Rove Protege Dig For Dirt On Obama

Anyone know where we might find this Mr. Griffin? We have some information for him...... heh, heh, heh......

Rove Protégé to Dig for Dirt on Obama

By Jason Leopold
May 23, 2008

Timothy Griffin, a central figure in the U.S. Attorney scandal and a protégé of Republican political guru Karl Rove, reportedly has been hired to dig up dirt on likely Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama.

FirstRead, a political Web site of NBC News, cited a Republican source as confirming that Griffin was being brought onboard by the Republican National Committee to handle opposition research on Obama.

Griffin hung up on me when I contacted him at his home and asked him to comment about the report. An RNC aide told me he could neither “confirm nor deny the report.”

Griffin’s return to the RNC as an opposition researcher – a post he held during the Bush-Cheney campaigns – would seem to mark a return to a “dirty tricks” style of campaigning that presumptive Republican nominee John McCain has vowed to avoid.

During the 2000 presidential campaign, Griffin handled “oppo” on Al Gore and, according to several RNC staffers, hung a poster behind his desk that paraphrased a line from “Gladiator”: "On my command - unleash hell on Al."

In 2004, Griffin also performed opposition research for the Bush-Cheney campaign and participated in an apparent Republican scheme to trap voters who had possible errors in their registration forms, so-called “caging.”

A Rove favorite, Griffin then was installed as U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Arkansas in 2006. His predecessor as U.S. Attorney, Bud Cummins, was one of nine federal prosecutors forced to resign in an unusual purge orchestrated by George W. Bush’s White House.

Griffin got the U.S. Attorney job via a little known provision slipped into the reauthorization of the Patriot Act in 2005, empowering the Attorney General to appoint emergency U.S. Attorneys without Senate confirmation.

However, after congressional Democrats – and some Republicans – complained about politicization of the Justice Department, Griffin resigned rather than face a regular confirmation process.

Griffin also stepped down as details began to emerge about his role in “vote caging,” a controversial tactic that has been used to suppress the turnout of minorities by having their names purged from the rolls when registered mail sent to their homes is returned unopened.

The Republican National Committee signed a consent decree in 1986 stating it would not engage in the practice after it was caught suppressing votes in 1981 and 1986.

More Caging

Documents released last year implicated Griffin and other Republican operatives in a broad effort to "cage" votes during Election 2004 in battleground states, such as New Mexico, Nevada, Florida and Ohio.

E-mails among Ohio Republican Party official Michael Magan; Coddy Johnson, then national field director of the Bush-Cheney 2004 campaign; and Griffin showed that the men received documents that could justify widespread voter challenges if the Bush campaign needed to contest the election results.

Johnson referred to the documents as a "goldmine.” Like Griffin, Johnson worked at the White House as a political aide to Rove.

The documents were lists of registered voters who did not return address confirmation forms to the Ohio Board of Elections. The Republican operatives compared the list with lists of voters who requested absentee ballots.

"A bad registration card can be an accident or fraud. A bad card AND an Absentee Ballot request is a clear case of fraud," argued Bush-Cheney campaign staffer Robert Paduchik.

”I have already tasked our IT [information technology] person with creating a match list between the Board of Elections return mail list and the Absentee Ballot request list,” according to an e-mail from Christopher McInerney, a Griffin colleague and a RNC researcher.

However, McInerney cautioned about having “GOP fingerprints" on the challenges.

"I would think we are less worried about ‘fingerprints’ if we have decent evidence that fraudulent ballots are being cast,” responded GOP strategist Christopher Guith. “I think the intent is to take the Board of Elections' list and challenge absentee ballots? At that point, isn't it more important to stop absentee ballots that we have a high certainty of fraud than avoid the hit?"

Griffin responded, "I guess we have to make sure we have bodies. It seems like it always comes down to bodies. Why don't you ask your peeps in each state at issue if they have the resources to do this? Then, I might/can put some resources in the states that are lacking."

Last July, in a letter to the Justice Department, Senators Sheldon Whitehouse, D-Rhode Island, and Edward Kennedy, D-Massachusetts, protested Republican use of these tactics.

"Caging is a reprehensible voter suppression tactic, and it may also violate federal law and the terms of applicable judicially enforceable consent decrees," the Whitehouse-Kenney letter read.

GOP Strategy

In a forthcoming book, In Justice: Inside the Scandal that Rocked the Bush Administration,
Former U.S. Attorney David Iglesias, one of the nine federal prosecutors fired, said Republican officials in his state were far less interested in election reforms and more intent on suppressing votes.

"But there was a more sinister reading to such urgent calls for reform, not to mention the Justice Department's strident insistence on harvesting a bumper crop of voter fraud prosecutions. That implication is summed up in a single word: ‘caging.’

"Not only did the [Bush] administration stoop to such seamy expedients to press its agenda in 2004," Iglesias wrote. "It had the full might and authority of the federal government and its prosecutorial powers to accomplish its ends."

The controversies over the prosecutor firings and the alleged “voter caging” led Griffin to resign from his post as acting U.S. Attorney rather than undergo a bruising confirmation hearing.

But the RNC appears to value Griffin’s political talents enough to bring him back onboard to look for derogatory information that might damage Barack Obama’s campaign.

Griffin is "one of the best political operatives in the country," a Republican source told NBC’s FirstRead.

Jason Leopold has launched a new Web site, The Public Record, at www.pubrecord.org


(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.

Greg Made Timmy Cry...BooHoo

It just galls the hell out of me when people, who have spent years victimizing others, when caught, cry, whine and moan about being victims, themselves.

I hope Griffin geoes to jail, right along with Scooter. He has certainly earned it.


BLOGGED BY Greg Palast ON 6/17/2007 7:52PM
Palast Exclusive: The Tears of a Clone

Conyers Closes in on Karl and his Rove-bots...
*** Special to The BRAD BLOG by Greg Palast


Boo-hoo! I made Tim Griffin cry.

He cried. Then he lied.

You remember Tim. Karl Rove's right hand (right claw?) man. The GOP's ragin' cagin' man.
Griffin is the Rove-bot exposed by our BBC Newsnight investigations team as the man who gathered and sent out the infamous 'caging' lists to Republican state chairmen during the 2004 election.

Caging lists, BBC discovered, were used secretly as a basis to challenge the right to vote of thousands of citizens - including the homeless, students and soldiers sent overseas. The day after BBC broadcast that the Chairman of the Judiciary Committee, John Conyers, sought our evidence on Griffin, Tim resigned his post as US Attorney for Arkansas. That job was a little gift from Karl Rove who made room for his man Griffin by demanding the firing of US prosecutor Bud Cummins.

Last week, our cameras captured Griffin, all teary-eyed, in his humiliating kiss-off speech delivered in Little Rock at the University of Arkansas where he moaned that, "public service isn't worth it."

True. In the old Jim Crow days in Arkansas, you could get yourself elected by blocking African-Americans. (The voters his caging game targeted are - quelle surprise! - disproportionately Black citizens.)

But today, Griffin can't even get an unemployment check. When he resigned two weeks ago following our broadcast, the cover story was that the voter persecutor-turned-prosecutor had resigned to work for Presidential wannabe Fred Thompson. But when Thompson's staff was asked by a reporter why they would hire the 'cagin' man,' suddenly, the 'Law and Order' star decided associating with Griffin might take the shine off Thompson's badge, even if it is from the props department.

Griffin, instead of saying that public service "isn't worth it," should have said, "Crime doesn't pay." Because, according to experts such as law professor Robert F. Kennedy Jr., 'caging,' when used to target Black voters' rights, is a go-to-prison crime.

By resigning, Tim may not avoid the hard questions about caging - or the hard time that might result. When I passed the first set of documents to Conyers (a real film noir moment, in a New York hotel room near midnight), the soft-spoken Congressman said that, resignation or not, "We aren't done with Mr. Griffin yet..."

Tears Not Truth

Back in Little Rock, when asked about caging, Rove's guy linked a few fibs to a few whoppers to some malefactious mendacity. That is, he lied.

"I didn't cage votes. I didn't cage mail," Griffin asserted.

At the risk of making you cry again, Tim, may I point you to an email dated August 26, 2004. It says, "Subject: Re: Caging." And it says, "From: Tim Griffin - Research/Communications" with the email tgriffin@rnchq.org. RNCHQ is the Republican National Committee Headquarters, is it not, Mr. Griffin? Now do you remember caging mail?

If that doesn't ring a bell, please note that at the bottom is this: "ATTACHMENT: Caging-1.xls".
And that attachment was a list of voters.

In last week's pathetic farewell, Mr. Griffin averred that the accusation he was involved in caging voters, "Goes back to one guy - whose name I won't mention." (FYI, Mr. Griffin: My mother calls me, "Gregory.")

Yes, I first reported the story for BBC London - back in 2004 which, as Griffin correctly noted, it was ignored by my US press colleagues until, as Tim put it, "I became embroiled in the US Attorney thing." By 'the US Attorney thing,' I assume you are referring to your involvement in firing and smearing honest prosecutors and grabbing one of their salaries for yourself.

You say, Mr. Griffin, that the unmentionable reporter, "Made [it] up out of whole cloth." You flatter me, Mr. Griffin. We could not possibly be so creative at The Beeb as to construct the thousands of names of voters on your caging lists.

And by the way, we don't have just one of your "caging" emails, but scores of them.

I want to take this opportunity to thank you for sending them to us - even if that was not your intent. You copied your caging missives to 'bdoster@georgewbush.org.' Mr. Doster was Chairman of the Florida Bush campaign - but that address was not his but John Wooden's pretending to be the Bush campaigners. Wooden then sent your notes to me.

Rove in Range

By the way, Mr. Griffin, if you want an explanation of 'caging voters,' just read an email dated February 5, 2007 by...Tim Griffin.

In that email, Griffin references the Bush campaigns mailing out thousands of letters. The letters returned ('caged') as undeliverable were used as the GOP's supposed evidence that these were "thousands of fraudulent voter registrations." These voters were subject to challenge.

However, these caging lists of "fraudulent" addresses, like the 2000 "felon" lists which in fact contained no felons, contained no fraudulent voters. But that wouldn't necessarily save them from the massively successful Republican voter-challenge campaign.

During the appearance he made in Arkansas last week, Griffin said he'd never heard of 'caging.' "I had to look it up," he said. Griffin discovered that "caging" is "a direct mail term."

I don't doubt Griffin's ignorance. Griffin's just a good ol' boy, a former military lawyer, who wouldn't know direct mail terminology from a hole in the ground. Until he went to work for the RNC.

So where did Tim get this direct mail term he used in his emails? Well, before Karl Rove signed on with George W. Bush, he owned Karl Rove & Co....a direct mail firm. Rove made millions making up lists of voters, doing more 'caging' than a zoo-keeper.

Am I saying caging-expert Rove had something to do with the allegedly illegal caging games of his boy Griffin? Does a bear...?

Mr. Griffin wouldn't answer BBC's requests for comment. So I suggested to an Arkansas local, Luther Lowe, a former army reservist and himself a victim of a challenge to his vote, that at the Little Rock send-off for Griffin, he ask the fallen US Attorney about Rove's involvement in caging. Lowe did so, politely. Griffin wove, ducked, blathered and blubbered. But wouldn't answer.

Unless Griffin joins Alberto Gonzales in Club Amnesia, Griffin has a lot to tell us about Mr. Rove and targeting Black voters.

Maybe a subpoena would encourage a Griffin response. And a grant of immunity from the Conyers committee. That's Rove's nightmare. Because unless Griffin joins Alberto Gonzales in Club Amnesia, Griffin has a lot to tell us about Mr. Rove and targeting Black voters.

Will he?

It's not Conyers' style to hunt down Rove. The congressman is not, despite what Republicans say, a partisan hit man. He is, however, one tenacious legislator who told me he would like his committee, "to follow where the evidence leads."

But that's not necessarily going to happen. Conyers told me he sees the evidence in the prosecutor firing investigation leading to the much bigger, nastier issue of voter suppression - in simpler terms, fixing elections.

Unfortunately, many on his committee from both parties see the hearings as limited to the single issue of the firing of prosecutors. They want to scrutinize the elephant's trunk but refuse to acknowledge it's attached to an elephant: election rigging. Racially poisoned, direct-mail driven, computer implemented election rigging.

But Conyers may get there yet, to the issue of elections manipulation. I didn't get that from the Chairman (too circumspect to let his future intensions slip out). I got it from the Big Bubba. When I ran into Ol' Silver Eyes himself at an Air America soiree, Bill Clinton (man, he's gotten thin!) told me, "When we really get going on these prosecutor hearings, when we really dig deep, we're going to get right to the issue of voter suppression."

But what do you mean "we," Bill?

Conyers is dean of the Congressional Black Caucus, which has an abiding concern and painful experience with illegal vote suppression of all types: caging, purging, challenging, lynching. But whether Conyers can convince his committee, mostly members of the Congressional White Caucus, to "dig deep" on vote suppression, is an open question.

In the meantime, Conyers has convinced his committee to drop subpoenas on Harriett Miers (the lady tight with Griffin, Rove and, notably, George W. Bush) and Sara Taylor, Rove's Gal Friday. Conyers, methodically, determinedly, is circling in on Rove, "Bush's Brain," a man known to surrender the corpses of his allies in place of his own (eh, Mr. Libby?). No wonder Griffin's in tears.

So here's a hanky, Mr. Griffin. This unnamable reporter would rather you save your tears for Randall Prausa. The African-American soldier was on active military duty when he ended up on one of your caging lists, what you term a suspected 'fraudulent' voter subject to GOP challenge because he was not home to get his fraudulent, 'Welcome, voter,' letter from the GOP.
Can you guess, Mr. Griffin, why Prausa wasn't at home? Well, unlike Messrs. Rove and Bush, Prausa was serving his country overseas.

And that's what caging is all about. If you're Black, you get shipped to Baghdad and you lose your vote. Mission Accomplished, Mr. Griffin. Mission Accomplished, Mr. Rove.

===
The confidential Griffin e-mail, "Subject: Re: Caging," is reproduced in Greg Palast's New York Times bestseller, ARMED MADHOUSE: Sordid Secrets and Strange Tales of a White House Gone Wild. Available at www.GregPalast.com

Also: Catch the film of Randi Rhodes and Greg Palast on "Bush's and Giuliani's favorite vultures," the men with connections to the Bush Administration who have siphoned off the money meant for Africa's poorest. Video online here.


(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.H. Rebuke DOJ Officials Over Rover

U.S. ATTORNEYS
Officials rebuked for disclosing Rove's connection to firing of U.S. attorney
By Margaret Talev and Marisa Taylor
McClatchy Newspapers

WASHINGTON - The White House's former political director was furious at Justice Department officials for disclosing to Congress that the administration had forced out the U.S. attorney in Little Rock, Ark., to make way for a protege of Karl Rove, President Bush's political adviser, according to documents released late Tuesday.

Then-White House political affairs director Sara Taylor spelled out her frustrations in a Feb. 16 e-mail to Kyle Sampson, then the chief of staff to Attorney General Alberto Gonzales.

She sent the message after Deputy Attorney General Paul McNulty told the Senate that unlike other federal prosecutors, U.S. Attorney Bud Cummins wasn't fired for performance reasons, but to make way for former Republican political operative Tim Griffin. Griffin, serving as the interim U.S. attorney, then announced that he wouldn't seek confirmation to the Arkansas post, but would remain until the Senate confirmed someone else. Griffin has since resigned.

"Tim was put in a horrible position; hung out to dry w/ no heads up," Taylor lashed out in the e-mail, which was sent from a Republican Party account rather than from her White House e-mail address. "This is not good for his long-term career."

The Taylor e-mail was among 46 pages of documents that the Justice Department turned over to Congress Tuesday as part of the investigation into the firings of at least nine U.S. attorneys.
The Democratic chairmen of the House and Senate Judiciary Committees said the documents showed greater White House involvement in the firings than previously known.

Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., said the documents "provide further evidence that White House officials like former political director Sara Taylor were deeply involved in the mass firings of well-performing prosecutors."

The White House disputed those characterizations, saying the e-mails deal only with the aftermath of the firings, not what led up to them, and that there was nothing inappropriate about wanting to promote Griffin, whom the administration considered "exceptionally" qualified.
"I know this is becoming terribly frustrating for Democrats, but once again documents show no wrongdoing in the decision to replace U.S. attorneys," said White House spokesman Tony Fratto.

Fratto said some documents also undercut Democrats' assertions that the White House wanted to abuse a change in federal law to keep interim U.S. attorneys in place without Senate confirmation.

In an e-mail exchange from early January, then-White House Counsel Harriet Miers asked Sampson how the department wanted to handle replacement candidates. Sampson replied that "in no case" did he want to use the new law unilaterally to "jam senators" because "that will only result in the Congress taking that authority away from us."

The newly released e-mails also showed that:

-The White House counsel's office thought in January that the ousted prosecutors had "disloyally stirred up the senators" but argued against criticizing them publicly because they hadn't "fired any shots" at the administration.

-Taylor called Cummins "lazy" and said that was "why we got rid of him in the first place." Cummins, reached Tuesday, said, "I don't know how Sara Taylor would have any information about my work ethic."
---
ON THE WEB
To read the latest e-mails, go to the bottom of the page at: www.realcities.com/mld/krwashington/news/special_packages/usattorneys/


(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.

Bush High Corruption Continues With Thompson

Timothy Griffin, the Karl Rove protégé at the center of the federal prosecutor scandal, is negotiating for a senior position on Fred Thompson’s Republican presidential campaign, another sign that the actor and former senator is positioning himself as the reddest of red-meat candidates appealing to the right-wing base.

A litmus test among devoted followers of George W. Bush remains an instinctive rejection of all scandals considered important by liberals, from the deceptive intelligence behind the Iraq War to the torture of terror suspects to the exposure of CIA officer Valerie Plame to the politicization of the U.S. Attorneys.

If the liberals think it’s a scandal, Bush’s followers know the talking points from Fox News, Rush Limbaugh and other right-wing media outlets explaining why it isn’t.

Thompson is courting those votes by making himself the stick-it-in-your-ear candidate, the guy who doesn’t give a hoot what the New York Times editorial page says.

While other Republican presidential contenders also may vouch for the rightness of the Iraq War and defend torture (with a couple of exceptions), Thompson has jumped out front demanding a pardon for convicted White House aide I. Lewis Libby.

Now Thompson’s consideration of Griffin for a top job is a sign of what Law & Order’s fictional D.A. thinks about the prosecutor scandal.

By letting it be known that Griffin is under consideration for a senior campaign post, Thompson’s nascent campaign is signaling to the Republican base that Thompson won’t shy away from Republicans under fire.

“I can tell you I’ve had discussions with my good friend Tim Griffin,” Thompson’s spokesman Mark Corallo told me.

Corallo also made clear that the Thompson campaign was not fazed by allegations implicating Griffin in so-called “caging” operations to disqualify black voters or by charges that Griffin inflated his résumé as a prosecutor.

The 38-year-old Griffin was appointed interim U.S. Attorney in Little Rock, Arkansas, in December 2006 after former U.S. Attorney H.E. “Bud” Cummins was one of nine regional federal prosecutors pushed out of their jobs to make room for “loyal Bushies.”

Attorney General Alberto Gonzales put Griffin in the job by using emergency powers that were slipped into the USA Patriot Act, thus evading the normal confirmation process before the U.S. Senate.

Exaggerated Experience

Despite the unusual appointment, the Bush administration and its political allies touted Griffin’s supposedly strong experience as both a civilian and military prosecutor. Under inspection, however, Griffin’s prosecutorial record looks less than impressive – and indeed his résumé appears misleading.

For instance, Griffin’s official Web site claimed that he had prosecuted 40 cases while stationed for nine months at Ft. Campbell, Kentucky. But Army records showed him serving as an assistant on only three, all of which were settled with guilty pleas.

Republican supporters also appear to have exaggerated Griffin’s experience during another nine-month stint as an assistant U.S. attorney in Little Rock.

Though the federal case tracking system lists Griffin as having secured 25 indictments, there is no evidence that he took any of them to trial before quitting to go to work on the 2004 Bush-Cheney campaign. I learned from Griffin’s former colleagues that some of his cases needed corrections (or superceding indictments) before other prosecutors could take them to trial.
Griffin didn’t agree to be interviewed, but his spokeswoman Cherith Beck suggested that Griffin’s higher number on the Ft. Campbell cases might refer to all prosecutions that he worked on in any capacity.

“Just wanted to clarify, make sure you had an understanding that prosecuted means it’s a case he handled while he was there; it doesn’t mean that it went to trial necessarily,” Beck said. “Prosecuted means he handled those cases in one form or another.”

However, I could find no evidence that Griffin tried either a civilian or military case; no examples of him presenting a case to a jury, like the prosecutors do on "Law & Order," the TV series in which Thompson plays a crusty New York district attorney. [For more on Griffin’s legal experience, see Consortiumnews.com’s “Did Rove Protégé Puff Up His Resume?”]

Though perhaps light on prosecutorial experience, Griffin impressed Bush’s chief political adviser Karl Rove with his campaign skills.

In September 1999, Griffin joined the Bush-Cheney campaign as deputy research director handling what’s known in the Washington political world as “oppo” or opposition research, digging up dirt on political opponents. He also worked as a legal adviser in the Florida recount battle that gained Bush the White House in December 2000.

As research director and deputy communication director for the 2004 Bush-Cheney campaign, Griffin’s initiatives included the use of a technique known as “caging” to identify suspect voters. Griffin’s team sent letters to newly registered voters in envelopes barring any forwarding, so they would be returned if a voter wasn’t at that address.

BBC investigative reporter Greg Palast uncovered Griffin’s role in this practice that proved especially effective in “caging” African-Americans who lived in low-income areas or who were in the U.S. military. “Caged” voters would then be challenged by Republican lawyers when they arrived at the polls or cast absentee ballots.

Quick Rise

After Bush secured a second term, Griffin joined the White House staff as deputy director for political affairs under Rove. Over the next two years, White House and Justice Department officials collaborated to oust Little Rock U.S. Attorney Cummins, a well-respected Republican, so a vacancy could be created for Griffin.

Although the Justice Department initially denied knowing “of Karl Rove playing any role in the decision to appoint Griffin,” an e-mail by Gonzales’s chief of staff Kyle Sampson revealed that Griffin’s appointment was “important to Harriet, Karl, etc.,” in a reference to then-White House counsel Harriet Miers and Karl Rove.

Griffin got the U.S. Attorney’s job in December 2006, but his interim appointment soon was caught up in the scandal over the firing of nine prosecutors. He quit the job abruptly on June 1, as House Judiciary Committee Chairman John Conyers began collecting evidence on the Bush-Cheney “caging” operations.

Despite Griffin’s baggage, Thompson is reportedly considering giving Griffin an important job on the campaign. When I asked what role Griffin might play in the campaign, spokesman Corallo answered, “that’s something that’s still under discussion.”

Thompson has been out front, too, in urging President Bush to pardon Libby, Vice President Dick Cheney’s former chief of staff who was convicted of obstruction of justice in the investigation into who leaked the identity of covert CIA officer Valerie Plame.

Thompson, a member of an advisory committee for Libby’s defense, called Libby’s conviction and 30-month sentence “tragic” and said he “absolutely” should be pardoned.

In a June 5 appearance on Fox’s Hannity & Colmes, Thompson reiterated the chief pro-Libby talking points that have become articles for faith for the Republican base.

"What they were looking at didn’t constitute a crime,” Thompson said, arguing that Plame was not a covert CIA officer as defined by the Intelligence Identities Protection Act of 1982. “Scooter Libby didn’t leak her [Plame’s] name. … They picked him out to bring the burden of this entire political witch-hunt on him.”

Talking Points

All Thompson’s comments on Plamegate are treasured Republican talking points, but not necessarily accurate.

Though it’s true that prosecutors faced a difficult challenge in charging senior administration officials of illegally divulging the identity of a covert agent (especially since President Bush was involved in the broader operation), the willful leaking of such sensitive classified information is often treated as a crime. Attorney General Gonzales himself has suggested using the Espionage Act to punish other leaks of classified material.

Also, despite claims by right-wing lawyers that Plame was not a “covert” agent, the CIA confirmed that she was and Plame testified before Congress that she had served abroad in the past five years, meaning that she would have come under the protection of the agents identities act.

Contrary to another Thompson assertion, Libby did leak Plame’s identity to at least two reporters, although it turned out that another journalist, Robert Novak, who had received the information from Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage and Rove, published the leak first.

Special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald presented an ironclad case proving that Libby had lied about his role in peddling Plame’s identity, which was done with the goal of discrediting her husband, former U.S. Ambassador Joseph Wilson, who was challenging Bush’s use of bogus intelligence about Iraq seeking uranium from Africa.

But Thompson’s eagerness to embrace Libby and Griffin, as well as his support of controversial actions by the Bush administration, suggests that he doesn’t see these scandals as political liabilities but rather as a way to burnish his bona fides with the hard-right base of the Republican Party.

Richard L. Fricker is a Tulsa, Oklahoma-based freelance reporter/writer and two-time winner of the American Business Press Editors Award for Investigative Journalism. He writes regularly for the Swiss newsweekly Sonntags Blick and Consortiumnews.com. Fricker can be reached at rlfricker@hotmail.com .


(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.

Tim Griffin: Effing Vote Cager.

This SOB is the one we should all being going after.

He stole votes from vets, for Chrissake, not to mention the usual list of minorities.

In a Democracy, this guy should be jailed by the authorities, until he can stand trial. His actions were illegal. He conspired to subvert Democracy.

If the authorities won't do their duty, then maybe, We, the people, should make sure he does not feel safe outside of jail.

This kind of BS is, and should be, intolerable in this country!

Former White House Communications Deputy Tim Griffin Resigns after Evidence Ties Him to Alleged Voter Suppression

Posted by Jon Ponder
Jun. 3, 2007, 8:44 am

The White House installed Griffin as U.S. Attorney without Senate approval using a provision they’d slipped into the Patriot Act.

Big media is ignoring the story that former White House Deputy Communications Director — and former RNC Research Director — Tim Griffin resigned as the U.S. Attorney in Arkansas last week after evidence revealed he was directly involved in alleged voter suppression in the 2004 elections.

This may be the first time you’ve heard of the illegal tactic of “caging” voters, but if BBC investigator Greg Palast is correct, it will not be the last.

Caging is a form of voter suppression involving registered mail. Typically, campaigns send registered letters to voters who are are unlikely to respond — soldiers serving overseas, for example. A list is compiled of the voters whose mail is returned marked undeliverable, or “caged.” On election day, when people on the caging list arrive to vote, campaign operatives are on hand to float challenges to their residency in the precinct. Palast says caging is a felony.

Palast recently obtained hundreds of emails sent by White House officials to Bush-Cheney operatives during the 2004 campaign. Among these were emails containing caging lists sent by Griffin, apparently in his role as communications deputy. Late last week, Palast agreed to show Griffin’s emails to Rep. John Conyers, chairman of the Judiciary Committee. On Thursday, Griffin abruptly announced his resignation in Little Rock, citing an urgent need to work in the private sector. (Some sources say Griffin is in negotiations to join Fred Thompson’s presidential campaign; while one wag suggests Griffin resigned “to spend more time in jail.“)

Griffin’s name first surfaced nationally in the investigation into the Bush administration’s unprecedented firing of eight U.S. attorneys last December. He has been depicted as a protege of Karl Rove with no real prosecutorial experience who was chosen to replace Bud Cummins as federal prosecutor in the Little Rock office. His appointment created a controversy in Arkansas — and in the U.S. Senate — when it was revealed that the White House installed him without Senate approval using a provision on “interim” appointments they’d slipped into the Patriot Act.
Why would the U.S. Dept. of Justice replace a seasoned, successful prosecutor with a political operative whose last job was working for the White House communications department? Here’s how David Iglesias, the New Mexico U.S. attorney who was also fired in December, described why the Bushies wanted him out of the way:

“They wanted a political operative who happened to be a US attorney … and when they got somebody who actually took his oath to the Constitution seriously, they were appalled and they wanted me out of there. The two strikes against me was, I was not political, I didn’t help them out on their bogus voter fraud prosecutions.”

None of this is new, by the way.

In 2004, Palast, working then as now for the BBC, accused Griffin and the GOP of caging the votes of African-American service personnel who lived in Florida but were serving in Iraq — but this, too went unnoticed by America’s corporate media.

Update: The story is even older than I indicated previously. Palast first reported it in 2004, not 2006, as I’d stated earlier. Thanks to Brad Friedman for the correct date.


(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.

Griffin To Resign As U.S. Attorney, Arkansas

The buzz is that Griffin has an offer from Fred Thompson' campaign. Guess Fred can't make it without Rove's man, Mr. Vote Caging.

Me thinks it would be bad for Thompson if Mr Griffin gets arrested during his campaign, but who cares, really?

If Fred thinks that hiring a Rover protege will be good for his camapign, he doesn't have good enough judgement to be president.

But it isn't just Thompson, is it? It seems that all of Washington has gone tone deaf, if not stone deaf.

I have a feeling that something very strange is going on; strange even for Washington.....


Griffin To Resign Friday, Congressional Staffers Say
By Peggy Harris
The Associated Press
Wednesday 30 May 2007


Little Rock - Tim Griffin, the federal prosecutor in Arkansas whose appointment was among those that led to calls for the resignation of Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, is resigning Friday, spokesmen for Arkansas congressional members said.

Griffin, a former assistant to President Bush's top political adviser Karl Rove, stepped in as interim U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Arkansas in December, replacing U.S. Attorney Bud Cummins.

Cummins, a well-respected prosecutor, was one of eight U.S. attorneys who were fired over the winter, leading to accusations of White House meddling in federal law enforcement. U.S. Sen. Mark Pryor, D-Ark., was particularly infuriated that the White House had skirted the Senate confirmation process in appointing Griffin.

Wednesday, Pryor spokesman Michael Teague said the Justice Department informed the senator's chief of staff late that day that Griffin would resign Friday and that First Assistant U.S. Attorney Jane Duke, who also worked under Cummins, would become acting U.S. attorney.

"This is a positive development, and Senator Pryor looks forward to restoring creditable leadership to the U.S. attorney's office," Teague said. "It is long overdue."

Griffin, who has said he would not seek Senate confirmation to the post permanently, would not say whether he was resigning. He said he might have an announcement today "with some specifics." He had no further comment.

In March, 3rd District Rep. John Boozman, R-Rogers, provided the White House with the names of three people whom he considered suitable for the U.S. attorney's post in Arkansas. Boozman consulted with Pryor and Sen. Blanche Lincoln, D-Ark., in making his recommendations.

Matt Sagely, Boozman's chief of staff , said Wednesday he learned from the White House that Griffin would resign Friday and be replaced by Duke. Sagely said he was sure Griffin's decision was strictly voluntary.

"I don't think it had anything to do at all with the administration saying, 'Yeah, we need to appoint an interim and you need to be gone by June 1," Sagely said. "I think as we're working through the process of his replacement, he's just been out and doing what he should do and that is talking to people about jobs and trying to find his next step.

"He's a guy that knows a lot of people and is going to do very well after this," Sagely said.

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