Posted on 10/24/2006 3:27:51 PM PDT by freespirited
Details of a television ad being aired by the Webb campaign:
TITLE: "Steer"
LENGTH: 30 seconds.
PRODUCER: GMMB
AIRING: Statewide.
SCRIPT:
Jim Webb: "I'm Jim Webb and I approved this message."
Announcer: "October ninth, The Associated Press reports George Allen tried to steer government contracts to a company that paid him stock options. Allen claimed the options were worthless when really they were worth $1.1 million. Now we find out that Allen hid his stock options for years. A blatant violation of senate ethics rules. George Allen — secret stock options, ethics violations, steering government contracts. It's time for a change."
KEY IMAGES: The ad opens with video footage of Allen addressing the Southern Republican Leadership Conference and freezes a frame. In typewriter style, the words "Allen tried to steer government contracts" appear on screen with an AP story cited as the ultimate source. Then grainy, greenish footage of Allen carrying a leather attache as he boards a private jet, and the image freezes again. Superimposed over it the image of a report by the Bloomberg news service with the headline "Allen's Undisclosed Stock Options Were Worth Up to $1.1 Million" and a Roanoke Times editorial headlined "Allen lapses keep coming: Now Virginians find out their junior senator hid financial records from them." The screen fades to a dark black-and-white image of Allen speaking and it freezes again. Superimposed again, typewriter style, are the words "Secret stock options, Ethics violations, Steering government contracts" and then "It's time for a change."
ANALYSIS: The negative ad is based chiefly on an AP report that Allen failed for the past five years to disclose to Congress stock options he received for his service on the boards of a Virginia high tech company he had assisted as governor. The story says Allen asked the Army to answer a question for a company that gave him options.
AP did not report that Allen tried to steer government contracts to any company.
After Allen left the governor's office in early 1998, he went to work for the McGuire Woods law firm in Richmond. He became a director on the corporate boards of Xybernaut and Commonwealth Biotechnologies, and he served on an advisory board for Com-Net Ericsson. All three were government contractors in Virginia whom he had aided as governor.
In December 2001, as a freshman senator, Allen wrote a letter to the Army urging it to resolve a lingering issue with Xybernaut. Allen's press secretary, John Reid, said Xybernaut had asked Allen to intervene. The Army provided an answer, but Xybernaut did not get what it wanted. Allen did nothing further. At the time, Allen held options to purchase 110,000 shares of Xybernaut stock, the AP story says. The value of Xybernaut stock could have been affected by any new federal contracts.
The ad's implication that Allen claimed his stock options were worthless when they were worth $1.1 million fails to account for the market price relevant to Allen's financial disclosure reporting dates.
The ad cites as its basis a Bloomberg story that appeared a day after AP's report.
Bloomberg reported that 60,000 Xybernaut options could have yielded $1.1 million for Allen had he exercised his rights to them as of March 2000. That was 10 months before Allen took his Senate seat and reflected Xybernaut's all-time high stock price of $23.75 per share. But by the end of 2000, after Allen's election to the Senate, Xybernaut stock prices had plunged and his options would have been worth only about $1,300, according to the Bloomberg report. By the time Allen took his Senate seat the following January, the market value of Allen's Xybernaut options would have been worth nowhere near $1.1 million.
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Analysis by AP Political Writer Bob Lewis.
BTW, I believe the article is wrong. It says Allen held options in Xybernaut when he wrote the letter on the company's behalf. Actually his options had expired nine months earlier.
webb must have had lunch at Beanos again and is blowing gas.
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