Not All the DOJ Missing Emails Are Missing

Hylas sends us to Democracy Now for a newscast on the missing emails, an interview with investigative journalist Greg Palast. Here's Palast talking about the fired US attorney from New Mexico, David Iglesias: "Iglesias believes the real reasons for the firings are in what are called the missing emails, emails sent by the [White House political advisor Karl] Rove team using Republican Party campaign computers, which Rove claims can't be retrieved. But not all the missing emails are missing. We have 500 of them. Apparently the Rove team misaddressed their emails, and late one night they all ended up in our inboxes in our offices in New York City." This story has had zero play in the US media; it's been being carried on the BBC.

Comments

Greg Palast's history

[0123456789]

A bit of history on Greg Palast; he's the guy who, on the BBC, broke the story about election irregularities in Florida before the 2000 election. Admittedly, a few days before, but it's still a bit of a scoop.

I must be new here...

[Anonymous Coward]

Does no one else find it not only weird, but downright scary how this just seems to disappear from the American political media, even though it is happening IN AMERICA, and largely effects AMERICANS? I mean jeeze guys, do not care what happens to your country? Rise up! Revolt! Hell, have Civil Rights march, cuz God knows you need it...

Re:I must be new here...

[Anonymous Coward]

Does no one else find it not only weird, but downright scary how this just seems to disappear from the American political media, even though it is happening IN AMERICA, and largely effects AMERICANS?

It's not weird at all. It's actually quite obvious why it's happening. Let me explain it to you:
1) The Republicans are the party of Big Business. They serve the interests of a wide variety of American corporations.
2) The mass media in the US is owned and controlled by a small number of large corporations. Take NBC, for instance. It's owned by General Electric, which is well-known for its "defense" work. Of course NBC won't put up any real opposition to the Republicans, who through their warmaking have no doubt made GE much in the way of profit.
3) The pathetic American education system has rendered most Americans unable to comprehend even their most essential civic duties. The mass media helps with this, by glorifying morons like Britney Spears, essentially all hip hop "artists", and so forth. They encourage most Americans to be as stupid as is possible.

When those three factors come together, shit like this can (and will) happen.

Re:I must be new here...

[kismet666]

You don't seem to understand what the uproar is over. The firings may have been unethical, but probably not illegal. The problems the administration has now are due to the effort to cover-up what happened. Like Watergate, Lewinsky, and many other scandals the cover-up is much worse than the original misguided activities.

Re:I must be new here...

[smooth wombat]

To summarize, the firings weren't illegal,

Nice troll. Too bad it's not correct.

You are correct when you say the US Attorneys serve at the will of the President. Bill Clinton, when he came into office, fired all 83 US Attorneys and replaced them. So did Reagan and Bush, Sr.

Bush, however, not only did not do that, he waited until two years into his second term to fire eight attorneys which he had previously appointed!

Further, as is now becoming clear, the firings were not for performance reasons, but political reasons. In one case, the attorney was told he was being fired to make way for a former aide to Karl Rove. In another case, Iglesias, he was specificaly told his firing was not for performance reasons but political yet the White House and Gonzales kept saying, and still say to this day, that the firing was for performance issues.

As Iglesias said on Fox Noise, and as the transcript above shows, he asked for and was given permission to use the DOJ as a reference. If he was fired for performance reasons, why bother to give him a recommendation?

So what we have is an Attorney General who has been lying under oath about an incident which he apparently knew nothing about even though he heads the department. Let's see, lying under oath, can't recall information, doesn't know what's going on. Why does that sound familiar?

Keep up the trolling. We need the laughs.

Must be the "liberal" media at work.

[Anonymous Coward]

This story has had zero play in the US media;

This can only be the work of the so-called "liberal media" in the US that we hear so much about. Look at those leftist, socialist Commie bastards protecting the interests of their right-wing Republican friends. Oh, wait...

Palast has more interesting things to say

[Eukariote]

Greg Palast is one of the few good reporters out there still willing to probe further and deeper. An interesting book of his, detailing the election, war, and oil machinations is "Armed Madhouse": http://www.gregpalast.com/madhouse/index.php/about /. For a quick summary, see this talk he gave in Portland: http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-680222806 2297352475.

Re:Hmmm

[niiler]

Here's how the mis-addressed email thing works. Politicos in the White House or elsewhere, have mistakenly typed .org instead of .gov when addressing their emails. The www.whitehouse.org owners are none to happy with Bush's politics, and so routinely forward their emails to Greg Palast, whose reputation is well known. Mystery solved. Palast says this much in most of his books. While American networks avoid Palast like the plague, largely because he is at odds with the media-moguls, he has had his own show on the BBC for years and is considered a good source for what is really happening in the US by the Europeans. He has also appeared on the NPR show On the Media and on Democracy Now from Pacifica Radio.

Greg Palast's history is even better

[Anonymous Coward]

It is much better than this!
He investigated the contract Jeb Bush gave to a company to filter out from the voter rolls the people who had no right to vote. He got their listings printed, and found out that they had prevented tens of thousands of african-americans from voting for no legal reason! As everyone knows african-americans almost always (95%) vote for the democrats. That is how the 2000 election really was stolen, and all US corporate media boycotted what he found, which only aired on the BBC.
http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=greg+p alast+2000&search=Search
For more great videos by Palast about the 2004 election and more:
http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=greg+p alast&search=Search
Also do a serch on emule for other exclusive materials.

Re:Greg Palast's history is even better

[Anonymous Coward]

Would you believe that 100% of all alleged electoral irregularities, and 125% of the proven cases, are perpetrated by Republicans?

Would you believe that we want fair elections, and that we don't give a shit whether its the Democrats or the Republicans fucking it up, we want it to stop?

Tit for tat is for 4 year olds.

Waaah.

Grow up.

Re:Greg Palast's history is even better

[wagadog]

Greg Palast lives in New York. He's a US Citizen. He only publishes in the UK newspapers because US newspapers (and other media outlets) won't publish his investigative journalism. Which is why its so great when his books (eg ARMED MADHOUSE) sell well enough to make the New York Times Bestsellers list. Because then the NYT *HAS* to mention his name. Delicious.

You and your grandpappy are wrong

[MisterSquid]

The Attorney General (Alberto Gonzalez) serves as an appointee of the President. You've got that much right. However, the Attorneys General that were replaced are appointed by the US Attorney General whose office is charged with serving the interests of the Judicial branch of the US government, not the Executive branch. While the US AG may serve at the pleasure of the President, he is not expected be beholden to the partisan interests of the President. The US AG is supposed to facilitate the enforcement of that the Legislative branch's checks (i.e. laws), not to place attorneys who kowtow to the will of one party or the other.

I am an American.

Another non-story about presidential lawbreaking

[MillionthMonkey]

U.S. Attorneys are usually all replaced at the beginning of an administration. They are not supposed to be replaced in the middle of a term in order to obstruct justice.

While they are political appointees they do not occupy political positions. Supreme Court judges are political appointees too. They can't simply be yanked off the court by the president if he or one of his friends loses a court decision.

To get on the Supreme Court, a nominee has to be approved by Congress. Ordinarily that applies to U.S. Attorney nominees as well. (Even though they serve "at the pleasure of the president".) Specter's little Patriot Act amendment put an end to that. So now the president can simply fire a prosecutor if he or one of his friends get prosecuted, replace him with whomever he likes, and nobody can say a thing.

Now we have people in the president's own party demanding that his prosecutors bring bogus charges against their political opponents, rushed in time for elections. (Historically prosecutors have usually waited until after elections to avoid tainting them.) We have people in the president's own party having the prosecutors investigating them fired. We have prosecutors being replaced by guys who compile lists of registered voters in minority districts for mass voter challenges. We have prosecutors being replaced for investigating real crimes instead of wasting their time harassing voters with imaginary "voter fraud" cases. We have a Department of Justice that launches more than six corruption investigations of local Democratic politicians for every single investigation of a Republican. If you think this is a "non-story" you're out of your mind.

Re:What's wrong about the firings, exactly?

[fishdan]

It's an excellent point you raise. These probably were not illegal FIRINGS.

The illegality (if there was any) was in the claim that US Attorneys were asked to break the law, and then fired for not doing so. If there is a WHIFF of illegality, especially in the election process, government should welcome the scrutiny. I'd rather hear Rove and others say "I cannot find the emails, but I will do all in my power to help others recover them."

If there was, as Mr. Iglesias claims, an attempt to coerce him into breaking the law, and it's now coming to light because of his firing, it's worthy of investigation. I do wish he had stood up and counted when it was more relevant and easier to prove, and the fact that he didn't makes me REALLY doubt his story. And in the absence of proof, I believe Gonzales should be completely exonerated. But rather than stonewalling, welcome the investigation. If a (former) US Attorney says that he was approached to be part of a conspiracy to commit a crime, that should be enough to get a search warrant (because conspiracy to commit a felony is also a felony). I take it all with a grain of salt -- this is a disgruntled ex-employee who was fired -- to me the allegation is still serious enough to warrant (pun intended) further investigation

Off topic, the flower thongs you sell cracked me up! I hope they're moving well.

That dog won't hunt no more.

[hey!]

Not after Iraq. Not after warrantless wiretapping. Not after Gitmo. Not after Katrina. Not after the DOJ torture memo. Not after the billions of dollars spent in Iraq reconstruction that have never been properly accounted for (millions in cash), and the no bid contracts for a company the VP hold stock options in. Not after the Valeri Plame leaks. Not after scientific findings have to be submitted for alteration by an administration zampolit.

I'm sick of this "there's no difference between the Democrats and Republicans" business. Maybe there should be more difference, but there is one undeniable difference: the Republicans have brought us the most incompetent and corrupt administration in American history, aided by a congress almost to match it. The only modern parallel for incompetence, criminality, cronyism and rashness would be the Palestinian authority under Arafat, and I'm not sure that counts because it wasn't officially a nation.

I'm not saying the Democrats are angels, or that they have the best policies for America. But they've never delivered a government that was so poorly, criminally, or tyrannically run as that of the modern "Republicans". I put "Republicans" in quotes because I don't think they deserve the name of the party of Goldwater.