Van Jones Resigns from White House; Targeted by Oil Interests

Posted by Adele Stan, AlterNet at 10:24 AM on September 6, 2009.

White House adviser Van Jones resigned last night from his White House post as adviser on green-jobs creation, issuing a statement that decries "vicious smear campaign against me" launched by "opponents of clean energy." Prior to his White House appointment, Jones was the public face of the organization Green for All, which he founded.

Glenn Beck of FOX News has been relentless in his criticism of Jones, focusing on statements made by Jones earlier in his career, including a petition signed by Jones in <strrike>early 2002</strike> 2004 that called for an investigation of the 9/11 attacks, and whether members of the Bush administration had permitted the attack to happen. Jones says he was unaware that the 9/11 petition included that bit about possible government involvement.

[UPDATE: I should have mentioned here that Jones is the co-founder of Color of Change, the group whose campaign has cost Beck's television show more than 46 advertisers (nine more dropped Beck since Tana wrote that post) -- after Jones left the group.]

Rep. Mike Pence of Indiana, who lends his endorsement to Grassfire, an organization that organizes members of the armed Patriot movement through its ResistNet site, called on Jones to resign, saying, "His extremist views and coarse rhetoric have no place in this administration or the public debate."

Grassfire is currently organizing ground-level opposition to the clean energy legislation -- especially its cap-and-trade mechanism -- supported by the White House.

AlterNet reported last month on the racist videos and statements posted on the ResistNet site, including a call for "white folks to riot in the streets" and a video that equates President Obama with Adolf Hitler. Van Jones is African-American.

Glenn Beck's boss, Rupert Murdoch, also has a dog in the cap-and-trade fight, and has allied his network, as AlterNet reported, with Americans for Prosperity, an astroturfing outfit financed by oil industry dollars.

Garance Franke-Ruta and Anne E. Kornbluth of the Washington Post have the story on Jones' resignation:

"On the eve of historic fights for health care and clean energy, opponents of reform have mounted a vicious smear campaign against me," Jones, special adviser for green jobs at the White House Council on Environmental Quality, said in a statement announcing his resignation just after midnight Sunday. "They are using lies and distortions to distract and divide."

He continued: "I have been inundated with calls -- from across the political spectrum -- urging me to 'stay and fight.' But I came here to fight for others, not for myself. I cannot in good conscience ask my colleagues to expend precious time and energy defending or explaining my past. We need all hands on deck, fighting for the future."

Jones issued two public apologies in recent days, one for signing a petition that questioned whether Bush administration officials "may indeed have deliberately allowed 9/11 to happen, perhaps as a pretext for war" and the other for using a crude term to describe Republicans in a speech he gave before joining the administration.

At the San Francisco Chronicle's The Thin Green Line blog, Cameron Scott has a sober assessment of how and why Jones' resignation happened.

Tagged as: glenn beck, rupert murdoch, barack obama, van jones, americans for prosperity, cap-and-trade, grassfire, resisnet, mike pence

Adele M. Stan is AlterNet's Washington bureau chief.