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When the list of donors to the Van Jones Green for All organization is examined, one name stands out -- the Open Society Institute of billionaire George Soros. The Green for All 2008 annual report is also notable for the pictures of the powerful people who associated with Jones. They include House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and former Vice President Al Gore.

While the Open Society Institute was supporting Green for All in 2008, when Jones was running it, the Soros-funded organization was financially underwriting the Ella Baker Center for Human Rights when Jones was in charge of that group. The Open Society Institute gave the Ella Baker Center $151,800 in 2006 and $140,000 in 2007. Jones ran this group during the years 1996-2007. He then emerged as a senior fellow at the Soros-funded Center for American Progress.

Other funders of the Green for All group included Gore's Alliance for Climate Protection, the Rockefeller family, Men's Warehouse, the Natural Resources Defense Council, the New World Foundation, the Schwab Charitable Fund, the Streisand Foundation, the Service Employees International Union, and the Tides Center and Foundation.

The 990 IRS forms of the Open Society Institute also disclose $560,000 in 2007 and $455,000 in 2006 to the Equal Justice Society, (web site) whose president, Eva Paterson, emerged as the major apologist for Jones when he came under attack for his communist background and anti-American statements. Paterson, who said that she hired Jones at the Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights of the San Francisco Bay Area, wrote a column (web site) for the Huffington Post about how Glenn Beck, one of Jones' major critics, was allegedly "fabricating" his attacks on Jones.

"Beck has said repeatedly that Van is some kind of a mysterious 'czar,' accountable to no one but the President," she said. "A simple Internet search shows that this claim is false. A March 10, 2009, press release announced that Van was hired by the Chair of the White House Council on Environmental Quality - to work on her staff as a 'special advisor.' In other words, Van is within the normal White House chain of command, reporting to an office confirmed by the United States Senate, just like most White House staffers. Media outlets sometimes use the 'czar' shorthand. But the facts show that Van has no mysterious role or extra-constitutional powers."

In fact, that March10 release (web site) does not say that Jones was "hired" by the chair of the Council on Environmental Quality. It says that, "White House Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ) Chair Nancy Sutley announced today that Van Jones will serve as Special Advisor for Green Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation at CEQ."

Sutley had a role in announcing the appointment, but not in making the hiring decision. This was confirmed when my Freedom of Information Act requests to the CEQ failed to disclose any documents about his hiring. Instead, the CEQ told me to contact the White House, which did not respond. We have subsequently learned that White House official Valerie Jarrett said that "we" had recruited Jones for his job at the CEQ. The "we" had never been identified but Jarrett is close to Barack and Michelle Obama.

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