From a Heartland media release:
FEBRUARY 19 — The Heartland Institute has sent legal notices http://heartland.org/press-releases/2012/02/19/heartland-institute-sends-legal-notices-publishers-faked-and-stolen-docume to numerous Web sites, blogs, and publications asking them to take down the stolen and forged documents and what it views as malicious and false commentary based on them.
The following statement by Heartland Institute President Joseph L. Bast may be used for attribution. For more information, contact Director of Communications Jim Lakely at jlakely “at” heartland.org or 312-377-4000.
_____
“We realize this will be portrayed by some as a heavy-handed threat to free speech. But the First Amendment doesn’t protect Internet fraud, and there is no right to defamatory speech.
“For 28 years, The Heartland Institute has engaged in fierce debates over a wide range of public policies – school reform, health care, telecommunications policy, corporate subsidies, and government waste and fraud, as well as environmental policy. We frequently and happily engage in vigorous, robust debate with those who disagree with our views.
“We have resorted in the past to legal means only in a very few cases involving outright fraud and defamation. The current situation clearly fits that description, and our legal counsel has advised that the first step in defending ourselves should be to ask the blogs to take down the stolen and forged documents.”
President
The Heartland Institute
jbast”at” heartland.org
312-377-4000
_____
The Heartland Institute <http://www.heartland.org> is a 28-year-old national nonprofit organization with offices in Chicago, Illinois and Washington, DC. Its mission is to discover, develop, and promote free-market solutions to social and economic problems. For more information, visit our Web site http://www.heartland.org or call 312/377-4000.
====================================================================
Here’s the letter being sent to some websites and bloggers, DeSmog Blog and Greg Laden of ScienceBlogs (already in legal trouble over the Tallbloke libel) both got copies.
February 18, 2012
By e-mail to: editor “at” desmogblog.com
By Federal Express to:
Mr. Brendan G DeMelle
Editor
DeSmog Blog
[street address redacted]
Seattle, WA 98117-2303
Re: Stolen and Faked Heartland Documents
http://www.desmogblog.com/heartland-insider-exposes-institute-s-budget-and-strategy
Dear Mr. DeMelle:
On or about February 14, 2012, your web site posted a document entitled “Confidential Memo: 2012 Heartland Climate Strategy” (the “Fake Memo”), which is fabricated and false.
On or about the same date, your web site posted certain other documents purporting to be those of The Heartland Institute (“Heartland”). Heartland has not authenticated these documents (the “Alleged Heartland Documents”).
Your site thereafter has reported repeatedly on all of these documents.
Heartland almost immediately issued a statement disclosing the foregoing information, to which your web site has posted links.
It has come to our attention that all of these documents nevertheless remain on your site and you continue to report on their contents. Please be advised as follows:
1. The Fake Memo document is just that: fake. It was not written by anyone associated with Heartland. It does not express Heartland’s goals, plans, or tactics. It contains several obvious and gross misstatements of fact. Publication of this falsified document is improper and unlawful.
2. As to the Alleged Heartland Documents your web site posted, we are investigating how they came to be in your possession and whether they are authentic or have been altered or fabricated. Though third parties purport to have authenticated them, no one – other than Heartland – has the ability to do so. Several of the documents say on their face that they are confidential documents and all of them were taken from Heartland by improper and fraudulent means. Publication of any and all confidential or altered documents is improper and unlawful.
3. Furthermore, Heartland views the malicious and fraudulent manner in which the documents were obtained and/or thereafter disseminated, as well as the repeated blogs about them, as providing the basis for civil actions against those who obtained and/or disseminated them and blogged about them. Heartland fully intends to pursue all possible actionable civil remedies to the fullest extent of the law.
Therefore, we respectfully demand: (1) that you remove both the Fake Memo and the Alleged Heartland Documents from your web site; (2) that you remove from your web site all posts that refer or relate in any manner to the Fake Memo and the Alleged Heartland Documents; (3) that you remove from your web site any and all quotations from the Fake Memo and the Alleged Heartland Documents; (4) that you publish retractions on your web site of prior postings; and (5) that you remove all such documents from your server.
Please do not hesitate to contact me if you require any further information.
Very truly yours,
Maureen Martin
General Counsel
original Heartland PDF is here: Tier One – DeMelle
I must confess that I find the Heartland reaction incredibly sad. The casualty in all of this is that we tend to get pulled away from the main purpose of WUWT. The dishonest warmists are prone to claim that skeptics are anti-science — even although we know that they have broken all the ground rules of genuine science. I sincerely hope that WUWT will not be distracted for too long by what is after all a peripheral issue and will get back to focusing on the publicising of genuine science. The AGW hypothesis and even more so the CAGW religion are totally off the map when it comes their bizarre fixation on the totally discredited unscientific hypothesis that CO2 is a dangerous pollutant. Genuine science is incredibly important to the well being of the human race and we need to focus on trying to undo the damage to the image of science which has resulted from the perversion of the basic scientific ground rules of openness and reproducibility.
A physicist says:
A physicist says: :The Heartland Institute should embrace the Marine principle “Be First With the Truth”, not the principle “Be First to Threaten Litigation”, because most folks recognize, as a matter of plain common sense, that suppressive legal bluster is a royal road that leads straight to “arrogance, weakness, lying, and abdication of responsibility.”
Non-sequitur. “Be First With the Truth” does not proscribe taking action against Falsehood and Fraud (such as the Fake Memeo) – to hold such is clearly perverted. Nor does that principle force one to accept theft, fraud, espionage, and breach of confidentiality over matters that do not involve exposure of wrongdoing. Again, see the UCMJ, and how it treats spies vs whistleblowers. hint: one of those renders one eligible for being placed before a firing squad of his peers.
<i.Richard, if your post said the same of the Heartland Institute, then their lawyers would aggressively threaten you with lawsuits … doesn’t that policy strike you as more than a little bit wrong-headed, and just plain un-American?
Using a falsehood to create a strawman – twofer! You guys give each other points for packing multiple illegitimacies into a small space? HI would do no such thing. You made that up, then stuffed it with straw.
As for hypocrisy, the Marine principle “Be First With the Truth” leaves no room for it — because “Be First With the Truth” is a principle that either is embraced entirely, or else in the end, rejected wholly.
Ergo, you are well on your way to rejecting it wholly.
That is why the Heartland Institute is traveling down an exceedingly slippery moral path.
There is no moral imperative for the innocent to suffer thieves and liars.
So you wouldn’t complain if someone came into your house, took lots of your documents and published them on the net? Would it be legal? Answers on a post card. ;O)
Hunt says: February 20, 2012 at 3:53 am
> Heartland still has a link to the illegally obtained “climategate” docs:
> http://heartland.org/policy-documents/death-blow-climate-science
> Although if you click the megaupload link, it’s been closed down by the
> feds for racketeering. Kind of says it all.
In response to seeing “closed down by the feds”, I checked out the link.
One of the 3 badge-like logos has “anti-piracy warning”, and another
mentions intellectual property. 2 of the 4 criminal charges mentioned have
to do with copyright infringement. I tried a web search with the terms
“megaupload” and “copyright”, and it appears to me that megaupload.com
was a huge “file sharing” site that got themselves into a megaton of deep
trouble, for copyright infringement and money laundering. What I don’t
see is linkage to Climategate.
The Wikipedia article on Megaupload mentions recent indictments and
arrests, on basis that allegedly Megaupload was “dedicated to copyright
infringement”. Also mentioned was DOS attacking of some US government
organizations and copyright-related organizations after the 1/19/2012
shutdown. Further in this Wiki article, illegal activity appears to me to be
dominantly mentioned as copyright infringement. This Wikipedia article
does not mention climate-anything.
Since the Heartland Institute appears to me to favor corporate interests,
I wonder why they (according to an above link) chose megaupload.com as
a place to get Climategate e-mails.
If its ok to post fake but true documents, then i suggest a WUWT Competetion!!!
“Fake but True Climategate mails ” Mails we never read.
Anthony, I mentioned this over at Lucia’s and people love the idea. Create fake but true climategate mails, as a writing competation!!
Moshpit, or CTM, will judge the winners.. or maybe you Bish or mcIntyre
Heartland is following the exact correct legal steps one should in a case like this. CRU should have done the exact same thing if they where going to pursue legal course about the publishing of the emails. Note it is very telling that CRU chose to not do so and instead has spent countless hours saving face by pursuing a very likely nonexistent hacker.
The legal process moves at a snails pace compared to the world of the internet. Which means that this will be entering court months from now. This notice is the first salvo in going to court and is the correct first step if you are going to pursue legal remedies and not just talk big. What reaction is taken by those who are sent the notice will be used as part of the legal case. They now can not claim to not know the status of the docs and the defiance shown now by the blogs receiving notice will cripple any defense they put up later.
For those thinking this is some how hypocritical of Heartland it isn’t. One of the core tenets of libertarianism is private property rights. And libertarians consider one of the valid reasons for government to exist is enforcing private property rights. From their point of view this is definitely a private property issue and they appear to be pursuing it. The reaction will be telling and I fully expect this to go on for quite some time as warmists appear to have no idea of the mine field they just ran joyfully into and are continuing to dance in.
A physicist says:
February 20, 2012 at 7:57 am
”
A physicist says: “Needless to say, the young folks at our party — many of them US Marine veterans of multiple combat tours in Iraq and Vietnam — were entirely familiar with McMaster’s principle of “Be First With the Truth,” (which has been universally adopted within the US armed forces). ”
DirkH asks: Do [Marines] also tolerate being smeared by fabrications?
Of course Marines often are “smeared by fabrications.”
It must be something with your brain that stops you from processing questions.
JJ, when it comes to family safety and personal possessions your post is entirely correct.
But when it comes to public dialog your post is entirely mistaken. The Marine principle “Be First with the Truth” recognizes that lies invariably are deployed against truth … and that truth invariably withstands the assault of lies.
That why the US Marines live-and-breath the dynamic strategy “Be First with the Truth” instead of the passive Heartland Institute strategy “Our lawyers will contact you.”
Vietnam ended in 75 – your “young” dinner guests must have been around 60.
Sounds a bit like “climatology” to me.
You really don’t understand the first amendment and freedom of the press do you?
So you are saying that if someone were to illegally access your personal records, say your medical records, or your employment history, or your tax returns and then published all sorts of lies about you based on those confidential documents, including a forged document that implied you were involved in some improper behavior, that you should just smile, pat them on the head and wish them good luck with their slander and libel?
The old saying about your freedom of speech stops at my nose, or you can’t yell fire in a crowded theater apply here. They are intentionally misrepresenting facts with the intent of discrediting HI and destroying their organization. (that is called lying, slander and libel for those of you who are ethically challenged).
As mentioned above any of the documents that are real, are protected under copyright and HI has an absolute right to control their use and publication in the public domain. Intentional copyright violation can be a very expensive error for a publisher. Their only defense against such a charge is “fair use” which is obviously not applicable if they are trying to use those documents to weave a false narrative, and have intentionally and repeatedly miss-characterized the content of those documents (rounding up dollar amounts) asserting facts not in evidence etc. Stating funding was granted when it was only under discussion etc.
The ability of some of you to totally miss the point is simply astounding. You would squeal like a stuck pig if the same behavior was directed toward yourself or a friend or your business, but some how it is perfectly ok if this sort of public deception is practiced against an organization you dislike.
Larry
Foxgoose, I just plain mis-typed: the Marine NCOs at our dinner party had (among them) 20++ years of combat experience in Iraq and Afghanistan. And needless to say, it is mighty instructive to listen to these Marines discuss lessons-learned from their years of service.
It was BrigGen Herbert Raymond (“HR”) McMaster whose well-respected book (among US military commanders and historians in general, and Marines in particular) Dereliction of Duty: Lyndon Johnson, Robert McNamara, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and the Lies that Led to Vietnam first illuminated “Be First with the Truth” as a bedrock principle of American military strategy.
One point that comes home (literally) to my wife and me is that the bedrock principle “Be First with the Truth” can sustain a trooper, and sustain that trooper’s family, through years of grinding conflict.
The Heartland Institute simply does not understand that “Our Lawyers will call You” can never provide the sustainment of “Be First with the Truth”.
Snapple says: If Joe Bast wants to clear this up, all he has to do is post a screen-save of the email sent with the attachments. Then we call all see what documents were actually attached and to whom they were sent.
If Joe Bast were to do that, he would lose the legal right to keep the documents private.
Obviously you are hoping that Joe Bast is stupid and doesn’t know the law. Sadly for you and your side though, it appears that Desmog and the warmers are the idiots.
Larry,
Speaking for myself, I think there is a distinction to be drawn between complaining about publishing the documents and complaining about any and all commenting about the documents.
Heartland has stated that they demand that “all posts that refer or relate in any manner to” the documents be removed.
Do you support this thread and all others like it being completely “disappeared” from the internet forever? Does Heartland have any business making that claim?
Why they insist on going that far is beyond me. Not only do they not have a leg to stand on, but it is absolutely horrible PR. What can they possibly hope to gain by threatening everyone, friend and foe alike, with this “legal” demand?
RTF
A physicist says:
JJ says: There is no moral imperative for the innocent to suffer thieves and liars.
JJ, when it comes to family safety and personal possessions your post is entirely correct.
It is universally correct, your non-responsive blather notwithstanding. There is no moral imperative for the innocent to suffer thieves and liars.
For confirmation, you may visit with your friendly neighborhood JAG regarding the UCMJ. Ask how it treats thieves, forgers, liars, and spies. Inquire as to when 10 USC 1034 applies, and when it does not. Determine the penalties applicable when it does not. Your invocation of the Marine Corps and your intentional misinterpretation of principles to dress up your attack on HI is offensive.
They will take them down but will always refer to them, the damage has been done, mission acomplished
Are you daft? That e-mail is material evidence in an on-going police investigation. Why not demand that the results of a rape kit be published on-line for the perpetrator to get a heads up? Good grief!
I think you are misunderstanding their request, they are asking the groups who have been intentionally misrepresenting those documents to not only remove the documents but their libelous and slanderous misrepresentations of those documents. I do not for a minute believe that their intent is to “disappear” legitimate public discussion of the issue, only the biased misrepresentations they have posted the steer the uninformed to jump to erroneous conclusions.
For example suppose a group was advertising a drug that had a name that mimicked a real drugs name and were asserting lots of improper and unproven benefits of that clone drug.
The rightful trade mark holder for that drug name could demand that they take down the advertisement and all their bogus claims but would have no right to ask unrelated discussion groups to wipe their discussions about that bogus drug. They could only ask them not to link or display the removed illegal advertisement.
Anthony and WUWT along with some other sites, have always acted in good faith (included appropriate warnings and disclaimers) and in fact have been trying to correct those misrepresentations. It would not be beneficial for the HI to ask for total purging of discussions, even if they could demand removal of the discussion on some thin legal technicality. In fact our discussions pointing out the many misrepresentations and twisted coverage would likely be useful in their case to help show that the blogs like desmog could have and should have known that the information they were pushing was incorrect, and intentionally misrepresenting the facts.
In fact Anthony and WUWT and similar sites are probably protected under fair use doctrine as they were providing news and educational service regarding the misrepresentations.
Larry
[SNIP: John, that sort of baiting is uncalled for. His son is a marine who was wounded in action and his buddies did not need to be forced to do what marines do: support one of their own. -REP]
A physicist,
Are you really supporting the theft of private property and the slander of the victim of the theft?
Why don’t you put up a blog with copies of the stolen property and repeat your slander?
Or do you not have the courage of your convictions?
A physicist says:
February 20, 2012 at 8:16 am
Which “truth” are sites such as Desmog being first with? The truth of a fake document? Doubleplusgood!
Your tirade is more appropriately applied to the CRU emails. Application of “Be first with the truth” to the Heartland documents is completely wrong, considering the primary item in question is a fake. Fake “truth” isn’t truth at all.
However, since you seem so intent on allowing the illegal dissemination of private property, how about you post your credit card info so we can all go buy some stuff.
Wouldn’t it be encouraging, inspiring maybe, if there was one organisation out there that was populated by people whose only concern was the achievement of greater understanding – of climate or anything – instead of the pursuit of a particular agenda, ideological or otherwise. As a genuine sceptic I find the HI’s response to this totally trivial affair both heavy handed and hypocritical. So what if people get an insider’s view of discussions . .! And why don’t they demonstrate clearly that the summary document is a fake, and more importantly, what parts of it are accurate and what parts are false. . . A plague on both their houses . . Truth/accuracy are always the first casualties when ideologies/agendas (is there a difference?) clash.
This has nothing to do with the Marines. It has to do with theft, something that has already been established WRT the Heartland Institute and, BTW, NOT established WRT EAU. Heartland is doing absolutely the right thing in going after the criminals who executed this theft. I hope they catch them and see them in prison.
Heartland said:
““We realize this will be portrayed by some as a heavy-handed threat to free speech. But the First Amendment doesn’t protect Internet fraud, and there is no right to defamatory speech.”
– – – – – – – –
– – – – – – –
R. Gates,
So, are you suggesting your associates and their institutions who were involved in the docs from CG1 & CG2 got some bad legal advice? You seem to be hinting that their legal counsel apparently told them erroneously they had no case to block blogs from using unauthorized release of real public documents that were, long before their CG1 & CG2 release, subject to dispute under FOIA.
It appears to me the legal counsel of those involved in the docs released in CG1 & CG2 do know the difference between those public fund produced documents and the HI’s private fund produced documents.
I suggest if you do not understand to give your CG1 & CG2 involved associates a call. They do know through their counsel’s advice.
John
sceptical says:
February 20, 2012 at 5:47 am
Even in the free market, it is the responsibility of the govt to prosecute criminal activity.
Weren’t you aware of that?