The betrayal of US secret agent Valerie Plame's covert identity is an instance in which several people should be in prison that are not.
Justice debased:
The Don Siegelman case is an instance of someone who is in prison that should not be.
Yes, Gonzalez, Rove and numerous underlings have fled their jobs, but they are not fighting off indictment or sweating on the harsh light of congressional investigations?
Why? What is wrong?
Will the system reset itself in January 2009?
Will these wrongs be righted in the only way they can be, i.e., through investigation and prosecution of this abuse of power?
Or will the incoming President talk lamely about putting the past behind us and healing the wounds of the nation.
Listen, you can't heal a wound until its cleaned.
Here is the latest on Don Siegelman, including links to the transcript of the CBS 60 Minutes segment and a video clip of it:
Attorneys for imprisoned former Alabama Gov. Don Siegelman on Monday called for a special prosecutor after a key government witness claimed that he was forced to write out his testimony to get his story straight.
Vince Kilborn, an attorney for Siegelman who contends Republican politics was behind the Democrat's prosecution, said the defense was never told of any written notes by Nick Bailey, a former Siegelman aide whose testimony was crucial to the government. Associated Press, 2-25-08
CBS's 60 Minutes broadcast Sunday regarding the alleged political prosecution of Democratic Alabama governor Don Siegelman went dark in the northern third of Alabama last night. According to WHNT-TV, the local CBS affiliate, the issue was caused by a technical malfunction. ...
CBS News – which owns 60 Minutes – denied any problem on their end.
Scott Horton of Harper's magazine reported late last night that CBS was directly pointing back at the local outlets as the cause of the problem.
"I contacted CBS News in New York and was told that 'there is no delicate way to put this: the WHNT claim is not true. There were no transmission difficulties. The problems were peculiar to Channel 19, which had the signal and had functioning transmitters.' I was told that the decision to blacken screens across Northern Alabama 'could only have been an editorial call.'" ... The White House has put pressure on CBS to kill the show, those close to the case say. Journalists covering the story have been attacked. The case's most prominent whistleblower, Dana Jill Simpson, recently testified to Congress, under oath, about Rove's involvement in politicizing the Bush Justice Department.
Her house mysteriously caught fire after she came forward.
WHNT in Huntsville Alabama was purchased by Oak Hill Capital Partners from the New York Times Company early last year. Oak Hill is owned by the Bass brothers, Bush fundraisers at the "Pioneer" level – raising over $100,000 for the Bush-Cheney campaigns in both 2000 and 2004. Lee Bass is perhaps the best known member of the Bass family for his role in George W. Bush's failed energy venture called Spectrum 7 and later for his bailing out of Harken Energy. Raw Story, 2-25-08
Is Don Siegelman in prison because he's a criminal or because he belonged to the wrong political party in Alabama? Siegelman is the former governor of Alabama, and he was the most successful Democrat in that Republican state. But while he was governor, the U.S. Justice Department launched multiple investigations that went on year after year until, finally, a jury convicted Siegelman of bribery.
Now, many Democrats and Republicans have become suspicious of the Justice Department's motivations. As correspondent Scott Pelley reports, 52 former state attorneys-general have asked Congress to investigate whether the prosecution of Siegelman was pursued not because of a crime but because of politics. ...
"I haven't seen a case with this many red flags on it that pointed towards a real injustice being done," says Grant Woods, the former Republican attorney general of Arizona.
Woods is one of the 52 former state attorneys-general, of both parties, who've asked Congress to investigate the Siegelman case.
"I personally believe that what happened here is that they targeted Don Siegelman because they could not beat him fair and square. This was a Republican state and he was the one Democrat they could never get rid of," Woods says.
Now a Republican lawyer from Alabama, Jill Simpson, has come forward to claim that the Siegelman prosecution was part of a five-year secret campaign to ruin the governor. Simpson told 60 Minutes she did what's called "opposition research" for the Republican party. She says during a meeting in 2001, Karl Rove, President Bush's senior political advisor, asked her to try to catch Siegelman cheating on his wife.
"Karl Rove asked you to take pictures of Siegelman?" Pelley asks.
"Yes," Simpson replies.
"In a compromising, sexual position with one of his aides," Pelley clarifies.
"Yes, if I could," Simpson says.
She says she spied on Siegelman for months but saw nothing. Even though she was working as a Republican campaign operative, Simpson says she wanted to talk to 60 Minutes because Siegelman's prison sentence bothers her conscience.
Simpson says she wasn't surprised that Rove made this request. Asked why not, she tells Pelley, "I had had other requests for intelligence before."
"From Karl Rove?" Pelley asks.
"Yes," Simpson says. ...
"He's indicted. He goes to trial. That's a pretty big deal to have your former governor on trial. Everybody's there. The government gives their opening argument. The judge says, 'I want to see you in chambers because this case, there's no case here,'" Grant Woods says.
Woods says the judge threw the case out, without a witness testifying. "The case is so lame that he throws it out," he says.
Vindicated, Siegelman focused on winning the 2006 election. And that's when Jill Simpson says she heard the Justice Department was going to try again. She says she heard it from a former classmate and work associate Rob Riley, the son of the new Republican governor.
"Rob said that they had gotten wind that Don was going to run again," she says. ... Asked how they were going to prevent that from happening, she says, "Well, they had to re-indict him, is what Rob said." ... The prosecution was handled by the office of U.S. Attorney Leura Canary, whose husband Bill Canary had run the campaign of Siegelman's opponent, Gov. Riley.
"Why would you do it that way?" Woods asks. "Why wouldn't you say, 'You know what? We're going to bring in someone from another jurisdiction to do it. There's a lot of United States attorneys around the country. We'll have somebody come in and do this case.' That's not what happened in Alabama. Every time they had the chance to go the extra mile to be independent and objective, they didn't do it." ...
Many legal minds were shocked when federal judge Mark Fuller, at sentencing, sent Siegelman directly to prison without allowing the usual 45 days before reporting.
"He had him manacled around his legs like we do with crazed killers. And whisked off to prison just like that. Now what does that tell you? That tells you that this was personal. You would not do that to a former governor," Woods says.
"Would you do that to any white collar criminal?" Pelley asks.
"No, I haven't seen it done," Woods says.
"Help me understand something. You're blaming the Republican administration for this prosecution. You're saying it was a political prosecution. You are a Republican. How do I reconcile that?" Pelley asks.
"We're Americans first. And you got to call it as you see it. And you got to stand up for what's right in this country," Woods says. ...
Don Siegelman has six years and eight months to go on his sentence. CBS, 2-21-08
Click here to watch the 60 Minutes segment. http://thinkprogress.org:80/2008/02/25/60-minutes-blocked/
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