by Sheldon Rampton and John Stauber

Full page advertisements in Newsweek magazine are expensive, so who footed the bill for an attack ad aimed at Greenpeace that ran in the January 28 issue? The Center for Consumer Freedom, which produced the ad, isn't saying.

At first glance, with its photo of a diving whale in the ocean, the ad looked like it might have been placed by Greenpeace itself--until, that is, you read the nasty quote from Patrick Moore, identified as a "Greenpeace Co-Founder," calling his former colleagues "a band of scientific illiterates who use Gestapo tactics."

The advertisement featured a web address, www.ConsumerFreedom.com, which belongs to the Center for Consumer Freedom (CCF). Like the advertisement itself, the name is misleading. CCF doesn't represent consumers. It's just the new name for lobbyist Rick Berman's latest front group.

Until January, the CCF called itself the "Guest Choice Network." Its name change coincided with the launch of a second website, called ActivistCash.com, which purports to reveal a vast, left-wing financial conspiracy among major foundations and nonprofit public interest organizations.

Berman's specialty as a lobbyist is what he calls "shooting the messenger": attacking activists who criticize his clients. PR Watch first exposed Berman & Co. in our First Quarter 2001 issue, detailing his work for the restaurant, tavern and alcoholic beverage industries. Since then, we have uncovered new information documenting his ties to Philip Morris.

Although ConsumerFreedom.org isn't saying who funded its attack advertisement against Greenpeace, Philip Morris is a distinct possibility. The tobacco giant is also now the largest food company in the United States. Greenpeace is one of the international leaders in the fight for safety and environmental testing of genetically engineered foods, and recently Greenpeace targeted Philip Morris Kraft for its sales of such products.

Ploys 'r' Us

ActivistCash.com and ConsumerFreedom.org are merely the latest in a string of organizations that Berman has created to advance his clients' interests. Another Berman front group, the Employment Policies Institute (EPI), calls itself a "non-profit research organization dedicated to studying public policy issues surrounding employment growth." In reality, EPI's mission is to oppose increases in the minimum wage so restaurants can continue to pay their workers as little as possible. EPI also owns the domain names to MinimumWage.com and LivingWage.com, a website that attempts to portray the idea of a living wage for workers as some kind of insidious conspiracy. "Living wage activists want nothing less than a national living wage," it warns (as though there is something wrong with paying employees enough that they can afford to eat and pay rent).

Some of Berman & Co.'s most visible lobbying has been waged against efforts to lower the legal blood-alcohol limit for drivers. It runs the American Beverage Institute, which was organized in 1991 with the stated mission of promoting "responsible alcohol consumption," but actually represents restaurants and retailers that sell alcohol. The ABI's arch-enemy is Mothers Against Drunk Driving (MADD).

Following the Money

ActivistCash.com claims to expose the funding behind groups like MADD, Action on Smoking and Health, and the Center for Science in the Public Interest. In reality, none of the information that it "exposes" has ever been hidden. It is available in public foundation reports and IRS tax statements that non-profit organizations provide to anyone who asks. Most of the information in the ActivistCash database can already be found in public libraries or the Internet. Non-profit organizations are not obligated to disclose the names of specific individual or institutional donors, but most of the groups attacked by ActivistCash have gone beyond the requirements of the law in providing the information that ActivistCash is now using to attack them.

It is hypocritical in the extreme, of course, for ActivistCash.com to "expose" the funding of others, while keeping the details of its own finances hidden to conceal the fact that its funding comes from the very industries that share a vested interest in attacking activists. Fortunately, some information about the funding of Berman's operations can be found as a result of lawsuits against the tobacco industry, which have forced the disclosure of internal industry documents. Correspondence between Berman and Philip Morris reveals that the Center for Consumer Freedom (then called the Guest Choice Network) was founded in 1995, with initial funding coming entirely from the tobacco industry.

"I'd like to propose to Philip Morris the establishment of the Guest Choice Network," Berman stated in a December 11, 1995 letter to Barbara Trach, PM's senior program manager for public affairs. "The concept is to unite the restaurant and hospitality industries in a campaign to defend their consumers and marketing programs against attacks from anti-smoking, anti-drinking, anti-meat, etc. activists. . . . I would like to solicit Philip Morris for an initial contribution of $600,000."

The purpose of the Guest Choice Network, as Berman explained in a separate planning document, was to enlist operators of "restaurants, hotels, casinos, bowling alleys, taverns, stadiums, and university hospitality educators" to "support mentality of 'smokers rights' by encouraging responsibility to protect 'guest choice.'"

According to a yearend 1995 budget, Guest Choice planned to spend $1.5 million during its first 13 months of operation, including $390,000 for "membership marketing/materials development," $430,000 to establish a communication center and newsletter (which Berman promised would have a "60% to 70% smoking focus"), $110,000 to create a "multi-industry advisory council," and $345,000 for "grassroots network development/ operation."

The tobacco company complied with Berman's initial funding request for $600,000 and pitched in another $300,000 early the following year. "As of this writing, PM USA is still the only contributor, though Berman continues to promise others any day now," wrote Philip Morris attorney Marty Barrington in an internal company memorandum dated March 28, 1996. No further information is publicly available about Guest Choice's finances or activities until its public launch two years later, in April 1998, sporting an advisory board comprised mostly of representatives from the restaurant, meat and alcoholic beverage industries.

In 1999, Berman continued to combine tobacco flackery with his role as a restaurant lobbyist, as his American Beverage Institute published a study titled "Effects of 1998 California Smoking Ban on Bars, Taverns and Night Clubs." The study surveyed bar owners and managers, asking whether business increased or decreased after January 1, 1998, the date the California bar ban went into effect. It claimed to find that business declined an average of 26.2%, but no hard numbers were used to arrive at this percentage. Rather than look at actual sales receipts, the ABI survey merely surveyed the opinions of bar owners. Numerous other studies have examined the effect of smoking bans on the hospitality industry, and studies that actually look at taxable sales receipts show no significant impact.

As a private company, Berman & Co. is not required to disclose its finances. However, two of its front groups--the Guest Choice Network and the Employment Policies Institute Foundation--are registered as tax-exempt non-profit organizations, and they are required to disclose some financial information to the Internal Revenue Service which is publicly available by inspecting their IRS Form 990s.

The IRS Form 990 for the Employment Policies Institute Foundation shows that it received revenues of $1,237,566 during the 1999 calendar year. Of that amount, $508,173 went to Berman & Co. for "consulting services." Another $163,026 in salary and benefits went directly to Rick Berman as EPIF's executive director, a job on which he reportedly spent 28 hours per week. EPIF secretary Thomas Dilworth (sometimes described in news stories as the organization's "research director") worked an average of 8.5 hours per week and received $32,863 in salary and benefits for the year.

The Guest Choice Network claims to represent "more than 30,000 U.S. restaurants and tavern operators." However, the IRS Form 990 which it filed for the the six-month period from July to December 1999 (prior to changing its name to the Center for Consumer Freedom) shows that almost all of its financial support came from a handful of anonymous sources. Its total income for that period was $111,642, of which $105,000 came from six unnamed donors. It received no income from membership dues. Some of its funding apparently comes from one of Berman's other organizations, the American Beverage Institute, which "contributes monthly amounts to the Guest Choice Network to assist with media expenses." The Guest Choice Network did not report paying salaries to any of its employees, who were presumably paid by other sources.