Browse Primary Sources · Undercover Reporting

XI-"I Was a Negro in the South for 30 Days" - Ray Sprigle - Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

Given the right kind of white neighbors, the right kind of a community, the right kind of land and a terrific capacity for hard work, once in a while a Negro can do pretty well for himself in the deep South. Witness David E. Jackson down here on the outskirts of Adel Ga., in Cook county. But remember, too, that Dave is one in a million. So far as I know he’s one in ten million. Dave Jackson owns and farms 1,000 acres of some of the best land in Georgia. He owns two blocks of business property in Adel, and a score of houses. He’s a stockholder in the newly formed bank. He lives in a 10-room modern home. He runs four tractors and four big trailer trucks. He operates two big produce warehouses in Adel. He buys and sells 100,000 bushels of corn every year in addition to the thousands of bushels he raises. He ships corn as far north as Tennessee and North Carolina. Last year he shipped 15 carloads of watermelons and he can’t recall how many trailer truck loads of early vegetables. He raises cotton and tobacco and hogs, 500 hogs last year, 400 this year.

Pittsburgh Post-Gazette 1948-08-20

X-"I Was a Negro in the South for 30 Days" - Ray Sprigle - Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

When they call the roll of Americans who died to make men free, add to that heroic list the name of Private Macy Yost Snipes, black man, Georgia, U. S. A. Death missed him on a dozen bloody battlefields overseas, where he served his country well. He came home to die in the littered door-yard of his boyhood home because he thought that freedom was for all Americans, and tried to prove it. It wasn’t that he didn’t get fair warning. He knew what to expect. And he got just that. Early in July the white folks passed the warning through the Negro countryside around the little sun-warped country hamlet of Rupert, in Taylor county, Georgia. It was brief and to the point. The first Negro to vote in Rupert would be killed, ran the word.

Pittsburgh Post-Gazette 1948-08-19

IX-"I Was a Negro in the South for 30 Days" - Ray Sprigle - Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

Not since my boyhood days in the homes of my Pennsylvania Dutch relatives have I sat down to a table loaded as this one is. Great platters of fried chicken - and listen, it’s Pennsylvania Dutch fried chicken, the gooey kind - not that abomination known as southern fried chicken that I’ve been getting for the past two weeks. And biscuits - light, fluffy and piping hot. And here’s a new wrinkle. The biscuits are baked in small pans - in the oven at a time. So when you call for a fresh one it’s right out of the oven. Three or four kinds of jam; big gobs of country butter. And great pitchers of real buttermilk - what’s left after you churn country butter - the first I’ve tasted in 20 years. This 65 acres a few miles outside Chickamauga, Ga., is another little oasis in the desert of discrimination and injustice that is the black South. It is the farm of C. D. Haslerig, who has carved out a way of life for himself and his children on this fertile North Georgia farm. The rest of our group attends a district meeting of a Negro fraternal order. I am here to eat.

Pittsburgh Post-Gazette 1948-08-18

VI-"I Was a Negro in the South for 30 Days" - Ray Sprigle - Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

Under a blazing Georgia sun we begin our journey of 3,400 miles through the black South. Cotton is greening the blood-red soil of the endless fields. It’s cotton chopping time, when the cotton plants must be thinned out. Family by family the Negro share-croppers are in the fields, children of seven or eight and grandmothers and grandfathers who totter when they walk but still are able to swing a hoe. Not all of the women are in the fields, though. This is Monday, wash day in the South as in the North. All along the highway and the little side roads the iron kettles are steaming over fires in the yards — dirty clothes boiling clean. We stop off for a drink of water and a bite of corn pone in the kitchen of Hannah Ingram. Hannah is one of the hundreds of Negro homesteaders on the Flint River project In Macon county. It’s a tract of some 12,000 acres bought by the federal government eight years ago and divided into tracts running from 50 to 200 acres. These were parcelled out to Negro share-croppers who could make a small down payment. They’ve got 40 years to pay out.

Pittsburgh Post-Gazette 1948-08-16

VIII-"I Was a Negro in the South for 30 Days" - Ray Sprigle - Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

This is a "tough" town in a "tough" county. We break our journey to get a couple of bottles of beer in the picturesque juke joint that Jared Buford runs down here in the Negro section for colored folk. And again, "Jared Buford" is about as far away from his real name as could well be. Jared just took over this little beer place a few months ago. He bought it out of the profits he made on his 100 rented acres outside of town. Jared himself is a tall, powerful Negro who moves like a great cat. He was three years in the Army, two of them overseas. There’s one thing that Jared Buford would like to do. He’d like to vote. Just once. He’s never voted and he’s never tried to vote. And he makes it plain that as long as he lives in this county he’ll never even try to vote. "No," he explains, "nobody would ‘hurt’ a Negro who tried to register. They’d just pay you no never mind. You go up to the courthouse and tell the white folks you want to register. That’d be the end of it. Nobody would give you anything to register with. Come closing time you’d just have to go home."

Pittsburgh Post-Gazette 1948-08-17

VII-"I Was a Negro in the South for 30 Days" - Ray Sprigle - Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

Under a blazing Georgia sun we begin our journey of 3,400 miles through the black South. Cotton is greening the blood-red soil of the endless fields. It’s cotton chopping time, when the cotton plants must be thinned out. Family by family the Negro share-croppers are in the fields, children of seven or eight and grandmothers and grandfathers who totter when they walk but still are able to swing a hoe. Not all of the women are in the fields, though. This is Monday, wash day in the South as in the North. All along the highway and the little side roads the iron kettles are steaming over fires in the yards — dirty clothes boiling clean. We stop off for a drink of water and a bite of corn pone in the kitchen of Hannah Ingram. Hannah is one of the hundreds of Negro homesteaders on the Flint River project In Macon county. It’s a tract of some 12,000 acres bought by the federal government eight years ago and divided into tracts running from 50 to 200 acres. These were parcelled out to Negro share-croppers who could make a small down payment. They’ve got 40 years to pay out.

Pittsburgh Post-Gazette 1948-08-16

V-"I Was a Negro in the South for 30 Days" - Ray Sprigle - Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

She is worn and aged and bent beyond her time. Nearly a quarter of a century behind a plow and a mule under blazing Georgia suns have done that to her. In a haze of dull despair, this broken, hopeless Negro farm woman sits in this little parlor in Black Atlanta and tells her tale of murder. "When the white folks gave him back to me he was in his coffin. I held his head in my hands when I kissed him. And I felt the broken pieces of bone under the skin. It was just like a sackful of little pieces of bone. "I put my arms around him for one last time as he lay there. All down one side of him there were no ribs -- just pieces that moved when I held him."

Pittsburgh Post-Gazette 1948-08-13

IV-"I Was a Negro in the South for 30 Days" - Ray Sprigle - Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

We’re at breakfast in this pleasant, comfortable, Negro home. One of the daughters is home on a visit from Tennessee where she and her husband are university instructors. The conversation drifts, as it inevitably will wherever and whenever Negroes gather, to the all-overshadowing race problem. Her 5-year-old son is at the table too. Whenever she uses the word "white," she spells it out w-h-i-t-e. She spells N-e-g-r-o too. So far, she hopes, her youngster doesn’t know the difference between Negro and white. He probably doesn’t because some of his relatives are as white in color as any white man and others range all the way to deep black. Those spelled-out words highlight another and vitally important problem of the intelligent Negro. When do you begin teaching your child how he is to live as a Negro? When do you begin teaching him the difference between black and white -- not as colors but as races? When do you begin teaching him how to live under the iron rule of a master race that regards him as an inferior breed? When do you begin teaching him that for him, the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence are scraps of paper?

Pittsburgh Post-Gazette 1948-08-12

IIII-"I Was a Negro in the South for 30 Days" - Ray Sprigle - Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

I quit being white, and free, and an American citizen when I climbed aboard that Jim Crow coach in Washington Union station. From then on, until I came up out of the South four weeks later, I was black, and in bondage not quite slavery but not quite freedom, either. My rights of citizenship ran only as far as the nearest white man said they did. Not that that Jim Crow coach was particularly bad-when regarded solely as a railroad coach. In fact, it was surprisingly good. The reclining seats were comfortable. The wash room was really luxurious compared with those in some of the coaches I ride around home. Seats were numbered and reserved. There was no crowding. But-even excellent accommodations are not going to reconcile intelligent, cultured Negroes to Jim Crow. My companion and I were having a little difficulty in finding the black section of the train. He encountered the daughter of an old friend of his, a handsomely-dressed, quite beautiful Negro girl, and asked where the Jim Crow coaches were. "There’s the things we’ll ride in," she said with a contemptuous wave toward the two pieces of Jim Crow rolling stock. It developed that she was a school teacher from Harlem on her way home to visit her aged mother. (Weeks later we passed through the sunbaked, dusty, sprawling little town where the mother lived. There was a vast difference between that unkempt town and the fashionable, cultured-appearing girl from Harlem with upswept hair-do and latest doo-dads in the way of costume.)

Pittsburgh Post-Gazette 1948-08-11

II-"I Was a Negro in the South for 30 Days" - Ray Sprigle - Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

This thing of suddenly switching races after more than half a century of life as a white man has its problems and difficulties. Remember all those romances you’ve read in which the hero is going to turn Hindu, or Arab or one or the other of the darker races. Remember how almost invariably he goes to "an old woman" in tile nearby village and she gives him a lotion that turns him dark for weeks or months. Well, my trouble, I guess, was that I couldn’t seem to find one of those old women. And in more than six months of searching I couldn’t find any lotion or liquid that would turn a white hide brown or black and still be impervious to perspiration, soap and water and the ravages of ordinary wear and tear. Wait a bit though. Let me modify that last statement. Both Mellon Institute in Pittsburgh and a Long Island chemist I consulted did come up with a permanent stain. Both recommended any one of a series of phenol compounds. But they thought it only fair to warn me that there was one little drawback. It seems that if you covered yourself thoroughly with one of them you’d find yourself thoroughly dead in from 15 minutes to 15 days, depending upon your resistance. I thanked them kindly for their assistance.

Pittsburgh Post-Gazette 1948-08-10

I-"I Was a Negro in the South for 30 Days" - Ray Sprigle - Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

For four endless, crawling weeks I was a Negro in the Deep South. I ate, slept, traveled, lived Black. I lodged in Negro households. I ate in Negro restaurants. I slept in Negro hotels and lodging houses. I crept through the back and side doors of railroad stations. I traveled Jim Crow in buses and trains and street cars and taxicabs. Along with 10,000,000 Negroes I endured the discrimination and oppression and cruelty of the iniquitous Jim Crow system. It was a strange, new-and for me, uncharted world that I entered when, in a Jim Crow railroad coach, we rumbled across the Potomac out of Washington. It was a world of which I had no remote conception, despite scores of trips through the South. The world I had known in the South was white. Now I was black and the world I was to know was as bewildering as if I had been dropped down on the moon. The towers and turrets of the great cities of the Southland, painted against the falling night, as we rolled along the highways, represented a civilization and an economy completely alien to me and the rest of the black millions in the South.

Pittsburgh Post-Gazette 1948-08-09

Introduction

CHICKAMAUGA, Ga. -- No one in the small country church 50 years ago had any reason to suspect that their visitor was not who he said he was. It was true that James R. Crawford - the light-skinned Negro man from Pittsburgh - was a complete stranger. And a Northerner. But Crawford had come to their black fraternal group's district meeting and picnic with C.D. Haslerig, who was a prosperous dairy farmer and one of the leading black citizens in the rural northern Georgia cotton mill town.

Pittsburgh Post-Gazette 1998-08-09

IV-"The Maiden Tribute of Modern Babylon" - W.T. Stead - Pall Mall Gazette

The watchword with which we started, Liberty for Vice, Repression for Crime, is the only safe keynote for the Legislature in dealing with this question. The Criminal Law Amendment Bill, as framed by Sir W. Harcourt, was not so much a bill for raising the age of consent and increasing the stringency of the provisions against procuration and the traffic in English girls as a bill for increasing the arbitrary power of the police in the streets.No one who has any acquaintance with the enormous variety of the duties which modern civilization imposes upon the police can sympathize with the abuse so ignorantly and uncharitably showered upon the force. The constable is the official upon whom modern society has devolved all the duties of the ancient knight errant. There is no more useful being in the world, and there are few nobler ideals of human activity than the daily life of a really public-spirited, chivalrous policeman. But the majority of policemen, being only mortal, are no more to be trusted with arbitrary power than any other human beings, especially over the other sex. Its possession leads to corruption, and the more that power is increased the more mischief is done. I have no wish to bring any railing accusations against a body of men who are constantly performing the most arduous duties in the public service; but those who think most highly of the force should be most anxious to save it from any increase of a temptation which already seriously impairs both its morale and its efficiency. In this, I am informed, I am expressing not only the unanimous opinion of our Commission, but also the matured conviction of some of the best authorities in the force.

The Pall Mall Gazette 1885-07-10

III-"The Maiden Tribute of Modern Babylon" - W. T. Stead - Pall Mall Gazette

The advocates of the Criminal Law Amendment Bill are constantly met by two mutually destructive assertions. On one side it is declared that the raising of the age of consent is entirely useless, because there are any number of young prostitutes on the streets under the legal age of thirteen, while, on the other, it is asserted as positively that juvenile prostitution below the age of fifteen has practically ceased to exist. Both assertions are entirely false.There are not many children under thirteen plying for hire on the streets, and there are any number to be had between the ages of thirteen and sixteen. There are children, many children, who are ruined before they are thirteen; but the crime is one phase of the incest which, as the Report of the Dwellings Commission shows, is inseparable from overcrowding. But the number who are on the streets is small. Notwithstanding the most lavish offers of money, I completely failed to secure a single prostitute under thirteen. I have been repeatedly promised children under twelve, but they either never appeared or when produced admitted that they were over thirteen. I have no doubt that I could discover in time a dozen or more girls of eleven or twelve who are leading immoral lives, but they are very difficult to find, as the boys of the same age who pursue the same dreadful calling. This direct evidence is by no means all that is available to show the deterrent effect of raising the age of consent. The Rescue Society, of Finsbury-pavement, which has an experience of thirty-one years, has kept for twenty-five years a record of the ages at which those whom they have rescued lost their character.

The Pall Mall Gazette 1885-07-08

II-"The Maiden Tribute of Modern Babylon" - W. T. Stead - Pall Mall Gazette

I described yesterday a scene which took place last Derby day, in a well known house, within a quarter of a mile of Oxford-circus. It is no means one of the worst instances of the crimes that are constantly perpetrated in London, or even in that very house. The victims of the rapes, for such they are to all intents and purposes, are almost always very young children between thirteen and fifteen. The reason for that is very simple. The law at present almost specially marks out such children as the fair game of dissolute men. The moment a child is thirteen she is a woman in the eye of the law, with absolute right to dispose of her person to any one who by force or fraud can bully or cajole her into parting with her virtue. It is the one thing in the whole world which, if once lost, can never be recovered, it is the most precious thing a woman ever has, but while the law forbids her absolutely to dispose of any other valuables until she is sixteen, it insists upon investing her with unfettered freedom to sell her person at thirteen. The law, indeed, seems specially framed in order to enable dissolute men to outrage these legal women of thirteen with impunity. For to quote again from "Stephen's Digest," a rape in fact is not a rape in law if consent is obtained by fraud from a woman or a girl who was totally ignorant of the nature of the act to which she assented. Now it is a fact which I have repeatedly verified that girls of thirteen, fourteen, and even fifteen, who profess themselves perfectly willing to be seduced, are absolutely and totally ignorant of the nature of the act to which they assent. I do not mean merely its remoter consequences and the extent to which their consent will prejudice the whole of their future life, but even the mere physical nature of the act to which they are legally competent to consent is unknown to them. Perhaps one of the most touching instances of this and the most conclusive was the exclamation of relief that burst from a Birmingham girl of fourteen when the midwife had finished her examination."It's all over now," she said, "I am so glad." "You silly child," said the procuress, "that's nothing. You've not been seduced yet. That is still to come." How could she know any better, never having been taught? All that the procuress had told her was that if she consented to meet a rich gentleman she would get lots of money. Even when an attempt is made to explain that there will be some physical pain, the information is so shrouded in mystery that in cases that have come under my own personal knowledge if the man had run a needle into the girl's thigh and told her that she was seduced, she would have believed it.

The Pall Mall Gazette 1885-07-07

I-"The Maiden Tribute of Modern Babylon" - W. T. Stead - Pall Mall Gazette

"In ancient times, if we may believe the myths of Hellas, Athens, after a disastrous campaign, was compelled by her conqueror to send once every nine years a tribute to Crete of seven youths and seven maidens. The doomed fourteen, who were selected by lot amid the lamentations of the citizens, returned no more. The vessel that bore them to Crete unfurled black sails as the symbol of despair, and on arrival her passengers were flung into the famous Labyrinth of Daedalus, there to wander about blindly until such time as they were devoured by the Minotaur, a frightful monster, half man, half bull, the foul product of an unnatural lust. "The labyrinth was as large as a town and had countless courts and galleries. Those who entered it could never find their way out again. If they hurried from one to another of the numberless rooms looking for the entrance door, it was all in vain. They only became more hopelessly lost in the bewildering labyrinth, until at last they were devoured by the Minotaur." Twice at each ninth year the Athenians paid the maiden tribute to King Minos, lamenting sorely the dire necessity of bowing to his iron law. When the third tribute came to be exacted, the distress of the city of the Violet Crown was insupportable. From the King's palace to the peasant's hamlet, everywhere were heard cries and groans and the choking sob of despair, until the whole air seemed to vibrate with the sorrow of an unutterable anguish. Then it was that the hero Theseus volunteered to be offered up among those who drew the black balls from the brazen urn of destiny, and the story of his self-sacrifice, his victory, and his triumphant return, is among the most familiar of the tales which since the childhood of the world have kindled the imagination and fired the heart of the human race. The labyrinth was cunningly wrought like a house; says Ovid, with many rooms and winding passages, that so the shameful creature of lust whose abode it was to be should be far removed from sight."

The Pall Mall Gazette 1885-07-06

"Undercover, Under Fire" - Ken Silverstein - Los Angeles Times

EARLIER THIS YEAR, I put on a brand-new tailored suit, picked up a sleek leather briefcase and headed to downtown Washington for meetings with some of the city's most prominent lobbyists. I had contacted their firms several weeks earlier, pretending to be the representative of a London-based energy company with business interests in Turkmenistan. I told them I wanted to hire the services of a firm to burnish that country's image.I didn't mention that Turkmenistan is run by an ugly, neo-Stalinist regime. They surely knew that, and besides, they didn't care. As I explained in this month's issue of Harper's Magazine, the lobbyists I met at Cassidy & Associates and APCO were more than eager to help out. In exchange for fees of up to $1.5 million a year, they offered to send congressional delegations to Turkmenistan and write and plant opinion pieces in newspapers under the names of academics and think-tank experts they would recruit. They even offered to set up supposedly "independent" media events in Washington that would promote Turkmenistan (the agenda and speakers would actually be determined by the lobbyists). All this, Cassidy and APCO promised, could be done quietly and unobtrusively, because the law that regulates foreign lobbyists is so flimsy that the firms would be required to reveal little information in their public disclosure forms. Now, in a fabulous bit of irony, my article about the unethical behavior of lobbying firms has become, for some in the media, a story about my ethics in reporting the story. The lobbyists have attacked the story and me personally, saying that it was unethical of me to misrepresent myself when I went to speak to them.

Los Angeles Times 2007-06-30

"Can Trickery by Reporters Be Right?" - Edward Wasserman - Syndicated

"In a cover story this month, Harper's Magazine Washington editor Ken Silverstein described his undercover foray into hiring two top-tier D.C. lobbying firms to represent Turkmenistan, an energy-rich former Soviet republic known for gross human rights violations and anti-democratic lunacies. Silverstein was in no position to hire the firms, of course. That was a ruse. Under an assumed name he posed as an emissary from a shadowy London middleman. He created phony business cards, a British cell phone number and an e-mail address."

Miami Herald 2007-07-09

"Their Men in Washington" - Ken Silverstein - Harper's

In March, when the U.S. State Department announced its new global survey of human rights, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice declared that the report demonstrated America’s commitment to civil liberties, the rule of law, and a free press. “We are recommitting ourselves to stand with those courageous men and women who struggle for their freedom and their rights,” she said. “And we are recommitting ourselves to call every government to account that still treats the basic rights of its citizens as options rather than, in President Bush’s words, the non-negotiable demands of human dignity.” Flipping through the report, however, one cannot help but notice how many of the countries that flout “the non-negotiable demands of human dignity” seem to have negotiated themselves significant support from the U.S. government, whether military assistance (Egypt, Colombia), development aid (Azerbaijan, Nigeria), expanded trade opportunities (Angola, Cameroon), or official Washington visits for their leaders (Equatorial Guinea, Kazakhstan). The granting of favorable concessions to dictatorial regimes is a practice hardly limited to the current administration: Bill Clinton came into office having said that China’s access to American markets should be tied to improved human rights—specifically its willingness to “recognize the legitimacy of those kids that were carrying the Statue of Liberty” at Tiananmen Square—but left having helped Beijing attain its long-cherished goal of Permanent Most Favored Nation trade status. Jimmy Carter put the promotion of human rights at the heart of his foreign policy, yet he cut deals for South American generals and Persian Gulf monarchs in much the same fashion as his successor, Ronald Reag

Harper's 2007-07-01

"Journalistic Stings Go Mainstream" - Edward Wasserman - Miami Herald

"Here's a problem of professional ethics right out of today's headlines: If a news organization prohibits its own staff from using certain reporting techniques—say, deception—should it publish information that somebody else gathered using those same forbidden techniques? Consider the resurgence of journalistic stings engineered by free-swinging ideologues to embarrass political opponents. Stings are a kind of undercover reporting in which targets are lured into fabricated situations intended to make them look bad. Most recently, a major fund raiser for National Public Radio was secretly videotaped in a Georgetown restaurant by two men posing as potential contributors. The official, Ron Schiller, made disparaging remarks about the Tea Party and acquiesced in offensive comments about Zionist influence made by the phonies, who claimed to be from some Islamic foundation. The video got picked up by established news media, Schiller, scheduled to leave NPR for a position with the Aspen Institute, lost both jobs, and NPR boss Vivian Schiller (no relation) was forced out."

Miami Herald 2011-03-14

"Stinger: James O’Keefe’s Greatest Hits" - Zev Chafets - New York Times Magazine

"The temperature was hovering near 90 degrees on the afternoon of Memorial Day when James O'Keefe III emerged from the woods and ambled over to my car. He was tall and thin, with pale skin and matted reddish hair. When his mug shot ran in the papers, some people told him he looked like Matthew Modine. Others said Lee Harvey Oswald. On the day I met him, he wore muddy work boots, filthy jeans and, despite the heat, a long-sleeved shirt. “Keeps the mosquitoes off,” he said. All day he was in the outback of a regional park just west of the Hudson, breaking rocks with a pickax to construct a trail. As a boy he was an Eagle Scout, but this wasn’t a nature project. O’Keefe, the man whose video stings helped take down high-ranking people at National Public Radio and led to the demise of Acorn, the nation’s biggest grass-roots community organizing group, was doing federal time. . ."

The New York Times 2011-07-27

"Planned Parenthood - Cleaner Race by 'Helping' Blacks" - Lila Rose, James O'Keefe - UCLA Campus Buzz

Hannity's America features a segment on The Advocate's 7-state investigation into Planned Parenthood's dirty money--employees accept donations from racists to abort Black Babies. Planned Parenthood has been targeting minorities since it was founded by elitist Margaret Sanger, who wanted to use abortion to control and limit minorities...And with almost 80% of Planned Parenthood clinics in minority neighborhoods, with African American women almost 4 times more likely than whites to abort, Planned Parenthood's founder's vision is lived out today...By killing over 1400 Black babies a day, Planned Parenthood and abortion affiliates are accomplishing what the KKK could only dream about...Don't excuse this kind of killing. Demand that the Federal Gov. cut the $300 million a year in tax money that it gives Planned Parenthood.The Advocate is an independent student magazine at UCLA. Go to Laadvocate.com for the full story.

UCLA Campus BuzzFox News 2008-04-03

"Planned Parenthood Exposed by UCLA Reporter" - Lila Rose and James O'Keefe - UCLA Campus Buzz

Youtube description: "A UCLA Student Reporter went undercover at the Los Angeles Planned Parenthood to expose illegal practices"

UCLA Campus Buzz 2007-05-11

"Caught on Tape: Planned Parenthood Aids Pimp’s Underage Sex Ring" - Lila Rose & David Schmidt - Live Action

Press Release: A Planned Parenthood manager in New Jersey coaches a man and a woman posing as sex traffickers how to secure secret abortions, STD testing, and contraception for their female underage sex slaves, and make their whole operation “look as legit as possible” in an undercover video released this morning.Clinic manager Amy Woodruff, LPN, of Planned Parenthood Central New Jersey’s Perth Amboy center, warns the pimp and his prostitute to have their trafficked underage girls lie about their age to avoid mandatory reporting laws, promising, “even if they lie, just say, ‘Oh he’s the same age as me, 15,’…it’s just that mainly 14 and under we have to, doesn’t matter if their partner’s the same age, younger, whatever, 14 and under we have to report.” She says, “For the most part, we want as little information as possible.”

Liveaction 2011-02-01

III-"NPR" - Project Veritas - James O'Keefe

On March 8th, Project Veritas released Part 1 of its investigation of National Public Radio, followed by a second release. The investigation, in which Project Veritas investigators posed as members of a fictional group founded by "members of the Muslim Brotherhood," was widely reported in the media and produced a dramatic response from NPR and its board members. The following video contains a full conversation between Project Veritas' undercover investigator, Simon Templar, and Betsy Liley, NPR's Senior Director of Institutional Giving along with James O'Keefe's call to George Soros' Open Society Foundation. In addition, Project Veritas would like to thank Pamela Geller for her cooperation with Project Muslim Brotherhood.

The Project Veritas 2011-03-17

II-"NPR" - Project Veritas - James O'Keefe

"On Tuesday, Project Veritas released Part 1 of its investigation of National Public Radio. The investigation, in which Project Veritas investigators posed as members of a fictional group founded by "members of the Muslim Brotherhood," was widely reported in the media and produced a dramatic response from NPR and its board members. The following video contains conversations between Project Veritas undercover investigator, Simon Templar, and Betsy Liley, NPR's Senior Director of Institutional Giving. . . "

The Project Veritas 2011-03-10

I-"NPR- Project Veritas Investigates: NPR" - Project Veritas - James O'Keefe

Project Veritas' latest investigation focuses on the publically-funded media organization, National Public Radio. PV investigative reporters, Shaughn Adeleye and Simon Templar posed as members of the Muslim Action Education Center, a non-existent group with a goal to "spread the acceptance of Sharia across the world." In this first video, produced by James O'Keefe, Shaughn and Simon sit down with NPR Foundation President Ron Schiller.

The Project Veritas 2011-03-08

VI-VIDEO: "ACORN San Diego Child Prostitution Smuggling" - Project Veritas - James O'Keefe

Youtube description: Undercover investigation featuring smuggling and Child Prostitution at ACORN in San Diego.

IV-VIDEO: "ACORN NYC Child Prostitution Investigation" - Project Veritas - James O'Keefe

Youtube description: Undercover investigation at ACORN in New York.

III-VIDEO: "ACORN DC Prostitution Investigation" - Project Veritas - James O'Keefe

Youtube description: Undercover investigation at ACORN in Washington, DC.

I-VIDEO: "ACORN Baltimore Prostitution Investigation" - Project Veritas - James O'Keefe

Youtube description: "Undercover investigation featuring prostitution, sex trafficking, tax evasion, and money laundering.

The Project Veritas 2009-09-09

V-VIDEO: "ACORN San Bernadino Child Prostitution Investigation" - Project Veritas - James O'Keefe

Youtube description: "Undercover investigation featuring corruption and murder at ACORN in San Bernadino.

II-"ACORN Exposed" - Project Veritas - James O'Keefe

On September 10, 2009, James O’Keefe and Hannah Giles released their explosive video on Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN), a community-organizing group better known for their embezzlement controversies and scandals of voter registration fraud. During the summer of 2009, O’Keefe and Giles visited eight ACORN offices as a pimp and prostitute, seeking advice getting a home loan to run a brothel. What the pair found next was shocking, ACORN employees repeatedly gave the couple guidance on tax evasion, child prostitution and human smuggling.

The Project Veritas 2009-09-10

Planned Parenthood videos, undercover recordings have roots in journalism they challenge - Adam Hochberg - PoynterOnline

You might call them “undercover activists.” People posing as pimps and prostitutes visit Planned Parenthood clinics. A Humane Society investigator gets a job at a California slaughterhouse to seek out violations of animal cruelty laws. Republican aides who identify themselves as students “working on a project” confront a North Carolina congressman and elicit a violent response. Yet another set of fake pimps and prostitutes visits offices of ACORN, the controversial community organization. All the while, cameras record video that eventually makes its way onto YouTube. Sometimes the cameras are hidden. In other cases, the recording devices are in plain sight, but the activists conceal their own identities. Either way, the resulting videos often are picked up by the mainstream media, where they help set the news agenda and have profound effects on their targets.

PoynterOnline 2011-02-23

'NPR loses C.E.O., its third exec swept away by political tornado' - Karen Everhart - Current

"One day after denouncing her top fundraiser and nine weeks after asking her news chief to resign, NPR President Vivian Schiller stepped down today at the request of the NPR Board. She fell victim to a series of executive mistakes and mishaps that muddied NPR’s reputation in a poisonously partisan runup to key federal budget votes affecting public broadcasting. Schiller, who made extraordinary progress in crafting a digital service strategy for NPR and its local stations since arriving in January 2009, ultimately took the fall for her management team's political errors during an unaccustomed moment of scrutiny. After the controversial firing of former news analyst Juan Williams last fall, Schiller seemed to recover from the missteps that put public radio in the crosshairs of Republicans who went on to take the House majority in November. She and other public radio leaders may not have seen the Williams firing fiasco as a warm-up for a protracted, no-holds-barred fight. . ."

Current.org 2011-03-09

"Does Raw Video of NPR Expose Reveal Questionable Editing & Tactics?" - Scott Baker - The Blaze

"On Wednesday, The Blaze posted a lengthy report looking at the ethics of undercover journalism. The comments on the post show a lively debate and wide-ranging views on what is considered ethical and acceptable in pursuit of a scoop. Plenty of readers felt the new NPR exposé justified any ethical misgivings involved in producing it. Others felt that those seeking truths should hold to higher standards. When undercover video like the NPR story first surfaces, we often look to see if there is raw video of the material used to produce the report as a basis for evaluating the accuracy of the representations made. And we decided to do that in this case. . ."

The Blaze 2011-03-10

"The NPR Body Count" – Jack Shafer – Slate

"They're stacking former NPR executives like cord wood on 7th Street and Massachusetts Avenue NW outside the radio network. Yesterday they carted out NPR CEO Vivian Schiller. The day before, Ronald J. Schiller, NPR's chief fundraiser, got the curb treatment. His resting place was previously occupied by Ellen Weiss, the senior vice president for news—essentially NPR's editor-in-chief—who got the shove from Vivian Schiller in January. None of these key executives had been at their jobs long. Ron Schiller arrived in October 2009. Vivian Schiller became CEO in January 2009, after the NPR board sent the gut wagon to collect Ken Stern, who had only been CEO since October 2006. . ."

Slate 2011-03-10

"NPR video stings ethics too" - James Rainey - Los Angeles Times

Here come the blockbuster news alerts. First: Governor of Wisconsin ready to demonize unions by planting protests with anti-labor thugs. And then this: Top NPR executive cozies up to nefarious Muslims, loathes real, God-fearing Americans.Talk about big news! Talk about changing the conversation! Talk about … a load of hooey, brought to you by your friendly purveyors of ambush "journalism," secret recordings and ham acting designed to draw out the worst in others.

Los Angeles Times 2011-03-11

"Judge for Yourself - NPR's Ron Schiller" - Project Veritas - James O'Keefe

"Project Veritas, in order to offer transparency in reporting, has released the full two-hour video later today related to Part 1 of our NPR Investigation. The video, which is largely the raw video and audio of the entire conversation with NPR Foundation's President Ron Schiller, does contain one brief section in which the audio is redacted in order to ensure the safety of an NPR overseas correspondent. . ."

The Project Veritas 2011-03-08

"Acorn files for bankruptcy" – Daniel Massey - Crain's New York Business

"Beleaguered community organizing group Acorn filed for Chapter 7 bankruptcy Tuesday, marking the end of a tumultuous two-year period in which attacks by conservatives and its own missteps proved too much to overcome.In a statement on Acorn's website, Chief Executive Bertha Lewis said she saw the end “coming for some time,” and blamed the group's downfall on “a political onslaught” that caused the organization “irreparable harm.” Acorn had become a GOP target by registering 3 million voters in swing states that turned blue in the 2008 presidential race. But it also made blunders of its own, including shoddy record-keeping and its founder's cover-up of his brother's $1 million embezzlement from the organization.Already weakened by the cover-up and allegations of widespread voter-registration fraud in the months before the 2008 presidential election, the final straw came last year when conservative activists masquerading as a prostitute and her boyfriend visited Acorn offices around the country and made hidden camera recordings. The videos, selectively spliced to make it appear as if employees were breaking the law, exploded onto the Internet and Fox news late last summer."

Crain's New York Business 2010-11-03

"Federal appeals court in NY rules against ACORN" - Associated Press

NEW YORK — A federal appeals court on Friday threw out a decision that had barred Congress from withholding funds from ACORN, the activist group driven to ruin by scandal and financial woes.The ruling by the 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals in Manhattan reversed a decision by a district court judge in Brooklyn that found Congress had violated the group's rights by punishing it without a trial.Congress cut off ACORN's federal funding last year in response to allegations the group engaged in voter registration fraud and embezzlement and violated the tax-exempt status of some of its affiliates by engaging in partisan political activities.

Associated Press 2010-08-13

'Pimp' in ACORN video shares story

"The proposition was outrageous, outlandish and right up James E. O'Keefe III's alley. Hannah Giles was on the phone from Washington, D.C., and she was asking him to dress as her pimp, walk into the offices of the ACORN community activist group, openly admit to wanting to buy a house to run as a brothel and see what happened.It was serendipity, O'Keefe said Thursday. On that day in May, he was still burning mad after watching a YouTube video of ACORN workers breaking padlocks off foreclosed homes and barging in. "I was upset," he said.O'Keefe, 25, packed his grandfather's old wide-brimmed derby hat from his swing-dancing days, his grandmother's ratty chinchilla shoulder throw, and a cane he bought at a dollar store, then drove from his parents' home in northern New Jersey to Washington to execute the idea with Giles, 20.What happened next was a scandal that has shaken ACORN to its core. O'Keefe and Giles secretly videoed ACORN workers in Washington, Brooklyn and Baltimore as they coached the two on how to evade taxes and misrepresent the nature of their business enterprise to get into a home. . ."

The Washington Post 2009-09-19

"Stingers From Our Past" - Joel Meares - CJR

With James O’Keefe’s latest video sting taking two scalps at NPR this week, we thought it timely to revisit some infamous recent and not-so-recent journalistic stings. From The Mirage Tavern to, yes, James O’Keefe—we didn’t go back so far as Nellie Bly—we’re checking out what happened in each case, what went down after the sting went public, and then giving our thoughts on just how much merit the controversial deception approach had in each case. How exactly do we assess such a thing? It’s not scientific. But Poynter’s Bob Steele has ventured in the past to provide a checklist of rather strict guidelines that must all be adhered to if deception is to be justified in journalism. These include: the information obtained being in the public interest; all alternative methods of obtaining the information being exhausted; the story being told fully; any harm prevented outweighing the harm caused by the deception; and all ethical and legal issues being closely considered. With those in mind, and the particulars of each case on hand, here’s our trip down an ethically murky memory lane.

Columbia Journalism Review 2011-03-10

VI-"Enrique's Journey" - Sonia Nazario - Los Angeles Times

Enrique's mother pays smugglers to get him across the Rio Grande and then to her in North Carolina. She cannot sleep. She has visions of him dead. At 1 a.m., Enrique waits on the edge of the water. "If you get caught, I don't know you," says the man called El Tirindaro. He is stern. Enrique nods. So do two other immigrants, a Mexican brother and sister, waiting with him. They strip to their underwear. Across the Rio Grande stands a 50-foot pole equipped with U.S. Border Patrol cameras. In daylight, Enrique has counted four sport utility vehicles near the pole, each with agents. Now, in the darkness, he cannot see any. He leaves it up to El Tirindaro, a subspecies of smuggler known as a patero because he pushes people across the river on inner tubes by paddling soundlessly with his feet, like a pato, or duck. El Tirindaro has spent hours at this spot studying everything that moves on the other side. Enrique, 17, tears up a small piece of paper and scatters it on the riverbank. It is his mother's phone number. He has memorized it. Now the agents cannot use it to locate and deport her. She left him behind in Honduras more than 11 years ago and entered the United States illegally to seek work. In all, Enrique has spent four months trying to find her. El Tirindaro holds an inner tube. The Mexicans climb on. He paddles them to an island in midstream. He returns for Enrique with the tube. He steadies it in the water. Carefully, Enrique climbs aboard. The Rio Bravo, as it is called here, is swollen with rain. Two nights before, it had killed a youngster he knew. Enrique cannot swim, and he is afraid. El Tirindaro places a plastic garbage bag on Enrique's lap. It contains dry clothing for the four of them. Then El Tirindaro paddles and starts to push. A swift current grabs the tube and sweeps it into the river. Wind whips off Enrique's cap. Drizzle coats his face. He dips in a hand. The water is cold.

Los Angeles Times 2002-10-07

V-"Enrique's Journey" - Sonia Nazario - Los Angeles Times

Enrique is stuck on the Mexican side of the Rio Grande, watching, listening and planning. Somewhere on the other side, in the United States, is his mother. You are in American territory," a Border Patrol agent shouts into a bullhorn. "Turn back." Sometimes Enrique strips and wades into the Rio Grande to cool off. But the bullhorn always stops him. He goes back. "Thank you for returning to your country." He is stymied. For days, Enrique, 17, has been stuck in Nuevo Laredo, on the southern bank of the Rio Bravo, as it is called here. He has been watching, listening and trying to plan. Somewhere across this milky green ribbon of water is his mother. She left him behind 11 years ago in Tegucigalpa, Honduras, to seek work in the United States. Enrique is challenging the unknown to find her. During her most recent telephone call, she said she was in North Carolina. He has no idea if she is still there, where that is or how to reach it. He no longer has her phone number. He had written it on a scrap of paper, but it blew away while he was being robbed and beaten almost four weeks ago on a freight train in southern Mexico. He did not think to memorize it.

Los Angeles Times Sunday, October 6, 2002

XII-"The Music Man" - Neil Henry - Washington Post

Allie, a young New Yorker I met at the Central Union Mission here, was the only man to discover my true identity in this two-month Baltimore-Washington odyssey. As time passed in the journey, the original fear I felt about being uncovered was supplanted by a sense of same, the ignominy of sharing bread and swapping stories with homeless derelicts while knowing I had alternatives that these men could only wish for - a warm place to sleep at night, steady work, food to eat.

The Washington Post 1980-05-08

IV-"Enrique's Journey" - Sonia Nazario - Los Angeles Times

From the top of his rolling freight car, Enrique sees a figure of Christ. In the fields of Veracruz state, among farmers and their donkeys piled with sugar cane, rises a mountain. It towers over the train he is riding. At the summit stands a statue of Jesus. It is 60 feet tall, dressed in white, with a pink tunic. The statue stretches out both arms. They reach toward Enrique and his fellow wayfarers on top of their rolling freight cars. Some stare silently. Others whisper a prayer. It is early April 2000, and they have made it nearly a third of the way up the length of Mexico, a handful of immigrants, riding on boxcars, tank cars and hoppers. Enrique is 17. He is one of an estimated 48,000 Central American and Mexican children who go to the United States alone every year. Many are searching for their mothers, who have left for El Norte to find work and never come back. Many credit religious faith for their progress. They pray on top of the train cars. At stops, they kneel along the tracks, asking God for help and guidance. They ask him to keep them alive until they reach El Norte. They ask him to protect them against bandits, who rob and beat them; police, who shake them down; and la migra, the Mexican immigration authorities, who deport them.

Los Angeles Times 2002-10-04

III-"Enrique's Journey" - Sonia Nazario - Los Angeles Times

As Enrique enters Mexico's southernmost state of Chiapas, he knows why immigrants call it "the beast." Bandits, street gangs and police will be out to get him. Even tree branches scraping the boxcars may hurl him from the train. But he will take those risks. He needs to find his mother. Enrique wades chest-deep across a river. He is 5 feet tall, stoop-shouldered and cannot swim. The logo on his cap boasts hollowly, "No Fear." The river, the Rio Suchiate, forms the border. Behind him is Guatemala. Ahead is Mexico, with its southernmost state of Chiapas. "Ahora nos enfrentamos a la bestia," immigrants say when they enter Chiapas. "Now we face the beast." Painfully, Enrique, 17, has learned a lot about "the beast." In Chiapas, bandits will be out to rob him, police will try to shake him down, and street gangs might kill him. But he will take those risks, because he needs to find his mother. When he was 5 years old, she left him in Honduras and joined hundreds of thousands of women from Central America and Mexico seeking work in the United States. An estimated 48,000 youngsters go north alone every year, many to search for their mothers. This is Enrique's eighth attempt to reach El Norte. First, always, comes the beast. About Chiapas, Enrique has discovered several important things. In Chiapas, do not take buses, which must pass through nine permanent immigration checkpoints. A freight train faces checkpoints as well, but Enrique can jump off as it brakes, and if he runs fast enough, he might sneak around and meet the train on the other side. In Chiapas, never ride alone.

Los Angeles Times 2002-10-02

XI-"'What's in It for Me?' in Washington" - Neil Henry - Washington Post

Welcome to the world of panhandling, an art, science, hustle and con - and the oldest and most respected pastime of Washington's down and out. This was a city where a bum wasn't a true bum unless he mooched, begged and bummed the public for cash.

The Washington Post 1980-05-07

II-"Enrique's Journey" - Sonia Nazario - Los Angeles Times

His quiet vow to villagers: 'I'm going to find my mom'. The day's work is done at Las Anonas, a rail-side hamlet of 36 families in the state of Oaxaca, Mexico, when a field hand, Sirenio Gomez Fuentes, sees a startling sight: a battered and bleeding boy, naked except for his undershorts. It is Enrique. He limps forward on bare feet, stumbling one way, then another. His right shin is gashed. His upper lip is split. The left side of his face is swollen. He is crying. Gomez hears him whisper, "Give me water, please." The knot of apprehension in Sirenio Gomez melts into pity. He runs into his thatched hut, fills a cup and gives it to Enrique. "Do you have a pair of pants?" Enrique asks. Gomez dashes back inside and fetches some. There are holes in the crotch and the knees, but they will do. Then, with kindness, Gomez directs Enrique to Carlos Carrasco, the mayor of Las Anonas. Whatever has happened, maybe he can help. Enrique hobbles down a dirt road into the heart of the little town. He encounters a man on a horse. Could he help him find the mayor? "That's me," the man says. He stops and stares. "Did you fall from the train?" Again, Enrique begins to cry.

Los Angeles Times 2002-09-30

X-"Tapping 'The Bank'" - Neil Henry - Washington Post

To the bums of Washington, getting by meant flipping fingers through the coin return slots for spare change, scavenging sidewalks outside fast food joints for packets of sugar, and knowing what times the soup kitchens opened. It meant tricks such as clipping the corners of a five-dollar bill, pasting the "5" digits over the "1" digits on a one-dollar bill and trusting cashiers to be none the wiser.

The Washington Post 1980-05-06

I-"Enrique's Journey" - Sonia Nazario - Los Angeles Times

The boy does not understand. His mother is not talking to him. She will not even look at him. Enrique has no hint of what she is going to do. Lourdes knows. She understands, as only a mother can, the terror she is about to inflict, the ache Enrique will feel and finally the emptiness. What will become of him? Already he will not let anyone else feed or bathe him. He loves her deeply, as only a son can. With Lourdes, he is a chatterbox. "Mira, Mami." Look, Mom, he says softly, asking her questions about everything he sees. Without her, he is so shy it is crushing.Slowly, she walks out onto the porch. Enrique clings to her pant leg. Beside her, he is tiny. Lourdes loves him so much she cannot bring herself to say a word. She cannot carry his picture. It would melt her resolve. She cannot hug him. He is 5 years old. They live on the outskirts of Tegucigalpa, in Honduras. She can barely afford food for him and his sister, Belky, who is 7. Lourdes, 24, scrubs other people's laundry in a muddy river. She fills a wooden box with gum and crackers and cigarettes, and she finds a spot where she can squat on a dusty sidewalk next to the downtown Pizza Hut and sell the items to passersby. The sidewalk is Enrique's playground.

Los Angeles Times 2002-09-29

IX-"A Washington Winter's Tale: Fear Hunger, Loathing, Abuse" - Neil Henry - Washington Post

When the sun went down and the rats came out - furry, long-tailed, hunchbacked rats. They scampered out of their nests in the bowels of the Daughters of the American Revolution building, tiptoeing along hedges and bushes, ducking in and out of drainage gutters, sniffing for food.

The Washington Post 1980-05-05

VIII-"In D.C., Raw and Threatening Things" - Neil Henry - Washington Post

After sojourns in Baltimore and the Maryland suburbs, I finally arrived in the District of Columbia - my last stop on this assignment as a homeless derelict - and soon discovered a number of contrasts between the two cities.

The Washington Post 1980-05-04

VII-"Snug Haven But No Sleep at Crisis Center" - Neil Henry - Washington Post

Carl strayed into Bethesda the same February evening I wandered into town as a homeless derelict. He was 18, a mentally troubled patient from Springfield State Hospital. He was a lost soul whose path eventually and inevitably met mine at the Bethesda Community Crisis Center, an all-purpose receptacle for Montgomery County's wounded and dispossessed.

The Washington Post 1980-05-03

VI-"All-Night Cafe: A Classroom on How to Survive" - Neil Henry - Washington Post

Suburbia was a no-man's-land for the down and out. In Baltimore, my legs were invaluable because they got me around to the blood banks, soup kitchens, libraries and labor pools where I could eat or kill a day and still get back in time to spend a night at the mission. There were, in other words, basic necessities for survival a derelict could count on in the city.

The Washington Post 1980-05-02

"Invisible Man" - Lawrence Otis Graham - New York Magazine

I drive up the winding lane past a long stone wall and beneath an archway of 60-feet maples. At one bend of the drive, a freshly clipped lawn and a trail of yellow daffodils slope gently up to the four-pillared portico of a white Georgian colonial. The building's six huge chimneys, the two wings with slate-gray shutters, and the white-brick façade loom over a luxuriant golf course. Before me stands the 100-year-old Greenwich Country Club—the country club—in the affluent, patrician, and very white town of Greenwich, Connecticut, where there are eight clubs for 59,000 people. I'm a 30-year-old corporate lawyer at a midtown Manhattan firm, and I make $105,000 a year. I'm a graduate of Princeton University (1983) and Harvard Law School (1988), and I've written eleven nonfiction books. Although these might seem like good credentials, they're not the ones that brought me here. Quite frankly, I got into this country club the only way that a black man like me could—as a $7-an-hour busboy.

New York Magazine 1992-08-17

V-"Money Brings a Taste of 'Real Living" - Neil Henry - Washington Post

As far as a bum was concerned, hotels such as the Edison were funhouses compared to the mission, and whenever my peers came across a little cash they immediately checked into the joint for a way or two of real living. Here, they could drink in the hallways, flirt with women, go in and out at night to savor The Block, and sleep much later than they could at the Helping-Up missions, where everyone was awakened and booted out the door at 5:30 every morning.

The Washington Post 1980-05-01

IV-"Learning the Tricks of Walking a Md. Throwaway Paper Route" - Neil Henry - Washington Post

In a mission riddled with decay and grime, Johnny was a man apart. Here, in the middle of it all, was a meticulous gentleman who wore expensive sunglasses, tucked away dry-cleaned trousers in a tidy duffel bag and ate supper with a paper napkin opened neatly on his lap.

The Washington Post 1980-04-30

III-'Work!' Brings Cheers at Local 194's Hiring Hall" - Neil Henry - Washington Post

"All right, you lousy, no-good, no-count, know nothin' sons of bitches," Cockeye barked, stepping over Sam's rusty bucket, shitting off a television game show with a quick flick of his thumb and facing the crowd of unemployed workers who glanced up from their poker hands in the Paca Street union hall and listened for the rest of what their grizzled labor leader had to say this rainy morning.

The Washington Post 1980-04-29

II-"The Bum's Life in Baltimore" - Neil Henry - Washington Post

We staggered out of the Helping-Up Mission in Baltimore every morning at 5:30, a down processional of bums trooping down the streets in twos and threes, alone in the city, save for a few prostitutes looking for one more trick to cap a long night.

The Washington Post 1980-04-28

I-"Exploring the World of the Urban Derelict" - Neil Henry - Washington Post

Old Louie was a little guy with a gaunt, pink face and a bushy mass of white hair that stood straight up on his head. He was a bum and, like other Baltimore bums, he insisted he was leading a secret life. Whenever pressed or drunk, Old Louie declared that he was not truly down and out but rather a descendant of Manchu royalty traipsing incognito from flophouse to flophouse recruiting an army to overthrow Mao.

The Washington Post 1980-04-27

Reaction: Task Force Vote Fraud Investigation: "More Poll Cheating Detailed" - William Currie and Pamela Zekman - Chicago Tribune

"More Democrats who acted as Republican election judges in the March primary testified before an Illinois legislative subcommittee that Democratic precinct bosses read the final vote tallies from election machines unchecked by the official judges. . ."

The Chicago Tribune 1972-09-22

VIII-Task Force Vote Fraud Investigation: "Illinois' Absurd Election Code" - Pamela Zekman - Chicago Tribune

"The Illinois election code is a patchwork quilt of absurdities and contradictions that make honest elections practically impossible. State legislators stitched the code together over the last 30 years, inserting, deleting, and overlooking needed provisions with wild abandon. The law has become sphinxlike, challenging those authorized to administer it and to enforce it to unravel its riddles. . ."

The Chicago Tribune 1972-09-18

Editorial: Task Force Vote Fraud Investigation: "The Vote Fraud Tragedy" - Unsigned - Chicago Tribune

"As a direct result of a months' long investigation of vote fraud by The Tribune, 40 persons have been indictment by a federal grand jury. U.S. Atty. James R. Thompson promises that 'our investigation will continue and evidence will be presented...until we are convinced that the last piece of election fraud which can be uncovered will be prosecuted' . . ."

The Chicago Tribune 1972-09-18

VII-Task Force Vote Fraud Investigation: "Vote-Stealing Old Story in Chicago's Elections" - William Currie - Chicago Tribune

"Vote fraud is an old story in Chicago. Only the names change when exposing the guilty. Currently, the Democrats are suspected vote stealers. A half century ago, Republican precinct workers sponsored by Mayor William H. Thompson were being hauled into courts to face charges resulting from their overzealous campaign strategies. . ."

The Chicago Tribune 1972-09-18

VI-Task Force Vote Fraud Investigation: "Cracking Dem Sanctum" - William Currie - Chicago Tribune

"It was a job nobody wanted. It was a vacancy for a $20-a-day Republican clerk in the Chicago Board of Election Commissioners office in City Hall. The likelihood of a Republican ever rising above a clerk's job in an office so dominated by Democrats is very dim; so it was not a a job many would seek. . ."

The Chicago Tribune 1972-09-18

Reaction: Task Force Vote Fraud Investigation: "20 More Vote Fraud Indictments Expected" - George Bliss - Chicago Tribune

"The federal grand jury that indicted 40 persons for vote fraud last week will soon return at least 20 more indictments, it was learned by The Tribune yesterday. . ."

The Chicago Tribune 1972-09-18

Follow-up: Task Force Vote Fraud Investigation: "List of 40 Indicted in Vote Fraud" - Pamela Zekman and William Currie - Chicago Tribune

"The 40 persons indicted for vote fraud by the federal grand jury and the violations they allegedly committed during the March primary are: . . ."

The Chicago Tribune 1972-09-17

Reaction: Task Force Vote Fraud Investigation: "U.S. Acts to Protect Vote" - George Bliss and William Mullen - Chicago Tribune

"The federal government announced formation yesterday of a special task force of prosecutors to combat Chicago vote fraud in the Nov. 7 Presidential election. Federal agents meanwhile continued to round up 40 persons named in federal grand jury indictments for vote fraud. . ."

The Chicago Tribune 1972-09-17

Reaction: Task Force Vote Fraud Investigation: "Kusper Reign Attacked" - George Bliss and William Currie - Chicago Tribune

"A parade of witnesses before a special Illinois House subcommittee investigating massive vote fraud told of vote buying, forgeries, phony election judges, terror tactics, and the beating of a poll watcher in Chicago precinct polling places last March. . ."

The Chicago Tribune 1972-09-16

Reaction: Task Force Vote Fraud Investigation: "Mass Vote Fraud Arrests" - William Mullen and Pamela Zekman - Chicago Tribune

"A federal grand jury investigating vote fraud during the March primary reportedly returned 12 indictments naming 40 persons yesterday before Chief Judge Edwin A. Robson of Federal District Court. He ordered them suppressed until noon today. . ."

The Chicago Tribune 1972-09-16

"Move to Divert Vote Probe Fails" - John Elmer - The Chicago Tribune

"A lone Republican joined Democrats today to try to prevent a special legislative subcomittee from launching a probe tomorrow into widespread Chicago vote fraud, but the move was blocked by Rep. Philip Collins (R., Chicago), House Elections Committee chairman. . ."

The Chicago Tribune 1972-09-15

Reaction: Task Force Vote Fraud Investigation: "Percy Urges FBI Probe of Vote Fraud in Chicago" - Unsigned - Chicago Tribune

"Sen. Percy (R., Ill.) today urged Atty. Gen. Richard Kleindienst to order the Federal Bureau of Investigation to examine evidence of vote fraud in Chicago and, possibly, to supervise the general election in November. . ."

The Chicago Tribune 1972-09-15

Reaction: Task Force Vote Fraud Investigation: "Prober Violated Law: Kusper" - George Bliss and Pamela Zekman - Chicago Tribune

"Lashing out at Tribune disclosures of widespread vote fraud and election day irregularities, Kusper cited the law the reporter allegedly broke, but under sharp questioning admitted he himself has worked as an attorney on private legal matters while he has been board chairman. . ."

The Chicago Tribune 1972-09-15

V-Task Force Vote Fraud Investigation: "Workers Fight to Save Jobs" - William Mullen and William Currie - Chicago Tribune

"It is not just loyalty to the Democratic Party which has spawned partisan election boards in many of Chicago's wards. More often than not, it is a matter of survival for the local Democratic precinct captains and patronage employees. The Tribune Task Force uncovered hundreds of election judges who violated election rules. Many did so out of ignorance, others, in order to survive the competitive patronage system. . ."

The Chicago Tribune 1972-09-14

Reaction: Task Force Vote Fraud Investigation: "3 Are Indicted in Vote Fraud" - George Bliss - Chicago Tribune

"A 46th Ward Democratic precinct captain, his wife and the wife of his assistant precinct captain were indicted by the county grand jury yesterday for voting from a precinct where they did not live during the March primary. . ."

The Chicago Tribune 1972-09-14

"20,000 Seek U.S. Marshals in Polls" - George Bliss and William Currie - The Chicago Tribune

"The signatures of 20,000 Chicago voters demanding federal marshals for the city's polling places will be presented at the White House Friday, leaders of a West Side coalition group announced yesterday at a press conference. . ."