Landrieu caper prep: Whole lotta typin' goin' on

[February 01, 2010]  NEW ORLEANS (AP) -- Johnny Angel opened the door to his old, brick-faced duplex and saw them all there, typing away quietly on their computers just days before their hidden-camera stunt in Democratic Sen. Mary Landrieu's district office.

"Man, it was laptop city in this place," said Angel, known locally as the front man for the swing band Johnny Angel and the Swinging Demons.

Working away were Stan Dai, 24, of the Washington, D.C., area, Joseph Basel, 24, of Minnesota, and James O'Keefe, the 25-year-old daredevil videographer known as "the pimp" since he recorded undercover visits to ACORN offices nationwide.

"I had no idea he was the cat from those ACORN videos," said Angel, whose pale face is framed by a dense, coal-black pompadour and thick sideburns that stretch two-thirds the way down his cheeks.

Angel's roommate, Ben Wetmore, told him that the three would be staying awhile. Wetmore has his own colorful past that includes an arrest for trying to tape a speech by Tipper Gore after police asked him to stop filming the former vice president's wife.

While Dai, Basel and O'Keefe aren't discussing their relationships or what they did in New Orleans during the days that led up to their Jan. 25 arrest, a more complete picture has emerged through interviews with more than a dozen people who know or met the suspects, and a review of writings and videos posted on the Web by some of the suspects and their friends.

A fourth person arrested, Robert Flanagan, 24, of New Orleans, the son of the Shreveport-based acting U.S. attorney for Louisiana's Western District, also has been silent.

Wetmore and O'Keefe are close, Angel said, but he didn't talk serious issues with any of them. "I didn't know anything about their politics," said Angel.

Angel didn't mind the three crashing at the house because they were nice guys. He just had no idea the three, along with a fourth man who lives in New Orleans, would get mixed up in a scheme that would land them in jail on a charge of entering federal property under false pretenses for the purpose of committing a felony.

Their respective trips to New Orleans ended with Angel driving them to the federal courthouse, their suitcases packed, to receive instructions from court officials outlining the conditions of their release. They're free on $10,000 bond and are scheduled to return to court Feb. 12.

Angel said he asked the guys if what the newspaper was saying was true: Did they really try to mess with Landrieu's phones?

"They said they couldn't talk about it, that the judge said they couldn't discuss the case," Angel said.

In the days before their ill-fated visit to Landrieu's office, O'Keefe and the other three spent an afternoon mingling with fellow conservatives at a luncheon that O'Keefe headlined; at a bar in the French Quarter, they watched the New Orleans Saints earn their first trip to the Super Bowl; and they spent time at one of Angel's shows.

O'Keefe, Basel and Dai had ties to the Leadership Institute, an Arlington, Va.-based program that provided resources to their conservative college publications. Several years ago, Wetmore hired O'Keefe to help establish dozens of conservative magazines on college campuses.

Wetmore used to brag about his influence on the younger O'Keefe after the ACORN videos made him a star: how he gave O'Keefe a job, helped him buy equipment used in his video projects and counseled him.

But standing in the den of his Uptown house about a block off the city's street car line, Wetmore just stared ahead silently when asked about O'Keefe and his other house guests. Did he know about the planned trip to Landrieu's office? Is there a reasonable explanation for what O'Keefe and the others were doing? How does he know the three and when did he meet them?

The 28-year-old student at Loyola University's law school in New Orleans had nothing to say, only politely saying: "I'll think about it" as he closed the front door.

The silence was uncharacteristic from the prolific -- at times caustic -- free-speech advocate who until days ago had an entire Web site dedicated to his research and writings, including tips on how to shut down abortion clinics developed as the leader of a Massachusetts anti-abortion group. Access to Wetmore's blogs, research, writings and speeches on his Web site became inactive soon after O'Keefe's arrest.

But material collected from the site earlier offer some of Wetmore's insights into O'Keefe and the in-your-face activism Wetmore's protege has practiced -- and Wetmore has preached -- behind and in front the camera.

"James O'Keefe's recent work against ACORN has been amazing," Wetmore wrote Oct. 16 on his blog after O'Keefe began releasing videos showing him posing as the pimp with his make-believe prostitute. The videos show O'Keefe and his sidekick seeking advice from ACORN staff on how to buy a house to set up a brothel featuring underage hookers trafficked in from Central America without revealing illegal income.

"As the person who hired James at the (Leadership) Institute, as well as one whom he turned to for help during his final weeks there, I hope to have some minor insight into the whole context of the situation," Wetmore wrote.

For his part, O'Keefe called Wetmore his mentor during his Jan. 21 luncheon speech here at the libertarian-leaning Pelican Institute think-tank, according to one attendee.

Flanagan only met the other three the day before the speech, five days before their arrest, said J. Garrison Jordan, Flanagan's lawyer.

Kevin Kane, who runs the Pelican Institute, said he asked O'Keefe to speak at the luncheon, although Kane declined to say how much he paid O'Keefe. The institute had published its own critical investigation of ACORN and was impressed with O'Keefe's videos, Kane said.

Kane and O'Keefe share another connection: They're both writers for biggovernment.com, run by Web site publisher Andrew Breitbart that last fall was the launching pad for O'Keefe's meteoric rise to notoriety through the ACORN videos.

Wetmore introduced O'Keefe at the institute's luncheon. Basel and Dai joined O'Keefe at the luncheon, and they talked with people in the audience after the event.

It was there that O'Keefe telegraphed publicly that he was working on a new, secret project in New Orleans.

The Saturday night after the Pelican Institute luncheon, Angel invited the group to watch his band perform at the Bombay Club jazz bar near the Quarter. And the next night, on the eve of their visit to Landrieu's office, they returned to the club to watch the Saints on the big screen beat the Minnesota Vikings to win the NFC Championship.

Basel, a Vikings fan, got ribbed by the others, Angel said.

The guys weren't big drinkers or big tippers, said Bennett Sheehy, the 29-year-old bartender who served them. Flanagan drank a mojito and rum and cokes; Dai preferred Maker's Mark bourbon. Sheehy served them a traditional Mardi Gras king cake, brought out after Angel said he was hungry.

More than two months before their trip to New Orleans, O'Keefe and Basel videotaped another stunt, this time testing the patience of administrators at Washington University in St. Louis with a fake Russian gulag built in an open area. The video mocking college liberals features Basel, dressed as a gulag guard, asking a student at one point, "Don't you have the desire to have a brotherhood with the common man?"

Basel, the son of a Lutheran pastor, worked at one time for a Minnesota Republican state senator and for a brief period in 2008 on a dairy farm in Morris, Minn.

Like the others, Dai also has a history of political activism. It dates back to when he brought conservative political commentator Bay Buchanan to his Illinois high school as part of his work with the Young America's Foundation, group spokesman Jason Mattera said. The Washington-area foundation develops political activists and counts as one of its stars Hannah Giles, who played the prostitute in the ACORN videos.

Later, Dai's interest turned to intelligence, a field where he found work as a government contractor.

Flanagan stands out from the others because he didn't share a background in conservative college publications. The All-American pitcher for the Division III baseball team at Rhodes College in Memphis, Tenn., was enrolled last year at Missouri State University's Department of Defense and Strategic Studies, in Fairfax, Va.

He served as a paid Washington intern for Republican Rep. Mary Fallin of Oklahoma and also interned for Sen. Lamar Alexander, R-Tenn.

[Associated Press; By BRETT J. BLACKLEDGE, JUSTIN PRITCHARD and MICHAEL KUNZELMAN]

Associated Press writer Steve Karnowski in Minneapolis contributed to this report.

The AP National Investigative Team can be reached at [e-mail].

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