http://www.BreakForNews.com/articles/MadsenVoteFraudTaleSpin.htm
Wayne Madsen's
Vote Fraud Tale Spin
BreakForNews.com,
7th Dec, 2004 14:00ET
by Fintan
Dunne, Editor EXCLUSIVE
 When
ex-NSA
employee, Wayne Madsen hit the Internet with his
tale of a massive electronic vote-stealing operation costing tens
of millions of dollars, the story was greeted with skepticism by vote
fraud activists. With good cause.
Despite their hunger for any report that would shed light on the exact
method by which Bush had subverted the will of the people, Madsen's
story --featuring a Cayman island bank, an offshore trust and a payoff
check to conspirators for over $29 million --was just a bit too tinfoil-hat
for most.
Madsen reassured the doubters with promises to put more flesh on the
bones of the story. After failing in two subsequent
missives
to add substantial details, he's finally laid
it all out. Unfortunately, even fully-fleshed, Madsen's story is
a corpse with no detectable pulse and a missing heart.
The heart of the story was his seminal account of a $29 million payoff
check to an alleged Bush-linked offshore trust. Now he admits the check
in question was a fake so inept that Nigerian scammers would blush at
such incompetence. No such blushes from Madsen, who now says the check
was just a follow-the-money pointer from his mysterious tipsters.
MSNBC's Keith Olberman, the thinking TV-watcher's no-tinfoil blogger,
was aghast
at such chutzpah, writing:
"..To turn on a dime and
write that a document is real, and hard evidence of a crime, and then
come back and admit that it’s fake, but still hard evidence of a crime,
is an intellectual leap of faith worthy of Evel Knievel."
But Olberman, reinforcing his status as one who can tell wood from trees,
declined to toss out the bathwater with the fake-check baby:
"There could very well be
facts — even important facts — hiding in there somewhere."
Yes, but where!
FLOGGING A DEAD DOG
The confusion arises because Madsen's account is a half-dozen different
stories melded into one, using much imagination and a few spots of circumstantial
glue. Some parts are undeniable fact. Many are unverifiable or disputed.
One aspect is pure tragicomic farce.
The most concrete story element was revealed in fullest detail by BradBlog.com
--who released an
affidavit from software engineer, Clint Curtis alleging that Florida
Republican, Tom Feeney and executives at Yang Enterprises, a software
firm under contract to Florida's Department of Transportation(DOT) --had
commissioned him to develop a prototype of software to "fix"
touch-screen voting machines in south Florida.
But that angle is not new. In January 2004, Curtis registered a website
to make these
exact claims, albeit with the alleged perpetrator's names lightly
disguised. He's even written a book (available
on Amazon.com) which covers this and other topics --such as "Communist
spies" stealing U.S. secrets. He's been openly promoting
his story, and
the book --on the Internet.
And Curtis has other vested interests in all this. In 2001, his main
allegation had been that his former employer Yang Enterprises had
overbilled
the Florida DOT on
contracted software. By then he was working for the DOT, and these
allegations --in which he was joined by his new boss at the DOT-- got
both of them fired and led to court
cases
seeking their reinstatement.
Without dismissing the merits of the overbilling allegation, Clint Curtis
has clearly got old axes to grind. Yang Enterprises have rubbished the
overbilling claim. And Feeney has rather unconvincingly
denied over-enthusiastic lobbying on their behalf.
But you can tell
something is up. Within hours of Madsen and RAW
STORY releasing their congruent versions of the software-vote-fix
saga, a German Shepherd dog owned by Clint Curtis was found... dead.
It's the second dog of his to meet such a fate, BradBlog breathlessly
informed readers.
Clearly Karl Rove had the poor mutts iced. Ruthless, eh? What do you
mean tinfoil? Case proven.
SKELETONS IN THE CLOSET
Even as BradBlog's credibility was dying with Curtis' dog, back in
Madsen's more expansive version of events there's dirty work afoot,
it seems.
He zeros in on the unfortunate fate of a Florida DOT corruption investigator,
whose inquires into the DOT overbilling issue ended when he turned up
dead in Valdosta, Georgia in June 2003 --an apparent suicide.
The investigator, Ray Lemme had told his wife he was working on a "big
case." Clint Curtis says Lemme informed him a cover up of Yang's alleged
malfeasance was coming from "as high up as I could imagine."
If Madsen had focused solely on this aspect, his article would have
been a well-aimed exposé. There's plenty of flesh on these particular
bones -- including signs that Jeb Bush's administration was interfering
in the DOT's handling of the overbilling issue.
But we only have Curtis' word that his claims of a vote stealing scheme
were being factored into Lemme's investigation. As a DOT fraud investigator,
Lemme would have been concerned only about the question of overbilling.
Vote fraud would have been well outside the scope of his inquiries.
Had it been Clint Curtis -not Lemme who ended up a suicide case, that
would have been a real red flag. But the closest Curtis gets... is a
suspiciously dead dog.
NOVEMBER SURPRISE
So what have we got? Much of this story revolves around Yang's claimed
overbilling of the DOT --not Feeney's alleged plan to steal the election
for the Bush boys. It's time to distill all this down to the vote fraud
essence.
Despite the hoopla, it's clear the Florida election was NOT stolen with
software Clint Curtis wrote for Feeney. The software Curtis touts
on his website is merely a prototype of what such
software might
look like were someone to take the time to program
it in full and stealthy detail.
But as it stands, Curtis' program is a mere skeletal outline --as lacking
in electronic flesh as Madsen's early articles. It was written
by Curtis, and has been promoted by Curtis.
We have only his word that the malicious intent was Feeney's.
And no amount of dead dogs can change those hard facts.
Despite Madsen's grand elaborations and whispers from shadowy tipsters,
nothing links Curtis' sparse software with any greater plot to steal
votes across America. Not even a real check.
 And
besides these questions about Madsen's "November Surprise"
article, we have the issue of his
pre-election article about an "October Surprise" --which
never in the end materialized.
Back then, Madsen's publicity-shy informants had assured him that George
Bush was ready to launch a strike against Iran to create an emergency
backdrop to his reelection bid. It never happened, of course.
But it would be unfair to single out Madsen for this error. If you recall,
the months before the election were rife with speculation about the
type of "surprise" that Bush was going to engineer in October,
2004.
Everybody knew Bush was in a fix, pardon the pun. Conventional wisdom
had come to believe that he needed to pull some stunt to avert defeat.
But, absent all those "October Surprise" speculations, people
might have realized something totally unsurprising was about to happen.
Bush would steal 2004 --just like he stole 2000. By means of vote fraud.
Big surprise, eh?
Madsen's mistaken "October Surprise" article was just one
more element in a vast misdirection of Rovian proportions. That's why
I would not like to put people off reading his material. Reading Madsen
has it's advantages.
It's an excellent way of figuring out what Karl Rove wants you to think!
Or it was up until now anyway.
Fintan Dunne,
7 Dec, 2004
(An earlier version said that RawStory was the site hyping
up the death
of Clint Curtis' dog - but it was Bin fact BradBlog. This is now corected)
.
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Fallujah's
9/11:
U.S. Used
Weapons of
Mass Destruction
 November
9th, 2004 was Fallujah's 9/11 Tuesday. It marked the peak of
3 days of indiscriminate bombing by US forces.
The bomb blitz featured weapons of mass destruction:
banned napalm-type munitions, chemical poison gas and super-bombs
of up to 2,000-pounds.
The ground assault was also indiscriminate. The target was a
city where at least 60,000 civilians outnumbered rebel fighters
by over thirty to one.
The evidence
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from inside Fallujah manage to bypass reporting restrictions.
..Our Exposé
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The relevant US commanders
should be immediately detained and interrogated --so we can
determine
on whose orders they acted, that
others may also face justice.
The attack on Fallujah was the worst single terrorism
atrocity since 2,752 people
died in New York on
Tuesday, 9/11/2001. The Iraqi Red Crescent fear
up to 6,000 killed so far,
in the terror on Fallujah.
See Also
Fallujah
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Saving
Fallujah,
And Other
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by Fintan Dunne, Editor
Just
as in the movie Saving Private Ryan, U.S. forces in the "assault"
on Fallujah
have a mission aimed at a single man: the elusive
Musab al-Zarqawi. They seek
him here. They seek him there.
They seek him everywhere.
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No doubt he has "slipped
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warfare. "Slipping away" is the
very definition of guerilla war.
Or hasn't anyone told the Americans? ..Read
on
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