Duo release another video of their meeting with ACORN worker

[Rick Mann]

Duo release another video of their meeting with ACORN worker
Latest footage has audio of two conservatives but not of the staff
member

By Susan Kinzie
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, October 22, 2009

Two undercover videographers released another videotape Wednesday of
their interaction with an ACORN worker, contending that it reveals
help they received from the community group's Philadelphia office when
they posed as a pimp and a prostitute seeking a home.

Unlike previous videotapes, the heavily edited footage includes audio
of the two conservatives but none of the ACORN Housing Corp. worker's
responses to their questions.

But James O'Keefe and Hannah Giles said the tape rebuts statements by
an ACORN official that a worker from its housing affiliate, Katherine
Conway-Russell, had quickly kicked them out. "ACORN has lied every
step of the way," said Andrew Breitbart, whose conservative Web site,
Big Government, has featured the pair's videos from other cities.

Federal funding for the Association of Community Organizations for
Reform Now has been frozen in the weeks since videos were released
showing its workers in several cities giving tax and housing advice to
the pair, who had asked about setting up brothels with young girls
from El Salvador.

ACORN and its affiliates also face several federal investigations,
accusations of voter registration fraud and an indictment on charges
of violating election law in Nevada, all of which stem from previous
unrelated incidents. The Louisiana attorney general is investigating
an embezzlement a decade ago that was allegedly covered up by the
group's founder.

But the videos and the political outrage they generated have left the
organization in crisis. After the release of one taken at the
Washington office of ACORN Housing, the organization fired two
employees. The future of the local housing office is uncertain.

"This is a targeted assault to disenfranchise our members
because . . . the right-wing agenda is to stop us from empowering
people of low and moderate incomes," said Junette Marcano, a board
member of Philadelphia ACORN. "When you make the poor powerful, the
powerful feel threatened."

Alyson Chadwick, an ACORN Housing spokeswoman, questioned O'Keefe's
statement that the camera battery died near the end of the video,
because the audio continued. She said the police had been called after
they left because the pair seemed suspicious.

The video was edited to include statements made by Conway-Russell and
others in the mid-September clip, which ACORN Housing posted to its
Web site and YouTube and which the pair attempt to rebut. For example,
they say that they spent 32 minutes in the office, in contrast to
officials' statements that they were quickly shown the door.

In her account, Conway-Russell said she became concerned after O'Keefe
and Giles began asking unusual questions. She said they weren't
flashily dressed.

"I was wearing white pants and a satin tie," O'Keefe says dryly on the
video released Wednesday. Giles was wearing large, green plastic hoop
earrings, heels, a sarong "and a bizarre-looking leather shirt," he
said.

The couple can be heard saying that they don't want trouble with
authorities and that they would put a lot of beds in one room. The
video also attacks coverage of ACORN Housing's earlier claims about
the encounter in several newspapers, including The Washington Post.

O'Keefe and Giles declined to take questions after playing the video
at the National Press Club Wednesday. O'Keefe said that he had edited
out Conway-Russell's responses because of a lawsuit filed by ACORN
over the first videos.

Breitbart said: "We ask that ACORN and the lady consent to play the
audio, to dispel the discrepancy."

Ian Phillips, legislative director for Pennsylvania ACORN, said the
video contains numerous manipulations, but "it's not on us to say,
'Release the audio.' "

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/10/21/AR2009102103284.html