FBI Called in by Heartland

Like a sequel to Rathergate a scandal involving one of the most prominent activist in the global warming movement played out in the blogosphere over the last two weeks. It started in the blogosphere and ended there, as bloggers, with no outside help and little mention in the popular media first pronounced the fraud as a hoax and then tracked down the culprit. Peter Gleick, co-founder of the respected Pacific Institute, author and professor who has often testified before congress and various state legislatures confessed to having purloined confidential financial documents from the libertarian think tank the Heartland Institute. Gleick posed online as a board member and asked the institute to re-email him documents to an email account he had set up for that purpose. Instead of just releasing the documents which contained donor information and members' personal contact information, Gleick added a poorly written "strategy memo" purporting to show Heartland planned underhanded tactics to discredit the global warming science. Ironically Heartland had recently invited Gleick to a dinner and conference on the merits of global warming science. Internet snoops using coding software were able to determine that the original documents were created in Chicago and the fraudulent memo was created in California. They even discovered the make of printer. Gleick was a prolific poster so his writing style (run on sentences and incorrect use of comas and parentheses) was well known. After bloggers began accusing him of the plot he eventually confessed online. His career is now in shambles but Heartland has called in the FBI and wants Gleick jailed.

It is hard to overstate the prominence Gleick held in the AGW community. This is as if Scott Rasmussen or Brent Bozell had been caught forging Planned Parenthood documents. Typical of the left, Gleick has sought victim hood status. Said Gleick’s lawyer John Keker, “Heartland no doubt will seek to exploit Dr. Gleick’s admitted lapse in judgment in order to further its agenda in the ongoing debate about climate change, but if it wants to pursue this matter legally, it will learn that our legal system provides for a level playing field.”