Rove's missing e-mails

Rove thought he was safe by using computers outside federal government control to plot his schemes. Yet, somehow, leaks happen, especially when an administration becomes a problem for those who believe themselves our owners. What follows is a transcript of an investigation into the prosecutor firings that the Bush administration would rather you and I know nothing about, aided by the fact that some 500 of Rove's e-mails have magically found their way into (investigative reporter) Greg Palast's hands. David Iglesias, by the way, is the attorney whose story was immortalized in A Few Good Men, which is why there are Jack Nicholson and Tom Cruise references. David Iglesias was one of the prosecutors who was recently fired for political reasons.

KEVIN BACON: Your honor, I’d like to ask for a recess.

TOM CRUISE: I’d like an answer to the question, Judge.

J.A. PRESTON: The court will wait for an answer.

GREG PALAST: This past December 7 was not the first time United States prosecutor David Iglesias had been brutally cut loose. In the 1992 film A Few Good Men, Tom Cruise plays David Iglesias, the true story of the young military defense lawyer fighting to uncover the truth.

TOM CRUISE: I want the truth!

JACK NICHOLSON: You can't handle the truth!

GREG PALAST: Greg Palast.

DAVID IGLESIAS: Greg, hi. David Iglesias.

GREG PALAST: Hey, how are you, Captain?

DAVID IGLESIAS: Hey, I’m doing just fine. Thank you.

GREG PALAST: So can you handle the truth or not?

DAVID IGLESIAS: Absolutely.

GREG PALAST: Captain Iglesias, the US prosecutor, knew something was very wrong when, just a week before the 2006 midterm elections, he received a strange and threatening call to his home. It was his state’s senior senator, the powerful Republican leader Pete Domenici on the line, pushing Iglesias to file criminal charges against a Democrat before the election.

DAVID IGLESIAS: I’m sitting in my bedroom, and here’s the killer point, Greg. He says, “Are these going to get filed before November?” And I said I didn't think so. And the line goes dead. In other words, our senior senator hung up on me. A terribly inappropriate call.

GREG PALAST: Inappropriate, certainly. Obstruction of justice, possibly.

DAVID IGLESIAS: He basically wanted to know: are you going to file these cases that can help Heather out? That was the subtext. I felt terrible after that phone call.

GREG PALAST: By “helping Heather,” he meant Congresswoman Heather Wilson, then candidate Heather Wilson. The race was a dead heat. Domenici wanted him to bust a Democrat to help Wilson. Still, Iglesias tried to be the loyal party man, even covering up the threatening call.

Did you report this phone call to anyone at the time?

DAVID IGLESIAS: I did not, and I should have. There is a requirement under the US attorney’s manual for us to report that kind of contact from a member of Congress. I didn't do that.

GREG PALAST: But that act of loyalty wasn't good enough for Karl Rove, the President’s political advisor. Rove flew to New Mexico just before the election and got an earful of complaints about Iglesias from state party chiefs. Rove reported to President Bush, who personally put the heat on Attorney General Gonzales. Iglesias was stunned.

DAVID IGLESIAS: I had no idea that a few local yokels in New Mexico would have enough stroke to get the President to complain.

GREG PALAST: There was more than failing to help the Wilson campaign. In the 2004 presidential election, Republican operatives blocked a quarter-million new voters nationwide from voting on grounds they brought the wrong IDs to the poles. To justify this massive blockade, Republican officials wanted Iglesias to arrest some voters to create a high publicity show trial. Iglesias went along with the game. Just before the 2004 election, he held a press conference announcing the creation of a vote fraud task force. But the prosecutor drew the line at arresting innocent voters.

DAVID IGLESIAS: They were telling Rove that I wasn’t doing their bidding. I wasn't filing these voter fraud cases.

GREG PALAST: The evidence fellow Republicans gave him was junk. He refused to bring a single prosecution.

DAVID IGLESIAS: It was the old throwing pasta at the wall trick, that he’s throwing up pasta. Something’s got to stick, and it didn't.

GREG PALAST: For failing to bring the voting cases, Iglesias paid with his job.

DAVID IGLESIAS: They wanted a political operative who happened to be a US attorney, and when they got somebody who actually took his oath to the Constitution seriously, they were appalled and they wanted me out of there. The two strikes against me was, I was not political, I didn't help them out on their bogus voter fraud prosecutions.

GREG PALAST: Rove personally ordered his removal. As a prosecutor, Iglesias says that if missing emails prove the firing was punishment for failure to bring bogus charges, Mr. Rove himself is in legal trouble.

DAVID IGLESIAS: If his intent was, look what happened with Iglesias, if that was his intent, he’s in big trouble. That is obstruction of justice, one classic example.

GREG PALAST: Iglesias believes the real reasons for the firings are in what are called the missing emails, emails sent by the Rove team using Republican Party campaign computers, which Rove claims can't be retrieved. But not all the missing emails are missing. We have 500 of them. Apparently the Rove team misaddressed their emails, and late one night they all ended up in our inboxes in our offices in New York City.

And as Iglesias predicted, they reveal a story the party would rather keep buried. Voting rights attorney Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., reviewed the evidence in our cache of emails and concluded:

ROBERT F. KENNEDY, JR.: They ought to be in jail for doing this, because they knew it was illegal, and they did it anyway.

GREG PALAST: What is it that was so obviously illegal that law professor Kennedy thought they deserved prison time? The evidence that shook him was attached to fifty of the secret emails, something that GOP party chiefs called caging lists, thousands of names of voters. Notably, the majority were African American. Kennedy explained how caging worked.

ROBERT F. KENNEDY, JR.: Caging is an illegal way of getting rid of black votes. You get a list of all the black voters. Then you send a letter to their homes. And if the person doesn't sign it at the homes, the letter then is returned to the Republican National Committee. They then direct the state attorney general, who is friendly to them, who’s Republican, to remove that voter from the list on the alleged basis that that voter does not live in the address that they designated as their address on the voting application form.

GREG PALAST: In all, the Republican Party challenged nearly three million voters, a mass attack on minority voting rights virtually unreported in the US press.

ROBERT F. KENNEDY, JR.: So they disenfranchised millions of black voters who don't even know that they’ve been disenfranchised.

GREG PALAST: Page after page of voters with this address, Naval Air Station, Jacksonville, hundreds, thousands of soldiers and sailors targeted to lose their vote. Go to Baghdad, lose your vote.

And what does this have to do with the prosecutor firings? Take a look at the name at the top of the secret missing email: Tim Griffin. This is the man in charge of the allegedly illegal caging operation. He is research director for the Republican National Committee, special assistant to Karl Rove, and as of December 7 Karl Rove's personal pick for US attorney for the state of Arkansas. Is this a case of the perpetrator becomes the prosecutor? For Democracy Now! this is Greg Palast.

JACK NICHOLSON: We use words like honor, code, loyalty.

GREG PALAST: Is Tom Cruise going to play you in this follow-up?

DAVID IGLESIAS: He’s more handsome, but I’m quite a bit taller, so I’ve got that on him.

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