Climate ugliness

Notes on the faked Heartland document

14 years ago
Anthony Watts

UPDATE: there’s even more evidence that the document was faked. The Koch Foundation and The Atlantic weighs in in update 3 below.

As a follow up to the post Notes on the Heartland Leak, I’ve prepared some notes on the PDF document “2012 Climate Strategy” that Heartland says in their press release is a fake among the other documents distributed. They say specifically that:

One document, titled “Confidential Memo: 2012 Heartland Climate Strategy,” is a total fake apparently intended to defame and discredit The Heartland Institute. It was not written by anyone associated with The Heartland Institute. It does not express Heartland’s goals, plans, or tactics. It contains several obvious and gross misstatements of fact.

Here is a screencap of the top part of that document, which was printed, and then scanned, unlike any of the other documents which were direct to PDF from word processing programs:

There’s been a lot of scrutiny in comments on various blogs, and I’ve given some scrutiny to the document as well, comparing it with other documents in the set. I’m in agreement that this is a fake, here is why:

1. It is the only document in the set that appears to have been scanned rather than produced by a PDF document publisher such as Adobe Distiller 8.0 or 8.1 which were both in document properties on other documents. For example compare the two document properties side by side. I’ve placed arrows marking distinct differences:

2. The metadata in document properties in the document said to be faked have been sanitized. Why cover tracks? This could possibly be due to the leaker not knowing how to remove other metadata in standard PDF, but knows if he/she scans it on an Epson flatbed scanner and saves it to the scanner’s memory stick/flash drive port, there will be no personally identifiable information.

3. One of the first questions I asked Joe Bast of Heartland when I saw this printed then scanned document was “do you not shred your trash”?  His response was, “there’s no need, all the communications are done electronically by email”. That suggests a paper copy never existed in the Heartland office. The fact that none of the documents contains any personal signatures lends credence to this.

4. It doesn’t read like a strategy document, as it mixes strategy with operational details and commentary.

5. It gets the operational details ( budget) wrong – especially the points about my project, rounding up to $90,000 from a very specific budget number of $88,000. This suggests trying to inflate the number for a purpose. There’s no evidence of rounding budget numbers in any other document in the set.

6. Key sentences are rather clumsily written and some make no sense. This contrasts with purposeful language in the other documents. This one sentence in particular has gotten a lot of attention:

His effort will focus on providing curriculum that shows that the topic of climate change is controversial and uncertain – two key points that are effective at dissuading teachers from teaching science.

I can’t imagine pitching “…dissuading teachers from teaching science.” to a board of directors at a meeting. It is a sure recipe for a public relations nightmare.

7. There are punctuation errors throughout it, suggesting it is not a professional document. There’s an overuse of commas for example. The formatting is different than other documents in the set, with a left justified title. All other Heartland documents have a center justified title. Fonts for titles don’t match either. The “2012 Climate Strategy” document has a different font.

8. The “2012 Climate Strategy” is the purported “smoking gun” that provides commentary and context missing from the other factual documents. Without this framing document, the other documents and what they contain, are rather bland. Without it, there’s not much red meat to dangle in front of people that would tear into it.

9. The document misrepresents the positions of Andrew Revkin and Dr. Judith Curry. This seems to come from a point of speculation, not from a point of certainty.

10. Most of the documents were prepared by Joe Bast, listed as author “jbast” in the PDF document metadata and done around 8AM on Monday, January 16th. One document, “Board Directory 01-18-12_0.pdf” has an author “ZMcElrath” ( a Heartland employee according to the Budget document) and was created on Wednesday January 25th at 1:04PM, within working hours just like all the others.

The document in question the “2012 Climate Strategy” has a timestamp of Monday, Feb 13th, at 12:41PM, just one day before “DeSmog Blog” released the documents on their website. The timeline disparity doesn’t make a lot of sense for documents that were supposedly mailed to a person posing as a board member (according to an alleged email snippet on Keith Kloor’s website) to trick someone at Heartland to email them the package of documents. Here it is:

Dear Friends (15 of you):

In the interest of transparency, I think you should see these files from the Heartland Institute. Look especially at the 2012 fundraising and budget documents, the information about donors, and compare to the 2010 990 tax form. But other things might also interest or intrigue you. This is all I have. And this email account will be removed after I send.

It would have had to have been sent sometime between 12:41PM Chicago time on Monday Feb13th and Tuesday Feb 14th 16:39 (Pacific Time) when the first comment appeared on DeSmog Blogs first post on the issue. According to David Appell’s blog, Keith Kloor says it was sent yesterday (Feb 14th), which is after the creation date for the “2012 Climate Strategy” memo of “2/13/2012 12:41:52 PM. Which means DeSmog blog had the documents only a short time.

Appell also writes: Desmogblog Had Leaked Docs For Only an Hour

I guess I’m behind on this, because this afternoon Politico reported that Desmogblog received the documents yesterday (2/14) and “The blog posted them about an hour later without contacting the Heartland Institute for confirmation.”

http://dyn.politico.com/printstory.cfm?uuid=5826D160-4705-4D72-A0BB-44C8C2EDA7DC

So they received them after the suspicious memo was scanned (according to its metadata). Which doesn’t prove its not fake, but at least the timeline isn’t inconsistent.

Appell also thinks the document makeup is suspicious and does his own metadata analysis.

Summary:

All the above evidence, plus Heartland’s statement saying it is a fake, taken in total suggest strongly that the “2012 Climate Strategy” document is a fake. From my perspective, it is almost if the person(s) looking at these said “we need more to get attention” and decided to create this document as the “red meat” needed to incite a response.

Indeed, the ploy worked, as there are now  216 instances (as of this writing) of this document title “Confidential Memo: 2012 Heartland Climate Strategy” on Google at various news outlets and websites.

The question to ask then is this: who benefits the most from the existence of such a document? A disgruntled employee? Hardly. Such things often backfire. And, who would know best how to craft such a document for maximum public impact? I think the answers are there, but the question needs to be asked. From what I hear, Heartland is going for criminal prosecution and/or civil liabilities on this one. They certainly have a case.

All of those news outlets and bloggers that regurgitated this document and the claims in it without checking for the veracity of it first are going to have some defending to do to. The Guardian seems particularly vulnerable for their “publish first, ask questions later” tactic.

UPDATE: At Lucia’s Blackboard, commenter Duke C. have been delving into the faked memo. What he has found is quite interesting:

Duke C. (Comment #89877)

February 15th, 2012 at 9:55 pm

Steve McIntyre (Comment #89815)

February 15th, 2012 at 4:31 pm

If you look at the Document Properties of the various Heartland documents, the Confidential Memo has a date of Feb 13, 2012 whereas the other documents date from January. In addition, the agenda source (for example) refers to a p: drive and an origin in a *.wpd document, while the Confidential Memo does not have these features.

The Confidential Strategy Memo and the Form 990 were both scanned, possibly from the same source. There are similarities in the Metadata. Both were created under PDF Version 1.5, with the same Extensible Metadata Platform Core:

xmlns:x=”adobe:ns:meta/” x:xmptk=”Adobe XMP Core 5.2-c001 63.139439, 2010/09/27-13:37:26

The other 6 pdfs show a different core version:

xmlns:x=”adobe:ns:meta/” x:xmptk=”Adobe XMP Core 4.0-c316 44.253921, Sun Oct 01 2006 17:14:39

The Form 990 linked at DeSmog shows August 02, 2011 as the last modified date. The 990 linked at Heartlandinstitute.org shows December 06, 2011. Scanning artifacts indicate that both are identical.

All of this is, of course, circumstantial evidence. but I’m not ready to rule out that the Strategy memo wasn’t scanned at Heartland.

================================================

Duke C. (Comment #89887)

February 15th, 2012 at 11:03 pm

More on the Strategy memo-

EPSON Scan

2012-02-13T12:41:52-08:00

2012-02-13T12:41:52-08:00

2012-02-13T12:41:52-08:00

Hmmm……

That’s Pacific Standard Time, if I’m reading it right.

=================================================

Duke C. (Comment #89888)

February 15th, 2012 at 11:07 pm

Oops. with html tags removed:

rdf:Description rdf:about=””

xmlns:pdf=”http://ns.adobe.com/pdf/1.3/”

pdf:Producer EPSON Scan /pdf:Producer

/rdf:Description

rdf:Description rdf:about=””

xmlns:xmp=”http://ns.adobe.com/xap/1.0/”

xmp:ModifyDate 2012-02-13T12:41:52-08:00 /xmp:ModifyDate

xmp:CreateDate 2012-02-13T12:41:52-08:00 /xmp:CreateDate

xmp:MetadataDate 2012-02-13T12:41:52-08:00 /xmp:MetadataDate

=================================================

According to the “contact” page at Heartland, they have no west coast offices:

The Heartland Institute

One South Wacker Drive #2740

Chicago, Illinois 60606

312/377-4000

map
Telephone Phone: 312/377-4000

Fax: 312/377-5000
Other offices 1728 Connecticut Avenue NW #2B

Washington, DC 20009

Phone: 202/525-5717

AdministratorP.O. Box 10330

Tallahassee, FL 32302

Christian R. Camara3900 Pearce Road

Austin, TX 78730

Julie DrennerP.O. Box 361195

Columbus, Ohio 43236

Alan Smith

Now who do we know on the West Coast in the Pacific Time Zone? One major player in this mix is in the Pacific Time Zone according to their “contact” page.

In the Heartland budget document “(1-15-2012) 2012 Heartland Budget.pdf ” in section 3, there’s also reference made to an employee that was let go that works out of the west coast home office. These are places to start asking questions.

UPDATE2: It seems Andrew Revkin, one of the first to publicly post about the documents without checking the veracity first, now agrees to the possibility of a fake (h/t A.Scott) :

“looking back, it could well be something that was created as a way to assemble the core points in the batch of related docs.”

Source: http://blog.heartland.org/2012/02/andrew-revkin-finds-journalism-religion-after-posting-fraudulent-document/

UPDATE3: 11:15AM 2/16/12 Megan McArdle at the Atlantic has even more evidence it is a fake. (h/t Bart)

It seems that the Koch Brothers had nothing to do with climate donations to Heartland, but they confirm they did donate for health care campaigns. Koch confirms in a press release that their contribution was for health care, not global warming:

The [Koch] Foundation gave just $25,000 to Heartland in 2011 (the only such donation to that organization in more than 10 years) and that funding was specifically directed to a healthcare research program, and not climate change research, as was erroneously reported.

McArdle writes:

Unless there’s an explanation I’m missing, that seems to clinch it–why would health care donations show up in their climate strategy report?  Unless of course, it was written by someone who doesn’t know anything about facts of the donation, but does know that the Kochs make great copy.

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Brian H
February 16, 2012 6:18 am

The smoking gun: “I propose that at this point it be kept confidential and only be distributed to a subset of Institute Board and senior staff.”
Now, I am not a climate scientist, but I have been general counsel and secretary for a number of public companies. This single sentence is so poorly crafted and badly thought out that it is virtually impossible for the “Confidential Memo” to be genuine. To the contrary, it was almost certainly crafted by someone who has never served or interacted with a Board of Directors.
1. No executive would ever put in writing that he was going to limit distribution to only a “subset” of directors. Any excluded director would instantly become an enemy. Board members are notoriously jealous of their position and authority. Moreover, selectively disseminating information only to certain Board members is a recipie for personal liability (for both the executive and the Board member who receives the selective distribution). It is not to say that selective distribution does not occur, it simply means that any person who had risen to a policy making level would know better than to put it in writing.
2. Any person comfortable writing memos to a Board would have said either: “a subset of THE Institute Board” or “a subset of Institute Board MEMBERS.” Board members are not “staff,” and every Board with which I have been associated had at least one member who would take offense at terminology (and remember the person who made the error). Of course, it could be a typo, but it is as obvious to anyone versed in these sorts of memos as a wrong note is to a professional musician.
3. “Senior staff” is an ill defined term and any person who wanted to keep something confidential, even if he were stupid enough to put the directive in writing, would carefully circumscribe the permissible recipients. The author might as well have said distribute only to you know who.
4. No executive “proposes” to keep something confidential in the very document that he intends to keep confidential. It suggests an amateurishness so pronounced as to refute any claim that the author is an executive employee with experience communicting in writing with a Board. Kind of like your nerd friend who asks if it’s half time at a Bruins game.
5. No executive “proposes” to keep a “Confidential Memo” confidential. It’s just silly, like proposing to keep water wet.
I have written hundreds of Board memos and read hundreds more. I have seen and made many, many errors. But the number of errors in this one sentence (not to mention the numerous other errors in the memo documented at length in this thread) prove to me beyond any reasonable doubt that the Confidential Memo is a fake. If I am wrong, then the idiot who wrote it deserves everything he gets. But I’m not wrong.

0
Caroline
February 16, 2012 6:20 am

There should be no surprise at the behaviour of the BBC… but you can take action.
MAKING COMPLAINTS TO THE BBC
Do you want to make a complaint to the BBC?
One thing to get straight from the start: – responsibility for the BBC’s editorial content within their Editorial Guidlines rests ultimately with the Director-General, as Editor-in-Chief. This may save complainants a great deal of frustration as the vast Kafka-like bureaucratic monster that the BBC has become will have you pushed from pillar to post as each department asserts that their department is not the one to deal with your complaint, and fobs you off to yet another department or the BBC’s “complaints” web page. Having had a long experience of dealing with BBC producers and editors, I can say with some authority that complaints are routinely ignored, dismissed, or, as in the case of emails, deleted by one of their army of “screeners” who filter out all averse comments from their boss’ Inbox.
So write a letter to the man who is running the BBC:
Mark Thompson, BBCDirector-General
Broadcasting House
Portland Place
London
W1A 1AA
UK
020 7580 4468
Fax 020 7637 1630
Contact the BBC directly
The BBC Trust
“Your complaint is important to us. The BBC Trust ensures BBC programmes are high quality. If you have a complaint please use this process.”
– Sir Michael Lyons, Chairman of the BBC Trust.
Re. AGW bias:
Alison Hastings, a member of the trust, has made this statement about bias:
“The BBC must be inclusive, consider the broad perspective, and ensure that the existence of a range of views is appropriately reflected. In addition, the new guideline extends the definition of “controversial” subjects beyond those of public policy and political or industrial controversy to include controversy within religion, science, finance, culture, ethics and other matters.”
Contacting her directly –
Alison Hastings
BBC Trust Unit
180 Great Portland Street
London
W1W 5QZ
UK
Telephone: 03700 100 222
Textphone: 03700 100 212
Email: Send your complaint https://www.bbc.co.uk/complaints/forms/
For the record, I have written to Alison Hastings myself about the BBC’s coverage of AGW, and I can tell you that she did not reply. Instead, I got a letter from her Correspondence Manager, Bruce Vander. He said that the Trust has no role in editorial matters, which are the domain of the BBC’s management. The Trust’s role is to set out the overall framework, known as the BBC’s Editorial Guidlines, which set out the values and standards that all BBC output should meet. He also pointed me to the complaints page: http://www.bbc.co.uk/complaints and said the Trust conducts regular impartiality reviews of BBC editorial content. The current impartiality review concerns science coverage, including global warming, and its findings are due to be published later this year.
From all that, I conclude the way to complain is firstly via the complaints page, then to the management, then finally to the Director-General himself.
The BBC will only change their behaviour on this subject if they get a regular avalanche of complaints from the public. They are an insulated, self-serving, arrogant, incestous bureaucracy which ignores the very public it proclaims itself to serve. The more you let them get away with it, the more they will get away with. If the BBC knows their biased and unfair treatment of AGW and the participants in their programs will invoke an avalanche of objections from viewers and listeners, they may well alter the content of their programs to make them less biased and unfair.
Also write to the BBC Complaints department
BBC Complaints
PO Box 1922
Darlington
DL3 0UT
UK
There are three stages to the BBC Complaints process. Within 30 working days of the transmission or event you can either:
make a complaint via this website:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/complaints/handle.shtml#code
Call BBC Audience Services on 03700 100 222
(UK-wide rate charged at no more than 01/02 geographic numbers; calls may be recorded for training)
or write (as above) to BBC Complaints, PO Box 1922, Darlington DL3 0UR
There is also the BBC “Feedback” program which will accept complaints online –
http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/features/feedback/contact/
or write to –
Feedback
PO Box number 67234
London
SE1P 4AX
telephone 03 333 444 544
feedback@bbc.co.uk
You can also complain to the broadcasting regulator Ofcom http://www.ofcom.org.uk/ about editorial standards in radio and television broadcasts (but not about online items or the World Service). Ofcom takes complaints about BBC issues except impartiality, inaccuracy and some commercial issues which remain the responsibility of the BBC Trust. Visit the Ofcom website to read about its remit and how to complain.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
BBC Statement:
We monitor and report in public on the complaints we receive and learn from them to improve our programmes and services.
Stage 1: What happens first when I make a complaint?
We aim to reply to you within 10 working days depending on the nature of your complaint. We also publish public responses to significant issues of wide audience concern on this website.
If we have made a mistake we will apologise and take action to stop it happening again.
If you are dissatisfied with our first response, please contact the department which replied explaining why and requesting a further response to the complaint. If you made your original complaint through this website, you will need to use our webform again. You should normally do this within 20 working days.
Stage 2: If I’m not satisfied with this second reply, what can I do next?
If you consider that the second response you received still does not address your complaint, we will advise you how to take the matter further to this next stage. You should normally do this within 20 working days
If it is about a specific item which you believe has breached BBC editorial standards and it was broadcast or published by the BBC, it will normally be referred to the Editorial Complaints Unit. The Unit will independently investigate your complaint (normally in writing), decide if it is justified and, if so, ensure that the BBC takes appropriate action in response.
Other complaints at this stage will normally be referred to management in the division responsible. For full details of the BBC’s complaints processes please visit the BBC Trust website http://www.bbc.co.uk/bbctrust/contact/complaints_appeals/appeal_trust.shtml
Stage 3: If I still think the BBC has got it wrong what can I do?
The BBC Trust ensures complaints are properly handled by the BBC and that the complaints process reflects best practice and opportunities for learning.
Within 20 working days of your response at Stage 2, you may ask the BBC Trust to consider an appeal against the finding. If the BBC Trust upholds an appeal it expects management to take account of its findings.
You can write to the BBC Trust at 180 Great Portland Street, London W1W 5QZ. Full details of the complaints and appeals processes are on the BBC Trust website.
We aim to treat every complainant with respect and in return expect equal consideration to be shown to our staff who handle complaints.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Email other BBC programs directly:
Storyville
storyville@bbc.co.uk
Broadcasting House
broadcasting.house@bbc.co.uk
Newsnight Investigations
NewsnightInvestigations@bbc.co.uk
Newsnight
newsnight@bbc.co.uk
Horizon
horizon@bbc.co.uk
Emma Jay
Producer/Director BBC Vision Productions (Horizon)
emma.jay@bbc.co.uk
The Today Program
todaycomplaints@bbc.co.uk
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Commissioning Editors
The British Broadcasting Corporation
BBC White City
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http://www.bbc.co.uk/commissioning
Knowledge
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Controller, Knowledge Commissioning & Controller, Editorial standards (BBC Vision)
(Encompasses the new genre areas within the umbrella of Knowledge)
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Head of Knowledge Commissioning
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Emma Swain’s role is to provide creative leadership to the team of commissioning editors, supporting the indie and inhouse producers. She will not make individual commissioning decisions, and will report to George Entwistle.
Krishan Arora
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Krishan doesn’t commission projects, but is the liaison between independent producers and the BBC.
Mary FitzPatrick
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Mary is also not a commissioner, but she works with commissioners and the like, and independent production companies to improve on-screen portrayal and diversity.
Documentaries
Charlotte Moore
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Maxine Watson
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0
Isonomia
February 16, 2012 6:22 am

Myrrh says:
February 16, 2012 at 5:09 am
and p.s. Anthony, these people are truly despicable, be strong.
Yes, get up from that hysterical laughter on the floor … it’s not that funny … OK, it is! But be strong, calm down, take deep breaths … the laughing will stop!

0
AdderW
February 16, 2012 6:22 am

TerryS says:
February 16, 2012 at 6:07 am
Curiously, the XMP toolkit used to generate the fake pdf was:
“Adobe XMP Core 5.2-c001 63.139439, 2010/09/27-13:37:26 ”
The XMP toolkit used to create one of the elements of desmog-fracking-the-future.pdf was:
“Adobe XMP Core 5.2-c001 63.139439, 2010/09/27-13:37:26 ”
I am not drawing any conclusions about this, just pointing out the coincidence.

Ha, ha, really !?

0
Mark T
February 16, 2012 6:23 am

You’d think Desmog would be smarter than that…
I wonder if “2010/09/27-13:37:26” is the install date, or the origination date, i.e., release date of the program itself? If the latter, doesn’t mean much. If the former, damning.
Mark

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Bill
February 16, 2012 6:31 am

a physicist
In answer to your post about why were people not upset about climategate:
There may be subtle or not so subtle differences.
1. If the climategate e-mails were hacked, then it is a form of theft and I don’t like it. However, in general I do like the release of information. I was ok with the whole Julian DeSands wikileaks in most cases. Once the information is leaked, it should be read and understood, not ignored. Sometimes the documents are released by a “whistelblower” for good reasons. So I did and will read the climategate e-mails.
2. In the climategate case, it may have been a whistleblower at the CRU who was upset with people not following the law (or traditional scientific convention) and delivering information freely, particularly with regard to FOI requests. This changes my outlook considerably.
3. After reading the e-mails, none of them are personal e-mails to family members that I know of and many of them show the participants in an unflattering light as they are dishonest about their true beliefs, and try to manipulate public opinion and hide data or obstruct others from seeing it. Some are vindictive and try to get others fired or journals shut down on the flimsiest of pretenses. They also show some behind the scenes things with the IPCC that indicate problems.
4. In the case of Heartland, there were much more clear violations of the law. Impersonating someone to gain access (this may be similar to hacking or slightly worse depending on the situation) and then it seems the most “incriminating” document appears to be faked.
Once they are released, I still read them (see 1. above) and I’m glad to note that they contain shocking information that the Koch Foundation gave money in 1999 and AGAIN in 2010 and gave the staggering sum of $200,000.
I believe I use similar values/outlooks in all the cases above.

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Scottish Sceptic
February 16, 2012 6:35 am

Dear Private eye,
I am writing to inform you of a particularly nasty episode where the BBC (Black) and Guardian went out of their way to hastily print information from what is now clearly a fraudulent document. Details of the scandal are on the WUWT site where the blog-owner was referred to in the fraudulent document. (See: http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/02/15/notes-on-the-fake-heartland-document)
However, those familiar with your coverage of climategate will be aware, despite your reputation to be: “a prominent critic and lampooner of public figures and entities that it deemed guilty of any of the sins of incompetence, inefficiency, corruption, pomposity or self-importance and it has become a self-styled “thorn in the side” of the British establishment” (Wikipedia), we all know that private eye is totally hypocritical when it comes to the catastrophic global warming scam.
As the chances of you following this story are about as high as getting Richard Black to admit that he is ” guilty of all the sins of incompetence, inefficiency, corruption, pomposity or self-importance”, I will be posting this to WUWT for their amusement.
regards,
the true thorn in the establishment’s side,
Scottish Sceptic.

0
John Kettlewell
February 16, 2012 6:36 am

Well since Canada is about as free as Britain, and DeSmogBlog is founded (based?) is Canada….should we expect a Tallblokean Investigation? It’s both a comical, and serious question; as I reside in these United States.
Remember: only Truth can stand up to Scrutiny

0
Richard Sharpe
February 16, 2012 6:37 am

Maurizio Morabito (omnologos) says on February 15, 2012 at 11:47 pm

Shall we start a fund to send Leo Hickman to some proper journalism classes?

Don’t bother. It is a waste of money.
Better to simply donate some money to the Heartland Institute …
(By their actions you will know them.)

0
Chris B
February 16, 2012 6:40 am

The timing is interesting. So close to the revelations about Media Matters ties to the White House.
Hmmmm……
http://mediamatters.org/search/tag/climate_change
http://in.news.yahoo.com/video/opinion-15749653/is-the-white-house-coordinating-with-media-matters-28282054.html

0
JJ
February 16, 2012 6:42 am

Tom Curtis says:
Anthony, several of your points are transparently false as can be determined by comparing the “strategy” document with the 990 form.
Nope.
The later is clearly an authentic document, containing, as it does, the signature of Bast.
Yeah, because signatures can’t be faked. The 990 form likely is genuine (remains to be seen if it has been altered) but your “logic” is assinine.
Equally clearly it is a scanned document, containing as it does hand written notation.
You are missing the point. The Form 990 is a scan. Of course it is – it is a FORM. Forms come preprinted, and are filled out. And they are signed by hand. Then they are scanned as submitted for records. That is what one expects of a form.
All of the rest of the documents are not forms. They are original creations. They were all made using word processing software (Word Perfect, suprisingly) and then converted directly to PDF for distribution. That is what one expects of an original document.
The “Claimate Strategy” is not a form. It is an original creation. Yet instead of simply creating the that coPDF directly from the word processing software, whoever made that document printed it to paper, scanned the paper back to an image, and converted the image to PDF. That is not what one expects of an original document.
Applying the same assumption to the strategy document, there is no reason to believe metadata was sanitized from that document either.
Yes there is – the fact that it was printed then scanned in the first place. Why would someone do that? One reason is that the act of printing then scanning eliminates the metadata that a direct software conversion would maintain.
On the contrary, there is every reason to believe that it was a paper document that was scanned on the day before it was released by desmog blog.
Yep, and that needs an explanation.
As it stands, one piece of evidence strongly suggests that the leak was performed by an insider, not by an outsider conducting a phishing attack as suggested by the Heartland Institute. Specifically, the date of last modification of the 990 form differs between that released by the leaker, and that released by the Heartland Institute.
The PDF modified date for the file on DeSmogblog is Feb 14, 2012.

0
Eric (skeptic)
February 16, 2012 6:42 am

Mark T, probably the release date, it is has over 1300 hits on google.

0
Shevva
February 16, 2012 6:44 am

If I was Heartland I’d get onto my lawyers quick and get people like Suzanne Goldenberg to stop using terms that cannot be associated to them. Sorry Heartland if you do not jump on the mis-infomation quick it will hang around like a bad smell.
“dissuade teachers from teaching science”,
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2012/feb/15/heartland-institute-fraud-leak-climate

0
Walter
February 16, 2012 6:57 am

Steve S says:
February 16, 2012 at 5:43 am
That is exactly what I was thinking about. 2004 was a long time ago.
http://littlegreenfootballs.com/article/12526

0
JJB MKI
February 16, 2012 7:09 am

They give themselves away by buying too heavily into their own cartoon image of monstrous ‘deniers’. Someone in the comments recently described these CAGW activists (DeSmog, SS etc.) as pathological narcissists. This seems a fairly apt description to me. They are so convinced at their own manipulatory skill (fostered by a lazy, equally narcissistic press) that they cannot concieve of how it could possibly backfire. And it does. Every time. Spectacularly. It’s brilliant to watch..

0
Exp
February 16, 2012 7:10 am

From the HI press release:
“But honest disagreement should never be used to justify the criminal acts and fraud that occurred in the past 24 hours. As a matter of common decency and journalistic ethics, we ask everyone in the climate change debate to sit back and think about what just happened.”
How highly moral of them.
Then I did a search on their site using keyword “Climategate”.
Nothing worse than the stench of putrid hypocrisy, eh?

0
Rob Crawford
February 16, 2012 7:11 am

A physicker: “It is mighty dismaying (to me) …”
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Whatever.
Have the Japanese followed your advice and nuked themselves yet?

0
Eric (skeptic)
February 16, 2012 7:15 am

That string including the “63.139439” is from an Adobe DLL, see for example http://www.foxite.com/fileinfo/?cat=266

0
NoAstronomer
February 16, 2012 7:16 am

Thanks to Michael Lowe above for quoting DeSmogBlog’s mission statement: “clear the PR pollution that is clouding the science on climate change.”
I took a look at their front page. It’s nothing *but* PR pollution.
Mike.

0
Robert
February 16, 2012 7:20 am

“Adobe XMP Core 5.2-c001 63.139439, 2010/09/27-13:37:26 ”
That leaves about everything and anyone else on the internet community appart from the Heartland Institute and my Computer.
Do a Google Search on it, this could be pirated version by the looks of it. Or someone who is trying to add his own meta-data to this file, wich would result in a question from my side in “Why then not use the Heartland meta-data?”
Or would that be to criminal?

0
Jeff Condon
February 16, 2012 7:22 am

Anthony,
I have posted a little commentary on your situation and how this is being addressed by our illustrious media. I’m fairly pissed off about their unprofessionalism and hope you don’t mind me dropping the link here.
http://noconsensus.wordpress.com/2012/02/16/hey-media-skeptics-are-scientists-too/

0
Copner
February 16, 2012 7:25 am

TerryS/AdderW
Paste the string Adobe XMP Core 5.2-c001 63.139439, 2010/09/27-13:37:26 into Google
You’ll find various pages relating to this string, most of which have nothing to do with climate change (the majority seem to be about programmimg since the string is usually hidden except during a program crash). So I don’t think it uniquely identifies a particular installation of Acrobat – just the version used.

0
Rob Crawford
February 16, 2012 7:25 am

As to how this is different from ClimateGate: private organization vs. tax-payer funded organization.

0
Jay Davis
February 16, 2012 7:25 am

I suspect Media Matters has a hand in it.

0
Copner
February 16, 2012 7:34 am

One other thing about the core’s
The Form 990 was also scanned, and has I am told (I didn’t check) the same core as the fake document. Now Form 990s are available without leaking or social engineering hacks or whatever you want to call it
Also a form 990 would also be an odd thing to include with board stuff like budgets.
So I’m wondering if the process the documents was:
– Hacker/leaker/social-engineer persuades HI to email them some documents
– Hacker/leaker/social-engineer adds form 990, which they already have from another source
– Hacker/leaker/social-engineers adds the fake document
– This then gets forwarded as a package.
The only way to know for sure would be to ask HI,if the 990 was included with the email bundle they were tricked into sending out. I’m betting it wasn’t.
And if the 990 was obtained separately and added to the bundle, that could be start of the trail…
If you’re looking for a suspect – my suggestion would be begin with: So who do we know in the Pacific time zone who likes checking 990s of climate skeptics?

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