Activist touts challenging authority

Conservative activist James O’Keefe told a Bigfork crowd on Thursday that the American media need to hold hypocritical public officials accountable, even if it means employing unorthodox antics or undercover recordings to do so.

O’Keefe boasted about disciplinary actions that have been taken by federal officials after his hidden camera investigations have gone viral. His talk was sponsored by Stand Up America and Glacial Forum, conservative groups based in the Flathead Valley.

“I don’t measure my success by number of page views,” O’Keefe said. “I measure my success by the number of people who resign.”

O’Keefe first gained fame in 2009 when he posed as a pimp — wearing his grandmother’s 1970s chinchilla coat — trying to get advice about how to report his income from the nonprofit Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, known as ACORN. The group was defunded by Congress and went bankrupt a year later.

Since then, O’Keefe has targeted government hypocrisy and malfeasance on several levels, resulting in congressional hearings about border control and voter photo identification requirements.

O’Keefe’s visit to Montana came just hours after he unveiled a video of a Hillary Clinton campaign staffer encouraging Nevada canvassers to continue to solicit votes for Clinton during voter registration drives, despite state laws that prohibit such actions.

The undercover video reveals attorney Christina Gupana telling the staffers: “Do whatever you can. Whatever you can get away with, just do it, until you get kicked out like totally.”

O’Keefe claimed the story should have come out in the Wall Street Journal a day previously but that management killed it.

He said it’s not uncommon for major news outlets to avoid the topics he covers because many of the media elite are in bed with those in power.

“You can’t properly investigate in an aggressive, adversarial manner these people if you are married to them or if you go to all the cocktail parties with them,” O’Keefe said.

“I think the undercover work is a really important part of democracy because if they are public officials, they need to be scrutinized. As far as this rule against filming people secretly, I don’t think anyone is a god that determines what journalism ethics are. I think it is important that people do this.”

O’Keefe said his nonprofit Project Veritas will release several more undercover Hillary Clinton videos as the campaign goes on. He said he believes the videos are more effective than preachy op-ed pieces.

“My whole philosophy is based on the fact that Americans are not stupid,” O’Keefe said. “If you show people the truth, it doesn’t need to be explained. You don’t have to advocate who to vote for or to believe. We just have to show people what is happening.”

Retired Maj. Gen. Paul Vallely, who founded Stand Up America, was supportive of O’Keefe’s videos.

“It’s really to expose fraud and corruption that we have in organizations across the country, including our government,” Vallely said. “It’s important.”

Harry Power, professor emeritus at Rutgers University, drove five hours from his native Eastern Montana to hear O’Keefe speak. Power was the faculty adviser of the student magazine O’Keefe founded at the university.

Power said he didn’t always agree with what O’Keefe printed, but that it was important for ideas to be exchanged.

“I want opinions to be freely expressed,” O’Keefe said. “It is the suppression of opinions that is truly damaging our nation.”

Reporter Megan Strickland may be reached at 758-4459 or by email at mstrickland@dailyinterlake.com.