Skip Gates corrects his foundation's filings

By Thomas Lifson

Oops, that research grant wasn't a research grant. And a conservative blogger apparently forced the "distinguished scholar" to come clean.

Chalk up another leftist embarrassed into doing the right thing by a conservative blogger. Dan Riehl of Riehl World View last Saturday exposed the rather questionable practices of Henry Louis Gates Jr's very own Inkwell Foundation, located in his Harvard-owned home on Ware St. in Cambridge. The one Sgt. Crowley tried to protect from a reported burglary.

Today, Dan writes:

I dug the donor's links out from Joe's documentation that made me aware of them and we were both pursuing the story together, and individually at that point. It appears to have gotten someone's attention. Many thanks to Joe Culligan at Web of Deception for the assist. Joe also contacted ProPublica.

Pro Publica writes:

A charity headed by star Harvard University professor Henry Louis Gates Jr. is filing an amended 2007 report to the Internal Revenue Service because $11,000 it paid to foundation officers as compensation was mischaracterized as being for research grants.

Questions about Inkwell Foundation emerged over the weekend, part of a tsunami of attention Gates has received since July 16, when he was arrested at his home by a police officer responding to a report about a possible burglary in progress. The incident ignited a national debate over racial profiling, further magnified when President Obama jumped into it.

ProPublica inquired about Inkwell after receiving an e-mail from Joseph Culligan, a private investigator who makes public on his Web site documents about prominent people, from Ann Coulter to Sonia Sotomayor. The e-mail spotlighted a $10,000 grant made to Joanne Kendall, the foundation's treasurer, pointing out that she is also Gates' assistant at Harvard. Gates, a member of ProPublica's board of directors, said Monday that the award to Kendall was actually payment for doing administrative work for Inkwell and not, as Inkwell's IRS 990 form states, a research grant.

Congratulations to Dan,whose digging and blog post apparently caused Gates to fess up. and kudos also to Joe Culligan and Pro Publica, which is funded by George Soros, and has Gates on its board. Now let's find out who is donating all that money (200m grand, reportedly, in one year) to Gates' foundation (or is it a slush fund?)

Clarice Feldman adds: The second largest grant, by the way, was $6,000 the charity disbursed to Gates' fiancee.