This was presented to the US Attorney’s office by the Jones-Day legal firm on behalf of the Heartland Institute in connection with the theft of documents by Dr. Peter Gleick of the Pacific Institute one year ago today.
It is a PDF document of a PowerPoint presentation. There are some redactions (black strips) in the document that are placed to protect the privacy of some of the people involved who were the the victim of Dr. Gleick’s actions.
I present it here without comment, published at the embargo time.
Criminal Referral of Dr. Peter H. Gleick Talking Points (PDF 5.6 MB)
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UPDATE: Here is the press release from Heartland:
Why Isn’t Pacific Institute’s Peter Gleick in Jail?
The Heartland Institute today released a 57-page slide presentation produced by its legal counsel, Jones Day, titled “Criminal Referral of Dr. Peter H. Gleick Talking Points.” The report, presented to the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Northern District of Illinois, asked the government to prosecute Pacific Institute President Peter Gleick, a prominent climate scientist and environmental activist.
Several presentations based on information contained in this document were made to the staff of the U.S. Attorney’s Office, including David Glockner, at the time head of the criminal division, and Gary Shapiro, now acting U.S. Attorney. So far, the government has not prosecuted Peter Gleick.
[NOTE: No redactions were included in the presentation to the U.S. Attorney’s Office, with the exception of personal information on a donor’s check. More redactions are included in this document to protect the privacy of those Peter Gleick victimized.]
The following statement by Heartland Institute President Joseph Bast may be used for attribution. For more information, please contact Director of Communications Jim Lakely at jlakely@heartland.org and 312/377-4000.
“Today marks the one-year anniversary of ‘Fakegate,’ the day Pacific Institute President Peter Gleick sent to liberal activists and reporters documents he stole from The Heartland Institute and claimed to have obtained from a ‘Heartland insider’ and later from an ‘anonymous source.’ The documents included Heartland’s annual budget, fundraising plan, and other confidential documents. Media outlets in the U.S. and around the world reported on the ‘leak’ of ‘secret plans’ by an anonymous ‘insider’ at the world’s most prominent think tank promoting skepticism about man-made global warming.
“Gleick eventually confessed to being the ‘insider’ and explained that he had stolen the identity of another person – a member of Heartland’s board of directors, it soon became known – in order to steal the confidential documents. There was no ‘leak.’ Gleick also admitted to lying about the nature of one document he originally claimed had come from Heartland, a ‘strategy memo’ that purported to describe Heartland’s plans to address climate change in the coming year. That document was quickly shown to be a fake, written to misrepresent and defame The Heartland Institute. Gleick denied he was the author of the fake memo.
“The Heartland Institute, a nonprofit organization, retained legal counsel to formally request that the U.S. Attorney prosecute Peter Gleick for the federal crimes of wire fraud and aggravated identity theft. Today, one year after the crime was revealed and nearly one year after Gleick’s confession, the U.S. Attorney still has not filed charges against Gleick.
“We urge everyone who has an interest in the global warming debate to review the ‘Criminal Referral of Dr. Peter H. Gleick Talking Points’ presentation and decide for themselves whether Peter Gleick should be tried for his crimes. We ask the reporters and activists who were fooled by Gleick’s lies and who used the documents he stole and may have forged to attack The Heartland Institute, rather than come to our defense as the victim of a serious crime, to revisit their decisions and cover the story again, this time honestly. And we urge everyone to ‘look under the hood’ at the real science behind the global warming scare and recognize that man-made global warming is not a crisis.”
The Heartland Institute is a 29-year-old national nonprofit organization headquartered in Chicago, Illinois. Its mission is to discover, develop, and promote free-market solutions to social and economic problems. For more information, visit our Web site or call 312/377-4000.
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Regarding possible civil litigation: Heartland’s lawyers warned us that if we filed a civil suit against Peter Gleick, they could not guarantee that our donors would be protected from subpoenas won by Gleick’s attorneys from a sympathetic (liberal) judge. All of the donors identified in the stolen documents could receive threatening letters from Gleick’s lawyers demanding that they surrender correspondence, emails, notes, receipts, etc. Obviously, that would be devastating to our future fundraising efforts, and a violation of our pledge of preserving the privacy of our donors. So we made the difficult choice to not pursue civil litigation.
Jim Lakely
Director of Communications
The Heartland Institute
Many will ask, why hasn’t he been charged? The political organs of the State will never charge anyone who is working to support the State-supported orthodoxy, no matter what he does. Much the same as the rules for the Inquisition, there is no crime and no law when dealing with Heretics.
I suppose Heartland is lucky that they haven’t been charged with being Insufficiently Deferential to the Keepers of Truth, but give it time.
Sorry, they tried. But no one is going to give a damn about this document but skeptics like me who enjoy getting themselves aggravated at 9 in the morning. H.I. doesn’t seem to have the stomach for civil action for whatever reason, so barring a miracle, once again one of their guys skates away. Not only is Gleick unblemished, he’s looked upon as a hero. Truly sad..
Game set and match!
So Gleick gets off scot free then
I must admit that I am disappointed in the absence of a direct accusation that Peter Gleick was the forger of the fake strategy memo. Everyone familiar with this case believes Gleick wrote the memo, given the circumstances, and given that it contains his highly idiosyncratic use of parenthesis, commas, and activist jargon that would never be used at Heartland.
Dr. Gleick, you forged the fake strategy document, fess up.
I wasn’t aware of the seriousness of this and the extent of the damage (financially). The majority of people would probably think that this was a good and moral thing for Gleick to do because the institutionalised brainwashing by the media with regards to CAGW over the last 20 years supports this mentality. The truth is that it was a callous, childlike action to obtain private information which has hurt a charitable organisation. Lets hope the courts take the appropriate action so that it deters future moronic behaviour like this.
Heartland does not seem to understand that liberal activists and black panthers (possibly the same thing) are not accountable for illegal behavior in your country.
It appears to be an excellent, succinct and to the point summary of everything which was discovered about Gleick, his actions, and the actions of the other participants.
This guy in my opinion was no whistle-blower and used criminal means to not only obtain confidential documents, but to even fake a document in order to make the Heartland Institute look bad and in such a way as to deter future donation-givers. In other words he deliberately set out to destroy the Heartland Institute using scurrilous and illegal methods.
It also appears to me that the other participants are also guilty of assisting him in this crime, and if there was any justice in this world, they too should in my opinion be charged alongside Gleick.
I am surprised that this is apparently the way you go about making a complaint to the police in the US. Using powerpoint. If it were me I would have gone with something like a signed written complaint. Powerpoint just feels like a sales pitch.
Imagine how quick some neo-nazi or white supremacist would be jailed/Gitmoed if he/she pulled a similar ruse against the American Jewish Congress or the NAACP.
The importance of donor anonymity should be obvious to anyone not corrupted by a “Noble Cause” like the rise of the Nth Reich.
Why not identify who was impersonated? just curious.
One thing that is not mentioned is whether, as well as disagreeing with heartland, gleick also had a personal motive.
I believe he did.
Gleick joins ncse, getting a job to encourage the teaching of “science”, especially climate science…
Then within days (if his plan had worked) we discover not only is his mission of key importance, because those evil heartland folks are trying to stop teaching of science – but also, heartland have personally identified gleick (in their secret strategy plan) as the number one defender of truth, justice, and science, all because of the incredible importance of gleick’s Forbes blog.
It looks even more grubby, if you believe that gleick’s motives were not only political fanaticism, but self-aggrandisement too.
I’ve helped in the preparation of a few of these things, and it is a sales pitch.
Basically, the appropriate U.S. Attorney’s office sends a team to your law firm. You ply them with refreshments and do the dog and pony show. You provide them with written supplements. Then you wait for them to decide whether or not their careers will be enhanced or harmed by the prosecution you are requesting.
The U.S. Attorneys’ Offices in the United States are thoroughly politicized entities that rampage over the innocent and guilty alike, behaving like a poster child of the destructive organizations that are described by public choice theory.
At what point does Paul Nurse’s once reputable Royal Society recruit Gleick to stand with Ehrlich as exemplars of good Baconian empiricism? Faugh!
This is very interesting reading. I just hope that a /very/ strong message will be its result, along with a personal penalty that will at least cause Gleik in part to compensate Heartland for its losses and lost time.
Can anyone estimate the chances of success?
That is the price of AGW skepticism, that all of us realists, must endure. It is the cost of minority action. If you are not prepared for it… What the hell are you doing in the kitchen? Man up! GK
Robin Edwards says:
Can anyone estimate the chances of success?
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Oh yes. Slim and none, leaning to none. The corruption in the justice system of the United States is outrageous. It has been exposed over and over and nothing happens, so consequently it gets worse.
Charle H said: ‘it was a callous, childlike action’.
Indeed, just like the publication of stolen, private University of East Anglia e-mails, and of embargoed draft IPCC reports. Organisations and websites that do or support this kind of activity need to be roundly condemned.
This thread has already gotten quite silly. There is no criminal case because Heartland felt it was important that no one see them blink and claimed that donations were actually up after the theft. And there is no civil defamation case because all the defamation was in the faked strategy document and they cannot prove that Gleick wrote it. The stuff about liberal judges and threatening subpoenas is all hyperbole.
Lawfare: Legitimate perversion of the course of justice?
When the people become wise to the fact that the Rule of Law is applied unequally; they have a historic tendency to withdraw their consent to the Rule of Law. Tyranny is then the only way for governments to maintain power.
[snip. sock puppetry. ~ mod.]
• • •
REPLY: This person isn’t actually “Jake Diamond”, I believe (based on the trace) it is longtime detractor Phil Clarke using a fake name to get past his ban for bad behavior here. – Anthony
Does anyone doubt that Catastrophic Anthropogenic Global Warming (CAGW) espousers would have prosecuted whomever leaked (or hacked) the Climategate material to the fullest extent of the law, if they had ever identified him (or her)? If they found the “culprit” tomorrow, does anyone think that they would dismiss the leak (or hacking) as just a “dirty trick” within the realm of politics? I don’t particularly want Gleick to be jailed for his crime. But hopefully he will be found guilt and have to wear the badge of “convicted felon” as an example to others who ascribe to the “ends justify the means” standard.
[snip]
@jim lakely – Let them subpoena me. I will give them whatever they want. Just for the satisfaction of seeing justice served. My correspondence is all contained in the donations. I do not care what they want to see. I do not write what I do not expect to be made public.