|
Banned
|
Quote:
|
Originally Posted by willravel
The 'Jesus Christ' wasn't to the post length, it was to the information. You think you know how bad it is and then you get reminded again. It's kinda like being shot.
|
Too bad it's "a time of war"....it makes all of it.....the outing of Plame, the hiring and naming of the key assistant to the most corrupt DC lobbyist in history, to be "special assistant to the POTUS", and his political advisor, Karl Rove, and placing her, for more than 5 years, just down the hall from the president's office: (While insisting that you don't even know the admitted felon):
Quote:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/11733701
Report: Bush, Abramoff joked together
<b>President still denies knowing ex-lobbyist</b>; Vanity Fair reports otherwise
The Associated Press
Updated: 8:21 p.m. ET March 8, 2006
WASHINGTON - Convicted lobbyist Jack Abramoff says President Bush knew him well enough to joke with him about weightlifting. “What are you benching, buff guy?” Abramoff said Bush asked him.
The president has said he doesn’t know Abramoff.
Abramoff said he finds it hard to believe Bush doesn’t remember the 10 or so photos he and members of his family had snapped with the president and first lady.
“He (Bush) has one of the best memories of any politician I have ever met,” Abramoff wrote in an e-mail, according to Vanity Fair’s April issue being released this week. “Perhaps he has forgotten everything. Who knows?”
Abramoff pleaded guilty Jan. 4 to charges that he and a former partner, Adam Kidan, concocted a fake wire transfer to make it appear they were putting a sizable stake of their own money into a multimillion-dollar purchase of SunCruz Casinos’ gambling fleet in 2000. Abramoff also has pleaded guilty to charges stemming from a probe into his ties with members of Congress and the Bush administration.
“I had my picture taken with him, evidently,” Bush said of Abramoff on Jan. 26. “I’ve had my picture taken with a lot of people.”
“I frankly don’t even remember having my picture taken with the guy,” Bush added. “I don’t know him.”
Abramoff: We met a dozen times
A few days later, Abramoff wrote to Washingtonian magazine that he had met briefly with the president nearly a dozen times and that Bush knew him well enough to make joking references to Abramoff’s family.
Abramoff told Vanity Fair that he once was invited to Bush’s Texas ranch, where he would have joined with other big Bush fund-raisers. Abramoff, an Orthodox Jew, said he didn’t go because the event fell on the Sabbath.
The lobbyist said that when Bush made a speech to fund-raisers in 2003, he sat just a few feet from the president. Abramoff, the only lobbyist on the dais, was seated between Republican Sens. George Allen of Virginia and Orrin Hatch of Utah.
Three former associates of Abramoff have told The Associated Press the lobbyist frequently told them he had strong ties to the White House through its deputy chief of staff, Karl Rove.
Asked about the former Abramoff associates’ accounts, the White House said Rove and Abramoff were leaders of a young Republicans group decades ago.
“Mr. Rove remembers they had met at a political event in the 1990s,” White House spokeswoman Erin Healy has said. “Since then, he would describe him as a casual acquaintance.”
According to Vanity Fair, Rove’s relationship with Abramoff was deeper.
After Bush took office, Susan Ralston, Abramoff’s administrative assistant, assumed the same post with Rove at the White House, where Abramoff met with Rove at least once, the magazine said.
Strong ties to Rove?
Rove dined several times at Abramoff’s former restaurant in Washington, Signatures, and was Abramoff’s guest in a luxury box at a basketball playoff game a few years ago, sitting for much of the game at Abramoff’s side, Vanity Fair reported.
The White House has not released any photos that Bush took with Abramoff, but acknowledged the authenticity of one that has been made public. In the 2001 photo, Bush is seen shaking hands with the leader of an Indian tribe that was an Abramoff client. The lobbyist is in the background.
Abramoff said he thought about, but decided against, selling his photos with the Bushes for money. Publications were making Abramoff offers that rose to the low seven figures, Vanity Fair reports.
He blames the Bush administration for the media attention.
“My so-called relationship with Bush, Rove and everyone else at the White House has only become important because instead of just releasing details about the very few times I was there, they created a feeding frenzy by their deafening silence,” Abramoff told the magazine.
“The Democrats, on the other hand, are going overboard, virtually insisting I was there to plan the invasion of Iraq.”
|
Quote:
http://thinkprogress.org/2007/05/22/...unity-for-now/
http://thenexthurrah.typepad.com/the...r_henry_n.html
May 22, 2007
Shorter Henry: Nice Try, Brad Berenson
by emptywheel
There has been a lot of discussion already about the Ralston news from today--that she asked for immunity so she could testify about Abramoff contacts with the White House. What seems to be missing from those stories is the takeaway: Henry Waxman's not giving Ralston immunity anytime soon.
Waxman provides a helpful map of what happened. Ralston gave a deposition on May 10--over a month after Waxman first invited her to visit. While there, she "testified on a number of subjects unrelated to the Abramoff matter." [Note to Novak and Rove--that bit's just there to make you sweat.] But as for the rest, Waxman describes what sounds like an unsuccessful attempt on the part of designated firewall defense lawyer Brad Berenson to convince Waxman to give Ralston immunity for stuff she's still under investigation for with the DOJ probe. Henry helpfully shows us the roadmap Berenson laid out for us:
Susan is here this morning voluntarily. She wants to assist the committee in its investigation to the extent she is able to. She is not under subpoena. We understand that the purpose of this morning’s deposition is really twofold: first, for her to provide the information that she can provide on a couple of subjects where she can testify without precondition … and, secondly, to make a record for the committee of the subjects on which she does not feel she can testify without a grant of immunity based on concerns that the testimony may reasonably form some link in a chain of evidence that someone could regard as inculpatory of her.
The subjects this morning that she will be unable to testify to on those grounds are the subjects of the relationship between Jack Abramoff and his associates and White House officials, including Ms. Ralston, and the subject of the use by White House officials of political e-mail accounts at the RNC.
She has material, useful information about both of those subjects. She is more than willing to provide it to the committee. However, she will, as we have previously discussed, require a grant of immunity before she is comfortable going forward.
And if you can't read that road map, Henry gives you an even more specific one:
She was personal friends with a number of the individuals on Abramoff’s staff, and as the
committee’s own report makes clear, was frequently the recipient of communications from them, even if the substantive matters under discussion related only to activities by other officials in the
White House.
So let me read the road map for you all:
1. Ralston would incriminate herself if she talked about Jack Abramoff's contacts with the White House.
2. Ralston would incriminate herself if she talked about the political emails at the RNC.
3. Ralston got frequent emails from people on Abramoff's staff discussing activities relating to "other officials in the White House."
But, Waxman says, Ralston isn't going to get immunity to talk about these things--there are plenty of people (like Michael Scanlon or the other Abramoff lobbyists who have flipped) who can testify about these things.
Curiously, Waxman doesn't say how he's going to get to the RNC emails without Ralston. But since Ralston says that, too, will incriminate her, I suspect her non-testimony has renewed Waxman's interest in getting the emails.
|
Quote:
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&s...es&btnG=Search
The Abramoff Investigation :: Committee on Government Reform ...
White House Contacts. 485 lobbying contacts with the White House ... Jack Abramoff and his team had 485 lobbying contacts with White House officials between ...
oversight.house.gov/abramoff/index2.asp
|
Bush tells us an "enemy wants to attack us"....but no need for his key aids to use secure white house email....is there???
Quote:
http://www.usnews.com/usnews/blogs/n...ompts_many.htm
....But just a week after E-mails in the U.S. attorneys case became a main focus of congressional Democrats probing the firings, several aides said that they stopped using the White House system except for purely professional correspondence.
"We just got a bit lazy," said one aide. "We knew E-mails could be subpoenaed. We saw that with the Clintons but I don't think anybody saw that we were doing anything wrong." ....
|
Quote:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...032601979.html
Correction to This Article
A March 27 article incorrectly attributed to Susan Ralston a warning that e-mail messages by lobbyist Jack Abramoff should not be put into the White House e-mail system "because it might actually limit what they can do to help us, especially since there could be lawsuits, etc." The author of the 2003 e-mail citing the warning, Kevin Ring, said yesterday that the warning was issued not by Ralston but by Jennifer Farley, who was a deputy in the White House Office of Intergovernmental Affairs.
GOP Groups Told to Keep Bush Officials' E-Mails
Democrat Cites Investigation of Firings
By R. Jeffrey Smith
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, March 27, 2007; Page A03
<i>A Democratic House committee chairman yesterday told the Republican National Committee and the Bush-Cheney '04 campaign to retain copies of all e-mails sent or received by White House officials using e-mail accounts under their control, raising the political stakes in the congressional inquiry into U.S. attorneys' firings.</i>
......Waxman noted for example that J. Scott Jennings, the White House deputy director of political affairs, used a "gwb43.com" e-mail account last August to discuss the replacement of the U.S. attorney for Arkansas, Bud Cummins, according to e-mails released to Congress by the White House.
Barry Jackson, a deputy to Rove, in 2003 used a "georgewbush.com" e-mail account to consult with Neil G. Volz, then an aide to lobbyist Jack Abramoff, about nominating one of Abramoff's Indian tribe clients for a Medal of Freedom, according to a copy of an e-mail. Abramoff is now serving a prison sentence for bank fraud, and Volz plead guilty to conspiracy charges last year.
Susan B. Ralston, while she was executive assistant to Rove, similarly used "georgewbush.com" and "rnchq.org" e-mail accounts to confer in 2001 and 2003 with Abramoff, her former boss, about matters of interest to Abramoff's clients.
In a related e-mail, an Abramoff aide said Ralston had warned that "it is better to not put this stuff in writing in [the White House] . . . email system because it might actually limit what they can do to help us, especially since there could be lawsuits, etc."
Abramoff's response, according to a copy of his e-mail, was: "Dammit. It was sent to Susan on her rnc pager and was not supposed to go into the WH system."
Waxman said the exchange indicated that in some instances, White House officials were using nongovernmental accounts "specifically to avoid creating a record of communications" that are nonetheless subject to the committee's jurisdiction.
|
yup...it's "war time".....Bush tells us it's a long, long war....enemy lurking...blah, blah, blah....we have to be "right 100 percent of the time...", yet there is no "email security policy", or preservation policy, and....the president's "special assistant"...sitting just down the hall from his office...is engaging her former boss, the man she followed from one lobbying firm to the next....is continuing her contacts....boasting that they are insecure...with her soon to be convicted felon....former boss....who the president, "doesn't know", even getting a 50 percent raise from the "war president":
Quote:
http://oversight.house.gov/Documents...0758-87640.pdf
HENRY A. WAXMAN, CAUFORNIA,
CHAIRMAN
TOM DAVIS. VIRGINIA.
RANKING MINOBTTY MEMBER
The White House
I 600 Pennsylvania Avenue
V/ashington, DC 20500
Dear Mr. Fielding:
I am writing to request information and a briefing regarding the e-mail policies of the
White House.
On Monday, I wrote to the Republican National Committee and the Bush Cheney'04
campaign directing them to preserve the e-mails of White House officials.r In those letters, I
cited multiple examples of the use of political RNC e-mail accounts by White House officials
conducting official government business. [n one example I cited, an associate of convicted
lobbyist Jack Abramoff was advised by a White House official not to send communications
through the official White House e-mail system because "to put this stuff in writing in their email
system ... might actually limit what they can do to help us."'
Since Monday, I have learned of new examples of the use of RNC and campaign e-mail
accounts by White House officials, including:</b>
o New Abramoff E-Mails. Susan Ralston, who was Karl Rove's executive assistant,
invited two lobbyists working for Jack Abramoff to use her RNC e-mail account to avoid
"security issues" with the White House e-mail system, writing: "I now have an RNC
blackbeny which you can use to e-mail me at any time. No security issues like my WH
Fred Fielding
March 29,2007
Page2
email."3 Ms. Ralston similarly wrote Mr. Abramoff: "I know [sic] have an RNC laptop
at the office for political use. I can access my AOL email when necessary so if you need
to send me something that I need to read, you can send to my AOL email and then call or
page me to check it."4</b>
New Scott Jennings E-Mails. Scott Jennings, the deputy director of political affairs in
the White House, and his assistant used "gwb43.com" e-mail accounts to communicate
with the General Services Administration about a partisan briefing that Mr. Jennings gave
to political appointees at GSA on January 26,2007.' When Mr. Jennings's assistant emailed
the PowerPoint presentation to GSA, she wrote: "It is a close hold and we're not
supposed to be emailing it around."o
o New Job Appointment E-Mails. Mr. Jennings also appears to have used his
"gwb43.com" account to recruit applicants for official government positions through the
"Kentucky Republican Voice," an internet site that describes itself as "the best source for
Kentucky Republican grassroots information." One posting from May 2005 advertised
17 vacancíes on assorted presidential boards and commissions.' A second posting from
May 2006 sought applicants for various boards within the Small Business
Administration.s In each case, these postings encouraged applicants to contact Mr.
Jennings at his "gwb43.com" address.
Moreover, U.S. News & ïlorld Reportreported yesterday thatmy letter on Monday to the
RNC may be driving official White House communications even further underground.
According to this report, at least two White House aides have now "bought their own private E-
Fred Fielding
March 29,2007
Page 3
mail system through a cellular phone or Blackberr)¡ server" to avoid the possibilities of
subpoenas. Another aide told U.S. News that he now communicates through "texting."e
<b>The statements of White House spokesperson Dana Perino at a press briefing this week
only further confused the issue. She said: "Of course, peopl.e^are encouraged, on official White
House business, to use their official White House accounts."'u But she did not cite any specific
policy or guidance issued to White House staff regarding the use of e-mail accounts and the
preservation of presidential records</b>, and she acknowledged that certain officials in the White
House have been given access to political e-mail accounts. When asked if a new directive had
been issued to White House staff reminding them to use their White House e-mails, she stated, "I
don't know of any new directive, but it is what we ask people to do."ll
Ms. Perino was also vague in her answers about whether the White House is ensuring the
security and preservation of offrcial communications that are sent through RNC and campaign email
accounts. She stated:
With respect to presidential records, an email that is sent to or from a White House email
address is automatically archived, even if the other person is not using a White House
email account. I believe well, I know that our White House Counsel's Office is in
communication with the RNC's general counsel to make sure that those archivings have
taken place.l2
To help the Committee understand the White House policies involving the use of
nongovertmental e-mail accounts by White House officials, I ask you to provide the following
information:
All policies, guidance, and other communications provided to White House officials
regarding appropriate use of nongovernmental e-mail accounts, particularly those
hosted by the Republican National Committee and other political organizations;
All policies, guidance, and other communications provided to White House officials
regarding the obligation to preserve e-mail records, including those created while
using nongoverTrmental e-mail accounts'....
|
Quote:
http://www.philippinenews.com/news/v...194d4960b18353
Top Rove aide ‘critical’ in CIA probe
Rita Gerona Adkins, Nov 08, 2005
<img src="http://www.philippinenews.com/directory/getdata.asp?about_id=4997403295ea354107194d4960b18353-2">
.....But that incident also demonstrated Susan’s strength as an organized and systematic operator. Her message to the veterans was, “don’t make it difficult for us to help you; you don’t make it easy for us by causing us embarrassment.”
At 37, Ralston, a graduate of management, had worked as assistant to Jack Abramoff, a powerfully connected lobbyist, at the Preston Gates and Ellis and later at Greenberg Taurig law and lobbying firms. Story had it that Abramoff, indicted on alleged corruption charges involving, among others, former Republican majority leader Tom DeLay, had offered Ralston to Rove when the latter was looking for an efficient and trusted assistant.
Before working in the nation’s capital, she was an office administrator for a commercial and real estate firm in Chicago, Ill.
Ralston has been promoted to Special Assistant to the President and Assistant to the President Senior Adviser with an annual salary of $92,000. She is married to Troy Ralston, executive director of a graduate school of management.
Karl is an amazing person to work for. I feel very, very fortunate to be in an office where so much is happening,” Ralston told this reporter in a 2003 interview.
|
Goodness me....some of us trust in our president's every word....but I'm more suspicious than ever that Mr. Bush was not legitimately elected to office, either time, does not believe what he says about the "enemy that wants to attack us"....using that phony threat to consolidate his own power by legal or illegal means, and knows much more than he has disclosed about the 9/11 attacks, and the subsquent anthrax "attacks"....<h3>How can we all be exposed to the same information and reach such vastly different opinions?</h3>
Last edited by host; 05-24-2007 at 10:54 AM..
|