Correspondence Began Same Day He Rejected Invitation to Debate
FEBRUARY 24, 2012 – The Heartland Institute today released all the emails Pacific Institute President Peter Gleick sent to The Heartland Institute for the purpose of fraudulently obtaining internal Heartland documents. The emails can be found at Fakegate.org.
The emails reveal how Gleick “phished” the documents by stealing the identity of a Heartland board member, an act to which he publicly admitted in his February 20 Huffington Post confession. Minor redactions have been made to the emails to protect the individual privacy of those involved.
Gleick originally portrayed all of the documents he circulated, including the fake climate change strategy memo, as originating from Heartland. Now he claims he received that memo from an “anonymous source” before his theft. But the emails Heartland released today reveal Gleick never asked for either of the two documents that are specifically cited and summarized in the memo, suggesting the memo was written after, not before, he received the phished documents.
The newly released emails also reveal the first email from Gleick to Heartland was sent on January 27, 2012 – the same day he rejected a cordial invitation to debate climate science at The Heartland Institute’s 2012 anniversary benefit dinner in August. Email correspondence between Gleick and Heartland Institute Director of Communications Jim Lakely can be found here. That correspondence makes it evident Gleick was aware of Heartland’s policies concerning the confidentiality of its donors.
We repeat our request that the fake climate change strategy memo be removed from Web sites and blogs such as DeSmog Blog, Think Progress, and the Huffington Post, along with documents that were stolen from Heartland. It is the ethical thing to do.
Previous press releases from The Heartland Institute plus links to dozens of news reports and commentary on Gleick’s transgressions can be reviewed at Fakegate.org.
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Here is a screencap from one of the email sets, click to enlarge:
more at Fakegate.org.
There is definitely enough Prima Facie evidence to take this to court and go for a custodial sentence. These evidence presented so far show that Dr Gleick had been made aware of HI policy regarding privacy of donors. The faked policy memo and the leak of donors demonstrates a criminal intent to cause financial loss and actual harm to the HI reputation. The ID fraud, Wire fraud and Electronic impersonation are criminal offences. Further it was a premeditated plot carried out over a two week period.
Has anyone in California informed the police and made a lawful demand to have Dr Gleick arrested and charged yet?
More evidence that HI likely wasn’t setting up Gleick, rather they just don’t have any internal knowledge of how computer/system/internet security works.
Isn’t it interesting that the one side of the AGW debate that feels it is alright to commit fraud, to intimidate editors, to exaggerate findings to pump up political support, and to engage in endless ad hominem attacks is also the side with the most money, the governmental support, and the friendliest media access?
Sonicfrog says:
February 24, 2012 at 12:11 pm
Anthony, Heartland gets a win on this eventually, but the Greens will not underestimate you guys again. They will regroup and lay a trap for Heartland.
Of course they will…. Anthony is a stupid TV weatherman after all! 🙂
*
Yep. And watch the silly buggers make a mess of that as well! The more attempts they make, the more ridiculous they look.
Oh yeah, lots more popcorn please. This is better than a TV soap. 🙂
“If this is the best and the brightest of libertarian thought then the “left” is perfectly safe”
Yes you’re absolutley correct, please continue to think that and keep doing what you’re doing, we’re loving it.
“Anthony, Heartland gets a win on this eventually, but the Greens will not underestimate you guys again. They will regroup and lay a trap for Heartland.
Of course they will…. Anthony is a stupid TV weatherman after all! :-)”
Exactly. He is hardly a climate science genius like the Railway engineer head of the IPCC, Pachuri, or Saint Al Gore, or Dr Michael Mann who cannot remember the basic steps involved in the scientific method, or even that god-like intelligence of Climate expert scientist, Dr Jones who admitted that he does not even know how to add up a column of numbers in a spreadsheet!
We are clearly having to deal with the highest intellects and genius intelligence.
Word to the warmists- The truth won’t alter just because you don’t believe it.
Al Gored says:
February 24, 2012 at 12:54 pm
“Fish taxonomists have just announced that the species currently known as the Northern Long-nosed Sucker will be renamed the Northern Gleick.
After learning of these details I am more convinced than ever that this was a setup. If they realized he was phishing it would have been so simple to feed him the fake document.”
And how would they have made him scan it on his EPSON scanner in the Pacific Time zone? Oh, I see, by snail-mailing it to him on paper BEFORE he started phishing. Using the Heartland Tardis to go back in time AFTER the phishing started.
“I guess bottom line for Gleick is if you can’t convince people in a fair debate, steal their identity and use that to steal their confidential papers to shame, threaten, and embarrass them. However, in a classic twist of good old fashioned poetic justice, Gleick fell on his own sword.”
You forgot to add that the stolen information had to be appended with fake information to make their case.
Had Peter Gleick actually found accurate and truthful evidence of criminal conspiracy in any of the information he blagged, (which incidentally is a crime for which British journalists have been arrested over), then he could have made a legitimate public interest defence. If he had made public only honest, unaltered and original genuine documents which uncovered a criminal conspiracy, THEN he would have been able to take some credit in the public interest defence.
As it is all the data he obtained through deception was legitimate, truthful, lacked any evidence of illegal or questionable actions, and contained no smoking gun, so the FAKE document was needed to cause injury and harm to reputations.
All this is pre-meditated and shows a criminal intent to cause harm and loss. These are serious breaches of criminal and common law.
mpaul says:
February 24, 2012 at 11:21 am
How do we know that Gleick acted alone?
=============================================
Because he went through with it….and then confessed.
Gleick wasn’t smart enough to know ahead of time that he would be caught…..
He told someone, after the fact, and that someone told him “YOU’RE CRAZY, YOU DIDN’T DO IT RIGHT”
….then he confessed
If he had told anyone with two working synapses ahead of time, either he wouldn’t do it this way, or would have done it a different way, or not at all…..
The Filthy Engineer says:
February 24, 2012 at 12:08 pm
I take it that you’ve seen Desmogblog’s latest offering?
http://www.desmogblog.com/heartland-selling-out-science-school
————————————————————————————
911-911-911
Heartland needs to have that video yanked at YOUTUBE.
It is libel and slander.
It is produced by Big AL’s Climate Reality Project.
“Founded and chaired by Al Gore,…, The Climate Reality Project has more than 5 million members and supporters worldwide.”
I hope Joe Bast sees it.
“Using the Heartland Tardis to go back in time AFTER the phishing started.”
Ixnay on the Ardis-Tay.
I pulled up a backup of my files from DSB, downloaded from them on Feb 15. The budget and binder docs are version (2), and the fake doc is version (3).
And as I had recalled, the Board Directory was part of the original release. That doc is not out on DSB now.
Now here is an interesting issue: Gleick requested a copy of the Board Directory in an email on Feb 8. In the phishing email on Jan 27, Gleick had requested that HI update the Board directory with the fake email address that he had given them. HI replied immediately, saying they had made that change. That fake email address does not appear in the Board Directory document downloaded from DSB. How to explain that …
1. HI said they made the requested change to the Board Directory, but did not.
2. HI did add Gleick’s phishing email to the Board Directory, as they had stated. That email address was in the Board Directory that HI sent to Gleick, and Gleick cleansed that document of incriminating evidence by removing the phishing address.
3. HI did add Gleick’s phishing email to the Board Directory, as they had stated. That email address was in the Board Directory that HI sent to Gleick. Gleick didn’t want to include the phishing address in his slur package, so he sent a copy of the Board Directory that he already had from an alternate source.
The dates present in the title and metadata of the Board Directory support #1 and #3.
Odd that DSB has taken down this doc, while beligerently refusing to take down the rest…
hmmmm….
Montani Semper Liberi says:
February 24, 2012 at 11:11 am
It’s exactly the sort of “dumb mistake” people make when they operate in the belief they have nothing to hide or conceal. You can bet if I tried the same phishing attack on Bernie Madoff’s organization back in the day, they would not have been so obliging.
People accidentally delete email all the time, or forget the charger for their laptop and run the battery down, or have a hard drive crash, or change ISPs (giving them a new email address). Getting requests to re-send documents is routine. The staffer had probably done the same thing on multiple previous occasions.
You’re giving HI too much credit in thinking this could all be an elaborate and devious set-up, and actually I would be very disappointed if it turned out to be.
Which Heartland board member did he impersonate? Dr Gleick had better hope that he is the rich, powerful, forgiving type.
APACHEWHOKNOWS says:
February 24, 2012 at 12:41 pm
OUT, OUT, DAM E-MAIL DOTS AND CODES OUT I SAY….!!!
———–
LOL! Hey, I knows wut dis frum…we sketicals we’s edumacated, like. Is a line from Lady Macgleick in Mr Shakes-sumthin’s Macgleick, yes?
Just thinking, Mr Apache, Gleick probably faked the memo on his own, but this phishing stuff he’d had to have help with. Guy seems like he’s at my level of IT know-how, and if I were as crazy or stupid as him, I’d be getting advice from buddies. He’s all cocky, now, with his lawyers amd buddies pumping him up, but when the cool, hard handcuffs go “click,” and the charges are politely read, hyperventilation will kick in and soon there’ll be singing. In fact, as the word gets around and the brave eco-warriors tune into the nasty reality, it’ll be a cocophony of an opera, I reckon. They’ll be a lot of hand-washing coming up then.
I wonder what Connolley thinks about all this. He seems to know everything.
Latitude says:
February 24, 2012 at 1:21 pm
mpaul says:
February 24, 2012 at 11:21 am
How do we know that Gleick acted alone?
=============================================
Because he went through with it….and then confessed.
Gleick wasn’t smart enough to know ahead of time that he would be caught…..
He told someone, after the fact, and that someone told him “YOU’RE CRAZY, YOU DIDN’T DO IT RIGHT”
….then he confessed
If he had told anyone with two working synapses ahead of time, either he wouldn’t do it this way, or would have done it a different way, or not at all…
*
I don’t think anyone told him he was crazy to do it. I think he fully expected no one to have a clue that he was behind it, only of course it didn’t work that way and he realized he’d have to cover his delicate behind.
You don’t suppose this isn’t Heartland’s first rodeo ?
(After all, the reason they gave for changing their policy regarding openness with donor info was that donors were being targeted for abusive treatment.)
I believe this tactic might be within the description of a ‘Honey pot’ as it relates to catching hackers, too.
.
Here is a direct link to “Heartland Department of Education”
Please get this crap yanked !
[snip sorry – I’m not going to compound the damage by posting speculations on who the board member was that Gleick impersonated – Anthony]
Re: Jeremy (at 12:51 PM) who says:
“…I think Heartland is being quite cocky in their behavior thus far. They seem to be behaving as an organization that thinks they can pressure their legal opponents into a major concession. All these public releases of evidence on the internet are very unusual. I am not a lawyer, but I cannot remember the last time I watched a legal case in it’s infancy where one side was displaying so much detail of what happened before a judge was involved…”
It strikes me, too, as unusual for a litigant to put so many cards on the table this early. But there are two battles being fought: in the courtroom and in the mind of the public. The first is almost irrelevant: certainly, on the evidence so far presented, Gleick is highly unlikely to get out with his hide intact, let alone with a clear “win.” The second battle is the key, and it requires sustained pressure. Pound on the enemy, identify weak points, drive through, exploit the breach. Do not let him get his footing, do not give him time to think, do not let him take the initiative.
These successive disclosures serve that objective. I think that, like Anthony Watts, Heartland is playing its cards very well indeed.
And now, the microwave is beeping. Popcorn’s ready.
I am not a lawyer, but I cannot remember the last time I watched a legal case in it’s infancy where one side was displaying so much detail of what happened before a judge was involved.
Princess Diana’s death. Valerie Plame’s “outing”. David Kelly and the Iraq war fiasco.
Heartland could keep all this secret, get a conviction on Glieck in two year’s time after it made its way through the system, and how would that help them?
By making it public they get exactly what they want. And may yet get the conviction too.
I suspect that the timing of docKtor Gleick’s wire fraud & the personal invitation to speak to an HI gathering is that there was most likely a Board intermediary who informally contacted the good doKtor asking if the invitation would be considered politely by him. That contact would have given him the email address he needed to commit a state & federal crime. QED? LOL?
Ally E. says:
February 24, 2012 at 1:44 pm
I don’t think anyone told him he was crazy to do it. I think he fully expected no one to have a clue that he was behind it, only of course it didn’t work that way and he realized he’d have to cover his delicate behind.
===================================
Ally, that was my point….
..if he had told anyone ahead of time, they would have told him that this way would get him caught
He only confessed because, after the fact, he told someone that told him
Anyone else wonder how this would have played out if he had taken the time to do it in a way he wouldn’t get caught?
I have been collecting many links that deals with HeartlandGate at my climate forum.It is being updated as more links become available.There are now over 50 and growing.
Hopefully this will help build a resource for some research into this sorry mess.
http://www.globalwarmingskeptics.info/showthread.php?tid=1808&pid=10863#pid10863