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.
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Thinkprogress.org claims to have removed Peter Gleick’s forged fantasy strategy memo, from this page:
[From: http://thinkprogress.org/heartland-institute-documents/ ]
However, they are in fact still hosting the document. Links to it still work at http://thinkprogress.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/2012-Climate-Strategy.pdf.
I hardly consider that compliance with the requirements of ethics, or the request of Heartland.
Montani Semper Liberi
says on February 24, 2012 at 11:11 am:
“It’s such a dumb mistake by the HI staffer to send the info out like that without some way of verifying Gleick was actually the board member he claimed to be.”
To blame the victim of a crime is what socialists do to feel they’re not responsible for the crime that the state commited against the victim.
So, essentially, if you get dragged out and hauled under a velt it’s your own damn fault for not veryfying the people nocking on your door so as to physically defend yourself? o_O
Thanks Latitude, my mistake.
What gets me is how the warmists pretend our arguments are their own, such as Peter claiming in his confession that he was frustrated at Heartland blocking debate whereas Heartland has been pushing for debate and invited Peter along only days before he “was so frustrated”. And people still believe this guy???
Hey, doesn’t popcorn make you… you know… blow off? In the future, in Greenie-dreams, would that be a punishable offence? Will they Ban the F*rt? Just askin’.
🙂
You missed the third and most obvious one: HI knows that Gleick is in such deep doo-doo that they’ll settle out of court for a tearful repentance. And possibly ratting out on some of his associates.
Jeremy wrote “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.”
Oman noted that there are two battles going on here, one for PR and one legal. But as an attorney myself, let me note that when you have got evidence that the other party has committed a Federal Felony, you have got hold of them by the proverbial short hairs. “Pressure them into a concession?” You can make them wear a pink tutu and dance in public for you when you’ve got those kinds of good on them.
harrywr2 says:
“That irritating little popup haunts me to no end. I have no interest in losing weight.”
Muah ha haaa ha… If you get that kind of a popup, your Heartland machine already belongs to me, you just didn’t know it! Two words – three if a hyphenated word counts as two. Firefox + No-Script. But here’s an easier tip: Don’t post full frontal screenshots to the world!
Malicious Skunk. Not yer average everyday wondering about lookin’ fer food skunk, but an evil intending, no morals, no standards having, head of ethics, stanky, mofo. Willing to spray anyone guilty of having a differing opinion with the ability to influence others, low life parasite.
How do his morals differ from a crack dealers?
The world is upside down.
I have been involved in some very complex Police investigations and, after 30 years of doing so, have come to give a degree of weight to what the Police all over the world call a ‘gut feeling’. My feeling, after reading the actual e-mails is that there is no way that Gleick was acting alone.
I’ve been following this matter since it first came to light and have tried to garner as much information as possible; I’ve looked and re-looked at Gleick’s prior writings and available videos. I think that he might have had a hand in the drafting of the forged document (I think we can now take it as a given that it is forged) but he didn’t compose it alone. The right idiosyncratic punctuation style is used but is combined with language not normally associated with the author (and I’ve read quite a bit of his writings) which leads me to this conclusion
The timings of the e-mails suggest that collaboration time was required before responses were given to Heartland. I would dearly love to see the contents of Gleick’s e-mail ‘Sent’ box, his phone records, any Skype contacts he made and the records of any IM program he’s using. Mobile phone records, especially if from a Blackberry or iPhone would also be invaluable.
With regard to the IT security at Heartland, look to who was actually answering the incoming mail. I’ll guarantee you that it was a member of the secretarial staff. He or she saw a name which they recognised and replied accordingly and you can’t expect someone in their position to react any differently. It’s what makes a mockery of all the suggested security arrangements given above. It’s called the Human Factor and it will defeat any non-automated security system every time. The person involved cannot be blamed. The perpetrator of the fraud must be blamed for taking advantage of this weak link.
DirkH says:
February 24, 2012 at 12:28 pm
Do you want to imply that Heartland knew they were being phished when Gleick’s e-mail arrived there? I think that’s one level too paranoid. Of course, they COULD have looked at the e-mail header which tells you the route the e-mail has taken; and probably they would have seen it came from California. Depends on their policies and care whether they did it… In that case they could have played Gleick knowingly… But I don’t think Heartland has the skills to have thought of that. They’re not an IT shop.
……………………………
Not at all…..The Heartland did everything correctly and ethically. The only ingredient for the genius award winner to undo himself was for him to 1) reject the kind offer from Heartland to participate in the conference, and be a bit snotty about it which he did, 2) act on his own failings and hack an email account, 3) think that this would be OK and he’d be carried off as a hero by the crazies.
Heartland did everything right. Gleick, did everything wrong, over and over again.
Typical of these secretive, debate denying, reality denying, liars, thieves and cheats pushing what I am now 100% convinced is a total fraud disguised as “science” in the form of the climate change alarmism, to disable comments on the Youtube video “Heartland Department of Education”
They would not want people who are unaware of FAKEGATE to actually stumble on a truthful comment under that video would they?
I have flagged that video on Youtube as an example of religious hate speech. and I would encourage everyone else to do so too. It is a criminal libel against the Heartland Institute intended to cause them harm and loss, both crimes in criminal and common law.
A big difference between the emails and documents of the Climategate incident(s?) is that the UAE documents appear to have been created, stored and/or received on computers owned by the University of East Anglia, and apparently subject to FOIA requests. In addition, many of the UAE materials disclosed to date appear to have been tied to PUBLICLY FUNDED projects. In the U.S. at least, most larger employers (public and private) have policies noting that said employer may monitor the use of the computer systems and, in addition, often indicate that the users should expect no privacy as the system belongs to the employer. In many cases, such policy statements flash up on screen when a person logs into the system as a reminder. So, they were likely “public” documents in the first place, regardless of any particular scientist’s perspective as to their “private” nature.
Heartland and most other PRIVATE organizations are not subject to FOIA, though I expect they do have policies in place about the appropriate use of computer systems.
And, the U.S. IRS provides the right within the tax code for not-for-profit organizations such as the Heartland Institute to maintain the confidentiality of their donors. Theft and disclosure of such materials is unbelievable; it may be unprecedented. I’ve always thought of this as a somewhat sacrosanct matter that no one would want to violate. Why should it be fine for such information to be made public regarding the Heartland Institute? Would it be acceptable if the donor list were that of Greenpeace, the United Jewish Appeal, Environmental Defense, World Wildlife Fund, the Union of Concerned Scientists, Media Matters, the Brooking Institution, The Independent Sector, or any other 501(c)(3), liberal, conservative or truly non-partisan? There are, I suspect, quite a few people out there who are much more careful, capable, and smarter than Mr Gleick. And we can see from the success of the hacker group “Anonymous” that they are able to stay quite hidden. Gleick may have just opened the door for future breaches of this nature…
JJ, you ask about the board directory. You wonder why the one leaked doesn’t contain the phishing address. The simplest explanation is the best. It’s because the directory is a PDF that has already been created so the secretary is just re-sending the document. HI won’t be updating the PDF until they really have to, probably at the next board meeting. They will have updated the source of the PDF though, either a database or WordPrefect document.
JJ says:
February 24, 2012 at 1:30 pm
“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.”
The properties of the file when viewed with Adobe Reader say:
created on: 25. Jan 2012 15:04:36
changed on: 14. Feb 2012 12:36:51
Can’t tell you the time zone, I’m looking at it on German time zone and locale. On which date and time did Gleick send the phishing mail?
Not if they have a hard policy of encrypting all attachments.
1DandyTroll says:
February 24, 2012 at 2:32 pm
Montani Semper Liberi
says on February 24, 2012 at 11:11 am:
“It’s such a dumb mistake by the HI staffer to send the info out like that without some way of verifying Gleick was actually the board member he claimed to be.”
To blame the victim of a crime is what socialists do to feel they’re not responsible for the crime that the state commited against the victim.
So, essentially, if you get dragged out and hauled under a velt it’s your own damn fault for not veryfying the people nocking on your door so as to physically defend yourself? o_O
*************************************************************************************************
When I was in college I took a summer job at a retail electronics store. While I was there one of the cashiers encountered a money counting scammer (google ‘change raiser’) who short-changed him $500. He ended up getting fired over that, even though we all knew it wasn’t really his fault (company policy yadda yadda). It’s easy to look in at something and say “hey dummy, you’re being scammed!”, but remember, scams work because they are specifically tailored for the individual being scammed. As many have pointed out, the HI staffer probably answers similar requests all the time.
If you’re a 9-to-5 office type for a multi-million dollar organization, and a member of the board emails you and asks for a few documents, you probably reply “yes, sir”, not “please verify your identity so I know you’re not an evil scammer, sir”. And once that relationship is established, the scammer can milk it, as Gleick did, until they get caught or cut it off. In the future I’m sure they will be more cautious, but they probably never had a reason to question this request in the first place.
So while I understand both sides of this argument, let’s not forget who victimized whom.
In spite of what others have said I don’t think the desktop screen shots are all that bad from a security standpoint. It took about 5 minutes to determine they are not using an Exchange server. The fact that they are using ACT! would lead me to believe that they don’t have any servers at all, just a workgroup of computers. The biggest concern I would have is they don’t appear to have any anti-virus software which would typically be seen in the Notification Area.
Ally E. says:
Hey, doesn’t popcorn make you… you know… blow off? In the future, in Greenie-dreams, would that be a punishable offence? Will they Ban the F*rt? Just askin’.
Nope, makes me want to drop a Connelly!
Paul Westhaver says:
February 24, 2012 at 2:59 pm
“DirkH says:
February 24, 2012 at 12:28 pm
“Do you want to imply that Heartland knew they were being phished when Gleick’s e-mail arrived ”
Not at all…..The Heartland did everything correctly and ethically. ”
Okay, I misunderstood the “did everything right”.
To me, that is the clincher. If these two documents were referred to in the memo, but not requested by Gleick, I can see no way he could justify his assertion that he received the memo from a third party and then requested documents based on that. It would be a massive coincidence that two additional documents mentioned in the memo would be sent to him even though he had not requested them.
I rest my case …
Greg F says:
February 24, 2012 at 3:21 pm
“The biggest concern I would have is they don’t appear to have any anti-virus software which would typically be seen in the Notification Area.”
It’s not expanded. Look at the small arrow. You can’t see all icons.
Sorry, on re-reading my previous post it appears that these were the only two documents that are specifically cited in the memo. In that case, his assertion is an obvious lie, IMO.
Re: YouTube “Heartland Department of Education” video.
Someone clever could copy that video and dub it over as a satire using off the wall statements by Al Gore, Jim Hansen, etc.
No snow for the kids…
No ice at the poles…
The oceans will boil…
Millions of degrees under my feet….
Add in lots of snow and blizzard stills….
something like that…
Then I would laugh.
I must agree with those who defend the HI staffer who sent the documents.
Absent a specific policy to the contrary, lowly clerical staff do not get to interrogate directors of their organisation when they email in with seemingly routine requests.
While this episode will no doubt result in a tightening of HI’s security, there are plenty of much larger organisations (including huge corporations) with far more rigorous security arrangements that have been duped and defrauded by determined scammers. Blaming the scammee in this instance is pretty harsh, especially the admin assistant who was just trying to be helpful. Being rude to a director is not generally a good career move.
It seems typical of people working alone to assume a hotmail or gmail address is untraceable. Two people working together would be far less likely to be so stupid.
Paul Westhaver says: “…Turns out, the Heartland guys did everything right and let Gleick ravel himself…”
Rav’el, meaning entangle? Or Rav·el’, with him tooting Bolero? [“…♪♫…”]