LAST MINUTE ANTI-ROMNEY DIRTY TRICKS TARGET FILMMAKER
By Cliff Kincaid
November 2, 2012
NewsWithViews.com
A controversial anti-Obama filmmaker has had his private financial accounts hacked into and the information used by a George Soros-linked journalist who may be part of a “dirty tricks” campaign against GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney.
Joel Gilbert says that “private company information” was illegally obtained in an effort to intimidate those who have made possible the distribution of millions of copies of the DVD of his film, Dreams from My Real Father. His firm is a private media company that produces and distributes films and is not a political action committee or affiliated with any political campaign.
The controversial film, which has been mailed to millions of voters in swing states and is available on Netflix, examines Obama’s relationship with Communist Party member and suspected Soviet espionage agent Frank Marshall Davis, and Obama’s ties to Weather Underground terrorist Bill Ayers. The film claims that Davis was not only Obama’s mentor but his real father.
Despite the attacks on his backers, Gilbert says that his film is continuing to have a major impact and that he recently spoke at The Villages near Orlando, Florida to a group of 500 people. “Most of the folks had already seen my film, Dreams from My Real Father, and they understood how the duplicity of Obama and complicity of the media combined to elect a person with a secretive past and hidden agenda into the White House,” he said.
He added, “During the question and answer portion, they expressed unending gratitude for my work and struggle to shed light on Barack Obama’s real past and real agenda.”
As the film continues to make an impact in various swing states, Gilbert identified Seth Rosenfeld, who describes himself as a contributor to the Los Angeles Times and New York Times, as having approached him and others with questions about his film and how it was financed. Gilbert said Rosenfeld had “confidential bank information” and had “fraudulently introduced himself as being with the Romney campaign” in a communication with a company investor. “The only way our banking information could have been obtained would have been through illegal hacking into our private company bank accounts,” Gilbert said. “The information was not public.” He said that, “If Rosenfeld or anyone assisting Rosenfeld hacked into my company’s bank accounts, they could be prosecuted for violating privacy and banking laws.”
Rosenfeld describes himself as a former reporter for the San Francisco Examiner and San Francisco Chronicle and winner of the George Polk Award and “other professional honors.” He is believed to be working on an article trying to discredit the film and those who financed its distribution by somehow linking them to the Romney campaign.
In fact, however, Romney and other top Republicans, such as Karl Rove, have steered away from any involvement in charges that Obama is a Marxist or socialist with a mysterious past that needs to be investigated. Romney has refused to take advice from such figures as Pat Caddell urging his campaign to combat media bias and liberal-left reporters directly.
The Fox News Channel, the leading source of news and information for Republican voters, has not covered or addressed the sensational charges in the Gilbert film.
Gilbert’s press release about the attacks on his company is titled “Soros Connected Reporter Targets ‘Dreams’ Filmmaker—May Have Used Confidential Bank Information.”
The title of the press release is a reference to the fact that Rosenfeld is identified as currently working for the Center for Investigative Reporting (CIR), funded by the pro-Marxist billionaire George Soros. Accuracy in Media named the CIR as being among an extensive network of Soros-supported media organizations in our 2004 report, The Hidden Soros Agenda: Drugs, Money, the Media, and Political Power.
The CIR has assumed great importance in the Soros media network, having received $250,000 in 2008 and $275,000 in 2010 from Soros’s Open Society Institute. The Open Society Institute is still listed as a funder on the CIR donors’ page.
The group’s “media partners” included Al-Jazeera English, the Arab government-funded foreign propaganda channel; the Daily Beast; National Public Radio; two Public Broadcasting Service programs; the Los Angeles Times; and The Washington Post.
We asked Rosenfeld about the detailed charges about his alleged deceptive conduct which are outlined in Gilbert’s press release and Gilbert’s charge that Rosenfeld failed to follow up with an email to him. We also asked about Rosenfeld’s relationship with the CIR.
Rosenfeld responded, “It is true that I am a freelance journalist researching a story about people who anonymously funded the distribution of the Joel Gilbert film that attacks President Obama, claims his election is part of a vast communist conspiracy and displays pornographic photos of his mother. It is false that I misrepresented myself or engaged in any improper or illegal conduct. I spoke with Joel Gilbert twice on the phone and at his request sent him an email seeking his reply to my inquiry. He declined to comment in our phone conversations, did not call me back, and did not respond to my email.”
Gilbert told AIM that Rosenfeld never sent an email, never provided a telephone number to call him back, and that all of the characterizations in his response to AIM are “grossly distorted or just false.”
Regarding the film, Gilbert said it doesn’t attack Obama but explains his family background and political foundations and does not allege a communist conspiracy behind his election. Finally, he emphasized, there are no nude photos or pornography in the film. Rather, he said, there are pin-up photos that are respectfully covered with black bars and included only for journalistic reasons, in order to establish the likelihood of an intimate relations between Davis and Obama’s mother, which preceded Obama being raised by Davis from ages 9-18. Gilbert says the photos were taken of Obama’s mother by Frank Marshall Davis at Davis’s house. Davis was known for taking nude photos and later wrote about illicit affairs with underage women.
Rosenfeld appears to have a fascination with leftist radicals, having written the book, Subversives, which takes the side of pro-communist agitators who were monitored by the FBI and labeled a threat to America’s internal security by such anti-communist figures as Ronald Reagan. Indeed, the book’s subtitle is “The FBI’s War on Student Radicals, and Reagan’s Rise to Power.”
Based on his public comments about the book, including on the far-left “Democracy Now!” program, Rosenfeld apparently believes that Reagan, who confronted Soviet communism as president, was a scoundrel for working with the FBI and J. Edgar Hoover to clean the communists out of Hollywood and academia.
A New York Times favorable review of the Rosenfeld book showed anti-war radical Tom Hayden, who supported the communist enemy during the Vietnam War, pondering the size of his FBI file (22,000 pages). Interestingly, Hayden was an associate of Bill Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn, who were friends and associates of Barack Obama in Chicago. Hayden, Ayers and Dohrn were leaders of the Students for a Democratic Society (SDS), which later became the terrorist Weather Underground.
Gilbert’s film has generated a lot of critical media attention in recent weeks, including from the George Soros-funded Media Matters organization, because the millions of copies of the DVD in circulation are reportedly damaging Obama’s prospects for a second term as president. Some have told Gilbert that they were not aware of the information about Obama’s communist background before they received the DVD in the mail. One said to him, “Got your dreams DVD in the mail and it is scaring my socks off. I’m telling everybody I know to get it and watch it. Thanks for producing it.”
Gilbert has described his film as a way to bypass the major media’s cover-up of the Obama-Davis relationship. He spoke at a conference at the National Press Club on July 19 and accused reporters of failing to investigate Obama in the same way they examine other candidates and political figures.
Before the illegal acquisition of his company’s financial information, stories about the distribution of the Gilbert film had included speculation about those who were investing in his company or had purchased copies of the film.
But demonstrating that he has nothing to hide, Gilbert said that he even gave Media Matters an interview about the film.
| Subscribe to the NewsWithViews Daily News Alerts! |
“The mainstream media have collapsed in America as independent public trustees for the American people,” Gilbert says. “The mainstream media wake up every day, and instead of thinking to themselves, ‘How can I report the news and let my readership decide for themselves?,’ they ask themselves, ‘How can I suppress and manipulate information in order to trick my readership into supporting Obama’s Marxist agenda.’”
However, he went on, “it now appears we are at an even more dangerous and previously unimaginable situation.” He said the media’s attacks on him and his financial backers suggest that “crimes” are being committed in an effort “to intimidate media who are reporting the truth” and destroying the First Amendment rights of others.
© 2012 Cliff Kincaid - All Rights Reserved
Share
This ArticleCliff Kincaid, a veteran journalist and media critic, Cliff concentrated in journalism and communications at the University of Toledo, where he graduated with a Bachelor of Arts degree.
Cliff has written or co-authored nine books on media and cultural affairs and foreign policy issues. One of Cliff's books, "Global Bondage: The UN Plan to Rule the World" is still awailable.
Cliff has appeared on Hannity & Colmes, The O�Reilly Factor, Crossfire and has been published in the Washington Post, Washington Times, Chronicles, Human Events and Insight.
Web Site: www.AIM.org
E-Mail: cliff.kincaid@aim.org
