Text 18879, 111 rader
Skriven 2006-04-17 12:27:20 av BOB SAKOWSKI (1:123/140)
Ärende: Ethical republicans
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http://www.nytimes.com/2006/04/17/opinion/17mon4.html?ei=5090&en=95d7f18eb564ed89&ex=1302926400&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss&pagewanted=print



April 17, 2006
Editorial Observer
A Small-Time Crime With Hints of Big-Time Connections Lights Up the Net
By ADAM COHEN

The Internet is a great breeding ground for political conspiracies, and
there is a new one lighting up computer monitors across the country.
Bloggers are fascinated by what they see as eerie parallels between
Watergate and a phone-jamming scandal in New Hampshire. It has low-level
Republican operatives involved in dirty campaign tricks. It has checks from
donors with murky backgrounds. It has telephone calls to the White House.
What is unclear is whether it is the work of a few rogue actors, or
something larger.

In 2002, there was a hard-fought Senate race between Gov. Jeanne Shaheen,
the Democrat, and John Sununu, the Republican. On Election Day, Democratic
workers arrived at five get-out-the-vote offices to find their phone lines
jammed. It turned out that the jamming was being done by an Idaho
telemarketing firm that was being paid by a Virginia consulting group. The
fee for the jamming, reportedly $15,600, was paid by New Hampshire
Republicans.

The executive director of the New Hampshire Republican Party and the
president of the Virginia consulting group pleaded guilty for their part in
the scheme. James Tobin, who was the New England political director for the
Republican National Committee, went to trial and was convicted of telephone
harassment last December.

Now, Jack Abramoff and his Indian tribe clients have joined the cast of
characters, and some records of phone calls to the White House have turned
up, though the significance of both of these revelations is hotly disputed.
The evidence that the phone-jamming scandal goes higher than Mr. Tobin
remains scant. But the watchdogs are right about this: the news media,
prosecutors and the general public should demand more information about
what happened.

The parallels drawn with Watergate are a good place to start:

1. The return of the "second-rate burglary." The New Hampshire
phone-jamming scandal is being dismissed as small-time, state-level
misconduct, but it occurred at a critical moment in a tough election.

In November 2002, Republicans were intent on winning a Senate majority so
they would control the White House and both houses of Congress. They saw
the Sununu-Shaheen race as pivotal. On Election Day morning, the phone
lines were jammed at the Democratic offices and at a get-out-the-vote
operation run by a firefighters' union. The police were called, and the
lines were eventually freed up. The election wasn't as close as expected.
Mr. Sununu won, and Republicans retook the Senate.

2. The return of the high-priced lawyer. Aficionados of the Watergate
connection like to point out that one of the first clues that the Watergate
burglars were not ordinary small-time crooks was the presence of a slick
lawyer in an expensive suit at their first court appearance. In the New
Hampshire case, Mr. Tobin was represented by Williams & Connolly, a
pre-eminent white-collar criminal law firm. The legal bills, which
published estimates have put at more than $2.5 million, were paid by the
Republican National Committee. Democrats are asking why the committee
footed the bill, if Mr. Tobin was a rogue actor who implicated the national
party in a loathsome and embarrassing crime.

3. The return of "follow the money." (As if it ever left.) New Hampshire
Democrats pored over the filings of the New Hampshire Republican Party and
found three contributions for $5,000 each, all shortly before the election.
One was from Americans for a Republican Majority, Tom DeLay's political
action committee. The other two were from the Agua Caliente Band of
Cahuilla Indians and the Mississippi Band of Choctaw Indians, tribes that
were clients of Jack Abramoff. Those checks add up almost exactly to the
cost of the phone jamming.

Republicans say that a lot of money flows into a campaign and that there is
nothing to tie these checks to the phone jamming. But New Hampshire
Democrats argue that it is highly unusual for Indian tribes to contribute
to a state party in a state that does not have federally recognized Indian
tribes or Indian gambling.

4. Does anybody get to ask: "What did they know, and when did they know
it?" Democrats would, of course, like to connect the jamming to the White
House, and this month they found a possible link. The Senate Majority
Project, a pro-Democratic campaign group, examined the phone records that
came out in Mr. Tobin's case and found that he made dozens of calls to the
White House's office of political affairs right when he was executing the
phone-jamming scheme. Ken Mehlman, the Republican National Committee
chairman who was the White House political director at the time, insists
that close contact of this kind between political operatives is the norm on
Election Day, and that none of the calls mentioned the jamming.

New Hampshire Democrats have filed a civil lawsuit seeking to learn more
about what occurred. They want the judge to give them access to e-mail
messages that could shed light on the phone calls to the White House, and
to let them question officials of the Republican National Committee and the
White House. In March, a federal grand jury indicted a fourth person in the
jamming scheme, the former co-owner of the Idaho telemarketing firm. The
Senate Majority Project has been putting key documents on its Web site
(www.senatemajority.com) and is continuing to investigate.

The phone jamming could turn out to be the work of a few bad actors. It
could, on the other hand, take the Abramoff scandals to a new level of
skullduggery. At least, 34 years after Watergate, we know the right
questions to ask.

Copyright 2006 The New York Times Compan
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