New letter found in lobbying scandal

A congressional investigation has turned up yet another fraudulent letter sent to U.S. Rep. Tom Perriello, this one forged to appear as if it was sent by the Senior Center in Albemarle County in opposition to climate change legislation.

In response to the ongoing scandal, a watchdog group called Tuesday for new laws to crack down on such phony grassroots campaigns. A similar measure was defeated in 2007 in the Senate after pressure from lobbying firms in what has been called a “misinformation campaign.”

The latest forgery brings the total number of bogus letters sent to Perriello and two other congressmen to 13, representing a total of nine community groups in Charlottesville and in Pennsylvania.

All of the letters were sent by a Washington “grassroots” lobbying firm on behalf of a pro-coal advocacy group in mid-June and urged the congressmen to vote in opposition to the American Clean Energy and Security Act.

“Dear Congressman Perriello,” the latest forged letter reads. “My organization, Senior Center Inc., represents seniors in your district. You are about to vote on important environmental legislation (the Waxman-Markey bill). We support making the environment cleaner, but the reason we are writing is that we are concerned about our electric bills. Many seniors, as you know, are on low fixed incomes. The cost to heat and cool our homes, run hot water and use other appliances is very important to those on a budget.”

The bogus letter was signed by “Peter M. Thompon [sic], Executive Director, Henry County Senior Services.”

Other details emerge

The real-life Peter Thompson, executive director of the Senior Center Inc., said he is “outraged” that a lobbying firm would falsely appropriate the Senior Center’s logo and reputation in opposition to a bill before Congress.

“We have clearly been victimized by a blatant act of fraud,” Thompson said Tuesday. “The Senior Center is nonprofit and nonpartisan. We seek to inform seniors in our community. We do not take stances on legislation. As a citizen and as the director of a community resource, I am outraged by this fraud.”

Details of four faked letters sent to Reps. Kathy Dahlkemper and Christopher Carney, both Democrats of Pennsylvania, were also revealed Tuesday. All of the newly revealed letters were purportedly sent by senior citizen groups.

“It’s awful to see our wonderful seniors’ groups misrepresented in this way and dragged into this debate,” Perriello said in a statement. “These kinds of reprehensible tactics are escalating now with the scary misinformation about health care reform. Let’s have the decency to debate issues with facts and civility.”

Previously disclosed letters were forged to appear as if they were sent by the Albemarle-Charlottesville chapter of the NAACP, Creciendo Juntos (a network of Charlottesville-area service providers to the local Hispanic community), a Charlottesville chapter of the American Association of University Women and the Jefferson Area Board for Aging.

Dahlkemper’s fake letters were made to appear as if they were sent by the Slippery Rock Senior Center in Slippery Rock, Pa.; the Erie Center on Health & Aging in Erie, Pa.; and the Butler Senior Center in Lyndora, Pa. Carney’s fake letter was forged to look as if it came from the Dunmore Senior Citizens’ Center in Dunmore, Pa.

Debate debased

U.S. Rep. Edward J. Markey, who launched the congressional probe after the forgeries were revealed by The Daily Progress, said in a statement that such “astroturfing” tactics are damaging to public discourse and the legislative process.

“We’ve seen the fear-mongering with our nation’s senior citizens with health care, and now we’re seeing fraud-mongering with senior citizens on clean energy,” said Markey, co-patron of the cap-and-trade bill and chairman of the Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming. “Lately, democratic debate has been deceptively debased by fake facts and harsh rhetoric. We must return to an honest discussion of the issues, and ensure that this sort of campaign does not further poison the well of trustworthy debate.”

Bonner & Associates, a “strategic grassroots” lobbying firm, sent the phony letters after it was hired by a public affairs company called the Hawthorn Group to perform “limited outreach” to key congressmen in opposition to the cap-and-trade bill. Hawthorn was working on behalf of the American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity.

Bonner & Associates has not returned repeated phone calls. Bonner has told other media organizations that the fake letters were sent by a temporary, part-time employee who they say has been fired.

The coal industry advocacy group and the Hawthorn Group have both said that they terminated their relationship with Bonner & Associates after they were told of the fake letters on June 24 — two days before the House approved the climate change bill by a margin of five votes.

None of the congressmen was notified of the fake letters until two weeks ago.

A ‘grassroots’ campaign

Both Hawthorn and the coal coalition blamed Bonner & Associates for the lack of notification prior to the vote, saying Bonner had assured them that the congressmen and the community groups would be told immediately.

According to Markey’s investigation, a total of 58 letters were sent to Perriello, Dahlkemper and Carney as part of the “grassroots” campaign. Investigators are working to verify whether the remaining letters were sent under false pretenses or if they represent the views of the signers.

Lisa Camoosa Miller of the coal advocacy group said in a statement Tuesday that ACCCE is cooperating fully with the investigation.

“As a part of both our internal examination and our full cooperation with the House Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming, ACCCE is continuing to take all possible steps to determine the authenticity of all letters Bonner and Associates submitted under its limited scope of work with the Hawthorn Group on behalf of ACCCE. ACCCE is sharing the information from our review with the Select Committee on an ongoing basis,” the statement said. “As ACCCE said last Thursday, out of respect for the Select Committee’s ongoing investigation, ACCCE will decline to make public additional details of its filings with the committee at this time.”

Calls for investigation

The Sierra Club has formally asked the U.S. Department of Justice to open a criminal wire fraud investigation of Bonner & Associates in connection with the forged letters.

OMB Watch, a nonprofit federal watchdog organization, said Tuesday that the phony letter scandal highlights the need for tougher disclosure rules for companies, such as Bonner & Associates, that organize “grassroots” campaigns on behalf of corporate clients seeking to sway lawmakers’ votes on legislation.

Under existing law, such companies are not required to reveal who is funding their lobbying efforts, as they supposedly do not directly lobby legislators.

Amanda Adams, a speech rights policy analyst with OMB Watch, said a provision of the Honest Leadership and Open Government Act of 2007 would have required groups to report grassroots lobbying if they were registered in the federal lobbying database and if expenditures on grassroots lobbying exceeded $25,000 per quarter.

That provision of the bill, however, was stripped out by an amendment from Sen. Bob Burnett, a Republican from Utah.

“The provision was taken out after an intensive campaign by opponents that was primarily based on inaccurate information or interpretations that were at odds with the stated intentions of the sponsors,” OMB Watch said in a statement after the disclosure rules were nixed in early 2007.

Adams said organizations that had engaged in big-dollar grassroots lobbying campaigns were chiefly behind the measure’s demise. “It was a hard battle to fight,” she said. “There was so much misinformation.”