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White House Email Trail Grows Cold with Death of Bush IT Expert
How many licks does it take to get to the Tootise Roll center of a Tootsie Pop? The world may never know...
For those of you who remember the famous 1969 animated Tootsie Roll commercial -- the wise old owl's line is indeed applicable to the missing White House emails -- the world may never know.
Unfortunately, this holds true more than ever with the untimely death of Bush IT guru Mike Connell. Connell was killed this past Friday while attempting to land his private plane three miles outside Akron-Canton Airport. Connell, 45, was the only soul onboard the aircraft. The accident is under investigation.
The Associated Press reported Connell's death with three brief paragraphs, noting that Connell:
"was a Republican media consultant who helped operate campaign Web sites for President Bush and former presidential nominee John McCain."
The AP failed to mention that Connell was also the chief architect of George W. Bush election websites including GeorgeWBush.com and GWB43.com -- the primary email account used by Karl Rove during his tenure as Senior White House Advisor. Connell's company, GovTech Solutions, was responsible for building and managing congressional email servers and firewalls, including websites for the House Judiciary Committee, Financial Services, Ways and Means and Administration Committees. Connell also managed the servers for former Ohio Secretary of State Kenneth J. Blackwell in 2004.
Mike Connell had also been subpoenaed to testify in an Ohio lawsuit regarding his knowledge of vote rigging and the outsourcing of the vote count to Smart Tech servers in Chatanooga, Tennessee before they were rerouted back to Blackwell's office during the 2004 election. The same SmartTech servers were also used to run Connell's GeorgeWBush.com and GWB43.com websites.
Ohio attorneys Cliff Arnebeck and Bob Fitrakis were banking on Connell's testimony to substantiate their racketeering case against Karl Rove for alleged criminal wrongdoing in the 2004 election.
In a telephone interview on August 2, 2008, Arnebeck told me:
Mike Connell comes into play because he has been a common instrument in many facets of Rove's activity that we see as a criminal enterprise. He comes into play in Florida in work in 2000 and it is not clear to me what he is doing. But if you are in the State system, you've got a strategic asset to be in the system during an election and whether that is in terms of any of this Choicepoint business or any vote counting or registration data base, I don't know the answer to it but he was in the system. In 2004 he was doing web and server hosting in Chatanooga, Tennesee for the Ohio vote in the general election of 2004.
Arnebeck added:
Connell, in an oversight capacity of data processing and is in a position to tell us as a witness how things relate to another and to tell us where there may have been opportunities where corrupt activity may have been in play.
With respect to Connell's knowledge about the missing emails, Arnebeck referred to Connell's 2006 meeting with cyber security expert Stephen Spoonamore. Arnebeck said, "My understanding is that there was there was a conversation in which Mr. Connell asked about data destruction and the conversation was terminated when Spoonamore said 'if you're talking about White House emails, I will not talk about this -- discussion is over.' Connell then knowing that destruction would be illegal -- may have proceeded to destroy, although I do not know that, it could be that he went back to Rove or an intermediary to say that it would create a legal problem and Rove would then have gotten someone else to take care of data destruction. We just don't know."
One thing is certain, Arnebeck was concerned about Connell's security and said:
One of the people we're working with received a tip from someone who appeared to be credible that Rove had threatened Connell that if he did not take the fall for what happened in Ohio and keep Rove out of it, that his wife (Heather) would be prosecuted for having crossed the line for some kind of lobbying laws. And one of the people with whom we are consulting made inquiries sufficient to satisfy him that this is a credible tip and threat seems to be in play and on that basis I took steps I believe appropriate to try and protect a person we have already publicly identified as key witness against harm and threats and put Mr. Rove on notice that we don't intend to have any witness intimated by him.
One of the steps Arnebeck was referring to was a July 24, 2008 email to US Attorney General Michael Mukasey warning of Rove's threats against Connell:
Thursday, July 24, 2008 1:50 PMFrom:Arnebeck@aol.com
To:AskDOJ@usdoj.govDear Attorney General Mukasey:
We have been confidentially informed by a source we believe to be credible that Karl Rove has threatened Michael Connell, a principal witness we have identified in our King Lincoln case in federal court in Columbus, Ohio, that if he does not agree to "take the fall" for election fraud in Ohio, his wife Heather will be prosecuted for supposed lobby law violations. This appears to be in response to our designation of Rove as the principal perpetrator in the Ohio Corrupt Practices Act/RICO claim with respect to which we issued document hold notices last Thursday to you and to the US Chamber of Commerce Institute for Legal Reform.
See: http://www.bradblog.com/?p=6189 and http://www.archive.org/details/ElectionFraudInOhioCourtCase.
I have informed court chambers and am in the process of informing the Ohio Attorney General's and US Attorney's offices in Columbus for the purpose, among other things, of seeking protection for Mr. Connell and his family from this reported attempt to intimidate a witness.
Concurrently herewith, I am informing Mr. Conyers and Mr. Kucinich in connection with their Congressional oversight responsibilities related to these matters.
Because of the serious engagement in this matter that began in 2000 of the Ohio Statehouse Press Corps, 60 Minutes, the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, C-Span and Jim VandeHei, and the public's right to know of gross attempts to subvert the rule of law, I am forwarding this information to them, as well.
Cliff Arnebeck, Attorney
cc: Robert Fitrakis, Esq.
Henry Eckhart, Esq
Heather Connell has not returned my call but Arnebeck says the family is publicly denying any foul play or knowledge of threats against Connell or his family members. However, Arnebeck points out, Connell may have kept things to himself in order to protect his loved ones.
Connell's tragic death has dealt a real blow to Arnebeck's lawsuit. In an email dated today, Arnebeck told me he asked Dave Margolis, the Justice Department's top career organized crime fighter to "make sure the best resources are used in the investigation of the crash."
With the loss of a key witness, it's unclear whether Arnebeck's lawsuit will reach trial. But there may be still a way to determine Karl Rove's involvement in the missing White House emails and the US Attorney Purge -- President-elect Barack Obama could demand the backup tapes from the Secret Service.
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Arnebeck better have good life insurance. Pray for this man.
Karl Rove, Dick Chaney, George W. Bush.
Names that will live in infamy.
What a sorry excuse for a media we have. Just pitiful.
I was so thrilled to hear Mike Connell had been supoenaed just before the '08 presÃdential election, then realized my family in the US had no idea who he was. Maybe they should check up the Brad Blog periodically.
www.scoop.co.nz/stories/HL0811/S00266.htm
Carol Bowner, climate Tzar or whatever her new position will be, siad that she refused to use E-mail so that there would never be a trail.
How very sad for Mr. Connell's family. My truly sincere condolences. No one deserves such an early and tragic death.
How convenient for Mr. Rove and his enablers. Approaching justice may be delayed, but hardly avoided. One day, he, like the rest of us, will have to account for his deeds to the ultimate authority.
I admire your faith!
If Mike Connell was a techie and he knew his life was in danger ... then somewhere there is a backup of incriminating information. Techies are paranoid by nature to start with.
If his wife doesn't know the whereabouts of the evidence and his lawyer doesn't know, I guarantee someone knows. Or maybe he rigged a deadman's switch on a standalone linux server that will send out an email with instructions at a predetermined time. I'm sure we haven't heard the last of Mike Connell.
Very interesting thoughts on this. I hope he was this bright - and paranoid, a survival trait that our culture tries to domesticate out of us.
Mike Connell is another in a long line of political activists/operatives that think they are serving America. They think they are serving America and blindly move forward with the task that will best help serve the country. They get Pats on the back, get to mingle with the real power and make lots of money.
OOPS, his fingerprints are on everything since 2000. He works for Bush/Cheney/Rove and knew way too much. With Bush out of office he wasn't going to get a Scooter Libby deal. if convicted, he was going to jail. The request for witness protection was his death sentence.
His wife not talking? She lost her husband and father to her kids. She either dosn't know or can't prove a thing and she probally has the money.Good luck to her.
Obama if you are paying attention. Everytime we get a new president, we sweep all the bad stuff under the rug. I have lived thru 2 dead Kennedys and a King. Warrem Commision. Watergate Hearings. Jerry Ford. Iran-Contra. We always move forward to heal the country and keep having the corruption move forward with us. It is time to expose Bush and his people. We are knee deep in it now. We cant impeach but we can send some of these criminals to jail.
America needs a Twelve Step program. We can't move forward unless we clean up our past.
Robhuff, you have said it well. Every time we move forward leaving the mess to fester, we just move it along with us. When are we going to hold these crooks liable for their actions? Ever?
The problem being that actually facing these problems would bring real pain to this nation. Our "leaders" are very right in saying they want to save this country pain by moving on from our scandals without sufficient investigation... but no progress will be made until we experience the inevitable painful confrontation.
Good reporting..first I have heard of this player. Amazing stuff...cyber wars of 2004.
The most telling thing about this piece is it makes me reflect on how utterly shameless this "administration" is. They commit so many offenses that monumentally grievous ones like the loss of vast volumes of Whitehouse email are actually in danger of falling between the cracks.
How can I put this better? It's like when they say a songwriter is so great that they've forgotten more good songs than a lesser songwriter wrote and kept.
The Bush administration is so corrupt that even Americans who care about their country will forget more of the insults to decent governance committed by Bush than were actually committed by the vaunted kings of corruption like Nixon or Harding.
Very well said! And an excellent point.
Nice nod to Harding here. Another guy who died before he could be sufficiently questioned.
The danger is that Obama will instruct his people to stay away from this in the interest of "bi-partisan" harmony. Unfortunately, that's what Obama is all about. Let's hope he has a conscience on this one. I'm not optimistic, personally.
What's funny is that Al Franken, who has publically stood up to the criminals in our system, was portrayed as "divisive" in the Senate campaign - and many Minnesotans took the bait, voting for the 3rd party candidate as someone who wasn't so "negative" in tone. But seriously, we need people who are not afraid to attack at the corruption in our politics. We don't need people too polite to point out and fight wrongdoing.
I remember Armbeck, from the 2000 election, Barbara Boxer, said she offered to be the senator, they needed to challenge the election, but Gore told her no
From: Junior
To: Subjects
It's not illegal if the president does it. Now shut up and go back to sleep.
Where is the perp walk?
We need to tell President Obama that! I think if enough of us ask, he will be compelled to do it.
Don't count on it. When Obama indicated he would vote for FISA, several thousand of us wrote to him at his website asking him to stand by the Constitution. He voted for it in spite of his earlier promise to vote against it and to filibuster. He must've made some kind of deal he needed to have a chance for the nomination and election. Who knows.
Now you're reaching.
"Pass the pipe dude..."
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