disclose, denny

CQ: Hastert knew of AIPAC infiltration

2009-04-27T20:24:00.000+10:00

Jeff Stein has a new brain-twister of an article in CQ titled 'CIA “Whistleblower” Told Hastert About Suppression of Harman Wiretap.'

The premise of the article is that in 2006, ODNI Negroponte, apparently at the behest of Attorney General Gonzales, blocked DCI Porter Goss from following protocol and informing the House leadership, Hastert and Pelosi, about the Harman wiretaps. In May 2006, Michael Hayden replaced Goss as DCI, but still there was no briefing for Hastert and Pelosi.

In the Fall of 2006, someone from CIA HQ, either under orders or freelancing, 'blew the whistle' to Hastert, 'incensed' that the protocols had been breached, then wrote a letter to Attorney General Gonzales demanding to be briefed. Gonzales ignored the request for weeks, but eventually told Hastert that there was nothing in the files to warrant a briefing.

By this time, the 'whistleblower' was becoming "agitated" about the lack of movement on the case. Fearing that the whistle blower might release the wiretap transcripts to the media - which would expose the operation against AIPAC and "unfairly 'smear' Harman as a foreign agent," (who they knew to be "highly respected") - Hastert's staff told Pelosi's staff about the wiretap on Harman in 'early October' 2006. Pelosi's Chief of Staff “remembers a conversation about it with (Hastert's Chief of Staff ), but that’s all.”

Kudos to Jeff Stein for getting Hastert on the record about this, and continuing to chase the story - and I'm sure that the 'facts' presented here are (mostly) accurate, but the combination of narrative & spin presented here doesn't make much sense. I'm not criticizing Stein here - but there's much more going on here than Stein offers in this piece.

Hastert
For starters, Hastert was most likely not really concerned about separation-of-power arguments, nor about following protocol. His demand for a briefing was much more likely because he desperately wanted to know the status of the 'sister investigation' that caught him on wiretaps in the years leading up to 1999, and probably since then.

Similarly, Hastert's efforts to inform Pelosi were intended to appease the so-called whistleblower from the CIA so that the news of the investigation didn't get exposed in public, because that would be very bad for Hastert and his cronies.

For some reason, Hastert thought that telling Pelosi would assuage the 'agitated' CIA 'whistleblower,' and stop him from going to the media. But as Jeff Stein reported last week, a CIA official independently told Pelosi. "She knew. We made sure she knew," said one of the former officials, chuckling."

(As an aside, from the pieces of Hastert's statements that Stein published, Hastert seems keen to emphasize two points: a) that the wiretap was a "legally authorized wiretap related to an espionage investigation" and b) that he "instructed (his) staff in early October 2006." I'm not exactly sure of the significance of either of those yet, but they are interesting details.)

Goss and the CIA
We also don't know the motivations of the CIA 'whistleblower.' Was Porter Goss really worried about the protocol of informing the House Leadership? Was he really worried that there might be a mole in their midst? Goss himself was Chair of the House Intelligence Committee from 1997 to 2005, so he was well aware that Hastert himself, and others in the House, had been compromised by Israeli and Turkish surrogates.

Perhaps the CIA 'whistleblower' actually was freelancing, and was legitimately concerned about the possibility that Harman would become Chair of House Intelligence. In that case, they only needed to tell Pelosi, but they told Hastert too, under the guise that the protocol dictated that both Hastert and Pelosi should know this information.

Regardless, at the same time that the CIA 'whistleblower' was telling Hastert, he was apparently exposing the issue in the media regardless of Hastert's efforts.

Hastert instructed his "staff in early October 2006 to tell Leader Pelosi" about the wiretaps, but the Time article detailing the essence of the story was published on Oct 20, 2006 anyway.

In a ridiculed op-ed in the New York Times in early 2006 called Loose Lips Sink Spies, Goss wrote:

I take seriously my agency's responsibility to protect our national security. Unauthorized disclosures undermine our efforts and abuse the trust of the people we are sworn to protect. Since becoming director, I have filed criminal reports with the Department of Justice because of such compromises. That department is committed to working with us to investigate these cases aggressively...

Our enemies cannot match the creativity, expertise, technical genius and tradecraft that the C.I.A. brings to bear in this war. Criminal disclosures of national security information, however, can erase much of that advantage. The terrorists gain an edge when they keep their secrets and we don't keep ours.

Your choice, Mr Goss: A) Did you file a criminal report with the DoJ in this case? Or B) Was this an 'authorized disclosure'?

Pelosi
The incurious Nancy Pelosi is apparently befuddled about these events.

In May 2006, according to LA Weekly, Harman "had some major contributors call Pelosi to impress upon her the importance of keeping Jane in place. According to these members, this tactic, too, hasn't endeared Harman to Pelosi."

The Harman thing was obviously on her radar, then - both privately and in the press - at a time when "Pelosi had soured on her California colleague."

At some point, apparently in the early Fall of 2006, the CIA officials unofficially told Pelosi:

that Harman had been overheard on a wiretap agreeing to intercede with Justice Department officials to try to reduce espionage-related charges against two officials of the American Israel Political Affairs Committee, or AIPAC.

However, Pelosi only has some vague recollection of this. Now she says that she can not remember exactly who told her, but "she thought it was the FBI."

But again, according to the 'whistleblowers':

"She knew. We made sure she knew," said one of the former officials, chuckling."

But according to Pelosi, they apparently didn't 'make sure' that she really knew.

And again, in "early October," Hastert briefed Pelosi on the matter, in a highly irregular meeting, that Harman was on the wiretaps. This meeting presumably included the fact that Hastert was 'incensed' at the breach of protocol, that Gonzales was blocking the whole thing, and that CIA officials from headquarters had decided to circumvent their chain of command, yet Pelosi's ~~firewall~~ Chief of Staff "remembers a conversation about it... but that’s all.”

And this was all during the time when there was a large battle taking place - in public and behind closed doors - about who Pelosi would appoint to Chair the House Intelligence Committee (Reyes was appointed in December 2006)

Yet apparently this was all eminently forgettable to Pelosi.

(Compare and contrast Hastert's level of detail with Pelosi's haziness. I suspect that Hastert's apparent clarity of recollection is due to Hastert doing some CYA - both then and now. And I suspect that Pelosi's haziness is due to same.)

Why It Matters
As Phil Giraldi said in his interview with Scott Horton last week, if not for the wiretap:

(Y)ou might have had someone who was - essentially - an Israeli agent either heading the House Permanent Intelligence Committee - or heading the CIA, which was another job that Jane Harman had a shot at.

At his blog on Saturday, Giraldi said:

As a former intelligence officer who has himself recruited agents of influence, I can tell you that Harman was the fruit of a high level Israeli covert action.

Whomever Harman spoke to, she was surely aware that she was in contact with someone empowered to promise her rewards from Israel and the Israeli lobby. The threat to withhold contributions from the Democratic Party if Harman were not to be named chairman is significant, as it indicates that it was all part of a careful plan.

The Israeli on the phone was committing espionage against the United States by trying to influence the actions of a government official and Harman was committing a number of possible crimes by agreeing to cooperate in return for her own personal advancement.

Please take my word for it that the quid pro quo is precisely how an intelligence officer recruits an agent. You ask for a favor and give a favor in return. As both the favor and the reward are illegal and the agreement itself can be used to blackmail the target of the operation, the target henceforth will be obligated to do what the intelligence officer wants or risk exposure.

This whole transaction is particularly important in the context of Jane Harman and what she might have represented to the Israelis. She was chairman presumptive of the House Intelligence Committee and subsequently was spoken of as being on the short list for Obama’s Director of Central Intelligence. If she had obtained either position, which would have happened if the FBI had not been privy to the transaction, she would have had complete access to all of America’s secrets and would have been involved in policy making. She would also have been working for Israel. So I have to ask, why isn’t the MSM interested in aggressively pursuing this story?

Jeff Stein
Again, kudos to Jeff Stein for pushing this story so hard. And congratulations to him for continuing to get people on the record and advancing the story. He has said that he was completely taken by surprise by the traction that this story has received. And at the same time, Giraldi is also correct that the MSM needs to agressively push it further.

Update:
Giraldi has a new article. Read the whole thing, but this excerpt was maybe the juiciest:

"Once you are on the hook in an intelligence relationship, there is no getting off it. Had Harman done a favor for the Israelis and been rewarded in return, it would have been a skeleton in her closet forever. The Israelis might also have taped the incriminating conversations, presumably unaware that the FBI was also on the line. The Israelis would surely remind her of her crime whenever they need a favor, and she would be forced to pay the piper whenever called upon. What could have been better for Israel than owning the director of central intelligence or the head of the House Intelligence Committee? What could have been worse for the United States?"

Obama: Armenian genocide

2009-04-27T20:23:00.000+10:00

McClatchy:

Obama marks Armenian tragedy but doesn't say 'genocide'

WASHINGTON — President Barack Obama on Friday broke a campaign pledge but mollified Turkey by formally remembering the mass killings of Armenians without using the diplomatically loaded term "genocide."
[...]
Presidents George W. Bush and George H.W. Bush broke similar pledges. President Bill Clinton, too, leaned on congressional leaders not to pass genocide commemoration measures.

In 2000, only minutes before debate was set to start in the House of Representatives, then-House Speaker Dennis Hastert yielded to Clinton's request not to bring the genocide resolution, authored by Radanovich, up for a vote.

Hastert is now a lobbyist with the firm Dickstein Shapiro, one of a number that Turkey hired to press its cause on Capitol Hill. Turkey pays $35,000 a month for help from Hastert and his team, Justice Department foreign-agent filings show. Turkey is paying former House Minority Leader Richard Gephardt's firm, DLA Piper, $100,000 a month, filings have shown.

For the record, Gephardt is another first-I-was-against-it genocide denier too.

Poltico is running this youtube of Samantha Powers today

Kudos to Jonathon Schwarz who ran this six weeks ago.

BTW: I knew that Marc Grossman, William Cohen and Joe Ralston had a "strategic alliance" with DLA Piper via the Cohen Group, but I (think I) only recently learned that all three are actually "Senior Advisers" to DLA Piper directly.

BTW2: Note in the following youtube how Hastert's 'official spokesman' says "The Speaker does not have any connections to American-Turkish interests." That statement is no longer operative.

Also interesting is the spokesperson's statement/rebuttal that 'the reporter does not have a transcript of any wiretap conversations that we know of' - which is reminiscent of the current outbreak of the Harman/AIPAC outrage.

* Update: In a post worth reading (as usual) , Mizgin says:

"If any of these Deep Staters had even the slightest nano-particle of honor, they'd blow their own brains out.

I'm just saying."

For what it is worth, I'd consider any reports of suicide as suspicious. I think we are both on the same page.

Hastert out.

2007-11-16T10:17:00.000+11:00

CNN:

"Former House Speaker Dennis Hastert bid his colleagues farewell in a final speech Thursday, expressing worry about the "breakdown of civility" in politics.

Hastert, 65, became the longest-serving Republican speaker of the House in history after taking the post in January 1999. The Illinois lawmaker stepped down as the top House Republican leader after Democrats won a majority in the 2006 midterm elections, ending 12 years of GOP control.

During his farewell address, the former high school history teacher and wrestling coach offered one bit of analysis about his tenure in Congress. "I continue to worry about the breakdown of civility in our political discourse," Hastert said. "I tried my best, but I wish I had been more successful."

Although he did not announce the date of his House departure, an aide to Hastert says the former speaker will retire by the end of the year.

Hastert, who forged a reputation for his ability to form compromises, said lawmakers "have a responsibility to be civil, open-minded and fair -- to listen to one another and work in good faith to find solutions to the challenges facing our nation."

Lawmakers have a responsibility not to take bribes from foreign interests.

Hastert Rules Out Another Run

2007-08-15T14:23:00.000+10:00

From the Washington Post:

"Rep. J. Dennis Hastert (Ill.), who last year became the longest-serving Republican speaker of the House, will announce Friday that he will not seek reelection, Republican House aides said yesterday.

GOP aides say that Hastert is likely to serve out the rest of his term, but that he has been considering resigning from the House this year. If he did, Hastert would trigger a special election that could give an indication of whether Democrats are continuing their political surge or whether Republicans have stanched the bleeding in GOP-leaning districts."

No mention on whether he is about to be indicted.

Hastert: I hate competition!

2007-05-06T19:26:00.000+10:00

Hysterical. I missed this LTE from Hastert to the Chig Sun Times, April 26 (in full):

At a time when recent trends in youth drug use have shown a significant downturn, I was disturbed by your recent editorial "Legalize medical marijuana" in support of state legislation to permit the growth of marijuana for medical purposes.

As a former schoolteacher and coach and father of two, I believe in giving our kids a drug-free future. Illegal drugs are responsible for the loss of 17,000 American lives annually, and marijuana is by far the most used and abused of these drugs. More kids use marijuana than cocaine, heroin, ecstasy and all other illicit drugs combined. Legislation that allows, supports or recognizes marijuana as a medicine is irresponsible, shortsighted and sends the wrong message to our youth.

There is absolutely no sound scientific evidence that marijuana has any medicinal value. The Food and Drug Administration is the only agency that can designate a substance as a medicine and to date has not done so. Marijuana continues to be a Schedule I Controlled Substance, and its use under federal law, for any reason, is a crime.

It is clear that if this bill becomes law, it would undermine the medical integrity and safeguards established by the federal drug approval process, compromise law enforcement efforts to combat drug trafficking, and endanger public health and safety. Legalization of any kind will also have unintended consequences: each person injured in driving and work-related accidents committed by those under the influence, and unborn babies harmed by abusing mothers.

I urge the General Assembly to think twice about supporting legislation that softens the stance that marijuana is dangerous, addictive and illegal. I would hope that everyone could agree that there is no legitimate place in our society for marijuana use.

For fisking of the letter, see DrugWarRant @ Salon.

Remember, Daniel Ellsberg:

"Sibel says that suitcases of cash have been delivered to the Speaker of the House, Dennis Hastert, at his home, near Chicago, from Turkish sources, knowing that a lot of that is drug money.

Now these are pretty inflammatory allegations, let's say, and it's note-worthy that they haven't even been picked up by the mainstream press. The Vanity Fair article made that plain, though not in as much detail as the antiwar.com interviews - but not one major newspaper I don't think has picked up her allegations against Hastert which are very specific, and one would think very important."

Hastert: Most Corrupt

2006-12-23T08:11:00.000+11:00

* RawStory:

"The advocacy group Judicial Watch released a list today of “Washington's 'Ten Most Corrupt Politicians' for 2006.” In a final swipe at Republican leadership in the last Congress, the list, as acquired by RAW STORY, singles out more Republicans than Democrats.

Judicial Watch describes itself as "a conservative, non-partisan educational foundation, [that] promotes transparency, accountability and integrity in government, politics and the law."

This year, according to the group, six of the most corrupt Washington politicians were Republicans whose names are often identified with the scandals widely believed to have contributed to the Democratic victory in the November midterms: Lobbyist Jack Abramoff, Rep. Randy "Duke" Cunningham (R-CA), Rep. Tom Delay (R-TX), Rep. Mark Foley (R-FL), Rep. Denny Hastert (R-IL), and Rep. Bob Ney (R-OH)."

Hastert is the only one who still has a job, so far.

URGING INVESTIGATION INTO SPEAKER HASTERT’S LAND DEAL

2006-11-29T01:42:00.000+11:00

CREW

CREW SENDS LETTER TO DOJ URGING INVESTIGATION INTO SPEAKER HASTERT’S LAND DEAL

CREW Questions Hastert Earmark – Demands Reform

Washington, DC – Earlier today, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) asked the Department of Justice (DOJ) to investigate whether Speaker Dennis Hastert (R-IL) violated the law by inserting an earmark into the 2005 Highway Bill that earned him a 500% profit on a lucrative land deal.

As reported in the Chicago Tribune, in August 2002, Speaker Hastert purchased 179 acres of land, inaccessible by road, in Kendall County, Illinois for $925,000, or $5,200 per acre. Then, in February 2004, Speaker Hastert formed a real estate trust with two other land buyers and purchased 69 acres of land adjacent to the original parcel at a cost of $1,033,000, or $15,000 per acre. The trust’s 69 acres was then joined with 69 acres of Speaker Hastert’s land.

The land purchased by the trust was more valuable than Speaker Hastert’s property because it was accessible by road.

In the summer of 2005, the Federal Highway Bill was enacted containing a $207 million earmark inserted by Rep. Hastert for construction of the Prairie Parkway. While the earmark was sufficient only to build about one-third of the entire 36 mile parkway, the language of the legislation mandated that construction take place on the portion of the parkway nearest to Speaker Hastert’s property.

As reported in The New Republic, four months after the bill was signed into law, the trust’s 138 acres was sold to a developer for $4,989,000 or $36,152 an acre. The partners apportioned the proceeds of the sale according to the acreage each had contributed. Thus, Speaker Hastert was credited with 62% ownership on the supposition that his $5,200 per acre land was equal in value to the partnership’s $15,000 per acre land with the result that he received $3,118,000 of the proceeds. While Rep. Hastert’s partners each made a 144% profit on their investment, Speaker Hastert’s profit was 500% of his original investment.

Melanie Sloan, CREW’s executive director, stated, “Speaker Hastert’s use of the earmarking process to increase his own property value is an egregious abuse of his legislative authority. The Department of Justice should immediately investigate this sweetheart deal.”

Sloan continued, “Congressional leaders have promised that the first order of business in January will be to enact ethics legislation. Any reform package must include a provision prohibiting members from inserting earmarks for their own personal financial benefit.”

The request for investigation and supporting documents are available at CREW’s website.

Speaker Hastert was included in the watch list of CREW's September 2006 report, "Beyond DeLay: The 20 most corrupt members of Congress (and five to watch)."

***

Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) is a non-profit legal watchdog group dedicated to holding public officials accountable for their actions.

Hastert for UN?

2006-11-21T20:29:00.000+11:00

Foreign Policy:

The List: Who Will Replace John Bolton?

John Bolton is the most controversial U.S. ambassador to the United Nations in history. But, to the delight of his critics, his temporary appointment is nearing expiration. With congressional Democrats in charge, President Bush won’t have the votes to send Bolton back to New York. Or will he? This week’s FP List considers the contenders for Bolton’s spot.
[snip]
The Longshot

Dennis Hastert, Republican congressman from Illinois

Why he’ll get the post: The outgoing Speaker of the House is already rumored to be at the top of Bush’s list to become the next ambassador to Japan. Hastert has said publicly that the 2007–2008 term will be his last, and there’s a chance the president will encourage him to step down early in order to go to Turtle Bay instead of Tokyo. That way, Bush can stick it to the Democrats who scuttled the Bolton nomination by appointing someone who equally raises partisan hackles.

Why he won’t: Hastert is politically polarizing. Critics call him a defender of congressional corruption. He was recently called out for his handling of the Mark Foley sex scandal and was a little too close for comfort to Jack Abramoff. Plus, his foreign-policy experience is thin. He briefly served on the House subcommittee tasked with national security, hardly a stand-out resume for the country’s top diplomat.

Please, please, please let Hastert be nominated, and soon.

Hastert & Abramoff: the payoff

2006-11-05T12:32:00.000+11:00

* n0madic has the details of Hastert's double dealing re indian casions. i hadn't ever really appreciated why Hastert was the number one beneficiary of Abramoff's cash. great work n0madic. more on hastert at The Real Denny.

Ellsberg: Hastert got suitcases of Al Qaeda heroin cash, should be in jail

2006-10-25T09:46:00.000+10:00

Over at DU, Randy mentioned an ' untranscribed interview between Ellsberg and Kris Welch of KPFA from Sept. '05'' - I actually hadn't heard it before (dammit!) - so I found it, and it is no longer 'untranscribed' (at least the Sibel related bits.)

Daniel Ellsberg said that Dennis Hastert received suitcases of cash at his home from Turkish heroin money and that Hastert should be in jail, along with his friends.

He also says that people in the State Department, and in nuclear labs, are paid in 'cold cash' for secrets that are sold on the nuclear black market.

He also says that a Dem Congress "could be pressed into holding genuine investigations of the torture, of the corruption, getting rid of Hastert, and starting impeachment proceedings."

All errors are mine, some snippage, usual disclaimers, etc.

---------------------------------

Kris Welch: I know you just met with Sibel Edmonds - what's the key thing about Sibel Edmonds' case?

Daniel Ellsberg: For several years, Sibel has been really hoping to get her case into a court, or into a hearing room in Congress. That's pretty well impossible with Republicans in charge of hearings - they won't hold any. She has told her story on a classified basis to several congressional venues, plus the 911 Commission - none of whom have done anything with it so far - it's too hot for them, essentially. You get a pretty good clue as to why the congressional people haven't pressed it in the article about her in the current Vanity Fair issue. Sibel is not yet in a position to tell all, but has been telling more and more.

Let me suggest two interviews with her that have come out since the VF article that go a good deal further than VF chose to print. VF did print ten pages and they got a lot but there was a lot that the reporter had, David Rose, that didn't get into the article, and a lot of that is in these two other interviews - both at antiwar.com, Chris Deliso and Scott Horton. In those interviews she finally reveals more of what she wished that VF had put out. Namely, if I can summarize it quickly, Al Qaeda, she's been saying to congress, according to these interviews, is financed 95% by drug money - drug traffic to which the US government shows a blind eye, has been ignoring, because it very heavily involves allies and assets of ours - such as Turkey, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Pakistan, Afghanistan - all the 'Stans - in a drug traffic where the opium originates in Afghanistan, is processed in Turkey, and delivered to Europe where it furnishes 96% of Europe's heroin, by Albanians, either in Albania or Kosovo - Albanian Muslims in Kosovo - basically the KLA, the Kosovo Liberation Army which we backed heavily in that episode at the end of the century.

It was known at the time that the KLA consisted largely of drug-dealers, and they still do. They're dominating the politics, pretty much, of Kosovo right now. Now, all of these people are, for various reasons, allies, or clients, of the US - and the fact that they get a large amount of their income from the heroin trade is something the US just regards as the price of doing business with them. That means that not only is the heroin coming into our markets where it furnishes, according to Sibel based on her FBI experience, some 14% of our heroin - up from 4% before the invasion of Afghanistan.

The major effect of that is that terrorist gangs are taking a cut of this, including Al Qaeda, which essentially taxes this traffic as it goes through the various lands where each 'band' pays a percentage as they hand it off. In other words, the US is in effect, endorsing - well, 'endorsing' is too strong a word - 'permitting', definitely permitting, or 'not acting against,' a heroin trade - which not only corrupts our cities and our city politics, AND our congress, as Sibel makes very specific - but is financing the terrorist organization that constitutes a genuine threat to us. And this seems to be a fact that is accepted by our top leaders, according to Sibel, for various geopolitical reasons, and for corrupt reasons as well. Sometimes things are simpler than they might appear - and they involve envelopes of cash. Sibel says that suitcases of cash have been delivered to the Speaker of the House, Dennis Hastert, at his home, near Chicago, from Turkish sources, knowing that a lot of that is drug money.

Now these are pretty inflammatory allegations, let's say, and it's note-worthy that they haven't even been picked up by the mainstream press. The Vanity Fair article made that plain, though not in as much detail as the antiwar.com interviews - but not one major newspaper I don't think has picked up her allegations against Hastert which are very specific, and one would think very important.

Kris Welch: Dennis Hastert's name is mentioned in the Vanity Fair article issue...

Daniel Ellsberg: Yes - but in another connection - namely that he sold a legislative move of removing from a vote a resolution that he had earlier backed, raising the price, of course, of removing it - condemning Turkish genocide of Armenians.

And for the first time, a legislative leader (Hastert) had backed such a resolution which meant that it went through the committee for the first time, and was headed for a vote - in order to help a Republican in Glendale, near Los Angeles, James Rogan, who had a large Armenian constituency. So all things were moving ahead, at last, after many years of them trying to do this, and at the last moment, Hastert removed it from the vote, removed it from the calendar - and according to the information claimed by Sibel, Turkish sources were claiming to have achieved this for a price of half a million dollars - paid to Hastert. Again, this would seem a story that... certainly the Armenians are picking it up, as they should.

Kris Welch: Well, and the Turks in Turkey are now attacking Sibel Edmonds

Daniel Ellsberg: Sibel is an 'enemy of Turkey' - she was a Turkish citizen, now an American, but she has some family in Turkey who are now threatened by this exposure. Her picture was on the front-page of every Turkish newspaper - denouncing her as a 'whore,' as a 'traitor' and a turncoat of various kinds and she's had many threatening letters, including death threats. So it's a very serious situation for her, and the contrast between the news in Turkey, and the silence in America about allegations about Dennis Hastert, the Speaker of the House, is quite a contrast.

Kris Welch: And, of course, she complains in the antiwar.com interviews that the VF article chose to focus on this Armenian story - which is not the story - and that's her problem. She says when the media does do anything about her story, they focus on 'oh - here's this poor whistleblower' instead of focusing on what the facts of her whistleblowing might be.

Daniel Ellsberg: Well, I think it's true that - as my friend and mentor Peter Dale Scott has said to me over the last 20 years or more - the American media maintain an almost unbroken silence on the connection between US policy and the drug trade, specifically the CIA and the drug trade. The silence is broken, typically, only to dismiss it, only to say 'No - there's nothing to this.' The 911 Commission, for instance, as Peter pointed out to me, went out of it's way simply to say that there was no connection between 911 and drug connections at all. Now, according to Sibel, that's absolutely wrong - that the connections through Turkey, in various ways, are very important.

Kris Welch: OK - and Sibel got this information because she applied for this after 911, wanting to do something real for her American patriotism - this is what she says she was motivated by...

Daniel Ellsberg: She is very patriotic...

Kris Welch: And these wiretaps that she translated went back to 1997... so she heard all these conversations, people bragging that they'd given this money

Daniel Ellsberg: Yes - these were people from the American Turkish Council - which is a quote 'lobbying group' - or as she has described it up till now, as a 'semi-legitimate organization'

Kris Welch: And Brent Scowcroft is on the board of directors?

Daniel Ellsberg: Yes. Brent Scowcroft is the head of board of directors - every member of the military industrial complex - Lockheed, Raytheon - everybody who does business with Turkey is a member of this group. That doesn't necessarily mean that they know... well, there's a great deal of arms trading...

Kris Welch: and that's where a lot of this money comes from too..

Daniel Ellsberg: and a lot of that is as legitimate as arms trading ever is - as merchants of death - but it's a legal trade, perhaps unfortunately - but aside from that, there's a great deal of dealing of information in illicit arms trades including, she says, nuclear information, from our nuclear weapons labs - for which cold cash is paid - to people in the labs, and to people, she says, to people in the State Department - who have essentially given 'OKs' for various trades, or have turned a blind eye - deliberately - to it. So there are messages in these wiretaps about people getting thousands of dollars - this is small potatoes - but in the State Department they come cheap apparently!

Kris Welch: As Sibel says, the State Department is the most corrupt element of our government

Daniel Ellsberg: Yes - and that's an amazing statement (laughs) when you consider the competition. I myself was amazed to hear that, and I told her that, because my sense of foreign service officers, and the State Department in general, was that they had many flaws, and many limitations, but I would have said that corruption was not part of that...

Kris Welch: And relatively speaking, they're "the good guys" with the recent foreign policy

Daniel Ellsberg: Well, it depends who's in charge. Under Powell, to a degree, they were sidelined, they had essentially no influence. But when they're 'good'...

Kris Welch: ...They're impotent

Daniel Ellsberg: Good children are meant to be seen not heard!

But Sibel said, very flatly, and she's extremely credible to me, she said 'That's just flatly wrong. People in the State Department take cash.' Now, since she's a person who has been checked out a good deal by some of the senators she's talked to - Senator Leahy, Senator Grassley, Republican, they have always said, repeatedly, that she's extremely credible. The FBI agents we've talked to have, in every respect that was raised, have confirmed her story - that she's a very credible witness. Representative Waxman, to whose staff she's spoken has said the same. So she is very credible. That's a fact. So when she says things like this, they do deserve to get picked up and followed up, and they are not being.

Kris Welch: Well, and her credibility might have something to do with the fact that she has been completely silenced, she says the most gagged person in history, by this very little used States Secrets privilege

[SNIP - for 20 minutes Ellsberg discusses martial law & the shredding of the constitution, 'the next 911, the Reichstag fire')

Daniel Ellsberg: It's very important to get the Republicans out before the next 911 - there's one process for doing that. I think the stuff that Sibel Edmonds is talking about - it's absolutely appropriate to get rid of Dennis Hastert, the Speaker of the House and put him in jail, actually, and to lose him his job, and some other people.

If people will press their congress representatives - and I suppose Armenian people are already doing this, because they were directly stabbed by Hastert on this point - but the whole country, of course, needs to be concerned about Dennis Hastert. I will believe Sibel on this - that he is guilty - well, let me put it this way, he's innocent till proven guilty. I believe he has earned the right to a fair trial - probably several fair trials! And I hope he really gets them - along with Rove - he's another person who seems to have earned the right to a fair trial, as have Scooter Libby and others.

That will hamstring the administration, but not get us out of Iraq. I would hope that the scandal the Republicans have earned in this, if it can be pursued, would get us what otherwise seemed impossible, a Democratic congress, a Democratic House which can impeach. The only way to impeach Bush is to get a Democratic House in 2006 - and just putting Democrats alone in, of course, doesn't get us out of Iraq. Putting John Kerry in, I don't think, would have got us out of Iraq. We definitely need a new bunch of Democrats in there - and new leaders. I'm very pleased to see Feingold, the one senator who had the guts to vote against the PATRIOT Act - just as Barbara Lee was the one person in congress to vote against the original delegation of power to the president after 911. One person in each case, like Cindy Sheehan, one person can start something - Feingold is my candidate right now to lead on this. But that's looking forward to 2008.

In 2006, we really do need to get Democrats because venal, and cowardly, and lazy, as they may be, they are people who could be pressed into holding genuine investigations of the torture, of the corruption, getting rid of Hastert, and starting impeachment proceedings. I think they're partisan enough to follow the voters and do what the voters want - and voters would say either 'Fire these guys, like Hastert, and the President, or we fire you' - and that, as they say on Capitol Hill, they may not see the light, but they'll feel the heat.
---------------------------------

2006-10-13T15:51:00.000+10:00

Foley scandal a boon for Hastert’s opponent

2006-10-11T10:08:00.000+10:00

* The Hill:

"Foley scandal a boon for Hastert’s opponent

The scandal involving former Rep. Mark Foley (R-Fla.) has trickled down to help the longest of long shots, including Speaker Dennis Hastert’s (R-Ill.) opponent.

In the days since Foley resigned, Democrat John Laesch raked in $40,000 from online contributions. He has had to reorder yard signs and install new phone lines in his campaign headquarters in Yorkville, Ill.

"Over the weekend, there were 20 to 30 people in the office that I’d never seen before," Laesch told The Hill. "People were coming in with a $100 check and asking for a yard sign."

The new interest in Laesch’s quixotic campaign underscores the impact the Foley scandal has had. Still, Hastert has never had a close race since winning with 52 percent of the vote in 1986. Since then he has always won with more than 64 percent of the vote in a district that President Bush won in 2000 and 2004 with 55 percent of the vote. "

Help John Laesch

Dennis Hastert is a bumbling half-wit

2006-10-11T09:42:00.000+10:00

* TNR:

"Can there be any doubting the conspiracy at the heart of the Mark Foley scandal? For years, much of official Washington has harbored a shameful secret about a certain congressman. Republicans looked the other way because they worried about their fragile majority, while the media played the role of willing enabler. Most knew the truth would come out eventually, but few had the guts to face it.

I refer here, of course, to the fact that Dennis Hastert is a bumbling half-wit--something that became apparent to the world last week but had been common knowledge in Washington for almost a decade. It was roughly eight years ago, after all, that Tom DeLay installed Hastert as his front-man, knowing full well that Hastert was no more capable of being speaker than the average sheepdog, to which he bears a remarkable resemblance. (Just after Hastert accepted the speaker's gig, a reporter asked him how he felt. Hastert's one-word response: "Scared.") But, rather than call DeLay on this lapse in judgment, House Republicans joined forces with the press to perpetrate an elaborate cover-up.

Reading back over the last several years of Hastert coverage, one is astonished by the lengths to which reporters go to avoid outing him as a guileless nincompoop. One common approach--frequently deployed in stories about dumb-but-powerful politicians--is to interpret Hastert's apparent lack of intelligence as evidence of his enigmatic character, as though Hastert were a walking riddle with jowls and a Midwestern accent."

Hastert's dodgy real estate, Turkish bribes. Worse than FoleyGate

2006-10-07T17:10:00.000+10:00

* Norm Ornstein at TNR:

"Denny Hastert's dodgy real estate deals. Worse than FoleyGate

Until last week, the broad image of House Speaker Dennis Hastert was of an affable, even grandfatherly figure. But Hastert's response--or lack thereof--to the Mark Foley scandal has suddenly put him in the hot seat, requiring even President Bush to defend him. The Speaker's reputation has taken a serious hit. Still, the image remains of an amiable guy, whose sins are more of sloth than malevolence.

Speaker Hastert, however, is no passive figure. When it comes to running the House, Hastert has, in fact, been an aggressive partisan. Recall, for instance, that he personally fired the chairman and two Republican members from the House Ethics Committee after they had the effrontery to rebuke Tom DeLay for misconduct. And when it comes to real estate, he has been a downright wheeler-dealer. Virtually overnight, the speaker's net worth went from approximately $300,000 to at least $6.2 million--thanks, in no small part, to an earmark he authored.

Hastert's real estate transactions have been reported extensively in the Chicago press and picked apart in a June report issued by the Sunlight Foundation. But they have been largely ignored in the national media. A careful examination of the facts in the case, however, leads to the conclusion that there are compelling reasons beyond the Foley case to call for the speaker's resignation from the post.
[]
Hastert has responded forcefully to the allegations of venality. "I owned land, and I sold it, like millions of people do every day." The speaker's office has painted a portrait of a guy who just happened to be driving past a house he liked; he bought it and subsequently, in a straightforward transaction, sold some of the land that came with it for a profit.

The speaker hasn't exactly helped his case with his accounts of the transaction. His office has, for instance, described the Prairie Parkway as located over five miles from his property. But U.S. Geological Survey aerial photographs clearly show it to be about four miles closer than that.

We cannot say at this juncture whether the actions taken by the speaker are illegal. We can say that they do not meet the standards we expect--or should expect--from a member of Congress. And they certainly do not meet the standards we expect from the speaker of the House."

* Lukery:

"Denny Hastert's Turkish bribes. Worse than FoleyGate
[]
In David Rose's blockbuster article in Vanity Fair, there are three separate bribery claims:

a) Hastert received tens of thousands of dollars in illegal campaign contributions

b) Hastert received tens of thousands of dollars in surreptitious payments in exchange for political favors and information. These bribes were delivered in cash in suitcases. We don't know specifically what these payments were for.

c) Hastert is believed to have accepted another $500,000. The details are a little murky, but it has been reported that this payment was in return for pulling a Congressional resolution on the Armenian genocide.

Got that? At least three different bribes that we know about."

why Hastert should be in jail

2006-10-06T13:23:00.000+10:00

I've put together a new post here on our current knowledge of why Hastert should be in jail (not including covering up the sex crimes of his friends)

Kill The Messenger: The Sibel Edmonds Story

2006-10-06T13:01:00.000+10:00

For all the news about the new film about Sibel Edmonds, see Sibel's site here including the trailer, or the blog for the movie here.

Resign, Denny.

2006-10-02T08:53:00.000+10:00

this is from John Laesch at DailyKos

Response to Hastert/Foley Pagegate Scandal
by John Laesch
Sat Sep 30, 2006 at 06:27:57 PM PDT
This is John Laesch, the Democratic candidate running against Dennis Hastert.
Our campaign office reports that the phone has not stopped ringing all day and the Inbox on our e-mail account is exploding.
We know that Dennis Hastert has been the "cover-up" guy for everything that is wrong in Washington. Hastert has been cleaning up messes all the way from this Wednesday's "get out of jail free" detainee bill that he gave to George Bush to gutting house ethics rules after Tom DeLay was indicted.
I am currently working with Danny Stover who is running against Shimkus in Illinois' 19th District to hold a near-term press conference. If you want to help Danny Stover get a $400 plane ticket to Chicago, you can donate here
It is time for both of these gentlemen to do the right thing for America and resign.
This morning we held a press conference in St. Charles, IL and I basically said that it is time for Dennis Hastert to resign. If he does not do the honorable thing then voters should fire him on Nov. 7th.
I started my speech with some of Hastert's own words from a 1998 press conference.

"Even though our children may be at home with the doors locked,"
"that doesn't mean that they are safe. We must continue to be proactive in warding off pedophiles and other creeps who want to take advantage of our children...It's not infringing on liberties, it's about protecting our kids."
Apparently proactive in Washington means waiting 11 months...
Exactly one month ago today Dennis Hastert made the front page of the Kane County Chronicle, a local paper, that covered Dennis Hastert's town hall forum on Internet safety.
Protecting children is OK for Dennis Hastert when it is earning him votes, but he doesn't give a damn when it is a page working on Capital Hill.
The fact that Hastert tried to cover this up is reason enough for him to resign.
The fact that Hastert is playing dumb means that he does not plan to go quietly into the night.
I am going to be reading all of the posts from Kossacks tonight and I cannot sit around too much longer. Please continue to offer advice and vote in our poll.
Update: Hastert trying to change the subject CNN is now reporting that House Leaders want criminal charges on Foley. They want to shift all the blame to Foley and away from themselves. According to CNN:
"The improper communications between Congressman Mark Foley and former House congressional pages is unacceptable and abhorrent. It is an obscene breach of trust," read the statement issued by Majority Leader John Boehner of Ohio, House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert of Illinois, and Majority Whip Roy Blunt of Missouri.

Earlier Saturday, the chairman of the House Page Board said Foley "was not honest about his conduct," referring to e-mail exchanges that a former page has called "sick, sick, sick."
Ummmm that is not going to happen. It sure didn't take long to realize that they are all going down for this.

Sincerely,
John Laesch
Democratic candidate for U.S. Congress

2006-07-15T13:56:00.000+10:00

via desi

disclose, denny

2006-07-08T19:39:00.000+10:00

(scroll down for new posts - and note that this post has been "forward-dated" so that it stays on top - it was actually posted in feb 05 )

In the September 2005 Issue of Vanity Fair, David Rose wrote an article called An Inconvenient Patriot which documented some of the details about Sibel Edmonds' story.

In the article, Rose describes an FBI counter-intelligence operation investigating attempts to bribe elected members of Congress in DC and Chicago dating back to 1997. An FBI Counterintelligence official who worked on this particular case noted that according to "some of the wiretaps, the F.B.I.’s targets had arranged for tens of thousands of dollars to be paid to Hastert’s campaign funds in small checks."

These efforts appear designed to slip under the Federal Election Commission regulations which stipulate that only donations greater than $200 are required to be itemized in public filings.

Rose's article suggests that these payments/bribes were made by certain Turkish lobbying groups as the price for Hastert's decision to torpedo a proposed congressional resolution which would recognize the Armenian genocide.

Despite many attempts by Vanity Fair, Hastert declined to provide any information refuting the claims, and in the six months since then, his office has simply dismissed the claims as 'ridiculous' - until now. In the most recent edition, Vanity Fair published a letter from Hastert's lawyer Randy Evans which purports to debunk some of the claims in Rose's article - but the letter is transparently disingenuous to anyone remotely familiar with the details. (see here for Evans' letter, and responses from both David Rose and Sibel Edmonds)

It isn't obvious why Hastert decided to respond to these charges in VF now, six months after Rose's article, but it is very clear that the response is unsatisfactory.

Dennis Hastert is two heartbeats, and two impeachment motions, away from the presidency. It's up to him to prove that he is worthy of the position - a good starting point would be the debunking of these very serious allegations that he is in the pocket of foreign interest groups.

Hastert must come clean now and release the detail of all of his campaign contribution data, for all of his PACs and any other fund-raising vehicles.

(I'm in the process of developing some campaign ideas and some action-items and should have more in the next week)

(cross-posted at wotisitgood4)

I'll keep this post on top - so scroll down for new posts

Hastert: Republican Culture of Corruption

2006-07-04T11:17:00.000+10:00

howie klein at FDL:

Hastert, of course, loudly denies any and all wrongdoing– he is a Republican politician and "deny, deny, deny" is what they teach them in their version of ethics school– and he is demanding retractions and apologies and everything else that Cunningham said and did (before he broke down and weeped and begged for mercy and wore a wire to help the Feds rat out his crooked associates).

Hastert, of course, has a long history of shady dealings and making vast sums of money through bribes and kickbacks. VANITY FAIR exposed him last year after he took a $500,000 bribe from Turkish agents to prevent the adoption of bipartisan legislation recognizing the Armenian holocaust. With Tom DeLay forced to resign in disgrace, and getting his affairs in order before his inevitable prison sentence (allegedly), Hastert has become the titular head of the Republican Culture of Corruption. And what everyone in DC and back home in Illinois’ 14th CD is wondering is, can he be swept out of office by the son of a preacher man?

The high school ex-wrestling coach-turned-multimillionaire (feeding, greedily, at the public trough for over 20 years), represents a north-central district due west of Chicago stretching nearly to Iowa. (Actually, Hastert represents multi-national corporations and the lobbyists who whore for them but his power derives from his political base in IL-14.) Electorally, Hastert has run far ahead of the GOP ticket, although his vote percentage slipped significantly in the last two cycles (from 74% to 69%) In 2004 Hastert spent $5 million on his campaign while his unknown opponent spent $18,028. Caught up in a more public corruption scandal than in the past– and facing a far more formidable opponent– Hastert is in for the battle of his political life this November.

It is rare– very rare– for constituents to defeat someone whose national power has brought the district so much pork and until 1994, when Republicans started a whispering campaign falsely accusing Speaker Tom Foley of being gay, no Speaker had been defeated for re-election since the Civil War!

If John Laesch doesn’t succeed in dislodging Hastert it won’t be through lack of the personal qualities that define worthy leadership. And it won’t be through lack of motivation. John’s younger brother, Sgt. Pete Laesch, currently stationed in Iraq, asked John to run against the gargantuan rubber stamp who represents their district in Congress.
John is 32 years old and grew up in West Africa where his missionary parents were stationed. They moved to a farm in Newark, Illinois when John was 12. He enlisted in the Navy when he was 21 and served as an intelligence analyst in Bahrain, monitoring terrorist activity and analyzing foreign political and military structures, winning numerous citations and meritoriously rising 5 ranks within 3 years.
[]
John already won his primary and now Democrats are united behind his race to replace an out-of-touch, entrenched, corrupt Speaker of the House with a fresh, energetic young man with integrity, strength and vision. John needs help to get out his message. I can’t imagine a candidate as forthright and independent as John is going to get sufficient help from Rahm Emanuel’s DCCC. It’s up to us.

Sibel's Whistleblowers’ Dirty Dozen

2006-07-01T14:06:00.000+10:00

from sibel

National Security Whistleblowers Coalition

www.nswbc.org

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE- June 29, 2006

Contact: Sibel Edmonds, National Security Whistleblowers Coalition, sedmonds@nswbc.org

Whistleblowers Hold House & Senate Members Responsible

Whistleblowers’ Dirty Dozen

The following members of Congress, by their action or inaction, have stood against real investigations, hearings, and legislation dealing with government whistleblowers who have exposed waste, fraud, abuse, and or criminal activities within government agencies.

These representatives of the People are not only standing against whistleblowers, but against the public’s right to know, effective oversight, accountability, and ultimately against the democratic processes that underpin our society. (To see the pdf list click here).

We, the National Security Whistleblowers Coalition, together with whistleblower members of our partner coalitions, consider it our duty to advise Americans of these representatives’ collusion with government and private interests to the detriment of the People.

Our position is based on our concern for our nation’s security, for accountable government, and the People’s Right to Know what their representatives and government are doing in their name, all of which depend on vigorous congressional oversight.

Our stand is not based on any political ideology or party – our coalition members include Republicans, Democrats, Libertarians and Independents. We do not ask you to vote for or against these individuals; nor do we ask you to choose a particular candidate over another.

All we ask is that before you decide to vote, you consider the true positions of these representatives with regard to their lack of candor or courage on core issues that matter to our country’s well-being.

Over the years, time and again we have informed these representatives about illegal government actions, agency fraud, and lying to Congress by administrators and bureaucrats. Yet these representatives have consistently refused to take any action and have instead betrayed the People they have taken an oath to serve.

We hope that by appealing directly to the American people, we can help bring about needed reforms, since we have proven unsuccessful in our appeals to the following representatives: the Whistleblowers’ Dirty Dozen. (To see the pdf list click here).

1. Senator Hillary Clinton
2. Senator Mike DeWine
3. Rep. David Dreier
4. Rep. Dennis Hastert
5. Senator Orrin Hatch
6. Rep. Peter Hoekstra
7. Senator Jon Kyl
8. Senator Joseph Lieberman
9. Rep. Dutch Ruppersberger
10. Senator Rick Santorum
11. Rep. James Sensenbrenner
12. Rep. Mark Souder

(update: i'll be interviewing sibel over the weekend about why these 12 congress folk are on the list)

About National Security Whistleblowers Coalition
National Security Whistleblowers Coalition (NSWBC), founded in August 2004, is an independent and nonpartisan alliance of whistleblowers who have come forward to address our nation’s security weaknesses; to inform authorities of security vulnerabilities in our intelligence agencies, at nuclear power plants and weapon facilities, in airports, and at our nation’s borders and ports; to uncover government waste, fraud, abuse, and in some cases criminal conduct. The NSWBC is dedicated to aiding national security whistleblowers through a variety of methods, including advocacy of governmental and legal reform, educating the public concerning whistleblowing activity, provision of comfort and fellowship to national security whistleblowers suffering retaliation and other harms, and working with other public interest organizations to affect goals defined in the NSWBC mission statement. For more on NSWBC visit www.nswbc.org

please distribute.

Hastert's laundry

2006-06-22T20:31:00.000+10:00

There's one part of the dodgy Hastert real-estate deal that I haven't seen answered. Was the property Hastert's primary residence? I haven't seen it mentioned anywhere that it was. If it was his primary residence, he doesn't have to record the asset/transaction/mortgage in his financial disclosure forms.
(update: the house was his primary residence, according to this)

Beyond that, I seem to have caught Hastert telling lies on his financial disclosure records.

Update: this post is a bit of mess. The significance of the information here, if any, is that two days after Duke Cunningham was exposed, Hastert rushed to file an amendment to his financial disclosure records - adding his $2million home/farm.

According to the Washington Post:

"In 2002, Hastert was driving to a parade in Sycamore, Ill., when he saw a post-and-beam house he fell in love with, according to Dallas C. Ingemunson, a longtime friend and ally of Hastert's who made the land deals for the speaker. Hastert struck a deal with the owner on the spot, purchasing the house near Plano, Ill., and 195 acres for $2.1 million."

In Hastert's 2002 filings, there was no mention of the property - no asset, no liability, no transaction, and no mention of his home/farm.

The same is true for the 2003 filing.

WaPo again:

"In February 2004, Ingemunson, treasurer of Hastert's campaign committee and chairman of the Kendall County Republican Party, established Little Rock Trust #225. A week later, through the trust, Hastert and his business partners purchased a 69-acre parcel for $340,000, providing road access to part of Hastert's farm that had been landlocked. Hastert owned a quarter of that parcel."

On May 16, 2005, Hastert filed his personal 2004 financial report. Hastert listed his share of the 69-acre parcel as :

Asset Value
1/4 share, value $250k-$500k

Transaction Value
1/4 share, value $250k-$500k

Mortgage Value
1/4 share, value $250k-$500k

Note: I'm pretty sure here that we've caught Hastert, or someone, in a mistake. Hastert is clearly saying in his filings that his one-quarter share is worth between $250-500k - but WaPo appears to say that these 69 acres are worth $340k in entirety, and Hastert only has a quarter share.

Having said that, the media reports are quite confusing

Here's how SunTimes describes it:

"Ingemunson told the Sun-Times that the three bought the 68.9-acre parcel from a farmer who wanted "to have cash immediately." Klatt, Ingemunson and Hastert formed a trust, which bought the land in 2004 for $15,000 an acre -- a total price of slightly more than $1 million."

SunTimes suggests that the total price for this block was $1.05M. WaPo says the price was $340k. Hastert says that his quarter share was worth between $250-500k - which would appear to sugggest that WaPo is wrong. Where did WaPo get their $340k number from? I'm sure that number didn't come out of the blue. WaPo - where did your $340k come from?

WaPo:

"In May 2005, Hastert transferred the 69 acres of previously hemmed-in land from his farm to the land trust."

~~The exact date of that transfer is not obvious - was it after or before the original filing on May 16?~~ (note that this 69-acres that Hastert transferred to Little Rock Trust is separate to the 69-acres that Little Rock Trust bought from a third-party.)
(update: the transaction occured May 2, 2005 (link))

Lo, just one month after that filing, on June 14 2005 Hastert resubmitted both his 2003 and 2004 filings in "an abundance of caution" - without adding any detail about why he was resubmitting it. The 2005 amendment of the 2004 records adds:

Asset Value
1/4 share, 69 acres- value: $250-$500k
Home/Property - $1m-$5m

Mortgage
Home/Property - $1m-$5m

(Note that this was the first time that Hastert's 'home/property' was disclosed in his personal financial records. why did he include it if primary residence is always exluded? )

Do you think that it was all completely above-board? or was Hastert's retrospective accounting somehow related to the deal that took place in May 05?

(updated 10 minutes after publication to add that Hastert's 'amendment' occured 2 days after Stern's original article about Duke Cunningham's real-estate deal hit the wires)

Similarly, I haven't been able to ascertain how much Little Rock paid Hastert for the transfer of the other 69 acres. Did Hastert pay taxes on it? Was it all a fuzzy 'book exercise'?

WaPo:

"Then, on Dec. 7, (05) Little Rock Trust #225 sold the Hastert parcels to a subsidiary of the Robert Arthur Land Co. for nearly $5 million. The deal netted Hastert a $2 million profit."

Suntimes:

*In December 2005, the 68.9-acre parcel and the 69.5-acre parcel were sold to a developer, which wants to build at least 1,700 residential units plus commercial space there.

It's all a bit confusing. At a minimum, we can see that he amended his financial disclosures with respect to this particularly dodgy investment.

First things first - Hastert appears to have not originally disclosed the Plano asset in his disclosure forms. Can any journalist out there check to see if it was actually his primary residence? Also - presumably WaPo's $340k number came from somewhere. where?

And the ultimate question, was Denny trying to launder his bribes?

update: miguel in the comments points to this post at Sunlight Foundation which notes that the property was indeed Hastert's primary residence.

(cross-posted)

Hastert's Little Rock Trust

2006-06-22T17:38:00.000+10:00

* josh:

"Good work: the Hastert earmark scam makes it into the Washington Post. "

that's what qualifies for 'good work' these days? at least they front-paged the story.

* at least wapo adds some detail:

"In 2002, Hastert was driving to a parade in Sycamore, Ill., when he saw a post-and-beam house he fell in love with, according to Dallas C. Ingemunson, a longtime friend and ally of Hastert's who made the land deals for the speaker. Hastert struck a deal with the owner on the spot, purchasing the house near Plano, Ill., and 195 acres for $2.1 million.

In February 2004, Ingemunson, treasurer of Hastert's campaign committee and chairman of the Kendall County Republican Party, established Little Rock Trust #225. A week later, through the trust, Hastert and his business partners purchased a 69-acre parcel for $340,000, providing road access to part of Hastert's farm that had been landlocked. Hastert owned a quarter of that parcel.

In May 2005, Hastert transferred the 69 acres of previously hemmed-in land from his farm to the land trust. That summer, Hastert personally intervened during House and Senate negotiations over a huge transportation and infrastructure bill to secure two separate earmarks, $152 million to help build the Prairie Parkway through Kendall County and $55 million for an interchange 5 1/2 miles from his property. President Bush signed the bill into law on Aug. 10.

Then, on Dec. 7, Little Rock Trust #225 sold the Hastert parcels to a subsidiary of the Robert Arthur Land Co. for nearly $5 million. The deal netted Hastert a $2 million profit."

Good to see WaPo actually note that Ingemunson is Hastert's treasurer as well. I hadn't seen that reported elsewhere.

Wapo adds:

"Hastert's attorney, J. Randolph Evans, fired off a letter to the Sunlight Foundation last week, demanding "that the false, libelous and defamatory matter be immediately withdrawn and corrected." In his letter, Evans said that asserting that a new road project would have an impact on land values more than 5 1/2 miles away "would be like complaining about a purchase in Alexandria, Virginia, based on renovations at the Capitol.""

Randy Evans also 'fired off a letter' to Vanity Fair when David Rose's article came out - with much more serious allegations. It's not obvious why those allegations, and that rebuttal, didn't make the front page of wapo.

more soon.

more of Hastert's ill-gotten gains

2006-06-16T08:53:00.000+10:00

TPMM:

The Chicago Tribune puts a number on Speaker Dennis Hastert's (R-IL) killing on that real estate deal: $1.5 million.

And here are the basics, first reported by the Sunlight Foundation yesterday.

Hastert acquired the first part of the land in August, 2002, a 69 acre portion of a 196-acre farm purchased under his wife's name. The rest was acquired by a land trust in Feburary, 2004 of which Hastert had a quarter interest - the two partners were Dallas Ingemunson ("a long-time supporter and political mentor to Hastert who is chairman of the Kendall County Republican Party") and Thomas Klatt ("a local trucking company owner who also has been a long-time supporter and campaign contributor to Hastert").

The funding for the Prairie Parkway, which will run 5.5 miles from the plot, went through in the Fall of 2005. Three months after that, in December, Hastert and his partners cashed out, selling the land to a developer for a $3 million total profit. Ingemunson told the Tribune that Hastert's share of that was five-eighths - about $1.5 million. (The Chicago Sun-Times, without attribution, reports the profit as "close to $2 million.")

Now Hastert's camp is focused on squashing the story with the line that 5.5 miles isn't close enough to affect the price of the plot. In fact, they're so up in arms that Hastert's lawyer wrote an angry letter to the Sunlight Foundation and have threatened legal action. But no amount of yelling will change the facts on the table.

Update: ThinkProgress has a graphic timeline of the land deal.

Nice deal, Denny.

Of course, Ingemunson is also treasurer of Hastert For Congress Committee PAC. We had some questions over at Disclose Denny about whether Ingemunson should have signed off on the FEC affadavit - rather than delegate to his deputy.

Hastert: Real (estate) Corruption

2006-06-15T07:30:00.000+10:00

* tpmm:

"Over at the Sunlight Foundation, they've found Speaker Dennis Hastert (R-IL) taking a page from Rep. Ken Calvert's (R-CA) investment playbook.
For years, Hastert has been pushing the construction of a highway called the Prairie Parkway in Illinois. He secured $207 million in earmarks to support the project. But what he didn't tell constituents was that he owned a huge plot of farmland just a few miles from where the road would run. And now that the project's gone through, the land has been tranferred to a real estate development firm with plans to build a 1,600 home community. The land has already improved in value by millions of dollars.

I wonder how much Hastert will ultimately make on the deal?"

I've looked at Hastert's financial records before - this property was listed as being basically worthless.

blogs: bring Hastert down

2006-05-29T21:32:00.000+10:00

it's time to re-publish Democrats.com 's take on the Hastert bribery claims:

-----------------

Unlike his egomaniacal predecessor Newt Gingrich, House Speaker Denny Hastert likes to stay out of the limelight.

And for good reason. When Hastert opens his mouth, he tends to say cold-hearted things like "It looks like a lot of [New Orleans] could be bulldozed."

But is Denny Hastert's heart cold enough to take bribes to coverup Turkey's Armenian genocide?

According to an investigative report in Vanity Fair by David Rose, Hastert may have taken as much as $500,000 in campaign bribes in October 2000 to kill a Congressional resolution designating the killings of Armenians in Turkey between 1915 and 1923 a genocide.

According to Wikipedia, "Most estimations for the losses between 1915 to 1917-18 range from 600,000 —claimed mostly by the Government of Turkey and Turkish national historians— and from 1.2 to 1.5 million by most of the international community and the scholarship."

The Turkish government rejects the term "genocide," blaming instead "inter-ethnic strife, disease and famine during the turmoil of World War I." But dozens of countries call it "genocide," along with the European Parliament, the U.N., and many U.S. states.

But thanks to Denny Hastert, Congress refuses to call it genocide. And according to Vanity Fair, "a senior official at the Turkish Consulate is said to have claimed in one recording that the price for Hastert to withdraw the resolution would have been at least $500,000."

There is no question that Hastert pulled the Armenian genocide resolution off the floor of Congress on October 19, 2000, after it passed the International Relations Committee by a large majority. (Hastert blames Bill Clinton - as if Hastert ever did Clinton a single favor, besides trying to impeach him!)

The only question is whether he took campaign bribes to do it. As David Rose reported,

According to some of the wiretaps, the F.B.I.’s targets had arranged for tens of thousands of dollars to be paid to Hastert’s campaign funds in small checks. Under Federal Election Commission rules, donations of less than $200 are not required to be itemized in public filings.

Hastert himself was never heard in the recordings, Edmonds told investigators, and it is possible that the claims of covert payments were hollow boasts. Nevertheless, an examination of Hastert’s federal filings shows that the level of un-itemized payments his campaigns received over many years was relatively high. Between April 1996 and December 2002, un-itemized personal donations to the Hastert for Congress Committee amounted to $483,000.

In contrast, un-itemized contributions in the same period to the committee run on behalf of the House majority leader, Tom Delay, Republican of Texas, were only $99,000. An analysis of the filings of four other senior Republicans shows that only one, Clay Shaw of Florida, declared a higher total in un-itemized donations than Hastert over the same period: $552,000. The other three declared far less. Energy and Commerce Committee chairman Joe Barton, of Texas, claimed $265,000; Armed Services Committee chairman Duncan Hunter, of California, got $212,000; and Ways and Means Committee chairman Bill Thomas, of California, recorded $110,000.

Where there's smoke there's usually fire. And the smoke surrounding Hastert's role in this scandal is so thick you need a chainsaw to cut it.

This sounds like a perfect investigation for the progressive blogosphere, right?

So why is this important job falling to a little-known blogger from down under in Australia named Lukery, creator of http://disclosedenny.blogspot.com/

I searched "hastert armenian genocide" in Technorati, Google Blogs, The story has received minimal coverage so far:

DemocracyNow's Amy Goodman interviewed David Rose and his source, FBI whistleblower Sibel Edmonds last August.
On 2/7/06, BradBlog published the response from Hastert's lawyer Randy Evans, and a detailed rebuttal by Sibel Edmonds. (Scott Horton blogged on that)

I can think of lots of bloggers and activists who should be all over this story:

All of the folks investigating Hastert's puppetmaster Tom DeLay, including CampaignMoney.org
All the folks covering FBI histleblower Sibel Edmonds
Josh Marshall of TalkingPointsMemo.com, the premier investigator of GOP Congressional scandals
Laura Rozen of WarandPiece.com, who has done outstanding work on Duke Cunningham, Brent Wilkes & Co.
Digby of Hullabalo, who understands GOP corruption better than anyone
Joseph Cannon of Cannonfire, who can investigate a conspiracy better than anyone
Larisa Alexandrovna of RawStory.com, one of the very first to investigate Jack Abramoff
ReddHead of FireDogLake.com, who investigated Brent Wilkes
Georgia10 of DailyKos.com, who is studying law in Chicago
BuzzFlash.com, which is based in Chicago
many others I can't think of off-hand

Let's get the blogosphere's top investigators on this story and help our heroic Australian cousin bring Hastert down!

Hastert and the Rule of Law

2006-05-26T18:50:00.000+10:00

Everyone is appropriately excited about Hastert defending the sanctity of the ~~rule-of-law~~ oops ~~precedent~~ oops his office.

Most seem to assume that Hastert's concern relates to the Abramoff ~~bribes~~ contributions - but, hey, the feds probably won't be able to find anything other than contemporaneous promises - and it would be irresponsible for them to speculate about any impropriety in that regard.

Perhaps he is really concerned about the ~~fact~~ possibility that he lied in his response to the FEC regarding his undisclosed contributions.

Or perhaps he is concerned about damning evidence regarding the ongoing investigations that Giraldi described - first:

"The (Turkish lobbying) money involved does not appear to come from the Turkish government, and FBI investigators are trying to determine its source and how it is distributed. Some of it may come from criminal activity, possibly drug trafficking, but much more might come from arms dealing."

second:

"Investigators are also looking at Israel's particular expertise in the illegal sale of US military technology to countries like China and India."

(although I havent seen anything to suggest that Denny is involved with Israel/ China / India)

Maybe Denny is only afraid that about the pictures of him and that nubile goat that he likes to keep in his office. Whatever it is, I suspect that he wont be sleeping too well this weekend. Perhaps Mrs Hastert will ask him why he can't sleep, and why he is sticking up for those mean american-hating democrats.

I'm sure he'll tell her that it's all about the Rule of Law.

Hastert's Deep Throat?

2006-05-26T17:55:00.000+10:00

emptywheel on Denny's latest shenanigans.:

Denny managed to take time away from protecting ~~the Congressional desk drawer where he hides all his bribery receipts~~ separation of the powers to angrily deny that he had any bribery receipts. DOJ helpfully issued a statement seemingly supporting the case.
[]
Is anyone else having a Deep Throat tingle? Because I sure am. So let me review what we know.

A federal law enforcement officer, who may or may not be the same guy who met in person with Ross to tell him to get a new cell phone because his phone records were being tracked, tells Ross that Abramoff has squealed about the bribe Denny took to write a letter opposing an Indian casino that would have competed with one of Abramoff's client's casinos. Ross reports that. DOJ denies Denny's a target. Ross reiterates his story. DOJ denies Denny's "in the mix" (must be a former wrestling coach term for "pigs at the trough").

If my logic serves me and the sources are all telling the truth, it would suggest federal investigators know about the bribe Denny took, but they're not investigating it. Is that what this friendly federal law enforcement officer is trying to tell us? Because, like I said, I'm having a Deep Throat tingle."

Perhaps Duncan Hunter is the DeepThroat. Remember what Larisa said:

Luke: Hopefully we can make that an election issue in Hastert's race against John Laesch in November

LA: I dont know - I dont think he's going to be running.

Luke: Wow - really?

LA: I have a feeling that the way things are going - remember, there are factional turf wars much like the kinds you see in organized crime. They're at each others' throats - because greed knows no loyalty. I think he's made a tactical error in attempting to remove Duncan Hunter from the Armed Services Committee.

Remember, regarding the Dubai ports deal, Duncan Hunter recently came forward and said that Dubai had allowed nuclear switches and heavy water to be shipped from Turkey, via Dubai, to Iran, the same switches I referenced above as being accurate but together in the wrong context - and shortly thereafter Hastert tried to remove (I am still trying to firm up what actually occurred) Hunter from the Armed Services Committee.

Luke: That's right - and Dubai rejected a U.S. request to stop the shipment.

LA: Right - and I think that really opens Hastert up - if Hunter wants to put some pressure on. In other words, Duncan Hunter is a fairly powerful individual, and fairly aggressive. Despite my reporting on Hunter in certain business areas of his, he really seems to be very much against outsourcing of security of any sort. There seems to be a principle there for him, and he seems to be very adamant about that. So Hunter and his faction have a lot of ammunition should Hunter want to retain his seat, or whatnot. It gives a lot of power and persuasion to that argument. So it should be interesting how this plays out

And of course, this isn't the first time an investigation into Hastert has been closed down. In an interview Sibel said:

“…what happened was, FBI had this information since 1997. In 1999, the Clinton Administration actually asked the Department of Justice to appoint a Special Prosecutor to investigate Hastert, and certain other elected officials that were not named in this (VF) article, to be investigated formally. And the Department of Justice actually went about appointing this prosecutor, but after the Administration changed they quashed that investigation and they closed it despite the fact they had all sorts of evidence, again I’m talking about wiretaps, documents- paper documents- that was highly explosive and could have been easily used to indict the Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert. That investigation was closed in 2001, and this was around the time I started reporting my cases to the Congress.”

what happens next?

How to corrupt Hastert

2006-04-18T18:03:00.000+10:00

Part 3 of my interview with Larisa Alexandrovna is here

here's a taste:

"Lukery: How does it happen? One of my readers noted that the bribes to Hastert go back at least to the 96 election cycle - before Hastert had any real power - and he wondered why Hastert would be targeted by these criminals when he was essentially a nobody...

LA: Well - this game is so complicated. For example, take a nobody like Curt Weldon - who by all accounts is a very nice man who I had respect for, once. He's a little bit eccentric and loopy but is generally a nice man - and then out of nowhere this nice, generally loopy, kinda goofy guy is somehow introduced to Ghorbanifar - an Iranian arms dealer who literally cannot come into this country, is exiled from his own country, who the CIA has burn notices against, and who was involved in Iran Contra. Now - how do these two people come together? Who woke up one morning and thought - ya know - those two people should meet? What jarred this? I mean, what was the reasoning behind this? ( I don’t think in Weldon's case he's being bribed or anything -I don't have anything on him doing anything illegal as far as I can tell he's an upstanding kinda guy but I do think he's being manipulated. )

Or take another example, a decorated Vietnam veteran like Duke Cunningham - who seems like a normal person, nice guy - one day he's approached, soon he's being bought off by Wilkes and his operatives in the various agencies - and all of a sudden he has all this money.

Lukery: OK - but if we go back to Hastert in 1996 - when he's basically a nobody...

LA: Look - if you're already at the top, chances are you're already either owned by something or somebody – as the Hastert allegations show - or you're not buyable - as in Feingold's case. You're just not for sale - so they just leave you alone.

So of course they're going to go after the available, pliable ones. In fact, if you look at how CIA officers are trained, they're trained to provide a pitch of sorts to identify the weakest, and have them turn against their own country. So one would think that foreign assets are quite capable of doing the same thing.

Lukery: OK - so they got Hastert in their pocket early - and presumably they had a few others as backup. It puts Hastert's ascension into the Speakership in an interesting light - as well as the motivations of the kingmakers.

LA: Well, I'm not sure about the actual mechanisms. But consider now that Duke has gone down and Wilkes is still operational - because apparently he's too important to go down - well, who's going to replace Duke? Do they start grooming others as soon as the allegations start surfacing? Are they grooming just one? More than one? Did they already have several people as backup? I just don't know."

Larisa Alexandrovna: All Roads Lead to Hastert

2006-04-14T08:12:00.000+10:00

I interviewed Larisa Alexandrovna from Raw Story

Here is the part that directly relates to Hastert.

[snip]

Luke: And the American Turkish Council and the Speaker of the House?

LA: Yes, the Vanity Fair piece of course. Now my understanding from the sources used by the writer (David Rose) that they had provided a great deal more on this account, but legal folks got involved and wanted certain things left out. I think that it is absolutely fair to believe this account to be true. First of all, the Speaker has yet to go on the record to fully deny these charges - apart from a glib reference. Secondly, the key witness/ whistleblower in this case, that is Sibel, is gagged under a rarely used gag, the states secret gag, so she cannot present her argument in court. The evidence also, from what I understand of the case does support her claims. So it is fair to say that there is reason to believe the Speaker Hastert is indeed taking money from foreign nationals, that is bribes, in exchange for something. In fact, the evidence was such that the FBI took this to the DOJ and an investigation was being assembled when the new administration came into office and Ashcroft, the then new Attorney General shut it down. Clearly shutting down an FBI/DOJ investigation instead of allowing it to move forward would also support the allegations against Hastert, but he is not alone in these allegations by any measure.

Luke: Well there were two allegations in the article. One was the ongoing bribery, and the other was the $500,000 for pulling the Armenian Genocide bill.

LA: No - well - sort of, but not really. The point is that there are only a couple of people who know, and obviously I cant report it and the key person who knows is gagged. So that leaves no room to fully and openly explore this. One would hope that in a democracy a citizen would have her right in court and the politically appointed AG would not shut down an FBI sting operation that had been going on for several years. One would hope that foreign nationals would not be bribing members of Congress and I don’t believe, at least from what I have seen, that these bribes have anything to do with a bill that Hastert may or may not have taken to the floor. Remember, this is about “making cookies” and those factions that we alluded to earlier. But if you really want to understand why Sibel is gagged, you need to focus on what happened with Hastert - not Hastert himself, but what happened with Hastert - because THAT is the holy grail to understanding why she is gagged - and also to some extent understanding Brewster Jennings. Not Plame - but Brewster Jennings - and that's the best I can do on the record (and off really).

Luke: Wow. That's interesting. Sibel described the way they quashed that investigation into Hastert in an interview recently - she said that it happened at the same time that she started reporting to Congress.
I actually run another blog called Disclose Denny which focuses on one of the claims in the Vanity Fair article where these Turkish groups were illegally financing his campaign and he refuses to open his books. It sure makes him look guilty.

LA: You are right. If Hastert is not being bribed, if these are false allegations, then he should stand up and go to court and address the accusers in court and say 'no I didnt do this' - or even in public. He should allow himself to be questioned and prove his innocence. But to have somebody gagged and to ignore the issue as though that should somehow indicate innocence is not very convincing. So until he corrects the record, and because Sibel is gagged - which gives her more credibility than him - I would say that it's quite probably true that he is being bribed. But I cannot emphasize enough that Hastert is not alone in this or even his “faction” as it were, rather, this is rampant abuse should these allegations be true.

Luke: Hopefully we can make that an election issue in Hastert's race against John Laesch in November

LA: I dont know - I dont think he's going to be running.

Luke: Wow - really?

LA: I have a feeling that the way things are going - remember, there are factional turf wars much like the kinds you see in organized crime. They're at each others' throats - because greed knows no loyalty. I think he's made a tactical error in attempting to remove Duncan Hunter from the Armed Services Committee.

Remember, regarding the Dubai ports deal, Duncan Hunter recently came forward and said that Dubai had allowed nuclear switches and heavy water to be shipped from Turkey, via Dubai, to Iran, the same switches I referenced above as being accurate but together in the wrong context - and shortly thereafter Hastert tried to remove (I am still trying to firm up what actually occurred) Hunter from the Armed Services Committee.

Luke: That's right - and Dubai rejected a U.S. request to stop the shipment.

LA: Right - and I think that really opens Hastert up - if Hunter wants to put some pressure on. In other words, Duncan Hunter is a fairly powerful individual, and fairly aggressive. Despite my reporting on Hunter in certain business areas of his, he really seems to be very much against outsourcing of security of any sort. There seems to be a principle there for him, and he seems to be very adamant about that. So Hunter and his faction have a lot of ammunition should Hunter want to retain his seat, or whatnot. It gives a lot of power and persuasion to that argument. So it should be interesting how this plays out

Luke: Interesting indeed.

You can read the rest of the interview here

the burden of proof should be on Hastert

2006-03-29T10:18:00.000+11:00

Hastert & Al Capone

2006-03-28T21:03:00.000+11:00

miguel again from the comments:

"I hope you will allow a little educated guessing at this point as to how the alleged bribing of Dennis Hastert and other members of Congress plays into the bigger picture of the Sibel Edmonds case. I'll share with you my working hypothesis:

-In the late 1990s, Turkey was being villified in the US press and Congress for human rights violations in its war against the Kurds.

-At the same time, Perle, Feith and Grossman were engineering a strategic Turkey/Israel alliance.

-Is it possible that part of the unspoken terms of this Israel/Turkey agreement was that people like Grossman, Perle and Feith would help Turkey get around the restrictions of US arms control laws and help pilfer US military technology and secrets to the Turks...as well as to Turkey's allies in Central Asia?

-The one obstacle to all this would be the US Congress, over which Grossman, Perle and Feith had no control The Turks were told that they were on their own in that regard, and that they would have to learn how to develop a lobbying presence to counteract the Human Rights, Greek and Armenian lobbies. They would get some support from strong supporters of Israel like Robert Wexler. But they were told they needed more than the Israeli connection, because the pressure on Turkish human rights violations was great.

-So the Turkish government worked in concert with Turkish organized crime to slowly develop a presence in the US Congress. Since Turkish-Americans are a relatively small group, they would have to use good, old fashioned bribery. Their most powerful organization was based in Chicago, so what better place to start then the town where Al Capone became famous?

-Coincidentally or not, Turkey's number one critic in Congress, John Porter, sat in Hastert's neighboring district. Were the Turks trying isolate Porter? Or did they attempt to bribe him too? Porter was co-chair of the Congressional Human Rights Caucus, along with Tom Lantos. It is interesting to note that Lantos is one of Turkey's biggest supporters now.

-Hastert was caught in their net, maybe just because he happened to be in Chicago, or maybe because he was a senior Republican. Regardless, I believe the Turks got "lucky" when he suddenly rose to power.

-The money used for all this lobbying power came mostly from illicit, underground activities, some of it terror-related.

That is my working hypothesis. But its just an educated guess, and is subject to criticism. I think if we can develop a coherent narrative, it will put things in greater context and help the public understand the question "Why Hastert?""

thanks miguel.

any thoughts?

I don't know Lantos or Porter

we cant FOIA congress

2006-03-28T20:55:00.000+11:00

from miguel in the comments:

"In regards to your comment, "One odd thing that i noticed is that the spreadsheet is apparently 'unsorted' - by anything. ", I have looked closely at the spreadsheet and it appears to be sorted by 'last name'. Of course, since all the last names are blacked out, it is hard to tell that. But, if you look carefully across the years, you will notice, for example, some of the same first name/city combinations appearing in approximately the same page of each year's report, which means a 'last name' sort is most likely. For example, if Ms. Identa from St. Charles gives in multiple years to Hastert, and every year she appears on the first page of the report, we can hypothesize that her surname begins with an "A".

In regards to the issue of the unitemized contributions not quite going up in the years we most expect, remember this: there were other "events" going on in Hastert's career that may have had an influence on his campaign finances. Most notably, in 1999, Hastert was plucked from obscurity to become House Speaker, so it is natural that all his campaign contributions would have increased, as he went from being "our Congressman Hastert" to "our most powerful Congressman in the House, Hastert".

So although it would strengthen the case against Hastert if we saw the unitemized contributions drop in 2000-2002, the fact that the unitemized contributions actually went up when the Turks apparently turned to more traditional bribery schemes can easily be explained by Hastert's increased visibility within his own community. In other words, it is quite possible that Hastert received a surge of legitimate, unitemized contributions after 1999 based simply on the fact that every Tom, Dick and Harry in Hastert's home district wanted to be 'seen' at one of Denny's annual fundraisers."

thnx miguel.

i agree that we shouldn't look at these specific claims in isolation - although i was somewhat surprised that the averages appear to be quite constant - except for the 30% increase in 2001 which stands out like a sore thumb.

we have no way of knowing if the lists have been 'cleaned' - unfortunately we cant FOIA congress. grrr.

hastert's response to CREW

2006-03-26T19:24:00.000+11:00

As I mentioned the other day, FEC has released the documents from Hastert in response to the CREW complaint.

The interesting thing is that the lawyers rant and rave, knock down straw men, conflate issues, introduce items that are in the Vanity Fair article that weren't in CREW's complaint - but they don't really address the core issue - that they received a large number of donations that were just below $200 so as to avoid the reporting requirements.

Here are some highlights:

The allegations against the Respondents contained in the Complaint are groundless and merely based on the unsubstantiated and false musings of a politically-motivated article written to sell magazines through repetition of unsubstantiated and false innuendo against House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert (Speaker Hastert). As the claims of the Complaint have absolutely no basis in fact, the Commission need not give this matter further investigation or action. Rather, the Complaint should be dismissed immediately.
[...]
From the utter and complete lack of evidence proffered in support of the allegations against the Respondents, one can only conclude that CREW filed this action against the Respondents - and loudly trumpeted its having done so in the media - as a political ploy to harm the image of Speaker Hastert rather than to lodge a legitimate complaint.

Hastert was given many opportunities to co-operate with the VF article and consistently refused. CREW clearly doesn't purport to have any evidence to proffer, and that's why they called for an investigation. Hastert has the only real evidence, and he refuses to disclose it. The FBI has the evidence in the wiretaps - will Hastert call for that to be released to exonerate himself?

At its core, the Complaint claims that the Respondents may have accepted contributions from foreign nationals in violation of federal campaign finance laws.
Specifically, the Complaint alleges that an article in the September 2005 issue of Vanity Fair relays that unnamed sources remember that a discharged FBI translator reviewed some wiretaps wherein certain Turkish targets of an FBI bribery investigation claim that they have ‘‘arranged for tens of thousands of dollars of campaign contributions to be sent to Rep. Hastert’s campaign committee in small (i.e., less than $200) checks that did not have to be itemized.”

[...]

Even a cursory review of the Complaint reveals that CREW seeks to have the Commission embark on nothing more than a “fishing expedition” to uncover wrongdoing on the part of Speaker Hastert and his campaign committee. The sole “evidence” the Complaint manages to muster against the Respondents relates to completely unsubstantiated claims in the Vanity Fair article along with publicly available information about HFC’s un-itemized contributions. However, even accepting, arguendo, that foreign nationals attempted to bribe Speaker Hastert as described in the Vanity Fair article, the Complaint fails to assert any allegations meriting further inquiry by the Commission because CREW presents no evidence that HFC accepted these phantom contributions.

[...]

The Complaint is utterly unable to allege facts or data that even potentially give rise to a reasonable basis for inquiry into whether the Respondents violated the Act.

It is true that the CREW complaint was poorly constructed - the real question is not whether

"the Respondents may have accepted contributions from foreign nationals in violation of federal campaign finance laws"

- the real issue in the VF article is:

"According to some of the wiretaps, the F.B.I.’s targets had arranged for tens of thousands of dollars to be paid to Hastert’s campaign funds in small checks."

The article doesn't say anything about whether the contributions were from foreign nationals, or how they were 'arranged'.

A. THE OBJECTIVE DATA REVEALS THAT THE CREW COMPLAINT, LIKE THE
VANITY FAIR ARTICLE IT IS BASED UPON, IS FALSE ON ITS FACE.
As stated above, the core allegation in the current Complaint is that the Respondents may have accepted contributions from foreign nationals in violation of federal campaign finance laws. Not only does CREW fail to provide any proof in support of that accusation, but rather, all available evidence supports the exact opposite conclusion. While perhaps unnecessary to defend against a complaint so lacking in merit on its face, the Respondents herein include with this Response the affidavit of its Assistant Treasurer, Lisa Post, to address, and refute, the baseless allegations set forth in the Complaint. Both publicly available and HFC internal documents attached to the Post affidavit and included herein, confirm that the implications of the Vanity Fair article are entirely false and that HFC did not illegally accept contributions from foreign nationals

The available evidence certainly does not support "the exact opposite conclusion" - as the article demonstrates, Hastert actually received a lot of unitemised contributions - five times more than Tom DeLay. The attachments provided by Hastert do nothing to refute the claims in VF.

Moreover, contrary to the Vanity Fair article’s statements and CREW’S innuendo, HFC actually retains information on the identity and residence of all contributors, including those contributing less than $200. Affidavit of Lisa Post, p. 1 (attached as Exhibit “1”). The data regarding these “under $200” contributions for the time period mentioned in the article, April 1996 to December 2002, confirms the identity and residence of 100% of Speaker Hastert’s unitemized contributions with NONE attributable to contributions of questionable origin or legality. (emphasis in the original)

I don't think that the article makes any such claim, and i'm not sure that CREW implied it either. Incidentally, I'm curious about the April 96 start-date - I suspect that Rose started there purely because the Q1, 96 report is missing from the official website.

Hastert/Evans then rant on about the armenian genocide issue, although that is not mentioned in the CREW complaint:

To further sensationalize its summer reading and CREW’S subsequent press statements, however, Vanity Fair includes a purported claim by an unidentified Turkish consulate senior official that “the price for Hastert to withdraw the resolution would have been at least $500,000.”

Notably, the total amount of all un-itemized contributions to HFC over the entire
six year period referenced in the Vanity Fair article did not total $500,000.
More significantly, as reflected in public filings, the un-itemized contributions received from July 1, 2000, through November 27, 2000 (the three months preceding and the month following the withdrawal of the resolution on October 19,2000), totaled a meager amount less than $36,000 and not even close to $500,000.

'Notably', they are either stupid or deliberately conflating two separate events. The article doesn't suggest that the $500k was paid in small donations to his campaign - only that 'tens of thousands' were paid in this manner. And if they are conflating intentionally, then why the smokescreen?

And again, NONE of these un-itemized contributions were of questionable legality or origin. Interestingly, less than $9,200 was donated to HFC in October 2000 (the month the resolution was withdrawn) of which only 5 contributors (Pennsylvania (l), Wisconsin (2), Michigan (l), and California (1)) were from somewhere other than Illinois.

'Interestingly', we don't care which state they were from.

Notwithstanding the above data which neuters the bribery scheme of the Vanity Fair article, even if foreign nationals had attempted to contribute to HFC in violation of federal law, HFC is well aware of, and abides by, FECA prohibitions and procedures regarding the origin of contributions.

Notwithstanding that the above data conflates two separate and distinct bribery schemes, it does absolutely nothing to neuter anything. Did FEC notice this nonsense?

As one might expect, HFC requests and maintains information on the identity and residence of its contributors and includes on its donor cards the disclaimer that “contributions from foreign nationals and corporations are prohibited.”
Eighteenth Annual Farmers’ Picnic Ticket Order Form (attached as Exhibit “6”).

I wonder when Hastert started doing this, and whether it is regular practice for congressfolk. The event mentioned was in 2005. If this is not standard practice, then I wonder if Hastert introduced it to give him cover.

CONCLUSION
The Commission should not allow the complaint process to continue to be abused in this way. The Respondents have done nothing to violate FECA. Conversely, it is quite apparent that the Respondents have taken great steps to ensure that their activities will be in compliance with Federal law. However, despite the fact that there is absolutely no evidence indicating that the Respondents have, or will, violate the Act, CREW has seen fit to adopt-false allegations and unsubstantiated “evidence” as the basis of its Complaint. The Commission must dismiss the
Complaint against the Respondents and find no reason to believe that the Respondents have violated the Act or the regulations promulgated thereunder.
Moreover, as stated above, the allegations of the CREW Complaint, verified under oath as being accurate by CREW Executive Director Melanie Sloan, are patently false on their face and presented solely in furtherance of a larger partisan attack. In the absence of some public rebuke of CREW, the Commission will continue to face such objectively specious complaints and will have to devote valuable investigatory resources to these matters. Respondents therefore respectfully request an Order fiom the Commission publicly admonishing CREW for such an abuse of process and the Commission’s time and obligating CREW to reimburse Respondents their attorneys fees incurred in responding

yada yada. Sloan simply pointed to the VF article and asked that the claims be investigated.

The document then provides 159 pages of spreadsheets with unitemized contributors which purports to 'prove' Hastert's innocence. It appears that there are different spreadsheets for each year - the fields are date, 'mailname', last name, first name, something called 'txtsource' , address 1, address 2, address 3, city, state, zip, and in some cases work & fax numbers. The only columns that have all the data are date, 'mailname', first name, txtsource, city and zip - the occasional phone number is included. All of the address fields are empty - and all of the other fields are empty. Notably there's no column for donation amount (nor is there a cloumn for whether the donation was cash or cheque). The 'mailname' field says something like "Mr & Mrs Joel X" where the X is redacted - so basically all we have is the first name, the date of the donation, and the city & zip - and the occasional phone number. colour me unconvinced.

Donations of more than $200 require the disclosure of the person's name - therefore I'm not sure what Hastert's logic is for redacting the last name of everyone of his donors (and i pity the poor sod who got the task of having to go through 159 pages with a thick black pen). is there an expectation of privacy? if so, why did they publish the occasional phone/fax number? why did they include many empty 'fields' such as address, but not include the 'donation size' field?

One odd thing that i noticed is that the spreadsheet is apparently 'unsorted' - by anything. I'm not suggesting that this means anything in particular - but it struck me as odd (yep - i've spent too many hours buried in spreadsheets).

(another thing that i found weird is that lots of the donors - according to the 'mailfield' - are from "Mr and Mrs X" - i've never been married but do married people really fill in their receipts as "Mr and Mrs X" ?)

As I've mentioned, at the core of Rose's suggestion is the suggestion that there were a large number of donations in some period which were close to the $200 ceiling. I suspect that those donations were in cash, rather than checks (contra Rose) - and if they were cash donations, then I suspect that the addresses on the receipts were fabricated. Hastert purports to provide 'proof' in his 159 pages of 'disclosure' but he does nothing of the sort - because both the addresses and the size of the donation are excluded from his 'proof'.

In Hastert's favor (you can't imagine how much it hurts me to say that), i previously estimated (more here) that Hastert's average contribution from his 'annual events' would be $50. As it happens, Hastert's filing enables us to look at average contributions per year. Based on rough calculations, according to Hastert's filings and some geek-work (# of pages of speadsheet, 50 entries per page), Hastert's undisclosed contributions are as follows (i'm not sure how this will format on the blog - first column is the year, second column is the average of the undisclosed contributions):

1996 - $48 (note this excludes Q1 which is missing from the official filing system)
1997 - $59
1998 - $55
1999 - $58
2000 - $61
2001- $80
2002 - $57

the 2001 number obviously stands out - although my sources tell me that the 90's are the key area of interest - so i don't quite know what to make of it.

the only thing we can be sure of at the moment, is that while Hastert pretends to have answered the claims in the VF article, he certainly hasn't.

disclose denny.

Laesch defeats Zamora in IL14

2006-03-23T09:56:00.000+11:00

Congratulations John!

Political rookie John Laesch will face off against one of America's most powerful men for the 14th Congressional District seat.

Laesch, of Newark, easily defeated Auroran Ruben Zamora in Tuesday's Democratic primary, moving on to the underdog role in the November election against Republican Dennis Hastert, of Plano, speaker of the U.S. House. Hastert, who has represented the district since 1986 and served as speaker since 1999, ran uncontested in the Republican primary.

Laesch isn't intimidated by those credentials.

"I just beat a guy 2-to-1 who's been campaigning for two years, and I've only been out here for six months," Laesch said from his victory party in Plano.

"Hastert hasn't had a challenge in 20 years. I think people are ready for change and I hope to be that voice of change."

Laesch, 32, works as a carpenter and on his family's Kendall County farm.

A former military analyst for the Navy, he plans to question Hastert's record on health care and demand the troops be taken out of Iraq. (link)

Onward and upward.

Hastert is next - and we'll do all we can to help :-)

hastert CREW and FEC

2006-03-23T09:27:00.000+11:00

FEC has just released regarding Hastert's response to CREW's FEC complaint. Go here and search for case number 5677.

The main document of interest will be "Response from Hastert for Congress Committee" although I'll look through the others as well. (CREW have posted it as well)

I'll have a full post about it in the next few days

crossposted at wotisitgood4

John Laesch

2006-03-02T09:41:00.000+11:00

kos has a post at dkos discussing John Laesch:

"As distinguished as the Fighting Dems are, John stands out from that crowd for a simple reason -- he's taking on Dennis Hastert himself, the Speaker of the House. That's no small feat and requires a pair of brass ones."

Laesch will be on AirAmerica right about now. You can get streams of these segments on Air America's Fighting Dems site - I'm not sure if they archive there .

Hastert's travel to Turkey

2006-02-25T18:37:00.000+11:00

Here are some details about a couple of Hastert's recent trips to Turkey, from an article in something called The International Post:

"During a (nov) 2002 visit with the Prime Minister in Turkey, Dennis Hastert stated:

It was a very good meeting that we had with the new Prime Minister. … We are committed as our country, the United States, to work with Turkey, to carry on. We see Turkey as a very stable country, as a matter of fact the model for stability and moderation and democracy. "

(Miguel found the official travel report here)

and this from WaPo about a Dec04 trip:

"Folks in Europe are still talking about that splendid, 10-day, pre-Christmas tour of Europe led by House Speaker Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.) to attend the 60th anniversary ceremonies of the Battle of the Bulge. The group stopped to… visit more troops at Incirlik air base in Turkey…

Hastert took four staffers to help him.... (and maybe Mrs Hastert?)

Support personnel... [were] amazed the plane got off the ground in Turkey -- what with all the fine rugs and pashminas -- not to mention some Turkish-made shotguns Hastert and Dingell bought. "

That's some good shopping, they were only in Turkey for a night.
(Miguel found the trip report here)

Further, the aforementioned International Post article quoted above says:

"With such a display of hospitality, it is not surprising that Speaker Hastert invited his Turkish friends for a visit in May 2005. The Anatolia News Agency reported on the trip:

Turkish Parliament Speaker Bulent Arinc has indicated today that his visit to the US Congress will be the first ever one by a Turkish parliament Speaker…

Arinc will be in Washington DC upon an invitation from US House of Representatives Speaker Dennis Hastert.

(snip)

Parliament Speaker Bülent Arınç visited Washington between May 24-27 as the guest of Dennis Hastert, Speaker of the US House of Representatives. Arınç also attended a reception hosted in his honor by Hastert. …

Arınç, who completed his meetings in Washington D.C. arrived in Chicago on May 27. …

Arınç, who got information from Turkish Consul General Naci Koru about the work of the Turkish Consulate General in Chicago on Saturday… met Turkish community in Chicago on May 29.

[snip]

Turkish Parliament Speaker Bulent Arinc, who is currently in the United States upon formal invitation of the U.S. House of Representatives Speaker Dennis Hastert, met representatives of the Jewish community and of the Assembly of the Turkish-American Associations (ATAA) on Wednesday. "

Note that in response to Hastert's response letter in VF, Sibel scoffed:

"7) In the VF article Hastert’s spokesman says that Hastert has no affiliation with the A.T.C. [American-Turkish Council] or other groups reportedly mentioned in the wiretaps: “He does not know these organizations.”

a. Please refer to Mr. Hastert’s trips to Turkey (all trips that took place- 1996-2002); its sponsors…they are self evident. Now how can he claim not knowing these entities (very intimately)?"

crossposted at wotisitgood4

meria heller

2006-02-24T19:49:00.000+11:00

sibel was on the meria heller show this week - i'll write up the interview over the weekend, but miguel has this:

"Here is the quote from the Maria Heller show about Hastert:

“…what happened was, FBI had this information since 1997. In 1999, the Clinton Administration actually asked the Department of Justice to appoint a Special Prosecutor to investigate Hastert, and certain other elected officials that were not named in this (VF) article, to be investigated formally. And the Department of Justice actually went about appointing this prosecutor, but after the Administration changed they quashed that investigation and they closed it despite the fact they had all sorts of evidence, again I’m talking about wiretaps, documents- paper documents- that was highly explosive and could have been easily used to indict the Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert. That investigation was closed in 2001, and this was around the time I started reporting my cases to the Congress.”"

update - more of the interview here

Hastert & Government Reform

2006-02-21T19:15:00.000+11:00

Miguel also points to this from 1997 CAMPAIGN FINANCE IMPROPRIETIES AND POSSIBLE VIOLATIONS OF LAW HEARING before the Committee on Government Reform and Oversight:

"Chairman Burton: This Committee's hearings will cover many subjects . . . . Our initial focus has been how political parties took or raised contributions from foreign sources. I am gravely concerned about foreign governments, foreign companies or foreign nationals trying to influence our electoral processes.”

Hastert was on the Comittee. He said the following, presumably with a straight face:

"Mr. HASTERT. Mr. Chairman, I think the real question of these hearings addressed the searing question of have the election laws of these United States been broken? And have the election laws of this country been broken or circumvented by the campaign committee of the chief law enforcement officer of this Nation?

The real issue here is will these hearings be used by some to divert our attention from that issue and instead use it for a launching platform for, quote, campaign reform, end quote.

Mr. Chairman, we need to keep our focus on one question: Have the election laws of this country been broken intentionally or unintentionally? As chairman of the Subcommittee on National Security, International Affairs, and Criminal Justice, I want to simply and directly state my concerns about the potential threat to our country's security that may have been and may continue to be posed by foreign influences on our electoral process.

The peril associated with direct foreign influence on our elections should be obvious. This Nation is a democracy and a democracy is not for sale. And one more point: If foreign governments have been contributing to U.S. elections, they have not been doing so for our benefit. Any such contributions would, by definition, imperil our Nation's security, since the reasons for contributions would likely be to secure favors and extend influence. I won't belabor the point, but it is central to this inquiry.

[snip]

As Judge Sirica once said, in a different context, follow the money, follow the money, follow the money.

[snip]

It concerns me, and I think it should concern every American, that there are so many people close to the President who believe that they may have committed a crime...."

Crossposted at wotisitgood4

Hastert, Turkey & Livingston

2006-02-21T13:05:00.000+11:00

In Sibel's response to the Hastert letter in VF - She specifically refers to both the ATC and Livingston:

"7) In the VF article Hastert’s spokesman says that Hastert has no affiliation with the A.T.C. [American-Turkish Council] or other groups reportedly mentioned in the wiretaps: “He does not know these organizations.”:
a. Please refer to Mr. Hastert’s trips to Turkey (all trips that took place- 1996-2002); its sponsors…they are self evident. Now how can he claim not knowing these entities (very intimately)?

b. Also, should we refer to Mr. Hastert’s dealing with the named foreign organization via [former House Speaker] Bob Livingston’s lobbying firm (Livingston Group)?"

She's not being particularly coy here - and I'm pretty sure that this is somehow connected to this odd statement she made last month which set off a flurry of speculation:

"He (Bob Livingston) is charging $1.2m - he's charging Turkey - and this is not the government of Turkish Republic, this is umm - who are these people who are paying him $1.2m per year? to do what? that is the question."

The FARA forms specify that the official client is the Turkish Embassy - is it possible that some of the Embassy's financing comes from somewhere other than the Turkish Government? I would have assumed not - but perhaps the embassy has some 'external' fundraising. Even if that was the case, I would have assumed that the Turkish Govt had some oversight of the Embassy's budget, and therefore was at least aware of the big chunks of money being shovelled at Livingston (and similarly Feith and Perle's IAI)

In the comments here, some sugegsted that maybe it was the the Turkish military who was financing the lobbying expense, or perhaps the ATC (and/or ATAA et al). Sibel's comments above suggest that the ATC et al may have been the vehicle for bribing Hastert - it's possible that the same groups were the vehicle for paying Livingston and Perle/Feith.

I know that Turkey has been through some tough financial times in the past decade, but I absolutely don't believe that Turkey couldn't have come up with say $20million to pay for 'lobbying' expenses in DC if required (as has been suggested), therefore we can probably assume that if the ATC is paying the Turkish Embassy in order to shovel money at Hastert and Livingston et al, then it is for purposes other than for the specific benefit of Turkey - that is, the money from the ATC is to benefit the ATC (or more specifically, to benefit certain members of the ATC).

The FBI has the answer to all these questions, recorded, translated and transcribed - it sure would be helpful if they let us in on their secrets.

FWIW, "Friends of Bob Livingston PAC" doled out $310,000 in the years 2000 to 2006, and in the same period, the Livingston Group PAC handed out $450,000 - and it was generally spread far and wide (amongst Republicans)

cross-posted at wotisitgood4

Hastert and Abramoff

2006-02-20T16:05:00.000+11:00

Speaking of mobbed up, let's not forget Mr Hastert's relationship with Jack Abramoff:

"DAVID SHUSTER: "But the Speaker himself may be in some political trouble. Abramoff held fundraisers for Hastert. And after one event at Abramoff's restaurant that raised $21,000, the House Speaker sent a letter to Interior Secretary Gayle Norton pressuring her to stop a casino in Louisiana. That new casino would have competed with an Abramoff client."" (link)

and

" House Speaker Dennis Hastert became the latest lawmaker to dump campaign contributions from clients of high-flying lobbyist Jack Abramoff, giving about $70,000 to charity Tuesday." (link)

Apparently Denny was so concerned about 'appearances' that he was happy to depart ways with Abramoff's $70,000 - but he isn't so worried about appearances that he is hoping to ride out the VF?TUrkish bribery claims when all he has to do is disclose his campaign contributions - and he doesn't even have any excuse for not disclosing...

Hastert's War on Drugs

2006-02-19T19:38:00.000+11:00

Speaking of Hastert and the War on Drugs (tm) - I'd forgotten about an episode from Sep 2004.

Here's Jack Schafer of Slate in an article called "Dennis Hastert on Dope - Two heartbeats from the presidency, an absolute nut job":

"We enter the Fox News Sunday interview transcript just after host Chris Wallace introduces the subject of 527s, such as MoveOn.org and the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth. Hastert starts complaining about the power flexed by non-political party groups:
HASTERT: Here in this campaign, quote, unquote, "reform," you take party power away from the party, you take the philosophical ideas away from the party, and give them to these independent groups.

You know, I don't know where George Soros gets his money. I don't know where—if it comes overseas or from drug groups or where it comes from. And I—

WALLACE (interrupting): Excuse me?

HASTERT: Well, that's what he's been for a number years—George Soros has been for legalizing drugs in this country. So, I mean, he's got a lot of ancillary interests out there.

WALLACE: You think he may be getting money from the drug cartel?

HASTERT: I'm saying I don't know where groups—could be people who support this type of thing. I'm saying we don't know. The fact is we don't know where this money comes from.

Before, transparency—and what we're talking about in transparency in election reform is you know where the money comes from. You get a $25 check or a $2,500 check or $25,000 check, put it up on the Internet. You know where it comes from, and there it is."

Even Chris Wallace couldn't believe the hatchet job that Hastert was performing. In fact, I imagine that Hastert had to swallow hard when he drew the short straw to pull out the knife at the GOP strategy meeting that week.

Hastert could hardly complain that he probably wasn't the man for the job, given that he himself had taken money from the Turkish drug mafia - could he? (actually, he could probably brag about it and everyone else at the table would have nodded silently)

Apparently Denny got all defensive about it - here's Josh Marshall a few days later:

"You'll remember a couple days ago we noted House Speaker Denny Hastert suggesting that George Soros may get his money from drug cartels or other such groups.

I've talked to reporters who've asked Hastert this around the convention hall. And he's been aggressively restating the 'charge.' I'm told he even shoved his finger in the chest of one of them when repeating it.

Now Soros has written this letter to Hastert, asking him to put up or shut up, or, more specifically "either substantiate these claims -- which you canont do because they are false -- or publicly apologize for attempting to defame my character and damage my reputation."

protesting too much, and all that.

Hastert was forced to respond to Soros:

"Dear Mr. Soros:
[snip]
I never implied that you were a criminal and I never would, that's not my style. I will state clearly that I believe your agenda is dangerous, extreme and wrong for America. I also believe that 527 political organizations set a dangerous precedent for political discourse because we don't know where the money comes from. For all we know, funding for some of the 527s might come from foreign sources or worse. Giving special interests more power and less accountability, while taking power away from political parties is a sad, but inevitable result of the campaign finance law that we enacted into law in the last session of Congress. It is my hope that we will take more effective action in the future to bring more transparency to the political process, as we take equally effective action to limit the power of the special interests."

see chutzpa: (Yiddish) unbelievable gall; insolence; audacity

I don't particularly want to focus on the drug element at the moment - but let's look at two of the above statements:

HASTERT: transparency—and what we're talking about in transparency in election reform is you know where the money comes from. You get a $25 check... put it up on the Internet. You know where it comes from, and there it is.

and

HASTERT: For all we know, funding... might come from foreign sources or worse.

Anyone disagree with that? That sounds pretty reasonable right? "You get a $25 check... put it up on the Internet. " Plain as day, in his own words. I can imagine that statement might find its way into the Vanity Fair LTE and elsewhere in our campaign.

I agree with Mr Hastert - transparency is important, as a matter of course, and even more so when there are serious allegations of wrongdoing. David Rose's article made some very specific allegations - and Mr Hastert could presumably have debunked those allegations quite easily by disclosing his campaign contibution data - for all of his PACs, from 1996 to 2002 - but he refused.

Think about that - Hastert preferred to weather allegations that he was in the pocket of 'foreign sources or worse' rather disclose all his campaign contributions. Let's be clear, the only reason the law was written such that it excluded sub$200 donations was to minimize the required paper work. There's no suggestion that sub$200 donors have any right to privacy or any such thing - in fact, many politicians open their books completely - so Hastert doesn't have any defense, other than claiming 'preposterous' at every available opportunity.

Even when the tenacious Melanie Sloan at CREW filed a complaint with FEC, Hastert proactively stripped relevant information from the data that he sent to FEC - surely it would have been simpler to hand over the information, complete and intact, rather than *ahem* 're-purpose' it for FEC.

He sure is acting like a man with something to hide.

disclose, denny

crossposted at wotisitgood4

Hastert's finances

2006-02-19T17:14:00.000+11:00

another point from miguel - Hastert has never been rich. His personal finance details can be found here at opensecrets - his net worth is measured in the hundreds of thousands - a rank pauper by congressfolk standards. This is not surprising, given that he spent "16 years of teaching and coaching at Yorkville High School." (link)

One possible implication of this is that he was possibly susceptible to "tens of thousands of dollars in surreptitious payments in exchange for political favors and information." (link)

Putting two kids through school can be kinda expensive, huh Denny?

The other possible implication is that Hastert didn't actually receive, at least not directly, the purported $500,000 that was apparently the price discussed for pulling the Armenian Genocide resolution. Of course, just because the money doesn't appear in his official statements doesn't mean that it was never paid. There are plenty of ways to hide the money - for example, in the freezer, or in french commodes, or by employing family members, or many other variations.

With the family member option in mind, I had a quick look at Hastert's family. As it happens, he has two sons (this from 2002):

"Joshua, 27, the oldest, in 1999 ran a record label and record store in DeKalb known locally as Seven Dead Arson, a name inspired by a news headline. After Hastert became speaker, Joshua moved to Washington and became a lobbyist, one of the rare ones who work the Capitol with a pierced ear. This summer, Joshua Hastert was named a principal member of the lobbying firm Federal Legislative Associates.

Joshua Hastert says his father has not changed much as speaker. He says key to his father’s style is “making sure everyone’s side is heard.”

His younger brother Ethan, 24, just wrapped up a stint as an aide to Vice President Dick Cheney’s chief of staff and is now at Northwestern University’s law school."

I wouldn't normally like to bring family into this - but given that one son worked for Cheney, and another is a newbie lobbyist, I figure they might be worth a closer look given that both Cheney and nepotism in lobbying seems to be the flavours of the day.

This from WaPo in 2003:

"Joshua Hastert, who represents high-tech and small businesses at Federal Legislative Associates, will not approach his father but has not ruled out lobbying other House leaders, Hastert spokesman John Feehery said."

Then:

"Hastert's son jumped to a bigger firm last year, Podesta Mattoon, where the Speaker's close adviser, Daniel Mattoon, is a name partner"

And then this from the Boston Globe last month:

"The website promoting the lobbying services of Joshua Hastert is enticing: ''Josh has long-standing relationships with numerous offices on Capitol Hill and in the administration as well as a unique understanding of the legislative process."

Unique, indeed. Hastert is the son of J. Dennis Hastert, the speaker of the House, making him one of dozens of high-powered lobbyists with family connections to members of Congress. Joshua Hastert, who says he does not lobby House Republican leaders, is registered as a lobbyist for clients ranging from Amgen, a biotech company, to Lockheed Martin, a defense contractor."

As noted, nepotism and lobbying in DC go together like a horse and carriage, love & marriage... so nothing unique there at all.

Ethan graduated Northwestern University’s law school in 2005 - his other claim to fame was in 2004:

"(AP) -- A son of House Speaker Dennis Hastert was arrested Saturday on charges including driving under the influence of alcohol, the speaker's office said.

Ethan Hastert was cited for several offenses, including DUI, in the early-morning hours, according to a press release from Hastert's office.

"It's regrettable, but as always, Ethan enjoys my love and full support in the face of this difficult situation,'' Hastert, R-Ill., said in the statement. "Now, we must respect the legal process while this matter is resolved.''

Hastert's spokesman, John McGovern, declined to elaborate, referring questions to police."

I'm not sure what the 'several offenses' were - for some reason this story didn't get picked up very much. It was one of those AP stories that wasnt picked up on the wires - I only found one mention of it. (although the NYT carried it )

I hope he was doing drugs - although the thought of any Hastert at a rave with his shirt off is somewhat disconcerting - mostly because:

"Chairman Hastert had broad oversight for the Departments of State, Defense and Justice, as well as the nation's War on Drugs..."

in any case, Hastert probably could have done with some extra funds in those early years.

another question that Miguel asked:

"why did the Turks start putting Hastert on the payroll in the 1996-1997 time frame? Hastert did not become House Speaker until 1999. Before then, he was Chief Deputy Whip. I believe Dick Armey was Majority Leader and Tom Delay was Whip.

Why did the Turkish mafia guys choose Hastert instead of Delay, Armey or Gingrich?"

I don't know the answer to that question. Maybe because it was cheap? Maybe they already had Delay, Armey & Gingrich on the payroll? Maybe because Hastert was involved in the War on Drugs(TM)? I'm not sure when his involvement in the WoD began - perhaps Hastert joined the WoD at the request of the Turkish mafia who relied on the 'War' for their profits...

cross-posted at wotitisgood4

Randy Evans and FEC

2006-02-19T13:30:00.000+11:00

One other thing that i noticed is that Randy Evans also represents HFCC "in connection with all matters pending before the FEC" - we must presume that the VF response was at least partially related to the response to FEC - probably the content, and perhaps the timing.

However the content of the letter to VF is substantially different to the 'justifications' offered in the affadavit to FEC (at least as represented in FEC's response). That strikes me as being really odd (as does the timing).

They are obviously a lot smarter, or a lot stupider, than we are. I can barely think of a plausible scenario.

If I was Evans, it would make sense to respond to VF immediately after the article was published - but after that window of opportunity had passed, it would be best to keep quiet. Having said that, almost by the time that the magazine had hit the newstands, he must have been aware of CREW's complaint. Similarly, if I was Evans, I'd probably make it my business to know when FEC was releasing their response to CREW - and I'd probably hope to have a pretty good understanding of whether there was likely to be anything damaging in the FEC report. But his actions don't seem to reflect any such thing...

Some conspiracy-minded folk might argue that Evans' absurd response in VF was an intentional attempt to fan some flames, only to have them doused by the FEC report - but to the extent that Hastert was seen to be exonerated (ie the aforementioned 'dousing') by the FEC report, then surely a better strategy would have been to let the exoneration speak for itself, without flaming the suspicion in advance with such obvious nonsense. Having said all that, if it wasn't for Miguel and I, the strategy would very probably have been successful - but if so, that would more likely have been by accident, rather than design - they still would have been better off just to let the FEC report speak for itself.

What are the other possibilities?

Is it possible that they were nervous about the FEC report because they were concerned about a possible negative outcome and were trying some pre-emptive media strike? It's difficult to imagine a scenario where that makes any logical/strategic sense.

Is it possible that Evans originally tried to get VF to publish a letter that was full of garbage (akin to the HFCC response to FEC) that VF knew to be false and they refused? again, difficult to imagine - and if it was the case, Evans' best game would have been to accept their refusal to print and just shutup. In fact, judging by the original Rose article, the lawyers were all over the story from the beginning - there sure is a lot missing from the article, and Sibel said that Hastert's camp was repeatedly offered the opportunity to input.

It would be kinda funny if FEC accepted Evans' nonsense response but VF wouldn't accept it, even in an LTE.

there's something happening here. what it is aint exactly clear.

crossposted at wotisitgood4

Dallas Ingemunson

2006-02-19T13:17:00.000+11:00

Miguel has made a few good points in the last couple of days - let me deal with a few in this post:

Miguel A):

"Hey, I just fond something else. The FEC report says Hastert's treasurer listed name and address of everyone making a contribution under $200. But NOT THE AMOUNT. One of the red flags would be amounts just under $200, such as a lot of contributions for $195. But since amounts are not listed, there is no way to evaluate.
[snip]
This is significant, if true, for it could render the list almost totally useless. You could not match the amounts on the list with the previously reported unitemized totals. Just as importantly, if you get a list of names that look suspicious, you cannot estimate how much each suspicious individuals might have donated. Does that make sense?"

Yep - sure does make sense. HFCC responded simply to the 'foreign names', 'foreign addresses' and 'foreign banks' claims - which are all largely irrelevant and are not responsive to the main claim.

Miguel B):

"The letter to CREW from the FEC says documents related to the case will be placed in the public record within 30 days. Should we wait for the 30 days to pass before filing the FOIA request?"

The law dealing with that is called the "Statement of Policy Regarding Disclosure of Closed Enforcement and Related Files" - details here (legalese warning).

Firstly, it isn't immediately obvious whether FEC will release all of the documents that they have - although I can't see any particular reason why they wouldn't.

As noted above, there isn't likely to be much useful in the documents that FEC has - just names and addresses, and it isn't obvious that would be of much assistance. It is possible that the list would also include the dates of the contributions which may be of some use/interest - specifically if we can identify periods of high activity outside of the 'annual events'.

Perhaps the best that we could hope for is to find some fake names and addresses. Also, we would learn the answer to how many names were listed on each page, which would answer the question I asked yesterday. Further, it is possible that HFCC made some supporting claims in their affadavit that were not mentioned in FEC's response to CREW.

Earlier, I asked:

"is it standard practice that the assistant treasurer would respond to a complaint of this nature? Or did they nominate her for the job so that she could correctly claim that the statement was true 'to her knowledge'?"

Miguel C):

"One issue you brought up is the Treasurer vs. Assistant Treasurer. Here is what FEC regs says about this issue:
"Assistant Treasurer

The Commission urges every committee to designate an assistant treasurer on its Statement of Organization. An assistant treasurer may assume the treasurer’s duties when the treasurer is unavailable or has resigned. 102.7(a)."
So the assistant treasurer is supposedly there when the Treasurer is unavailable. Kind of convenient that Hastert's treasurer wasn't around when it came time to sign the affadavit, huh?"

It sure does look a little convenient. Anyone have any thoughts?

Incidentally, FEC's response lists some dates in the meta-data of the report, although the meaning of them isnt entirely clear:

Date Complaint Filed: August 16, 05
Date of Notification: August 22, 2005
Last Response Received: Sep 7, 2005
Date Activated: Nov 7, 2005
Expiration of Statute of Limitations: (rolling from) Jan1 05 to Dec31 06

I presume that 'notification' means that HFCC was notified on that day, and that all responses from HFCC were received Sep 7, and perhaps FEC 'activated' an official investigation a month later (?). (alternatively, perhaps the initial back and forth was between CREW and FEC, and HFCC wasn't officially contacted till Nov 7 when the investigation was opened.)

Anyhow, for one reason or other, Treasurer Dallas Ingemunson wasn't available - either to write the affadavit or sign any of the documents - even though Dallas Ingemunson was personally named as a respondent in the affadavit. Incidentally, at least according to one political reporter, Dallas Ingemunson, is regarded as Hastert's "political godfather".

crossposted at wotisitgood4

disingenuous denny hastert

2006-02-17T21:35:00.000+11:00

further to my previous post called "is Hastert bamboozling?", we learnt from the FEC response to CREW's complaint that 70% of the contributions to Hastert For Congress were in "annual low-ticket-price (between $25 and $150) events."

In that post, I speculated that the average contribution was likely to be approximately $50 (based purely on the 80/20 rule). I don't really understand how these events are organised - are these 'contributions' effectively ticket prices (with different strata)? or are they 'open' events where the participant literally makes a donation? or are there different events with different ticket prices - say $150 per plate at one event, and other events where you walk by and get your photo taken with him for $25? etc... once we know that, i suspect that we can look into the historical record and get a better fix on the exact size on the average donation size for the "70% of the contributions" - but for the moment, I'm quite comfortable assuming an average of approximately $50 for these 70% of contributions.

Consider that HFCC plucked this apparently random statistic in an attempt to show themselves in the best light.

Given that we are primarily interested in understanding whether HFCC received an inordinate number of marginally-less-than-$200 contributions, as described in the wiretaps, then maybe Hastert has inadvertently given us a window into the other 30% of 'individual contributions'.

Excuse the math for a minute, but there are some things that we know, and with some interpolation, we may be able to ascertain the things that we dont know (to paraphrase Rumsfeld).

According Rose, between April 96 and Dec 02, Hastert received $483,000 in undisclosed contributions. I believe that Rose started his analysis in April because the Q1, 96 numbers are missing from Hastert's official filings. I learnt that Hastert's total contributions from individuals in Q1 were $50,000 - and Hastert's Q2 numbers show a 50/50 split between disclosed and undisclosed. Therefore, I assumed that half of his Q1 individual contributions were also undisclosed. Therefore, between 96 and 02, I have pegged Hastert's undisclosed contributions at (483+25) = $508,000.

According to FEC, Hastert "attached a list of all unitemized contributions from 1996 to 2002" - so I'm going to assume that includes all of 1996 (i.e. including Q1). And we know that "70% of the contributions came from annual low-ticket-price (between $25 and $150) events." For reasons that I've outlined, I'm assuming that the average of those contributions is $50.

Following on, we have 2 unknowns - the total number of contributions (let's call that Y), and the average size of contributions that occur outside of these 'annual events' (let's call that Z) - such that the equation at hand is:

(70% * $50 * Y) + (30% * $Z * Y) = $508,000

If we knew the value of Y ( total number of contributions), we could solve for Z (the average size of contributions that occur outside of these 'annual events') - and if Z was suspiciously high, then we'd be some way toward proving our point - which is that Hastert was on the receiving end of "tens of thousands of dollars" of contributions which were designed to skirt the $200 reporting requirement.

Thanks to FEC, we have a small glimpse into understanding Y. FEC notes that Hastert's affadavit "included a 159-page attachment listing the names and addresses of all individuals who contributed less than $200 between 1996 and 2002."

The question, then, is how many contributors per page? If there is a standard reporting procedure/format, and if we can get that information, then we can determine how many contributors Hastert had, and we will then know the average size of the contributions that occur outside the regular 'annual event' channels.

My guess is that this number will look 'somewhat' high, but won't 'prove' anything, specifically. However, if my hunch is correct, it will demonstrate that Hastert's random claim that "70% of the contributions came from annual low-ticket-price (between $25 and $150) events" is intentionally disingenuous - which would certainly focus our attention.

lemme ask around.

(if necessary, we could also do some research into the validity of my guesstimate that the average 'annual event' contribution is $50)

crossposted at wotisitgood4

is Hastert bamboozling?

2006-02-17T18:57:00.000+11:00

Here's an important update to my post about Hastert's response to CREW's claim (i also posted an update in that post):

the amazing miguel in the comments notes that:

"The report does not quote the assistant treasurer as saying "70% of funds", it says "70% of contributions". In other words, 70% of the contributors were at these annual events. But 70% of contributers contributing an average of..let's say $25 per person..is less then the 30% of contributors who contribute $199/person."

(NB - on revision of the original letter, I've just noticed that it actually says "70% of THE contributions")

I'm *kicking* myself TWICE. once for making the transcription error, and twice for falling for it. Miguel is correct - the way Hastert framed the sentence could mean either a) 'funds' (aka 'gross contributions') or b) 'contributors'. Most probably the latter.

The question then becomes whether the language was intended to be misleading in the context of CREW's filing (even while being technically correct). If Hastert's claim doesn't speak to the heart of the issue, then why would they include it as evidence against that claim?

Here is the language:

"70% of the contributions came from annual low-ticket-price (between $25 and $150) events"

(FWIW: also, note that FEC is paraphrasing, rather than actually quoting directly from the affadavit.)

For want of a better starting point, let's presume the 80/20 rule which would give us an average of $50 for each of the contributors at these events. I'm not sure how much further we should extrapolate the numbers... for now. But let me just state, for the record, that if they made this claim (out of the blue) to 'prove' the point, and if it doesn't actually lend much credence to their case, then it would appear that they are trying to bamboozle.
(see here for speculation about the numbers)

cross-posted at wotisitgood4

Hastert responds to CREW

2006-02-16T08:58:00.000+11:00

updated - see below
-----------------
This just in from CREW:

February 13, 2006
FEC Responds to CREW's Complaint Requesting Investigation into Foreign Donations to Speaker Hastert's Campaign

On August 16, 2005, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) filed a complaint with the Federal Election Commission (FEC) requesting an investigation into whether Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert's campaign committee illegally accepted campaign contributions from foreign nationals in 2000 and 2001.

CREW based its complaint on an article appearing in the September issue of Vanity Fair in which it was reported that former F.B.I. translator Sibel Edomonds reviewed wiretap recordings involving an F.B.I. target at Chicago, Illinois' Turkish Consulate, as well as members of the American-Turkish Council and the Assembly of Turkish American Associations. According to Ms. Edmonds, the recordings indicated that an F.B.I. target had arranged for tens of thousands of dollars of campaign contributions to be sent to Rep. Hastert's campaign committee in small (i.e., less than $200) checks that did not have to be itemized.

Hastert for Congress received $110,860.75 in unitemized contributions in 2001 and $72,275 in unitemized contributions in 2000.

Federal election campaign law strictly prohibits foreign nationals from making political contributions and prohibits political committees from accepting campaign contributions from foreign nationals. If a committee receives a contribution of questionable legality, it must make at least one written or oral request for evidence that the contribution is legal and either confirm the legality of the contribution or refund the contribution.

Today, CREW received an answer from the Federal Elections Commission. In their reponse, they wrote:

"On January 24, 2006, the Federal Election Commission reviewed the allegations in your complaint dated August 16, 2005, and found that, on the basis of the information provided in your complaint, and information provided by the Hastert for Congress Committee and Dallas Ingemunson, in her official capacity as treasurer, there is no reason to believe the respondents violated the Act or Commission regulations as alleged in the complaint. Accordingly, on January 24, 2006, the Commission closed the file in this matter."

FEC's full response here (pdf).

From the pdf (my transcription, errors are mine):

"HFCC (Hastert for Congress) responded via affadavit that it never knowingly accepted contributions from foreign nationals, and attached a list of all unitemized contributions from 1996 to 2002, none of which seem to be of questionable origin

[snip]

To refute these allegations, HFCC provided a detailed affadavit from it's assistant treasurer, which included a 159-page attachment listing the names and addresses of all individuals who contributed less than $200 between 1996 and 2002. In her affadavit, the assistant treasurer stated... to her knowledge, HFCC "never solicited, accepted or received funds from a contributor or donor using a foreign passport, providing a foreign address , using a check... from a foreign bank... [or] where the bank identification or the account ownership information imprinted on the contribution check indicates a foreign address

[snip]

The assistant treasurer also stated that over 90% of all unitemized contributions came from residents of Illinois and that 70% of the contributions came from annual low-ticket-price (between $25 and $150) events from Speaker Hastert's District"

(NB: the word 'the' added on revision - as i noted "errors are mine"!)

*cough* bullshit *cough*

we've already outlined many of the reasons that the "no foreign passport / foreign address / foreign bank" claim tells us nothing. If the purpose of these sub$200 donations was to hide below the radar, as is claimed in the wiretaps and the VF article, then of course they wouldn't use a foreign bank or foreign address as the vehicle.

CREW's initial filing specifically asked about 'foreign names' and 'foreign nationals' - but the complaint was framed in such a way that it didn't capture many of the more ~~nefarious~~ tricky financing schemes - such as chanelling the money in cash contributions, or using fake names and addresses, or using Abramoff-type vehicles etc.

We need to get a new FOIA request filed with FEC, the FBI & DOJ which is written such that the answer we receive is actually responsive to the claims in Vanity Fair. I'll contact POGO again.

Based on my analysis it seems most improbable that 70% of funds came from an "annual events" in any year unless she is saying that there are many annual events throught the year. I doubt that the treasurer is lying about any of the specific claims that she makes in the affadavit. see update below.

Along the same lines, is it standard practice that the assistant treasurer would respond to a complaint of this nature? Or did they nominate her for the job so that she could correctly claim that the statement was true 'to her knowledge'?

One other point to consider, Hastert's lawyer knew that this response was imminent when he wrote the letter to VF - I don't know what it means, if anything

update: the amazing miguel in the comments notes that:

"The report does not quote the assistant treasurer as saying "70% of funds", it says "70% of contributions". In other words, 70% of the contributors were at these annual events. But 70% of contributers contributing an average of..let's say $25 per person..is less then the 30% of contributors who contribute $199/person."

"70% of the contributions came from annual low-ticket-price (between $25 and $150) events"

(FWIW: also, note that FEC is paraphrasing, rather than actually quoting directly from the affadavit.)

For want of a better starting point, let's presume the 80/20 rule which would give us an average of $50 for each of the contributors at these events. I'm not sure how much further we should extrapolate the numbers... for now. But let me just state, for the record, that if they made this claim (out of the blue) to 'prove' the point, and if it doesn't actually lend much credence to their case, then it would appear that they are trying to bamboozle.
(see here for some speculation about how we might ascertain the missing numbers)

(Cross-posted at wotisitgood4)

Hastert for Congress Unitemized Contributions

2006-02-15T14:25:00.000+11:00

Hastert For Congress Committee is the PAC named in David Rose's article as being of particular interest.

Rose writes:

"According to some of the wiretaps, the F.B.I.’s targets had arranged for tens of thousands of dollars to be paid to Hastert’s campaign funds in small checks. Under Federal Election Commission rules, donations of less than $200 are not required to be itemized in public filings.

Hastert himself was never heard in the recordings, Edmonds told investigators, and it is possible that the claims of covert payments were hollow boasts. Nevertheless, an examination of Hastert’s federal filings shows that the level of un-itemized payments his campaigns received over many years was relatively high. Between April 1996 and December 2002, un-itemized personal donations to the Hastert for Congress Committee amounted to $483,000. In contrast, un-itemized contributions in the same period to the committee run on behalf of the House majority leader, Tom Delay, Republican of Texas, were only $99,000..."

Sibel seems to suggest that Hastert for Congress isn't the only PAC that was involved with these bribes - she asks:

"Why doesn’t Hastert disclose all the contributions (those under $200), to all his PACs (he has several) for the years between 1997 and 2001?"

I've rummaged through the official Hastert for Congress filings (from here) and picked out the contributions from individuals.

There isn't anything that is conclusive, but the main thing that seems to stand out is that Hastert's non-itemized contributions remain quite stable over the period, even while his stature grew, and his itemized contributions exploded. This seems to support the story-line that Sibel suggests - i.e. that the unitemized contributions in those early years were 'padded' somehow...

If Hastert simply discloses his data, then he can remove the cloud over his name...

----
Unitemized Individual Contributions (itemized in brackets)
1996
Q1 $25,000 ($25k) (#1)
Q2 $20,000 ($19k)
Q3 $29,000 ($66k)
Q4 $5,000 ($18k)
total - $79,000

1997
1H) $26,000 ($65k)
2H) 23,000 ($70)
total - $49,000

1998
1Q) $17,000 ($48k)
2Q) $8,000 ($12k)
3Q) $20,000 ($64k)
4Q) $2,000 ($23k)
total - $47,000

1999
1H) $45,000 ($236k)
2H) $34,000 ($243k)
total - $79,000

2000
1Q - $17,000 ($17k)
2Q - $15,000 ($41k)
3Q - $23,000 ($141k)
4Q - $ 12,000 ($110k)
total - $67,000

2001
1H - $65,000 ($329k)
2H - $45,000 ($359k)
total - $109,000

2002
1Q - $11,000 ($162K)
2Q - $15,000 ($116K)
3Q - $32,000 ($306K)
4Q - $8,000 ($137K)
total - $66,000

2003
1Q -$38,000 ($308K)
2Q - $34,000 ($294K)
3Q - $25,000 ($240k)
4Q - $16,000 ($314K)
total - $113,000

2004
1Q - $16,000 ($408K)
2Q - $36,000 ($446K)
3Q - $49,000 ($460K)
4Q - $20,000 ($218K)
total - $121,000

2005
1Q - $37,000 ($362K)
2Q - $19,000 ($329K)
3Q - $34,000 ($352K)
4Q - $10,000 ($313K)
total - $100,000

notes
1. I can't find the Q1, 96 report. However the Q2 report has the YTD Individual Contributions listed as $89,000, and the Q2 as $40,000. Therefore the Q1 Total from Individs is $49,000. I've split that in half (itemized/non-itemized) which is the same ratio as Q2. (N.B. the actual split has been redacted for some reason)
2. note that there is some rounding

crossposted at wotisitgood4

open secrets

2006-02-15T12:59:00.000+11:00

Here is some more of Hastert's campaign contribution data from Open Secrets.org

Again, this data isn't particularly useful for our current purposes, but here it is.

1995-96
Total Receipts: $948,369
Source of Funds:
PACs $550,187 (58.0%)
Individuals $362,676 (38.2%)

---------

1997-1998
Total Receipts: $1,019,580
Source of Funds:
Small Individual contributions(<$200) $130,941 (12.8%)
Large Individual contributions ($200+) $262,341 (25.7%)

---------
2000
Raised: $2,386,942
Source of Funds:
PACs: $1,307,648 (55%)
Individuals: $1,004,692 (42%)

----------
2002
Raised: $2,995,170
Source of Funds:
PACs: $1,319,855 (44%)
Individuals: $1,588,870 (53%)

-----------
2003-2004
Total Receipts: $4,862,029
Source of Funds:
Individual contributions $2,924,677 (60.2%)
PAC contributions 1,911,381 (39.3%)
---------

Also, OpenSecrets notes that "PAC contributions and large donations from individuals are the two biggest sources of contributions for most members of Congress. In the 2000 elections, winning U.S. House candidates collected about 42% of their money from PACs, 37% from individual contributions of $200 or more, and 15% from small individual contributions.

KOMPAC

2006-02-15T12:47:00.000+11:00

I've been burrowing through some campaign finance data for Mr Hastert.

Here, for reference, are the details of Hastert's Keep Our Majority Leadership PAC (KOMPAC)

The data is from OpenSecrets.org and doesn't include the sub-$200 breakout - but I'll post it here for the record.

NB - The VF article doesn't mention KOMPAC, and I'm not particularly interested in KOMPAC for our current purposes
-----------------
kopmpac 98
Total Receipts $130,600
Contributions to this PAC from individual donors of $200 or more $12,004
-----------------
kompac2000
Total Receipts $2,178,369
Contributions to this PAC from individual donors of $200 or more $952,589
-----------------
kompac 2002
Total Receipts $1,824,153
Contributions to this PAC from individual donors of $200 or more $442,702
-----------------
kompac 04
Total Receipts $2,641,098
Contributions to this PAC from individual donors of $200 or more $555,786
----------------

If we decide that we want to take a closer look at KOMPAC, the actual filing data (which will give us the unitemized contributions) are here

Citizens for Hastert and KOMPAC

2006-02-14T10:23:00.000+11:00

from Miguel:

"Hastert controls two political war chests -- his election fund named Citizens for Hastert and KOMPAC, the acronym for the speaker's Keep Our Majority political action committee.

Scratched from Hastert's political calendar is a February $5,000-per-person fund-raiser in Hawaii for KOMPAC and an April event in Orlando for his re-election fund. This would have been KOMPAC's third Hawaiian fund-raiser. Most of the political money Hastert raises goes to bankroll Republican candidates. Hastert, who is a top draw for donors, will continue to travel extensively headlining fund-raisers to benefit Republicans." (link)

Does anyone have a list of Hastert's PACs? There's Citizens for Hastert, Hastert for Congress and KOMPAC - any others?

crossposted at wotisitgood4

more soon

2006-02-14T10:15:00.000+11:00

Apologies for light posting - I was hoping to have some more detail up by now.

Things are chugging away in the background - I'll have some more soon.

Hastert Loves Wiretaps

2006-02-13T10:17:00.000+11:00

This just in:

"Speaker Dennis Hastert provided a strident defense of a controversial warrantless wiretapping program Saturday while drawing comparisons between two of his party's most revered former presidents and the office's current occupant.

[snip]

And “sometimes to do that you have to do some fairly extraordinary things,” he said, such as listen in on possible terrorist-related communications.

[snip]

“If you're a foreign national” and interested in harming Americans, he said, “then you better watch out because we'll do everything we can to stop you.”" (link)

Priceless.

Cross posted at wotisitgood4

Randy Evans

2006-02-12T19:10:00.000+11:00

i've had this post in my 'draft' box for a week or so - i thought that i had published this already. apologies. here are some random facts about Hastert's lawyer, Randy Evans

* from miguel: randy evans has been Hastert's private counsel since the day Hastert took over the Speakership.

"The Evans connection is very interesting. He is the [Governor] Perdue-appointed chair of the State Election board, and active in pushing the Voter-ID law. Randy is also counsel for the Republican Party of Georgia."

--------------------
disinfopedia:
"Randolph "Randy" Evans, the chair of the Financial Institutions practice at McKenna Long & Aldridge LLP (MLA), "handles high profile, complex litigation matters in state and federal courts throughout the United States for some of the largest companies in the world." [1]

Evans served as outside counsel to both Newt Gingrich and J. Dennis Hastert, Speakers of the United States House of Representatives, as well as to House Majority Whip Roy Blunt and former Representative from Oklahoma and House GOP Chairman J.C. Watts ( "as well as a number of other United States Senators and Congressmen as client.")

Evans is chairman of the board of the Newt Gingrich Companies. He is also chairman of the board of the J.C. Watts Companies."

-------------------
"Evans made his first mark in the area of Speaker politics and law in February 1988 when he assisted then Congressman Newt Gingrich with the drafting of the ethics complaint against then Speaker Jim Wright. Eventually, Speaker Wright resigned, leading to Gingrich’s elevation to Minority Whip of the House GOP Conference in 1989."

"Evans continued in the area following Mr. Gingrich’s resignation. In 1999, newly elected Speaker J. Dennis Hastert kept Mr. Evans on as his counsel. ... Evans announced the negotiation and approval of a book contract for the publication of a book by Speaker Hastert to be published by Regnery Publishing"

------------
"Randy Evans has served as General Counsel to the Georgia Republican Party since his appointment by then Georgia GOP Chairman Ralph Reed. He was reappointed by Georgia GOP Chairman Alec Pointevint in 2003. In addition, Georgia Governor Sonny Perdue appointed, (and the Georgia State Senate confirmed) Mr. Evans to the Georgia State Election Board in 2003. While serving as Presiding Justice, Chief Justice Norman Fletcher of the Georgia Supreme Court appointed Mr. Evans as a Special Master of the Court."
----------

In 1999, david corn reported on the details of Gingrich's first divorce (Randy Evans was representing him) - apparently it was a mystery at the time why Newt didn't settle quietly - rather than publicly airing a lot of his dirty laundry. Let's hope Evans takes the same approach with the Hastert case!

crossposted at wotisitgood4

Hastert issues in Vanity Fair

2006-02-12T18:30:00.000+11:00

i keep scouring the Vanity Fair article looking for the Denny-related paragraphs for reference. I've decided to bring them all together, here in one place. That should help me, and you.

First reference:

"It may be more than another embarrassing security scandal. One counter-intelligence official familiar with Edmonds’s case has told Vanity Fair that the F.B.I. opened an investigation into covert activities by Turkish nationals in the late 1990’s. That inquiry found evidence, mainly via wiretaps, of attempts to corrupt senior American politicians in at least two major cities—Washington and Chicago. Toward the end of 2001, Edmonds was asked to translate some of the thousands of calls that had been recorded by this operation, some dating back to 1997.

Edmonds has given confidential testimony inside a secure Sensitive Compartmented Information facility on several occasions: to congressional staffers, to investigators from the O.I.G., and to the staff from the 9/11 commission. Sources familiar with this testimony say that, in addition to her allegations about the Dickersons, she reported hearing Turkish wiretap targets boast that they had a covert relationship with a very senior politician indeed—Dennis Hastert, Republican congressman from Illinois and Speaker of the House since 1999. The targets reportedly discussed giving Hastert tens of thousands of dollars in surreptitious payments in exchange for political favors and information. “The Dickersons,” says one official familiar with the case, “are only the tip of the iceberg.” "

second reference:

"Echoing Cole and German, one of the congressional staffers who heard Edmonds’s secure testimony likens the FBI to a family, “and you don’t take your problems outside it. They think they’re the best law enforcement agency in the world, that they’re beyond criticism and beyond reproach.” To an outside observer that ethos alone might explain the use of the state secrets privilege against Edmonds. But, the staffer adds, some of the wiretaps she said she translated “mentioned government officials.” Here may lie an entirely different dimension to her case. Vanity Fair has established that around the time the Dickersons visited the Edmondses, in December 2001, Joel Robertz, an F.B.I. special agent in Chicago, contacted Sibel and asked her to review some wiretaps. Some were several years old, others more recent; all had been generated by a counter-intelligence that had its start in 1997. “It began in D.C.,” says an F.B.I. counter-intelligence official who is familiar with the case file. “It became apparent that Chicago was actually the center of what was going on.”

Its subject was explosive; what sounded like attempts to bribe elected members of Congress, both Democrat and Republican. “There was pressure within the bureau for a special prosecutor to be appointed and take the case on, “the official says. Instead, his colleagues were told to alter the thrust of their investigation – away from elected politicians and toward appointed officials. “This is the reason why Ashcroft reacted to Sibel in such an extreme fashion,” he says “It was to keep this from coming out.”

In her secure testimony, Edmonds disclosed some of what she recalled hearing. In all, says a source who was present, she managed to listen to more than 40 of the Chicago recordings supplied by Robertz. Many involved an F.B.I. target at the city’s large Turkish Consulate, as well as members of the American-Turkish Consulate, as well as members of the American-Turkish Council and the Assembly of Turkish American Associates.

Some of the calls reportedly contained what sounded like references to large scale drug shipments and other crimes. To a person who knew nothing about their context, the details were confusing and it wasn’t always clear what might be significant. One name, however, apparently stood out – a man the Turkish callers often referred to by the nickname “Denny boy.” It was the Republican congressman from Illinois and Speaker of the House, Dennis Hastert. According to some of the wiretaps, the F.B.I.’s targets had arranged for tens of thousands of dollars to be paid to Hastert’s campaign funds in small checks. Under Federal Election Commission rules, donations of less than $200 are not required to be itemized in public filings.

Hastert himself was never heard in the recordings, Edmonds told investigators, and it is possible that the claims of covert payments were hollow boasts. Nevertheless, an examination of Hastert’s federal filings shows that the level of un-itemized payments his campaigns received over many years was relatively high. Between April 1996 and December 2002, un-itemized personal donations to the Hastert for Congress Committee amounted to $483,000. In contrast, un-itemized contributions in the same period to the committee run on behalf of the House majority leader, Tom Delay, Republican of Texas, were only $99,000. An analysis of the filings of four other senior Republicans shows that only one, Clay Shaw of Florida, declared a higher total in un-itemized donations than Hastert over the same period: $552,000. The other three declared far less. Energy and Commerce Committee chairman Joe Barton, of Texas, claimed $265,000; Armed Services Committee chairman Duncan Hunter, of California, got $212,000; and Ways and Means Committee chairman Bill Thomas, of California, recorded $110,000.

Edmonds reportedly added that the recordings also contained repeated references to Hastert’s flip-flop, in the fall of 2000, over an issue which remains of intense concern to the Turkish government – the continuing campaign to have Congress designate the killings of Armenians in Turkey between 1915 and 1923 a genocide. For many years, attempts had been made to get the house to pass a genocide resolution, but they never got anywhere until August 2000, when Hastert, as Speaker, announced that he would give it his backing and see that it received a full house vote. He had a clear political reason, as analysts noted at the time: a California Republican incumbent, locked in a tight congressional race, was looking to win over his district’s large Armenian community. Thanks to Hastert, the resolution, vehemently opposed by the Turks, passed the International Relations Committee by a large majority. Then, on October 19, minutes before the full House vote, Hastert withdrew it.

At the time, he explained his decision by saying that he had received a letter from President Clinton arguing that the genocide resolution, if passed, would harm U.S. interests. Again, the reported content of the Chicago wiretaps may well have been sheer bravado, and there is no evidence that any payment was ever made to Hastert or his campaign. Nevertheless, a senior official at the Turkish Consulate is said to have claimed in one recording that the price for Hastert to withdraw the resolution would have been at least $500,000.

Hastert’s spokesman says the congressman withdrew the genocide resolution only because of the approach from Clinton, “and to insinuate anything else just doesn’t make any sense.” He adds that Hastert has no affiliation with the A.T.C. or other groups reportedly mentioned in the wiretaps: “He does not know these organizations.” Hastert is “unaware of Turkish interests making donations,” the spokesman says, and his staff has “not seen any pattern of donors with foreign names.” "

crossposted at wotisitgood4

hastert, bribes

2006-02-11T23:13:00.000+11:00

another thing that i wanted to mention is that there is some discrepancy in the Rose article regarding the 'price' of the bribe.

there is some confusion about this.

Rose claims (separately)that:

a) "According to some of the wiretaps, the F.B.I.’s targets had arranged for tens of thousands of dollars to be paid to Hastert’s campaign funds in small checks."
b) " a senior official at the Turkish Consulate is said to have claimed in one recording that the price for Hastert to withdraw the resolution would have been at least $500,000. "
c) "The targets reportedly discussed giving Hastert tens of thousands of dollars in surreptitious payments in exchange for political favors and information."
d) "Nevertheless, an examination of Hastert’s federal filings shows that the level of un-itemized payments his campaigns received over many years was relatively high. Between April 1996 and December 2002, un-itemized personal donations to the Hastert for Congress Committee amounted to $483,000."

Without any evidence - it's my guess that b) is nonsense - and that misunderstanding leads to a lot of misinformed speculation. It's my guess that we are only looking for "tens of thousands" - not half a million. My best guess is that the fact that the $483k approximates the $500k (in b)) is mostly a coincidence.

Miguel asked earlier why the Turks were financing Hastert at such an early stage (before he was Speaker) - but I'm not sure that we can presume that was the case. I haven't really looked into the data - but we needn't be constrained by the time-frames suggested by Rose. If we assume for a minute that the Turkish lobby only paid Hastert "tens of thousands" then the calculations - and the time frames, and the magnitude - kinda get portrayed in a different light.

Update 1: Miguel in the comments: "Yes, lukery, but remember Sibel wrote in her response to Evans letter: "The article correctly establishes the timeline (Hastert receiving illegal donations) as 1996 to 2002."
Noticed she put in the word "correctly"."

Update 2: Oldschool in the comments rightly notes that the whole thing screams cash bribes, not piddly donations to the campaign fund - we 'know' that Hastert was collecting brown bags full o' cash. The reason that we are currently focusing on the sub$200 donations is that there is literally a paper trail which could prove Sibel's claims. But Oldschool is correct to note that the difference between the "tens of thousands" and the $500k is undoubtedly of the stuffed envelope variety.
cross-posted at wotisitgood4

money laundering

2006-02-11T18:53:00.000+11:00

Miguel writes in, again:

"I pinged a high-level person at Common Cause about this story, and they said they had never heard of anyone bundling unitemized contributions before. Here was their take on it:

"I have not heard of this practice - but then I am endlessly surprised at the various schemes for raising funds. This one, however, sounds too logistically complex for what is likely not a huge amount of money, and very risky given it's foreign contributions."

This will be part of the challenge we face: some of the mainstream campaign finance reform groups might not have sufficient imagination to believe that contributions can be bundled this way.

The big question: how are the Turkish nationals able to handle this "logistically complex" problem of getting all their friends to write checks under $200? "

Miguel adds:

"It just occurred to me that this campaign finance scheme is a little bit like "smurfing" in the world of money laundering. A "smurf" opens up a bank account for just under $10,000, which is the threshold after which banks have to report to the tax authorities. So if a criminal organizations wants to hide illegal money, they sometimes use these smurfs to open up hundreds of small bank accounts.

In this case, the Turks appeared to be "smurfing" the campaign system by writing checks under $200."

Indeed - that's exactly what it is (although i'm unfamiliar with the term) - I apologise if that wasn't made clear earlier. It's a standard trick (in both legal and illegal activities) - you look at the law, see what you are permitted to do, and then find a way around it.

The person at Common Cause has a valid point in that "tens of thousands" isn't a whole lot of money - although at the same time, we've seen that just about every other congresscritter can be bought for that amount.

Let's go back to David Rose:

"According to some of the wiretaps, the F.B.I.’s targets had arranged for tens of thousands of dollars to be paid to Hastert’s campaign funds in small checks. Under Federal Election Commission rules, donations of less than $200 are not required to be itemized in public filings. "

Rose specifically says that the contributions were in 'checks' - that language may or may not precise - and even if his language is literally true, he's only quoting people in the wiretaps - and their language may or may not be precise it may be shorthand for 'contributions'. Again, I'm not exactly sure about the campaign finance laws - is it possible to donate in cash? If it is possible to donate in cash, then it doesn't make much sense that they would use checks if they were trying to get the cash in Hastert's account(s) without any fingerprints.

Similarly, if it is possible to donate in cash (presumably with 'receipts' with a name and address), and presuming they were specifically trying to launder the money, then I expect that most of the names and addresses are either:

a) completely fictitious or
b) a bunch of repeats (i.e. just a few people making many donations of $199)

On the other hand, if cash donations are forbidden, then Rose must be correct when he talks of checks. Obviously. The question remains, though, why would they bundle a whole bunch of checks under the $200 radar? Common Cause suggests that it would be "logistically complex" - i guess they are presuming that the bribers would have to round up hundreds of individual donors - but that wouldn't make any sense. If they had hundreds of donors, then they wouldn't have to hide under the $200 radar - the donations would simply appear to come from a particular lobbying/interest group. Therefore, if this money did indeed come via checks (or 'cheques' as we call 'em here), my bet is that the 'tens of thousands' came from just a handful of bank accounts. And if that's the case, then it's more than likely that the owners of those bank accounts have broken the law by donating more than the legal maximum - and they 'knew' that they could get away with it because the $<200 don't need to be disclosed.

The person from Common Cause also says that its "very risky given it's foreign contributions" - but again, this misses the point. If the purpose was to get around the laws, then the purported 'donors' wouldn't be foreign - the money will have been washed through a US citizen - perhaps the secretary or someone else at the ATAA who would be a 'legitimate' donor.

Let me add here, that those looking for 'foreign names' in Denny's donor list ought be careful - the answer will neither prove or disprove anything.

I do agree with the person at Common Cause when they say "I am endlessly surprised at the various schemes for raising funds" - that's the point. If there's a way, it'll be done.

Having said that, none of this is very elaborate, or unusual - just consider as an example that Christine DeLay 'worked' for Alexander Strategy Group.

(cross-posted at wotisitgood4)

Update: for all of the reasons mentioned above, Denny must Disclose! Fully. Any partial nonsense like 'in October, only $1000 wasn't from Illinois' can never be satisfactory

bradblog shoutout

2006-02-10T21:05:00.000+11:00

thanks to bradblog for a shoutout.

brad is promising a bunch of new exciting things in the next little while. stay tuned.

Thanks, Democrats.com

2006-02-10T08:52:00.000+11:00

Bob at Democrats.com has pointed to this blog in a post very 'generously' called "Can An Australian Blogger Bring Down Speaker Hastert?" and he put out a call for other bloggers to help out and cover the story. (Thanks Bob)

Democracy Now: Did Speaker Hastert Accept Turkish Bribes?

2006-02-09T15:52:00.000+11:00

Back in August 05 (when the VF article was published), Democracy Now interviewed Sibel and David Rose in a piece called "Did Speaker Hastert Accept Turkish Bribes to Deny Armenian Genocide and Approve Weapons Sales?"

I've emailed them to see if they want to do a followup piece (news and/or interview) in response to Evans' letter

John Laesch

2006-02-09T11:01:00.000+11:00

* over at bradblog, John Laesch left the following comment:

"My name is John Laesch and I am the Democrat who is running against Dennis J. Hastert in Illinois' 14th District.

I served as an intelligence analyst for the United States Navy; having spoken to Mrs. Edmonds personally, I see no reason to doubt her statments. Why would she make all of this up - which is what Hastert's spin doctors are saying.

If Mr. Hastert wants to come clean, then he needs to open up his records and prove to the world that he is innocent.

I would be happy to open up my campaign contributions and I would welcome anyone to join that effort by logging on to www.john06.com and making a financial contribution.

I am one of 50 Veteran Democrats running for U.S. Congress with hopes of restoring integrity to Washington. People need a government they can trust.

Respectfully,
John Laesch"

He seems like the perfect 'candidate' for taking the lead in getting Hastert to disclose his campaign contributions. He has a bigger platform, and significant motivation...

I'll try to get in contact with him.

cross-posted at Wotisitgood4

hastert and sibel

2006-02-08T21:49:00.000+11:00

a couple of days ago, 'anonymous' in the comments suggested that we jointly compose a letter to Vanity Fair in response to Randy Evans' most unsatisfying and belated response to An Inconvenient Patriot where Hastert was accused by " several sources in the congress and several sources within the FBI counterintelligence division" of accepting a bunch of small campaign contributions as the price for torpedoing the Armenian Genocide resolution.

Anon's comment in full was:

"Maybe you could take the lead on a response LTE to VF? Here's my suggestion: Post the Evans letter and your drafted response based on Miguel's points. Keeping bumping to the top of page and add a call-out to your readership to suggest new points/questions with a one-week deadline. You post revised drafts on Wednesday and Friday which incorporate the best points your readers raise. Then submit to Rose, the LTE editor and the publisher of VF."

Incidentally, miguel tells me that:

"Hastert later told the reporter (Ed Fanselow) that he had sent all his data to the FEC and asked them to speed up their inquiry."

I haven't been able to (yet) verify that part of the story - however Evans doesn't mention it in his letter to VF. Interesting, no? If Hastert lied to the reporter about that, then he was obviously just trying to kick the can down the road.

The always-helpful and ever-industrious Miguel has penned a proposed letter to VF which he humbly calls a 'first stab':

"Dear Editor,

You published a letter from Randy Evans, Counsel to Speaker J. Dennis Hastert, last month which would, on the surface at least, appear to clear the most powerful member of the U.S. Congress of any suspicion of taking illicit campaign contributions from Turkish nationals in exchange for political favors. However, I would like to point out that Mr. Evans’ letter raises more questions than it answers about the large number of unitemized contributions received by Mr. Hastert from 1996-2002.

Mr. Evans tries to frame the debate about Hastert’s contributions of less than $200 by singling out the month of October, 2000, during which time Evans claims that Hastert’s own records show that the unitemized contributions totalled to “less than $9,200”. The main problem with this line of argument is that Mr. Rose never specified in the article what time frame the Turkish nationals would have made the bundled contributions; in fact, Mr. Rose’s analysis suggest that contributions were made over several years, not just in one single month. More importantly,
however, is that Mr. Evans does not address the question of whether Hastert’s internal records reveal an unusually large number of Turkic sounding names, which would be the primary metric that might indicate that the translated wiretaps were more than “hollow boasts”. Finally, it should be pointed out that Evans’ letter may have given some readers the misleading impression that Hastert has released the list of his previously unitemized donations to public scrutiny. A review of Hastert’s filings with the Federal Election Commission, however, reveals that none of this data has to date been made public. If Mr. Hastert truly “retains
information on the identity and residence of contributors, including those contributing less than $200”, as Evans claims, then one would think the Speaker should back up his Counsel’s claims by publishing all this data to put this issue to rest once and for all. After all, the decisions Dennis Hastert makes on a daily basis affect all Americans, and not just the residents of the Speaker’s own Congressional District."

a pretty good 'first stab' huh?

lemme make a few randomish (and in no particular order) points:

1. we are already behind anon's suggested timeframe, because we only saw the text of the letters today - that's ok though because VF is a monthly magazine.

2. it's a great idea to jointly compose an LTE - but I suggest that we individually also send in our submissions. my guess is that the more LTEs they receive on any particular subject, the more likely they are to publish one of them.

3. having said that, our ultimate goal is to get Hastert to release all of the details of his campaign financing. With that in mind, we need to remember not to get caught in the weeds by poking holes in Evans' response and arguing about details.

4. We should aim to move this beyond the LTE pages of VF. I've been tossing around in my head a couple of broader campaign ideas - I haven't cemented any great ideas yet, but we shuold come up with a plan by Monday morning.

5. Randy Evans has made a career for himself representing dodgy repug causes - so he's undoubtedly pretty smart. We should be cognizant of which rabbit holes he is trying to force us into, and try to reverse-engineer why he is pointing us in that particular direction, and devise a strategy from that knowledge/awareness. eg 'from illinois', 'october 2000', and last but not least, the fact that the only issue that Evans even addressed was the issue of small contributions (rather than the more serious charges)

6. does anyone know if Evans is a new recruit to the Hastert cause? has Evans worked for hastert before? Did Haster recruit him to deal with this particular 'problem'?

7. as per above, can anyone verify that Hastert told Faneslow that he has submitted his contribution info to FEC? can anyone verify whether that has actually been done? and if so, why and when? was it in response to CREW's efforts?

7. re CREW, i emailed them yesterday but havent heard back from them. similarly, Faneslow.

8. re 'Turkic sounding names' as the 'primary metric' - my guess is that we steer away from this line of thinking. i dont know the detail of the reporting requirements of $199 contributions, but if they really were laundering the contributions, then it is likely that the 'donations' were in cash, and the accompanying documentation was probably falsified. if they did a reasonable job trying to cover their tracks, it's likely there are as many Jane Smiths as Ebru Orals.

9. re "less than $9,200 was donated in October 2000" - firstly, the resolution flip-flop was on the 19th of the month - is Evans trying to argue that bribes usually come immediately before and immediately after a resolution? Secondly, "Hastert for Congress received $110,860.75 in unitemized contributions in 2001 and $72,275 in unitemized contributions in 2000" - therefore $9200 was simply an average month - why didnt Evans make that point? presumably that would strengthen his case - and we can presume that he isnt an idiot. why isn't that dog barking?

10. Evans: " only five contributors (whose donations amounted to less than $1,000 total) were from somewhere other than Illinois." - is he trying to filibuster? try as i might, i've not been able to come up with a scenario where five contributions of less than $200 can be anything other than "less than $1,000 total"

11. Sibel also makes some great points, of course:
a) "Why did Hastert’s office refuse to provide Vanity Fair with information refuting the claims prior to the article being published despite many attempts by VF?" - there's no good answer to that.

b) sibel also points to another comment that has intrigued me before: "Instead, his colleagues were told to alter the thrust of their investigation – away from elected politicians and toward appointed officials."

c) sibel: "Why doesn’t Hastert disclose all the contributions (those under $200), to all his PACs (he has several)"

d) sibel: "should we refer to Mr. Hastert’s dealing with the named foreign organization via [former House Speaker] Bob Livingston’s lobbying firm (Livingston Group)?" - this is intriguing - i've written extensively about the livingston connection, start here (and more here, and here) sibel has only recently begun discussing the Livingston connection.

12. there's some more on Evans here:

"Quick Summary of Randy Evans

The attorney who responded for Hastert has a rather high profile background himself.

Randy Evans of Georgia has served on the Georgia State Board of Elections since April 2003. He was the head of the legal team for the Bush-Cheney '04 Reelection in Georgia. He is general counsel of the Georgia Republican Party.

He has served as an attorney who advises the House Republican leadership on government ethics. His clients include the former and current Speaker of the United States House of Representatives, Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.) and Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.).

Evans has been Chairman of Gingrich Holdings, Inc. Evans is serving as Special Master for the Georgia Supreme Court.

Randy Evans is chairman of the board of the J.C. Watts Companies (http://www.jcwatts.com/bios/bio5.html). Watts represented Oklahoma’s 4th District in the U.S. House of Representatives for eight years through January 7, 2003. Watts served as Chair of the House Republican Conference and served on a number of key committees during his tenure in Congress, including the Armed Services Committee, the Select Homeland Security Committee, the Military Readiness Subcommittee and the Procurement Subcommittee."

anyways - that's about it for my random thoughts of the evening. the main points seem to be:
a) hastert is feeling some heat (from somewhere?), otherwise they would have kept quiet and not re-opened this can o' pandoras.
b) the time seems ripe for broadening the campaign beyond VF. let me mull some possibilities over the next couple of days - suggestions are most welcome. hopefully i'll hear back soon from a couple of the people ive tried to contact so that i can co-ordinate with CREW et al
c) our main goal is to get denny to disclose all of his campaign contributions - and we need to make sure that all our efforts are directed toward that goal. i.e. we need to resist getting dragged into the weeds by Evans

cross posted at wotisitgood4

Denny Hastert, please disclose

2006-02-08T18:43:00.000+11:00

(this post has been bumped up to the intro post)

hastert and sibel

2006-02-07T22:11:00.000+11:00

Update for DU'ers - i put together a post on Hastert's real crimes yesterday with the latest that we know. Also, don't miss the blog for the new film about Sibel here.
---------------------------------

BradBlog has the VF letter from Haster's Lawyer, David Rose's response, and a response from sibel.

Update: miguel has helpfully transcribed the text of the letters (thnx miguel!)

"Hastert’s Money Trail

“An Inconvenient Patriot” (September) by David Rose, contains references to Speaker J. Dennis Hastert which could suggest that accusations in a wiretap concerning unaccounted-for contributions were credible and possibly true; those references were themselves unfounded. Unlike many public officials, Speaker Hastert retains information on the identity and residence of contributors, including those contributing less than $200. Those records indicate that there was no basis for suggesting that there were numerous unaccounted-for contributions, much less hundreds of thousands of them. The facts are: the data regarding contributions of less than $200 provide the identity of the donors of Speaker
Hastert’s un-itemized contributions, confirming that none were of questionable
origin or legality. In fact, less than $9,200 (not $500,000, or even tens of thousands of dollars) was donated in October 2000, and only five contributors (whose donations amounted to less than $1,000 total) were from somewhere other than Illinois.

Randy Evans
Counsel to Speaker J. Dennis Hastert
Atlanta, GA

DAVID ROSE REPLIES: My article did not suggest that the alleged contents of F.B.I. wiretaps in which the Turkish targets spoke of donations to Mr. Hastert’s campaign were credible or true. Indeed, it stated that their claims may have been “hollow boasts”. The point is that the contents have been described by the former F.B.I. translator Sibel Edmonds to congressional investigators, but only under conditions of strict secrecy, and as long as the government persists in smothering her case beneath the state-secrets privilege, there is no possibility of testing the veracity of any of her allegations, the reported Hastert wiretaps included. "

As many have noted - a very weak response from Evans, and also a soft response from David Rose. Let's see if we can get Hastert's full records released.

and Sibel's response (from BradBlog):

"1) Why is Hastert refusing to declare all donations?

On August 16, 2005, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) filed a complaint with the Federal Election Commission (FEC) requesting an investigation into whether Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert’s campaign committee illegally accepted campaign contributions from foreign nationals in 2000 and 2001. Melanie Sloan, CREW’s executive director, stated “if Hastert for Congress received an unusually large number of contributions in amounts just under $200 in a relatively condensed period of time, the treasurer’s suspicions should have been raised, particularly if many of these checks appeared to be made out by individuals with foreign names.” “As a result,” Sloan continued, “the treasurer should have followed the procedures outlined by the FEC to discover whether, in fact, the campaign illegally received contributions from foreign nationals.”

“The sheer number of small contributions should have raised a red flag. Hastert’s campaign committee was obligated to ensure that no laws were being broken. It is now time for a thorough investigation into Hastert’s finances.”

2) Why did Hastert’s office refuse to provide Vanity Fair with information refuting the claims prior to the article being published despite many attempts by VF?

3) The article correctly establishes the timeline (Hastert receiving illegal donations) as 1996 to 2002. Why did Randy Evans pick only October 2000 for his letter in response to the article on Hastert by VF?

4) One of the sources for VF on wiretaps involving Dennis Hastert is identified as an FBI Counterintelligence official who worked on this particular case; does Mr. Evans accuse this source of lying?:

“It began in D.C.,” says an F.B.I. counter-intelligence official who is familiar with the case file. “It became apparent that Chicago was actually the center of what was going on.”

Its subject was explosive; what sounded like attempts to bribe elected members of Congress, both Democrat and Republican. “There was pressure within the bureau for a special prosecutor to be appointed and take the case on, “the official says. Instead, his colleagues were told to alter the thrust of their investigation – away from elected politicians and toward appointed officials. “This is the reason why Ashcroft reacted to Sibel in such an extreme fashion,” he says “It was to keep this from coming out.”

5) Mr. Evans states: ‘… and only five contributors (whose donations amounted to less than $1,000 total) were from somewhere other than Illinois.’

Nothing in the VF article suggested that questionable donations only came from OUTSIDE Illinois. It is likely that many (most) came from within Illinois – after all – Chicago is certainly in Illinois.

6) Why doesn’t Hastert disclose all the contributions (those under $200), to all his PACs (he has several) for the years between 1997 and 2001? Many congressman do just that; why not come clean & show us yours Mr. Hastert?

7) In the VF article Hastert’s spokesman says that Hastert has no affiliation with the A.T.C. [American-Turkish Council] or other groups reportedly mentioned in the wiretaps: “He does not know these organizations.”

a. Please refer to Mr. Hastert’s trips to Turkey (all trips that took place- 1996-2002); its sponsors…they are self evident. Now how can he claim not knowing these entities (very intimately)?

b. Also, should we refer to Mr. Hastert’s dealing with the named foreign organization via [former House Speaker] Bob Livingston’s lobbying firm (Livingston Group)?

8) Finally, the article by VF had several sources in the congress and several sources within the FBI counterintelligence division. I was not cited as a source." (emph in orig)

cross-posted at wotisitgood4

(start here for my other sibel posts)

hastert's genocide

2006-02-07T13:07:00.000+11:00

Further to my recent posts (here and here) on Hastert and Sibel regarding Hastert's lawyer's letter in VF, Miguel writes in again:

"Whatever Hastert sent to the FEC was based on the inquiry that was opened by Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington. In other words, Hastert may have been asked to itemize the previously unitemized contributions as part of FEC enforcement. We can't really say for sure what he sent because FEC is mum about ongoing investigations.

The reporter's name is Ed Fanselow. The newspaper has pulled down his articles but one remains preserved here from Liberty Post, a right wing blog:

Note Fanselow implies that the Hastert campaign will have to go back and itemize previously unitemized contributions. But the Vanity Fair letter implies it is standard practice for Hastert to track his small contributions."

I must admit, i didnt know that CREW had filed against Hastert, or that there was any activity on this front at all. Here's CREW's press release:

"WASHINGTON - August 16 - Earlier today, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) filed a complaint with the Federal Election Commission (FEC) requesting an investigation into whether Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert’s campaign committee illegally accepted campaign contributions from foreign nationals in 2000 and 2001.

CREW based its complaint on an article appearing in the September issue of Vanity Fair in which it was reported that former F.B.I. translator Sibel Edomonds reviewed wiretap recordings involving an F.B.I. target at Chicago, Illinois’s Turkish Consulate, as well as members of the American-Turkish Council and the Assembly of Turkish American Associations. According to Ms. Edmonds, the recordings indicated that an F.B.I. target had arranged for tens of thousands of dollars of campaign contributions to be sent to Rep. Hastert’s campaign committee in small (i.e., less than $200) checks that did not have to be itemized.

Hastert for Congress received $110,860.75 in unitemized contributions in 2001 and $72,275 in unitemized contributions in 2000.

Federal election campaign law strictly prohibits foreign nationals from making political contributions and prohibits political committees from accepting campaign contributions from foreign nationals.

[snip]

“The sheer number of small contributions should have raised a red flag. Hastert’s campaign committee was obligated to ensure that no laws were being broken. It is now time for a thorough investigation into Hastert’s finances.”

Contact: Naomi Seligman of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, 202-588-5565"

CREW's efforts apparently led to this in December:

"Mike Dorning, The Chicago Tribune

December 12, 2005

When Vanity Fair's September issue included a sensational and unproven accusation that House Speaker Dennis Hastert accepted a bribe to sideline a measure criticizing the Turkish government, the irate Republican leader and his staff immediately suspected the handiwork of a political enemy.

The object of their suspicion, according to two close Hastert advisers, is Rahm Emanuel, a Democratic congressman and former Clinton White House operative whose home district lies 14 miles from Hastert's suburban Chicago constituency."

it's unusual for Repugs to pull the partisanship card when they are in trouble...

The Ed Fanselow articles that Miguel mentioned are as follows. First there was this (i think) dated on or about 8/18/05:

"WASHINGTON — A magazine story alleging a covert relationship between a group of Turkish nationals and House Speaker Dennis Hastert has prompted a group of leading Democrats to call for a federal investigation into the claims.

The story, published in the September issue of Vanity Fair magazine, relies on an uncorroborated account from a former FBI translator, who says she overheard Turkish wiretap targets — who were the subject of counter-intelligence investigations — brag of funneling thousands of dollars into Hastert's campaign fund in exchange for political favors.

The translator told the magazine that the donations were to be made in payments of less than $200, which do not have to be itemized under Federal Election Commission rules.

The Yorkville Republican himself was never heard in the recordings, the translator told the magazine, and the story's author admitted that the Turks supposed claims may have been nothing more than "hollow boasts."

Still, the story caught the eye of the Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW), which on Tuesday filed a complaint with the FEC calling for "a thorough investigation into Hastert's finances."

The group, founded by the former senior counsel to House Democrats, was responsible for drafting a complaint against House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, R-Texas, for which he was admonished last year.

In a written statement, CREW Executive Director Melanie Sloan suggests that the translator's claims warrant a closer look since Hastert recorded an inordinately high amount of small, unitemized donations between 1996 and 2002.

According to the FEC, the Hastert For Congress Committee reported more than $480,000 in donations of less than $200 during that 7-year period.

By comparison, DeLay reported receiving less than $100,000 during the same span.

"The sheer number of small contributions should have raised a red flag," Sloan said.

John McGovern, a Hastert spokesman, called the allegations "outlandish."

"These are ridiculous and reckless claims from a Democratic front group that have no basis in reality," he said Tuesday. "It's just not true."

According to the Vanity Fair report, the Turks were apparently looking for Hastert to help derail a 2000 House resolution designating the killings of thousands of Armenians in Turkey during the 1920s as genocide.

The controversial issue has long been a source of hostility between the two countries as well as between Americans of Armenian and Turkish descent.

The magazine alleges that Hastert originally supported the resolution, only to reverse his position and withdraw it from consideration on the House floor.

Another Hastert spokesman told the magazine, though, that the speaker's about-face came only after a personal appeal from then-President Bill Clinton.

"To insinuate anything else," the spokesman said, "just doesn't make sense.""

which apparently triggered an email from Sibel to the journo, leading to this article a couple of weeks later

"We newspaper reporters get a lot of e-mail.

Some are pats on the back for a job well done; most are complaints about a name spelled wrong or some minor detail that got left out.

I got about a dozen e-mails earlier this month after I suggested in this column that Aurora's Jim Oberweis might want to reconsider his run for the Illinois governor's mansion. (I'll leave it to you to guess whether those letter writers agreed with me or not.)

I must admit, though, that it's not every day I get an e-mail from a bona fide undercover FBI operative.

But such was the case last week, the day after I wrote a story about former FBI interpreter

Sibel Edmonds and some surprising accusations she made involving a certain Republican from Kendall County.

Her story is featured in the current edition of Vanity Fair magazine — the same issue, mind you, with a cover spotlighting a half-clothed Jennifer Aniston and the headline, "Jen finally talks."

The Interpreter's story doesn't start until page 264, but once you get there, it's hard to put the thing down.

Among other things, she alleges that while translating FBI counter-intelligence wiretaps on a group of Turkish nationals back several years ago, she overheard the men talking about a clandestine relationship with a prominent American politician they called "Denny Boy."

The Turks, she says, were bragging about paying Denny Boy thousands of dollars in bribes in exchange for some political favors.

The payments — if The Interpreter's story is to be believed — were to be made in small (less than $200) donations to his campaign fund, which don't need to be itemized and can't be traced by the Federal Election Commission.

Denny Boy, in case you haven't figured it out, is none other than Speaker of the House

Denny Hastert, whose office was none too happy with me when I decided to re-tell The Interpreter's story in last Wednesday's Beacon News.

The speaker's press spokesman, John McGovern, did his best to dissuade me from writing, saying that the allegations were nothing more than "reckless" and "ridiculous" lies.

And maybe they are. In fact, they probably are.

After all, the whole tale sounds more like the plot of a bad post-Sorkin episode of the West Wing or some far-fetched movie thriller starring Harrison Ford.

Which brings me back to that e-mail from The Interpreter.

"If the allegations are so ridiculous," she wrote me, "why doesn't the Hastert Campaign simply release the names of all of the small contributors, the amount of the contributions and the date they were received?"

It's a fair point.

Would it be that difficult for Denny's staff — God knows he's got enough people working for him — to go back into their files and itemize all the small checks his campaign received between 1996 and 2002?

As The Interpreter wisely points out: "The fact that the contributions didn't have to be itemized doesn't mean that the campaign is precluded from itemizing them."

As a matter of fact the Bush/Cheney '04 campaign published every single donation they received, no matter how small, on its Web site.

You could argue, I suppose, that piecing together every last cent of almost $500,000 in donations now, long after the fact, would be quite a tedious task.

Doing so would also lend credibility to a story that the mainstream national press (The New York Times, the Washington Post, CNN, et.al.) has decided to ignore thus far.

But it also might give some peace of mind to the hundreds of loyal Hastert constituents who read about the accusations in The Beacon News last week, not to mention the countless Kendall County farmers and soccer moms who stumbled across the Vanity Fair story while trying to catch up on the Jen-and-Brad saga.

After all, it's many of those same people whose $50 and $75 donations presumably comprise that $500,000 chunk of unitemized donations that's now in question.

Like I said, this whole thing is in all likelihood nothing more than a fairy tale out of control.

But just in case it's not, I think we here in Denny's district deserve to see the proof.

Ed Fanselow covers state and local politics and Aurora City Hall for The Beacon News. He can be reached at (630) 844-5957 or efanselow@scn1.com

(that email address is at the paper which he apparently has since left - i've sent him an email at the dailyherald.com which appears to be his latest gig)

Incidentally, while researching this post, i stumbled across this which appears to add some nuance as to why Hastert pulled the genocide resolution. to the extent that it is true:

"Back in October 23, 2000, the Turkish newspaper Sabah published an article that sounded too bizarre to be taken seriously at the time, but in the light of recent revelations, it now merits a second look. Sabah reported that in order to persuade Speaker Hastert to block the Armenian Genocide resolution, “the Chairman of AIPAC [The American Israel Public Affairs Committee] met with Hastert and explained to him ‘all the concerns in plain English.’” The AIPAC Chairman then reportedly pressured Hastert by telling him: “You may well gain a few more Armenian votes, but have you stopped to consider how many Jewish votes you will lose by this?”

Sabah further reported: “Another Jew had come down from Chicago and put the squeeze on Hastert because they had financed the Republicans to the tune of $10 million or more.” Hastert agreed to block the Armenian Genocide resolution on condition that Pres. Clinton make such a request in writing. Sabah reported that a “Jewish Turk from Istanbul” then contacted former Israeli Prime Minister Shimon Peres who in turn persuaded Clinton to write the requested letter. Hastert used Clinton’s letter as a cover to pull the resolution from the House floor."

----------------------------------------------

I've emailed CREW to see if they have any new news, and/or new approaches given the latest letter from Hastert's lawyer.

I'm trying to track down David Rose's email in the meantime - but i won't contact him till i've at least seen Evans' letter and Rose's response - that would be dumb!

stay tooned.

more on Hastert and Sibel

2006-02-07T11:09:00.000+11:00

in response to my post yesterday about Hastert's lawyer's letter published in Vanity Fair in response to the Sibel article, anon in the comments writes:

"Maybe you could take the lead on a response LTE to VF? Here's my suggestion: Post the Evans letter and your drafted response based on Miguel's points. Keeping bumping to the top of page and add a call-out to your readership to suggest new points/questions with a one-week deadline. You post revised drafts on Wednesday and Friday which incorporate the best points your readers raise. Then submit to Rose, the LTE editor and the publisher of VF"

Miguel had some further thoughts :

"That sounds like a great idea! David Rose put up a weak defense of his own article in response to Evans letter (I strongly suspect that Rose is being hamstrung by the Vanity Fair legal team in his ability to tell the full story), Sibel is gagged and cannot put up a defense on this point, so it's up to the rest of us to fight back.

To me, the most important point is to get Hastert to release all his campaign donor data to public scrutiny, so we can all evaluate for ourselves. A local reporter in Hastert's district had challenged the Speaker to do just that- here we are 5 months later and nothing has been released (Hastert later told the reporter that he had sent all his data to the FEC and asked them to speed up their inquiry. The reporter later left the publication- it's not clear whether he quit or was fired). If Denny has nothing to hide, why won't he simply release the full list?"

I'm happy to take the lead - first things first - if someone can get me a copy of Randy Evans' letter in VF (or type it up), and David Rose's response, and we can take it from there.

Does anyone have any information about the efforts of the 'local reporter' that Miguel is referring to?

My guess is that we shuold try to get a response from Hastert and/or Evans first, and depending on their response or lack thereof, we could then try to squeeze them with some publicity via VF and/or elsewhere.

I'll try to track down David Rose (author of An Inconvenient Patriot) to clarify what sort of research he did into the issue - and what roadblocks he encountered.

As I mentioned yesterday, the good news is that the Hastert/Evans (eventual) response in VF appears to suggest that they are feeling under some pressure.

sibel, hastert

2006-02-06T22:08:00.000+11:00

miguel writes (thnx):

"Luke,

As I was browsing through the current edition of Vanity Fair this morning, I was surprised to find a letter to the VF editor from an Atlanta-based attorney representing Dennis Hastert, responding directly to the "Inconvenient Patriot" article. To non-Sibelologists, the attorney's response appears to clear Dennis Hastert once and for all of taking illegal campaign contributions from Turkish sources. The attorney writes that all but two of Hastert's contributions of under $200 during the period in question came from people "from Illinios" and during the month of October, 2000 (when Hastert pulled the Armenian Genocide resolution
from the House floor), Hastert received only 6 campaign contributions.
Furthermore, Hastert's lawyer claims something to the effect that Hastert tracks the name and address of ALL his contributors, including those who contributed small amounts, and nothing improper has been found in any of those contributions.

For Sibelologists, however, Hastert's attorney's letter raises more questions than it answers. First of all, the attorney does not make it clear who, if anyone, reviewed Hastert's small campaign contributions. Was it an outside auditor or Hastert's own treasurer? Secondly, the lawyer does not state whether the contributions are available for public review- in fact, the response is so carefully worded that I assume that this data has not been made public, although it's very possible it was turned over to the Federal Elections Commission for the complaint filed by CREW. Also, "people from Illinois" can lead one with the impression that most contributors were U.S. citizens; in fact, Hastert's attorney does not say whether it is confirmed if each small donor has been confirmed to be a U.S. citizen or green card holder. People from Illinois can include temporary residents, including temporary Turkish residents, of the State of Illinois.

Most importantly, however, is that the attorney completely dodges the question of whether an unusual number of checks were received by Hastert for Congress from people with Turkish sounding names. In fact, if Hastert were completely innocent and I were his attorney, that point would strike me as far more important than accounting the number of contributions Hastert received in October, 2000. If Hastert did NOT receive a large number of checks from Turkish nationals, why doesn't the lawyer make this point?

In my opinion, Hastert's lame response to the Vanity Fair article should make all of us more, not less, inclined to believe Sibel Edmond's allegations are true. He has really been ducking the issue, when he could clear most of this up by publishing the names of all his contributors (although Sibel also says Hastert received cash delivered in suitcases to his suburban Chicago home and that money would be difficult to trace).

(By the way, Hastert's attorney who wrote the letter to Vanity Fair is the same lawyer who defended New Gingrich against ethics charges, Randy Evans.)"

great catch!

for the record, here's the relevant section of the VF article:

"Some of the calls reportedly contained what sounded like references to large scale drug shipments and other crimes. To a person who knew nothing about their context, the details were confusing and it wasn’t always clear what might be significant. One name, however, apparently stood out – a man the Turkish callers often referred to by the nickname “Denny boy.” It was the Republican congressman from Illinois and Speaker of the House, Dennis Hastert. According to some of the wiretaps, the F.B.I.’s targets had arranged for tens of thousands of dollars to be paid to Hastert’s campaign funds in small checks. Under Federal Election Commission rules, donations of less than $200 are not required to be itemized in public filings.

Hastert himself was never heard in the recordings, Edmonds told investigators, and it is possible that the claims of covert payments were hollow boasts. Nevertheless, an examination of Hastert’s federal filings shows that the level of un-itemized payments his campaigns received over many years was relatively high. Between April 1996 and December 2002, un-itemized personal donations to the Hastert for Congress Committee amounted to $483,000. In contrast, un-itemized contributions in the same period to the committee run on behalf of the House majority leader, Tom Delay, Republican of Texas, were only $99,000. An analysis of the filings of four other senior Republicans shows that only one, Clay Shaw of Florida, declared a higher total in un-itemized donations than Hastert over the same period: $552,000. The other three declared far less. Energy and Commerce Committee chairman Joe Barton, of Texas, claimed $265,000; Armed Services Committee chairman Duncan Hunter, of California, got $212,000; and Ways and Means Committee chairman Bill Thomas, of California, recorded $110,000.

Edmonds reportedly added that the recordings also contained repeated references to Hastert’s flip-flop, in the fall of 2000, over an issue which remains of intense concern to the Turkish government – the continuing campaign to have Congress designate the killings of Armenians in Turkey between 1915 and 1923 a genocide. For many years, attempts had been made to get the house to pass a genocide resolution, but they never got anywhere until August 2000, when Hastert, as Speaker, announced that he would give it his backing and see that it received a full house vote. He had a clear political reason, as analysts noted at the time: a California Republican incumbent, locked in a tight congressional race, was looking to win over his district’s large Armenian community. Thanks to Hastert, the resolution, vehemently opposed by the Turks, passed the International Relations Committee by a large majority. Then, on October 19, minutes before the full House vote, Hastert withdrew it.

At the time, he explained his decision by saying that he had received a letter from President Clinton arguing that the genocide resolution, if passed, would harm U.S. interests. Again, the reported content of the Chicago wiretaps may well have been sheer bravado, and there is no evidence that any payment was ever made to Hastert or his campaign. Nevertheless, a senior official at the Turkish Consulate is said to have claimed in one recording that the price for Hastert to withdraw the resolution would have been at least $500,000.

Hastert’s spokesman says the congressman withdrew the genocide resolution only because of the approach from Clinton, “and to insinuate anything else just doesn’t make any sense.” He adds that Hastert has no affiliation with the A.T.C. or other groups reportedly mentioned in the wiretaps: “He does not know these organizations.” Hastert is “unaware of Turkish interests making donations,” the spokesman says, and his staff has “not seen any pattern of donors with foreign names.”"

firstly, let me note that i always thought this was inexcusably terrible reporting by david rose - he argues that hastert received a large number of sub-$200 donations, and yet he only looked at 4 other senior repugs as a comparison. Of those, i probably would never have heard of Hunter if it wasnt for the Wilkes shenanigans, Thomas i would probably never have heard of except that michael mack worked for him - and i have no recollection of barton or shaw.

having said that, miguel seems kinda on the money (if anyone has access to that letter, i'd appreciate a full transcript) - it seems odd that the attorney has responded now - 6 months after the initial VF piece. Sibel recently (alex jones interview?) said something like ''we've never even had a response from hastert to the allegations - apart from some michael moore reference" (or x-files, or one of the usual repug dismissals)- so it's odd that they are responding now - let's hope they are feeling some heat and the 'ignore' option is no longer on the table. similarly, it's odd that their defense is restricted to a) 'during the month of October, 2000' b) 'from illinois' c) 'the period in question' d) 'foreign names'

as miguel says, it sounds like an effective denial, but in reality it's nothing of the sort. further to the reaons miguel outlines, it could be that the donations were in cash, in which case it is largely irrelevant what the documentation reveals in terms of where the purported donor says they live and what they claim is their family name.

Even more relevant than all of that though is miguel's observation that "Sibel also says Hastert received cash delivered in suitcases to his suburban Chicago home and that money would be difficult to trace" which kinda renders all the other 'analysis' moot.

The good news is that Hastert apparently felt that he had to respond to the claims at all - however belatedly - hopefully that means that they are feeling some heat. If i'm not mistaken, the $200 thing was something introduced by Rose, not Sibel, and it's probably significant that they tried to respond to that limited claim, rather than any of the more substantive issues (according to miguel's retelling of the vf letter).

all in all, good news.

(and thanks again to miguel for pointing it out - if anyone has any more info, including the letter, pls lemme know)

disclose, denny

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Obama: Armenian genocide

Hastert out.

Hastert Rules Out Another Run

Hastert: I hate competition!

Hastert: Most Corrupt

URGING INVESTIGATION INTO SPEAKER HASTERT’S LAND DEAL

CREW SENDS LETTER TO DOJ URGING INVESTIGATION INTO SPEAKER HASTERT’S LAND DEAL

CREW Questions Hastert Earmark – Demands Reform

Hastert for UN?

Hastert & Abramoff: the payoff

Ellsberg: Hastert got suitcases of Al Qaeda heroin cash, should be in jail

Foley scandal a boon for Hastert’s opponent

Dennis Hastert is a bumbling half-wit

Hastert's dodgy real estate, Turkish bribes. Worse than FoleyGate

why Hastert should be in jail

Kill The Messenger: The Sibel Edmonds Story

Resign, Denny.

Response to Hastert/Foley Pagegate Scandal

by John Laesch

Sat Sep 30, 2006 at 06:27:57 PM PDT

disclose, denny

Hastert: Republican Culture of Corruption

Sibel's Whistleblowers’ Dirty Dozen

Hastert's laundry

Hastert's Little Rock Trust

more of Hastert's ill-gotten gains

Hastert: Real (estate) Corruption

blogs: bring Hastert down

Hastert and the Rule of Law

Hastert's Deep Throat?

How to corrupt Hastert

Larisa Alexandrovna: All Roads Lead to Hastert

the burden of proof should be on Hastert

more Hastert links

Hastert & Al Capone

we cant FOIA congress

hastert's response to CREW

Laesch defeats Zamora in IL14

hastert CREW and FEC

John Laesch

Hastert's travel to Turkey

meria heller

Hastert & Government Reform

Hastert, Turkey & Livingston

Hastert and Abramoff

Hastert's War on Drugs

Hastert's finances

Randy Evans and FEC

Dallas Ingemunson

disingenuous denny hastert

is Hastert bamboozling?

Hastert responds to CREW

Hastert for Congress Unitemized Contributions

open secrets

KOMPAC

Citizens for Hastert and KOMPAC

more soon

Hastert Loves Wiretaps

Randy Evans

Hastert issues in Vanity Fair

hastert, bribes

money laundering

bradblog shoutout

Thanks, Democrats.com

Democracy Now: Did Speaker Hastert Accept Turkish Bribes?

John Laesch

hastert and sibel

Denny Hastert, please disclose

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hastert's genocide

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sibel, hastert