9/20/2006 7:49:00 PM
DNC: White House Finally Releases Culture of Corruption FOIAshttp://releases.usnewswire.com/GetRelease.asp?id=72864WASHINGTON, Sept. 20 /U.S. Newswire/ -- After months of negotiations and stonewalling by the Bush White House, the administration was forced to finally release Secret Service WAVE records detailing visits by Abramoff cronies and Republican culture of corruption co-conspirators Grover Norquist, Patrick Pizzella, Ralph Reed, Michael Scanlon, and David Safavian between Jan. 20, 2001 and May 12, 2005. The Democratic National Committee filed the FOIA request with the Department of Justice in Jan. 2006 in an attempt to uncover the truth about the full extent and nature of the roles these figures played in the Bush White House.
Unfortunately, the Secret Service WAVE records released today are not the full and complete record. This is due to a policy change under the Bush administration, pursuant to which the United States Secret Service turned over its WAVE records to the White House after 30 days and then destroyed its copies of the records. The records turned over to the White House then become protected by Executive Privilege and not subject to FOIA, thus insulating them from release, even if they would have been disclosable under FOIA if they were still held by the Secret Service. In fact, the administration has been so intent on blocking disclosure of these records, the Bush Justice Department attempted to take the absurd position that Secret Service records aren't subject to FOIA.
The five people named in the FOIA request have since been shown to be intimately involved in a number of Republican schemes. Some have pled guilty to various crimes related to business deals with Abramoff, and others have been implicated in various pay-to-play schemes. In fact, Grover Norquist and Ralph Reed are so intimately linked and invaluable to the Bush White House, that the White House tried at one point to argue that they were such valuable and important advisors to the White House on tax policy and "other conservative policies" that their discussions with White House officials should be protected by the "deliberative process" privilege. This privilege protects discussion of policy among U. S. government officials. Such a move would extend a protection for U.S. Government employees to Republican lobbyists. The Bush administration also tried to keep records of convicted former Bush official David Safavian's meetings secret, by arguing that his "privacy" should be protected. This assertion was made despite the fact that Safavian was a government official conducting official business, and that he was convicted of lying to the government in order to take free trips and gifts from Abramoff.
"By trying to extend a special privilege typically reserved for U. S. Government employees, to protect their Abramoff cronies like Grover Norquist, and Ralph Reed, the Bush administration showed just how willing they are to manipulate the law to hide the truth and protect their political interests," said Democratic National Committee Communications Director Karen Finney. "It's become a disturbing Nixonian pattern from the Bush administration, that when faced with legitimate questions they don't want to answer, they resort to ethically questionable maneuvers to hide the truth and stonewall rather than giving honest answers."
http://releases.usnewswire.com/GetRelease.asp?id=72864
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