Bill Berkowitz
January 17, 2006

Hudson Institute: Home of the indicted and the exposed

After hiring Scooter Libby, "Senior Fellow" Michael Fumento admits taking Monsanto money and not disclosing it, and is fired by Scripps Howard News Service

Lewis "Scooter" Libby, the indicted former Chief of Staff of Vice President Dick Cheney, has found a new home at the Hudson Institute (grants, profile). Meanwhile, Hudson's Michael Fumento, a longtime Institute Senior Fellow, recently became the latest right wing 'scholar' exposed for writing columns without disclosing they were underwritten by corporations.

The good news for Michael Fumento -- a now former columnist with the Scripps Howard News Service (SHNS) and a senior fellow at the conservative Hudson Institute -- stemming from BusinessWeek Online's recent revelation that he had been relieved of his duties by SHNS for not disclosing he had taken payments in 1999 from agribusiness giant Monsanto, is that it is unlikely he will lose his Hudson Institute post.

In fact, if the Indiana-based Hudson Institute's hiring of Lewis "Scooter" Libby -- the former Chief of Staff and Assistant to the Vice President for National Security Affairs who was indicted in October 2005 over the Valerie Plame Affair -- is indicative of its sense of integrity, Fumento may be in for a promotion and a raise.

In a statement released Friday, January 14, 2006, SHNS Editor and General Manager Peter Copeland said that Fumento "did not tell SHNS editors, and therefore we did not tell our readers, that in 1999 Hudson received a $60,000 grant from Monsanto" Copeland added: "Our policy is that he should have disclosed that information. We apologize to our readers."

An advisory sent to SHNS subscribers read: "The Jan. 5 column by Michael Fumento about new biotechnology products from Monsanto should have included more information. We believe the column should have disclosed a $60,000 grant from Monsanto that Fumento received in 1999 for a book about biotechnology. Fumento's column will no longer be distributed by Scripps Howard News Service, but is available from Michael Fumento...

When BusinessWeek Online's Eamon Javers asked Fumento about the payments, he said that he is "extremely pro-biotech." According to Javers, Fumento "said that he solicited several agribusiness companies to finance his book, which was published by Encounter Books (grants,profile - Encounter is essentially a project of the Bradley Foundation). 'I went after everybody, I've got to be honest,' Fumento says of his fund-raising effort. 'I told them that if I tell the truth in this book, the biotech industry is going to look really good, and you should contribute.'"

Fumento also allowed that the grant from Monsanto went from the company to the Hudson Institute and was aimed at supporting his work. While part of it went to the Institute's overhead, "most of it" was earmarked for his salary.

At the Institute, Fumento "has carved out a specialty debunking critics of the agribusiness and biotechnology industries," Javers reported.

'Scooter' scoots to the Hudson Institute

Lewis "Scooter" Libby was indicted on five counts including obstruction of justice for his involvement in the Valerie Plame affair. According to a Hudson Institute news release, he "will focus on issues relating to the War on Terror and the future of Asia. He also will offer research guidance and will advise the institute in strategic planning," the think tank's new release stated.

"Scooter Libby brings decades of experience to Hudson Institute that will strengthen our robust research efforts. We look forward to drawing on his expertise," said Hudson Institute Chairman Walter P. Stern.

In what must have been an oversight, the 300-plus word news release, which touted Libby's long career in public service, his academic qualifications and copious achievements, made no mention of the events that drove Libby from being a top player in the Bush Administration to becoming a think tanker.

If Libby manages to cop a plea -- or goes to trial and is convicted -- and is sentenced to hard time, it is not inconceivable that he either could continue with Hudson and shift his focus from issues related to the War on Terror to the benefits of prison privatization, or like Charles Colson before him, he could find a spiritual awakening and set up his own version of a prison ministry.

A disturbing history of corporate support

Between 1987 and 2003 the Hudson Institute received nearly $15 million from a passel of right wing foundations which includes the Carthage Foundation, Sarah Scaife Foundation, the Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation, and the John M. Olin Foundation.

As for its cozy relationship with corporations, IP Justice (website) -- "an international civil liberties organization that promotes balanced intellectual property law in a digital world -- published a report in May 2005, titled "Bush and Big Pharma Team Up to Discredit WHO and Generic Medicines: Drug Companies' Influence on Health Care Policy Worsens Global AIDS Crisis," which noted that according to the Institute's annual report "the pharmaceutical industry is one of its main financial supporters. Besides large cash donations, annual reports reveal that drug company executives have consistently sat on the Hudson Institute's Boards of Directors and Trustees and oversaw its policy development on health care issues."

The IP report documented Hudson's decades-long role as a corporate water carrier whose "research" appears to have long been tainted by corporate underwriting:

The Hudson Institute's stated mission is "to educate policymakers and opinion leaders." It advertises its services by claiming that "our scholars regularly contribute to major publications ... [and] our policy experts frequently appear on major television networks throughout the world ..."

[It] ... is [the] same special interest advocacy group that was hired by the tobacco lobby decades ago to write and publish articles that would create confusion over the negative health care effects of cigarette smoking. Now, [it] ... employs the same strategy of public misinformation to discredit affordable generic medicines in order to increase the sale of patented drugs to the benefit the US pharmaceutical industry.

Recent tobacco-related litigation has uncovered key insider documents detailing the interaction and close relationship between the tobacco industry and US policy research/advocacy organizations. As early as 1971, the Philip Morris Corporation hired the Hudson Institute to create and promote "junk science" in an attempt to "debunk" the negative health effects of tobacco.

One recently discovered hand written document discussed strategies for fending off critics, including using "politicized science" designed to "create doubt in the eyes of the public -- in science; in politics; in risks," of cigarette smoking. A Hudson Institute report was one of two reports that were recommended for commissioning in the tobacco industry's secret document to promote it junk science. For decades, joint projects between Philip Morris and the Hudson Institute were often made-to-order.

Characterized as "scientific lobbying", the Hudson Institute's strategic model of influencing public policy is intended to "communicate [with] scientists," to "work the 'walls' of [scientific] meetings," and to "influence protocols of new research." The special interest group is even known to have used this same strategy on behalf of the agri-chemical lobby (another major funder of the Institute) to discredit the safety of organic food...

Since 2000, the Hudson Institute's Annual Reports show major funding from pharmaceutical corporations including Eli Lilly, Merck, Novartis, Pfizer, Bristol-Myers Squibb, and the powerful lobby group, the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America (PhARMA). Other large financial supporters ... have included major oil and agro-chemical corporations and ultra-right-wing family foundations. [Its] ... program areas and policy initiatives overlap with its corporate donors' financial interests. According to IRS forms, the Institute's Senior Fellows are paid between $100,000 - $200,000 to engage in "pseudo scientific" research and advocacy.

Wife of advisor to ... President Reagan, Ken Adelman, Ms. Carol C. Adelman joined the Hudson Institute in March 2000 as a research fellow and promoted the pharmaceutical industry's cause in both Congress and public opinion. Ms. Adelman has since published a number of misleading articles condemning generic medicines and attacking the WHO prequalification program. The Wall Street Journal published one of her advocacy pieces on 9 December 2004 that accuses the WHO and MSF as having "endangered almost as many with their strategy of using unproven and outmoded drugs in developing nations to combat AIDS and malaria." The industry-funded lobbyist contends that these "outmoded knockoff AIDS drugs ... can kill in other ways."

Like the articles planted by IPN [International Policy Network] and AEI [American Enterprise Institute], the Hudson Institute claims concern for the safety of AIDS patients taking generic medicines, while the policies it promotes means that AIDS drugs will never reach African patients. According to MSF [Médecins Sans Frontières], "like arsonists masquerading as firefighters, Ms. Adelman's Hudson Institute and other industry-funded groups pretend to have the best interests of the patients at heart while treating their needs with contempt and blatantly disregarding medical ethics and evidence-based science. People with AIDS need affordable and effective treatment, not massive disinformation."

In her "research," Ms. Adelman has consistently denied that drug patents can create a health problem for developing countries, dismissing such concerns as "the global health babble." The Hudson Institute published a report in 2004 that claimed that generic AIDS drugs are more expensive than brand-name patented drugs. Since the report was funded by the US pharmaceutical industry and made claims that fail to pass the "giggle test", no one took the report seriously. But since the industry promoted it heavily in the media, MSF issued a response, "the Hudson Institute's report is not credible" and published a detailed statement that refuted the pharmaceutical lobbyist's claim.

Regarding revelations about his and other conservative columnists involvement in the "pay to play" scandal, Michael Fumento blamed the whole situation on a press corps revved-up and intoxicated by the Abramoff Scandal. He claimed "We're in a witch-hunting frenzy now but, as after all witch hunts, people do return to their senses and regret the piles of ashes at their feet."

Fumento added: "Often it happened fast enough the witch hunters found themselves tied to the stake. I do hope that happens here."

And, in a stunning bit of uncertainty, BusinessWeek Online reported that "while Fumento doesn't think he should have disclosed the payments to his readers, Hudson's CEO Kenneth R. Weinstein is less sure. Asked if the scholar should have disclosed his financial relationship with Monsanto, Weinstein pauses and says, 'that's a good question, period.'"

(For a heavy dose of Fumento, see "The Michael Fumento Interview" by John Hawkins @ RightWing News.)

Bandow finds a new home

In a separate, but not entirely unrelated development, Doug Bandow, the former Copley News Service columnist and former senior fellow at the Cato Institute, outed by BusinessWeek Online in an earlier article for having accepted as much as $2000 per column from indicted GOP uber-lobbyist Jack Abramoff to write pieces in support of issues of interest to Abramoff's clients, has also landed on his feet.

In late-December, Citizen Outreach, which describes itself as "a non-profit organization focused on limited-government public policies," announced that Bandow, "one of the nation's foremost libertarian thinkers," had been hired by the organization to be "its new Vice President of Policy."

"I've been reading Doug's columns for many years now," said Citizen Outreach President Chuck Muth. "And even on the rare policy issue in which he and I might not agree 100 percent, I always know that Doug's reasoning is based on objective thought and not emotion. He's able to justify any public policy issue from a limited government standpoint in the best tradition of our Founding Fathers. I wish we had more public officials who think like Doug in elective office. Citizen Outreach couldn't be happier that he is joining our organization."

According to the Citizen Outreach announcement -- which in more than 275 words neglected to mention the reason he needed to seek new employment in the first place -- Bandow "will be based in the Washington, D.C., area and will focus on extending Citizen Outreach's public policy efforts on state and federal issues, as well as Capitol Hill outreach and coalition-building with other grassroots organizations who share the limited-government philosophy."

"I'm excited to be joining Chuck in his efforts to energize the grassroots," said Bandow. "Only by getting average citizens across the country involved in politics will we be able to return government to its original limited role of protecting our liberties. The work of Citizen Outreach is particularly important at a time when regulation."