Scary Politics In Alabama

Actually, scarier than usual in my old home state.

As my grandpa used to say; "some people ought to be taken out back and horse-whipped!"

The Goppers involved in this horror fit the profile of those who ought to be horse-shipped, not out back, but on the National Mall!

By Larisa Alexandrovna, Ig Publishing
Posted on July 21, 2008, Printed on July 28, 2008
http://www.alternet.org/story/92158/

Editor's Note: The following chapter is from "Loser Take All: Election Fraud and the Subversion of Democracy, 2000-2008," (IG Publishing, 2008), edited by Mark Crispin Miller.

On Election Day 2002, the Alabama governorship seemed all but certain to be delivered to the Democratic incumbent, Don Siegelman. In a largely Republican state, the popular Siegelman had been the only person in Alabama history to hold all of the state's highest offices, having served as Attorney General, Secretary of State, Lieutenant Governor and finally, as Governor. When the polls closed on election night, and the votes were being counted, it seemed increasingly apparent that Governor Siegelman had been victorious in his re-election bid against the Republican challenger, Bob Riley. But, sometime in the middle of the night, a single county changed everything, and by the next morning, Alabamians awoke to find that Riley was their new governor.

(Why do these sudden victories always take place late at night, when most folks have long since gone to bed? It was the same with Kerry?)

According to CNN, the confusion over who the actual winner was stemmed from what appeared to be two different sets of numbers coming in from Baldwin County:

The confusion stems from two sets of numbers reported by one heavily Republican district," the network stated. "Figures originally reported by Baldwin County showed Siegelman got about 19,000 votes there, making him the state's winner by about two-tenths of 1 percent," its reporter added. "But hours after polls closed, Baldwin County officials said the first number was wrong, and Siegelman had received just less than 13,000. Those figures would make Riley the statewide winner by about 3,000 votes.

Bullshit! If you believe that, I have a bridge in Brooklyn I would like to sell to you

Riley's electoral victory had rested on a razor-thin margin of 3,120 votes. According to official reports, Baldwin County had conducted a recount sometime in the middle of the night, when the only county officers and election supervisors present were Republicans. While there were many electronic anomalies across the state, the Baldwin County recount had put Riley over the finish line. State and county Democrats quickly requested another Baldwin County recount with Democratic observers present, as well as a statewide recount. But before the Baldwin County Democratic Party canvassing board could act, Alabama's Republican Attorney General William Pryor had the ballots sealed. Unless Siegelman filed an election contest in the courts, Pryor said, state county canvassing boards did not have the authority "to break the seals on ballots and machines under section 17-9-31" of the state constitution.

Framing a political opponent

Pryor had won his reelection bid in 1998 to Alabama's top legal office with the help of two campaign managers, one of whom is remarkably well known because he would later go on to lead the George W. Bush victory in the 2000 election: Karl Rove. Pryor's other campaign manager was a longtime GOP operative by the name of Bill Canary. Canary would emerge as the campaign manager for Siegelman's opponent, Bob Riley, in the 2002 election. After Pryor was re-elected in 1998, he almost immediately began investigating Siegelman, who was then Lieutenant Governor. Siegelman appears to have made an enemy of Pryor as early as 1997, when he criticized the latter's close relationship with the tobacco industry. Pryor's history and relationship with Canary and Rove should have been reason enough for the Alabama Attorney General to recuse himself from the November 2002 election controversy. But Pryor refused.

A year earlier, in 2001, President Bush had appointed Leura Canary to serve as U.S. Attorney for the Middle District of Alabama. If that last name sounds familiar, it is because her husband is Bill Canary. Leura Canary had begun working on Siegelman's case almost as soon she took office, when she federalized Attorney General Pryor's ongoing state probe. After spending six months investigating Siegelman, Leura Canary was forced to formally recuse herself from the investigation because of her husband's connections to the Riley campaign. At least she gave the appearance of recusing herself; no evidence of this recusal has ever been found, and all requested documents from the Department of Justice are MIA. By all accounts, Leura Canary continued to conduct the investigation from behind the scenes. This resulted in her delivering an indictment in 2004 of conspiracy and fraud in which Siegelman and two alleged co-conspirators were said to have rigged Medicaid contracts in 1999. However, only a few months after filing the indictment, the U.S. Attorney's prosecuting the case were held in contempt of court, and the case against Siegelman was dismissed.

Finding a more receptive judge

After Siegelman indicated his intention to seek reelection, Canary's original investigation resurfaced in 2005. (Canary had never stopped pushing the investigation along, even against the advice of her professional staff.) As a result, in October 2005, Don Siegelman was once again indicted by a federal grand jury, on 32 counts of bribery, conspiracy and mail fraud.

Siegelman was accused of accepting a $500,000 donation from HealthSouth founder Richard M. Scrushy in exchange for an appointment to the Alabama hospital regulatory board. That donation supposedly went to pay off a debt incurred by a non-profit foundation set up by Siegelman and others to promote an education lottery in a state referendum. However, Siegelman's attorney argued that Siegelman did not control the foundation by which the debt was incurred, nor did he take money from or profit from the foundation.

The case was assigned to Judge Mark Fuller, whom George W. Bush had nominated for a federal judgeship to the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Alabama in 2002. Prior to his promotion to the federal bench, Fuller had served as District Attorney for Alabama's 12th Circuit. Fuller had been replaced as D.A. by Gary McAliley, who in investigating his predecessor's accounting practices, found that Fuller had been defrauding the Alabama retirement system by spiking salaries.

There were many irregularities during the trial, including strong indications of jury tampering involving two jurors. Eventually, in June 2006, Siegelman was convicted of seven of the charges against him, after the jury had deadlocked twice and been sent back each time to deliberate by Judge Fuller. When it came time for sentencing, Fuller imposed a sentence of seven years and four months, and would not allow Siegelman to remain free while his case was under appeal. Within hours of his sentencing, Siegelman had been taken to a federal penitentiary in Atlanta.

A letter sent to then-U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales by members of the U.S. House Judiciary Committee revealed numerous questions about the indictment and the trial:

There have been several reported irregularities in the case against Mr. Siegelman that raise questions about his prosecution. In 2004, charges against Mr. Siegelman were dropped by the U.S. Attorney's Office in the Northern District of Alabama before the case went to trial, and the judge harshly rebuked prosecutors bringing that case. In the RICO case filed in the Middle District of Alabama in 2005, there have been allegations of jury tampering involving two of the jurors who convicted Mr. Siegelman. These and other irregularities prompted 44 former state attorneys general to sign a petition 'urging the United States Congress to investigate the circumstances surrounding the investigation, prosecution, sentencing and detention' of Mr. Siegelman.

However, this story became even more twisted when a long time Alabama Republican attorney who had handled opposition research for Bob Riley's 2002 campaign against Siegelman came forward with some astonishing allegations. Dana Jill Simpson had spent the 2002 election cycle digging into Don Siegelman's background. In 2007, Simpson filed an affidavit in which she alleged direct White House involvement in the 2002 Alabama election. According to Simpson's affidavit, Siegelman had conceded the election and did not push for a recount because Riley's team had threatened him with prosecution if he did not withdraw from the race. In addition, Simpson also revealed an alleged conference call that took place on November 17, 2002 between herself, Bill Canary, Rob Riley-Governor Bob Riley's son-and other members of the Riley campaign:

Rob Riley told her in early 2005 that his father and a Republican operative met with Rove months earlier to discuss Siegelman's prosecution. Simpson said Rob Riley told her Rove spoke to Bob Riley and William Canary. 'He proceeds to tell me that Bill Canary and Bob Riley had had a conversation with Karl Rove again, and that they had this time gone over and seen whoever was the head of the department' at Justice overseeing the Siegelman prosecution, Simpson testified.

Expanding on her original allegations, Simpson testified on September 14, 2007 before lawyers for the House Judiciary Committee and dropped a bombshell revelation. Describing a conference call among Bill Canary, Rob Riley and other Riley campaign aides, which she said took place on November 18, 2002-the same day Don Siegelman conceded the election-Simpson alleged that Canary had said that "Rove had spoken with the Department of Justice" about "pursuing" Siegelman and had also advised Riley's staff "not to worry about Don Siegelman" because "'his girls' would take care of" the governor.

The "girls" allegedly referenced by Bill Canary were his wife, Leura, and Alice Martin, another 2001 Bush appointee as the U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Alabama. Simpson added that she was told by Rob Riley that Judge Mark Fuller was deliberately chosen when the Siegelman case was prosecuted in 2005, and that Fuller would "hang" Siegelman.

Before Simpson testified before the House Judiciary Committee, her house was burned down and her car was run off the road. Simpson was not the only one to have had experienced such bizarre misfortune. Dana Siegelman, Don Siegelman's daughter, said that her family's home was twice broken into during the trial and that Siegelman's attorney had had his office broken into as well.

(Ah! could there be a new "plumbers group?" Of course there could. After all, Karl Rove's childhood hero was Richard M. Nixon.)

In the end, what then are we to make of the Alabama election of 2002 and its aftermath, during which not only did Don Siegelman lose, but so did those of us who believe in the rule of law, the Constitution, fair elections, and a Justice System above politics? Is this the type of story you expect to read about in the United States of America?

Those of us who still believe in the rule of law are big fools, because if the rule of law does not apply to the most powerful and wealthy in the land, it ceases to exist for the rest of us as well. That's what is meant by equal under the law. When they lock up the new fascists, they can lock up the rest of us. Until then, it is up to those who love the rule of law to apply it to the powerful and the wealthy.

Larisa Alexandrovna is the managing editor of investigative news for RawStory.com, and contributes to AlterNet, the Huffington Post, and her own blog, ATLargely.com.

© 2008 Ig Publishing All rights reserved.
View this story online at: http://www.alternet.org/story/92158/

(In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. I.U. has no affiliation whatsoever with the originator of this article nor is I.U endorsed or sponsored by the originator.)


The Nazis, Fascists and Communists were political parties before they became enemies of liberty and mass murderers.

Americans Beware! Election fraud

Time for Change's Journal

A Close Look at How Siegelman “Lost” the 2002 AL Governor’s Race: The Role of Central Tabulators

Posted by Time for change in General Discussion

Fri Apr 11th 2008, 09:00 PM

A close look at the 2002 Alabama Governor’s race suggests that the fraud perpetrated in that election was more obvious than even the 2000 or 2004 U.S. Presidential elections. The final official results were Riley 672,225, Siegelman 669,105 – a difference of 3,120 votes, representing a margin of 0.2% of the total.

It would behoove us to have a good understanding of how this happened, because I have a slight suspicion that we’ll see more of this sort of thing this November, and it should be much easier to prevent if we know what to look for.


Election night, November 5, 2002, Bay Minette, Alabama

Republican controlled Bay Minette is the county seat for Baldwin County, Alabama. In 2002, Baldwin County used optical scan machines to tabulate vote counts from paper ballots filled out by voters and fed into the machines. The paper ballots themselves are saved, which means that they are available for recounting in case of close or contested elections.

The machine tabulated results from each precinct in the county are recorded on individual “data packs”, which are picked up by sheriff deputies after the polls close and delivered to the Bay Minette Board of Elections, which then use a central tabulator to tabulate the county-wide vote count.

The initial vote count for Governor for Baldwin County, reported from the Bay Minette tabulator at 10:45 p.m., was quite surprising to say the least. It reported: Riley (R) 30,142, Siegelman (D) 11,820, and the Libertarian candidate, John Sophocleus, 13,190. Although it was expected that Siegelman would lose Baldwin County, the margin of the loss not believable, as he had lost Baldwin County in the Governor’s race in 1998 by only a little over four thousand votes. Furthermore, the idea of his losing to the Libertarian candidate was not plausible.

So, “someone” from the sheriff’s office went into the tabulation room to look into the matter and returned a few minutes later, announcing that the problem had been fixed. The new totals, which were reported at 11:04 p.m. and picked up and distributed by the AP, were: Riley 31,052, Siegelman 19,070, and Sophocleus a much more reasonable 937. The pickup of 7,250 votes by Siegelman was enough to give him a slim state-wide victory.

But two minutes later, at 11:06 p.m., the results were changed again, reducing Siegelman’s total back down to 12,736, a decrease of 6,334 votes, which gave the election back to Riley. William Pfeifer, the Baldwin County Chairman of the Democratic Party, was just outside the tabulating room at 11:04 when the second report, giving Siegelman the victory, was announced. But he didn’t find out about the reversal until he returned home and turned on the news.


Next morning, November 6, 2002, Bay Minette

The next morning, Pfeifer arrived at the probate court building in an attempt to speak with probate officials to find out what had happened. Pfeifer relates his experience:

No one could get back there to talk to the members of the panel for most of that time, and we didn't get to actually speak to them until just a few minutes before they went out and did the certification. (When I finally got to speak with them, just before the certification) I tried to persuade them to wait until Friday at noon (for the final certification). They were very insistent that the results were correct and that they were going to certify them that morning.

The board certified the election results a little after 10:30 a.m., and Riley gave his victory speech around 11:00 a.m.


Failed request for recount

Two days later, Pfeifer petitioned for a hand recount of the Baldwin County ballots. But Alabama Attorney General Bill Pryor ruled later that day that the seals on the boxes containing the ballots could not be broken without a court order to do so. He claimed that his ruling was based on the Alabama Constitution. Don Siegelman contested the ruling and continued to seek a recount, which may have been the reason that he was framed for bribery and sent to prison, as testified to by Dana Jill Simpson:

The Simpson affidavit says the conference call focused on how the Riley campaign could get Siegelman to withdraw his challenge. According to Simpson's statement, William Canary, a senior G.O.P. political operative and Riley adviser who was on the conference call, said "not to worry about Don Siegelman" because "'his girls' would take care of" the governor. Canary then made clear that "his girls" was a reference to his wife, Leura Canary, the U.S. attorney for the Middle District of Alabama, and Alice Martin, the U.S. attorney for the Northern District of Alabama. Canary reassured others on the conference call that he had the help of a powerful pal in Washington. Canary said "not to worry that he had already gotten it worked out with Karl and Karl had spoken with the Department of Justice and the Department of Justice was already pursuing Don Siegelman…

In an apparently unrelated incident, Bill Pryor was appointed to the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals by George W. Bush during a Congressional recess in 2004.


Statistical anomalies

It is worth noting that when the original computer error was identified, which resulted in adjusting Siegelman’s vote upwards from 11,820 to 19,070 and reducing the Libertarian candidate’s vote downward from an implausible 13,190 to 937, there were also five other races that had to be re-adjusted at the same time. But when the third and final report was issued, the totals in those five other races remained as what they had been adjusted to, while Siegelman’s vote total was the only one that was re-adjusted.

I’ve already noted that Siegelman’s vote total in 2002 in Baldwin County was totally out of line with what would be expected from his performance in 2004.

In addition, James H. Gundlach, a professor of sociology at Auburn University, performed an analysis of the data and concluded that someone with a wireless connection must have changed the tallies. He presented his analysis at the 2003 annual meeting of the Alabama Political Science Association in a paper titled " A Statistical Analysis of Possible Electronic Ballot Box Stuffing”. In that paper Gundlach emphasized the reduction in Siegelman’s vote count from 19,070 to 12,736, saying that such a dramatic decrease is

commonly found in data that is intentionally changed but rarely the result of random errors… The circumstances surrounding it are really hard to believe… The notion that the software is designed to count votes (but that it) comes up with different results means somebody is messing with the software…. Computers do not accidentally produce different totals… Someone is controlling the computer to produce the different results.

A discussion of central tabulator mediated election fraud

County central tabulators receive vote counts from all precincts throughout the county. They generally receive the counts electronically by modem, and they receive a whole bunch of physical evidence (tapes from individual voting machines, memory cards, provisional ballots, etc.) as well. The central tabulators tabulate and report the vote counts for the whole county and by precinct, using processes that vary from state to state. These processes can be quite complicated, as indicated by this article from Verified Voting, which explains how people can monitor the tabulation process.

The “pre-tabulator” vote counts for individual precincts are the vote counts that are posted by the individual precincts shortly after poll closing on Election Day. The “post-tabulator” vote counts are the vote counts that are reported out by the county central tabulator, and those are the official counts. For obvious reasons, the pre-tabulator and post-tabulator vote counts should match in a fair election.

There are reasons, I believe, to think that central tabulator mediated fraud is a more practical way to influence a national or state-wide election than is programming vote switching for individual voting machines. Individual voting machines register perhaps one hundred votes per machine. So consider how many individual voting machines would have to be rigged to change the results of a presidential election.

County central tabulators, on the other hand, tabulate the results for a whole county, which in large counties may account for a million or more votes. So you’d have to rig the results of ten thousand individual voting machines to achieve the impact of rigging the results of a single large county central tabulator.

Let’s now consider some examples of likely central tabulator election fraud:

November 2000, Election Day, Volusia County, Florida
The TV networks initially called Florida for George W. Bush based on a “computer glitch” in the central county tabulation of votes in Volusia County, which mysteriously subtracted 16,022 votes from Al Gore’s total. Gore subsequently conceded the election to Bush, but then retracted his concession when the problem was discovered and the votes were given back to Gore, at which time the election was then declared a virtual tie – pending a vote recount that was never completed. So probably the glitch in Volusia County had nothing to do with the final election results. But still, one has to wonder about the reasons for such an error.

November 2004, Election Day, Cleveland, Ohio
The combination of exceptionally long voting lines throughout Cleveland on Election Day 2004 on the one hand, and yet surprisingly low official voter turnout in Cleveland, is very perplexing, especially since Cleveland used punch card voting, which is not subject to the delays that electronic voting tends to cause. That finding alone suggests foul play, since long voting lines should be associated with high voter turnout, not low voter turnout. And since Cleveland is a very heavily democratic city with over three hundred thousand registered voters, the potential for fraud is obvious.

Because I was very suspicious of this I tried to ascertain whether or not the pre-tabulator and post-tabulator vote counts for Cuyahoga County matched. The post-tabulator vote counts were published on the Cuyahoga county web-site, so that part was easy. I then requested the pre-tabulator vote counts from the Director of the Cuyahoga County Board of Elections, Michael Vu. Though Vu repeatedly promised to obtain those for me, he never followed through. So I collaborated with Ray Beckerman’s Ohio Project to conduct an audit to obtain the pre-calculator vote counts. The initial audit of 15 precincts (out of 1458 in Cuyahoga County) showed a net loss to the Kerry/Edwards ticket of 140 votes. However, the audit was never able to be completed.

The other way that the vote count in Cuyahoga County could have been confirmed would have been to conduct a county-wide hand recount of the votes. The rules of the Ohio recount specified that a 3% recount of each county would be conducted, and if any discrepancies were found in the recount (between the pre-tabulator and the official post-tabulator precinct counts), then a county-wide hand recount would be conducted. No vote discrepancies were found in the Cuyahoga County 3% recount. However, many anomalies were observed at the recount, and two election workers were convicted of rigging the vote count.

November 2004, Election Night, Warren County, Ohio
When election officials in Warren County, Ohio, performed the final tabulation of votes for their county, they decided to do so in private, locking out all reporters from observation of the process. Their initial excuse for this was that they didn’t want reporters to interfere with the counting process. Later, they changed that excuse to say that the FBI warned them of a terrorism alert of grade 10 on a 1 to 10 scale. That claim was later denied by the FBI, and county officials refused to name the FBI agent whom they claimed gave them the warning. Several months later I called Erica Solvig, the reporter who broke the story, in an attempt to find out more about what happened. She told me that she wasn’t at liberty to discuss it.


Lessons that Democrats should learn from all this

(Democrats? How about all democracy loving Americans?)

1) In any close election against a Republican, consider very carefully the possibility of election fraud before conceding.

2) Democrats should push hard to make sure that paper trails are required for all elections, so that the citizens of our country don’t have to be at the mercy of privately owned electronic voting machines that essentially count our votes in secret. And when paper trails are available, there is no reason in the world why, in a democracy, hand recounts shouldn’t be done whenever the results of an election appear suspicious or questionable. Election officials should never be allowed to pick what precincts are counted.

3) Prevention of central tabulator-mediated election fraud : If county central tabulator fraud is perpetrated, the official post-tabulator precinct counts will not match the pre-tabulator counts, which are calculated at each precinct in the county shortly after poll closing. The post-tabulator counts are easy to identify, since they are the official counts and will be posted on the county Board of Elections web site as soon as the results become official.

The pre-tabulator counts are more difficult to obtain. In my attempt to help confirm fraud in the 2004 presidential election, I tried to obtain pre-tabulator counts in order to compare them with post-tabulator counts. Because of the difficulties I had obtaining those counts I talked with voting rights organizations to ascertain how I could obtain them. I was astounded to hear from them that they had also tried but had rarely been able to obtain the pre-tabulator counts.

Thus, it appears that within weeks or days following the 2004 election, the pre-tabulator vote counts either tended to disappear, or else county boards of elections were generally unhelpful in making them available to inquiring citizens.

But they must be available at the time of poll closing, since each precinct must report them to the county central tabulator. In many jurisdictions, they are required to be publicly posted at each precinct at the time of poll closing. But even if they aren’t posted, there should be no reason why poll watchers couldn’t obtain them. In fact, that is one of the most important tasks of today’s poll watchers.

Identifying substantial mismatches between pre-tabulator and post-tabulator vote counts should signal a high likelihood of election fraud. In any county where that occurs in a close race, automatic hand recounts should be required.

(In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. I.U. has no affiliation whatsoever with the originator of this article nor is I.U endorsed or sponsored by the originator.)


The Nazis, Fascists and Communists were political parties before they became enemies of liberty and mass murderers.

More Evidence Of An Awesome Republican Cabal

New Evidence In Siegelman Case Points To Republican Cabal
By Sam Stein
The Huffington Post

Thursday 13 March 2008

A new review of evidence suggests that an aligned group of Republican interests were pressing for - and seeking to profit financially from - the trial of former Alabama Gov. Don Siegelman on charges of bribery.

According to court documents and official testimony, months before Siegelman was charged, Rob Riley, the son of the state's governor, expressed confidence that an indictment would occur and that Siegelman's political financier, Richard Scrushy, would be drawn into case.

Around the same time, moreover, Riley managed to maneuver himself into an extremely profitable position: lead local counsel on a separate, massive civil suit against Scrushy and his company, HealthSouth.

How he received the assignment aroused some suspicion.

Riley had limited experience in securities litigation. And, for critics, his appointment gave of the appearance of legal-political insider trading: the governor's son, cognizant that Scrushy would be dragged into Siegelman's case, saw the benefits to be had from the civil suit against Scrushy's company, and positioned himself to profit.

Riley denied these charges in an interview with the Huffington Post, saying that he had no prior knowledge of Siegelman's forthcoming indictment and arguing that he had been recruited to come on board the HealthSouth case, not the other way around.

What is agreed upon, however, is that Riley earned big money from his work. Ten months after he signed onto the HealthSouth suit, Siegelman was indicted. Less than a year after that, the former governor was convicted of bribery along with Scrushy. And months later, Health South settled for $445 million one of the largest settlements in securities litigation history.

---

In the early days of 2005, HealthSouth and Scrushy were in the midst of a long-waged battle over whether the company had "perpetrated an elaborate scheme to deceive HealthSouth's investors." The case alleged that the company, and its financial supporters, had "committed deceptive acts whose primary purpose and effect was to create a false appearance" of good financial results and future prospects. There were no connections to Siegelman.

On January 13, Rob Riley, a lawyer for the firm Riley & Jackson P.C. and the son of the state's governor, was abruptly added as local counsel to the New Mexico State Investment Council, a relatively new plaintiff in the case against HealthSouth. It was an interesting move. Riley, who specialized in medical malpractice law, had little history in complex securities litigation. Co-plaintiffs complained, as they often do, that his presence would simply drive up the cost of the case and cut into the pot of any settlement. But their appeal was denied.

Why did Riley come on board? According to him, it was a product of local stature and a bit of luck.

"A guy in New Mexico said, 'Hey, we are trying to get involved in this case,'" Riley recalled. "At that point, it was pretty well out in the papers that there had been fraud at HealthSouth. So I felt like it was probably a good case. I didn't know what chance we had at being lead counsel."

Another official with knowledge of the case said Riley was chosen primarily for his political connections.

But around that time, Jill Simpson, an Alabama Republican official and opposition researcher, told the House Judiciary Committee that Riley called her and said the state's legal apparatus was gearing up to re-investigate Don Siegelman. Moreover, Simpson recalled Riley as saying that Republicans would tie the former governor with Scrushy, "a reviled figure in Alabama."

Less than a year earlier, Siegelman had been indicted for conspiracy and Medicaid fraud but his trial - which seemed politically motivated - fell apart within a day in court.

On this new go-around, the prosecution had a more favorable judge. Mark Fuller, who had been appointed by President Bush to the U.S. District Court in the Middle District of Alabama, was well connected in Republican circles and, according to local Alabama journalist Glynn Wilson, had personal ties to Rob Riley.

Ten months after Riley signed onto the HealthSouth case, Siegelman and Scrushy were indicted on charges of political bribery. At the center of the charge was a $500,000 donation Scrushy made to the former governor's 1999 campaign. The money had gone to the state's education lottery and in exchange Scrushy got a position on a hospital regulatory board.

The connection, critics claim, was weak and prejudiced. Scrushy had been appointed to the board under several governors and his firm had no interests under the board's purview. But the trial, which began ion April 2006, reverberated throughout Alabama's political and legal circles. Siegelman's bid to become governor again was snuffed out. And the civil trial against HealthSouth was altered.

"[Riley] very aggressively he thrust himself into that suit as a late comer," said Scott Horton, a law professor at Columbia University who has written extensively on these issues for Harper's magazine. "He knew that Fuller had made statements suggesting that he felt he had once been a target of a politically motivated attack by Siegelman. He knew that this would make someone predisposed against Siegelman and perfect hanging judge. And he would reap the benefit of the class action suit on the side."

---

As the criminal case against Siegelman proceeded, so too did the suit against HealthSouth. And in the spring and summer of 2006, the two cases intersected.

According to the Associated Press, in May 2006, William McGahan, an official at UBS, one of HealthSouth's investment bankers, testified in the Siegelman case that he had been pressured to pony up $250,000 for the donations to the state's education lottery. The testimony had limited relevance to the class action suit. But, over objections, it found its way into the court record. McGahan, the document read, was eager to please Scrushy and "arranged for UBS to be the source of the funds for the bribe."

What affect this, and Scrushy's ongoing criminal trial, had on the proceedings is a subject of debate. Riley, pointing to earlier HealthSouth executives who had pleaded guilty to fraud, said he saw no tangible cross-over between the two cases.

"I don't believe that had anything to do with the settlement," he said. "I don't think that it aided it at all."

Two other lawyers who served with other plaintiffs on the class action suit against HealthSouth, however, offered different opinions.

"It is not common that you have criminal trials of corporate executive at the same time that a class action suit is taking place involving the same individual," said Louis Mallone, an attorney for O'Donoghue & O'Donoghue LLP and liaison counsel on the case. "It certainly didn't hurt the prospects of the [class action case]."

A second official, who declined to speak on the record, said that while the HealthSouth case was a "slam dunk" even before the Scrushy-Siegelman trial began, having Scrushy as a convicted felon "obviously helped" the suit against HealthSouth.

In June 2006, both Siegelman and Scrushy were convicted on charges of bribery. Siegelman was sentenced to seven years and four months in federal prison. Scrushy was given six years and ten months.

Months later the HealthSouth case, after years of trial, was finally settled. The company announced that it would pay a whopping $445 million. It was, said Malone, "one of the top fifteen or twenty [settlements] of all time."

Riley declined to reveal what he made from the case, saying that the amount was "evolving." But he did acknowledge that it was substantial. "It was a very good settlement," he said. "But at the same time there was a lot of work that went into it.

For critics, however, the message was clear. Riley knew Scrushy going down in the criminal trial and saw a way to reap the benefits on the separate civil suit. In other words: Good work, if you can get it.

"Rob Riley approved of the strategy of the dragging Scrushy into the [criminal] case because it would have benefits for him in the class action suit," said Horton. "It was clear that he was intently following what was going on in Fuller's court and knew that the conviction of Scrushy in that case would have strong benefits in the class action suit."

(In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. I.U. has no affiliation whatsoever with the originator of this article nor is I.U endorsed or sponsored by the originator.)


The Nazis, Fascists and Communists were political parties before they became enemies of liberty and mass murderers.

W. Ben Barnes, The Texas Lottery and Don Siegelman

Karl Rove's Glass House Problem: Or How Governor W. Used the Texas Lottery To Pay Off Ben Barnes

Posted by McCamy Taylor in General Discussion
Mon Feb 25th 2008, 08:28 PM

Sometimes, I think Karl Roves gets his ideas for how to smear his opponents by looking at the real crimes of the Bush family.

The charge that Alberto Gonzales’ Grand High Inquisitors created----making it a crime to re-appoint someone to a state board after he has donated money to a state lottery campaign---absolutely pales in comparison to what went on when George W. Bush was governor of Texas.

Remember Ben Barnes? The Democratic former Texas Speaker who helped W. evade the draft and get a spot in the Texas Air National Guard ahead of other men, back during the Vietnam War? That favor he did for the Bush family really paid off. Here is a link to the story from WorldNetDaily (so we are not talking the liberal media here):

http://www.wnd.com/news/article.asp?ARTICL...

What GTECH revealed in its 1997 10-K was that the company was under investigation in Texas because of allegations against one of its paid consultants, one Ben Barnes, who previously had been lieutenant governor of Texas. GTECH hired Barnes in 1991, before the company had the Texas Lottery contract, because Barnes claimed to have influence with then-governor of Texas, Ann Richards. For getting GTECH the Texas contract in 1992, Barnes received somewhere between 3.5 to 4 percent of GTECH's gross Texas Lottery revenue, a percentage that yielded Barnes somewhere in the range of $3 million a year.

The 1997 GTECH 10-K noted that the company was under investigation in Texas and its contract had been open to competitive bid. GTECH disclosed that Texas Lottery contract was then the company's largest contract, accounting for 16 percent of GTECH's total revenue in fiscal 1997. Losing this contract would materially hurt GTECH's operating income and depress its stock price as a consequence. GTECH ran for cover by terminating Ben Barnes contract and paying him $23 million to stay quiet.

Why did Barnes hold out until 1997? He was a Democrat with influence over Democrat Gov. Ann Richards, but what hold did he have on Republican Gov. George W. Bush?

You already know what he had over Bush, because I just told you. He knew that W. got into the National Guards—and avoided going to Vietnam with the riffraff to die—due to favoritism. However, as usual, the cover up was much worse than the crime.

Things went on the way they were until 1997 when someone noticed that everything about the Texas State Lottery was illegal, including its habit of hiring former state officials like Ben Barnes. A new executive director named Larry Littwin was brought in.

He decided to put the GTECH contract up for competitive bid. Mr. Littwin was ordered by the Texas Lottery Commission, including Harriet Miers, to stop his investigation. On Oct. 29, 1997, only five months after he had been hired, Mr. Littwin was fired by the Texas Lottery Commission, whose only state reason was that they had "lost confidence" in him.

Littwin sued and during the discovery phase, his attorney questioned Barnes and obtained testimony in which “he disclosed his alleged involvement with the Bush National Guard controversy and his political influence peddling for GTECH through the first two years of Bush's term as governor of Texas.”

Littwin was able to settle with GTECH in exchange for suppressing these incriminating documents. And the contract was re-awarded to GTECH.

Here is James Moore, at Huffington Post, on the same story (so left and right agree on this one):

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jim-moore/bu...

Barnes had been hired by G-Tech, and had signed a lifetime contract giving him a percentage of revenues generated by the lottery. In the late 1960s, Barnes was also Speaker of the Texas House of Representatives. As one of the two most influential people in the Texas legislature during those years, Barnes frequently took requests from people interested in getting their sons enlisted in the Texas National Guard. Enrollment in the Army or Air National Guard was considered a legitimate method for avoiding the draft, and not fighting in Vietnam. As a result, there were more than 100,000 young men on waiting lists around the country, hoping to get enrolled. Usually, they were drafted before the Guard called. Waiting lists were often up to five years long. A friend, or family member, who wanted to get George W. Bush into the National Guard, would have had to contact Barnes or someone on his staff.

So, obviously, if young W. got into the National Guard , he did it through Ben Barnes. When Republican Governor W. took over in Austin, there was no question that Barnes’ company, GTech would continue to manage the lucrative Texas State Lottery. In 1994 W. had sworn that no special influence was used to get him into the National Guard. He needed to keep Barnes happy to keep that story from being revealed to be the lie it was.

However, according to Moore, an anonymous letter made the rounds in Texas in 1997, including the federal attorney.

“Several months ago many of us felt that the Lottery Commission should re-bid the G-Tech contract when it came up for renewal,” the unsigned and undated letter said. “Leaders of the Republican Party strongly supported re-bidding and I believe the chair of the commission also wanted to re-bid. It is now time to disclose at least one reason why it was not re-bid. Governor Bush thru Reggie Bashur made a deal with Ben Barnes not to re-bid because Barnes could confirm that Bush had lied during the ’94 campaign. During that campaign, Bush was asked if his father, then a member of Congress, had helped him get in the National Guard. Bush said no, he had not, but the fact is his dad called then Lt. Gov. Ben Barnes to ask for his help to get his son not just in the Guard, but to get one of the coveted pilot slots, which were extremely hard to get. At the time contacted General Rose at the Guard and took care of it. George Bush was placed ahead of thousands of young men, some of whom died in Vietnam.

“Bashur was sent to talk to Barnes who agreed never to confirm the story and the Governor talked to the chair of the Lottery two days later and she then agreed to support letting G-Tech keep the contract without a bid. Too many people know this happened. Governor Bush knows his election campaign might have a different result if this story had been confirmed at the time.”

After the lawsuits were settled and the tell-tale depositions had been buried, Barnes issued a public statement saying that he did not do any favors for the Bush family. GTech bought out his interest in their company for $23million. And that was that. Or it would have been that. Except that in 2004, Ben Barnes told the whole truth for the first time to Dan Rather for a 60 Minutes II episode.

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2004/09/09/...

"I would describe it as preferential treatment. There were hundreds of names on the list of people wanting to get into the Air National Guard or the Army National Guard," he said. "I think that would have been a preference to anybody that didn't want to go to Vietnam or didn’t want to leave. We had a lot of young men that left and went to Canada in the '60s and fled this country. But those that could get in the Reserves, or those that could get in the National Guard - chances are they would not have to go to Vietnam."

Which is pretty amazing, after all the millions Barnes had made off the citizens of Texas by not saying it. Makes you wonder why he decided to go ahead and talk to Dan Rather in 2004. Barnes was giving up his chance to extort the Bush family forever, so he was losing a lot for no return. Unless someone told him to talk to 60 Minutes to make sure that the Bush AWOL story was run, Barnes being the star witness and all.

My own theory (as I have described before) is that Rove wanted the Bush AWOL story to run, because he planned to attack Rather and his team, in order to have them tied up during the days preceding and following the 2004 election. I believe that Sumner Redstone was party to this plan. Rove knew that the election results would provoke controversy, with the voter disenfranchisement in Ohio and Florida, and the likelihood of e-vote/exit poll discrepancies in Ohio high. The last thing that he wanted was the Rather investigative news team on the scene reporting on the stories as they happened. The fall of Dan Rather would also serve as a warning to other investigative reporters. Stick your nose into Bush family business, and it would get chopped off

Anyway, we have come full circle, now that 60 Minutes has reported on Karl Rove’s attempt to create a bogus lottery scandal in Alabama to take out a political enemy and stage a political coup. What Siegelman is accused of doing is nothing compared to the crimes of Governor George W. Bush, who allowed a firm to overcharge the state for its lottery work so that Ben Barnes would keep quiet about a secret that would jeopardize his political career and who, when the conspiracy was uncovered, participated in a cover up with the assistance of Harriet Miers. Siegelman is charged with letting someone keep a state board appointment after he donated money to a state lottery fund. Is that even a crime? Not according to CBS.

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2008/02/21/...

Is Don Siegelman in prison because he’s a criminal or because he belonged to the wrong political party in Alabama? Siegelman is the former governor of Alabama, and he was the most successful Democrat in that Republican state. But while he was governor, the U.S. Justice Department launched multiple investigations that went on year after year until, finally, a jury convicted Siegelman of bribery.

Now, many Democrats and Republicans have become suspicious of the Justice Department’s motivations. As correspondent Scott Pelley reports, 52 former state attorneys-general have asked Congress to investigate whether the prosecution of Siegelman was pursued not because of a crime but because of politics.

Memo to Karl Rove: People who live in glass houses should not throw stones.

PS

I found another link here

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/john-fund/lo...

The New York Sun has reported that Lawrence Littwin, a former executive director of the Lottery Commission, is eager to testify should the Senate subpoena him. Mr. Littwin claims that in 1997 Ms. Miers fired him after five months on the job because she was protecting GTECH, the controversial Rhode Island firm managing the lottery. GTECH had been mired in controversy for years, and in 1996 David Smith, its national sales director, was convicted in New Jersey in a kickback scheme involving a lobbyist.

Mr. Littwin has alleged that aides to then-Gov. Bush were worried that should GTECH lose its lottery contract, its top lobbyist, Mr. Barnes, would discuss efforts he claimed to have made to push a young George W. Bush to the top of the coveted waiting list for a pilot's slot in the Texas Air National Guard.

Littwin was precluded, by the terms of his lawsuit settlement, from discussing what he had learned about the sweetheart deal between Barnes, GTECH and Gov. Bush, but had the Harriet Miers nomination gone forward, he might have been called to testify about the role she played in covering up for W.


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The Nazis, Fascists and Communists were political parties before they became enemies of liberty and mass murderers.

Karl Rove: Gone But Not Forgotten

GOP Lawyer Deposed on Alabama Case

By BEN EVANS
The Associated Press
Friday, September 14, 2007; 7:32 PM

WASHINGTON -- A Republican lawyer who says Karl Rove may have been involved in the prosecution of former Democratic Alabama Gov. Don Siegelman emerged without comment Friday from four hours of questioning at the House Judiciary Committee.

Jill Simpson was called to the Capitol to provide sworn testimony about her claim that she heard discussions in 2002 suggesting that Rove, a former top White House political adviser, may have played a role in the corruption case against Siegelman. At the time of the alleged conversation, Simpson was a campaign worker for Republican Gov. Bob Riley, who defeated Siegelman in that year's gubernatorial race.

"We answered their questions," Simpson's attorney Priscilla Duncan told reporters after the deposition, declining to elaborate.

Siegelman, elected governor in 1998, was convicted last year on federal bribery, conspiracy and mail fraud charges following a lengthy investigation. He recently began serving a prison sentence of more than seven years.

Siegelman was convicted along with former HealthSouth CEO Richard Scrushy in a high-profile government corruption case. In the key charge, Siegelman was accused of appointing Scrushy to an influential hospital regulatory board in exchange for Scrushy arranging $500,000 in contributions to Siegelman's campaign for a state lottery.

In an affidavit made public in May, Simpson said she heard a Republican operative during a 2002 telephone conference call say he had spoken with Rove, referred to in the document as "Karl," and had been assured the Justice Department was pursuing Siegelman.

As part of a broader investigation into political influence at the Justice Department, the Judiciary Committee recently asked the department to turn over its documents involving the case. More than forty former state attorneys general also have asked Congress to investigate.

In a letter to the committee last week, the Justice Department said it has not found any communications regarding Siegelman with the White House, members of Congress, or political party officials. The department denied the committee's request for internal documents, however, saying an appeal is pending in the case and that releasing internal communications about prosecutorial decisions would undermine the legal system.

The department _ and the career prosecutors who handled the case _ have insisted that politics played no role in the decisions to pursue the prosecution and have emphasized that he was convicted by a jury.

A Judiciary Committee spokeswoman said it could be weeks before the parties involved decide whether to release a transcript of Friday's interview, conducted by Democratic and Republican attorneys for the committee.

© 2007 The Associated Press

(In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. I.U. has no affiliation whatsoever with the originator of this article nor is I.U endorsed or sponsored by the originator.)


The Nazis, Fascists and Communists were political parties before they became enemies of liberty and mass murderers.

Siegelman gets over 7 years....meanwhile

Karl Rove still has a security clearance and a job in the White House.

Lil Alberto still has a job, which aparently includes running like a little boy from a few hundred protesters, as does Dick Cheney, whose job no one appears to be clear about, except Dick Cheney, but his job does seem to have someting o do with ridding us of that dastardy piece of paper, the Constitution

I'm not saying that Seligman isn't a crook. I'm just saying there are far bigger ones.

Ex-Alabama Democratic Gov. Don Siegelman gets over 7 years in prison.

There is evidence that Siegelman was targeted by Karl Rove in political use of Justice Department prosecutors. Unlike Scooter Libby, Siegelman goes directly to prison without any letters of support from Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman or James Carville.

(In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. I.U. has no affiliation whatsoever with the originator of this article nor is I.U endorsed or sponsored by the originator.)

The Nazis, Fascists and Communists were political parties before they became enemies of liberty and mass murderers