Some SUBSTANTIVE discussion of Susan Ralston

[Divernan]

I am interested in getting some substantive background on Susan Ralston - so please spare me the 90 some comments like "falling on her sword", "Friday news dump", yada, yada, yada.
There are a lot of gaps in general knowledge about her.
As a staff member, and not an elected official, she is responsible for paying her own legal fees - both past ones re her grand jury appearances, and any future ones.

www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/09/12/AR2005091201630.html

"Witnesses face stress, uncertainty and -- worst of all -- crippling lawyer's fees that can take years to pay off. And as prosecutors cast their net ever wider, inexperienced staffers with few financial assets are increasingly facing the emotional and financial burden of grand jury testimony."
(end of WP quote)

I would like to get a sense of just how wealthy this woman and her low profile husband are. In googling articles about her, my first thought had been, hmmm, Ralston is not a Filipino name. I learned that her husband is one Troy Ralston, who is repeatedly and quite briefly described as, "executive director of a graduate school of management". I finally found an article from Asian Week, by Phil Tajitsu Nash, dated Oct. 28, 2005 (the link is more than one line in length; I can't get it to "stick"; google it if you want to read the whole thing).
Here are some quotes from the article:

"According to a profile by Jenny Ilustre in Asian Fortune's August 2004 issue, Susan Ralston is the eldest of four children of Teotimo D. Bonzon, originally from Rizal province in the Philippines, and Purificacion Lagman Bonzon of Quezon City.

"Ms. Ralston, 37, is married to Troy Alan Ralston, regional director of operations for the Keller Graduate School of Management at DeVry University. Ralston received her MBA degree from Keller after earning a bachelor's degree with honors from Loyola University Chicago. In a 2003 interview with PeopleAsia magazine, Ralston said that she grew up in Jacksonville, Florida, and in Chicago, in a "very close-knit community with a lot of Filipinos."

"On August 2, ABC News reported that Ralston testified before the grand jury investigating the source of the leaking of Valerie Plame’s identity as a covert CIA operative. Whether or not she testified about Rove is unclear, but the National Journal reported on June 18 that, "If Karl Rove is Bush's main man, then it's Ralston who makes this White House go — because she's indispensable to Rove."

How did Ralston, without obvious ties to Texas, where most of the Bush team hails from, make the jump to the White House? According to Newsweek, when Rove first came to Washington and needed a trusted aide, Ralston was suggested to Rove by her boss at that time, lobbyist Jack Abramoff, who worked at Preston Gates and Ellis as well as the Greenberg Traurig law firm. He has made a name for himself in high Republican circles as a fundraiser and dealmaker. Some speculate that Abramoff figured he could increase his value to Rove and increase his ties to the White House by encouraging Ralston and other aides to work for the Bush Administration.
* * * * *
A September 13 Washington Post article described the emotional and financial price paid by senior staffers, such as Susan Ralston, who must pay their own legal bills when grand jury probes force them to hire lawyers, even if they themselves are not the targets of the investigations. Government lawyers do not represent staffers in their personal testimonies before grand juries, and if any reimbursements are made, they never cover full costs, and can take years to arrive.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Reach Phil Tajitsu Nash at [e-mail].


At Fundrace,
www.fundrace.org/neighbors.php?search=1&type=name&lname=Ralston

I see that Mrs. Susan B Ralston, listed as "executive assistant, the White House, and residing at 15572 Wigeon Way, Woodbridge, VA 22191, donated $565 to George Bush, and Mr. Troy Ralston, of the same address, described as "Education Management, Devry Management", gave the RNC $250.

(Ironically, there is ANOTHER Susan Ralston, sometimes using the middle initial "D", who lives in NYC, NY, a "freelance Editor", who donated $2,000 to John Kerry, and $500 to the DNC.)

SO, here's some research challenges to the DU body politic.

Can some DUer use Virginia property tax or other records to get information on the Ralston residential property - a photo, and estimated value?

The Asian Fortune magazine is circulated mainly to the Asian/Pacific community in the Dallas/Ft. Worth and Washington DC area. Anyone able to access this August 2004 issue with the article about
Ms. Ralston? And what might her link be to the Filipino spy discovererd in Cheney's office?

What's the story on this Devrys "graduate school of management"? where her husband is employed, and where she got an MBA? Is it anything more than a low flying diploma mill?

None of these things are guaranteed to be significant, but given that she may end up being a critical, if unwilling witness to the corrupt legacy of Bush, Rove, et al., I think she, her husband, her background, her education, her wealth, should be put under a microscope.

[OzarkDem]

1. IIRC there were a lot of posts

back when the photo ran of her working in the WH w/ Rove on election night. They also gave her some sort of promotion a year or more ago.

She used to work for Abramoff before she came to the WH. She seemed to be his "inside" person, but she was also closest to Rove in the WH. She's always had mysterious assignments in the Bush admin:

From Wikipedia..

In July of 2004, she was promoted from "Executive Assistant to the Senior Adviser" to "Special Assistant to the President and Assistant to the Senior Advisor” at the White House.<4>

Sometime before December 2005, Susan Ralston may have moved to the United States Department of Commerce but remained on the White House Roster. <5>

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Susan_Ralston

Her work has always been hidden from public view. The fact that she's suddenly resigning out of the clear blue is very, very mysterious indeed. Is the investigation into Abramoff being conducted legitimately enough that it would seriously threaten someone like her? I can't believe Bush, DOJ or Congress would allow any kind of real investigation to take place. Could be wrong, though...

[Divernan]

2. 15532 Wigeon Way (same block) sold for $637,000.

Another humongously long link from the WP. Google amongst yourselves.

[rooney]

3. The house at this address is estimated at

$826,000. There is a website called www.zillow.com that will give you real estate information on any house.

[Stinky The Clown]

14. When you run that address through zillow, you see a sewage plant as

the back fence neighbor. Zillow shows a google earth-like hybrid map/photo. Zoom out a bit and set it to hybrid and you'll see the sewage plant right behind that property.

[grasswire]

4. Devry sure looks like a diploma mill

So her degree is probably worthless.

[grasswire]

6. incidentally...

...how did she get a security clearance after working for Abramoff?!

Surely the FBI must have understood the ramifications of having her close to top secret information.

[SpiralHawk]

10. Diploma mill? Yikes. Somebody better investigate soon.

But I have no confidence that the corporate propaganda media will do its job.

Thanks so much for this thread. K and r

[TahitiNut]

13. Devry Institute and Devry Management are different entities.

Devry Institute (now called 'Devry University') is a well-known chain of technical schools, offering degrees for people working full-time. Their curriculum is heavily slanted to the proprietary products of their corporate benefactors ... who also hire the graduates. With off-shoring of IT jobs, Devry will suffer. It's a publicly-traded corporation, traded on the NYSE with a current market value of around $22.50/sh. It's hugely oriented toward training corporate techy droids.

[bleever]

5. Two DU posts about Ralston from the past:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=203x423695

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=104x5467221

Even without explicit knowledge of crimes, she has information that will fill out the full picture.

Great thread.

[Me.]

7. It Has Been Reported That

Whenever Rove would get a call, Susan Ralston would first check with Grover Norquist, who would say either yea or nay, as to whether the caller got through to Rove. (don't have the link but it was here on DU several times during the last year)

*shadow government*

[Me.]

8. Here's The Story

"According to a 2004 Salon piece, she also had a role with one of conservative Washington's leading men, Grover Norquist, in which she took messages for Rove and called Norquist to screen callers.

"For two years, the assistant who answered Rove's phone was a woman who had previously worked for lobbyist Jack Abramoff, a close friend of Norquist's and a top DeLay fundraiser," Salon reported. "One Republican lobbyist, who asked not to be named because DeLay and Rove have the power to ruin his livelihood, said the way Rove's office worked was this: 'Susan took a message for Rove, and then called Grover to ask if she should put the caller through to Rove. If Grover didn't approve, your call didn't go through.'"cont...


The Washington Monthly added, soon thereafter:

"Speaking of phones and doorkeepers, it's widely understood that to have real influence in Washington, one must be on good terms, not so much with Cabinet secretaries, as with White House secretaries--that is, the assistants who sit in the outer offices of the president's senior advisors. As with much else in this town, uber-lobbyist/anti-tax activist Grover Norquist seems to understand this rule as well as anybody. Norquist had a deal with Susan Ralston, who until recently was the assistant to Karl Rove. An unnamed Republican lobbyist recently told Salon.com: "Susan took a message for Rove, and then called Grover to ask if she should put the caller through to Rove. If Grover didn't approve, your call didn't go through."

How did Norquist attain such influence over Ralston? Flowers every Friday? Redskins tickets? The answer, actually, is what the White House ethics lawyers call a "preexisting relationship." Ralston had formerly worked for lobbyist Jack Abramoff, a close friend of Norquist's and a top fundraiser for House majority whip Tom DeLay (R-Texas)." cont...


http://rawstory.com/news/2005/ROVE_AIDE_CALLED_TO_TESTIFY_TOOK_HIS_MESS_0802.html

*shadow government*

[longship]

9. This isn't going to end pretty.

Just read this entire thread and links. This doesn't look good for ol' Susan.

DeVry? Really? Doesn't sound like a high six figure income job to me. So how do the Ralstons afford to live in a neighborhood like that?

[onenote]

15. its not a particularly upscale neighborhood

Its a pain in the ass commute to DC from Woodbridge. And houses in Woodbridge are distinctly less expensive than in other parts of the DC suburbs. A quick search of home sales on Wigeon Way shows that in January of this year, houses sold from under 485K to $637k. And I haven't seen anything indicating when Ralston bought her home.

[wicket]

11. K & R

:kick:

[bleever]

12. Kick.