Saturday, April 5, 2008

Wayne Madsen Pulls a Gotcha on Rove

Investigative journalist Wayne Madsen caught Karl Rove in a lie while the former "Bush's Brain" was ranting in GQ about Alabama Republican whistleblower Jill Simpson.

Rove had claimed that Simpson was a "lunatic" and a "loon" and specifically said she was wrong in her reference to Republican headquarters in Virginia. But Madsen, who runs the Wayne Madsen Report (WMR), reports that Rove is the one with the faulty memory:

In the interview, Rove falsely claims that Bush-Cheney Transition headquarters was in Austin, Texas in January 2001 when it was, in fact, in an office in McLean, Virginia that was formerly used by Dick Cheney as a Halliburton office.

Madsen follows up with this interesting nugget:

WMR previously reported that at least one phone call originated from the McLean transition office to the Pamela Martin & Associates escort service.

Madsen provides details about Power Line, a right-wing blog that Rove touted in his GQ interview. Turns out Power Line has some interesting ties to the Martin escort service--and so evidently does Vice President Dick Cheney:

PowerLine is run by three former fellows of the neocon Claremont Institute in California. Its most well-known blogger is Akin, Gump, Strauss, Hauer & Feld attorney Paul Mirengoff. Akin Gump's headquarters are located in Washington's Dupont Circle neighborhood, a popular "entertainment" area that has been frequented on a number of occasions by Rove.

It is noteworthy that an Akin Gump legal secretary was suspended last May after it was discovered that she was an escort for the Pamela Martin escort agency, which counted Louisiana Republican Senator David Vitter, US Agency for International Development director Randy Tobias, and Dick Cheney military strategy adviser Harlan Ullman as clients. WMR also reported that Cheney, himself, was a client of the agency when he served as CEO of Halliburton.

Perhaps most interesting to folks in Alabama is Madsen's report that Republicans are planning to claim that Simpson used the ChoicePoint data-mining firm to illegally obtain a credit report on U.S. Judge Mark Fuller, who oversaw the Don Siegelman trial. ChoicePoint, by the way, has interesting ties to the 2000 presidential election. Madsen reports that a Fuller representative is pressuring ChoicePoint to go along with the false claim that Simpson acted illegally in obtaining credit information on Fuller. Toll-road projects evidently are at the heart of GOP concerns over the matter:

The GOP in Alabama, using its influence peddlers at the Press Register, is reportedly planning to claim that Simpson illegally obtained from the data mining firm Choice Point a credit report on US Judge Mark Fuller, the scandal-tainted judge who presided over the Siegelman case and ordered Siegelman directly to prison following his conviction. ChoicePoint is the firm that was charged with assisting Florida Secretary of State Katherine Harris to purge and cage voters lists in the 2000 Florida presidential election that propelled George W. Bush into the White House.

WMR has learned that Fuller is being probed by investigative journalists targeting his financial interests in Alabama toll road projects, contracts that involve ChoicePoint. WMR has also learned that a representative for Fuller contacted ChoicePoint and said their contracts on the toll road projects could be jeopardized if the firm did not cooperate in the false claim that Simpson "illegally" obtained financial information on Fuller from the firm.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Thanks for the gems from WMR. I added some of your points to my own story on Rove.

I think Rove is PR-ing, abusing media platforms to undermine his enemy the way he always does.

I found a CNN transcript that has Eileen O'Connor reporting from the Bush-Cheney transition headquarters in McLean, Virginia back in 2000.

http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0012/14/se.09.html

Anonymous said...

It isn't surprising they're using criminal tactics to create and design ammunition against Simpson.

In Kentucky there was a Democratic Governor seated named Paul Patton. Incredibly, and almost desperately, Republicans have attempted to take control of the South, even spewing religion to get the vote, only to later ridicule religious constituents.

About the same time Governor Riley took Alabama, Perdue took Georgia; and Fletcher took Kentucky. While it would be interesting to see who else fell in to this little GOP Rovian plan in other states, after Fletcher took office, nearly his entire cabinet committed crimes and later received pardons.

Patton had been destroyed with the revelation that he had a mistress, and had exchanged with her gubernatorial favors of sorts. It was the perfect scenario for a Republican victory.

And I've always wondered if the whole thing wasn't staged over time, even years, to lure the governor to his destruction, as I have found it's how these good 'ole boys work. They despise the fact their party hasn't controlled an area for a few decades.

In the midst of his televised destruction and impending court battles, this woman was said to have fled the state of Kentucky in fear for her life, with enough mud scraped and used against her to threaten her with prison, and federal crimes.

It appeared she, a private citizen, was targeted almost more fiercely than the Governor, who was elected to be responsible to the public.

The moral to the story is, you're right.

The courts are dirty, where favors exist, pardons are granted, and pockets get greased. But if you come up against politicians, as Jill Simpson has found, it can become frightening, and even life threatening.

These folks have an entire menagerie of trick-peddling consultants to win in courts that normal people couldn't imagine or utilize.

Most people are unaware how evil humans can be, and that sometimes those most commanding of respect are the ones who least deserve it.

They can be so evil Karl Rove's teacher, Atwater confessed to the Almighty on his deathbed for all he'd done, and it's well documented.

It's not my call, but if it was, I'd doubt he was forgiven for any of it.