DOUG HELLER
Consumer advocate with the Santa Monica-based Foundation for Taxpayer and Consumer Rights, Heller said today: “Internal Enron e-mails we have obtained confirm that Schwarzenegger was among a small group of executives who met with then-Enron head Ken Lay at the posh Peninsula Beverly Hills hotel in May of 2001. The meeting with Enron occurred ten days after rolling blackouts darkened California; Schwarzenegger has previously said that he does not remember such a meeting. You don’t meet with America’s most well-known corporate crook in the middle of California’s biggest financial disaster and not remember. Schwarzenegger should come clean about what happened at that meeting and if he shares Lay’s views on energy regulation.”
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GREG PALAST
Palast is coauthor of Regulation and Democracy and author of The Best Democracy Money Can Buy. He has just written a piece entitled “Arnold Unplugged,” based on the just-revealed Enron documents. He said today: “A $9 billion refund from Enron and other companies is in jeopardy if Schwarzenegger is elected. The secret meeting between Lay and Schwarzenegger on May 17, 2001 was specifically aimed at undercutting legal moves by Gray Davis and Cruz Bustamante from seeking funds from Enron and others for illegal manipulation of the power markets. The meeting took place one month after Bustamante filed a $9 billion claim against the power companies, a case now heading for trial.”
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MARTIN LEE,
Author of The Beast Reawakens: Fascism’s Resurgence from Hitler’s Spymasters to Today’s Neo-Nazi Groups and Right-Wing Extremists, Lee has spoken with confidential sources regarding aspects of Schwarzenegger’s comments about Hitler. Lee said today: “In the early 1990s, Schwarzenegger paid more than a million dollars to a documentary film producer to obtain the politically embarrassing outtakes of ‘Pumping Iron,’ a documentary film. The secret pay-off gave Schwarzenegger the rights to the film and the right to destroy the out-takes in which he spoke about Hitler…. While Schwarzenegger now says he repudiates everything Hitler stood for, this was not always the case. His youthful admiration of Hitler, his pro-Hitler comments recorded on film, his heel-clicking and SS-strutting antics as a body-builder, his wedding-day toast to former UN Secretary-General Kurt Waldheim (after Waldheim’s involvement in Nazi war crimes had been publicly disclosed), and Schwarzenegger’s support for Jorg Haider’s neofascist Freedom Party in Austria are part of a disturbing pattern that the actor-cum-office seeker has tried to whitewash and obfuscate…. Today, Schwarzenegger continues to serve on the advisory board of U.S. English, a controversial anti-immigrant group with a history of ties to organized white supremacists and racists. Other key figures in the English-only movement are involved in the group People’s Advocate, which launched the recall effort in the first place.”
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LORRAINE QUIROGA
Quiroga is communications director for the League of United Latin American Citizens. The group has called on Schwarzenegger to resign from the advisory board of U.S. ENGLISH.
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For more information, contact at the Institute for Public Accuracy:
Sam Husseini, (202) 347-0020; or David Zupan, (541) 484-9167