Recorded Jan­u­ary 2 and 9, 2005
Lis­ten to #493:
MP3 Side 1 | Side 2
RealAu­dio

Lis­ten to #494
MP3 Side 1 | Side 2
RealAu­dio

Due to the over­lap­ping nature of FTRs #493 and #494, the descrip­tions for the two pro­grams are merged into a sin­gle, longer doc­u­ment. The pro­grams set forth the crooked nature of com­pa­nies that make the elec­tronic vot­ing machines for US elec­tions, as well as that corruption’s effects on the Amer­i­can polit­i­cal process. One of the most dis­turb­ing points of infor­ma­tion pre­sented here con­cerns the appar­ent use of phony ter­ror alerts to manip­u­late vote-tabulating com­put­ers in two bor­der­line states. In War­ren County, Ohio and Tal­la­has­see, Florida, dubi­ous “ter­ror alerts” caused the evac­u­a­tion of key elec­tion facil­i­ties and the secur­ing of both by secu­rity per­son­nel. Much of the dis­cus­sion focuses on Sequoia Pacific and its long-standing rela­tion­ship with both orga­nized crime and the GOP. A sup­posed com­peti­tor of Sequoia Pacific—ES&S—actually works closely with its “oppo­nent.” Daniel Hop­sicker inves­ti­gates var­i­ous gam­bling ini­tia­tives, and how the orga­nized crime and polit­i­cal ele­ments involved in elec­tion tam­per­ing skew­ered the vote tal­lies on those pro­pos­als. Charles Kane is a “for­mer” CIA offi­cer who advised the Ukraine on elec­tion mat­ters in 1996, and was involved in the highly sus­pi­cious han­dling of absen­tee bal­lots in Mar­tin County, Florida in 2000. The arti­cles by Daniel Hop­sicker have been repro­duced here, for the con­ve­nience of the listener.

Pro­gram High­lights Include: The crim­i­nal con­vic­tion of Lloyd Dixon, head of Sequoia’s pre­de­ces­sor com­pany; Dixon’s successor—Louis Wolfson—tried to bribe Supreme Court Jus­tice Abe For­tas; Sequoia’s involve­ment with a New Orleans gam­bling ini­tia­tive; the con­vic­tion of SP’s South­east rep­re­sen­ta­tive Pasquale “Rocco” Ricci for brib­ing Jerry Fowler, Louisiana’s elec­tions over­seer; the sus­pi­cious “sui­cide” of the New Orleans offi­cial in charge of secu­rity for the build­ing hous­ing the elec­tion machines; Deb­o­rah and Richard Clark’s highly ques­tion­able involve­ment with both Sequoia Pacific and SP’s sup­posed com­peti­tor ES&S; the man­ner in which SP and ES&S swap machines back and forth; the extra­or­di­nary maneu­ver­ing Kathryn Fer­gu­son used to pur­chase SP machines for Las Vegas; numer­ous exam­ples of the strange and anom­alous results achieved by some of these elec­tronic vot­ing machines.

1. Before pre­sent­ing text that illu­mi­nates the dis­cus­sion in FTRs 493 and 494, we present (in line-items 1–4) Daniel Hopsicker’s arti­cles upon which the pro­grams are based:

The Big Fix 2004
How to Fix a Pres­i­den­tial Elec­tion Pt. 1: Con­victed, Felons, ‘Shad­owy Financiers’ Own Com­pa­nies Count­ing Votes

An inves­ti­ga­tion into the surprisingly-sordid his­tory of America’s “elec­tion ser­vices indus­try” has revealed that exec­u­tives and own­ers of the two largest com­pa­nies, E S & S and Sequoia Pacific, have been con­victed of bribery and sub­orn­ing pub­lic offi­cials in more than a dozen states.

And while a felony con­vic­tion may be enough »Con­tinue orig­i­nal article»

2.

Elec­tion Com­pany Has Long Crim­i­nal History

Thugs, Rack­e­teers Count­ing Amer­i­can Votes

While Ukraini­ans poured into the streets of their cap­i­tal Kiev to protest a pres­i­den­tial elec­tion they say was stolen by that country’s cur­rent regime, here in the U.S. a little-known elec­tion com­pany called Sequoia Pacific, respon­si­ble for putting our own ‘cur­rent regime’ in pow­er­four years ago, was at the cen­ter of con­tro­versy last week... for the sec­ond Pres­i­den­tial elec­tion in a row.

While U.S. news­pa­pers have been filled with quotes from Amer­i­can offi­cials pon­tif­i­cat­ing »Con­tinue orig­i­nal article»

3.

Back In The USSR
CIA “Help­ful” in Ukraine Elections

A retired CIA agent, whose ille­gal and unfet­tered access to elec­tion rolls in Mar­tin County Florida was a major source of legal con­tention after the 2000 Elec­tion, trav­eled to the Ukraine four years ear­lier to teach “grass-roots pol­i­tics” to peo­ple there, The Mad­Cow­Morn­ingNews has learned.

The news came even as cit­i­zens in the Ukraine cel­e­brate »Con­tinue orig­i­nal article»

4.

Fraud by Com­puter in Florida
Elec­tion Offi­cial Thwarts Recount Using Phony Vote Totals

A “mis­take” made in the office of a seriously-compromised Super­vi­sor of Elec­tion in Pinel­las County whose hus­band is a top exec­u­tive of the country’s largest elec­tion ser­vices com­pany has almost unno­ticed spiked the best hope for a elec­tion recount in Florida that might have thrown a spot­light on the dark cor­ners of the Florida elec­tion process con­ceal­ing wide­spread sys­temic and system-wide vote fraud.

The office of Super­vi­sor of Elec­tions in Pinel­las County, Deb­o­rah Clark, pro­vided inflated totals on the YES side of the gam­bling »Con­tinue orig­i­nal article»

5.

Rogue State: The Covert Op that Ate the World

While both of the ter­ror­ist pilots who crashed into the World Trade Cen­ter were stu­dents at Venice Florida’s Huff­man Avi­a­tion, the flight school’s owner Wal­lace J. Hilliard, 72, of Naples, FL., was simul­ta­ne­ously pur­su­ing his own diplo­matic open­ing to Fidel Castro’s Cuba. A pho­to­graph (left) recently made avail­able »Con­tinue orig­i­nal arti­cle»

One of the cen­tral themes in Daniel Hopsicker’s arti­cles on elec­tronic vote fraud con­cerns the per­va­sive­ness of orga­nized crime in the milieu of the crooked vot­ing machines. In addi­tion, gambling—one of the prin­ci­pal sources of income for orga­nized crime syndicates—also fig­ures in this con­cate­na­tion. It is impor­tant to note, how­ever, that orga­nized crime is but one of the ele­ments in the crooked vot­ing machine pha­lanx. One of the com­pa­nies that has both Repub­li­can right-wing AND orga­nized crime influ­ences is Sequoia Pacific. A Gam­bino crime fam­ily oper­a­tive was involved with the company’s oper­a­tions in New York. ” . . . In fact, the Gam­bino fam­ily and Sequoia Pacific have had more than a nod­ding acquain­tance, accord­ing to news­pa­pers in New York report­ing on the intrigue sur­round­ing the award­ing of a multi-million dol­lar con­tract for elec­tion machines in New York City dur­ing the mid-90’s, where Sequoia’s rep­re­sen­ta­tive in the bid­ding gained noto­ri­ety for attempt­ing to grease the skids a lit­tle at a marathon lun­cheon hosted by Sal­va­tore Reale, a Gam­bino under­boss who later pled guilty to rack­e­teer­ing. . . .“
(“Elec­tion Com­pany Has Long Crim­i­nal His­tory” by Daniel Hop­sicker; Mad Cow Morn­ing News; 11/24/2004; p. 3.)

6. From its incep­tion, Sequoia has been inex­tri­ca­bly linked with crim­i­nal activ­i­ties. Begun as Amer­i­can Vot­ing Machine, the com­pany was under the con­trol of stock­hold­ers in [North Amer­i­can] Rock­well, a major defense con­trac­tor. Pres­i­dent and CEO Lloyd Dixon was con­victed of brib­ing an offi­cial and sen­tenced to prison. ” . . . It [Sequoia Pacific] began its mod­ern life as Auto­matic Vot­ing Machine, spun off to share­hold­ers of Defense con­trac­tor Rock­well in the 1960’s. The company’s founder, Lloyd A. Dixon Jr. resigned as pres­i­dent and CEO on Jan. 10, 1973, and later went to prison, after being indicted by a New York fed­eral grand jury for brib­ing Buf­falo elec­tion offi­cials. The com­pany was fined nearly $50,000 for brib­ing Texas and Arkansas offi­cials. . .” (Idem.)

7. Things didn’t get any bet­ter after Dixon’s depar­ture and impris­on­ment: ” Last week, we briefly related the sor­did tale of the next owner of Sequoia Pacific, financier and cor­po­rate raider Louis Wolf­son. Wolf­son was con­victed of brib­ing the only Supreme Court Jus­tice ever forced to resign in dis­grace, ‘Dis­hon­est Abe’ For­tas. For­tas got caught palm­ing a life­time yearly ‘retainer’ from the wily Wolfson’s fam­ily foun­da­tion. Alas for ‘Dis­hon­est Abe,’ as he came to be called, the law draws no dis­tinc­tion between ‘accept­ing a retainer’ and ‘tak­ing a bribe.’ For­tas cut him­self a deal. He taped phone calls, at the FBI’s behest, with Wolf­son, who was plead­ing with the Supreme Court Jus­tice to dummy up. In the tran­scripts of these phone calls the word ‘cover-up’ enters the Amer­i­can lex­i­con for the first time. Appar­ently, For­tas coined it at the instant of need, when he said (prob­a­bly for the tape recorder), ‘No I can’t do that! That be a cover-up!’” (Ibid.; pp. 3–4.)

8. Gam­bling was at the epi­cen­ter of a scan­dal con­cern­ing the appar­ent bribery of Louisiana’s Com­mis­sioner of Elec­tions Jerry Fowler. ” . . . Fowler got him­self in big gam­bling trou­ble at Harrah’s casino in Atlantic City in the mid-’90’s, which helped explained his tak­ing bribes. It was at this same time when alle­ga­tions of vot­ing irreg­u­lar­ity became com­mon­place in Louisiana. Curi­ously, gam­bling was the burn­ing issue on the bal­lot in state elec­tions at the same exact time. One propo­si­tion con­cerned Harrah’s pro­posal to build a casino in down­town New Orleans. . . .” (Ibid.; p. 5.)

9. Fowler was con­victed of tak­ing bribes from Pasquale “Rocco” Ricci, the South­east­ern rep­re­sen­ta­tive of Sequoia Pacific. ” . . . We first learned of Sequoia Pacific’s pen­chant for greas­ing the palms of cor­rupt pub­lic offi­cials from the well-publicized news accounts in the year 2000 about Louisiana’s Com­mis­sioner of Elec­tions Jerry Fowler, con­victed of tak­ing as much as ten mil­lion dol­lars over a period of a decade from Sequoia’s South­east Rep­re­sen­ta­tive, a man named Pasquale ‘Rocco’ Ricci, from Marl­ton, New Jer­sey. Even after plead­ing guilty to sub­orn­ing democ­racy in the state of Louisiana for more than a decade, Ricci remained some­thing of a mys­tery fig­ure, we learned to our sur­prise. . . .” (Ibid.; p. 4.)

10. The Ricci/Fowler liai­son was brought to light when Susan Bernacker, a los­ing can­di­date tested the vot­ing machines. When she voted for her­self, the Sequoia Pacific machines reg­is­tered a vote for her opponent—Nick Giambel­luca. ” . . .Vot­ing machine tests per­formed and video­taped by a sus­pi­cious local can­di­date imme­di­ately after this elec­tion demon­strated that votes Susan Bernacker cast for her­self dur­ing the test were elec­tron­i­cally recorded for her oppo­nent. (The test was repeated sev­eral times with the same result. The aston­ish­ing video footage is in our doc­u­men­tary The Big Fix 2000.) . . .” (Ibid.; p. 4.)

11. It is inter­est­ing to note that the Super­vi­sor of Elec­tions in New Orleans—Tony Giambelluca—allegedly com­mit­ted sui­cide behind a dump­ster two weeks before the elec­tion. It is unclear whether Tony was related to Nick Giambel­luca. ” . . . Tony Giambel­luca, who held the keys to the ware­house where the elec­tion machines were kept, turned up an appar­ent sui­cide. He had cho­sen to take his life behind a garbage dump­ster, which seems an odd deci­sion. Given the choice, we fig­ure most peo­ple would choose to end their exis­tence in a slightly more scenic locale. . .” (Idem.)

12. Sequoia Pacific and another elec­tronic vot­ing company—E S & S—operated in con­junc­tion with one another, rather than in com­pe­ti­tion. The col­lu­sion between E S & S and Sequoia will be high­lighted again later on in this descrip­tion. (For more about E S & S, see FTRs 470, 487.) ” . . . Study of this case revealed some inter­est­ing details about the way the ‘elec­tion ser­vices’ indus­try works. . . First, the scheme showed that there was col­lu­sion, rather than com­pe­ti­tion between the two major elec­tion ser­vices firms, Sequoia Pacific and E S & S. Court doc­u­ments revealed the two sold vot­ing machines back and forth to each other until they had arrived at the fig­ure they wanted the client, the state of Louisiana, to pay. Nor was this an iso­lated case. The bribery con­vic­tion of Arkansas Sec­re­tary of State Bill McCuen, for exam­ple, revealed that E S & S’s pre­de­ces­sor com­pany. Busi­ness Records Corp. of Dal­las, arranged for con­tracts which led to Smur­fit Pack­ag­ing Corp. and its sub­sidiary, Sequoia Pacific Vot­ing Equip­ment Inc. More col­lu­sion. . . .” (Ibid.; p. 6.)

13. Sequoia oper­ates through dummy front com­pa­nies: ” . . . Another dis­cov­ery was that, like the CIA, Sequoia Pacific oper­ates through a num­ber of dummy front com­pa­nies. For exam­ple, two Florida elec­tion execs, Glenn Boord and Ralph Escud­ero, pled guilty to con­spir­acy to com­pound a felony (pub­lic bribery), who had owned a paper voting-machine com­pany called Uni-lect, which was just a front for Sequoia Pacific. Pasquale ‘Rocco’ Ricci’s com­pany, Inter­na­tional Vot­ing Machines, was also really Sequoia Pacific. So, too, was Harold Webb’s Gar­den State Elec­tions. (And also Herb Webb’s Elec-tec.) Webb, a New Jer­sey elec­tions equip­ment exec­u­tive who par­tic­i­pated in the bribery and kick­back scheme that resulted in the con­vic­tion of Fowler also played a key role in the infa­mous Mar­tin County, Florida drama over Repub­li­can absen­tee bal­lots in the 2000 elec­tion.” (Idem.)

14. “New Jer­sey elec­tion ser­vices com­pa­nies con­trolled by Webb were key sup­pli­ers to Mar­tin County, Florida, which calls into ques­tion the ver­sion of events sur­round­ing the tam­per­ing with absen­tee bal­lot appli­ca­tions tes­ti­fied to by Repub­li­can Party oper­a­tives in court in 2000. In coun­ties where their name never sur­faced, Sequoia sup­plied both com­puter and punch card sys­tems, and used tab­u­lat­ing machines from Sequoia Pacific dis­guised as being from other ven­dors, and used the same (doc­tored) machines as Louisiana, sup­plied by the same ‘shad­owy’ sources. When a reporter for the Fresno Bee inter­viewed Sequoia’s chief exec­u­tive, the reporter told us later he had been ‘taken aback by his secre­tive nature.’ In truth, Sequoia’s chief exec­u­tive has a lot to be secre­tive about. . . .” (Idem.)

15. Next, the dis­cus­sion turns to the issue of the vote tam­per­ing in Mar­tin County, Florida. (Sub­se­quent dis­cus­sion of the Florida elec­tion scams will return to the appar­ent role of gam­bling in these machi­na­tions.) A pro­found irony con­cern­ing elec­toral fraud in the U.S. con­cerns the dif­fer­ence between the reac­tion of the U.S. media and elec­torate to the Amer­i­can and Ukrain­ian elec­tions. The exit polls in both the U.S. and Ukraine were fun­da­men­tally dif­fer­ent from the elec­tion results. How­ever, the U

krain­ian peo­ple were vocal and vis­i­ble in their reac­tion to the appar­ent fraud. The Amer­i­can peo­ple, on the other hand, were alto­gether pas­sive. It is par­tic­u­larly note­wor­thy that The Wash­ing­ton Post and The New York Times were vehe­ment in their con­dem­na­tion of the elec­tion results in the Ukraine, while dis­miss­ing U.S. crit­ics of the elec­tions as “con­spir­acy the­o­rists.” (For more about this, see FTR#485.) DANIEL HOPSICKER NOTES THAT THERE IS A LINK BETWEEN UKRAINIAN ELECTIONS AND THE FRAUDULENT BALLOT TALLIES IN FLORIDA—“FORMER” CIA OFFICER CHARLES KANE. “A retired CIA agent, whose ille­gal and unfet­tered access to elec­tion rolls in Mar­tin County Florida was a major source of legal con­tention after the 2000 Elec­tion, trav­eled to the Ukraine four years ear­lier to teach ‘grass-roots pol­i­tics’ to peo­ple there, the Mad­Cow­Morn­ingNews has learned. The news came even as cit­i­zens in the Ukraine cel­e­brate their new-found free­dom, while in the U.S. sus­pi­cion con­tin­ued to fes­ter that vote fraud may have cost Amer­i­cans their own right to free and hon­est elec­tions.“
(“Back in the U.S.S.R.: CIA ‘Help­ful’ in Florida, Ukraine Elec­tions” by Daniel Hop­sicker; Mad­Cow­Morn­ingNews; 12/8/2004; p. 1.)

16. “In a bit­terly ironic twist, Charles Kane, for­mer Direc­tor of Secu­rity at the Cen­tral Intel­li­gence Agency, and mem­ber of the Florida Repub­li­can Exec­u­tive Com­mit­tee, spent four days in Kiev, the cap­i­tal of the for­mer Soviet repub­lic, host­ing train­ing ses­sions for Ukrain­ian polit­i­cal par­ties in 1996. Insti­tute offi­cials chose Kane to go to the Ukraine, accord­ing to the Feb­ru­ary 20, 1996, Stuart/Port St. Lucie News, appar­ently straight-faced, ‘because of his expe­ri­ence in grass-roots cam­paigns.’” (Idem.)

17. Kane later par­tic­i­pated in the Mar­tin County (Florida) elec­toral shenani­gans: “Four years later, Kane’s cre­den­tials as a pro­po­nent of democ­racy were receiv­ing much closer scrutiny. . . . ‘Kane’s efforts were part of a sin­is­ter under­ground con­spir­acy to help Bush,’ Edward Stafman, attor­ney for the Mar­tin County chal­lengers told the Asso­ci­ated Press on Decem­ber 7, 2000. . .” (Ibid.; pp. 1–2.)

18. ” . . . The career of the much-traveled Kane, it must be stated, resem­bles noth­ing so much as a con­spir­acy theorist’s wet dream. . . He was also involved, years ear­lier, in the inves­ti­ga­tion into the JFK assas­si­na­tion, dis­patch­ing a memo to the FBI regard­ing the where­abouts on the day of the assas­si­na­tion of noto­ri­ous pipe-smoking Water­gate bur­glar E. Howard Hunt.” (Ibid.; p. 2.)

19. As Daniel notes, Kane’s pres­ence in the Ukraine and Florida (as well as his intel­li­gence back­ground), raises ques­tions about his activ­i­ties in Mar­tin County. (For more about Kane, see FTR#268. An excel­lent web site fea­tur­ing infor­ma­tion about the appar­ent fix­ing of the 2004 elec­tion is www.campaignwatch.org. Infor­ma­tion about Charles Kane can be found here.) Daniel relates Kane’s role in the Mar­tin County vote snafu: “Char­lie Kane’s pres­ence in both the Ukraine and the 2000 elec­tion deba­cle prompted us to take a quick back­ward glance at the con­tro­versy which became famil­iar dur­ing the weeks fol­low­ing the infa­mous Florida Vote Snafu of 2000. Two heav­ily Repub­li­can coun­ties in Florida had allowed party offi­cials access which they said was to fix hun­dreds of flawed absen­tee bal­lot appli­ca­tions that had been sub­mit­ted by vot­ers but rejected by the elec­tions office. The Mar­tin County super­vi­sor of elec­tions, a Repub­li­can, let Repub­li­can Party work­ers take away the bal­lot requests on a daily basis, add miss­ing voter iden­ti­fi­ca­tion num­bers and resub­mit them, a deputy elec­tions super­vi­sor said.” (Ibid.; p. 3.)

20. “Just days before the Nov. 7 elec­tion, Charles Kane and his buddy Thomas Hauck were labor­ing in front of a com­puter at the local Repub­li­can head­quar­ters in Stu­art, sup­pos­edly as part of their party’s sophis­ti­cated but botched statewide effort to get out the absen­tee vote. A print­ing com­pany had failed to put the required voter iden­ti­fi­ca­tion num­bers on thou­sands of absen­tee bal­lot request forms that were mailed to vot­ers. So Hauck and Kane got busy in Mar­tin County, aided by a Repub­li­can super­vi­sor of elec­tions who let them remove forms from her office.” (Idem.)

21. Daniel notes that Kane’s access to the print­ing com­pany forms may have led to fraud in other parts of Florida, since the same forms were used all over the state. “Kane, who chaired the 2000 Bush-Cheney cam­paign in Mar­tin County, sup­pos­edly read the num­bers from the party’s data­base. Hauck, the local GOP trea­surer and a 20-year vet­eran of local cam­paigns, sup­pos­edly filled in the blanks on the request forms. But the print­ing company’s forms were used state-wide. Had this per­haps ‘con­ve­nient’ fact been used as an excuse to allow ille­gal access in other places in Florida as well? The ques­tion was never answered.” (Idem.)

22. Still more about the absen­tee bal­lots and the role they may have played in both the Mar­tin County vot­ing results and in the results of Florida as a whole: “More­over, while Gov. George W. Bush edged Vice Pres­i­dent Al Gore by 56 per­cent to 44 per­cent in Mar­tin County, the absen­tee votes—control of which vio­lated the rules of chain of custody—broke nearly 2 to 1 for Bush. . . . Other tan­ta­liz­ing clues have emerged, like the recent state­ments made by Jeff Fisher, Demo­c­ra­tic can­di­date for the U.S. House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives from Florida’s 16th Dis­trict, which, curi­ously, encom­passes both Mar­tin as well as Palm Beach County, where the vote count has been dis­puted in an analy­sis by UC Berke­ley researchers. Fisher has evi­dence, he says, not only that the Florida elec­tion was hacked, but of who hacked it and how. Per­haps the proof of vote tam­per­ing, if proof is ever found, will be found by pierc­ing through the implau­si­ble expla­na­tion offered for Char­lie Kane’s ille­gal access to elec­tion records . . .” (Idem.)

23. In another of Daniel’s arti­cles on voter fraud, he returns to the sub­ject of Sequoia Pacific, its rela­tion­ship to ES&S and evi­dence of elec­toral fraud in Florida. Exem­pli­fy­ing the shady over­sight of the elec­toral process in Florida is Deb­o­rah Clark, appointed by Jeb Bush to the office of Super­vi­sor of Elec­tions in Pinel­las County. And once again, we see gam­bling ini­tia­tives fig­ur­ing in the sce­nario. “I’m shocked—shocked—to learn that there’s gam­bling going on in this estab­lish­ment!” ” . . . The office of Super­vi­sor of Elec­tions in Pinel­las County, Deb­o­rah Clark, pro­vided inflated totals on the YES side of the gam­bling ini­tia­tive which were then used by state offi­cials in the offi­cial state tally of the hotly-contested gam­bling ini­tia­tive known as Amend­ment 4. The ini­tia­tive would allow casino slot machine gam­bling in South Florida, an out­come devoutly to be wished by own­ers of the spank­ing new $700 mil­lion Hard Rock Café Casino in Hol­ly­wood, Florida, a facil­ity all dressed up but with cur­rently nowhere to go.“
(“‘Fraud by Com­puter’ in Florida: Elec­tion Offi­cial Thwarts Recount Using Phony Vote Totals” by Daniel Hop­sicker; Mad­Cow­Morn­ingNews; 12/14/2004; p. 1.)

24. Daniel relates Deb­o­rah Clark’s curi­ous behav­ior with regard to the gam­bling ini­tia­tive: “Pinel­las County vot­ers defeated the gam­bling ini­tia­tive by more than 17,000 votes. But t

he offi­cial state record says the exact oppo­site, the result of a ‘mis­take’ by the office of Pinel­las Elec­tions Super­vi­sor which would have gone unno­ticed, said local reports, had it not been caught by out­side observers. A recount of Florida’s votes on the state gam­bling ini­tia­tive offered an oppor­tu­nity to cor­re­late what was found with what are so far just ‘the­o­ries’ of how the Pres­i­den­tial elec­tion in Florida might have been stolen. Deb­o­rah Clark pro­vided an extra 34,000 votes on the YES side of the ini­tia­tive, suf­fi­cient to legally pre­clude what would have oth­er­wise been a man­dated recount.” (Ibid.; pp. 1–2.)

25. Return­ing to the inces­tu­ous rela­tion­ship between Sequoia Pacific and ES&S, the dis­cus­sion high­lights Deb­o­rah Clark’s hus­band Richard, after not­ing that a recount of votes on the gam­bling ini­tia­tive might very well have shed light on how the vote was manip­u­lated for the pres­i­den­tial race. “As a long­time top exec­u­tive with ES&S, the com­pany which counts more than half the U.S. vote, Richard Clark prob­a­bly had more to lose from a recount than almost any­one alive. . . . Should rumored anom­alies sur­face in the recount, the for­tunes of any elec­tions firms involved would no doubt suf­fer. A recount of the gam­bling ini­tia­tive, known as Amend­ment 4, elec­tion experts said, would have offered clues as to how and why 90,000 extra YES votes for gam­bling were recorded in Broward County, for exam­ple. This num­ber is almost equal to the ‘extra’ votes for Pres­i­dent Bush cast in Broward County, which researchers say were inex­plic­a­ble except through manip­u­lated elec­tronic vote tabulation—which were counted in the same county’s tally.” (Ibid.; pp. 2–3.)

26. More about Deb­o­rah Clark’s hus­band Richard and his pro­fes­sional involve­ment with ES&S and Sequoia: ” . . . More seri­ously, while Deb­o­rah Clark had worked as a top offi­cial in the Pinel­las Super­vi­sor of Elec­tions Office, her hus­band Richard Clark’s employer Elec­tions Sys­tems & Soft­ware, was awarded more than $400,000 in busi­ness with the office, and was up for a lucra­tive con­tract worth as much as $15-million to sell new vot­ing machines to Pinel­las County. . .” (Ibid.; p. 3.)

27. When read­ing the text that fol­lows, recall the inces­tu­ous nature of the rela­tion­ship between ES&S and Sequoia dis­cussed above. The two sup­pos­edly com­pet­ing com­pa­nies swap machines back and forth. ” . . . He [Clark] said he quit ES&S for about five years, hav­ing joined the firm when it acquired the com­pany that pre­vi­ously employed him, Busi­ness Records Corp. [For more about Busi­ness Records Corp. and its con­nec­tions to the ultra right-wing Hunt fam­ily of Texas, see FTR#470.] But Clark said he quit ES&S just before his wife was named elec­tions super­vi­sor because he was wor­ried that his employ­ment with the firm could appear as a con­flict. But so far, Clark’s new com­pany, Richard A. Clark Enter­prises, works for just one com­pany, ES&S. The selec­tion process in Pinel­las County became mired in eth­i­cal con­flicts after county com­mis­sion­ers learned in July 2001 that ES&S had ‘very’ close ties to Deb­o­rah Clark.” (Ibid.; p. 5.)

28. ” . . . Even Clark’s deputy admin­is­tra­tor, Karen But­ler, is a sis­ter of San­dra Mortham, Florida’s for­mer sec­re­tary of state and a lob­by­ist for ES&S before the state leg­is­la­ture. . . .” (Idem.)

29. More about Richard Clark and his rela­tion­ship with the incestuously-related ES&S and Sequoia Pacific and the latter’s rela­tion­ship with orga­nized crime, includ­ing the Louisiana scan­dal: ” . . . Clark had been work­ing in Birm­ing­ham, Ala. as an inde­pen­dent con­trac­tor, after resign­ing from the com­pany. . . Appar­ently, no one noticed that when Richard Clark went to Birm­ing­ham, another Birm­ing­ham elec­tion exec, Phil Fos­ter, was being indicted on felony bribery charges. Fos­ter, a regional sales vice pres­i­dent was allegedly involved in a con­spir­acy and money-laundering scheme that involved the sale of machine parts at inflated prices and kick­backs of nearly $600,000. Pinel­las com­mis­sion­ers were sur­prised when the St. Peters­berg Times reported that Fos­ter, a key employee for front-runner Sequoia Vot­ing Sys­tems, had been indicted for the elec­tions kick­back scheme in Louisiana. . . .” (Ibid.; pp. 5–6.)

30. ” . . . Tes­ti­mony in Fed­eral Court in Baton Rouge revealed that, in fact, Sequoia had engi­neered the com­plex scheme, an action which pro­vides yet another elec­tion irony. Pinel­las Com­mis­sion Chair­man Calvin Har­ris told the Times he assumed the state had checked out the com­pet­ing com­pa­nies while their machines were being cer­ti­fied. Not so, said Clay Roberts, direc­tor of the state’s Divi­sion of Elec­tions, who main­tained that back­ground checks were a job for coun­ties. So while the state of Florida was death on vot­ing by con­victed felons, there were no safe­guards in place to pre­vent the votes from being counted by felons. . . .” (Ibid.; p. 6.)

31. It is inter­est­ing to note Deb­o­rah Clark’s capri­cious views on spend­ing for vot­ing tech­nol­ogy. She was against spend­ing $2 mil­lion to retro­fit Pinel­las County’s machines. But she was in favor of spend­ing $14 mil­lion on Sequoia machines in the first place. ” . . . Although she hadn’t shown much con­cern over spend­ing $14 mil­lion on the machines, she said that the $2 mil­lion expense of retro­fitting Pinel­las County’s new touch screen vot­ing machines to gen­er­ate a receipt for vot­ers which would ver­ify how their bal­lots were cast was unnec­es­sary. The county’s touch screen vot­ing sys­tem, built by Sequoia Vot­ing Sys­tems, was safe from tam­per­ing.” (Ibid.; p. 5.)

32. Before return­ing to the Florida vote sub­terfuge, let’s once again note the pres­ence of gam­bling (“ . . . shocked, shocked!”) in the envi­ron­ment of the crooked vot­ing machine com­pa­nies. ” . . . For why this hap­pens, there’s no bet­ter exam­ple than. . . . where else? Las Vegas. . . Back in 1993–94, many observers won­dered why new Clark County elec­tions chief Kathryn Fer­gu­son would com­mit to what turned out to be tens of mil­lions of dol­lars in expen­di­tures to adopt Sequoia Pacific’s elec­tronic vot­ing machines. So deter­mined was Ms. Fer­gu­son to buy the Sequoia machines for Las Vegas that a for­mer mem­ber of her elec­tions depart­ment team stated Fer­gu­son resorted to the sim­ple exi­gency of hav­ing Sequoia Pacific’s rep­re­sen­ta­tive send a list of bid spec­i­fi­ca­tions designed so that Sequoia’s machines were the only ones that could meet them. [Empha­sis added.].” (Ibid.; p. 7.)

33. Note again the inces­tu­ous rela­tion­ship between ES&S and Sequoia: “This hardly seems sport­ing. And it’s def­i­nitely ille­gal. Asked at the time, Fer­gu­son said she had no con­cern that her accep­tance of a job at Sequoia Pacific might appear to be a pay­off for favors ren­dered. Today, Kathryn Fer­gu­son is ES&S’s chief spokesman. She’s good to go.” (Idem.)

34. At times, the vote sna­fus in Florida were of truly com­i­cal pro­por­tions. In a 2002 pri­mary elec­tion, Hills­bor­ough County recorded a total of 118,699 votes for state attor­ney. Con­sider the fol­low­ing: ” . . . A total of 118,699 peo­ple turned out to vote coun­ty­wide. But some­how, 125,891 voted in the race for state attor­ney.” (Idem.)

35. One town in Hills­bor­ough county was remark­able for its per­for­mance in that same pri­mary elec­tion: ” . . . For exam­ple, in the Aug. 31, 2002 pri­mary, the pop­u­la­tion of an entire small town—12,498 voters—appeared at the polls in Hills­bor­ough County and appar­ently decided not to vote in the race for state attor­ney. The town cast votes in all the other con­tests, but not in the race for state attor­ney. Had there been a town-wide secret pact?” (Ibid.; p. 3.)

36. In the 2004 elec­tion, there were two sus­pi­cious ter­ror alerts—one in War­ren County (Ohio) and one in Tal­la­has­see (Florida). It appears alto­gether pos­si­ble that the evac­u­a­tions result­ing from the alerts per­mit­ted vote tam­per­ing. ” . . . In Ohio, there was the famous ‘War­ren County Lock­down’ because of ‘ter­ror’ threats, and in Florida, a ‘bomb threat’ at the State Elec­tions Office in Tal­la­has­see. The State Elec­tions Office in Tal­la­has­see holds, of course, that state’s main tab­u­lat­ing com­put­ers. . .“
(“Back in the USSR”, p.4.)

39. The last arti­cle (as of the time FTR#494 was recorded) that Daniel pub­lished on elec­toral fraud draws con­nec­tions between Wally Hilliard (of Huff­man Avi­a­tion) and Adnan Khashoggi, the Egyptian-born Saudi weapons dealer who was a prin­ci­pal fig­ure in the Iran-Contra scan­dal. Daniel uncov­ered trips that Hilliard had made to Castro’s Cuba. “While both of the ter­ror­ist pilots who crashed into the World Trade Cen­ter were stu­dents at Venice Florida’s Huff­man Avi­a­tion, the flight school’s owner Wal­lace J. Hilliard, 72, of Naples, Fl., was simul­ta­ne­ously pur­su­ing his own diplo­matic open­ing to Fidel Castro’s Cuba. A pho­to­graph recently made avail­able to the Mad­Cow­Morn­ingNews shows a smil­ing Hilliard strap­ping a Rolex with the must-have dia­mond beveled-face onto the pre­sum­ably grate­ful wrist of one of Fidel Castro’s top aides, Guillermo Gar­cia Frias, known in Cuba as ‘the Com­man­dante of the Rev­o­lu­tion.’”
(“Rogue State: the Covert Op that Ate the World” by Daniel Hop­sicker; Mad­Cow­Morn­ingNews; 1/4/2005; p. 1.)

40. What was Hilliard doing in Havana? ” . . . Hilliard was look­ing to cut a deal with Cas­tro, said Rob Tiller, who pro­vided the pho­to­graph, to buy a 10,000 acre cat­tle ranch on the island for the Mor­mon Church in Utah, report­edly in antic­i­pa­tion of the resump­tion of nor­mal diplo­matic rela­tions between Cuba and the United States.” (Ibid.; p. 2.)

41. Next, Daniel ties Hilliard in with Adnan Khashoggi. They appear to be involved in an effort to secure land­ing rights on Rum Cay in the Caribbean, appar­ently in con­nec­tion with drug smug­gling activ­i­ties. ” . . . But it’s Hilliard’s involve­ment with Adnan Khashoggi, the Saudi bil­lion­aire and inter­na­tional fugi­tive, which is most intrigu­ing. We learned of it from a busi­ness rival of the two men, both vying for rights to build a casino on a remote island in the Bahamas. Like a ‘ban­dit cab’ in the air, Hilliard’s Lear jet was fly­ing with­out any appar­ent offi­cial sanc­tion. Though the FAA license under which it oper­ated has been sus­pended, (that of Air Florida, belong­ing to Pak­istani Per­vez Khan) the plane was mak­ing reg­u­lar runs to the Bahamas. We received a photo taken in Rum Cay attest­ing to its pres­ence bol­ster­ing one side in a strug­gle for con­trol of the iso­lated island and its cov­eted run­way, which had recently been upgraded for jets.” (Ibid.; p. 4.)

42. “Located 375 miles to the south­east of Ft. Laud­erdale in the remote south­east­ern Bahamas, Rum Cay, we soon learned, is the very def­i­n­i­tion of ‘secluded.’ In fact, that’s its charm. The island once served as a refuge for pirates, and had been a cen­ter of gun-running dur­ing the Amer­i­can Civil War before grow­ing to true promi­nence dur­ing Pro­hi­bi­tion as a port used for boot-legging. What was going on at Rum Cay was that there was a new run­way, which now allowed pri­vate jets like Hilliard’s Lear to land on the island. Local news­pa­pers were run­ning reg­u­lar items with head­lines like ‘Cops Seize $50 Mil­lion in Drugs.’” (Idem.)

43. “The reputed head of one group vying for con­trol was a South African named Les­ley Greyling, report­edly fronting for Khashoggi. News accounts about Mr. Greyling relied rather heav­ily on the ‘M’ word. . . . Mob­ster. But not a mob­ster of the ‘dese dem & dose’ vari­ety. . . Greyling helmed a Palm Beach com­pany, Mem­bers Ser­vice Corp., whose chair­man was for­mer Repub­li­can Gov­er­nor of Florida Claude Kirk, and included noted attor­ney F. Lee Bai­ley, and Saudi arms dealer Adnan Khashoggi. Greyling was said to be also con­sid­er­ing help­ing the Saudi arms mer­chant and Iran-Contra mid­dle­man build a casino on the Gaza Strip. Saudis and the Mob and ter­ror flight school owner Wally Hilliard all bump­ing chests together in the world’s Bermuda Tri­an­gle of nar­cotics traf­fick­ing. It’s a Strange Brew. . . .” (Ibid.; pp. 4–5.)

44. Evi­dence sug­gests that Khashoggi may be involved with com­pa­nies impli­cated in some of the funky vote tech­nol­ogy. (Note that this link has not been com­pletely “closed” as yet.) ” . . . Hilliard is in busi­ness, to cite one exam­ple, with Saudi bil­lion­aire arms dealer and inter­na­tional fugi­tive Adnan Khashoggi, whose name has now sur­faced in con­nec­tion with at least one, and pos­si­bly two, Amer­i­can elec­tion com­pa­nies mired in con­tro­versy. The story which fol­lows is of vital cur­rent inter­est only for what it reveals about the milieu in which the 2004 elec­tion was fixed. . . .” (Ibid.; p. 5.)

45. ” . . . Was Adnan Khashoggi a prin­ci­pal in a com­pany which has been count­ing the votes of Amer­i­can ser­vice­men over­seas? Answer: highly likely. Both Election.com and Triad, the elec­tion com­pany cited for caus­ing most of the prob­lems in Ohio, should receive close scrutiny for evi­dence of Khashoggi involve­ment.” (Ibid.; p. 7.)

46. Next, Daniel notes that Khashoggi has been involved with a num­ber of enter­prises named “Triad.” Whether he was in any way involved with the elec­tion machine com­pany of the same name remains to be seen. “While there has been no sug­ges­tion of it any­where in the media, the name ‘Triad’ was used exten­sively by Khashoggi at exactly the same time (the early 80’s) and in exactly the same place (Palm Beach, Florida) as the ‘Triad Gov­ern­men­tal Sys­tems’ involved in Ohio’s cur­rent elec­tion ‘dif­fi­cul­ties.’ Khashoggi owned a num­ber of com­pa­nies named ‘Triad.’ Khashoggi owned ‘Triad Inter­na­tional Mar­ket­ing.’ ‘Northrop the Los Angeles-based air­craft and elec­tron­ics man­u­fac­turer owes Triad Inter­na­tional Mar­ket­ing, S.A., a Liecht­en­stein cor­po­ra­tion con­trolled by Khashoggi. $31 mil­lion in com­mis­sions on sales to the Saudi air force,’ reported the L.A. Times on August 29, 1987. Kashoggi owned ‘Triad Amer­ica.’ ‘Cred­i­tors claim they are owed more than $100 mil­lion by Triad Amer­ica and its sub­sidiaries. . . in Salt Lake City. Leonard Gumport, the court-appointed exam­iner, also is rec­om­mend­ing that Triad Amer­ica seek repay­ment of the $189.2 mil­lion loaned to com­pa­nies con­trolled by the Khashog­gis,’ reported the Salt Lake Tri­bune.” (Idem.)

47. “In 1982, Khashoggi owned Triad Farms in Ken­tucky. In The Blue­grass Con­spir­acy by Sally Den­ton, she revealed that the large drug smug­gling oper­a­tion called ‘The Com­pany,’ [had] head­quar­ters near Lex­ing­ton, Ken­tucky, at Triad Farms, owned by Khashoggi. That’s just about the same time (1982) that TRIAD Gov­ern­men­tal Sys­tems was founded. From the company’s lit­er­a­ture: ‘TRIAD Gov­ern­men­tal Sys­tems, Inc., is a nation­ally rec­og­nized cor­po­ra­tion that is com­mit­ted to pro­vid­ing qual­ity, com­puter based sys­tems for gov­ern­men­tal vot­ing units. Incor­po­rated in 1982, TRIAD GSI was founded to pro­vide qual­ity sup­port and ser­vices for Rapp Sys­tems’ Elec­tion prod­ucts, with elec­tion expe­ri­ence that spans a quar­ter of a cen­tury.” (Idem.)

48. Triad had prob­lems as far back as 1988. “We also dis­cov­ered that a strik­ingly sim­i­lar alle­ga­tion of Triad employee tam­per­ing was lodged against the com­pany all the way back in 1988. . . Accord­ing to Jackie Beville, a for­mer employee of the Super­vi­sor of Elec­tions in Hills­bor­ough County, Triad work­ers adjusted the soft­ware to clear up a ballot-counting prob­lem shortly before the elec­tion, and the machin­ery should then have been re-certified fol­low­ing the work. When ques­tioned she was told that Triad work­ers were just fix­ing prob­lems caused by a light­ning strike. Beville dis­putes that the weather had any­thing to do with the repair work. But even if it did, ‘My ques­tion is, why was it a secret? The party chair­men were not called in. The can­vass­ing board was not noti­fied. The Divi­sion of Elec­tions was not noti­fied.” (Idem.)

49. “‘Why was I for­bid­den to men­tion it? If the party chair­men and divi­sion had been noti­fied, it may not have been a big deal. But it should have been made pub­lic. Every­one has a right to know.’ Triad man­u­fac­tures punch-card vot­ing sys­tems, and also wrote the com­puter pro­gram that tal­lied the punch-card votes cast in 41 Ohio coun­ties last Novem­ber. The com­pany is owned by a man named Tod Rapp, who has donated money to the Repub­li­can Party as well as the elec­tion cam­paign of George W. Bush. Given the broad dis­tri­b­u­tion of Triad vot­ing sys­tems in Ohio, the alle­ga­tions that have been lev­eled against this com­pany strike to the heart of the assumed result of the 2004 elec­tion. And not just Triad. . . .” (Ibid.; pp. 7–8.)