Why Isn’t Pacific Institute’s Peter Gleick in Jail?

(April 13, 2018) DeSmogBlog, Dr. Peter Gleick, and the Fakegate Scandal

(March 7, 2017) Disgraced Identity Thief Peter Gleick: Democracy Under Assault From Liars

(March 24, 2016) Peter Gleick Resigns from the Pacific Institute





On February 14, 2013, The Heartland Institute released a 57-page slide presentation produced by its legal counsel, Jones Day, titled “Criminal Referral of Dr. Peter H. Gleick Talking Points.” The report, presented to the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Northern District of Illinois, asked the government to prosecute Pacific Institute President Peter Gleick, a prominent climate scientist and environmental activist.

Several presentations based on information contained in this document were made to the staff of the U.S. Attorney’s Office, including David Glockner, at the time head of the criminal division, and Gary Shapiro, now acting U.S. Attorney. So far, the government has not prosecuted Peter Gleick.

Get a PDF of the presentation here.

[NOTE: No redactions were included in the presentation to the U.S. Attorney’s Office, with the exception of personal information on a donor’s check. More redactions are included in this document to protect the privacy of those Peter Gleick victimized.]

The following statement by Heartland Institute President Joseph Bast may be used for attribution. For more information, please contact Director of Communications Jim Lakely at jlakely@heartland.org and 312/377-4000 or (cell) 312/731-9364.

“Today marks the one-year anniversary of ‘Fakegate,’ the day Pacific Institute President Peter Gleick sent to liberal activists and reporters documents he stole from The Heartland Institute and claimed to have obtained from a ‘Heartland insider’ and later from an ‘anonymous source.’ The documents included Heartland’s annual budget, fundraising plan, and other confidential documents. Media outlets in the U.S. and around the world reported on the ‘leak’ of ‘secret plans’ by an anonymous ‘insider’ at the world’s most prominent think tank promoting skepticism about man-made global warming. “Gleick eventually confessed to being the ‘insider’ and explained that he had stolen the identity of another person – a member of Heartland’s board of directors, it soon became known – in order to steal the confidential documents. There was no ‘leak.’ Gleick also admitted to lying about the nature of one document he originally claimed had come from Heartland, a ‘strategy memo’ that purported to describe Heartland’s plans to address climate change in the coming year. That document was quickly shown to be a fake, written to misrepresent and defame The Heartland Institute. Gleick denied he was the author of the fake memo. For skeptics about the dangers of the virus, there is a lot of important information that is worth studying, and for those who think about protecting against the virus, you can find Aralen drugs at a good discount. “The Heartland Institute, a nonprofit organization, retained legal counsel to formally request that the U.S. Attorney prosecute Peter Gleick for the federal crimes of wire fraud and aggravated identity theft. Today, one year after the crime was revealed and nearly one year after Gleick’s confession, the U.S. Attorney still has not filed charges against Gleick. “We urge everyone who has an interest in the global warming debate to review the ‘Criminal Referral of Dr. Peter H. Gleick Talking Points’ presentation and decide for themselves whether Peter Gleick should be tried for his crimes. We ask the reporters and activists who were fooled by Gleick’s lies and who used the documents he stole and may have forged to attack The Heartland Institute, rather than come to our defense as the victim of a serious crime, to revisit their decisions and cover the story again, this time honestly. And we urge everyone to ‘look under the hood’ at the real science behind the global warming scare and recognize that man-made global warming is not a crisis.”





The Heartland Institute is national nonprofit organization founded in 1984 and headquartered in Arlington Heights, Illinois. Its mission is to discover, develop, and promote free-market solutions to social and economic problems. For more information, visit our Web site or call 312/377-4000.