SourceWatch and Bill Clinton
EXCERPT:
Clinton Global Initiative Hires APCO
The Clinton Global Initiative chose the PR firm APCO Worldwide to help organize its 2010 annual meeting -- the same public relations firm that helped Philip Morris organize a damaging front group in October, 1993 called The Advancement of Sound Science Coalition that helped the tobacco industry fight public health efforts to control secondhand tobacco smoke after the EPA rated it a Group A Human Carcinogen. APCO has also helped industry pin the label of "junk science" on environmentalists, and manage a massive, tobacco industry-funded, below-the-radar national effort aimed at altering the American judicial system to make it more hostile towards product liability lawsuits. The effort, called "tort reform," was actually an internal corporate program of Philip Morris (PM). PM hired APCO to create fake "grassroots" organizations around the country called "(insert state name here) Citizens Against Lawsuit Abuse, e.g., "Alabama Citizens Against Lawsuit Abuse." Read the rest of this item [http://www.prwatch.org/node/9469 here.
Projects for citizen editors
Help Us Keep SourceWatch's Article on BP Up to Date
Information about BP's PR and spin is gushing forth every day, almost as thick and fast as the oil is spewing into the Gulf. With all the information being discovered aboutBP and its corporate (mis)behaviors, we're having a hard time keeping the SourceWatch article about BP up to date with all the news. Have you heard or read something about BP's corporate spin, lobbying, flim-flamming, stonewalling, or other efforts to influence regulatory agencies, legislators or public perception? Record them in SourceWatch's article about the company.
Here's How You Can Help: Please cite authoritative sources for any information you add. If this is your first time editing on SourceWatch, you can register here, and learn more about how to contribute, what SourceWatch is all about, and how to cite references. Hold onto your hat, have fun, and thanks for your help!
If you would like to help in other ways, please take a look at some of our earlier citizen journalism projects here.
Exxon Secrets
EXCERPT:
P.O. Box 18432 or 1155 Conn Ave NW Suite 300.Washington, DC 20036
Phone: 800-369-6608
Fax: 800-251-5253
A corporate front group designed to launch a well-funded campaign to cast doubt on a variety of environmental and public health issues, including global warming and second hand smoke. (The New York Times,April 25, 1998)
The apparently defunct Advancement of Sound Science Coalition (TASSC) was founded primarily by Philip Morris in 1993, and faded into oblivion after September 1998, possibly due to damage caused by the negative exposure in a 1998 New York Times article. TASSC as "Coalition" may have dropped its public profile, but the Advancement of Sound Science Center (not Coalition) is still operating out of Steve Milloy's home in Potomac, MD and continues to spend around $300,000 a year, with Milloy enjoying a salary of $165,888 in 2000. The Center has apparently been the Coalition's official IRS name since 1993- or at least the Center's 990s date back to 1993, the same year the Coalition was founded. The Coalition and Center are effectively the same organization, with the same contact information and personnel, and Milloy being the sole non-administrative employee. Though later a project of Milloy's then employer, the EOP Group, TASSC was originally based in the Washington, D.C. offices of the lobbying firm APCO Associates. In its hey-day , the Coalition claimed a membership of over 400 corporations representing chemical, agricultural, manufacturing, oil, dairy, timber, paper and mining interests, including Amoco, Chevron, and Occidental Petroleum, as well as industry trade associations. TASSC also had a science advisory panel of over 200 members, including some of the most prominent science skeptics in America. TASSC is mentioned by name in the now infamous "tobacco papers" as a group organized to help with the "scientific" message that second hand smoke is harmless. The purpose of TASSC, as described in a memo from APCO's Tom Hockaday and Neal Cohen, was to "link the tobacco issue with other more 'politically correct' products"--in other words, to make the case that efforts to regulate tobacco were based on the same "junk science". (http://www.prwatch.org/prwissues/2000Q3/junkman.html) Though the coalition is no more, Steve Milloy continues to operate The Advancement of Sound Science Center from his home address in Potomc, MD.
