Byron York reports on the financial ties between George Soros’ Open Society Institute and terrorist-supporting lawyer Lynne Stewart:
Billionaire financier George Soros, whose opposition to President Bush’s conduct of the war on terror caused him to pour millions of dollars into the effort to defeat the president, made a substantial donation to the defense fund for radical lawyer Lynne Stewart, who last week was found guilty of giving aid to Islamic terrorists.
According to records filed with the Internal Revenue Service, Soros’s foundation, the Open Society Institute, or OSI, gave $20,000 in September 2002 to the Lynne Stewart Defense Committee.
In filings with the IRS, foundation officials wrote that the purpose of the contribution was "to conduct a public education campaign around the broad civil rights implications of Lynne Stewart’s indictment."
Soros personally contributed over $95 million to the OSI in 2002 (the donation to Stewart is on page 47 of the pdf file of the OSI 2002 tax return). Its beyond bizarre that someone who favors an "open society" would be financing the advocate of those who prefer the closed society of sharia law. What the heck was George Soros thinking? The mission of the Open Society Institute is to "implement a range of initiatives that aim to promote open societies by shaping government policy and supporting education, media, public health, and human and women’s rights, as well as social, legal, and economic reform." Giving money to Lynne Stewart isn’t mission creep. It’s mission leap.
Update II: My beef with George Soros and his institute is this: he and his group are chock full of rampant hypocrisy. While I tip my hat to his efforts in eastern Europe for his attempts at improving and liberating post-Soviet society, his anti-Bush obsession is causing a fundamental misallocation and distortion of huge resources. If he really wanted to pry open the closed societies of the world, he’d work off of this list, start with the unfree countries and work backward, if by "open" he means "free". Surely Soros’ money could go so much farther in places like Cuba, Burma, Libya, North Korea, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, Syria and Turkmenistan. There are 148 countries with fewer freedoms than the United States. Why waste it here?
If Soros means "open" to be "transparent", the Open Society Institute could do so much better working off of this list, starting at the bottom with countries such as Haiti, Bangladesh, Nigeria, Myanmar and Chad. There are 128 countries that are more corrupt than the United States. But no, Geoge Soros would rather try to stick a thumb in George Bush’s eye and defend America-hating communists such as Lynne Stewart. The hypocrisy is major league and world class. The fact is that without Soros’ money, Lynne Stewart’s rights to a competent defense are the same as with the money. New Sisyphus offers some details which show that what Stewart did went well beyond the bounds of the attorney-client relationship.
Update III: Looking further into the numbers. In 2002, George Soros, via his institute, gave $131.2 million to a whole range of recipients. Of that total, $120.7 million or 92.0% went to recipients who happened to be in the most open society on the planet, the United States of America. When you include all of the other free countries (according to Freedom House) where Soros donated money, it amounts to $123.6 million or 94.2% of the total. If there’s any group of countries that could really use Soros’ money, it would be the partially free ones such as Ukraine, Georgia, Armenia and Malaysia, since their citizen have enough freedoms to perhaps do something to improve their situations. The Ukrainian election and do over are prime examples. However, those countries only got 3.0% of Soro’s OSI money. Like I’ve said, the man can do whatever he wants with these funds. He’s earned it and he’s donated it. But if he really believes in the open society concept, surely he must be aware that he’s wasting and misappropriating his resources since 94.2% of his preaching is already to the choir.
To clarify further. I have not said that Soros or Stewart were treasonous or traitorous, or that Soros funds terrorists. If I did, I would have said so explicitly. Stewart was indicted on the charges, Soros subsequently donated money to her cause, then Stewart was later convicted of those charges. Those are the facts.
The fundamental point here is that this is a criticism of a multi-billionaire, what he’s doing with his money and how he’s misallocating massive resources. If he really wanted to expand and grow his open societies, he’d be marshaling 94.2% of said resources to the partially free and unfree nations, and send the 3.0% to the U.S.
Update IV: In Hilzoy’s post above, Paul Cella came by and wrote this: "The question of when free speech can no longer be extended to a certain faction is one that must be decided by the people’s representatives sitting in legislative assemblies." This is where Paul and I differ. For me, the First Amendment and the body of resultant case law is good enough. When legislatures start infringing on the boundaries of free speech, I get very nervous because that opens the door to a tyranny of the majority. For example, even though the Supreme Court upheld it, that is why I opposed the McCain-Feingold bill. Because of this, I do not agree with his statement that "subsersives" be given the option of "silence, exile or death".
In their FAQ, the OSI proclaims that there is "no monopoly on truth", but then they proclaim their own truth in the next sentence, that their society is "characterized by a reliance on the rule of law, the existence of a democratically elected government, a diverse and vigorous civil society, and respect for minorities and minority opinions." So which is it, because apparently a communist’s or a Wahhabi’s truth would not be welcome in a Soros society.
[Update I below the fold]