Candace C. Crandall
Candace Carolyn Crandall was partner and wife of S. Fred Singer]]. She both fronted and ran the Science & Environmental Policy Project (SEPP) for the tobacco industry (organised and funded via APCO), while Singer ran a parallel institute. Before partnering with Singer she had been in the PR and administrative fields with the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), so she had had considerable experience with running a conservative think-tank before her involvement with SEPP. She must also have been fully aware of the connection between SEPP and Philip Morris, via APCO.
Over the course of some 20 years she has published more than 200 by-lined articles and editorials on scientific research, health risks, environmental policy, business issues and, most recently, Social Security reform. These have appeared in the Wall Street Journal, San Diego Union-Tribune, Cleveland Plain Dealer, Washington Times, Orange County Register, First Things, Human Life Review, Capitalism magazine, Northern Virginian magazine, and publications of the National Institutes of Health and the Department of Health and Human Services, among others. Her article "The Fetus Beat Us" is cited in Judge Robert Bork's book Slouching Towards Gomorrah.
Documents and Timeline
1984- 86 She graduated "with distinction" from George Mason University [1] in 1984 with a degree in English, writing and editing concentration. [2] She was briefly a sports reporter for the Star-News chain of suburban newspapers in Southern California but from graduation until late 1986, Crandall worked as Public Information Officer at George Mason University.
1987 June - June 1990, she was at the Washington, DC-based Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), an $18 million a year defense and foreign policy think tank founded at Georgetown University, first as Press Relations Director and then as Director of Communications. While at CSIS, she brought CSIS visibility in the print and broadcast media up 450 percent to just over 6,000 mentions a year, including some 1500 radio/TV interviews on Nightline, MacNeil-Lehrer, CNN, National Public Radio, network news, and other programs. Published op-eds by CSIS policy analysts increased from 400 to 1100 per year.
1987 Jul S Fred Singer and Crandall coauthored articles expressing skepticism about climate change - both global warming and ozone depletion. For example, "Assessing the threat to the Ozone" in the July 1987 edition of Consumers' Research [3] [4]
1987 Sep Crandall and Singer authroed the article "Assessing Stratospheric Ozone" published in September 1987 by the Unification Church and Washington Times-linked magazine The World and I
Each chlorine atom, according to this widely publicized theory, set off a chain reaction that would destroy thousands of ozone molecules over a seventy-to one-hundred-year period.
Though theoretically likely, this reaction has yet to be verified as actually occurring in the ozone layer. But in 1974, concern was such that environmentalists were able to mount an effective boycott of products sold in aerosol cans. [5]
1990 May - February 2001 She married physicist S. Fred Singer and a few years later helped him to set-up, manage and publicize the Science and Environmental Policy Project (SEPP). [Actually done via the Unification Church's Washington Institute under the funding and control of APCO for Philip Morris]
1991 Aug 16 Crandall wrote a letter to the editor of the Wall Street Journal, as Editorial Director of the Washington Institute, about mandatory HIV testing for doctors. [6] [7]
[Note: The Washington Institute for Values in Public Policy was a corporate-friendly front set up by the Unification Church The Moonies also owned the newspaper the Washington Times. These instrumentalities appear to have been used by APCO as fronts when setting up SEPP for the tobacco industry. The Monies had funded their new local think tank, the Washington Institute for Values in Public Policy, at a rate of $1.5 million a year, and S Fred Singer was listed as its director. It was initially seen as the parent/affiliate organisation of SEPP.
1992 Jan 21 Sharon Boyse, the head of Scientific Issues Management at British-American Tobacc, is discussing her company's plans for the joint tobacco industry monitoring of the Rio Earth Summit. There is to be a general meeting of the cigarette companies in Miami before the Summit. She says in this memo that Philip Morris are planning to also have staff in Buenos Aries to communicate with the world media. The tobacco industry lawyers Shook Hardy & Bacon and the Tobacco Institute are also to attend, and she wants to get Paul Dietrich of the Institute for International Health & Develpment involved. [8]
1992 Feb 19 Earth Summit will Shackle the Planet, Not Save It. An article in the Wall Street Journal on the Earth Summit by S Fred Singer. He says it is a plot to transfer money from the "poor in rich countries to the rich in poor countries." This is unnecessary because "The [Bush] White House, to its credit, has resisted the example of Germany, Australia and other nations. They have announced specific targets for not just capping but reducing carbon dioxide emissions, by as much as 25% over the next decade or two ..." [9]
1992 Apr 14 A one-day conference, sponsored by the asbestos and tobacco industries, met at the Heidelberg Cancer Research Center (Germany) primarily to discuss the removal of asbestos insulation from schools, etc. and the handling of hazardous waste. Many scientists believe it was safer to leave asbestos in situ (perhaps oil-soaked or embedded in resins) rather than attempt removal, which always produces dust.
The one-day meeting was probably part-organised by SEPP, since Michel Solomon, editor of Projection Quarterly magazine and an associate of S Fred Singer created and presented the first draft of the Appeal document to the participants at this meeting. It was essentially a demand that "scientific opinion be respected".
The Heidelberg Appeal has always been nothing more than a scientific "motherhood" statement. It merely demands that political policy on public safety and health matters be based on the best scientific evidence available.
Only when it was released and accompanied by a SEPP-crafted press release -- and then in the context of Rio -- did it appear to be an attack on the climate-change concepts. This climate-change emphasis was implied by its final phrase
We do however forewarn the authorities in charge of our planet's destiny against decisions which are supported by pseudo-scientific arguments or false and non-relevant data.
It is claimed that this was added after the Heidelberg conference, since no draft of the original document signed by participants actually exists. (See Soloman's claims) [10]
In the context of Rio, this demand appeared specific to climate, rather than general about science.
1992 June She was at the IPPC "Rio Earth Summit" where she was listed as a 'publicist' for the Global Science Communications Team of the Global Climate Coalition (GCC).
The GCC ran an industry-wide collaborative delay and disinformation program to try to block decisions being taken at the Summit. It was a coalition of fifty oil, gas, coal, automobile and chemical manufacturing companies (and their trade associations) who had been put together by the public relations giant Burson-Marsteller (employed by the manufacturers association) Crandall clearly provided SEPP liaison between the GCC group and the ICSE Heidelberg Appeal operation.
The main anti-IPPC operation in Rio at the 1992 Earth Summit was run by the Global Climate Coalition, which was put together by Burson-Marsteller (USA) with funding from the National Association of Manufactuerrs (NAM) and oil companies. The GCC hired SEPP, and presented the Heidelberg Appeal document to the press in Rio.
A few weeks later the Detroit News was treating her as an authority on NASA and ozone depletion in its editorial A Rat in the Ozone Scare. "There is no hole," it says.
| The later Heidelberg Appeal offshoots were: |
|---|
|
| How they got so many signatures on the Appeal. |
|
Bonner and Associates had pioneered a technique known as the "virtual petition." When the Bonner solicitors make their phone calls, they offer to fax over a "letter of support." The recipient is asked to sign their name in a box, and fax it back. Bonner and Associates then scan the signature into their computer system. There, it is re-printed onto a petition which, to the untrained eye, looks as though it was assembled the old-fashioned door-to-door way. One of Bonner's projects was a full-page "Open Letter" ad in the Des Moines Register, signed by prominent Iowans, denouncing the Rio Treaty on global warming. (Western Fuels Association, a coal industry group, is a client of Bonner's.) As it turned out, many of the signatories had no idea their names were being used this way: they'd signed a statement on "changes in the environment" that might cost jobs, without reading the fine print that gave Bonner and Associates permission to use the signatures. (Silverstein, 1997) |
1992 Aug 9 The Detroit News editorial "A Rat in the Ozone Scare" - quotes Candace Crandall of SEPP
The focal point of the press conference was a series of high-altitude flights by NASA planes in northern latitudes that found "unexpectedly high" chlorine levels of up to 1.5 parts per billion. But NASA held its press conference even before its high-altitude sampling had been completed, much less subject to the usual scientiific peer review proces. Now it turns out there's no hole. Moreover, as Candace Crandall of the Science and Environmental Policy Project in Washington points out, some of the same NASA scientists were aware of far higher readings in the past. Why the rush to publicize this particular finding?
She suggested to the newspaper that "public-funded scientists are playing fast and loose with the facts" [11] See page 65 [12]
1992 Nov 21 Scripps Howard News Service (St Louis Post Dispatch) Scientists ripped as alarmists in ecology warning.
"It's the usual hype we've come to expect" from the Union of Concerned Scientists, said Candace Crandall, executive director of the Science and Environmental Policy Center a research group. These kinds of tactics do little to clarify the reality and extent of our environmental problems and even help to bring about effective costings of some solutions.
See page 66 [13]
1992 Dec 9 Crandall, writing in the Moonie's newspaper, the Washington Times defends the "Wise Use" coalition, and says that the Earth Summit was:
"... an outrageously expensive bazaar of the bizarre, a sideshow of turtle-lovers, nuclear-power haters, breast-feeding advocates, Hollywood celebrities, and Third World kleptocrats intent on getting their hands on more of those good Yankee dollars."
She believes the environmental movement is on the slide, and advises that ...
"President-elect Bill Clinton [should] consider carefully the implications of this ugly trend among environmental groups. What is needed in the new Administration is the backbone to withstand pressure from extremists and to focus on what should be our national long-term goal -- bringing concerns for wildlife and ecosystems back into balance with concerns for the welfare of people." [14]
1993 Mar 2 Tom Hockaday (vice president APCO & Associates) (the Philip Morris-controlled PR company that set up SEPP) wrote in a fax to Lance Pressl (Philip Morris) {Who would not necessarily have been informed about SEPP.] He lists Singer and Crandall prominently among the: "Possible Inviduals to be Approached for Opinion Editorials."
As you, know, it has been, decided that Dr Bonner Cohen will not author the opinion editorial on indoor air quality ('IAQ). In order to be of assistance to David Laufer (PM), we are attempting to identify other individuals who might be interestied in authoring, the IAQ article.
We have compiled the following, list of possibie authors based on our own research and suggestions from Tom Borelli and Bonner Cohen. At this point, we need you to verify as soon as possible whether we should not formally approach any of the following individuals.
- Dr Fred Singer -- University of Virginia.
(He has) charged that the EPA-supported theories of global warming and global ozone depletion are not backed up by the scientific evidence. (He has also) charged that several major government studies that found information contrary to "politically correct" issues (acid rain), was ignored. - At a Consumer's Research seminar in DC that dealt with official regulations (he says that they) frequently have little basis in scientific fact, being driven instead by political/social factors. "The tendency not only to misuse science but to ignore it is very strong" in policy decisions concerning global warming, ozone depletions, and acid rain. (He) has spoken on issue of cost of other environmental problems. Singer was director of the Washington Institute for Values in Public Policy, on leave from UVA's department of environmental science. [15]
- Candace Crandall -- Executive Vice President of the Science and Environmental Policy Project (SEPP).
She has published extensively on junk science issues in the past. Crandall was the Director of Communications for the Center for Strategic and International Studies before joining SEPP. The primary focus of SEPP is to document the use of scientific data in the development of federal environmental policy. SEPP is an independent, non-profit research group that relies on private funding. It will co-sponsor a conference with George Mason University in May on scientific integrity in the political process. Crandall has arranged for a number of prominent scientists to be participants, including Dr. Bernard Davis of Harvard University and Sir William Mitchell of Oxford University. Crandall is Dr. Fred Singer's wife." [16] [17]
See full document: [18]
- [Note: Tom Borelli was the main science corrupter at Philip Morris USA (the domestic company -- and he helped Crandall organise the SEPP-GMU conference, while Bonner Cohen was editor of EPA Watch newsletter for APCO and Philip Morris. Both were later partners of Steve Milloy of TASSC]
1993 May Control of the Heidelberg Appeal appears to have transferred from SEPP to tobacco industry lobbyists. Tobacco industry lobbyist Jim Tozzi of Federal Focus, Multinational Business Services and Institute for Regulatory Policy is generating coalition partners for the ongoing Heidelberg Appeal/ICSE workshops and has charged Philip Morris $40,353 for: * miscellaneous work on 'meta-analysis' [designed to criticise the EPA's use of meta-analysis involving 15 studies linking passive smoking (ETS) to lung-cancer in non-smokers [known as ETS Risk Assessment].
- writing on agency use of meta-analysis to main food industry lobby group [ILSI]
- preparing material on EMF (power-line scares) for a utility industry conference.
- attending conference run by ICSE in Paris
- "provided comments to ICSE regarding preparation of consensus statement following the conference."
- Attending GMU (George Mason Uni)/SEPP conference on Scientific Integrity in the Regulatory Process. [19]
- [Note: The main thrust of the tobacco industry attack on the EPA's assessment that second-hand smoke was a Class A carcinogen was to organise an attack on the scientific use of meta-analysis and recruiting other industries with similar problems in support of "cost-benefit" risk analysis and the discounting of meta-analysis and similar epidemiological tools. The science supporting global warming depended extensively on meta-analysis (a way of combining multiple smaller studies into one larger and more trustworthy whole, so attacking global warming was a good proxy for attacking the EPA's passive smoking research, without the tobacco industry needing to show its involvement.]
1993 May 23 An article by Crandall in the San Diego Union-Tribune is widely quoted by those lobbyists and PR companies promoting the junk-science message. Steve Milloy at TASSC reports her as writing:
"Widespread distortion of scientific evidence, aided by scientific illiteracy among journalists and policy makers, has led to health and environmental policies that are increasingly driven by advocacy and activism, by emotion rather than by reason. Not surprisingly, more and more people are coming to the conclusion that US environmental policies are wrong-headed, incredibly wasteful, at times counterproductive, and frequently enacted before we know if they will do any good -- or even if the suspected problem is real ." [20]
1993 May 24 & 25 The George Mason University conference on Scientific Integrity in the Political Process -- at the University which has harboured more unethical think-tanks and policy institutes than any other in the USA. Candace Crandall, together with Tom Borelli of Philip Morris, are the major organisers of the ICSE/SEPP/George Mason conference (funded by the tobacco industry). "Scientific Intergrity" is the new industry catch-cry -- to match its vocal claims of "junk-science" for findings they didn't like, so the Tobacco Institute's publishes a book "Tobacco Smoke and the Nonsmoker: Scientific Intergrity at the Crossroads" and speeches are made on the same theme.
In every case the EPA's risk assessment of passive smoking is given as the example of a lack of scientific integrity. Every tobacco scientist and every tobacco lobbyists is turned out to beat the same drum. The tobacco industry focus for SEPP attacks on the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) was supported by a wide coalition of corporate-funded astroturfs and think-tanks, all claiming to have scientific backing. The focus of this multi-facetted program was not simply to attack the EPA's decisions on climate and passive-smoking, but to condemn the agency for its lack of scientific integrity.
Scientific Integrity, so-called "sound-science", and claims of "junk-science", and over-regulation by the "Nanny State" were the tools of their trade. The ICSE/SEPP/GMU conference was just one of a flood of 'scientific integrity' projects that the tobacco industry releases at that time. [21] [22] [23] [24] [25]
1996 Jul 31 The Wall Street Journal carried an op-ed from her on abortion malpractice,"Legal, But Not Safe". This was a condensed version of a piece by the same title published in the Summer 1996 issue of The Women's Quarterly, a journal published by the Independent Women's Forum in Washington, DC.
1995-96 Crandall is associated with the Independent Women's Forum
1999 AugCrandall and S. Fred Singer separated, at which time her involvement with Singer's SEPP ceased. They divorced in February 2000.
2000 Jan In January 2000 she became an Associate Producer of the weekly Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) politics and public policy television talk show 'Think Tank with Ben Wattenberg', which is a production of BJW, Inc. in association with New River Media. (see also Ben J. Wattenberg). Wattenberg is a well-known right-wing commentator in the Rush Limbaugh mold, and an associate of the American Enterprise Institute.
Over four years, she produced more than 60 half-hour programs, including interviews with scientist Paul Ehrlich (author of The Population Bomb); former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger; former National Security Adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski; defense policy adviser Richard Perle; historians Jay Winik (April 1865) and Adam Nicolson (God’s Secretaries); biographers Ron Chernow (Alexander Hamilton) and H.W. Brands (Woodrow Wilson); broadcast journalist Marvin Kalb; columnists Charles Krauthammer, Christopher Hitchens; Andrew Sullivan, Michael Barone, and others. Crandall earned a 2003 Telly Award for the two-part episode "Irving Berlin’s America," and was promoted from Associate Producer to Series Producer in January 2004. [26] [27]
2000 Feb She became a Adjunct Fellow at the National Center for Public Policy Research (NCPPR) run by Amy Moritz Ridenour an old associate of Jack Abramoff, Ralph Reed and Grover Norquist. This tink-tank will work for any large industrial group that will pay. The NCPPR press-release says:
Candace C. Crandall has been named Adjunct Fellow at the National Center for Public Policy Research in Washington, D.C., where she will work on cultural, demographic, and consumer issues related to women in business.
2005 May 10 In his Guardian column, George Monbiot uncovered a story implicating Fred Singer in the spread of misinformation on the state of the world's glaciers. An expanded version of this story made its way into Monbiot's best selling book, Heat.
Singer and the "Glacier Story" [To summarize what Monbiot discovered:]
Monbiot was researching climate change a couple of years ago and when he became nervous about what he thought was the manipulative nature of the "scientific debate." Then he found a letter by the UK climate change denier David Bellamy in New Scientist magazine. Bellamy reported that "555 of all the 625 glaciers under observation by the World Glacier Monitoring Service in Zurich have been growing since 1980."
This was an interesting -- and significant -- piece of information (because if the globe was warming, you'd expect the glaciers to be shrinking). But when Monbiot phoned the World Glacier Monitoring Service, he also found that it was, in their indelicate words, "complete bullshit." Glaciers are retreating around the world.
Monbiot chased all over in search of a source for this information. The claim appeared dozens of times in many different locations, but all trails seemed to lead back to the website of the Science and Environmental Policy Project, S. Fred Singer's group.
When people challenged Singer, he first lashed out, saying Monbiot "has been smoking something or other." But Singer finally conceded, in March 2005, that the information had originated on his site -- posted there by "former SEPP associate Candace Crandall." Singer acknowledged that the information "appears to be incorrect and has been updated." "Updated," however, is different than "corrected." You could still find the claim on his website 18 months later.
Singer also failed to mention that the former associate, Candace Crandall, was his wife. See DeSmogBlog [28]
2005 Jun A more recent op-ed on the impact on working women of Social Security reform, appeared in the premiere issue (June 2005) of American Businesswoman magazine.
Family Links
She is said to be the sister of Robert W Crandall ('Bob') who was the Director of Regulatory Studies at the Brookings Institution, and also served a consultant to the tobacco industry (he was employed by B&W in Sept 1996). [29] He is also involved with the Cato Institute, and the American Industrial Health Council (AIHC).
There is also a Michael S Crandall with NIOSH doing indoor air quality investigations in Ohio.[30] Relationship is not known.
Related Links
- S. Fred Singer, Candace Crandall, "Assessing the Threat to the Ozone," Consumers' Research, July 1987 11-14 [31] [32]
- Candace C. Crandall, "Chiller: Does the Doctor Have AIDS?," Wall Street Journal, August 16, 1991
- "Biography: Candace Crandall," Science and Environmental Policy Project", February 1998
- "Candace Crandall Named Adjunct Fellow at The National Center for Public Policy Research," The National Center for Public Policy Research, February 8, 2000.
- "Meet the Think Tank team," Public Broadcasting Service
