Right Wing Hate Machine Continues To Spread Disinformation About 9-11 Families Critical Of Bush Ads

 

By Allan P. Duncan

March 16, 2004

 

OpEdNews.Com

 

On March 10^th I wrote an article titled A Not-So-Mighty Wind: Limbaugh Blows It Once Again about how Rush Limbaugh had bashed two 9-11 widows along with the group September 11^th Families for Peaceful Tomorrows for having the audacity to criticize the Bush Campaign ads for using 9-11 footage.

 

On his radio show, Limbaugh rushed to judgment and accused the family members of being manipulated by the Democrats and insinuated that Peaceful Tomorrows was being funded by Teresa Heinz Kerry. I then documented how a series of articles in the press over a period of a week had been spun by the right wing into what appears to be an orchestrated disinformation campaign to discredit the 9-11 Families who were critical of the ads in the press. To read the article you can go to the URL below and verify what I reported.

 

http://www.opednews.com/duncan031004_limbaugh.htm

 

On Friday, March 12^th, The Heinz Foundation, which had been accused of funneling money to Peaceful Tomorrows, responded to an earlier Post article which I’ve excerpted below:

 

http://www.nypost.com/postopinion/editorial/20231.htm

 

(MRS.) KERRY'S CASH CONNECTION

March 9, 2004

 

Excerpts:

“But now it turns out that this whole furor is driven by a tiny group that's motivated by a far-left agenda and a festering hatred of the president - and has some quite dubious financial ties.

 

Leading the rhetorical charge has been an outfit called September 11th Families for Peaceful Tomorrows - which, the group admits, has only a few dozen members and represents relatives of no more than 1 percent of the 9/11 victims.

 

And back in January 2003, the group said had it had gotten a "verbal commitment" to the fund proposal from the junior senator from Massachusetts - John F. Kerry.

 

Little surprise there - because Peaceful Tomorrows' parent group, the San Francisco-based Tides Foundation, has received millions from foundations controlled by Kerry's heiress wife, Teresa Heinz Kerry.”

 

Here are some excerpts from  the statement that appeared in the Post on March 12^th from the Heinz Endowment in response to the Post’s March 9^th editorial:

 

http://www.nypost.com/postopinion/letters/17022.htm

 

HEINZ ENDOWMENTS: HARDLY EXTREMIST

 

“March 12, 2004 -- Your allegation ["(Mrs.) Kerry's Cash Connection," Editorial, March 9] that an organization called Peaceful Tomorrows has received funding from foundations directed by Teresa Heinz Kerry is flat-out wrong.

 

The allegation rests on a false assumption - that Heinz Endowments funding of the Tides Center for projects in western Pennsylvania is "fungible," as you state in your editorial, and so can be redirected to other causes.”

 

“It is no more accurate to suggest that Heinz supports every one of these projects than it is to suggest that a person who contributes to a specific organization through the United Way supports the agenda of every other United Way beneficiary.”

 

Maxwell King

President, The Heinz Endowments

Pittsburgh, Pa.

 

In my Limbaugh piece I mentioned that I had received a copy of a statement from Peaceful Tomorrows that they sent to the Post to rebut the charges about receiving funds from Teresa Heinz Kerry. To date, the Post has not published the statement from Peaceful Tomorrows. Here are some excerpts from the statement. The entire statement can be found in my first article.

 

Peaceful Tomorrows statement on the "Kerry Connection"

 

“September 11th Families for Peaceful Tomorrows has never received funding from the Howard Heinz Endowment, the Vira I. Heinz Endowment, Teresa Heinz Kerry or John Kerry.

Peaceful Tomorrows has no connection with the Heinz or Kerry families through Tides Foundation, the Tides Center or any other entity.”

 

“Peaceful Tomorrows has been a not-for-profit project of the Tides Center since July of 2002.  As our fiscal sponsor, the Tides Center provides administrative and financial services that allow the staff and membership of Peaceful Tomorrows to focus on work related to our mission.  We raise money for our own work and we pay Tides Center 9% of those funds in exchange for vital services such as invoice payment, tax services, and insurance.”

 The New York Post then piled on.

 

In the same March 12^th edition of the Post, in an editorial titled MRS. KERRY'S PROXY PROTESTS, the Post refutes the statement by the Heinz Foundation. Here are some excerpts from the editorial.

 

http://www.nypost.com/postopinion/editorial/17047.htm

 

MRS. KERRY'S PROXY PROTESTS

 

“March 12, 2004 -- IN a letter in the opposite column, the president of the Heinz Endowments - chaired by Sen. John Kerry's wife, Teresa Heinz Kerry - takes issue with our Tuesday editorial on the hard-left anti-war group Peaceful Tomorrows, which is spearheading criticism of President Bush's campaign ads.

 

Peaceful Tomorrows - which has opposed the entire War on Terror, including the toppling of Afghanistan's Taliban regime - is heavily funded by the San Francisco-based Tides Foundation.

 

And Tides, in turn, has received millions from Mrs. Kerry's charities.

We noted that the Heinz donations to Tides "were earmarked specifically for environmental charities" - but added that "money is fungible."

 

In their defense, the Tides Foundation then wrote a Letter to the Editor of the Post and also published it on their website. To date, the Letter to the Editor has not been published by the Post. Here are some excerpts from the letter.

 

http://www.tidesfoundation.org/press_rel_03.cfm

 

March 10, 2004

Letters to the Editor
New York Post


To the Editor:

 

“Your editorial on March 9 ("(Mrs.) Kerry's Cash Connection") is both factually and conceptually inaccurate. Tides Foundation, which has made four grants to Peaceful Tomorrows in 2002 and 2003 for a combined total of $34,665, has not received "millions of dollars controlled by Teresa Heinz Kerry". The Heinz Endowments have granted Tides Foundation a total of $230,000 dispensed between 1994 and 1998. These grants were to support a pollution prevention initiative and other environmentally friendly practices by industries in Western Pennsylvania.

Tides Center, an independent offshoot of Tides Foundation, provides administrative and management services to nonprofit projects across the country. Tides Center has received additional support from the Heinz Endowments specifically to support projects in Pennsylvania, none of which has gone to September 11th Families for Peaceful Tomorrows.”

 Sincerely,

Drummond Pike
President, Tides Foundation and Tides Center

 

On the same date, March 12^th, John Podhoretz wrote a column in the New York Post titled BACK TO REALITY. I’ve copied parts of the column below.

 

http://www.nypost.com/postopinion/opedcolumnists/17032.htm

 

BACK TO REALITY

By JOHN PODHORETZ

 

“March 12, 2004 -- GO ahead, you deluded or dishonest folks who claim George W. Bush has no business discussing or showing the 2001 attacks on America in his advertising.

 

Go right ahead with your coordinated, contemptuous complaining - paid for in part by foundations and organizations lubricated by Mrs. John Kerry's ketchup-drenched dollars.”

 

“Which brings us back to America and the critics of Bush and his 9/11 ads.

 

Kerry's claim that Bush is "stonewalling" the 9/11 commission was parroted by several of the victims' family members as they criticized the Bush commercials last week in language so eerily similar in every instance that it was clear they were speaking from the same sheet of talking points.”

 

I particularly got a kick out of the following quote from Podhoretz’s column:

 

“Kerry's claim that Bush is "stonewalling" the 9/11 commission was parroted by several of the victims' family members as they criticized the Bush commercials last week in language so eerily similar in every instance that it was clear they were speaking from the same sheet of talking points.”

 

Podhoretz’s claims that 9-11 Family members parroted quotes from John Kerry is eerily similar in every instance that it is clear that he and Rush Limbaugh were speaking from the same sheet of talking points. Pot…Kettle…Black!

 

In another interesting development, a friend of mine forwarded an email he received. My friend is a GOP Team Leader and he received this officially sanctioned Republican Party email on March 12^th. As I scrolled down the page of the email I noticed a link to an article under the section Site Updates. The link was titled, In Case You Missed It: The Politics of 9/11.

 

I clicked the link, and lo and behold, I was led to an article published by the Wall Street Journal dated March 10^th titled The Activists Who Claim To Speak For The Families Are Not Exactly Politically Neutral.

 

This was an article I had missed somehow.

 

Here are excerpts from the article that appeared on the GOP Team Leader website. Notice the URL. The original URL to the Wall Street Journal is published at the end of the article.

http://www.gopteamleader.com/myissues/view_issue.asp?id=1610

The Activists Who Claim To Speak For The Families Are Not Exactly Politically Neutral

 

From The Wall Street Journal

Review & Outlook
March 10, 2004

 

“Has anyone else out there begun to wonder just who these 9/11 "families" are that have been interviewed without end the past week about their "outrage" over President Bush's TV ads with a quick clip of September 11? Are they all neutral innocents, as depicted, or are they part of an organized anti-Bush opposition? ...

 

Consider the benignly named September 11th Families for Peaceful Tomorrows. ...”

 

“The group was immediately welcomed into the Democratic network of money and support. Peaceful Tomorrows is a "project" of the leftist Tides Center. ... The Center receives generous financial assistance from liberal foundations, including various Heinz family endowments. The chairman of at least one of those endowments is Teresa Heinz, wife of Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry.

 

Peaceful Tomorrows has also received grant money from the closely related Tides Foundation. The Foundation pushes the principle that money is fungible for left-wing activist groups. Big donors (including the Heinz endowments) give money to Tides, with private instructions as to which groups it should then be distributed; thus the original donors don't have to publicly admit to the activities they fund. ...”

 

What we have ... are politically motivated activists standing willingly as a front organization for the Democratic Party. They've traded on the press's reluctance to question their motives, hoping for a free run to impugn Mr. Bush every time he discusses terrorism from now until the election. Peaceful Tomorrows is hardly alone; scratch the surface and many of the other groups and individuals making a fuss have similar ties. ...”

 

For Entire Article Please Visit : http://www.opinionjournal.com/editorial/feature.html?

 

So what’s going on here? Is the link to the Wall Street Journal article on the GOP Team Leader website even more evidence that an orchestrated right wing hate campaign against certain 9-11 Family members and some of their organizations is operating full steam ahead?

 

We have mainstream papers like the New York Post and the Wall Street Journal publishing articles, columns and editorials all spreading the same disinformation about the 9-11 Families and some of their organizations, and they are backed up by people like Rush Limbaugh who continues the bashing on the airwaves.

 

Since September 11^th Families for Peaceful Tomorrows, the Heinz Endowment and the Tides Foundation all deny that they are in collusion with one another, and have released statements and letters to this effect, who are we to believe?

 

I’m banking on Kristen Breitweiser, Monica Gabrielle and Colleen Kelly. These three women all lost loved ones on 9-11 and are the three people who have taken the brunt of the bashing from the right wing hate machine. I know all three of these women to be in possession of incredible character and integrity and when they tell me that their criticism of the Bush ads is not political, but instead one of principle, I believe them.  

 

All these women want is the truth about what really happened on 9-11 so that they can make some kind of sense as to how and why their family members were murdered on that horrible date. Is that too much to ask?

 

Why do they have to be battered in the press just because they are upset about footage from Ground Zero ending up in a campaign ad?

 

Put yourself in their places for a moment if you possibly can. Imagine yourself as one of these women watching TV with their kids, when suddenly a Bush ad comes on, and they have to relive that horror all over again. How do you think you would you feel every time you saw footage of 9-11 on TV if your husband or brother had been killed that day?

 

The 9-11 Families need to heal. Many of them have had no real time to mourn because they’ve been too busy fighting our government for answers as to what happened that day. Is it too much for certain members of the Republican Party and their lapdogs in the press to take their feelings into account and try to understand why some of them are so angry?

 

I love and respect these people with all of my being and it breaks my heart to see divisions among the 9-11 Families as a whole over this issue. They need to reunite for their common good so that they can nurture themselves as a group and hopefully become as healthy as they can possibly be.

 

I appeal to the right wing hate machine to please cease and desist from hurting these people anymore. They don’t deserve to be lied about and most importantly they don’t deserve to be hurt anymore than they already have been. Please stop! There are plenty of us out here who can take the beating…just leave the 9-11 Families alone.

 

Allan Duncan is a 911 activist, and a former Social Worker and police officer,  who lives in New Hope, PA.  This article is copyright by Allan Duncan ADuncan282@aol.com originally published by opednews.com Permission is granted to forward this or to place it on a website as long as the article is included intact, including this statement