19-02-2013, 07:15 PM
AARON MATÉ: When it comes to the wealthy funders of right-wing causes, the big names are well known: billionaires like the industrialist Koch Brothers and the casino magnate Sheldon Adelson, super PACs like Americans for Prosperity and Karl Rove's Crossroads GPS. Now, through them, hundreds of millions of dollars have poured into right-wing causes and candidates. But now it turns out this web of dark-money donations is even more secretive than we previously thought. That's because the operations of a largely unknown group have now come to light. They're called Donors Trust, a nonprofit charity based in Virginia.
Since 1999, Donors Trust has handed out nearly $400 million in private donations to more than 1,000 right-wing and libertarian groups. The fact Donors Trust has been able to quietly do so appears to explain why it exists: Wealthy donors can back the right-wing causes they want without attracting public scrutiny. Donors Trust is classified as a "donor-advised" fund under U.S. tax law, meaning its funders don't have direct say in where their money goes. That in turn allows them to remain largely anonymous.
AMY GOODMAN: But the most detailed accounting to date shows Donors Trust funds a wish list of right-wing causes, prompting Mother Jones magazine to label it, quote, "the dark-money ATM of the right." Donors Trust recipients include the American Legislative Exchange Council, or ALEC, a mechanism for corporate interests to help write state laws; the Franklin Center for Government and Public Integrity, a media outlet that unabashedly promotes right-wing causes; and the State Policy Network, a number of right-wing think tanks that push so-called "free-market" policies.
But the major focus of Donors Trust appears to be funding the denial of global warming. More than a third of Donors Trust donationsat least $146 millionhas gone to think tanks and other groups that challenge the science of climate change. Later in the broadcast, we'll take a closer look at that funding of climate change denial, but first we turn to an overview of Donors Trust and look at why it's been able to evade public scrutiny until now.
Joining us from Washington, D.C., is John Dunbar, politics editor at the Center for Public Integrity, worked on the group's months-long investigation into Donor's Trust. We did ask Donors Trust to join us, but they declined our request.
John Dunbar, lay out just what Donors Trust is.
JOHN DUNBAR: Well, they're essentially a pass through. What they do is, is they act as a kind of a middleman between what are very large, well-known private foundations created bymostly by corporate executives, like the Kochs, for example, and they direct the money of those contributions to a very large network of right-leaning, free-market think tanks across the country, including those that you've named. By doingby running it through the middleman, it essentially obscures the identity of the original donors, of the folks who have provided the funds themselves. And the organization itself actually makes that clear on its own website, essentially saying people who give money to the organization can avoid being identified or being connected with potentially controversial issues.
AARON MATÉ: And John Dunbar, so the figure is $400 million since 1999. Why is it that all this is just coming to light now?
JOHN DUNBAR: Well, we kind of stumbled onto it, to be honest with you. We've been, at the Center for Public Integritythat's publicintegrity.org if you'd like to read our full report on itwe were looking at activities at the state level, and we were noticing a certain continuity. There was a certain sameness to what was going on in various states on these issues. And we have been looking at the American Legislative Exchange Council for quite some time, and we were looking for how these organizations were funded. And this Donors Trust organization kept popping up, and it seemed to be such an amorphously named organization. We couldn't really figure out where it was. So we got to wondering, "Well, who's funding Donors Trust?" And then we backed it up a step, and then we started looking at some of the more better-known right-wing, free-market foundations, particularly those run by the Koch brothersthe Searle Freedom Trust, for example, is another one; the Bradley Foundationthese are all very well-known right-leaning foundationsand found that an enormous amount of the funds that came into Donors Trust came from thosefrom those organizations.
AMY GOODMAN: John Dunbar, in your report, you speak with the Donors Trust president and CEO, Whitney Ball. She says much of the group's focus is on the state level because of, quote, "gridlock" at the federal level of government means donors see, quote, "a better opportunity to make a difference in the states." Ball also sits on the board of the State Policy Network. Can you talk about this focus on activity at the state level?
JOHN DUNBAR: Yeah, I think thatI don't think anybody would argue with her point that it's hard to get anything done in Washington these days. They have been a lot more successful at the state level. And I think that in Washington we have a tendency to sort of get tunnel vision: We don't think that anything that happens outside of Washington really matters, when in fact the laws that are passed in the states are extremely important. Some of the focus of the Donors Trust recipients have been on specific state issues that, you know, affect all of us. You know, some of their favorite issues are right-to-work laws in the states; climate issues; renewable energy, as you'll hear from Suzanne and The Guardian, which has done such great work on that; and as well as, you know, tax issues, etc. People tend to look at states and what's happening in a particular state in isolation; they don't look around and see that the same thing seems to be happening in other states. And it'sthis is clearly a coordinated effort to create state-based think tanks. There's 51 of them that they've funded all across the country to push legislative issues. And then they created their own media empire to supportthey even support the ideas behind those issues.
AARON MATÉ: Well, John Dunbar, if you could follow up on that, this media group, the Franklin Center for Government and Public Integrity. They receive 95 percent of their funding from the Donors Trust?
JOHN DUNBAR: Right, and that was kind of shocking, actually. You know, wethat is a foundation-financed reporting organization. I have to say that the Center for Public Integrity is also a foundation-financed reporting organization, sohowever, we do not get 95 percent of our funding from any individual donor. Franklin does. The difficulty with that is that, first of all, you have to wonder whatwhether the reporting is going to be influenced by that single donor. Secondly, they are a ©3, which iswhich means donations to them are tax deductible, and they don't pay taxes themselves. That's a public trust, by the way. That'sthe Donors Trust is in the same position. If they were not a publicly financed nonprofit, they would lose their nonprofit status. By getting all of their money or most of their money through Donors Trust, they're able to maintain their ©3 status as a, quote, you know, "publicly financed charity," unquote. And if all that money came from one person, for example, they would lose that exemption, or they would be part ofthey would have to be absorbed by whatever foundation it was that was funding them.
AMY GOODMAN: John, in 2009, Republicans, bloggers, conservative think tanks began to cite a report that the Obama administration had pumped billions of stimulus funds into phantom congressional districts, suggesting money intended to create jobs and shore up the economy had been misused or lost. One of the key websites to report this was newmexicowatchdog.org, which is almost entirely funded by Donors Trust. The story was picked up by Fox News, like in this report from Stuart Varney.
STUART VARNEY: Take a look at this map, please. The government is claiming jobs created in nine Oklahoma congressional districts; problem: There's only five. Jobs in eight districts of Iowa; big problem: There's only five. Jobs in eight districts in Connecticut; again, there's only five. Jobs in three congressional districts in the Virgin Islands; there is only one. And as you point out, Bill, Puerto Rico, the government claims 17,544 jobs created or saved in six congressional districts; there is only one congressional district in Puerto Rico.
BILL HEMMER: I don't know if we should be laughing or crying over this.
STUART VARNEY: No.
BILL HEMMER: I mean, Puerto Rico alone, 99th Congressional District, 98th Congressional District, a no-number congressional district.
STUART VARNEY: Yes.
BILL HEMMER: I mean, good lord!
STUART VARNEY: Yes, yes, yes. Raise your eyebrows, please. Look, it's very bad, very unreliable statistics, and it really undermines all of these claims, these gross claims of job creation from stimulus.
AMY GOODMAN: That Fox News report was based on a report by newmexicowatchdog.org, one of the many so-called watchdog websites that are almost entirely funded by the Donors Trust. John Dunbar, your response?
JOHN DUNBAR: Well, I think that the implication of that report was that there were millions and millions of dollars that were being misspent, when the reality was it was data errors. I don't think anyone would defend the government's ability to create accurate databases. They clearly didn't do a very good job on that front, at least on the Recovery Act. However, the implication that all of this money was going into a black hole was actually nonsense. It was kind of a phantom issue about phantom districts, as the Associated Press had reported. A lot of the reporting by these different watchdog organizations that are funded by Franklin has been called into question, including by the Nieman Center at Harvard that's called it a lack in context and in some cases actually distortions of facts.
AARON MATÉ: While Donors Trust has given money to a variety of right-wing causes, denying climate change appears to be its top priority. An analysis by the environmentalist group Greenpeace reveals Donors Trust has funneled at least $146 million to more than 100 climate change denial groups over the past decade. In 2010, 12 of these groups received between 30 to 70 percent of their funding from Donors Trust. Some of the recipients include Americans for Prosperity, the Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow, the Heartland Institute and the Competitive Enterprise Institute.
AMY GOODMAN: Although many Donors Trust funders are unknown, at least two of its members include foundations bankrolled by the billionaire Charles Koch, a leading backer of climate denial. According to the most recent figures, the Koch-funded Knowledge and Progress Fund gave Donors Trust nearly $8 million through 2011.
For more on Donors Trust and the denial of global warming, we're joined in Washington, D.C., by Suzanne Goldenberg, U.S. environment correspondent for The Guardian. She has written a series of articles detailing the ties between Donors Trust and opponents of climate change science.
Lay out what you've found, Suzanne.
SUZANNE GOLDENBERG: Well, basically, what you see is thatover the last decade or so, you see a concerted effort by wealthy conservatives, conservative billionaires, to fund up and prop up a whole series of institutions that could work to undermine the science behind climate change and also work to undermine any kind of effort to pass legislation to deal with climate change. This money is going to think tanks. It's going to activist groups. It's going to so-called "scholars." It's going to a wide range of individuals, you know, more than a hundred different organizations.
And, you know, the goal here is to create this illusion, this idea that there is, you know, a really strong movement against the science of climate change and against action on climate change. In fact, that's actually, to an extent, become a reality now: You see that opposition to action on climate change is central to Republican thinking.
AMY GOODMAN: Talk about the different groups.
SUZANNE GOLDENBERG: You've got lots. You know, you've got sort of blue-chip think tanks in Washington, D.C., some of the really big institutions like the American Enterprise Institute. You've got organizations that really wouldn't exist or wouldn't, you know, make much of an impact at all if they didn't get half their budget from Donors Trust. In that category, I would put the Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow. One of its main activities is to run a website that's like a clearing house for articles that try and discredit the science behind climate change or, you know, launch personal attacks against people like Al Gore or climate scientists, you know, people who speak up against climate change. So you've got lots of different efforts going on. I mean, you've seenI don't know if you remember, a few years back, there was this organization called the Energy Citizens that was launched by Americans for Prosperity, you know, grassroots activists against action on climate change. That, it now turns out, had funding from Donors Trust, as well.
AMY GOODMAN: Donors Trust declined our request to join us on today's show, but the group's president and CEO, Whitney Ball, provided us with a statement. She wrote, "DonorsTrust was established to promote liberty and help like-minded donors preserve their charitable intent. We follow the same rules and operate in the same manner as other donor-advised funds which include the Fidelity Charitable Gift Fund, Jewish federations, local community foundations, and the left-of-center Tides Foundation, just to name a few. Donor-advised funds are classified as public charities, and thus are not required to disclose their donors. I do not know of a donor-advised fund that makes their donor lists public. The press has referred to us as a 'black box,' labeled our funding as 'dark money,' and [Suzanne] Goldenberg described us as 'secretive.' These characterizations are unfair and misleading. How is it that the Tides Foundation, which has a record of funding environmental causes and does not publish donor lists, is never characterized in the same way by these same reporters?" Your response, Suzanne Goldenberg, as she names you?
SUZANNE GOLDENBERG: Well, oh, sure. This is the first I've heard of it. Well, you know, I talked to Whitney Ball. I asked her flat out, "Can you tell me who gives to you, what kind of people give to you?" And she said, "No. I mean, that in fact is the purpose of this trust, to make the giving anonymous, to giveto allow these conservative billionaires to remain hidden." And I think, you know, she's trying to cast this as, look, the right have their organizations, the left have their organizations.
I think there's something really different here and that comes into play, in that these organizations being supported by Donors Trust are actually working to spread information that is factually incorrect, that is untrue. You know, it's as if you're sort of funding groups to go around saying, "Oh, you can get the HIV virus from toilet seats." You can't draw this equivalence here. These organizations areyou know, were funded for the express purpose, many of them, of spreading disinformation.
AARON MATÉ: Now, Suzanne, one of the climate denialists funded by Donors Trust is a group called the Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow.
SUZANNE GOLDENBERG: Yes.
AARON MATÉ: They run the website Climate Depot, which consistently attacks scientists and environmentalists who call for taking on global warming. Now, the head of Climate Depot, Marc Morano, appears frequently on Fox News and also mainstream outlets like CNN. On Monday, the day after tens of thousands of people rallied against the Keystone XL pipeline on the National Mall, Morano appeared on Fox News to warn that Keystone opponents could resort to, quote, "ecoterrorism." And he cited as their inspiration the NASA climatologist James Hansen.
MARC MORANO: So, the leaders at NASAand, you know, I call him NASA's resident ex-conis inspiring these people to potential acts of ecoterrorism. These people believe in this doomsday prophecy. And don't think they won't act. I mean, when I was in the U.S. Senate Environment Committee, we had to deal with ecoterrorism when it came to animal rights. We had to dealthere's been ecoterrorism when it deals with property rights out in Colorado. So it's a very real thingtorching SUVs. This movement, if it gets frustrated, particularly frustrated with a Democratic president, Obama, who's supposed to be their standard bearer, and actually goes ahead and approves the pipeline, there are going to be a lot of angry people, not the least of which is probably the NASA scientist going to jail again, James Hansen.
AARON MATÉ: That's Marc Morano of Climate Depot appearing on Fox News.
SUZANNE GOLDENBERG: You know, I wish I'd
AARON MATÉ: Suzanne Goldenberg, if you could talk about his group.
SUZANNE GOLDENBERG: Well, I wish I would seen. I mean, that's quite incredible. Just let's get back to the truth here, is that, yes, James Hansen was arrested, in fact as recently as last week, and what he was doing was just using plastic twist-tie handcuffs to handcuff himself to the gates of the White House and, you know, in an agreement arranged in advance with the D.C. police, arranged to be arrested in a nonviolent fashion with 40-something other activists, you know, to make a symbolic protest against the Keystone pipeline. So I do not know how you can describe these kind of acts, which, you know, were preceded by Mahatma Gandhi, Martin Luther King and other, you know, peaceful resistersI don't know how you can call that ecoterrorism.
But I think it's reallyit's really interesting and important to see what Marc Morano is doing here, and which is that he's deliberately spreading misinformation and lies, really, about what happened and about the means of protest that are taking place against the Keystone pipeline. And this is crucial because it helps create this sort of confusion about what people are doing to oppose the pipeline, and in that confusion, it makes it difficult for people to make an informed choice about what is right, what is wrong, and it makes it really hard for people in Congress or people in government agencies and in state agencies to actually act on a very urgent problem, because there's so much confusion and controversy surrounding it.
AMY GOODMAN: Suzanne, the Donors Trust-backed Heartland Institute sparked controversy last year after it paid for a billboard advertisement in Chicago likening those who accept the reality of global warming to the Unabomber, Ted Kaczynski.
SUZANNE GOLDENBERG: Yes.
AMY GOODMAN: The billboard featured a picture of Kaczynski and the words "I still believe in global warming. Do you?" Talk about the Heartland Institute, this ad.
SUZANNE GOLDENBERG: That's interesting. I just want to add, briefly, first, you know, I asked Whitney Ball about that advertisement, and she laughed. And she said, "Look" and, you know, I was asking, "Well, did your donors like what Heartland did?" And she said, "Some of them did; some of them didn't."
I think that ad was really interesting, because, in a way, it wasyou know, it really exposed Heartland Institute and exposed the way that they seeyou know, exposed the lengths they will go to to try and defend their cause, right? I mean, you know, for a lot of people looking at that, that was really an extreme kind of action. And I think that's true. I think what Heartland and these other groups are promoting is a really extreme view and a wrongheaded view of the science of climate change, of the need for action on climate change. That billboard, for many people, crystallized that extreme view.
To go back there, the reason why Heartland put up that billboard was because they were feeling besieged and under attack because of a disclosure of information about their finances, which showed that they were being heavily financed by the Koch brothers and by conservatives like Donors Trust. So, they had been the victim of a sting, which sort of laid bare all their financials, laid bare their strategy, and they fought back and sort of went overboard with this extremist ad about the Unabomber.
AARON MATÉ: Now, Suzanne, we've talked already about the actions of Donors Trust on the state level, and you've written about their funding of groups trying to fight wind farming in several states. We have 30 seconds.
SUZANNE GOLDENBERG: Yeah, I think that's their new focus, is not to look at trying to oppose action in Washington on climate change, because it's not happening, but they're going to go out into the states and oppose efforts to increase the amount of renewable energy, like wind farms and solar farms. I would also look at them to oppose action forby city councils in coastal communities to protect themselves from climate change in future development planning.
AMY GOODMAN: Suzanne Goldenberg, we want to thank you for being with us, U.S. environment correspondent for The Guardian. Her article, most recently, "Secret Funding Helped Build Vast Network of Climate Denial Thinktanks,"
Since 1999, Donors Trust has handed out nearly $400 million in private donations to more than 1,000 right-wing and libertarian groups. The fact Donors Trust has been able to quietly do so appears to explain why it exists: Wealthy donors can back the right-wing causes they want without attracting public scrutiny. Donors Trust is classified as a "donor-advised" fund under U.S. tax law, meaning its funders don't have direct say in where their money goes. That in turn allows them to remain largely anonymous.
AMY GOODMAN: But the most detailed accounting to date shows Donors Trust funds a wish list of right-wing causes, prompting Mother Jones magazine to label it, quote, "the dark-money ATM of the right." Donors Trust recipients include the American Legislative Exchange Council, or ALEC, a mechanism for corporate interests to help write state laws; the Franklin Center for Government and Public Integrity, a media outlet that unabashedly promotes right-wing causes; and the State Policy Network, a number of right-wing think tanks that push so-called "free-market" policies.
But the major focus of Donors Trust appears to be funding the denial of global warming. More than a third of Donors Trust donationsat least $146 millionhas gone to think tanks and other groups that challenge the science of climate change. Later in the broadcast, we'll take a closer look at that funding of climate change denial, but first we turn to an overview of Donors Trust and look at why it's been able to evade public scrutiny until now.
Joining us from Washington, D.C., is John Dunbar, politics editor at the Center for Public Integrity, worked on the group's months-long investigation into Donor's Trust. We did ask Donors Trust to join us, but they declined our request.
John Dunbar, lay out just what Donors Trust is.
JOHN DUNBAR: Well, they're essentially a pass through. What they do is, is they act as a kind of a middleman between what are very large, well-known private foundations created bymostly by corporate executives, like the Kochs, for example, and they direct the money of those contributions to a very large network of right-leaning, free-market think tanks across the country, including those that you've named. By doingby running it through the middleman, it essentially obscures the identity of the original donors, of the folks who have provided the funds themselves. And the organization itself actually makes that clear on its own website, essentially saying people who give money to the organization can avoid being identified or being connected with potentially controversial issues.
AARON MATÉ: And John Dunbar, so the figure is $400 million since 1999. Why is it that all this is just coming to light now?
JOHN DUNBAR: Well, we kind of stumbled onto it, to be honest with you. We've been, at the Center for Public Integritythat's publicintegrity.org if you'd like to read our full report on itwe were looking at activities at the state level, and we were noticing a certain continuity. There was a certain sameness to what was going on in various states on these issues. And we have been looking at the American Legislative Exchange Council for quite some time, and we were looking for how these organizations were funded. And this Donors Trust organization kept popping up, and it seemed to be such an amorphously named organization. We couldn't really figure out where it was. So we got to wondering, "Well, who's funding Donors Trust?" And then we backed it up a step, and then we started looking at some of the more better-known right-wing, free-market foundations, particularly those run by the Koch brothersthe Searle Freedom Trust, for example, is another one; the Bradley Foundationthese are all very well-known right-leaning foundationsand found that an enormous amount of the funds that came into Donors Trust came from thosefrom those organizations.
AMY GOODMAN: John Dunbar, in your report, you speak with the Donors Trust president and CEO, Whitney Ball. She says much of the group's focus is on the state level because of, quote, "gridlock" at the federal level of government means donors see, quote, "a better opportunity to make a difference in the states." Ball also sits on the board of the State Policy Network. Can you talk about this focus on activity at the state level?
JOHN DUNBAR: Yeah, I think thatI don't think anybody would argue with her point that it's hard to get anything done in Washington these days. They have been a lot more successful at the state level. And I think that in Washington we have a tendency to sort of get tunnel vision: We don't think that anything that happens outside of Washington really matters, when in fact the laws that are passed in the states are extremely important. Some of the focus of the Donors Trust recipients have been on specific state issues that, you know, affect all of us. You know, some of their favorite issues are right-to-work laws in the states; climate issues; renewable energy, as you'll hear from Suzanne and The Guardian, which has done such great work on that; and as well as, you know, tax issues, etc. People tend to look at states and what's happening in a particular state in isolation; they don't look around and see that the same thing seems to be happening in other states. And it'sthis is clearly a coordinated effort to create state-based think tanks. There's 51 of them that they've funded all across the country to push legislative issues. And then they created their own media empire to supportthey even support the ideas behind those issues.
AARON MATÉ: Well, John Dunbar, if you could follow up on that, this media group, the Franklin Center for Government and Public Integrity. They receive 95 percent of their funding from the Donors Trust?
JOHN DUNBAR: Right, and that was kind of shocking, actually. You know, wethat is a foundation-financed reporting organization. I have to say that the Center for Public Integrity is also a foundation-financed reporting organization, sohowever, we do not get 95 percent of our funding from any individual donor. Franklin does. The difficulty with that is that, first of all, you have to wonder whatwhether the reporting is going to be influenced by that single donor. Secondly, they are a ©3, which iswhich means donations to them are tax deductible, and they don't pay taxes themselves. That's a public trust, by the way. That'sthe Donors Trust is in the same position. If they were not a publicly financed nonprofit, they would lose their nonprofit status. By getting all of their money or most of their money through Donors Trust, they're able to maintain their ©3 status as a, quote, you know, "publicly financed charity," unquote. And if all that money came from one person, for example, they would lose that exemption, or they would be part ofthey would have to be absorbed by whatever foundation it was that was funding them.
AMY GOODMAN: John, in 2009, Republicans, bloggers, conservative think tanks began to cite a report that the Obama administration had pumped billions of stimulus funds into phantom congressional districts, suggesting money intended to create jobs and shore up the economy had been misused or lost. One of the key websites to report this was newmexicowatchdog.org, which is almost entirely funded by Donors Trust. The story was picked up by Fox News, like in this report from Stuart Varney.
STUART VARNEY: Take a look at this map, please. The government is claiming jobs created in nine Oklahoma congressional districts; problem: There's only five. Jobs in eight districts of Iowa; big problem: There's only five. Jobs in eight districts in Connecticut; again, there's only five. Jobs in three congressional districts in the Virgin Islands; there is only one. And as you point out, Bill, Puerto Rico, the government claims 17,544 jobs created or saved in six congressional districts; there is only one congressional district in Puerto Rico.
BILL HEMMER: I don't know if we should be laughing or crying over this.
STUART VARNEY: No.
BILL HEMMER: I mean, Puerto Rico alone, 99th Congressional District, 98th Congressional District, a no-number congressional district.
STUART VARNEY: Yes.
BILL HEMMER: I mean, good lord!
STUART VARNEY: Yes, yes, yes. Raise your eyebrows, please. Look, it's very bad, very unreliable statistics, and it really undermines all of these claims, these gross claims of job creation from stimulus.
AMY GOODMAN: That Fox News report was based on a report by newmexicowatchdog.org, one of the many so-called watchdog websites that are almost entirely funded by the Donors Trust. John Dunbar, your response?
JOHN DUNBAR: Well, I think that the implication of that report was that there were millions and millions of dollars that were being misspent, when the reality was it was data errors. I don't think anyone would defend the government's ability to create accurate databases. They clearly didn't do a very good job on that front, at least on the Recovery Act. However, the implication that all of this money was going into a black hole was actually nonsense. It was kind of a phantom issue about phantom districts, as the Associated Press had reported. A lot of the reporting by these different watchdog organizations that are funded by Franklin has been called into question, including by the Nieman Center at Harvard that's called it a lack in context and in some cases actually distortions of facts.
AARON MATÉ: While Donors Trust has given money to a variety of right-wing causes, denying climate change appears to be its top priority. An analysis by the environmentalist group Greenpeace reveals Donors Trust has funneled at least $146 million to more than 100 climate change denial groups over the past decade. In 2010, 12 of these groups received between 30 to 70 percent of their funding from Donors Trust. Some of the recipients include Americans for Prosperity, the Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow, the Heartland Institute and the Competitive Enterprise Institute.
AMY GOODMAN: Although many Donors Trust funders are unknown, at least two of its members include foundations bankrolled by the billionaire Charles Koch, a leading backer of climate denial. According to the most recent figures, the Koch-funded Knowledge and Progress Fund gave Donors Trust nearly $8 million through 2011.
For more on Donors Trust and the denial of global warming, we're joined in Washington, D.C., by Suzanne Goldenberg, U.S. environment correspondent for The Guardian. She has written a series of articles detailing the ties between Donors Trust and opponents of climate change science.
Lay out what you've found, Suzanne.
SUZANNE GOLDENBERG: Well, basically, what you see is thatover the last decade or so, you see a concerted effort by wealthy conservatives, conservative billionaires, to fund up and prop up a whole series of institutions that could work to undermine the science behind climate change and also work to undermine any kind of effort to pass legislation to deal with climate change. This money is going to think tanks. It's going to activist groups. It's going to so-called "scholars." It's going to a wide range of individuals, you know, more than a hundred different organizations.
And, you know, the goal here is to create this illusion, this idea that there is, you know, a really strong movement against the science of climate change and against action on climate change. In fact, that's actually, to an extent, become a reality now: You see that opposition to action on climate change is central to Republican thinking.
AMY GOODMAN: Talk about the different groups.
SUZANNE GOLDENBERG: You've got lots. You know, you've got sort of blue-chip think tanks in Washington, D.C., some of the really big institutions like the American Enterprise Institute. You've got organizations that really wouldn't exist or wouldn't, you know, make much of an impact at all if they didn't get half their budget from Donors Trust. In that category, I would put the Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow. One of its main activities is to run a website that's like a clearing house for articles that try and discredit the science behind climate change or, you know, launch personal attacks against people like Al Gore or climate scientists, you know, people who speak up against climate change. So you've got lots of different efforts going on. I mean, you've seenI don't know if you remember, a few years back, there was this organization called the Energy Citizens that was launched by Americans for Prosperity, you know, grassroots activists against action on climate change. That, it now turns out, had funding from Donors Trust, as well.
AMY GOODMAN: Donors Trust declined our request to join us on today's show, but the group's president and CEO, Whitney Ball, provided us with a statement. She wrote, "DonorsTrust was established to promote liberty and help like-minded donors preserve their charitable intent. We follow the same rules and operate in the same manner as other donor-advised funds which include the Fidelity Charitable Gift Fund, Jewish federations, local community foundations, and the left-of-center Tides Foundation, just to name a few. Donor-advised funds are classified as public charities, and thus are not required to disclose their donors. I do not know of a donor-advised fund that makes their donor lists public. The press has referred to us as a 'black box,' labeled our funding as 'dark money,' and [Suzanne] Goldenberg described us as 'secretive.' These characterizations are unfair and misleading. How is it that the Tides Foundation, which has a record of funding environmental causes and does not publish donor lists, is never characterized in the same way by these same reporters?" Your response, Suzanne Goldenberg, as she names you?
SUZANNE GOLDENBERG: Well, oh, sure. This is the first I've heard of it. Well, you know, I talked to Whitney Ball. I asked her flat out, "Can you tell me who gives to you, what kind of people give to you?" And she said, "No. I mean, that in fact is the purpose of this trust, to make the giving anonymous, to giveto allow these conservative billionaires to remain hidden." And I think, you know, she's trying to cast this as, look, the right have their organizations, the left have their organizations.
I think there's something really different here and that comes into play, in that these organizations being supported by Donors Trust are actually working to spread information that is factually incorrect, that is untrue. You know, it's as if you're sort of funding groups to go around saying, "Oh, you can get the HIV virus from toilet seats." You can't draw this equivalence here. These organizations areyou know, were funded for the express purpose, many of them, of spreading disinformation.
AARON MATÉ: Now, Suzanne, one of the climate denialists funded by Donors Trust is a group called the Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow.
SUZANNE GOLDENBERG: Yes.
AARON MATÉ: They run the website Climate Depot, which consistently attacks scientists and environmentalists who call for taking on global warming. Now, the head of Climate Depot, Marc Morano, appears frequently on Fox News and also mainstream outlets like CNN. On Monday, the day after tens of thousands of people rallied against the Keystone XL pipeline on the National Mall, Morano appeared on Fox News to warn that Keystone opponents could resort to, quote, "ecoterrorism." And he cited as their inspiration the NASA climatologist James Hansen.
MARC MORANO: So, the leaders at NASAand, you know, I call him NASA's resident ex-conis inspiring these people to potential acts of ecoterrorism. These people believe in this doomsday prophecy. And don't think they won't act. I mean, when I was in the U.S. Senate Environment Committee, we had to deal with ecoterrorism when it came to animal rights. We had to dealthere's been ecoterrorism when it deals with property rights out in Colorado. So it's a very real thingtorching SUVs. This movement, if it gets frustrated, particularly frustrated with a Democratic president, Obama, who's supposed to be their standard bearer, and actually goes ahead and approves the pipeline, there are going to be a lot of angry people, not the least of which is probably the NASA scientist going to jail again, James Hansen.
AARON MATÉ: That's Marc Morano of Climate Depot appearing on Fox News.
SUZANNE GOLDENBERG: You know, I wish I'd
AARON MATÉ: Suzanne Goldenberg, if you could talk about his group.
SUZANNE GOLDENBERG: Well, I wish I would seen. I mean, that's quite incredible. Just let's get back to the truth here, is that, yes, James Hansen was arrested, in fact as recently as last week, and what he was doing was just using plastic twist-tie handcuffs to handcuff himself to the gates of the White House and, you know, in an agreement arranged in advance with the D.C. police, arranged to be arrested in a nonviolent fashion with 40-something other activists, you know, to make a symbolic protest against the Keystone pipeline. So I do not know how you can describe these kind of acts, which, you know, were preceded by Mahatma Gandhi, Martin Luther King and other, you know, peaceful resistersI don't know how you can call that ecoterrorism.
But I think it's reallyit's really interesting and important to see what Marc Morano is doing here, and which is that he's deliberately spreading misinformation and lies, really, about what happened and about the means of protest that are taking place against the Keystone pipeline. And this is crucial because it helps create this sort of confusion about what people are doing to oppose the pipeline, and in that confusion, it makes it difficult for people to make an informed choice about what is right, what is wrong, and it makes it really hard for people in Congress or people in government agencies and in state agencies to actually act on a very urgent problem, because there's so much confusion and controversy surrounding it.
AMY GOODMAN: Suzanne, the Donors Trust-backed Heartland Institute sparked controversy last year after it paid for a billboard advertisement in Chicago likening those who accept the reality of global warming to the Unabomber, Ted Kaczynski.
SUZANNE GOLDENBERG: Yes.
AMY GOODMAN: The billboard featured a picture of Kaczynski and the words "I still believe in global warming. Do you?" Talk about the Heartland Institute, this ad.
SUZANNE GOLDENBERG: That's interesting. I just want to add, briefly, first, you know, I asked Whitney Ball about that advertisement, and she laughed. And she said, "Look" and, you know, I was asking, "Well, did your donors like what Heartland did?" And she said, "Some of them did; some of them didn't."
I think that ad was really interesting, because, in a way, it wasyou know, it really exposed Heartland Institute and exposed the way that they seeyou know, exposed the lengths they will go to to try and defend their cause, right? I mean, you know, for a lot of people looking at that, that was really an extreme kind of action. And I think that's true. I think what Heartland and these other groups are promoting is a really extreme view and a wrongheaded view of the science of climate change, of the need for action on climate change. That billboard, for many people, crystallized that extreme view.
To go back there, the reason why Heartland put up that billboard was because they were feeling besieged and under attack because of a disclosure of information about their finances, which showed that they were being heavily financed by the Koch brothers and by conservatives like Donors Trust. So, they had been the victim of a sting, which sort of laid bare all their financials, laid bare their strategy, and they fought back and sort of went overboard with this extremist ad about the Unabomber.
AARON MATÉ: Now, Suzanne, we've talked already about the actions of Donors Trust on the state level, and you've written about their funding of groups trying to fight wind farming in several states. We have 30 seconds.
SUZANNE GOLDENBERG: Yeah, I think that's their new focus, is not to look at trying to oppose action in Washington on climate change, because it's not happening, but they're going to go out into the states and oppose efforts to increase the amount of renewable energy, like wind farms and solar farms. I would also look at them to oppose action forby city councils in coastal communities to protect themselves from climate change in future development planning.
AMY GOODMAN: Suzanne Goldenberg, we want to thank you for being with us, U.S. environment correspondent for The Guardian. Her article, most recently, "Secret Funding Helped Build Vast Network of Climate Denial Thinktanks,"
"Let me issue and control a nation's money and I care not who writes the laws. - Mayer Rothschild
"Civil disobedience is not our problem. Our problem is civil obedience! People are obedient in the face of poverty, starvation, stupidity, war, and cruelty. Our problem is that grand thieves are running the country. That's our problem!" - Howard Zinn
"If there is no struggle there is no progress. Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and never will" - Frederick Douglass
"Civil disobedience is not our problem. Our problem is civil obedience! People are obedient in the face of poverty, starvation, stupidity, war, and cruelty. Our problem is that grand thieves are running the country. That's our problem!" - Howard Zinn
"If there is no struggle there is no progress. Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and never will" - Frederick Douglass