The Whistleblower and Harriet Miers

The Village Voice
The Whistleblower and Harriet Miers
Thu Oct 6, 2005 13:33
64.140.158.2

The Whistleblower and Harriet Miers
By James Ridgeway, with Isabel Huacuja
The Village Voice

Tuesday 04 October 2005
http://villagevoice.com/news/0540,webmondo2,68584,6.html

Questions linger about Court nominee's time with Texas Lottery.

Washington - Sooner or later, senators pondering Harriet Miers's qualifications to be a Supreme Court judge will want to inquire into the byzantine dealings of the Texas Lottery Commission in the late 1990s, when she was its chair.

Miers has been portrayed as a tough administrator who cleaned up a scandal-plagued state board, as in this report from the Houston Chronicle:

"Harriet Miers proved to be a tough, no-nonsense administrator during her five years heading the Texas Lottery Commission, firing two executive directors to stamp out scandal but leaving unexpectedly amid lagging sales and player interest."

The paper goes on to note that "one of those firings stirred up questions about whether political influence helped George W. Bush avoid active service in Vietnam."

But that's not the last question stirred by Miers's tenure on the lottery commission. There's room for speculation about whether, even as she worked to clear out corruption, she stifled the claims of a key whistleblower.

The story goes like this:

Apparently in January 1996, then Texas governor George Bush received an anonymous letter claiming that Nora Linares, director of the Texas Lottery Commission, was in cahoots with a former employer and a boyfriend to rip off the commission. Supposedly, the boyfriend, convicted on an unrelated federal bribery charge, was using state equipment and personnel to work on a private contract he had with Gtech. That's the company contracted to carry out the Texas lottery. According to reports in the Houston Chronicle from that time, Linares claimed she knew nothing about this, even though the boyfriend was running his business out of her cousin's New Mexico apartment address.

At first, Bush and his then assistant Miers did nothing, but eventually Miers was sent over to the commission to straighten things out. This raised eyebrows at the time, since Miers's law firm represented a company which had a major contract with the lottery. Linares was fired, and in March 1997 the commission put the Gtech contract up for re-bid. Then in June, one Lawrence Littwin, a Democrat, was hired to run the lottery, which had been set up in 1992. At the time, Miers, now chair of the lottery commission, said of Littwin, "His extensive business, technical and lottery experience, his knowledge of lottery products offered by vendors, and his knowledge of the procurement process will be of great benefit . . . . He is a man of integrity who will further develop and maintain strict controls at the commission and insure operations that are above reproach."

When Littwin took over he received a report from the state auditor critical of both Gtech and the lottery commission for failure to conduct proper accounting. Littwin hired the firm of Deloitte and Touche to run more audits, and they allegedly revealed that Gtech had seriously violated its contract. His investigation also revealed what were described as illegal campaign contributions. At that point, according to Littwin, Miers and other commission members ordered him to stop the investigation.

The upshot of the affair was that Gtech, even though not the low bidder, got its contract back, and according to Littwin never corrected its auditing breaches. Littwin was fired that October, after only five months on the job. The commission would only say it had "lost confidence" in him. The personnel files say he was dismissed for "reasons unknown."

In a subsequent 1999 lawsuit, Littwin claimed Gtech was engaged in questionable dealings through its chief Texas lobbyist in 1997, Ben Barnes, former state lieutenant governor.

Barnes hit the headlines during Bush's first campaign because he supposedly was the man who got young George out of the draft and into the Texas National Guard, a charge he denied. Littwin's suit was eventually settled for $300,000. Barnes's deposition, in which the National Guard matter was mentioned, disappeared.

The question is whether Miers was dispatched to the state lottery commission to cover up a mess on the verge of being brought to light by a whistleblower. We may never know.

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...OR WHY BUSH NEEDS MIERS TO CYA...COMING ATTRACTIONS!!!!

21 Administration Officials Involved In Plame Leak

The cast of administration characters with known connections to the outing of an undercover CIA agent:
http://www.thinkprogress.org/leak-scandal

WAS BUSH INVOLVED IN THE LEAK? In July 2005, the New York Times raised the possibility that Bush could be involved in the leak. “It is still not clear what the investigation into the leak of a C.I.A. operative’s identity will mean for President Bush. So far the disclosures about the involvement of Karl Rove, among others, have not exacted any substantial political price from the administration. And nobody has suggested that the investigation directly implicates the president. Yet Mr. Bush has yet to address some uncomfortable questions that he may not be able to evade indefinitely There is the broader issue of whether Mr. Bush was aware of any effort by his aides to use the C.I.A. officer’s identity to undermine the standing of her husband, a former diplomat who had publicly accused the administration of twisting its prewar intelligence about Iraq’s nuclear program.” [NYT, 7/24/05]

BUSH QUESTIONED BY FITZGERALD FOR OVER AN HOUR: On June 24, 2004, special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald and several of his assistants questioned the president for about 70 minutes in the Oval Office. Bush retained a private lawyer, Jim Sharp, for the interview. A prominent First Amendment lawyer, Floyd Abrams, said “It’s hard to believe the special prosecutor would be burdening the president with an interview unless they had testimony to the effect that the president had information.” [Washington Post, 2/25/04]

STARR DEPUTY SAID BUSH INTERVIEW SUGGESTED HIGH-LEVEL INVOLVEMENT IN LEAK: The New York Daily News reported, “The Bush interview ‘indicates there’s obviously a belief that the leak was at a high level,’ said Sol Wisenberg, a former [Ken] Starr deputy who questioned Clinton. ‘The President usually doesn’t meet and knock around ideas with midlevel staffers.’” [New York Daily News, 6/25/04]

BUSH WAS ABOARD AIR FORCE ONE WITH THE STATE DEPARTMENT MEMO: A classified State Department report that contained Valerie Plame’s identity was sent to Secretary of State Colin Powell and other administration officials who were aboard Air Force One with the president on July 7, 2003. The extent of the circulation of the memo is not known. [Washington Post, 7/21/05]

BUSH CLAIMED TO WANT TO GET TO THE BOTTOM OF THE LEAK: On September 29, 2003, a senior administration official told the Washington Post that Bush said, “I want to get to the bottom of this,” during a daily staff meeting which Karl Rove attended. [Washington Post 9/30/03]

BUSH TOLD TENET HE WOULD COOPERATE WITH THE INVESTIGATION: A conversation between the president and Tenet about the investigation did not consume, according to Andy Card, “any significant amount of time or discussion or angst. It was basically, ‘We’re cooperating, you’re cooperating, I’m glad to see the process is moving forward the way it should.’” [NYT, 10/4/03]
http://www.thinkprogress.org/leak-scandal