The Strange Case of an Imprisoned Alabama Governor--Editorial

Source: The New York Times, nytimes.com
September 10, 2007
Editorial Observer
By ADAM COHEN

Alberto Gonzales is out as attorney general, but there is still a lot of questionable Justice Department activity for Congress to sort through. The imprisonment of Don Siegelman, a former Democratic governor of Alabama, should be at the top of the list. Jill Simpson, an Alabama lawyer and Republican operative, is heading to Washington this week to tell Congressional investigators that she heard prominent Republicans plotting to use the United States attorneys’ offices to remove Mr. Siegelman as a political threat. The case should be the focus of a probing Congressional hearing this fall.

Mr. Siegelman was a major frustration to Alabama Republicans. The state is bright red, but Mr. Siegelman managed to win the governorship in 1998 with 57 percent of the vote. He was defeated for re-election in 2002 under suspicious circumstances. In the initial returns, Mr. Siegelman appeared to have won by a razor-thin margin. But a late-night change in the tallies in Republican Baldwin County gave the current governor, Bob Riley, a victory of a little more than 3,000 votes out of 1.3 million cast.

Mr. Siegelman has charged that the votes were intentionally shifted by a Republican operative. James Gundlach, an Auburn University professor, did a statistical analysis of the returns and found that the final numbers were clearly the result of intentional manipulation. Mr. Siegelman wanted to take back the governorship in 2006, but his indictment made it impossible.

If Ms. Simpson is telling the truth, she provides important support for Mr. Siegelman’s claim that his prosecution was political. In a sworn affidavit, she says she was on a phone call in November 2002 with Governor Riley’s son, Rob Riley, and Bill Canary, a Republican political operative whose wife, Leura Canary, is the United States attorney for Montgomery. According to Ms. Simpson, they were discussing the political threat Mr. Siegelman posed, and Mr. Canary said his “girls” — his wife and Alice Martin, the United States Attorney in Birmingham — would take care of Mr. Siegelman. Ms. Simpson said Mr. Canary also said the case had been discussed with Karl Rove.

Ms. Martin’s office prosecuted Mr. Siegelman, but the case fell apart after a federal judge cast doubt on the charges. Ms. Canary’s office then convicted him of charges for which he was sentenced to seven years in prison.

In addition to the phone call, which has been reported, Ms. Simpson says she will tell House investigators about a second conversation with Rob Riley. In late January or early February of 2005, she says, in his Birmingham office, Mr. Riley told her that Mr. Siegelman would be re-indicted in Montgomery. He was indicted by Ms. Canary’s office in May 2005, and tried in May 2006, one month before the Democratic primary for governor. Mr. Riley denies that the conversation occurred.

There are other red flags, besides Ms. Simpson’s testimony. Mr. Siegelman was convicted of appointing the businessman Richard Scrushy to a state hospital board in exchange for a contribution to a campaign for a state lottery to fund education. Elected officials, from the president down, appoint people who contribute directly to their campaigns without facing criminal charges.

Decisions about whether to bring this sort of public corruption case are extremely sensitive. A prosecutor must examine an official’s state of mind and decide if he intended the appointment to be in exchange for the contribution, or if he simply ended up appointing a contributor. The extraordinary sensitivity of these cases — and their ability to change the political balance of power in the country — makes it critical that prosecutors be nonpolitical and above reproach. In the current Justice Department, they have not been.

Mr. Siegelman’s case has disturbing parallels to the prosecution of Georgia Thompson, the Wisconsin civil servant wrongly convicted by the Justice Department of awarding a state contract to a Democratic contributor. Prosecutors tried to get Ms. Thompson, who spent four months in jail before being freed by an appeals court, to testify against Jim Doyle, the state’s Democratic governor.

Ms. Thompson refused — because, she made clear, there was no crime to implicate him in. But her trial was during his re-election campaign, and her conviction was used in anti-Doyle attack ads. It’s too early to say that her case and Mr. Siegelman’s were brought simply to elect Republican governors, but there is certainly evidence that they may have been.

The Bush administration insists that the United States attorney scandal is a non-scandal. But the Siegelman and Thompson cases are a reminder that when the power of the state to imprison people is put in the wrong hands, lives can be ruined and democracy can be threatened. Since the Justice Department refuses to appoint an independent prosecutor to examine whether these and other cases were politicized, Congress must provide the scrutiny.

Rove Named in Alabama Controversy

Source: TIME.com
June 1, 2007
By Adam Zagorin / Washington

In the rough and tumble of Alabama politics, the scramble for power is often a blood sport. At the moment, the state's former Democratic governor, Don Siegelman, stands convicted of bribery and conspiracy charges and faces a sentence of up to 30 years in prison. Siegelman has long claimed that his prosecution was driven by politically motivated, Republican-appointed U.S. attorneys. Now Karl Rove, the President's top political strategist, has been implicated in the controversy. A longtime Republican lawyer in Alabama swears she heard a top G.O.P. operative in the state say that Rove "had spoken with the Department of Justice" about "pursuing" Siegelman, with help from two of Alabama's U.S. attorneys. The allegation was made by Dana Jill Simpson, a lifelong Republican and lawyer who practices in Alabama. She made the charges in a May 21 affidavit, obtained by TIME, in which she describes a conference call on November 18, 2002, which involved a group of senior aides to Bob Riley, who had just narrowly defeated Siegelman in a bitterly contested election for governor. Though Republican Riley, a former Congressman, initially found himself behind by several thousand votes, he had pulled ahead at the last minute when disputed ballots were tallied in his favor. After the abrupt vote turnaround, Siegelman sought a recount. The Simpson affidavit says the conference call focused on how the Riley campaign could get Siegelman to withdraw his challenge. According to Simpson's statement, William Canary, a senior G.O.P. political operative and Riley adviser who was on the conference call, said "not to worry about Don Siegelman" because "'his girls' would take care of" the governor. Canary then made clear that "his girls" was a reference to his wife, Leura Canary, the U.S. attorney for the Middle District of Alabama, and Alice Martin, the U.S. attorney for the Northern District of Alabama. Canary reassured others on the conference call — who also included Riley's son, Rob, and Terry Butts, another Riley lawyer and former justice of the Alabama supreme court — that he had the help of a powerful pal in Washington. Canary said "not to worry — that he had already gotten it worked out with Karl and Karl had spoken with the Department of Justice and the Department of Justice was already pursuing Don Siegelman," the Simpson affidavit says. Both U.S. attorney offices subsequently indicted Siegelman on a variety of charges, although Leura Canary recused herself from dealing with the case in May 2002. A federal judge dismissed the Northern District case before it could be tried, but Siegelman was convicted in the Middle District on bribery and conspiracy charges last June. William Canary called the allegations "outrageous" and "the desperate act of a desperate politician." Terry Butts said, "I do not recall this telephone conversation — this whole story must have been created by a drunk fiction writer." A White House spokesman told TIME that since the case of former Governor Siegelman remained before the courts, it would have no comment. Rob Riley said, "I do not recall making the statement attributed to me." He added: "Neither I nor anyone on our campaign staff have been involved...in a conspiracy to bring a criminal case against Don Siegelman." Louis Franklin, who prosecuted Siegelman, said he did confer on several occasions with Justice Dept. officials in Washington, but that "nobody ordered me to bring this case, and we handled it just like any other." Canary was appointed by President George H. W. Bush to serve in the White House as special assistant for intergovernmental affairs, and then named chief of staff of the Republican National Committee. Later in the 1990's he also worked closely with Karl Rove in a successful series of campaigns to get Republicans elected to Alabama's state courts. In an interview with TIME, Simpson confirmed that the "Karl" cited in her sworn statement was Karl Rove. "There's absolutely no question it was Karl Rove, no doubt whatsoever," she said. She also said she has phone records to back up the date and duration of her phone calls. Though Simpson's legal work primarily involved research for companies seeking federal government contracts, she says she also did "opposition research" on Siegelman as a volunteer in Riley's campaign in 2002. A lifelong G.O.P. supporter, she says she has long been friendly with Riley's son, Rob Riley, whom she met at the University of Alabama and worked with on various legal cases. In her interview with TIME, Simpson said the participants in the conference call expressed growing concern that Gov. Siegelman would refuse to give up his challenge to the vote count. According to Simpson, Rob Riley said, "Siegelman's just like a cockroach, he'll never die, what are we going to do?" At that point Canary offered reassurance by citing Rove's news from Justice Department. Simpson said she had long been troubled by the conference call conversation, and even consulted an official of the Alabama State Bar Association to determine whether she could disclose it publicly without violating her obligations as a volunteer working for the Riley campaign. She was told, she said, that she was free to speak of the matter. Simpson said she grew more concerned about the matter after Siegelman's conviction last June. She says she told several friends about the conference call ; one of them, Mark Bollinger, a former aide to a Democratic attorney general in Alabama and in the Alabama Bureau of Investigation, has given his own affidavit, obtained by TIME, swearing that Simpson had told him of the conference call and Rove's alleged statements. The federal investigation of Siegelman culminated in a criminal prosecution that became public not long after Siegelman announced that he would run again for governor of Alabama in 2006. Partly because of the investigation, Siegelman failed in his bid for the Democratic nomination. Siegelman, together with former HealthSouth CEO Richard Scrushy, was convicted on bribery and conspiracy charges and faces sentencing June 26. Lawyers for Siegelman and Scrushy told TIME they were considering whether to use Simpson's affadavit in expected motions to dismiss charges against their clients, or in some other phase of what is likely to be a protracted appeals process. Siegelman was convicted of appointing Scrushy to a hospital regulatory board in exchange for a $500,000 contribution to a campaign for a state lottery to fund education. Defense lawyers have argued that Siegelman drew no personal financial benefit from Scrushy's donation to the lottery campaign, and they note that Scrushy had served on the hospital regulatory board under three previous governors, before Siegelman reappointed him. The reappointment, they have argued, offered little of value to Scrushy except more work.