James O'Keefe

For the Irish politician, see James O'Keeffe. For the cardiologist, see James O'Keefe (cardiologist).

James O'Keefe
Born	James E. O'Keefe III (1984-06-28) June 28, 1984 Bergen County, New Jersey, U.S.
Citizenship	United States
Education	B.A. in Philosophy
Alma mater	Rutgers University, (2006)
Occupation(s)	Conservative movement filmmaker, lecturer, and activist
Years active	2006–present
Organization	Project Veritas
Known for	Activism and Videography
Notable work	Hidden camera videos of ACORN workers (2009), NPR videos (2011)
Website	www.theprojectveritas.com

James E. O'Keefe III (born June 28, 1984) is a conservative American activist who has produced audio and video recordings of staged encounters with public figures and workers in a variety of organizations, purportedly showing abusive or illegal behavior by representatives of those organizations. He gained national attention for his release of video recordings of workers at ACORN offices in 2009, his arrest in early 2010 at the office of Senator Mary Landrieu in a failed attempt to record staff conversations, and release of videos of NPR executives in 2011. Investigations by both legal authorities and journalists have found O'Keefe has "selectively", "heavily" or "deceptively" edited secretly recorded videos to leave a false impression and present the subjects in the worst possible light.

After founding an independent conservative student paper in college, O'Keefe began to use available, inexpensive technology to make videos. His strategy has been to control distribution of his work to conservative media outlets for maximum impact. Some of O'Keefe's projects have influenced Congressional votes. Due to his videos of ACORN workers supposedly aiding a couple in criminal planning, the US Congress voted to freeze funds for the non-profit, which had aided low- and moderate-income people for 40 years. The non-profit also lost most private funding, and in March 2010 had to close most of its offices. Shortly after, the California State Attorney General's Office and the US Government Accountability Office released their related investigative reports. The Attorney General's Office found that O'Keefe had misrepresented the actions of ACORN workers and that the workers had not committed illegal actions. The GAO found that ACORN had managed its federal funds appropriately.

Because his work has become widely seen as deceptive, O'Keefe's initial success in gaining extensive media attention caused controversy and discussions of journalistic standards. By the summer of 2011, his claims to have uncovered widespread Medicaid fraud, purportedly documented on videos released in Maine and other locations, were treated with more skepticism by the media and governmental officials. For instance, the Maine governor Paul Lepage said that the video could help improve staff training, but it did not show evidence of a worker trying to defraud the welfare system.

O'Keefe has gained support from conservative media and interest groups. In 2009 Andrew Breitbart paid the activist, then 25, for the option to publish new videos exclusively on BigGovernment.com. In June 2010, O'Keefe formed a 501(c)(3) organization, Project Veritas, with the stated mission to "investigate and expose corruption, dishonesty, self-dealing, waste, fraud, and other misconduct."

Early life and education

O'Keefe is the elder of two children born to James E. O'Keefe Jr., a materials engineer, and Deborah O'Keefe, a physical therapist. His younger sister became a painter and sculptor.

O'Keefe grew up in Westwood in Bergen County, New Jersey. He is single and lives with his parents. His home was politically "conservative but not rigidly so," according to his father. He graduated from Westwood High School, where he showed an early interest in the arts, theater and journalism. He played the leading role in his high school's 2002 production of the musical Crazy for You. He attained the highest rank, Eagle Scout, in the Boy Scouts of America.

O'Keefe started at Rutgers University in 2002 and majored in philosophy. Beginning in his sophomore year, he wrote a bi-weekly opinion column for The Daily Targum, the university's student paper. He left the Targum and founded the Rutgers Centurion, a conservative student paper supported by a $500 "Balance in the Media" grant from the The Leadership Institute.

For his first video, O'Keefe and other Centurion writers met with Rutgers dining staff to demand the banning of the cereal Lucky Charms from dining halls because of its offense to Irish Americans. O'Keefe said the leprechaun mascot presented a stereotype. He intended to have officials lose either way: to appear insensitive to an ethnic group, or to look silly by agreeing to ban Lucky Charms. The students said they expected to be thrown out for the discussion, but the Rutgers official took notes, was courteous, and said their concerns would be considered. Rutgers staff say the cereal was never taken off the menu.

Career

After graduating, O'Keefe worked for a year under Ben Wetmore, a media specialist, at the Leadership Institute (LI), a conservative-funded organization in Arlington, Virginia. The institute sent O'Keefe to colleges to train students to start independent newspapers. After a year, officials at the institute asked O'Keefe to leave. According to Morton Blackwell, the institute's president and founder, they had concern that O'Keefe's videos had threatened LI's tax exemption as a nonprofit by trying to influence legislation (a legal characterization of lobbyists, which do not have tax exempt status). Blackwell said O'Keefe "wanted to go out and catch leftists breaking the law."

O'Keefe uses inexpensive, available technology to produce and distribute secretly recorded videos and audio files made during staged encounters, some of which have been distributed on YouTube. Such secret recordings are illegal in California and Maryland. He has embarrassed organizations such as Planned Parenthood and ACORN by presenting their low-level workers in the worst light; his videos of ACORN caused a media storm that resulted in the Congress freezing funds, two executive agencies cancelling contracts, and ACORN workers being fired. The national organization lost so much private funding that it closed most of its offices in the six months following the videos. In other cases, O'Keefe used colleagues to interview and record executives, as at NPR shortly before its Congressional funding hearings. He selectively edited and manipulated the NPR material, distorting chronology and putting material together that happened at separate times. In the summer of 2011, he began releasing videos of colleagues' staged encounters with workers related to Medicaid applicability, but media and governmental officials took time to examine his work more carefully and responded more cautiously to their purported content.

O'Keefe and colleagues were arrested in New Orleans in January 2010 during an attempt to make recordings at the office of United States Senator Mary Landrieu, a Democrat. His three fellow activists, who were dressed as telephone repairmen when apprehended, included Robert Flanagan, the son of William Flanagan, acting U.S. Attorney of the Eastern District of Louisiana. The four men were charged with malicious intent to damage the phone system. O'Keefe said he entered Landrieu's office to investigate complaints that she was ignoring phone calls from constituents during the debate over President Barack Obama's health care bill. The charges in the case were reduced from a felony to a single misdemeanor count of entering a federal building under false pretenses. O'Keefe and the others pleaded guilty on May 26. O'Keefe was sentenced to three years' probation, 100 hours of community service and a $1,500 fine. The other three men received lesser sentences.

Working with advice on media strategy from his mentors Ben Wetmore and Andrew Breitbart, O'Keefe has sought to maximize publicity by releasing the videos over several days or months, and often in relation to funding authorizations or other significant political actions related to the subject organization. His strategy has included releasing some projects only to conservative media outlets, such as Fox News Channel and the Big Government website; he has interviewed exclusively with the same media to control the story. In the NPR case in 2011, he released the video at a press conference at the National Press Club in Washington, DC.

As of January 2010, O'Keefe began a column on Andrew Breitbart's website, "BigGovernment.com". Breitbart said in an interview that he paid O'Keefe a salary for his "life rights", to gain release of his videos first on his website. In 2010 O'Keefe formed his own organization, Project Veritas (truth in Latin), whose stated mission is "to investigate and expose corruption, dishonesty, self-dealing, waste, fraud, and other misconduct in both public and private institutions in order to achieve a more ethical and transparent society."

Political and personal beliefs

O'Keefe has described his politics as "progressive radical", though media coverage consistently describes him as a conservative. He refers to himself as a muckraker. He expresses admiration for the philosophy of the British writer G.K. Chesterton and for a free press.

Major works

Planned Parenthood recordings (2008)

In 2006, O'Keefe met Lila Rose, founder of an anti-abortion group on the UCLA campus. They secretly recorded encounters in Planned Parenthood clinics. Rose posed as a pregnant teenager seeking advice; they made two videos and released them on YouTube. In one, a clinic worker in Los Angeles tells Rose "that she could 'figure out a birth date that works' to avoid having PPLA notify police." By law, girls under a certain age who are pregnant have suffered statutory rape and some states require the reporting of such cases to the police. In some states, underage girls may not get abortions without parental permission. The videos received national attention.

In 2007 O'Keefe phoned several Planned Parenthood clinics and secretly recorded the conversations. He posed as a donor, asking if his donations would be applied to needs of minority women. When told they could be, he made "race-motivated" comments. By audio recordings, workers at clinics in six other states reportedly agreed to accept his donation under similar terms.

Planned Parenthood of California filed a "cease and desist" order against Lila Rose, charging that she was violating state laws against secret recordings. The order required her to remove the videos from YouTube and give all the recordings to the organization. She complied through her attorney.

After O'Keefe's four audio recordings were publicized in 2008, Planned Parenthood of Ohio issued a public response, saying the worker's words were "a violation of any policy, and it's very upsetting." The CEO said, "Planned Parenthood has a long history of social justice." Other offices noted the wide variety of services the organization offers to low income communities. African-American leaders called for withdrawal of public financing of the organization. No funding was withdrawn.

ACORN videos (2009)

Main article: ACORN 2009 undercover videos controversy

In September 2009, O'Keefe and his associate, Hannah Giles, published edited hidden camera recordings in which Giles posed as a prostitute and O'Keefe as her boyfriend, a law student, in an attempt to elicit damaging responses from employees of the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN), an advocacy organization for 40 years for persons of low and moderate income. A Washington Post reporter wrote the activist "said he targeted ACORN for the same reasons that the political right does: its massive voter registration drives that turn out poor African Americans and Latinos to cast ballots against Republicans."

The videos were recorded during the summer of 2009 and appeared to show low-level ACORN employees in six cities providing advice to Giles and O'Keefe on how to avoid detection by authorities of tax evasion, human smuggling and child prostitution. He framed the videos with a preface of him in what he called his "pimp" outfit, which he wore in TV media interviews, although he appeared at the ACORN offices in conservative street clothes.

Reception

After the videos were released through the fall of 2009, the U.S. Congress voted to freeze federal funding to ACORN. The Census Bureau and the IRS terminated their contract relationships with ACORN.

By December 2009, an external investigation of ACORN was published that cleared it of any illegality, while noting that its poor management practices contributed to unprofessional actions by some low-level employees. In March 2010, ACORN announced it would dissolve due to loss of funding from government and especially private sources. On March 1, 2010, the district attorney for Brooklyn found that there was no criminal wrongdoing by the ACORN staff in New York. In late March 2010, Clark Hoyt, then public editor for The New York Times, reviewed the videos, the full transcripts and the full audio. Hoyt wrote, "The videos were heavily edited. The sequence of some conversations was changed. Some workers seemed concerned for Giles, one advising her to get legal help. In two cities, Acorn workers called the police. But the most damning words match the transcripts and the audio, and do not seem out of context."

The California Attorney General's Office granted O’Keefe and Giles limited immunity from prosecution in exchange for providing the full, unedited videotapes related to ACORN offices in California. The AG's Report was released on April 1, 2010: it found the videos from ACORN offices in Los Angeles, San Diego, and San Bernardino to have been "severely edited"; it found there was no evidence of criminal conduct on the part of ACORN employees, nor of any evidence that any employee intended to aid or abet criminal conduct. It found that three employees had tried to deflect the couple's plans, told them ACORN could not offer them help on the grounds they wanted, and otherwise dealt with them appropriately. Such context was not reflected in O'Keefe's edited tapes. The AG's Report noted that, because the Giles-O'Keefe criminal plans were a ruse, the ACORN workers could not be complicit in them. It found no evidence of intent by the employees to aid the couple.

The AG's report confirmed that one of the ACORN employees, shown in O'Keefe's video as apparently aiding a human smuggling proposal, had reported his encounter with the couple to a Mexican police detective at the time to thwart their plan. Following the AG's report, that employee, who had been fired by ACORN immediately after the video's release, sued O'Keefe and Giles in 2010. He alleged invasion of privacy, and cited a California law that prohibits recordings without consent of all parties involved.

On June 14, 2010, the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) published its report: it found no evidence that ACORN, or any of its related organizations, had mishandled any of the $40 million in federal money which they had received in recent years.

NPR video (Spring 2011)

In March 2011, shortly before the US Congress was to vote on funding for NPR, O'Keefe released a video of a discussion with Ronald Schiller, National Public Radio's then-senior vice president for fundraising, and an associate. Raw content was secretly recorded by his partners Simon Templar (an alias) and Shaughn Adeleye. Due to questions at the time about the video's veracity, staff of The Blaze analyzed the released version, and compared it with the raw videotape. As the journalist Scott Baker wrote, analysis of the raw videos showed that O'Keefe's released video was edited to intentionally lie or mislead, that much of the context of the conversation was changed, and that elements were transposed and chronology shifted.

On the edited, released video, it appears that the NPR executives were led to believe they would be meeting with representatives of a self-described Muslim group affiliated with the Muslim Brotherhood, that wished to donate money to NPR. In the video, Schiller says that he will speak personally, and not for NPR; then he appears to contrast the fiscally conservative Republican party of old that didn't get involved in people's personal and family lives with "the current Republican Party, and in particular the Tea Party, that is fanatically involved in people's personal lives and very fundamental Christian — I wouldn't even call it Christian. It's this weird evangelical kind of move." Schiller said some highly-placed Republicans believed the Republican Party had been hijacked by this radical group, and the Republicans characterized them as "Islamophobic" and "seriously racist, racist people". This video was released March 8, 2011.

Later in the edited video, Schiller seems to say he believes NPR "would be better off in the long run without federal funding," explaining that removal of federal funding would allow NPR more independence, and remove the widely held misconception that NPR is significantly funded by the public. But, USA Today reports that the raw, unedited tape is substantially different. On the raw tape, Schiller says that withdrawing federal funding would cause local stations to go under and that NPR is doing "everything we can" to keep it.

In a statement released before analysis of the raw video, NPR said, "Schiller's comments are in direct conflict with NPR's official position." They also said, "The fraudulent organization represented in this video repeatedly pressed us to accept a $5 million check with no strings attached, which we repeatedly refused to accept."

Reception

Comparison of the raw video with the released one revealed editing that was characterized as "selective" and "deceptive" by Michael Gerson, opinion writer in the Washington Post, who wrote, "O’Keefe did not merely leave a false impression; he manufactured an elaborate, alluring lie." Time magazine noted that the video "transposed remarks from a different part of the meeting", was "manipulative" and "a partisan hit-job".

On March 17, Martha T. Moore of USA Today reported: "According to The Blaze analysis, Ron Schiller's most inflammatory remarks, that Tea Party members are "seriously racist," were made as he was recounting the views of Republicans he has spoken with — although he does not appear to disagree. It also shows Schiller appearing to laugh about the potential spread of Islamic sharia law, when the longer version shows he laughed in reaction to something completely different."

People who reviewed the raw video said that Schiller told the two men "that donors cannot expect to influence news coverage." On the longer tape, he says, "There is such a big firewall between funding and reporting: Reporters will not be swayed in any way, shape or form." The broadcast journalist Al Tompkins, who now teaches at the Poynter Institute, noted that Ron Schiller was a fundraiser, not an official affecting the newsroom. He commented on the raw tape: "The message that he said most often — I counted six times: He told these two people that he had never met before that you cannot buy coverage," Tompkins said. "He says it over and over and over again.

Two days later, O'Keefe released a video in which Betsy Liley, the senior director of institutional giving at NPR, appeared to have checked with senior management and said MEAC was cleared to make donations anonymously and NPR could help shield donations from government audits, but added that, in order to proceed, additional background information would be required, including an IRS Form 990. Liley advised the caller that NPR executives would investigate them before accepting any large donation, examining tax records and checking out other organizations that have received donations from them. Liley raises the possibility of NPR's turning down substantial gifts and stresses the "firewall" between the revenue-generating part of NPR and its news operation.

NPR put Liley on administrative leave. In emails released following the publication of the Liley video, NPR showed that the official had consulted appropriately with top management and notified the purported donors of problems with their desired method of donation.

Results

Schiller had submitted his resignation on January 24, and had announced in early March that he was leaving NPR for the Aspen Institute. After the video release, NPR put him on administrative leave. The next day NPR's CEO Vivian Schiller (no relation) announced she was resigning, effective immediately. Ronald Schiller made his resignation from NPR effective immediately on the evening of the video's release; the next day he ceded his new position at the Aspen Institute.

New Hampshire Primary videos (2012)

In January of 2012, O’Keefe released a video of associates obtaining a number of ballots for the New Hampshire Primary by using the names of recently deceased voters. O’Keefe intended to demonstrate the need for voter ID laws, which are controversial because of past discriminatory voter registration abuses in many states. His team culled names from published obituaries, which were checked against public voter roll information. O’Keefe said his team broke no laws, as they did not pretend to be the deceased persons when they asked for the ballots, and they did not cast votes after receiving ballots. One of his associates was exposed as an imposter when the voting supervisor at the polling station recognized that the name he gave was of someone she knew had died.

Reception

One media account referred to it as a stunt. Governor John Lynch said, "I think it is outrageous that we have out-of-staters coming into New Hampshire, coming into our polling places and misrepresenting themselves to the election officials, and I hope that they should be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law, if in fact they're found guilty of some criminal act." The New Hampshire Attorney General and the US Attorney’s Office are investigating the video.

New Hampshire Associate Attorney General Richard Head said he would investigate both the possible weaknesses in the voting system, and the possibility that the filmmakers may have committed crimes while producing the video. New Hampshire state law prohibits recording another person without their consent, and Head noted the video does not suggest that the subjects knew they were being recorded. Hamline University law professor David Schultz said that "if they [O'Keefe's group] were intentionally going in and trying to fraudulently obtain a ballot, they violated the law," referring to Title 42, which prohibits procuring ballots fraudulently.

Praise and criticism

O'Keefe's actions have stirred a public debate on what it means to be a journalist and on what constitutes good journalistic practice when false pretenses are used. Andrew Breitbart and other supporters say that O'Keefe is the right wing's answer to a long line of left-leaning "hybrid troublemakers who get put on the cover of Rolling Stone, like Paul Krassner and Abbie Hoffman."

In the same March 2011 article by Tim Kenneally and Daniel Frankel, Marty Kaplan, director of the Norman Lear Center at University of Southern California's Annenberg School for Communication, said,

"What [O'Keefe] does isn't journalism. It's agitpop, politi-punking, entrapment-entertainment. There is no responsible definition of journalism that includes what he does or how he does it. His success at luring his prey into harming themselves is a measure of how fallible and foolish anyone, including good people, can sometimes be."

In reporting on O'Keefe's attempt in 2010 to hack into Senator Landrieu's office phone system, Jim Rutenberg and Campbell Roberston of the New York Times wrote that O'Keefe practiced a kind of "gonzo journalism" and his tactic is to "caricature the political and social values of his enemies by carrying them to outlandish extremes."

Jonathan Seidl of The Blaze, in writing about the first NPR video, said, "The video, in the end, not only raises questions about NPR, but it also raises questions about undercover, gotcha journalism that can sometimes border on entrapment." Scott Baker of The Blaze wrote in March 2011 about the NPR videos that O'Keefe was "unethical" because he calls himself an "investigative journalist" but "uses editing tactics that seem designed to intentionally lie or mislead about the material being presented." Later in March 2011 some notable journalists wrote that they regretted having given O'Keefe's NPR videos "wider circulation without scrutinizing them for themselves, given his past record and some of the objections that The Blaze first raised. They include Ben Smith of Politico, James Poniewozik of Time magazine and Dave Weigel of Slate." The journalist Chris Rovzar of New York Magazine, in reporting on the NPR video, wrote that O'Keefe's videos are "edited in a highly misleading way."

In a March 2011 interview with O'Keefe, the journalist Bob Garfield of NPR said, describing the ACORN scam:

"So let's just recap for a moment the ACORN scenario. You lie to get into – the offices. You lie, subsequently, about the lie you told to get into the offices. You edit the pimp shot into the trailer to create the illusion that you were somehow wearing it during your sting. You go on television wearing the same pimp outfit and let interviewers observe, uncorrected, that that’s what you were wearing when you confronted the ACORN employees. If your journalistic technique is the lie, why should we believe anything you have to say?"

O'Keefe responded:

Investigative reporters have used, you know, quote, unquote, "false pretenses" like To Catch a Predator, ABC’s Primetime Live. Even Mike Wallace at 60 Minutes went undercover. You go undercover in order to get to the truth. Now, is it lying? It’s a form of guerrilla theater. You’re posing as something you’re not, in order to capture candid conversations from your subject. But I wouldn't characterize it as, as lying.

In July 2011, the New York Times Magazine published, "Stinger: James O'Keefe's Greatest Hits," a profile by Zev Chafets, the author of "Rush Limbaugh: An Army of One". Chafets interviewed the dean of the University of Missouri’s school of journalism, who said,

"I put James O’Keefe in the same category as Michael Moore. Some ethicists say it is never right for a journalist to deceive for any reason, but there are wrongs in the world that will never be exposed without some kind of subterfuge."

The NYT Magazine profile of O'Keefe was sharply criticized in The Atlantic as "woefully incomplete, leaving readers unaware of the most damning critiques of O'Keefe's work and unable to render an informed judgment ... Through the quote he chooses, Chafets leads the reader to conclude that the core controversy is whether it's ever okay for a journalist to mislead his subject. But the mortal sin that O'Keefe commits in the ACORN videos is misleading the audience. His videos are presented to the public in less than honest ways that go far beyond normal "selectivity." "

The media response to O'Keefe's videos released in August 2011, purportedly showing local workers aiding Medicaid fraud, has been more cautious. Some reporters have scrutinized the staged encounters and labeled his work as another "sting". Similarly, there has been little response to his projects about alleged media bias and about the people involved in Occupy Wall Street.

Minor works

Plan for Abbie Boudreau (2010)

In August 2010, O'Keefe planned a staged encounter with the CNN correspondent Abbie Boudreau, who was doing a documentary on the young conservative movement. He set up an appointment at his office in Maryland to discuss a video shoot. Izzy Santa, executive director of the Veritas Project, warned Boudreau that O'Keefe was planning to "punk" her on the boat by trying to seduce her—which he would film on hidden cameras. Boudreau did not board the boat and soon left the area.

CNN later published a 13–page plan written by O'Keefe's mentor Ben Wetmore. It listed props for the boat scheme, including pornography, sexual aids, condoms, a blindfold and "fuzzy" handcuffs. When questioned by CNN, O'Keefe denied that he was going to follow the Wetmore plan, as he found parts of it inappropriate. Boudreau commented "that does not appear to be true, according to a series of emails we obtained from Izzy Santa, who says the e-mails reveal James' true intentions."

According to an article written in November 2011 by Kenneth Vogel for Politico, James O'Keefe and Project Veritas paid the former employee, Izzy Santa, a five-figure settlement after a falling out between Santa and O'Keefe following the Boudreau incident. Santa’s settlement included a nondisclosure agreement.

New Jersey Teachers' Union video (2010)

Starting October 25, 2010, O’Keefe posted a series of videos on the Internet entitled Teachers Unions Gone Wild. At the time, the New Jersey Education Association (NJEA) was in negotiations with Chris Christie, the New Jersey governor, over teacher pay benefits and tenure. O'Keefe derived one video from recordings made by “citizen journalists,” whom he recruited to attend the NJEA’s leadership conference. They secretly recorded meetings and conversations with teacher participants. It featured teachers discussing the difficulty of firing a tenured teacher. A second video featured a staged phone conversation by O'Keefe with Lawrence E. Everett, assistant superintendent of the Passaic City Schools, in which Everett refused to commit to firing a teacher based on the purported parent's saying the teacher used “n-word” with his child. The third video (October 26, 2010) featured audio of a voice, identified as NJEA Associate Director Wayne Dibofsky, who alleged voter fraud during the 1997 Jersey City mayoral election. The voice of Robert Byrne, Jersey City municipal clerk, was recorded on the same video; he noted that the election was monitored by lawyers for both candidates.

Reception

Governor Christie said nothing on the videos surprised him. NJEA spokesman Steve Wollmer called O'Keefe's videos a "complete fabrication" and "a calculated attack on [the NJEA] organization and its members". Wollmer called O'Keefe "flat-out sleazy".

Medicaid videos (Summer 2011)

In the summer of 2011, O'Keefe released videos purportedly showing Medicaid fraud in offices in several states. Following his previous strategy, he parcelled out the releases through conservative outlets over a period of weeks. In July 2011, two conservative groups released a secretly recorded video of an encounter in Maine's Department of Health and Human Services. In the video, an actor attempts to apply for benefits while hinting that he is a drug smuggler. Americans for Prosperity and O'Keefe said that he had similar recorded videos from offices in Ohio, Virginia and South Carolina, and believed that there was a systemic problem.

A similar video posted on the Project Veritas web site purported to show workers at the Ohio Department of Job and Family Services assisting actors posing as drug dealers in applying for benefits. O'Keefe's fourth Medicaid video, apparently filmed in Richmond, Virginia, was released in July 2011.

Reception

The videos received less national attention than earlier O'Keefe efforts. Generally, the state officials and representatives acknowledged potential problems but also took a measured tone in response, to allow time to fully investigate and evaluate the incidents. After viewing the video, the Maine governor Paul Lepage noted it could help in improving staff training and customer service, but he did not believe that it showed a worker trying to help defraud the welfare system. Lepage directed his agency director to work on correcting the problem.

Ohio media initially reported that "a Franklin County Jobs and Family Service worker was placed on administrative leave and at least one other person was out of work" as a result of the video's release. Ben Johnson of the Ohio Department of Job and Family Services noted that benefits were never granted in the case, and that the made-up story would have been caught if the application process had proceeded. He said his office would use the video to strengthen staff training. Mike DeWine, Attorney General of Ohio, described the Ohio video as "outrageous" and said that he had instructed his state's Medicaid fraud unit to look into the incident.

As another example, a spokesman for Virginia governor Bob McDonnell said that he had asked state police to review the video and take appropriate actions.

External links

• Scott Baker, "Does Raw Video of NPR Exposé Reveal Questionable Editing and Tactics?", The Blaze, 10 March 2011
• "James O'Keefe", bio and articles, BigGovernment.com
• Project Veritas

Multi-media

• Interview of O'Keefe by NPR's On the Media (audio with transcript)