The controversial conservative activist James O’Keefe spoke on the topic of free speech without interruption in Middlebury Thursday night.
About 40 people gathered in a small event room at the Courtyard Marriott to hear O’Keefe, whose Project Veritas has been in the national news this week for a botched sting that targeted the Washington Post.
He declined to answer questions about why Veritas apparently attempted to plant a fake story in the Post, saying the group does not discuss its “motives or methods.” But O’Keefe vowed to keep doing undercover work and video exposés. “I don’t consider anything off limits,” he told the audience.
At least 15 people in attendance were members of the media, and at times they seemed to take up most of the space in the room. A few Middlebury College students and residents of the town turned out too.
“I care about free speech. I think that hearing from O’Keefe is important,” said Samuel Zimmer, a Middlebury College sophomore, after the talk.
O’Keefe’s talk came as the college deals with continued fallout from a visit by The Bell Curve author Charles Murray in March. Protesters shut down his talk and mobbed Murray as he attempted to leave campus. The incident triggered national discussion about campus free speech.
O’Keefe’s speech was billed as a response to “Middlebury’s Free Speech Problem.”
Zimmer said that’s a fair statement. “I certainly think that there is [a problem],” he said.
While O’Keefe was reluctant to talk about the Washington Post sting, he walked the audience through several other Veritas Projects that targeted Acorn, National Public Radio, Planned Parenthood, CNN and voter fraud in New Hampshire.
O’Keefe said the mainstream media has too many sacred cows and it’s up to organizations like Veritas to go after stories the rest of the pack ignores.
“There is so much crap, and so much fraud and so much hypocrisy,” O’Keefe said. He added: “I will never be out of work.”
He took digs at the Washington Post, the New York Times, CNN and even Fox News. As for criticism that Veritas videos are selectively edited, all journalism is selectively edited, O’Keefe claimed. Still, while he insisted that his methods are in some ways consistent with mainstream journalism, he also portrayed himself as a crusader against a “leviathan” mainstream media.
“Nobody, and I mean nobody, is willing to do what I do,” O’Keefe said.
Zimmer introduced O’Keefe but said he is not a member of the Preservation Society, the group that was billed as the sponsor of the talk. While promotional emails said the Preservation Society is a Middlebury College student organization, college officials said it is not a registered group.
Asked who was funding his talk, O’Keefe told the audience that the Leadership Institute had kicked in a few thousand dollars. The Virginia-based organization describes itself as a conservative training institute.
Leadership Institute field representative/contractor Emily Faulkner was at Thursday’s speech but declined to provide details about her work.
Gregor Clark of Middlebury was disappointed when O’Keefe declined to answer a question he posed about the motivation for the Post sting. O’Keefe’s response was evasive, Clark said. Despite what O’Keefe says, he does have an agenda, said Clark, a travel writer.
Still Clark was glad the talk went forward without being shut down by protests. It was “appalling” that Murray was shouted down last spring, Clark said. The incident painted Middlebury as “this intolerant place,” Clark said.
Public dialogue is important, Clark added.
There were no visible protests, although security was fairly tight. Middlebury police walked through the conference room with a canine before the speech began. A hotel manager stood at the door monitoring the people coming and going.
O’Keefe said during his talk that the security was unusual and came in response to threats this week.
He said he put his early work on his credit card, but that now Project Veritas has a budget of $4.5 million to $5 million annually from donors who appreciate his work. “Nothing’s going to stop us, ever,” O’Keefe said.
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Samuel Zimmer, a Middlebury College sophomore should rethink his willingness to hear out O’Keefe. O’Keefe is a proven liar.
Come back to this link after reading the following: http://www.nydailynews.com/news/crime/b-kl…
Some time ago in a successful Peter Welch assisted assault on the national low income advocacy group ACORN (not to be confused with the Vermont group ACORN), O’Keefe and female partner (and fellow bullshitter) Hannah Giles made the fake-news radical right wing talk circuit to bleat out claims of ACORN advising people on how to avoid paying taxes.
Proven liars O’Keefe and Giles told everybody who would listen about a visit to a Brooklyn, NYC, NY ACORN office where, the two claimed, they were advised to bury proceeds from prostitution to avoid paying taxes. Unfortunately for the two liars, there was an unedited version of that video, and that video showed without a shadow of a doubt O’Keefe and Giles were lying.
The truth in the video is that the two liars (O’Keefe and Giles) asked for advice on how to keep money the supposed prostitute Giles earned away from an abusive pimp, and the ACORN worker advised her to hide the money in a tin in her back yard.
I don’t know – maybe Giles was the prostitute after all. And Sam … O’Keefe is a dishonest POS who doesn’t deserve your time. Try doing some in depth research instead … you’ll learn more.
Oh, and shame on Middlebury College for allowing themselves to be used for spreading this kind of crap. This has nothing to do with free speech, and everything to do with a radical right wing racist agenda.
It continues to be fantastic that Charles Murray, the quiet academic racist, was met with ferocious opposition by students. They should be thrilled to labeled as intolerant of racism. It’s good to know which side of the fence Gregor Clark sits on.
And kudos to the student body and the town for pretty much ignoring a proven liar last night.
The deep irony is that O’Keefe utilizes all of the dirty tactics he imagines the “MSM” uses… rendering his work just more slanted blather that is demonstrably less reliable than the MSM.
It’s small scale proof that the ends don’t justify the means.
You can fool some of the people all the time.
That was a seriously terrible decision, Sam.
There is a clear line of demarcation between Charles Murray and James O’Keefe. It’s the difference between ideas about which people can legitimately disagree or examine, and flagrant violations of basic integrity that deny facts and omit important occurrences. James O’Keefe has been repeatedly and relentlessly guilty of the latter – with ACORN, Abbie Boudreau, Mary Landrieu, the WaPo and countless others. In failing to differentiate between the two, you’re making a fatal mistake. No matter how strong your commitment to free speech, which is mirrored by a majority of Americans, there is not one single tenet of that principle that you serve by providing a platform to a proven and unapologetic liar like James O’Keefe. In fact, free speech as a concept heavily relies on the notion that we should make this distinction, and refuse to reward people who lie, cheat and edit their videos with platforms for them to continue that behavior.
Kudos to the students who opted not to waste their eyeballs or time on this human garbage fire. That was the right response.