Conservative Activists’ Sting: The Undercover Videos
Post #4 – The third controversy ensnaring ACORN is the most infamous – the secretly recorded videotapes.
“My name is James O’Keefe. On August 7, 2009, Hannah Giles and I took our ACORN investigation to San Bernardino, California – one of the most highly foreclosed and economically desolate areas in the country.
Hannah posed as the prostitute, seeking to traffic in underage girls from El Salvador. I posed as the up and coming local politician, who wanted to use illicit sex money from the underage girls to fund my future Congressional campaign.”
With this voiceover – accompanied by a strutting Hannah Giles playing dress-up as a streetwalker – conservative activist / provocateur James O’Keefe introduces a video, filmed surreptitiously at the ACORN office in San Bernardino – one of six videos released beginning on September 10, 2009 on BigGovernment.com and heavily promoted by Fox News after the pair visited ACORN (and ACORN Housing) offices in San Bernardino and seven other urban areas (Baltimore, Brooklyn, Los Angeles, Miami, Philadelphia, San Diego, and Washington DC).
As the video continues, Mr. O’Keefe advises us that the part-time worker the pair encountered in the ACORN office says she has had experience running an escort service. We see her on camera saying,
“And, I ran a service, yeah …”
…
“I have some experience in, in, in how not to get caught.”
Mr. O’Keefe says the staffer also related how she had shot her husband. We see her on tape saying,
“I shot him. I shot him…”— Hannah Giles can be heard asking, “In self-defense?”— The ACORN staffer replies, “Yeah.”
This is enough, a mere 54 seconds into the video, to get a flavor of the dynamic duo’s undercover investigation / performance art. Some quick points, based on observation, news accounts, and Scott Harshbarger’s report: The videotape was highly-edited – as the other released tapes appear to be. We don’t know what was said in between the edited clips we see. Unedited videos have not been released. As we have learned subsequently, the undercover investigators were thrown out of a number of ACORN (and ACORN Housing) offices; no video has been released of these encounters. Voiceover soundtracks were added after the videos were filmed. Mr. O’Keefe, who appears in all released videos dressed as a pimp, actually appeared in each office with button down shirt and slacks. Ms. Giles wore the same streetwalker get-up at all the venues. The videographers do not distinguish between ACORN, a 501(c)(4) community organizing group with local chapters across the country, and ACORN Housing, a separate 501(c)(3) that provides counseling for low and moderate income homebuyers. Three of the released videos capture only ACORN Housing employees. Finally, note that none of the ACORN staff or volunteers actually proffered any assistance to the poseurs.
While the videographers are hardly paragons of journalistic integrity in a quest for truth (as James O’Keefe’s subsequent brush with fame would attest), the tapes still present us with a damning picture of ACORN.
Indeed, ACORN has acknowledged as much. In a September 16, 2009 interview with CNN’s Rick Sanchez (see accompanying video) in the aftermath of the tapes’ release, ACORN President Bertha Lewis says of the clips, “Pretty horrendous, isn’t it? … I mean, this would curl anyone’s hair. And it was outrageous, it was indefensible, even though we know these tapes — no one has shown totally unedited tapes, because you don’t see tapes where they were thrown out of ACORN offices. You don’t see tapes where people are told, you know, we can’t help you.”
Ms. Lewis, interviewed with Congressman Darryl Issa on Fox News Sunday a few days later, reacts to Chris Wallace’s suggestion that she had attacked Fox News when the videos first surfaced.
“Well, what did I do? Immediately those folks were terminated.”
And in an exchange seconds later continues, “… And what did I also do? Make sure that we have an independent review, make sure that we suspended any walk-in activities so we could review what worked, what didn’t work.
In instances those folks were thrown out. I have an obligation to my board, to my members and to my other employees that actually did practice professional, good high standards. Those folks cannot work for me.”
In addition to the staff firings and Ms. Lewis’s attempt to get out in front of the story with media appearances, ACORN commissioned an independent inquiry of the circumstances surrounding the videos, evaluation of the management and governance reforms that ACORN began in June 2008, and proposals regarding ACORN management, oversight, and governance.
The resulting report by Scott Harshbarger refers to the video controversy as “the third strike against ACORN.” The aftermath of this controversy was devastating. In the wake of the public ridicule heaped on the group, the U.S. Census Bureau severed its relationship with ACORN, the U.S. Senate voted to deny HUD funds to ACORN , the House of Representatives voted to strip funding from ACORN, foundations pulled their funding (decried here and here), and ACORN’s natural allies in the nonprofit world fell silent.
The San Bernardino video, which provided the basis for this post, can be found here.
More in my next post: The Filmmaker’s Invisible Art – Editing to Tell a Story
Related Video: Bertha Lewis Speaks to CNN about ACORN Controversy
Previous posts in this series:
