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The proposition was outrageous, outlandish and right up James O'Keefe's alley. Hannah Giles was on the phone from Washington, asking him to dress like her pimp, walk into ACORN offices, admit to wanting to buy a house to run as a brothel, and see what happened.
It was serendipity, O'Keefe said Thursday. On that day in May, he was still burning mad after watching a YouTube video of ACORN workers breaking padlocks off foreclosed homes and barging in.
"I was upset," he said.
O'Keefe, 25, packed his grandfather's old wide-brimmed hat and his grandmother's ratty chinchilla shoulder throw, then drove from his parents' home in New Jersey to Washington to execute the idea with Giles, 20.
What came next was a scandal that has shaken ACORN to its core. O'Keefe and Giles secretly videoed workers of the community activist group in Washington, Brooklyn and Baltimore as the workers coached the secret filmmakers on how to evade taxes and misrepresent their business enterprise to get into a home.
In the wake of a public outcry over the videos, Congress has taken action. On Thursday, the House voted 345-75 to defund the organization.
Last year, Republicans lobbed accusations of voter-registration fraud against the group - which offers housing and other services, including voter registration, to the poor. As a community organizer, President Obama worked for an ACORN-affiliated group and once represented ACORN as a lawyer. This week, White House spokesman Robert Gibbs said that "obviously the conduct that you see on those tapes is unacceptable."
On Wednesday, ACORN chief executive Bertha Lewis announced an independent review of its operations. ACORN also has fired some who were caught on video. But the group has said the videos were manipulated, that in at least one case a worker was simply playing along with what she considered a ridiculous scheme, and that the amateur journalism project was part of a conservative attack on the organization.
O'Keefe insists that his and Giles' work was done independently, and he rejects suggestions that the videos were bankrolled by conservative organizations. He does, however, say he got help and advice from a conservative columnist and Web entrepreneur.
When O'Keefe had filmed the first two videos - in Washington and Baltimore - a friend urged him to share his project with Andrew Breitbart, an Internet entrepreneur planning an anti-liberal site called BigGovernment.com. Breitbart said he was skeptical after a June phone call with O'Keefe about what he had, but when the video was rolling in his basement office in Los Angeles in late July, Breitbart said, he gasped.
Breitbartt advised O'Keefe to roll out the videos one by one, rather than at once. He said he predicted the mainstream media would try to ignore the story, and after a day "poof, it would be over."
"When I saw these videos, I couldn't help thinking, this is the Abu Ghraib of the Great Society," said Breitbart. "Everybody that is a conservative news junkie thinks that ACORN is the most important institution for us to uncover to the American public."
The strategy worked. As ACORN's fortunes have fallen, those of O'Keefe and Giles have risen. O'Keefe said he has received hundreds of requests for interviews.
He dismissed assertions that the videos were doctored.
"They've lied every step of the way," he said. "They said nothing happened in D.C. and we disproved that. They said nothing happened in Baltimore and we disproved that. I don't know why anyone believes them."
Giles and O'Keefe have been criticized on accuracy. Their videos include the oft-repeated claim that ACORN is expected to get up to $8.5 billion in government funds. That's a bold exaggeration, as it includes $3 billion in stimulus funds set aside for revitalization efforts nationwide, and $5.5billion in federal community development grants. It assumes ACORN would apply for and win every project and grant in the country, while ACORN says it is not applying for any of the stimulus funds.
Giles did not respond to interview requests. Her father, Doug Giles, of the radical Clash Church in Miami, had opined about what he called the evils of the Obama administration and its alliance with ACORN.
Ron Robinson, director of Young America's Foundation, where Hannah Giles spent the summer learning about how to be a journalist from conservative media experts, said Doug Giles has reason to be proud of his daughter.
"Certainly, she may have been inspired to some extent by her father," Robinson said, "but this was her doing."
