Funny how the MSM has yet to even begin to expose this latest case of media malpractice....
[This] is sheer madness. There are only two alternatives:
either Ms. Simpson is a liar (or perhaps insane), or else
every other person with knowledge of her allegations,
including a former Alabama Supreme Court Justice and Don
Siegelman himself, is lying. Yet CBS offered Ms. Simpson as
a credible witness without disclosing these basic facts.
....It seems fair to wonder whether, at some level, the
people who run CBS and 60 Minutes are as deranged as Jill
Simpson when it comes to Karl Rove and the Republican Party.
Dissecting the 60 Minutes Scandal
Power Line
We've written a couple of times about the 60 Minutes story last Sunday that claimed former Alabama governor Don Siegelman was the victim of a Republican conspiracy that sent him to prison for bribery and mail fraud. The story implicitly accused the career prosecutors who handled the case of complicity in the alleged conspiracy, but the real focus of CBS's account was Karl Rove. The network's star witness was a small-time Alabama lawyer named Jill Simpson, who claimed she was a life-long Republican, but had stepped forward to tell what she knew about events in 2001 and 2002.
The centerpiece of Simpson's account, as presented on 60 Minutes, was her claim that she did "opposition research" for the Republican Party in Alabama at the request of Karl Rove. She said that in 2001, while Siegelman was still governor, Rove asked her to follow Siegelman around and try to get photos of the Governor in bed ("in a compromising sexual position") with one of his female aides. Not only that: Simpson said that this request by Rove didn't surprise her, because Rove had asked her to carry out other secret missions in the past.
Put aside for a moment the inherent stupidity of this account. CBS aired it without disclosing the fact that Simpson has told her story several times before--without mentioning that she had ever met or spoken to Karl Rove, let alone that he asked her to spy for him.
Simpson first came to public attention last summer, when she signed an affidavit about a conversation that she allegedly had with Rob Riley, son of soon-to-be Republican Governor Bob Riley and several others, in November 2002. The affidavit, 22 paragraphs long, purported to set out Simpson's recollection of a phone conversation that was then five years in the past. It says that "Karl" was mentioned in the phone conversation, and she understood "Karl" to be Karl Rove. The affidavit does not say that Simpson had ever met Rove, spoken with Rove, or been asked by him to spy on Governor Siegelman.
This affidavit brought Simpson to the attention of Democrats on the House Judiciary Committee. Democrats on the Committee's staff set up a formal interview with Simpson, under oath, as part of their "investigation" into whether Siegelman had been railroaded by Alabama Republicans. Staff Democrats pre-interviewed Simpson before her sworn testimony was taken, on September 14, 2007.
The transcript of the interview is 143 pages long. Ms. Simpson was asked about her work on various Republican campaigns. She was obviously a low-level volunteer; she described "my general way I help, which is putting up signs and things of that nature." At no time did she claim to have done any opposition research in connection with any campaign.
In fact, while the whole point of the interview was to try to show that in 2002 Republicans, including Karl Rove, conspired to destroy Don Siegelman with a trumped-up prosecution, Simpson never suggested that she knew Rove; that she had ever spoken to Rove; or that Rove had asked her to spy on Siegelman--all facts that would have been highly relevant to the Committee's inquiry. Obviously she never disclosed these claims to the Democratic Committee staff, or they would have asked her about them in the interview. Nor did they come up when a Republican counsel cross-examined Simpson, establishing that her claims were all hearsay and not based on personal knowledge.
The conclusion seems inescapable that Simpson fabricated her story about Rove asking her to spy on Siegelman some time after September 2007. At a minimum, 60 Minutes certainly owed it to its audience to ask Simpson, on camera, why her alleged memory of a passing reference to "Karl" in a phone conversation more than five years ago has suddenly morphed into the claim that she had such a close relationship with Rove, one of the most senior officers of the Executive Branch, that he would ask her to spy on the Governor of Alabama--a claim for which, CBS might have noted, she offers zero evidence.
This is not the only respect in which CBS's presentation of Simpson's story was less than honest. In fact, what Simpson has alleged is a "conspiracy so vast" as to be self-refuting. CBS failed to disclose the extent of Simpson's wild claims so as to conceal from its viewers the fact that Simpson is, to put it bluntly, a nut.
Let's start with Terry Butts. By her own account, Simpson started getting involved in the Siegelman prosecution in large part because of her purported concern about Butts's "conflict of interest." She alleges that Butts was one of the participants in the November 2002 conference call that is the centerpiece of her tale. She says further that on November 18, 2002, Butts went to Don Siegelman and compelled him to drop his challenge to Bob Riley's election victory by threatening to disclose the blockbuster information that Simpson herself had developed (more about this later). Butts then surfaced as one of the lawyers representing Richard Scrushy, former chairman of HealthSouth and Siegelman's co-defendant. Simpson's affidavit emphasizes the importance of Butts's alleged conflict:
<<< The reason I did this is because I believe everyone has a sixth amendment right to have an attorney who does not have a conflict and I believed that Mr. Butts did. >>>
The problem for Simpson (and CBS) is that Terry Butts is not, like Simpson, an unknown lawyer of uncertain mental health. He is a former Justice of the Alabama Supreme Court. He unequivocally denies that the 2002 conversation alleged by Simpson ever took place: "Absolutely not true."
Then there is the trial judge, Mark Fuller. Simpson alleges that Judge Fuller is part of the conspiracy, too. She concocted a bizarre theory that Fuller--to my knowledge, a competent and respected federal judge--had a conflict of interest (like Butts), in that he is an investor in an aviation company that has federal contracts, and one of the Assistant U.S. Attorneys handling the Siegelman prosecution is an Air Force Reserve officer. Don't spend a lot of time trying to get your mind around that one; in my professional opinion, the claim is frivolous.
Actually, every single person whose name Simpson invokes as she spins her stories says that she is either lying or deluded. Even Don Siegelman. Simpson says that she signed her affidavit after repeated urging by Siegelman, whom she spoke with several times on the telephone. Untrue, says Siegelman. As the Justice Department wrote in a letter to John Conyers' Judiciary Committee:
<<< The alleged conversation described by Ms. Simpson has been denied by all of the alleged participants except Ms. Simpson. Indeed, even Mr. Siegelman states that Ms. Simpson's affidavit is false as it relates to him. Moreover, according to Ms. Simpson, she met with Mr. Siegelman and his co-defendant Richard Scrushy for several months before signing the statement at their urging. She also claims to have provided legal advice to them. She contends she drafted but did not sign a motion filed by Mr. Scrushy seekung to have the federal judge removed from the case. >>>
All of which is sheer madness. There are only two alternatives: either Ms. Simpson is a liar (or perhaps insane), or else every other person with knowledge of her allegations, including a former Alabama Supreme Court Justice and Don Siegelman himself, is lying. Yet CBS offered Ms. Simpson as a credible witness without disclosing these basic facts.
Which brings us, finally, to Ms. Simpson's core narrative: her account of what happened in November 2002.
Here again, CBS has demonstrated a remarkable lack of that critical faculty which once was attributed to newsmen. Here is their account of Simpson's story of the phone call, in its entirety:
<<< Simpson says she was on a conference call in 2002 when Canary told her she didn't have to do more intelligence work because, as Canary allegedly said, "My girls" can take care of Siegelman. Simpson says she asked "Who are your girls?"
"And he says, `Oh, my wife, Leura. You know, she's the Middle District United States Attorney.' And he said, `And then Alice Martin. She is the Northern District Attorney, and I've helped with her campaign,'" Simpson says.
"Federal prosecutors?" Pelley asks.
"Yes, Sir," she says. >>>
Where to begin! Perhaps with the fact that this is only a small part of the story that Simpson has told, in her affidavit, her testimony before the House Judiciary Committee, and elsewhere. To appreciate fully what an unreliable witness Simpson is, more context is necessary.
The events in question happened in November 2002. Don Siegelman was the sitting Governor of Alabama, and his race against the Republican challenger, Bob Riley, came down to a photo finish. For some days after the election the outcome was uncertain. Siegelman tried various legal maneuvers, unsuccessfully, and on November 18, 2002, he conceded that he had lost the election.
Simpson claims that after the election, she was contacted by Rob Riley, the Republican challenger's son, who asked her to look into a possible dirty trick by the Democrats. Simpson's story isn't very coherent, but it can be fairly summarized as follows: Riley signs were disappearing in Simpson's part of Alabama; it was suspected that a particular Democratic lawyer was stealing them; the Riley camp feared that this Democratic lawyer would use the Riley signs in connection with a Ku Klux Klan rally to be held shortly; they wanted Simpson to "investigate" this possible dirty trick; Simpson went to the KKK rally; she saw the Democratic lawyer putting up Riley signs at the rally, thereby confirming the dirty trick; and she took photos of the lawyer, the signs and the rally.
On Simpson's telling, she called Rob Riley, the Republican candidate's son, on November 18, 2002, to report the success of her mission and the fact that she had taken photos of the KKK rally. She says that Riley then conferenced others (Terry Butts, Bill Canary, et al.) into the call. It is in this context that Simpson alleges that Canary said that the group didn't need to worry about Siegelman, since "his girls"--two United States Attorneys; is this a bad joke, or what?--would take care of him. Further, Canary supposedly said that "Karl" had spoken to the Department of Justice and "the Department of Justice was already pursuing Don Siegelman."
This is the heart of Simpson's story, as relayed by 60 Minutes, but it makes zero sense. As of November 18, it was clear to nearly everyone that Riley had won the election; in which case, why would anyone be worried about Siegelman? Further, how could pictures of a Democrat putting up Riley signs at a KKK rally have any impact on Siegelman's legal challenges to Riley's apparent victory? And, in any event, how could anything that Canary's "girls" could do by way of investigating Siegelman over the months and years to come have any impact on the election results? Moreover, by November 2002, it had already been reported publicly that the U.S. Attorney's office was investigating Siegelman's conduct as governor, so the alleged reference to "Karl" and the "girls" would, at the time, have been gratuitous at best.
Simpson's story continues with the claim that, notwithstanding Canary's faith in the "girls," Terry Butts went to Don Siegelman to convey the supposedly devastating information that Jill Simpson had pictures of a Democratic lawyer putting up Bob Riley signs at a KKK rally:
<<< I understood from what Rob told me that Terry Butts talked to Mr. Siegelman and some of his campaign people is what I understood. And in that conversation basically, Mr. Siegelman had been offered to go ahead and concede, that the pictures would not come out and that they would not further prosecute him with the justice department. >>>
The idea that Governor Siegelman conceded the race because Simpson had photos of a would-be Democratic dirty trick is, to put it kindly, stupid. Undoubtedly, Siegelman conceded the race because he had exhausted his legal challenges to Riley's electoral victory. Yet this is how Simpson tells the story in her affidavit. Note, by the way, that the idea that Butts's offer included--absurdly--immunity from future Justice Department prosecution is an interpolation that occurred after Simpson's meeting with House Democratic staffers. In the original version, she says that Siegelman quit the race solely to avoid revelation of his supporter's dirty trick:
<<< During the call Rob Riley was upset about the pictures and internet trick and wanted to go to press but was told by Terry Butts that he would confront Siegelman regarding the signs and get him to withdraw his contest of the election and he believed that Don Siegelman would concede by the ten o'clock news when confronted with these pictures and the internet so as to avoid any embarrassment to Don Siegelman. Terry claimed that he would be able to assure Don that this would be all over if he would concede. ***
Arrangements were made with me to meet a campaign worker of Bob Riley's to give the photos that I had received from the attorney in Jackson County [the Democrat referred to above] and to give the disposal [sic] camera since I had not developed the pictures that I had taken. I gave the photos and the disposal [sic] camera to the campaign worker.
Late that afternoon of November 18, 2002, I was called by Rob Riley and told Terry Butts had talked with Don Siegelman and that Don Siegelman would be resigning before the ten o'clock news.
Don Siegelman gave up his contest of the Alabama Governor's Election the night of November 18, 2002. >>>
Q.E.D. Remarkably, though, Siegelman himself had no knowledge of Simpson's pivotal role in the 2002 election:
<<< I did not realize until this past fall when I was having a conversation with Joe Espy that Don had never told his attorney why he conceded on November 18, 2002. >>>
The "real reason," unknown to Siegelman himself! Jill Simpson is a sad case, but she's not the only one. The world is full of mildly deranged people who are convinced that they alone have stumbled onto the great conspiracy of their time, or that they themselves have played a key role in events, unaccountably unacknowledged by anyone else. There once was a time when journalists tried, at least, to avoid being led down blind alleys by such sad cases.
What is surprising is not that Jill Simpson exists, but that CBS chose to put her forward on 60 Minutes as a credible witness, without disclosing the many facts that would have enabled the network's viewers to draw their own conclusions about Simpson's story. It seems fair to wonder whether, at some level, the people who run CBS and 60 Minutes are as deranged as Jill Simpson when it comes to Karl Rove and the Republican Party.
UPDATE: It's worth noting that in her House Judiciary Committee testimony, it was Rob Riley, not Karl Rove, who supposedly asked Simpson to take pictures of Siegelman. And it wasn't sexually compromising photos, it was pictures of campaign events:
<<< A I would talk to Rob directly about strategy.
Q And that's Rob Riley?
A That is correct.
Q Okay. What else?
A I would help if he asked me to help on specific things. I was not a phone worker or anything of that nature. I did help get signs out in the community. He would ask me -- he would hear that Don was coming to the area of where I was located at. *** The Witness. He would ask me to try to follow Don Siegelman to try to obtain some pictures.
Q And did you do that? Did you follow Don Siegelman for some time when he visited your area?
A I would traditionally -- I guess you could say I followed him to specific events. >>>
My guess is that this story is false, too, but it appears to be the acorn from which the oak tree of Simpson's supposed secret-agent relationship with Karl Rove grew.
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