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Banned
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Bush Appointees & Associates: Backgrounds, Qualifications, Investigations/Indictments
This is involved, but it seems necessary and timely to examine the credentials, associations, and backgrounds of the people who POTUS George W Bush chooses to place in positions of responsibility in government agencies, and most tellingly....who he picks to surround himself with, especially at the white house.
In addition to a 2004 Denver Post article that reports on the more than 100 Bush appointments to key positions at federal regulatory agencies, of people who were either executives of, or lobbied on behalf of the industries and corporations that the federal agencies are responsible for regulating; a strategy that can be construed as putting the "fox" in charge of the chicken coop.......
The recurring pattern of influence and one key appointment spotlighted in the first three posts on this thread (Posts cannot exceed 50,000 characters each, so it was necessary to spread the documentation out....), is the "hand" of lobbyist Jack Abramoff. He was indicted in August by federal prosecutors in Miami on charges related to a "casino ship" purchase/money laundering scheme. White house staffer David Safavian (a Bush appointee) was indicted this week on charges related to his relationship with Abramoff.
Susan Ralston, appointed in 2001 as "Special Assistant to the President and Assistant to the Senior Advisor", was a key assistant to Abramoff before working for Bush and Rove. Reports in Posts #2 & #3 indicate that she pre-screened all of Karl Rove's calls, and may have contacted Grover Norquist for his pre-approval before allowing any outsider to speak directly to Rove!
Ralston has apparently testified before Fitzgerald's grand jury that is investigating the Plame CIA leak.
Click Link to view "West Wing" map.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...060601310.html
.....9. Susan Ralston, Special Assistant to the President and Assistant to the Senior Advisor
Below in this post are reports of Bush's pending appointment of the new, number two person in the Justice Dept., second only to Atty General Alberto Gonzales.....a 52 year old conservative named Flanigan...who....you guessed it....has a past, recent relationship with lobbyist Abramoff which he is reluctant to fully disclose to the senate. Flanigan, if confirmed by the senate, will also supervise special prosecutor Fitzgerald, and will have the authority to fire him.....since Gonzales has recused himself from involvement because of Fitzgerald's investigation of the Bush white house.
If you sort through enough of this to acquire an informed opinion, or if you already have one, and wish to discuss or challenge the documentation, or points in my comment, please post. Abramoff seems to be everywhere, and most likely will either cooperate with prosecutors, or face many more charges.
While it is true that he also gave many thousands to democratic party politicans, he gave millions of dollars to key republicans, including the Bush campaign. Bush apparently assisted Abramoff by writing a letter while he was still Texas governor, and by dismissing a federal prosecutor in the same Marianas Islands Abramoff lobbying effort, when Bush became president.
The Tom Delay connections to Abramoff, along with the Bush, Rove, Norquist,
association to Susan Ralston and her past relationship as a key assistant to Abramoff, coupled with her testimony for Fitzgerald and her reported process of restricting Karl Rove's calls to those approved by Norquist, if true, is alarming.
What is in our leaders' heads? What the hell are they thinking? If anyone can defend this "appointment" process, the appointees described in the reports, or the amazing depth of Abramoff's access and influence with republican leaders (and...for that matter....Norquist's, also), I can barely wait to read it!
In the wake of reports that the first Bush era director of FEMA was Joe Allbaugh, Bush's chief of staff when he served as Texas governor, and later as his Bush/Cheney 2000 campaign manager, we also learned that Allbaugh's hand picked FEMA successor was a friend who he knew since college...25 years ago:
Quote:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...090802165.html
Inside FEMA
Leaders Lacking Disaster Experience
'Brain Drain' At Agency Cited
By Spencer S. Hsu
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, September 9, 2005; Page A01
Five of eight top Federal Emergency Management Agency officials came to their posts with virtually no experience in handling disasters and now lead an agency whose ranks of seasoned crisis managers have thinned dramatically since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.
FEMA's top three leaders -- Director Michael D. Brown, Chief of Staff Patrick J. Rhode and Deputy Chief of Staff Brooks D. Altshuler -- arrived with ties to President Bush's 2000 campaign or to the White House advance operation, according to the agency. Two other senior operational jobs are filled by a former Republican lieutenant governor of Nebraska and a U.S. Chamber of Commerce official who was once a political operative...........
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After publicly praising Brown............Bush accept's Brown's resignation:
Quote:
http://www.nola.com/newsflash/topsto...ist=topstories
Michael Brown's FEMA tenure
9/13/2005, 1:24 a.m. CT
The Associated Press
.......September 2001: President George W. Bush nominates Brown to be FEMA deputy director.
January 2003: Bush nominates Brown to the position of undersecretary of Homeland Security for emergency preparedness and response. He replaces Joe M. Allbaugh in the top position at FEMA.
Aug. 29, 2005: Hurricane Katrina makes landfall along Louisiana and Mississippi coastlines.
Sept. 2, 2005: During a news conference in Mobile, Ala., President Bush said, "Brownie, you're doing a heck of a job."
Sept. 9, 2005: Brown is recalled back to Washington by Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff. Coast Guard Vice Adm. Thad Allen takes over as head of the hurricane rescue efforts.
Sept. 12, 2005: Brown resigns, with R. David Paulison, head of FEMA's emergency preparedness force, named to replace him.
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After the PR fiasco of praising unqualified FEMA director Michael Brown's obviously unacceptable coordination of emergency response in the wake of hurricane Katrina, and the swift appointment of a new, more qualified FEMA director.....it does seem as if nothing was learned about "cronyism":
Quote:
http://www.chron.com/cs/CDA/ssistory...utlook/3364320
Sept. 21, 2005, 11:21PM
More nonstop disaster-ops and disastrous cronyism
By MAUREEN DOWD
...........There's nothing more pathetic than watching someone who's out of touch feign being in touch. On his fifth sodden pilgrimage of penitence to the devastation he took so long to comprehend, W. desperately tried to show concern. He said he had spent some "quality time" at a Chevron plant in Pascagoula and nattered about trash removal, infrastructure assessment teams and the "can-do spirit."
"We look forward to hearing your vision so we can more better do our job," he said at a briefing in Gulfport, Miss., urging local officials to "think bold," while they still need to think mold.
Bush should stop posing in shirtsleeves and get back to the Oval Office. He has more hacks and cronies he's trying to put into important jobs, and he needs to ride herd on that.
The announcement that a veterinarian, Norris Alderson, who has no experience on women's health issues, would head the FDA's Office of Women's Health ran into so much flak from appalled women that the FDA may already have reneged on it. No morning-after pill, thanks to the antediluvian administration, but there may be hope for a morning-after horse pill.
Bush made a frownie over Brownie, but didn't learn much. He's once more trying to appoint a nothingburger to a position of real consequence in homeland security. The choice of Julie Myers, a 36-year-old lawyer with virtually no immigration, customs or law enforcement experience, to head the roiling Immigration and Customs Enforcement Agency with its $4 billion budget and 22,000 staffers, has caused some alarm, according to The Washington Post.
Myers' main credentials seem to be that she worked briefly for the semidisgraced homeland security director, Michael Chertoff, when he was at the Justice Department. She just married Chertoff's chief of staff, John Wood, and she's the niece of Gen. Richard Myers, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
As a former associate for Ken Starr, the young woman does have impeachment experience, in case the forensic war on terrorism requires the analysis of stains on dresses.
Julie makes Brownie look like Giuliani. I'll sleep better tonight, knowing that when she gets back from her honeymoon, Julie will be patrolling the frontier.
As if the Veterinarian and the Niece were not bad enough, there was also the Accused. David Safavian, the White House procurement official involved in Katrina relief efforts, was arrested on Monday, accused by the FBI of lying and obstructing a criminal investigation into the seamy case of "Casino Jack" Abramoff, the Republican operative who has broken new ground in giving lobbying a bad name. Democrats say the fact that Safavian's wife is a top lawyer for the Republican congressman who's leading the whitewash of the White House blundering on Katrina does not give them confidence.
Just as he has stonewalled other inquiries, Bush is trying to paper over his Katrina mistakes by appointing his homeland security adviser, Frances Townsend, to investigate how her department fumbled the response..........
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WaPo article: Bush Appoints Julie Myers to head the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency:
Quote:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...901930_pf.html
washingtonpost.com
Immigration Nominee's Credentials Questioned
By Dan Eggen and Spencer S. Hsu
Washington Post Staff Writers
Tuesday, September 20, 2005; A01
The Bush administration is seeking to appoint a lawyer with little immigration or customs experience to head the troubled law enforcement agency that handles those issues, prompting sharp criticism from some employee groups, immigration advocates and homeland security experts.
The push to appoint Julie Myers to head the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency, part of the Department of Homeland Security, comes in the midst of intense debate over the qualifications of department political appointees involved in the sluggish response to Hurricane Katrina.
Concerns over Myers, 36, were acute enough at a Senate hearing last week that lawmakers asked the nominee to detail during her testimony her postings and to account for her management experience. Sen. George V. Voinovich (R-Ohio) went so far as to tell Myers that her résumé indicates she is not qualified for the job.
But Voinovich has since met with Myers and is now likely to support her, his spokeswoman said yesterday. Myers, who has attracted strong support from many former colleagues, told senators that she would draw upon the experiences of ICE veterans in running the agency.
"I realize that I'm not 80 years old," Myers testified. "I have a few gray hairs, more coming, but I will seek to work with those who are knowledgeable in this area, who know more than I do."
After working as a federal prosecutor in Brooklyn, N.Y., for two years, Myers held a variety of jobs over the past four years at the White House and at the departments of Commerce, Justice and Treasury, though none involved managing a large bureaucracy. Myers worked briefly as chief of staff to Michael Chertoff when he led the Justice Department's criminal division before he became Homeland Security secretary.
Myers also was an associate under independent counsel Kenneth W. Starr for about 16 months and has most recently served as a special assistant to President Bush handling personnel issues.
Her uncle is Air Force Gen. Richard B. Myers, the departing chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. She married Chertoff's current chief of staff, John F. Wood, on Saturday.
In written answers to questions from Congress, Myers highlighted her year-long job as assistant secretary for export enforcement at Commerce, where she said she supervised 170 employees and a $25 million budget. ICE has more than 20,000 employees and a budget of approximately $4 billion. Its personnel investigate immigrant, drug and weapon smuggling, and illegal exports, among other responsibilities.
Myers was on her honeymoon and was not available to comment yesterday. Erin Healy, a White House spokeswoman, cited Myers's work with customs agents on money-laundering and drug-smuggling cases. "She's well-known and respected throughout the law enforcement community," Healy said. "She has a proven track record as an effective manager."
ICE was created from remnants of the former immigration and customs services. It is widely viewed as one of the most troubled parts of the sprawling Department of Homeland Security.
Homeland Security political appointees have come under scrutiny since Michael D. Brown resigned under fire this month as head of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, which he joined with no experience in disaster preparedness. Several other senior FEMA officials were Bush supporters who did not have crisis-management credentials.
Unlike most political appointments, the head of ICE is required by statute to have at least five years of experience in both law enforcement and management.
Many immigration advocates, ICE employee representatives and homeland security experts said they were troubled by the nomination of Myers to take over an agency with so many problems.
"It appears she's got a tremendous amount of experience in money laundering, in banking and the financial areas," said Charles Showalter, president of the National Homeland Security Council, a union that represents 7,800 ICE agents, officers and support staff. "My question is: Who the hell is going to enforce the immigration laws?"
I. Michael Greenberger, a former Clinton administration official who heads the Center for Health and Homeland Security at the University of Maryland, said the Myers appointment represents "pre-Katrina thinking, where political relationships were a very large factor."
"Post-Katrina, we now see that people need to be eminently qualified," Greenberger said.
But Jim Pasco, executive director of the Fraternal Order of Police, which represents several thousand ICE employees, lauded Myers's government experience.
"That organization . . . is on some days almost dysfunctional," Pasco said. "I think Julie may be just the person to pull people and functions together to get them working right for a change."
During a hearing Thursday of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, Chairman Susan Collins (R-Maine) and ranking Democrat Joseph I. Lieberman (Conn.) quizzed Myers on whether her positions over the past five years qualified her for the job.
The most pointed questioning came from Voinovich, who said during the hearing that he wanted to meet with Chertoff to discuss Myers's qualifications. "I'd really like to have him spend some time with us, telling us personally why he thinks you're qualified for the job, because based on the résumé, I don't think you are," Voinovich said.
But Marcie Ridgway, Voinovich's communications director, said yesterday that the Ohio senator had resolved his concerns by talking privately with both Chertoff and Myers. Ridgway said Voinovich was not available to speak directly about the issue.
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Quote:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...091901576.html
FDA Rethinks Women's Chief
Toigo Is Acting Head; Agency Denies Naming Veterinary Official
By Marc Kaufman
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, September 20, 2005; Page A21
One week ago, the Office of Women's Health of the Food and Drug Administration sent an e-mail notice to women's groups and others announcing the appointment of Norris Alderson as its new acting director.
An FDA veteran trained in animal husbandry who spent much of his career in the agency's Center for Veterinary Medicine, Alderson quickly became the subject of active and largely negative comment on the Internet and elsewhere.
The Office of Women's Health serves as a liaison with women's health groups and as an advocate on women's issues; critics said that a man with a primarily veterinary background could not properly fill the role.
The last director, Susan Wood, resigned last month to protest the agency's unwillingness to make a decision on whether to make emergency contraception more easily available.
Three days after the Alderson announcement, the FDA main press office sent out a very different announcement. It said that 20-year FDA veteran Theresa A. Toigo would be the new acting director of the women's health office, and that she would be a champion for women's health inside and outside the agency. Alderson -- and the statement announcing his appointment -- was never mentioned.............
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Quote:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...101496_pf.html
Aide Was Reticent on Lobbying for Foreign Clients
By Susan Schmidt and R. Jeffrey Smith
Washington Post Staff Writers
Wednesday, September 21, 2005; 2:27 PM
David H. Safavian, the Bush administration official arrested Monday, initially failed to disclose lobbying work he had done for several controversial foreign clients when he went before a Senate panel last year to be confirmed as chief of the White House's federal procurement office.
The Senate Governmental Affairs Committee held up Safavian's nomination for more than a year, in part because of lawmakers' concerns about lobbying work for two men later accused of links to suspected terrorist organizations, according to committee documents. Safavian did not disclose his firm's representation of the men until questioned in writing by the committee's staff, and initially failed to tell the panel he had registered as a foreign agent for two controversial African regimes.
The Senate panel nevertheless approved him unanimously and the Senate followed suit on Nov. 21, 2004.
Safavian was arrested Monday on charges of lying and obstructing an investigation into former powerhouse lobbyist Jack Abramoff's dealings with the federal government. Safavian resigned his government post Friday. His attorney, Barbara Van Gelder, said he would contest the charges vigorously. "I think this is a creative use of the criminal code in order to secure my client's cooperation in pending criminal investigations," she said.
Senate approval of Safavian occurred two months after The Washington Post disclosed Safavian's participation in an August 2002 Scotland golf trip with Abramoff. That trip was central to the criminal complaint against Safavian unsealed on Monday.
Yesterday, a spokeswoman for committee chairwoman Susan Collins (R-Maine) said the review of Safavian's background had been thorough.
"Based on our extensive review of his qualifications and background, we had no reason to believe that Mr. Safavian had engaged in any wrongdoing," said a spokeswoman for Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman (Conn.), the committee's senior Democrat at the time of the vote.
The record of Safavian's confirmation shows extensive questioning by the committee staff about his alleged lobbying for local Muslim leader Abdurahman Alamoudi, who in October 2000 made widely publicized comments supporting Hezbollah and the Islamic Resistance Movement, or Hamas, at a rally in Lafayette Park.
Lobby disclosure forms originally filed by Safavian's firm, Janus-Merritt Strategies, show that it represented Alamoudi, a prominent Muslim activist, until 2001. Alamoudi has since been convicted and imprisoned for accepting money from the Libyan government as part of an alleged plot to assassinate the crown prince of Saudi Arabia.
Janus-Merritt Strategies changed its lobby disclosure forms in 2001 to indicate that its client was not Alamoudi but Jamal Barzinji. In March 2002, Barzinji was named in a search warrant affidavit filed by a Customs Service official as "the officer or director" of a group of entities in Northern Virginia "controlled by individuals who have shown support for terrorists or terrorist fronts." No charges have been filed against Barzinji, and he has denied any wrongdoing.
Safavian told the committee in an April 16, 2004, letter that he and his firm never did any work for Alamoudi. He said the firm lobbied at Barzinji's request to gain U.S. support to free the former deputy prime minister of Malaysia, Anwar Ibrahim, who was imprisoned for six years.
Safavian also told the committee that he had "overlooked" two other clients while preparing his initial submissions for the OMB position. He did not initially mention work as a registered foreign agent for Gabon, a country persistently rated by the United States as having a "poor" human rights record, or his work as a registered foreign agent for Pascal Lissouba, the former president of the Republic of Congo who has been tried in absentia for treason and embezzlement.
Safavian, former chief of staff at the General Services Administration, is charged with three counts of making false statements and obstructing a GSA investigation into his ties with Abramoff. Before joining the government, Safavian worked as a lobbyist with Abramoff, then founded Janus-Merritt Strategies with conservative antitax crusader Grover Norquist.
As a lobbyist, he represented the government of Pakistan on military sales matters and the Islamic Institute in an effort to promote a U.S. postage stamp commemorating Ramadan. With Abramoff, he also represented the Commonwealth of Northern Mariana Islands, a U.S. protectorate, to try to block the imposition of minimum wage rules.
In its probe, the Senate committee also raised questions about a potential conflict of interest between Safavian and his wife, Jennifer, the chief counsel for oversight and investigations at the House Committee of Government Reform, which oversees federal procurement policy matters.
Safavian said his wife had pledged to recuse herself from "any matters where the conduct of officials and employees" at the Office of Management and Budget the principal issue, "as well as matters relating specifically to procurement policy, competitive sourcing, or information technology."
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Quote:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...092000753.html
Scandal Visits the White House
By Dan Froomkin
Special to washingtonopost.com
Tuesday, September 20, 2005; 12:24 PM
The Jack Abramoff lobbying scandal reached into the White House yesterday, picking off President Bush's top procurement official -- who just barely had time to resign before being arrested.
The federal charges against David Safavian stem from his tenure as chief of staff of the General Services Administration, predating his arrival at the White House a year ago. But his arrest nonetheless draws renewed attention to the ongoing corruption and influence-peddling inquiry swirling around Abramoff, a lobbyist well known for his connections to conservative Republicans in the White House and Congress.
And for a White House so desperate to build public confidence in its ability to respond to the Gulf Coast disaster, it doesn't exactly help that the man who up until Friday was overseeing contracting policy for the multi-billion dollar relief effort has now been charged with lying and obstructing a criminal investigation.
R. Jeffrey Smith and Susan Schmidt write in The Washington Post: "The Bush administration's top federal procurement official resigned Friday and was arrested yesterday, accused of lying and obstructing a criminal investigation into Republican lobbyist Jack Abramoff's dealings with the federal government. It was the first criminal complaint filed against a government official in the ongoing corruption probe related to Abramoff's activities in Washington.
"The complaint, filed by the FBI, alleges that David H. Safavian, 38, a White House procurement official involved until last week in Hurricane Katrina relief efforts, made repeated false statements to government officials and investigators about a golf trip with Abramoff to Scotland in 2002."
Philip Shenon and Anne E. Kornblut write in the New York Times:.............
........<b>"His wife, Jennifer Safavian, is chief counsel for oversight and investigations on the House Government Reform Committee, which is responsible for overseeing government procurement and is, among other things, expected to conduct the Congressional investigation into missteps after Hurricane Katrina."........</b>
......Just recently, Safavian was the administration's point man when it came to one of the controversial measures in the White House's recent $51.8 billion supplemental aid request: The boosting from $15,000 to $250,000 of the upper limit for purchases made with government-issued credit cards. Critics said the change will allow card holders to circumvent important measures to curb fraud and cronyism................
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Quote:
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationwo...adlines-nation
THE NATION
Nominee Is Linked to Controversy
# Bush's choice for deputy attorney general worked with a lobbyist, now being investigated, in an effort to shield offshore firms from U.S. taxes.
By Walter F. Roche Jr., Times Staff Writer
WASHINGTON — The Bush administration's pick for deputy U.S. attorney general supervised a lobbying campaign two years ago by controversial lobbyist Jack Abramoff to block legislation aimed at offshore companies escaping American taxes, records and interviews show.
Timothy E. Flanigan, 52, chief counsel of Tyco International Ltd. since 2002, appeared before the Senate Judiciary Committee this week and acknowledged supervising Abramoff's work for the Bermuda-based firm. However, he declined to answer questions describing what the lobbyist did for the company.
Sen. Richard J. Durbin (D-Ill.) said Thursday that he was not satisfied with Flanigan's response, and said he would submit written questions seeking more details.
At the heart of Abramoff's work for Tyco was an intensive effort to block the Corporate Patriot Enforcement Act and similar bills designed to penalize American firms that incorporated outside the U.S. to avoid taxes, according to records and sources familiar with the lobbying campaign.
One person with direct knowledge of Abramoff's lobbying efforts called it "a full-court press." And congressional aides credited Abramoff's intense lobbying with helping to keep the legislation from reaching the House floor for an up-or-down vote.
"They called in the big guns," said one of the aides, who agreed to discuss Abramoff's role on condition of anonymity.
Lobbying reports filed by Abramoff and his law firm at the time, Greenberg Traurig, showed they were paid more than $1.7 million in 2003 and 2004 by Tyco.
Abramoff left the law firm under fire in early March 2004. He is the subject of investigations by a federal grand jury and a Senate committee over allegations that he bilked Indian tribes out of millions of dollars. Questions also have arisen over Abramoff's role in arranging foreign trips for congressional leaders, including House Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-Texas).
Flanigan did not respond to a request for comment Thursday. Abramoff and a spokesman for Greenberg Traurig also declined to be interviewed.
In a brief statement, Tyco Vice President David Polk said that Abramoff "was engaged to provide certain legal services on matters relating to Tyco's business." He would not elaborate.
Flanigan was White House deputy counsel under Alberto R. Gonzales, now attorney general, before joining Tyco in November 2002.
The diversified manufacturing and service company, founded in Massachusetts in the 1960s, moved its corporate headquarters to Bermuda in 1997.
At the time Flanigan took over the corporate counsel's office, members of Congress, organized labor and pension officials in various states, including California, were pressuring Tyco as a result of the move.
By Tyco's estimates, its move to offshore incorporation saved up to $400 million a year in U.S. taxes.
Bills filed in 2002 and 2003 by Rep. Richard E. Neal (D-Mass.) and Rep. James H. Maloney (D-Conn.) would have imposed tax penalties on such companies as Tyco. Other legislative proposals would have barred companies with offshore headquarters from getting government contracts.
The various proposals — all opposed by Tyco and other offshore companies — were widely referred to by supporters and foes as "the Benedict Arnold bills."
The Neal bill, despite having dozens of sponsors, was blocked from a vote in the House by the Republican leadership in 2003. Attempts to attach the provisions to other legislation also failed.
Tyco also was one of a handful of companies eventually granted an exemption from a new restriction on offshore firms getting Homeland Security contracts.
Federal lobbying reports filed by Abramoff and his law firm characterized their work on behalf of Tyco as "government contracts legislation" and "tax and trade legislation." They also listed the agencies lobbied, which included the House, Senate and "executive office of the president."
Also during Flanigan's tenure as vice president and general counsel, Tyco stood to benefit from language inserted into a Senate bill, which would have given the firm a no-bid $67.4-million contract to install fiber-optic cable to serve a U.S. military installation in the Marshall Islands. The provision was dropped, however, when the measure went to a House-Senate conference committee in late 2003.
Flanigan, the father of 14, previously served as a clerk to former U.S. Supreme Court Justice Warren E. Burger. He was in private law practice before becoming deputy to then-White House counsel Gonzales. Earlier, Flanigan volunteered his legal services to the Bush-Cheney campaign during the Florida recount of 2000.
His nomination is not expected to be voted on until after the Senate returns from a summer recess.
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Quote:
http://www.timesleader.com/mld/times...s/12221244.htm
Posted on Mon, Jul. 25, 2005
Deputy attorney general nominee's record likely to draw scrutiny
BY ANDREW ZAJAC
Chicago Tribune
WASHINGTON - (KRT) - Timothy Flanigan, President Bush's nominee to be deputy attorney general, has repeatedly found himself in pitched political and ideological battles, including the court fight over the disputed Florida recount in the 2000 presidential election, and the crafting of White House memos that justified torture of alleged terrorists.
His involvement with those memos while serving as deputy White House counsel following the Sept. 11 attacks almost certainly will draw questioning from the Senate Judiciary Committee, which is slated to hold a hearing on his nomination Tuesday afternoon.
But Flanigan's resume contains other entries that also may draw scrutiny, particularly from committee Democrats.
In his current position as senior vice president and general counsel of Tyco International, Flanigan oversaw the work of Jack Abramoff, a lobbyist who is the subject of at least two congressional investigations and a Justice Department inquiry and is alleged to have bilked millions of dollars from six Indian tribes.
Abramoff listed the president's office among the agencies his team of lobbyists sought to influence on behalf of Tyco during Flanigan's tenure at the Bermuda-based conglomerate.
In a brief telephone interview Monday, Flanigan said he did not personally lobby the White House and that he made a point of avoiding contact with it even beyond the requirements of "revolving door" rules restricting the contact of former government officials with their old offices.
He referred further questions to Tyco; a company spokeswoman declined to comment.
If confirmed, Flanigan would replace James Comey, a career prosecutor who has received bipartisan praise for his performance. He is leaving for a private sector job.
Flanigan, 52, has a lengthy pedigree in conservative and Republican circles.
During much of the administration of Bush's father, President George H.W. Bush, Flanigan was assistant attorney general in charge of the office of legal counsel, which advises the executive branch on constitutional issues.
He subsequently practiced corporate law, but also testified occasionally before Congress, taking conservative positions on such issues as limiting the lobbying activities of groups receiving federal funding and on the need to limit judicial activism.
A graduate of Brigham Young University and the University of Virginia Law School, Flanigan in 1985 and 1986 was senior law clerk to the late Chief Justice Warren Burger.
Between 1996 and 1999, Flanigan was paid more than $800,000 as a consultant to the Federalist Society, an association of conservative lawyers with significant ties to the current Bush administration, to write an as yet unfinished biography of Burger.
The underwriters of the book were publishing magnate Dwight Opperman, whose family formerly controlled the West Publishing Co. legal publishing empire, and Wade Burger, Warren Burger's son, Federalist Society executive director Eugene Meyer said in an exchange of e-mails.
Flanigan said he took a leave of absence from his corporate law practice to write the book. It was supposed to be completed by mid-2001, but Flanigan said, "It was just a laborious effort ... it's still in process."
In the aftermath of the 2000 election, Flanigan was a key member of a legal team headed by former Solicitor General Theodore Olson that helped Bush capture Florida's electoral votes and with them the presidency.
Flanigan subsequently joined the White House and worked as a deputy to White House counsel Alberto Gonzales, who is now the attorney general.
While working in the White House, Flanigan and Gonzales were part of a small circle of lawyers who worked to craft the legal justification to give Bush a free hand to wage the administration's war on terror. One outgrowth of their deliberations was a since-repudiated August 2002 memo that argued that the president was not limited by international treaties outlawing torture of detainees.
Flanigan left government to join Tyco in November 2002, after disgraced chief executive Dennis Kozlowski had left the company, and three months after Tyco had hired Abramoff's law firm, Greenberg Traurig LLP, to do lobbying work in Washington.
Greenberg billed Tyco $40,000 in 2002, and $280,000 for the first six months of 2003, according to lobbyist records filed with the Senate.
In August 2003, Abramoff himself signed on to the Tyco account for Greenberg and billings for the second half of 2003 zoomed to $800,000, records show. Abramoff listed the "Executive Office of the President" as among the agencies Greenberg was trying to influence.
The lobbyist left Greenberg Traurig in March 2004. The firm's lobbying billings to Tyco for the first six months of 2004 totaled $480,000. Abramoff could not be reached for comment.
Messages left with Greenberg Traurig's government affairs director were not returned Monday night.
White House spokeswoman Erin Healy said she needed more information before she could comment. "What do they mean by lobbying the executive office of the president?" Healy asked.....
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<b>Flanigan, if confirmed, will oversee and have the power to fire Special Prosecutor Peter Fitzgerald, who is finishing the investigation of the Plame CIA agent leak:</b>
Quote:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...900853_pf.html
Bush on a Roll?
By Dan Froomkin
Special to washingtonpost.com
Friday, July 29, 2005; 11:57 AM
.............Federalist Watch
Michael A. Fletcher writes in The Washington Post about a Washington mystery: Why an administration unapologetically awash in members of the Federalist Society so vigorously disputed that its Supreme Court pick was a member.
"The eagerness of the White House to distance Roberts from the Federalist Society baffled many conservatives. They believe the reaction fed a false perception that membership in the organization -- an important pillar of the conservative legal movement -- was something nefarious that would damage Roberts's chances of confirmation. . . .
"The group claims more than 35,000 members, an increasing number of whom work in the highest councils of the federal government. Many Justice Department lawyers, White House attorneys, Supreme Court clerks and judges are affiliated with the group."
The Rove Dilemma
Ron Hutcheson writes for Knight Ridder Newspapers about Bush's long friendship with his political guru, Karl Rove.
"Now their friendship is being tested by Rove's involvement in the unauthorized outing of an undercover CIA officer. Depending on the outcome of a grand jury investigation, the president soon could face a painful choice between protecting his trusted aide or forcing his resignation to limit political damage."................
...........Fitzgerald's Future
In yesterday's Chicago Tribune, John Chase recounted former senator Peter Fitzgerald's assertion that there is mounting political pressure to oppose the reappointment of U.S. Attorney Patrick J. Fitzgerald this fall.
But Lynn Sweet writes in the Chicago Sun-Times today that Fitzgerald's job is safe.
"Though his term is up this fall, U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald, the aggressive prosecutor who is investigating Mayor Daley's City Hall, possible illegal White House leaks and who has a former Illinois governor awaiting a corruption trial, is in no danger of losing his job.
"House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.) was asked about Peter Fitzgerald's concerns Thursday . 'I know there [have] been innuendos about my getting pressures. I can tell you nobody has talked to me or called me about this. Anybody. Period,' Hastert said. . . .
"Legally, if President Bush does nothing, he stays on the job even though his term is over. Politically, Bush would face a storm of protest if he fired a man who is investigating his own administration."
But Whom Will Fitzgerald Report To?
John Harwood (subscription required) raises a fascinating issue in his Washington Wire column in the Wall Street Journal: "Imminent departure of Deputy Attorney General [James] Comey, who appointed CIA leak prosecutor Fitzgerald, would create a vacuum, since [Attorney General Alberto] Gonzales is recused because of previous White House counsel service. Arriving deputy [Timothy E.] Flanigan, who also worked in counsel's office, may have similar problem, while third-in-command [Associate Attorney General Robert D.] McCallum [Jr.] is Yale friend of Bush. Comey plans to give the responsibility to career Justice attorney, though the only control Fitzgerald's Justice handler has is to fire him."
DAG Watch
As for Flanigan, Walter F. Roche Jr. writes in the Los Angeles Times: "The Bush administration's pick for deputy U.S. attorney general supervised a lobbying campaign two years ago by controversial lobbyist Jack Abramoff to block legislation aimed at offshore companies escaping American taxes, records and interviews show."
Ambassadorships at a Price
Richard Wolffe and Holly Bailey write in Newsweek.com about Bush's picks for senior embassy postings. For instance, there's the new German ambassador-to-be, William Timken Jr., an Ohio industrialist who doesn't speak German and "has no obvious qualifications or abilities to repair the deeply strained relationship with one of America's most important allies for the last 50 years."
But he did raise at least $200,000 for the president's reelection campaign in 2004 -- "ranking him among the elite class of fund-raisers known as the Bush Rangers. . . .
"Timken is the eighth $100,000-plus Bush fund-raiser to be nominated for an ambassadorship since January. On Wednesday, the White House nominated Al Hoffman, a Florida developer who has raised $300,000 for Bush's presidential campaigns, to be ambassador to Portugal. Last month, Bush appointed Robert Tuttle, a California car dealer, to be ambassador to the United Kingdom, while Ronald Spogli, a California financer who was Bush's classmate at Harvard Business School, was named the top diplomat in Rome. Both men were Bush Pioneers in 2004 -- having raised at least $100,000 for the campaign. In April, the White House named David Wilkins, a South Carolina state representative who raised $200,000 for the 2004 campaign, as the ambassador to Canada. That appointment raised concerns north of the border when Wilkins admitted that he'd only visited Canada once--more than 30 years ago on a trip to Niagara Falls--and that he didn't speak French (Canada is officially a bilingual country)."
Kirstin Downey has even fresher ambassador news in The Washington Post: "On the same day that the White House announced that President Bush is nominating California billionaire Roland E. Arnall to be ambassador to the Netherlands, the company he controls said it would set aside $325 million for a possible settlement of allegations of predatory lending tactics."...............
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Last edited by host; 09-22-2005 at 04:04 AM..
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