“Yeah, I did,” I answered matter-of-factly. “We do YouTube videos and expose stuff like that. Is that why they keep stopping me?”
“Uh, no, that’s what you said, you said—basically, it’s the southern border, so, it’s your, it’s your—it’s a free country,” he stuttered. “Do whatever you want. Here you go.”
With that he handed me my passport. As I leaned over to accept it, I stole a glance at the computer. Finally, I got to see what all these agents had been looking at when they typed in “James O’Keefe.” There, blinking away in some ancient-looking, pre-Windows version of MS-DOS were the words that had been redacted in all the FOIA responses, the words that caused the agents to tense up when they read them, the words that triggered my repeated detentions: “Subject is an amateur reporter engaged in publicity stunts including unlawfully entering the United States dressed like an ISIS terrorist and crossing the Rio Grande dressed like Osama bin Laden.”
At that moment, the truth descended upon me like a tongue of fire. The failure of Department of Homeland Security leadership to define me and characterize my work with any accuracy led to the detentions and harassment. Like bureaucrats everywhere, CBP agents are used to checking boxes. I did not quite fit the “journalist” box they were used to. My constitutional rights hinged on that definition. Apparently, an “amateur reporter” was not entitled to the same protections as a traditionally defined “professional.”
The CBP agents took their cues from a media establishment jealously guarding its privileges. For instance, Paul Farhi of the Washington Post describes my news anchor role on a series of Project Veritas videos as “master of ceremonies.”14 This was his not-so-subtle way of excluding me from the journalistic ranks, and Farhi was no outlier. Major media reporters routinely employed dismissive language to establish the difference between us and them.
It did not surprise me that the Department of Homeland Security called our videos “publicity stunts” in the records that were redacted in the FOIA requests. “Stunt” had become the word of choice in the journalistic establishment to summarize our undercover reporting. When I Google “James O’Keefe” and “stunt” I get 282,000 hits.
On this occasion, I was able to see those FOIA redactions unmasked. And only I would ever see the unredacted truth for myself. I couldn’t film it—that would have been unlawful in those circumstances. The culture, the media, and the government were using language as a weapon, a secret weapon at that, as no one, myself included, was able to expose it. “In our time, political speech and writing are largely the defence of the indefensible,” wrote Orwell seventy years ago, and since then political speech has not improved a whit.15
As I walked out of the CBP station and into the Seattle rain, I dictated the statement on the computer screen from memory and recorded it on my iPhone. We promptly released a video that included audio from the actual encounter. After its release, I got a call from reporter Jerry Markon of the Washington Post. Markon, an old-school reporter with an unusual dose of integrity, assured me he could get a comment from the agency since he had reliable sources there. I was dubious, but as he reminded me, “It’s different when you’re with the Washington Post. They’ll call me back.” Enjoy resting on your laurels, Washington Post, I thought. One day, there will be nothing left to rest on.
But Markon seemed to be genuinely fair. Jerry got through to CBP and received a statement from the agency. It read, “CBP does not retaliate against applicants for entry into the United States.” A lot depends on the way you define “retaliate.” What the CBP did not do, Markon noted, was “contest the video’s depictions of O’Keefe’s encounters with federal officers.”16 The major media may be losing their grip, but the memory of their power still echoes.
If there is a moral here, it is that sunlight remains the best disinfectant. The CBP can redact information on FOIA requests, but once we published the “O’Keefe” warning on social media and the Post amplified that message, the game was over. The CBP has not detained me since. As of this writing, the ACLU is representing ten US citizens for “warrantless searches of smartphones, laptops, and other electronic devices at the border.” As the ACLU observes, “None of our clients have been accused of any wrongdoing, nor have they been given any valid explanation for why this happened to them.”17 It is a shame that I do not fit the ACLU profile. I could have saved its people a lot of legwork.
Honoring a Tradition—The History of Journalism and Its Demise
Although you would not know it by listening to our critics, the kind of investigative journalism we do at Project Veritas has a long and proud history. In fact, for more than a century, reporters have been going undercover and telling stories that otherwise would not have been told. For those who are curious, NYU has done an excellent job of creating a historical database of such reporting.1 The database includes capsule descriptions of scores of undercover efforts, including several done by Project Veritas. As far as I could tell, ours were the only summaries that came with caveats attached, such as the use of the word “alleged” in the discussion of our NPR sting or the damage-control description of the ACORN employees as “earnest” and “low-level.”
Perhaps the most celebrated of all undercover jobs took place more than a century ago. Most Americans of a certain age had to read Upton Sinclair’s classic 1906 novel The Jungle, and with good reason. Sinclair finessed his way into a Chicago meatpacking plant for a month or more, quietly interviewed workers, and reported what he saw and experienced. Although he worked in an era without hidden-camera technology or the means to distribute information quickly, his account proved truthful enough and powerful enough, even in novel form, to inspire major reforms in the food-processing industry. Those reforms included the passage of the Pure Food and Drug Act.
Like Sinclair, we are not in a position to capture a comprehensive look at whatever subject we investigate. But also like Sinclair, we try to capture an honest slice of it, in context, package it to attract attention, and, ideally, make a difference.
Sinclair was one of a class of “muckrakers,” a word adapted from John Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress and popularized by President Theodore Roosevelt. “The men with the muck rakes are often indispensable to the well-being of society,” said Roosevelt in a 1906 address.2 He cautioned, however, that muckrakers had to be truthful and judicious if they were to be effective. Our experience has confirmed the same.
These investigative reporters were well known in their time, and a few of them, such as Lincoln Steffens and Ida Tarbell, still have historical currency. At Project Veritas, we have a special place in our hearts for those who went undercover to gather their facts. For me, among the most impressive was Elizabeth Jane Cochran, a young working-class woman who wrote under the name “Nellie Bly.” In 1887, still in her early twenties, Nellie left her native Pittsburgh for New York and secured a job with the New York World.3 The World was one of the first muckraking newspapers. Under the leadership of Joseph Pulitzer, who bought the paper in 1883, the World did the kind of reporting that today would be all but unthinkable, such as exploring welfare abuse on the recipient end.4
Soon after her arrival, Nellie accepted an undercover assignment to feign insanity and get herself treated in the fashion of the day. She had little trouble deceiving the doctors into thinking her “undoubtedly insane.” It did not take much; unblinking eyes and a feigned breakdown did the trick. Once committed to the city’s hospital for the mentally ill—then, as now, Bellevue—she spent ten brutal days on the receiving end of the care reserved for those in her presumed condition. Fortunately, she lived to write about it, first for the World and later in a book, Ten Days in a Mad-House.
Nellie’s firsthand account of the inhumane everyday treatment meted out to the mentally ill caused a sensation. A grand jury was quickly empaneled, and the jurists seconded the recommendations Nellie had made. As a result, the City of New York was forced to invest considerable s
ums in improving the conditions for the mentally ill, and doctors were forced to tighten their procedures to determine who was and was not “insane.”
At the time, Nellie discovered something we would rediscover more than a century later: when you provoke powerful interests, they will push back, ostensibly against your methods but in reality against your findings. Knowing she was in the right and having the public in her corner, Nellie refused to give in to those “expert physicians who are condemning me for my action.” She knew why they were upset and embarrassed. She had proven their ability “to take a perfectly sane and healthy woman” and, through their draconian treatment, “make her a mental and physical wreck.”5
In 1972, the Chicago Tribune made a major investment in undercover work. One of its reporters, William Mullen, got himself hired as a clerk at the Chicago Board of Election Commissioners. Mullen spent three months working undercover. In that role he “gathered and compiled evidence of election shenanigans from public records.” His work and that of his colleagues resulted in a major exposé of voter fraud by the Tribune.6 A generation or so later, “journalists” would be dismissing voter fraud as fake news and denouncing groups such as Project Veritas that have gone undercover to expose it.
Also in 1972, a twentysomething Geraldo Rivera, working as an investigative reporter for local WABC-TV in New York, caused a similar sensation. Unannounced and uninvited, Rivera and his cameraman toured the children’s facilities at Willowbrook State School for the mentally challenged on Staten Island.7 Although others had written exposés, no printed report had the impact of Rivera’s visuals. Thanks to the camera, citizens did not have to take his word for the conditions at Willowbrook. They could see for themselves. What they saw outraged them and led to major reforms at the institution as well as a new federal law, the Civil Rights of Institutionalized Persons Act of 1980. And, as was true for Nellie Bly, the undercover work launched a successful, if somewhat checkered, career.
Rivera was not the first journalist to cause a sensation with a hidden camera. That honor goes to Tom Howard. In 1928, the New York Daily News recruited Howard, a Chicagoan, to photograph an execution at Sing Sing Prison just north of the city. Well aware that prison officials would never allow a photographer anywhere near the electric chair, the New York Daily News picked Howard specifically for the reason that no one knew him. He strapped a camera to his ankle and wired a triggering mechanism up the inside of his pant leg. As soon as the executioner flipped the switch, Howard pointed his foot at the prisoner, Ruth Snyder, and snapped just the one photo. That the condemned was a woman made the resulting image all the more powerful.8
Despite the possibilities inherent in undercover camera work, the medium has never really taken off. There are several reasons why. The more obvious reasons—cost, time, legal concerns—are ones media analysts are willing to discuss. The less obvious ones these same analysts do not discuss—in part because they do not see the problem; in part because they are the problem. Looking at the media establishment from our perspective, outside of it, we can see forces at play that these analysts cannot see from within.
For those doing undercover work, the pushback could get intense, especially in the 1970s and afterward. For years, hard-hitting investigations and undercover work, often in the form of “real news” or cinema verité, were staples of newspapers around the country, especially in Chicago. The willingness of Chicago reporters to engage in extended confidence games was legendary, especially at the Chicago Tribune where George Bliss and Bill Jones organized the Tribune’s task force.
In 1970, investigative reporter Jones won a Pulitzer for exposing the collusion between police and ambulance companies while going undercover as an ambulance driver. In 1972, as mentioned earlier, young Tribune reporter Bill Mullen worked undercover in the Chicago Election Board City Hall office and successfully exposed widespread Democratic Party voter fraud. The story so angered the Chicago machine, said Mullen, that “[my editors] told me to get out of town until the mayor cooled off, so I bought a Pan Am ‘Round the World’ Ticket.”9
Tribune investigative reporter William Gaines went undercover as a janitor in a Chicago hospital. In addition to mopping the floors and disposing of the garbage, Gaines was recruited to help doctors and nurses in surgery while still in his janitorial garb. He won a Pulitzer for his efforts in 1976. Gaines’s MO could have come right out of the Veritas playbook: find out what the target wants and become that person.
“It wasn’t hard to get a job,” said Gaines. “The first guy would find out [the needs of the target]. The second guy would be exactly that.”10 As Gaines acknowledged, there was no other way to get the information they obtained.
Arguably the most ambitious undercover investigation ever produced by a newspaper took place in Chicago in 1977. That year the Chicago Sun-Times purchased a seedy bar and used it to attract the city’s equally seedy politicians. Reporters actually ran the bar, the aptly named Mirage Tavern, and they were able to document a series of shady deals orchestrated by their politician customers. Hidden cameras were rolling the entire time. The journalists posed as waitresses and bartenders. They captured payoffs to city inspectors, shakedowns by state liquor inspectors, and tax fraud by accountants that was estimated to cost the state of Illinois some $16 million.11
In 1978, the paper ran twenty-five days of stories on the venture. The results were on par with the Veritas ACORN investigation. Fourteen city employees were suspended. The mayor created a new office of inspections. Internal investigation units were set up at the city, state, and federal levels. A local sensation, the series was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. It did not win. Without getting too far ahead of myself, I bring up the lack of awards for a reason. An unwillingness to provide establishment kudos for undercover reporting would lead to the demise of arguably the single most effective technique for gathering information.
Seemingly out of nowhere, the Pulitzer committee deemed the investigation unworthy of its highest honors. “The Pulitzer Prize Board decided not to award the Sun-Times the prize because the series was based on deception,” Sun-Times editor Jack Fuller later explained. “The board concluded that truth-telling enterprises should not engage in such tactics.” According to Fuller, legendary Washington Post editor Ben Bradlee used his clout to deny the Sun-Times the prize. “We would not allow reporters to misrepresent themselves in any way,” Bradlee told him.12 Bradlee added, “I don’t think we should be the hidden owners of anything.”
If there was a watershed moment in the history of investigative journalism, this may have been it. Although the Mirage story was sensational and lethally effective, it was “overshadowed by what the reporters did to get the story,” recalled Gaines. There are various theories as to why the Pulitzer Board voted the way it did and to why, subsequently, journalists largely abandoned undercover reporting. I have some theories of my own.
Trophies
For one, publishers rarely measure a series of this scope by the good their journalists do. Largely for future marketing purposes, they measure success by the awards they win, especially the Pulitzers. The board’s pointed rejection of the Mirage series surely discouraged other editors from using undercover techniques. After all, why devote enormous resources and money into something that will not stock the trophy case?
The Watergate Factor
The earthshaking Watergate investigation had a negative effect on undercover reporting as well. Journalists, and not just those at the Post, started taking themselves way too seriously. Journalism became more decorous, less fun. The smug among them began using phrases like “stunt journalism” or “gimmick journalism” to dismiss people like Nellie Bly or William Gaines or, down the road, James O’Keefe.
The Collapse of Competition
Then, too, the emergence of TV news, local and national, made it very hard for newspapers to remain profitable. By the turn of the twenty-first century, only the largest mar
kets had more than one viable daily newspaper. The lack of competition bred complacency and ideological uniformity.
The “Professionalization” of the Industry and “Narrative” Journalism
Meanwhile, the J-schools were grooming earnest young “professionals.” The media no longer recruited ordinary working people like Nellie Bly. Reporters, like the J-schools that groomed them, had increasingly come to reflect the prevailing statist ethos on America’s campuses. With the increasing political polarization of society and the deeming of some subjects as untouchable, producers had less and less interest in pursuing the kinds of stories that once made Chicago a Mecca of undercover reporting.
An investigation into voter fraud at the polls, for instance, could produce no useful political result. From the newsroom’s perspective, it might even feed into a racial narrative that would ultimately depress the black vote. An investigation into administrative agency abuse, once a staple of intrepid Chicago reporting, might be viewed as blaming victims and hurting people in need. An investigation into the easy movement of sexual predators from one public school district to another might damage the public school establishment, a bulwark of the Democratic Party. Better to stick to priests. In America’s newsrooms today, the “narrative” rules.
The Threat of Litigation
What finally buried hidden-camera journalism were legal and economic concerns. I will go into detail on this issue later in the book, but the use of litigation, even when the law was not in the plaintiff’s favor, has sobered many a media executive.
Despite the rich history of undercover journalism, both print and visual, the media often treat Project Veritas as though we invented the practice. After our sting of NPR executives in 2011, one that resulted in the rolling of some high-level heads, I agreed to be interviewed by NPR media critic Bob Garfield.
“If your journalistic technique is the lie,” Garfield asked with obvious disdain, “why should we believe anything you have to say?”13
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