Today, the Heartland Institute initiated the Rep. Anthony Weiner Defense Strategy of Blaming Unknown Actors.
They issued a press release blaming the document on thieves and forgeries. The odd thing is that if this were a forgery and made up of whole cloth, why did they apologize to their donors?
Apologies: The Heartland Institute apologizes to the donors whose identities were revealed by this theft. We promise anonymity to many of our donors, and we realize that the major reason these documents were stolen and faked was to make it more difficult for donors to support our work. We also apologize to Heartland staff, directors, and our allies in the fight to bring sound science to the global warming debate, who have had their privacy violated and their integrity impugned.The Guardian also followed up on this story only to get changing stories from the H.I. flacks, who then took a "don't you dare question us" approach:
The nature of the "theft" charges by Heartland was also not immediately clear. Lakely, in his statement, explains that a staff member, persuaded by "an unknown person", mistakenly sent the documents to an unfamiliar email address.As the saying goes, I believe them, even if a million other people don't.
Heartland's statement said the "stolen documents appear to have been written by Heartland's president for a board meeting that took place on January 17."
However, in an email to the Guardian later on Wednesday, Lakely backtracked on this apparent confirmation that some of the documents were genuine.
"Considering the fact that the individual who committed fraud and identity theft in correspondence with a staffer yesterday also created a fake Heartland document out of whole cloth, we cannot authenticate any of the documents," he wrote.
"At any rate, our standing policy is to not discuss confidential documents. We are also in the process of taking legal action, so our previous statements are all we have to say about the matter at present."
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