The Fakegate Timeline – from soup to nuts

I’d be interested in seeing what if any commentary Gleick included with the documents while presenting them to his 15 friends. Is that out in the open, or a guarded secret?

Again, I can’t resist reposting this prediction from 8 days ago, seeing that A. Scott’s excellent work is making a rather strong case for item #2:
—————————————————————————————-
Russ R. says:
February 20, 2012 at 8:49 pm
Predictions:
1. Desmog and other alarmist outfits will rush to support Gleick, accepting his story uncritically, and offering up plausible defenses, contorting the evidence and timeline to explain how things could have transpired. They will also continue to act as if the strategy document were authentic. They will portray him simultaneously as a hero (David standing up to Goliath), and a victim (an innocent whistleblower being harassed by evil deniers and their lawyers).
2. It will become apparent that Gleick was in contact with Desmog prior to sending them the document cache. They knew he was the source, and they probably knew that he falsified the strategy document. They also likely received the documents ahead of the other 14 recipients, which is the only way they could have had a blog post up with all the documents AND a summary hyping up their talking points within hours of receiving them.
3. This will take months, or possibly years to fully resolve.
—————————————————————————————-

Wait…the only party involved and in the EST zone is TP…what exactly is being suggested here???

“…ran out of patience with any chance of rational discussion with WUWT,”
Does this mean that he has been here at WUWT, discussed with the WUWT’ers, given up, and has now disappeared…? Which username is missing nowadays?

Something wrong with this?
” We also can deduce, from the fact that ThinkProgress first posted the story at 3:10pm EST/9:10am PST (or more likely, based on other evidence actually at 2:10pm EST/8:10am PST) ”
Only PST is only three hours behind EST, yes?
RR
REPLY: Yes, some typos there, that’s the value of having lots of people look at it and review it here. Will fix that, thanks – Anthony

Well, we knew he was becoming unhinged, but wow, some of that is rubber room stuff. I think it was his butthurt from Taylor that sent him over the edge…… It will be interesting to find out who else knew about the faked memo.

Russell C says (February 28, 2012 at 3:11 pm): “Last I heard, Desmogblog’s star blogger Ross Gelbspan is in Brookline, MA, if that’s the least bit helpful.
He is the central figure in my online articles over the past two years, including what I had today at American Thinker: ‘Fakegate Opens a Door: More than meets the eye in the Heartland controversy’ ”
Thanks, Russell. Lots more to read at the “Climategate Country Club” link in the American Thinker article.

Somehow the Copner and Watts Excel files need to be merged.
Both have important info to collate.

There’s something called, I believe, the “Long Tail” which means the extraordinary difference it makes in eg cutting costs and still get a profit, if there is a huge audience / number of subscribers / commenters / buyers. Normally a court case’s material is collected by one lawyer’s outfit, I would suppose. But here we have “crowdsourcing” at its finest, providing instant defence material for Heartland.
Much as Gleick may have sought out / had handed to him on a plate / the most expert bully in the lawyering profession with Keker, I just get a feeling that competing with the “Long Tail” of crowdsourcing here may be new territory even for Keker.
People here have been working all hours to piece all this together, because standing up for truth is a powerful driver. I seriously doubt that the other side could match our efforts even if they tried.
Heck, they just did, and got themselves a name for it. Gleicking. Gleickenspiel.
Newspapers and the warmist blogs have shown they have given up their most basic ethical practice, of checking facts before publishing, in this case. “Review” committees have shown that they have given up their most basic ethical practice, of asking questions of both sides, of giving both sides chance to respond.
But we still entertain the hope that the courts have not completely abandoned the basic principles of justice, and have not given up their ancient fourfold system of prosecution, defence, prosecution responds to defence, and … drum roll… defence responds to prosecution (and to prosecution’s response)… plus the use of a jury.
This is important. This is history in the making.

Ted K said Zowie!
That’s from ‘Some like it Hot.’ !!!

kwik says: February 28, 2012 at 3:23 pm
“…ran out of patience with any chance of rational discussion with WUWT,”
Does this mean that he has been here at WUWT, discussed with the WUWT’ers, given up, and has now disappeared…? Which username is missing nowadays?
IIRC, Anthony warned him not to use inflammatory language, and said that, if this condition was met, fine with WUWT.
Sounds similar to what has happened recently with WMConnolley, who was IIRC snipped and warned likewise to keep off offensive language which WMC then wrote about on his blog in a way that gives the impression he had been banned from a blog (WUWT) that claimed it allowed all shades of opinion to be published.
All the more reason that a court case is needed, to help break the vicious circle “WUWT are (eg) hypocritical” “How do you know?” “Stoat and DSB and the Guardian say so” “Have you checked they were correct?” “Don’t need to. They are trustworthy, unlike the hypocritical WUWT” “Have you checked at WUWT?” “Are you mad? they’ve already been shown to be hypocrites”…

Nicely investigated, assembled and documented.
It could be interesting to include:
– Gleick’s tweets just prior to the 14th through the present. If there’s a smoking gun prior to the 14th it may have been purged. Thereafter his tweets were few but interesting nonetheless.
– Mashey’s IRS report release. If desmogblog received the documents before your timeline presumes, it’s unlikely that Mashey was immediately involved. But his involvement may help frame what occurred on that day.

I would never have believed this but
“Gleichschaltung” (German pronunciation: [ˈɡlaɪçʃaltʊŋ]), means a political policy of “coordination”, “making the same”, “bringing into line”, among the goals of this policy were to bring about adherence to a specific doctrine and way of thinking and to control as many aspects of life as possible.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gleichschaltung
The truth is even stranger than fiction!
A “Gleichschaltung: is EXACTLY what Peter Gleick and his CAGW green eco-fighters have in mind. They seek to control the way of thinking in as many aspects of life as possible! Through infiltration/control of unelected government bodies (EPA, IPCC), institutions, NGO’s and the like.
For more details see: Karl Dietrich Bracher “Stages of Totalitarian “Integration” (Gleichschaltung): The Consolidation of National Socialist Rule in 1933 and 1934″ pages 109–28 from Republic To Reich The Making of the Nazi Revolution Ten Essays edited by Hajo Holborn, New York: Pantheon Books, 1972.
WOW WOW WOW. History Repeating.
Etymology
Gleichschaltung, as a compound word, is better comprehended by those who speak other languages by listing its predecessory uses in German. The word gleich in German means alike, equal, or the same; schaltung means something like switching. The word Gleichschaltung had two uses in German for physical, rather than political, meanings:

“Groklaw” (corrected spelling)

Thanks all for the comments – thanks Anthony as well.
This effort started within a day of the Feb 14 document dump, intending to verify in detail the times, and zones, of DeSmog, TP, etc’s postings It quickly mushroomed into something much more. In addition to my research, drilling down to as deep as possible – which includes attempting to verify time zones for each source, and then verify them.
Anthony encouraged a “check it three time” detail level when this began – and I’ve tried to check the facts that are verified to a fairly high degree of certainty.
For example starting with a “posted” time on a web story, 1st try to determine the web sites time zone, then use Facebook, Twitter and other tools to try and “prove” your assumption on time zone with these supporting “crosschecks.”
I’ve also tried to follow the excellent “peer to peer” work by many others – the Steve’s; Mosher & McIntyre, along with the gangs at Climate Audit, Lucia’s and others. I’ve tried to note “H/T’s” in the spreadsheet – some I know I’ve missed.
What you see is an internal working document, warts – lots of warts – and all. There are plenty errors, typo’s, incomplete areas and the like. It’s been like peeling an onion – as you see each new detail, each new line of reasoning in a comment, etc. it opens another whole path … in some cases its just been get the data and source noted and to go back to later. Some are notes to myself – and lines of inquiry – other may be obsolete or answered as I have not spent time cleaning old data that may be updated with what we know now.
It’s a work in progress – several days back I expanded from just the 2/14 (and related documents etc) timeline to try to include what I think of as the “motivation” timeline – Gleick’s posts, comments etc. Copner, Mosher and others at Lucia’s are working on an excellent version of that.
I’m formatting some of my notes on that for them as well – although from what I see they’ve been very thorough. A lot of their info is in current version of this file (which I’ll update to Anthony to be posted a bit later).
Keep in mid this is a data file – my plan was/is – once data is closer to complete – to put into a more readable/useful timeline format. In the end collecting and compiling the data and info, while its “hot” (and available – as some has already disappeared) became the priority to making it pretty 😉

It also seems somewhat ironic that in German, gluck, with 2 dots above the u, means luck.
So to quote Jeremy: “The truth is even stranger than fiction!”

Excellent work, A. Scott. You have done a great service with this. Same to all those who have contributed to uncovering the details of this. Thank you all.
I love this: “Gleick was becoming increasingly combative and agitated. In his 1/26/12 email to Woods he said he had: “…ran out of patience with any chance of rational discussion with WUWT, Bishop Hill, or the regular tweeters and bloggers of that group.”
Double-congratulations to one and all for apparently helping him jump off the ethical cliff!

Lucy Skywalker said @ February 28, 2012 at 4:12 pm

People here have been working all hours to piece all this together, because standing up for truth is a powerful driver. I seriously doubt that the other side could match our efforts even if they tried.
Heck, they just did, and got themselves a name for it. Gleicking. Gleickenspiel.
…
This is important. This is history in the making.

That brought a tear to my eye.

I still wonder about Gleick’s past activities, most particularly in the area of California water policy, and whether his eagerness to engage in funny business with Heartland was brought on by past success in traducing the bounds of law and ethics in other spheres…

sherlock;
To make the point clearer, you could have asked, “What hypothetical weather trends could disprove AGW?” Then explain that having at least one test that needs to be passed is a basic qualification for any scientific theory. If there isn’t one (or more) then it can’t be called science.

Warmatologist Gleick,
Incredibly tried to be slick,
With his buds at desmog,
(a daft warmista blog),
He’ll be spending time swinging a pick.

“I don’t think it was power to push his agenda as much as being on an Ethics board put Dr. Gleick in a position to making sure everybody else is being ethical.”
Ah, but if he’s the watchdog and approves of this behavior, then nothing anyone does under his watch is unethical. It’s not that dissimilar to George Soro’s campaign to get progressive Attorney Generals into office. Ultimately, they’re the ones that make the call on what’s legal and not.

What’s the point of doing all of this research if law enforcement has no intention of enforcing the law? In a sane world, Gleick and his co-criminals would have been arrested long before now, but in an Obama/Holder world, up is down, wrong is right, and bad is good, and these fanatics will never be prosecuted.

bravo!
warm up the tar and fetch the feathers!

“[H]e said he had: ‘…ran out of patience with any chance of rational discussion with WUWT, Bishop Hill, or the regular tweeters and bloggers of that group.'”
Huh?
“[H]e said he ‘ran out of patience….'”, or “[H]e said he had run ‘out of patience….'” The past tense and past participle are not hard to figure out. The word “had” doesn’t work before “ran,” “rang,” “sang,” or “went.”

52.Anton said:
February 29, 2012 at 5:22 am
“…What’s the point of doing all of this research if law enforcement has no intention of enforcing the law? In a sane world, Gleick and his co-criminals would have been arrested long before now, but in an Obama/Holder world, up is down, wrong is right, and bad is good, and these fanatics will never be prosecuted…”
And, in a sane world, anyone on the “other side” who confesses in public to the same crime now has a precident.
If the leaker/hacker that released the Climategate emails is ever identified, the Obama/Holder world will have a pretty hard time arguing which one was worse. But Gleik’s actions have already been tried in the court of public opinions – something that may be far worse than a fine or jail time.
Who’d want to hear his opinion on ANYTHING after this?

http://blog.chron.com/sciguy/2012/02/mann-on-heartlands-education-plan-so-amoral-it%E2%80%99s-almost-hard-to-put-into-words/
As someone who was a victim of leaked confidential documents, do you have any sympathy for the Heartland Institute, whose internal memos were leaked by Peter Gleick?
It’s funny, I do in a sense. But it’s only to a point. There has been some tendency to compare these two things and create a moral equivalency between the two, but I don’t think that equivalency actually exists. The leaked e-mails, we’ve now had nine different investigations, and they all came to the conclusion that there was no impropriety. This was a misrepresentation, taking people’s words out of context. There was no attempt to fudge data or hide evidence or any of these claims that have been made. In retrospect it really was a smear campaign that was used to discredit climate science.
On the other hand this really reinforces what we already sort of knew, that Heartland Institute was one of a number of these think tanks or front groups funded by industry or certain right-wing special interests to manufacture false controversy, to attack climate science and individual climate scientists. It reinforced what we already knew, but it also brought out some interesting details that to my knowledge Heartland has actually admitted to. That there was this program to indoctrinate K-9 school children with climate change denial propaganda. To me that is so pernicious, and I am genuinely horrified by it. I’m all too aware that those who will bear the brunt of our emissions today are going to be our children and grandchildren. They’re going to bear the costs of our cheap energy today. So there’s this effort to misinform the very people who will bear the greatest cost of climate change. To me that is so amoral it’s almost hard to put into words.

Some interesting developments ….
“Older Tweet results for @TP_Green are unavailable.”
“Older Tweet results for @DeSmogBlog are unavailable.”
“Older Tweet results for @RLittlemore are unavailable.”
“Older Tweet results for @climatebrad are unavailable.”
“Older Tweet results for @james_hoggan are unavailable.”
“Older Tweet results for joe romm are unavailable.”
The above accounts (and probably some others at Twitter) no longer offer any posts older than 2/22/12 ….
Can you say “running for the hills…”
I know you can. 😉
Revkin has also deleted posts, and I read the story about AGU deleting several posts and adding a new one. Its a veritable landslide and picking up steam.
Discuss.

Hey Nerd
Perhaps you might be bothered to read the REAL facts about Heartlands education initiative rather than the crap in the fake Strategy memo ginned up by poor Mr. Gleick and/or his cronies, when there was nothing incendiary in the real documents.
Heartland promotes teaching BOTH sides of the climate debate. That is called education – indoctrination is what the Geicks of the world want taught.
And while we’re at it – since you think what Heartland does is morally repugnant – how about you share with us how morally disgusted you are with places like DeeSmogBlog and the like – whose sole purpose is to literally attack those with a different opinion than theirs?

Maybe I didn’t understood the timeline well but, was the fake memo scanned (2/13/12 8:41PM) a day before Gleick’s phishing (2/14/12 6:13PM)? In that case, how it is that the faked memo quotes some of the phished docs? I imagined Gleick got the docs, and then made up the fake memo, but the dates above contradict that.
Been up and working for many hours, so my logical routines are a bit strained. If I’m making a stupid mistake be compassive!

Oldseadog said @ February 29, 2012 at 2:34 am

Is this story going to be a nutcracker?

Dunno, but it sure is sweet 😉

Matthew W says:
February 28, 2012 at 4:23 pm
@ Lucy
“Gleicking. Gleickenspiel”
How about adding “Gleickenenfreude”

…. or even Gleickshaltung

The thought occurs that if the pro-CAGW ‘science’ truly held water, they wouldn’t need to indulge in this sort of name calling. As they do; to use a card players analogy, it indicates they’re bluffing on a very poor hand indeed.

Tom B:
Your hashing of the files makes sense, although the naming – file and file(1) could be the cause. HOWEVER, MS Office doesn’t ‘delete’ anythin when you edit a file, it rather ‘comments it out.’ This way you can revert. It does this even after a save if you know how to look at the file. When dealing with large documents with lots of formating, it has occassionally done this to me scraping work because it failed a save and did a ‘revert’ on load.

TomB – “The Laden/Littlemore versions match each other and the Desmog/TP versions match each other. But they do not match between the sets.”
That is correct. Littlemore’s story was posted one minute later than Demelles original story at DeSmog. Regardless, he saved and re-uploaded all the documents, in doing so giving them a new “Modified” date of 2/14/12. There is no logical reason for him to have done so.
There is however a VER GOOD other reason to do so.
By doing these he/they accomplished an important goal – the “Modified” time on the Littlemore version of the files shows between 12:36pm and 12:55pm – they published the story at 1:14pm … all PST.
This makes the statement they gave to Politico – that they only had the documents a short time – that they published them within an hour of receipt. They wanted people to believe they received the “Insider” email at 12:13pm PST, and having these files re-saved at 12:36 to 12:55 supports this, and the Politico story claim.
Paraphrased, this is the timeline they want people to believe:
‘We got the files at 12:13pm from the Insider. We can prove that because when we saved and uploaded them starting at 12:36 and ending at 12:55. We published the story at 1:14pm. See – aren’t we smart – it all fits!’
BZZZZZZZTTTT!!!
Nope. Not.
That WOULD have worked perfectly. They could say – ‘hey look, there is an unchanged clean version in DeMelles first posting at 1:13pm, but we musta saved them or sumpthin’ when we uploaded for Littlemore’s story – you can clearly see they say 12:36 to 12:55pm – we ain’t misrememberin’ – honest.’
Except for one pesky fact. While all the other Heartland documents were modified between 12:36 and 12:55pm PST – Littlemore’s version of the “Fundraising” document was saved …. at 9:59 AM PST.
Let me repeat that – Littlemores copy of “Fundraising” document was saved at 9:59AM PST.
The original Heartland document (as uploaded with Demelle’s DeSmog story and at ThinkProgress) was created and last modified 1/16/12 at 10:02 AM CST.
Someone forget to keep track of ALL the documents they were trying to carefully manipulate to manufacture evidence to support their claimed timeline.
When at first you practice to deceive, what a dangerous web you weave.
A Keystonian (as in Cops, not pipeline) blunder … and one that unravels all their carefully planned work at faking (this is Fakegate right?) a timeline.
That one document – saved at 9:59 AM PST – shows that DeSmogBlog had the files hours earlier than they claimed. It proves the claim DeSmog made to Politico – that they only had the files for an hour before publishing – was not only false – it was KNOWINGLY FALSE.

PHIL – was simply a TYPO – this is the correct timeline:

The timeline shows (and Mosher has said he had other support confirming) that the documents were received about 9:15 am PST. One of Littlemore’s documents has a Modified date at 9:59 am PST, meaning he had to have received before then, and then saved it.
DeSmog posted the stories at 1:13 pm PST (Demelle) and 1:14 pm PST (Littlemore) – which means they had documents at least 4 hours. It seems HIGHLY unlikely they both, along with Think Progress, all could have written the detailed stories that appeared if they only had docs for an hour … much more to investigate there I think.
The bottom line … ONE of the Littlemore files has a Modified Date of 9:59 AM PST. Using all the evidence available (the DeSmog post times, tweets, Facebook posts etc) it appears DeSmog’s server or publishing platform is set to MST and in reality it is pretty certain they posted the stories at 1:13 pm PST and 1:14 pm PST respectively for DeMelle’s and Littlemore’s versions.

Perhaps Anthony or one of the mods can update the story text to correct.

A. Scott says:
February 29, 2012 at 7:31 am
Hmmmm …. now they seem to be working – that is weird – others worked, showed older tweets … yet all of them stopped at 2/22.
Mod’s feel free to delete above posts
=====================
FBI or legal eagles copying files / accounts?

I believe the Leo Hickman and Gleick tweets around 1/22 re: Gleick having a fax machine to be very interesting … as well the names of some of the others tweeting with Hick,am around that time as well
At Lucia’s “Amused” has found CCITT encoding in one of the files – meaning the file was scanned and saved at fax resolution. The only document in the group that displays at that low resolution is the Strategy document.
Hickman was also one of the very first to tweet about the stories first appearing – within less than 15 minutes. And within minutes after that had a long string of tweets lined up regarding the contents.
And a recent tweet from him points to this vapid excuse-making:
@Leo Hickman:
Gleick’s actions kick off intriguing ethics debate: “The morality of unmasking Heartland” …
http://theconversation.edu.au/the-morality-of-unmasking-heartland-5494