lee fang bak
format mess main
atlas-network-alejandro-chafuen-libertarian-think-tank-latin-america-brazil
NO LNX GFX
phere of Influence: How American Libertarians Are Remaking Latin American Politics
The Atlas Network has spent decades building up libertarian institutions across Latin America. Now the work is paying off.
Lee Fang
August 9 2017, 6:00 a.m.
Share
Photo Illustration: The Intercept. AP Photo
For Alejandro Chafuen, the gathering this spring at the Brick Hotel in Buenos Aires was as much a homecoming as it was a victory lap. Chafuen, a lanky Argentine-American, had spent his adult life working to undermine left-wing social movements and governments in South and Central America, and boost a business-friendly version of libertarianism instead.
It was a lonely battle for decades, but not lately. Chafuen was among friends at the 2017 Latin America Liberty Forum. The international meeting of libertarian activists was sponsored by the Atlas Economic Research Foundation, a leadership-training nonprofit now known simply as the Atlas Network, which Chafuen has led since 1991. At the Brick Hotel, Chafuen was reveling in recent victories; his years of work were starting to pay off, thanks to political and economic circumstances — but also because of the network of activists Chafuen has been working for so long to cultivate.
Over the past 10 years, leftist governments have used “money to buy votes, to redistribute,” said Chafuen, seated comfortably in the lobby. But the recent drop in commodity prices, coupled with corruption scandals, has given an opportunity for Atlas Network groups to spring into action. “When there is an opening, you have a crisis, and there is some demand for change, you have people who are trained to push for certain policies,” Chafuen noted, paraphrasing the late Milton Friedman. “And in our case, we tend to favor to private solutions to public problems.”
Chafuen pointed to numerous Atlas-affiliated leaders now in the spotlight: ministers in the new conservative government in Argentina, senators in Bolivia, and the leaders of the Free Brazil Movement that took down Dilma Rousseff’s presidency, where Chafuen’s network sprang to life before his very eyes.
“In Brazil, I have been in the street demonstrations, and I’m like, ‘Hey, this guy I met when he was 17, 18 — he is up there on the bus leading this. This is crazy!’” Chafuen said, excitedly. Those in Atlas’s orbit were no less excited to run into Chafuen in Buenos Aires. Activists from various countries stopped Chafuen intermittently to sing his praises as he walked through the hotel. For many, Chafuen, from his perch at Atlas, has served as a mentor, fiscal sponsor, and guiding beacon for a new political paradigm in their country.
Ousted Honduras' President Manuel Zelaya, left, looks down inside a car on his way to the airport where he will board a flight to Nicaragua on the outskirts of San Jose, Sunday, June 28, 2009. Soldiers seized Honduras' national palace and sent the President Zelaya into exile in Costa Rica on Sunday, hours before a disputed constitutional referendum. Zelaya, an ally of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, said he was victim of a coup. Honduras' Congress sworn in Sunday congressional leader Roberto Micheletti as the country's new President. (AP Photo/Kent Gilbert)Ousted Honduran President Manuel Zelaya, left, looks down inside a car on the outskirts of San Jose on his way to the airport to board a flight to Nicaragua, June 28, 2009. Photo: Kent Gilbert/AP
A rightward shift is afoot in Latin American politics. Triumphant socialist governments had once swept the region for much of the 21st century – from Argentina’s Cristina Fernández de Kirchner to land reform populist Manuel Zelaya in Honduras – championing new programs for the poor, nationalizing businesses, and challenging U.S. dominance in hemispheric affairs.
In recent years, however, leftist leaders have fallen one after another, sometimes in spectacular fashion. Zelaya was led from the presidential palace in his pajamas in a military coup; in Argentina, a real-estate baron swept to the presidency and Kirchner was indicted for corruption; and in Brazil, the ruling Workers’ Party, facing a growing corruption scandal and a mass protest movement, was swept out of office via impeachment over charges of budget chicanery.
This shift might appear as part of a larger regional rebalancing, merely economic circumstances taking hold. And yet the Atlas Network seems ever-present, a common thread nudging political developments along.
The story of the Atlas Network and its profound impact on ideology and political power has never been fully told. But business filings and records from three continents, along with interviews with libertarian leaders across the hemisphere, reveal the scope of its influential history. The libertarian network, which has reshaped political power in country after country, has also operated as a quiet extension of U.S. foreign policy, with Atlas-associated think tanks receiving quiet funding from the State Department and the National Endowment for Democracy, a critical arm of American soft power.
Though recent investigations have shed light on the role of powerful conservative billionaires, such as the Koch brothers, in developing a business-friendly version of libertarian thought, the Atlas Network, which receives funding from Koch foundations, has recreated methods honed in the Western world for developing countries.
The network is expansive, currently boasting loose partnerships with 450 think tanks around the world. Atlas says it dispensed over $5 million to its partners in 2016 alone.
Over the years, Atlas and its affiliated charitable foundations have provided hundreds of grants to conservative and free-market think tanks in Latin America, including the libertarian network that supported the Free Brazil Movement and organizations behind a libertarian push in Argentina, including Fundación Pensar, the Atlas think tank that merged with the political party formed by Mauricio Macri, a businessman who now leads the country. The leaders of the Free Brazil Movement and the founder of Fundación Eléutera in Honduras, an influential post-coup neoliberal think tank, have received financial support from Atlas, and are among the next generation of political operatives that have gone through Atlas’s training seminars.
The Atlas Network spans dozens of other think tanks across the region, including prominent groups supporting right-wing forces behind the unfolding anti-government movement in Venezuela and the campaign of Sebastián Piñera, the right-of-center candidate leading the polls for this year’s presidential election in Chile.
FILE - In this Dec. 2, 2015 file photo, people demonstrate against the government as they take part in protest in favor of impeaching Brazil's President Dilma Rousseff, in front of the National Congress, in Brasilia, Brazil. The country has seen a vicious circle of ballooning crises over the past year. Major scandals, some of which are connected to Rousseff, have combined with tanking commodity prices to deliver blows to the powerhouse economy, including credit-rating downgrades, a sharp currency devaluation and 10-percent annual inflation. (AP Photo/Eraldo Peres, File)People demonstrate in favor of impeaching Brazil’s President Dilma Rousseff in front of the National Congress in Brasilia, Brazil, Dec. 2, 2015. Photo: Eraldo Peres/AP
Nowhere has the Atlas method been better encapsulated than in a newly formed network of Brazilian free-market think tanks. Recently formed institutes worked together to foment anger at socialist policies, with some cultivating academic centers, while others work to train activists and maintain a constant war in the Brazilian media against leftist ideas.
The effort to focus anger solely at the left paid dividends last year for the Brazilian right. The millennial activists of the Free Brazil Movement, many of them trained in political organizing in the U.S., led a mass movement to channel public anger over a vast corruption scandal against Dilma, the left-of-center president popularly known by her first name. The scandal, nicknamed Operação Lava Jato, or Operation Car Wash, is a still-unfolding tale of bribery involving leading politicians from all of Brazil’s major political parties, including the right-wing and center-right parties. But the social media-savvy Free Brazil Movement, known by its Portuguese initials, MBL, managed to direct the bulk of outrage squarely at Dilma, demanding her ousting and an end to the welfare-centric policies of her Workers’ Party.
The uprising, which has drawn comparisons to the tea party movement, especially considering the quiet support from local industrial conglomerates and a new conspiracy-minded network of far-right media voices, ended 13 years of rule by the Workers’ Party by removing Dilma from office through impeachment in 2016.
The landscape that MBL sprang from is a new development in Brazil. There were perhaps three active libertarian think tanks 10 years ago, said Helio Beltrão, a former hedge fund executive who now leads Instituto Mises, a nonprofit named after the libertarian philosopher, Ludwig von Mises. Now, he said, with the support of Atlas, there are close to 30 such institutes active in Brazil, all working collaboratively, along with groups, such as Students for Liberty and MBL.
“It’s like a soccer team. Defense is the academia. The forward guys are the politicians. We’ve scored a few goals,” he said, referring to Dilma’s impeachment. The midfield, he said, are the “cultural guys” that shape public opinion.
Beltrão explained that the think tank network is hoping to privatize the national post office in Brazil, calling it “low-hanging fruit” that could lead to a larger wave of free-market reforms. Many of the conservative parties in Brazil embraced libertarian campaigners when they showed they could mobilize hundreds of thousands of people to protest against Dilma, but haven’t yet adopted the fundamentals of supply-side theory.
Fernando Schüler, an academic and columnist associated with Instituto Millenium, another Atlas think tank in Brazil, made the case another way.
“Brazil has 17,000 unions paid by public money, one day of salary per year goes to unions, completely controlled by the left,” said Schüler. The only way to reverse the socialist trend has been to out-maneuver them. “With technology, people could by themselves participate, organize at low cost — WhatsApp, Facebook, YouTube, using networks, a kind of public manifestation,” he continued, explaining the way libertarian organizers mobilized a protest movement against left-leaning politicians.
Organizers against Dilma had created a daily barrage of YouTube videos mocking the Worker’s Party government, along with an interactive scoreboard to encourage citizens to lobby their legislators to support impeachment.
Schüler noted that the Free Brazil Movement and his own think tank receive financial support from local industrial trade groups, but the movement had succeeded in part because it is not identified with the incumbent political parties, most of which the general public views with suspicion. He argued that the only way to radically reshape society and reverse popular sentiment in support of the welfare state was to wage a permanent cultural war to confront left intellectuals and the media.
maxresdefault-1502212171Fernando Schüler. Photo: Screen shot from YouTube
One of the founders of Schüler’s Instituto Millenium think tank, Brazilian blogger Rodrigo Constantino, has polarized Brazilian politics with hyperpartisan rhetoric. Constantino, who has been called the “Breitbart of Brazil” for his conspiratorial views and acidic right-wing commentary, chairs yet another Atlas think tank, Instituto Liberal. He sees the Brazilian left’s every move as a veiled attempt at subverting democracy, from the use of the color red in the country’s World Cup logo to the Bolsa Família cash assistance program to poor families.
Constantino is credited with popularizing a narrative that Worker’s Party supporters are limousine liberals, wealthy hypocrites that flock to socialism to claim the moral high ground while snubbing the working classes they claim to represent.
The Breitbartization of public discourse is but one of the many ways the Atlas network has subtly influenced political debate.
“It’s a very paternalistic state. It’s crazy. It’s a lot of state control, and that’s the long-term challenge,” said Schüler, adding that despite recent victories, libertarians had a long way to go in Brazil. He hoped to copy the model of Margaret Thatcher, who relied on a network of libertarian think tanks to push unpopular reforms. “This pension system is absurd. I would privatize all education,” Schüler, rattling off a litany of changes he would make to society, from defunding labor unions to repealing the law that makes voting compulsory.
Yet the only way to make all that possible, he added, would be to build a network of politically active nonprofits all waging separate battles to push the same libertarian goals. The existing model — the constellation of right-wing think tanks in Washington, D.C., supported by powerful endowments — is the only path forward for Brazil, Schüler said.
Atlas, for its part, is busy doing just that. It gives grants for new think tanks, provides courses on political management and public relations, sponsors networking events around the world, and, in recent years, has devoted special resources to prodding libertarians to influence public opinion through social media and online videos.
An annual competition encourages Atlas’s network to produce viral YouTube videos promoting laissez-faire ideas and ridiculing proponents of the welfare state. James O’Keefe, the provocateur famous for needling Democrats with his undercover videos, has appeared before Atlas to explain his methods. Producers from a Wisconsin group that worked to create online videos to discredit teacher protests against Gov. Scott Walker’s law busting public sector unions have also provided instructions for Atlas’s training sessions.
Caracas, Distrito Federal, Venezuela, South AmericaCrowd members burn a puppet of Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez at Plaza Altamira in protest against the government. Photo: Lonely Planet Images/Getty Images
Among its other exploits of late, Atlas has played a role in a Latin American nation roiled by the region’s most acute political and humanitarian crisis: Venezuela. Records obtained through the Freedom of Information Act by author and activist Eva Golinger, as well as State Department cables disclosed by whistleblower Chelsea Manning, reveal U.S. policymakers’ sophisticated effort to use Atlas think tanks in a long-running campaign to destabilize the reign of Venezuelan leader Hugo Chávez.
As early as 1998, Cedice Libertad, Atlas’s flagship think tank in Caracas, Venezuela’s capital, received regular financial support from the Center for International Private Enterprise. In one grant letter, NED funds marked for Cedice are listed to help advocate “a change in government.” The director of Cedice was among the signatories of the controversy “Carmona Decree” supporting the short-lived military coup against Chávez in 2002.
A 2006 cable laid out a strategy from U.S. Ambassador William Brownfield for funding politically active nonprofits in Venezuela: “1) Strengthening democratic institutions, 2) penetrating Chávez’s political base, 3) dividing Chavismo, 4) protecting vital U.S. business, and 5) isolating Chávez internationally.”
In Venezula’s current crisis, Cedice has promoted the recent spate of protests against President Nicholás Maduro, Chávez’s embattled successor. Cedice is closely affiliated with opposition figure María Corina Machado, one of the leaders of the massive anti-government street demonstrations in recent months. Machado has publicly recognized Atlas for its work. In a videotape message delivered to the group in 2014, she said, “Thank you to the Atlas Network, to all freedom fighters.”
Venezuelan opposition leader María Corina Machado has recognized Atlas for its work: “Thank you to the Atlas Network, to all freedom fighters,” she said in 2014.
At the Atlas Network’s Latin American Liberty Forum in Buenos Aires, young leaders buzzed back and forth, sharing ideas on how to defeat socialism at every level, from pitched battles on college campuses to mobilizing an entire country to embrace impeachment.
Think tank “entrepreneurs” from Peru, the Dominican Republic, and Honduras competed in a format along the lines of “Shark Tank,” an America reality show where start-up businesses pitch to a panel of wealthy, ruthless investors. Instead of seeking investments from a panel of venture capitalists, however, the think tank leaders pitched policy marketing ideas for a contest that awarded $5,000. In another session, strategies were debated for attracting industry support to back economic reforms. In another room, political operatives debated arguments “lovers of liberty” can use to respond to the global rise of populism to “redirect the sense of injustice many feel” toward free-market goals.
One young leader from CADAL, a think tank in Buenos Aires, presented on an idea to rank each Argentine province using what he called an “economic liberty index,” which would use the level of taxation and regulation as the main criteria to generate buzz for free-market reforms. The idea is consciously modeled on similar strategies from the U.S., including the Heritage Foundation’s “Index of Economic Freedom,” which measures countries based on criteria that includes tax policies and regulatory barriers to business formation.
Think tanks are traditionally associated with independent institutes formed to develop unconventional solutions. But the Atlas model focuses less on developing genuinely new policy proposals, and more on establishing political organizations that carry the credibility of academic institutions, making them an effective organ for winning hearts and minds.
Free-market ideas — such as slashing taxes on the wealthy; whittling down the public sector and placing it under the control of private operators; and liberalized trade rules and restrictions on labor unions — have always struggled with a perception problem. Proponents of this vision have found that voters tend to view such ideas as a vehicle for serving society’s upper crust. Rebranding economic libertarianism as a public interest ideology has required elaborate strategies for mass persuasion.
But the Atlas model now spreading rapidly through Latin America is based on a method perfected by decades of struggle in the U.S. and the U.K., as libertarians worked to stem the tide of the surging post-war welfare state.
Map of Atlas group locations in South America.Map of Atlas group locations in South America. Map: The Intercept
Antony Fisher, a British entrepreneur and the founder of the Atlas Network, pioneered the sale of libertarian economics to the broader public. The tack was simple: Fisher made it his mission to, in the words of an associate, “litter the world with free-market think tanks.”
The basis for Fisher’s ideals came from Friedrich Hayek, a forbearer of modern thought on limited government. In 1946, after reading the Reader’s Digest version of Hayek’s seminal book, “The Road to Serfdom,” Fisher sought a meeting with the Austrian economist in London. As recounted by his close colleague John Blundell, Fisher suggested Hayek enter politics. But Hayek demurred, replying that a bottom-up focus on shifting the public discourse could better shape society.
Meanwhile, in the U.S., another free-market ideologue, Leonard Read, was entertaining similar notions after leading the U.S. Chamber of Commerce’s Los Angeles branch into bruising battles with organized labor. To counter the growth of the welfare state, a more elaborate response would be necessary to shape popular debates around the direction of society, without the visible link to corporate interests.
Fisher was propelled forward by a fateful visit to Read’s newly formed nonprofit, the Foundation for Economic Education, in New York, which was founded to help sponsor and promote the ideas of free-market intellectuals. There, libertarian economist F.A. Harper, at the time working at FEE, advised Fisher on methods for creating his own nonprofit in the U.K.
During the trip, Fisher also traveled with Harper to Cornell University to observe the latest animal industry breakthrough of battery cages, marveling at the sight of 15,000 chickens housed in a single building. Fisher was inspired to bring the innovation home with him. His factory, Buxted Chickens, grew rapidly and made Fisher a substantial fortune in the process. Some of those profits went into the other goal fostered during his New York trip: In 1955, Fisher founded the Institute of Economic Affairs.
IEA helped popularize the once-obscure set of economists loosely affiliated with Hayek’s ideas. The institute was a place to showcase opposition to British society’s growing welfare state, connecting journalists to free-market academics and disseminating critiques on a regular basis through opinion columns, radio interviews, and conferences.
Businesses provided the bulk of funding to IEA, as leading British industrial and banking giants — from Barclays to BP — pitched in with annual contributions. According to “Making Thatcher’s Britain,” by historians Ben Jackson and Robert Saunders, one shipping magnate remarked that, since universities were providing ammunition for the unions, the IEA was an important source of bullets for business.
As the economic slowdown and rising inflation of the 1970s shook the foundations of British society, Tory politicians gravitated more and more to the IEA to provide an alternative vision — and IEA obliged with accessible issue briefs and talking points politicians could use to bring free-market concepts to the public. The Atlas Network proudly proclaims that the IEA “laid the intellectual groundwork for what later became the Thatcher Revolution of the 1980s.” IEA staff provided speechwriting for Margaret Thatcher; supplemented her campaign with policy papers on topics as varied as labor unions and price controls; and provided a response to her critics in the mass media. In a letter to Fisher after her 1979 victory, Thatcher wrote that the IEA created “the climate of opinion which made our victory possible.”
“There’s no doubt there’s been enormous progress in Britain, the Institute of Economic Affairs, which Antony Fisher set up, made an enormous difference,” Milton Friedman once said. “It made possible Margaret Thatcher. It made possible not her election as prime minister but the policies that she was able to follow. And the same thing in this country, the developing thought along these lines made possible Ronald Reagan and the policies he was able to follow.”
IEA had come full circle. Hayek set up an invitation-only group of free-market economists called the Mont Pelerin Society. One of its members, Ed Feulner, helped found the conservative Washington think tank the Heritage Foundation, drawing on IEA’s work for inspiration. Another Mont Pelerin member, Ed Crane, founded the Cato Institute, the most prominent libertarian think tank in the U.S.
Austrian-British economist and political philosopher Friedrich Hayek (1899 - 1992) with a class of students at the London School of Economics, 1948. (Photo by Paul Popper/Popperfoto/Getty Images)Austrian-British economist and political philosopher Friedrich Hayek with a class of students at the London School of Economics, 1948. Photo: Paul Popper/Popperfoto/Getty Images
In 1981, Fisher, who had settled in San Francisco, set out to develop the Atlas Economic Research Foundation at the urging of Hayek. Fisher had used his success with IEA to court corporate donors to help establish a string of smaller, sometimes regional think tanks in New York, Canada, California, and Texas, among other places. With Atlas, though, the scale for Fisher’s free-market think tank project would now be global: a nonprofit dedicated to continuing his work of establishing libertarian beachheads in every country of the world. “The more institutes established throughout the world,” Fisher declared, “the more opportunity to tackle diverse problems begging for resolution.”
Fisher began to fundraise, pitching corporate donors with the help of letters from Hayek, Thatcher, and Friedman, including an urgent call for donors to help reproduce the success of IEA through Atlas. Hayek wrote that the IEA model “ought to be used to create similar institutes all over the world.” He added, “It would be money well spent if large sums could be made available for such a concerted effort.”
The proposal was sent to a list of high-level executives and soon, money began pouring in from corporate coffers and Republican mega-donors, including Richard Mellon Scaife. Companies, such as Pfizer, Procter & Gamble, and Shell, all gave to Atlas. But their influence would need to remain cloaked for the project to work, Fisher contended. “To influence public opinion, it is necessary to avoid any suggestion of vested interest or intent to indoctrinate,” Fisher noted in a proposal outlining the purpose of Atlas. Fisher added that IEA’s success hinged on the perception that it was academic and impartial.
Atlas grew rapidly. By 1985, the network featured 27 institutions in 17 countries, including nonprofits in Italy, Mexico, Australia, and Peru.
And the timing could not have been better: Atlas’s international expansion came just as the Reagan administration was doubling down on an aggressive foreign policy, hoping to beat back leftist governments abroad.
While in public, Atlas declared that it received no government funding (Fisher belittled foreign aid as just another “bribe” used to distort market forces), records show the network quietly worked to channel government money to its growing list of international partners.
In one 1982 letter from the International Communication Agency, a small federal agency devoted to promote U.S. interests overseas, a bureaucrat at the Office of Private Sector Programs wrote to Fisher, in response to an inquiry about acquiring federal grants. The bureaucrat said he was barred from giving “directly to foreign organizations,” but could cosponsor “conferences or exchanges with organizations” hosted by groups like Atlas. He encouraged Fisher to send over a proposal. The letter, sent one year after Atlas’s founding, was the first indication that the network would become a covert partner to U.S. foreign policy interests.
Memos and other records from Fisher show that, by 1986, Atlas had helped schedule meetings with business executives to direct U.S. funds to its network of think tanks. In one instance, an official from the U.S. Agency for International Development, the principal foreign aid arm of the federal government, recommended that the head of Coca-Cola’s subsidiary in Panama work with Atlas to set up an IEA-style affiliate think tank there. Atlas’ partners also drew funding from the coffers of the National Endowment for Democracy, a government-charted nonprofit, founded in 1983, that is funded largely by the State Department and USAID to build U.S.-friendly political institutions in the developing world.
Alejandro Chafuen, of the Atlas Economic Research Foundation, back right, shakes hands with Rafael Alonzo, of Venezuela's Freedom Center for Economic Studies, CEDICE, left, as Peruvian writer Mario Vargas Llosa applauds during the opening of the "Freedom and Democracy" international forum in Caracas, Thursday, May 28, 2009.(AP Photo/Ariana Cubillos)Alejandro Chafuen, of the Atlas Economic Research Foundation, back right, shakes hands with Rafael Alonzo, of Venezuela’s Freedom Center for Economic Studies, CEDICE, left, as Peruvian writer Mario Vargas Llosa applauds during the opening of the “Freedom and Democracy” international forum in Caracas, May 28, 2009. Photo: Ariana Cubillos/AP
With corporate and U.S. government funding pouring in, Atlas took another fortuitous turn in 1985 with the arrival of Alejandro Chafuen. Linda Whetstone, Fisher’s daughter, remembered in a tribute that, in 1985, a young Chafuen, then living in Oakland, showed up to Atlas’s San Francisco office “and was willing to work for nothing.”
The Buenos Aires-born Chafuen hailed from what he described as “an anti-Peronist family.” They were wealthy and, though raised in an era of incredible turmoil in Argentina, Chafuen lived a life of relative privilege. He spent his teenage years playing tennis, dreaming of becoming a professional athlete.
Chafuen credits his youthful ideological path to his appetite for devouring libertarian texts, from Ayn Rand to booklets published by FEE, the Leonard Read group that had originally inspired Fisher. After studying at Grove City College, a deeply conservative Christian liberal arts school in Pennsylvania, where he served as the president of the student libertarian club, Chafuen returned to his home country. The military had stepped in, claiming a threat from communist revolutionaries. Thousands of students and activists would be tortured and killed in the crackdown on left-wing dissent following the coup d’etat.
Chafuen remembers the time in a mostly positive light, later writing that the military had acted out of necessity to prevent a communist “takeover of the country.” While pursuing a teaching career, Chafuen encountered “totalitarians of every style” within academic life. After the military coup, he wrote that he noticed that his professors became “gentler,” despite their differences with him.
In other Latin American countries, too, libertarianism was finding a receptive audience among military governments. In Chile, after the military swept out the democratically elected government of Salvador Allende, Mont Pelerin Society economists quickly flocked to the country, setting the stage for widespread libertarian reforms, including the privatization of industry and the country’s pension system. Throughout the region, under the watch of right-wing military leaders that had seized power, libertarian economic policies began to take root.
For his part, Chafuen’s ideological zeal was on display as early as 1979, when he published an essay for FEE titled “War Without End.” He described the horrors of leftist terror, “like the Charles Manson family, or in regimental strength, like the guerilla troops in the Middle East, Africa, and South America.” There was a need, he wrote, for the “forces of individual freedom and private property” to fight back.
His enthusiasm garnered attention. In 1980, at age 26, Chafuen was invited to become the youngest member of the Mont Pelerin Society. He traveled to Stanford, an opportunity that put him in direct contact with Read, Hayek, and other leading libertarians. Within five years, Chafuen had married an American and was living in Oakland. He began reaching out to Mont Pelerin members in the Bay Area, including Fisher.
Throughout the region, under the watch of right-wing military leaders that had seized power, libertarian economic policies began to take root.
According to Atlas’s board meeting notes, Fisher told his colleagues he had made a $500 ex gratia Christmas payment that year to Chafuen, and hoped to hire the young economist full-time to develop Atlas think tanks in Latin America. The following year, Chafuen organized the first Atlas summit of Latin American think tanks in Jamaica.
Chafuen understood the Atlas model well and worked diligently to expand the network, helping to launch think tanks in Africa and Europe, though focusing his efforts in Latin America. Describing how to attract donors, Chafuen once noted in a lecture that donors cannot appear to pay for public surveys because the polls would lose credibility. “Pfizer Inc. would not sponsor surveys on health issues nor would Exxon pay for surveys on environmental issues,” Chafuen noted. Libertarian think tanks, such as the ones in Atlas’s network, however, could not only present the same survey with more credibility, but do so in a way that garnered coverage in the local media.
“Journalists are very much attracted by whatever is new and easy to report,” Chafuen said. The press is less interested in quoting libertarian philosophers, he contended, but when a think tank produced a survey people would listen. “And donors also see this,” he added.
In 1991, three years after Fisher died, Chafuen took the helm of Atlas and would have the opportunity to speak to donors with authority about Atlas’s work. He quickly began to rack up corporate sponsors to push company-specific goals through the network. Philip Morris contributed regular grants to Atlas, including a $50,000 contribution to the group in 1994, which was disclosed years later through litigation. Records show that the tobacco giant viewed Atlas as an ally for working on international litigation issues.
Journalists in Chile, however, found out that Atlas-backed think tanks had worked to quietly lobby against smoking regulations without disclosing their funding from tobacco companies, a strategy similar think tanks repeated across the globe.
Corporate giants, such as ExxonMobil and MasterCard, were among Atlas’s donors. But the group also attracted leading figures in libertarianism, such as the foundations associated with investor John Templeton and the billionaire brothers Charles and David Koch, which lavished Atlas and its affiliates with regular contributions.
Chafuen’s fundraising prowess extended to the growing number of wealthy conservative foundations that were beginning to flourish. He was a founding member of Donors Trust, a secretive donor-advised fund that has doled out over $400 million to libertarian nonprofits, including members of the Atlas Network. He also serves as a trustee to the Chase Foundation of Virginia, which was founded by a Mont Pelerin Society member and similarly sends cash to Atlas think tanks.
Another wellspring of money came from the American government. Initially, the National Endowment for Democracy encountered difficulty setting up U.S.-friendly political nonprofits. Gerardo Bongiovanni, the president of Fundación Libertad, an Atlas think tank in Rosario, Argentina, noted during a lecture with Chafuen that the early seed money from NED’s grant partner, the Center for International Private Enterprise, totaled $1 million between 1985 and 1987. The think tanks that received those initial grants quickly folded, Bongiovanni said, citing lack of management training.
Atlas, however, managed to turn U.S. taxpayer money coming through the NED and Center for International Private Enterprise into an important source of funding for its growing network. The funding vehicles provided money to help boost Atlas think tanks in Eastern Europe, following the fall of the Soviet Union, and, later, to promote U.S. interests in the Middle East. Among the recipients of the Center for International Private Enterprise’s cash is Cedice Libertad, the group thanked by Venezuelan opposition leader María Corina Machado.
WASHINGTON, DC - JUNE 09: White House Deputy Assistant To The President Sebastian Gorka participates in a television interview outside the White House West Wing June 9, 2017 in Washington, DC. A former national security editor for Breitbart, Gorka has hard-line stands on Islam and terrorism and past involvement in right-wing Hungarian politics. (Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)Sebastian Gorka, White House deputy assistant to the president, participates in a television interview outside the West Wing on June 9, 2017, in Washington, D.C. Photo: Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images
At the Brick Hotel in Buenos Aires, Chafuen reflected on the last three decades. Fisher “would be overall pleased, and he would not believe how much our network grew,” Chafuen said, noting that perhaps the Atlas founder would not have expected the level of direct political engagement the group is involved in.
Chafuen lit up when U.S. President Donald Trump came up, offering praise for the president’s appointees. And why not? The Trump administration is littered with alumni of Atlas-related groups and friends of the network. Sebastian Gorka, Trump’s Islamophobic counterterrorism adviser, once led an Atlas-backed think tank in Hungary. Vice President Mike Pence has attended an Atlas event and spoken highly of the group. Education Secretary Betsy DeVos and Chafuen were close through their leadership roles at the Acton Institute, a Michigan think tank that develops religious arguments in favor of libertarian policies — which now maintains an affiliate in Brazil, the Centro Interdisciplinar de Ética e Economia Personalista.
Perhaps Chafuen’s most prized figure in the administration, however, is Judy Shelton, an economist and senior fellow at the Atlas Network. After Trump’s victory, Shelton was made the chair of the NED. She previously served as an adviser to the Trump campaign and transition effort. Chafuen beamed when he talked about it. “There you have the Atlas people being the chair of the National Endowment for Democracy,” he said.
Before ending the interview, Chafuen intimated that there was more to come: more think tanks, more efforts to overturn leftist governments, and more Atlas devotees and alumni elevated to the highest levels of government the world over. “The work is ongoing,” he said.
Later, Chafuen appeared at the gala for the Latin America Liberty Forum. Along with a panel of Atlas experts, he discussed the need to ramp up libertarian opposition movements in Ecuador and Venezuela.
Listen to reporter Lee Fang discuss his investigation of the Atlas Network on our podcast Intercepted:
Danielle Mackey contributed research to this story.
2023 2024?
praying_for_armageddon_2024_investigating_the
mission m 25 biker burd sp
jc says sell shirt to buy sword bc bad time coming
lee 9 min in for pol israel
With close quarters journalism, this feature documentary embeds with American believers who prepare for The Holy war and exposes how powerful megachurch pastors call for the 'final battle' that they believe will trigger the Second Coming of Christ. A deep dive into power and policy, this film unveils how politicians driven by faith embrace Israel as the key to their prophetic vision for the end of days. At any cost.
Actor
Director
Producers
Christian Aune FalchTorstein PareliusIngrid Aune Falch
---
lee fang
Exclusive: David Koch Refuses To Answer Questions About *Citizens United*, Secret Right-Wing Meetings
By Lee Fang on Jan 10, 2011 at 4:20 pm
*This is Part 3 of a three-part installment of ThinkProgress’ interview with David Koch. Watch Part 1 here and Part 2 here.
Last week, ThinkProgress conducted an impromptu interview with David Koch — one of the richest men in America, co-owner of the conglomerate Koch Industries, and a top financier of right-wing front groups — after we found him leaving the swearing-in ceremony for Speaker John Boehner (R-OH). In the first part of the interview, Koch said that he “admire[s]” the Tea Party movement, and that “the rank and file are just normal people like us.” In the second part, Koch denied the existence of climate change and shrugged when asked if carbon pollution causes global warming. Koch Industries, which owns a coal shipping company, several of the country’s largest oil refineries and pipeline networks, and several fertilizer plants and factories, is a major contributor to climate change and funds much of the climate change-denying propaganda machine.
Throughout the interview, Tim Phillips — an “astroturf” lobbyist who is now president of Koch’s Americans for Prosperity front group — tried to push ThinkProgress’ Scott Keyes away and yelled into the camera Keyes was holding. Phillips also continually yelled and tried to physically block us, even though Koch himself never objected to speaking with us. Regardless of Phillips’ interference, we asked Koch about the Citizens United Supreme Court decision, the landmark case that eliminated one hundred years of campaign finance law by allowing unlimited corporate money in elections. The subject appeared to cause discomfort with Koch, who looked down once he realized what we were talking about. He later walked away when asked about his secret election planning meeting held last June with other corporate and right-wing leaders to plan the 2010 election:
FANG: What do you think of Citizens United? Has it helped your influence?
KOCH: Citizens United?
FANG: The Supreme Court decision.
KOCH: Oh.. Hm…[...]
FANG: I know you had a meeting last summer with Glenn Beck and several other conservatives. Could you tell the public what you discussed at that meeting?
Watch it:
:{:{Koch has long sought to expand his influence and the influence of other right-wing plutocrats by funding groups that have chipped away at campaign finance laws and disclosure laws for decades. When the Supreme Court took up the Citizens United case, Koch-funded front groups filed a series of amicus briefs arguing that unlimited corporate money in politics is protected by the First Amendment. }:
For example, the Cato Institute, founded and financed by the Koch brothers, submitted a brief that called for “unfettered” corporate “speech” and the Institute for Justice, founded and financed by David’s brother Charles, submitted a brief claiming that campaign finance laws prohibiting unlimited corporate money “trump the First Amendment.” Koch-funded groups later lobbied aggressively to oppose efforts to provide transparency for the new tidal wave of corporate spending.}:
As ThinkProgress has covered extensively, the Citizens United case opened the floodgates for corporate money. Corporations funneled hundreds of millions of dollars into nonprofit groups to anonymously run attack ads against Democrats last fall. Koch’s own Americans for Prosperity group ran $40 million dollars in direct attacks, but also hired over 80 operatives to orchestrate pro-Republican Tea Parties across the country.
:{:{The Koch-elected Republican Congress and Koch-orchestrated Tea Party is well documented, but Koch’s relationship with the Supreme Court is more mysterious. As ThinkProgress reported, the Koch brothers have convened secret meetings for years with corporate leaders and right-wing partisans. }:
We obtained a memo detailing the last meeting, in June of 2010, which was attended by executives from the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, Glenn Beck, and a large group of businessmen (including major hedge fund managers, the CEO of Bechtel, oil billionaire Phil Anschutz, and others). The memo also indicated that Justices Clarence Thomas and Antonin Scalia have been featured at Koch meetings in the past. Scalia and Thomas, who maintains a close working relationship with Koch-funded front groups, of course supported the Citizens United decision.}:
In the first interview we published with Koch, he was excited about doing more political work. “We’re going to do more too in the next couple of years,” he boasted about Americans for Prosperity. Americans for Prosperity has led the way in whipping up paranoid right-wing Tea Parties and purchasing partisan attack ads on television. If the post-Citizens United midterm elections were any indication of the future, Koch’s influence will only grow.
---
pt2
exclusive: Tea Party Billionaire David Koch Denies Climate Change, Shrugs Off His Carbon Pollution
By Lee Fang on Jan 7, 2011
*This is Part 2 of a three-part installment of ThinkProgress’ interview with David Koch. Watch Part 1 here.
This week, ThinkProgress conducted an impromptu interview with David Koch — one of the richest men in America, co-owner of the conglomerate Koch Industries, and a top financier of right-wing front groups — after we found him leaving the swearing-in ceremony for Speaker John Boehner (R-OH). In the first part of the interview, Koch said that he “admire[s]” the Tea Party movement, and that “the rank and file are just normal people like us.” As ThinkProgress has detailed, Koch operatives orchestrated the first anti-Obama Tea Party protests, channeled Tea Party groups into increasing the Koch’s personal wealth, and organized Tea Parties for Republican campaigns and lobbying drives.
When we tried to speak to Koch — who never said he did not want to talk to us — his employee Tim Phillips, president of Koch’s Americans for Prosperity, tried to push ThinkProgress’ Scott Keyes away and yelled into the camera Keyes was holding. Phillips is a prolific “astroturf” lobbyist who has worked for Jack Abramoff’s forced-abortion sweatshop clients, Enron, and had a hand in an anti-Semitic campaign against Rep. Eric Cantor’s (R-VA) first bid for Congress. Despite Phillips’ distractions, Koch answered several of our questions about climate science and global warming.
Asked why Koch’s Americans for Prosperity focuses so much on denying climate change, Koch said it was because “regulating CO2 excessively … really damage[s] the economy.” Koch however was hesitant to answer if he himself believes in climate change. He eventually denied anthropogenic global warming by giving a standard climate denier response: “Climate does fluctuate. It goes from hot to cold. We have ice ages.” However, he simply shrugged when asked if carbon pollution — like the carbon pollution Koch Industries heavily contributes to — affects climate change:
FANG: Why does Americans for Prosperity focus so much on the science of climate change? I’m just curious why they spread so much information that denies the existence of climate, of global warming?
KOCH: Well… I think it’s uh, regulating CO2 excessively is going to put — uh really damage the economy.
FANG: Do you believe in climate change yourself? [...] Do you believe in climate change yourself, Mr. Koch?
KOCH: Climate does fluctuate. It goes from hot to cold. We have ice ages.
FANG: But do you believe carbon pollution affects climate change? [Koch shrugs]
Watch it:
It is doubtful that Koch, who was educated at MIT, seriously believes that climate simply “fluctuate[s]” from “hot to cold” (although the exhibit Koch funded at the Smithsonian perpetuates this lie). Rather, Koch understands that his entire business model depends on denying the greatest threat facing the planet.
:{:{Koch Industries — the largest private corporation in America — thrives on emitting carbon pollution and other forms of pollution for free. Much of Koch Industries’ $120 billion-a-year revenues are derived from burning fossil fuels: oil refineries and pipelines, chemical plants, fertilizer plants, manufacturing factories, and the shipping of coal. Moreover, Koch Industries owns Georgia Pacific, one of the largest timber companies, so Koch also contributes to global warming by decreasing the world’s carbon sink capacity. }:
The National Academy of Sciences, the US Global Change Research Program, and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change have all come to the same conclusion: “that carbon dioxide emissions from fossil fuel use and the loss of carbon-sink capacity in heavily timbered forests are increasing temperatures and making oceans more acidic.” Corporate documents revealed by ThinkProgress show that Koch Industries explicitly targeted laws to reduce carbon emissions as a threat to Koch’s bottom line.}:
To boost their profits, Koch is the largest funder of climate change denying organizations and media outlets in the world. For example, Koch bankrolls denier groups like the CATO Institute, Fraser Institute, Foundation for Research on Economics and the Environment, the Manhattan Institute, the Marshall Institute, the Competitive Enterprise Institute, the State Policy Network, and dozens of others. Not only have Koch fronts instructed Tea Party groups to kill national legislation to address climate change, but Koch groups have been instrumental in pushing climate change-believers out of the Republican Party. As the Wonk Room’s Brad Johnson has detailed, the vast majority of new Republicans in Congress are “climate zombies.” Koch Industries is so fervently anti-climate science that it recently filed a lawsuit claiming that a belief in global warming damages its reputation.
Koch’s active role in Republican politics and multifaceted propaganda campaigns are almost always tied to Koch Industries’ business interests. Koch’s assistance to then-Sen. Bob Dole (R-KS) resulted in special legislation to exempt Koch from prosecution regarding an oil spill, and Koch’s efforts to elect President Bush were rewarded with a virtual pardon of charges related to Koch’s release of carcinogenic chemicals in Texas. Koch groups also worked to derail international climate negotiations in Copenhagen, and Koch-funded groups helped spread the myth that hacked e-mails from the University of East Anglia Climatic Research Unit somehow disputed the scientific consensus on climate change.
Of course, Koch’s current war on climate science is not new. As we first reported, Koch’s current campaign to distort the public’s understanding of global warming is a continuation of its campaign in 1990 to spread skepticism about acid rain. However, Koch’s hidden role in the climate denying machine is beginning to unravel.
---
Part 1 of a three-part installment of ThinkProgress’ interview with David Koch.*
Yesterday, David Koch — one of the richest men in America, co-owner of the conglomerate Koch Industries, and a top financier of right-wing front groups — attended the swearing-in ceremony for Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) and also hosted a party for the new Republican majority he helped bankroll.
Perhaps no one has been more aggressive in exposing Koch’s activities than ThinkProgress. We first reported in April 2009 that Americans for Prosperity, the front group founded and chaired by Koch since 1984, helped orchestrate many of the first Tea Party rallies and anti-Obama protests. ThinkProgess also unearthed a memo detailing how Koch convened a meeting of executives from Wall Street and the oil industry — along with hate talker Glenn Beck and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce — to plan how to win the November elections for Republicans in 2010.
Yesterday, ThinkProgress came face-to-face with David Koch, so we seized the opportunity to conduct an impromptu interview. We ran into him outside of the Capitol, where he was chatting with one of the freshmen lawmakers he helped elect, Rep. Frank Guinta (R-NH), as well as Tim Phillips, a longtime “astroturf” lobbyist and former Jack Abramoff associate now hired by Koch to lead his Americans for Prosperity front group. Koch told ThinkProgress that he expects the new Republican Congress to “cut the hell out of spending, balance the budget, reduce regulations, and support business.” Asked about the Tea Party movement, Koch cautioned that there are some extremists (indeed, Koch-funded Tea Party events have featured signs comparing health reform to the Holocaust). However, Koch said he “admire[s]” the Tea Party movement, saying that “the rank and file are just normal people like us”:
TP: Hi sir, I’m Lee Fang. I’m with the blog ThinkProgress. I’m just asking what you’re expecting from the new Congress under Speaker Boehner?
KOCH: Well, cut the hell out of spending, balance the budget, reduce regulations, and uh, support business.
PHILLIPS: Hey David, Lee here is a good blogger on the left, we’re glad to have him–
TP: Just a quick interview. Are you proud of what Americans for Prosperity has achieved this year?
KOCH: You bet I am, man oh’ man. We’re going to do more too in the next couple of years, you know.
TP: What are you planning on doing. What are your goals?
KOCH: I just told you what we hope the Congress will do and AFP is going to support that.
[...]
TP: I’m curious to know, Mr. Koch, are you proud of what the Tea Party movement and what they’ve achieved in the past years–
KOCH: Yeah. There are some extremists there, but the rank and file are just normal people like us. And I admire them. It’s probably the best grassroots uprising since 1776 in my opinion.
Watch it:
It’s interesting that Koch, who inherited his wealth from his father’s oil company and is now worth $21.5 billion dollars, considers himself just another “normal” Tea Party member. Despite the myth that the Tea Party represents some kind of “spontaneous” uprising of middle class voters, many of the drivers of the movement come from America’s wealthy elite. Millionaire Steve Forbes and corporate lobbyist Dick Armey own the other significant Tea Party organizing group, FreedomWorks. Cliff Asness, a wealthy hedge fund manager who attended several Republican planning meetings and Koch’s secret meeting last June, considers himself a card-carrying member of the Tea Party movement.
Despite the Tea Party veneer, Koch and other wealthy businessmen have a self-interested reason to invest in anti-government movements and Republican politicians. Koch funneled large amounts of donations into electing George Bush in 2000 (even sending Koch-linked lobbyists to help disrupt the Florida recount). At the time, Koch Industries faced 97-count federal indictment charging it with concealing illegal releases of 91 metric tons of benzene, known to cause leukemia, from its refinery in Corpus Christi, Texas. When Bush took office, his Justice Department dropped 88 of the charges and settled the case for a small amount of money. As the Wall Street Journal reported, Koch front groups largely dictated Bush’s environmental regulatory policy and Koch lobbyists gained appointments to key environmental regulatory position in the administration.
Although Bush is gone, Koch still flexes his muscle over major policy issues in the Obama era. Americans for Prosperity, leveraging its large budget and over 80 campaign operatives, coordinated Tea Party protests to kill clean energy reform (Koch Industries is a major oil company and is still one of the worst polluters in America), pass tax cuts for the rich, and to slow down financial reform (Koch Industries is also very active in the unregulated derivatives market). Koch’s vast network of front groups are also credited with successfully distorting the public’s understanding of climate change.
---
format fail, see bak
==
2x? lee f
https://theintercept.com**/2019**/08/26/david-koch-donald-trump/
David KOCH, the fossil fuel industry billionaire who passed away on August 23 at the age of 79, spent the second half of his life building a political power structure alongside his brother Charles that radically reshaped society and set the conditions for the rise of President Donald Trump.
Many obituaries published in recent days examine Koch’s history of polluting the environment and political system, how the donor network he helped lead mobilized opposition to addressing climate change, transformed our election laws to allow unlimited secret spending by the very rich, and systematically fought any regulation, labor reform, or tax viewed as a threat to the corporate power elite.
Yet Koch’s most visible accomplishment is the current occupant of the White House — a legacy largely unrecognized, and one that goes well beyond any other single triumph in his life.
The nexus is not readily clear to most, especially given that the two clashed publicly; Trump, for instance, has taken to gleefully ridiculing Koch and his brother as “globalists.” But in his scorched-earth quest for unparalleled influence, Koch, perhaps unwittingly, laid the path for Trump.
First, there were obvious efforts made by Koch, though largely ignored by the mainstream press, that directly elected Trump. In 2016, Americans for Prosperity, the Kochs’s primary vehicle for influence that operates as a privately run political party, hired over 650 staffers, deploying many to battleground states, including Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, and Michigan, to turn out Republican voters. The field staff filled in the gaps left by Trump’s chaotic field operation. In Wisconsin alone, Americans for Prosperity staff, equipped with state-of-the-art voter contact technology, made 1.5 million phone calls and knocked on nearly 30,000 doors.
“Mr. Chairman,” said Corey Lewandowski, then the New Hampshire state leader for Americans for Prosperity, before boasting that he had organized right-wing rallies so raucous that when President Barack Obama visited the state, they had “forc[ed] him to change his motorcade route to avoid the angry mob.” Koch can be seen in the front of the room, clapping in approval.What’s more, over the previous eight years, the Koch network had plowed tens of millions of dollars into the region, with a focus on Wisconsin, to transform the state, once a progressive bastion, into a laboratory for the radical right. The network focused carefully on political investments designed to change the power alignment throughout the upper Midwest: new barriers to voting, dramatic restrictions on labor unions, and investments in a localized conservative voter mobilization apparatus. The states that produced the Electoral College victory over Clinton had been primed for electing a future GOP presidential nominee, and Trump was simply the beneficiary.Late in the campaign, the Koch money flowed to television advertisements in the Rust Belt, including the crucial states of Wisconsin and Pennsylvania, that hammered Hillary Clinton. Political scientist Thomas Ferguson has persuasively argued that the spending blitz by Republican billionaires, including Koch, in late October and early November, was the decisive factor in Clinton’s defeat. Koch groups spent $4.3 million in Wisconsin, eclipsing the $3 million spent by the Clinton campaign, with television ads that sought to simultaneously tear down Democrat Russ Feingold and Clinton, a pattern repeated in other crucial swing states.
MORE IMPORTANT, however, are the structural investments and vindictive political style nurtured by Koch. Though he wielded power largely behind closed doors, in the shadows of a complex web of dark-money lobby groups and think tanks, there were public glimpses of the Koch fiefdom. The most revealing of these can be seen in the the archived footage, preserved on C-SPAN, of the 2009 Americans for Prosperity annual gala.
The event space was transformed into a miniature presidential convention hall, complete with vertical placards among the rows to represent the various states of the union. But these were not elected delegates convened to nominate an American president. These were the assorted paid operatives and talking heads that had taken a wrecking ball to progressive society. They were there to thank their benefactor in an Orwellian four-hour tribute. A parade of prominent Republican politicians and pundits took the microphone, followed by staff of Americans for Prosperity, to sing praises to Koch, who stood before the hall. As each operative stood to explain what they had accomplished on his behalf, they dutifully addressed the billionaire as “Mr. Chairman."
[vid gingrich]
the cutthroat tactics that would define Koch’s anything-goes approach, and the men who would later serve as the lieutenants in Trump’s remarking of the country, were also on full display.
Other officials took turns at the microphone to blast the policies of Obama and his administration. One speaker bragged that he had forced the resignation of former White House official Van Jones by appearing on the Glenn Beck program to accuse Jones of being a secret communist. Another promised to work to repeal the estate tax, euphemistically referred to as the “death tax.” And many others discussed the coast-to-coast tea party rallies they mobilized, focused on preventing action on climate change and health care reform.
Over the years, Americans for Prosperity and its affiliated nonprofits continued to battle Obama as the Koch network poured billions into election advocacy and lobbying. Their political rhetoric rarely matched Koch’s idealized form of libertarianism about limited government. Money flowed freely to anti-abortion groups as well as anti-Muslim and anti-immigrant extremists. But principled laissez-faire activism was never a criterion for receiving Koch money.
The assembled speakers at the 2009 convention were quick to form the basis of Trump’s inner circle. Newt Gingrich, who helped open the event, was the first major figure from the GOP establishment to endorse Trump’s bid for the Republican nomination. Larry Kudlow, another speaker at the event, is now in the executive office shaping Trump’s economic policies. Trump himself appeared at Americans for Prosperity events as early as 2014.
The permanent political machine gainfully employed by Koch to fan the flames of the tea party movement seamlessly transitioned into Trump’s orbit. Lewandowski would later serve as Trump’s presidential campaign manager. Alan Cobb, the vice president of Americans for Prosperity, became a senior adviser to the Trump election effort. Marc Short, who later became Trump’s liaison to Congress, previously worked as president of Freedom Partners, Koch’s central clearing house for doling out political grants. Donald McGahn, Koch’s campaign operation lawyer, became Trump’s campaign and White House attorney. And Mark Block, a key Americans for Prosperity official in Wisconsin, seen in the C-SPAN video reporting out the success of his growing chapter in mobilizing anti-Obama demonstrations, was the first to introduce Cambridge Analytica’s services to Steve Bannon, according to a whistleblower account.
No wonder, then, that much of Trump’s administration has been hyper-focused on the policy goals of the Koch network: deregulation, tax cuts, and business-friendly judges. A memo circulated to the Koch donor network last year compiled the laundry list of environmental and judicial victories scored through the administration, including leaving the Paris climate agreement and the appointment of Justice Neil Gorsuch to the Supreme Court.
I BECAME ACUTELY familiar with the Koch network early in my career while traveling across the country in 2009 and 2010 to cover the emerging tea party protests. I was the first to report on Koch’s hidden hand in helping to orchestrate the tea party movement and harness its anger for his own political agenda, and interviewed him about climate change.
At the congressional swearing in ceremony for the Tea Party wave, I saw David Koch leaving the building and got a short interview. Every other political interview Koch ever gave was carefully screened. This one wasn't. pic.twitter.com/bHsBR6fXvQ
— Lee Fang (@lhfang) August 23, 2019
The tactics were often covert. During a town hall hosted by then-congressmanTom Perriello, a Democrat from rural Virginia, angry citizens took turns screaming into the mic, accusing the lawmaker of “ignoring the law of the Constitution that requires Obama to prove that he is a natural born citizen.” I witnessed Americans for Prosperity staff in the back, videotaping the confrontations to create viral moments of constituent unrest. Several of the loudest protesters told me after the event that they had met with Americans for Prosperity staff, who had provided talking points and advice for confronting Democratic lawmakers.
Later, in the midterm elections, an avalanche of television advertisements, many of which were funded by Koch, accused Perriello of abandoning his constituents by voting for health reform and the cap-and-trade bill in Congress.
In Washington, D.C., as the vote on the Affordable Care Act neared, Americans for Prosperity provided free buses, food, and other arrangements for thousands of demonstrators to storm Capitol Hill. When lawmakers saw hundreds of rowdy protesters storm the halls in opposition to the vote, few were aware that a single billionaire had paid their way.
in other instances, the propaganda techniques bordered on comical. One television advertisement featured an actor who played “Carleton the eco-hypocrite,” who sought action on global warming only to enrich himself and cause “massive unemployment.” Another Americans for Prosperity campaign depicted the Environmental Protection Agency’s climate policies represented as a Big Brother-style power grab, falsely claiming that “carbon cops” would arrest Americans and regulate churches under the guise of combating global warming. The campaign toured throughout the country with free food and an inflatable bounce house for children shaped as a giant green police car to illustrate the point.
Other advocacy efforts worked to grow the dark underbelly of American paranoia. American Future Fund was one of several groups that received over $10 million in 2010 from a Koch-financed nonprofit to run attack ads, including spots that spread the bigoted lie that a
was planned near the former World Trade Center.
In the end, media attention did little to dim Koch’s prospects for power. In the midterm elections that year, Koch’s advocacy machine helped deliver 63 seats in the House of Representatives, including Perriello’s seat, the entire state government in Wisconsin, and hundreds of other elections across the country into Republican hands in one of the greatest election routs in American history. The move to extremism was rewarded with raw power, with Koch as the kingmaker.
==
REPORTER’S NOTE
Behind Big Pesticide’s Playbook
The introduction three decades ago of a new class of insecticides called neonicotinoids — derived from nicotine — dazzled farmers: It promised insect-killing efficiency with precision application. Before long, neonics became one of the most widely used insecticides, applied to agricultural crops, ornamental trees, and home gardens in every corner of the globe.
Problems began almost immediately. Neonicotinoids have been blamed for killing bees. But while the European Union moved to ban the insecticide, little has been done in the U.S.
What’s different here? Industry lobbying documents and emails obtained by The Intercept show a vast strategy by the pesticide industry to influence academics, beekeepers, and regulators, and divert attention away from the potential harm caused by pesticides and push the public into focusing only on other factors that could harm bees and other insects.
As a result, the pesticide industry has largely prevailed and continues to reap massive profits. Revenue has doubled over the past decade; the global neonic industry generated $4.42 billion in 2018. And in the meantime, the effects are being seen in massive die-offs of several insect species; the poison is even reaching birds and potentially large mammals. Certain species are nearing extinction.
==
no lnx many
Lee Fang
January 18 2020,
IN SEPTEMBER 2009, over 3,000 bee enthusiasts from around the world descended on the city of Montpellier in southern France for Apimondia — a festive beekeeper conference filled with scientific lectures, hobbyist demonstrations, and commercial beekeepers hawking honey. But that year, a cloud loomed over the event: bee colonies across the globe were collapsing, and billions of bees were dying.
Bee declines have been observed throughout recorded history, but the sudden, persistent and abnormally high annual hive losses had gotten so bad that the U.S. Department of Agriculture had commissioned two of the world’s most well-known entomologists — Dennis vanEngelsdorp, a chief apiary inspector in Pennsylvania, then studying at Penn State University, and Jeffrey Pettis, then working as a government scientist — to study the mysterious decline. They posited that there must be an underlying factor weakening bees’ immune systems.
At Le Corum, a conference center and opera house, the pair discussed their findings. They had fed bees with extremely small amounts of neonicotinoids, or neonics, the most commonly used class of insecticides in the world. Neonics are, of course, meant to kill insects, but they are marketed as safe for insects that aren’t being directly targeted. VanEngelsdorp and Pettis found that even at nonlethal doses, the bees in the trial became much more vulnerable to fungal infection. Bees carrying an infection will often fly off to die, a virtuous form of suicide designed to protect the larger hive from contagion.
“We exposed whole colonies to very low levels of neonicotinoids in this case, and then challenged bees from those colonies with Nosema, a pathogen, a gut pathogen,” said Pettis, speaking to filmmaker Mark Daniels in his documentary, “The Strange Disappearance of the Bees,” at Apimondia. “And we saw an increase, even if we fed the pesticide at very low levels — an increase in Nosema levels — in direct response to the low-level feeding of neonicotinoids.”
The dosages of the pesticide were so miniscule, said vanEngelsdorp, that it was “below the limit of detection.” The only reason they knew the bees had consumed the neonicotinoids, he added, was “because we exposed them.”
Bee health depends on a variety of synergistic factors, the scientists were careful to note. But in this study, Pettis said, they were able to isolate “one pesticide and one pathogen and we clearly see the interaction.”
The evidence was mounting. Shortly after vanEngelsdorp and Pettis revealed their findings, a number of French researchers produced a nearly identical study, feeding minute amounts of the same pesticide to bees, along with a control group. The study produced results that echoed what the Americans had found.
Drifting clouds of neonicotinoid dust from planting operations caused a series of massive bee die-offs in northern Italy and the Baden-Württemberg region of Germany. Studies have shown neonicotinoids impaired bees’ ability to navigate and forage for food, weakened bee colonies, and made them prone to infestation by parasitic mites.
In 2013, the European Union called for a temporary suspension of the most commonly used neonicotinoid-based products on flowering plants, citing the danger posed to bees — an effort that resulted in a permanent ban in 2018.
In the U.S., however, industry dug in, seeking not only to discredit the research but to cast pesticide companies as a solution to the problem. Lobbying documents and emails, many of which were obtained through open records requests, show a sophisticated effort over the last decade by the pesticide industry to obstruct any effort to restrict the use of neonicotinoids. Bayer and Syngenta, the largest manufacturers of neonics, and Monsanto, one of the leading producers of seeds pretreated with neonics, cultivated ties with prominent academics, including vanEngelsdorp, and other scientists who had once called for a greater focus on the threat posed by pesticides.
[Automobiles pass Syngenta AG's headquarters at dawn in Basel, Switzerland, on Feb. 4, 2015. Syngenta, the world's largest maker of crop protection chemicals, forecast stable earnings this year as the benefits of a cost-cutting program offset unfavorable currency shifts. Photographer: Philipp Schmidli/Bloomberg via Getty ImagesSyngenta AG’s headquarters in Basel, Switzerland, on Feb. 4, 2015. Photo: Philipp Schmidli/Bloomberg via Getty Images]
The companies also sought influence with beekeepers and regulators, and went to great lengths to shape public opinion. Pesticide firms launched new coalitions and seeded foundations with cash to focus on nonpesticide factors in pollinator decline.
“Position the industry as an active promoter of bee health, and advance best management practices which emphasize bee safety,” noted an internal planning memo from CropLife America, the lobby group for the largest pesticide companies in America, including Bayer and Syngenta. The ultimate goal of the bee health project, the document noted, was to ensure that member companies maintained market access for neonic products and other systemic pesticides.
CLA Pollinator Issue Management Plan
10 pages
The planning memo, helmed in part by Syngenta regulatory official John Abbott, charts a variety of strategies for advancing the pesticide industry’s interests, such as, “Challenge EPA on the size and breadth of the pollinator testing program.” CropLife America officials were also tapped to “proactively shape the conversation in the new media realm with respect to pollinators” and “minimize negative association of crop protection products with effects on pollinators.” The document, dated June 2014, calls for “outreach to university researchers who could be independent validators.”
The pesticide companies have used a variety of strategies to shift the public discourse.
“America’s Heartland,” a PBS series shown on affiliates throughout the country and underwritten by CropLife America, portrayed the pollinator declines as a mystery. One segment from early 2013 on the crisis made no mention of pesticides, with the host simply declaring that “experts aren’t sure why” bees and butterflies were disappearing.
Another segment, released in January 2015, quickly mentions pesticides as one of many possible factors for honeybee deaths. A representative of the “North American Bee Care Program,” Becky Langer, appeared on the program to discuss the “exotic pests that can affect the bees.”The program does not mention Langer’s position as a spokesperson for Bayer focused on managing fallout from the bee controversy.
:{
}:
Michael Sanford, a spokesperson for PBS KVIE, which produces “America’s Heartland,” wrote in an email to The Intercept that “consistent with strict PBS editorial standards and our own,” sponsors of the show provided no editorial input.
Bayer’s advocacy, designed to position the firm as a leader in protecting bee health, included a roadshow around the country, in which Bayer officials handed out oversized ceremonial checks to local beekeepers and students. The firm hosts splashy websites touting its leadership in promoting bee health and sponsors a number of beekeeping associations.
Meanwhile, Bayer has financed a series of online advertisements that depict individuals who fear that its pesticide products harm nontarget insects as deranged conspiracy theorists.
Honeybees have captured almost all the attention for the dangers of neonics, but they are hardly the only species in decline because of the chemical.
Other forms of influence have been far more covert.
Communications staff with CropLife America compiled a list of terms to shape on search engine results, including “neonicotinoid,” “pollinators,” and “neonics.” One of the consulting firms tapped to coordinate the industry’s outreach, Paradigm Communications, a subsidiary of the public relations giant Porter Novelli, helped lead the effort to shift how pesticide products were portrayed in search engine results.
A slide prepared by Paradigm Communications showcases its push to decouple Google search results for bee decline with neonic pesticides.
The greatest public relations coup has been the push to reframe the debate around bee decline to focus only on the threat of Varroa mites, a parasite native to Asia that began spreading to the U.S. in the 1980s. The mite is known to rapidly infest bee hives and carry a range of infectious diseases.
CropLife America, among other groups backed by pesticide companies, has financed research and advocacy around the mite — an effort designed to muddy the conversation around pesticide use. Meanwhile, research suggests the issues are interrelated; neonics make bees far more susceptible to mite infestations and attendant diseases.
Bayer even constructed a sculpture of the Varroa mite at its “Bee Care Center” in North Carolina and at its research center in Germany, hyping its role as the primary force fueling the decline of pollinators.
[pix FILE -- A model of honeybee with a varroa mite on its back at Bayer's Bee Care Center in Monheim am Rhein, Germany, Nov. 19, 2013. Scientists and biotechnology companies are developing a way to kill insects, like the mite, which is believed to be partly responsible for the mass die-offs of honeybees, by disabling their genes. (Joanna Nottebrock/The New York Times) -- EDITORIAL USE ONLYA model of honeybee with a Varroa mite on its back at Bayer’s Bee Care Center in Monheim am Rhein, Germany, on Nov. 19, 2013. Photo: Joanna Nottebrock/The New York Times via Redux]
The stunningly successful campaign has kept most neonic products in wide circulation in commercial agriculture as well as in home gardens. The result is a world awash in neonics — and massive profits for companies such as Syngenta and Bayer, which now counts Monsanto as a subsidiary.
Millions of pounds of the chemical are applied to 140 commercial crops every year. In the U.S., nearly all field-planted corn and two-thirds of soybean use neonic-coated seeds. The chemical is found in soil samples from coast to coast, in waterways and in drinking water. Neonics, which are water soluble, have been detected in the American River in California, the River Waveney in England, tap water in Iowa City, and hundreds of other streams and rivers across the world. In Brazil last year, after President Jair Bolsonaro’s government approved dozens of new pesticides, the use of neonics caused the death of more than 500 million bees across the country.
In August, a study publishing in peer-reviewed journal PLOS One found that the American landscape has become 48 times more toxic to insects since the 1990s, a shift largely fueled by the rising application of neonics.
Honeybees have captured almost all the attention for the dangers of neonics, but they are hardly the only species in decline because of the chemical. Studies have tied neonics to the disappearance of native bees, butterflies, mayflies, dragonflies, amphipods, and a range of waterborne insects, as well as earthworms and other insect invertebrates. Several species of bumblebees in the U.S. and Europe are approaching extinction, a die-off researchers say is tied to the use of neonics and other pesticides.
In September, a study released in the academic journal Science revealed that migrating songbirds suffered immediate weight loss following the consumption of only one or two seeds treated with neonics. Previous research had linked disappearing insect life to dwindling food sources for birds in the Netherlands, but the Science study provided the evidence that bird species were directly affected by the chemical.
Another groundbreaking study published in Nature’s Scientific Reports showed that neonics are likely causing serious birth defects in white-tailed deer, the first time research has shown that the chemical compound could endanger large mammals.
“Bees are the canary in the cornfield,” said Lisa Archer, from Friends of the Earth. “The science linking pesticides to the extinction crisis has grown.”
Scientists are only now taking a closer look at the potential impact of neonics on humans and other mammals.
“Bees are the canary in the cornfield,” said Lisa Archer, the food and agriculture program director at Friends of the Earth. “The science linking pesticides to the extinction crisis has grown.”
Dave Goulson, a professor of biology at the University of Sussex, told The Intercept, “I think perhaps we are reaching a tipping point where people finally begin to appreciate the importance of insects, the scale of their decline, and that blitzing the landscape with pesticides is not sustainable or desirable.”
Bayer and Syngenta reject any claim that their neonic products are harming the environment.
“Neonicotinoid products are critically important tools for farmers, and are approved for use in more than 100 countries due to their strong safety profile when used according to label,” said Susan Luke, a spokesperson for Bayer Crop Science North America, in a statement to The Intercept. “This is why Bayer continues to strongly support their continued safe use, even though the manufacture of neonic products is not a major part of our business.”
“Research claims that have been made questioning neonic safety all share common flaws, such as exposure levels that far exceed real-world scenarios, and the flawed idea that exposure to substances in the environment necessarily means harm,” adds Luke. “It does not, otherwise no one would go swimming in chlorine or drink caffeinated coffee.”
“Since neonicotinoids were introduced in the 1990s, honey bee colonies have been increasing in the United States, Europe, Canada and indeed around the world,” Chris Tutino, a spokesperson for Syngenta, claimed in a statement to The Intercept. He added that “most scientists and bee experts agree that bee health is affected by multiple factors, including parasites, diseases, habitat and nutrition, weather and hive management practices.”
Tutino, in his email, noted that the neonic compound thiamethoxam, used in popular Syngenta products such as Cruiser and Dividend, had undergone “extensive tests evaluating effects on pollinators,” and providedlinks to five studies, all of which were produced by Syngenta consultants or employees.
Neither company responded directly to questions about the role of neonic products in fueling declines of butterflies, dragonflies, and other insect species beyond bee populations. Both companies highlighted company funding for honeybee health research.
The chemical industry’s comments were disputed by Willa Childress, an organizer with Pesticide Action Network North America.
While it’s true, Childress noted, that managed honeybee hive populations are growing, that is because of the commercial value of honeybees in pollinating a vast array of American agriculture. Beekeepers on average now lose around 40-50 percent of hives every year, well up from historical averages of 10 percent. Many commercial beekeepers are forced to constantly divide hives and buy queens to maintain hive populations, with many relying on government subsidies to scrape by.
“So no, honeybees aren’t doing ‘better than ever,’” said Childress. “And the scientists do agree that multiple interacting factors are driving pollinator decline, including, as chemical companies neglect to mention, pesticide use.”
“Honeybees will not go extinct in our lifetimes,” noted Childress. But, she added, “data on native bees and wild pollinators is far more ‘apocalyptic’ than even the most concerning reports on honey bee losses. Unprecedented numbers of wild pollinators are facing extinction — and we have very limited data on a number of other pollinators that are at risk.”
NOT LONG AGO, action in the U.S. to restrict neonics seemed imminent.
The pressure began to build in 2010 after Tom Theobald, a beekeeper in Boulder, Colorado, obtained an internal Environmental Protection Agency report showing that the agency’s own scientists had sharply criticized the research used to permit the sale of one of the most popular lines of neonic products.
In 2003, Bayer had secured the temporary right to use clothianidin, a neonic used widely for corn and canola, from the EPA — under the condition that the company conduct a “chronic life cycle study” showing how use of the neonic would affect honeybees by the end of the following year.
The Bayer-funded study, led by Cynthia Scott-Dupree, an environmental sciences professor at the University of Guelph in Ontario, placed hives in clothianidin-treated fields of canola and hives in untreated fields of canola. The tests found little variation between the two sets of hives, but researchers later pointed out that the hives in the study were placed only 968 feet apart from one another. Honeybees forage for pollen up to six miles from their hives.
Scott-Dupree was later appointed the “Bayer CropScience Chair in Sustainable Pest Management” at the University of Guelph. Regulators in Canada and at the EPA used the study to clear clothianidin for unconditional use. Internally, however, EPA scientists expressed concerns.
The memo, written by two EPA scientists, noted that the previous Bayer-funded study failed baseline guidelines for pesticide research and warned that clothianidin posed a “major risk concern” to “nontarget insects (that is, honey bees).”
A dizzying array of research began pointing to problems with neonics. Despite claims that the compound represents a form of precision agriculture, a growing body of research shows that the chemical strays far from targeted crops, often traveling with the wind during planting operations, remaining in the soil for long periods of time, leaching into waterways, and causing acute problems for a wide variety of insect and animal life.
In 2014, Rep. Earl Blumenauer, a Democrat from Oregon, introduced legislation to compel the EPA to take steps to suspend the pesticides. That year, in response to growing controversies around bee decline and the demands for greater accountability over loosely regulated pesticide use, President Barack Obama issued an executive memorandum calling attention to the “significant loss of pollinators, including honey bees, native bees, birds, bats, and butterflies.”
Activists picketed the White House demanding action. Beekeepers and environmentalist groups filed lawsuits challenging the registration status of major neonic products, claiming that EPA had violated its own protocols when licensing products from Bayer and Syngenta. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service announced a decision to phase out neonics in wildlife refuge areas in the Pacific region.
Around the country, legislators in states across the country proposed bills to restrict neonics. In Minnesota, a bill was signed into law to prevent nurseries from marketing plants as pollinator-friendly if they had been treated with neonics.
For a while, the movement seemed to be gaining traction, which some hoped would lead the U.S. to mirror the EU in moving to regulate the widely used insecticide.
In the end, little changed. The settlements related to the lawsuits removed small-market neonics. The private-public partnerships that grew out of the Obama memorandum lacked any enforcement mechanism to restrict neonic use in agriculture. President Donald Trump rescinded the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service rule. Minnesota legislators quickly repealed the labeling requirement a year after it was passed.
After a hearing in which he pointed to pesticides, Jeffrey Pettis told the Washington Post that he was criticized him for failing to follow “the script.”
In almost every other state, with the exception of Vermont, Connecticut, and Maryland, lobbyists from the pesticide and agribusiness industry successfully killed any significant restriction on neonic products. The scientific community, once focused on studying the impact of pesticides, became splintered, with many of the leading voices going to work for industry or industry-backed nonprofits.
Critics of neonics were quickly sidelined. In April 2014, the House Agriculture Subcommittee on Horticulture, Research, Biotechnology, and Foreign Agriculture — then chaired by Rep. Austin Scott, a Georgia Republican — convened a hearing to discuss the pollinator crisis. The event featured David Fischer, a Bayer official, and Jeff Stone, lobbyist for commercial nurseries. Both men used the hearing to warn against any restrictions on neonics in response to bee decline. The third, Dan Cummings, a representative of the Almond Board, a trade group for almond growers, focused on the threat of the Varroa mite.
A fourth witness, the Department of Agriculture researcher Jeffrey Pettis — the scientist who had collaborated with vanEngelsdorp — noted that unlike traditional pesticides, neonics are found in pollen, increasing exposure to bees. Under questioning from Scott, the committee chair, Pettis reiterated that even without mites, bees would still be in decline, and pesticides raise concern “to a new level.”
After the hearing, Pettis told the Washington Post that he spoke privately with Scott, who criticized him for failing to follow “the script.”
CropLife America, notably, celebrated the hearing performance for its heavy focus on nonpesticide-related factors for bee decline. “One thing that we hope was made clear during the hearing was the crop protection industry’s commitment to addressing this issue,” Jay Vroom, then the president of CropLife America, said in a statement.
Campaign finance records show that CropLife America, just weeks after the hearing, gave $3,500 to Scott, who then sponsored legislation to solve the bee crisis through exemptions to expedite the approval of pesticides used to control the Varroa mite.
And two months after the hearing, according to the Post, Pettis was demoted, losing his role managing the USDA bee lab in Beltsville, Maryland. Pettis later left the government and now serves as president of Apimondia.
[BROOKINGS,SD-JAN 11: Entomologist Jonathan Lundgren is a USDA scientist who is struggling to get out his research that may provide some answers to the dwindling honey bee population. (Photo by Michael S. Williamson/The Washington Post via Getty Images)BROOKINGS,SD-JAN 11: Entomologist Jonathan Lundgren is a USDA scientist who is struggling to get out his research that may provide some answers to the dwindling honey bee population. (Photo by Michael S. Williamson/The Washington Post via Getty Images)
Entomologist Jonathan Lundgren, who is researching answers for what might be causing the dwindling honeybee population, on Jan. 9, 2016.Photos: Michael S. Williamson/The Washington Post/Getty Images]
The Post also details the story of a prominent USDA scientist, Jonathan Lundgren, who researched the dangers posed by neonics to pollinators and spoke publicly about the issue. In 2015, Lundgren suddenly faced suspensions and an internal government investigation over misconduct, a push he believes was motivated by industry for his role in speaking out on pesticides.
“I guess I started asking the wrong questions, pursuing risk assessments of neonicotinoids on a lot of different field crop seeds used throughout the U.S. and how they were affecting non-target species like pollinators,” Lundgren told The Intercept.
The USDA did not respond to The Intercept’s request for comment. It told the Post that the suspensions had nothing to do with his research. They were for “conduct unbecoming a federal employee” and “violating travel regulations.”
Lundgren now runs Blue Dasher Farm in South Dakota, a research effort to develop ways to rotate diverse sets of crops as a way to increase yields and suppress pests naturally.There are few institutions, he noted, where researchers can pursue science independent of industry influence. “Universities have become dependent on extramural funds, entire programs are bankrolled by these pesticide companies, chemical companies,” he added.
The regulatory system in the U.S. assumes chemical products are generally safe until proven hazardous.
“Generally, we see the U.S. waiting longer than the EU to take action on a variety of pesticides and other chemicals,” said Childress, the organizer with Pesticide Action Network North America. Part of the divergence, Childress continued, stems from a regulatory system in the U.S. that assumes chemical products are generally safe until proven hazardous. In contrast, the EU tends to use the “precautionary principle,” removing products that may cause harm, and requiring proof of safety before allowing them to return to market.
Another major factor, Childress noted, is the widespread corporate capture of American regulatory institutions. The EPA, for instance, employs 11 former lobbyists — including its administrator, Andrew Wheeler,who previously worked for coal interests in opposition to climate regulations — in senior positions.
The pesticide industry also maintains a long history of underhanded methods to discredit its critics.
Monsanto deployed aggressive tactics to punish critics of Roundup,the most widely used herbicide in the world and the company’s marquee product over the last several decades. Emails released through ongoing litigation in California last year showed that the firm used its lobbyists to orchestrate a campaign in Congress to criticize and defund scientists with the World Health Organization’s cancer research affiliate, after that body had declared that glyphosate, the active ingredient in Roundup, is a “probable carcinogen.” Many of the documents detailing Monsanto’s role in shaping the public discourse around glyphosate were released during the course of class-action lawsuits filed by cancer victims who blame the company for their illnesses.
Syngenta became infamous after its tactics against University of California, Berkeley Professor Tyrone Hayes were reported. Hayes’s research showed that the company’s signature herbicide, atrazine, appeared to disrupt the sexual development of frogs.
The company dispatched people to follow and record Hayes at public speaking events, commissioned a psychological profile of the professor, and worked with a variety of writers to smear Hayes as “non-credible” and a liability to academics who considered working with him. The effort to sideline Hayes and his research, which included coordination with industry-friendly academics, was revealed in a series of court documents that were disclosed over litigation involving claims that Syngenta had polluted local water sources with atrazine.
In the two lawsuits against Syngenta and Monsanto, subpoenaed documents revealed that both Syngenta and Monsanto maintain a list of “third party stakeholders,” including free market think tanks and scientists the industry could turn to for messaging support.
Many of the think tanks and individuals included in the roster now play a prominent role in the neonic debate. The American Council on Health and Science,which has relied on corporate funding from Monsanto, Bayer, and Syngenta, has published over a dozen articles disputing the dangers posed by neonics.
In one email revealed through the Monsanto-Roundup litigation, Daniel Goldstein, a Monsanto official, wrote to colleagues in all-caps to support the council’s work: “I can assure you I am not all starry eyed about ACSH- they have PLENTY of warts- but: You WILL NOT GET A BETTER VALUE FOR YOUR DOLLAR than ACSH.” The bottom of the email included hyperlinks to articles criticizing demands to regulate both glyphosate and neonic pesticides.
The Heartland Institute, one of the think tanks in Syngenta’s third-party stakeholder list, which has received Bayer donations in the past, has published articles deriding research critical of neonics as “junk science.”
“The pesticide industry is using Big Tobacco’s PR tactics to try and spin the science about their products’ links to bee declines and delay action while they keep profiting,” said Archer, whose group, Friends of the Earth, has documented the lobbying tactics of pesticide makers.
WHEN NEONICS HIT the market three decades ago, they were the first new class of insecticide invented in nearly 50 years, and their use skyrocketed.
As early as the late 17th century, farmers found that they could grind tobacco plants and use nicotine extract to kill beetles on crops. Nicotine acts as an organic insecticide, binding to nerve receptors and causing paralysis and death in aphids, white flies, and other plant-eating insects.
Attempts to use nicotine for a mass-market pesticide, however, frustrated scientists. In early research, sunlight diluted the effectiveness of nicotine-based products. But that changed just over three decades ago, when Bayer scientists at Nihon Bayer Agrochem, the firm’s Japanese subsidiary, first synthesized neonicotinoids in the 1980s — a compound that not only withstood heat and sunlight, but could be applied to the root or seed of a plant and remain effective for that plant’s entire lifespan.
Neonics were hailed as the “Goldilocks compound” because they are “not too hard, not too soft, but just right.”
The new chemical came just in time. Farmers and regulators were seeking alternatives to another class of pesticides — organophosphates, nerve agents sprayed on crops — that had been found to cause cancer in humans. Initial studies of neonics showed that the compound was acutely toxic to insects but unlikely to cause harm to mammals.
As one scientist for Bayer described the invention in a 1993 Science magazine article hailing the introduction of the new class of chemicals, neonics were the “Goldilocks compound” because they are “not too hard, not too soft, but just right.”
And because seeds could be pretreated with neonics, which were absorbed and expressed through the tissue, nectar, and pollen, they could be also produced on an industrial scale, providing agriculture crops with an efficient insect-killing capability without the need for expensive spray treatments or constant reapplication.
In other words, farmers could soak the ground and seeds with enormous amounts of the compound to avoid problems from pests in the future. The delivery mechanism saved money for farmers but set the conditions for chronic overuse of the pesticides.
[Imidacloprid-layout-3-tint-1579299443Estimated agricultural use of imidacloprid. Information compiled from the U.S. Geological Survey’s Pesticide National Synthesis Project. Map: USGS National Water-Quality Assessment, The Intercept]
The first commercial neonic, imidacloprid, was registered with the EPA in 1994 and sold as a potato seed treatment. Business boomed as neonic products spread worldwide to Japan, France, Germany, and South Africa. In the U.S., it became a popular standard seed and root treatment for corn, cotton, soybeans, almonds, and a range of fruits and vegetables.
Neonics were even used for household applications. Bayer produced imidacloprid as a flea treatment on pets throughout the U.S. The Advantage line of flea control took off, with a marketing campaign featuring the Jack Russell terrier “Eddie” from the television show “Frasier” and a 30-foot inflatable flea in Times Square.
Chemical Week called the introduction of neonics a “renaissance for the U.S. insecticides industry” providing “environmentally friendly products.” The Columbus Dispatch, in an article for home gardeners about ways to deliver a “surgical strike” against pests, called for consumers to consider Bayer’s Merit soil treatment, which the paper called “virtually non-toxic.”
The swift adoption of the compound instantly made Bayer, which had previously profited largely from its pharmaceutical line of products, a worldwide player in the agrochemical industry.
“Imidacloprid is our most important product,” the head of Bayer’s pesticide division told investors in 2008.
In 2003, at a forum hosted by Goldman Sachs, Bayer listed Confidor, Premise, and Gaucho, several seed treatments based on neonic compounds, among its top-performing products in a presentation outlining the company’s performance metrics. Another investor presentation, given by Bayer executives in Lyon, France, projected rapid growth from the neonic products, estimating that the firm, which had sales of close to 400 million euros from the portfolio in 1998, would more than double to 850 million euros by 2010.
“Imidacloprid is our most important product,” Friedrich Berschauer, then-head of Bayer’s pesticide division, told investors during a conference call in 2008, according to a transcript of his remarks. Company disclosures underscore Berschauer’s remarks: During that fiscal year, the company reported 932 million euros in sales for its top two neonic compounds.
In 2009, the global neonic market brought in $2.1 billion dollars for the largest pesticide producers. Other agribusiness interests invested heavily in the market. Monsanto began offering neonic-based seed treatments through its popular Acceleron product for corn, soybeans, and cotton. Switzerland-based Syngenta rolled out two neonic seed treatments, Actara and Cruiser, quickly positioning itself as a leading insecticide firm alongside Bayer. Many of the early compounds of neonics are no longer patent-protected, allowing other businesses to compete for the market. Valent, BASF (which acquired part of Bayer’s neonic portfolio as a condition of its merger with Monsanto), and Sumitomo Chemical are also leading neonic producers.
The first restrictions on neonics in the EU, announced late in 2013, raised alarm in the industry.“The number for the full year as a consequence of the suspension is about $75 million,” noted John Mack, then-Syngenta’s chief executive officer on a call with investors the following year, referring to the decrease in revenue as a result of the decision. The executives were quick to point out, however, the full brunt of the restriction had been limited because many EU states obtained exemptions from the suspension rule.
In another call with investors, Mack declared that there “is no relationship between” the use of neonics “and the causality of bee decline,” and said he was certain regulators in the U.S. would not take the European approach.
Speaking with investors 2018, Liam Condon, a Bayer executive in charge of pesticide products, warned that the neonic ban in France alone had cost the firm 80 million euros. The wider restrictions imposed on the chemical, Condon continued, “drags our entire European results down.”
Bayer no longer breaks out individual product revenue in its investor reports. Previous financial reporting has suggested that neonics represent as much as 20 percent of its sales. The company’s annual report in 2018 showed that the company’s insecticide division produced more than 1.3 billion euros in revenue.
Werner Baumann, chair of Bayer’s board, announcing its acquisition of Monsanto in 2016, declared that the deal would create “a global leader in the agricultural industry,” delivering insecticides and seed treatments.
The global neonic market generated $4.42 billion in revenue in 2018, roughly doubling over the previous decade, according to new figures provided to The Intercept from Agranova, a research firm that tracks the industry.
[ pix Beekeepers take part in a demonstration at the Esplanade des Invalides in Paris on June 7, 2018, during a national day of action of French beekeepers. - The National Union of French Apiculture (Union Nationale de lApiculture Francaise - UNAF) and the French Federation of Professional Beekeepers (Federation Française des Apiculteurs Professionnels - FFAP) have called for a national day of action to ask the State and the President of the Republic to launch an exceptional support plan for French beekeepers and to restore a viable environment for bee colonies and pollinators. (Photo by FRANCOIS GUILLOT / AFP) (Photo credit should read FRANCOIS GUILLOT/AFP via Getty Images)Beekeepers take part in a demonstration at the Esplanade des Invalides in Paris on June 7, 2018, during a national day of action of French beekeepers. Photo: Francois Guillot/AFP/Getty Images]
THE EVIDENCE ENTANGLING neonicotinoids with bee die-offs began to surface almost as soon as they hit the market.
In the early 1990s, in France, several bee hives near fields planted with neonicotinoids collapsed suddenly, and beekeepers observed mass bee die-offs in the vicinity of sunflower fields treated with Bayer’s imidacloprid-based Gaucho.
The French beekeepers mounted a sustained pressure campaign, including demonstrations of hundreds marching in Paris and outside of Bayer’s factory in Cormery, in central France.
The beekeepers observed that their bees were disoriented and unable to forage, and weakened to a point where disease and parasitic infections spread rapidly, destroying thousands of hives. Beekeepers found bees trembling and dying on the ground, a syndrome they nicknamed “mad bee disease.” They blamed neonics, but Bayer maintained that the chemicals caused no harm.
“We don’t believe the insecticide poses any risks,” Peter Brain, a regulatory affairs official with Bayer, told reporters.
In 1999, facing mounting pressure from farmers, the French government moved to temporarily ban the use of imidacloprid, though other neonicotinoids continued to be used. Annual hive loss continued.
In 2008, officials in Italy, Germany, and Slovenia observed that the sowing of fields with neonic-treated seeds correlated with nearby mass bee die-offs. In one region of Germany, beekeepers reported the loss of 11,500 bee colonies following the planting of nearby canola fields with neonic-treated seeds. Similar observations across the continent led to the temporary restriction of commonly used neonic products in all three countries that year.
The following year, a group of 70 scientists, including prominent biologists, toxicologists, entomologists, and other specialists in Europe formed the Task Force on Systemic Pesticides, an ad hoc group to study neonics and other systemic pesticides. The task force worked to conduct research independent of industry.
Over the years, more and more research appeared to confirm that neonics were not only endangering nontarget insects. In the journal Science, a study confirmed that field-realistic applications of neonics reduced bumblebee fertility by 85 percent. The United Kingdom-based advocacy group BugLife released research that compiled years of academic studies showing that neonicotinoids appeared to be damaging the populations of honeybees, native bees, and other nontarget invertebrates.
The Task Force on Systemic Pesticides brought together over a thousand peer-reviewed studies, concluding that wide-scale use of neonics, along with fipronil, another popular systemic pesticide, were causing “widespread, chronic impacts upon global biodiversity.” The group noted that neonic pesticides linger for long periods in the soil and were found to be contaminating fields and waterways far from agricultural sites. The scientists called for an urgent reduction in the use of the chemicals.
Growing backlash against neonics pushed the EU into action. In 2012, the European Food Safety Authority, the leading pesticide regulator in the EU, released a risk assessment finding that the three most widely used neonicotinoids posed acute risks to bees. The finding set into motion an effort backed by most EU states to suspend the use of neonicotinoids on outdoor flowering plants for two years.
The mounting pressure created a need for the pesticide industry to push back with its own research. In fact, one of the greatest victories for the industry was its effort to cultivate the most influential bee scientists in the U.S.
[bees019034-1579302860Dennis vanEngelsdorp. Photo: David Yellen]
THE FIRST WAVE of headlines in the U.S. about the rapid decline of bees started in 2006 as beekeepers in Pennsylvania reported drastic hive losses.Other beekeepers also reported staggering losses over the winter that year, at an average ranging around 30 percent, wiping out more than a fourth of the 2.4 million colonies in the country.
The mysterious crisis was termed “colony collapse disorder” in the media. Dennis vanEngelsdorp, then-serving as Pennsylvania acting chief apiary inspector and studying at Penn State University, found himself at the center of the story. “It’s just causing so much death so quickly that it’s startling,” he told the Philadelphia Inquirer. He started with autopsies of dead bees in Pennsylvania, but soon came into contact with beekeepers in Georgia, Florida, and California reporting similar losses.
A team of other prominent bee experts, including vanEngelsdorp, Washington State University entomologist Walter “Steve” Sheppard, and other prominent scientists worked to investigate the crisis. “This is like C.S.I. for agriculture,” said one of the academics on the project, Columbia University’s W. Ian Lipkin, in an interview with the New York Times.
VanEngelsdorp, alongside Jerry Hayes, then-Florida chief apiary inspector and president of the Apiary Inspectors of America, pioneered an effort to survey beekeepers throughout the country to track colony collapse disorder. Bees were sent to his lab and examined for cause of death. VanEngelsdorp started a foundation, the Bee Informed Partnership, to formalize the survey and continue research into possible factors for the disorder.
In interviews with national news outlets, local media, and television stations across the country, vanEngelsdorp became an overnight celebrity. In 2008, he appeared prominently in the award-winning documentary “Silence of the Bees,” depicted as leading the research effort around collapsing bee colonies, and also recorded a well-received TED Talk, “A Plea for Bees.”
In his TED Talk, vanEngelsdorp stressed that honeybee colonies could be rebuilt, given that commercial bee farmers can split a hive into two or buy queens through the mail. But the danger of collapsing bee colonies went beyond the European honeybee, which is used widely for pollinating American agriculture. Native bees were also disappearing at an alarming rate, with no commercial effort to revive them. Bats were disappearing too, he lamented, “and there’s no money to study that.”
“Imagine if every one of three cows died. The National Guard would be out,” vanEngelsdorp said in 2013.
The following year, in September 2009, vanEngelsdorp appeared alongside Pettis at Apimondia. During this period in his career, vanEngelsdorp generally suggested in media interviews that several factors were likely to blame for bee loss. The decline, he told a local paper in Missouri in 2007, could be attributed to “mites and associated diseases, some unknown pathogenic disease and pesticide contamination or poisoning.” The research he presented at Apimondia concluded that “interactions between pesticides and pathogens could be a major contributor to increased mortality of honey bee colonies.”
In the following years, vanEngelsdorp used his voice to dismiss concerns with neonics in the media. His shift in rhetoric coincided with a push by the pesticide industry, in response to rising calls for pesticide restrictions to stem bee losses, began a push to rebrand itself as bee-friendly.
In 2013, he told one reporter, “Imagine if every one of three cows died. The National Guard would be out.” He continued: “Sure, neonics may be a problem some of the time. But not all, or in my humble opinion, most of the time.”
“The jury’s still out,” he told the Raleigh News & Observer, when asked about role of the pesticide in bee decline in 2014. The Associated Press quoted vanEngelsdorp declaring, “I am not convinced that neonics are a major driver of colony loss” in 2016. “In many cases, [neonicotinoids] are actually the safest alternative,” he was quoted as saying in another article, expressing skepticism over the push to ban the compound.
When asked about his seeming shift, vanEngelsdorp said in an email that his work focused on honeybees, but he is concerned with the threat posed to other pollinators and insect life. In Maryland, he wrote, high levels of mite infestations “would explain lots of [honey bee] mortality.”
“I should stress that I am speaking about honey bees, not native bees, and the effects of neonics on non-target non-honey bees (Honey bees have a reserve work force that can be lost without consequence as they are social organisms and other non-honey bee bees don’t) is much more pronounced and concerning,” vanEngelsdorp wrote.
Around that time, vanEngelsdorp joined Monsanto’s Honey Bee Advisory Council, a company-backed effort, and appeared at the company’s Honey Bee Health Summit in 2013 as a spokesperson. That same year, Project Apis m., a foundation heavily funded by Bayer, donated to vanEngelsdorp’s nonprofit, the Bee Informed Project, and has since provided at least $700,000 to the lab, according to public tax filings.
In an email, vanEngelsdorp said that although that he has received one grant funding stream from Bayer, that award came in last year and “it would be hard to argue it influenced past work.” The funding from Project Apis m. to vanEngelsdorp’s Bee Informed Project, he added, came from Costco, not the agricultural industry. Other corporate interests, including the Almond Board of California and the General Mills Foundation, have also directly funded the Bee Informed Project.
VanEngelsdorp said that his lab has never received direct funding from pesticide companies.
Bayer, as part of its Healthy Hives 2020 initiative, has dedicated at least $1.3 million to the project in collaboration with Project Apis m., which counts Bayer as one of its largest donors, though the company does not break down individual donor amounts.
The University of Maryland professor also explained that he felt conflicted about joining Monsanto’s advisory board, a position that ended in 2019.
“The purpose of this board is to help guide the development of new tools to help control Varroa, which I think, and the data suggest – are the biggest drivers of loss,” wrote vanEngelsdorp. “So it was a big struggle when I was asked to join the advisory board (which included several beekeepers), because – who wants to have an association with Big Ag?”
“Do I feel conflicted? – all the time,” vanEngelsdorp told The Intercept. ”But do I think my involvement with encouraging the development of a desperately needed new mite control skews my view of drivers of honey [bee] health. No. I think the data is clear.”
:{
}:
He added, “The world is a complicated place. Full of gray. I just have to believe the science will show truth, and hope we can get there by keeping things cordial, and respectful of the idea that people taking different paths towards the same end (save the bees) is not bad.”
“I’m an environmentalist – so have been and continue to be very concerned and vocal about protecting the earth and its biome,” he wrote. “I am certain that in all interviews on this topic I clearly say – the widespread use of neonic coated seeds is a short sighted, wasteful and environmentally unsustainable way of using this product. I strongly advocate for wise use. Use it when you know you need it and not unless you know you do.’ But that quote never gets picked up. But it’s what I think and have thought for a long time.”
Danielle Downey, the executive of Project Apis m., said the group is “transparent about where donated funds come from and what we use them for, keeping in mind donor privacy,” in a statement to The Intercept. “Project Apis m. does keep abreast of the science regarding bee health, which allows us to support industry-relevant projects.”
Downey did not take a position on regulating neonics, and noted that “regarding bans and regulations of pesticides, countries which apply different precautionary and risk assessment paradigms, may reach different outcomes.”
In 2013, vanEngelsdorp also edited a controversial paper authored by a group of consultants that claimed that thiamethoxam, a neonic produced by Syngenta, posed “a low risk to honey bees” when applied to oilseed rape and maize. In a section of its website titled “Bee Decline,” Syngenta cites the study to claim that “there is no direct correlation between neonicotinoid use and poor bee health.”
The paper, which was cited by Syngenta to apply for an exemption in the United Kingdom to the EU’s newly imposed moratorium on neonic products, was later widely panned. In a scathing article for Environmental Sciences Europe, a group of entomologists claimed that the vanEngelsdorp-edited study was not based on “truthful data and methodologies,” arguing that it used seed treatment at lower-than-recommended rates and that the experiment was poorly designed.
“Do I feel conflicted? – all the time,” vanEngelsdorp said. “The world is a complicated place. Full of gray. I just have to believe the science will show truth.]
Another group of scientists at the University of St. Andrews in Scotland also eviscerated the vanEngelsdorp-edited paper, noting that it used no formal statistical analysis and came to its conclusion by vaguely inspecting the data. They mocked the method as simply reflecting “the prior beliefs of those involved.” The House of Commons Library, in a briefing paper on neonics, noted that the thiamethoxam study faced criticism for lacking rigor, and that all five of authors of the study “were current or former employees of Syngenta or had been paid by Syngenta for their work.”
VanEngelsdorp also lent his name to a splashy advocacy effort on behalf of the pesticide industry. CropLife America, Bayer, and Syngenta launched the Honey Bee Health Coalition, a new group focused on research into the Varroa mite and other nonpesticide-related causes of bee decline. The group was officially coordinated by the Keystone Policy Center, a supposedly independent third party, in conjunction with beekeeper associations and environmentalists. Records show, however, that the Keystone Policy Center is largely funded by major corporations, including Bayer and Syngenta. And internal documents from the Honey Bee Health Coalition show that its communications to beekeepers were reviewed by its bloc of growers and pesticide company members, including DuPont, CropLife America, Syngenta, and the Agricultural Retailers Association. Farmers and beekeepers paid as little as $500 to join the organization while corporate members paid as high as $100,000 in dues.
Marques Chavez, a spokesperson for the Keystone Policy Center, which organizes the Honey Bee Health Coalition, noted in a statement to The Intercept that the group “supports honey bee health and tackles complex problems in agriculture and beyond by bringing diverse perspectives together.” The statement did not address the proportion of pesticide industry influence, but said that the group maintains a public charter that “outlines the structure and decision-making process utilized by the coalition to identify, refine, and finalize the idea and deliverables that reflect the diverse input and collaborative effort of our members.”
Jerry Hayes, the former Florida apiary inspector, joined Monsanto and became the company’s representative at beekeeper conferences around the country and helped pitch Monsanto’s research into genetic solutions for bees to skeptical beekeepers. Hayes also helped with the launch of the Honey Bee Health Coalition. He recruited vanEngelsdorp to serve as one of the first scientists on the coalition’s steering committee.
They weren’t only ones. The industry also recruited bee industry voices to be the face of the new rebranding. Richard Rogers, an academic consultant and former adjunct professor at Acadia University in Nova Scotia, produced Bayer-backed research in Canada in the early 2000s discounting the dangers posed to bees by neonics applied to potato plants on Prince Edward Island. Rogers was brought on to help lead the Bayer Bee Care initiative when the center was opened in 2012. Dr. Helen Thompson, a leading official environmental official in the United Kingdom who had opposed the E.U.’s directive to suspend the use of neonics, joined Syngenta.
Washington State University entomologist Sheppard was also among the other prominent bee scientists to accept the pesticide industry’s outreach. The same year of the launch of the Honey Bee Health Coalition, Sheppard joined Bayer for a roadshow the company sponsored called the Bee Care Tour. He later joined the company steering committee for its “Healthy Hives 2020” initiative.
Emails obtained by The Intercept show a friendly relationship between the pesticide firms and the recruited academics.
In one exchange, with David Fischer, the manager of Bayer’s Bee Care Center, vanEngelsdorp was asked how to respond to reporters on how to calculate annual hive loss. The Maryland academic suggested a method that diminishes any winter losses of hives by factoring in new hives that have been split off from strong hives, though he noted that such a method “‘lowers’ the loss rate” and has been rejected by European beekeepers.
[WSU-emailDaniel Schmehl, an official with Bayer, asked bee scientist Walter “Steve” Sheppard to provide quotes explaining why “the partnership with Bayer Bee Care Center is important for your bee research.” Screenshot: The Intercept]
Daniel Schmehl, an official with Bayer, asked Sheppard to provide quotes explaining why “the partnership with Bayer Bee Care Center is important for your bee research,” as well as other blurbs the company could use. Sheppard appears regularly on Bayer press releases and publications as part of the company’s commitment to bee health.
In another exchange, Rogers, the former adjunct Acadia University professor and now official with Bayer’s Bee Care Center, wrote in 2015 to Sheppard and Jamie Ellis, an associate professor at the University of Florida, to publish a “paper on the definition of a healthy honey bee colony.” Rogers noted that he had worked on a draft but suggested that, “for the best optics, maybe you or Steve, or someone other than a Bayer staff member should be the lead author.” Ellis agreed and wrote back that he “understood your concern about Bayer staff taking the lead.”
VanEngelsdorp’s shift away from concern about the role of neonics is captured in another documentary about the plight of the bees.
:{
}:
In 2015, the website FiveThirtyEight produced a mini-documentary series, including a feature on the “Fight to Save the Mighty Honeybee.” The film, which was accepted into the Sundance Film Festival, traces vanEngelsdorp in his lab and in the field, exclusively discussing the Varroa mite. Unlike his previous appearance in documentaries about bee decline, the video made no mention of neonics or any other pesticide stress to bee health.
Bayer was thrilled with the documentary. Sarah Myers, an event manager with the chemical company, asked vanEngelsdorp for permission to feature the video on the company’s website. VanEngelsdorp politely let the company know that he did not own the copyright and referred Myers to the producers at FiveThirtyEight’s parent company. Bayer’s Bee Care Center showcased the film.
In an exchange with Paul Hoekstra, a regulatory official with Syngenta, vanEngelsdorp was thanked for agreeing to speak to John Brown, a Canadian attorney helping fight a contentious lawsuit over the registration of neonics.
“I think they were using this group as a PR advantage, but by the same token we have no money in the beekeeping industry,” Hayes said.
The relationship has continued. Earlier this month, the American Beekeeping Federation hosted its 2020 convention. The largest sponsor of the event was Bayer, which showcased a series of talks at the conference to tout the company’s commitment to bee health. Sheppard was featured in a Bayer promotional video screened at the event. Among the presentations was an address by vanEngelsdorp about mites.
“My association with Bayer has had no influence on my research focus nor my research,” said Sheppard, in a statement to The Intercept that detailed his work helping Project Apis m. identify research proposals for honeybee health using over $1 million in funding from Bayer.
“I cannot speak for Bayer – but the projects funded with their money and administered through Project Apis m. appear to be completely unrelated to any effort to ‘prevent the restriction’ of the use of neonicotinoids,” wrote Sheppard. “I am not naïve enough to think such a major company does not have their own agenda for the promotion or support of their insect control products. However, and emphatically, in the case of the funds distributed by Project Apis m., no such connection was apparent to either Project Apis m. or myself.”
Jerry Hayes retired two years ago from Monsanto after the project he was hired to promote “just didn’t work out.” He now works as an editor at Bee Culture magazine.
In an interview, Hayes said that he was proud of the work the Honey Bee Health Coalition achieved, including the development of guides for beekeepers to manage Varroa infestations. And he views the effort to bring various stakeholders together in one coalition as a unique accomplishment. But he said that pesticide corporations were largely in the drivers’ seat.
“I think they were using this group as a PR advantage, but by the same token we have no money in the beekeeping industry,” said Hayes.
“These guys were funding the organization, they were funding meetings, all of us knew there were perhaps ulterior motives,” he noted. “Without those resources, we wouldn’t be down the road a little bit to making honeybees a little less endangered.”
Hayes said he had followed the controversies around neonics and was concerned about the growing number of studies showing the threat to nontarget insects. Though he’s concerned that restricting the chemical could reintroduce older pesticides with a greater risk to mammals, he added that the drive for profits have fueled the overuse of neonics.
“It all comes down to money. Bayer is taking care of stockholders,” said Hayes.
Hayes said he doesn’t believe vanEngelsdorp’s views on pesticides have been shaped by his ties to industry.
“He’s a good scientist,” said Hayes. “Science changes over time. I think that science progresses and data shows different things at times, but I don’t think Dennis is influenced by money from these other people.”
“But,” Hayes added, when “chemical companies want to support Dennis because if he can come up with solutions to honey bee health, it takes pressure off of them, doesn’t it?”
[HOMESTEAD, FL - MAY 19: John Gentzel, the owner of J & P Apiary and Gentzel's Bees, Honey and Pollination Company, works with his honeybees on May 19, 2015 in Homestead, Florida. U.S. President Barack Obama's administration announced May 19, that the government would provide money for more bee habitat as well as research into ways to protect bees from disease and pesticides to reduce the honeybee colony losses that have reached alarming rates. (Photo by Joe Raedle/Getty Images)The owner of J&P Apiary and Gentzel’s Bees, Honey and Pollination Company, works with his honeybees on May 19, 2015, in Homestead, Florida. Photo: Joe Raedle/Getty Images]
DESPITE A SOPHISTICATED lobbying campaign to defeat neonic restrictions, Maryland was one of the few states to pass a law banning neonic-based products in consumer products. Industry threw its weight against even this minor bill, which exempts neonics in landscaping and agriculture.
And vanEngelsdorp played a prominent role in nearly defeating the legislation.
In January 2016, the University of Maryland, College Park campus held a summit bringing corporate representatives and researchers together to talk about solutions to the bee crisis. Maryland, California, Massachusetts, and other states were considering restrictions on neonic products. The Obama administration had encouraged an approach that brought together a wide array of stakeholders, known as the Managed Pollinator Protection Plan, or MP3, method of resolving the issue.
State officials tapped the Keystone Policy Center — the same chemical industry-funded nonprofit in charge of CropLife America’s Honey Bee Health Coalition — to manage the process.
VanEngelsdorp, addressing the summit, presided over a PowerPoint that listed a Monsanto affiliation in small type at the bottom, according to Luke Goembel, an official with the Central Maryland Beekeepers Association.
The presentation, said Goembel, made the case that “Varroa mites, not pesticides, were the primary cause of hive losses” and included “an image of a vampire baby to represent a Varroa mite.” VanEngelsdorp, he said, made a mocking comparison, showing a graph with a chart showing the rise of pirate next to a chart showing the increasing loss of hives over time, an “attempt to present the concept ‘correlation does not prove causation,’” and to “ridicule the concern over increasing pesticide use.”
“I was shocked,” Goembel said, “because the journals are full of research that describes many avenues by which pesticides, especially neonicotinoids, almost certainly lead to hive losses.”
The summit included a broad range of speakers, but beekeeper activists complained the discussion was dominated by pesticide makers.
Speaker after speaker claimed that hive loss was only “due to Varroa mites, not pesticides,” according to Bonnie Raindrop, another official with the Central Maryland Beekeepers Association, who attended the event. Only a small percentage of the attendees, Raindrop said, were beekeepers, and those who did make it were separated from one another. The rest, she said, “were people who knew nothing about bees,” including lobbyists, lawn care professionals, and representatives of agribusiness.
“They had a very controlled format,” said Raindrop, “with one beekeeper at each table, the rest industry people, and we were asked to make recommendations for what the MP3 policy should look like.”
Both Raindrop and Goembel brought up the role of neonicotinoids and other systemic pesticides killing bees, but said other participants at the summit shot them down.
The Keystone Policy Center moderators kept the conversation focused largely on mites, “and said beekeepers weren’t doing their due diligence to control mites using chemicals,” she added.
Asked about the beekeeper’s criticism of the Maryland summit, the Keystone Policy Center’s spokesperson, Chavez, said in a statement that the event “involved outreach to a wide variety of stakeholders” and encouraged the public to view the final report produced from the event.
One month after the summit, legislators in Annapolis, Maryland, took up a bill to ban consumer neonics. During the House of Delegates debate over the legislation, a panel of opponents — including representatives from Republican Gov. Larry Hogan’s administration, pesticide industry representatives, and the owner of commercial nursery — repeatedly cited the survey taken by the Keystone Policy Center at the summit as evidence that researchers did not think pesticides were a problem.
Several cited vanEngelsdorp by name, claiming the University of Maryland professor had provided research showing that neonicotinoids did not pose a threat to Maryland hives.
At the hearing, state delegate Clarence Lam, a Democrat, noted that hundreds of peer-reviewed scientific articles identified neonicotinoids as a prime driver of bee decline and scoffed at the industry attempt to use the MP3 summit as a counterexample.
“Presenting data like this is pretty specious,” Lam said. “It’s marginally better than presenting data from a Facebook poll and saying this is what the data shows and this is what the science shows.”
In the end, the industry blitz failed, and, later in 2016, Maryland passed the Pollinator Protection Act. A similar measure passed that year in Connecticut to limit the use of neonics on flowering plants, and last year, Vermont enacted restrictions on consumer use of neonics.
Regulators in Oregon, after outcry following an incident in which 50,000 bees suddenly died in a Target parking lot as the result of the spraying of a neonic-based pesticide, have moved to prevent the use of neonics on linden trees. But in most of the country, there are largely no limitations on the chemical. California regulators also announced an effort to freeze new applications by pesticide companies that would expand the use of neonics.
Gary Ruskin, the co-director of U.S. Right to Know, a watchdog group following pesticide industry influence, which shared some of the emails obtained via records requests between industry and academics with The Intercept, said, “vanEnglesdorp’s close ties to the pesticide industry raise serious questions about the worth and reliability of his research.”
“As companies are increasingly threatened by scientific findings, they search for ways to blunt any independent science that may detract from profits,” Ruskin said. “One great way to do this is to co-opt scientists from public universities, who typically enjoy the public’s trust.”
In one of the emails revealed by Ruskin’s group, vanEngelsdorp wrote to Fischer, the manager of Bayer’s Bee Care Center, apparently irritated that Bayer had published confidential research from his lab, and claiming the data had been misused and posted without his permission.
“Tech team data is confidential so it should not be published — especially by a chemical company!” vanEngelsdorp wrote.
In a response, Fischer removed the line from Bayer’s blog. He also reminded the University of Maryland academic that Bayer had invested significant financial resources into the relationship and made it a priority for the company.
“We value our work with you and other researchers and stakeholders who have committed themselves to addressing this significant problem,” Fischer wrote.
“As you are aware, perception is everything,” vanEngelsdorp responded.
Nick Surgey contributed research.
RELATED
Angela Ramirez looks out the window of her home in Waukegan, Ill. on Jan. 2, 2020. Ramirez, who was diagnosed with breast cancer, lives less than six miles away from two factories that emit ethylene oxide, a gas known to cause cancer. Pat Nabong for The Intercept.Trump’s Gutting of Toxics Regulations Will Mean Higher Profits for Polluters and Higher Cancer Rates for the American PeopleEmails Show Monsanto Orchestrated GOP Effort to Intimidate Cancer ResearchersU.S. Lobbyists Prepare to Seize “Historic Opportunity” in Tory-Led Brexit to Shred Consumer Safeguards, Raise Drug PricesToxic PFAS Chemicals Found in Artificial Turf
CONTACT THE AUTHOR:
Lee Fang
lee.fang@?theintercept.com
@lhfang
https://theintercept.com/2020/01/18/bees-insecticides-pesticides-neonicotinoids-bayer-monsanto-syngenta/
==
new
https://freebeacon.com/culture/high-times-at-the-intercept/
2 pix
Free Beacon Staff - FEBRUARY 4, 2015 5:46 PM
Landing a job in journalism can be a drag, but former Steny Hoyer supporter Lee Fang has landed a heady new gig working with an accomplice of American fugitive Edward Snowden.
Once a budding young talent, Fang’s credibility has taken a hit in recent years due to his unfortunate habit of writing stories that his editors are forced to retract. However, The Intercept,a journalism startup known for its blunt approach to tackling the issues, decided not to pass on the opportunity to hire Fang, who is joining the outlet as an investigative reporter.
Intercept editor-in-chief Betsy Reed announced the hire in a post laced with high praise for the former Think Progress blogger. Intercept co-founding editor Glenn Greenwald also puffed Fang up on Twitter:
Welcome to The Intercept: @lhfang! Great investigative reporter for following $: K Str & Homeland Security Complex https://t.co/aqTnjzK4Zm
— Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald) February 4, 2015
Greenwald has previously taken Fang to task for promoting "repellant" ideas.
https://theintercept.com/2020/01/18/bees-insecticides-pesticides-neonicotinoids-bayer-monsanto-syngenta
no lnx many
Lee Fang
January 18 2020, 6:00 a.m.
IIN SEPTEMBER 2009, over 3,000 bee enthusiasts from around the world descended on the city of Montpellier in southern France for Apimondia — a festive beekeeper conference filled with scientific lectures, hobbyist demonstrations, and commercial beekeepers hawking honey. But that year, a cloud loomed over the event: bee colonies across the globe were collapsing, and billions of bees were dying.
Bee declines have been observed throughout recorded history, but the sudden, persistent and abnormally high annual hive losses had gotten so bad that the U.S. Department of Agriculture had commissioned two of the world’s most well-known entomologists — Dennis vanEngelsdorp, a chief apiary inspector in Pennsylvania, then studying at Penn State University, and Jeffrey Pettis, then working as a government scientist — to study the mysterious decline. They posited that there must be an underlying factor weakening bees’ immune systems.
At Le Corum, a conference center and opera house, the pair discussed their findings. They had fed bees with extremely small amounts of neonicotinoids, or neonics, the most commonly used class of insecticides in the world. Neonics are, of course, meant to kill insects, but they are marketed as safe for insects that aren’t being directly targeted. VanEngelsdorp and Pettis found that even at nonlethal doses, the bees in the trial became much more vulnerable to fungal infection. Bees carrying an infection will often fly off to die, a virtuous form of suicide designed to protect the larger hive from contagion.
“We exposed whole colonies to very low levels of neonicotinoids in this case, and then challenged bees from those colonies with Nosema, a pathogen, a gut pathogen,” said Pettis, speaking to filmmaker Mark Daniels in his documentary, “The Strange Disappearance of the Bees,” at Apimondia. “And we saw an increase, even if we fed the pesticide at very low levels — an increase in Nosema levels — in direct response to the low-level feeding of neonicotinoids.”
The dosages of the pesticide were so miniscule, said vanEngelsdorp, that it was “below the limit of detection.” The only reason they knew the bees had consumed the neonicotinoids, he added, was “because we exposed them.”
Bee health depends on a variety of synergistic factors, the scientists were careful to note. But in this study, Pettis said, they were able to isolate “one pesticide and one pathogen and we clearly see the interaction.”
The evidence was mounting. Shortly after vanEngelsdorp and Pettis revealed their findings, a number of French researchers produced a nearly identical study, feeding minute amounts of the same pesticide to bees, along with a control group. The study produced results that echoed what the Americans had found.
Drifting clouds of neonicotinoid dust from planting operations caused a series of massive bee die-offs in northern Italy and the Baden-Württemberg region of Germany. Studies have shown neonicotinoids impaired bees’ ability to navigate and forage for food, weakened bee colonies, and made them prone to infestation by parasitic mites.
In 2013, the European Union called for a temporary suspension of the most commonly used neonicotinoid-based products on flowering plants, citing the danger posed to bees — an effort that resulted in a permanent ban in 2018.
In the U.S., however, industry dug in, seeking not only to discredit the research but to cast pesticide companies as a solution to the problem. Lobbying documents and emails, many of which were obtained through open records requests, show a sophisticated effort over the last decade by the pesticide industry to obstruct any effort to restrict the use of neonicotinoids. Bayer and Syngenta, the largest manufacturers of neonics, and Monsanto, one of the leading producers of seeds pretreated with neonics, cultivated ties with prominent academics, including vanEngelsdorp, and other scientists who had once called for a greater focus on the threat posed by pesticides.
Automobiles pass Syngenta AG's headquarters at dawn in Basel, Switzerland, on Feb. 4, 2015. Syngenta, the world's largest maker of crop protection chemicals, forecast stable earnings this year as the benefits of a cost-cutting program offset unfavorable currency shifts. Photographer: Philipp Schmidli/Bloomberg via Getty ImagesSyngenta AG’s headquarters in Basel, Switzerland, on Feb. 4, 2015. Photo: Philipp Schmidli/Bloomberg via Getty Images
The companies also sought influence with beekeepers and regulators, and went to great lengths to shape public opinion. Pesticide firms launched new coalitions and seeded foundations with cash to focus on nonpesticide factors in pollinator decline.
“Position the industry as an active promoter of bee health, and advance best management practices which emphasize bee safety,” noted an internal planning memo from CropLife America, the lobby group for the largest pesticide companies in America, including Bayer and Syngenta. The ultimate goal of the bee health project, the document noted, was to ensure that member companies maintained market access for neonic products and other systemic pesticides.
CLA Pollinator Issue Management Plan
10 pages
The planning memo, helmed in part by Syngenta regulatory official John Abbott, charts a variety of strategies for advancing the pesticide industry’s interests, such as, “Challenge EPA on the size and breadth of the pollinator testing program.” CropLife America officials were also tapped to “proactively shape the conversation in the new media realm with respect to pollinators” and “minimize negative association of crop protection products with effects on pollinators.” The document, dated June 2014, calls for “outreach to university researchers who could be independent validators.”
The pesticide companies have used a variety of strategies to shift the public discourse.
“America’s Heartland,” a PBS series shown on affiliates throughout the country and underwritten by CropLife America, portrayed the pollinator declines as a mystery. One segment from early 2013 on the crisis made no mention of pesticides, with the host simply declaring that “experts aren’t sure why” bees and butterflies were disappearing.
Another segment, released in January 2015, quickly mentions pesticides as one of many possible factors for honeybee deaths. A representative of the “North American Bee Care Program,” Becky Langer, appeared on the program to discuss the “exotic pests that can affect the bees.” The program does not mention Langer’s position as a spokesperson for Bayer focused on managing fallout from the bee controversy.
Michael Sanford, a spokesperson for PBS KVIE, which produces “America’s Heartland,” wrote in an email to The Intercept that “consistent with strict PBS editorial standards and our own,” sponsors of the show provided no editorial input.
Bayer’s advocacy, designed to position the firm as a leader in protecting bee health, included a roadshow around the country, in which Bayer officials handed out oversized ceremonial checks to local beekeepers and students. The firm hosts splashy websites touting its leadership in promoting bee health and sponsors a number of beekeeping associations.
Meanwhile, Bayer has financed a series of online advertisements that depict individuals who fear that its pesticide products harm nontarget insects as deranged conspiracy theorists.
Honeybees have captured almost all the attention for the dangers of neonics, but they are hardly the only species in decline because of the chemical.
Other forms of influence have been far more covert.
Communications staff with CropLife America compiled a list of terms to shape on search engine results, including “neonicotinoid,” “pollinators,” and “neonics.” One of the consulting firms tapped to coordinate the industry’s outreach, Paradigm Communications, a subsidiary of the public relations giant Porter Novelli, helped lead the effort to shift how pesticide products were portrayed in search engine results.
A slide prepared by Paradigm Communications showcases its push to decouple Google search results for bee decline with neonic pesticides.
The greatest public relations coup has been the push to reframe the debate around bee decline to focus only on the threat of Varroa mites, a parasite native to Asia that began spreading to the U.S. in the 1980s. The mite is known to rapidly infest bee hives and carry a range of infectious diseases.
CropLife America, among other groups backed by pesticide companies, has financed research and advocacy around the mite — an effort designed to muddy the conversation around pesticide use. Meanwhile, research suggests the issues are interrelated; neonics make bees far more susceptible to mite infestations and attendant diseases.
Bayer even constructed a sculpture of the Varroa mite at its “Bee Care Center” in North Carolina and at its research center in Germany, hyping its role as the primary force fueling the decline of pollinators.
FILE -- A model of honeybee with a varroa mite on its back at Bayer's Bee Care Center in Monheim am Rhein, Germany, Nov. 19, 2013. Scientists and biotechnology companies are developing a way to kill insects, like the mite, which is believed to be partly responsible for the mass die-offs of honeybees, by disabling their genes. (Joanna Nottebrock/The New York Times) -- EDITORIAL USE ONLYA model of honeybee with a Varroa mite on its back at Bayer’s Bee Care Center in Monheim am Rhein, Germany, on Nov. 19, 2013. Photo: Joanna Nottebrock/The New York Times via Redux
The stunningly successful campaign has kept most neonic products in wide circulation in commercial agriculture as well as in home gardens. The result is a world awash in neonics — and massive profits for companies such as Syngenta and Bayer, which now counts Monsanto as a subsidiary.
Millions of pounds of the chemical are applied to 140 commercial crops every year. In the U.S., nearly all field-planted corn and two-thirds of soybean use neonic-coated seeds. The chemical is found in soil samples from coast to coast, in waterways and in drinking water. Neonics, which are water soluble, have been detected in the American River in California, the River Waveney in England, tap water in Iowa City, and hundreds of other streams and rivers across the world. In Brazil last year, after President Jair Bolsonaro’s government approved dozens of new pesticides, the use of neonics caused the death of more than 500 million bees across the country.
In August, a study publishing in peer-reviewed journal PLOS One found that the American landscape has become 48 times more toxic to insects since the 1990s, a shift largely fueled by the rising application of neonics.
Honeybees have captured almost all the attention for the dangers of neonics, but they are hardly the only species in decline because of the chemical. Studies have tied neonics to the disappearance of native bees, butterflies, mayflies, dragonflies, amphipods, and a range of waterborne insects, as well as earthworms and other insect invertebrates. Several species of bumblebees in the U.S. and Europe are approaching extinction, a die-off researchers say is tied to the use of neonics and other pesticides.
In September, a study released in the academic journal Science revealed that migrating songbirds suffered immediate weight loss following the consumption of only one or two seeds treated with neonics. Previous research had linked disappearing insect life to dwindling food sources for birds in the Netherlands, but the Science study provided the evidence that bird species were directly affected by the chemical.
Another groundbreaking study published in Nature’s Scientific Reports showed that neonics are likely causing serious birth defects in white-tailed deer, the first time research has shown that the chemical compound could endanger large mammals.
“Bees are the canary in the cornfield,” said Lisa Archer, from Friends of the Earth. “The science linking pesticides to the extinction crisis has grown.”
Scientists are only now taking a closer look at the potential impact of neonics on humans and other mammals.
“Bees are the canary in the cornfield,” said Lisa Archer, the food and agriculture program director at Friends of the Earth. “The science linking pesticides to the extinction crisis has grown.”
Dave Goulson, a professor of biology at the University of Sussex, told The Intercept, “I think perhaps we are reaching a tipping point where people finally begin to appreciate the importance of insects, the scale of their decline, and that blitzing the landscape with pesticides is not sustainable or desirable.”
Bayer and Syngenta reject any claim that their neonic products are harming the environment.
“Neonicotinoid products are critically important tools for farmers, and are approved for use in more than 100 countries due to their strong safety profile when used according to label,” said Susan Luke, a spokesperson for Bayer Crop Science North America, in a statement to The Intercept. “This is why Bayer continues to strongly support their continued safe use, even though the manufacture of neonic products is not a major part of our business.”
“Research claims that have been made questioning neonic safety all share common flaws, such as exposure levels that far exceed real-world scenarios, and the flawed idea that exposure to substances in the environment necessarily means harm,” adds Luke. “It does not, otherwise no one would go swimming in chlorine or drink caffeinated coffee.”
“Since neonicotinoids were introduced in the 1990s, honey bee colonies have been increasing in the United States, Europe, Canada and indeed around the world,” Chris Tutino, a spokesperson for Syngenta, claimed in a statement to The Intercept. He added that “most scientists and bee experts agree that bee health is affected by multiple factors, including parasites, diseases, habitat and nutrition, weather and hive management practices.”
Tutino, in his email, noted that the neonic compound thiamethoxam, used in popular Syngenta products such as Cruiser and Dividend, had undergone “extensive tests evaluating effects on pollinators,” and provided links to five studies, all of which were produced by Syngenta consultants or employees.
Neither company responded directly to questions about the role of neonic products in fueling declines of butterflies, dragonflies, and other insect species beyond bee populations. Both companies highlighted company funding for honeybee health research.
The chemical industry’s comments were disputed by Willa Childress, an organizer with Pesticide Action Network North America.
While it’s true, Childress noted, that managed honeybee hive populations are growing, that is because of the commercial value of honeybees in pollinating a vast array of American agriculture. Beekeepers on average now lose around 40-50 percent of hives every year, well up from historical averages of 10 percent. Many commercial beekeepers are forced to constantly divide hives and buy queens to maintain hive populations, with many relying on government subsidies to scrape by.
“So no, honeybees aren’t doing ‘better than ever,’” said Childress. “And the scientists do agree that multiple interacting factors are driving pollinator decline, including, as chemical companies neglect to mention, pesticide use.”
“Honeybees will not go extinct in our lifetimes,” noted Childress. But, she added, “data on native bees and wild pollinators is far more ‘apocalyptic’ than even the most concerning reports on honey bee losses. Unprecedented numbers of wild pollinators are facing extinction — and we have very limited data on a number of other pollinators that are at risk.”
NOT LONG AGO, action in the U.S. to restrict neonics seemed imminent.
The pressure began to build in 2010 after Tom Theobald, a beekeeper in Boulder, Colorado, obtained an internal Environmental Protection Agency report showing that the agency’s own scientists had sharply criticized the research used to permit the sale of one of the most popular lines of neonic products.
In 2003, Bayer had secured the temporary right to use clothianidin, a neonic used widely for corn and canola, from the EPA — under the condition that the company conduct a “chronic life cycle study” showing how use of the neonic would affect honeybees by the end of the following year.
The Bayer-funded study, led by Cynthia Scott-Dupree, an environmental sciences professor at the University of Guelph in Ontario, placed hives in clothianidin-treated fields of canola and hives in untreated fields of canola. The tests found little variation between the two sets of hives, but researchers later pointed out that the hives in the study were placed only 968 feet apart from one another. Honeybees forage for pollen up to six miles from their hives.
Scott-Dupree was later appointed the “Bayer CropScience Chair in Sustainable Pest Management” at the University of Guelph. Regulators in Canada and at the EPA used the study to clear clothianidin for unconditional use. Internally, however, EPA scientists expressed concerns.
The memo, written by two EPA scientists, noted that the previous Bayer-funded study failed baseline guidelines for pesticide research and warned that clothianidin posed a “major risk concern” to “nontarget insects (that is, honey bees).”
A dizzying array of research began pointing to problems with neonics. Despite claims that the compound represents a form of precision agriculture, a growing body of research shows that the chemical strays far from targeted crops, often traveling with the wind during planting operations, remaining in the soil for long periods of time, leaching into waterways, and causing acute problems for a wide variety of insect and animal life.
In 2014, Rep. Earl Blumenauer, a Democrat from Oregon, introduced legislation to compel the EPA to take steps to suspend the pesticides. That year, in response to growing controversies around bee decline and the demands for greater accountability over loosely regulated pesticide use, President Barack Obama issued an executive memorandum calling attention to the “significant loss of pollinators, including honey bees, native bees, birds, bats, and butterflies.”
Activists picketed the White House demanding action. Beekeepers and environmentalist groups filed lawsuits challenging the registration status of major neonic products, claiming that EPA had violated its own protocols when licensing products from Bayer and Syngenta. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service announced a decision to phase out neonics in wildlife refuge areas in the Pacific region.
Around the country, legislators in states across the country proposed bills to restrict neonics. In Minnesota, a bill was signed into law to prevent nurseries from marketing plants as pollinator-friendly if they had been treated with neonics.
For a while, the movement seemed to be gaining traction, which some hoped would lead the U.S. to mirror the EU in moving to regulate the widely used insecticide.
In the end, little changed. The settlements related to the lawsuits removed small-market neonics. The private-public partnerships that grew out of the Obama memorandum lacked any enforcement mechanism to restrict neonic use in agriculture. President Donald Trump rescinded the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service rule. Minnesota legislators quickly repealed the labeling requirement a year after it was passed.
After a hearing in which he pointed to pesticides, Jeffrey Pettis told the Washington Post that he was criticized him for failing to follow “the script.”
In almost every other state, with the exception of Vermont, Connecticut, and Maryland, lobbyists from the pesticide and agribusiness industry successfully killed any significant restriction on neonic products. The scientific community, once focused on studying the impact of pesticides, became splintered, with many of the leading voices going to work for industry or industry-backed nonprofits.
Critics of neonics were quickly sidelined. In April 2014, the House Agriculture Subcommittee on Horticulture, Research, Biotechnology, and Foreign Agriculture — then chaired by Rep. Austin Scott, a Georgia Republican — convened a hearing to discuss the pollinator crisis. The event featured David Fischer, a Bayer official, and Jeff Stone, lobbyist for commercial nurseries. Both men used the hearing to warn against any restrictions on neonics in response to bee decline. The third, Dan Cummings, a representative of the Almond Board, a trade group for almond growers, focused on the threat of the Varroa mite.
A fourth witness, the Department of Agriculture researcher Jeffrey Pettis — the scientist who had collaborated with vanEngelsdorp — noted that unlike traditional pesticides, neonics are found in pollen, increasing exposure to bees. Under questioning from Scott, the committee chair, Pettis reiterated that even without mites, bees would still be in decline, and pesticides raise concern “to a new level.”
After the hearing, Pettis told the Washington Post that he spoke privately with Scott, who criticized him for failing to follow “the script.”
CropLife America, notably, celebrated the hearing performance for its heavy focus on nonpesticide-related factors for bee decline. “One thing that we hope was made clear during the hearing was the crop protection industry’s commitment to addressing this issue,” Jay Vroom, then the president of CropLife America, said in a statement.
Campaign finance records show that CropLife America, just weeks after the hearing, gave $3,500 to Scott, who then sponsored legislation to solve the bee crisis through exemptions to expedite the approval of pesticides used to control the Varroa mite.
And two months after the hearing, according to the Post, Pettis was demoted, losing his role managing the USDA bee lab in Beltsville, Maryland. Pettis later left the government and now serves as president of Apimondia.
BROOKINGS,SD-JAN 11: Entomologist Jonathan Lundgren is a USDA scientist who is struggling to get out his research that may provide some answers to the dwindling honey bee population. (Photo by Michael S. Williamson/The Washington Post via Getty Images)BROOKINGS,SD-JAN 11: Entomologist Jonathan Lundgren is a USDA scientist who is struggling to get out his research that may provide some answers to the dwindling honey bee population. (Photo by Michael S. Williamson/The Washington Post via Getty Images)
Entomologist Jonathan Lundgren, who is researching answers for what might be causing the dwindling honeybee population, on Jan. 9, 2016.Photos: Michael S. Williamson/The Washington Post/Getty Images
The Post also details the story of a prominent USDA scientist, Jonathan Lundgren, who researched the dangers posed by neonics to pollinators and spoke publicly about the issue. In 2015, Lundgren suddenly faced suspensions and an internal government investigation over misconduct, a push he believes was motivated by industry for his role in speaking out on pesticides.
“I guess I started asking the wrong questions, pursuing risk assessments of neonicotinoids on a lot of different field crop seeds used throughout the U.S. and how they were affecting non-target species like pollinators,” Lundgren told The Intercept.
The USDA did not respond to The Intercept’s request for comment. It told the Post that the suspensions had nothing to do with his research. They were for “conduct unbecoming a federal employee” and “violating travel regulations.”
Lundgren now runs Blue Dasher Farm in South Dakota, a research effort to develop ways to rotate diverse sets of crops as a way to increase yields and suppress pests naturally. There are few institutions, he noted, where researchers can pursue science independent of industry influence. “Universities have become dependent on extramural funds, entire programs are bankrolled by these pesticide companies, chemical companies,” he added.
The regulatory system in the U.S. assumes chemical products are generally safe until proven hazardous.
“Generally, we see the U.S. waiting longer than the EU to take action on a variety of pesticides and other chemicals,” said Childress, the organizer with Pesticide Action Network North America. Part of the divergence, Childress continued, stems from a regulatory system in the U.S. that assumes chemical products are generally safe until proven hazardous. In contrast, the EU tends to use the “precautionary principle,” removing products that may cause harm, and requiring proof of safety before allowing them to return to market.
Another major factor, Childress noted, is the widespread corporate capture of American regulatory institutions. The EPA, for instance, employs 11 former lobbyists — including its administrator, Andrew Wheeler, who previously worked for coal interests in opposition to climate regulations — in senior positions.
The pesticide industry also maintains a long history of underhanded methods to discredit its critics.
Monsanto deployed aggressive tactics to punish critics of Roundup, the most widely used herbicide in the world and the company’s marquee product over the last several decades. Emails released through ongoing litigation in California last year showed that the firm used its lobbyists to orchestrate a campaign in Congress to criticize and defund scientists with the World Health Organization’s cancer research affiliate, after that body had declared that glyphosate, the active ingredient in Roundup, is a “probable carcinogen.” Many of the documents detailing Monsanto’s role in shaping the public discourse around glyphosate were released during the course of class-action lawsuits filed by cancer victims who blame the company for their illnesses.
Syngenta became infamous after its tactics against University of California, Berkeley Professor Tyrone Hayes were reported. Hayes’s research showed that the company’s signature herbicide, atrazine, appeared to disrupt the sexual development of frogs.
The company dispatched people to follow and record Hayes at public speaking events, commissioned a psychological profile of the professor, and worked with a variety of writers to smear Hayes as “non-credible” and a liability to academics who considered working with him. The effort to sideline Hayes and his research, which included coordination with industry-friendly academics, was revealed in a series of court documents that were disclosed over litigation involving claims that Syngenta had polluted local water sources with atrazine.
In the two lawsuits against Syngenta and Monsanto, subpoenaed documents revealed that both Syngenta and Monsanto maintain a list of “third party stakeholders,” including free market think tanks and scientists the industry could turn to for messaging support.
Many of the think tanks and individuals included in the roster now play a prominent role in the neonic debate. The American Council on Health and Science, which has relied on corporate funding from Monsanto, Bayer, and Syngenta, has published over a dozen articles disputing the dangers posed by neonics.
In one email revealed through the Monsanto-Roundup litigation, Daniel Goldstein, a Monsanto official, wrote to colleagues in all-caps to support the council’s work: “I can assure you I am not all starry eyed about ACSH- they have PLENTY of warts- but: You WILL NOT GET A BETTER VALUE FOR YOUR DOLLAR than ACSH.” The bottom of the email included hyperlinks to articles criticizing demands to regulate both glyphosate and neonic pesticides.
The Heartland Institute, one of the think tanks in Syngenta’s third-party stakeholder list, which has received Bayer donations in the past, has published articles deriding research critical of neonics as “junk science.”
“The pesticide industry is using Big Tobacco’s PR tactics to try and spin the science about their products’ links to bee declines and delay action while they keep profiting,” said Archer, whose group, Friends of the Earth, has documented the lobbying tactics of pesticide makers.
WWHEN NEONICS HIT the market three decades ago, they were the first new class of insecticide invented in nearly 50 years, and their use skyrocketed.
As early as the late 17th century, farmers found that they could grind tobacco plants and use nicotine extract to kill beetles on crops. Nicotine acts as an organic insecticide, binding to nerve receptors and causing paralysis and death in aphids, white flies, and other plant-eating insects.
Attempts to use nicotine for a mass-market pesticide, however, frustrated scientists. In early research, sunlight diluted the effectiveness of nicotine-based products. But that changed just over three decades ago, when Bayer scientists at Nihon Bayer Agrochem, the firm’s Japanese subsidiary, first synthesized neonicotinoids in the 1980s — a compound that not only withstood heat and sunlight, but could be applied to the root or seed of a plant and remain effective for that plant’s entire lifespan.
Neonics were hailed as the “Goldilocks compound” because they are “not too hard, not too soft, but just right.”
The new chemical came just in time. Farmers and regulators were seeking alternatives to another class of pesticides — organophosphates, nerve agents sprayed on crops — that had been found to cause cancer in humans. Initial studies of neonics showed that the compound was acutely toxic to insects but unlikely to cause harm to mammals.
As one scientist for Bayer described the invention in a 1993 Science magazine article hailing the introduction of the new class of chemicals, neonics were the “Goldilocks compound” because they are “not too hard, not too soft, but just right.”
And because seeds could be pretreated with neonics, which were absorbed and expressed through the tissue, nectar, and pollen, they could be also produced on an industrial scale, providing agriculture crops with an efficient insect-killing capability without the need for expensive spray treatments or constant reapplication.
In other words, farmers could soak the ground and seeds with enormous amounts of the compound to avoid problems from pests in the future. The delivery mechanism saved money for farmers but set the conditions for chronic overuse of the pesticides.
Imidacloprid-layout-3-tint-1579299443Estimated agricultural use of imidacloprid. Information compiled from the U.S. Geological Survey’s Pesticide National Synthesis Project. Map: USGS National Water-Quality Assessment, The Intercept
The first commercial neonic, imidacloprid, was registered with the EPA in 1994 and sold as a potato seed treatment. Business boomed as neonic products spread worldwide to Japan, France, Germany, and South Africa. In the U.S., it became a popular standard seed and root treatment for corn, cotton, soybeans, almonds, and a range of fruits and vegetables.
Neonics were even used for household applications. Bayer produced imidacloprid as a flea treatment on pets throughout the U.S. The Advantage line of flea control took off, with a marketing campaign featuring the Jack Russell terrier “Eddie” from the television show “Frasier” and a 30-foot inflatable flea in Times Square.
Chemical Week called the introduction of neonics a “renaissance for the U.S. insecticides industry” providing “environmentally friendly products.” The Columbus Dispatch, in an article for home gardeners about ways to deliver a “surgical strike” against pests, called for consumers to consider Bayer’s Merit soil treatment, which the paper called “virtually non-toxic.”
The swift adoption of the compound instantly made Bayer, which had previously profited largely from its pharmaceutical line of products, a worldwide player in the agrochemical industry.
“Imidacloprid is our most important product,” the head of Bayer’s pesticide division told investors in 2008.
In 2003, at a forum hosted by Goldman Sachs, Bayer listed Confidor, Premise, and Gaucho, several seed treatments based on neonic compounds, among its top-performing products in a presentation outlining the company’s performance metrics. Another investor presentation, given by Bayer executives in Lyon, France, projected rapid growth from the neonic products, estimating that the firm, which had sales of close to 400 million euros from the portfolio in 1998, would more than double to 850 million euros by 2010.
“Imidacloprid is our most important product,” Friedrich Berschauer, then-head of Bayer’s pesticide division, told investors during a conference call in 2008, according to a transcript of his remarks. Company disclosures underscore Berschauer’s remarks: During that fiscal year, the company reported 932 million euros in sales for its top two neonic compounds.
In 2009, the global neonic market brought in $2.1 billion dollars for the largest pesticide producers. Other agribusiness interests invested heavily in the market. Monsanto began offering neonic-based seed treatments through its popular Acceleron product for corn, soybeans, and cotton. Switzerland-based Syngenta rolled out two neonic seed treatments, Actara and Cruiser, quickly positioning itself as a leading insecticide firm alongside Bayer. Many of the early compounds of neonics are no longer patent-protected, allowing other businesses to compete for the market. Valent, BASF (which acquired part of Bayer’s neonic portfolio as a condition of its merger with Monsanto), and Sumitomo Chemical are also leading neonic producers.
The first restrictions on neonics in the EU, announced late in 2013, raised alarm in the industry. “The number for the full year as a consequence of the suspension is about $75 million,” noted John Mack, then-Syngenta’s chief executive officer on a call with investors the following year, referring to the decrease in revenue as a result of the decision. The executives were quick to point out, however, the full brunt of the restriction had been limited because many EU states obtained exemptions from the suspension rule.
In another call with investors, Mack declared that there “is no relationship between” the use of neonics “and the causality of bee decline,” and said he was certain regulators in the U.S. would not take the European approach.
Speaking with investors 2018, Liam Condon, a Bayer executive in charge of pesticide products, warned that the neonic ban in France alone had cost the firm 80 million euros. The wider restrictions imposed on the chemical, Condon continued, “drags our entire European results down.”
Bayer no longer breaks out individual product revenue in its investor reports. Previous financial reporting has suggested that neonics represent as much as 20 percent of its sales. The company’s annual report in 2018 showed that the company’s insecticide division produced more than 1.3 billion euros in revenue.
Werner Baumann, chair of Bayer’s board, announcing its acquisition of Monsanto in 2016, declared that the deal would create “a global leader in the agricultural industry,” delivering insecticides and seed treatments.
The global neonic market generated $4.42 billion in revenue in 2018, roughly doubling over the previous decade, according to new figures provided to The Intercept from Agranova, a research firm that tracks the industry.
Beekeepers take part in a demonstration at the Esplanade des Invalides in Paris on June 7, 2018, during a national day of action of French beekeepers. - The National Union of French Apiculture (Union Nationale de lApiculture Francaise - UNAF) and the French Federation of Professional Beekeepers (Federation Française des Apiculteurs Professionnels - FFAP) have called for a national day of action to ask the State and the President of the Republic to launch an exceptional support plan for French beekeepers and to restore a viable environment for bee colonies and pollinators. (Photo by FRANCOIS GUILLOT / AFP) (Photo credit should read FRANCOIS GUILLOT/AFP via Getty Images)Beekeepers take part in a demonstration at the Esplanade des Invalides in Paris on June 7, 2018, during a national day of action of French beekeepers. Photo: Francois Guillot/AFP/Getty Images
TTHE EVIDENCE ENTANGLING neonicotinoids with bee die-offs began to surface almost as soon as they hit the market.
In the early 1990s, in France, several bee hives near fields planted with neonicotinoids collapsed suddenly, and beekeepers observed mass bee die-offs in the vicinity of sunflower fields treated with Bayer’s imidacloprid-based Gaucho.
The French beekeepers mounted a sustained pressure campaign, including demonstrations of hundreds marching in Paris and outside of Bayer’s factory in Cormery, in central France.
The beekeepers observed that their bees were disoriented and unable to forage, and weakened to a point where disease and parasitic infections spread rapidly, destroying thousands of hives. Beekeepers found bees trembling and dying on the ground, a syndrome they nicknamed “mad bee disease.” They blamed neonics, but Bayer maintained that the chemicals caused no harm.
“We don’t believe the insecticide poses any risks,” Peter Brain, a regulatory affairs official with Bayer, told reporters.
In 1999, facing mounting pressure from farmers, the French government moved to temporarily ban the use of imidacloprid, though other neonicotinoids continued to be used. Annual hive loss continued.
In 2008, officials in Italy, Germany, and Slovenia observed that the sowing of fields with neonic-treated seeds correlated with nearby mass bee die-offs. In one region of Germany, beekeepers reported the loss of 11,500 bee colonies following the planting of nearby canola fields with neonic-treated seeds. Similar observations across the continent led to the temporary restriction of commonly used neonic products in all three countries that year.
The following year, a group of 70 scientists, including prominent biologists, toxicologists, entomologists, and other specialists in Europe formed the Task Force on Systemic Pesticides, an ad hoc group to study neonics and other systemic pesticides. The task force worked to conduct research independent of industry.
Over the years, more and more research appeared to confirm that neonics were not only endangering nontarget insects. In the journal Science, a study confirmed that field-realistic applications of neonics reduced bumblebee fertility by 85 percent. The United Kingdom-based advocacy group BugLife released research that compiled years of academic studies showing that neonicotinoids appeared to be damaging the populations of honeybees, native bees, and other nontarget invertebrates.
The Task Force on Systemic Pesticides brought together over a thousand peer-reviewed studies, concluding that wide-scale use of neonics, along with fipronil, another popular systemic pesticide, were causing “widespread, chronic impacts upon global biodiversity.” The group noted that neonic pesticides linger for long periods in the soil and were found to be contaminating fields and waterways far from agricultural sites. The scientists called for an urgent reduction in the use of the chemicals.
Growing backlash against neonics pushed the EU into action. In 2012, the European Food Safety Authority, the leading pesticide regulator in the EU, released a risk assessment finding that the three most widely used neonicotinoids posed acute risks to bees. The finding set into motion an effort backed by most EU states to suspend the use of neonicotinoids on outdoor flowering plants for two years.
The mounting pressure created a need for the pesticide industry to push back with its own research. In fact, one of the greatest victories for the industry was its effort to cultivate the most influential bee scientists in the U.S.
bees019034-1579302860Dennis vanEngelsdorp. Photo: David Yellen
TTHE FIRST WAVE of headlines in the U.S. about the rapid decline of bees started in 2006 as beekeepers in Pennsylvania reported drastic hive losses. Other beekeepers also reported staggering losses over the winter that year, at an average ranging around 30 percent, wiping out more than a fourth of the 2.4 million colonies in the country.
The mysterious crisis was termed “colony collapse disorder” in the media. Dennis vanEngelsdorp, then-serving as Pennsylvania acting chief apiary inspector and studying at Penn State University, found himself at the center of the story. “It’s just causing so much death so quickly that it’s startling,” he told the Philadelphia Inquirer. He started with autopsies of dead bees in Pennsylvania, but soon came into contact with beekeepers in Georgia, Florida, and California reporting similar losses.
A team of other prominent bee experts, including vanEngelsdorp, Washington State University entomologist Walter “Steve” Sheppard, and other prominent scientists worked to investigate the crisis. “This is like C.S.I. for agriculture,” said one of the academics on the project, Columbia University’s W. Ian Lipkin, in an interview with the New York Times.
VanEngelsdorp, alongside Jerry Hayes, then-Florida chief apiary inspector and president of the Apiary Inspectors of America, pioneered an effort to survey beekeepers throughout the country to track colony collapse disorder. Bees were sent to his lab and examined for cause of death. VanEngelsdorp started a foundation, the Bee Informed Partnership, to formalize the survey and continue research into possible factors for the disorder.
In interviews with national news outlets, local media, and television stations across the country, vanEngelsdorp became an overnight celebrity. In 2008, he appeared prominently in the award-winning documentary “Silence of the Bees,” depicted as leading the research effort around collapsing bee colonies, and also recorded a well-received TED Talk, “A Plea for Bees.”
In his TED Talk, vanEngelsdorp stressed that honeybee colonies could be rebuilt, given that commercial bee farmers can split a hive into two or buy queens through the mail. But the danger of collapsing bee colonies went beyond the European honeybee, which is used widely for pollinating American agriculture. Native bees were also disappearing at an alarming rate, with no commercial effort to revive them. Bats were disappearing too, he lamented, “and there’s no money to study that.”
“Imagine if every one of three cows died. The National Guard would be out,” vanEngelsdorp said in 2013.
The following year, in September 2009, vanEngelsdorp appeared alongside Pettis at Apimondia. During this period in his career, vanEngelsdorp generally suggested in media interviews that several factors were likely to blame for bee loss. The decline, he told a local paper in Missouri in 2007, could be attributed to “mites and associated diseases, some unknown pathogenic disease and pesticide contamination or poisoning.” The research he presented at Apimondia concluded that “interactions between pesticides and pathogens could be a major contributor to increased mortality of honey bee colonies.”
In the following years, vanEngelsdorp used his voice to dismiss concerns with neonics in the media. His shift in rhetoric coincided with a push by the pesticide industry, in response to rising calls for pesticide restrictions to stem bee losses, began a push to rebrand itself as bee-friendly.
In 2013, he told one reporter, “Imagine if every one of three cows died. The National Guard would be out.” He continued: “Sure, neonics may be a problem some of the time. But not all, or in my humble opinion, most of the time.”
“The jury’s still out,” he told the Raleigh News & Observer, when asked about role of the pesticide in bee decline in 2014. The Associated Press quoted vanEngelsdorp declaring, “I am not convinced that neonics are a major driver of colony loss” in 2016. “In many cases, [neonicotinoids] are actually the safest alternative,” he was quoted as saying in another article, expressing skepticism over the push to ban the compound.
When asked about his seeming shift, vanEngelsdorp said in an email that his work focused on honeybees, but he is concerned with the threat posed to other pollinators and insect life. In Maryland, he wrote, high levels of mite infestations “would explain lots of [honey bee] mortality.”
“I should stress that I am speaking about honey bees, not native bees, and the effects of neonics on non-target non-honey bees (Honey bees have a reserve work force that can be lost without consequence as they are social organisms and other non-honey bee bees don’t) is much more pronounced and concerning,” vanEngelsdorp wrote.
Around that time, vanEngelsdorp joined Monsanto’s Honey Bee Advisory Council, a company-backed effort, and appeared at the company’s Honey Bee Health Summit in 2013 as a spokesperson. That same year, Project Apis m., a foundation heavily funded by Bayer, donated to vanEngelsdorp’s nonprofit, the Bee Informed Project, and has since provided at least $700,000 to the lab, according to public tax filings.
In an email, vanEngelsdorp said that although that he has received one grant funding stream from Bayer, that award came in last year and “it would be hard to argue it influenced past work.” The funding from Project Apis m. to vanEngelsdorp’s Bee Informed Project, he added, came from Costco, not the agricultural industry. Other corporate interests, including the Almond Board of California and the General Mills Foundation, have also directly funded the Bee Informed Project.
VanEngelsdorp said that his lab has never received direct funding from pesticide companies.
Bayer, as part of its Healthy Hives 2020 initiative, has dedicated at least $1.3 million to the project in collaboration with Project Apis m., which counts Bayer as one of its largest donors, though the company does not break down individual donor amounts.
The University of Maryland professor also explained that he felt conflicted about joining Monsanto’s advisory board, a position that ended in 2019.
“The purpose of this board is to help guide the development of new tools to help control Varroa, which I think, and the data suggest – are the biggest drivers of loss,” wrote vanEngelsdorp. “So it was a big struggle when I was asked to join the advisory board (which included several beekeepers), because – who wants to have an association with Big Ag?”
“Do I feel conflicted? – all the time,” vanEngelsdorp told The Intercept. ”But do I think my involvement with encouraging the development of a desperately needed new mite control skews my view of drivers of honey [bee] health. No. I think the data is clear.”
He added, “The world is a complicated place. Full of gray. I just have to believe the science will show truth, and hope we can get there by keeping things cordial, and respectful of the idea that people taking different paths towards the same end (save the bees) is not bad.”
“I’m an environmentalist – so have been and continue to be very concerned and vocal about protecting the earth and its biome,” he wrote. “I am certain that in all interviews on this topic I clearly say – the widespread use of neonic coated seeds is a short sighted, wasteful and environmentally unsustainable way of using this product. I strongly advocate for wise use. Use it when you know you need it and not unless you know you do.’ But that quote never gets picked up. But it’s what I think and have thought for a long time.”
Danielle Downey, the executive of Project Apis m., said the group is “transparent about where donated funds come from and what we use them for, keeping in mind donor privacy,” in a statement to The Intercept. “Project Apis m. does keep abreast of the science regarding bee health, which allows us to support industry-relevant projects.”
Downey did not take a position on regulating neonics, and noted that “regarding bans and regulations of pesticides, countries which apply different precautionary and risk assessment paradigms, may reach different outcomes.”
In 2013, vanEngelsdorp also edited a controversial paper authored by a group of consultants that claimed that thiamethoxam, a neonic produced by Syngenta, posed “a low risk to honey bees” when applied to oilseed rape and maize. In a section of its website titled “Bee Decline,” Syngenta cites the study to claim that “there is no direct correlation between neonicotinoid use and poor bee health.”
The paper, which was cited by Syngenta to apply for an exemption in the United Kingdom to the EU’s newly imposed moratorium on neonic products, was later widely panned. In a scathing article for Environmental Sciences Europe, a group of entomologists claimed that the vanEngelsdorp-edited study was not based on “truthful data and methodologies,” arguing that it used seed treatment at lower-than-recommended rates and that the experiment was poorly designed.
“Do I feel conflicted? – all the time,” vanEngelsdorp said. “The world is a complicated place. Full of gray. I just have to believe the science will show truth.
Another group of scientists at the University of St. Andrews in Scotland also eviscerated the vanEngelsdorp-edited paper, noting that it used no formal statistical analysis and came to its conclusion by vaguely inspecting the data. They mocked the method as simply reflecting “the prior beliefs of those involved.” The House of Commons Library, in a briefing paper on neonics, noted that the thiamethoxam study faced criticism for lacking rigor, and that all five of authors of the study “were current or former employees of Syngenta or had been paid by Syngenta for their work.”
VanEngelsdorp also lent his name to a splashy advocacy effort on behalf of the pesticide industry. CropLife America, Bayer, and Syngenta launched the Honey Bee Health Coalition, a new group focused on research into the Varroa mite and other nonpesticide-related causes of bee decline. The group was officially coordinated by the Keystone Policy Center, a supposedly independent third party, in conjunction with beekeeper associations and environmentalists. Records show, however, that the Keystone Policy Center is largely funded by major corporations, including Bayer and Syngenta. And internal documents from the Honey Bee Health Coalition show that its communications to beekeepers were reviewed by its bloc of growers and pesticide company members, including DuPont, CropLife America, Syngenta, and the Agricultural Retailers Association. Farmers and beekeepers paid as little as $500 to join the organization while corporate members paid as high as $100,000 in dues.
Marques Chavez, a spokesperson for the Keystone Policy Center, which organizes the Honey Bee Health Coalition, noted in a statement to The Intercept that the group “supports honey bee health and tackles complex problems in agriculture and beyond by bringing diverse perspectives together.” The statement did not address the proportion of pesticide industry influence, but said that the group maintains a public charter that “outlines the structure and decision-making process utilized by the coalition to identify, refine, and finalize the idea and deliverables that reflect the diverse input and collaborative effort of our members.”
Jerry Hayes, the former Florida apiary inspector, joined Monsanto and became the company’s representative at beekeeper conferences around the country and helped pitch Monsanto’s research into genetic solutions for bees to skeptical beekeepers. Hayes also helped with the launch of the Honey Bee Health Coalition. He recruited vanEngelsdorp to serve as one of the first scientists on the coalition’s steering committee.
They weren’t only ones. The industry also recruited bee industry voices to be the face of the new rebranding. Richard Rogers, an academic consultant and former adjunct professor at Acadia University in Nova Scotia, produced Bayer-backed research in Canada in the early 2000s discounting the dangers posed to bees by neonics applied to potato plants on Prince Edward Island. Rogers was brought on to help lead the Bayer Bee Care initiative when the center was opened in 2012. Dr. Helen Thompson, a leading official environmental official in the United Kingdom who had opposed the E.U.’s directive to suspend the use of neonics, joined Syngenta.
Washington State University entomologist Sheppard was also among the other prominent bee scientists to accept the pesticide industry’s outreach. The same year of the launch of the Honey Bee Health Coalition, Sheppard joined Bayer for a roadshow the company sponsored called the Bee Care Tour. He later joined the company steering committee for its “Healthy Hives 2020” initiative.
Emails obtained by The Intercept show a friendly relationship between the pesticide firms and the recruited academics.
In one exchange, with David Fischer, the manager of Bayer’s Bee Care Center, vanEngelsdorp was asked how to respond to reporters on how to calculate annual hive loss. The Maryland academic suggested a method that diminishes any winter losses of hives by factoring in new hives that have been split off from strong hives, though he noted that such a method “‘lowers’ the loss rate” and has been rejected by European beekeepers.
WSU-emailDaniel Schmehl, an official with Bayer, asked bee scientist Walter “Steve” Sheppard to provide quotes explaining why “the partnership with Bayer Bee Care Center is important for your bee research.” Screenshot: The Intercept
Daniel Schmehl, an official with Bayer, asked Sheppard to provide quotes explaining why “the partnership with Bayer Bee Care Center is important for your bee research,” as well as other blurbs the company could use. Sheppard appears regularly on Bayer press releases and publications as part of the company’s commitment to bee health.
In another exchange, Rogers, the former adjunct Acadia University professor and now official with Bayer’s Bee Care Center, wrote in 2015 to Sheppard and Jamie Ellis, an associate professor at the University of Florida, to publish a “paper on the definition of a healthy honey bee colony.” Rogers noted that he had worked on a draft but suggested that, “for the best optics, maybe you or Steve, or someone other than a Bayer staff member should be the lead author.” Ellis agreed and wrote back that he “understood your concern about Bayer staff taking the lead.”
VanEngelsdorp’s shift away from concern about the role of neonics is captured in another documentary about the plight of the bees.
In 2015, the website FiveThirtyEight produced a mini-documentary series, including a feature on the “Fight to Save the Mighty Honeybee.” The film, which was accepted into the Sundance Film Festival, traces vanEngelsdorp in his lab and in the field, exclusively discussing the Varroa mite. Unlike his previous appearance in documentaries about bee decline, the video made no mention of neonics or any other pesticide stress to bee health.
Bayer was thrilled with the documentary. Sarah Myers, an event manager with the chemical company, asked vanEngelsdorp for permission to feature the video on the company’s website. VanEngelsdorp politely let the company know that he did not own the copyright and referred Myers to the producers at FiveThirtyEight’s parent company. Bayer’s Bee Care Center showcased the film.
In an exchange with Paul Hoekstra, a regulatory official with Syngenta, vanEngelsdorp was thanked for agreeing to speak to John Brown, a Canadian attorney helping fight a contentious lawsuit over the registration of neonics.
“I think they were using this group as a PR advantage, but by the same token we have no money in the beekeeping industry,” Hayes said.
The relationship has continued. Earlier this month, the American Beekeeping Federation hosted its 2020 convention. The largest sponsor of the event was Bayer, which showcased a series of talks at the conference to tout the company’s commitment to bee health. Sheppard was featured in a Bayer promotional video screened at the event. Among the presentations was an address by vanEngelsdorp about mites.
“My association with Bayer has had no influence on my research focus nor my research,” said Sheppard, in a statement to The Intercept that detailed his work helping Project Apis m. identify research proposals for honeybee health using over $1 million in funding from Bayer.
“I cannot speak for Bayer – but the projects funded with their money and administered through Project Apis m. appear to be completely unrelated to any effort to ‘prevent the restriction’ of the use of neonicotinoids,” wrote Sheppard. “I am not naïve enough to think such a major company does not have their own agenda for the promotion or support of their insect control products. However, and emphatically, in the case of the funds distributed by Project Apis m., no such connection was apparent to either Project Apis m. or myself.”
Jerry Hayes retired two years ago from Monsanto after the project he was hired to promote “just didn’t work out.” He now works as an editor at Bee Culture magazine.
In an interview, Hayes said that he was proud of the work the Honey Bee Health Coalition achieved, including the development of guides for beekeepers to manage Varroa infestations. And he views the effort to bring various stakeholders together in one coalition as a unique accomplishment. But he said that pesticide corporations were largely in the drivers’ seat.
“I think they were using this group as a PR advantage, but by the same token we have no money in the beekeeping industry,” said Hayes.
“These guys were funding the organization, they were funding meetings, all of us knew there were perhaps ulterior motives,” he noted. “Without those resources, we wouldn’t be down the road a little bit to making honeybees a little less endangered.”
Hayes said he had followed the controversies around neonics and was concerned about the growing number of studies showing the threat to nontarget insects. Though he’s concerned that restricting the chemical could reintroduce older pesticides with a greater risk to mammals, he added that the drive for profits have fueled the overuse of neonics.
“It all comes down to money. Bayer is taking care of stockholders,” said Hayes.
Hayes said he doesn’t believe vanEngelsdorp’s views on pesticides have been shaped by his ties to industry.
“He’s a good scientist,” said Hayes. “Science changes over time. I think that science progresses and data shows different things at times, but I don’t think Dennis is influenced by money from these other people.”
“But,” Hayes added, when “chemical companies want to support Dennis because if he can come up with solutions to honey bee health, it takes pressure off of them, doesn’t it?”
HOMESTEAD, FL - MAY 19: John Gentzel, the owner of J & P Apiary and Gentzel's Bees, Honey and Pollination Company, works with his honeybees on May 19, 2015 in Homestead, Florida. U.S. President Barack Obama's administration announced May 19, that the government would provide money for more bee habitat as well as research into ways to protect bees from disease and pesticides to reduce the honeybee colony losses that have reached alarming rates. (Photo by Joe Raedle/Getty Images)The owner of J&P Apiary and Gentzel’s Bees, Honey and Pollination Company, works with his honeybees on May 19, 2015, in Homestead, Florida. Photo: Joe Raedle/Getty Images
DDESPITE A SOPHISTICATED lobbying campaign to defeat neonic restrictions, Maryland was one of the few states to pass a law banning neonic-based products in consumer products. Industry threw its weight against even this minor bill, which exempts neonics in landscaping and agriculture.
And vanEngelsdorp played a prominent role in nearly defeating the legislation.
In January 2016, the University of Maryland, College Park campus held a summit bringing corporate representatives and researchers together to talk about solutions to the bee crisis. Maryland, California, Massachusetts, and other states were considering restrictions on neonic products. The Obama administration had encouraged an approach that brought together a wide array of stakeholders, known as the Managed Pollinator Protection Plan, or MP3, method of resolving the issue.
State officials tapped the Keystone Policy Center — the same chemical industry-funded nonprofit in charge of CropLife America’s Honey Bee Health Coalition — to manage the process.
VanEngelsdorp, addressing the summit, presided over a PowerPoint that listed a Monsanto affiliation in small type at the bottom, according to Luke Goembel, an official with the Central Maryland Beekeepers Association.
The presentation, said Goembel, made the case that “Varroa mites, not pesticides, were the primary cause of hive losses” and included “an image of a vampire baby to represent a Varroa mite.” VanEngelsdorp, he said, made a mocking comparison, showing a graph with a chart showing the rise of pirate next to a chart showing the increasing loss of hives over time, an “attempt to present the concept ‘correlation does not prove causation,’” and to “ridicule the concern over increasing pesticide use.”
“I was shocked,” Goembel said, “because the journals are full of research that describes many avenues by which pesticides, especially neonicotinoids, almost certainly lead to hive losses.”
The summit included a broad range of speakers, but beekeeper activists complained the discussion was dominated by pesticide makers.
Speaker after speaker claimed that hive loss was only “due to Varroa mites, not pesticides,” according to Bonnie Raindrop, another official with the Central Maryland Beekeepers Association, who attended the event. Only a small percentage of the attendees, Raindrop said, were beekeepers, and those who did make it were separated from one another. The rest, she said, “were people who knew nothing about bees,” including lobbyists, lawn care professionals, and representatives of agribusiness.
“They had a very controlled format,” said Raindrop, “with one beekeeper at each table, the rest industry people, and we were asked to make recommendations for what the MP3 policy should look like.”
Both Raindrop and Goembel brought up the role of neonicotinoids and other systemic pesticides killing bees, but said other participants at the summit shot them down.
The Keystone Policy Center moderators kept the conversation focused largely on mites, “and said beekeepers weren’t doing their due diligence to control mites using chemicals,” she added.
Asked about the beekeeper’s criticism of the Maryland summit, the Keystone Policy Center’s spokesperson, Chavez, said in a statement that the event “involved outreach to a wide variety of stakeholders” and encouraged the public to view the final report produced from the event.
One month after the summit, legislators in Annapolis, Maryland, took up a bill to ban consumer neonics. During the House of Delegates debate over the legislation, a panel of opponents — including representatives from Republican Gov. Larry Hogan’s administration, pesticide industry representatives, and the owner of commercial nursery — repeatedly cited the survey taken by the Keystone Policy Center at the summit as evidence that researchers did not think pesticides were a problem.
Several cited vanEngelsdorp by name, claiming the University of Maryland professor had provided research showing that neonicotinoids did not pose a threat to Maryland hives.
At the hearing, state delegate Clarence Lam, a Democrat, noted that hundreds of peer-reviewed scientific articles identified neonicotinoids as a prime driver of bee decline and scoffed at the industry attempt to use the MP3 summit as a counterexample.
“Presenting data like this is pretty specious,” Lam said. “It’s marginally better than presenting data from a Facebook poll and saying this is what the data shows and this is what the science shows.”
In the end, the industry blitz failed, and, later in 2016, Maryland passed the Pollinator Protection Act. A similar measure passed that year in Connecticut to limit the use of neonics on flowering plants, and last year, Vermont enacted restrictions on consumer use of neonics.
Regulators in Oregon, after outcry following an incident in which 50,000 bees suddenly died in a Target parking lot as the result of the spraying of a neonic-based pesticide, have moved to prevent the use of neonics on linden trees. But in most of the country, there are largely no limitations on the chemical. California regulators also announced an effort to freeze new applications by pesticide companies that would expand the use of neonics.
Gary Ruskin, the co-director of U.S. Right to Know, a watchdog group following pesticide industry influence, which shared some of the emails obtained via records requests between industry and academics with The Intercept, said, “vanEnglesdorp’s close ties to the pesticide industry raise serious questions about the worth and reliability of his research.”
“As companies are increasingly threatened by scientific findings, they search for ways to blunt any independent science that may detract from profits,” Ruskin said. “One great way to do this is to co-opt scientists from public universities, who typically enjoy the public’s trust.”
In one of the emails revealed by Ruskin’s group, vanEngelsdorp wrote to Fischer, the manager of Bayer’s Bee Care Center, apparently irritated that Bayer had published confidential research from his lab, and claiming the data had been misused and posted without his permission.
“Tech team data is confidential so it should not be published — especially by a chemical company!” vanEngelsdorp wrote.
In a response, Fischer removed the line from Bayer’s blog. He also reminded the University of Maryland academic that Bayer had invested significant financial resources into the relationship and made it a priority for the company.
“We value our work with you and other researchers and stakeholders who have committed themselves to addressing this significant problem,” Fischer wrote.
“As you are aware, perception is everything,” vanEngelsdorp responded.
Nick Surgey contributed research.
leefang919
https://cpj.org/blog/2018/02/weinstein-blackcube-surveillance-claim-exposes-agg.php
Weinstein-BlackCube surveillance claim exposes aggressive tactics to kill a story
By Avi Asher-Schapiro/CPJ US Correspondent on February 7, 2018
Those with deep pockets can go to great lengths to push back against journalism they find objectionable. Billionaire Peter Thiel deployed a team of lawyers in a move that bankrupted the news site Gawker in 2016--and last month President Donald Trump's lawyers tried to block the publication of an unflattering book. But there's another, much less public, arena where the wealthy can combat unflattering reporting: the world of subterfuge-for-hire, where private investigators work to undermine a story before it's even made public.
In late 2017, the public was privy to a rare glimpse inside this world. Ronan Farrow, in a New Yorker exposé, reported that movie mogul Harvey Weinstein's lawyers at Boies Schiller Flexner had enlisted a team of private investigators to push back against reporting into dozens of sexual assault and rape allegations against their client. One of the private investigation firms, BlackCube--an outfit staffed with former agents of the Israeli intelligence service, Mossad--was ordered in a contract obtained by The New Yorker to "completely stop the publication" of an article critical of Weinstein. BlackCube ultimately failed. But, Farrow's report found, journalists investigating Weinstein at The New Yorker, The New York Times, and New York magazine, and their sources, were approached by undercover agents with fabricated backstories, as part of an elaborate effort to keep Weinstein's alleged sexual misconduct secret.
Weinstein's spokespeople have denied the allegations against him and rejected claims that he tried to "suppress" any journalism. BlackCube has repeatedly insisted that it "applies high moral standards" to all of its work, and in an interview a member of its advisory board expressed regret for its relationship with Weinstein.
While there are no laws against lying to a reporter or their sources, or conducting public surveillance of or pushing embarrassing information about a journalist--as long as that behavior doesn't veer into libel or slander--the Weinstein story raised questions about how far some will go to kill a negative story--and what, if any, ethical and legal guardrails exist to protect journalists
Of course, the use of underhanded tactics to derail a reporter is nothing new. Bethany McLean, a business reporter who broke the Enron story in 2001, recalls receiving multiple phone calls from individuals who said they were potential sources. These calls, she told CPJ, amounted to sloppy sting operations: those on the other line would try to lure her into admitting she wanted to financially benefit from her own reporting--McLean said she assumed she was being taped.
For most reporters, however, pushback usually comes in the form of aggressive public relations firms or, on occasion, threatening letters from their subjects' lawyers. Weathering an undercover operation has not typically been part of a journalists' job description. George Freeman said that in nearly 30 years as a lawyer for The New York Times, he "can barely think of an example" of these tactics. He is now executive director of the independent advisory group the Media Law Resource Center. "Unfortunately, it's becoming less rare in the last couple years," he told CPJ. "And that's what's scary about it"
Subjects of journalistic scrutiny are, of course, entitled to defend themselves. And for those with the resources to do so, there are plenty of techniques that reporters with whom CPJ spoke said they have come to expect, including compiling publicly available information that could reveal a reporter's conflicts of interest, or a dossier of past reporting mistakes.
The Weinstein story revealed a more aggressive toolbox apparently used by private investigators: the impersonation of sources and hiring reporters as agents. Other cases involve deploying aggressive surveillance, and smearing sources or reporters by spreading potentially damaging personal information.
Before Weinstein, another high-profile case alleging attempts to suppress reporting focused on Roger Ailes, the founder of Fox News. Ailes' biographer Gabriel Sherman, citing sources inside Fox, alleged that the executive used a portion of Fox's budget to pay for a "Black Room," where PR and surveillances operations against Ailes' perceived enemies--including reporters--were coordinated.
Ailes, who died in May, denied the allegations at the time. On the record, Fox executives insisted to Sherman that they had no knowledge of company money being spent on surveillance or online attacks against reporters.
But, Sherman said, sources inside of Fox told him a different story. "From my own reporting, inside Fox, I know Ailes had hired private investigators to have me surveilled," Sherman told CPJ. "It adds a level of psychological intimidation, if you know your subject has goons out there looking for you." Sherman recalled one particularly chilling incident while he was working on his biography of Ailes: he and his wife noticed a black SUV lurking outside a cabin they were renting--when they tried to approach the car, it peeled out and raced away.
Beyond laws against stalking, assault, and fraud, there's little to prevent the rich and powerful from deploying such tactics to suppress reporting they don't approve of, said Philip Segal, the founder of Charles Griffin Intelligence, a private investigations firm. Segal is an expert on investigative ethics and gives ethics seminars to state bar associations.
He said he believes private investigators should follow strict ethical guidelines and refrain from impersonation tactics. Investigators should not, he said, pay other journalists to gather intelligence for them, unless those reporters are prepared to broadcast that they are not working in their capacity as a reporter.
Getting a clear picture of the scope and breadth of these aggressive private investigations is difficult. "Out of a thousand cases, I'd say one or two involved a reporter," Randy Torgerson, the president of the United States Association of Professional Investigators, an organization with over 600 members, told CPJ.
And, when a reporter is the apparent victim of such an operation, it can be difficult to definitively trace the source. In the BlackCube case, Farrow was able to publish a copy of the firm's contract with Weinstein. But more often than not, obtaining such a document is not possible, leaving reporters with a mixture of circumstantial evidence, suspicion, and the assurances of their own sources.
Lee Fang, an investigative journalist at the Intercept, who has reported for a number of outlets about the sprawling political network funded by the conservative Koch brothers, said he suspects operatives working for the Kochs hacked his private account on the image hosting site Photobucket and circulated an image of him smoking marijuana as a teenager.
The image published by the conservative website the Washington Free Beacon, in a post titled "High Times at The Intercept" that mocked the publication's decision to hire Fang, was taken from a password protected account, Fang said. The Free Beacon was co-founded by Michael Goldfarb, who previously worked as a crisis communications consultant for the Kochs.
Fang told CPJ he can't definitively prove who was behind the hack, but said that his reporting had been flagged by pro-Koch Brothers operatives before, including on a now-defunct website, KochFacts.com, that listed journalists writing critically on the Kochs' political activities.
"There's a healthy return on investment for intimidating reporters," Fang told CPJ. "It can go a long way, editors can be skittish, and all you have in this business is your reputation."
The Free Beacon did not respond to CPJ's request for comment on how it obtained the images.
In her book Dark Money, an investigation into the Koch's political network, New Yorker staff writer Jane Mayer alleged that the brothers retained New York City Police Commissioner-turned private investigator Howard Safir to delve into her past. Mayer wrote that sources told her Goldfarb was involved in that work. She said she also discovered that a dossier erroneously accusing her of plagiarism was passed around conservative D.C. media circles--a reporter with the conservative Daily Caller website even contacted her editors at The New Yorker, accusing her of plagiarism. She was able to quickly refute the allegations before they were made public.
The Koch Brothers have called Mayer's reporting inaccurate, but did not directly refute the accusations when contacted by The New York Times in 2016. Safir did not respond to CPJ's request for comment.
This kind of treatment can be particularly chilling for reporters without the institutional backing of a major publication. Roddy Boyd, the president of the Southern Investigative Reporting Foundation, says that last year he was lured to London with a job offer, only to be pumped for information about his reporting on an insurance company AmTrust. "It was really shady," he told CPJ. "It makes you wonder; what won't they do."
Some investigative campaigns however, have run into legal trouble. Back in 2006, the California Attorney General found that private investigators hired by Hewlett Packard to trace leaks to the press had targeted the phone records of nine journalists. Hewlett Packard's general counsel resigned and a court sentenced one of the investigators to three months in jail for identity theft.
In the wake of the Weinstein scandal, his lawyer David Boies expressed some regret. He said that he did not select the private investigators that Weinstein hired, or direct their work--although his signature appears on the BlackCube contract. "It was not thought through," Boies wrote in a public statement explaining his decision to facilitate Weinstein and BlackCube's relationship. "And it was a mistake. I take responsibility for that." There's no indication he or BlackCube broke any laws or will face any censure (although, The New York Times reported that BlackCube lacked the proper license to do business in New York).
[EDITOR'S NOTE: David Boies chaired CPJ's annual International Press Freedom Awards in 2012. He and his law firm, Boies Schiller Flexner, have both donated to CPJ.]
Still, lawyers who retain private investigators are bound by a fairly strict code of professional ethics. According to the American Bar Association's model rules for ethics, lawyers cannot engage in impersonation or false representation. They are also required to oversee the work of private investigators they may retain--and can be held responsible for ethical breaches of subcontractors.
"There's no question the rules of professional conduct govern lawyers in all the lawyers' activities on behalf of the client, and that certainly would include retaining a third party to work in the client's interest," Dennis A. Rendleman, the ethics counsel in the Center for Professional Responsibility at the American Bar Association, told CPJ. "The lawyer has an obligation to supervise and make sure that's done in accordance with the model rules in each licensing jurisdiction. Getting positive press could be part of their job. But that needs to be done in accordance with the rules."
In New York, Attorney Grievance Committees are charged with enforcing these ethical guidelines and disciplining lawyers. These committees, and similar mechanisms in other states, could provide a route to pushback against aggressive investigators--or at least, the lawyers who employ them. "To the degree that law firms are involved in this, you may try to use the bar disciplinary system to rein in lawyers who are involved in such activity," said Kathleen Clark, an ethics expert and law professor at the University of Washington Law School.
The committee charged with overseeing lawyers in Manhattan declined to comment to CPJ on any potential investigation into Weinstein's lawyers, or speak on the record about any past instances of lawyers facing discipline for their work with private investigators.
Avi Asher-Schapiro is CPJ's research associate for North America. He is a former staffer at VICE News, International Business Times, and Tribune Media, and an independent investigative reporter who has published in outlets including The Atlantic, The Intercept, and The New York Times.
==
In August, The Intercept revealed that Alpha Natural Resources, one of the largest coal mining companies in America, has been secretly financing think tanks and political organizations that deny climate change. One of the people they funded, attorney Chris Horner, is well known for hounding climate scientists across the country.
The payments were exposed in the firm’s bankruptcy filings last month.
On Monday, when I asked Kevin Crutchfield, the chief executive officer of Alpha Natural Resources, about his company’s support for Horner and his aggressive investigations of climate scientists, he was unapologetic.
“It should come as no surprise to you that we support those with like-minded philosophies,” Crutchfield said.
We spoke briefly at the Southern States Energy Board, an energy conferenced hosted at The Greenbrier resort in West Virginia.
“Everything we have to disclose, it’s on our restructuring website,” Crutchfield added, referring to the website that helps manage Alpha Natural Resource’s bankruptcy proceedings. He added, “The other thing I’d like to say is that the amount of political contributions pale in the amount of charitable contributions we’ve made over the years.”
As we reported, Alpha Natural Resources has funded a wide array of political groups that have helped the coal industry beat back environmental regulations, including the American Enterprise Institute, the American Legislative Exchange Council, the Heartland Institute, and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. The filings also showed that the firm helped finance the Kentucky Opportunity Coalition, a dark money group that was set up to provide undisclosed campaign support to the reelection effort of Sen. Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., in his race last year.
The bankruptcy filings named recipients of Alpha Natural Resources’ money, but did not provide dollar amounts for the contributions. I asked Crutchfield how much he has given to Horner and other groups that work to deny the existence of manmade climate change.
“I don’t know the numbers. We believe in transparency,” he retorted, and began walking away.
I asked if he believes that the burning of fossil fuels contributes to climate change. “It doesn’t matter what I believe because the bus has left the station seems like,” Crutchfield said, smiling. By then, a group of men with earpieces surrounded the Alpha Natural Resources CEO, blocking me from asking any more questions.
==
Lee Fang is a journalist with a longstanding interest in how public policy is influenced by organized interest groups and money. He was the first to uncover and detail the role of the billionaire Koch brothers in financing the Tea Party movement. His interviews and research on the Koch brothers have been featured on HBO’s “The Newsroom,” the documentaries “Merchants of Doubt” and “Citizen Koch,” as well as in multiple media outlets. He was an investigative blogger for ThinkProgress (2009-2011) and then a fellow at the Investigative Fund of the Nation Institute and contributing writer for The Nation.
In 2012, he co-founded RepublicReport.org, a blog to cover political corruption that syndicates content with TheNation.com, Salon, National Memo, BillMoyers.com, TruthOut, and other media outlets. His work has been published by VICE, The Baffler, The Boston Globe, the San Francisco Chronicle, The Progressive, NPR, In These Times, and The Huffington Post. His first book, “The Machine: A Field Guide to the Resurgent Right,” published by The New Press, explores how the conservative right rebuilt the Republican Party and its political clout in the aftermath of President Obama’s 2008 election victory. He is based in San Francisco.
==
The Machine. A Field Guide to the Resurgent Right. Lee Fang
new press 2013
https://books.google.com/books?id=fwsw28t2wocC&dq=inauthor:%22Lee+Fang%22&source=gbs_navlinks_s
fangmachine 6/7/2015
2008 gop brand low; Mccain had PO'd evals in past; also old schism evals and libertarians;
EIC after hartmann
mark meckler lawyer herbalife
FWs mage TP listserv 10 AFP htland talking pts; training by kch Leadership Inst p 10
TP patriots went to CNP mtg, looked like all the others, but press called them indep 11
TP meme old, smokers rights, (nadr /norquist?) BM astroturf CART 1992, PM 2m$ to CSE expose so cancelled?
1995 jack guthrie worldcom tob farmers 18
dick A flat tax TP meme 1997 Tauzin
TTP $ from Howie rich, kochs; nired ed crane camp mgr -->cato; eric o'keefe term limits 23
CSE, N caro, armey uses cse for corp lobbying 24, split to FW
pvt SocS; oil, BP, irving for offshore drill; life insur dereg;
SAM AA 26- E O'k , koch, oil bankers use Donors trust
eric odom
malkin 31 santelli, wrong on mkts, but still bloviating
AIG bailed out, bonus to execs, left and unions protest, but rush ~
cinci TP claimed stimulus killed jobs
beck 912
TCOT twitter 37
GOA, SPN neo-nazi support/horn in on TP 39
Porter N astrot ~ ACA rx co
API 100K$ FW --> TP 40
gov perry, vitter ; mark kirk assass BO bn/c of tax rise 41
bozell post-mort: norquist, vig, creative resp, perkins, fedsoc, blackwell, regnery tyrrell am spect, go after rinos, fake populism? old rmn new rt, had built rwi 45
creap resp mueller w rick scott on aca 46
bozell MRC ~ BO socialism
newt says CoC ally of evals 46
norquist weds mtgs ATR $ luander for jack a
weyrich lunch inhofe, gohmert, cooch 59
heritage hub, bloggers, townhall bought by salem
becky norton dunlop cartridge box if not ballot box 67
CNP la haye, blackwater big donor 69(met w. dick c, rummy, paul bremer
Conserv Action pjt: feulner, mirror Sharon Stmt, dunlop, GOA, Galen, ned ryun,
vs aca, disclose, fin reform 73
Weaver Terrace Gp post CU: pol dir CoC; Stenen law coc--> gps; malek; noble koch
CoC backup when astroturf busted, CoC would start neg ads 77
coc // party in amt $
ch3 koch war BO
dupont, lib league, minute men etc Am legion, thought about kkk 84 but dems tied al landon to "economic royalists", cellophane league b/c see thru it cf bk Invisible Hands by kim Phillips-Fein new deal to RR;
dupont fail b/c lacked coherent intellectual framework, so coors and scaife built one 84 but no direct challenge to prez till kochs;
kochs took out demo maj 2010, won on climate, labor almost ACA, engr TP shellacking 85 BO caved on extending b2 tax cuts and estate tax
koch/fox paint BO socialist (no cellophane ~)
kochs combined all approaches eg norquist, CoC, BB&T bank ayn rand;
Fink after Phil roundtable wanted Hayek model: raw mat'l --> consumer products 87
50M koch $ ~ agw, 35 groups 88 gentry two hats industries and fdn 89
confs amplify devos, anschutz, blackstone schwartman 89
venable Tx textbooks
chls CNP
academia: fund depts, mercatus 14 of 23 regulatory axed; susan dudley; chls river pay to play academia eg exxon report 92 Brown U florida state u
fred, JBS, NAM rebooted Mccarthyism 97 bozell ghost write goldwater
fred pal of textile Milliken, roger
fluoridation
say free market but B2 strategic oil reserve (ussr) stole 300m ga nat am, dole and newt covered 112
timber, coal power plants, pipeline, chemicals, fertilizers, ethanol, financial products [CDS? yup 113 1st derivative, crude, koch exec 1986; lobbied against BO reform] 2009 110B$ revenue 2010 each bro 21B$ 106
koch boost sanford and demint
carlton the wealthy eco-hypocrite 110 make $ on saving the planet; actually CBO says BO policies wd lower cost energy
effective ~ BO b/c 30 yrs of organizing
CSE ~ BTU
koch 300m tons co2/yr 114; went after state cap and trade 114 used TP and lobbyists
VA Rick Boucher backed clean energy, so ~ Morgan Griffith ended 28 yr career 115 bill passed house not senate: IER, hrtlnd, gmu heritage
koch funded spanish study bogus, climategate, bus tour (3-4, free food, visa gift cards] EPA "carbon cops" regulate churches, refrig, air you breathe, hosted TP events 116.
ark sen blanche lincoln gut clean air act; gop house 2011 one of 1st act to cut epa CAA enforcement 117
CA ab 32, pac res; NH out of rggi
2008 JMcc and BO agree on age, but by 2011 1/2 gop congress deniers (inglis , castle primaried) ; mark kirk 180 on W-M to stay 118.
1 mo into new congress, epa $ to enforce koch co2 cut 119
themis voter data
before swear in of 112th, david chat with boehner; lobbyist met with new chair energy and commerce =?
ch 4 reform hits wall at k str
tom perrielo bogus ltrs 125 naac, sr, AAU women; bonner; WM watered house, killed senate
outside lobbying (only register if spend more than 20% talking directly to lawmakers, so astroturf not covered 126
bernays set up front for Mack truck for interstate hwy 127
TP astro by pol ops become fronts for corps eg salt; pol ops are hubs in rwi, energized by ~BO ad hoc swarm on single issue/bill
PR Qorvis staff henretty posed as news reporter and interviewed college rep on student debt (fun to track down to check on hoist]
lots of astro pose as merely ideological eg cut tax limit gov't but rentable sg Freedomworks army front for BP post spill 129.
CDR --> cornwall
tim phillips 131 goodlatte ralph reed, century stray xian; rec by rove led to 1st big gig: enron 380K$ for energy dereg --> energy crisis /recession 201 DAVIS?! 132 note 15 Public citizen blind faith see blindfaith.txt http://www.citizen.org/cmep/article_redirect.cfm?ID=7104 see below davis and reed got stuff in NYT
phillips marians island sweatshop forced abortions, w/ abramoff indian scams 133 w/ grover launder $?
chambliss, sonny perdue, black bastard dtr ~ Mcc 134; hot air, tour, save my ballot tour joe the p; reg reality tour bouncy castles, food ~Clean air act 135 so god in 2010 expande 2012 tip pt on agw w/ pledge; met bloggers: if doubt on sci we win 136
ACA: see toxic sludge bk: rush jail ppl and bankrupt usa; harry & l: diss Moore as entertainer; APCO
Creative Concepts rick scott HCA, w/ APCO 3.8M$ 2009 142 CoC 10m$; industry 107M$ neg ads
1/2 AMA for ACA 1st x, so bogus CPPR, DCI; porter novelli ...
ch 5 social media
instead of change ideas post 2008 loss, gop improved info delivery via soc med (already had direct mail radio etc)
heritage and nat rev --> Townhall //drudge msg coordination 154 precursor TCC aei James Glassman w/ DCI (laster GWB Inst in dallas
rt had media dominance, but got lazy after kerry win; edelman peer-to peer (3rd party spin?) IN imp form of info; 2008 edelman study of BO online efforts by Krempasky --> REDstate (mirror daily kos) later boosted TP 157 TPM broke AG fire
tpm instant fact check McC
bozell at CNP decried left gains (MRC made media left meme myth ; google wikipedia and FB said leftists
Ning illusion of open democ platform; TPP fed info by FWs; FWs and iol paid Odom 167
ypucut scam .017%
porter Novelli videogames ~ aca; OcO hooter certificates 168
Fleishman Hill mirror BO online 169
CoC paid google to redirect fang query to ~ www 169
scott brown teddy seat Am Fut Fund, twitter spam vs Martha Coakley 171
geo allen r va media tracker dem --> Macaca 173 rising star; McC shaky vid seems authentic vs slick media 173
scripted rants at town halls led dems to not run for re-election, some videos, some were stealth staffers eg etheridge
perrileo dirty tricks, followed by Marchi AFP 176
daily caller 2010 tucker carlson mirror huffpo: news, invest jrnl, ent and pol gossip; Martosko oppos res for Berman 177 Blaze, PJ (anti muslim, pro-Israel ) escalator: afp ~ clAA--> pj made news pkg (VNR/fake news? 179
ning->fake tweet -->pjtv videos -->dailyc/blaze --> viral vid, digg bury correction 180.
C ent complex: pol and poker; running reality tv of cands; right to laugh; jackpot justice (class action)tory; stakelbeck on terror ~ muslim 180-1.
ed snider ceo comcast ~ dems on gulf war 2
fox, ailes, rush; cato forum nra fam res cncl; ailes Am talking --> msnbc 1996; fox news boost when favored by b2 admin 186
movies: Mot Pict Inst (Fdn for indiv rights in educ staffers 2005) rob Pfaltzgraff 187) the Cartel --> wait for superman, vonnegut bergson; eliz koch on mpi bd; pac res, CEI w/ MPI, also Horowitz/ The D Film Inst blames BC for 911 (aborts mission to get Osama, aired by ABC as docudrama 188-9, busted , so tfi lower profile; horo also matchmaker of rw to stars eg Braveheart producer Steve McEveety,
// Movieguide Ted Baehr xian (templeton fdn funds awards) converted jewish produces 189
MGM remake Red Dawn ~chinese; kalifornistan jason apuzzo praised by malkin, boosted 24 creators surnow and manny coto 191 ; pal of rush into to ailes led to Daily show mirror 191; the n The Kennedy's for History channel: doz sex scene but not cuban crisis (waves of sec serv msg to have sex in pool) 191
ex GS now media bak) Stephen Bannon Libertas films 9 free office sp to Breitbart) 191 w/ Phil A on Narnia; fire from heartland gop women bachmann coulter and TP loesch
CU Bossie: hype: the Obama effect; buch with newt: john paul II;
rightnetwork via Verizon cabe
rupert pays 11$ per viewer on local cable, opposite of biz model
bannon/phil: The Hope and the change (~ bo) 2016 Obama's Am 194-5
ch 5 states
big loss 2008 fed so shift to state level; already had fair no of gov and legis, plus bunch of rw fronts built over decades; ~ BO, and his win fuelled 197; no new ideas, but footsoldiers for rw agenda; would localize msg ~ eg ACA
muscle to go on offense: immigration AZ, unions 198
SPN 1992 (BC) planned by defunct Madison group: Th Roe (heritage) So Caro Policy Cncl eg vouchers, ~ grn regs; go between local conserv eg Family Policy Cncl // Dobson evangelicals and nat'l rw ctrs 199/
mid 90's 37 spn, // Heritage Mandate (plan plus staffers) so new gov or legislature (often part time latter) had ready made plan and ppl 200 really gop but kinda look nonpart; have boilerplate to ward off pseudo/stinktank charge: IRS bless, we don't take bribes, advance "civil society" 201 so ironically confirms rubberstamp
DCI entwines
SPN funded Pelican, ~ dem 4k$ conf of mayors and inaug, burt silent on jindal 45K$ tax for helo campaign trips 202; Laffer, Vitter, james o'keefe
now 58 tanks, every state: CA official pac res, but affiliate Claremont, horowitz, indep inst oakland, Reason, prometheus 203
SPN media savvy, so connect to local media, (90's colo independent inst had cable news show, and VT ethan a inst had regular npr op ed) has radio shows (web? sirius?), bogs, podcast 205.
now oppos res masked as jrnl: Jason Stverak, pres frkln ctr, ex N Dak gop honcho), stealth camp for SAM (erick O'k w/ h rich $) 206
Bill McMorris invest jrnl at fkl ctr, Robt Novak fellowship from Phillips 2 L to pay him 206
sph put up 75K for alaska reporter gig; Wayne Hoffman ID challenged to find bias 207
Illinois Statehouse News denied creds b/c wd not disclose $, couple others states deny also;
scam phantom district on stimulus zip code error; but drudge, politico then ABC 208 (then weeks on Fox)
rep Mary fallin denounced; // fnk ctr w/ McCain and Coburn did report, but either not stim, or mischaracterized eg WNBA facility was tribal community ctr w/ no for-profit anything 208.
b/c real reporters laid off, easy to grab for cred; eg Mackinac created mich Transparency Cter [fe] then hired local nbc kathy hoekstra eg on film tax credit for m moore 209; OC reg --? pac res CalWatchDog; pres soc prof jrnl --> tenn ctr pol res [gore hit?]; assoc of am phys and surgeons ~ ACA but not shown nuts: BO covert hypnosis to get ppl to rally, medicare ~ const; cited alex jones VBO cia spy 209
local news desperate: in WI 18 pprs syndicates the franklin front 210
FC pledge to build out; partner w/ Nat Rev on battlegnd elections (in 2014?); expand training.
70's lobbyists from 100 co/trade gps State Gov Affairs Cncl, funded Cncl state gov, pro biz but not radical enough, so ALEC, fdr Weyrich, differs from spn in that it actually writes legis; 2k members; corps pay up to 50K/yr; into 1/k/yr, 20% pass 212
~ min wage, net neutral; big funder of climate/~ grn pwr; PIC: Laurie Shanblum CCA, mtg w/ Russell Pearce AZ state sen, wrote SB 1070 (show yr papers; but you can tell by shoes 214; AZ has 3 CCA jails, want to grow more;
Pershing Sq cp investor; Jan Brewer hired CCA top lobbyist and camp chr; dep COS; 2/3 1070 co-spon either alec member or at conf where written; 30 got $ during debate; Mgt & Training Corp; clone 1070 tried in penn, ok, tenn, colo, fla; TP boost.
gop wants rx care across state lines, so biz can flee to least consumer protection (//credit card [utah?] 216
ban lawsuit of hmo
10 states w/ gop gain 2010, voter restrictions 217
2010 gerrymander (had org/strategy custom made?]
rove and gillespie polled, found ppl receptive to overpaid teachers arg "new fed bureaucratic elite" 219 SPN?SAM posted public worker salaries (foia bomb where not easy to get); helped kasich gut collective barg; // Koch fight Back WI, walker 40K koch $, tim phillips stumped; spn/mciver bogus studies support gt unions, NYT oped; claimed tcher got 2z avg pvt wage or 100K actually 50 222
3 ez fix for budget, but walker cut taxes; public empl had already offered concessions, so goal was to kill union 223; mciver had war room ~ union; partnered w. Franklin news bur; hired local reporter and gop staffer; made VNR; Drew Ryun opps res bloggers: said bbq union in ret for votes; local da said bogus 224.
2012 looked like big demo win, but gerrymander so only 10 of 23 seats needed to have any power 226; conv wisdom is that gop $ wasted, but actually prevented dem sweep 227; big GOTV TP ginned eg by AFP (telemkt mogl lend infra?); right after election, went after Kay hagen for 2014 by oil co;
2012 record corp profits; ceo 3500x avg worker; avg family lost 40% wealth in Gt Rec; foreclosures, domestic vil etc riples
occupy ridiculed in press and smashed by cops and survelll state; 230 endit
alec new orleans video http://thinkprogress.org/politics/2011/08/05/288405/alec-security-attacks-thinkprogress/?mobile=nc
public affairs official Raegan Weber denies siccing
http://www.thenation.com/blogs/lee-fang
Center for Am Freedom
In May 2012, PRWeek reported that ALEC had hired the notorious global PR firm Edelman. Edelman is the firm of choice for big tobacco, big oil, and big pharma, all key sponsors of ALEC. ALEC also held a special meeting asking right-wing bloggers, such as the Breitbart operation,for help in "a very aggressive campaign to really spread the word about what we actually do," as CMD has reported.
An "aggressive campaign" is clearly underway.
ALEC's note to legislators claims that CMD's "top investigative reporter" has a "lengthy criminal background." It links to a attack-piece published by a newly created entity called The Washington Free Beacon (WFB), the online publication of the self-proclaimed "conservative advocacy group" the Center for American Freedom.
In that piece, recent college grad CJ Ciaramella focuses on Beau Hodai, a freelance reporter who has written for the Center for Media and Democracy, In These Times, Prison Legal News, Extra! (a publication of Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting), and the investigative news publication he founded, DBA Press.
Beau has been researching and reporting on ALEC since late 2009. His reporting has detailed the relationship between ALEC and private prison contractors in the dissemination of bills based on Arizona's SB 1070, and has identified ALEC as one of the key forces behind attempts to destroy public employee unions and privatize public services.
Notably, the WFB attack job does not find any material errors in any of Beau's extensively documented reports on ALEC, but focuses on misdemeanor court records. It dwells on the fact that his legal first name is Mohamad. Beau has been nicknamed "Beau" since birth. (It is worth noting that "CJ" is not Ciaramella's legal first name but the nickname he uses instead of "Carl.")
Beau recently stirred the pot with a special report detailing corruption in the Ohio General Assembly based on public records that raise questions as to whether the state's elected officials in ALEC are complying with Ohio's ethics laws regarding gifts.
Interestingly enough, Beau learned that exactly one week following the publication of the Ohio ALEC corruption story, a private investigation firm requested court records concerning a past arrest. Allegations from those same court records emerged as the centerpiece of the WFB attack article.
The Washington Free Beacon's "Aerial Hunting Operation"
WFB's Matthew Continetti (who previously was an opinion editor at the right-wing Weekly Standard, where he remains a contributing editor) outlined the WFB's strategy as part of its recent launch:
"What would happen if the media wolf pack suddenly had to worry about an aerial hunting operation? You are about to find out. The Washington Free Beacon is here to enter the arena of combat journalism. [...] At the Beacon, we follow only one commandment: Do unto them."
And this is the team ALEC is using to attempt to discredit CMD as an "attack-dog"?
This is not the first such piece to come out of WFB. In the past few months, Ciaramella has written three pieces personally attacking reporters and activists working to expose ALEC. In addition to the piece on Beau, he published a similar attack on Color of Change staffer Gabriel Rey-Goodlatte, as well as The Nation reporter Lee Fang. Fang has also written for Think Progress (blog of the Center for American Progress) and Republic Report, and who has reported critically on ALEC over the past year. Color of Change has been instrumental in the call for ALEC corporate members to sever ties with the organization.
The latest piece also takes a shot at George Soros by attempting to link Beau to the philanthropist through PRWatch. But CMD openly discloses on its website that the past grant it received from the Open Society Institute was focused on homeland security, not ALEC. Notably, neither the WFB nor CAF disclose to the public which corporations, organizations, or individuals bankroll their operations or smear campaigns.
The People Behind the "Center for American Freedom"
WFB is a creature of the Center for American Freedom (CAF), which was incorporated in Washington, D.C., on August 18, 2011, as a not-for-profit corporation. According to District of Columbia Department of Consumer and Regulatory Affairs (DCRA) records, CAF has two active trade names: "Free Bacon" [sic] and "Washington Free Beacon," both of which were formally effected in March 2012.
DCRA records list the names of two founding CAF "governors," Michael Goldfarb and Aaron Harison.
Harison, currently CAF's president, previously served as director of communications for the Republican National Committee (RNC). Harison is joined at CAF by former RNC acting director of communications, and current CAF research director, Tim Killeen.
Harison is also the former executive director of Keep America Safe, an operation co-founded in 2009 by Dick Cheney's daughter, Liz Cheney. William Kristol, the founder and editor of the neoconservative Weekly Standard, is a founding board member of Keep America Safe. Kristol is currently listed as a board member of CAF, and is the former executive director of the Project for the New American Century (PNAC), a neocon "think tank" that had strong ties to the American Enterprise Institute.
Michael Goldfarb, CAF's chairman, has reportedly worked as an advisor to Keep America Safe and the militaristic Emergency Committee for Israel. (Kristol is also a board member for the Emergency Committee for Israel). Goldfarb is also listed as a contributing editor to Weekly Standard.
In addition, Goldfarb is a partner in the lobby/PR firm, Orion Strategies LLC. Not surprisingly, given Goldfarb and Kristol's warmongering predilections, Orion has lobbied on issues of arms sales and foreign relations for very special interests like defense contractors and foreign governments.
While these ties may explain some of the content on the WFB, what does any of this have to do with its efforts to defend ALEC by attacking its critics?
According to Politico, right-wing financiers Charles and David Koch also employ the services of Orion Strategies and, as CMD has documented, Koch Industries and/or the Koch family fortune have helped fund ALEC and numerous ALEC private sector members that help operationalize the brothers' ideological and financial agenda. There is no indication that the Kochs asked WFB to jump to the defense of ALEC. However, the right wing has been howling that the press and progressive groups have been too persuasive in exposing ALEC and in making the case about how ALEC helps make the corporate wish list into law through its members and operations.
The Machine: A Field Guide to the Resurgent Right: Lee ...
www.amazon.com › ... › Political Parties
Amazon.com, Inc.
Rating: 4.8 - ?12 reviews
Informed by years of deep research and firsthand reporting, Lee Fang "knows it ... "With our lawmakers more beholden than ever to dark money, Lee's book ...
INTERVIEW: Lee Fang talks about his book “The Machine: A ...
www.eclectablog.com/.../interview-lee-fang-talks-about-his-book-the-ma...
Apr 30, 2013 - NOTE: This is part two of a two-part post on Lee Fang's new book “TheMachine: A Field Guide to the Resurgent Right”. My review of the book ...
Lee Fang's “The Machine: A Field Guide to the Resurgent ...
www.eclectablog.com/.../book-review-lee-fangs-the-machine-a-field-gui...
Apr 29, 2013 - NOTE: This is part one of a two-part post on Lee Fang's new book “TheMachine: A Field Guide to the Resurgent Right”. My interview with Lee ...
The Machine: A Field Guide to the Resurgent Right ...
themachinebook.com/
Investigative reporter Lee Fang's look at how the conservative movement rebuilt itself after the 2008 ... The book is published by The New Press. ... The Machine.
gen opportunity vs obamacare
50 mil$ vs aca since 2009; tells young ppl they will be healthier if they don't sign up (scary gyno ads)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a3A6vXYuTgU
==
http://www.amazon.com/The-Machine-Field-Guide-Resurgent/dp/1595586393
pt 2 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1dySJF4iRds
no pt 2? Published on May 6, 2013
For Conversation With Great Minds I'm joined by Lee Fang.
2013
hartmann interview video
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u1TVvUcj3FQ
after RR fail, dixiecrats gone, not just dem big margins but progressive, so RT rebooted populism, CTT plus new media: TP 2009 various fronts led to 2010 wave, gerrymandered; evangelical and social conservative hed been foot soldiers for corp gop, frayed relations. libertairians and __ playing with populist movement (tP metaphor, 1993 tobacco lobby use to fight clinton tax to pay for rx reform, but can't do it as philip morris, so organized rallies, did not catch on; 1997 dick armey corp lobbyists want to replace progreeive tax w/ flat tax; laughed at; kock CSEcon--> _ tried TP 2003-4 MIch , NCarolina; 2007-8 sam adams populists by millionaires just handed out $ to do stunts
BO rolled his populist social media to derc, did not jail banksters and gave up populist approach
NOTE: This is part one of a two-part post on Lee Fang’s new book “The Machine: A Field Guide to the Resurgent Right”. My interview with Lee Fang can be found HERE.
This past week, journalist Lee Fang’s new book The Machine: A Field Guide to the Resurgent Right was released. Fang is a reporting fellow with the Investigative Fund at The Nation Institute and a contributing writer at The Nation and the book represents the culmination of several years of researching and writing about the intersection of conservative politics with corporate influence on our government. The book is, at its core, a history book, showing us how America arrived at a place where a relatively small number of wealthy individuals and corporate entities have shaped the national dialog, our elections, national policy, and even the laws of our land to their own benefit, privatizing wealth while socializing risk.
The first chapter of The Machine is the most comprehensive overview of the history of the Tea Party that I have seen to date. Tracing its history back to the 90s when Big Tobacco manipulated populist sentiment against President Clinton’s proposal to tax cigarettes to pay for health insurance reform, Fang shows how some smart investments by a handful of millionaires and billionaires have created a powerful political force in this country.
The tobacco industry demonstrated that the Tea Party could be used to induce regular Americans to find common cause with corporate interests, and [Dick] Armey’s stunts showed willingness from the Republican Party to embrace the concept as their own. However, the nuts and bolts of how to create a self-perpetuating antigovernment Tea Party were designed primarily by three wealthy libertarians: real estate magnate Howie Rich and the billionaire owners of Koch Industries, Charles and David Koch.
Lee FangBut the book is about far more than the Tea Party and shows how “holistic” the Kochs and others have been in their effort to further their corporatist agenda and each chapter details a different part of the overall strategy. From message coordination to pitting progressive groups against each other and from a full-scale new media campaign to changing the face of politics at the state level, the conservative right as a front for corporate interests has covered all of their bases including some you may not have thought about. Lee Fang, however, pulls back to curtains to reveal the full scope of their decades-long effort.
The success the right has had is largely a reflection of their ability to coordinate their strategically chosen messages across a wide variety of communications platforms. No group has been more effective at this than the Heritage Foundation and, as Fang shows, they remain the “center of conservatism”:
By supplying policy ideas, hosting an endless array of conservative experts to testify on behalf of legislation, as well as other services, Heritage has become what many correctly call the “most influential conservative think tank.”
Much of Heritage’s decisive influence, however, must be measured by its primary — if underrecognized — role in coordinating the conservative movement and thereby setting the strategy for advancing cohesive right-wing ideals. Heritage sets the agenda for state-level conservative think tanks through the State Policy Network umbrella group, and its affiliated “Resource Bank” conference, while also providing assistance for right-wing think tanks internationally through its partnership with the Atlas Economic Research Foundation. During the Obama presidency, Heritage took an even more aggressive stance, pulling together the key elements of the conservative coalition to fight progressives at every opportunity.
Fang also lays out how the U.S. Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision has played so effectively into the hands of the corporatist conservative machine. After honing the coordination of their network of groups for decades, they were in a perfect position to exploit the impact of Citizens United which let the genie out of the bottle with respect to corporate influence of our elections and national discourse:
In a drab office space at New York Avenue and 14th Street, just around the corner from the White House, elements of the Bush White House constructed a network of nonprofits dedicated to seizing power. This effort was not about restoring small government or changing America’s cultural fabric. It was a cold, calculated project to seize tens of millions in anonymous corporate money and use it to clobber their enemies with deceptive advertisements. Unlike the ideological right, these men—some of them lobbyists, most of them experienced partisans—had one and only conviction: defeating Democrats.
The informal network, called the Weaver Terrace Group, named after the street where Karl Rove convened meetings at his home, came together because of the Citizens United ruling. On January 21, 2010, the Supreme Court, in a 5-4 decision, eliminated nearly a century of campaign finance law by allowing corporations and unions to spend unlim- ited amounts on electioneering. It was the second ruling in a row, after F.E.C. v. Wisconsin Right to Life, which allowed corporate-funded “issue-ads” to be run near election season, to open the floodgates to big business influence.
That spring, as Democrats toiled over health reform, jobs measures, and the financial overhaul known as Dodd-Frank, the Republican planners got to work. Citizens United provided an opportunity, but why would any corporation risk the public backlash of directly backing a candidate or cause? The idea, therefore, was floated to take advantage of the decision by developing a sprawling network of nonprofit organizations to funnel corporate cash into campaign commercials. The nonprofit organizations would simply be brands to conceal the true financiers of the advertisements. As Democrats continued their push for reforms, these GOP lobbyists and ad- makers would solicit funds from the companies that faced new regulations or taxes.
Fang’s work reveals how corporatists like the Koch brothers use both conservatives and liberals to advance their goals saying, “Essentially, Koch will fund both conservatives and liberals when it comes to social policy. Because for them, social initiatives are more often a Trojan horse for imposing their radical economic views.”
He also shows how pervasive corporate money, much of which goes undisclosed, is in our elections, an influence that has exploded since the Citizens United Supreme Court decision:
The massive gains for Republicans in the midterm elections were the direct result of a permanent campaign financed by Koch, from the Tea Party, to constant media distortions, to the elevation of hundreds of Republican candidates. It’s impossible to truly quantify the amount of political money Koch infused in the first two years of the Obama administration. Koch’s charitable foundations provide a clue, but the true extent may never be known. Direct corporate donations from Koch Industries through fronts like the Independent Women’s Forum and Americans for Prosperity never have to be disclosed. {…}
Rather than appeal to the public directly, lobbying interests often set up what are known as “third-party authorities” to deliver a message. Again, corporations pursuing public policy through front groups is not considered lobbying by law. As such, front group–led campaigns not only confuse the public, but face very few disclosure requirements.
Perhaps one of the most insidious and effective efforts to beat progressives was the manipulation of social media and public websites. In The Machine, Fang notes how links to progressive articles on websites like Reddit were suppressed through well-coordinated actions. Additionally, sales of progressive books were hampered by a concerted and intentional effort by an army of operatives who gave poor reviews on websites like Amazon.com:
The manipulation of “open” platforms should be expected and is difficult to prevent. But right-wing operatives streamlined the process. The well-funded front group American Majority hosted 395 training sessions in 2009 and 2010 to teach Tea Party and Republican volunteers how to abuse open platforms like Twitter to spread the conservative cause—usually by spam attacks on Democrats. Austin James, a trainer with American Majority, taught a session on “guerrilla warfare” against liberals at a retreat in Pittsburgh. One technique he recommended was to go on Amazon and for “every Obama book” he told attendees to rate it down with one star (the lowest rating). “I mean, 80 percent of the books that I view and put stars on online, I never read, people. That’s just how it works,” he said.
Beginning in 2009, my colleagues and I noted that Think- Progress stories no longer appeared on popular websites like Digg and Reddit, sites where users submit and comment on the best content on the web. ThinkProgress, where I blogged, had been wildly popular on both sites for years. In August of 2010, AlterNet revealed a massive conspiracy by a small cabal of Digg users to systematically “bury” news content from liberal sources like Talking Points Memo, the Atlantic Monthly, the Huffington Post, and my own site, ThinkProgress. A secret list of Digg users called “DiggPatriots” had worked for over a year to coordinate their efforts. It was never clear if the group was acting on its own or working with an established GOP consulting firm or other entity.
Finally, Fang shows in The Machine how well-coordinated efforts at the state level have helped to kneecap public employee unions, further the drive to use tax money to fund private/charter schools, and generally funnel tax money into the coffers of corporations:
Most state governments, unlike the federal government, require balanced budgets. A confrontation was brewing, and groups like the U.S. Chamber of Commerce preferred that public servants—not businesses—feel the pain. If conservatives could convince the public to blame both state and federal budget woes on public employee salaries or pensions, then the problem could be solved by axing workers and their benefits instead of raising taxes on businesses or the rich.
This state-level approach is described in even greater detail in his follow-up piece for The Nation titled “The Right Leans In”.
The Machine should serve as a warning to the progressive movement in the United States. Through his exhaustive and well-documented reporting, Lee Fang has given us a clear look at our political adversaries. No matter where you turn, the influence of corporate America on our country and our government is there to be found in some form or another. What Republicans have done in Michigan since the 2010 midterm election is a nearly a case study in the pervasiveness of this impact. From the leverage exerted by money from the wealthy conservative DeVos family to the impact on the news we read from the State Policy Network affiliate Mackinac Center for Public Policy and from the crushing of unions by new Republican-advanced laws to fact that Michigan has more private for-profit schools than any other state in the country, Michigan has been on the front lines of the war on progressives that is detailed in The Machine.
Fang offers little in the way of answers to this and the progressive response is something that is clearly tepid at this point in the game. With corporations seeking to further their agenda, it’s Republicans who will have access to the nearly bottomless pile of money they have to offer. Nonetheless, Fang’s work will be an important element in understanding what we’re up against and, without that knowledge, we will never be successful.
==
hit job:
High Times at the Nation
Cloud of controversy trails left-wing blogger Fang to new mag
Lee Fang
Lee Fang
BY: Adam Kredo
July 31, 2012 5:00 am
One of the Nation magazine’s newest hires, Lee Fang, is a far-left Democratic operative with a history of publishing error-riddled and misleading reports.
As Fang (pronounced like bong) begins his stint at the historic left-wing publication, questions still surround a series of half-baked reports that were filed during his time as a writer for the Center For American Progress Action Fund’s Think Progress blog, and for the Republic Report. Both organizations advocate for greater transparency in politics, even as neither fully discloses its donors.
Historian and author Ronald Radosh noted that the Nation, which is one of America’s oldest publications, has often been plagued by scandal.
“The Nation’s whole history is one big scandal—support for the Soviet Union for decades,” Radosh said. “And of course, support for Cuba, [Hugo] Chavez and Venezuela, the Sandinistas, etc.”
The Nation also received criticism for hiring the late Alexander Cockburn, a journalist and author who was reprimanded by Jewish leaders for his anti-Semitism, Radosh noted.
In its obituary for Cockburn, the New York Times noted he once wrote a column “drastically revising downward the number of deaths attributable to Stalin.”
Fang, a 2009 graduate of the University of Maryland’s Government and Politics program, first got hooked on politics as president of UMD’s College Democrats chapter (see photo above).
Before that, Fang also interned for former Rep. Stephanie Tubbs Jones (D., Ohio) and served as a researcher at Progressive Accountability, an opposition research group jointly formed by the far-left Center for American Progress Action Fund (CAPAF) and Media Matters Action Network (MMAN).
Lee Fang
As an investigative blogger for CAPAF’s Think Progress blog, Fang took a hit for secretly coordinating his coverage with Democrat-aligned special interest groups. Fang continued his questionable reporting methods after joining the Republic Report alongside convicted felon Jack Abramoff soon after his release from prison.[intersting mirroring, presumably this is part of JA mea culpa tour]
Fang has written extensively about conservative billionaire businessmen Charles and David Koch, portraying them as nefarious GOP puppet masters—a charge that even “some liberals reject as an overly simplistic caricature,” according to Politico.
While investigating the Koch brothers on Think Progress’ behalf, “Fang attended a meeting with representatives from [the Democrat-aligned] Common Cause, Greenpeace, Public Citizen and the Service Employees International Union at SEIU headquarters to figure out how to make the most of the sudden focus on the Kochs,” according to an April 2011 Politico report.
“Meeting participants have continued to trade research about the Kochs and strategize via a Koch-related email listserv and a rolling series of conference calls,” Politico reported.
Asked about CAPAF’s refusal to distribute the names of those who fund it, Fang explained the difference on a conference call organized by Common Cause:
“It’s fundamentally different when you have wealthy individuals that want to donate to a worthy cause, and the Koch brothers and some of their cohorts that are funding groups that are essentially just advancing their self interests and their lobbying interests,” Fang said.
Fang later narced on Politico “for not writing that his side of political debates is morally right.”
In April 2011, Fang accused the Koch brothers of “manipulating the oil market,” though his claims were later debunked. The article remains uncorrected.
Several months later, another Fang report was exposed as false.
Fang had claimed that a former Goldman Sachs employee who worked for Rep. Darrell Issa (R., Calif.) on the House Oversight Committee had changed his name to hide his past at the financial giant.
The staffer later told Talking Points Memo that “he and his sister switched their names a few years back to respect the last wish of his grandfather to carry on his mother’s family name.”
Think Progress was forced to “update” Fang’s story five times in a series of attempts to explain why it was standing by the erroneous report.
Liberals have also criticized Fang’s work.
Salon writer Glenn Greenwald took Fang to task Monday for defending calls to stop the restaurant Chick-fil-A from opening restaurants merely because its owner holds political views anathema to progressives.
Greenwald dissected Fang’s arguments point-by-point to show how they were false and misleading.
Fang left CAPAF in late 2011. At that time, the organization was engulfed in a scandal over its writers’ promotion of anti-Semitic conspiracy theories. (Fang was not involved.) The scandal forced several writers to resign from the blog.
Soon after, Fang joined the Republic Report, an online news site published by the non-profit United Republic, a campaign finance reform special-interest group that seeks to get “big money” out of politics.
The group initially refused to reveal its donors, but capitulated to mounting pressure earlier this month when it released the names of its top five contributors.
Fang finally joined the Nation last week, where he will get in the weeds of “money in politics, conservative movements and lobbying.”
Who Funds the Fund Watchers?
Pro-transparency liberal group United Republic won’t disclose donors