[classicman]

MCCRAY: Well, what I would say about that, Glenn, is that really what you need to look at in terms of ACORN is governance. I mean, what we have is an organization, a venerable organization that had a very beautiful mission and a lot of committed supporters. What's happened over time, though, is that there are certain leaders and senior staff members that have kind of, for the most part, hijacked the organization and they're using it for their own personal games.

MCCRAY: Wade Rathke is the founder of the organization, and he is an incredible organizer. And it was his vision that allowed ACORN to progress to kind of where it is today. Unfortunately, with, you know, absolute power comes some corruption, and the board members found out about eight or nine months ago that there had been $1 million embezzlement by his brother.

Now, what the board did at that point of time was that, once the full board found out about it, they immediately moved to terminate Wade and Dale, then they tried to put in place the young ladies that you interviewed on Friday — Karen and Marcel — in order to try to set the record straight and get to the bottom of what happened to the money.

MCCRAY: And don't you find it very interesting that even when after word that $1 million embezzlement came out and the fact that board members and executive committee members covered up the embezzlement, that the only people that had been punished were the people that were trying to get to the bottom of where the money go?

MCCRAY: Essentially, CCI — Citizens Consulting, Inc. — is basically the financial nerve center for ACORN and all its entities. So, if you really want to try to follow the money, that's why we requested a forensic examination and financial audit of CCI.

BECK: OK. CCI — can you put that back up on the screen, please? CCI shows one — what a surprise, it's in New Orleans. There's no corruption down there. It shows one address. This is the address that has — that all of the other ACORN entities, they all list this as their address.

So, if you are — correct me if I'm wrong here, Michael — but if you're in one of these organizations and you apply for federal dollars or any kind of dollars, the money goes there?

MCCRAY: I mean, that's the main problem. As a matter of fact, the money goes there first.

So, even if you are at a local chapter of ACORN that wanted to, say, you know, some good philanthropist wanted to write a local grant, the local ACORN chapter can't get the grant. Everything winds up being funneled through national and all of the monies come are dispersed from CCI.

Now, CCI says that they pay a small administrative fee. But the problem is, is without an audit, you know, we don't know if CCI gets 1 percent, 50 percent, 90 percent — we don't know. And that's what Karen Inman and Marcel Reid were trying to get their hands on.

And these are two more people being forced out of their jobs for trying to get to the truth. Why is that?

Apparently there are upwards of 200 different organizations under the acorn banner. There are BILLIONS of dollars at stake here, much of which was written into the stimulus package.

Acorn is also involved in gathering data for the next census.
I'm not so sure I'm comfortable with that.