Revealed! O'Keefe and Burns' Gulag Controversy Was a Hoax!

I knew that people from outside campus came to Washington University and spray painted hammers and sickles on the grounds as part of a demonstration. I knew that one member of the group from off campus, John Burns, had later accused the university of "fraud" for asking the demonstrators to pay for the cleanup of the graffiti. I knew that James O'Keefe had secretly videotaped school employees then edited the video to try to make it look like the employees had an agenda against right-wing ideology. But even knowing all of this, I previously had said that I thought the school overreacted by shutting down the display. Well, I'd like to apologize to the university for thinking this, because I've recently found out that the entire gulag display was a farce from start to finish.

John Burns, whose sketchy past has been detailed extensively here and here, claimed that the school shut down the gulag because they found it offensive. From the beginning, Wash U insisted that the proper paperwork was not filled out. I believed the school, but assumed that whatever was not filled out was a relatively minor detail. However, thanks to the testimony of a Young American for Liberty (YAL was the student group that put the display on with Burns assistance), it now is apparent that their request was fundamentally inaccurate: in fact, YAL didn't even mention that they would be building a structure on campus!

We first see this in a post on the Show Me Institute's blog Show Me Daily, where the author repeats the inaccurate claim that the display was shut down because it was "offensive." YAL member Caitlin Hartsell responds in the comments:

Actually, I think Gateway Pundit and John made too big a deal of it. It actually was shut down because they got a permit to pass out pamphlets and instead built a structure… slightly different.

Michael M. offered the following support for Caitlin's claims:

I am a Wash U alum and was president of one of the conservative groups on campus. In that capacity I was involved in organizing several relatively controversial events, ones considerably more offensive to the administration’s sensibilities than this one. They were never shut down and never hampered by the school. You are correct to point out that the University’s stated policies are vague: they SHOULD be, because (as any small gov’t person knows) institutions are unable to foresee all possible scenarios and consequences. Instead, the school’s practical policy is “Work with us in advance and there will be no problems.” I was always upfront with the school about what we were planning to do, and while they didn’t give me any pats on the back, they didn’t get in my way either. This all comes down to YAL having been deceptive. You guys need to stop whining and start making an effort to communicate a thoughtful, non-socialist message.

Caitlin then offered a couple more thoughts in the comments:

As a member of the club who interviewed both the head of Wash U YAL and the administrator, I feel I can comment on this better than either of you.

This is not an events service regulation. It’s an architectural one. It’s stupid, but it exists. Every club that builds something HAS to have a go-ahead from the administration. (And lots of clubs do build and DO get this permission. YAL didn’t.) The gulag was up for 3 hours. It made its point. Wash U is private property and the Wash U. administration can (and does) do what it wants with it… no group would have been allowed to make a building like this without getting explicit permission.But overreacting to a legitimate concern makes you (and your point) sound illegitimate.

and

First off, as a brand-new club, Wash U. YAL is NOT yet recognized by the university. In this first semester limbo, the University does not have to afford the group space EVER. Thus, any use of meeting rooms and reservations on campus for events is from the goodness of the administrations’ hearts. Allowing YAL to pamphlet on campus and reserve the space was generous. Had the group been honest about their intentions, perhaps the gulag would have been allowed to stay up longer (but it made its point, it didn’t need to stay up longer!) So referencing existing rules is meaningless.

The gulag project was offensive and attention-grabbing… but was that not its purpose? To shock people and force people to consider its message? When one has an unpopular message, one has to be very careful to follow the rules and be respectful (like trying to work with the administration.) Otherwise, the administration will find rules to bring it down.

And the safety issue actually is a legitimate one; had someone been hurt, Wash U could have been liable. By reproving the project and forcing you (you because who else is going to do it?) to take it down, they send a message to future groups and YAL that this isn’t the way to go about things. Obviously, safety wasn’t the key issue in this project… but it could be in future ones and allowing YAL to subvert the process without rebuke just opens a can of worms for the school. Plus, Wash. U. is private property and they can set whatever rules they’d like for it; the rules are vague on purpose to force student groups to be transparent and protect the university.

There is a right way and a wrong way to go about these things. It’s fine if YAL wants to subvert that process, but to get indignant that it is taken down (and considered offensive, one of its main objectives) is stupid and only takes away from any point it tried to make. The University generously turned a blind eye from 11 till 2:30 and YAL made its point. That point is obscured though in any of your hoopla of “victimization.”

On her own blog Lady Liberty, Hartsell tells basically the same story:

When reserving the space, YAL told the university they were distributing pamphlets, but omitted the part about power tools and building a structure.

She also clarified her role in the YAL:

I am a member of Wash. U.’s YAL, but was not involved in the planning process for the gulag. I was at the event in my capacity as an intern for the Show-Me Institute, along with Josh Smith and Chrissy.

This is a pretty compelling argument that the administration was justified in their actions. As Hartsell suggests, if the group is going to deliberately flout the rules in filling out the forms, they should not scream "oppression!" when the rules are enforced.

Furthermore, the setup of the event is made far more suspicious by the fact that James O'Keefe and Joseph Basel, two of the people arrested in New Orleans under suspicion of tampering with Senator Landrieu's phones, came to campus that day with video recorders used to secretly record campus employees. Wouldn't it be a remarkable coincidence that O'Keefe and Basel, who both live far away from St. Louis, just happened to fly into town for that day, bring their secret recording devices, and then selectively edit the video while alleging oppression against the university for enforcing it's rules after YAL did not explain anything about what their event would look like? In fact, it would be a coincidence that is too ridiculous to believe. Clearly, O'Keefe, Burns, and Basel came to campus with a pre-arranged plan to accuse the university of "silencing free speech."

So, to recap the situation:

1. First, people from off-campus came to Wash U and vandalized the campus by spray-painting hammers and sickles to promote their display.
2. Even though they only filled out paperwork to pass out literature, they in fact built a wooden structure that was a liability risk for the university, even according to their own members.
3. Two alums of the right-wing Leadership Institute, James O'Keefe and Joseph Basel, secretly videotaped their conversations with university employees and then selectively edited the video to make it look like the admin had an agenda (fortunately, even after the editing, the case wasn't very convincing).
4. After the university enforced it's rules, John Burns (but as far as I know, none of the actual students from Wash U) went around the internet and local media falsely claiming that the University shut down the display because it was "offensive."
5. Then, when the university asked YAL to pay for the cleanup of the graffiti, John Burns accused the university of fraud.
6. Burns then asked for donations "to help the students," when in fact the donations were directed to the Campus Gulag group he created.

A pretty ridiculous hoax all the way around. So naturally, the St. Louis Tea Party decided to make John Burns the leader of their anti-public transit campaign.

Who is CBT's John Burns?

Shortly after the recent Tea Party convention in Nashville Tennessee, a new group emerged in St. Louis dedicated to fighting against funding for public transportation in the St. Louis region. The misleadingly titled "Citizens for Better Transit" (CBT) was publicly represented by spokesperson John Burns, a relative newcomer to St. Louis politics. Despite the fact that Burns had no particular credibility and was using wildly misleading talking points (which I'll have to discuss at a different time), the local media has been quite wiling to treat him as the spokesperson for a legitimate group and to provide him with equal airtime to the pro-transit campaign. In this post and the following, I want to examine the recent political activities of John Burns characterized by the blatant use of misinformation, sketchy connections, and contempt for the LGBT community.

Burns' first appearance in the local media was in November when he built a gulag on the Wash U campus along with the Young Americans for Liberty. They passed out literature that claimed that we were approaching a gulag state because of things like AmeriCorps, child labor laws, and the civil rights act. There were only a small handful of actual students who participated in the rally, but Burns was among a number of right-wing activists with no affiliation with the university who came to campus for that day. Of particular note, James O'Keefe and Joseph Basel, neither of whom even live in St. Louis, attended the event. Basel dressed up in the full uniform and was one of the main speakers, while James O'Keefe secretly videotaped conversations with Washington University administrators and then edited the tape to make it look like they had an agenda against YAL. Both can be seen in the following video (Basel is the guy with glasses and a bloody head arguing with students, Burns has the goatee, and O'Keefe is the person videotaping the administrators):

O'Keefe and Basel are best known at this point for being arrested under suspicion of maliciously tampering with the phone lines in Senator Mary Landreiu's office in New Orleans, but both had controversial careers before that point. Basel was reviled on the University of Minnesota campus after putting up fliers that read, "End Racism and Sexism Now: Kill all the White Males" and managing to offend the entire black student body so much during a speech that they all walked out while he was talking. O'Keefe, of course, was a right-wing hero for severely damaging the reputation of ACORN by using highly edited, decontextualized, and often blatantly false videos of his visits to ACORN offices across the country. Despite the fact that O'Keefe and his funder Andrew Breitbart have implied that ACORN is "running a child prostitution ring," investigators have repeatedly stated that ACORN employees did not break any laws. On the other hand, it was recently revealed that the right-wing media was blatently lying when they stated repeatedly that James O'Keefe was wearing a pimp outfit when he was in the ACORN offices. In many cases, the actual story O'Keefe told employees was that he was trying to protect Hannah Giles from a pimp. Of course, it's hard to know what the full story is because Andrew Breitbart and James O'Keefe refuse to release the full video tapes. As we'll see below, Burns' extensive involvement with these characters calls into serious question what his actual motives are.

But back to the original story: O'Keefe once again surreptitiously videotaped employees at the university and selectively edited the tape to try to imply that they had an agenda against the students (even with the editing, he didn't really get very good material). Burns then went all over the local right-wing media portraying himself as a leader of YAL and suggesting that they were victimized by a biased university. A member of YAL, however, claimed that Burns was not a member of the group. But that didn't stop Burns from claiming that the gulag was his idea and creating the group Campus Gulag.

A little later Burns again appeared in the right-wing media accusing Washington University of "fraud" because the university was charging the student group YAL for the costs of removing hammer and sickle graffiti that appeared on campus the same day as the display. Burns suggested it was fraud because the university used "mexican labor" to wash the graffiti off, and claimed that the students were innocent. Extremely interesting, however, is the fact that Burns repeatedly uses the specific phrasing that "students" did not put up the graffiti, which of course leaves open the possibility that Burns, O'Keefe, or Basel were the people who were spray-painting the university. Even more interesting, at the bottom of this page, Burns writes that people interested in helping "the students" can make a donation, and he directs them to the campusgulag.org page. Yet there's no place on the campus gulag page for donations that differentiates general donations from those made for helping "the students." Was Burns trying to make money for his own organization on the backs of the students at Washington University?

The next appearance of Burns is the most shameful, in my opinion. I wrote last week about how James O'Keefe and Joseph Basel attempted to disrupt the free speech of LGBT protesters at a rally in St. Louis. O'Keefe was in town to speak at a St. Louis Tea Party event. It's not entirely clear why Joseph Basel was accompanying him. But John Burns also attended the event with his two friends. Here's video of Burns conferring with O'Keefe and Basel at the start of the event:

Burns looks a little different without his goatee, but he was ID'd the day before at a tea party rally by Dana Loesch:

Later, you can see Burns trying to blend in with the crowd as O'Keefe and Basel are being disruptive:

Here's a screenshot in case you missed Burns:

And just to recap what I've written earlier, here's how O'Keefe, Basel, and Burns acted at the rally. First, as is seen in this video, Basel and O'Keefe blatantly disregarded police orders and the wishes of all of the protesters by standing in front of the line. At another point, O'Keefe and Basel push people out of the way (including a woman in a wheel chair) to make sure that they were at the front of the line. At another point, rally participants were handing out signs for the rally, and John Burns took one of the signs:

The trio then wrote "Free Abortions" on the sign and attempted to hold it up to the Catholics who were attending mass as the Basilica. They also shouted "what about health care?" while people were attempting to speak at the rally. In other words, John Burns, who presented himself as a fighter for free speech when complaining about the administration's response to the gulag, attempted to directly interfere with the LGBT community's ability to express themselves in a peaceful rally.

Now flash forward to the present. John Burns is now the head of an anti-transit group. As was detailed at the St. Louis Pushes Back blog, Burns was involved in planning meetings with the St. Louis Tea Party at the national Tea Party convention in Nashville, and it appears he was also planning with them the weekend before in Dallas. In particular, he was part of a group with noted anti-transit campaigner John Loudon. Also of interest, Burns again appeared in two pictures with his friend Joseph Basel at the conference. A few days after Nashville, the first anti-transit event kicked off, promoted only by the St. Louis Tea Party. The first meeting of the group was promoted by Tea Party member Gina Loudon.

Like most of the St. Louis Tea Party activities, the anti-transit groups strategy appears to be based on repeating falsehoods and misleading information over and over. As one example, Burns recently wrote a misleading op-ed for the Wash U newspaper where he failed to identify himself as a nonstudent and as the spokesperson for CBT and put forward a number of misleading claims. I'll have to analyze the arguments at a later time. But for now, I'd just like to summarize some of the specifics about anti-transit group CBT's leader John Burns:

Burns is closely connected with James O'Keefe and Joseph Basel, two people arrested in Louisiana under suspicion of maliciously interfering with the government phone lines.
As someone with no affiliation with Washington, Burns claims to have organized the campus gulag which compared AmeriCorps, labor laws, and the civil rights act to totalitarian communism.
He claimed he organized the events, but members of the student group claimed he's not part of the group and that it was their event that he was merely helping out with.
Burns's group secretly recording Washington University employees and used highly edited tapes to try to claim that the University was "biased" against conservatives.
Someone from the event vandalized the grounds of Wash U, and Burns accused the university of "fraud" for asking the group to pay for the cleanup.
Burns tried to raise money for his own group while claiming to help out "the students."
Burns, along with O'Keefe and Basel, maliciously interfered with an LGBT protest.
They wrote "free abortions" on signs trying to deliberately lie about the protesters message.
They refused police orders, and then pushed people out of the way to make sure they could be front and center at the rally.
They ignored the polite requests of protesters to stop interfering.
Burns wrote an op-ed for a student newspaper refusing to identify himself as the head of an anti-transit organization

.
I'll have a lot more to say about this in the near future, but for now I think there are a lot of questions people (and especially reporters) should be asking Burns about his background.

Fake Wash U Student Arrested in New Orleans

Joseph Basel, one of the fly-in conservatives involved in the "campus gulag" hosted by the Young Americans for Liberty at Washington University, was at the heart of the actions that resulted in the arrest of four people at the office of Senator Mary Landrieu. Here's a description of Basel's role:

"At 11 a.m., Basel entered the Hale Boggs building with his associate, Robert Flanagan, dressed up as telephone repairmen with hard hats and tool belts. They went to Senator Landrieu's 10th floor New Orleans office, where they found O'Keefe waiting.

Basel asked for access to the phone, manipulated it, tried to call it from a cell phone and said he couldn't get through. Basel and Flanagan said they'd have to fix it.

They were directed to the main office, where their credentials were requested. They claimed they "had left their credentials in their vehicle."

Under questioning, both admitted they weren't telephone repairmen and admitted to their role in the alleged phone-tapping operation."

Here's a pic of Basel after the arrest (via the AP):

And here's a pic of Basel at the Wash U campus gulag from winger Gateway Pundit's blog:


Basel has been repeatedly portrayed by the local right-wing media as a Washington University student. O'Keefe was also at the WashU event, and ironically enough secretly videotaped the administration and then edited it to make it look like they had a vendetta against the students (Basel plays a central role in this video as well).

Update: Forgot to mention that O'Keefe and Basel, along with their local friend Jon Burns, also crashed a Show Me No Hate rally in St. Louis and held "free abortions" signs while trying to secretly videotape people. O'Keefe was in town for a tea party rally.

WashU Students for Liberty: Social Justice is Exactly Like a Gulag Labor Camp

The WashU Young Americans for Liberty built their own Gulag on campus to warn students about the evils of communism.
Included in their definition of communism: the Civil Rights Act, child labor laws, AmeriCorps, and, as you can see, "Peaceful Social Justice." Sometimes, there's just no need for commentary.