CNN 2012-07-17

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We begin tonight, Keeping them Honest with a woman who has been making money by tugging² at your heartstrings and playing to your patriotism³. Her name is Terri Crisp. She runs a charity that claims to reunited military dogs with personnel they served with overseas. What could be more heartwarming and patriotic⁴ than that, right. Well, she said the program is called Baghdad pups and her charity, SPCA international were all about helping⁵ the troops.

 

SPCA international is, you know, certainly gonna do everything we can to continue to support the military. Hopefully the wars will come to an end, so we won’t be doing anything as dramatic as this. But you know, we’ve become real attached to the fact that military personnel love their animals and we want to do everything we can to keep them together. 

 

Well, sounds great, it’s a noble thing to you, right? If, in fact that is what Terri Crisp was doing. Instead, Keeping them Honest tonight, CNN’s Drew Griffin  discovered that only a slim fraction of that the 26 million dollars that woman raised would even possibly have gone towards  rescuing dogs. And as you see, a charity watchdog group has serious doubt about how even that slim fraction was spent? As they put it, a number just don’t seem to add up. The appeal though, reuniting dogs and troops is powerful just as it was six and half years ago after hurricane Katrina, when Terri Crisp was running an operations call Noah’s Wish, and appeal then was to help reunite pets and survivors⁶ 

 

Well, here is Terri Crisp from S/ California. She joins me tonight, Terri, good to see you. 

Good to see you Anderson too. 

And You brought an animal with you. 

Yes, this is Tabasco. He is one of survivors of Hurricane Katrina, he was found on a washing machine in a house that flooded, and he and his sister, his mother and another dog all survived.  

 

Turns out though, I didn’t know it at the time, there were serious questions too about Noah’s wish and a legal settlement with the state of California. We’re been reporting on this for weeks now as part of a continuing investigation⁷ into the people asking you for money into charities, and what they do with the money they raise. One thing we have not been able to do is confront Terri Crisp, that is until tonight. Here is Drew Griffin. 

 

It’s the televised appeal on CNN’s HLN. Our salute⁸ to the troops today is actually live on in this studio today. That’s many of you found outrageous⁹. Sitting right beside Nugget is Terri with the SPCA and Ivy¹⁰ is down under my feet. March of 2011, Terri Crisp with SPCA international was telling our viewers Ivy and Nugget, just look at that face, were two bomb sniffing¹¹ dogs that had worked for a US contractor¹² in Iraq and had been essentially¹³ abandoned by the company. She rescued them and was trying to find them homes. Along for the visit was an unwedding retired¹⁴ military dog handler. HLN anchor Robin¹⁵ Meade understandably couldn’t believe the story. 

 

So how is it that they fall through the cracks and get stranded¹⁶ there, that’s unthinkable to me. 

 

It is unthinkable and that’s why SPCA international is making sure that these dogs don’t get forgotten.  And they get brought home.

 

It turns out Ivy and Nugget were not abandoned, they were donated, taking from their adoptive homes in Iraq, a military contractor tell CNN , after Terri Crisp asked for them. The military contractor, Reed Security told CNN, they had no idea Chris would use Ivy and Nugget as fund raising tool in the United States. 

 

For weeks, CNN has been trying to track down Chris, first we were told by her spokesperson, she was unavailable. This week we drove to Terri Crisp rural home, down this dirty road in the foothill of California Sierra Nevada and found Chris driving straight toward us.

 

Miss Chris, it’s Drew Griffin with CNN, we’d sure like to talk to you. Terri Crisp, dog in hand,  got out of her car, walked right up to our camera and acted like she was about to answer our questions. 

 

This is not the place to do an interview.

What is the place to do an interview because we’ve been trying to get an interview with you for a long long time. Specifically to ask you about the operation Baghdad pups. 

 

Yes, umm….Stephanie Scott, our director of communications, has she communicate with you directly? 

Yeah, I understand that, but can you tell us why you came on CNN and basically lied to our viewers about Ivy and Nugget. 

You need to talk to Stephanie. 

I think you need to talk to your viewers and explain to us what operation Baghdad pups are all about, because it appears to be just a fund raising effort for your lifestyle and Quadriga Art, quite frankly¹⁷. 

Well, like I said again, you just need to contact Stephanie, all our interviews are coordinated¹⁸ through her. We have offered her to do that with you. 

You’ve been on our air Ma’am. You’ve told our viewers that Ivy and Nugget were abandoned military contract dogs which we’ve confirmed that they were not, basically lying to our viewers and I know you got an outpouring of support and most likely, money after that appearance. I mean our viewers feel like they, and so do we, CNN feels that we were lied to, do you have any explanation on how that happened. 

Okay, this, like I said, it is not the time and place. We’re happy to talk to you. Everything has to be coordinated through our director of communications.

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