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three days after Chandra Levy disappeared. He was the darling of the White House, Bush-Cheney's favorite Democrat. Though he had multiple mistresses, one of his proposals was to place the "Ten Commandments" in all public building--the same kind of hypocrisy that Bush's "pod people" engage in. In short, he's the kind of Democrat that we can do without, very like the current "Blue Dog" Democrats who want to cut everything in the federal budget except war spending, and who are responsible for--and no doubt were (s)elected by Diebold and ES&S to accomplish--a ming-boggling ESCALATION of the war on Iraq, despite 75% opposition by the American people.
So don't cry any tears over Gary Condit as a 'Democrat.' He wasn't.
The first Bush/Cheney tax cut for the rich was a very close vote. It wouldn't have passed without the ten "Blue Dog" votes that Condit organized and led. It was a very big deal at the time. The vote occurred on May 3, 2001. Three days prior, on May 1, 2001, the day Chandra Levy disappeared, Condit met with Dick Cheney at noon, during a three hour hole in his schedule, 12-3, with no other activities scheduled. It turned out that this was the time slot during which Chandra Levy disappeared (vanished from her apartment without a trace--leaving behind keys, wallet and bags packed for California). Early in the summer, DC police/FBI placed her disappearance in the mid-morning, which would have meant that Cheney was not Condit's only alibi during the disappearance hours. And no one--not the DC policy, not the FBI, not any news organization--asked Cheney or his aides about that noon Cheney/Condit meeting--not even to verify that it took place. In late summer, they changed their minds about the time window of her disappearance to early afternoon, based, they said, on an analysis of her computer use. The FBI had had her computer for three months. A ten year old could have figured it out in less time than that--in minutes. They made this announcement in late July, accompanied by a high-profile, second search of Rock Creek Park--featuring front page photos of lines of cadets searching for Levy.* Following this announcement and new park search, in the first week of August, Newsweek published Cheney's version of the meeting with Condit (back on May 1). Short, routine meeting, about 20 minutes, two aides present--according to Cheney aides, quoted in the article, who also said that no one had asked Cheney or aides about the meeting until then. (Condit had released his schedule in June--so there was plenty of time for the our ace DC journalistic corps to be on it, as well as our ace crime investigators.)
I have always wondered about this sequence of events--especially about DC police/FBI and news corps giving Cheney three months to cock up his version of the meeting with Condit. He was, in fact, Condit's only alibi during the disappearance hours--and was never questioned about it (according to his aides). And it appears also that investigators were covering up the true time window of her disappearance throughout the summer, prior to Cheney planting his version of the meeting in the pages of Newsweek.
There are many questions about Chandra Levy's disappearance--including how and why her internship at the Bureau of Prisons was cut short, why Mrs. Condit traveled to DC that week (husband and wife were estranged), whether or not she met with Levy, and Levy's purported desire that Condit get her a job with the FBI. There was a big investigation of the FBI occurring at that time--summer 2001, leading up to 9/11--by the House Intelligence Committee. Condit sat on that House committee, and was privy to many secrets. Apparently also, there was an initial search of Levy's apartment, at Condit's instigation, without a warrant. We have also since learned that Bush/Cheney is engaged in pervasive domestic spying. Although their assertion of this illegal power--and further their politicalization of agencies like the DoJ, FBI and CIA--only became widespread knowledge more recently (and post 9/11), who can doubt that they already had their spies and toadies at work, trying to gain the levers of blackmail and intimidation within our government?
I would say: Do not judge any reopening of this case on a partisan basis. Despite how Faux News and the rest of the war profiteering corporate news monopolies USED the case as a distraction from the 2000 election coup, and from Bush/Cheney's steeply falling approval numbers that summer, and from the increasing peril to the country that the Bush/Cheney junta posed (FBI agent John O'Neil being forced out of the FBI, Rumsfeld pulling all NORAD decision-making power into his own hands, the 9/11 hijackers running all over the country taking flying lessons, etc., Cheney's secret energy meeting in spring '01, and many other alarm bells), and also despite how Faux News and others focused on the sleazy sexual aspects of the case, and never asked the right questions and never followed up on the political and power issues, those questions remain. And I would advise not dismissing them.
There is also the simple matter of justice, which SHOULD BE a non-partisan issue. Why did this young woman leave (get taken from?) her apartment, without her keys or any ID, and head for (was lured to?) a Rock Creek Park destination (indicated by her MapQuest search), where she was killed*?
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*(Her bones were found not far off the path, post 9/11, in May 2002.)
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