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Banned
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Originally Posted by The_Jazz
Host, snarkey comments aside, my question is actually relevant to the topic at hand. I can't believe with all your google skills that you aren't able to find it. The only other alternative is that you aren't willing to find it, which would mean that you aren't really interested in discussing anything.
Thompson's first role was playing Fred Thompson in "Marie". It's a movie about the woman who took on the governor of Tennessee and the pardon board in the mid-70's. Thompson defended her when she was illegally removed from office for refusing to rubber-stamp pardons that had been bought and paid for. When Roger Donaldson made it into a movie, he asked Thompson to play himself. That's his first role, as a crusading lawyer defending the unjustly accused.
Thompson was also responsible for Howard Baker's question "what did the President know and when did he know it" during Watergate.
So host, when you attack Thompson as being an "entertainment personality", you really make yourself look uninformed and ignorant of the facts.
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The_Jazz, "things" are not always the way they seem....especially dramatized events in a movie based on a book by the author of the earlier book titled "Serpico", later made into a movie starring Al Pacino:
Quote:
http://select.nytimes.com/gst/abstra...rssnyt&emc=rss
DEBATE ON REPORTING OF NASHVILLE SCANDAL REOPENS
July 22, 1983, Friday
By JONATHAN FRIENDLY, SPECIAL TO THE NEW YORK TIMES (NYT); National Desk
A new book has set off a lively debate about how the state's best-known newspaper, The Nashville Tennessean, reported a state official's fight against corrupt bosses.
The debate has focused attention on how the paper treated the opening phases of a big political scandal that involved the Governor it had supported. The debate has also underlined how a book, written away from the pressure of deadlines and shaped according to the writer's dramatic vision, can tell a story sharply different from episodic daily journalism.
The book, ''Marie: A True Story,'' is about Marie Ragghianti, the head of the State Board of Pardons and Paroles, who was ousted after she balked at releasing some prisoners who were later proved to have bribed aides to Gov. Ray Blanton. She sued and was ordered reinstated; the Governor left office and was later tried in Federal court on other graft charges.
The book's author, Peter Maas, charges that The Tennessean missed the pardons scandal at first because the editors supported the Governor and later because the reporters had decided Mrs. Ragghianti was only a jilted girlfriend of the Governor's legal counsel.
''Basically they blew the story,'' said Mr. Maas, whose earlier best-seller, ''Serpico,'' was about Frank Serpico, the New York policeman who exposed corruption among his fellow officers. They Say Her Role Was Small
Reporters and editors at The Tennessean said that the story was never as clear-cut as Mr. Maas says and that Mrs. Ragghianti played only a minor role in bringing to light the sale of pardons. They said that the Governor was driven from office not because of the clemency case but because of a liquor license scandal that The Tennessean uncovered. Mr. Blanton's conviction in this case is on appeal.
John Seigenthaler, editor of The Tennessean, said, however, that he had long known Mrs. Ragghianti had an interesting story to tell but his own reporters had been unable to get it. He said he later introduced Mr. Maas to Mrs. Ragghianti, saying, ''She won't talk to us but if you can get her to talk, you will have a female Serpico.''
In 1976, Mrs. Ragghianti, who was 34 years old, divorced and supporting three children, was working in the office of T. Edward Sisk, the Governor's counsel. He encouraged her to seek a position on the State Parole Board.
Mr. Maas's book said that Mrs. Ragghianti, whose father had worked for The Tennessean, asked Mr. Seigenthaler to help her get the appointment. He recommended her to Governor Blanton, whom the newspaper had backed. 'I've Recommended a Lot'
''I have recommended a lot of people for a lot of jobs, in and out of government,'' said Mr. Seigenthaler. He said journalists could often unearth important news through such friendships.
''If John Seigenthaler wrote all the stories he knew, The Tennessean could sell for $2 a copy,'' said Larry Brinton, a reporter for a Nashville television station. As a reporter for The Nashville Banner, which is as strongly Republican as The Tennessean is Democratic, he got Mrs. Ragghianti to talk to him and he wrote the first articles about the Blanton scandals in 1976.
John Haile, who wrote articles on Governor Blanton for The Tennessean and who now heads the editorial pages of The Orlando Sentinel Star, said it was common knowledge in Tennessee that newspapers and politicians were close, adding, ''Perhaps we were too close.''
Mr. Seigenthaler said his efforts in behalf of Mrs. Ragghianti's appointment had not affected coverage of her work because the reporters had not known about the efforts. 'We Covered Her,' Editor Says
Marsha Vande Berg, a city editor at The Tennesseean who covered the story when she was reporting on the Federal courts, said that, on the contrary, she had known of Mr. Seigenthaler's role but he constantly pushed her in 1977-78 to find out whether Mrs. Ragghianti was cooperating with Federal investigators. ''We covered her just as hard and as vigorously as we should have,'' she said.
The Tennessean printed occasional articles about the Federal inquiry but none said the paper was making its own investigation. In its only editorial comment, the paper said the Federal inquiry was a waste of public funds.
Henderson Hillin, an agent of the Federal Bureau of Investigation with whom Mrs. Ragghianti worked, said the press reported as much as it could about her case. ''All she had at the time were her suspicions,'' he said, ''but there was nothing until the F.B.I. made the case.''
When Governor Blanton dismissed her in 1977, she filed suit for reinstatement. At the trial, a year later, the jury took 50 minutes to conclude that the charges against her were trivial and that she should be reinstated. She Sees No Follow-Up
Mrs. Ragghianti said this alone should have alerted The Tennessean that there was substance to her charges of improper pressure from the Governor's office, but she said reporters did not follow up the leads in her testimony.
Tennessean reporters said Mrs. Ragghianti did not go to them with information and would not reply when asked questions. Her lawyer, Fred D. Thompson, said that the only questions his client was ever asked were about her personal life.
Editors and reporters at The Tennessean say they believe Mrs. Ragghianti was having an affair with Mr. Sisk and possibly others, including the Governor. Mrs. Ragghianti said they never asked her about that rumor, which she denies. She adds that, in any event, promiscuity would not excuse selling of pardons.
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The_Jazz, go check out John Seigenthaler Jr. He has a reputation as a distinguished journalist....even a hero for his exploits in the field of journalism.
He seemed less impressed with Thompson's client, Maria, than the author of the book about her, did.
....and...I suspect that Thompson deserves a place on my "republicans aiding or abetting treason", list, for this contrived POS, pro Libby propaganda piece, and because of his "service" to Libby's "Legal Defense Trust":
Quote:
http://article.nationalreview.com/?q...M2NjQ5OGU0YTc=
March 7, 2007 6:00 AM
Law and Disorder
Sherman’s march through the law.
By Fred Thompson
Doesn’t Patrick Fitzgerald look like a man who has dodged a bullet and is ready to get out of town? That was my first impression after watching the special-prosecutor’s press conference after news came down Wednesday about Scooter Libby. It would seem that prosecuting a Bush official before a Washington jury is not necessarily a slam dunk after all when the gruel is this thin.
Two crucial decisions were made in order for this sorry state of affairs to have played out this way. The first was when the Justice Department folded under political and media pressure because of the Plame leak and appointed a special counsel. <h3>When DOJ made the appointment they knew that the leak did not constitute a violation of the law.</h3> Yet, instead of standing on that solid legal ground they abdicated their official responsibility.
The Plame/Wilson defenders wanted administration blood because the administration had had the audacity to question the credibility of Joe Wilson and defend themselves against his charges. Therefore, the Department of Justice, in order to completely inoculate themselves, gave power and independence to Fitzgerald that was not available to Ken Starr, Lawrence Walsh, or any prior independent counsel under the old independent-counsel law. Fitzgerald became unique in our judicial history in that he was accountable to no one. And here even if justice had retained some authority they could hardly have asked Fitzgerald why he continued to pursue a non-crime because they knew from the beginning there was no crime.
From there the players’ moves were predictable. Fitzgerald began his Sherman’s march through the law and the press until he thought he had finally come up with something to justify his lofty mandate — a case that would not have been brought in any other part of the country.
The media by then was suffering from Stockholm syndrome — They feared and loved Fitzgerald at the same time. He was establishing terrible precedent by his willingness to throw reporters in jail over much less than serious national-security matters — the Ashcroft standard! Yet Fitzgerald was doing the Lord’s work in their eyes. This was a “bad leak” not a “good leak” like the kind they like to use. And it was much better to get the Tim Russert and Ari Fleischer treatment than it is to get the Judith Miller treatment. Fitzgerald paid no price for his prosecutorial inconsistencies, his erroneous public statements, or his possible conflicts of interest. And now they get to point out how this case revealed the “deep truths” about the White House.
The second decision was made by Libby himself. It was the decision to spend eight hours without counsel in a grand-jury room with Fitzgerald with this controversy swirling around him while trying to remember and recount conversations with various news reporters — reporters who he knew would be interviewed about these conversations themselves. These, of course, were reporters Libby had no right to expect to do him any favors. This sounds like a man with nothing to hide. This sounds like a man who doesn’t appreciate the position he is in or what or whom he is dealing with.
It is ironic that what Libby is facing today is not due to the evil machinations so often attributed to the White House but rather due to an apparent naivety.
Like most Washington political fights, very few participants have been left unscathed. Among the results of this investigation and trial, there will be less cooperation by public officials in future investigations and less ability of reporters to get information. We should ask ourselves: Are our institutions or is our sense of justice stronger because of this prosecution?
— Fred Thompson, an actor, is a former Republican senator from Tennessee. <h3>He is on the Advisory Committee for the Libby Legal Defense Trust .</h3>
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Consider that Thompson, an attorney himself, who is described by The_Jazz as the Watergate counsel to then Sen. Howard Baker, not only served as a legal advisor to Libby's "Defense Fund Trust", he wrote the "hit piece" against Patrick Fitzgerald, <b>after</b> all of the evidence and testimony in Libby's trial was publicly presented, and after both Libby and VP Cheney failed to testify in Libby's defense, and after a jury found Libby guilty on 4 of 5 counts.
We are "at war". How blindly partisan is Thompson, and how little respect for the law does he have, to write such blatantly political crap after the verdict?
I think we can draw from the mindset that Thompson displayed in his NRO opinion piece, that, if he was the president of the US, as Bush did not, he would not have insisted that the white house director of security investigate whether classified information regarding Plame's CIA employment status had been leaked. Like Bush, it seems that Thompson would react to such allegations as if they were a politically motivated attack, and not as an alert to look for a security leak and investigate to find a culprit, or eliminate suspicion that security was breached by executive branch personnel.
Last edited by host; 05-30-2007 at 11:34 PM..
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