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This broad­cast high­lights a num­ber of aspects of the Bush admin­is­tra­tion, includ­ing infor­ma­tion about the elec­toral coup of 2000. (Note that this pro­gram was recorded before 9/11.)

1. The pro­gram begins with dis­cus­sion of the skewed media pre­sen­ta­tion of the “legit­i­macy” of Bush’s “win” in the Florida elec­toral vote count. An inves­ti­ga­tion by the New York Times found incon­sis­ten­cies in the way that absen­tee bal­lots were processed. “On the morn­ing after Elec­tion Day, George W. Bush held a lead of 1,784 votes in Florida, but to his cam­paign strate­gists, the mar­gin felt per­ilously slim. They were right. Within a week, recounts would erode Bush’s unof­fi­cial lead to just 300 votes. With the pres­i­dency hang­ing on the out­come in Florida, the Bush team quickly grasped that their best hope of vic­tory was the bal­lots still arriv­ing from Florida vot­ers liv­ing abroad. Over the next 18 days, the Repub­li­cans mounted a legal and pub­lic rela­tions cam­paign to per­suade can­vass­ing boards in Bush strong­holds to waive the state’s elec­tion laws when count­ing those bal­lots.” (“Absentee-Ballot Push Gave Bush Key: GOP Pres­sured Florida to Dis­re­gard Flaws, Study Shows” by David Barstow and Don Van Natta Jr. [New York Times]; San Jose Mer­cury News; 7/15/2001; p. 15A.)

2. The GOP strat­egy was appar­ently suc­cess­ful. “Their goal was sim­ple: to count the max­i­mum num­ber of over­seas bal­lots in coun­ties won by Bush, par­tic­u­larly those with a high con­cen­tra­tion of mil­i­tary vot­ers, while seek­ing to dis­qual­ify over­seas bal­lots in coun­ties won by Vice Pres­i­dent Al Gore. A six-month inves­ti­ga­tion by The New York Times of this chap­ter in the clos­est U.S. elec­tion shows that the Repub­li­can effort had a major impact. Under pres­sure from Repub­li­cans, Florida offi­cials accepted hun­dreds of over­seas absen­tee bal­lots that failed to com­ply with state elec­tion laws. [Ital­ics are Mr. Emory’s]. In an analy­sis of the 2,490 bal­lots from Amer­i­cans liv­ing abroad that were counted as legal votes after Elec­tion Day, the Times found 680 ques­tion­able votes. Although it is not known for whom the flawed bal­lots were cast, four out of five were accepted in coun­ties car­ried by Bush, the Times found. Bush’s final mar­gin was 537 votes.” (Idem.)

3. The Times described some of the irreg­u­lar­i­ties. “The flawed votes included bal­lots with­out post­marks, bal­lots post­marked after the elec­tion, bal­lots with­out wit­ness sig­na­tures, bal­lots mailed from within the United States and even bal­lots from peo­ple who voted twice. All would have been dis­qual­i­fied had the elec­tion laws been strictly enforced. . . .” (Idem.)

4. “The Times found that these over­seas ballots-the only votes that could legally by received and counted after Elec­tion Day-were judged by dif­fer­ent stan­dards, depend­ing on where they were counted. The unequal treat­ment is at odds with state­ments by Bush cam­paign lead­ers and by Florida Sec­re­tary of State Kather­ine Har­ris that rules should be applied uni­formly and not changed in the mid­dle of a con­tested elec­tion. It also appar­ently con­flicts with the equal-protection guar­an­tee the U.S. Supreme Court invoked in Decem­ber when it halted a statewide man­ual recount and effec­tively handed Florida to Bush. [Ital­ics are Mr. Emory’s].” (Idem.)

5. Key files were appar­ently erased in Florida, fur­ther obfus­cat­ing the inves­ti­ga­tion into what hap­pened. “Five months ago, elec­tions offi­cials in Palm Beach County, Fla., turned their atten­tion from last year’s con­tro­ver­sial pres­i­den­tial bal­lot­ing to the spring elec­tion for dozens of munic­i­pal offices. As they pre­pared for the new elec­tion, they wiped out com­puter files show­ing how each bal­lot was punched in the pres­i­den­tial elec­tion, remov­ing that infor­ma­tion from the pub­lic domain even as schol­ars and jour­nal­ists con­tinue to ana­lyze the results of Florida’s pres­i­den­tial vot­ing. The data is espe­cially impor­tant because Palm Beach was one of the key coun­ties in the five-week recount process that ulti­mately sent Pres­i­dent Bush to the White House.” (“Files Erased in Florida, Dam­ag­ing Elec­tion Review” by Geoff Dougherty; The Chicago Tri­bune; 8/1/2001; accessed at www.chicagotribune.com/templates/misc/printstory.jsp?slug=chi%2DO108010285aug01 .)

6. “The files were the only com­put­er­ized record of the way the county’s tab­u­lat­ing machines reg­is­tered each bal­lot last Novem­ber. The punch card bal­lots them­selves were not destroyed but can­not be accu­rately recounted because they have been exten­sively han­dled and pos­si­bly dam­aged since Elec­tion Day. The era­sure is an unex­pected blow to advo­cates of elec­tion reform because of the data’s his­tor­i­cal value. By wip­ing out the records, the elec­tions staff also may have vio­lated Florida’s strict rules against destroy­ing pub­lic records.” (Idem.)

7. NBC has con­tributed to the efforts to obscure the true nature of the 2000 elec­tion. In the con­text of what fol­lows, the role of John Ellis, George Bush’s cousin, as the edi­tor of the polit­i­cal desk at Fox News. (See FTR#259.) “At issue in [NBC Pres­i­dent Andrew] Lack’s case is sworn tes­ti­mony at the Feb­ru­ary hear­ing into botched elec­tion night news cov­er­age. In his tes­ti­mony, Lack offered to turn over a copy of tapes-if they existed-that showed the news­room actions of his cor­po­rate boss, Gen­eral Elec­tric Chair­man Jack Welch. The rumor, Wax­man told Lack was that Welch, a major con­trib­u­tor to the Repub­li­can Party, had ‘inter­vened’ in the network’s deci­sion to call the race for George W. Bush. Wax­man said he had heard Welch ‘cheered’ for Bush, ‘hissed’ Demo­c­ra­tic can­di­date Al Gore. At one point, Wax­man said Welch had allegedly asked some­one on the deci­sion desk: ‘What would I have to give you to call the race for Bush?’” (“NBC Balks at Shar­ing Elec­tion Night Tapes” by Megan Gar­vey; The Los Ange­les Times; 8/8/2001; p. A5.)

8. Much of the broad­cast deals with the Machi­avel­lian Karl Rove, the Bush aide cred­ited with much of W’s polit­i­cal suc­cess. In FTR#315, we exam­ined the untimely and sus­pi­cious death of J.H. Hat­field, the author of For­tu­nate Son–a Bush biog­ra­phy that high­lighted W’s drug abuse and, more impor­tantly, the busi­ness con­nec­tions between Bush and the Bin Laden fam­ily. The afore­men­tioned FTR#248 is among the pro­grams that high­lights the Hat­field mate­r­ial on the Bush/Bin Laden family/Arbusto Energy con­nec­tion. Karl Rove was alleged by the pub­lisher of the paper­back edi­tion of For­tu­nate Son to be a source who fun­neled dis­in­for­ma­tion to Hat­field to dis­credit him. “The Eufaula Con­nec­tion? That was Karl T. Rove. The other top Bush advi­sor was Clay John­son. The Bush con­fi­dante source, was his min­is­ter, May­field. Now you know. Remem­ber, you’ve got to swear now. . . .” J.H. Hat­field had just iden­ti­fied Karl T. Rove, the Bush campaign’s senior advi­sor to me per­son­ally as the pri­mary source for the G.W. Bush cocaine arrest cocaine story. It took me that whole year to under­stand why Rove would do such a thing.” (“George W. Bush’s Brain? How Karl T. Rove Used For­tu­nate Son to Stick George W. Bush in the White House” by Sander Hicks; Online Jour­nal; 5/23/2001; p. 3; accessed at www.onlinejournal.com/Media/Hicks052301/hicks052301.html; sourced from Soft­skull Press www.softskull.com/catalog/hatfield/fs karlrove.html .)

9. Hicks dis­cusses the back­ground to the sti­fled press about W’s drug abuse. “When the media stum­bled upon the story that George W. Bush was arrested for cocaine pos­ses­sion in 1972, it was through an anony­mous tip reported by a colum­nist at Salon.com (“Bush Up To His Arse In Alle­ga­tions! Sharp-Toothed E-Mail, Killer Bees and Bags of Worms. Will This Hound Hunt?” by Amy Reiter.) Hatfield’s book was in final proof­ing stages when this hot story broke on August 25, 1999. The piece was the first to state that Bush had been arrested in the early ‘70’s, and that he ‘was ordered by a Texas judge to per­form com­mu­nity ser­vice in exchange for expung­ing his record show­ing illicit drug use,’ accord­ing to the source. To make mat­ters worse, that August, Bush went out on his own on the cam­paign trail and impro­vised on cam­era about his drug past. With his han­dlers out of town ghost-writing his ‘auto­bi­og­ra­phy,’ he blurted out at a press con­fer­ence that he hadn’t done drugs since 1974. The media crowed at the spec­ta­cle. For instance, USA Today gushed, ‘Bush has admit­ted some­thing, but he refuses to say what.’” (Idem.)

10. Enter J.H. Hat­field and Karl Rove. “Hat­field, who long sus­pected some­thing was awry in young Bush’s play­boy days, went back to his Texas sources to cor­rob­o­rate this story through Clay John­son and Karl Rove, his reg­u­lar sources of infor­ma­tion. Accord­ing to Hat­field, Rove and John­son explained the cocaine arrest on the phone, under con­di­tion of anonymity. Rove had ear­lier taken Hat­field on a fish­ing trip to Lake Eufaula, OK, to dis­cuss Bush, so his pseu­do­nym in the ‘After­word’ became the cloak-and-daggeresque ‘The Eufaula Con­nec­tion.” (Idem.)

11. Hicks dis­cusses Rove’s rea­sons for select­ing Hat­field. “Why choose Jim Hat­field? Hat­field had com­mit­ted his 1987 crime in Dal­las, where long­time Bush school­mate and friend Clay John­son was an asso­ciate. John­son was friends with Hatfield’s employ­ers Larry Burke and Kay Bur­row. He would have heard about the vio­lent work­place con­spir­acy that stemmed from an illicit affair Burke was hav­ing with Bur­row. Bur­row had tried to black­mail Burke, and Hat­field took the fall for the attempt he arranged on Burrow’s life at his boss Burke’s request.” (Idem.)

12. Next, Hicks high­lights the alleged feed­ing of dis­in­for­ma­tion to Hat­field in order to fur­ther the dis­cred­i­ta­tion project. “Rove and John­son fur­ther ensured they could dis­credit Hat­field by feed­ing him flawed infor­ma­tion. They altered key facts in the cocaine arrest story, and thus raised the bur­den of proof for future reporters. At one point, Hat­field was told that the arrest­ing judge was a Repub­li­can, a false­hood which, although eas­ily detected, served to dam­age Hatfield’s cred­i­bil­ity. After St. Martin’s rushed the cocaine arrest story into the book as an ‘After­word,’ sud­denly the Dal­las Morn­ing News received the pri­vate, crim­i­nal record of J.H. Hatfield’s felony in Texas. The News pub­lished an arti­cle about Hatfield’s felo­nious past and it was all over for the Bush cocaine arrest story.” (Ibid.; pp. 3–4.)

13. “All in a day’s work” might very well sum up Hicks’ assess­ment of Rove’s machi­na­tions. What is to be pon­dered in this con­text is the fact of Hatfield’s untimely death. Like the late Sen­a­tor Paul Well­stone, Hat­field had been tar­geted by Rove. As to whether Rove had any­thing to do with their deaths is anybody’s guess. “This style of dis­in­for­ma­tion fol­lows the pat­tern set by all mas­ters of pub­lic opin­ion of the 20^th Cen­tury. Karl T. Rove is an avid his­tory buff, and applies what he reads. In just two short months he sur­gi­cally removed the media’s talk of the Bush drug arrest by feed­ing it to a biog­ra­pher he knew had a felony con­vic­tion in his past. Hat­field broke the story, and then Rove broke Hat­field. The Bush Campaign’s friends at the Dal­las Morn­ing News broke a sala­cious, mes­mer­iz­ing story about a car-bomb, a hit man, a boss, a felony con­vic­tion, and the mass media’s atten­tion is focused en masse on Hat­field, who can’t take the heat, denies the alle­ga­tions and flees town. St. Martin’s doesn’t know what’s going on, but sud­denly they are get­ting threat­ened by Bush cam­paign lawyers who are ‘look­ing into’ suing them. St. Martin’s behav­ior becomes para­noid, they announce that they are pulling 88,000 copies of the book from stores. So much for Amer­ica, so much for the Bill of Rights.” (Ibid.; p. 4.)