An excellent wrapup today from Scott Horton, of Harper's, on the latest in the Don Siegelman case.
Perhaps most interesting is Horton's report that a prominent former Republican attorney general recently completed a network television interview on the Siegelman case. I assume this will be part of the 60 Minutes story that has been in the works for a while. The former attorney general apparently points out the many irregularities in the Siegelman case, including the fact that Siegelman has been moved around the country through the federal prison system. This has been done even though the best known facility for minimum-security prisoners in the United States is at Maxwell Air Force Base in Montgomery, AL.
"But the Justice Department had another objective," Horton writes. "Silencing the man, assuring that he had no communication with the outside world. . . . It was something from a novel."
Horton goes on to say that a major television network (CBS?) has sought to tape an interview with Siegelman. The request was denied. When a former press aide sent Siegelman a memo with a note covering points he might want to raise in an interview, the letter was intercepted by Justice officials, and its contents seized. Siegelman received an empty envelope.
This is scary stuff, folks. It sounds like something out of Josef Stalin's gulag system. And Don Siegelman is not alone. I don't have a lot of details, but I get the impression Mississippi attorney Paul Minor is being treated in a similar fashion. My last report is that he is in Tallahassee, Florida.
If Congress ever truly gets to the bottom of the Bush Justice Department scandal, it probably will be because of honest Republicans who have seen enough. I'm talking about people like Rainsville attorney Jill Simpson, whose affidavit first shined a serious light on the Siegelman case. Now a former GOP attorney general is joining the chorus.
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