Guest essay by Joe Bast
On Thursday, March 24th, POLITICO announced disgraced climate scientist Peter Gleick has stepped down as president of the Pacific Institute, though he will remain there as a researcher and fundraiser. Interestingly, no successor has been named, so “the search for a new president is underway.” What was the hurry?
In 2012, Gleick stole the identity of a Heartland board member (committing identity theft, a federal crime) and used it to commit a second crime (stealing and revealing confidential documents from a competitor, industrial espionage). He confessed to both crimes, but not to a third crime, libel, which he very likely committed by forging a document and lying repeatedly to his allies — and then to the general public and to his own board of directors — about the true origins of that document. He has yet to confess to that crime. This whole hoary incident is called Fakegate and is documented on this site.
The Heartland Institute, Gleick’s victim, carefully documented Gleick’s crimes and tried to persuade the U.S. Attorney for Northern Illinois to prosecute him, but failed. At the time, we couldn’t understand why: Gleick confessed to committing crimes, and the crimes he committed caused great damage to Heartland’s reputation and to the wider world of public policy debate. Letting him go unpunished would set a terrible precedent: Groups that support different perspectives on controversial issues are now apparently free to break the law to attack and discredit their opponents.
Why didn’t the Department of Justice prosecute Gleick? Events in recent weeks help explain it.
The Obama administration’s heavy-handed abuse of constitutional authority has extended beyond the IRS, FCC, and EPA to include the Department of Justice. The DOJ apparently has consulted with the FBI to investigate global warming realists, and possibly plans to use RICO against groups like The Heartland Institute. Astonishing, and frightening. And it raises an obvious question: For how long has DOJ viewed global warming realists as possible criminalsand not victims?
Maybe The Heartland Institute never stood a chance against Peter Gleick, because DOJ already made up its mind that alarmists are the “good guys” and realists are the “bad guys” in the global warming debate. Maybe Gleick had political protection from the White House. Maybe political bias trumped justice?
Which brings us back to Peter Gleick’s resignation as president of the Pacific Institute. Gleick is only 60 years old. It’s unusual for a CEO to resign without announcing a replacement … unless the resignation was involuntary and there wasn’t time to recruit a replacement. Was Peter Gleick fired?
Maybe members of the board of the Pacific Institute, who refused to respond to not one buttwo letters from The Heartland Institute warning them of Gleick’s misconduct and calling on them to fulfill their fiduciary responsibilities, finally realized they were being lied to by Gleick. That they had failed to behave in an honorable fashion. That their fake “internal investigation” was being misrepresented by the liberal mainstream media. That their failure to act had made the Pacific Institute a joke to many in the science community because its CEO was an unconvicted felon.
Maybe some of this, or all of this?
The statute of limitations on Gleick’s crimes runs five years … to February 2017, a month after a new president is installed in office. Interesting timing.
This WUWT forensic analysis (done by an expert third party) of Gleick’s letter suggested he was in fact the letter writer. Credit goes to Steve Mosher for initially fingering Gleick based on patterns in writing observed.
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I am inclined to agree with the other commenters that Gleick’s resignation is not due to Fakegate. If this was an issue of concern for the Board, they would have asked him to resign long before now. And as you pointed out, the current administration supports law breaking so long as you are in ideological synchronicity with it.
It could very well be that he is shifting into a new, less active role with the Institute.
Perhaps the Shukla effect is sending shivers down the Pacific Institute’s spine
What spine?
Auditor spine perhaps
Money talks, Gleick walks (sideways)?
Pacific Institute -Total receipts
2010 – $2,245,984
2011 – $1,752,439
2012 – $1,209,525
2013 – $944,722
2014 – $1,083,990 (Hurrah, the slide is arrested!)
Did receipts dip back under $1,000,000 in 2015? Whatever, the unconvicted felon hung onto his ~$150,000 salary throughout, and no doubt will continue to do so in his new position.
Fascinating decline, down to half or so. This alone may explain the removal. Could be due to Fakegate.
Charlie on March 28, 2016 at 1:28 pm
– – – – – –
Charlie,
You have identified a relevant factor for the PI board to have used to move Gleick out (via a sideways maneuver). Disappearing funding $ has to be a concern for the PI.
I think several other factors that may have contributed to his sideways removal are: 1) climate alarmism is a rapidly declining area of interest, plus 2) the political environment in the USA is radically shifting to skeptical valuations due to the presidential campaign trends.
Those 3 three factors were probably increased in importance in the PI board’s mind due to the pre-existing Fakegate background of Gleick.
John
When you factor in costs and inflation in California, they are still losing ground and probably personnel. So keeping him on staff probably means others will be let go.
Fund raiser i.e. grant writer.
Peter Gleick should spend time in prison and then rot in hell when he dies. No doubt about it.
That was a great whodunnit by Steve Mosher. Gleick should have gone to trial.
…that’s unconvicted alleged felon. 😉
An action could be commenced before the limitation period and then there is no chance to weasel out due to time . The Heartland Board member would likely have the best case to press . If Gleick admitted to doing it already it would be a short discovery . It would open up an audit trail of Emails between others at the Pacific Institute who may or may not have been aware of plans to gain access and use the Heartland Board members identity .IF an an ultimate objective was to pry into Heartland’s affairs without authorization and to potentially harm the Board member and Heartlands reputation then other charges would be possible . Wire theft charges are a serious offence and depending on what the access to information was used for much more serious charges could be added . It seems highly unlikely the Pacific Institute is going to pick up the legal bill of a rogue management employee unless they know or anticipate the allegations run a lot deeper than one lone incident run by one person on their own .
The only way to get to the bottom of this is through the courts and clearly the government isn’t motivated on their own .
There is another Pacific Institute, founded in Seattle by Lou and Diane Tice in 1971, long before Peter Gleick founded his organization. It is a nice story:
http://www.thepacificinstitute.com/memoriam
Best, Allan
You mean Gleick stole the name?
I worry that the administration would go ahead with prosecution before the election but then Obama would give pardons to various people such as Gleick and Hillary Clinton.
I don’t believe that prosecution is required for a Presidential pardon.
http://www.legalflip.com/Article.aspx?id=61&pageid=321
However, Presidential pardons only apply to federal criminal acts against the United States. Not sure if Gleick’s crimes are federal crimes against the US.
On the other hand, it seems to me that Ms Clinton could easily be pardoned by President Obama, even before any charges or prosecution.
Oh, I dunno; Mr. Gleick has done the decent thing, even belatedly. (No doubt in an empty room, left alone with a bottle of whiskey and a hockey stick!)
It has become all to obvious that our government routinely fails to apply our laws equally. This is the sort of problem that arises from the growth of a career political and bureaucratic class that has become nothing less than a pseudo royalty believing it is above the law and entitled to do as it pleases without repercussion. It is unlikely that this will soon change unless the people finally insist upon it.
In the climate case it also believes it is above the science, buying biased scares to support bogus policies, rather than doing serious research. I address the need to expose this bias in some detail here, if anyone is interested: http://www.cato.org/publications/working-paper/government-buying-science-or-support-framework-analysis-federal-funding
Mr Gleick at the Pacific Institute’s website on the occasion of their 20th anniversary-
“In 1987, the Cold War was starting to warm up, but so was the Earth. The Berlin Wall was starting to come down, but nascent political and ideological threats were emerging. Traditional academic disciplines were searching for new language, tools, and answers to interdisciplinary problems. The concept of sustainability was just being introduced, but there was a growing appreciation that problems of the environment, economy, and society were intricately linked.
This idea drove us to create the Pacific Institute. We believed that global problems and effective solutions in the 21st century would require innovative ways of thinking, seeing, and doing. “
Personally I found no nascent political and ideological threats emerging at the time the Berlin Wall was being torn down. Rather a feeling of jubilation and exhilaration but each to their own eh Peter?
Creating and milking a nonprofit organization in the U.S. is good work when you can spin it. It all comes down to fundraising and cheer leading. Execution? not so much. It’s the persona projection that counts.