ACORN Pimp tries to tap Senator's phone

[jimmy olsen]

  Dumbass

His Acorn sting was brilliant, but this was just stupid. Got caught up in his own hype. Probably thought he was the next Paul Harvey, but he ain't gonna get away with this like Harvey did with his infiltration.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100126/ap_on_re_us/us_senator_s_office_arrests

By MICHAEL KUNZELMAN, Associated Press Writer Michael Kunzelman, Associated Press Writer   – 51 mins ago

NEW ORLEANS – A conservative activist who posed as a pimp to target the community-organizing group ACORN and the son of a federal prosecutor were among four men arrested and accused of trying to tamper with phones at Democratic Sen. Mary Landrieu's office.

Activist James O'Keefe, 25, recorded two of the other suspects with his cell phone as they walked into the office dressed like telephone repairman and said they needed to fix problems with the phone system, according to an FBI affidavit.

A federal law enforcement official said one of the suspects was picked up in a car a couple of blocks away with a listening device that could pick up transmissions. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because the information was not part of an FBI affidavit that described the circumstances of the case.

O'Keefe said "veritas," Latin for truth, as he left a suburban jail Tuesday with suspects Stan Dai and Joseph Basel, both 24. All declined to comment.

"There will be a time for that," Dai said.

As he got into a cab outside the jail, O'Keefe said, "The truth shall set me free." His biography on a Web site where he blogs says he works at VeritasVisuals.com, though that Web site does not currently work.

The fourth suspect, Robert Flanagan, the son of Shreveport-based acting U.S. Attorney Bill Flanagan, was not with them. It was not immediately known if he had already been released on the $10,000 bail set for each suspect.

It sounded like a Watergate-style operation, but federal officials have not yet said why the men wanted to interfere with Landrieu's phones, whether they were successful, or even if the goal was political espionage.

According to the FBI affidavit, Flanagan and Basel showed up at Landrieu's office Monday morning carrying white hard hats and dressed in jeans, blue work shirts, fluorescent green vests and toolbelts. They told an employee they were there to fix problems with the phone system. O'Keefe told an employee he was there waiting for someone.

The affidavit says Basel asked for access to a phone at the reception desk, then manipulated the handset and tried to call the phone with his cell phone, but said he could not get through. Flanagan tried to call as well, according to the affidavit.

They said they needed to work on the main system and asked where the telephone closet was. They were directed to another office in the building, where they again said they were telephone repairmen and an employee asked for their credentials. They said they had left them in their vehicle.

They were arrested later by U.S. marshals. Details of the arrest were not available. Dai was also arrested, but Letten's office said only that he assisted the others in planning, coordinating and preparing.

Landrieu, a moderate Democrat, declined comment Tuesday through spokesman Aaron Saunders. Saunders did say Landrieu was in Washington, not in her office, when the men showed up Monday. Landrieu has been in the news recently because she negotiated an increase in Medicaid funds for her state before announcing her support for Senate health care legislation.

Bill Flanagan's office confirmed his son was among those arrested, but declined to comment further.

An FBI criminal complaint charging the men was unsealed Tuesday. None of the defendants, each wearing red prison jumpsuits, commented at a court hearing held in the afternoon. All four were charged with entering federal property under false pretenses for the purpose of committing a felony, which could bring up to 10 years in prison and a $250,000 fine.

"It was poor judgment," Robert Flanagan's lawyer, Garrison Jordan, said in a brief interview outside the courthouse. "I don't think there was any intent or motive to commit a crime."

Michael McHale, chairman of the Louisiana Democratic Party, referred to the episode as "Louisiana Watergate" in a statement Tuesday and urged authorities to prosecute "any wrongdoers to the fullest extent of the law."

O'Keefe was the brains behind a series of undercover videos that have caused major problems for ACORN — the Association of Community Organizers for Reform Now.

He managed to do what Republicans have been trying to for years — hurt the political affiliates of ACORN, which have registered hundreds of thousands of voters in urban and other poor areas of the country.

By producing undercover videos shot in ACORN offices, O'Keefe brought a firestorm of criticism that the group was helping its low-income clients break the law.

Using a hidden camera, O'Keefe, posing as a pimp and accompanied by a young woman posing as a prostitute, shot videos in ACORN offices where staffers appeared to offer illegal tax advice and to support the misuse of public funds and illegal trafficking in children.

Edited videos of those visits to ACORN offices were first posted on biggovernment.com, a site run by conservative Andrew Breitbart.

In a statement e-mailed to The Associated Press, Breitbart said: "We have no knowledge about or connection to any alleged acts and events involving James O'Keefe at Senator Mary Landrieu's office. We only just learned about the alleged incident this afternoon. We have no information other than what has been reported publicly by the press. Accordingly, we simply are not in a position to make any further comment."

In the past, Breitbart has said O'Keefe — now a paid contributor to biggovernment.com — is an independent filmmaker, not an employee.

O'Keefe has been sued in Pennsylvania and Maryland based on the ACORN videos; he does not have an attorney of record in either case and attempts Tuesday to locate a lawyer who might represent him were not successful.

ACORN calls itself the largest grass roots community organization of low- and moderate-income people in the country, claiming over 400,000 families, more than 1,200 neighborhood chapters in about 75 cities.

Until the controversy last year over the videos at ACORN offices, 10 percent of ACORN's funds came from federal government grants. In September, Congress blocked previously approved funds from going to the group.

___

Associated Press Writers Kevin McGill in New Orleans, Pete Yost in Washington, Justin Pritchard in Los Angeles and Ben Nuckols in Baltimore contributed to this report.

[Caliga]

  What's this about Paul Harvey?  He's the

....and now you-ouuuuuuuuuuuuu know.... the rest of the story.

guy, right?

[jimmy olsen]

What's this about Paul Harvey?  He's the

....and now you-ouuuuuuuuuuuuu know.... the rest of the story.

guy, right?

Tired to sneak on a nuclear base in the 50's to prove security was too lax and commies did it all the time. He was caught.

[Jaron]

Isn't Paul Harvey Two Face?

[jimmy olsen]

Isn't Paul Harvey Two Face?

That's Harvey Dent

[Razgovory]

Isn't Paul Harvey Two Face?

That's Harvey Dent

Maybe the full name is Paul Harvey Dent.  He just uses Paul Harvey as a stage name.

[citizen k]

James O'Keefe charged in alleged plot to bug Senator Mary Landrieu's office

By Carol D. Leonnig and Garance Franke-Ruta
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, January 27, 2010

The conservative young filmmaker whose undercover sting damaged a liberal activist group last year faces federal criminal charges in an alleged plot to bug the New Orleans office of Sen. Mary Landrieu (D-La.).

James O'Keefe was among four men who created a ruse to enter the lawmaker's downtown office, saying they needed to repair her telephones, according to court records unsealed Tuesday. O'Keefe used his cellphone to take pictures of two men, Joseph Basel and Robert Flanagan, who are accused in an FBI agent's sworn affidavit of impersonating telephone company workers. Stanley Dai is accused of aiding the Jan. 25 plot.

All four were taken to a suburban New Orleans jail and charged with entering federal property under false pretenses with the intent of committing a felony. If convicted, each man faces up to 10 years in prison and a fine of $250,000.

Flanagan, 24, is the son of William J. Flanagan, the acting U.S. attorney for the Western District of Louisiana, based in Shreveport. William Flanagan declined to comment through an office assistant.

Landrieu said Tuesday, "I am as interested as everyone else about their motives and purpose, which I hope will become clear as the investigation moves forward."

Last July, Landrieu proposed a replacement for William Flanagan, and last week, President Obama nominated that person, Stephanie A. Finley, for the job.

O'Keefe, 25, became a conservative hero last year after he and fellow activist Hannah Giles secretly videotaped several regional offices of the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN) while posting as a pimp and a prostitute. O'Keefe's videos showed ACORN staffers appearing to offer them housing help and advice on concealing their purported prostitution business.

The furor over the videos led Congress in September to recommend banning all federal funding for ACORN, and the group, facing major questions about its housing work for the federal government, was forced to launch an internal audit of its operations. The ban never took effect: In December, a federal court ruled that singling out ACORN for punishment was unconstitutional and ordered the federal government to honor its existing contracts with the group.

Given that history with O'Keefe, Democrats gleefully pored over the details of the criminal charges Tuesday, while Republicans either spoke about waiting for all the facts to come out or kept their thoughts to themselves.

Conservative activist Andrew Breitbart, who helped champion O'Keefe's undercover work on his Web site BigGovernment.com and advised him on how best to release the videos over time, said Tuesday that he didn't have enough details about the New Orleans charges to comment.

"We have no knowledge about or connection to any alleged acts and events involving James O'Keefe at Senator Mary Landrieu's office," Breitbart said. "We have no information other than what has been reported publicly by the press."

According to the FBI affidavit, Flanagan and Basel were dressed in blue denim pants, blue work shirts, light green fluorescent vests, tool belts and white construction-style hard hats when they entered the Hale Boggs Federal Building on busy Poydras Street. The pair told Landrieu's staff members that they were telephone repairmen and needed access to the office's main reception desk telephone.

O'Keefe was already inside the office, telling a Landrieu staffer that he was waiting for someone to arrive. The staffer told an FBI agent that O'Keefe had "positioned his cellular phone in his hand so as to record Flanagan and Basel," the affidavit stated.

On Thursday, O'Keefe delivered a speech to the Pelican Institute, a libertarian think tank based one block from Landrieu's office. He was hailed in promotional materials for the event as "a pioneer in the use of new media to drive these kinds of important stories. . . . He will discuss the role of new media and show examples of effective investigative reporting."

In October, 31 members of Congress signed a resolution, authored by Rep. Pete Olson (R-Tex.), to honor O'Keefe and Giles "for their diligent investigative journalism exposing the fraudulent and potentially illegal activities" of ACORN.

"Hannah and James should be applauded for their efforts to root out corruption and abuse of federal tax dollars," Olson said, adding that they were "setting an example for concerned citizens across America that we can hold those who receive taxpayer funds accountable."

Olson said Tuesday that he understandably supported exposing the misdeeds of a government contractor. "However, if recent events conclude that any laws were broken in the incident in Senator Landrieu's office -- that is not something I condone," he said in a statement.

The earlier videos put ACORN, and many of the Democratic lawmakers who supported it, in the hot seat for nearly a month. ACORN, whose subsidiaries have federal contracts primarily to offer housing counseling, is best known for its robust registration of low-income and minority voters, who typically vote Democratic. Its efforts in 2008 were credited with helping to elect Barack Obama president.

Last fall, ACORN accused O'Keefe of doctoring some of the videos, including by deleting comments by ACORN staffers that indicated they thought his pimp act was a joke.

ACORN President Bertha Lewis said Tuesday that O'Keefe's arrest is "further evidence of his disregard for the law in pursuit of his extremist agenda" and that it supports the organization's view that many videos were edited to make it look bad.

"From the day that O'Keefe's undercover 'sting' videos came out, ACORN leadership pledged accountability for its own staff while pointing out that the videos had been shot illegally and edited deceptively in order to undermine the work of an organization that has empowered working families for four decades," she said. "Unfortunately, during the rush to judge ACORN, both the media and Congress failed to question the methods, intent and accuracy of Mr. O'Keefe's videos."

O'Keefe is well-known, but Flanagan, Basel and Dai are not. Flanagan worked last year as a paid intern for Rep. Mary Fallin (R-Okla.); he now works at the Pelican Institute as a blogger.

Dai, who is from Alexandria, is a Chinese immigrant and was president of the Conservative Student Union at George Washington University in 2005, student records show.

Basel, a Mankato, Minn., native, and O'Keefe became friends as fellow founders of conservative newspapers at their respective colleges, O'Keefe at Rutgers and Basel at the University of Minnesota-Morris.

In a joint interview given to CampusReform.org two weeks ago, O'Keefe and Basel were quoted about their frustration with what they considered to be the liberal bent of college media. O'Keefe urged young conservatives to think and act boldly to avoid complacency.

"The more bold you are, the more opportunities will be open to you," O'Keefe said. "The less bold you are, the less opportunities in life will be open to you."

Research editor Alice Crites contributed to this report.

The Saul Alinsky of our generation.

[Fireblade]

Dude's going to be tossing salad all goddamn day in prison. Hope he likes jelly.

Relevant:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=077UtUWGQOA

[Jaron]

I think brilliant is a bit strong of a word, Tim.

[KRonn]

What a bunch of idiots. Federal crime, if it goes that way, these guys are likely screwed.