Bush vs. Gore, the 'Arkansas Project,' the USA firings, and the Swiftboat Admiral

[L. Coyote]

Can these sound bites really all be related?
Shouldn't Karl Rove be in that list somewhere?

It is amazing who is in the list of persons related to these seemingly unconnected events.
This thread will bring some startling connections to light, as the post compilation grows.

Are Republicans tying the knot that brings these events together, just in case we didn't know.

On the principle that Bush appoints to AG someone most inclined to keep Bush's secrets, well Gonzales
was a sure-fire natural as Bush's attorney. Who might be #2 using the "keep Bush's secrets" principle?

======================
GOP Floating Ted Olson, Head of 1990s Anti-Clinton ‘Arkansas Project,’ for AG
Posted by Jon Ponder | Apr. 22, 2007, 7:03 am
http://www.pensitoreview.com/2007/04/22/gop-floating-ted-olson-for-ag?p=3917

(W)ould Pres. Bush nominate Ted Olson for attorney general? ....

During the 1990s, the GOP ran a stealth disinformation campaign against the Clintons, .... out of the offices of the American Spectator, a rightwing magazine. Internally, the operation was called the Arkansas Project, but Hillary famously referred to it as a “vast rightwing conspiracy.” It was funded by Richard Mellon Scaife and its CEO was Ted Olson.

Olson’s wife, Barbara ...the author of the diatribe ... “Hell to Pay: The Unfolding Story of Hillary Rodham Clinton,” died on the plane that hit the Pentagon on Sept. 11, 2001.

... Olson argued for the Bush/Cheney campaign in Bush v. Gore. ... he was rewarded with the position of solicitor general, a job once held by his friend Ken Starr ... who spent $60 million of the taxpayers’ money to smear the Clintons with allegations, much of which were generated by the Arkansas Project. ....

With the possible exception of Starr, no one is more responsible than Ted Olson for paving the way for the Worst President Ever.

...... Today the Judiciary chairman, Pat Leahy, and other committee Democrats like Chuck Schumer, Ted Kennedy and Russ Feingold may be more ready to get Olson on the record about his role in the Arkansas Project .....

[Kagemusha]

1. I heard Olson was part of the people who were gonna resign over the NSA stuff

and that's why he was no longer wanted. I was like, wha? Olson? Whose wife died on a plane on 9/11? That Olson? Monica Gooding's more of a true believer than Olson? Whoa.

[Toots]

17. I don't think it was a matter of right or wrong with him but of getting caught.

I think he recognized the fact the Bush* Cabal was made up of people so arrogant they felt they could just do anything they wished without consequence and because of that they were careless and at times completely incompetent. He is evil, make no bones about it, just smarter than the rest of them..

[L. Coyote]

19. He is the consummate insider in this group. But you are right in this sense

The considerations in opposing the ultra-secret illegal wiretapping had more to do with dealing with the DoJ not signing off and how to FIX that aspect of the situation. DoJ sign-off was necessary for the telephone companies allowing capture of all communications in the country.

The FINAL SOLUTION was installing Gonzales in the position that was resisting Bush's decisions. The mid-term solution was satisfying the objections in as minimal a fashion as possible. The near-term was flaunt the law and have Gonzales write a brief (legal escape clause) justifying the President's erst-while illegal actions.

The danger the "mutiny crew" worried about was not the captain of the pirate ship.
They were worried about pirates (themselves) getting hung from the mast of state.

[L. Coyote]

2. Nixon’s political legacy – mixing dirty tricks, “rat-fucking,” character assassination and cover-ups

ISSUE: Arkansas Project
From Consortiumnews.com,Robert Parry, May 6, 2002
David Brock & the Watergate Legacy
EXCERPT - http://www.mediatransparency.org/issue.php?issueID=4

David Brock’s tell-all "Blinded by the Right" parallels another account by a young man who came to Washington and found a home in Republican circles. That confessional book was "Blind Ambition" by Richard Nixon’s White House counsel John Dean....

.... the two “blinded” books by former insiders can be seen as bookends. Dean’s marks the early days of Nixon’s vision of a mechanism for dirty tricks to neutralize political enemies – and Brock’s chronicles its maturity through the impeachment battles against Bill Clinton and ultimately its success installing George W. Bush in the White House.

This continuum of Republican attack politics from Watergate to W. is the unacknowledged back story of Brock’s book, ...

Brock’s book ... ranks as a valuable guidebook explaining how the conservative attack machine worked in the 1990s ... its key players.... dissecting the dirty tricks – along with detailing the raging hypocrisies of many right-wing operatives .....

............

...... writing for the American Spectator, Brock turned the tales about alleged sexual misbehavior by Bill and Hillary Clinton into another national media frenzy in December 1993. The so-called Troopergate charges – some which proved to be false or highly unlikely – smashed the modern taboo against prying into the private life of a sitting American president.

Brock became a hero to the American Right...The increasingly powerful conservative apparatus was determined to oust Clinton over one charge or another. Nixon’s political legacy – mixing dirty tricks, “rat-fucking,” character assassination and cover-ups – had become the everyday tricks of the trade for America’s conservative movement...

[L. Coyote]

3. Billionaire Richard Mellon Scaife ... had given the magazine at least $3.3 million.

Washington Post Staff
Sunday, May 2, 1999; Page A24
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/politics/special/clinton/stories/scaifeside050299.htm

The "Arkansas Project" ...R. Emmett Tyrrell Jr. ... Richard M. Larry ... David Henderson ... Steven Boynton ... David Hale, a Little Rock lawyer and political figure who became prominent in the Whitewater affair after accusing then-Gov. Clinton of pressuring him to make an improper $300,000, federally backed loan ... Parker Dozhier, a rabid Clinton hater ...

Billionaire Richard Mellon Scaife ... had given the magazine at least $3.3 million. Under the tax law, Scaife's foundations could not sponsor their own investigation of Clinton. They had to give money to a registered nonprofit organization ...The American Spectator Foundation, which publishes the magazine, qualified ... Henderson was paid $477,000 ...
Boynton received at least $577,000 ... project money went to private investigators ... Rex Armistead... was paid at least $353,517 .....

The project ... underway in January 1995 ... staff writer David Brock reporting Arkansas state troopers' accounts of how they had arranged illicit trysts for Clinton ... reference to "a woman named Paula" ...

Brock ... summoned ... Armistead laid out an elaborate "Vince Foster murder scenario," Brock said ...

[L. Coyote]

4. allegations made by a former Arkansas municipal court judge, David Hale ... Clinton

At the core of Whitewater .... allegations made by a former Arkansas municipal court judge, David Hale ... Clinton ... pressured Hale to make an illegal and fraudulent $300,000 loan to Susan McDougal ... Starr even drafted an impeachment referral to the House of Representatives alleging that there was "substantial and credible evidence" that Clinton might have committed perjury regarding the Hale matter.

Salon's reporting on Hale and Whitewater raised serious questions about the veracity of Hale's allegations and the conduct by Starr in leading the Whitewater probe. Partly as a result of those stories, a federal grand jury examined allegations that Hale accepted financial assistance and gratuities from conservative activists. Moreover, Starr ultimately never sent his Whitewater referral to the House because of the new questions raised about Hale's credibility as a witness against the president.

Murray Waas, who reported the Salon stories, won the Society of Professional Journalists Award for Depth Reporting for his coverage of Whitewater.

NUmerous articles linked: http://www.salon.com/news/special/clinton/whitewater.html

[L. Coyote]

9. 'Starr-gate': Cracks on the Right = Hale's motives could devastate Starr

'Starr-gate': Cracks on the Right
By Robert Parry
http://www.consortiumnews.com/archive/clinto13.html

... the conservative campaign to impeach President Clinton through endless "scandal" has started to come unglued ... Whitewater witness David Hale was receiving cash and other gratuities from a conservative operative, a Clinton-hating sportsman named Parker Dozhier ... working for The American Spectator's Arkansas Project ... financed by right-wing billionaire Richard Mellon Scaife.

... a pattern of cash payments to Hale ... when the former municipal judge stayed at Dozhier's cabin in Hot Springs, Ark. ... free lodging and free use of Dozhier's car.

... Hale and Dozhier met with ... investigators from Starr's staff ... Hale's motives could devastate Starr's Whitewater investigation ... just as he is drafting a report recommending President Clinton's impeachment.

... Scaife has heaped his largesse onto offices at Pepperdine University where Starr planned to go to work after finishing his Whitewater investigation ... Scaife also has financed a number of other right-wing lawyer groups with close ties to Starr, such as the Washington Legal Foundation, the Federalist Society and the Landmark Legal Foundation..

... Hale ... only fingered Clinton in 1993 after the FBI caught him defrauding the Small Business Administration of $2 million ... but Hale's account still is expected to be one of the twin pillars of Starr's impeachment ... other pillar reportedly will consist of allegations that Clinton lied when he denied sexual relations with Monica Lewinsky.....

[L. Coyote]

11. Foreshadowing the USA Firings: Ken Starr & the smearing of Judge Woods

The smearing of Judge Woods
HOW NEWSPAPER ARTICLES OF QUESTIONABLE ORIGIN WERE USED BY KENNETH STARR TO REMOVE A FEDERAL JURIST IN A WHITEWATER CASE.
BY GENE LYONS, JOE CONASON AND MURRAY WAAS
©1998 Salon Magazine
http://www.salon.com/news/1998/04/22news.html

Operatives of the anti-Clinton Arkansas Project mounted a campaign in the summer of 1995 to discredit a federal judge because they did not want him to preside over a criminal prosecution brought by the Whitewater independent counsel .. Starr prevailed in a highly unusual motion to remove the jurist, U.S. District Judge Henry Woods, from a case involving then-Arkansas Gov. Jim Guy Tucker...

...the judge had quashed Starr's indictment of Tucker in a crucial pretrial motion ... Starr cited newspaper articles about Woods that contained questionable and erroneous information in part generated by individuals associated with the Arkansas Project ... Debbie Gershman, a spokeswoman for the Office of Independent Counsel, told Salon: "It is traditional for prosecutors to use information in whatever form it may take."

... a lengthy op-ed article in the conservative Washington Times by Jim Johnson, a former Arkansas Supreme Court justice and avowed segregationist ... described Woods, among other things, as a Clinton crony ... Woods knew the Clintons socially and had appointed Hillary Clinton to a panel overseeing integration of the Little Rock public school system, which (segregationist) Johnson bitterly opposed ...

... a derogatory memo about Woods ... was faxed to the office of Sen. Lauch Faircloth, R-N.C., ... from the office of Stephen Boynton ...

[L. Coyote]

12. Ken Starr tried to prevent state prosecutors from charging his prime witness

Protected witness
How Ken Starr tried to prevent state prosecutors from charging his prime witness with defrauding poor black people of burial insurance.
http://www.salon.com/news/1998/09/cov_10newsa.html


... Ken Starr tried to prevent state prosecutors from charging his prime witness ... David Hale looted funds from an insurance company ... facts in this case ... may have further eroded Hale's credibility ... and thereby negatively affected Starr's entire effort long before the Monica Lewinsky scandal salvaged the independent counsel's investigation...

... Sam Dash, a senior advisor to Starr, told the state prosecutors that their actions might be construed as federal witness tampering if they were to bring any indictment of Hale, according to three law enforcement officials ... three other Whitewater prosecutors, Bradley E. Lerman, Ray Jahn and Amy St. Eve, as well as three Arkansas state prosecutors, were present ...

Hale ... received covert payments of money and other gratuities from conservative political activists during a period of time that he was a cooperating witness in Starr's Whitewater investigation ... Charles G. Bakaly III, a spokesman for the Whitewater independent counsel, has said Starr and other prosecutors in his office "followed the letter and spirit of the law" ...

... a federal grand jury in Little Rock had also indicted Hale on four felony counts that he had defrauded the federal Small Business Administration of more than $3.4 million. Hale ... made fraudulent and illegal loans to a number of Arkansas political and business leaders....

[L. Coyote]

32. Anti-Clinton Billionaire Goes Before Grand Jury = "Scaife tried to influence the testimony"

Anti-Clinton Billionaire Goes Before Grand Jury
By John Mintz
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, September 29, 1998; Page A8
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/politics/special/clinton/stories/scaife092998.htm


Conservative billionaire Richard Mellon Scaife earlier this month appeared before a federal grand jury in Fort Smith, Ark., investigating whether a group of anti-Clinton researchers financed by Scaife tried to influence the testimony of one of President Clinton's chief Whitewater accusers with cash payments, informed sources said.

The grand jury is looking into allegations that Arkansas businessman David Hale ... received thousands of dollars from ... an anti-Clinton research project funded by Scaife.

The probe is proving to be an embarrassment for Scaife, a secretive scion of the Mellon family known for his generosity to conservative causes. It also raises questions about Hale, who served 20 months in jail after pleading guilty to defrauding the Small Business Administration. As part of the agreement, Hale became a cooperating witness for Starr and has accused Clinton of pressuring him into making a fraudulent $300,000 loan ...

The Arkansas grand jury was empaneled by Michael J. Shaheen, a former Justice Department government ethics investigator .....

[L. Coyote]

31. Conservative billionaire Richard Mellon Scaife: "Funding Father" of the Right = $1.4 billion

Scaife: Funding Father of the Right
Conservative billionaire Richard Mellon Scaife.
By Robert G. Kaiser and Ira Chinoy
Washington Post Staff Writers
Sunday, May 2, 1999; Page A1 - First of two articles
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/politics/special/clinton/stories/scaifemain050299.htm


One August day in 1994, while gossiping about politics over lunch on Nantucket, Richard Mellon Scaife, the Pittsburgh billionaire and patron of conservative causes, made a prediction. "We're going to get Clinton," Joan Bingham, a New York publisher present at the lunch, remembers him saying. "And you'll be much happier," he said to Bingham and another Democrat at the table, "because Al Gore will be president."

.... Scaife's assertion came to seem less and less far-fetched ... James Carville, Clinton's former campaign aide and rabid defender, called Scaife "the archconservative godfather in heavily funded war against the president." ....

But people who know him well say that although Scaife is fond of conspiracy theories of many kinds, he is incapable of managing any sort of grand conspiracy himself. And months of reporting produced no evidence of his orchestrating any effort to "get" Clinton beyond his financial support. Indeed, focusing on his role in the crusade against Clinton can obscure the 66-year-old philanthropist's real importance, which is not based on his opposition or support for any individual politicians (though he once gave Richard M. Nixon $1 million). His biggest contribution has been to help fund the creation of the modern conservative movement in America.

By compiling a computerized record of nearly all his contributions over the last four decades, The Washington Post found that Scaife and his family's charitable entities have given at least $340 million to conservative causes and institutions – about $620 million in current dollars, adjusted for inflation. The total of Scaife's giving – to conservatives as well as many other beneficiaries – exceeds $600 million, or $1.4 billion in current dollars, much more than any previous estimate. ....

[L. Coyote]

5. Swiftboating Bill Clinton: The Jerry Falwell / Orange County Connection

HOW THE REV. JERRY FALWELL AND A CALIFORNIA POLITICAL ORGANIZATION HELPED FINANCE AND ORCHESTRATE AN EXTENSIVE ANTI-CLINTON PROPAGANDA CAMPAIGN.
BY MURRAY WAAS
http://www.salon.com/news/1998/03/cov_11news.html

A conservative political organization with ties to the Rev. Jerry Falwell covertly paid more than $200,000 to individuals who made damaging allegations about President Clinton.... paid out over a three-year period, between l994 and l996, by Citizens for Honest Government, headquartered in Orange County....

... allegations -- some of which were either fabricated or grossly exaggerated -- were part of a covert and sophisticated political propaganda effort to influence public opinion against President Clinton.

One of the allegations, that Clinton protected an Arkansas-based cocaine-smuggling operation when he was governor of that state, spread from local talk radio shows to propaganda videos to the mainstream media, and eventually prompted an exhaustive, multimillion-dollar investigation by the House Banking Committee in 1994. The investigation concluded Clinton had nothing to do with the drug operation.

In another instance, in March, 1995, the Arkansas represenative of Citizens for Honest Government signed a contract agreeing to pay two Arkansa state troopers who had made questionable allegations supporting the theory that the late White House Counsel Vincent Foster had been murdered. ...

[L. Coyote]

6. The Wall Street Journal and the Clinton-cocaine stories

THE FALWELL CONNECTION -
http://www.salon.com/news/1998/03/cov_11news3.html


... Citizens for Honest Government's paid "expert witnesses" ... Nichols and three other individuals ... told the press that Clinton ... ordered state law enforcement officials to turn a blind eye to a cocaine trafficking ring ... because one of the ring's backers was a Clinton campaign contributor. They also alleged the drug smuggling ring was connected to a covert U.S. intelligence operation in Central America.

The allegations ... began moving into the mainstream via articles in the American Spectator and the conservative Washington Times ... ultimately legitimized ... in 1994 on the editorial page of the Wall Street Journal.

Rep. Jim Leach, (R-Iowa), chairman of the House Banking Committee, acknowledged in an interview in the fall of l996 that he had directed his committee staff to conduct a comprehensive investigation of the Mena allegations after first reading about them in the Wall Street Journal.

... House Speaker Newt Gingrich, R-Ga., ... personally urged that Leach investigate ... CIA Inspector-General ... concluded ... there was no evidence ... Leach's House Banking Committee requested the CIA investigation.

Among those who ... received generous payments from Citizens for Honest Government -- was John Brown, a former deputy sheriff ... more than $28,000 ...

... American Spectator ... editor, R. Emmett Tyrrell Jr., ... quoted Parks as saying that she had personally witnessed Clinton using cocaine ... Parks and other members of her family received more than $16,000 from Citizens for Honest Government ... an additional $6,000 ....

[L. Coyote]

8. If they would tell their sensational story about the Foster death on a video

THE FALWELL CONNECTION
http://www.salon.com/news/1998/03/cov_11news4.html

The death of White House counsel Vincent Foster also played a prominent part in the anti-Clinton campaign financed by Citizens for Honest Government....

... Nichols ... Roger Perry and Larry Patterson, the two Arkansas state troopers ... were honored guests at the Citizens for Honest Government conference in February 1995 ... Nichols told the troopers and Davis that he had a business proposition ... If they would tell their sensational story about the Foster death on a video sequel to "The Clinton Chronicles," he would share the profits from its sale ... a dollar for each video sold ...

Perry and Patterson told their stories about Foster's death to investigators in ... Starr's office ... unaware of the financial relationship...

Nichols promised hefty profits ... Falwell had agreed to purchase between 50,000 and 75,000 copies ... promote it on television. Citizens for Honest Government also had agreed to buy a substantial number ... Perry says he received no compensation from Nichols, who told him the video made no profits. Nichols told other people, however, that he made more than $150,000

... Perry says he believes Nichols cheated ... "... I learned about the kind of things that Larry Nichols and Pat Matrisciana were doing, I came to believe that what they were up to was wrong, too ... And now there is going to be a price to be paid ....

[L. Coyote]

34. a virtual conspiracy: CLINTON'S FOES SPREAD RUMORS, ALLEGATIONS, SPECULATIONS AND LIES

The anatomy of a virtual conspiracy
UNABLE TO DEFEAT HIM AT THE POLLS, PRESIDENT CLINTON'S FOES USE THE PRESS TO SPREAD RUMORS, ALLEGATIONS, SPECULATIONS AND LIES.
BY PETER J. OGNIBENE
http://www.salon.com/news/1998/05/18news.html


The first lady is right, as Salon and others have suggested: There is a conspiracy to bring down President Clinton. But this is no ordinary conspiracy. Not a tiny cabal like the one that met in Mary Surratt's boardinghouse to plot the assassination of Abraham Lincoln nor the scenario of a wigged-out novelist or film director. It is something quite different -- indeed, unprecedented in our history -- a "virtual conspiracy." ....

A virtual conspiracy starts in the open and requires publicity to flourish and gain adherents. Virtual conspirators test-fly stratagems, tactics and rumors. They do not meet in secret until they have discerned what will advance their undertaking and what will not. Moreover, by making their initial moves in the open, they attract others to their cause and to one another.

Instantaneous communication is critical to a virtual conspiracy. So, too, is freedom of expression. Though there are laws against making false accusations, virtual conspirators who channel charges, allegations and rumors through the press or spread them on the Internet gain the protection of the First Amendment. Most thrusts fail, but some wound, making the hated target more vulnerable the next time around.

Sound far-fetched? Consider: ............

[L. Coyote]

49. The Arkansas Dixiecrat and Trent Lott's past -- and how that should affect his future.

Joe Conason's Journal
Trent Lott's past -- and how that should affect his future.
Dec. 11, 2002
http://archive.salon.com/politics/conason/2002/12/11/bush/index.html

Trent Lott ... blurting out his true feelings, in public, about the course that America has taken since 1948, when his political forebears were defeated and the emancipation of black Americans resumed ... Lott deployed his old "seg" allies in the Republican assault on Bill Clinton in 1992. Among the unreconstructed racists who joined the GOP along with Thurmond was a former Arkansas Dixiecrat known as "Justice Jim" Johnson, who had led the violent resistance to the integration of Little Rock High School in 1957. As a young activist, Clinton had fought Johnson in more than one election during the '60s. When Clinton ran for president, Johnson called upon his old comrades to help ruin him.

Johnson wanted to find a letter that Clinton had written to a Mississippi draft board ... Justice Jim later told an interviewer ... he asked Trent Lott for assistance in retrieving the document. "I was subsequently contacted by Col. Rex Armistead of Lula, Mississippi. Col. Armistead was the head of the Mississippi State Police when my friend, former Rep. John Bell Williams, was Governor of Mississippi." ... the last openly racist governor of Mississippi ... His former police chief Armistead rose to power during an era of official terrorism and violent repression against black citizens and civil rights advocates. Upon retiring from his strange career in law enforcement, Armistead became a private detective who specialized in political dirty tricks on behalf of Republican candidates. In 1983, he engineered a GOP scheme to smear Mississippi Democratic gubernatorial candidate Bill Allain as a homosexual.

Armistead ... later joined the payroll of Richard Mellon Scaife's "Arkansas Project," ...

Like his sub rosa support for the CCC, Lott's connections with Jim Johnson and Rex Armistead strongly suggest that, unlike Thurmond, he never changed at all. His statements and affiliations are not a series of momentary aberrations but a clear pattern...

[UTUSN]

7. Frying pan, meet fire. This is RICH!1 Gonzo's crime is POLITICIZING the DOJ, so OLSEN

will fix that? HAH!!1

[L. Coyote]

10. Swiftboating Bill Clinton: Paula Jones' mysterious 501(c)3 benefactor = secret $50,000

Paula Jones' mysterious benefactor
Who's behind a secret $50,000 donation to the legal fund of Clinton's accuser?
BY JONATHAN BRODER AND MURRAY WAAS
http://www.salon.com/news/1998/03/cov_12newsb.html

... a secret $50,000 contribution ... to Jones' legal war chest came from the Washington, D.C.-based Fund for a Living American Government, or FLAG ... William Lehrfeld, refused to confirm or deny ... "I think that individuals and organizations should be able to support Ms. Jones with their privacy being assured,"

... however, FLAG is required by law to allow public review ... the year that the organization secretly contributed $50,000 ... disclosure statement said only that the organization had paid out a total of $175,000 that year "in support of human and civil rights, secured by law via payments to lawyers and law firms." The disclosure statement said FLAG's primary goals were "to assist the Heritage Foundation" -- a Washington-based conservative think tank -- and also to promote the "ideals of limited government."
... Lehrfeld has built a career out of doing tax-related legal work for a number of conservative foundations and political organizations, including the Sarah Scaife Foundation -- controlled by Pittsburgh newspaper publisher Richard Mellon Scaife ...

The secrecy surrounding FLAG's $50,000 donation to Paula Jones raises questions about the identities of the people or groups that are contributing to Jones' legal fund and whether they may be using middlemen to funnel money tax-free to Clinton's accuser. The organization's 501(c)3 tax-exempt status allows contributors to make donations tax-free. ...

Jonathan Broder is Salon's Washington correspondent. Murray Waas is a Washington reporter whose articles have appeared in the New Yorker, the Boston Globe, the Los Angeles Times and the New Republic.

[Supersedeas]

50. the Fat Cats play to win

[L. Coyote]

13. Playing Dirty ..cloak-and-dagger world of opposition research—the updated version of "dirty tricks

Playing Dirty ... cloak-and-dagger world of opposition research—the updated version of "dirty tricks"
The Atlantic Monthly | June 2004
by Joshua Green
http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200406/green

... Barbara Comstock ... taking over the research team marked a significant change. She was a lawyer and a ten-year veteran of Capitol Hill who had been one of Representative Dan Burton's top congressional investigators during the Clinton scandals...: Filegate, Travelgate, assorted campaign-finance imbroglios, and Whitewater. ... Comstock put together a group of seasoned attorneys and former colleagues from the Burton Committee, including her deputy, Tim Griffin. "The team we had from 2000," she told... "were veteran investigators from the Clinton years. We had a core group of people, and that core was attorneys."

Griffin ... "We think of ourselves as the creators of the ammunition in a war," he says. "We make the bullets." ... campaign against Gore illustrates how what Bill Clinton referred to as "the politics of personal destruction" has become institutionalized ... a profession run by seasoned investigators, most of whom learned their craft on one side or another of the Clinton scandals ... have become the leading lights in the low-lit world of opposition research. ...

[L. Coyote]

15. Holmes to Watson, Holmes to Watson, This is elementary Watson. Griffin is a Rat

March 20, 2007
I Smell a Rat
http://pundits.thehill.com/2007/03/20/i-smell-a-rat/


Watson,

I smell a rat ... what we know:

1. A well-qualified U.S. attorney in Arkansas was fired ....

3. ... replaced by one Timothy Griffin ... aide to Karl Rove ... Griffin’s expertise? Political oppo research...

This is elementary, my dear Watson.

I want you to whisper in the proper ears, to discover what is behind this foul-smelling sequence of events.

— Holmes

[L. Coyote]

16. VOTE CAGING Rove-Protege Tim Griffin Resigns As U.S. Attorney

Rove-Protege Tim Griffin Resigns As U.S. Attorney
http://thinkprogress.org/2007/05/30/griffin-resigns

The Arkansas Times reports that the controversial U.S. attorney in Arkansas, Tim Griffin, has resigned ... effective Friday, June 1.

Griffin, a former protege of Karl Rove, was formerly research director of the Republican National Committee. In 2004, BBC News published a report showing that Griffin led a “caging” scheme to suppress the votes of African-American servicemembers in Florida.

Griffin became the poster boy for the politicization of the U.S. attorney process. Former Justice official Kyle Sampson noted that getting Griffin into office “was important to Harriet , Karl, et cetera.” ........

===============================
Email Raises More Questions about Rove's Role in U.S. Attorney Appointment
By Paul Kiel - May 25, 2007, 5:17 PM
http://www.tpmmuckraker.com/archives/003295.php

Emails show that White House and Justice Department officials worked together for months to install Griffin, dating back to last summer. Rove's aides in the White House Office of Political Affairs were intimately involved. Up until now, however, there had been no evidence of direct communication between Rove and Griffin about the appointment. But an email contained in documents released earlier this week shows Griffin directly emailing Rove and his deputies in the White House Office of Political Affairs ...


http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/docs/griffin-rove/

... Sen. Pryor had been most alarmed by the administration's apparent scheme -- which Alberto Gonzales' chief of staff Kyle Sampson laid out in a December 19, 2006 email that was later turned over to Congress in March -- to appoint Griffin indefinitely without Senate confirmation, via a little noticed provision in the USA PATRIOT ACT Reauthorization bill. ...

[L. Coyote]

30. Rove Pick for US Attorney Resigns After BBC Television "Newsnight" report

Conyers Requests Palast's "Vote Caging" Evidence
By Brad Friedman
t r u t h o u t | Guest Contributor
Monday 04 June 2007
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/060407R.shtml


... Rove Pick for US Attorney Resigns After Conyers Seeks Evidence From BBC ... Tim Griffin, formerly right-hand man to Karl Rove, resigned Thursday as US attorney for Arkansas hours after BBC Television "Newsnight" reported that Congressman John Conyers requested the network's evidence on Griffin's involvement in "caging voters." ....

Experts have concluded the caging lists were designed for a mass challenge of voters' right to cast ballots. The caging lists were heavily weighted with minority voters, including African-American homeless men, students and soldiers sent overseas.

Conyers, chairman of the House Judiciary Committee investigating the firing of US attorneys, met Thursday evening in New York with Palast. After reviewing key documents, Conyers stated that, despite Griffin's resignation, "We're not through with him by any means."

Conyers indicated that he thought it unlikely that Griffin could carry out this massive caging operation without the knowledge of White House Deputy Chief of Staff Rove. ......

[L. Coyote]

43. J. Timothy Griffin - Rise of a Very 'Loyal Bushie'

Rise of a Very 'Loyal Bushie'
By Richard L. Fricker - March 28, 2007
http://www.consortiumnews.com/2007/032707a.html

If you want to know what the career path of a “loyal Bushie” looks like, let me introduce you to J. Timothy Griffin, a Karl Rove protégé who was slipped into the post of U.S. Attorney in Little Rock, Arkansas, and now is at the center of the controversy over whether the Bush administration has sought to politicize federal prosecutions.

Griffin has pretty much touched them all – the Federalist Society, work for a Clinton-era special prosecutor, the Florida recount battle in 2000, opposition research and voter security duties for the Republican National Committee in Campaign 2004, a brief tour as a military lawyer in Iraq, a deputy in Karl Rove’s political shop at the White House.

But now this carefully groomed Republican operative stands out as Exhibit A for Democrats as they contend that the Bush administration imposed political litmus tests on federal prosecutors who wield enormous power over the lives of those they investigate. ...

While at the New Orleans university, Griffin became a leader of the Tulane chapter of the Federalist Society, a powerful conservative legal organization and the chief training ground for right-wing lawyers dedicated to rolling back the liberal gains of the Warren Court and supportive of unrestrained presidential powers. ...

... he joined the Bush-Cheney (2000) campaign as deputy research director working for the Republican National Committee, what’s known in the Washington political world as “oppo” or opposition research ... Griffin’s résumé describes his job as “the primary research resource ... with over 30 staff.”

During the bitter Florida recount battle, Griffin served as legal adviser in Volusia and Brevard counties ... Bush rewarded Griffin in March 2001 with the job of special assistant to Michael Chertoff ....

[L. Coyote]

56. "We have a senator prob, so while wh is intent on nominating,..."

E-Mails Show Machinations to Replace Prosecutor
Administration Worked for Months to Make Rove Aide U.S. Attorney in Arkansas
By Dan Eggen and Amy Goldstein
Washington Post Staff Writers
Friday, March 23, 2007; Page A01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/03/22/AR2007032202266.html


... Some of the thousands of pages of e-mails ... underscore the extraordinary planning and effort, at the highest levels of the Justice Department and White House, to secure Griffin a job running one of the smaller U.S. attorney's offices ...

... Sampson wrote to Monica Goodling ... said that he would speak .. with Michael A. Battle, chief of the office that oversees U.S. attorneys, and make sure that Deputy Attorney General Paul J. McNulty's office "knows that we are now executing this plan."

... Griffin was never formally nominated ... Sampson and others were devising ways to hire Griffin into the Justice Department's criminal division until he could be moved into the U.S. attorney's spot ... Rove aide J. Scott Jennings used an RNC e-mail address to arrange a telephone call about Griffin with Sampson and Goodling ... an hour later, Goodling wrote to Sampson ... "We have a senator prob, so while wh is intent on nominating, scott thinks we may have a confirmation issue," she wrote. "The possible solution I suggested to scott was that we (DOJ) pick him up as a political . . . and then install him as an interim" U.S. attorney.

"I agree but don't think it really should matter where we park him here," Sampson replied, "as AG will appoint him forthwith to be USA."

... Justice officials had arranged to hire Griffin into a political position in headquarters, at a salary of $142,900, then transfer him immediately to work in the U.S. attorney's office in Little Rock and await his nomination. ...

[L. Coyote]

18. "... scheme to wipe out the voting rights of 70,000 citizens prior to the 2004 election...."

Another wrinkle in the U.S. attorney scandal
http://www.southernstudies.org/facingsouth/2007/03/another-wrinkle-in-us-attorney-scandal.asp

... Griffin was named to the U.S. attorney post on Dec. 15, while it was still occupied by Bud Cummins ... Cummins resigned on Dec. 20.

U.S. Sen. Blanche Lincoln said, “Clearly, the president and his administration are aware of the difficulty it would take to get Tim Griffin confirmed through the normal process, and therefore chose to circumvent it in order to name him as interim U.S. attorney.

Why did Bush go out of his way to give Griffin the job? Critics speculate it was a reward for years of loyal service to the Republican Party. Here's his resume, as reported by the Arkansas Times:

    That political work includes serving from 1995-96 as an associate independent counsel investigating 
    Henry Cisneros, who was President Bill Clinton’s secretary of housing and urban development; senior 
    investigative counsel to the Republican-controlled House Government Reform Committee’s 1997-99 inquiry 
    into foreign contributions to the Democratic National Committee; deputy research director for the 
    Republican National Committee from 1999-2000; legal adviser to the Bush/Cheney recount team in Florida 
    following the 2000 election; special assistant to Assistant Attorney General Michael Chertoff from 2001-02; 
    and research director and deputy communications director for the Republican National Committee from 2002-05, 
    after which he joined the White House political affairs office.

Reporter Greg Palast today recalls a BBC story he did in 2004 which revealed an unsavory aspect of Griffin's political history:

    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. 

[L. Coyote]

27. Did Rove's Protégé Puff Up Résumé? = Advised Bush and Cheney

Did Rove's Protégé Puff Up Résumé?
By Richard L. Fricker
April 3, 2007

http://www.consortiumnews.com/2007/040307b.html


... Griffin ... made claims about his experience as an Army lawyer that have been put in doubt by military records. ... Griffin claims on his official Web site that he prosecuted 40 criminal cases ... Army authorities say Ft. Campbell’s records show Griffin only serving as assistant trial counsel on three cases,

‘Oppo’ Researcher

In September 1999, Griffin joined the Bush-Cheney campaign as deputy research director ... He also worked as a legal adviser in the Florida recount battle that gained Bush the White House.

In 2001, Bush appointed Griffin as a special assistant to Michael Chertoff, assistant attorney general at the Justice Department’s criminal division....

Griffin then spent nine months in Little Rock as a special assistant to U.S. Attorney Cummins ...

... he was named research director and deputy communication director for the 2004 Bush-Cheney campaign. ... Griffin’s campaign initiatives included the use of a technique known as “caging” to identify suspect voters. ...
... Griffin said he “advised President George W. Bush and Vice President Richard B. Cheney on political matters, organized and coordinated political support for the President’s agenda, including the nomination of Judge John Roberts to be Chief Justice of the Supreme Court.”

[L. Coyote]

52. Rex P. Armistead: "odoriferous background ... head-bashing of black civil rights workers..."

"Armistead, a former Mississippi law enforcement official, was paid $250,000 by the Arkansas Project ..."

======================
Newspaper columnist did not libel former sheriff
http://www.rcfp.org/news/2002/0528armist.html

* A 1998 column that recounted Rex P. Armistead's "odoriferous background" in Mississippi politics and civil-rights incidents was substantially true, ... Bill Minor did not libel a former sheriff ... a column called "Eyes on Mississippi" ... in April 1998 on Armistead was sparked by a story ... about Armistead's involvement as a paid investigator for the "Arkansas Project," ... recounted Armistead's activities dating to the 1960s ... "odoriferous background in Mississippi, ranging all the way from head-bashing of black civil rights workers to concocting a bizarre homosexual scandal in an attempt to defeat a gubernatorial candidate."
Armistead ... failed to prove that Minor acted with actual malice ...

=======================
http://mediamayhem.blogspot.com/2004_02_01_archive.html
Feb. 07, 2004 - Hillary's Right Wing Conspiracy: The Death of Steve Kangas

Former Mississippi state trooper Rex Armistead was gathering background information on Steve Kangas, when the former Army intelligence officer (Kangas) inexplicably shot himself in the head outside the offices of Richard Mellon Scaife in March 1999, according to the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. Prior to his untimely death, Kangas had published information on the Internet that detailed Scaife's efforts to defame then-President Bill Clinton. Armistead, a private investigator, had dug up dirt on the Clintons for American Spectator magazine and also worked as an investigator for Whitewater assistant special prosecutor Hickman Ewing.

=======================
Starr deputy met with Scaife private investigator
WHITEWATER PROSECUTOR HICKMAN EWING DID NOT FULLY REPORT ON MEETINGS WITH ANTI-CLINTON OPERATIVE.
BY MURRAY WAAS © Salon Magazine - April 20, 1998
http://www.salon.com/news/1998/04/cov_20news.html

LITTLE ROCK, Ark. -- Deputy Whitewater independent counsel W. Hickman Ewing Jr. has quietly met several times during the course of his investigation with a private eye employed by conservative philanthropist Richard Mellon Scaife, according to two federal law enforcement sources. One Whitewater investigator expressed concerns about the meetings, because the ties between Scaife and independent counsel Kenneth Starr have come under close scrutiny lately and because not all of Ewing's meetings with Scaife's private detective were recorded in the official files of the independent counsel. The law enforcement official called the meetings between Ewing, who is Starr's chief deputy in Little Rock, and the private investigator, Rex Armistead, "either the worst case of judgment or something worse."

Armistead, a former Mississippi law enforcement official, was paid $250,000 by the Arkansas Project,

[L. Coyote]

53. Rex Armistead spied on CNN's correspondent John Camp, Assaulted suspect.

http://journalism.berkeley.edu/conf/conference1998/newmediaopening.html

Rex Armistead, a private eye who worked for Mr. Scaife, spied on CNN's correspondent John Camp, spied on his private life, assembled a dossier on Mr. Camp that ended up somehow in the hands of the House Banking Committee.

Hickman Ewing, who is Mr. Starr's right hand man in Little Rock, the man who runs the Little Rock investigating army of Starr's operation, has met privately and quietly with this same investigator, Rex Armistead ...

==================
Officers reflect on Klan probe - Threats, violence were commonplace as troopers investigated
By Jerry Mitchell - May 27, 2007
http://www.clarionledger.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070527/NEWS/705270362/1001

The highway patrolmen recognized the man from the photograph he carried. "God almighty, damn, I got mad," Armistead recalled. "I lost it."
Seale filed charges of assault, battery and unlawful arrest against Armistead ... Armistead was ordered to report to the governor's office ...
His wife worked there ... Gov. Paul Johnson ... "Tell me you didn't do what they said you did," ..."They tell me you whipped a man's a--,"

The highway patrolman explained that his daughter had been threatened. With that, the tone of the meeting changed, Armistead said. "He said, 'You're doing a good job. Get your a-- back down there, and quit worrying. ..." ... authorities never pursued the case against Armistead.

In 1968, Armistead was promoted to chief investigator for the Highway Patrol.

[L. Coyote]

14. Ted Olson's anti-Clinton past = can't hide his connection to the notorious "Arkansas Project."

Ted Olson's anti-Clinton past = can't hide his connection to the notorious "Arkansas Project."
By Joe Conason
http://archive.salon.com/news/col/cona/2001/04/05/olson/print.html

.... the Spectator published a piece titled "Criminal Laws Implicated by the Clinton Scandals," a lengthy catalogue of alleged felonies by Bill Clinton, Hillary Rodham Clinton and various Clinton associates. The byline on that piece was "Solitary, Poor, Nasty, Brutish & Short," the magazine's fictional (and jocosely named) law firm. The actual (and self-confessed) authors of that brutish, nasty piece were Ted Olson and an associate at Gibson, Dunn named Douglas Cox.

... an "expense analysis" spreadsheet of the Arkansas Project, ... shows payments to writers David Brock, James Ring Adams and Daniel Wattenberg, as well as to Arkansas bait-shop owner Parker Dozhier, Boynton and Henderson. Also listed among the legal expenses paid by the Arkansas Project between March and August of 1994 are four payments to Olson's firm -- Gibson, Dunn -- that total more than $14,000.

At that time, the linchpin of the Arkansas Project was David Hale, the crooked former Little Rock judge ... spending much of his time with Dozhier, Boynton and Henderson ... hired Ted Olson to represent him in December 1993, when he expected to be summoned by congressional committees investigating Whitewater ... Olson is among the top lawyers in Washington; among his clients is former President Ronald Reagan

... the covert scheme came to a sour conclusion with the firing of the Spectator's founding publisher, Ronald Burr ... Spectator's board of directors held a secret meeting ... Burr was dismissed ... replaced in that post by Olson ... when reports about the Scaife-funded project appeared in the New York Observer, Ted Olson told me that he and other members of the Spectator board were conducting an "internal analysis" of the Arkansas Project ... results of that internal probe have never been made public...

[L. Coyote]

20. "They aren't installing any more dirty trickster, character assassins for the next two years"

Hullabaloo
http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2007/04/running-out-of-choices-by-digby-is-this.html

Right:

What an excellent idea. De-politicize the Justice Department with one of the guys who ran the Clinton witch hunt. I guess the Republicans think it's still 2001 and Orrin Hatch is still Chairman of the Judiciary Committee. They can't seem to grasp their changed circumstances.

Here's an article from the NY Times

 
        The first meeting of the Arkansas Project took place in 1994 at Olson's 
Washington law office and was attended by Olson, Stephen Boynton, Dave Henderson 
and others from the American Spectator and other Scaife-funded organizations, 
according to reporting by Jonathan Broder and Joe Conason ...

... the extravagant, "tax-exempt" lifestyle of American Spectator editor R. Emmett 
Tyrrell, a third of whose $598,000 McLean, Va., home was owned by the nonprofit foundation 
... Olson was among those "frequent visitors" -- a list of whom reads like a who's who of anti-Clinton journalists.

... Olson amended his response in a letter he sent to Leahy ... "I do recall meetings, 
which I now realize must have been in the summer of 1997 in my office regarding allegations 
regarding what became known as the 'Arkansas Project.'" ... 

the American Spectator's attorney during the same period ... also confirms that he did, 
in fact, convene a meeting about the Arkansas Project in his office prior to 1998. Of the 
1994 meeting, he writes, "I do not recall the meeting described." Olson adds, "I certainly 
was not involved in any such meeting at which a topic was using Scaife funds and the American 
Spectator to 'mount a series of probes into the Clintons and their alleged crimes in Arkansas.'"

... their political hitmen are going to have to take a rest ... They aren't installing any more dirty trickster, character assassins for the next two years. Nah guh happ'n.

[L. Coyote]

21. "this is payback; this is payback for Bush v. Gore. He argued the case"

A suitable solicitor general?
NPR - POLITICAL WRAP - May 18, 2001
http://www.pbs.org/newshour/shields&gigot/may01/sg_5-18.html

JIM LEHRER: It's going to be an interesting summer. New subject: Nomination of Ted Olson to be solicitor general ... What's going on?

MARK SHIELDS: ... Ted Olson is a very able lawyer ... probably the most high profile Republican lawyer, partisan lawyer in the city, and they've chosen him to be solicitor general, who's the 10th Justice of the Supreme Court ...

JIM LEHRER: Explain -- the solicitor general represents the government of the United States before the Supreme Court. ...

MARK SHIELDS: That's right. It's an esteemed position and not one that you think of as a campaign attorney getting ... Ted Olson had not been forthcoming; he's too smart a guy to have been on the American Spectator writing articles for them and on their board and doing their legal work at a time when everybody in shoe leather in this town knew that the American Spectator existed for one purpose and that was to absolutely destroy Bill Clinton; that was it.

... the lack of his candor and forthcomingness that is causing him the problem.

PAUL GIGOT: He was their lawyer, not their editor! ... I think this is payback; this is payback for Bush v. Gore. He argued the case before the Supreme Court. He is a partisan and has been a partisan on occasion -- no question about that

... I think it's payback -- I really do. I think it's some of these staffers who think you're going to get this partisan, this guy…

JIM LEHRER: Payback for what?

PAUL GIGOT: Bush v. Gore ... For what he did during the campaign ... the Supreme Court, many Democrats still believe, stole this election -- and he was an agent of that and so they're going to make sure he doesn't become solicitor general.....

[L. Coyote]

24. Olson: John Roberts Had Larger 2000 Recount Role .. participated in a "moot court"

Roberts Had Larger 2000 Recount Role
By Marc Caputo - The Miami Herald
27 July 2005
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/073005Y.shtml


... John Roberts played a broader behind-the-scenes role for the Republican camp in the aftermath of the 2000 election than previously reported - as legal consultant, lawsuit editor and prep coach for arguments before the nation's highest court ... Ted Cruz ... Roberts was one of the first names he thought of while he and another attorney drafted the Republican legal dream team of litigation "lions" and "800-pound gorillas," which ultimately consisted of 400 attorneys

... Roberts, a constitutional-law expert in a top Washington law firm (Hogan & Hartson) at the time . he was a member of a tight-knit circle of former clerks for the court's chief justice, William Rehnquist ... "the cabal."

... Sen. Edward Kennedy ... has said ... that Roberts is a partisan Republican ...

... Jeb Bush ... Roberts ... discuss the governor's role in certifying the election ... Ted Olson ... said Roberts helped ... participated in a "moot court" hearing to prep him ...

[L. Coyote]

26. "There are some similarities between the case of General Pinochet and that of Bush v. Gore"

Bush v. Gore and the Case of General Pinochet
Henry GAO
http://www.oycf.org/Perspectives/9_123100/bush_v2.htm

There are some similarities between the case of General Pinochet and that of Bush v. Gore. Similar to the case of Pinochet, one could argue that the decision of Bush v. Gore should also be set aside, because six members of the U.S. Supreme Court were nominated by the Republicans ... two of them were nominated by the father of one of the parties ... there was allegation that Chief Justice Rehnquist intimidated voters while serving as the Republican Party's head of "ballot security" in Phoenix, Arizona ... Ted Olson, the attorney who represented George W. Bush before the Supreme Court, is a partner in the same law firm as Gene Scalia, the son of Justice Scalia...

...this case might have had a different outcome should the Americans follow the Pinochet precedent ...

The reality is that most, if not all, members of the American judiciary are sent to the bench by certain political group. And in such a highly political case, it is hard to name even a single judge in US who could be accepted by both parties as without "appearance of bias."

[L. Coyote]

23. The first Ted Olson scandal ...assistant attorney general to President Reagan

The first Ted Olson scandal
By David Neiwert - May 14, 2001
http://archive.salon.com/politics/feature/2001/05/14/independent_counsel/index.html

... pattern of ruthlessness and deception began during his tenure in the Reagan administration.
... In the mid-1980s, he became the focus of an independent counsel's investigation for ... giving misleading testimony to Congress -- some charged it was perjury -- that was intended to cover up his own misbehavior.

Olson's current problems stem from his failure to be forthcoming before the Senate Judiciary Committee ... evasive answers about his participation in dirt-digging expeditions ...

... the last time Olson served as a top presidential legal counselor, he left behind a political disaster area strewn with bad legal advice, wrecked careers and lingering scandals ... assistant attorney general to President Reagan from 1981 to 1983, Olson advised the president to claim executive privilege to block an investigation by congressional Democrats into the scandal-plagued Superfund program, based on assertions that later proved fatally false ...

... . He earned a full investigation by an independent counsel, for perjury and obstruction of justice ... the independent counsel scrupulously ruled that, though Olson's testimony was "misleading and disingenuous," it did not rise to the level of prosecutable perjury ...

... Olson's complete record reveals a troubling portrait of a counselor willing to risk everything -- including the credibility of his president, and his political colleagues' careers -- in pursuit of a highly charged partisan agenda ...

[L. Coyote]

25. Olson was Solicitor General, also AAG in charge of OLC at DoJ, partner Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher

From: http://www.gibsondunn.com/insidegdc/whoswho/bio/?contactId=ee1c0fc494153e55

Theodore B. Olson is a partner in Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher's Washington, D.C. office; a member of the firm's Executive Committee, Co-Chair of the Appellate and Constitutional Law Group and the firm's Crisis Management Team.

Mr. Olson was Solicitor General of the United States during the period 2001-2004. From 1981-1984 he was Assistant Attorney General in charge of the Office of Legal Counsel in the U.S. Department of Justice. Except for those two intervals, he has been a lawyer with Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher in Los Angeles and Washington, D.C. since 1965.

...He has argued 46 cases in the Supreme Court, including Bush v. Palm Beach County Canvassing Board and Bush v. Gore, ...

...As Solicitor General, during the presidency of George W. Bush, Mr. Olson was the Government's principal advocate in the United States Supreme Court, responsible for supervising and coordinating all appellate litigation of the United States, and a legal adviser to the President and the Attorney General. As Assistant Attorney General for the Office of Legal Counsel during the Reagan Administration, Mr. Olson was the Executive Branch's principal legal adviser, rendering legal guidance to the President and to the heads of the Executive Branch departments on a wide range of constitutional and federal statutory questions, and assisting in formulating and articulating the Executive Branch's position on constitutional issues.

Mr. Olson has served as private counsel to two Presidents, Ronald W. Reagan and George W. Bush, in addition to serving those two Presidents in high-level positions in the Department of Justice. ...

[L. Coyote]

33. "Who the hell cares about the Arkansas Project anymore?" asked Orrin Hatch

Why the Senate should reject Ted Olson
His role in the sleazy Arkansas Project is bad enough. The fact that he hasn't told the truth about it is worse.
By Gary Kamiya
http://archive.salon.com/politics/feature/2001/05/18/arkansas_project/index.html


May 18, 2001 | "Who the hell cares about the Arkansas Project anymore?" asked Orrin Hatch, chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, after the committee deadlocked 9-9 on party lines on whether to confirm Theodore Olson to be solicitor general.

The answer is simple: Every American who thought that the impeachment of former President Clinton mattered cares, or should care, about the Arkansas Project.

... the Arkansas Project -- the five-year, $2.4 million dollar effort ... channeled through the tax-exempt, nonprofit American Spectator magazine -- played a key role in the events that led to that impeachment.

It makes perfect sense that Sen. Hatch wants us to think that the Arkansas Project is some 19th century dispute over municipal water rights, rather than a sleazy, secretive operation that had a major impact on the biggest political crisis of the last 50 years. The Republican Party and the right wing would like nothing better than for America to forget that they spent eight years and tens of millions of taxpayer dollars trying to bring down a sitting president, often -- as with the Arkansas Project -- using the most dubious methods. Now that their own candidate has been installed in the White House, it would be much better if all that sleazy dirt-digging simply never happened.

For what the Arkansas Project really reveals is the connection between the creepy-crawliest elements of the American far right and the powerful, respectable, establishment face of conservatism, in the person of Ted Olson. It's important for the GOP that that connection be forgotten, immediately and permanently. ...............

[L. Coyote]

22. Consequences of the Vast Right Wing Conspiracy

Consequences of the Vast Right Wing Conspiracy
By Joby Comstock - April 16, 2002
http://www.democraticunderground.com/articles/02/04/16_vrwc.html

With the release of the final report of the Office of the Independent Counsel, Ken Starr and Robert Ray have finished their slaughter of President Clinton's character, and the Republicans are trying to wipe up their fingerprints and move on. Typical are the comments of conservative columnist Kathleen Parker in "Let Vast Right Wing Conspiracy Die:" ...

One of the central figures of the Arkansas Project was Ted Olson, the current solicitor general. David Brock, an insider to the "get Clinton" movement of the nineties, spells out in detail what most political watchers knew all along. From the earliest days of the 1992 presidential campaign a right wing cabal led and financed by Richard Melon Scaife would stop at nothing, certainly not the truth, to destroy Bill Clinton. .....

Olson, a reputable lawyer and former assistant Attorney General, was a board member of the Spectator. When Brock approached him to kill the irresponsible Foster story, Olson refused. The story, Olson explained, raised questions about Foster and Clinton, and "was a way of turning up the heat… until another scandal broke loose." Olson made no bones about his beliefs: he knew Foster's death was a suicide. But journalism was not the mission of the Spectator. Getting Clinton was. At this point, in the last conversation Brock wanted to have with Olson, Brock realized that his magazine was all about propaganda, and none about journalism. .........

Brock is explicit: Paula Jones's own attorneys thought she was lying, But they didn't care about the truth. They wanted Clinton under oath, so they could get him to lie. Or tell the truth - either way would weaken him further. It was all an entrapment plot to get Clinton.

The first calls for impeachment came from Bob Barr and Robert Bork in 1997, even before there was a charge on which to impeach Clinton. .... And when Clinton went after Bin Laden, Congress accused him of bombing an aspirin factory. In order to get Clinton, the Republicans convinced themselves that he was the real enemy. ....

From 1998 through the 1999 impeachment fiasco, Bin Laden's alliance with the Taliban strengthened ...

[L. Coyote]

28. RFK: Rove And Rove's Brain, 'Should be in jail,' Not In Office

RFK: Rove And Rove's Brain, 'Should be in jail,' Not In Office
by Greg Palast | May 8 2007 - 9:27am
http://www.smirkingchimp.com/thread/7329

Voting rights attorney Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has called for prison time for the new US Attorney for Arkansas, Timothy Griffin and investigation of Griffin's former boss, Karl Rove, chief political advisor to President Bush.

"Timothy Griffin," said Kennedy,"who is the new US attorney in Arkansas, was actually the mastermind behind the voter fraud efforts by the Bush Administration to disenfranchise over a million voters through 'caging' techniques - which are illegal."

... 'Caging' lists are "absolutely illegal" under the Voting Rights Act, noted Kennedy on his Air America program, Ring of Fire. The 1965 law makes it a felony crime to challenge voters when race is a factor in the targeting. African-American voters comprised the bulk of the 70,000 voters 'caged' in a single state, Florida....

The Republicans successfully challenged "at least one million" votes of minority voters in the 2004 election.

Kennedy, a voting rights attorney, fumed, "What he did was absolutely illegal and he should be in jail. Instead was rewarded with the US Attorney's office."

"They knew it was illegal."

[L. Coyote]

29. Voting fraud investigation now inside the White House

Bullet news: Voting fraud investigation now inside the White House
by General Disarray
Sat Jun 02, 2007 at 08:16:47 AM PDT
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2007/6/2/11950/13383

# Tim Griffin, Karl Rove's "protege," resigned ... May 31.

# The resignation comes a day after journalist Greg Palast showed Congressman John Conyers a 2004 email ...

# Caging voters is when you identify people who are likely to not be able to respond to inquiries about their legal ability to vote. For example, someone who is serving in Iraq ... voter's ballot when returned from, say, Iraq, is not counted.

# Hilariously, the caging lists were obtained by Palast when an email was accidentally sent ...RNC.org. (article has error, sent to was .org)

# ... this week marks the first time it has been reported that Congress is looking into the caging ...

# ... the Republicans, instead of supporting the troops, were stripping minority soldiers of their right to vote.

# ... if this investigation goes deep enough, impeachment could be possible.

[L. Coyote]

35. Swiftboating the Florida Supreme Court Justices with illegal funding

Where Did A Republican Party Operative ... Get $150,000 During The 2000 Recount To Finance A Campaign To Oust Florida Supreme Court Justices?
http://www.buzzflash.com/analysis/03/09/15_recount.html

... one little operation of the vast right wing conspiracy ... an undertaking that took time at a point the Bush Cartel was afraid that the Florida State Supreme Court would succeed in forcing a recount ... they launched some dirty tricks ... the formation of a supposedly Florida-based group that was allegedly going to work toward the defeat of Florida Supreme Court judges for supporting a recount ...

... the Florida Elections Commission fined Palm Beach County Commissioner Mary McCarty $2,000 for violating state election laws ... certified an "incorrect, false, or incomplete" campaign report ... a mysterious $150,000 loan for a direct mail fundraising campaign that by all accounts came from Roger Stone, Jr., a long-time Republican operative who owns the Washington, D.C.-based Ikon Public Affairs.

... Stone did not explain -- and still has not to this day -- is who instructed him to create the committee and who donated the $150,000 ... committee campaign records listed the $150,000 as a "loan" from Creative Marketing in Alexandria, Va., which doesn’t exist, though it does share the same mailing address as the Stone Group, a fundraising and marketing firm run by Republican activist Ann Stone, Roger’s ex-wife ... "Stone ‘or his organization’ actually paid the $150,000 not to Creative Marketing but to a Virginia company called Unique Graphics and Design ... principals Ann Stone and Lora Lynn Jones ...

... Unique Graphics was not a legal entity ... James A. Baker II ... Bush Jr.’s chief post-election strategist, contacted Stone and asked for his help ... Baker aide Margaret Tutwiler ... said, ‘Mr. Baker would like you to go to Florida,’" ...

Stone had previously worked on the brief presidential campaigns of Sen. Arlen Specter ...

[L. Coyote]

36. Who is Roger Stone, Jr.? Buckley, Nixon, Reagan, Bush operative.

"Roger J. Stone, Jr. is a long-time Republican dirty-tricks operative who led the mob that shut down the Miami-Dade County recount and helped make George W. Bush president in 2000. He was also a campaign strategist during the presidential campaigns of Presidents Nixon, Reagan and George Herbert Walker Bush. He is the chairman of the Fort Hill Group, a Washington, D.C.-based public affairs firm...." (From http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Roger_J._Stone,_Jr)

This is another case of illegal and stealth funding. "... During the 2004 presidential primary, Stone served as a behind-the-scenes consultant to black firebrand Al Sharpton's campaign to win the Democratic Party nomination, prompting speculation that Sharpton's campaign was actually a stealth operation to weaken the party's chances of winning in the general election."

Roger Stone, Jr., began his career volunteering for William F. Buckley’s 1965 mayoral campaign, and has since had roles in the presidential campaigns of Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush. A veteran Republican operative, Stone went to Florida to help the Bush campaign" during the 2000 recount, where he is creditied with organizing the "recount riot." Remember that gaggle of Washington D.C. Congressional aides, the posers pretending to be enraged Floridians, yeah--the guys who got their daily marching orders slipped under hotel doors in envelopes, that's the crew Stone puportedly directed via walkie-talkie from across the street.

Stone has ties to Morton Blackwell's Leadership Institute and started his career in the College Republican National Committee during the Nixon era, when Blackwell "had turned it into a school for political dirty tricks. Both Stone and Blackwell have been closely connected since the 1970's with right-wing fundraiser Richard Viguerie." (http://www.abunchofgreedyrightwingliarswhoworkforwalmart.com/liars.asp?liar=5)

Richard Viguerie, is connected to Scaife, and like Scaife, has been dubbed "the funding father of the conservative movement". See American Target below.

Stone is associated with the swiftboating of Dan Rather. Check this DU thread: rathergate.com! - http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=104&topic_id=2400623

Mike Krempasky: "I've been using Roger Stone's email system for one of my California statewide campaigns."

And, where o' where is rathergate.com located?
Administrative Contact = Mike Krempasky: contact @rathergate.com
RatherGate
6814 Kincaid Ave
Falls Church, VA 22042

That's the address of "RedState.com - Conservative News and Community and their contact is American Target.
(Also the address used by Thomas Crowe in the list of Boy Scouts of America Troop 654 Counselors.)

American Target "is" Richard Viguerie. Viguerie is connected to Falwell via the "People of Faith 2000" National Advisory Committee. Richard Viguerie is

(http://www.atheists.org/flash.line/falwell2.htm) "considered the godfather of many conservative and religious right causes, going back to the early 1970s when he began a direct mail operation on behalf of political candidates and groups. He is head of American Target Advertising in Washington, D.C. Viguerie is considered the architect of the alliance between political conservatives and evangelical-fundamentalist Christians; he helped form groups like the American Life Lobby which began training conservative Christians and integrating them into the ranks of the GOP. He also has had contacts within the beltway for nearly three decades, and when not raising money for candidates like Jesse Helms, Viguerie has used his direct mail organization to assist more shadowy groups like the World Anti-Communist League -- described by sociologist and researcher Sarah Diamond as "a multinational network of Nazi war criminals, Latin American death squad leaders, North American racists and anti-Semites, and fascist politicians from every continent..."

Viguerie has also maintained close ties with Rev. Moon's Unification Church cult, which even rescued him from bankruptcy in the 1980s."

[L. Coyote]

37. Roger Stone and the Jack Abramoff mould. Making $$millions$$ gaming gaming.

A Dirty Trickster's Bush Bonanza
The man who stopped Miami recount makes gaming millions
by Wayne Barrett
April 19th, 2004 9:30 AM
http://www.villagevoice.com/news/0416,barrett,52802,1.html

Roger Stone, the dirty-tricks hobgoblin of Republican politics, has exploited his Bush connections to become an influence-peddling force in the $13 billion Indian gaming industry. Stone's booming business in such a federally regulated enterprise makes his recent pro bono orchestration of Al Sharpton's double-edged presidential campaign an even stranger covert caper.

The longtime GOP consultant's reward for fomenting the "Brooks Brothers mob" that shut down the Miami-Dade recount in 2000 was an invitation within days of Bush's election to serve on the Department of Interior transition working group—helping, in his own words, to staff its Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA). Stone has since used this unannounced perch to market himself to tribes and developers from Louisiana to California, earning fat fees and contingent percentages of future casino revenue. Just two of the five deals examined by the Voice are projected to pay him at least $8 million, and perhaps as much as $13 million.

Time, The Washington Post and The New York Times have published exposés about Bush's BIA, with a February story highlighting $45 million in payments to two GOP lobbyists from four tribes since 2001. But no one has focused on Stone's profiteering, which, unlike the payments to registered lobbyists, is not reported on any public filings. ..............

[L. Coyote]

40. Roger Stone, Iran-Contra, NCPAC, Blackwell, Buchanan, Rove, Sex & Trump's Money ...

What role did Stone play in financing the Contras?

Founding Fakers by Franklin Foer
http://www.tnr.com/doc.mhtml?i=20030818&s=foer081803

... the Reagan administration, by all accounts, engineered the political leadership of the Contras, falling in love with a series of counterrevolutionaries ... One such leader was Adolfo Calero, who became Washington's Contra of choice in the mid-'80s. After graduating from Notre Dame, Calero had gone on to run Managua's Coca-Cola bottling plant ... and helped launch the Authentic Conservative Party ... when the Sadinisitas seized power ... a life of exile in Miami ... made him an easy sell to American conservatives, a pitch enhanced by Calero's alliance with Republican consultant Roger Stone, from UNITA's lobbying firm. In direct-mail solicitations, Stone compared Calero to Washington at Valley Forge. ...

=================================
starroute Sep-23-04 11:38 AM - http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=104&topic_id=2400623#2404602

"Perhaps the most important constituent body of the New Right network after the Heritage Foundation is the National Conservative Political Action Committee (NCPAC), also founded in 1975 by John Terry Dolan, ... Charles Black and Roger Stone with the help of Richard Viguerie."

I posted that .... My general conclusion was that Viguerie is closely linked to the Young Republic/dirty tricks/Karl Rove wing of the New Right. Scaife is much closer to the southern/racist/anti-Clinton wing -- both Harry MacDougald and many of the SwiftBoat figures have Scaife connections.

=================================
Morton C. Blackwell, founder and chairman, Conservative Leadership PAC, has served (circa 2000) as Treasurer of the Free Congress Foundation.
http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Morton_C._Blackwell

Blackwell is "Executive director, Council for National Policy; founder and president, the Morton Blackwell Leadership Institute, a foundation which trains young people for youth leadership; founder and chairman, Conservative Leadership PAC; Republican National Committeeman from Virginia; treasurer, Reagan Mumni Association; youngest delegate to Barry Goldwater RNC in 1964; alternative delegate for Reagan in 1968 and 1976 and a delegate in 1980; former special assistant to President Ronald Reagan on the White House staff; ...

"With Paul M. Weyrich and Richard Viguerie, Blackwell met with Jerry Falwell to found the Moral Majority. 'Finally, on the verge of realizing his right-wing utopia, Weyrich harvested what his friend Morton Blackwell termed the greatest track of virgin timber on the political landscape: evangelicals. Out there is what you might call a moral majority, he told Jerry Falwell in Lynchburg, Pennsylvania, in 1979. That's it, Falwell exclaimed. That's the name of the organization.' .....

==================================
AnIndependentTexan Wed Sep-22-04 - http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=132&topic_id=884949

The term 'New Right' was coined by Kevin Phillips in 1975 and refers to the amalgam of organisations and institutes spawned by Richard A. Viguerie, Paul Weyrich, Howard Phillips and John Terry Dolan with heavy funding from such financial magnates as Joseph Coors, Nelson Bunker Hunt and Richard Mellon Scaife. ... In 1973 Coors, with the help and advice of Paul Weyrich ... founded the Heritage Foundation. .....

Blackwell ... trained a teen-aged Karl Rove as a field organizer ...
Rove Consults With Blackwell on Political Strategy. At the 2000 convention, Bush strategist Karl Rove consulted with Morton Blackwell of Virginia, who supported a plan that emphasized primaries in small states when the Republican Party selects its presidential nominee.

===================================
The Sex Scandal That Put Bush in the White House
How GOP operative Roger Stone destroyed the Reform Party in the 2000 presidential campaign
by Wayne Barrett with special reporting by Jessie Singer
May 18th, 2004 10:00 AM
http://www.villagevoice.com/news/0420,barrett,53586,6.html

Pat Buchanan ... seized control of ... the Reform Party ... became the party's presidential nominee ... (and) mysteriously disappeared, getting 2.4 million votes less than Ralph Nader, 80,000 less in Florida alone. ... Stone and Buchanan were aides to Nixon and Reagan, and Stone, also a Bush I campaign veteran, was rewarded for his subterranean 2000 efforts with an appointment to the Department of Interior transition team, which he parlayed into a multimillion dollar business as an Indian gaming consultant ....Buchanan's vanishing act—after Stone cajoled him to run Reform—left nearly a dozen party leaders contacted by the Voice convinced that he and Stone were conscious agents of doom. ...

... "Buchanan hospitality suite" at the Dearborn, Michigan, convention hotel—with soda and hamburgers and occasional champagne—"was paid for by Roger, who, in turn, said he was covering it with Trump's money." .....

Stone(s) ... sacking of the Reform Party may be his lasting legacy.

[L. Coyote]

41. Roger Stone - "slash-and-burn Republican black-bag election tamperer"

A Prayer for Reverend Al
Let Him Buy His Soul Back from the Republicans
by Doug Ireland
www.dissidentvoice.org
February 21, 2004 - First Published in LA Weekly
http://www.dissidentvoice.org/Feb04/Ireland0221.htm

Who is Roger Stone? A slash-and-burn Republican black-bag election tamperer and consultant whose mentor was the repulsive Roy Cohn — the redbaiting hatchet man for Senator Joe McCarthy. Stone first made news in the Nixon Watergate scandal, when it was revealed that the 19-year-old apprentice McCarthyite had infiltrated George McGovern’s 1972 presidential campaign as part of CREEP’s sabotage plan. ... Stone helped Ollie North raise money for the Nicaraguan contras, and was a close associate of the notorious Lee Atwater ...

... Jeffrey Toobin ... the 2000 Florida election — details how Stone was summoned by Bush recount chief James Baker to disrupt the vote counting (Stone and his Cuban wife, Nydia, organized a screaming mob of Miami Cubans outside the headquarters of the canvassing board — Stone directed the mob by walkie-talkie from across the street — and intimidated the board into ending the count).....

When Sharpton launched a vicious attack on Howard Dean for his supposed “anti-black agenda,” the man behind the curtain was Stone, who crowed to The New York Times that he “helped set the tone and direction” of the blast at Dean, while the research for it was provided by the man Stone had installed as Sharpton’s campaign manager, Charles Halloran, one of a half-dozen top aides to Sharpton who worked for Stone in previous campaigns....

Stone has acknowledged that he “helped Sharpton” meet the 20-state, $5,000-contribution threshold required for federal matching funds. Example, according to The Voice: “In Florida, Stone’s wife, Nydia; son Scott; daughter-in-law Laurie; mother-in-law Olga Bertran; Stone’s executive assistant Dianne Thorne; Tim Suereth, who lives with Thorne; and Halloran’s mother, all pushed Sharpton comfortably over the threshold, donating $250 apiece .........

[L. Coyote]

42. Swiftboating 60 Minutes, Dan Rather, and the Niger Forgery and Bush AWOL Stories

UPDATE: Rove/Stone/Gannon TANG Forgeries Timeline!
by Sherlock Google
Wed Apr 27, 2005 at 12:10:27 PM PDT
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2005/4/27/151028/467

Just Part of a Timeling on dKos: "Some of this has been proved and some is logical conjecture...."

* September 8, 2004 - Within 18 minutes of the end of the TANG report, posts from "Buckhead" appear on FreeRepublic.com, saying he thinks something is phony. Within a few hours, Buckhead is putting forth forensic analyses of fonts and proportional spacing, claiming the memos are forged and actually word-processed. Buckhead soon identified as Harry MacDougald, who worked under Roger Stone in the 2000 Miami riot. ....

* September 9, 2004 - Winger Bloggers, including MacDougald's own wife Liz, plus the media, develops and trumpets forgery claim, discrediting Rather and whole TANG issue. Liz MacDougald forwards "Buckhead's" posts without revealing she is his wife. ....

* September, 10 2004 - Jeff Gannon enters White House at 11:19 and leaves at 12:55 on a day there was no briefing. Gannon talked to someone, likely Bartlett or Rove ... Gannon tells Sean Hannity about Mapes, effectively giving up the scoop to score the bigger political hit of letting Hannity have it -and enrage all his listeners. Hannity: HANNITY: "Now, Jeff Gannon, who is a terrific Washington bureau chief and White House correspondent for Talon News, actually shot me an e-mail today, and he's about to break a story in an exclusive about these CBS documents." HANNITY: "And apparently they're also, according to Jeff Gannon, the -- Talon News -- this woman, Mary Mapes, this Dallas producer, is under pressure for the network, and now there's doubts about their authenticity has taken place." ....

* Sept. 21, 2004 - NY Post reports rumors that Roger Stone got the forgeries to Burkett. He has no comment. MacCauliffe repeats the Stone charge and asks the White House and RNC what they know about Stone and the documents.

* Sept. 25 2004 - After being exposed in the press, CBS announces that it will not run Niger Yellowcake Forgery report until AFTER the election,

[sicksicksick_N_tired]

38. L. Coyote,...you own this thread!!!

Damn fine work!!! :patriot:

[L. Coyote]

39. I could sure use some help too. Meanwhile, this reflects what I'm learning

from ongoing research of the "vast right wing conspiracy" and its connections to the current "vast right wing politization."

Useful bits and pieces are everywhere in DU archives, I'm noting from Google searches of players like Stone.

[L. Coyote]

44. Donald Trump, Roger Stone, Jack Abramoff, Gaming Gaming and Scalping the Tribes.

How is it that two consumate Republican insiders, both purported specialists in illegal
funding of campaigns, one a political dirty trickster who stays behind the scenes and
the other a felonious convict linked to the White House political office, each manage
to garner tens of millions of dollars from Indian tribes in the gaming rackets? By
working both sides at once, of course. And, how is it that one gets convicted and goes
to jail while the other keeps getting paid? Who is scalping whom for how much, who has
lost their scalp, who still has theirs, and will Donald Trump's hair survive the scandals?

With all the attention to Abramoff defrauding the Tribes, why isn't there more attention on
who else is involved in all of gaming's political machinations and influence peddling?

Who has lucrative contracts to receive a percentage of the gross from Indian casinos, and
how did they obtain it? Where is all that money going? How much ends up in the coffers of
politicos like Sen. John McCain, and why? Who else is scalping the Tribes?

And how much of the scalping goes to legal and illegal campaign contributions?

Questions to be answered.

[L. Coyote]

45. GOP dirty trickster/operative admits hatchet job on BIA's Wayne Smith + $$$$$$$

$$$$$ "contract to pay Stone a $250,000 retainer plus 7.5 percent of annual gaming revenue from the proposed casino" $$$$$

===========================
GOP operative admits hatchet job on Wayne Smith
Thursday, April 22, 2004
http://www.indianz.com/News/2004/001456.asp?print=1

A Republican operative who helped Neal McCaleb and Aurene Martin get their jobs at the Bureau of Indian Affairs admits to orchestrating the campaign to fire former BIA deputy Wayne Smith.

Smith was ousted after letters from Phil Bersinger, a former business partner, surfaced in the spring of 2002. In the letters, Bersinger touted his close connections to Smith, who handled land-into-trust, federal recognition and gaming issues for the BIA.

At the time, Smith was trying to resolve a leadership dispute within a small California tribe. Republican operative Roger Stone worked with one faction of the Buena Vista Rancheria that wants a casino. According to The Village Voice, this faction has a contract to pay Stone a $250,000 retainer plus 7.5 percent of annual gaming revenue from the proposed casino.

When Smith refused to overturn a decision favoring Stone's clients, Stone told The Voice that he "faxed the letters to certain members" of the press, leading to stories in Time Magazine and other outlets. The stories suggested Smith was using his position to help Bersinger hire tribal clients.

Neal McCaleb eventually got rid of Smith ....

[L. Coyote]

46. "the dirty-tricks hobgoblin of Republican politics, has exploited his Bush connections"

A Dirty Trickster's Bush Bonanza
The man who stopped Miami recount makes gaming millions
by Wayne Barrett - April 19th, 2004 9:30 AM
http://www.villagevoice.com/news/0416,barrett,52802,1.html


Roger Stone, the dirty-tricks hobgoblin of Republican politics, has exploited his Bush connections to become an influence-peddling force in the $13 billion Indian gaming industry.

... Stone also has lucrative stakes in casinos connected to two other California tribes—Enterprise Rancheria, which has a BIA application and a congressional corrections bill currently under consideration, and the Lytton Band of Pomo Indians, which won BIA approval in October for a San Francisco Bay casino opposed by Senator Dianne Feinstein.

The Buena Vista agreement calls for a $25 million payment to the tribal leader who retained Stone and permits the construction of two casinos, at least one of which would pay Stone his percent off the top. Documents obtained by the Voice also list the value of Stone's interest in the Enterprise project—40 miles north of Sacramento—as between $4.2 million and $6.3 million over five years.

Sam Katz, the general partner in the Lytton deal, refuses to reveal what Stone's holdings are worth, saying only that Stone "will get a portion of the proceeds" when the already negotiated sale to another gaming company is completed. Tony Cohen, the tribe's attorney, said Katz's group would be paid "tens of millions of dollars," and Stone has told business associates that he will earn $4 million to $7 million, a figure he would not confirm to the Voice.

In addition to these three stakeholder positions, a Stone prospectus, circulated last summer in California for casino investors, listed four other tribes that supposedly had agreements with Stone. The 157-page prospectus names Stone as one of three "participants" in Ikon LLC, a Mississippi company ....

[L. Coyote]

47. Inside Bush's BIA - A labyrinth manufacturing millions $$$ - Trump, Rove, Norton, Barbour, Brulte

Inside Bush's Indian Bureau - A labyrinth of lobbyists is manufacturing millions
by Wayne Barrett with special reporting by Jennifer Suh
April 27th, 2004 12:20 PM
http://www.villagevoice.com/news/0417,barrett,53013,1.html

... Wayne Smith ... the '90s, he'd been chief deputy to California's Republican attorney general ... at 52, he was assistant deputy secretary at Interior, managing the $3.5 billion budget of the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) and overseeing the hotly politicized Indian casino industry ...

... in his new job—which he got on the recommendation of a colleague from his AG days, Sue Wooldridge, top aide to Secretary of the Interior Gale Norton. Neal McCaleb, who was Smith's immediate boss and ran BIA, put him in charge of gaming ... BIA remained a bureaucratic land where the only chiefs are buttoned-down lobbyists, raking in millions from tribes whose casinos are virtually franchises to print influence-peddling largesse.

Smith was troubled early ... his office was lobbied on behalf of two tribes by Diane Allbaugh, the wife of Joe Allbaugh, head of the Federal Emergency Management Agency and the 2000 national campaign manager for Bush. Diane Allbaugh, who worked at a firm headed by former Republican National Committee chair Haley Barbour, appeared on behalf of a Louisiana casino developer under contract with the Jena Band of Choctaw Indians and the Paucatuck Eastern Pequots, a Connecticut tribe then tied to Donald Trump. McCaleb urged Smith to take her calls, explaining that he and Joe Allbaugh were old Oklahoma friends and that Allbaugh had "helped convince the White House" to install him at BIA.

... lobbyist who concerned Smith more than any other ... he'd been on the transition working group for Interior, staffing the agency. The dark force of Indian gaming, retained as a hidden consultant by tribes and developers across the country, was Roger Stone, a veteran of eight Republican presidential campaigns and star of the Miami/Dade recount shutdown. Scott Reed is often his up-front lobbyist face.

... Reed began leaning on Smith in late January 2002. Smith even got a note supporting the Stone faction from the Republican leader of the California state senate, Jim Brulte. Stone had recommended the retention of a consulting firm owned by Brulte's former chief of staff, Tom Ross, and Ross wrote the memo summarizing the Buena Vista case that Brulte enclosed. Later in 2002, Stone would host a fundraiser for Brulte at his 40 Central Park South apartment and take Brulte to visit Stone's longtime client Donald Trump. The Brulte intervention sent a particularly strong message to Smith because he'd attended a 2001 Palm Springs meeting involving Karl Rove and a dozen tribes, where Brulte was introduced as "the administration's main man in California—especially for Indian matters." ...

[L. Coyote]

48. Swiftboating Al Gore from Argentina, SIDE, Israeli wire transfers, spy files, forgery, Bush & Menem

There just is no way to make this stuff up!! This is a court pleading. Unbelievable.

First get some spy files from Israel, alter them to look like Argentine spy files, make them implicate Bush and Menem in corruption, blame Gore for the forged documents. Sound familiar. Did I mention blackmailing bribed journalists and, of course, the perennial covert Republican dirty tricksters. This genre of dirty trick came to be known as "swiftboating" when done to Kerry four years later by the same players!!

==========================
http://pacer.ca4.uscourts.gov/opinion.pdf/041901.P.pdf
Olavar (Triumph Communications International Group, Plaintiffs-Appellants, v.
Santibañes, Defendant-Appellee, and Ikon Holdings, Inc., t/a Ikon Public Affairs, Dick Morris, Roger Stone, Eileen McGann, John Does, Defendants.

Appeal from the United States District Court Decided: December 1, 2005

Triumph Communications International Group, Incorporated is a corporation that provides political consulting and public relations services and is owned and operated solely by Mattie Lolavar.

In early 2000, Miss Lolavar began discussions with defendant Dick Morris about the possibility of her working with Craig Snyder and defendant Roger Stone, who are partners in defendant IKON Holdings, Inc., another political consulting firm ... about the possibility of Triumph Communications’ assistance with work that IKON was doing for the government of Argentina.
These discussions lead to two contracts ... and provided that Triumph would act as a public relations consultant to "the Secretary of Intelligence of Argentina" as well as arrange various media events...

Miss Lolavar went to Argentina in August 2000 to assist de Santibañes with preparations for his testimony in Argentine congressional hearings inquiring into allegations that he and the Argentine intelligence agency, known as SIDE, were responsible for bribing various Argentine senators in exchange for political support. Morris and Stone assigned other tasks to Miss Lolavar while she was in Argentina. Among other acts, they instructed her to contact SIDE and obtain a list of journalists who accepted bribes from that organization in order to harm the credibility of those same journalists in reporting on a bribery scandal surrounding de Santibañes and President de la Rua, as well as requiring her to spread false information to the press concerning de la Rua’s political opponent, Dr. Carlos Menem. The charges and counter-charges related here are from the papers in the court file, as are the other facts.

A request that occasioned controversy between Miss Lolavar and the defendants was Morris and Stone’s request that she serve as an intermediary in an anonymous wire transfer of funds to an official in Israel. These funds were to be paid to secure intelligence files from the Israeli government to assist de la Rua’s political domestic disputes with Menem, and to imply a corrupt relationship between Menem and George W. Bush, who was then running against Albert Gore for the United States presidency. These files were to be altered by Miss Lolavar to appear to be SIDE documents.

When the defendants became concerned that this plot would be discovered and traced back to them, they ordered Miss Lolavar to orchestrate a press response to blame Vice President Gore for the dissemination of the documents, since it was known to them that the Gore campaign had been attempting to connect Menem with the Bush campaign.

[Lorien]

51. Kick n/t

[L. Coyote]

54. Conservative billionaire Richard Mellon Scaife and Dead Critic Steven R. Kangas

Scaife Probes Background of Suicide
AP - Monday, March 15, 1999; Page A10
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/politics/daily/march99/scaife15.htm

PITTSBURGH, March 14—Conservative billionaire Richard Mellon Scaife has a private investigator digging into the background of ... Steven R. Kangas, 37, ... died of a gunshot wound to the head on the 39th floor of One Oxford Center on Feb. 8. Scaife did not run into Kangas on the day of his death.

For the last month, private investigator Rex Armistead of Mississippi has been traveling the country to investigate Kangas ... Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, where Scaife is publisher, reported that Kangas posted a message on the Internet six days before his death blaming Scaife for all of Clinton's troubles.

"... it is only the insanity of Richard Mellon Scaife that is causing them to go after this man," Kangas wrote

... building engineer Don Adams checked a men's room down the hall from Scaife's office and found Kangas alive and lying on the floor ... Adams went for help, and when he returned he found Kangas seated on a toilet with a gunshot wound to the head

Kangas's mother, Jan Lankheet, said One Oxford Center officials showed her a videotape indicating her son was in the building nearly nine hours ...

[L. Coyote]

55. Swiftboating John Kerry = "The anti-Clinton slime machine is back..."

The hunt is on - By Joe Conason
The anti-Clinton slime machine is back -- and this time its mud pies are aimed at John Kerry.
http://dir.salon.com/story/opinion/conason/2004/06/18/hunting/index.html


June 18, 2004 | Whatever doubts I might have felt about the current relevance of "The Hunting of the President" -- the new documentary based on the book of the same name by Gene Lyons and me -- were abruptly dispelled last Tuesday evening, after the movie's premiere screening in Little Rock ... I was leaving the auditorium, an older gentleman approached ... "I'm a Vietnam veteran," he said. "I served with John Kerry. I'm supporting him for president, I've campaigned for him -- and I want to tell you, they're trying to do the same thing to him that they did to Bill Clinton."

... In 1997 ... Starr's office had hired private detectives to probe Clinton's sex life. The ostensible purpose of this taxpayer-funded fishing expedition was to find women to whom the president might once have whispered pillow talk about his money-losing Whitewater land deal.

And as Little Rock private detective Larry Case explains quite comically in "The Hunting of the President," the gamy digging began much earlier. Case fondly recalls how he was wined and dined by journalists who parachuted into Arkansas during the 1992 presidential campaign, searching desperately for "spicy" tales about the Democratic nominee.

... Even before the bogus "Kerry intern" story surfaced, some media outlets fell for a classic dirty trick reminiscent of the Clinton saga. Back then Clinton's adversaries would circulate blurry photographs and fuzzy tapes that supposedly revealed him in compromising circumstances with women or drugs. Pursued with zeal by the same right-wing operatives who now attack Kerry, those photos turned out to be fakes or myths. This year's model -- an old news photo showing a youthful Kerry next to "Hanoi Jane" Fonda -- was more successful. It was even mentioned in the New York Times before professional analysts proved the "incriminating" picture was in fact a computer-generated fraud.