Mike Connell dummied up at his deposition yesterday, saying repeatedly that he knew nuttin' about nuttin'. Well-guarded by a unit of Republican attorneys, Rove's longtime IT fixer professed no knowledge of attempts to rig the vote in the Ohio contest four years back, or of any "Trojan horses"--leftover bits of code that might be used to slant the outcome of the race tonight.
Connell played it like a staunch "Bush/Rove team player," says Cliff Arnebeck,
the lead attorney in the case. "He had the whole weekend to prepare how to stonewall -- and that he did."
Connell's GOP attorneys jumped in frequently to tell their client to shut up. For example, they did not let Connell answer this question: "Who directed you to set up the 'Swift Boat Veterans for Truth' IT network?"
As tight-lipped as he was, however, Connell did let slip one detail of immense
significance. Asked if he'd brought SmartTech and Triad, two private IT companies owned by fierce partisans (and dedicated Christianists), into the Ohio election game, Connell admitted that he did. (At first he denied bringing SmartTech in, but then admitted it.)
This was a major revelation, as it confirms the view--long advanced by expert
witness Stephen Spoonamore--that SmartTech and Triad played key roles in
stealing the 2004 election. (SmartTech ran Ohio's election results through its
GOP-supported servers in Chattanooga, then sent it back to SoS Blackwell's
website: a classic "man in the middle" set-up favored by computer fraudsters,
according to Spoonamore. Triad interfered with the recount by pulling hard drives
from county-level tabulators.)
Otherwise, Connell sang a song of perfect innocence, denying that there were "any problems" with the voting systems in Ohio--and, furthermore, that he "does not know of any vulnerablities" in any voting systems anywhere! In short, his message was that everything is fine, there's been no fraud in past election, and there won't be any fraud today. So everyone should just forget the whole thing, and go home.
Connell's stance reminded Arnebeck of how Lewis Libby and his cohorts answered Patrick Fitzgerald's questions: "They stonewalled and lied. That's exactly what Connell did. His way of stonewalling was to answer without answering."
The deposition yesterday served two important purposes. First of all, it adds some extra punch to the big racketeering case that the attorneys have been building against Bush & Co. for months. Said Arnebeck: "Connell has just ensured that he is Exhibit A of the soon-to-be-filed RICO lawsuit against Karl Rove et al."
And, just as important, Mike Connell and his team are now on notice that they're working under very careful scrutiny. So they might now be less inclined to risk another electronic theft of an American election.
MCM
Posted on Mon, Nov. 03, 2008
Computer expert denies knowledge of '04 vote rigging in Ohio
By GREG GORDON - McClatchy Newspapers --
http://www.ledger-enquirer.com/254/story/497984.html#recent_comm
WASHINGTON --A Republican computer consultant denied under oath Monday that he knew of any GOP effort to steal the 2004 election for President Bush by rigging Ohio's vote totals, an attorney who questioned him said.
A federal judge on Friday ordered Michael Connell, whose firms had consulting contracts with Bush's campaign and with the Ohio secretary of state's office in 2004, to submit to a limited, closed-door deposition in a suit alleging schemes to fix the vote.
A transcript of the deposition was unavailable, but Clifford Arnebeck, the plaintiffs' attorney, whose clients include the Rainbow Coalition and other liberal groups, said that during some two hours of questioning, Connell "denied any knowledge of the altering of votes."
Connell also denied knowing of any leftover "Trojan Horses" - bits of computer code that could play havoc with Tuesday's vote counts, Arnebeck said.
Connell's appearance, on the eve of the 2008 presidential election, culminated weeks of jockeying over his testimony, amid unsubstantiated allegations that he's been subjected to threats of retaliation if he tells all he knows, and U.S. District Judge Solomon Oliver ordered the sealing of any questions about threats to Connell.
Allegations of Republican schemes to shift 2004 votes from Democratic challenger John Kerry to Bush have swirled around Ohio for four years, initially fed by exit polls that showed Kerry winning the election. Bush won the state by 118,601 votes to secure a second term.
Oddities in Ohio's 2004 presidential election continue to surface, including evidence of document shredding and disclosures of the presence of partisan operatives in the office of former Secretary of State Kenneth Blackwell, who's been criticized for his office's handling of the election.
Records show that Blackwell hired Connell's Govtech Solutions, LLC, of Richfield, Ohio, as an Internet consultant. SMARTech Corp. of Chattanooga, Tenn., was retained to provide a backup server, which was needed because the secretary of state's Web site got more than 40 million election-night visits, said a spokesman for Ohio's current Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner, a Democrat.
During the same year, Bush's campaign paid New Media Communications, which was owned by Connell, more than $806,000 for Web services, according to Federal Election Commission records. Connell's firm also has served as a consultant to John McCain's 2008 Republican presidential campaign.
SMARTech was paid more than $72,000 by Bush's 2004 campaign and has hosted hundreds of Republican Web and e-mail sites, including the gwb43.com site for politically related e-mails by Bush White House employees, whose disappearance triggered an outcry from congressional Democrats during last year's Justice Department scandal.
Arnebeck called SMARTech's role "an outrageous conflict of interest." A 2004 election-night computer architecture map for Blackwell's office appears to suggest that as many as 51 of Ohio's 88 counties periodically sent their results to the secretary of state's office. Jeff Ortega, Brunner's chief spokesman, said that computer technicians in her office have been unable to determine how many, if any, counties transmitted results directly from vote tabulators, rather than from separate computers to shield against outside access to vote counts.
Stephen Spoonamore, a cybersecurity expert who's assisting the plaintiffs in the suit, alleged in an affidavit that SMARTech appears to have had the ability to intercept election returns before they were publicly disclosed. Spoonamore describes himself as a "lifelong Republican."
James Hocker, who was the chief information technology official in Blackwell's office, told McClatchy that there's "no truth" to the allegation.
SMARTech President Jeff Averbeck couldn't be reached for comment.
Blackwell didn't respond to e-mails sent via a close associate or to a message left with the Buckeye Institute, a policy institute with which he's loosely affiliated.
Brunner, who took office in January 2007, has dropped all outside consultants and says she's linked counties to her office via secure, dedicated lines.
She told McClatchy that after she took office, employees advised her that about six months earlier, "the Blackwell administration started shredding paper."
(McClatchy Newspapers correspondent Tish Wells contributed to this report.)
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