Posted on 03/07/2006 8:07:42 PM PST by RWR8189
HILLARY GURU PLANS DATABASE TO RIVAL DNC; SOROS FINANCED
Tue Mar 07 2006 20:38:16 ET
A group of well-connected Democrats led by a former top aide to Bill and Hillary Clinton is raising millions of dollars to start a private firm -- that plans to compile huge amounts of data on Americans to identify Democratic voters.
The effort by Harold Ickes, a deputy chief of staff in the Clinton White House and an adviser to Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, D-N.Y., is prompting intense behind-the-scenes debate in Democratic circles, the WASHINGTON POST is planning to report on Wednesday.
Officials at the Democratic National Committee think that creating a modern database is their job, and say that a competing for-profit entity could divert energy and money that should instead be invested with the national party.
Ickes and others involved in the effort acknowledge that their activities are a vote of no confidence in the DNC under Chairman Howard Dean.
The venture is being backed by financier George Soros.
Developing...
bttt
HAROLD ICKES
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"The most important person in the Democratic Party today."
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Co-founder and unofficial director of the Democrat Shadow Party
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Sought chairmanship of the Democratic Party in February 2005
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Ran Hillary's successful Senate campaign in 1999-2000
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Former Deputy Chief of Staff for the Clinton White House
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Freedom Rider and antiwar activist of the New Left. Worked on Eugene McCarthy and George McGovern campaigns.
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Met Bill Clinton through the anti-Vietnam War movement in 1972
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In his law practice, represented Mob-run labor unions, with ties to the Lucchese, Colombo, Genovese, Gambino and other major crime families.
Harold McEwan Ickes is a long-time Democrat operative widely recognized as the chief organizer of the Shadow Party. During the 2004 presidential race, Democrat strategist Howard Wolfson told New York Magazine that - outside the Kerry campaign - Ickes was "the most important person in the Democratic Party today." (Michael Crowley, "Shadow Warriors," New York Magazine, 28 June 2004)
Ickes was a serious contender to succeed Terry McAuliffe as chairman of the Democratic Party in February 2005, though Howard Dean ended up getting the position.
"Whenever there was something that [Bill Clinton] thought required ruthlessness or vengeance or sharp elbows and sharp knees or, frankly, skulduggery, he would give it to Harold," former Clinton advisor Dick Morris told Vanity Fair in 1997. (Judy Bachrach, "Seduced and Abandoned," Vanity Fair, September 1997)
If Ickes evinces skill in "skulduggery," it comes from long experience working in the dim-lit underworld where politics meets labor racketeering and organized crime.
Recruited by New Left icon Allard Lowenstein in 1964, Ickes turned up on every major battlefront of leftwing activism during the Sixties and early Seventies. He registered black voters in the Deep South for the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) and the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE); assisted Castro-ite rebels in the Dominican Republic; organized resistance to the Vietnam War and campaigned for "peace-at-any-price" candidates Eugene McCarthy and George McGovern.
Ickes subsequently began practicing labor law, representing a long list of gangsters, labor racketeers and Mob-run unions, many with ties to major New York crime families, among them the Lucchese, Colombo, Genovese and Gambino organizations. In his Mob law practice, Ickes often went beyond the call of duty, skirting if not actually crossing the line from attorney to accomplice.
New York Post columnist Mike McAlary wrote in 1993, "There are more than a couple of prosecutors in this city who believe that the only thing separating Harold Ickes and a jail cell is his ability to go strong and silent in the face of tough questions." (Todd S. Purdum, "A Political Whodunit: Suspects Abound in the Downfall of Harold M. Ickes," The New York Times, 14 February 1993, p. 41)
Bill and Hillary Clinton found many uses for Ickes' peculiar talents. By the mid-1990s, he was heading their fundraising machine, collecting record-breaking quantities of soft money - much of it through such unsavory means as labor racketeering; soliciting pay-offs from U.S. businessmen seeking inside access to overseas trade missions; and - as Edward Timperlake and William C. Triplett II document in their book Year of the Rat: How Bill Clinton and Al Gore Compromised U.S. Security for Chinese Cash - cutting deals with Chinese intelligence agents eager to loosen up U.S. export controls on military technology. (Edward Timperlake and William C. Triplett II, Year of the Rat: How Bill Clinton and Al Gore Compromised U.S. Security for Chinese Cash [Washington, DC; Regnery Publishing; 2000] )
By 1996, federal investigators had begun zeroing in on Ickes' involvement in numerous Clinton scandals including Filegate (the illegal commandeering of more than a thousand secret FBI background files on potential Clinton foes) and Chinagate (the selling of military secrets to Red China in exchange for campaign contributions).
Ickes had become a liability. Immediately after Bill Clinton's re-election in November 1996, the President fired him.
The firing was only temporary, however. In 1999, Ickes became Hillary's chief campaign advisor in her 2000 run for the Senate. Following Hillary's successful election, Ickes played a central role in creating the Democrat Shadow Party.
Biography
Harold McEwan Ickes comes from a prominent political family. His father Harold LeClair Ickes served as Secretary of the Interior from 1933 to 1946, under Franklin Delano Roosevelt and Harry Truman.
The elder Ickes lost his first wife in an automobile accident in 1935. At age 64, he married 25-year-old Jane Dahlman. She gave birth to Harold on September 4, 1939. The younger Ickes hardly knew his famous father, who died when he was only twelve.
Harold Ickes attended the prestigious Sidwell Friends School along with other children of Washington's elite. But young Ickes rebelled against his privileged background. After high school, he eschewed college, choosing instead to fulfill a boyhood dream of working as a cowboy on ranches, which he did for three years, acquiring sufficient skill in roping steer and busting broncos to appear in rodeos. (Daniel Wise, "Veteran `Point Man' Ickes Gets New Battle Assignment," New York Law Journal, 28 December 1993, p. 1)
Ickes enrolled in Stanford University in 1961. There he fell under the influence of Professor Allard Kenneth Lowenstein, known as the "Pied Piper" for his ability to seduce idealistic young students into the New Left.
At Lowenstein's urging, Ickes spent the summers of 1964 and 1965 registering black voters in Mississippi and Louisiana respectively, for the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) in Vicksburg, Mississippi and for the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) in Tallulah, Louisiana. White vigilantes in Louisiana beat Ickes so badly in 1965 that he lost a kidney.
Undaunted, Ickes went that same year to the Dominican Republic, where — according to the Boston Globe — he sought to "help deposed leftist president Juan Bosch return to office." After spending two years in Communist Cuba, the socialist Bosch had returned to the Dominican Republic and won the support of a group of leftwing colonels, who sought to place Bosch in power through an armed coup. (John Aloysius Farrell, "The President's Get-It-Done Guy," The Boston Globe, 15 October 1995, p. 14)
Only the arrival of 22,000 U.S. Marines stopped the Bosch coup. According to the Boston Globe, Ickes was present on the island when the Marines landed, on April 29, 1965. He subsequently left the country and began "touring Latin America," until his mentor Lowenstein summoned Ickes back to New York to begin work on the anti-Vietnam War movement.
Shadow Man
Returning to the USA in 1966, Ickes joined Allard Lowenstein in New York. Lowenstein was then running for Congress. He introduced Ickes to the rough-and-tumble world of New York politics. (David Saltonstall, "Harold Ickes Knows All the Secrets But Won't Tell Any," Daily News [New York], 10 October 2000, p. 30)
Ickes became a political operative for the Democrats, working on various campaigns, including the 1968 and 1972 presidential runs of Eugene McCarthy and George McGovern respectively. He met Bill Clinton while both were working on Operation Pursestrings, a grassroots lobbying effort aimed at pushing through the Hatfield-McGovern Amendment to cut off all military aid to South Vietnam.
Hatfield-McGovern was defeated, but subsequent measures promoted by Senator Ted Kennedy succeeded in slashing U.S. aid to South Vietnam by 80 percent in the next three years. By 1975, South Vietnam and Cambodia could no longer afford to defend themselves. They fell to the Communists, who promptly slaughtered 2-3 million people in Indochina.
In 1977, Ickes joined the Mineola, Long Island law firm Meyer, Suozzi, English & Klein, taking charge of its labor practice. Among the crooked unions Ickes represented for the firm were Local 100 of HERE - the Hotel Employees and Restaurant Employees International Union - which was jointly controlled by the Colombo and Gambino crime families; the New York City District Council of Carpenters, then controlled by the Genovese crime family; and Teamsters Local 851, which ran the air freight rackets at JFK airport for the Lucchese crime family. (Micah Morrison, "Who is Harold Ickes?", The Wall Street Journal, 26 October 2000; Jerry Seper, "U.S. to Probe White House Aide's Former Law Firm for Mob Ties," The Washington Times, p. A1)
"The Firm"
Ickes has always denied complicity in any of the criminal activities of his mob clients. Faced with an avalanche of bad press in 1993, Ickes argued, "It is very important that law firms such as mine, which are known for their integrity, provide honest and competent legal representation to unions and their memberships. If we abandoned our clients in the face of allegations of corruption, it would leave union members at the mercy of only corrupt lawyers." (Charles R. Babcock, "Ickes Law Firm is Fighting Release of Investigator's Report," The Washington Post, 16 October 1994, p. A25)
However, Ickes' clients have faced more than mere "allegations of corruption." Several have been convicted and jailed for mob activity. Moreover, Meyer, Suozzi's reputation is considerably more controversial than Ickes admits. Among many New York attorneys, Meyer, Suozzi bears the humorous nickname, "The Firm" - after the 1993 film by the same name, starring Tom Cruise and Gene Hackman as attorneys trapped in a white-shoe law office serving the Mafia. (William G. McGowan, "The Mob and the Deputy Chief of Staff; Harold Ickes, Jr.," Washington Monthly, July 1994, p. 9)
Ickes joined the Clinton White House on January 4, 1994, serving as Assistant to President Bill Clinton and Deputy White House Chief of Staff for Political Affairs and Policy from January 1994 through January 1997.
Ickes brought his mob connections with him to the White House. He would later surface at the center of the so-called "Teamstergate" scandal - a complex money-laundering scheme in which several high-level Democrat leaders and union bosses who were directly implicated in the case mysteriously escaped prosecution. Among the big fish who slipped the net were Service Employees International Union (SEIU) head Andrew Stern; American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME) chief Gerald McEntee ; Terry McAuliffe - who then headed the Clinton-Gore reelection campaign - and, of course, Harold Ickes himself. ("Cleaning up the Unions," The Wall Street Journal, January 30, 2001; John Bacon, "Hoffa Demands Congress Investigate Teamsters Vote," USA Today, 20 December 1994, p. 3A)
For more on Teamstergate and Ickes' ties to organized crime, see the entry for Meyer, Suozzi, English and Klein.
Hillary's Man
Insiders have long noted Ickes' special loyalty toward Hillary Clinton. The Boston Globe called him "a special favorite of the president's wife." (John Aloysius Farrell, "The President's Get-It-Done Guy," The Boston Globe, October 15, 1995, p. 14)
In the Clinton White House, Ickes quickly gravitated to Hillary's end of the operation. He served initially as "health care czar," charged with rescuing Hillary's floundering Health Security Act. (Robin Toner, "New Health Care Czar Preparing for Long Leap," The New York Times, 24 January 1994, A12) Hillary later placed Ickes in charge of a special unit within the White House Counsel's office, dedicated to suppressing Clinton scandals. It operated, in effect, as a Counsel's office within the Counsel's office. In his book The Seduction of Hillary Rodham, David Brock refers to Ickes' special unit as the "Shadow Counsel's Office." Its operatives included Mark Fabiani, Chris Lehane and Jane Sherburne. Ickes reported directly to Hillary Clinton on all matters related to the work of this special unit. (David Brock, The Seduction of Hillary Rodham (New York; The Free Press; 1996), 406-07; Jane Sherburne, interviewed by Chris Bury, Frontline, PBS, August 2000)
In time, Ickes would graduate from running a Shadow Counsel's Office to running an entire Shadow Party.
Hillary recruited Ickes as chief campaign advisor for her 2000 Senate run. According to Ickes, he accepted the job after a four-hour meeting with Hillary on February 12, 1999 -- the same day that the U.S. Senate voted on Bill Clinton's impeachment. "I'm really doing this out of my friendship for Hillary, pure and simple," Ickes told the Associated Press on June 17, 1999. "She called and there was no way I was going to say no to Hillary." (Marc Humbert, "Ickes, a Tenacious Operative, Mrs. Clinton's `Oak Tree' in New York," The Associated Press State & Local Wire, June 17, 1999)
As Hillary's unofficial campaign chief, Ickes brought to bear all the clout and connections he had accumulated through thirty-three-years of bare-knuckled power struggles in the Empire State - most of them fought in dark, smoke-filled rooms beyond the prying eyes of the law. A statewide get-out-the-vote drive conducted by canvassers from the radical cult ACORN and its front group The Working Families Party proved pivotal in Hillary's Senate victory, as did massive assistance from Ickes' old union allies.
Family:
Harold Ickes married attorney Laura Rose Handman on December 5, 1983. She practices media law in New York, but Ickes works in Washington DC. Ickes and Handman have a daughter named Charlotte.
http://tinyurl.com/k3c7u
Remember when we couldn't wait for the Clintons to get out of the White House so we'd never have to hear about these people again?
How could we have been that dumb?
In The Splintering of the Democratic Party, I pointed out how Howard Dean’s accession to the party chair created a problem by pushing the Democrats too far to the left. Soros was underwriting him, Move On and the entire party.
But for a Democrat to win, he (or she) would have to peel off a significant chunk of Republicans and independents, and occupying the Sensible Center is the only way to do it. Otherwise, it’s McGovern time all over again. Hillary has spent her first term setting herself up as a pragmatist and centrist, no doubt receiving a lot of coaching from her husband who was a master of triangulation.
With Dean pushing the party to the Hard Left, it becomes necessary to replace him, preferably with Harold Ickes, but that would open up a fight that would split the party. Hillary doesn’t need to be the heavy in an internal war to purge the Hard Left. They, after all, are the base. What Hillary needs is to control the purse strings. If she has that, then it doesn’t matter who chairs the party.
The coup is her seduction of Soros. If he’s underwriting Hillary’s effort, that means he has abandoned Move On and Dean, its avatar. It means that Hillary’s shadow party will harvest the unions for money while Dean will harvest the Hard Left. But Ickes will have the power while Dean becomes merely a figurehead.
In politics, always follow the money.
New York Times
Bill Clinton's Garbage Man
By Michael Lewis
September 21, 1997, Sunday
snip
Ickes has been caught up in so many of Clinton's scandals and crises that he came to describe his function in the White House as "director of the sanitation department."
As campaign manager of Clinton's '92 New York campaign, he persuaded the state's Democrats to stick with Clinton while Gennifer Flowers strutted luridly through the national imagination. (His persuasion saved Clinton's candidacy.)
snip
When he was 25, Ickes had entered Columbia University Law School and promptly contracted -- if that is the right word - narcolepsy. For 10 years or so Ickes took massive doses of Dexedrine. Five milligrams of the stuff would wire a normal person for 48 hours; Ickes swallowed 60 milligrams a day to keep himself awake. At the White House Ickes had a special terror of falling asleep in the Oval Office. He imagined a day when a pride of Cabinet members would be sitting around the yellow sofas, Al Gore would be going on about the ozone layer and whoosh ... he'd be nodding off on his feet like some giant flamingo. He says: "It's hard to fall asleep on your feet but it can be done.Just give me a nice, dark cozy corner."
snip
Ickes and Clinton got to know each other in the early 1970's, and when they'd meet, they were often joined by their mutual friend Susan Thomases. The ghost of Harold Ickes Sr. was ever present. He had long been one of Thomases' heroes; she worshiped him," she says. It was for that reason, in part, that she knew who Ickes was when he was protesting the Vietnam War at Columbia. (Their friendship was born during Eugene McCarthy's 1968 campaign for the Democratic Presidential nomination; they both worked for him.)
Ickes graduated from high school functionally illiterate, and didn't finish his undergraduate work at Stanford until he was 24. He was, to put it mildly, a loner. "I don't remember having a single close friend before age of 25," he says.
snip
As best as he can recall the first sign he had that his friendship with Clinton had changed was the first time he visited the President in the Oval Office: "The first time I went to brief Clinton I knew him as my friend. He's my friend, I'm thinking. He's the President but he's my friend. And I'm standing there waiting for him to acknowledge me, but. .. he's...doing a crossword puzzle."
The crossword puzzle isn't what's unusual; everywhere the President goes he carries a crossword puzzle, a deck of cards and a book. What's unusual is his new attitude. "I am standing in front of his desk," Ickes says, "waiting for him to give me his undivided attention. I mean he's sitting there like there is no one else in the room. This guy is now the President. But he's also my friend. I'm thinking: 'Hey Pal. I'm here. Let's go.' Without looking up he finally says, 'Yeah, what do you want?'
http://tinyurl.com/frnsb
you know what? They already have that information! They can spend their millions forming a data mining operation, they'll get the same names. "Ooh look, George Clooney's name turned up!" You think?
Hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm............................
Thanks for all that work, kc .... Ickes is literally The Bomb, nuclear, biological and radiological.
R Warren Meddoff, Florida businessman, tells Senators at hearing on campaign financing that Harold M Ickes, then top political adviser in White House, asked him to arrange $1.5 million donation from another businessman, William R Morgan, to help Pres Clinton just days before 1996 Presidential election, and that Ickes called back several hours later to ask him to shred fax that described request;
October 1994 memorandum by former deputy White House chief of staff Harold M Ickes indicates Pres Clinton made fund-raising call to wealthy California businessman from White House that resulted in $50,000 contribution two weeks later; is strongest evidence yet that President tried to raise campaign money by telephone from White House
Democratic National Committee transferred at least $32 million to state Democratic parties in 1996 election as part of elaborate plan to spend more money than Federal election law appeared to allow on huge advertising campaign that indirectly helped re-elect Pres Clinton; plan was conceived and coordinated by Clinton-Gore campaign staff and Democratic Party officials as end-run around legal spending limits
Pres Clinton's former campaign adviser; Harold M Ickes, former White House deputy chief of staff, was deeply involved in directing DNC's fund-raising and expenditures
Kevin Kretz letter disputes February 19 Op-Ed article by Philip B Heymann on allegations surrounding role of Interior Sec Bruce Babbitt and former Deputy White House chief of staff Harold M Ickes in approval of Indian gambling casino
Harold M Ickes, former top White House aide who remains adviser to Pres Clinton, testifies before grand jury in Alexandria, Va, about Pentagon's improper disclosure of details from Linda Tripp's personnel file
Editorial says Atty Gen Janet Reno, by authorizing narrowly defined investigation of whether former deputy White House chief of staff Harold Ickes committed perjury in Senate testimony about 1996 election campaign
Kenneth W Starr's report to Congress reveals that Pres Clinton's Secret Service bodyguards repeatedly allowed Monica S Lewinsky into Oval Office after being told that she was delivering papers and that they were not surprised that she often stayed for an hour or more; Betty Currie, Clinton's secretary, and Harold M Ickes, a former aide, are also cited in report as having been in position to suspect what was going on between Clinton and Lewinsky
House panel probing teamsters union discloses internal Clinton Administration documents that shed fuller and harsher light on effort by Harold M Ickes, former deputy chief of staff, to resolve strike against Diamond Walnut Growers on union's behalf; documents surface at time when Justice Department probes whether he lied to Senate panel probing campaign finance abuses when he denies Adminstration played role in dispute; include Ickes Mar 1995 memo to then-Trade Repr Mickey Kantor saying Ickes had met with group of teamsters officials and wanted Kantor to intervene on strikers' behalf; Kantor, who phoned cooperative president William Cuff after meeting with Ickes
Editorial finds it no surprise that Atty Gen Janet Reno has decided against independent counsel to probe misconduct allegations against Harold Ickes, who ran Pres Clinton's 1996 campaign; says 'cover-up' is now complete, and will be 'shameful page' in Justice Department history
Hillary Rodham Clinton steps up her efforts to consider running for United States Senate from New York as her political adviser, Harold Ickes, contacts wide range of union leaders and campaign consultants;
she (Hillary) also recently entertained powerful New York Democrats and public figures at White House, including Dennis Rivera, labor leader; in making her calls, Mrs Clinton works from a list of 200 names provided by Harold M Ickes, former White House official and veteran of New York politics
US Atty Mary Jo White's office expands criminal probe into whether efforts were made to buy pardons; Sen Hillary Rodham Clinton says she played no role in any of pardons, expresses chagrin that her brother Hugh Rodham accepted large fee for lobbying
Clinton aides say William Cunningham 3d, Mrs Clinton's Senate campaign treasurer and law partner of Clinton adviser Harold Ickes, helped get last-minute pardons for James Manning and Robert Fain; Ickes says friend asked him to help get pardons for two, who were convicted of tax evasion in 1982, interview; says he referred friend, identified by others as television producer Harry Thomason, to Cunningham, did not discuss pardons with either Pres or Mrs Clinton and got no money
Access to Pres Bill Clinton or to White House counsel's office was common ingredient in final group of pardons granted by him; lawyers say that without entree, it was nearly impossible to argue merits of clemency applications; say assistance was given by wide array of people who topped 'Friends of Bill' list: Harry Thomason, television producer, Terry McAuliffe, Clinton fundraiser, Rev Jesse Jackson, and Harold M Ickes, former White House deputy chief of staff and senior adviser to Hillary Clinton; say applicants paid six-figure fees to middlemen such as Hillary Clinton's brother, Hugh Rodham, who worked on two clemency petitions, and Jack Quinn, former White House counsel who represented Marc Rich
http://tinyurl.com/f69oz
The mob and the deputy chief of staff - Harold Ickes, Jr
Washington Monthly, July-August, 1994 by William G. McGowan
snip
allegations surfaced: that Ickes knew about mob infiltration of a labor union he represented as a lawyer in New York, and that he had lied to a federal grand jury in connection with a stock transfer deal involving then-Mayor David Dinkins.
Ickes has "the experience of political damage control," noted George Stephanopolous. "That is his ball game."
citing Ickes' reputation for vindictiveness and his formidable powers as deputy chief of staff--were not surprised that he had put himself in a position where he could be charged with obstruction of justice.
examination of his record as a New York labor lawyer and a leading Democrat suggests a proclivity for stonewalling and a dread of full disclosure that could be dangerous for the Clintons. The trail Ickes left in New York weaves through the same territory of half-truths, dodges, unsavory associations, and seedy appearances that Whitewater does.
Ickes is of the old school, with one of the most extensive vocabularies of expletives in politics and a taste for confrontation. During Herman Badillo's 1973 bid for the New York mayoralty, for example, Ickes got into a brawl with a fellow campaign aide and bit the leg of a third aide who tried to break it up
Ickes stayed in touch with the Clintons through the seventies, frequently having dinner with them and his former girlfriend Susan Thomases (another politically influential New York lawyer) when the Clintons came to New York.
http://tinyurl.com/ztr2s
I absolutely remember. The Clintons illegally used government assets. I have said that Soros would spend $250 million of his own money to get Hillary elected. So it begins. No one is going to match her for data, money, and organization. Unless Peter Paul can put a figurative stake into the heart of the vampire, this evil demonic woman is our next president.
ping
Sounds like Ickes is lining himself up for head of the "Secret Police" if there's a second "Clinton Regime".
The venture is being backed by financier George Soros.
Isn't there a saying about the Tree of Liberty and tyrants ???
Did you see #34, Doug?
This is the only way she can win, imo.
Go ahead and ID me, you expletives-deleted. For all the freaking good it will do you. I'd be more than happy to tell you why I won't be voting Dem any time soon. And I'll be more than happy to pass along everything you send me.
The only thing good about this is that it cements Hillary! and the rest of the DNC to the Moonbat Left fringe of their party. If the Moonbats are calling the shots, the Donks will not be able to move to the center. The more Soros and his ilk control, the better it is for the 'Pubbies!
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