Free Republic

Posted on Fri, Nov. 14, 2003 BIZ'S RECORDS LIST IMAN, QA'ID STATEN By RAMONA SMITH smithra@phillynews.com What did the slain son of powerful union leader Sam Staten Sr. have to do with an obscure company that has been sucked into the widening federal investigation in Philadelphia? Qa'id Staten, a promising 17-year-old shot to death in a North Philadelphia robbery attenpt in April, was one of two people who last year set up a company named Clear Alley Inc., according to records on file with the Pennsylvania Department of State. The other incorporator: The widely known Muslim cleric Imam Shamsud-din Ali,...

Posted on Thu, Nov. 13, 2003 Two Phila. union chiefs subpoenaed The federal grand jury investigating corruption summoned a Street ally and his son, a source said. By Nancy Phillips and Emilie Lounsberry Inquirer Staff Writers A Philadelphia union leader who is a major supporter of Mayor Street has been subpoenaed to appear before a federal grand jury that is investigating corruption in city government, according to a court-system source familiar with the labor official. Samuel Staten Sr., business manager of Local 332 of the Laborers' International Union of North America and a longtime Street ally, and his son, Samuel...

Posted on Sat, Nov. 08, 2003 Feds eyeing cell-phone pacts at airport Subpoenas issued 'within last week' for records of company with ties to a Street supporter By RAMONA SMITH smithra@phillynews.com THE FEDS HAVE expanded their city government probe by going after the records of an airport cell-phone deal involving a company partly owned by prominent Muslim cleric Imam Shamsud-din Ali. Keystone Information and Financial Services, which was raided by the FBI on the day after an electronic listening device was found in Mayor Street's office, got a small piece of the action in leasing arrangements set up to bring...

Posted on Tue, Nov. 04, 2003 Incidents mar Election Day By Angela Couloumbis and Thomas J. Gibbons Jr. Inquirer Staff Writers As voting continued throughout the city today, a court injunction and 36 reports of incidents at the polls highlighted the contentious nature of the mayor's race. Mayor Street's campaign officials went to court and obtained an emergency injunction against a Katz supporter who was asking to see voters' identification before they entered the polls. Later this afternoon, Katz's campaign obtained an injunction against an alleged Street campaign worker who was engaging in physical and verbal intimidation, harassment and coercion...

Posted on Tue, Nov. 04, 2003 WHEN DID COMMISH KNOW? JOHNSON INSISTS HE WASN'T AWARE IN '01 OF FBI PROBE By Jill Porter porterj@phillynews.com WHAT DID he know and when did he know it? That Watergate-era question has now surfaced in respect to Police Commissioner Sylvester Johnson and the federal investigation involving Mayor Street. According to reliable sources, Johnson knew as far back as 2001 that the FBI was investigating possible corruption in the mayor's office - because he told then-Police Commissioner John Timoney and mentioned it at a meeting of other deputy police commissioners. "That is totally untrue," Johnson...

Goons gone wild a tired election actBy Tom Ferrick Jr.Inquirer Columnist When is someone in this town going to stand up to Johnny Dougherty and tell him to stop his guys from thugging up our elections?Time and again, members of Doc's union - Local 98 of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers - have engaged in bully-boy tactics and punch-in-the-mouth politics. It's become their stock in trade.They did it again Monday night in South Philadelphia at a Sam Katz rally at Front Street and Snyder Avenue.When the Republican candidate arrived, he was greeted not only by a handful of supporters,...

Posted on Wed, Oct. 29, 2003 Polls show Street opening a sizable lead over Katz He campaigned in the city with the Rev. Jesse Jackson. Sam Katz said polls did not deter him. By Thomas Fitzgerald and Angela Couloumbis Inquirer Staff Writers Mayor Street got a big lift yesterday as two new polls showed him opening a double-digit lead in the last week of his reelection campaign, and the Rev. Jesse Jackson urged audiences to stand up for a mayor who has stood up for the disadvantaged. Street led Republican challenger Sam Katz by 17 points, 54 percent to 37...

STREET CITY Just how desperate is the national Democratic Party for a win? Desperate enough to send both DNC chairman Terry McAuliffe and Democratic lightning rod James Carville to Philadelphia to campaign for embattled Philly Mayor John Street. Street, who is in a tough race against moderate Republican Sam Katz, remains ahead in the polls, and Democrats don’t feel he can afford to lose. "If we lost Philadelphia, even in an off-year election, it would be devastating to the party’s psyche," says a DNC fundraiser. "We got beaten up in 2002, McAuliffe is getting hammered for his lack of leadership,...

Posted on Sun, Oct. 26, 2003 'Pay to play' entrenched in the city Experts in campaign finance say the give-and-get game in Phila. is as brazen as it gets. By Ken Dilanian, Cynthia Burton and Rose Ciotta Inquirer Staff Writers Three decades ago, Mayor Frank L. Rizzo had a stock answer when asked why he doled out city contracts to his political supporters. "I have to give them to somebody," he said. "You don't expect me to give them to my enemies, do you?" On this subject, the late Rizzo and Mayor Street are kindred spirits, as Street has made...

Posted on Sun, Oct. 26, 2003 Poll shows slim lead for Street By Thomas Fitzgerald Inquirer Staff Writer Mayor Street holds a narrow lead over GOP challenger Sam Katz as the candidates make their final appeals to an electorate sharply divided along racial lines, according to The Inquirer Poll. Street was the choice of 46 percent of city voters surveyed; 41 percent favored Katz in the poll, which has a margin of error of plus or minus 3.5 percentage points. Twelve percent said they were undecided, and 1 percent planned to vote for John Staggs of the Socialist Workers Party....

Posted on Fri, Oct. 24, 2003 Bug Didn't Incriminate Mayor By Mark Fazlollah, Joseph Tanfani, Emilie Lounsberry and Nathan Gorenstein Inquirer Staff Writers The bug planted in Mayor Street's City Hall office did not record any incriminating words from the mayor during its brief, two-week life, The Inquirer has learned. The discovery of the FBI listening device, found so soon after it was installed, set back the wide-ranging corruption investigation that is mainly focused on the awarding of city contracts in exchange for campaign contributions. It also ignited a public furor that has blotted out all other issues in the...

Ron White's Office Bugged October 23, 2003 — Action News has now confirmed that the Mayor's office wasn't the only place bugged by federal investigators. We have learned that there was at least one phone tap. By the time FBI agents raided lawyer Ron White's office last week, they apparently already knew a lot about him. That's because his phone was tapped. Action News has learned that FBI agents have been playing back some of those recordings to people involved in the conversations. Those people, many of whom have business with the city, have been hiring private attorneys and some...

Posted on Thu, Oct. 23, 2003 U.S. officials: Bug not political By Joseph A. Slobodzian and Nancy Phillips Inquirer Staff Writers The extraordinary decision to bug Mayor Street's office was a necessary step in a continuing federal investigation and was not politically motivated, the region's top federal law enforcement officials said yesterday. U.S. Attorney Patrick L. Meehan and FBI Special Agent Jeffrey Lampinski said federal authorities never intended for the bug to be discovered weeks before a close election. "Certainly nobody wanted to have any negative impact on the election," Meehan said in the lobby of the Sheraton Society Hill...

Posted on Wed, Oct. 22, 2003 Street, Katz trade barbs over ethics By Thomas Fitzgerald Inquirer Staff Writer Mayor Street maintained that a federal investigation into city contracts was an attempt to sabotage his reelection, while Republican Sam Katz called the probe an "exclamation point" on a long-corrupt political system that needs reform, during a televised debate last night dominated by sharp exchanges over ethics. After 25 years in public office, "it was not until the last couple of weeks that anybody raised any question at all about my integrity," Street said. "The fact that there is an investigation does...

Posted on Wed, Oct. 22, 2003 City officials told: 'Preserve all records' By Rose Ciotta, Marcia Gelbart and Nancy Phillips Inquirer Staff Writers Mayor Street's administration has ordered its department heads to "preserve all records" as they prepare to answer a wide-ranging grand-jury subpoena delivered last week in the federal corruption probe. The confidential memorandum, a copy of which was obtained by The Inquirer, told officials to save everything from e-mails and appointment books to bank deposits, meeting logs and computer data on city business starting last Jan. 1. "As you are aware, the City has been served with a...

Philadelphia mayor probe now includes Mobile County schools Ronald White, close adviser of Street's, may have done work on construction bond 10/21/03 By RENA HAVNER Staff Reporter Federal investigators in Pennsylvania have subpoenaed Mobile County school records in conjunction with a probe that centers on Philadelphia Mayor John Street. Officials with the Mobile County Public School System on Thursday were ordered to turn over documents pertaining to a $121 million construction bond managed by JP Morgan Securities Inc., Philadelphia attorney Ronald A. White and Georgia attorney Anthony Snell, said system attorney Bob Campbell. The Philadelphia Inquirer has reported that White...

PHILADELPHIA (Talon News) -- As the offices of Democrat Philadelphia Mayor John Street's attorney as well as three other city departments were raided by the FBI last week in the ongoing investigation of corruption in city government, Democrats have launched racial and political accusations against Republicans over the digging. Attorney Ronald A. White, who has actively raised money on behalf of the Street reelection campaign, has previously conducted a substantial amount of legal work on behalf of the city of Philadelphia as well as regularly assisted private companies with obtaining city government contracts. Last Thursday, the FBI scoured White's office...

Posted on Tue, Oct. 21, 2003 FEDS AVOID A SCENE THIS TIME SUBPOENAS TAKE THE PLACE OF MADE-FOR-TV FBI RAIDS AS PROBE CONTINUES ANOTHER DAY, another demand from federal investigators for documents from the city. But yesterday, the feds and city officials played nice. Sort of. Instead of a platoon of FBI agents carting out boxes of documents, as happened Thursday, investigators delivered subpoenas to City Solicitor Nelson Diaz, a source said. That allows the city to gather the information and deliver it to the FBI rather than face the embarrassment of raids captured live on evening news programs. The...

Posted on Tue, Oct. 21, 2003 BUG REVIVES SAD HISTORY AFRICAN-AMERICANS TROUBLED BY SIMILARITY TO PAST PROBES GINO BANKS, a 40-year-old truck driver from North Philadelphia, is a rare Philadelphia voter - an African-American who says he is a registered Republican. And he was thinking briefly about voting for his party's mayoral candidate, Sam Katz - until he heard about the FBI bug in Mayor Street's office. "Because of the scandal, I'm voting for Street because they're giving him an unfair deal," Banks said yesterday. "If they wanted to do this, they could have done this months and weeks ago....

Posted on Mon, Oct. 20, 2003 Strict controls aim to keep politics out of surveillance By Joseph A. Slobodzian Inquirer Staff Writer The bug, electronic eavesdropping, Title III, the wire. By any name, electronic surveillance has been called law enforcement's most effective - and intrusive - tool. And, 35 years after a federal law authorized using electronic surveillance, its role in criminal investigations remains poorly understood by the public. For starters, an affidavit seeking its use often runs 25 pages or more. Some people are quick to attribute political motives for its use, as is the case now with Mayor...