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
@Billy Liar
“So, Ryan, when you write that book and I steal copy and put it on the internet for all to read; that’ll be OK then?”
He would have lost money then. Are you saying that the HI was going to sell those documents in order to make money?
JS, please let me express the hope that you and other WUWT readers will not mind verifying that “Be First with the Truth” is a core doctrine of David Petraeus’ Multi-National Force-Iraq Commander’s Counterinsurgency Guidance, as published in Military Review.
IMHO, the directors of the Heartland Institute would do well to ask themselves why “Be First with the Truth” has proven itself to be sound doctrine.
JC,
That being said, the notion of “Be First with the Truth” might sound good and puff up a few chests but it has very little to do with our armed forces …
That is not correct. “Be First with the Truth” has legitimate meaning as a guiding principle within the US armed forces, and specific meaning and intent with respect to counter terrorism/counter insurgency strategy.
Neither of those meanings is what “A physicist” is trying to make of it in his self-serving, flag wrapping, global warming politics exercise, and that is the problem.
Yawn,
I started to write a cogent reply, but realized that you really can’t read it with your head buried that far into the sand. When you have read even one of the ‘climate gate’ emails, none of which have been alluded, much less proved to be fake, come on back. Until then just stay in the little troll cave in your mother’s basement.
And don’t bother to respond. You are on my permanent comment skip over list. A new record. You made it in one post in only one hour.
yawn:
the climategate emails were not taken out of contexts – THEY ARE THE CONTEXT.
none were FORGED by professional habitual fraudsters who should be in jail.
and you are not the 800 lb mannian sycophant in the room – that’s the fake fizzizist.
say it, yawnling: forgery forgery lies deceit treachery;
say it, yawning: theft by deception of billions and billions = fraud
the climategate emails just proved it was neither innocent nor accidental – incontovertibly.
say it, yawner; liars, fakers, conmen in labcoats, crooks with degrees, stealing your children’s future, wrecking the world economy.
say it yawnette: scammers with unlimited ambition. and you must be getting some, eh?
The Marine Corps principle is not ‘First with the truth’ it’s ‘First in war, First in peace.’ Truth is expected.
Navy in Vietnam and Marine in Vietnam era. 65yo. Leave the military out of your politicing
Larry Ledwick (hotrod) says:
February 20, 2012 at 10:18 am
Larry, I hope you are correct. Your explanation is reasonable, but what they wrote, taken at face value, is over the top. Hopefully they will see fit to clarify this. Because the apparent meaning of their demand #2 is wrong, both morally and legally.
Thanks for your interpretation.
RTF
The guy calling himself a physicist, is just another internet troll who obviously doesn’t work in physics, because if he did, he’d be mortified, someone would find out what he’s been seen repeatedly, endorsing as physics.
He’s believed in Mike Mann’s hockey sticks.
He’s believed in Mike Mann’s treemometers: he can’t even grasp that “light, relative humidity, sunlight, temperature, CO2/canopy O2/root zone precipitation quantity, precipitation periods,
*sixteen minerals in more or less proper proportion,” thing.
He knows those hockey sticks are real math, and those treemometers are real, and that magic gas is real, because he thinks we all don’t know about the heating potential
of the class of gas whose main constituent water, covers the earth to about 70% worth,
and is an atmospheric pressures phase-change
refrigerant.
He’s appalled that we can’t believe someone combed out the miniscule footprint of CO2 then combed out the MORE miniscule MANMADE CO2 footprint and quantified it in correlation with the temperature of the globe, to within a tenth of a degree or so.
He can believe every instrument on earth is broken and ‘not showing the heating as it is’ as though people caught calculating doomsday with Math, they didn’t know was Fake,
makes THEM the ones to watch for signs of genius and finally being right one day.
A man made fake math to calculate what fake treemometers would say about yesteryear, and the answer is we all have to stop using fire.
But these internet trolls aren’t in the least affected by the infrared astronomy field’s revelations that the amount of infrared downwelling is LESS now than fiftee years ago.
Their take on things is that you are denying carbon sin.
To the troll claiming he was a physicist somewhere once,
that is high quality scientific construction to him.
He’s an internet scammer from somewhere like Kooks@Cooks@Kweenslund.
From the stolen Heartland marketing plan (a real document, not the faked one):
Seems reasonable to me — HI wants to broaden their support base from a relatively few major contributors to a larger group of more ordinary means.
Well I just gave them a $250 donation online. And my employer will match the contribution. Until this little dust-up I hadn’t realized what a thorn in the side HI is to the AGW movement.
Anthony: If I could have, I would have designated my donation to support your project. If you put up a contribution link, I’ll donate directly. WUWT is a fantastic resource.
@ur momisugly Billy Liar 1:16
Publishing an entire manuscript is definitely copyright infringement. Publishing memos of obvious political and journalistic relevance is almost certainly fair use under 17 USC Sec 106.
@McComberBoy
Ooh, what a great way to make your case. Simply repeat the same old talking points.
The mails are not fake, but quotes were faked and taken out of context to create the fake controversy called Climategate. That was what I wrote. And you decided to start throwing around straw men and red herrings instead.
Typical.
@IAmDigitap
The hockey stick has been confirmed and verified by independent researchers multiple times.
Your attacks on Mann are just pathetic. The least you can do is to try to be honest about it. You clearly have no idea what Mann’s position is, or what it is based on.
Remember, Mann started his research as a student, and focused on finding natural causes for climate change. What he found was not what he expected. He did find natural cycles, but on a regional scale. But with the hemispheric average, the regional cycles canceled each other out.
So, please, stop it with the nonsense now. Try to educate yourself about the real background story.
I’ve been wondering about the possible outcomes:
0. The ignore the release (too late obviously) := the affair blows over with a few bloggers claiming victory.
1. The HI issue notices & bloggers desist, HI takes no further action := a few bloggers don’t go home claiming victory.
2. The HI settle “out of court” := a few bloggers go home to their wives and try to explain why they have to move to a smaller house.
3. The HI go to court and loose := the world’s press go crazy saying “it’s all proved that sceptics lie” … and lots of other ridiculous stuff. In other words they now believe that they have a god given right to say anything about sceptics. This could backfire … the public don’t like to see martyrs, but more than likely it will be taken as evidence of everything bad that has ever been said about the HI and sceptics in general.
4. The HI go to court and win, I presume it would be an action against a limited number followed by threats to most other participants, who would have little option but to settle out of court.
:= Obviously their first tactic would be to say it doesn’t matter … it was the theft/fraud and obvious the judge was going to come down against that, it doesn’t prove the Hearland were right. However, a much bigger impact is likely to be the media editor;s confidence in the global warming scare that (used to) lay the golden egg. We can hear the conversation even now: “look I just want you to tone down your language, stick to facts … and if you can’t find any, find another subject“.
Yes … the main change will be a loss in confidence … the loss in that belief in invincibility, in the certainty they hold the moral highground, that their cause is greater than the law. Not even trying to save the planet justifies fraud and theft.
It could well precipitate a few other settlements like the FOI/mann case.
JJ thank you for your comments, my dad was a Marine who served in the Pacific during WWII. He wouldn’t have made it through the first post by “a physicist” without blowing his top. There are no “former” Marines, he was one till the day he died and would have viewed the posts by “a physicist” as someone trying to use the honor of the Corps. for their own ends. That is not something, or someone, the old man would have had any respect for. Bury him with the UCMJ for he knows not of what he speaks.
Tony Mach says:
February 20, 2012 at 5:12 am
I believe that request was made very soon after the publications.
Colin Porter says:
February 20, 2012 at 5:38 am
Unlikely under “fair use” and the fact that opposite views were allowed.
sceptical says:
February 20, 2012 at 5:47 am
So you don’t expect them to report burglary either or perhaps they should just “send in da boys”?
A physicist says:
February 20, 2012 at 7:02 am
I suggest you read and understand McMaster before quoting.
USMC is not a private entity!
DaveE.
yawn,
If you actually believe the nonsense you’re posting, then you must have come here from one of those small echo chamber blogs like RealClimate, Pseudo-Skptical Pseoudo-Science, tamina, or similar.
None of the principle characters have stated that the Climategate emails are fake. And if they had been fabricated, then all those named in them would have loudly objected. And there were scores of names. And note that there are thousands of Climategate emails. Many are incriminating, and to dismiss what they are saying with the throwaway retort that they were “taken out of context” is lame. And how do you explain the Harry_read_me file, in which the programmer states that he is fabricating years of temperature records? So you will understand that you sound like a lunatic here, claiming that it amounts to nothing. Climategate was the turning point.
Next, Mann’s original Hokey Stick was last used by the IPCC in 2007. They can no longer publish it. Why not? Because it has been debunked. So now the IPCC uses inferior spaghetti charts that look more confusing and less alarming than Mann’s original chart.
Michael Mann is a known climate charlatan, who used the Tiljander proxy after he was told it was no good. He used it anyway, because it gave him the hockey stick shape he needed. Mann knew that road work and bridge building overturned lake sediments that were used as Mann’s proxy. Ms Tiljander found that the resultant proxy gave upside-down results and told Mann, but he published anyway, without informing anyone of the corrupted proxy. When he was caught by Steve McIntyre, he furiously tap-danced. But he was proved a charlatan, and guilty of scientific misconduct in Mann08. That fits with his actions in MBH98/99, when he used extremely dubious “treemometers”. Those peprs were deconstructed, which is why his scary chart is now the butt of jokes.
The only reason that Michael Mann is employed is due to his rainmaking ability. He brings in $millions, so universities cast aside their integrity and professional ethics, and defend him. But we know the truth about Michael Mann. Obviously, you do not.
Phil C says:
February 20, 2012 at 7:36 am
So you have no problems with me publishing your bank account details?
DaveE.
Smokey
Echo chamber? This blog is nothing but an echo chamber, so your hypocrisy is quite hilarious.
I have never claimed that the e-mails are fake, so once again you are misrepresenting my statements. I have pointed out that quotes have been taken out of context to misrepresent them, and portray them as something they aren’t, thereby creating a fake controversy.
Case in point: Your mindless parroting of the “Harry_read_me” lie. It would have taken you less than 30 seconds to find the actual context and purpose of the quote:
http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2009/12/quote_mining_code.php
The hockey stick has not been debunked. Rather, it has been confirmed over and over. Where did you get the idea that the IPCC can no longer publish it? Also, I thought you [snip: strike two.] all think the IPCC is a bunch of liars, so why would they NOT publish it even if it was debunked?
Your attacks on Mann are simply pathetic. Mann started his work in the 1990s trying to find natural causes for the global warming. What he found was not what he expected. He did find natural cycles, but on a regional scale. But with the hemispheric average, the regional cycles canceled each other out.
Mann brings in millions? What are you talking about?
[SNIP: You ARE familiar with the term “thread bombing“, right? And you know the fate of thread bombers, right? -REP]
Ryan says:
February 20, 2012 at 2:45 pm
@ur momisugly Billy Liar 1:16
Publishing an entire manuscript is definitely copyright infringement. Publishing memos of obvious political and journalistic relevance is almost certainly fair use under 17 USC Sec 106.
Publishing entire memos is almost certainly not fair use.
yawn says:
February 20, 2012 at 1:38 pm
@Billy Liar
“So, Ryan, when you write that book and I steal copy and put it on the internet for all to read; that’ll be OK then?”
He would have lost money then. Are you saying that the HI was going to sell those documents in order to make money?
Don’t be daft. If they lose donors as a result of the publication of the documents there’s going to be a liability case somewhere.
@Billy Liar
What does losing donors have to do with copyright infringement?
Since DeSmogBlog is a Canadian operation, things could get dicey for it. The Canadian courts have abundant case law requiring blogs to take down purloined material. If its been further shown that the person who solicited the email was Canadian, then there is acharge in Canada’s criminal code, “Personation”, which may have legs. Personating for the purpose of a [criminal] libel, would be a nasty turn of events for the guilty… The Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms does not normally protect against overt activities that are the direct purview of the Crminal Code. And as for freedom of speech, the Charter is virtually worthless.
Ludwig, that you from littlegreenfootballs blog?
I think Heartland is going about this in the wrong way, however legal their actions are. I would suggest forcing everyone who has copies of the documents to identify them with large letters those that are fraudulent and those that were stolen, so that anyone visiting any site where they were visible would know the character of those posting or commenting on the information. It won’t matter to the ‘true believers’, but it would destroy the effectiveness of the documents in supporting their agenda.