Bonner: Sorry for fake letters

WASHINGTON — The head of the “grassroots” lobbying firm that sent bogus letters to U.S. Rep. Tom Perriello and two other congressman apologized Thursday to a congressional panel investigating the deception.

Jack Bonner, founder and president of Bonner & Associates, told the House Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming that the forged letters were an “anomaly” and a “most unfortunate matter.”

“I personally take full responsibility for what happened,” Bonner said at Thursday’s hearing. “While we certainly did not authorize these letters, we also did not prevent them.”

Bonner’s firm — which specializes in mobilizing “grassroots” support or opposition for its clients’ public policy positions — was hired as a subcontractor by public affairs company the Hawthorn Group, which was working on behalf of a coal industry advocate called the American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity.

The coal group was undertaking a multi-million-dollar lobbying campaign against the American Clean Energy and Security Act that aims to curb greenhouse gas emissions and promote clean energy alternatives. Bonner & Associates was hired to identify minority, veteran and senior citizen groups in the congressional districts of seven key swing members in the and encourage those groups to write letters to their congressmen urging changes to the bill. The company was to be paid $43,500 for its efforts, according to an invoice.

A temporary employee of Bonner & Associates, however, forged 14 letters to appear as if they came from community groups in the targeted congressional districts. Perriello received letters made to look as if they were sent by groups such as the Albemarle-Charlottesville chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, the Senior Center Inc., the Jefferson Area Board for Aging and a defunct chapter of the American Association of University Women.

The letters urged Perriello and the other two congressmen — Kathy Dahlkemper and Chris Carney, both Democrats of Pennsylvania — to oppose portions of the legislation, commonly known as “cap and trade.”

Bonner said that the employee was fired immediately after the forgeries were discovered. The firm, he said, has since implemented new ethical and quality-control measures to prevent such trickery in the future.

“It is difficult to defend against a person bent on committing fraud,” Bonner said.

Lisa M. Maatz, director of public policy and government relations for the American Association of University Women, testified that the AAUW forgery was particularly offensive, as it not only used AAUW’s reputation to further the agenda of the coal industry but also featured the address of a former president and the identity of a woman who had passed away.

Maatz read a quote from Willa Lawall of Charlottesville, who said: “As a former president of the Charlottesville AAUW branch, I was shocked to learn from Gwen Dent, our last president, that the cited letter used her home address without her permission and cited the name of our dear lamented longtime historian, Anne Waldner, who died before the ‘cap and trade’ issue ever came up. So, not only were Bonner & Associates engaging brazenly in theft of the AAUW log, their theft of address was grossly insulting.”

U.S. Rep. Edward Markey, chairman of the House committee on global warming, grilled Bonner and Steve Miller, president and CEO of the American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity.

Documents uncovered by Markey’s investigation found that Bonner & Associates first learned of the forgeries on June 22. Bonner & Associates notified the Hawthorn Group, which then notified the coal industry organization. Miller said the coal group demanded that Bonner & Associates immediately notify each of the affected organizations and the three congressmen.

Many of those notifications, however, did not take place. Officials with the Senior Center, JABA and the local NAACP never received notification from Bonner & Associates. It was only after The Daily Progress revealed the existence of the letters that the coal group realized that the notifications had not occurred and apologized to the groups.

Bonner & Associates, Hawthorn and the coal group also did not attempt to notify the congressmen until after the vote on the legislation took place June 26. The bill passed by a slim margin.

“Why didn’t you take action before June 26, before the vote on the floor of Congress, to let Congress know that the NAACP, the American Association of University Women were not in opposition to the American Clean Energy and Security Act?” Markey asked Bonner.

Bonner apologized again. “I am personally very sorry,” he said. “We were wrong not to be up there. We should have made sure that everybody knew.”

Markey skewered Bonner and Miller for knowingly allowing the three congressmen to cast a vote on a landmark clean energy bill believing that key constituent groups opposed the bill.

“The coal group was willing to pay millions for their lobbying efforts against the bill, but they weren’t willing to spend a few cents to make a phone call,” he said.

Bonner replied that he did not know when the vote on the bill was supposed to take place. “We are a grassroots firm, not a lobbying firm, so we weren’t aware exactly when that was supposed to occur,” he said.

U.S. Rep. Jay Inslee, D-Wash., did not believe Bonner, pointing out that the vote’s date was widely advertised and Bonner & Associates was conducting a major letter-writing campaign against the legislation.

“All I can say is, give me a break,” he said.

Markey reserved the bulk of the blame, however, for Miller. The coal group, he said, is ultimately responsible for misleading key swing members on an important vote.

“The responsibility — and I’ll put it right on your shoulders — was to notify members of Congress,” Markey said to Miller. “I’m putting it on you.”

Miller said he regrets not personally making the notifications. He and two other coal group executives, he added, have been sanctioned with “severe” financial penalties as a result of the fake letters.

“Our reliance on Mr. Bonner’s firm was misplaced,” he said. “We are partially responsible for the failure to make sure that members were notified.”

Perriello also testified before the committee, saying that such phony letters undermine the process by which congressmen hear viewpoints from their constituents.

“Forgery and identity theft in attempting to influence members of Congress not only does a disservice to those who support the legislation, but also to those who oppose it,” he said. “If members of Congress have to view voices of opposition with suspicion or doubt, it hurts the opposition’s cause and our national debate as a whole. As for me, I will not change my dedication to listening to my constituents and treating their opinions legitimately, but clearly, ‘Astroturf’ campaigns and the expanding corporate capture of government are not healthy for our democracy.”

The committee’s ranking Republican, U.S. Rep. F. James Sensenbrenner of Wisconsin, said that no one appreciates a fraud being perpetrated upon Congress, but added that left-leaning organizations are also engaging in such deceptive tactics.

Sensenbrenner mentioned a recent hoax in which an activist group called the Yes Men held a fake news conference to announce that the U.S. Chamber of Commerce had reversed its position on the climate change bill and now supports the measure in the Senate.

“We’re all unanimous in condemnation of hoaxes,” he said. “[The fake letters matter] was a hoax in which [those responsible] paid a price. The Yes Men hoax was not.”

Environmental activists from the Climate Action Factory also attended Thursday’s hearing. Three of them wore bright green suits made of Astroturf, a play on the coal industry’s “grassroots” lobbying effort.