*** Special to The BRAD BLOG by Greg Palast
Boo-hoo! I made Tim Griffin cry.
He cried. Then he lied.
You remember Tim. Karl Rove’s right hand (right claw?) man. The GOP’s ragin’ cagin’ man.
Griffin is the Rove-bot exposed by our BBC Newsnight investigations team as the man who gathered and sent out the infamous ‘caging’ lists to Republican state chairmen during the 2004 election.
Caging lists, BBC discovered, were used secretly as a basis to challenge the right to vote of thousands of citizens – including the homeless, students and soldiers sent overseas. The day after BBC broadcast that the Chairman of the Judiciary Committee, John Conyers, sought our evidence on Griffin, Tim resigned his post as US Attorney for Arkansas. That job was a little gift from Karl Rove who made room for his man Griffin by demanding the firing of US prosecutor Bud Cummins.
Last week, our cameras captured Griffin, all teary-eyed, in his humiliating kiss-off speech delivered in Little Rock at the University of Arkansas where he moaned that, “public service isn’t worth it.”
True. In the old Jim Crow days in Arkansas, you could get yourself elected by blocking African-Americans. (The voters his caging game targeted are – quelle surprise! – disproportionately Black citizens.)
But today, Griffin can’t even get an unemployment check. When he resigned two weeks ago following our broadcast, the cover story was that the voter persecutor-turned-prosecutor had resigned to work for Presidential wannabe Fred Thompson. But when Thompson’s staff was asked by a reporter why they would hire the ‘cagin’ man,’ suddenly, the ‘Law and Order’ star decided associating with Griffin might take the shine off Thompson’s badge, even if it is from the props department.
Griffin, instead of saying that public service “isn’t worth it,” should have said, “Crime doesn’t pay.” Because, according to experts such as law professor Robert F. Kennedy Jr., ‘caging,’ when used to target Black voters’ rights, is a go-to-prison crime.
By resigning, Tim may not avoid the hard questions about caging – or the hard time that might result. When I passed the first set of documents to Conyers (a real film noir moment, in a New York hotel room near midnight), the soft-spoken Congressman said that, resignation or not, “We aren’t done with Mr. Griffin yet…”
Tears Not Truth
Back in Little Rock, when asked about caging, Rove’s guy linked a few fibs to a few whoppers to some malefactious mendacity. That is, he lied.
“I didn’t cage votes. I didn’t cage mail,” Griffin asserted.
At the risk of making you cry again, Tim, may I point you to an email dated August 26, 2004. It says, “Subject: Re: Caging.” And it says, “From: Tim Griffin – Research/Communications” with the email tgriffin@rnchq.org. RNCHQ is the Republican National Committee Headquarters, is it not, Mr. Griffin? Now do you remember caging mail?
If that doesn’t ring a bell, please note that at the bottom is this: “ATTACHMENT: Caging-1.xls”. And that attachment was a list of voters.
In last week’s pathetic farewell, Mr. Griffin averred that the accusation he was involved in caging voters, “Goes back to one guy – whose name I won’t mention.” (FYI, Mr. Griffin: My mother calls me, “Gregory.”)
Yes, I first reported the story for BBC London – back in 2004 which, as Griffin correctly noted, it was ignored by my US press colleagues until, as Tim put it, “I became embroiled in the US Attorney thing.” By ‘the US Attorney thing,’ I assume you are referring to your involvement in firing and smearing honest prosecutors and grabbing one of their salaries for yourself.
You say, Mr. Griffin, that the unmentionable reporter, “Made [it] up out of whole cloth.” You flatter me, Mr. Griffin. We could not possibly be so creative at The Beeb as to construct the thousands of names of voters on your caging lists.
And by the way, we don’t have just one of your “caging” emails, but scores of them.
I want to take this opportunity to thank you for sending them to us – even if that was not your intent. You copied your caging missives to ‘bdoster@georgewbush.org.’ Mr. Doster was Chairman of the Florida Bush campaign – but that address was not his but John Wooden’s pretending to be the Bush campaigners. Wooden then sent your notes to me. 🙂
Rove in Range
By the way, Mr. Griffin, if you want an explanation of ‘caging voters,’ just read an email dated February 5, 2007 by…Tim Griffin.
In that email, Griffin references the Bush campaigns mailing out thousands of letters. The letters returned (‘caged’) as undeliverable were used as the GOP’s supposed evidence that these were “thousands of fraudulent voter registrations.” These voters were subject to challenge. However, these caging lists of “fraudulent” addresses, like the 2000 “felon” lists which in fact contained no felons, contained no fraudulent voters. But that wouldn’t necessarily save them from the massively successful Republican voter-challenge campaign.
During the appearance he made in Arkansas last week, Griffin said he’d never heard of ‘caging.’ “I had to look it up,” he said. Griffin discovered that “caging” is “a direct mail term.”
I don’t doubt Griffin’s ignorance. Griffin’s just a good ol’ boy, a former military lawyer, who wouldn’t know direct mail terminology from a hole in the ground. Until he went to work for the RNC.
So where did Tim get this direct mail term he used in his emails? Well, before Karl Rove signed on with George W. Bush, he owned Karl Rove & Co….a direct mail firm. Rove made millions making up lists of voters, doing more ‘caging’ than a zoo-keeper.
Am I saying caging-expert Rove had something to do with the allegedly illegal caging games of his boy Griffin? Does a bear…?
Mr. Griffin wouldn’t answer BBC’s requests for comment. So I suggested to an Arkansas local, Luther Lowe, a former army reservist and himself a victim of a challenge to his vote, that at the Little Rock send-off for Griffin, he ask the fallen US Attorney about Rove’s involvement in caging. Lowe did so, politely. Griffin wove, ducked, blathered and blubbered. But wouldn’t answer.
Maybe a subpoena would encourage a Griffin response. And a grant of immunity from the Conyers committee. That’s Rove’s nightmare. Because unless Griffin joins Alberto Gonzales in Club Amnesia, Griffin has a lot to tell us about Mr. Rove and targeting Black voters.
Will he? It’s not Conyers’ style to hunt down Rove. The congressman is not, despite what Republicans say, a partisan hit man. He is, however, one tenacious legislator who told me he would like his committee, “to follow where the evidence leads.”
But that’s not necessarily going to happen. Conyers told me he sees the evidence in the prosecutor firing investigation leading to the much bigger, nastier issue of voter suppression – in simpler terms, fixing elections.
Unfortunately, many on his committee from both parties see the hearings as limited to the single issue of the firing of prosecutors. They want to scrutinize the elephant’s trunk but refuse to acknowledge it’s attached to an elephant: election rigging. Racially poisoned, direct-mail driven, computer implemented election rigging.
But Conyers may get there yet, to the issue of elections manipulation. I didn’t get that from the Chairman (too circumspect to let his future intensions slip out). I got it from the Big Bubba. When I ran into Ol’ Silver Eyes himself at an Air America soiree, Bill Clinton (man, he’s gotten thin!) told me, “When we really get going on these prosecutor hearings, when we really dig deep, we’re going to get right to the issue of voter suppression.”
But what do you mean “we,” Bill? Conyers is dean of the Congressional Black Caucus, which has an abiding concern and painful experience with illegal vote suppression of all types: caging, purging, challenging, lynching. But whether Conyers can convince his committee, mostly members of the Congressional White Caucus, to “dig deep” on vote suppression, is an open question.
In the meantime, Conyers has convinced his committee to drop subpoenas on Harriett Miers (the lady tight with Griffin, Rove and, notably, George W. Bush) and Sara Taylor, Rove’s Gal Friday. Conyers, methodically, determinedly, is circling in on Rove, “Bush’s Brain,” a man known to surrender the corpses of his allies in place of his own (eh, Mr. Libby?). No wonder Griffin’s in tears.
So here’s a hanky, Mr. Griffin. This unnamable reporter would rather you save your tears for Randall Prausa. The African-American soldier was on active military duty when he ended up on one of your caging lists, what you term a suspected ‘fraudulent’ voter subject to GOP challenge because he was not home to get his fraudulent, ‘Welcome, voter,’ letter from the GOP.
Can you guess, Mr. Griffin, why Prausa wasn’t at home? Well, unlike Messrs. Rove and Bush, Prausa was serving his country overseas.
And that’s what caging is all about. If you’re Black, you get shipped to Baghdad and you lose your vote. Mission Accomplished, Mr. Griffin. Mission Accomplished, Mr. Rove.
UPDATE: 6/26/07 Video of part of Griffin’s speech is now available at BRAD BLOG.
===
The confidential Griffin e-mail, “Subject: Re: Caging,” is reproduced in Greg Palast’s New York Times bestseller, ARMED MADHOUSE: Sordid Secrets and Strange Tales of a White House Gone Wild. Available at www.GregPalast.com
Also: Catch the film of Randi Rhodes and Greg Palast on “Bush’s and Giuliani’s favorite vultures,” the men with connections to the Bush Administration who have siphoned off the money meant for Africa’s poorest. Video online here.
Wow. The pasty brothers-in-caging are going to get in trouble. Boo-hoo.
Looks to me like a “cagin’ queen.”
Greg, when you said “No wonder Griffin’s in tears” I had a wonderful belly laugh … made my day …
Yep, Griffin has “sacrificial lamb” written all over him … veal anyone … Karl is cooking up a storm …
But Greg! He was crying! Can’t you cut him a break? This should be pursued NO FURTHER…because he wuz cryin’! How dare you???
I’ll quote from your OWN ARTICLE ABOVE, GREG:
Griffin says, in his OWN EMAIL ENTITLED: “CAGING”:
“I didn’t cage votes. I didn’t cage mail,” Griffin asserted.
And the other day, Greg, Tony Snow II told Tony Snow I, both on video, that he never said the DOJ firings were based on performance! Tony Snow II told off Tony Snow I, who said it WAS based on performance! Tony Snow II handed Tony Snow I his ASS on THOSE baseless allegations both on video!
If YOU think an email entitled “Caging” by Tim Griffin…is an email entitled “Caging”, by Tim Griffin, YOU’VE GOT ANOTHER THINK COMING!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Greg Palast has got the swashbuckling journalist thing DOWN!!!
Great! I love it!
It takes that kind of personality to make folks listen in our entertainment-besotted country.
Keep doing whatcha do Greg.
And how ’bout it for Brad, keeping all this in front of us?
I gotta say that every day I check out the mainstream news and then I come here to Bradblog; because this is where I find what is really going on in my country.
Thanks swashbucklers. Hang in there and keep the fire burning.
shw
Now, how ’bout dem lobbyists from Microsoft ?
Up in New York, Then in Sen. Finestains office
Anyone in particular DARE to take them on ?
…and don’t tarnish one of my favorite songs of all time: “Tears Of A Clown” by Smokey Robinson!!!
Greg Palast is the “Captain Jack Sparrow” of journalism!
Thank you for your efforts to discover the truth and to PRESENT IT to the world! Thank God that somebody cares enough to use his talents to help bring this foolishness out into the light of day.
Sadly, even with the truth, those who represent us must act, and they have not shown any proclivity to do so. Maybe some fire under them will help move them. It makes one wonder… with all this hard-core illegal stuff coming to light, why isn’t anyone acting in the interest of principle, ethics, and justice? Maybe their inaction hints at other activities that could stand to be revealed.
If you don’t stop making Tim Griffin cry, I’ll get Tony Snow III after you! You know, Tony Snow III is the guy that said Tony Snow I and Tony Snow II were BOTH full of shit…
Oh waah waah waah, somebody call the waaaaahmbulance! What a bunch of whiney babies these neo-cons have turned out to be!
But I do admit, there is some satisfaction in knowing that the tears were caused because their plans have been wrecked, and they know that the loyal Bushies are on their way out.
Think Gonzales will cry when he says his final goodbye?
Hey, remember the scene at the end of Shawshank Redemption, where the corrupt sadistic guard was said to “Cry like a little girl” when he was led into prison?
Okay, now picture KARL ROVE or GEORGE BUSH in that position.
(And I wish I had a dollar for everyone who just smiled and thought, “Oh HELL yeah” when they read that.)
Conyers: “We’re not done with Mr Griffin yet.”…….I should bloody well hope not!
It’s OK for Republicans to cry.
IOKFRTC
It’s OK for Republicans to go f–k themselves.
IOKFRTGFT
It’s OK for Republicans to drive off
a 1000-foot cliff.
IOKFRTDOTFC
It’s OK for Republicans to drink a quart of cyanide.
IOKFRTDQC
Any ideas for others?
Think Progress and Huffpo are reporting that:
The depth and breadth of this criminal enterprise is beyond belief!
“The depth and breadth of this criminal enterprise is beyond belief!” – DREDD
I realize this is strictly rhetorical, but for others: if you really think it’s beyond belief, you haven’t been paying attention for the last 6 years….
I want to thank Brad, and particularly Greg, for bringing this Republican caging scheme out in the open.
As for Conyers, he talked the big talk when he was in the minority.
You may remember him holding impeachment hearings in the basement but as soon as he was in the majority impeachment was off the table.
Greg, don’t depend on Conyers to get the job done. He won’t. He’s just another political hack.
Troubled
Talk about turning a whiter shade of beyond the pale….
My “Dar” tells me that this guy will end up delivering the Rowe.
That “British – BBC reporter” Greg Palast you would think the guy was an American – he has so much fire in his belly to uncover the criminality of Bu$$hCo.
What is an American investigative reporter doing in London ? Was Greg bushwhacked by the Nazi – Poppy Bu$$$h – and had to move overseas to continue to ply his trade ? Mr. Palast thank you for all your hard work that keeps us informed about what makes the Bu$$h Crime Family tick.
People like you and this blog assure that their days of power over America are numbered. May they get locked up in prison for the disgrace and illegalities they have performed in the name of the United States of America.
Gregory, huh? I’m betting Mr. Griffin calls you something else, though. He just couldn’t say it…
Interesting that the BBC is covering the fact that our elections were rigged, but our press won’t touch it and therefore most Americans have no clue.
Great work, Greg.
Based on the millions of emails destroyed by the Bush administration and the RNC in an attempt to cover-up their widespread illegal activities, the ones you have may be the few that remain, and yet, a prime example of how far into criminality they were willing to go.
Also, a suggestion on where Bush should locate his presidential library: Alcatraz. It’s on an island. Has plenty of jail cells. And with just a little refurbising could both house Bush’s library and all the criminals in the Bush administration, with a sign beside their jail cell doors reading “Don’t feed the monkey.” Bush. Cheney. Rove. Gonzales. Griffin. All of the BushCo crooks. Now, that would be tour I’d definitely sign up for.
I have one thing to say and that is thank God for the British press reporting these hi-jinks. This lousy, Republican lap dog press does nothing in regards to the Bush crime family antics. Thank you for your reporting! Perhaps the British press will be the saviors of the USA, because it certainly will not be the bought off corporation owned American press!
Eventually I hope we will get tired of catching the small fry and go for the big enchiladas…
America is still looking for a real man with cohones to match and a glimpse of effective power to apply this recipe and really get rid of these poor excuses of men !
Dying Regime Part 2 : http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-316522221891913371
Unless something is rapidly done, like a second American revolution, I’m afraid we are all pretty much fucked !
“He who allows oppression, shares the crime.†: Erasmus Darwin
“A cynical, mercenary, demagogic press will produce in time a people as base as itselfâ€: Joseph Pulitzer
†Of all forms of tyranny the least attractive and the most vulgar is the tyranny of mere wealth, the tyranny of plutocracy †: John Pierpont Morgan
†Remember there’s a big difference between kneeling down and bending over.†– Frank Zappa
Big John…Big Bad John….Sic’em..John!!!
Nothing will happen. A criminal traitor organization is in the white house, congress, media.
Who can you think of anyone that can do anything about it. How many criminal acts by them will it take for people to realize our media, politicians are either willing participants (traitors), blackmailed. or simply paid off (owned).
It’s is very serious when we get to the point where not a law enforcer in the entire country will do anything about these criminals.
The shadow government is us. We either stand up in unity and take our country back or we’re finished.
By the way, i don’t think bush has 30% support. After all, why should i beleive media polls.
Lugnut #25 I am sorry to say I agree with all you wrote.
Your goose is cooked. They’ve taken over, it’s officially a dictatorship. I was optimistic for some time but not anymore. When you’ve got some lawyers and Republicans trying to justify Libby’s outing of a CIA agent , it can’t get much worse IMO. Who’s left to judge the crooked attorneys and other crooks? Anyone?
Some of the democrats must have seen this happening many years ago and did NOTHING.