The Maldon Institute - Guess What? Guess Who?

In the course of blogging at this blog, occasionally readers (some astute and some otherwise) email in suggestions for blog posts. Some are interesting, some less so.

A while ago, one reader suggested I take a look at something called The Maldon Institute.

So I took a look.

It's hard to pin down exactly what the institute is. The institute described itself in 2007 this way:

The Maldon Institue was founded in 1985 in support of the concept that realistic assessments of political, economic, social and environmental risks, issues and opportunities are essential to reasonable decision making especially regarding the emerging and developing economies of Eastern Europe, Central Asia, Latin American and Africa.

And on the website, you can find this description:

The Maldon Institute’s (TMI) mission is to provide and publish information on matters ignored or misrepresented by the media, or that is believed will amplify the knowledge necessary to understand a variety of international and domestic press and government reports. TMI seeks to publish truthful information where false reporting may have contributed to our loss of tranquility.

Loss of tranquility? That's a new one.

Globalsecurity.org puts the Maldon Institute among on its "Private Intelligence" list.

Public Eye (a progressive think tank) described it this way:

The Maldon Institute is a right wing think tank that studies national security and terrorism from a countersubversive and often conspiracist perspective. Maldon's director, John Rees, infiltrated the political left in the 1970s, and passed the information to groups ranging from the John Birch Society to the FBI.

Guess who funds The Maldon Institute?

That's right, our old friend Richard Mellon Scaife - by way of the Allegheny, Carthage and Sarah Scaife Foundations. In fact, the Media Transparency project at Media Matters lists only those three foundations supporting Maldon.

According to Mediamatters, between 1985 and 2007 Scaife's foundations supported Maldon to the tune of about $5.6 million. That doesn't count the $450K granted by the Sarah Scaife foundation in 2009, $242K granted by the Sarah Scaife foundation in 2008, and the $250K granted by the Carthage foundation in 2008.

So who's this John Rees? That will have to wait until later tonight or tomorrow.