by hilzoy
A couple of days ago, I advanced the following explanation for part of the US Attorney purge:
(a) The provision allowing Bush to appoint US Attorneys without Senate confirmation was slipped into the PATRIOT Act to benefit Tim Griffin, who replaced Bud Commins as US Attorney in the Eastern district of Arkansas.
(b) Griffin is normally described as a protégé of Karl Rove, which he is. But his specific area of expertise is opposition research: digging up dirt on one’s political opponents. He was the head of opposition research for the Bush 2004 campaign.
(c) The reason the administration wanted to make Tim Griffin a US Attorney in Arkansas was to send their chief opposition researcher to the state where Hillary Clinton, then the presumptive frontrunner for the Democratic nomination, had spent most of her adult life; and to send him not as a campaign employee but as a US Attorney with subpoena power.
Is this explanation true? I don’t have any evidence of it. I suspect that if it were true, there would not be any evidence. But it makes sense, both because the administration has in fact appointed its chief oppo researcher to the US Attorney’ job in Eastern Arkansas, and because it fits Rove’s modus operandi. (See below.) And if it is, it’s very, very bad.
According to the US Attorneys’ Manual, US Attorneys have all sorts of powers. You can read about the ones related to criminal law here. One of them is, of course, the power to indict and prosecute people. That’s a risky power to abuse, however: when you actually have to present your case, it’s a lot easier for people to see that you don’t have one. The power to investigate doesn’t suffer from these limitations: it’s easy to say that despite your earlier suspicions, you didn’t happen to find enough to prove your case. In the interim, however, your opponent will be under a cloud: s/he’s the object of a Federal Investigation, people will say; where there’s smoke, there’s fire. By the time they discover that the “investigation” didn’t actually go anywhere, the election might be over, and the person whose honor you have dragged through the mud might have lost.
Just think what fun an opposition researcher with subpoena power could have in Arkansas. There are crowds of people who know the Clintons in Arkansas, and any of them could profitably be investigated for fraud or insider trading or — heck, why not? — child molestation or serial murder. It would take a certain amount of ingenuity to come up with just the right investigations — investigations that managed to remind people of Whitewater and Monica and all that without being, well, obvious about it; but that, no doubt, is where the artistic side of an opposition researcher comes into play. And while this sort of thing requires more of a certain kind of deviant brilliance than normal US Attorney work, it’s a lot easier in other respects, since there’s no need for even the slightest bit of evidence that the person you propose to investigate and smear is actually guilty of anything.
I can’t tell you how angry the thought of someone doing this makes me. It was wrong when Hoover kept files on his opponents. It was wrong when Nixon launched IRS audits of people he decided were his “enemies”. Any time the law enforcement powers of the state are used for political purposes, it’s wrong, wrong, wrong.
Naturally, this wrong thing turns out to be one of Karl Rove’s favored tactics…
“Rove, as all the world knows, has been a longtime Republican political operative in Texas prior to heading to Washington with Bush. During that time, Texas Democrats noticed a pattern that they eventually became somewhat paranoid about: In election years, there always seemed to be an FBI investigation of some sitting Democrat either announced or leaked to the press.
After the election was over, the allegations often vanished, although in the case of Agriculture Commissioner Jim Hightower, three of his aides were later convicted. The investigations were conducted by FBI agent Greg Rampton, who was stationed in Austin in those years.”
This pattern seems to have had its roots in this bizarre episode:
“Rove soldiered on in obscurity until 1986, when he was working on the second campaign of Bill Clements, a Republican trying to recapture the governor’s office after losing it to Democrat Mark White. Rove made news by going public with a complaint that an electronic bugging device had been found in his office–shortly before a scheduled televised debate between the two candidates. “We never took it seriously, because we knew nobody in our shop had anything to do with it,” says Dwayne Hollman, who worked for White at the time. Hollman said it was assumed that it was a publicity stunt. “It was investigated by the FBI,” Hollman said, “and nothing ever came of it.”
Yet some wonder what “came of” Rove’s meeting with FBI agent Greg Rampton, who conducted that investigation. Local authorities who looked into the bugging seem to agree with Hollman’s assessment. “We were the first on the scene and concluded that Rove had hired a company to debug his office, and that the same company had planted the bug,” says a source involved in the Travis County DA office’s investigation. But the media reported that Rampton had determined there was nothing to pursue.”
Apparently, Rove and Rampton hit it off:
“MOORE: Anyway, my belief is that somehow, during the course of the phony bugging investigation in Karl’s office, Rove discovered that he and Greg Rampton were politically sympathetic with each other. And Greg Rampton ended up investigating every Democratic officeholder on a statewide basis in Texas, and never got anything against any of them. And they went after Jim Hightower, the Agriculture Commissioner, and were interviewing dozens of people at the Ag Commissioner’s office, hoping to get Jim Hightower indicted, but they couldn’t.
But there were two elderly guys who had been fundraisers for about 30 years over there. They ended up being indicted and prosecuted and convicted. And during the course of all that, they got many offers to roll over on Hightower and the charges against them would be dropped. They refused to do it.
Also in process, numerous people were told during the course of their interviews by Greg Rampton: Look, if you think you’ve got anything, call Karl Rove and he’ll get in touch with me. It was quite, quite clear to everybody in town, and from the attorneys who were defending these people at the Ag Department –- dozens of people had retained attorneys for their FBI interviews -– that Rove was running the operation, and Rampton was taking directions from Karl Rove.
BUZZFLASH: And also that some of their investigation was timed for the media.
MOORE: Yeah, the day that Hightower announced that he was running for reelection, Rampton showed up at Hightower’s office with 10 different subpoenas for documents and individuals and said it was strictly coincidental.
Just as the timing on the bugging in Karl’s office was “coincidental,” in that the bug was discovered on the day of the only debate in the Texas gubernatorial campaign in 1986, and Karl’s candidate happened to be a horrid debater. And the coverage of that bugging completely covered up the entire debate. On the front page of the newspaper the next day, hardly anything was written about the debate.
BUZZFLASH: And it also made his candidate and him look like victims. Just two other quick things about Hightower: You also point out -– in a somewhat scary and humorous fashion at the same time -– that a reporter at one point called Hightower’s office about their reactions to subpoenas that had been issued, and no one in the office knew, meaning that this reporter had been leaked the subpoena information — possibly by Rove — and had just jumped the gun.
MOORE: It actually happened several times with several reporters. But that was the one where the Ag Department people put the pieces together.”
Launching investigations against political opponents is only one way of blackening their names and sowing doubts among their potential supporters. Rove has mastered the whole genre. While I’m writing about such things, I have to mention what is, to me, the single most appalling Rove story I know. Rove’s client was running against one Mark Kennedy:
“Kennedy had spent years on the bench as a juvenile and family-court judge, during which time he had developed a strong interest in aiding abused children. In the early 1980s he had helped to start the Children’s Trust Fund of Alabama, and he later established the Corporate Foundation for Children, a private, nonprofit organization. At the time of the race he had just served a term as president of the National Committee to Prevent Child Abuse and Neglect. One of Rove’s signature tactics is to attack an opponent on the very front that seems unassailable. Kennedy was no exception.
Some of Kennedy’s campaign commercials touted his volunteer work, including one that showed him holding hands with children. “We were trying to counter the positives from that ad,” a former Rove staffer told me, explaining that some within the See camp initiated a whisper campaign that Kennedy was a pedophile. “It was our standard practice to use the University of Alabama Law School to disseminate whisper-campaign information,” the staffer went on. “That was a major device we used for the transmission of this stuff. The students at the law school are from all over the state, and that’s one of the ways that Karl got the information out—he knew the law students would take it back to their home towns and it would get out.” This would create the impression that the lie was in fact common knowledge across the state. “What Rove does,” says Joe Perkins, “is try to make something so bad for a family that the candidate will not subject the family to the hardship. Mark is not your typical Alabama macho, beer-drinkin’, tobacco-chewin’, pickup-drivin’ kind of guy. He is a small, well-groomed, well-educated family man, and what they tried to do was make him look like a homosexual pedophile. That was really, really hard to take.””
Would a man who is so hell-bent on winning at any cost that he’s willing to try to make everyone think that his candidate’s opponent is a pedophile, and deliberately set out “to make something so bad for a family that the candidate will not subject the family to the hardship”, balk at corrupting our system of justice? I can’t imagine why.
What I have always wondered is why the American people were willing to elect someone who hired Karl Rove as his closest political advisor. Truly a mystery that passeth all understanding.
US Attorneys: More Why (Special Rove Edition)
Hmm, my understanding has been that Rove was looking for someone to work for, and shopped around the governor of Texas, with his almost presidential name, to the powers that be. I don’t think Bush fils really wanted to be president until he was told he wanted to be president. and my hunch is that if he had it to do over again, he’d opt out.
But no, it doesn’t surprise me that someone cut from the same cloth as Lee Atwater would want to plant a bent US Attorney in the home state of the candidate he most wants to undermine. Josh Marshall has had the goods on Rove forever. Just SOP for these guys.
It was wrong when
NixonClinton launched IRS audits of people he decided were his “enemies”.I don’t know hilzoy – I think you are stretching a bit here. Rove is done. After 8 years in the WH where is he going from here? Do you think the next R candidate/nominee is going to take him on? He is poison at this point. I’d say that except for a tell-all book in 10 years he will fade into obscurity.
And BTW – you know you will spend $20 for that book… 🙂
The Three Big Lies:
1. Karl Rove is used up.
2. Ann Coulter doesn’t speak for the Republican Party.
3. I won’t co . . . well, you get the idea.
OCS, while Rove might have to sit out 2008, he’ll spend the next 2 years on the lecture circuit, charging up the base, and will have shed whatever tarnish he’s got by the 2010 midterms.
He and his dishonorable ways will be with us for as long as dishonor is tolerated.
On pure speculation, I bet Rove is like Hoover in the respect that he will stay around forever. Given his current posistion he undoubtably has dirt on every republican canidate as well and will threaten to bring the next canidate who doesn’t take him on.
Such things happen when you have people who care more about power than good governence running the country. Being in government should be seen as a responcibility not as a privlage, until we have people in office who view it that way we will always have problems.
“Is this explanation true? I don’t have any evidence of it. I suspect that if it were true, there would not be any evidence. But it makes sense…”
In other words, you have no evidentiary basis for your belief and probably never will even if it were true. Now I have no love for Bush and Co and would love to see them impeached (even though its politically impossible) but isn’t that an unfair argument? There’s no way anyone could argue for or against that.
Rove will always have clients, because his brand of Bizzarro World political smears is successful, and will remain so for as long as the MSM and voters have their collective heads up their collective arses.
Rove is a Patriotic American who loves liberty and freedom.
And the Republicans who hire him have those same values.
isn’t that an unfair argument?
I think that depends on what the argument is doing. If it is used to convict Rove and company for 20 years of hard labor, it is unfair. But if it is to show what is really at stake here and underline why we should demand neutral attorneys, and why we should continue to pursue this, it seems appropriate.
In other words, you have no evidentiary basis for your belief and probably never will even if it were true.
Hilzoy is floating a theory.
Any good theory is parsimonious, consistent with what has been observed, and saves the present phenomenon.
This one does.
“Is this explanation true? I don’t have any evidence of it. I suspect that if it were true, there would not be any evidence. But it makes sense…”
In other words, you have no evidentiary basis for your belief and probably never will even if it were true. Now I have no love for Bush and Co and would love to see them impeached (even though its politically impossible) but isn’t that an unfair argument? There’s no way anyone could argue for or against that because its unprovable or disprovable.
Now admittedly the fact that these people are criminals who lie all the time with zero credibility does make these suspicions reasonable. But if you have a situation where there’s no way to prove whether something happened or not then its mostly just pointless speculation.
“Is this explanation true? I don’t have any evidence of it. I suspect that if it were true, there would not be any evidence. But it makes sense…”
In other words, you have no evidentiary basis for your belief and probably never will even if it were true. Now I have no love for Bush and Co and would love to see them impeached (even though its politically impossible) but isn’t that an unfair argument? There’s no way anyone could argue for or against that because its unprovable or disprovable.
Now admittedly the fact that these people are criminals who lie all the time with zero credibility does make these suspicions reasonable. But if you have a situation where there’s no way to prove whether something happened or not then its mostly just pointless speculation.
Now admittedly the fact that these people are criminals who lie all the time with zero credibility does make these suspicions reasonable. But if you have a situation where there’s no way to prove whether something happened or not then its mostly just pointless speculation.
Let’s say that you have a lot of money in the stock of a particular company. And you see a lot of circumstantial evidence that the president of the company is liquidating as much cash value as he can get and siphoning it out, and his intention is to get as much as he possibly can and then skip out, perhaps taking his money to someplace where it’s hard to extradite him.
There’s no possible way in the short run to prove that those are his intentions. Now here are 3 possible actions you can take:
1. Try hard to get more information about what he’s actually doing, perhaps with an eye to stopping him.
2. Sell your stock for what you can get.
3. Argue with other stockholders that there’s no proof his intentions are bad and there can never be any proof that he had bad intentions even if the company collapses and the former president becomes incredibly rich. So argue that with no proof we should all sit back and do nothing, and we certainly should not discuss the possibility that there might be something wrong.
Joseph,
While I think the speculative nature of the hypothesis warrants caution, to say it is “mostly just pointless” is way off the mark.
That Rove would place a mudslinger to go after Clinton is an excellent conjecture. Until reading this idea, I couldn’t fathom from the outset why a Rovian operative was placed as US Attorney in Arkansas. The change of attorneys there now makes sense and, by making its rationale explicit, we may have an empirical chance at countering its consequences.
“It was wrong when
NixonClinton launched IRS audits of people he decided were his “enemies”.”Yup, Nixon threatened that in one of his rants. Clinton actually did it. Best to keep that straight.
Anyway, it’s a strong theory; A US attorney could have as much fun digging up dirt on the opposition as, say, a former bouncer with access to the opposition’s FBI records. Shall we use the same standard of evidence in both cases?
Shall we use the same standard of evidence in both cases?
Sorting the difference out, isn’t that the purpose of a confirmation hearing?
Digby has a relevant post, built around the McClatchy story that reports on this:
Digby also relates another of the many, many Rove election-throwing stories, from the same Atlantic article hilzoy cited.
Yup, Nixon threatened that in one of his rants. Clinton actually did it. Best to keep that straight.
Before keeping it straight, one should be sure that it’s actually true… and history begs to differ.
Anarch: Don’t bother. It’s very obvious that Clinton has to be as bad or WORSE than Bush, because to argue otherwise is to indulge in the worst sort of partisanship.
Besides, that Clinton was a corrupt President who abused his power over and over and over has been repeated so often it’s factesque.
So, of course Clinton sicced the IRS on his enemies. In fact, I look forward to learning about the time Clinton personally killed hobos — I mean, he’s got to keep ahead of Bush on the “worstest President ever” chart.
The mere fact that he left office with a 60%+ approval rating — a level Bush only achieved after exploiting a national tragedy — isn’t a real fact.
Well Mr. Bellmore, what’s the deal?
Were you simply misinformed? Or part of the misinformation project?
But Charles Johnson said….
I’m guessing just misinformed. I like to give the benefit of the doubt and all.
But feel free to correct me if necessary.
No doubt Clinton was blackmailing Ken Starr, which is why he never uncovered all of this egregious wrongdoing. It’s disgraceful how little investigation the man did — not like the thorough examination of the administration that we’ve had during the past six years.
I guess I’ve said this before, but as with von, now with Joseph. Folks, you cannot take the same approach to unmediated conflicts as you do to mediated ones. Well, okay, you can. Provided you’re eager to be eaten by your adversaries. “Fairness,” as lj points out, can have multiple meanings.
Americans (mostly) tend to assume that they have some recourse to the law, and that however imperfect said law (or “gummint,” or “entities who monopolize the use of force,” or “mediation process,” or whatever), it is largely impartial. We assume, since most of us have never seen tyranny up close and personal, that enforcement and adjudication mechanisms, once established, persist.
They do not. They decay. If they are not actively rebuilt and repaired they eventually collapse.
The approach advocated by Joseph (and von and others) is a perfectly good one for mediated confrontations. The problem is that in the current confrontation, one of the parties is not subject to the enforcement mechanisms upon which the other parties could ordinarily rely.
I’ve had this argument before, so I know that the next [substantive] thing that’s going to happen here is that somebody is going to tell me that such confrontations are mediated by the courts — by the judicial, rather than the exec — and that therefore I’m totally wet. Unfortunately, even to the very restricted extent to which it’s true (i.e. aside from various questions of “standing”), it applies only to adjudication, not to enforcement. It’s the exec that enforces the findings of the judicial, remember? Quis custodiet ipso custodes, Jackson and Marshall, Little Rock Central High, etc…
So, in a nutshell, no. If this were a mediated conflict, then hilzoy’s speculation would be mostly, though certainly not entirely, pointless. However, this is not a mediated conflict, except to the extent that popular and legislative branch outrage will have to function as an enforcement mechanism. What hilzoy describes is, in all likelihood, what actually happened — keeping quiet about it is not compatible with invoking the only enforcement mechanism available.
And assuming that this administration might do anything that resembles “taking care that the laws are faithfuly executed,” after all that’s happened… Aw heck, just picture me shaking my head sadly.
OCSteve: I don’t know of evidence that Clinton used the IRS against his opponents, and I do know of evidence — in the form of the report Anarch linked to (note that it’s a report of a Congressional committee chaired by Republicans.) If you can provide some, however, I’ll gladly update the post.
(Unnecessary note after a cursory look at Google: Ann Coulter and Newsmax do not count as credible sources, to my mind.)
And Joseph: the reason I noted that I had no evidence was to make it clear that I was speculating. On the other hand, I think it’s not what you might call “mere” speculation (like, say, my speculation on what color pajamas Bush wears, which would be a blind guess.) It fits Rove’s procedures; it explains hitherto unexplained facts (e.g., why insert the provision in the Patriot Act? Why so secretly? Why the focus on getting this one guy into a US Attorney’s job in Arkansas?); it also predicts a somewhat odd chain of events which actually occurred.
The reason I wrote about it, which I don’t normally do with my speculations, is that it was useful to me in understanding this, and I hoped it might be useful to others who wanted to make sense of it. That said, it did matter to me to make it clear that it was, in fact, speculation.
Personally, I don’t think that in a democracy, it’s useless to try to help citizens understand what their government might be doing, and providing possible explanations for governmental actions, when the evidence for them isn’t overstated and they’re not presented as fact, is a way of doing that.
It’s also interesting to me since while the explanation I offer is plainly wholly corrupt, it’s not obvious to me that it’s illegal. (Though I imagine it would be illegal for Griffin or anyone else to investigate someone without enough evidence of wrongdoing to justify an investigation.)
Anarch and Hilzoy – I stand corrected. One of those rightwing memes engraved in my memory I guess.
Ann Coulter and Newsmax do not count as credible sources
really?
cause Newsmax has a big BREAKING NEWS item up right now about a hard-hitting investigative book about “The Boy President”. that’s Clinton, not Bush. it includes such juicy items as:
* The true story of Secret Service agents who work for Hillary and why they “detest” her and their true feelings about Bill.
* The Clinton curse: Why both Clintons’ friends and enemies seem to suffer so much.
* Terry McAuliffe’s recollections about he boy President after he left the White House: Clinton did not know how to use an ATM card.
* “The Chop Suey Connection:” The Clintons’ ties to China and why it portends such dangers if Hillary ever becomes President.
frankly, i can’t wait to learn : “Why the Clintons have become ‘the two most exaggerated figures in modern American political history’ ” !
Well you take away Ann Coulter and Newsmax what am I left with? I have to take my toys and go home.
Oh well, there is always FNC…
Anarch and Hilzoy – I stand corrected. One of those rightwing memes engraved in my memory I guess. -OCSteve
Which is why people continue to read your comments. A completely sincere and non-condescending thank you for having intellectual honesty.
God the Republicans are so good at blowing smoke. They want to investigate Gonzalez et al. because they may have gone after prosecutors for not targeting political opponents, and yet they manage to call the congressional investigation a show trial, as if THAT were the real threat to our liberty.
No, no, no, the people whose liberty we have to protect is the liberty of the people in power! It’s Gonzalez’s liberty we are trampling on here! Not the liberty of those that they might be targetting with the powers of law enforcement.
And all that’s on the boobtube news is obscure discussions of the scope of executive privilege, rather than just how dangerous and unamerican these people are.
Just think what fun a opposition researcher with subpoena power could have had in Arkansas, six years ago. Enough fun to last close to a decade, I suspect.
But you’re right, it’s much better to subpoena just before an election, if there really isn’t any dirt to find, so I tend to agree that this looks a little fishy. Or maybe red-tide-level fishy.
Hmmm…very interesting theory. I wouldn’t be surprised if there were some Clinton discussions along the way, but I think the most likely reason why the Admin was “making room” for Griffin in Arkansas was because he was born there.
One of those rightwing memes engraved in my memory I guess
I thought about this more overnight – very weird. I remember the allegations as clear as day – but I honestly don’t remember that investigation or report on the validity. It’s amazing how those filters work.
OCSteve, you’re certainly not alone in that kind of experience. I find I have to keep clearing out things that it turns out I remembered wrongly or (more usually) incompletely.
The difference: OCSteve and Bellmore both got something wrong. They were rapidly corrected. OCSteve admits he was wrong – and thus retains the respect of everyone else, despite political differences. Bellmore just vanishes, presumably to appear again on another thread later – and thus everyone thinks he’s a prat.
It was wrong when Hoover kept files on his opponents.
That reminds me, what safeguards have been put in to keep that from happening again?
Is there somebody who looks over all the FBI activity to make sure they aren’t collecting blackmail material on congressmen etc? If so, is there some reason to discourage these overseers from participating in the blackmail?