Bill's Big Diamond Blog

Rove on Siegelman— Stumbling, Clearly Dissembling Performance on 'This Week'

Today, Karl Rove appeared on This Week with George Stephanopoulos. When asked about his involvement in the prosecution of Don Siegelman, the former architect of Bush's political rise and reign gave himself away. He wouldn’t answer a direct question about whether he’d spoken to anyone in the Justice Department about prosecuting Siegelman. Instead, he made several other points, skirting around the issue.

When Stephanopoulos pointed out that his comments and his assertion that he’d read about the prosecution in the newspaper didn’t amount to a denial, Rove wouldn’t budge off script, but couldn’t pull it together to make it sound offhand or real.

Rove’s inability to properly choke out his scripted non-denial, “I learned about the prosecution in the newspaper,” is as damning an indictment of his involvement as we’re likely to see without putting Rove under oath. It’s hard to imagine what was more important about keeping to airtime that Stephanopoulos felt he should simply let Rove off the show at that moment. The former puppeteer was teetering so close to the edge of total unreality that it was incredible to see Stephanopoulos simply say, “Thank you.”

See for yourself. See Memorandum for more.

Corruption Reports by HUD Staffers Were Swept Aside by Jackson

Carol Leonnig at the Wa Po reports today on staffers at HUD who questioned work claims by contractors favored by now-resigned HUD Secretary Alphonso Jackson. The staffers often ended up being transferred or resigning. The contractors, often plucked from obscurity by higher-ups at HUD who rewarded political pals, seem frequently to have little or no qualifications for a meteoric rise. One company, National Housing Group of Miami (NHG), parlayed tens of thousands in campaign contributions to Republican candidates into millions in HUD business before finally being held to account:

(NHG) …grew from a 10-employee firm with
$490,000 in sales in 1997 to a multimillion-dollar
HUD contractor by 2003. Since then, it has won
HUD contracts worth $50 million to manage
multifamily properties in default, with $41 million of
that amount closed to any competition.

When lower-echelon HUD contract employee Wayne Girovasi began scrutinizing NHG’s work, he concluded the company had grossly exaggerated it’s work claims. He was reassigned. High-level interest in the the contractor’s well-being apparently led to Girovasi's replacement by another reviewer. The second reviewer came to the same conclusion about NHG. In February, the FBI charged NHG principal Wynee Joyner with falsifying claims for HUD reimbursement.

UPDATE— If readers want to get into the backstory of the Jackson scandal, I recommend blogger E’s series on it at We Could Be Famous.
Part 4 has links to the previous three posts and when you’ve caught them all, you might still be in the mood to learn more about New Orleans housing crisis. so go on to Part 5 here.

Documents Relating to Scott Bloch of Special Prosecutor's Office Shutting Down Internal Siegelman Probe

From Left in Alabama, here’s an excerpt from a Task Force document obtained by the Project on Government Oversight, related to an investigation started in September 2007 by the Office of the Special Prosecutor into possible political influence behind the prosecution of Don Siegelman.

The Task Force draft document (excerpted below—see pgs 7-8 of original by download at POGO site) shows that the investigation was shut down by Scott Bloch (yes, the one who is now himself being investigated by the feds) because he, "did not authorize the Task Force to investigate these allegations and that to do so is a breach."

Former Alabama Governor Siegelman (D) was prosecuted twice by federal prosecutors during the Bush Administration. The first case was thrown out of court by the judge “with prejudice” (as in “don’t come back with this”). The second case was filed later in another district, after Siegelman telegraphed his intention to run again against the Republican Governor at the time.

In the second trial, Siegelman was convicted in the courtroom of a judge who seemingly had conflicts of interest in the case. The prosecutor was married to Siegelman's former opponent's campaign manager. A witness placed Karl Rove and the prosecutor's husband in conversation about how to get Siegelman.

Siegleman’s now out of prison, on orders of the US Court of Appeals, awaiting an appeal:

From the draft document obtained by POGO:

Following the Silence on Pentagon Media Manipulation

Glenn Greenwald has been on a writing tear ever since the NY Times ran David Bartow’s excellent April 20 dissection of how the Administration manipulated military talking heads in the media regarding Iraq. Greenwald has another good post up today about the story.

One of the perplexing questions that arise when the country’s leading newspaper runs a huge story on such a sophisticated and devious scheme, complete with life and death consequences— and then virtually no one picks it up… is to ask whether anyone cares— or whether Americans now just expect stuff like this— and therefore simply aren’t surprised or interested. I suspect there’s an element of both of these answers to the question— and some other memes responsible as well.

1) The television networks are most defensive about the Times story and least likely to give it play, since they are most heavily implicated in the deception it unveils. It is largely a consequence of their lack of vetting of military analysts that such a program could be so effective.

2) Many Americans, fed so much tit-for-tat media over the years, have forgotten that information isn’t all spin anyway— and so might think the Administration feeds us their line because that’s its job. The differences between political persuasion and a complex deception are not yet visible to many citizens, especially if they already don’t care to be challenged over the veracity of their assumptions.

3) Many of us who DO care about the manipulation of ‘experts’ over Iraq now are so overwhelmingly cynical in our expectations of the Bush Administration that we no longer gin up much outrage over new revelations of its extent. As Scott Collins wrote in the LA Times blog:

…many Americans, confronted with evidence that
TV's talking heads are taking orders not just from
government officials but also military-contractor
clients, can be excused for not being all that
surprised. That is the price we pay for having a
government that's not afraid to use sophisticated –
and often brazenly misleading -- PR tactics.

4) The Barstow story is COMPLICATED. This is a big problem for most newspapers and all television programs. Remember that CBS had to get Papal dispensation to run a three-minute story on the Watergate money way back in the seventies, since the flow of Republican CREEP cash was such a difficult thing to explain with only pretty pictures. We can’t expect, with all the changes for the worse in media ownership since then, that the Barstow story will command the same amount of time from corporate news management as Woodward and Bernstein’s work did, unless the story itself becomes a hot product.

With all the above working against the dissemination of information about how the war machine has been spinning its tales, we are left with new media as the only reasonable way to rail against mainstream silence. The blogosphere, led by writers like Greenwald, needs to keep pointing out the story and its consequences. It may not be likely for it to catch fire with the public, but without the blogosphere, military analysts maintained by the Pentagon and rewarded by the mainstream media for their conflicts of interest and spoon-fed conclusions have no reason to expose the psy-op that was used against them, and through them, against us all.

I’d like to point out that within the media, NPR’s On the Media ran a good piece on the Barstow story and suggest that readers listen to it. I’d also suggest that we keep up with Greenwald’s battle to make the networks account for their use of analysts who were either advocates for the Iraq operation from its infancy— or were so beholden to Pentagon spin and to their military contractor clients winning big deals to support the effort— that they were useless as objective commentators.

This story, in the context of the Plamegate scandal and what we know from sources as varied and conservative as Paul O’Neill and the MI6’s Richard Dearlove, points to an operation to foment and justify war against Iraq that preceeded 9/11—and was likely a goal from the outset of the Bush Administration. It isn’t going to be possible for the US to unravel itself from Iraq now without the public better understanding how we got in—and weaning itself off the the same experts who now tell us we must stay for another decade, if necessary.

The Don Siegelman Case, with Scott Horton-Part 8

Welcome to Part 8 of our Scott Horton interview about former Alabama Governor Don Siegelman’s prosecution on corruption charges. We’ll be continuing to cover the Siegelman story as his appeal comes up and to dig into the back story about why he was targeted for prosecution.

To begin the series from the beginning, see the posts prior to this one:

Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4
Part 5
Part 6
Part 7

In previous installments, our discussions were more specific to the particular case against Siegelman— and aspects of the prosecution in which Horton’s investigation uncovered apparent impropriety. This segment brings the story to the level of the Justice Department’s Public Integrity Section, which is supposed to be a watchdog against just such impropriety.

In this clip, Horton introduces us to Noel Hillman, now a Federal District Court Judge, who headed up Public Integrity at the Justice Department during the Siegelman prosecution. (Note: Hillman was instrumental in the Abramoff prosecution, but his appointment by President Bush to the federal bench in 2006, with aspects of that explosive case still open, left much work permanently undone.)

We’ll also become acquainted with the research of Professors Donald Shields and John Cragan, who studied the national statistics on political officials prosecuted under the Bush Administration. Now, put the Siegelman prosecution in a broader context of a pattern of prosecutions against Democrats— and a lack of prosecutions against Republicans— and one has to wonder about the back story. We'll have more on this story in future posts:

Download Video Part 8-Quicktime

EPA Cooking Science

The Union of Concerned Scientists released the results of an investigation at the EPA yesterday and the findings are extremely troubling. Even after the Administration was outed for having pressured scientists to make their studies conform to the Administration’s political ends, the practice continues to be rampant.

Here are the top findings:

– 889 scientists (60 percent) said they had personally experienced at least one instance of political interference in their work over the last five years.

– 394 scientists (31 percent) personally experienced frequent or occasional "statements by EPA officials that misrepresent scientists' findings."

– 285 scientists (22 percent) said they frequently or occasionally personally experienced "selective or incomplete use of data to justify a specific regulatory outcome."

– 224 scientists (17 percent) said they had been "directed to inappropriately exclude or alter technical information from an EPA scientific document."

– Of the 969 agency veterans with more than 10 years of EPA experience, 409 scientists (43 percent) said interference has occurred more often in the past five years than in the previous five-year period. Only 43 scientists (4 percent) said interference occurred less often.

– Hundreds of scientists reported being unable to openly express concerns about the EPA's work without fear of retaliation; 492 (31 percent) felt they could not speak candidly within the agency and 382 (24 percent) felt they could not do so outside the agency.

Siegelman on Rove Testimony

Former Alabama Governor Don Siegelman spoke on camera to Tommy Stevenson of the Tuscaloosa News yesterday from an office in Birmingham. There was not much new in his statement. The main takeaway is to note the single focus the Governor has on hearing from Karl Rove and those communicating with Rove regarding his prosecution.

The Don Siegelman Case, with Scott Horton-Part 7

Welcome to Part 7 of our Scott Horton interview about former Alabama Governor Don Siegelman’s prosecution.

To begin the series from the beginning, see the posts prior to this one:

Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4
Part 5
Part 6

In our previous installment, we heard about the judge-shopping and the curious and undisclosed conflicts of interest of the second judge to sit on a case against Don Siegelman. Now, to continue the perfect judicial storm—let's meet the prosecutors…

In this installment with Mr. Horton, we explore the relationship between Karl Rove’s good friend and major Alabama power broker, Bill Canary, and the two federal prosecutors who press cases against Siegelman. You’ll remember that Rove and Canary go back as buddy's to the days of Rove’s work as a consultant in Alabama politics.

Now, listen to how Bill Canary himself is behind the scenes in two federal prosecutions against his most formidable political opponent— and how his wife seems to be protected against Justice Department disciplinary action involving leaks of information from her office to the press— during a political campaign her husband is running against Siegelman.

Download Video Part 7-Quicktime

The Don Siegelman Case, with Scott Horton-Part 6

Finally, we continue the Scott Horton interview on former Alabama Governor Don Siegelman’s prosecution, with Part 6.

To begin the series from the beginning, see the posts prior to this one:

Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4
Part 5

This segment regards Mark Fuller, the second Federal District Court Judge to hear the prosecution case against Siegelman. Remember, the first case was thrown out of court unceremoniously by Judge U.W. Clemon. He told them not to come back. Instead, in a different district, Judge Fuller goes full speed ahead. One might ask, why?

Remember, the 11th Circuit has set Siegelman free from incarceration as he prepares his appeal, giving credence to the notion that they will eventually find in favor of him in a review of his bizarre and highly politicized case.

Here’s one of the reasons that the 11th Circuit may be thinking this case was tainted. Listen to Horton on Fuller’s history with the Siegelman Administration:

Download Video Part 6-Quicktime

Siegelman Posts— More to Come

For readers who’ve been waiting for the continuation of our interview series on the Don Siegelman case, my apologies for the delay in the Scott Horton video interview posts. I’ve been on other business most of the last week and haven’t had time to post the edits. I’ll be on the road for the next couple of days as well. The series will continue next week— and expect to see more follow up pieces soon.

This case is looking more and more like one that will have long legs— and lots of consequences for those who have used the federal courts as a political weapon.