Amanda Peterson Beadle, an editorial assistant at the far-left Think Progress blog, went on the Kremlin’s English-language propaganda channel RT Thursday to discuss the blog’s "scoop": A collection of forged and altered documents that purport to show that the Chicago-based Heartland Institute is planning to educate Americans on the flawed and politicized science behind the theory of global warming.
Peterson Beadle admitted during her appearance that the authenticity of the documents has been credibly disputed, but went on to say that CAP had "confirmed some of the information in them." Among the facts confirmed by the Center for American Progress: The Charles G. Koch Foundation made a $25,000 contribution to the Heartland Institute in 2011. That is the only donation to the Heartland Institute by the foundation in the last 10 years and accounts for approximately .055 percent of the institute’s $44 million funding over that period, legal documents show.
The donation by the Charles G. Koch Foundation is less than half the amount donated to the Heartland Institute in 2011 by Microsoft in the form of tech assistance.
RT is funded by the government of Russia, the world’s largest exporter of fossil fuels.
Transcript below:
THOM HARTMANN: For more, I’m joined by Amanda Beadle, a reporter for thinkprogress.org, and the Center for American Progress’s blog. What has CAP discovered about Heartland and this plan?
AMANDA PETERSON BEADLE: There have been these documents that have come out and they already said they don’t know where they came from, and at least one of them is fake and a few of them have been altered. We have these and we have confirmed some of the information that is in them. The biggest part we have confirmed is that the Heartland Institute has a plan and they are actively trying to create an education curriculum that is anti-climate change that you can teach students in schools.
HARTMANN: The Heartland Institute, just to clarify, is a right-wing think tank in the Pacific Northwest funded by the Koch brothers and others.
BEADLE: Yes, the Koch brothers are some of the funders for it.