Rove's IT Guru Warned of Sabotage Before Fatal Plane Crash; Was Set to Testify

By Amy Goodman, Democracy Now!. Posted December 22, 2008.

MCM: Well, specifically, there's a computer architecture setup called "Man in the Middle," which involves shunting the election returns from, you know, the state in question -- in this case, Ohio -- shunting them to a separate computer elsewhere. All of the election returns in Ohio in 2004 went from the Secretary of State's website -- this is Ken Blackwell -- to a separate computer in a basement in Chattanooga, Tennessee, which was under the control of another private company called SMARTech.

So we have now two private companies: GovTech Solutions, which is Connell's company, SMARTech, which is run by a guy named [Jeff] Averbeck. And the company -- the third private company that managed the voting tabulators in Ohio was called Triad. All three of these companies worked closely together on election night in Ohio in 2004. It turns out that the state's own IT person was sent home at 9:00 p.m. They said, "Go ahead. Go home. We'll take care of this." So that this trio of highly partisan and, let me add, Christianist companies basically took over the whole --

AG: What do you mean, "Christianist"?

MCM: Well, they're radical theocratic activists, particularly -- particularly Triad and SMARTech. You know, they are fervently anti-choice.

AG: Well, Mike Connell was, in fact -- many said that's what motivated him through all of this, his fierce anti-abortion stance.

MCM: He told -- Connell told Spoonamore that one of the primary reasons why he helped Bush-Cheney steal elections was to save the babies. I do think, though, that we have to draw a distinction between Connell, on the one hand, and the Averbeck and the Rapp family, on the other hand, because Connell was far less ferocious in his political views. He was an ardent anti-abortionist, it's true, but he wasn't quite as hardcore as the others. And in fact, you know, he was a little bit alienated from the others, and that's one of the reasons why he was inclined to talk, and so on.

But the fact is, to answer your question, that on election night in 2004, it had been Connell, with these other two companies working with him, who had managed the computer setup, enabling Ken Blackwell to study the maps of precincts and voter turnout very carefully and figure out how many votes they need. By shunting the data to Chattanooga, they kind of slowed down the data stream.

AG: Wasn't Karl Rove's email also there in Chattanooga on some of these servers?

MCM: Yes, yes. The same servers were used to host a whole bunch of highly partisan websites. And also, indeed, Karl Rove's emails were on that server, too.

AG: That have gone missing.

MCM: That have gone missing. Incidentally, Stephen Spoonamore, again, the whistleblower who's the one who named Connell, has told us -- and I've seen his own contemporary notes --

AG: And explain again who he was. Why was he in a position to whistleblow?

MCM: Stephen Spoonamore is a conservative Republican, a former McCain supporter and a very prominent expert at the detection of computer fraud. He's the star witness in the Ohio lawsuit, right, in which Connell was involved. He has done extensive work of this kind, involving computer security, and had therefore worked with Connell, knew Connell personally and knew a lot of the people who were involved in the sort of cyber-security end of the Bush operation.

Despite his conservatism -- or I suppose some would say because of it -- he's a man of principle -- I mean, believes in the Constitution. He believes elections should be honest. He's the one who came forward and named Connell.

And I have seen his notes of a conversation in which Connell asked Spoonamore how one would go about destroying White House emails. To this, Spoonamore said, "This conversation is over. You're asking me to do something illegal." But clearly, clearly -- this is the important point -- Mike Connell was up past his eyeballs in the most sensitive and explosive aspects of this crime family that, you know, has been masquerading as a political party.

AG: And what did Fitrakis, the attorney who has brought the suit with Harvey Wasserman, the Ohio lawsuit, learn in the deposition of Mike Connell in the day before the election, which hardly got attention, considering it was the day before this historic election?

MCM: Yeah. Harvey wasn't part of it. Harvey writes articles with Bob. It's Bob Fitrakis and Cliff Arnebeck are the attorneys. They learned very little. What they learned was that Bush-Cheney lawyer who accompanied Connell to the deposition was watching the whole thing like a hawk, repeatedly objected to questions. Connell was stonewalling like crazy at this deposition.

They only learned one thing. And that was, they got confirmation that it was Connell who brought these other private companies into the arrangement, in addition to his own GovTech Solutions. Again, there was Triad and SMARTech. It was Connell who brought those three companies into one unit, so that the three of them were, in effect, handling Ohio's election returns on election night under Connell's supervision. That's what we learned.

See more stories tagged with: dick cheney, voter fraud, karl rove, george w. bush, michael mukasey, bob fitrakis, michael connell, velvet revolution, cliff arneback, mark crispin miller

Amy Goodman is the host of the nationally syndicated radio news program, Democracy Now!

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