Echoes of Hillary.
Posted on 01/24/2004 10:57:21 AM PST by Tumbleweed_Connection
Former Clinton White House attack dog and one-time Gore campaign communications director Chris Lehane didn't deny last Sunday allegations that he's Gen. Wesley Clark's presidential campaign dirty trickster. Asked if he was "the guy behind the dirty tricks," Lehane brushed aside the question, telling Fox News Channel's Rita Cosby, "Well, you know, there has not been a single thing that's been covered on Howard Dean or any of these other candidates that was not accurate and true. Reporters report the information based on the facts." Cosby pressed Lehane to confirm or deny his role as the Clark campaign's primo attack man. "So Chris, do you take credit . . . Some reporters have said yes, Chris is the one that gave me the paperwork. Do you take credit for those things you've been quoted for and more?" Lehane explained, "People write stories based on whether they're accurate or not, reporters write good stories. We all know that..." Another non-denial. As Wes Clark's dirt digger extraordinaire, Lehane is a man who plans to make a difference in this week's New Hampshire primary. It wouldn't be the first time. In fact, some believe to this day, Lehane pretty much single-handedly delivered the presidential popular vote to Al Gore four years ago, by allegedly digging up President Bush's 1976 DUI arrest and leaking it to the press five days before the 2000 election. To be sure, Lehane denied at the time that the Gore campaign had anything to with the Bush DUI hit. But when it came to questions of his personal involvement in the story, Lehane's denial was somewhat less than explicit. Days before the 2000 election Lehane was pressed by the New York Daily News on whether he was involved in the 11th hour hit. The Gore operative laughed off the "rumors," saying he'd heard "he was related to the reporter who broke the story, or had attended her wedding. He also said he had heard a rumor that his sister was married to the lawyer who gave the reporter the documents." "Next, they'll be saying that my sister was [Bush's] arresting officer," Lehane joked. But others weren't laughing. The day after the story broke, Fox News Channel's Carl Cameron explained why Lehane was a prime suspect as the conduit for the Bush DUI file, which was handed to a Portland, Maine Fox News reporter by a local lawyer who was reportedly also a delegate to that year's the Democratic Convention. "There are two lawyers in the Southern Maine area who, in fact, were delegates to the Democratic convention in Los Angeles earlier this year," Cameron explained. "One of those gentlemen was Michael McCloud Ball, and we have spoken to him this morning, and he adamantly denies anything to with this story. "But a second was a gentleman by the name of Kenneth Curtis, and Kenneth Curtis is the former chair of the Democratic National Committee, in other words, the chairman of the DNC, some time ago." Cameron noted that a junior partner in the Curtis' lawfirm just happened to be Lehane's sister, Erin. In fact, both Erin and her brother had grown up in Kennebunk - right next door to the scene of the Bush DUI - where news reports say the Lehanes moved when Chris was a child. Later, when another Democratic operative emerged claiming credit for the DUI leak, his story didn't exactly sound convincing. Tom Connolly told the New York Daily News that he had tried to fax the Bush DUI files to the Gore campaign - just once. The line was busy, insisted Connolly, so he gave up. Instead he handed the DUI files to Fox News reporter Erin Fehlau at the network's Portland affiliate. One reason Mr. Connolly couldn't manage to get his fax through might have been because the fax machines at Gore campaign headquarters - or at least fax machines operating on Gore's behalf - were already working overtime. "There is something of a mystery that has unfolded since we broke the story," Fox's Cameron said the night the Bush files hit the fan. "And that is that part of the arrest record and the state of Maine's documentation of George Bush's driving record and arrest record in Maine was faxed to news agencies all over the country after we were on the air with it at 6 o'clock Eastern time." If Chris Lehane knew anything about the Bush DUI blast faxes, he wasn't saying. But for late deciders in the Bush-Gore race, saturation coverage of the mini-scandal over the next four days made a big difference, with one out of three voters telling exit pollsters it impacted their presidential choice. The DUI dirty trick was a huge success. An all but certain Bush win turned into a 37-day national leadership crisis that nearly handed the keys to the White House to Al Gore. Republicans weren't buying Lehane's denials that the Gore campaign had nothing to do with the hit. "If anybody doesn't believe that this came right out of Gore headquarters, you ought to sprinkle some Peter Pan twinkle dust on them," complained former Wyoming Sen. Alan Simpson. As they come into the home stretch in New Hampshire, Gen. Clark's rivals would be well advised to keep an eye on the Gore campaign's most notorious veteran.
Echoes of Hillary.
The story can be sent to Dean's campaign for HIS people to take action.
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