[Previous entry: "GopBias.Org Blog record and database for March and April, 2008, plus May and June 2008, culminating with the July fourth two hundred and thirty second anniversary of our Declaration of Independence and continuing on to November 4th and beyond to 2009 and 2010 - This web blog holds the key to the great November, 2008 Presidential Election, as the following letters and columns regarding John Sidney McCain III illustrate, and the resurrection of the "strategic framework agreement" by Admiral Mike Mullen (now Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff), an agreement that will continue to be troublesome, along with the "Status of Forces"."] [Next entry: "GopBias.Org Blog record and database for March and April, 2008, plus May and June 2008, culminating with the July fourth two hundred and thirty second anniversary of our Declaration of Independence and continuing on to November 4th and beyond to 2009 and 2010 - This web blog holds the key to the great November, 2008 Presidential Election, as the following letters and columns regarding John Sidney McCain III illustrate, and the resurrection of the "strategic framework agreement" by Admiral Mike Mullen (now Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff), an agreement that will continue to be troublesome, along with the "Status of Forces"."]
01/22/2009: "Mark Crispin Miller on Democracy Now - Archive"
AMY GOODMAN: Well, let's start where I haven't seen much mention, and that is this man, Mike Connell, in Ohio, testifying. Who is he? What is his relevance to the big day, to Election Day tomorrow?
MARK CRISPIN MILLER: Yeah, this event in a courtroom in Columbus may be one of the most important things to happen in this whole election and may be one of the most important things to happen in American history. I mean, this sounds hyperbolic, I know, but it is true.
Mike Connell is--has been named as Karl Rove's computer guru since 2000. The lawyers in the case refer to Connell as a high-IQ Forrest Gump, because he's been on the scene of every dubious election we've had over the last eight years, starting with Florida 2000.
Now, he has been named by a man named Stephen Spoonamore, S-P-O-O-N-A-M-O-R-E, who's a very unusual and particularly unimpeachable kind of whistleblower. He's a conservative Republican; he's a former McCain supporter. But above all, he is a renowned and highly successful expert at the detection of computer fraud. He works for big banks. He works for foreign governments, the Secret Service. His job is to figure out how computers are used to steal money or information or votes. Well, he's named a lot of people in the Bush-Cheney election subversion conspiracy. He has worked with them. He knows them personally. And months ago, he named Mike Connell and his company GovTech Solutions as having played a crucial role in the--basically the electronic subversion of the vote in Ohio in 2004. And Spoonamore has actually described the computer architecture that was used to do this.
Now, on the strength of this testimony, the lawyers in the case had the judge issue a subpoena to Mike Connell last week. Connell defied the subpoena; he was in contempt. Late last week, the lawyers filed a motion to compel compliance, and to everyone's surprise and delight, the judge ordered Connell to appear today and to be deposed for two hours about his role in this longstanding electronic plot, basically, to flip votes towards the Republicans.
Some of this deposition will be sealed, and I have to tell you the part that'll be sealed. Apparently, Rove has threatened Connell. He told him that if Connell did not take the fall for this whole thing, the Department of Justice would start investigating Connell's wife Heather for improper lobbying practices. Now, that part of the deposition we're not going to know the answers to. But what's astonishing to me--
AMY GOODMAN: Who does she lobby for?
MARK CRISPIN MILLER: Various politicians and so on. Whether she's guilty or innocent is beside the point, because, as we know, the Department of Justice is a cudgel in the collective hands of the Bush administration. This would be more selective prosecution.
But what's really astonishing here is that Karl Rove could make that threat with such impunity. This shut Connell up, and he was, you know, earlier inclined to talk about what was going on. Then he got himself three very expensive Republican attorneys who promised that they would make sure he could not be deposed before Election Day. Well, hallelujah, he's being deposed before Election Day. And the reason why--
AMY GOODMAN: Today.
MARK CRISPIN MILLER: Today. The reason why this is so important and the strategy behind the early part of this case all along has been that if we can shine a spotlight on the perpetrators of this kind of fraud before Election Day, make them nervous, make them pull in their horns, distract them, there's a good chance that they might not try to do what they're clearly ready to do, because, let me just add, Connell is on the McCain payroll. He's working for McCain right now, and he specializes in a particular kind of computer architecture whose only purpose, Spoonamore says, is to steal votes. - Amy Goodman 11/3/08
Ralph Nader is on the radio airways in Florida, Missouri, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Virginia and elsewhere. Is this more of Sheldon G. Adelson's largesse at work? Ask them.