60 Minutes: Rove Sought to Smear Dem (Siegelman) - Airs 2/24

[Laura PourMeADrink]

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2008/02/21/60minutes/main3859830.shtml

GOP Operative: Rove Sought To Smear Dem
60 Minutes: Woman Says Top Bush Adviser Asked Her To Take Compromising Pictures Of Alabama Gov. Siegelman
Comments 509
NEW YORK, Feb. 21, 2008

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------


Pelley's Reporter's Notebook
Scott Pelley discusses his "60 Minutes" report on the controversy surrounding the trial of former Alabama Governor Don Siegelman who is serving prison time after being convicted on corruption charges. | Share/Embed


Pelley's Reporter's Notebook (3:21)
Preview: Don Siegelman (1:22)» More Videos

Related
Interactive
End Of The Rove

President Bush's longtime friend and political mastermind Karl Rove resigns.




Interactive
Political Scandals

Politics can be a strange and dirty business. Check out some of the biggest missteps and mishaps in recent history.





(CBS) A Republican operative in Alabama says Karl Rove asked her to try to prove the state’s Democratic governor was unfaithful to his wife in an effort to thwart the highly successful politician’s re-election.

Rove’s attempt to smear Don Siegelman was part of a Republican campaign to ruin him that finally succeeded in imprisoning him, says the operative, Jill Simpson.

Simpson speaks to Scott Pelley in her first television interview, to be broadcast on 60 Minutes Sunday, Feb. 24, at 7 p.m. ET/PT.

Simpson spoke to Pelley because, she says, Siegelman’s seven-year sentence for bribery bothers her. She recalls what Rove, then President Bush’s senior political adviser, asked her to do at a 2001 meeting in this exchange from Sunday’s report.

"Karl Rove asked you to take pictures of Siegelman?" asks Pelley.

"Yes," replies Simpson.

"In a compromising, sexual position with one of his aides," clarifies Pelley.

"Yes, if I could," says Simpson.

Simpson says she found no evidence of infidelity despite months of observation. She tells Pelley that Rove, who had been a top Republican strategist in Alabama, had made requests for information from her before in her capacity as an "opposition researcher" for Republicans running for office.

Rove would not speak to 60 Minutes, but elsewhere has denied being involved in efforts to discredit Siegelman.

Siegelman was convicted of bribery in a case that has drawn criticism from Democrats and Republicans. In fact, 52 former states’ attorneys general from both political parties petitioned Congress to investigate Siegelman’s case, resulting in hearings held last fall.

"I haven’t seen a case with this many red flags on it that pointed towards a real injustice being done," Grant Woods, the former Republican attorney general of Arizona and one of those who petitioned Congress, tells Pelley. "I personally believe that what happened here is that they targeted Don Siegelman because they could not beat him fair and square."

Siegelman was the only politician in Alabama history to be elected to all four of the state’s highest offices of secretary of state, attorney general, lieutenant governor and governor, and he did it as a Democrat in the heavily Republican state.

[annabanana]

1. The rotten to the core republicans are already fighting back:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x2903087

and

especially:
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x2906401

[baldguy]

2. Don Siegelman is a political prisoner.

[samplegirl]

3. Rove & Novak

Should both be behind bars!!