How to “undermine” climate research with cash payments

As reported by DeSmog Blog, Climate Progress, Brad Johnson, and now the New York Times, internal strategy documents leaked from the climate change denier Heartland Institute flat-out state that:

At present we sponsor the NIPCC [Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate Chnage] to undermine the official United Nation's IPCC [Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change] reports and paid a team of writers $388,000 in 2011 to work on a series of editions of Climate Change Reconsidered. 

Nearly $400,000 spent explicitly to "undermine" scientific research! Over $4 million spent last year. 

Today Heartland was apologizing to donors for the document leaks. The contributors, including one Anonymous Donor giving a $1 million or more a year, must be wondering if they're getting their money's worth. All that bank, and for what? A mock conference and a bogus report that barely pretends to be scientce and is "self-evidently nonsense," said the researchers at RealClimate. 

The docs also reveal that the Institute coldly dismissed two of its top fund-raisers for failure to bring in more than the millions they raised last year. Could the leaks have come in retaliation?