The proposal from the Illinois Policy Institute for a campaign to deal with Chicago's government worker pensions crisis by switching to 401(k)-style retirement plans similarly focuses on a politician – in this case Mayor Rahm Emanuel. The proposal says that "Mayor Emanuel has privately expressed the need for 401(k)-style changes to truly achieve reform."



The institute plans to "leverage the leadership potential of Mayor Emanuel … as the spark for wider pension changes in Illinois." It adds that "friendly legislators would be welcome to draft legislation modelled on our policy work and work in tandem with Mayor Emanuel to move it forward in the legislative process."

John Tillman, CEO of the Illinois Policy Institute, told the Guardian that Emanuel had been "an outspoken proponent of pension reform that includes moving to a 401(k)-style, defined contribution system." He saw no problem with the lobbying that the think tank undertakes.

NERMEEN SHAIKH: The secretive American Legislative Exchange Council, known as ALEC, has just ended a week-long meeting in Washington where corporate lobbyists worked with state lawmakers on model bills that will later be introduced in states nationwide. ALEC has reportedly drafted a number of new bills designed to prevent President Obama from cutting emissions, and to weaken state policies promoting clean energy. Another measure would charge homeowners fees for installing their own solar panels. This follows ALEC’s sponsoring of at least 77 energy measures in 34 states last year.

Meanwhile, The Guardian reports new documents reveal ALEC is struggling to re-enlist donors after an exodus prompted by its backing of Florida’s "Stand Your Ground" law. Stand Your Ground initially helped shield George Zimmerman from prosecution for killing Trayvon Martin and was later used in instructions to the jury that acquitted him. According to The Guardian, ALEC has lost nearly 400 state legislators from its network over the past two years and more than 60 major corporate donors. The group is facing a funding shortfall for the first time after losing more than a third of its projected income.

AMY GOODMAN: Now conservative groups across the United States are apparently planning a coordinated effort in six states to raise money for attacks on public sector rights and services in the key areas of education, healthcare, income tax and workers’ compensation. The proposals were coordinated by the State Policy Network, an alliance of groups that act as incubators of conservative strategy at the state level. In just one example, a proposal from the Illinois Policy Institute outlines a campaign to switch Chicago’s government worker pensions to 401(k)-style retirement plans. A copy of the plan published by The Guardian shows the institute wants to, quote, "leverage the leadership potential of Mayor [Rahm] Emanuel ... as the spark for wider pension changes."

For more, we go to Washington, where we’re joined by Lisa Graves, executive director of the Center for Media and Democracy and publisher of PRWatch.org and ALECExposed.org. Last week, their work featured in a several reports by The Guardian. On Monday, they jointly published another story, "Shilling for Profit: A Case Study of ALEC’s Campaign Against Divestment from Apartheid South Africa." We’ll talk about that in a minute.

Lisa Graves, welcome back to Democracy Now! Talk about your most significant findings in your most recent report.

LISA GRAVES: Well, I think that the report we did jointly with the People for the American Way organization was the product of a long-standing piece of research we were doing, because this is ALEC’s 40th year, and we thought they ought to be held accountable for all 40 years. What we had discovered in our lengthy research was that ALEC was one of the major movers in the effort to stop the United States from divesting from South Africa and to thwart those policies. And so, we recently published a piece that really goes into detail about how influential ALEC was in pushing the Reagan administration and officials in the Reagan administration to try to thwart efforts to divest from South Africa. It’s quite astounding.

AMY GOODMAN: Why did the piece appear in the London Review of Books and not in your traditional place where you publish, in The New Yorker or, as it was expected to appear, in The Washington Post, with Executive Editor Marty Baron saying the sourcing in the article didn’t meet the _Post_’s standards?

SEYMOUR HERSH: Well, that’s what he told me in an—or one of his editors said in an email, after the story, when it had been, I thought, scheduled to run for a few weeks, was—and, you know, he’s—look, he’s the boss. He’s a rational, good editor, and he’s entitled to say it didn’t meet—the information I got is that it didn’t meet the standards of The Washington Post. And I respect that. He’s no fool, you know, and I don’t know the guy, but everything I heard about him is that he’s a very competent editor. I know people that worked with him when he was that the L.A. Times, which he was. And so, I don’t begrudge an editor to say what he wants. You know, look, people like me, we really wear out welcomes very quickly. You know, sometimes you get tired of reporters coming in and saying, you know, the sky is always black, and it’s not sunny. And that’s what we do. So, investigative reporters, we have a very short shelf life. You know, we’re the Bad News Bears.

AMY GOODMAN: Talk about the information that came out of the documents that NSA contractor Edward Snowden released and how they bear on this, Sy.

SEYMOUR HERSH: Well, that’s why I went to the Post. Snowden gave—you know, Snowden—by the way, the Post, you’ve got to admire the Post for publishing Snowden, too, a mainstream press newspaper doing it, obviously getting heat from the White House. One of the documents Snowden gave that ended up being in The Washington Post's hands was sort of an annual budget request by the intelligence community, and it included information about the National Security Agency, a much, very much higher document than top-secret, etc., etc. And there was a section of it—the Post ran only a dozen or two—less than that, maybe 17, 18 pages of the document. The rest they withheld at the request of the government, which is their right. And—but in the story, a summary story, they mentioned two things that made me think—that really woke me up. They mentioned the sensor system. And I had known about the sensor system from people inside. And as I mentioned earlier, it's difficult, because passive sensors are something that, as a journalist, I’m glad we have. Passive, nobody’s hurt. We collect information that we can make judgments on.

AMY GOODMAN: These are run by the National Reconnaissance Office.

SEYMOUR HERSH: Yes, and the National Security Agency, too, runs a lot of them. And presumably, they’re not to be tampered with, the findings. This administration tampered, is one of the points of the article in the London Review of Books, was that they tampered with something they shouldn’t tamper with, a system that should be taken very seriously. But that article in The Washington Post mentioned the sensor system.

And it also mentioned something else...