In the wake of the infamous undercover pimp/prostitute videos that got the community outreach group ACORN in such hot water in September, the group hired Massachusetts Attorney General Scott Harshbarger to conduct an internal investigation. The results are now in, and ACORN's CEO Bertha Lewis calls it "part vindication, part constructive criticism and 100% roadmap to the future." Harshbarger says he "did not find a pattern of intentional, illegal conduct by ACORN staff involved; in fact, no action, illegal or otherwise, was ever taken by any ACORN employee on behalf of the videographers. Instead, the videos represent the byproduct of ACORN's longstanding management weaknesses, including a lack of training, a lack of procedures and a lack of onsite supervision." Well, that settles that, right?
"How surprising is it that a report paid for by ACORN exonerates them?" asks Rep. Darrell Issa of California, the ranking Republican on the House Oversight & Government Reform Committee, in a statement. And the Associated Press has a quote from conservative columnist Andrew Breitbart, who's being sued by ACORN along with James O’Keefe and Hannah Giles (who played the prostitute and her boyfriend in the videos) calling it "a whitewashed ‘internal investigation’ by a Democrat Party hack from Massachusetts." But now Breitbart's mad at the AP for whitewashing his quote!
Speaking of whitewashing, this pdf details how the transcripts of the raw videos differ from the edited videotape, which made ACORN employees look like they were helping Giles evade taxes and open a brothel with minors:
O’Keefe and Giles used clever editing and voiceovers to hide a key fact that the transcripts show to be true in each case: In each office, the duo claimed that 20-year old Hannah was being threatened by a violent abusive pimp. They pleaded for ACORN to help protect the prostitute (and in some cases underage girls as well) from the pimp by helping her get a place to live. O’Keefe and Giles edited this out of the video given the news media and the public, but neglected to remove it from the transcripts.
Remember, for example, the tape of the NY ACORN worker advising the prostitute to hide money in a tin can, presumably to evade taxes? The transcript shows it was so the pimp “can’t get it from you if he wants to come and rip up the place.” And the prostitute told the loan counselor that her pimp had “ all these 13, 14,15 year old girls from El Salvador and that’s what—I need to protect them like I know what its like and I have to protect them and like give them somewhere to live.”
But the report also decided that ACORN's management is "now reaping what [founder Wade] Rathke sowed" after an alleged eight-year cover up by Rathke of an embezzlement by his brother. And the videos further created the "impression that ACORN believes it is above the law." The report contains nine recommendations for improving ACORN's management, including a simplified organizational structure, a return of focus to its "core competency—community organizing and citizen engagement empowerment, with related services" and recruitment of additional management and legal staff.
