USA

WARNING: This site deals only with the corporate corruption of science, and makes no inference about the motives or activities of individuals involved.
    There are many reasons why individuals become embroiled in corporate corruption activities - from political zealotry to over-enthusiastic activism; from gullibility to greed.
    Please read the OVERVIEW carefully, and make up your own mind.

EXPLANATORY • ABBREVIATIONS • INITIALS • JARGON • FIRST & NICKNAMES • STRUCTURES RELATED MATERIAL • S Fred Singer • SEPP • Alexis de Tocqueville Inst. • George C Marshall Inst. • Global Climate Coalition • Frederick Seitz • William O'Keefe • Heidelberg Appeal • Michel Salomon • Intern'l Center for Scientific Ecology • Thomas Borelli • SourceWatch/Crandall

RANDOM OBSERVATIONS Doctorates can be purchased mail-oder or obtained from some college established by a town council in the boondocks. However the quality of the individual may be a more important determiner of expertise than the quality of the credentialing institution.

She was the wife of S. Fred Singer, and his partner in the climate-denial operation known as Science and Environmental Policy Project (SEPP). Crandall was also an experienced PR and corporate propaganda expert in her own right having worked as Director of Communications at both George Mason and Georgetown Universities.

Candace Crandall was the wife and partner of climate scientist/denier S. Fred Singer, and the sister of the conservative spokesman Robert Crandall who works through the Brookings Institution.

Before her marriage she had been a Californian sports reporter, then later ran the public information office at George Mason University.

She then became the PR Director/Director of Communications at the Center for Strategic and International Studies at Georgetown University [A conservative think tank that served as a roost for hawks like Henry Kissinger, Sbigniew Brzesinsky, James Schlesinger, and Robert McFarlane]

After marriage to Singer (who was then at the University of Virginia), she joined him at the Washington Institute for Values in Public Policy (where she became listed as "Editorial Director") . This was a policy-tank set up by the Moonies Unification Church.

From this base, and with organisational help from the Alexis de Tocqueville Institution, Singer, Crandall and Gerhard Stohrer created the Science and Environmental Policy Project (SEPP) in 1990. However Crandall was still using the Washington Institute "editorial director" title in August 1991.

SEPP then sought additional funds from the tobacco and general industrial corporations wishing to fight the activists on global climate change. She became SEPP's nominal director and spokesperson, and later helped in the creation of the Heidelberg Appeal and with the International Center for Scientific Ecology.

SEPP and the Global Science Coalition (a coalition of industrial groups) joined forces both in the Heidelberg Appeal scam and the corporate coalition attempts to destabilize the 1992 Rio Earth Summit. During this time Crandall used the title of "publicist" with the Global Science Communications Team. The Global Climate Coalition had been created by major energy and chemical companies (aided by the National Manufacturers' Association) as the key organizer of serious attempts at disrupting the summit.

In 1993, after Rio, Crandall helped run the SEPP/ICSE conference in Paris and a later seminar at the George Mason University, both of which were aimed at extending the influence of the Heidelberg Appeal project and promoting the idea that the regulators depended on 'junk-science' in their determinations. She worked with Tom Borelli and Gerard Wirz of Philip Morris on these projects.

Crandall was also high on the list of prominent scientific commentators who Philip Morris decided were available (for a generous fee) to put their bylines on propaganda articles and editorials promoted to compliant newspapers. The memo lists her credentials as:

Fred Singer is not on this list, presumably because SEPP at this time was being looked after by British-American Tobacco and its PR company, Shandwick.

About this time Crandall also became associated with the Independent Women's Forum, a Scaife-funded conservative group which opposed welfare dependency, affirmative action, and etc. It was run by Barbara Leeden, the conservative wife of the neocon luminary, Michael Leeden (AEI, Brookings & Project for the New American Century).

Crandall separated from Singer in August 1999 (they divorced a few years later) but her involvement with SEPP continued. In early 2000 she turned up as the associate producer on the PBS program "Think Tank with Ben Wattenberg (a far-right-wing show which ran for four or more years) and, simultaneously, she was credited with being an Adjunct Fellow at the National Center for Public Policy Research in Washington DC. This was another Scaife and tobacco-funded think-tank run by the notorious Amy Moritz Ridenour [an associate of Jack Abramoff, Ralph Reed, and Grover Norquist].

Crandall wrote many editorials and articles for prominent US newspapers and magazines in support of the tobacco industry.

DOCUMENT TIME SEQUENCE

1984: For three years she served as communications director with the Center for Strategic & International Studies, edited promotional publications for Washington embassies, and has acted as a media consultant to universities, think tanks and other non-profits in the Washington, D.C. area.
However her email address was still given at crandall@sepp.org

1984 - 86: She was working at the Public Information Office at George Mason University

1986 Jun to 1990 Jun: Director of Communications at the Center for Strategic and International Studies at GeorgeTown University (ie its PR Director).

1987 She is cowriting articles on ozone-depletion with S Fred Singer ("Assessing the threat to the Ozone" in the Consumers' Research magazine (June 1987), and "Assessing Stratospheric Ozone" (Sep 1987) in the Moonie's Washington Times magazine The World and I.

1989: A few years earlier the Washington Post had reported on the Washington Institute and its relationship with the Unification Church, noting:

"The church also is spending $1.5 million a year on a new local think tank, the Washington Institute for Values in Public Policy, that is underwriting conservative-oriented research and seminars at Stanford University, the University of Chicago, the Institute for Energy Analysis in Oak Ridge, Tenn., and other institutions."

[The Director was paid well: a few years after Singer moved to SEPP, the Washington Institute Director was earning $142,000 pa. ]
Sourcewatch/Washington Institute

1990: The Science and Environmental Policy Project (SEPP) began as an affiliate of the Washington Institute for Values in Public Policy. S. Fred Singer's SEPP received startup funding and a one-year donation of office space from the Washington Institute, which was totally controlled and funded by the Moonies Unification Church.

1990 May: Crandall married S Fred Singer and began to help him run SEPP. At this time she was employed by the Washington Institute.

1991 Aug 16: As editorial director of the Washington Institute (which at that time continued to harbour SEPP) , she wrote a letter ppublished in the Wall Street Journal about mandatory HIV testing for doctors. (Chiller: Does the Doctor Have AIDS?)

1992: SEPP was involved during this year in the Heidelberg Appeal scam, and work leading up to the Rio Earth Summit. It was actively working for the tobacco and asbestos industries, but her name doesn't appear on any of the tobacco archive documents.

1992 May Singer, Salomon and members of SEPP were involved in setting up the Heidelberg hazardous materials handling conference at which the Heidelberg Appeal was first presented by Michael Salomon. This operation was funded by the asbestos and tobacco industries, and used in support of the wider coalition of interests opposing the Rio Earth Summit.

1992 June: At the Rio Earth Summit. She is listed as a 'publicist' on the Global Science Communications Team of Global Climate Coalition (GCC) which ran the industry's delay and disinformation program to try to block decisions being taken at the Summit. The GCC 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 National Manufacturers Association and the tobacco industry)

Crandall clearly provided liaison between the GCC group and the Singer/SEPP/ICSE Heidelberg Appeal operation.

1992 Aug 9: The Detroit News is now 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, and suggests that "public-funded scientists are playing fast and loose with the facts" It is probably written by Singer of Crandall.

1992 Nov: She now writes under the title of "Executive Director of SEPP,"

1992 Dec 9: Crandall wrote an article in the Moonie's newspaper, the Washington Times, defends the "Wise Use" coalition. In the article she also 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

"President-elect Bill Clinton [to] 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."

It is an extraordinary diatribe which provides some insight into her zealotry.

1993 March 2: In a memo written by Tom Hockaday of APCO to Lance Pressl of Philip Morris she is listed prominently among the: "Possible Individuals 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, we are attempting to identify other individuals who might be interested in authoring, the IAQ article.

We have compiled the following list of possible 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.

[Note: Tom Borelli was the main science corrupter at Philip Morris USA (the domestic company) -- and he helped Crandall organise the SEPP-GMU conference. Bonner Cohen, whose by-line was too risky to use, was the editor of EPA Watch newsletter for APCO/Philip Morris. Both men were later partners of Steve Milloy of TASSC]

1993 May 23: An article she wrote in the San Diego Union-Tribune is widely quoted by those lobbyists and PR companies promoting the junk-science message. Steve Milloy at TASSC quotes 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 ."

1993 May 24-25: Together with Tom Borelli of Philip Morris, she is the major organiser of the ICSE/SEPP/George Mason conference on "Scientific Integrity in the Political Process" which was funded by the tobacco industry. The tobacco industry's calender of important events lists:

Despite the industry shills who are on the speaking list, "Scientific Integrity" is the new industry catchcry. The Tobacco Institute's publishes a book "Tobacco Smoke and the Nonsmoker: Scientific Integrity at the Crossroads" and speeches are regularly 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 was being turned out during this period to beat the same drum.

1994: Crandall is specializing in health risk issues, climate change, and environmental politics. SEPP was directing its attacks on the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), and in this it was supported by a wide coalition of corporate-funded astroturfs and think-tanks, all claiming to have scientific backing for their criticism.

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 and to have its budget reduced by Congress. The ICSE/SEPP/GMU conference was just one of a flood of 'scientific integrity' projects that the tobacco industry releases at that time. See:

1995 Nov: SEPP organises a conference in Leipzig, Germany, where the Leipzig Declaration (written by Fred Singer) is presented and signed. It is promoted in the USA by having TV weathermen and other celebrities publicly sign it. A large number of signers with the name "Elvis Presley" together with many "Donald Ducks" also added their signature later.

1995 - 96: Crandall is associated with the Independent Women's Forum in an unknown capacity. They are opposing the feminist movement, and she writes anti-abortion tomes.

1999 Aug: She separates from Singer but her SEPP involvement continues

2000 Jan: She becomes the Associate Producer of the PBS program "Think-Tank with Ben Wattenberg" Wattenberg is a well-known right-wing commentator in the Rush Limbaugh mold. [sic] Wattenberg is an associate of the American Enterprise Institute. This program is a parade of interviews with neocons and old Cold War warriors from her Center for Strategic and International Studies days.

2000 Feb: She became a Adjunct Fellow at the National Center for Public Policy Research run by Amy Moritz Ridenour. This think-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.

2004 Jan: She is still a series Producer for PBS