Van Jones

Van Jones, President Obama's controversial former "green jobs" czar, serves on the advisory board of an independent environmental organization actively working with the White House

, WND has learned.

Jones resigned in September after it was exposed he founded a communist revolutionary organization and signed a statement that accused the Bush administration

of possible involvement in the 9/11 attacks.

Jones is one of 20 advisers to the University of Colorado–based Presidential Climate Action Project, or PCAP, which draws up climate-policy recommendations for the White House and has been working with members of the Obama administration.

The PCAP last September released a lengthy proposal to guide the environmental policies during the first 100 days of the 44th U.S. president regardless of whether Obama or Sen. John McCain won the election.

William S. Becker, the PCAP's executive director, confirmed to WND his group is "about to propose a new and more assertive strategy for President Obama to raise the bar on the U.S. climate goal, with or without Congress."

Becker told WND his group's initial proposals have received a "very positive reception from the moment we delivered (the 100-day proposal) last November to John Podesta, co-chair of Obama's transition team."

"We continue to work with some colleagues inside the (Obama) administration, as well as continuing to push for bold action from the outside," he said.

Becker said the White House "adopted quite a few of our recommendations or variations of them."

He cited a few examples of the influence of the PCAP and other environmental groups on Obama's policies:

• The PCAP recommended that the U.S. reach a bilateral climate deal with China prior to the upcoming U.N. Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen. The U.S. has since signed several agreements with China to share technology that reduces greenhouse-gas emissions.
   
• The PCAP recommended an executive order that removed the gags from federal climate scientists. This became one of Obama's first actions on environmental policy.
   
• The PCAP recommended an overhaul of federal energy management to beef up efficiency requirements for federal agencies and to restore absolute carbon reduction targets that had been rescinded by the Bush administration. The Obama administration issued a new federal energy management order in October, including a requirement that agencies develop absolute targets for greenhouse-gas reductions.
   
• The PCAP recommended (as did many others) that the Environmental Protection Agency embrace California's vehicle emission standards and begin the process of regulating greenhouse gases under the Clean Air Act. The EPA is doing both.
   
• The PCAP recommended major budget increases for states and communities to engage in energy and climate actions and to weatherize the homes of low-income families. This was part of Obama's stimulus package.

The PCAP describes itself as seeking to engage the "best thinking of America's leaders in government, science and civil society to identify actions that will empower all elements of society to meet the challenges of energy security and climate change." The group actively promotes the theory of global warming.

A means to fight racial 'justice'

WND reported Jones was a founder and leader of the communist group Standing Together to Organize a Revolutionary Movement, or STORM.

STORM's official manifesto, titled "Reclaiming Revolution," had been published on the Internet until WND and other websites linked to the online publication.

A review of the 97-page treatise found that the manual describes Jones' organization as having a "commitment to the fundamental ideas of Marxism-Leninism."

"We agreed with Lenin's analysis of the state and the party," read Jones' manifesto. "And we found inspiration in the revolutionary strategies developed by Third World revolutionaries like Mao Zedong and Amilcar Cabral."

Cabral is the late Marxist revolutionary leader of Guinea-Bissau and the Cape Verde Islands. Jones named his son after Cabral and reportedly concludes every e-mail with a quote from the communist leader.

Speaking to the East Bay Express in 2005, Jones said he first became radicalized in the wake of the 1992 Rodney King riots, during which time he was arrested.

"I was a rowdy nationalist on April 28th, and then the verdicts came down on April 29th," he said. "By August, I was a communist. I met all these young radical people of color – I mean really radical: communists and anarchists. And it was, like, 'This is what I need to be a part of.' I spent the next 10 years of my life working with a lot of those people I met in jail, trying to be a revolutionary," he said.

Jones boasted to the East Bay Express that his environmental activism was a means to fight for racial and class "justice."

Jones went on to found the Ella Baker Center for Human Rights, named after a little-known civil rights firebrand and socialist activist.

Succeeding revelations by WND included:

• Jones previously served on the board of an environmental activist group at which a founder of the Weather Underground terrorist organization is a top director.
   
• Jones was co-founder of a black activist organization that has led a campaign prompting major advertisers to withdraw from Glenn Beck's top-rated Fox News Channel program. The revelation followed Beck's reports on WND's story about Jones' communist background.
  
  
• Jones and other White House appointees may have been screened by an ACORN associate.
  
  
• One day after the 9/11 attacks, Jones led a vigil that expressed solidarity with Arab and Muslim Americans as well as what he called the victims of "U.S. imperialism" around the world.
  
  
• Just days before his White House appointment, Jones used a forum at a major youth convention to push for a radical agenda that included spreading the wealth and "changing the whole system."
  
  
• Jones' Maoist manifesto while leading the group Standing Together to Organize a Revolutionary Movement, or STORM, was scrubbed from the Internet after being revealed by WND.
   
• Jones was the main speaker at an anti-war rally that urged "resistance" against the U.S. government – a demonstration sponsored by an organization associated with the Revolutionary Communist Party.
   
• In a 2005 conference, Jones characterized the U.S. as an "apartheid regime" that civil rights workers helped turn into a "struggling, fledgling democracy."
  
  
• Jones signed a petition calling for nationwide "resistance" against police, accusing them of using the 9/11 attacks to carry out policies of torture.

Editor's note: This article included research by Brenda J. Elliott.