I wanted to highlight this other piece of James O'Keefe's life prior to becoming (in)famous for pretending to be a pimp to catch ACORN employees on camera advising him to do bad things. First, if you haven't read RfrancisR's diary, do it now.
So we know about how he founded a conservative paper at Rutgers. But after graduation, he came here to do a stint at the UCLA Law School. And here at UCLA, he teamed up with freshman Lila Rose. You remember her, right? The girl who pretended to be 13 years old and recorded Planned Parenthood employees with a hidden camera, trying to get them to tell her to lie about her age to get an abortion? Does that tactic sound familiar?
Because when her story made the news, everyone focused on her. She went on O'Reilly and Hannity and Beck several times. Instant Fox News celebrity. But buried in the article was the name of the guy who helped her out. James O'Keefe.
The girl's voice in the videotape is tiny and tentative. She is talking to a nursing aide in a Planned Parenthood clinic in Bloomington, Ind. The girl wants an abortion.
The aide explains that the girl will need a parent's consent because she is only 13.
The girl balks; she does not want to name the father.
"Cause, I mean, he would be in really big trouble," says the girl. Her boyfriend, she explains, is 31.
The aide drops her head into her hands.
"In the state of Indiana," says the aide, "when anyone has had intercourse and they are age 13 or younger ... it has to be reported to Child Protective Services."
There is a 60-second gap in the tape, according to the running timer on the video. What happens next is meant to be explosive.
"OK," says the aide, "I didn't hear the age. I don't want to know the age. It could be reported as rape. And that's child abuse."
"So if I just say I don't know who the father was, but he's one of the guys at school or something?" asks the girl.
"Right," says the aide, who has just stepped into a carefully laid trap.
As it happens, the boyfriend does not exist. The girl is not pregnant. Nor is she 13.
She is Lila Rose, a 20-year-old UCLA history major with a little voice and a bold plan to expose what she and many abortion foes see as Planned Parenthood's wrongdoings.
Since 2006, Rose has orchestrated undercover "stings" at Planned Parenthood clinics in Los Angeles, Indianapolis, Bloomington, Tucson, Phoenix and Memphis.
Surreptitiously videotaping their interactions, she and a friend have posed as abortion-seeking teens impregnated by older men. The videos -- boiled down to five minutes, with portentous music and fast cuts to heighten the drama -- are posted on Rose's website, LiveAction.org, and YouTube.
A gap in the tape. Sound familiar? Rose says she's posted the full video on her website, but it seems parts of what she actually says to the PP employees are mysteriously muted at certain points.
What Rose has done has had a tangible negative impact on Planned Parenthood's ability to help out the community, as conservative lawmakers try to cut off their funding.
On Wednesday, Tennessee lawmakers said they would seek to end a $721,000 contract with Planned Parenthood, citing outrage over what they saw in a video Rose had posted two days earlier from a Memphis clinic. She posed there in July as a 14-year-old impregnated by a 31-year-old; a Planned Parenthood staffer says, "Just say you have a boyfriend, 17 years old, whatever."
Last month, the Orange County Board of Supervisors voted to suspend a grant worth nearly $300,000 to Planned Parenthood that was earmarked for sex education, not abortions. A conservative Tustin businessman raised the issue with Supervisor John Moorlach after meeting Rose and seeing her videos.
What's interesting is that even back then when the story first broke, Rose was already aware not to reveal where she was getting the money from.
For this story, Rose would answer questions only by e-mail. When contacted in December, she agreed to meet a reporter the next day but canceled, citing schoolwork, and refused to reschedule. She was subsequently advised by a publicist to communicate only in writing.
She did not answer a question about who funds her work, saying only that she operates "on a very low budget" and uses "mostly student volunteers." Federal tax records for Live Action Films, created in 2008, are not yet available.
I'm not an investigative journalist, and I have no idea how to go about getting this information, but since it's now 2010, could someone now get the federal tax records for Live Action Films? I think it'd be pretty informative to see where they get their money from, though we probably have a good idea already of which right-wing "institutes" are funding her.
I mean, look at all the cities Rose had been to to film her work, from California to Indiana to Tennessee. That's a lot of mileage for a college student to be piling up in the summer. Since this all happened, she's become a darling of the Religious Right, and has gotten quite a bit of money out of it too, along with key connections to other right-wing players.
For Rose, the threat was a badge of honor: "They are on the lookout for me," she told an audience of conservative Christian activists at the Family Research Council's Values Voter Summit in Washington in September. "When I walk into Planned Parenthoods across the country, I am flattered to see my picture on the wall. It is because to Planned Parenthood, I am -- quote -- a 'known anti-choice extremist.' This is one of the better compliments I have received."
In February, she was awarded $50,000 from the Gerard Health Foundation, a Massachusetts-based charity founded by a Catholic businessman that funds antiabortion and abstinence-only sex education efforts.
David French, an attorney with the Alliance Defense Fund, a Christian legal group, gave her free advice when Planned Parenthood of Los Angeles threatened action, and appeared at her side during an interview with conservative TV talk-show host Bill O'Reilly. She also receives guidance from CRC Public Relations, a Washington-area firm that represents conservative clients and had a hand in the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth campaign that targeted Democrat John F. Kerry during the 2004 presidential race.
And then in the final paragraphs of the L.A. Times piece, we start to see some of the connections to these right-wing groups.
Between 2006 and 2008, Rose attended four workshops at the Leadership Institute, a Virginia-based educational foundation that teaches conservatives how to polish their communication skills.
In fall 2006, when she was a UCLA freshman, she and fellow conservative activist James O'Keefe came up with the idea to infiltrate clinics.
....
O'Keefe, 24, said he and Rose have received criticism from some of their associates for using deception. "It's a pretty complicated ethical issue," he said, "but we believe there is a genocide and nobody cares, and you can use these tactics and it's justified."
I wonder if that's the same kind of short-sighted ends-justify-the-means thinking that led O'Keefe to try to wiretap a U.S. Senator. But the key there is the foundation listed. The Leadership Institute. TPM has looked into what the institute is. Did you know CampusReform.org is part of the Leadership Institute?
(FYI, this isn't David Horowitz's group, though they do feed off of each other. Their tactics of professor intimidation and claims of "liberal bias" reminds me of how Laura Clawson and I helped expose Andrew Jones here at UCLA when he tried to pay students to record their professors' lectures. Even Horowitz himself got pissed off about that incident.)
Anyway, here are the key staffers for the Leadership Institute.
President's Office
Morton Blackwell - President
Cathy Graham - Executive Assistant to the President
Programs
David Fenner - Vice President of Programs
Campus Leadership Program & Development
Steven Sutton - Vice President of Development and Campus Programs
Carolyn Bolls - Intern Coordinator
John Davis - Special Projects Manager
Finance
Joseph Metzger - VP of Finance
David Hempel - Assistant Controller
Technology & Operations
Mark Centofante - Vice President for Technology and Operations
Admittedly, I'm unfamiliar with any of the names. (Update: See Califlander's comment. Turns out Blackwell was responsible for those Purple Heart band-aids in 2004.) But Rose is tied into the Leadership Institute, as are the four who were arrested in Landrieu's New Orleans office two days ago.
Update: TPM has a more detailed article up now about the Leadership Institute.
BTW, what has Rose done since then? She's continued her attacks on Planned Parenthood, and in 2008 was recording phone conversations to try to accuse them of racism for wanting to abort black babies. No, I'm not making that up. And who was the male providing the voice on the recorded phone calls? Why, O'Keefe again. And she also got the 2008 Person of the Year Malachi Award from the doctor-murdering terrorist group Operation Rescue, though I don't think she'll be personally pulling the trigger anytime soon. She's not that kind of person. Some of her admirers, OTOH..........
For more on the danger Rose poses to the pro-choice movement, read Mandy Van Deven's piece on Rose.
I hope this diary was informative in shining a light on part of O'Keefe's background that seems to have gone largely unnoticed, even by the progressive blogosphere, after his ACORN sting videos plastered the national media.
BTW, anyone notice O'Keefe's Conservapedia page hasn't been updated to let them know he's in jail? I wonder if anyone here wants to try to update it. ;-)
Update: OK, so it seems that O'Keefe and the others are now out of jail after having posted bond. Now, bond was set at $10,000 for each of them. So... where did they get the money? I mean, I don't think they got it from Chico's Bail Bonds.