AIG's executives were scolded on Capitol Hill ... and then they partied on, dude
Did you hear the one about the credit default swap peddler / insurance giant who went in the toilet, got a huge bailout from Uncle Sam, then got a second bailout, and blew the money on lavish parties for their top sales performers and executives? Well here's the sequel:
Even as the company was pleading the federal government for another $40 billion dollars in loans, AIG sent top executives to a secret gathering at a luxury resort in Phoenix last week.
Reporters for abc15.com (KNXV) caught the AIG executives on hidden cameras poolside and leaving the spa at the Pointe Hilton Squaw Peak Resort, despite apparent efforts by the company to disguise its involvement.
"AIG made significant efforts to disguise the conference, making sure there were no AIG logos or signs anywhere on the property," KNXV reported.
A hotel employee told KNXV reporter Josh Bernstein, "We can't even say the word [AIG]."
A company spokesperson, Nick Ashooh, confirmed AIG instructed the hotel to make sure there were no AIG signs or mention of the company by staff.
"We're trying to avoid confrontation, keep our profile low," said Ashooh. "Some of our employees have been harassed."
You don't say... By the way those please were quite successful:
US Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson's decision to inject another US$27 billion into failed insurer AIG and raise the taxpayers' investment to $150 billion suggests he is more intent on helping his pals on Wall Street than protecting taxpayer interests.
And the Asia Times also explains how we got into this mess:
AIG has solid businesses in industrial, commercial and life insurance, but like a lot of financial firms was attracted to easy profits writing credit default swaps on mortgage-backed bonds - so called collateralized debt obligations (CDOs).
AIG received fees to guarantee repayment of those mortgages, or the funds obtained through foreclosures when homeowners defaulted. Like most on Wall Street, AIG executives believed home prices would rise faster than household incomes forever, so these CDOs really bore little risk.
This credit default swap business was outside AIG's highly regulated, solid insurance businesses but was backed by the value of those businesses. Essentially, if the CDOs fell too much in value, AIG pledged the value of those businesses.
If an abnormal number of the mortgages failed, the held-to-maturity value of the CDOs would fall and obligations would trigger for AIG to post collateral. When that happened in 2007, AIG deposited cash or other liquid assets with the investors holding the CDOs. With the housing market so depressed by the summer of 2007, AIG could not raise enough cash to meet all its obligations.
On September 16, the Federal Reserve provided $85 billion in loans to AIG in exchange for warrants - the right to buy common stock - equal to 79.9% of the company.
AIG was to pay 8.5% above the benchmark London Interbank Offered Rate (Libor) for the first $85 billion. The insurer was to use the loans to honor obligations to holders of the credit default swaps, and AIG was to sell parts of its insurance businesses to repay the loans to the Federal Reserve. That loan proved inadequate, and the Fed advanced another $38 billion on October 9.
The $123 billion was not enough to finance AIG's short-term credit default swap obligations, and it cannot sell enough pieces of its good insurance businesses to pay back the Federal Reserve in the current environment.
Now, the Federal Reserve and Treasury are agreeing to restructure $60 billion of the original loan, lowering the interest rate to 3% above Libor and invest about another $27 billion in AIG. The interest rates on the loans were lowered, in part, because large shareholders complained about heavy-handed government action.
How wonderful for AIG! The rest of us? Not so much. Where are the Marshalls when you need them. Back to the party:
Company officials confirmed the company spent an estimated $343,000 to sponsor the 2008 Asset Management Conference. A spokesperson said much of the cost would be recouped from product sponsors at the conference.
KNXV said the president of AIG unit Royal Alliance Associates, Art Tambaro, stayed in a two-story Casita suite and worked out at the spa while others participated in seminars.
Alaska's "First Dude," Todd Palin bragged not too long ago that he and his buddies built his family's dream home off Lake Lucerne himself. Turns out, by "himself," he meant with free labor from the same contractors who built Wasila's brand spanking new hockey rink (millions of dollars over budget) at the behest of the city's former mayor ... Sarah Palin. From reporter Wayne Barret of the Village Voice:
The $12.5 million sports complex and hockey rink that is the lasting monument to Palin's two terms as Wasilla mayor is also a monument to the kind of insider politics that dismays Americans of both parties. Six months before Palin stepped down as mayor in October 2002, the city awarded nearly a half-million-dollar contract to design the biggest project in Wasilla history to Kumin Associates. Blase Burkhart was the Kumin architect on the job—the son of Roy Burkhart, who is frequently described as a "mentor" of Palin and was head of the local Republican Party (his wife, June, who also advised Palin, is the national committeewoman). Asked if the contract was a favor, Roy Burkhart, who contributed to her campaign in the same time frame that his son got the contract, said: "I really don't know." Palin then named Blase Burkhart to a seven-member builder-selection committee that picked Howdie Inc., a mostly residential contractor owned at the time by Howard Nugent. Formally awarded the contract a couple of weeks after Palin left office, Nugent has donated $4,000 to Palin campaigns. Two competitors protested the process that led to Nugent's contract. Burkhart and Nugent had done at least one project together before the complex—and have done several since.
A list of subcontractors on the job, obtained by the Voice, includes many with Palin ties. One was Spenard Builders Supply, the state's leading supplier of wood, floor, roof, and other "pre-engineered components." In addition to being a sponsor of Todd Palin's snow-machine team that has earned tens of thousands for the Palin family, Spenard hired Sarah Palin to do a statewide television commercial in 2004. When the Palins began building a new family home off Lake Lucille in 2002—at the same time that Palin was running for lieutenant governor and in her final months as mayor—Spenard supplied the materials, according to Antoine Bricks, who works in its Wasilla office. Spenard actually filed a notice "of its right to assert a lien" on the deed for the Palin property after contracting for labor and materials for the site. Spenard's name has popped up in the trial of Senator Stevens—it worked on the house that is at the center of the VECO scandal as well.
Todd Palin told Fox News that he built the two-story, 3,450-square-foot, four-bedroom, four-bath, wood house himself, with the help of contractors he described as "buddies." As mayor, Sarah Palin blocked an effort to require the filing of building permits in the wide-open city, and there is no public record of who the "buddies" were. The house was built very near the complex, on a site whose city purchase led to years of unsuccessful litigation and, now, $1.3 million in additional costs, with a law firm that's also donated to Palin collecting costly fees from the city.
Dorwin and Joanne Smith, the principals of complex subcontractor DJ Excavation & Development, have donated $7,100 to Palin and her allied candidate Charlie Fannon (Joanne is a Palin appointee on the state Board of Nursing). Sheldon Ewing, who owns another complex subcontractor, Weld Air, has donated $1,300, and PN&D, an engineering firm on the complex, has contributed $699.
Ewing was one of the few sports-complex contractors, aside from Spenard, willing to address the question of whether he worked on the house as well, but he had little to say: "I doubt that it occurred, but if it did indirectly, how would I know anyhow?" The odd timing of Palin's house construction—it was completed two months before she left City Hall and while she and Todd Palin were campaigning statewide for the first time—raises questions, especially considering its synergy with the complex.
So ... I guess being a maverick involves ... cronyism, enriching oneself through one's office, and getting a brand new hockey rink AND a new house that the taxpayers pay you to live in? Who knew?
Alaska Republican Sen. Ted Stevens, of the famous "bridge to nowhere," has been indicted according to Politico and the AP:
Stevens' Washington office is shut down right now and no one is answering phone calls, and a spokesman in Alaska declined to answer questions. The Associated Press is reporting that the criminal charges are related to false reporting of hundreds of thousands in renovations to his Alaska resort home.
The indictment would be a stunning development in an extraordinary Senate career that has spanned four decades. Stevens is undoubtedly the most powerful politician in Alaska's 50 year history of statehood, but his relationships with contractors and lobbyists have come under intense scrutiny over the past year.
Another member of the party of personal responsibility down for the count... from the AP, via the WaPo:
Stevens, 84, has been dogged by a federal investigation into whether he pushed for fishing legislation that also benefited his son, an Alaska lobbyist.
From May 1999 to August 2007, prosecutors said Stevens concealed "his continuing receipt of hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of things of value from a private corporation." The indictment released Tuesday said the items included: home improvements to his vacation home in Alaska, including a new first floor, garage, wraparound deck, plumbing, electrical wiring; as well as car exchanges, a Viking gas grill, furniture and tools.
Justice Department officials were holding a news conference later Tuesday to discuss the charges.
Matthew Friedrich, acting assistant U.S. attorney general, said Tuesday that the government is charging the legislator with seven felony counts of making false statements between 1999 and 2006. Stevens was chairman of the powerful Senate Appropriations Committee from 1997 to 2005, except for the 18 months when Democrats controlled the chamber.
The Justice Department is alleging that Stevens, who is 84, accepted gifts from oil-services company Veco in the form of material and labor to renovate his private residence in Alaska.
"These items were not disclosed" on Stevens' Senate financial-disclosure forms, according to Friedrich. ...
...The indictment alleged that Stevens received substantial home improvements to property he owns in Girdwood, Alaska; automobile exchanges in which the senator got new vehicles worth far more than the used vehicles he provided in return; and household goods. ...
... The indictment of Stevens is part of an ongoing federal criminal investigation in Alaska. There have been seven criminal convictions to date from the investigation. Former Veco Chief Executive Bill Allen and Richard Smith, the company's former vice president of community affairs and government relations, pleaded guilty in May 2007 to providing more than $400,000 in corrupt payments to Alaska public officials.
As for Friedrich, I just heard on Randi Rhodes' show and confirmed for myself that he is "acting" because he replaced Alice Fisher, the U.S. attorney who cut the plea deal with Jack Abramoff in 2006, and who mysteriously left the Justice Department this May. More on Friedrich's background from a May 22 post on the Legal Times blog:
A veteran prosecutor and top aide on criminal matters to Attorney General Michael Mukasey has been tapped to lead the Criminal Division at Main Justice. ...
... [Matthew] Friedrich is Fisher's former chief of staff and also was a principal deputy assistant attorney general in the Criminal Division.
Friedrich has served on the department's Enron task force and previously worked as one of the lead prosecutors in the Arthur Andersen case when he served in the Eastern District of Virginia. A former assistant U.S. attorney in the Eastern District of Texas, Friedrich joined the department as a Tax Division attorney in 1995.
Meanwhile, Fisher's May 1 departure came at an awkward time for the DOJ, as she was probing a number of big cases:
Her departure leaves the Justice Department even more short-staffed. Fisher is one of only four remaining division chiefs who have navigated the Senate confirmation process.
Among the ongoing investigations Fisher has been overseeing are cases involving members of Congress and executives at mortgage companies caught up in the credit debacle.
Her prosecution of the Abramoff cases had raised some eyebrows, according to Sourcewatch:
"I was more than a little tweaked to turn on CSPAN and see Alice Fisher giving the press conference on behalf of" the Justice Department in the Abramoff case, Jane Hamsher wrote January 4, 2006, in The Huffington Post.
"Alice Fisher should have recused herself from this matter long ago," Hamsher said. "Fisher is a Republican who in her former job was registered as a lobbyist for HCA, the healthcare company founded by Bill Frist's father.
Her appointment was also controversial due to the fact that like her boss AbuGonzales, Fisher has no trial experience and with [James] Comey gone there would be no senior member of the Justice Department who was an experienced criminal prosecutor. But Senatorial oversight was dispensed with and BushCo. continued on its Brownie-esque rampage to replace experience with cronyism."
- The role of the torture lawyers in crafting the system is far more intimate than they have acknowledged. John Yoo, Michael Chertoff and Alice Fisher reviewed specific techniques which clearly amounted to torture and blessed them as fine to use, and then lied publicly and to Congress about their involvement. Yoo is said to have given his legal blessing to torture techniques and their application by DOD operatives on the squash court as he played rounds with Jim Haynes.
So we're likely well rid of her, and perhaps the wiser about why she suddenly vacated the premises. If she did indeed lie to Congress about her involvement in torture, all the Jack Abramoff prosecutions in the world might not have saved her from testifying, even at the Dems' sham hearings, and even though no one will likely ever be prosecuted for the various crimes committed by the current administration...
I first heard this on Stephanie Miller's show this morning, and it's a doozy, courtesy of the Times of London:
The images on the tiny screen of Stephen Payne’s personal organiser told a clear story: this was a man with connections at the highest level.
One showed Payne uprooting dead trees side by side with George W Bush on the US president’s Texas ranch. Another depicted him skeet shooting next to Dick Cheney, the vice-president, and a third grinning for the camera alongside Condoleezza Rice, the secretary of state.
The man on the other side of the table from Payne at the Lanesborough hotel in central London last week appeared impressed by the contents of the BlackBerry. He was a familiar figure, a Kazakh politician Payne knew as Eric Dos.
Dos, whose full name is Yerzhan Dosmukhamedov, told Payne that he was representing another foreign political figure who was looking to meet the top people in the US government.
Dos had good reason for believing that Payne could make it happen. Payne has accompanied Bush and Cheney on foreign trips to the Middle East and Asia, and he sits on the influential advisory council to the Department of Homeland Security. Payne is also president of a lobbying company, Worldwide Strategic Partners (WSP), which specialises in connecting business and political interests with the US government.
Dos told Payne that the politician needing help was Askar Akayev, the former president of the central Asian state of Kyrgyzstan.
Akayev, who is in exile in Moscow after being ousted from power three years ago in a people’s revolt, was seeking an endorsement from senior US figures in order to help rehabilitate himself in the eyes of the world, Dos told Payne.
“Who does he want to meet with in Washington?” asked the American. Dos replied: “Well of course, maybe the president of the United States, vice-president Cheney, to speak maybe directly to explain the situation in central Asia . . . To give his side of the story. These kind of things.”
“I think that some things could be done,” said Payne, adding that seeing Bush himself might be more difficult. With barely a pause, he continued:
“I think that the family, children, whatever [of Akayev], should probably look at making a contribution to the Bush library.
“It would be like, maybe a couple of hundred thousand dollars, or something like that, not a huge amount but enough to show that they’re serious.”
... What Payne did not know was that the third person at the Lanesborough meeting last Monday was an undercover Sunday Times reporter. Nor did he know that the meeting was being recorded.
How to say ... "uh-oh..." Payne then went on to offer confabs with Dick Cheney, National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley, or maybe Condi Rice.
So who is Dos? He's an exile from Khazakhstan! Yes, Khazhakstan... (is nice!) He had run afoul of that country's government when he deigned to set up his own political party. ... (is not nice...) The Times goes on:
Before that happened, however, he acted as an adviser to Timur Kulibayev, the billionaire son-in-law of Nursultan Nazarbayev, the Kazakh president, and a man of considerable influence within the country.
Dos said that in the autumn of 2005 he had been asked by the Kazakh government, via Kulibayev, to arrange a visit by Cheney. The intention was to improve the country’s international standing.
Dos had spent several days negotiating with Payne. A deal was eventually agreed, he said, and he understood that a payment of $2m was passed, via a Kazakh oil and gas company, to Payne’s firm.
The following May, Cheney made a brief trip to Kazakhstan. His visit was remarked upon in the media at the time, both for the lavish praise which he publicly heaped on Nazarbayev and for the stark contrast between this and a speech he had made just a day earlier at a conference in Lithuania in which he had lambasted Russia for being insufficiently democratic. Now he was lauding Nazarbayev, who has effectively made himself president for life and in whose country it is an offence to criticise him.
“Why did Cheney castigate Russia’s imperfect democracy while saying not a word about Kazakhstan’s shameless travesty of the democratic system?” said one newspaper following the visit. “Cheney’s flattery of the Kazakh regime was sickening,” said another.
Dos believes some of the money paid to WSP may have found its way to “entities” connected to the Bush administration.
In order to test which channels might be available to foreigners seeking influence within the US, Dos agreed to approach Payne, at The Sunday Times’s request, with a fabricated story about Akayev wanting to rehabilitate himself in the eyes of the world. Akayev was not aware of the approach to Payne.
And that's "uh-oh" number two. So just what is the going price of the "honor and integrity" of the Bush White House? Which leads us to a very telling quote by Mr. Payne:
Following e-mail questioning from Dos about how Payne might pass on money paid to him by foreigners, Payne became increasingly cagey.
He said: “Anyone that tells you ‘I can deliver a US government action in exchange for specific funds’ is someone you will soon visit in prison . . . as that would be bribery in this country.”
Clink-clink. The Democrats in Congress, as is their wont to do, are "investigating." Add it to the list.
February 2006. Photo Credit: J. Perez/City of Miami
Rev. Gaston Smith, the high-flying Miami preacher accused of stealing money from a non-profit named after Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., turns on his friend and parishioner, Miami Commissioner Michelle Spence-Jones:
In police interview, pastor says he feels used
BY SCOTT HIAASEN [I wonder if that's Carl Hiaasen's son...]
The Rev. Gaston Smith sat in the Miami-Dade state attorney's office last October facing a veteran prosecutor and a pair of investigators with some uncomfortable questions about one of his parishioners: Miami City Commissioner Michelle Spence-Jones. The investigators wanted to know about $8,000 in consulting fees that Smith paid Spence-Jones before she was elected in 2005. The money came from a $25,000 Miami-Dade County grant to Friends of MLK, a nonprofit organization the pastor ran.
Under questioning, the pastor said Spence-Jones, then an aide to Miami Mayor Manny Diaz, had urged him to create the nonprofit in the first place -- and that she had helped arrange the county grant without his knowledge. Smith said he felt like he had been used.
''It's almost like date rape,'' Smith told investigators, according to an interview transcript. ``I've been violated.''
The transcript was among more than 4,000 documents the state attorney's office released last week to defense lawyers for Smith, who was charged in January with stealing $10,000 in grant money for himself. The Miami Herald obtained these records under a publicrecords request.
Smith's statements -- secretly recorded by a Miami-Dade police detective -- cast a new light on the ongoing investigation of Spence-Jones. Prosecutors and police have been examining the commissioner's finances while also pursuing allegations of influence peddling since Spence-Jones joined the commission. ...
Note to pols: preachers don't do well in jail...
Prosecutors would not discuss the theory of their investigation of the commissioner. The transcript of the Oct. 9 meeting shows that prosecutor Richard Scruggs told Smith, ``Either you got taken advantage of or you're a co-conspirator.''
No theory yet? Really?
Nearly four months later, Smith, the pastor at Friendship Missionary Baptist Church in Liberty City, was arrested on one count of grand theft, accused of taking $10,000 in grant money through ATM withdrawals -- including a $500 withdrawal at a Las Vegas martini bar.
Smith's lawyer, Michael Tein, said Friday that the grant money went toward legitimate expenses. He said he believes his client was arrested in attempt to pressure him to provide more evidence against Spence-Jones -- but he insists his client has said all he knows.
Let me stipulate to the fact that I really like Michelle Spence-Jones. She's a lovely person, and comes across as sincere, and truly interested in bettering her community. But there are so many allegations being made about her conduct, that you've got to wonder just how business is being done down in Miami. I also don't think she is the ultimate target of this investigation. It goes beyond her, and once prosecutors are finished squeezing the chubby Rev. Gasston, they're going to start squeezing her. There are other fish on that line. Let's just leave it at that.
Did John McCain talk to the head of Paxson Communications before writing a "highly unusal" letter to the FCC in 1999 to ask the body to speed up deliberations on a pending Paxson deal in Pittsburgh? And did Paxson's chief lobbyist, Vicki Iseman, whose firm had given lots of money to McCain's presidential campaign and flown him on their private jets and ferried them on their yachts ... attend such a meeting?
Rev. Gaston's Smiths problems are tied to City of Miami Commissioner Michelle Spence-Jones (who actually refers to herself simply as "Spence Jones"...) Cue the Miami Herald:
Pastor's arrest, payouts linked BY SCOTT HIAASEN AND MICHAEL VASQUEZ The arrest of a prominent Liberty City minister on theft charges Thursday was part of a continuing investigation into the financial dealings of Miami City Commissioner Michelle Spence-Jones.
The Rev. Gaston Smith, who was charged with misspending a $25,000 county grant to a nonprofit he ran, passed along $4,000 from that grant to a company owned by Spence-Jones' family, records show.
The checks are among a series of questionable payments to the first-term commissioner from public dollars set aside for urban redevelopment that police say began before she won her seat in November 2005.
During a press conference Friday announcing Smith's arrest, Miami-Dade Police said the two checks to Spence-Jones' company from the minister's charity, Friends of MLK, were among several payments under investigation. But police would not discuss these checks.
Smith's attorney, Michael Tein, said Spence-Jones received a total of $8,000 from Smith -- with half coming from his church -- as a consultant to help raise money for the charity.
Spence-Jones received at least one check while working on Mayor Manny Diaz's staff before she was elected to the commission.
Spence-Jones stressed late Friday that she had not been charged with any wrongdoing. ''Yes, they did go over there investigating me, but they found no illegal activities on my part -- and that's why nothing happened to me,'' she said.
Spence-Jones' attorney Richard Alayon said she had ''verbal permission'' to work for Smith's organization while on the city payroll. Suzanna Valdez, the mayor's chief of staff, said Spence-Jones' supervisor at the time ``did not authorize her to do outside work.''
Spence-Jones insisted Friday that she did obtain written approval from the mayor's office and filed the document with the city clerk. The city could not immediately provide that document Friday, but Spence-Jones noted that it was filed during a time when the clerk's office was relocating -- complicating its retrieval.
While on the commission, Spence-Jones has backed housing deals transferring city land to another nonprofit run by Smith, senior pastor at Friendship Missionary Baptist Church. Tein said the payments to Spence-Jones were unrelated to the land deals, and the city attorney found Spence-Jones had no conflict of interest. ...
... Detectives are chasing allegations that Spence-Jones asked a condo developer to pay $100,000 in consulting fees to two allies -- former County Commissioner Barbara Carey-Shuler and campaign advisor Barbara Hardemon -- to win her support. Hardemon and Carey-Shuler say they did nothing wrong.
Investigators are also examining $100,000 in county grants to Karym Ventures, a business owned by Spence-Jones' family.
The grants to both Karym Ventures and Friends of MLK were approved by Carey-Shuler in 2004 and funneled through the Metro Miami Action Plan Trust, a county-affiliated anti-poverty agency.
Friends of MLK was supposed to use its grant to help revitalize Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard in Liberty City, county records show. But the contract also allowed for vague expenses including fundraising, community outreach and administrative costs. County officials say they never received receipts from Friends of MLK.
Miami-Dade Police Director Robert Parker said Smith used the money for ''his own personal gain,'' including hotel bills and plane tickets. More than $10,000 was taken out in ATM withdrawals over three months -- including a $500 withdrawal at a martini bar at the MGM Grand hotel in Las Vegas.
''Nothing shows any work done so far,'' Parker said.
Tein said Smith used the $25,000 as seed money to promote and expand the organization, in part by traveling to religious conferences. He said most of the cash withdrawals were used to pay an employee of Friends of MLK. Another $1,000 paid for a scholarship for a student at a train-conductor course in Jacksonville.
Tein said Smith mixed the funds of his nonprofit agencies and his church, but that Smith has repaid Friends of MLK for much of the money.
''The pastor viewed the business of MLK as virtually the same business as the church,'' Tein said. ``They will never be able to show that Pastor Smith stole from MLK or anybody else.''
Tein said he met with State Attorney Katherine Fernandez Rundle less than two weeks ago in an effort to convince her Smith committed no crime. He believes detectives ''leapfrogged'' the prosecutor to make an arrest.
Oh there will be more ... it's only a matter of time before the probe begins to dig into other political figures. What are you doing these days, Dorrin Rolle...?
Karl Rove is implicated in what appears to be the politicized prosecution of a Democratic political figure by one of Alberto's finest, during a heated re-election, which also happens to contain a fishy recount. TIME reports:
In the rough and tumble of Alabama politics, the scramble for power is often a blood sport. At the moment, the state's former Democratic governor, Don Siegelman, stands convicted of bribery and conspiracy charges and faces a sentence of up to 30 years in prison. Siegelman has long claimed that his prosecution was driven by politically motivated, Republican-appointed U.S. attorneys.
Now Karl Rove, the President's top political strategist, has been implicated in the controversy. A longtime Republican lawyer in Alabama swears she heard a top G.O.P. operative in the state say that Rove "had spoken with the Department of Justice" about "pursuing" Siegelman, with help from two of Alabama's U.S. attorneys.
The allegation was made by Dana Jill Simpson, a lifelong Republican and lawyer who practices in Alabama. She made the charges in a May 21 affidavit, obtained by TIME, in which she describes a conference call on November 18, 2002, which involved a group of senior aides to Bob Riley, who had just narrowly defeated Siegelman in a bitterly contested election for governor. Though Republican Riley, a former Congressman, initially found himself behind by several thousand votes, he had pulled ahead at the last minute when disputed ballots were tallied in his favor. After the abrupt vote turnaround, Siegelman sought a recount. The Simpson affidavit says the conference call focused on how the Riley campaign could get Siegelman to withdraw his challenge.
According to Simpson's statement, William Canary, a senior G.O.P. political operative and Riley adviser who was on the conference call, said "not to worry about Don Siegelman" because "'his girls' would take care of" the governor. Canary then made clear that "his girls" was a reference to his wife, Leura Canary, the U.S. attorney for the Middle District of Alabama, and Alice Martin, the U.S. attorney for the Northern District of Alabama.
Canary reassured others on the conference call — who also included Riley's son, Rob, and Terry Butts, another Riley lawyer and former justice of the Alabama supreme court — that he had the help of a powerful pal in Washington. Canary said "not to worry — that he had already gotten it worked out with Karl and Karl had spoken with the Department of Justice and the Department of Justice was already pursuing Don Siegelman," the Simpson affidavit says. Both U.S. attorney offices subsequently indicted Siegelman on a variety of charges, although Leura Canary recused herself from dealing with the case in May 2002. A federal judge dismissed the Northern District case before it could be tried, but Siegelman was convicted in the Middle District on bribery and conspiracy charges last June. ...
Of course all of the parties named are denying it, with the exception of the White House, which, intrestingly enough, has no comment. More from TIME:
Canary was appointed by President George H. W. Bush to serve in the White House as special assistant for intergovernmental affairs, and then named chief of staff of the Republican National Committee. Later in the 1990's he also worked closely with Karl Rove in a successful series of campaigns to get Republicans elected to Alabama's state courts.
In an interview with TIME, Simpson confirmed that the "Karl" cited in her sworn statement was Karl Rove. "There's absolutely no question it was Karl Rove, no doubt whatsoever," she said. She also said she has phone records to back up the date and duration of her phone calls.
Though Simpson's legal work primarily involved research for companies seeking federal government contracts, she says she also did "opposition research" on Siegelman as a volunteer in Riley's campaign in 2002. A lifelong G.O.P. supporter, she says she has long been friendly with Riley's son, Rob Riley, whom she met at the University of Alabama and worked with on various legal cases.
In her interview with TIME, Simpson said the participants in the conference call expressed growing concern that Gov. Siegelman would refuse to give up his challenge to the vote count. According to Simpson, Rob Riley said, "Siegelman's just like a cockroach, he'll never die, what are we going to do?" At that point Canary offered reassurance by citing Rove's news from Justice Department.
Simpson said she had long been troubled by the conference call conversation, and even consulted an official of the Alabama State Bar Association to determine whether she could disclose it publicly without violating her obligations as a volunteer working for the Riley campaign. She was told, she said, that she was free to speak of the matter.
Simpson said she grew more concerned about the matter after Siegelman's conviction last June. She says she told several friends about the conference call ; one of them, Mark Bollinger, a former aide to a Democratic attorney general in Alabama and in the Alabama Bureau of Investigation, has given his own affidavit, obtained by TIME, swearing that Simpson had told him of the conference call and Rove's alleged statements.
Hm. Wouldn't I love to see those phone records ... And what about the timing?
The federal investigation of Siegelman culminated in a criminal prosecution that became public not long after Siegelman announced that he would run again for governor of Alabama in 2006. Partly because of the investigation, Siegelman failed in his bid for the Democratic nomination.
So why hasn't this story hit the mainstream, television media? Could it be that reporters and senior management at the big three networks and their cable offspring are just too protective of, and close to, Karl and friends (every Washington reporter appears to be on a first name basis with him.) Could it be that they have decided, on their own, that Karl news isn't really news? It's too "inside the beltway," it won't go anywhere anyway (remember Plamegate?) Or maybe, they just assume that nobody cares.
Either way, stories like this are ones you only find linked to by blogs, or possibly on "Countdown." That, my friends, is why Karl Rove is untouchable. Not because his criminality isn't real or known, but because the Fourth Estate is playing on his team.
Other stories you won't hear on "Hardball" or the nightly news:
NBC did a report tonight of the U.S. Army's refusal to switch from Interceptor body armor, which has been in use for decades, to state-of-the art "dragon skin" armor, made by a company called Pinnacle, which in March of 2006 was banned by the Army for use by its soldiers, two months before it was tested, and even though top generals and other dignitaries were knowingly protected by troops who were issued dragon skin, and the CIA also issued the superior dragon skin to its operatives in Iraq. Even the inventor of the Interceptor armor told NBC that dragon skin is far superior to his design, because it's flexible and covers more of the body's vital parts, and that if he were deployed to combat, he'd choose dragon skin.
After listening to the report on Countdown, I decided to do a little bit of digging. What I found is nothing new, just as the reports of our troops being issued defective body armor isn't new (not least to the troops themselves). But new or not, here it is:
Interceptor body armor is manufactured by a company called Point Blank Body Armor, which is a division of DHB Industries out of right down here in Pompano Beach, Florida (they also have offices in Deerfield Beach, Oakland Park, Jacksboro, TN and Washington D.C).
DHB has a retired 4 star general as its president, a retired California State Senator (William Campbell) as its chairman of the board, and as of March of this year, and a retired Marine general (Lt. Gen. Martin Berndt) as one of its directors. The company announced that it had received some $248 million in contracts to supply the U.S. Army with body armor. According to a January press release:
January 16, 2007
DHB INDUSTRIES ANNOUNCES $82 MILLION IN CONTRACT ORDERS WITH THE U.S. ARMY AND UPDATES 2006 CASH RECEIPTS
Pompano Beach, Florida – DHB Industries Inc. (OTC Pink Sheets: DHBT.PK), a leader in the field of protective body armor, announced today that it had received orders for approximately $82 million to supply the U.S. Army with the Deltoid Axillary Protection System (DAPS) and the Enhanced Side Ballistic Insert (ESBI). These orders came under contracts awarded to Point Blank Body Armor, one of the Company’s wholly-owned subsidiaries.
New Orders
The Company received an order of approximately $51 million to supply the United States Army with DAPS. The Company anticipates it will begin shipping product against this new order in May 2007 and complete shipments in October 2007. This order is part of the approximately $239 million contract awarded in June 2004, which was subsequently modified to approximately $248 million. Potential orders now remaining on the DAPS three-year contract are about $67 million.
Oh, and the DHB in DHB Industries? It stands for David H. Brooks. A bit about him: From an article by Katrina Vanden Heuvel published in The Nation on my birthday in 2005:
Bat Mitzvah Corruption: In terms of sheer outrage, millionaire defense contractor David H. Brooks is hard to top. The New York Daily News recently reported that Brooks spent an estimated $10 million on his daughter's bat mitzvah reception. Aerosmith performed at the reception (reportedly earning a cool two million dollars), and Kenny G, 50 Cent, Tom Petty and The Eagles' Don Henley and Joe Walsh also played. Here's the kicker: Brooks has reportedly made more than $250 million in wartime profits as the CEO of DHB Industries-- which has had thousands of defective bulletproof vests recalled by the government!
According to a government investigation into the faulty vests that was uncovered by the Marine Corps Times, DHB's equipment saw "multiple complete penetrations" when 9mm pistol rounds were fired into the vests. One government ballistics expert quoted in the government's findings said he had "little confidence" in DHB's equipment. Meanwhile, the SEC is looking into Brooks' 2004 sale of $186 million worth of company stock. Institute for Policy Studies' Sarah Anderson, who co-authored a report called "Executive Excess 2005," called Brooks a "world champion war profiteer," concluding, he has "no shame."
Sounds like just the Bushies' kind of guy.
Of course, Bushie kind of guys almost always come to a fretful end. Here's Brooks':
In November 2005, bulletproof vest maker David H. Brooks made national headlines when he blew a pile of his war windfalls on a celebrity-studded bash in New York City’s Rainbow Room. For Brooks, the highlight of the $10 million gala was a performance by rockers from Aerosmith. So pumped was the middle-aged Long Island businessman that he reportedly donned a hot pink, metal-studded suede pantsuit to cavort onstage with Steven Tyler.
While Brooks was enjoying his rock star fantasy, dark clouds were forming over him and his company, DHB Industries. The stock was in the toilet, the Securities and Exchange Commission was investigating him, and then there was the mood-killing matter of the military recalling his company’s bulletproof vests over concerns about their bulletproofness. In hindsight, the pink-suited Brooks showed all the symptoms of a man who feared his partying days were numbered.
And indeed, as of this week, his reign as America’s most ostentatious war profiteer does appear to be over. On July 10, the DHB Board of Directors issued a terse statement to the effect that Brooks had been put on indefinite “administrative leave” pending the outcome of unspecified investigations.
The Justice and Defense Departments are jointly investigating Brooks for possible criminal fraud and insider trading. The SEC had already been looking into the company in response to shareholder lawsuits charging that DHB execs carried out a “pump-and-dump” scheme to artificially inflate profits before selling off a boatload of their stock in 2004. Brooks personally sold about $186 million worth, shortly before the share price plummeted from about $22 to around $10. Today it’s selling over the counter for less than $1. The company was booted from the American Stock Exchange last month for blowing off reporting deadlines.
Getting shoved out of a company you named after yourself has gotta sting. But Mr. DHB’s forced vacation hardly makes up for the troubles he’s caused shareholders, taxpayers and soldiers as he capitalized on the “War on Terror.” ...
And yet, his company's substandard body armor lives on. Why?
Scooter Libby's conviction on perjury, obstruction of justice and lying to the FBI provided some satisfaction to those of us who have long believed that the current administration has been, since its inception, engaged in a criminal conspiracy to mislead Congress and the American people into supporting an invasion of Iraq, for the purpose of taking over that country's natural resources and controlling it currency. But the core question, which remains under debate, is whether there was an underlying crime, beyond Libby's lying lips. Bush supporters and conservatives (there is a distinction these days) argue that no such underlyng crime occurred, because, they insist, Valerie Plame was not a covert agent, having been out of the field for more than five years. They argue that this was a case about perfectly legitimate "push back" by the administration against critics of its pre-war claims, which got elevated when put into the hands of an overzealous prosecutor (exactly the flip side of their Clinton-era argument, which stated that lying and obstruction WERE the underlying crimes...)
But those of us on the other side have argued that first, Valerie Plame WAS a covert agent, otherwise the CIA would not have gone to the Justice Department to demand an investigation of her outing. Further, the stamp of "secret" that accompanied the memo to then Secretary of State Colin Powell regarding Plame's status speaks to how crucial her work was considered to the national security operations of the United States. Thirdly, critics of the administration have concluded that Libby only would have put himself in such legal jeopardy if he deemed it important to protect someone higher up -- in this case, the vice president -- from public disclosures that could damage him, either politically or legally. In fact, the Libby jury seems to have concluded that Libby did, in fact, become the willing fall guy, either for Karl Rove, or for Dick Cheney, or for someone else.
So we're back to the quetsion at hand: Scooter Libby and Dick Cheney went to great lengths to see that Valerie Plame's identity wound up in the newspapers. Why?
I have come to the conclusion that Cheney and Libby became so desperate to refute Joe Wilson, not so much because they thought he was a threat, but bcasue they saw his disclosures -- his very presence in Niger -- as the latest challenge from a recalcitrant CIA, which had been fighting the administration the whole way on Iraq intelligence. Outing Valerie Plame wasn't about punishing Joe Wilson, or about hurting Valerie Plame -- it was about slapping down the CIA, impeding its work on finding the truth about WMD (something Plame had dedicated her work to) and stopping any additional CIA officials from daring to challenge Bush, Cheney or their operatives inside the Pentagon's Office of Special Plans on the subject of Iraq's WMD or supposed nuclear programs.
Last week, we had 27 year CIA veteran Ray McGovern on the program for the second time. He made much the same point on the air, and does so in his latest piece for Common Dreams. McGovern writes:
CIA analysts were still insisting, correctly, that there were no meaningful ties between al-Qaeda and Iraq, despite Tenet's acquiescence to Powell's request that Tenet sit behind him on camera as Powell wove his web of half- and un-truths at the UN. (Watching Tenet sit impassively as Powell spoke of a "sinister nexus" between al-Qaeda and Iraq was a tremendous blow to the morale of the courageous analysts who had resisted that particular recipe for cooking intelligence. As for their colleagues working on WMD, most of them had long since been pressured to cave in to Cheney's pressure during the dozen visits he made to CIA headquarters and were not as incensed.)
No trace had been found of weapons of mass destruction. In some quarters (even in the corporate press) the casus belli had morphed into a casus bellylaughi. Reports in Fox News that Saddam had somehow transported his WMD to Syria undetected (or maybe buried them in the desert) elicited widespread ridicule. Constant reminders of how difficult it is to find something in such a large country as Iraq - "the size of California" - were wearing thin. The attempt to associate uranium enrichment with the (in)famous aluminum tubes had, well, gone down the tubes. And the "mobile biological weapons laboratories," initially applauded by the president himself as proof the administration had found the WMD, turned out to be balloon-making machines for artillery practice, as the Iraqis had said. It was getting very embarrassing.
So this new challenge from Joe Wilson and his obnoxiously expert wife made for a very bad hair day. Cheney readily saw it as payback by honest CIA professionals for all the crass arm-twisting they had experienced at the hands of Cheney and kemosabe Libby. It is not hard to put oneself in Cheney's frame of mind as he witnessed the gathering storm.
Worst of all, the Iraq-Niger caper was particularly damaging, since it was tied directly to the office of the vice president. There was that unanswered question regarding who commissioned the forgery in the first place. And not even Judy Miller could help this time, since most thinking folks knew her to be a shill for the Bush administration.
And yet this insubordination, this deliberate sabotage, had to be answered. Something had to be done, and quickly, so that others privy to sensitive information about the litany of lies leading up to the war would not think they could follow Wilson's example and go to the press. ...
But wait, there's more. Because ultimately, Plamegate was about protecting the administration from an even more damaging truth -- that they probably knew Iraq had no weapons of mass destruction long before they made the decision to invade, and the decision to invade was itself made long before 9/11 provided the excuse. A second piece from Common Dreams, by investigative reporter Dave Lindorf, breaks it down:
way back in early 2001 there was a pair of burglaries at the Niger Embassy in Rome and at the home of the Niger ambassador. Police investigating the crimes found that the only things stolen were official stationary and some official stamps, used to make documents official. A cleaning lady and a former member of Italy's intelligence service were arrested for the crimes. They were odd burglaries to be sure, since there is precious little one could use, or sell, such documents for, given the country involved. I mean, it might make sense to steal official stationary from the French Embassy in Rome, which a thief might use to finagle a pass to the Cannes Festival. But Niger?
Jump to October 2001. A few weeks after the 9-11 attacks, Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, accompanied by his ministers of defense and intelligence, made a visit to the White House. There he reportedly handed over the forged Niger documents (they were on Niger government stationary, and had Niger government stamps!), which appeared to be receipts for uranium ore, made out to Saddam Hussein. Now forget the matter of why either Hussein or Niger's government would want paper receipts for such an illegal transaction, and forget the matter of how Hussein would have transported 400 tons of yellow dust across the Sahara to his country without somebody noticing. The simple fact is that Bush's own intelligence experts at the CIA and State Department promptly spotted the forgeries, and they were dumped.
We know this because we know, from the likes of onetime National Security Council counterterrorism head Richard Clarke and former Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill, that Bush was pushing for war with Iraq almost as soon as he finished reading My Pet Goat following the attack on the Twin Towers. Surely if the White House had even thought those Niger documents might be legit, they would have leaked or broadcast them all over creation.
They didn't. The documents were deep-sixed, and mentioned to no one.
But according to some dedicated investigative reporters at the respected Italian newspaper La Repubblica, they resurfaced before long at a very suspicious meeting. This meeting occurred in December 2001 in Rome, and included Michael Ledeen, an associate of Defense Department Undersecretary for Policy Douglas Feith and a key figure in the White House's war-propaganda program, Larry Franklin, a top Defense Intelligence Agency Middle East analyst who later pleaded guilty to passing classified information to two employees of the America Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), convicted Iraqi bank swindler Ahmed Chalabi, then head of the CIA-created Iraqi National Congress, and Harold Rhode of the sinister Defense Department Office of Special Plans, that office set up by the White House and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld under Feith's direction to manufacture "evidence" to justify a war on Iraq. Also at this peculiar meeting were the heads of the Italian Defense Department and of SISMI, the Italian intelligence agency.
According to La Repubblica, it was at that meeting that a plan was hatched to resurrect the forged Niger documents, and to give them credibility by recycling them through British intelligence.
And that is what Bush was referring to when, in his 2003 State of the Union address, he famously frightened a nation by declaring, "The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa."
Bush lyingly implied that this was new information, when in fact he knew--had to know--that the "evidence" in British hands was the same set of documents he had been offered by Berlusconi almost a year and a half earlier, which had been declared to be bogus. ...
That, my friends, is the real story behind Plamegate, and as Lindorf points out further down in the piece, it's right there, waiting for some enterprising mainstream media organization to uncover.
The question is, will anyone do so.
On Friday, Valerie Plame will testify before Henry Waxman's House committee on government reform. Let's hope that's the first step in getting the truth out. If it does emerge, it could mean there is incontrovertible proof that the president, the vice president, and key members of the administration committed high crimes -- lying to Congress, misleading the country into war, and, as we have seen the bribes and dollar unfold, engaging in war profiteering.
Kind of makes Monicagate look like a walk in the park.
I'm watching the rebroadcast of Tuesday's Senate Judiciary Committee hearings into the "Pearl Harbor Day massacre," and the following updates should be noted:
Apparently, the attempted intimidation of U.S. attorneys by members of Congress and the Bush administration went beyond the inappropriate phonecalls made by Congresswoman Heather Wilson (R-NM) and Senator Pete Domenici to then New Mexico U.S. attorney David Iglesias last October, both attempting to dig into sealed indictments against state Democratic officials. In addition to the pressure on Iglesias, who said the Domenici phonecall in particular made him feel "sick," there was also an attempt at direct intimidation of several of the fired prosecutors.
H.E. "Bud" Cummins, the Arkansas prosecutor dismissed to make room for a former Karl Rove deputy, received a phonecall in late February from Mike Elston, the chief of staff to deputy attorney general Paul McNulty. During the call, Elston informed Cummins that his comments to the Washington Post that past Saturday were most unwelcome, having come after Congress had already begun to inquire into the firitngs, forcing Attorney General Alberto Gonzales to admit to a Congressional hearing that Cummins had been dismissed purely to help a political flak. Cummins was told that if he and his fellow firees continued to talk to the press, and if any of them began to cooperate with Congress (all had refused requests to testfy before the two judiciary committees) then the administration would consider that an "escalation of the conflict, meriting some unspecified form of retaliation" and that the DOJ might just take off the gloves in defending their actions, by releasing information unfavorable to the prosecutors' performance while in office.
Cummins took the call as a threat, or at least a "message," and sent an email to several of his colleagues, including the other three former U.S. attorneys who testified on Tuesday (Carol Lam, the California prosecutor dismissed after successfully prosecuting Duke Cunningham and indicting deputy CIA director Kyle "Dusty" Foggo for abusing his office, and his defense contractor buddy Brent Wilkes; Mr. Iglesias and John McKay of Washington State, who had received pressure via the chief of staff to GOP Congressman Doc Hastings, to investigate the razor thin margin of victory of the newly minted Democratic governor of that state ... Hastings is the ranking member on the House ethics committee, wouldn't you know...) Cummins submitted the email to the panel, and testified that he didn't feel it was a betrayal of Ellison to pass on the information, since he felt that the purpose of the call was to get him to pass the word to his colleagues, in order to preemptively shut them up. (McKay's response to the email was that it didn't make him feel intimidated, it made him mad, which is why he was sitting before the committee. The only one of the four who seemed intimidated at all, or at least protective of the administration, ws Ms. Lam, for reasons unknown.)
For his part, Cummins testified that he had intended to stay out of the political fray, and only talked to the Washington Post because the admnistration chose to attack his colleagues' performance while in office, and he wanted to defend their work, as well as the work of his former staff.
Further, Mr. Iglesias testified that he was told by a Justice Department official that his firing was determined "from on high."
The dismissals are bad enough. The attempted threats and intimidation may be criminal.
Update: Senator Sheldon Whitehouse of RI asked a most pertinent question: what each of the four witnesses would do if a witness in a case they were prosecuting received a phonecall like the one Mr. Cummins got, from a subject in the case. All answered that they would refer the call for investigation for obstruction of justice, or in Ms. Lam's case, for witness tampering. Mr. Ellison should think seriously about that.
It should also be noted that all eight of the dismissed U.S. attorneys were nominated by President Bush and confirmed by the Senate, with the first crop of U.S. attorneys after September 11. They are all either Republicans or Independents, as Iglesias testified, appointed because they were considered political assets, not liabilities. How did they become liabilities five years later? By doing things unpopular with the Republican Congress and with their fellow poliical hacks in the White House. In addition, all had excellent evaluations of their work on record, with no recorded complaints from DOJ.
Update 2: Alabama Senator Jeff Sessions was the first Republican on the committee to begin swinging the hatchet on behalf of the Bush administration. True to the form which became familiar during the subservient 109th Congress, Sessions began his questioning by going after Ms. Lam's prosecutorial record with respect to gun cases, suggesting she was not upholding administration policy when compared with U.S. attorneys in other districts.
Likewise, Lindsey Graham is trying to save the administration by suggesting that the three witnesses had served unusually long terms in office.
...proving, once again, that there are no lengths Republican members of Congress won't go to in order to shill for the administration. One day, perhaps we'll discover the reason for this remarkable fealty.
Given the authority to invade the privacy of Americans for national security reasons after 9/11, the FBI promptly abused it:
WASHINGTON - The nation's top two law enforcement officials acknowledged Friday the FBI broke the law to secretly pry out personal information about Americans. They apologized and vowed to prevent further illegal intrusions.
Attorney General Alberto Gonzales left open the possibility of pursuing criminal charges against FBI agents or lawyers who improperly used the USA Patriot Act in pursuit of suspected terrorists and spies.
The FBI's transgressions were spelled out in a damning 126-page audit by Justice Department Inspector General Glenn A. Fine. He found that agents sometimes demanded personal data on people without official authorization, and in other cases improperly obtained telephone records in non-emergency circumstances.
The audit also concluded that the FBI for three years underreported to Congress how often it used national security letters to force businesses to turn over customer data. The letters are administrative subpoenas that do not require a judge's approval.
"People have to believe in what we say," Gonzales said. "And so I think this was very upsetting to me. And it's frustrating."
"We have some work to do to reassure members of Congress and the American people that we are serious about being responsible in the exercise of these authorities," he said.
Under the Patriot Act, the national security letters give the FBI authority to demand that telephone companies, Internet service providers, banks, credit bureaus and other businesses produce personal records about their customers or subscribers. About three-fourths of the letters issued between 2003 and 2005 involved counterterror cases, with the rest for espionage investigations, the audit reported.
Shoddy record-keeping and human error were to blame for the bulk of the problems, said Justice auditors who were careful to note they found no indication of criminal misconduct.
Still, "we believe the improper or illegal uses we found involve serious misuses of national security letter authorities," the audit concluded.
Question, between this and the firings of the Gonzales Seven, why is Alberto Gonzales still employed?
Meanwhile, TPMM reports that the House Judiciary Committee probe of the "Pearl Harbor Day massacre" has moved to the White House:
The House Judiciary Committee requested a host of documents from the White House today related to the administration's firing of a group of U.S. attorneys. The committee is also seeking to interview at least one current official in the White House's counsel's office, William Kelley, Deputy Counsel to the President, and former White House counsel Harriet Miers. (Former USA for Seattle John McKay has told reporters that, in a meeting with Kelley and Miers, he was asked about accusations that he had "mishandled" an investigation of Democratic voter fraud in the 2004 Washington gubernatorial election.)
The committee sought the documents in a letter to White House counsel Fred Fielding signed by Chairman John Conyers (D-MI) and Subcommittee Chairwoman Linda Sanchez (D-CA). By next Friday, March 16th, the committee wants all records of communications within the White House regarding the firings, all records of communications with members of Congress concerning the fired attorneys, the names of any members of Congress who were advance notice of the firings, and the names of anyone in the White House who was involved in the firings.
Jesus, it's so Nixonian, it even has Fred Fielding. You can check out the actual letter on TPMM's site.
And Greg Palast reports that one of the replacements -- Timoth Griffin, a political operative and former aide to Karl Rove who was airlifted into the U.S. attorney's office in Arkansas to replace , may actually be a criminal.
Griffin, according to BBC Television, was the hidden hand behind a scheme to wipe out the voting rights of 70,000 citizens prior to the 2004 election.
Key voters on Griffin’s hit list: Black soldiers and homeless men and women. Nice guy, eh? Naughty or nice, however, is not the issue. Targeting voters where race is a factor is a felony crime under the Voting Rights Act of 1965.
In October 2004, our investigations team at BBC Newsnight received a series of astonishing emails from Mr. Griffin, then Research Director for the Republican National Committee. He didn’t mean to send them to us. They were highly confidential memos meant only for RNC honchos.
However, Griffin made a wee mistake. Instead of sending the emails — potential evidence of a crime — to email addresses ending with the domain name “@GeorgeWBush.com” he sent them to “@GeorgeWBush.ORG.” A website run by prankster John Wooden who owns “GeorgeWBush.org.” When Wooden got the treasure trove of Rove-ian ravings, he sent them to us.
And we dug in, decoding, and mapping the voters on what Griffin called, “Caging” lists, spreadsheets with 70,000 names of voters marked for challenge. Overwhelmingly, these were Black and Hispanic voters from Democratic precincts.
The Griffin scheme was sickly brilliant. We learned that the RNC sent first-class letters to new voters in minority precincts marked, “Do not forward.” Several sheets contained nothing but soldiers, other sheets, homeless shelters. Targets included the Jacksonville Naval Air Station in Florida and that city’s State Street Rescue Mission. Another target, Edward Waters College, a school for African-Americans.
If these voters were not currently at their home voting address, they were tagged as “suspect” and their registration wiped out or their ballot challenged and not counted. Of course, these ‘cages’ captured thousands of students, the homeless and those in the military though they are legitimate voters. We telephoned those on the hit list, including one Randall Prausa. His wife admitted he wasn’t living at his voting address: Randall was a soldier shipped overseas.
Randall and other soldiers like him who sent in absentee ballots, when challenged, would lose their vote. And they wouldn’t even know it.
And by the way, it’s not illegal for soldiers to vote from overseas — even if they’re Black.
But it is illegal to challenge voters en masse where race is an element in the targeting. So several lawyers told us, including Ralph Neas, famed civil rights attorney with People for the American Way.
Griffin himself ducked our cameras, but his RNC team tried to sell us the notion that the caging sheets were, in fact, not illegal voter hit lists, but a roster of donors to the Bush-Cheney reelection campaign. Republican donors at homeless shelters?
Over the past weeks, Griffin has said he would step down if he had to face Congressional confirmation. However, the President appointed Griffin to the law enforcement post using an odd little provision of the USA Patriot Act that could allow Griffin to skip Congressional questioning altogether.
Kyle "Dusty" Foggo used to be the number three man at the CIA. Now, he's inmate #54321 ... okay, I made up the number. But he has been indicted, along with one of his contractor friends. Fasten your seatbelts: it's the return of Hookergate.
