Posted on 11/16/2006 4:34:13 AM PST by drpix
It was a real Cinderella story. When last heard from, Virginia resident Joe Sestak had been – in the words of the Philadelphia Inquirer – "unceremoniously fired" from his job as a deputy chief of naval operations. This was in August 2005. In January 2006, Sestak quietly retired from the Navy.
Looking about for a new career, Sestak decided, improbably enough, on Congress. The nostalgic admiral eyed not the Virginia district in which he lived, but the Pennsylvania district in which he had last lived as a boy. More daunting still, he would be facing off against popular 10-term maverick Republican, Curt Weldon.
Despite the odds, the political novice proved master rainmaker – it must have helped to leave the Navy under a cloud – as he somehow managed to muster a $3 million war chest within months. Former National Security Adviser Sandy Berger pitched in big time. Now a lobbyist – quelle surprise – Berger hosted a serious fund-raiser for the admiral in Washington and lent the Sestak campaign his firm's director of communications to serve as the official campaign spokesman.
The donor list for the recently dumped Sestak – the Navy cited "poor command climate" for the dumping – read like a who's who of international mismanagement. There was, of course, the disgraced Berger. Then there was the disgraced former CIA director, John Deutch, who had signed a criminal plea agreement in connection with his mishandling of national secrets a day before being pardoned by the outgoing President Clinton. One interesting contribution came in from the disgraced Mary O. McCarthy, recently fired from the CIA after failing a polygraph on leaked classified information in regards to CIA prisons overseas.
I regard these races as asassinations, and they make me sick. Publically, Clinton decries the politics of personal destruction, but watch what they do!
The RAT honor roll of criminal minds.
Able Danger exits, stage left.
Thanks for posting this - 1st time I had seen some of this info - quite *interesting*.
It's my understanding that any congresscritter can ask for the full, unredacted Able Danger report, then legally release it. If that's true, I think we should write Congressman Weldon, while he's still in office, and ask him to do just that. He's fought the good fight on it for so long, in the end, he could win out over all the Clintonistas.
You make a very good point. Able Danger was a political loaded gun aimed squarely at the Clinton admin. and obviously certain people wanted to see any reference to it disappear.While 10 term incumbent Reps. may not be guaranteed re-election it's interesting Weldon should fall the election after he tried to bring Able Danger to public attention !!!
Sestak is going to vote for John Murtha for Majority Leader too. What a pain in the ass this guy is going to be. So embarrassed that my PA neighbors voted for him.
The FBI raided his daughter's offices shortly before the election, looking for evidence of corruption. Such an action, with its electoral implications, is highly unusual, I'm told.
It is a pretty good tactic. What are Weldon's supporters going to do to repond to the raid? If they protest, then they can be painted as condoning corruption. If they don't protest, then Weldon is taken to be corrupt. Either way, Weldon's opponents, who manifestly include others who are not in the Sestak camp, win.
$3,000,000 practically overnight? Sounds fishy.
Weldon releasing the Able Danger report on his way out the door would be delicious irony.
Pretty please?
That raid required the approval of AG Gonzales, doncha think?
I dunno. Given that it was Weldon's daughter who was raided, not Weldon himself, perhaps not. Regardless, I suspect that it was approved at a high level.
How are relations between the Attorney General and the FBI? If they are not good, then a scenario is that the FBI goes to the AG for approval. If he says "yea" then the raid is on. If he says "nay" then it is leaked that the Administration is covering up corruption. Again, there is no good outcome for Weldon. Perhaps the moral is - don't be corrupt and you won't get raided. I think that Governor Stark of LA (All the King's Men) would agree with me.
(As an aside, was the Abscam sting approved by Carter's AG? - his name is on the tip of my tongue, but I can't summon it - I suspect not, and the situation is roughly comparable.)
Note the Clintonista fingerprints on all of them. Note also that if the Republican administration would put all Democrats who serve in Congress who have committed crimes in jail they would restore their Senate control and have a big jump on '06. Will they have the gumption?
FBI (D) 53%
Weldon (R) 45%
Sandy Berger stole and destroyed documents from the National Archives that were directly germane to an active investigation regarding his administration's role in failing to prevent the largest attack on American soil in its history.
What do you think would have happened if this was 1946, and Mr Berger had been a former FDR intelligence official who was was caught red-handed stealing and destroying documents germane to the Pearl Harbor investigation regarding that administration's role in failing to prevent the attack?
A) He would have been executed
B) He would have been sentenced to 25 years in prison
C) He would have been sentenced to 100 hours of community service, fined, and had his security clearance revoked, but only for 4 years.
Hint: Mr. Berger's actual "punishment" was C
Nausea BUMP.
Why wouldn't Weldon have run TV ads saying (in professionally sound-bited format) exactly what Cashill says here in his column?
That analysis is worth laying out in detail, I think. I'd settle for Hillary behind bars.
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