- Big Government uncovers a laughable attempt to paint O'Keefe as a knuckle-dragging racist. You have to read it to believe it.
StuckInNJ
For those who like details ... Canadian press editorial PLUS the accident investigation report
================================================================================
The United States is turning Toyota’s recall into a massive national industrial advantage
By Terence Corcoran
T
here can be little doubt that Toyota, the world’s greatest automaker in recent years, has become the victim of much more than another typical out-of-control All-American media frenzy. When top-line political gamesman such as U.S. Transport Secretary Ray LaHood, Congressional pit bull Henry Waxman, and conniving United Auto Workers executives start piling on, this is clearly much bigger sport that the usual ritual public lynching of auto executives, a routine occurrence in Washington. The attack on Toyota, at this time of U.S. economic weakness and populist excess, is fast turning into a great American nationalist assault on a foreign corporation, an economic war.
The White House has denied any such motivation on the part of the United States. But that denial lacks credibility. While it may be technically true that President Obama’s team didn’t explicitly reach a decision to target Toyota, nobody in this crowd needs a presidential order to turn the Japanese auto giant’s Sudden Unintended Acceleration (SUA) problem into a national industrial advantage for the United States. The owners of union-dominated Government Motors can spot a strategic economic opportunity without waiting for the memo from head office.
California Congressman Henry Waxman swung into action, using recent anecdotal reports of sudden acceleration as a pretext for extended assaults on Toyota and its management. The UAW has joined the project as part of its campaign against Toyota’s closure of a unionized California plant.
Yesterday you could practically see the calculating wheels spinning under the hood of Mr. LaHood’s cranium when the transportation secretary told a committee that Toyota owners should simply “stop driving” their Toyotas. He later claimed to have misspoken, but then said much the same thing. If Toyota drivers are worried, they can take their vehicles to a dealer where, as Mr. LaHood knows, there was nothing the dealer could do since it is expected to take weeks if not months for Toyota to “fix” the alleged cause of Toyota’s alleged sudden acceleration problem.
Toyota shares continued their SUA plunge yesterday, ending just below $74, down from recent highs of $92. The company has lost $23-billion in market capitalization since the crisis began.
At this stage, there is little hard data on whether Toyota actually has a sudden acceleration problem. The company is not helping matters with its apparent scrambling to come up with an explanation and a “fix” for a phenomenon that has been cropping up in auto industry lore for decades. No maker is immune, but Toyota seems to have been caught in the latest run of reports. All of the reports are anecdotal accounts of out-of-control vehicles for reasons that nobody can ever adequately explain. The latest stories, including one of a Tennessee man who says his 2003 Camry suddenly jolted into a parking space, become instant media legends.
Of the millions of cars on the road, only a few hundred anecdotal reports exist, making it far more likely that other things are happening, including driver mistakes and even fluke occurrences that no amount of corporate fixing can avoid. Usually the stories fade and the auto companies move on, although Audi famously became victim of a SUA craze a couple of decades ago, losing massive market share even though no problem was ever identified beyond driver error.
Toyota’s experience looks like it could become even worse that Audi’s, mainly because bashing Toyota serves the national economic interest of the United States, U.S. auto makers, union leaders and others whose economic ideas tend toward nationalism. U.S. jobs for U.S. workers employed by U.S. companies.
Is the media involved? The extent of exaggeration surrounding Toyota’s problem may be just a little larger than the usual media frenzy. In a typical over-the-top anti-Toyota item, famed author James B. Stewart yesterday told Wall Street Journal readers to “avoid — or sell — Toyota Motor shares.” His reason is that Toyota may have misrepresented the cause of a now notorious crash of a Toyota Lexus ES-350 in San Diego last August. Toyota said the Lexus crash, in which four occupants were killed following a frantic 911 call, was due to a faulty floor mat.
The official accident report by the U.S. National Highway Traffic Safety Administration makes clear that the floor mat is the likely culprit and Toyota may not quite be responsible. The mat in the Lexus was “not secured” properly, and it was also the wrong mat for that Lexus model. There also appeared to be no notable issues with the accelerator pedal itself. (See excerpt of the report below).
Another newspaper treatment of the Lexus event, in The New York Times, also treated the San Diego crash as a function of a Toyota acceleration problem that has more causes than a poorly maintained and wrongly installed floor mat. So far, however, nobody has proven this to be true. Even less clear is how the fix Toyota has announced — involving a new part for the accelerator pedel — is even related to the problem. Was Toyota panicked into doing something — anything — when faced with a looming full-bore economic attack from the United States Economic Marines, with the media imbedded as part of the crusade?
Excerpt from the U.S. Department of Transportation National Highway Traffic Safety Administration report on the crash and site inspection of a Toyota Lexus on Aug. 28, 2009, near San Diego, California.
Report: Vehicle and Crash Site Inspection of 2009 Lexus ES-350, VINJTHBJ46G792282025
From: Bill Collins, Investigator and Interviewer, Engineer, Vehicle Research and Test Center
Date of Inspection: 09/03/2009
Vehicle condition at time of inspection: Catastrophic damage caused by severe frontal impact, roof impact, side impact, & fire damage. The driver’s seat buckle was observed in a closed, connection condition.
Narrative: All four occupants were killed at 6:38PM on August 28th, 2009 at the T-intersection of Highway 125 and Mission Gorge Road in Santee, California. The vehicle was a loaned Lexus ES-350 traveling at a very high rate of speed that failed to stop at the end of Highway 125...
Cause of crash: Very excessive speed. According to the 911 call made by the brother-in-law sitting in the back seat of the Lexus, the accelerator pedal was depressed in a full power condition and attempts by the driver to release the pedal were unsuccessful.
Other significant factors:
Accelerator Pedal — The pedal is made from a composite plastic that forms a rigid, one-piece lever. Beyond the main pivot, the lever is not hinged and has no means for relieving forces caused by interferences. Upon removing the pedal from the vehicle, the rotating motion of the pedal assembly was confirmed to still be operational. The return spring action was smooth and unencumbered.
Upon inspection of the crashed vehicle, it was found that an all-weather floor mat bearing the Lexus insignia was present in the driver’s foot well vehicle with very minor fire damage. The mat was not secured by either of the two retaining clips. The right clip was installed into the grommet of the carpeting but not installed into the mat. The left clip was found under the middle of mat but was not clipped to either the carpet or the rubber mat. Removal of the mat was difficult because the bottom edge of the accelerator pedal had melted to the upper right corner of the mat. Further inspection of the mat revealed that while it was a Lexus brand mat, it was not the correct application for the vehicle ...
Read more: http://network.nationalpost.com/np/blogs/fpcomment/archive/2010/02/03/terence-corcoran-the-war-on-toyota.aspx#ixzz0ebev1ysF
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Anonymous
waxman and lahood should go back to rest of the elected assholes in the barnyard. im sure theres a paint cup and brush for them to keep painting on the fucking burned out trade agreement barn door.
Kill Bill
Kill Bill
Kill Bill
TLaCour
An update and one blogger's view of O'Keefe and the Louisiana Tap-dance:
O'Keefe Article May Explain Senate Stunt
On Jan. 25, James O'Keefe and three other conservative activists were arrested after a weird incident in which they entered Sen. Mary Landrieu's (D-La.) office in New Orleans dressed as telephone repairmen and attempted to gain access to the closet where the phone system was serviced. They were charged with "entering federal property under false pretenses for the purpose of committing a felony," according to an FBI press release.
There's been a lot of speculation about the motives of O'Keefe, who led an attempted sting of ACORN offices last fall that was widely publicized and helped spur Congress to drop millions in funding for the voter registration and lower income charity. Messing with the telephones in a federal government official's office is a serious felony, whether O'Keefe and his associates were planning to bug the phones, vandalize them or achieve some other purpose. If they are convicted, the four men face up to 10 years in prison and a fine of $250,000.
On a web site published by Andrew Breitbart, who has O'Keefe on his payroll but denies involvement in the Landrieu incident, O'Keefe issued a statement after the arrest claiming that "[n]o one tried to wiretap or bug Senator Landrieu's office. Nor did we try to cut or shut down her phone lines."
This statement doesn't explain why some of them were dressed as repairmen and tried to access the telephone closet, as the FBI alleges.
An article that O'Keefe wrote in November 2008 for the online conservative magazine New Guard may shed some light on his actions. In the article, O'Keefe describes a past sting project where he and a young anti-abortion activist named Lila Rose contacted Planned Parenthood offices seeking to donate money to fund abortions and reduce the number of black babies in the United States.
We were able to donate money to the organization for the explicit purpose of reducing the number of black babies born in the United States -- in line with the intentions of Planned Parenthood's founder, Margaret Sanger.
We carefully chose a dozen or so "one party consent" states, where it is legal to audio record someone without their consent. Not a single Planned Parenthood employee we spoke to was disinterested in the prospect of a donation for our stated purposes.
As he did later at ACORN offices, O'Keefe targeted low-level employees of liberal leaning groups and tried to get them to say something damning while he was taping the interactions. Although he says that the Planned Parenthood taping was legal, he also writes this in the article:
Leaders taking on power structures need to be raw, confident, fearless and impermeable. Lila received a letter threatening to prosecute the group for violating wiretapping laws, but it did not stop her from continuing the investigation. After the investigation aired nationally on Fox News, Planned Parenthood could no longer press charges, as Lila would appear the victim.
O'Keefe believed that even if he and White were putting themselves in legal jeopardy, the fear of bad publicity would make it impossible for charges to be pressed against them.
I don't know what O'Keefe and his fake telephone repairmen were planning to do at Landrieu's office, but he seems to believe that when you break laws in pursuit of a media stunt, the coverage will shield you from prosecution. That hasn't worked out for him this time around.
-- Rogers Cadenhead
Anonymous
tsk tsk. Calling BullShit on the self-proclaimed Purveyors of Truth? Get with the program.