Dai, Stan jok

=

Conservative activist James O'Keefe plotted a potential voter

fraud sting of the Service Employees International Union in 2010 in

Massachusetts — a sting that, had it been carried out, could have been

funded by Rick Santorum patron Foster Friess.

The plot is elaborated on and eventually ruled out in an email chain started by conservative writer John

Fund, who emailed Republican National Lawyers Association executive

director Michael Thielen that the union was "contracting for buses on

election day."

"If you're black or brown they'll rope you in and take you to the

polls, registration can be worked out," Fund wrote, per his "Boston

source." His email was forwarded on to others, forming the basis for the

plans.

The email exchange, parts of which may be missing, is below. Read

from the bottom. The last email is from James O'Keefe to associates Stan

Dai and Nadia Naffe, who later filed harassment charges against O'Keefe.

Others on the

thread include Heather Higgins, the founder of the conservative

Independent Women's Voice and the late Andrew Breitbart.

Naffe told BuzzFeed she flew to Boston to investigate, but that

they never uncovered anything of interest and the project fizzled.

From: "James E. O'Keefe III" Date: January 13, 2010 12:21:54 PM EST

To: xxxxxxx@gmail.com, xxxxxx@aol.com Subject: Fwd: brainstorm of sorts,

here - far-fetched? Maybe not?...

Your thoughts Nadia?

---------- Forwarded message ----------From: Heather Higgins Date:

Wednesday, January 13, 2010 Subject: Re: brainstorm of sorts, here -

far-fetched? Maybe not?... To: Steve Friess , James O'Keefe

xxxxxxxxxx@gmail.com, Andrew Breitbart Cc: Foster Friess

Andrew and James, I'm forwarding what could be a very clever idea from Steve Friess

in response to the intel below from John Fund re SEIU's intentions in

Tuesday's election in MA. Don't know what it would cost, but you all

should talk.

Warmest regards -Heather Higgins

On Wed, Jan 13, 2010 at 12:25 AM, Steve Friess wrote:

Wouldn't it be great if a "ACORN sting video" could be produced about these busses?

Dad - maybe bounce this off Breitbart?

Some black /Latina conservatives could be wired for video, and get

picked up on one of these busses, and show what goes on. My guess -they

are offering cash, (which I am pretty sure is illegal), and I also would

wager that at least some of these busses are making more than one stop

with the same people - ie getting them to vote twice -though I don't

know the mechanics of that.

Perhaps some private detective types would be needed to help track

down the busses, and a block or two ahead of them to drop our cameramen

off...

Too much to dream? Imagine pulling this off - legal / image problems

for SEIU would be a good thing... think there's upside to this?

Brietbart would know, and Fund would know - 'if we catch them doing

X, it could mean Y' - I just don't know what the stakes are...

On Jan 12, 2010, at 12:46 PM, Heather Higgins wrote:

Foster --See below from John Fund re SEIU -Acorn is in MA as well. It

would be hugely helpful if you would assist with our non-glamorous but

highly effective GOTV effort. If you could possibly let me know today,

that would be helpful to our planning. This is such a great opportunity

for making trouble in the best sort of way - I hope you can help us

really capitalize on it.

Many thanks, Heather

-------- Original Message --------Subject: FW: John Batchelor From:

"Fund, John" Date: Tue, January 12, 2010 8:25 am To: 'Michael Thielen'

Tip from Boston source (normally reliable)

Seiu contracting for buses on election day and heading to roxbury,

mattapan, roslindale and jamaica plain. If you're black or brown they'll

rope you in and take you to the polls, registration can be worked out.

Sent via BlackBerry from T-Mobile

</blockquote>

In the next installment, O'Keefe, who appears to have contacted Fund at this point, starts setting up

From: "James E. O'Keefe III" > Date: January 13, 2010 4:16:14 PM

EST> To: "mikeroman.com" > Subject: Re: ACORN videos / seiu /

election>> what time zone are you in. I'm assuming you mean 8Est.

That works.> I'm 201-637-0564>> On Wed, Jan 13, 2010 at 1:10

PM, mikeroman.com wrote:>>>> Have time to talk around

8?>>>>>> On Jan 13, 2010, at 3:41 PM, James E. O'Keefe

III wrote:>>>> > Mike,>> >>> > Got

your info from John Fund.>> > I was the producer of the ACORN

Videos>> > Would like to know whereabouts of the busses in

Boston SEIU, et al are using in order to bus people in to vote in the

Tuesday special election.>> > Thinking about sending some

undercover folks up there.>> >>> > James

</blockquote>

Then O'Keefe proposed sending Nadia Naffe up to Boston:

From: "James E. O'Keefe III"

Date: January 14, 2010 11:10:49 PM EST

To: xxxxxxx@aol.com

Cc: Stan Dai

Subject: Boston

Nadia,

We're willing to book you a plane ticket to Boston to get some footage from the SEIU busses.

Joe will be joining you taking care of logistics/equipment--- but i'll be in new orleans causing trouble.

im confident your training will take you far.

Interested in making some more video history?

James

</blockquote>

A couple days later, O'Keefe has booked travel for Naffe, who was to

do the operation. This email included an Orbitz booking confirmation:

From: "James E. O'Keefe III" > Date: January 15, 2010 2:46:09 PM

EST> To: nknaffe@aol.com, Stan Dai , Joe Basel > Subject: Fwd:

Travel Document - Boston 1/18/10>> Nadia,>> here's what I

could come up with- one stop but its along the way - no 12 hour flights,

more like 4-5 hour flight.> leaving tampa mon at noon> leaving

boston wed at 2pm so you can sleep.>> keep in mind Wed morning is

for additional work - if the polls are continuing if its close..>>

I'll also get you a hotel room for the mon night - Joe is flying in

overnight from San Francisco and arrives at 6:30am.>> Joe will be

picking you up shortly thereafter. But you will have to wake up around 7

on tuesday - your country needs you.>> More details to

follow.> James

</blockquote>

He also set up a place for her and Joe Basel, one of the men later

arrested with him after the Senator Landrieu affair, to stay in Boston

(Naffe and Basel are copied on the email):

From: "James E. O'Keefe III"

Date: January 16, 2010 10:59:14 PM EST

To: Amy Contrada

Cc: xxxxxx@aol.com, Joe Basel

Subject: Boston election day,

Amy,

Two of my collegues are coming to Boston to infilrate the SEIU on election day. One of them is a female.

Would you be able to put them her up Monday night?

James

</blockquote>

The video from the trip, if it was ever made, was never published.

"I believe there was discussion of doing something but O'Keefe's

office will tell you nothing was done," said Fund, reached by email.

"This is a classic example of someone trying to breath life into a three-year old dead horse," said Fund.

He said that other reporters had contacted him about it in the past

and that some "pointed out the email thread looked truncated and

edited." .

Reached by email, Naffe said the emails were authentic: "Fund and

Steve Friess, the son of billionaire Foster Friess, introduced the idea

to O'keefe that SEIU would fraudulently register anyone with brown skin

to vote."

"James flew me out to Boston to find the SEIU busses, just days after

that email was sent," Naffe said. She claimed that "Congressman Steve

King from Iowa was waiting at the hotel when we arrived to take us to

dinner. He gave us a pep talk about illegal voting."

"O'keefe has the footage, though I'm doubtful he would share any of

it. Since, he was arrested a week later in New Orleans while attempting

to wire tap Senator Mary Landrieu," Naffe said.

O'Keefe didn't respond to a request for comment.

Update: Fund emailed to say that he thinks his original email was

altered: "I maintain the email was edited to take out the fact I was

referring to what someone told me might be happening and that I was

asking a source (whom I have quoted in the past) if they had heard

anything about it."

He also wished to clarify that he did not personally tip O'Keefe to the busing. That has been reflected above.

</div>

==

...

Few conservative activists went on to achieve the fame O’Keefe did for <a title="the sting he pulled with fellow activist Hannah Giles" href="http://spectator.org/blog/2009/09/11/okeefes-acorn-expose-moves-to">the 2009 sting he pulled with fellow activist Hannah Giles</a>, posing as a pimp and prostitute inside ACORN offices, and secretly taping the advice they received. In the week since O’Keefe and three colleagues were arrested for apparently tampering with phones in the New Orleans office of Sen. Mary Landrieu (D-La.), national reporters have <a title="trained their eyes" href="http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/31/us/politics/31landrieu.html">trained their eyes</a> on organizations like the Collegiate Network and the Leadership Institute. The CN also gave a grant to the Patriot (George Washington University) and The Counterweight (University of Minnesota-Morris), where O’Keefe’s accomplices <a title="Stan Dai" href="http://majikthise.typepad.com/majikthise_/2010/01/is-this-the-same-stan-dai-.html">Stan Dai</a> and <a title="Joseph Basel" href="http://blogs.citypages.com/blotter/2010/01/joseph_basel_ph.php">Joseph Basel</a>, respectively, had worked in college.

The Leadership Institute employed O’Keefe for a year to train conservative activists; while there, he formed a friendship with Ben Wetmore, another veteran campus conservative who put up the four activists at his home before the Landrieu escapade. But any attempt to make them the faces of conservative college journalism, argued Longwell, would be off-base.

“From what he’s said and what he’s doing, O’Keefe strikes me as an ideologue,” said Longwell. “To use him to define conservative campus journalism is silly.”

Longwell has gained some perspective on this. In 2005, she left the Intercollegiate Studies Institute–the umbrella organization that runs CN–for Berman and Company, a free-market public relations firm in Washington that aggravates liberals with dogged, smart-alecky campaigns against their causes. Also joining Berman was Justin Wilson, once the editor of CN’s paper at the University of Michigan, then another program director at CN. Both later worked with <a title="Bret Jacobson" href="http://bretjacobson.com/">Bret Jacobson</a>, formerly the editor of the CN’s paper at the University of Oregon. (Before she came to CN, Longwell worked at a CN paper at Kenyon College.) In the years since, all three of them helped out with a punchy campaign against the Employee Free Choice Act–legislation that would make it easier for workers to form unions–at Berman’s Center on Union Facts. That campaign included <a title="ads" href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tu4oj_2E1jE">ads</a> that portrayed union organizers as thugs and undercover <a title="videos" href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P7eIqS-o0QE">videos</a>–conducted with more subtlety than O’Keefe, who would pose in costume–that captured union strategists shifting their strategy. One measure of how successful Berman and Company was at frustrating Democrats came when the late Sen. Ted Kennedy (D-Mass.) angrily <a title="ripped up one of the firm's anti-EFCA newspaper ads" href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GcJ5lKq3GY0">ripped up one of the firm’s anti-EFCA newspaper ads</a> in front of a cheering crowd of union workers.

According to activists who spoke with TWI, the experience of campus conservatives who went on to Berman is more representative of the movement’s investment in college journalism than the trials of James O’Keefe, Stan Dai, Joseph Basel and Ben Wetmore. It’s the sort of work that the three latter activists were doing until last week, using their training and connections to become players in the intelligence industry or in conservative activism. For the Leadership Institute, the Collegiate Network, and the National Journalism Center run by Young Americans for Freedom–just three of the conservative training organizations that have operated for more than a generation–the Landrieu debacle was a distraction from a project that had been going quite well. Conservative activists and journalists who’ve come out of those training programs have had a larger, but quieter, impact than O’Keefe. (Disclosure: I edited a CN paper, The Northwestern Chronicle, from 2002 to 2004, and I held a CN fellowship at USA Today from 2004 through 2005.) They’re well-funded–ISI, CN’s parent organization received, $8.3 million in contributions in 2009–and while they don’t release the names of donors, their trustees include American Spectator publisher Al Regnery (ISI), Heritage Foundation president Ed Fuelner (ISI), and GOP strategist Frank Donatelli (LI).

“Every two years or so, somebody writes a story about how conservatives on college campuses have suddenly discovered journalism,” said John J. Miller, an editor at National Review who came there from the same conservative UM paper as Berman’s Justin Wilson, and who hires summer interns from the CN roster. “Still, if you took people under the age of 40 or 45, right-of-center journalists–however you want to categorize them–a lot of them came from these conservative campus newspapers.”

While O’Keefe’s experience with the Leadership Institute has received more attention than his CN grant–and more than the internship Hannah Giles had at the National Journalism Center–the path from campus conservative journalism to D.C. influence is reliable. Before Marc Thiessen wrote speeches for George W. Bush, he was editor-in-chief of the Vassar Spectator. Before the Chamber of Commerce’s James Gelfand was tripped up for an email asking if it was possible to fund a study that would discredit health care reform, he was an editor at the Northwestern Chronicle. They place yearlong fellows at Roll Call, The Hill, The Weekly Standard, The American Spectator, and USA Today. Last year, the CN’s program expanded to the Raleigh News & Observer in North Carolina.

John McCormack scored a Collegiate Network internship with Miller on the strength of his work with the GW Patriot–the same paper that produced Stan Dai. From there he got the CN fellowship at The Weekly Standard, and was hired full-time after his fellowship ended. In October 2009 and January 2010, he shifted the momentum of elections in New York’s 23rd congressional district and in Massachusetts by hounding candidates who were blowing off his questions, prompting them to overreact–and suffer from the ugly headlines that resulted.

===

As Media Matters' Eric Hananoki noted, O'Keefe's <a href="http://mediamatters.org/blog/201001260052" title="http://mediamatters.org/blog/201001260052">three alleged accomplices</a> -- Joseph Basel, Robert Flanagan, and Stan Dai -- are right-wing activists as well. Basel was the founder of a conservative campus publication at the University of Minnesota-Morris, which, like the campus publication started by O'Keefe at Rutgers University, received funding from the conservative Leadership Institute's "Balance in Media" grant. Flanagan, the son of acting U.S. Attorney for the Western District of Louisiana William Flanagan, reportedly <a href="http://mediamatters.org/blog/201001260060" title="http://mediamatters.org/blog/201001260060">works</a> at the conservative Pelican Institute in New Orleans, just half a block from Landrieu's office. Dai received $5,000 from the right-wing Phillips Foundation's Ronald Reagan Future Leaders Scholarship Program. Additionally, during his time as a campus conservative, Dai reportedly co-wrote "a satirical work entitled The Penis Monologues, apparently a takeoff on the Vagina Monologues."

===

Note that while the ostensible purpose of the request by the pseudo phone repairmen to see the phone closet was to "embarrass" Sen. Landrieu (per O'Keefe's explanation) for her vote on healthcare and inaccessability to constituent phone callers, Landrieu is also a senior member of the Committee on Homeland Security in the Senate, and she has access to sensitive and controversial security intel.

By far the most intriguing background belongs to would-be telco switch operator Stan Dai.

Dai served as associate director of a college recruiting program for spy agencies funded by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI). Funded by a renewable $250,000 grant starting in 2004, the pilot program at Trinity Washington Univ. in DC was administered in part by Stan Dai. The programs have spread to 22 college campuses, each known as an ‘Intelligence Community Center of Academic Excellence’ (ICCAE), and pronounced "Icky". David Price has <a href="http://www.counterpunch.org/cockburn02052010.html">dug into it.</a>

Dai helped assemble the May 2004 spring colloquium, also funded by ODNI, at Trinity <a href="http://www.trinitydc.edu/news_events/pressreleases/index.php/2008/04/24/trinity-to-host-spring-colloquium-intelligence-support-for-the-war-on-terrorism/">headlined</a> as "Intelligence Support for the War on Terrorism" with panelists like Robert McFarlane and officers of the National Counter Terrorism Center, NCTC.

He <a href="http://www.defenddemocracy.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=11774010&Itemid=348">also co-hosted an Iraqi translator</a> with the US Army's 101st Airborne division, appearing on campus at George Washington University.

There are students across America imbibing the CIA’s lethal ethics, now openly imparted to eager youth. The anthropologist David Price has a major scoop in our latest subscriber-only newsletter. He describes how, across the past five years, without a word of public debate, let along concern the CIA has successfully implanted spy schools on 22 university campuses across the country, many of them labeled “Intelligence Community Centers of Academic Excellence” – ICCAE, pronounced “Icky”.

It began in 2004,” Price reports, when “a $250,000 grant was awarded to Trinity Washington University by the Intelligence Community for the establishment of a pilot ‘Intelligence Community Center of Academic Excellence’ program. Trinity was in many ways an ideal campus for a pilot program. For a vulnerable, tuition-driven struggling financial institution in the D.C. area the promise of desperately needed funds and a regionally assured potential student base, linked with or seeking connections to the DC intelligence world, made the program financially attractive.”

Price’s timing is impeccable. The very day we were preparing to send his story to press, came news that a group  of Fox News’ free-lance buggers – the same who set up ACORN – had been arrested, trying for phone sabotage in Senator Mary Landrieu’s New Orleans office. Three of the team were caught inside Landrieu’s office. A fourth was arrested as he sat in a car a few blocks away with what the police described as “a listening device that could pick up transmissions." Another anonymous official told MSNBC that the man in the car was Stan Dai.

Dai is a veteran of Trinity Washington University’s spook school,. funded by the “Intelligence Community”. In 2008, Dai served as associate director of ICCAE at Trinity Washington.

How many wannabe Howard Hunts and G. Gordon Liddys are being turned out by the spook schools? As Price writes, “Even amid the extreme militarization prevailing in America today, the public silence surrounding this quiet installation and spread of programs like ICCAE is extraordinary. In the last four years ICCAE has gone further in bringing government intelligence organizations openly to multiple American university campuses than any previous intelligence initiative since World War Two. Yet the program spreads with little public notice, media coverage, or coordinated multi-campus resistance.”

Did any tenured faculty member at the 22 campuses now hosting spook-schools publicly raise the alarm? Twenty years ago there would have been furious demonstrations. Not now. Faculty, most notably at the University of Washington, did write anguished, even angry memos. Price quotes them. But as he writes,

“it’s far from clear that these private critiques had any measurable effect, precisely because they remained private…

“Tenured professors on ICCAE campuses, or on campuses contemplating ICCAE programs, need to use their tenure and speak out, on the record, in public… the split between the public and private reactions to ICCAE has helped usher the CIA silently back onto American university campuses. The intelligence community thrives on silence.”

</blockquote>

Price can be reached at <a href="mailto:dprice@stmartin.edu">dprice@stmartin.edu</a>.

Our newsletter features Price’s full, exclusive story

===

<h3>Stan Dai

</h3>

A "Stan Dai" is based in the Washington D.C. area and has frequently been involved in conservative causes.

College conservative. In 2005, The Phillips Foundation <a href="http://www.thephillipsfoundation.org/index.php?q=node/23387">awarded</a> Dai a $5,000 scholarship under its Ronald Reagan Future Leaders Scholarship Program and cited his work on conservative causes. From the foundation's 2005 <a href="http://www.thephillipsfoundation.org/index.php?q=node/20">biography</a> of Dai:

STAN DAI, Lisle, Ill., attends The George Washington University majoring in Political Science. He is editor-in-chief of The GW Patriot, an alternative conservative student newspaper, a Club 100 Activist of Young America's Foundation, and an Undergraduate Fellow on Terrorism of the Foundation for the Defense of the Democracies. He is co-founder of GW's Students Defending Democracy, a volunteer on several political campaigns, and active in the GW College Republicans and GW Colonials for Life. He was a 2003 Honorable Mention in the U.S. Institute of Peace Essay Contest.

</blockquote>

Freelance consultant, former assistant director for intelligence center. According to a <a href="http://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&q=cache:YTF9E_m3P6UJ:www.jsa.org/georgetown/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/june-23-24-2009-agenda-packets.pdf+Young+America%E2%80%99s+Foundation+stan+dai&hl=en&gl=us&sig=AHIEtbQNR6D_fJbB6nJrDPejV30gzoVQLw">packet</a> provided for the <a href="http://www.jsa.org/">Junior Statesmen</a> Summer School speakers program, Dai is currently a "Freelance consultant" after previously <a href="http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&client=firefox-a&rls=org.mozilla%3Aen-US%3Aofficial&hs=byZ&q=site%3Awww.trinitydc.edu+Dai&aq=f&aql=&aqi=&oq=">serving</a> as "the first Assistant Director of the Intelligence Community Center of Academic Excellence at Trinity in D.C."

The Intelligence Community Center of Academic Excellence states that it "prepares students for careers in intelligence. Its curriculum develops the skills relevant to intelligence community careers, while also allowing students to pursue the major of their choice." In 2008, the Junior State of America podcast <a href="http://jsacast.podomatic.com/">wrote</a> of Dai's background:

Stan Dai is the Assistant Director of Trinity's Intelligence Community Center of Academic Excellence in DC. He was formerly the Assistant Operations Officer at a Department of Defense irregular warfare fellowship program and a Fellow on Terrorism at the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies. Stan graduated Phi Beta Kappa from the George Washington University.

Stan's main interest is the intersection of political mass movements, culture, and violence. He has discussed these topics as a guest lecturer at the George Washington University and on media outlets including C-SPAN's Washington Journal and Voice of America.

Stan has been involved in JSA since 2001: after attending summer school at Yale, he founded the JSA chapter at Naperville North, served in various Midwest region positions, and was a resident assistant at Georgetown.

</blockquote>

Majikthise blogger Lindsay Beyerstein further <a href="http://majikthise.typepad.com/majikthise_/2010/01/is-this-the-same-stan-dai-.html?cid=6a00d8341c61e653ef0120a813e410970b">wrote</a> of Dai:

In college, Stan Dai co-wrote a satirical work entitled <a href="http://74.125.93.132/search?q=cache:nG5622o9lDYJ:www.gwumc.edu/cahh/pdf/gw_patriot_bieber.pdf+gw+patriot+stan+dai&cd=8&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us&client=firefox-a">The Penis Monologues</a>, apparently a takeoff on the Vagina Monologues. Here's a taste:

</blockquote>

My Angry Penis

MY PENIS IS ANGRY!!!!!!! You want to know what happened to my penis? Joan happened to my penis! There I was, sleeping peacefully when Joan stormed in and dragged me out for "an educational program." I thought was going to see Mr. Rogers! But nooooooo! It turned out to be the "Whine-gina Monologues!"

</blockquote>