Found: Rove's Playbook for Attorney Scandal

[kpete]

Found: Rove's Playbook for Attorney Scandal
by Deep Harm
Wed Jun 06, 2007

In the U.S. attorneys scandal, all eyes are on Karl Rove as the presumed architect. But, long before Karl Rove began plying his trade, Fred Malek wrote the manual for politicizing the Justice Department. Malek, a little known but influential Republican operative and "hatchet man," devised the strategies used to remove Democrats and whistleblowers from the civil service and to turn the federal government into a Republican Party headquarters. Malek's connections with President Bush may explain why the U.S. Attorney's office discontinued investigation of wrongdoing at Fannie Mae, where Malek was then a board member and was one of several individuals named in a civil suit. Rather than face criminal penalties, Fannie Mae settled with the SEC and OFHEO for a $400 million civil penalty.

......................

Like a cancer, the dirty personnel practices devised by Malek would spread from one adminstration to another; the Bush administration would embrace them with particular fervor. Political loyalty was emphasized at the expense of competence in carrying out responsibilities designated by law. For those considered uncooperative, the "Malek Manual" described ways to force them out of the civil service, despite laws supposedly protecting them from political interference. Thus, the government incompetence exposed by Hurricane Katrina and the 9/11 attacks traces back to Malek and other Nixon aides who set into motion the Republican plan to make agencies "responsive," not to the people, but to political concerns. With Malek's manual available, Karl Rove did not have to be a genius; merely an eager student of The Master.

....................

By "responsiveness," Malek did not mean responsive to the public, whose taxes fund agencies supposedly for nonpartisan services. Rather, it referred to the willingness of agency officials, including career or "Schedule C" employees, supposedly protected from political pressures, to further the campaign goals of the Republican Party. As the investigating committee indicated, this applied to the Justice Department, where even legal authorities were viewed as mere political machinery.

Particularly important to the present study is the clear prescription in this document that "legal or regulatory action" should be shaped to benefit the campaign effort. In this regard, the memorandum quoted in the previous section that referred to legal actions by the Department of Justice as a form of "patronage" to be utilized for campaign purposes should be recalled.
..............

" No written communications from the White House to the Departments -- all information about the program would be transmitted verbally . . . documents prepared would not indicate White House involvement in any way."
-- March 17, 1972, Malek memo to Haldeman.

more at:
http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2007/6/6/182434/8934

[underpants]

1. Baathification

or so it has been called elsewhere

[Supersedeas]

5. when will Pelosi and Reid get the memo?

[Gabi Hayes]

2. one of the worst vermin imaginable

http://www.scooterlibby.com/committee/?id=26

http://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com/2007/04/10/malek-and-mccain/

http://www.slate.com/id/2058486/

[Nikki Stone1]

3. To the greatest page!

#5

[The Backlash Cometh]

4. Screw the playbook. We could get a handheld movie camera following

Rove for the last 6 years and documenting his every move, like that Blair Witch movie, and that sumbitch would still go free.

[SpiralHawk]

6. "Malek" - now there's a name that sounds like it came out of the krypt

and krawled into bed with the darkside occult cabal of corrupt republicons

Beware the curse of Malek

Evil Doing is afoot

[BeHereNow]

12. LOL!!! Too funny, too true- "Malek, the Magistrate of MALICE!!!

BWAHAHAHAH!
Good one SH!
BHN

[BornagainDUer]

7. Jesusland!! The grand plan here is

to destroy government. Hopefully someone will come forth to expose the Christian Reconstructionist movement to turn the US into Jesusland.


Go here for more on Jesusland, map and history, etc. :

http://images.google.com/imgres?imgurl=&imgrefurl=http://homepage.univie.ac.at/horst.prillinger/blog/archives/2004/11/000842.html&h=277&w=320&sz=17&tbnid=SSKabnxt7S5BDM:&tbnh=102&tbnw=118&prev=/images%3Fq%3Djesusland%26um%3D1&start=1&sa=X&oi=images&ct=image&cd=1

[jdadd]

9. Maybe the new national anthem...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=seUvYO0IC4I :rofl:

[cui bono]

8. k & r

[Senator]

10. K&R & Impeach already

[Straight Shooter]

11. And yet there are those who believe there is no difference between the Dems and the Repubs. n/t

[peacetalksforall]

19. Yeah ... maybe someone should send an e-mail to Nader and ask for a statement. nt

[BikeWriter]

13. K&R

[annabanana]

14. Ah yes.. the Nixon years

The Curse that keeps on killing.

Does anyone still think that pardoning this viper unexamined was "good for the nation?"

[StClone]

15. Mr. Olbermann

Your commentary on this would help.

[Gman]

16. Nixxon's cold dead mummified fingeres are reaching out from the dead

and he's STILL party to committed felonies.

Nixon's body should have been disposed of as Hunter S Thompson suggested:

"If the right people had been in charge of Nixon's funeral, his casket would have been launched into one of those open-sewage canals that empty into the ocean just south of Los Angeles. He was a swine of a man and a jabbering dupe of a president. Nixon was so crooked that he needed servants to help him screw his pants on every morning. Even his funeral was illegal. He was queer in the deepest way. His body should have been burned in a trash bin."

Maybe then he might not have been able to reach out from the grave.

http://www.liberalavenger.com/2005/02/hunter-s-thompson-on-nixons-death.html

[cosmicdot]

17. Malek - he's one of Poppy's trustees ...

Hired by the McCain campaign ...
http://mediamatters.org/items/200704040004


and, he's a trustee at the 'bi-partisan' Aspen Institute, yet another tax-exempt corporate-supported 'think tank' (where Prince Bandar bin Sultan, Former Saudi Ambassador to the United States, is a Lifetime Trustee; oh, look, there's Madeleine K. Albright, what'cha you hanging with this crowd? and, where 'new democrat' Simon Rosenberg became a Fellow - it's such a small world) ... and, has his own private equity investment company (just like Carlyle and Blackstone), Thayer Capital Partners http://www.thayercapital.com/ (Jack Kemp is a Thayer 'advisor')

Frederic V. Malek
Washington, D.C.
http://www.georgebushfoundation.org/bush/asp/OverView/Trustees.asp

Frederic V. Malek
Chairman
Thayer Capital Partners
http://www.aspeninstitute.org/site/c.huLWJeMRKpH/b.612063/k.AE55/Board_of_Trustees.htm

Frederic V. Malek

Frederic Malek is founder and Chairman of Thayer Capital Partners, a Washington, D.C. based merchant bank that focuses on management buyouts and is also Chairman of Thayer Hotel Investors, a hotel investment company. Mr. Malek has had careers in government, business and politics. He has served as Special Assistant to the President of the United States, Deputy Director of the U.S. Office of Management and Budget, and Ambassador to the Economic Summit of Major Industrialized Nations. He is a past President of Marriott Hotels and Resorts, was President and Vice Chairman of Northwest Airlines, and part owner with President Bush of the Texas Rangers Baseball Club. He has periodically taken time from business to assist in political campaigns and was Director of the 1988 Republican National Convention and campaign manager for former President Bush in 1992.




Fred Malek received his 15 minutes of fame in the 1970s as deputy director of CREEP (Committee to Re-elect the President), the Nixon White House operation behind Watergate. Unlike many of his former associates, Malek walked--but not out of Washington. After lying low for a time, he made his political comeback as a leader in the Republican Party in the late 1980s, only to resign as deputy chairman of the Republican National Committee in 1988 when an ugly incident from his past came to light: At Nixon's behest, he had drawn up a list of Jews in the Bureau of Labor Statistics, where Nixon thought a "Jewish cabal" was out to get him. Nonetheless, Malek rebounded yet again in 1992 as campaign manager for the Bush/Quayle ticket.

... Malek once wrote a most explicit description of political influence. In a briefing paper on the federal budget to Nixon in 1972, Malek asserted: "All major grants and construction decisions for the next fiscal year were reviewed prior to the finalization of the budgets to ensure to the extent possible they impacted on politically beneficial areas."

http://www.motherjones.com/news/special_reports/coinop_congress/96mojo_400/malek.html

[xxqqqzme]

29. It just makes you shake your head in

utter amazement & disbelief. Try as they might these evil old, white, male fuckers are gonna die and their legacies will whither 'n die w/ them.



Oh wait, isn't there some old saying about the evil men do lives after them and the good dies w/ them....or something like that? I can't remember...

[Morgana LaFey]

18. And NOW we know the REAL reason for

Bush's insistance that the new Homeland Security Department not have Civil Service. So much the easier to politicize EVERY level of employment within the entire agency. I actually realized that at the time, but this makes it quite clear and quite stark that it was an organized plan, not just an instinct.

[peacetalksforall]

24. For over a decade I have written 'exquisitely orchestrated' in

reference to the tricks, agenda, tactics, strategies, communicatins of the Republicans - a vast cast to orchestrate and it has been an amazing success. Maybe now we'll get to see some of the 'how'.

[Morgana LaFey]

28. It has been exquisitely orchestrated, and very, very crafty, hasn't it

And soooooooo damned easy with asleep-at-the-wheel Dems in power, and a complicit press.

[ourbluenation]

20. it's like donald segretti, on steroids. n/t

[peacetalksforall]

21. With a friend like Malek, you get to talk face to face.

Malek working for McCain. Malek - friend of George, the Jr.

"He joined George W. Bush's syndicate to purchase the Rangers, he went on the board of the American-Israel Friendship Society, he took over Northwest Airlines, and he started an investment firm, Thayer Capital Partners." Taken from below:

"April 05, 2007
Fred Malek -- who counted Jews in the BLS for Nixon -- Named McCain Co-Chair; report Media Matters and The Nation

Media Matters for America and The Nation are reporting that the McCain campaign has hired Fred Malek as its national finance co-chairman. Malek was dispatched by President Nixon to count the number of Jews working at the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) after Nixon accused a "cabal" of Jews at BLS of skewing economic numbers to harm the image of the administration.

From Timothy Noah in Slate:

It's one of the more gothic stories about Nixon related in Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein's The Final Days. As they tell it, late in 1971—the same year, coincidentally, that the Washington Senators moved to Texas and changed their name to the Rangers—Nixon summoned the White House personnel chief, Fred Malek, to his office to discuss a "Jewish cabal" in the Bureau of Labor Statistics. The "cabal," Nixon said, was tilting economic figures to make his Administration look bad. How many Jews were there in the bureau? he wanted to know. Malek reported back on the number, and told the President that the bureau's methods of weighing statistics were normal procedure that had been in use for years.

In 1988, when George Bush père installed Malek as deputy chairman for the Republican National Committee, Woodward dusted off his notes and, with the Washington Post's Walter Pincus, further revealed that two months after Malek filed a memo on the matter—he'd counted 13 Jews, though his methodology was shaky—a couple of them were demoted. (Malek denied any role and said Nixon's notions of a "Jewish cabal" were "ridiculous" and "nonsense.") The 1988 story raised a predictable ruckus, and Malek beat a hasty retreat from the RNC. As exiles go, Malek's was pretty painless. He still got to run the 1988 Republican Convention (and in 1992 he would be Bush père's campaign manager). He joined George W. Bush's syndicate to purchase the Rangers, he went on the board of the American-Israel Friendship Society, he took over Northwest Airlines, and he started an investment firm, Thayer Capital Partners."

http://njdc.typepad.com/njdcs_blog/2007/04/fred_malek_who_.html

[peacetalksforall]

23. ... take a look at this gossip ....

" ...and, when he was younger, got arrested for killing, skinning, and barbecuing a dog."

http://www.prospect.org/csnc/blogs/tapped_archive?month=04&year=2007&base_name=post_3347

[Swamp Rat]

22. k&r

[peacetalksforall]

25. There seem to be plenty of sites that contain both Sybil Edmonds and Malek

- can someone who is an expert on Edmonds say a litle about the connecton?

[BrklynLiberal]

26. Nothing about this crew surprises me..but it still does sicken me.

[KT2000]

27. This nation needs a bath!

It is just covered in slime.
Impeach we must.

[AuntPatsy]

30. I think it's pretty obvious why none of them are honestly being held accountable for their crimes,

it may look that way when charges are brought but they never seem to actually pay the price do they? Is our justice system so corrupted already that we cannot even hope for justice to prevail or that the dems can actually aid in assuring that justice be served? If they already own the courts they how do people expect any of the dems to actually move forward in serving justice in this country?

[meowomon]

31. The Dems in Congress are too chicken to impeach

And the rethuglicans are too evil to impeach one of their own.

[RUMMYisFROSTED]

32. Common denominator: Cheney.