Officials with the revamped ACORN office in New York — operating as New York Communities for Change — have fired staff, shredded reams of documents and told workers to blame disgruntled ex-employees for leaking information in an effort to explain away a FoxNews.com report last week on the group’s involvement in Occupy Wall Street protests, according to sources.

NYCC also is installing surveillance cameras and recording devices at its Brooklyn offices, removing or packing away supplies bearing the name ACORN and handing out photos of Fox News staff with a stern warning not to talk to the media, the sources said.

“They’re doing serious damage control right now,” said an NYCC source.

NYCC Executive Director Jon Kest has been calling a series of emergency meetings to discuss last week’s report—and taking extreme measures to identify the sources in their office and to prevent further damage, a source within NYCC told FoxNews.com.

Two staffers were fired after NYCC officials suspected them as the source of the leaks, a source told FoxNews.com. “One was fired the day the story came out, the other was fired on Friday. (NYCC senior staff) told everyone that they were fired because they talked to you,” a source said.

NYCC spokesman Scott Levenson denied that anyone was fired for talking to the press.

FoxNews.com’s report identified NYCC as a key organizing force behind the Occupy Wall Street protests. Sources within the group also told FoxNews.com NYCC was hiring people to carry signs and join the protests. NYCC — a nonprofit organization run almost entirely by former ACORN officials and employees –did not reply for comment prior to the publication of the initial article, but later posted a statement on its website dismissing the article and denying that it pays protesters.

A source said that immediately following publication of the FoxNews.com report staff were called into the Brooklyn office for meetings headed by NYCC’s organizing director, Jonathan Westin. Westin handed out copies of the article and went through it line-by-line, the source said.

Staffers were also given copies of photos of Senior Fox News Correspondent Eric Shawn and three other Fox News staff members, including this reporter.

“They reminded us that we can get fired, sued, arrested for talking to the press,” the source said. “Then they went through the article point-by-point and said that the allegation that we pay people to protest isn’t true.”

“‘That’s the story that we’re sticking to,’” Westin said, according to the source.

Read more here.

It should come as no surprise that on the campaign trail, President Obama refused to be interviewed about Saul Alinsky, the community organizing guru who wrote Rules for Radicals, a how-to guide for destroying American capitalism and democracy.

Presumably Obama, who taught courses on Alinsky’s brutal, sometimes violent organizing techniques, declined to speak to reporters about the late guru. He must have realized that such an interview would throw an unwanted spotlight on Alinsky’s radicalism, and by extension, his own. Such counterproductive publicity would also have undermined the candidate’s efforts to reinvent himself as a moderate. Alinsky’s adherents now dominate the modern Democratic Party establishment. Apart from President Obama himself, they include Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, White House senior advisor Valerie Jarrett, Federal Communications Commission diversity chief Mark Lloyd, Obama’s ex-green jobs czar Van Jones, former DNC trainer Heather Booth, Children’s Defense Fund founder Marian Wright Edelman, former HUD Secretary Henry Cisneros, and Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa to name just a few. “Who the hell isn’t [an Alinskyite] in this administration?” asks conservative author David Horowitz.

And President Obama hasn’t been the only longtime ACORN operative working in the White House. There’s also the low-profile Patrick Gaspard who, until recently, was White House political affairs director, one of the titles Karl Rove held in President Bush’s White House.

In a move that ought to disturb anyone who cares about the integrity of the democratic process, earlier this year Gaspard took over the reins of the Democratic National Committee as its executive director—just in time to begin initial preparations for President Obama’s 2012 reelection campaign.

Gaspard hails from the same world of radical left-wing community organizing that made Barack Obama who he is today. Gaspard is an expert in the harsh, street-smart organizing tactics taught by Alinsky. He’s the hatchet man Obama sent to New York over a year ago to strong-arm then-Gov. David Paterson into dropping his reelection campaign. As executive director running the DNC’s day-to-day operations, Gaspard will oversee Organizing for America, a project of the DNC supposedly modeled on Alinskyite organizing principles.

Former Obama White House political director Patrick Gaspard is now ACORN's man at the DNC

Born in the Democratic Republic of Congo to Haitian parents, not much is known about this Rasputin-like power behind the throne. Gaspard studiously avoids publicity and is reluctant to talk to journalists. Look him up on Nexis and you will find virtually nothing about this influential radical leader. But his colleagues hold him in high esteem. “Patrick is the best political mind of his generation in New York and maybe the nation,” according to Kevin Sheekey, a lieutenant of New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg. “I wouldn’t dispute that,” added David Axelrod, at the time a senior advisor in the Obama White House.

Gaspard came to the White House from ACORN’s favorite labor organization, Service Employees International Union. (SEIU Locals 100 and 880 were, until recently, official affiliates of ACORN.) He had been executive vice president for political and legislative affairs for SEIU Local 1199 United Healthcare Workers East, which claims to be the largest union local on the planet, “representing more than 300,000 members and retirees in New York, Maryland, the District of Columbia and Massachusetts.”

Evidence suggests that before he joined the Obama administration, Gaspard was ACORN chief organizer Bertha Lewis’ political director in New York. How do we actually know Gaspard, who goes to extraordinary lengths to shun the public spotlight and scarcely appears in Nexis searches, was Lewis’ right hand man?

Because Gaspard’s employment with ACORN was acknowledged by no less an authority than ACORN founder Wade Rathke himself.

Rathke wrote May 16, 2009, at his blog: “Tell me that 1199’s former political director, Patrick Gaspard (who was ACORN New York’s political director before that) didn’t reach out from the White House and help make that happen, and I’ll tell you to take some remedial classes in ‘politics 101.’”

ACORN founder Wade Rathke

The “before that” time period Rathke is referring to is 2003, when Gaspard was executive vice president for political and legislative affairs for Service Employees International Union Local 1199 (United Healthcare Workers East). It’s also worth noting that of all the entries in Bertha Lewis’ rolodex, a copy of which this writer gained possession of in 2009, the entry for Gaspard is the most extensive.

Gaspard’s ties to ACORN, SEIU, and Lewis go back at least to 1989, when he volunteered for the David Dinkins mayoral campaign in New York City. In 2003, he became acting field director for Howard Dean’s presidential bid. He was national field director in 2004 for America Coming Together, a now-defunct get-out-the-vote operation that received a $775,000 fine for campaign finance abuses. In 2006, Gaspard was acting political director for SEIU International. In 2008, Gaspard worked as national political director for the Obama campaign followed by a stint as associate personnel director for the Obama-Biden transition team.

As the old Washington saying goes, politics is personnel. Who knows how many administration offi cials were put in place by Gaspard with direct input from ACORN’s Bertha Lewis? It boggles the mind. Gaspard also worked for New York’s Working Families Party, an appendage of ACORN. Lewis is a co-founder of that party —which endorsed Obama in 2008— and has close ties to Rep. Jerrold Nadler, D-N.Y., who pointedly refused to have the House Judiciary subcommittee he chaired in the previous Congress investigate ACORN.

As news of Gaspard’s involvement with ACORN spread, Rathke changed his blog entry. Where he had written that Gaspard worked for New York ACORN, he inserted two new sentences: “This line used to contain a reference to Patrick Gaspard working for NY ACORN. This is untrue, he never worked for ACORN.”

But Rathke wasn’t able to shove all evidence tying Gaspard to ACORN down the memory hole. If Gaspard isn’t tied to ACORN, why did he sign a letter to the editor of the Nation magazine (dated July 2, 2001) on behalf of the Working Families Party of New York? (Lewis signed the letter on behalf of ACORN and the Working Families Party.)

The party is part of ACORN, according to ACORN’s website, which in 2009 confirmed that in 1998, “ACORN members spearhead[ed] formation of the Working Families Party, the first community-labor party with official ballot status in New York state in more than 50 years.”

Internal ACORN documents obtained by this writer show Gaspard gave ACORN $40,000 before he joined the Obama administration. While Gaspard worked as an executive vice president of SEIU Local 1199, he gave ACORN $15,000 in 2007 and $25,000 in 2008. That’s an awfully large tithe for someone who made $111,894 in 2007 and who has a wife and two children. The $111,894 figure comes from an SEIU 1199 tax return. (If salary and deferred benefits are combined, the total is $151,869.)

Given Gaspard’s longstanding links to ACORN, it’s not at all surprising that Scott Levenson, a lobbyist and spokesman for ACORN, dropped by the White House to visit with his former co-worker. The purpose of the meeting was not disclosed. Another New Yorker in the Obama administration, Secretary of Housing and Urban Development Shaun Donovan, has close ties to ACORN. Before taking office, Donovan was New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s housing development commissioner. He worked closely with ACORN for five years on several projects.

ACORN's man at HUD, Shaun Donovan

“Perhaps no administration official has had more interaction with ACORN than” Donovan, according to the New York Times. Reinforcing the newspaper’s point, ACORN chief organizer Bertha Lewis praised the HUD secretary. “We grew to respect him, and he grew to respect us,” she said. Roll Call, a Washington, D.C., newspaper that covers Capitol Hill, reported Lewis admitted “ACORN has friends in high places for the first time in a long time.” Lewis acknowledged “that she has particularly good relationships with Housing and Urban Development Secretary Shaun Donovan and with Patrick Gaspard, the White House political director.”

This writer filed a Freedom of Information Act request with HUD last year seeking all correspondence between Secretary Donovan and ACORN. Instead of the maximum 45 days allowed, HUD responded eight months later. The letter said no such records of correspondence between ACORN and Donovan exist.

That’s hard to believe.

(This article is excerpted from “Subversion Inc.: A new book reveals how Obama’s ACORN friends are still ripping off American taxpayers,” by Matthew Vadum which was published in the May 2011 issue of Townhall magazine and is republished here with permission. Copyright © 2011 by Matthew Vadum.)

An award-winning investigative journalist, Matthew Vadum is a senior editor at Capital Research Center, a conservative think tank in Washington, D.C. Vadum is author of the new book Subversion Inc.: How Obama’s ACORN Red Shirts are Still Terrorizing and Ripping Off American Taxpayers (WND Books), from which this piece is adapted. Of the book Andrew Breitbart says, “For too long the institutional left has been allowed to operate under cover of darkness because the Democrat-media complex refuses to hold them accountable. But these radicals who have been sticking it to Americans for decades scatter like cockroaches under the harsh spotlight of Matthew Vadum’s great new book, Subversion Inc.”

An ambitious rebranding scheme that began earlier this year has now accelerated to include affiliates in at least 12 states. The bankruptcy filing the organization slyly submitted on Election Day is properly viewed as “a head fake” and a “public relations gimmick” arranged to distract attention away from the partisan political activities of renamed affiliates, sources say.

It is worth recalling that the organization known in full as the Association of Community Activists for Reform Now had initially denied reports that it would be dropping its tarnished name in press statements released in the summer of 2009.  Wade Rathke, who founded ACORN in 1970, had announced on his blog that ACORN International, one of many affiliate organizations, had officially changed its name to “Community Organizations International.” Former board members who came together under the banner of ACORN 8 in response to an embezzlement scandal saw the move as a possible opener to a larger rebranding effort.

Scott Levenson, a spokesman for organization’s national leadership, issued a statement claiming that the name has not been dropped and that Rathke is no longer connected with ACORN.

“ACORN is not changing its name,” he declared. “ACORN International, is a five-year old organization from which ACORN withdrew a year ago as part of an overall restructuring process and requested that they stop using the ACORN name, which they have now done. Wade Rathke was fired as Chief Organizer of ACORN in June 2008.”

Just after ACORN’s leadership announced that it was dissolving its network on April 1 of this year, ACORN Housing, the national affiliate at the center of an undercover videotape investigation, renamed itself Affordable Housing Centers of America. Several state affiliates have now followed suit with at least one notable exception that has attracted a paucity of press coverage.

The ACORN Community Labor Organizing Center (ACLOC), which is registered in Louisiana and also maintains a strong presence in Texas, has served as a major conduit for political operations and could play a prominent role in the 2012 elections. The affiliate was prominently mentioned in a House Oversight Committee report that probed into ACORN’s financial transactions and political activities.

“According to a document provided by former ACORN employees, the ACORN Community Labor Organizing Center (“ACLOC”) led important campaigns including the Texas for Obama Campaign,” the report said. “According to the document, ACLOC raised 1.3 million dollars from political campaigns and delivered the funds directly to ACORN offices. The document noted, `[d]oes the ACORN association board want Wade [Rathke] to be this intimately involved in coordinating campaigns this close to ACORN?’ACORN readily acknowledged its partisan behavior.”

ACLOS is categorized as an “active” organization on the Louisiana Secretary of State’s web site, but it is also listed as being “Not in Good Standing for Failure to File Annual Report.”

Jacques Berry, the press secretary for Louisiana Secretary of State Jay Dardenne, said in an interview that ACLOS and other ACORN affiliates that have declined to submit their report could potentially lose their legal status.

“We are not an enforcement agency,” he explained. “We just change their designation of an organization if they miss their annual report anniversary and if they miss it three years in a row then we revoke their legal ability to do business in Louisiana. The annual report is not a financial document. It just includes basic information like name, address and if there’s any changes to any changes to pertinent information such as the makeup officers. Even if no changes are made, they need to file every year. We don’t get into financials at all that’s for the state department of revenue.”

ACLOC was founded in 2005 for purpose of building and fostering partnerships between community activists and organized labor, according to the group’s now defunct web site. In Canada, ACLOC provided “basic training” for recruits with Service Employee International Union (SEIU) who then moved into “Organizer Apprentice” positions. ACLOC has also partnered with the SEIU in Houston and Boston.

The ACORN labor group has also allied with the United Federation of Teachers (UFT) to provide “community support” for daycare providers. It also joined with the United Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW) “to put pressure” on a grocery store chain in Arizona to allow for unionization.

There is no escaping the strong nexus that exists between ACORN and organized labor. Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.), the current ranking minority member on the House Oversight Committee, has reported extensively on this partnership and how it relates to partisan political activities.

“SEIU/ACORN has leveraged its size, influence, and wealth to advance its policies and agendas through a complicated web of political connections, backroom negotiations, public relations, intimidation and litigation,” a February 2010 report observed. “SEIU/ACORN has spent millions of dollars and man hours supporting union friendly federal and state candidates and legislation. These connections are then used to entice employers into neutrality agreements with offers of government subsidies and union concessions.”

All told, organized labor has contributed over $10 million to ACORN, since 2005 with the SEIU contributing about $8.7 million of this sum including over $222,000 in 2009 alone, according to Labor Department records.

ACLOC was the single largest recipient of donations from the SEIU to ACORN and its many affiliates between 2005 and 2008, U.S. Department of Labor (DOL) LM-2 disclosure forms show.

The SEIU donations recorded on LM-2’s show the ACLOC Apprentice Program received $630,457 in 2008, $780,300 in 2007, $1.5 million in 2006, and $834,841 in 2005.

Going forward, the ACORN affiliates that have dropped the tarnished name may have greater flexibility and dexterity to solicit renewed financial support from long-times allies within organized labor and liberal foundations, notes Matthew Vadum, a senior editor and analyst with the Capital Research Center (CRC).

“This bankruptcy filing is really a public relations head fake,” he said. “ACORN is altering its organizational structure because the name has been sullied and damaged. But it remains a potent force.”

Moreover, he added, the congressional funding ban that went into effect last year is now lifted.

The lead ACORN organization registered in Arkansas and New Orleans has in the past received $3 million from the Marguerite Casey Foundation, $821,000 from the Robin Hood Foundation, $595,000 from the Edna McConnell Clark Foundation and $65,000 from the Annie E. Casey Foundation, according to CRC.

Other foundations have contributed to ACORN’s affiliates.

Project Vote, the affiliate at center of on-going voter registration fraud allegations and investigations, has received $4,047,500 from the Rockefeller Family Fund, $1,460,801 from the Tides Foundation, and $2,643,100 from the Vanguard Charitable Endowment Program, financial records show.

“The professional Left didn’t throw tons of cash at ACORN each cycle because of the group’s lofty ideals,” notes Bret Jacobson, a partner with Maverick Strategies based in Washington D.C. “ACORN was hired out for bare-knuckle, ground-level politics. They picked their fights shrewdly and in many cases played a key role in pushing ballot measures for minimum wage or “living wage” hikes in swing states that were meant to impact the election for liberal politicians. In short, they didn’t spend their time preaching to the choir — they were busy proselytizing to the swing voters … or at the very least busy creating bogus voter registrations for them.”

On a web site that was removed from public view but preserved by CRC, Project Vote identifies the renamed affiliates it worked with in key states as part of its GOTV efforts. Those states are: Arkansas, Colorado, Connecticut, Florida, Kentucky, Illinois, Michigan, Missouri, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Texas, and Wisconsin.

Despite its questionable legal status in Louisiana, ACLOC remains in position to campaign aggressively on behalf of Barack Obama in 2012 and to partner with rebranded ACORN entities.

“There is no doubt in my mind that ACORN, in whatever form it chooses to disguise itself, will be a big player in the 2012 election cycle, particularly in the areas of voter registration and voter mobilization,” Vadum said. “ACORN’s affiliate Project Vote is still apparently well funded and has an ongoing relationship with rebranded ACORN entities such as Pennsylvania Neighborhoods for Social Justice (PNSJ). With Project Vote and PNSJ it’s largely the same people. That’s the ACORN way: keep recycling people and campaigns and strategies and tactics over and over again while covering up the tracks. My understanding is that ACORN has never been strong in Virginia. ACORN prefers states with big cities because it concentrates its recruiting and activism in poor urban neighborhoods.”

Levenson has served as ACORN’s crisis communications consultant and needless to say, he’s been a busy man.

Nevertheless, Janine Materna’s loss for the South Shores City Council is ACORN’s fault.  From the Staten Island Advance:

Democrat Janine Materna’s campaign is considering suing its consulting firm, the Advance Group, for $1 million, and claimed that consultant Scott Levenson’s position with the controversial ACORN group was among the reasons Ms. Materna lost the South Shore City Council race.

“It’s because of him that Janine lost the election,” said Jodi Materna, her sister’s campaign manager.

She said the campaign did not know of Levenson’s ACORN affiliation and if it had, “we never would have hired him.”

…

Levenson, ACORN’s national spokesman, said it was a “true sign of political immaturity to scapegoat anyone for Janine’s loss.”

Materna is not taking her loss lying down.  She’s suing Levenson’s Advance Group for $1 million.  A reason is not cited in the article, but we’re guessing it’s because Materna’s embarrassed that she doesn’t read the newspapers or watch cable news.  If she did, she would have seen what a colorful character she had hired to run her council campaign.

And speaking of that, there’s an old saying: if you lie with dogs, expect to get fleas.  This certainly seems to be the case here.  The article also reported a “heated” meeting took place between the two to the point where the police were called in to intervene.

In typical fashion, similar to his obnoxious defense of ACORN, Levenson said this of his client: “The lies and erratic behavior of the Materna family are nothing more than a scam to avoid paying their bills. It is an extreme case of sore loser.”

What a peach.  It should be noted Michael Gaspard, brother of White House political director Patrick Gaspard, works for Scott Levenson.  How does that old saying go again?

Levenson’s inclusion in the newly released list of visitors to the Obama White House makes the president’s claim he’s clueless about his former employer ACORN — and its election fraud trials and tribulations — especially difficult to believe. That’s because Gaspard is President Obama’s right hand man. Some describe him as the new Karl Rove.

The purpose of the visit by Levenson (pictured below) who met with Gaspard in March was not disclosed.

The relentlessly combative Levenson, who is also a registered lobbyist for New York ACORN, was thrown out of Glenn Beck’s TV studio May 6 for suggesting during a commercial break that the TV host was racist for daring to challenge ACORN. Levenson’s been helping to coordinate ACORN’s public disinformation strategy which relies heavily on lies and misdirection.

Few would care about Levenson’s visit to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue if it weren’t for the fact that President Obama claims — unconvincingly — to be out of the loop regarding ACORN.

After the undercover prostitution sting videos first surfaced on BigGovernment.com and the “Glenn Beck Program” in September the American public began to realize that ACORN is a vast criminal conspiracy whose reach extends to the highest levels of the U.S. government.

Obama said at that time he was barely aware of ACORN’s problems. “This is not the biggest issue facing the country. It’s not something I’m paying a lot of attention to,” he told ABC’s George Stephanopoulos.

Nobody believed the president — except for certain members of the mainstream media. Evidently Anne E. Kornblut and Jason Horowitz of the Washington Post are also incurious members of the MSM. Their puff piece profile of Gaspard today suggests they have no interest in probing Gaspard’s ties to ACORN.

Gaspard, who came to the White House after serving as executive vice president of SEIU Local 1199, has ties to ACORN that go way back.

Gaspard also worked for New York’s Working Families Party, which is part of the ACORN network. ACORN chief organizer Bertha Lewis is a co-founder of that party — which endorsed Obama last year — and has close ties to Rep. Jerrold Nadler (D-N.Y.) who has been most reluctant to have the House Judiciary subcommittee he chairs investigate ACORN. Nadler is even providing advice to ACORN through its lawyer Arthur Z. Schwartz but he refuses to address this huge conflict of interest. The congressman’s press office won’t return my calls.

My article is available in full at the American Spectator.

ACORN’s explanation?  A regional representative told the New York Times that the two are just trying to make a name for themselves.  Has ACORN no shame?

Matthew Henderson, the regional representative, said this is the first time the organization has faced criminal prosecution.

From the Mercury News:

[Former ACORN employee Christopher Howell] Edwards told Las Vegas Justice of the Peace William Jansen on Tuesday that while he never sought written permission, his ACORN supervisors knew canvassers making $8 per hour were paid bonuses of $5 per shift for exceeding a quota of 20 voter registration cards last August and September.

His regional supervisor, Amy Busefink, initially wanted him to set the bonus mark at 26, he said, but agreed to his idea of 21.

“Hey, it’s Las Vegas. It’s blackjack,” Edwards said.

And according to Justice of the Peace Jansen, according to the Times:

“It appears to me,” he said, “that Amy approved this 21 blackjack program as an incentive to get more people registered so they can be in good standing to meet the national quota of Acorn.”

The case now will go to a jury and according to the Associated Press, ACORN and a former employee also standing trial, Amy Busefink, will plead not guilty upon arraignment October 14.

This case will likely have a dramatic effect on ACORN’s/Project Vote’s voter registration program as it could lead to discontinuing incentives for registrations alltogether.

But, even more critical than that, by having ACORN as an entity on trial, it stands to lose its non-profit status in the state, according to a more complete AP story on Breitbart.com and face other penalties.

And ACORN’s attorney, as well as the one for Busefink, are attempting all sorts of legal gymnastics.  The Mercury News article:

“There’s no hard and fast evidence that people were fired for not reaching that mark,” [ACORN attorney Lisa] Rasmussen said, adding that bonuses were awarded to people “for a job well done.”

Apparently witness testimony isn’t sufficient.  And this:

Busefink’s lawyer, Kevin Stolworthy, said Busefink was actually employed at the time by the advocacy group Project Vote, a nonprofit voting rights organization that is not named as a party in the criminal case.

ACORN can’t have it both ways: it can’t pretend to be under one umbrella, ACORN, then when questions are raised, attempt to explain there is a division of labor.

For example, when we caught “campaigns” for political candidates on a board in the background of the Brooklyn video, we alerted the New York Post reporter, who followed up with a story.  In it, ACORN spokesman Scott Levenson said:

ACORN insists it is not doing anything wrong because the primary endorsements and campaigning are being done by the group’s political action committee, spokesman Scott Levenson said.

ACORN’s sloppiness is slowing catching up with it and its attempt to have it both ways won’t work forever.