Bush-Abramoff Photos Disappear

[kpete]

Bush-Abramoff Photos Disappear

Josh Marshall discovered that a photography company that works at Republican political events recently wiped all photographs of President Bush and Jack Abramoff from its public offerings.

"The woman from Reflections told me that that this sometimes happened when the White House wanted to prevent the public from accessing certain photographs of the president."

Meanwhile, the New York Times reports President Bush said "we live in a world in which those pictures will be used for pure political purposes, and they're not relevant to the investigation."

http://politicalwire.com/archives/2006/01/26/bushabramoff_photos_disappear.html
http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/007536.php

[Skidmore]

1. Check Karl Rove's underwear drawer.

[cyberpj]

2. POOF! King George says they're not important so do away with them!

[jsamuel]

3. "We live in a world where my criminal actions against the American people

will be used to try to put me in jail... and that just isn't what I want."

[KansDem]

4. Probably put in the drawer with *'s old Texas driver's license records...

...and TANG records.

It must be nice to have low friends in high places...

[Horse with no Name]

5. Excuse me

They are *relevant* if you deny the association.

[OldLeftieLawyer]

6. Keep in mind,

there's no proof that such photographs exist.

So far, it's nothing but people talking about them, quoted second-, third-, fourth-hand.

I'm doubtful they exist. Abramoff didn't work that way.

[KurtNYC]

7. How about this one?

[Betsy Ross]

8. On an earlier post it was said that

this is not Abramoff, but a secret security man.

[OldLeftieLawyer]

10. What about it?

That's not Jack Abramoff.

Oh, for heaven's sake, consider lobbyists and how they work.

Can you name - without googling - one lobbyist in DC with clout?

The job description requires them to stay out of the spotlight. Before this scandal, you never heard of Jack Abramoff.

And they do NOT get their pictures taken.

[Jara sang]

13. That's bullshit. Everybody in Washington does the meet and greet photo.

The guy I worked for had everybody up on his trophy wall. Pictures of himself with Nixon, George H.W., Reagan, Jack Danforth, Ashcroft, Rumsfeld, The Pope, etc. It was a monument to himself. I know Abramoffs ego was at least as big as this guy's, in fact he knew Abramoff.

[OldLeftieLawyer]

16. Not the big fat guys, no

Not anymore.

Abramoff was always in the shadows. If not for a disgruntled girlfriend of a former associate, he'd still be in the shadows and no one would ever have heard of him.

Those pictures on the walls are rapidly becoming relics for K Streeters.

[ljm2002]

17. I think you're wrong on this one

Firstly, Josh Marshall goes into great detail on what was said to him by people at Reflections Photography, including a low level staffer and the owner of the company, who directly admitted to ordering photos deleted.

Secondly, there has been lots of buzz from more than one source that the 5 photos spoken of by Time were being shopped around; some of the buzz claims that Jack A. was the one doing the shopping. Regardless of how lobbyists usually work, Jack made a lot of $$ by selling access. The right pictures, shown to the right prospective clients, would serve to reinforce the reality of that access. And Time has gone on record as having seen 5 pictures of the two together.

Finally, if you recall, several months ago, when this first started heating up, Jack was heard angrily announcing that those politicos on the golf trip (including Tom DeLay) most certainly did know how it was funded -- this was after they started trying to distance themselves. We know he already cut a deal in return for his guilty plea. And he may be less than cooperative than Ken "Who?" Lay was when suddenly "distanced".

I think there are pictures, and they will get out, and they will put the lie to Bush's claims. Will anyone besides a few of us care? Now that is a different question entirely...

[OldLeftieLawyer]

18. First,

what Josh Marshall reports is hearsay. Worthless, at least as I'm forming my opinion.

Next, if you believe that nonsense about "Abramoff shopping pictures around," you had better get back on your turnip truck - it's leaving without you ;). You're forgetting the fact that Abramoff's already filed his plea, and now, everything he has - including photos - belong to the prosecutor. He ain't "shopping" anything around, believe me, because someone - probably Larry Flynt - would have already bought them.

So, that's what I think of this "pictures" thing. And, besides, it's a red herring, since pictures are probative of absolutely nothing.

Relax. Soon enough, Abramoff's testimony will be translated into indictments, and when all that becomes public, we can all watch history being made. Testimony, not photos.

[spuddonna]

9. Wow... Good to see they're scrubbing history so well!

What about the Time magazine reporters that claimed to have seen the 5 pics that the Washintonian had?

Have we really gotten as close to Orwell's "1984" as I think we have?

"As soon as all the corrections which happened to be necessary in any particular number of The Times had been assembled and collated, that number would be reprinted, the original copy destroyed, and the corrected copy placed on the files in its stead. This process of continuous alteration was applied not only to newspapers, but to books, periodicals, pamphlets, posters, leaflets, films, sound-tracks, cartoons, photographs -- to every kind of literature or documentation which might conceivably hold any political or ideological significance. Day by day and almost minute by minute the past was brought up to date. In this way every prediction made by the Party could be shown by documentary evidence to have been correct, nor was any item of news, or any expression of opinion, which conflicted with the needs of the moment, ever allowed to remain on record. All history was a palimpsest, scraped clean and reinscribed exactly as often as was necessary." - George Orwell, "1984"

[Not_Giving_Up]

11. Yep...Memory Hole was my first thought

It never happened folks, move along, nothing to see here.

[DoYouEverWonder]

19. Let them scrub all they want

It's the cover up that gets them every time.

[kpete]

12. Photo Co:President that "scrubbed" Abramoff photo with Bush gave to Bush

Photograph Company President that "scrubbed" Abramoff photo with Bush gave to Bush

Josh has a post in which he interviews the President of Reflections Photography on why their photos of Abramoff and Bush are no longer available. From his post:


But early this afternoon, I decided to take one more go at Reflections. I talked to company president Joanne Amos. We went back and forth over various questions about whether photographs at the site were available to the public and why some had been removed. When she, at length, asked me who it was in the picture with the president. I told her we believed it was Jack Abramoff.

Amos very straightforwardly told me that the photographs had been removed and that they had been removed because they showed Abramoff and the president in the same picture. The photos were, she told me, "not relevant."

When I asked her who had instructed her to remove the photos, she told me she was the president of the company. She did it. It was "her business decision" to remove the photographs. She told me she had done so within the last month.

http://dailydelay.blogspot.com/2006/01/photograph-company-president-that.html

[fishnfla]

14. Weren't the pics taken for "pure political purposes" ?

what an ironic choice of words. Pure as the driven snow, them two

[merbex]

15. Read the whole thing at talkingpointsmemo - the woman who is the

owner used almost exactly the same phrase as B* - not relevant

It is unbelievable how the repugs stay on message right down to the phrasing