The Heartland Institute - February 2012 Document Misappropriation

February 2012 Document Misappropriation

In February 2012 environmentalist scientist and president of the Pacific Institute, Peter Gleick, obtained internal Heartland Institute documents and divulged them, together with an additional document he later claimed to have received from an unknown source, to public websites. The documents contained the 2012 Heartland budget, a fundraising plan and board materials. The documents disclosed the names of a number of donors to the institute – including the Charles G. Koch Charitable Foundation, tobacco companies Altria and Reynolds American, drug firms GlaxoSmithKline, Pfizer and Eli Lilly, Microsoft, liquor companies, and an anonymous donor who had given $13 million over the past five years. Some of the documents also contained details of payments to climate skeptics and financial support to skeptics' research programs, namely the founder of the Center for the Study of Carbon Dioxide and Global Change Craig Idso ($11,600 per month), physicist Fred Singer ($5,000 plus expenses per month), geologist Robert M. Carter ($1,667 per month) and a pledge of $90,000 to meteorologist Anthony Watts. Carter and Watts confirmed receiving payments. The documents also indicated that the institute planned to provide materials to teachers in the United States to undercut the teaching of global warming in schools. The documents also appeared to disclose Heartland's plans for "Operation Angry Badger", in which $612,000 was to be allocated for activities related to Wisconsin's recall elections. None of the leaked documents were independently authenticated.

Heartland maintained that the documents, which were first published on Desmogblog, were fraudulently acquired and declared that the last document was a fake that had been fabricated with the purpose of defaming and discrediting the institute. The Heartland Institute asserted that one in particular of the released documents, the "Climate Strategy Memo", was "forged." Following an inquiry, the Pacific Institute reinstated Gleick, an action that "implicitly backed Gleick's assertion that he was not responsible for creating a document labeled a fake by Heartland." The Heartland Institute branded this action as a "whitewash".

In support of Heartland's claims of forgery, The Atlantic editor Megan McArdle concluded that the offending document's mismatched metadata, unprofessional writing style and references to specific individuals made its authenticity extremely unlikely.

In the wake of the release, several environmental organizations called on General Motors and Microsoft – companies that had donated to the institute in the past – to sever their ties with Heartland; additionally, scientists previously attacked by Heartland called on it to "recognise how its attacks on science and scientists have poisoned the debate about climate change policy."

On February 20, 2012, Gleick said he was mailed the disputed strategy memo from an anonymous source. He admitted obtaining the other documents from Heartland by deceptive means, "in a serious lapse of my own professional judgment and ethics", and stated that "My judgment was blinded by my frustration with the ongoing efforts – often anonymous, well-funded, and coordinated – to attack climate science and scientists and prevent this debate, and by the lack of transparency of the organizations involved." On February 16, Gleick resigned as chair of American Geophysical Union's Task Force on Scientific Ethics.

On February 22, 2012, Congressman Raúl Grijalva requested a House Committee on Natural Resources hearing to investigate whether alleged Heartland payments to Indur Goklany, a senior adviser to the Interior Department, violated Federal ethics rules. Greenpeace also requested an investigation into this allegation on the same date. Golklany told Politico he had previously cleared his activities with his department's ethics unit. On February 28, 2012, the Committee announced that it was planning to ignore Congressman Grijalva's request.