National
News
"Theft
of the Presidency"
BBC-TV Newsnight
Thursday, February
15, 2001
by Greg Palast
View
the full video here.
GREG PALAST: Washington, the marine band plays
'Hail to the Chief' for George W Bush, 43rd
President of the United States. But in Florida,
some are singing 'Hail to the Thief'.
COUNTRY SONG: After hundreds of lies
Fake alibis
PALAST: We are coming into Tallahassee. We want
to know whether George W Bush won the election
or did brother Jeb steal it for him? Our
investigation suggest the answer lies in this
shuttered building and in a very expensive
contract between Governor Jeb's division of
elections and a private company named DBT, which
accidentally wiped off the voter rolls thousands
of Democratic voters. 18th floor division of
elections, we have come to ask Mr Clayton
Roberts, the director, a few questions. Roberts
agreed to talk, but became a bit uncomfortable
when he learned that we had obtained the secret
DBT contract, and asked him if he knew what DBT
were up to.
CLAYTON ROBERTS: Florida Director of Elections
No, I didn't ask DBT. They do what we contract
them to do. We have a statute that says we have
to have a private company to do this. We put it
out for bid, we put it out for bid, and I think
I'm done with this interview.
PALAST: Let me just show you the contract if I
could Mr Roberts. It says here in the contract
that the verification is supposed to be done by
DBT. That you paid them $4 million. It could
look to others don't you think that you paid $4
million to purchase this election for the
Republican party. 95% wrong on the felon list.
Mr. Roberts, could you answer the question
regarding the contract... Instead, Mr Roberts
called out State troopers. It's interesting
here?
STATE TROOPER: Oh, man! Never a dull moment.
PALAST: I don't know why he had to call the
police. We hadn't gotten to our difficult
questions yet! The difficult questions are: Did
Governor Jeb Bush, his Secretary of State
Katherine Harris, and her Director of Elections,
Clayton Roberts, know they had wrongly barred
22,000 black, Democrat voters before the
elections? After the elections did they use
their powers to prevent the count of 20,000
votes for the Democrats? The Democrats say the
answers to both questions are yes.
COMMISSIONER: In any other country in the world,
if this had occurred, there probably would have
been riots or military troops throughout the
streets.
PARTY CHAIRMAN: Al Gore won the election. He won
the popular vote and he won the vote in Florida.
I think that that's pretty clear.
VOTER: It wasn't done fairly. They shouldn't
allow you to contest an election then give you
no way to contest it.
LEGISLATOR: Jeb Bush promised his brother he was
going to deliver Florida. I believe the
Republicans strategy was at all costs we deliver
Florida.
CAMPAIGNER: Were people taken out of polls and
stopped from voting? Yes, I think that was not
right. I smell a rat!
PALAST: This is Database Technologies. This is
the company that the state of Florida hired to
remove the names of people who committed serious
crimes from the voter lists. I have obtained a
document marked "confidential and trade
secret". It says the company was paid
millions of dollars to make telephone calls to
verify they got the right names - but they
didn't. There is nothing in the state of Florida
files that says they made these telephone calls.
So the question remains, why did the Republican
leaders of this state pay millions for a list
that stopped thousands of innocent Democrats
from voting? The first list from DBT included
8,000 names from Texas supplied by George Bush's
state officials. They said they were all felons,
serious criminals barred from voting. As it
turns out, almost none were. Local officials
raised a ruckus and DBT issued a new list naming
58,000 felons. But the one county which went
through the whole expensive process of checking
the new list name by name found it was still 95%
wrong. Reverend Willie Whiting was one of those
removed from voter roles after DBT wrongly
labelled him a serious criminal.
REVEREND WILLIE WHITING: I have never spent a
night in jail.
PALAST: Were you ever busted?
More....
Click here
to read more or here
to view a video based on this report. Both links
take you to externals websites.
http://www.gregpalast.com
or www.viciouspit.com
Article © 2001
Greg Palast.
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