Is there a genuine Miers-Bush scandal afoot?

[BarnOwl]

If Miers’ name is quickly withdrawn from the Supreme Court nomination, it might just be to prevent the following story to come before the Senate Judiciary Committee. For clarity’s sake, I’ve bolded my comments

Miers panel to hear ‘explosive testimony’?

Gag order lifted for ex-lottery boss claiming Miers kept ‘lid’ on Bush Guard controversy

Posted: October 21, 2005 1:31 p.m. Eastern

Released from a gag order, Larry Littwin – the controversial former director of the Texas Lottery under Harriet Miers – is free to appear at the upcoming Supreme Court confirmation hearings to give “potentially explosive” testimony damaging both to President Bush and his nominee, according to WND columnist Jerome Corsi.

As WorldNetDaily has reported, Littwin allegedly was fired by Miers because he wanted to investigate improper political influence-buying by lobbyists for GTECH, the firm contracted to run the lottery.

Corsi believes that Littwin, according to an examination of hundreds of contemporary Texas newspaper accounts, will be able to establish under oath that the GTECH contract was preserved on a no-bid basis by then-chairwoman of the Lottery Commission Miers in order to “keep the lid on” the National Guard controversy involving then-Gov. Bush

Read the whole story at…
http://www.wnd.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=46964

This link and links to other related articles can be found at…

http://talkingpointsmemo.com/

**To find the links at the website above, scroll down to… **

(October 21, 2005 – 05:13 PM EDT // link)

Earlier today, World Net Daily reported what it called a big development in the Miers story. That development involved a guy named Larry Littwin, a fellow who’s been under a gag order and prevented from talking about his role in a scandal that took place on Harriet Miers’ watch at the Texas State Lottery Commission.

Littwin wanted to investigate GTECH. And for that Miers allegedly fired him. For more detail on what this scandal was all about see this piece by James Ridgeway in the Village Voice.

According to WND, the Senate Judiciary Committee successfully pressured GTECH, the Rhode Island company which ran the state lottery.

The sourcing on the original story seem a little opaque to me. So I spoke to sources up on the Hill who confirmed that this is in fact true, that GTECH has agreed to allow Littwin to testify.

More on this soon.

[tomndebb]

Since Littwin has not yet testified, we are all free to speculate how damaging his testimony will be.

On the other hand, World News Daily has a very clear agenda that has been demonstrated repeatedly on these boards to interfere with its presentation of “facts.” Since WND is clearly among the religious Far Right that has opposed Miers as being a closet moderate, I’m going to withhold speculation on the story until there is some sort of actual evidence presented in a more neutral medium.

(I will admit to a certain anticipatory schadenfreude if the WND begins savaging President Bush as a “traitor” to the cause, but I will not get my hopes up; I doubt that the WND is all that consistent.)

[BarnOwl]

I wasn’t aware of WND’s pedigree. Damn. <piano> But the story is still, intriguing.

There are other links at the website. Religious right as well?

[ITR_champion]

All the links that I see point to other articles on the WND site. It’s worth noting that Jerome Corsi, who’s cited as the original source for this nonsense, worked for the Swift Boat Goons last years, which shows you what his word is worth. We should also remember that World Net Daily responded to 9/11 by celebrating the fact that God had sent righteous terrorists to smite the wicked homosexuals and bloodthirsty communists of New York City. So in summary, I don’t but too much faith in them.

[BarnOwl]

@ITR champion

All the links that I see point to other articles on the WND site. It’s worth noting that Jerome Corsi, who’s cited as the original source for this nonsense, worked for the Swift Boat Goons last years, which shows you what his word is worth. We should also remember that World Net Daily responded to 9/11 by celebrating the fact that God had sent righteous terrorists to smite the wicked homosexuals and bloodthirsty communists of New York City. So in summary, I don’t but too much faith in them.

DAMN <szforzando>

The only redeeming thing about all this will be if the charges are true and are then aired during the hearings.

[BrainGlutton]

From the Wall Street Journal (a more reputable source than WND, if only marginally so) – http://www.opinionjournal.com/diary/?id=110007431:

The New York Sun has reported that Lawrence Littwin, a former executive director of the Lottery Commission, is eager to testify should the Senate subpoena him. Mr. Littwin claims that in 1997 Ms. Miers fired him after five months on the job because she was protecting GTECH, the controversial Rhode Island firm managing the lottery. GTECH had been mired in controversy for years, and in 1996 David Smith, its national sales director, was convicted in New Jersey in a kickback scheme involving a lobbyist.

Mr. Littwin has alleged that aides to then-Gov. Bush were worried that should GTECH lose its lottery contract, its top lobbyist, Mr. Barnes, would discuss efforts he claimed to have made to push a young George W. Bush to the top of the coveted waiting list for a pilot’s slot in the Texas Air National Guard. (Mr. Barnes went public with those claims last year in an interview with CBS’s “60 Minutes.”) Lottery Commission officials, including Ms. Miers, never detailed the reasons for the Littwin firing. Last week, when the Houston Chronicle asked about it, the White House replied, “Harriet Miers has never commented and will not now on what was a personnel matter.”

After his firing, Mr. Littwin sued GTECH, claiming it had helped him lose his job. He focused much of his discovery efforts on Mr. Barnes, who had two lucrative contracts with GTECH that brought him $3 million a year. In 1997, when GTECH let Mr. Barnes go amid the growing lottery scandal, he received a $23 million severance package. As part of the Littwin lawsuit, Mr. Barnes gave a deposition in 1999 in which he first told his story that Houston businessman Sidney Adger, a Bush family friend who died in 1996, had approached him to secure a National Guard slot for Mr. Bush.

Mr. Littwin sought to depose Ms. Miers, but a federal magistrate quashed that attempt. Shortly after that, GTECH agreed to pay Mr. Littwin $300,000 in exchange for a confidentiality agreement under which the Barnes deposition and other documents would be destroyed and Mr. Littwin wouldn’t discuss the case In public. Mr. Littwin isn’t talking to reporters, but he told the New York Sun if the Senate calls, “I’m coming, if they subpoena me.” That would release him from his confidentiality agreement. Senate staffers from both parties confirm they have discussed bringing Mr. Littwin to Washington to ask for his testimony on the Lottery Commission.

[tomndebb]

@E = mc²

There are other links at the website. Religious right as well?

Not obviously. It looks like Marshall picks up lots of leads from lots of sources–as long as they tend to be hostile to the current administration.

It is just coincidence that in this particular case, the extremes are willing to band together against the moderates to oppose Miers. (Politics, strange bedfellows, that sort of thing.)