Black Box: Chuck Hagel suddenly "finds" disclosure document

[BevHarris]

Okay, so it wasn't on Open Secrets (http://www.opensecrets.org) with all the other disclosure documents. And it wasn't on Political Money Line (http://www.tray.com). And it wasn't in the records room for the Senate Ethics Committee when reporter Alex Bolten of "The Hill" went looking for it. And Hagel's staff never came up with it when Bolten asked about it last January. And no one mentioned it to the Seattle Times reporter this week when he asked about Hagel's disclosure documents when he first ran for the U.S. Senate in 1996.

No, and no one at Hagel's office would talk to me or return my phone calls. And Hagel's office never took issue with my statement that he had lied on his disclosure documents and failed to mention that he held the position of chairman at American Information Systems (now ES&S).

But now, today, suddenly, in response to follow ups by Keith Erwin, the Seattle Times reporter writing a story, Chuck Hagel's office found a document that they say shows he made full disclosure. They found this document in response to a story the Seattle Times was preparing about, among other things, his reluctance to disclose his ties to the voting company.

Here are the facts about his nondisclosure:

1) He won the 1996 contest with the biggest upset, nationwide, of the year, according to the Washington Post.

2) He quit as chairman of AIS (now called ES&S) on March 15, 1995. He announced his candidacy for the U.S. Senate 15 days later.

3) Candidate disclosure documents require listing every position held, every salary paid, every stock held or transferred. His 1995 candidate statement failed to list that he was Chairman of AIS in 1994 and 1995, and failed to list that he was CEO of AIS in 1994. All of his disclosures have failed to mention that he owned stock in AIS Investors Inc., a group of owners of the voting machine company.

4) This new document, which he says was filed in 1995, lists his position with AIS as chairman, but leaves out his position as CEO, and fails to list his stock in AIS Investors Inc.

The Seattle Times reporter asked me if this changes my thinking on Hagel. I said yes, it does, and if the documents are genuine it shows that he only omitted SOME of the critical information on his first 1995 statement, but he still omitted ALL of the critical information on his 1995 statement that is on file on Open Secrets.

I said I'll give him the benefit of the doubt that the newly found document is legitimate. I will adjust the Black Box Voting web sites soon with the new information, and catch the edit on the book page proofs immediately. And I'll characterize Hagel as dodgy rather than a liar.

As for the rest of you, you can draw your own conclusions. :eyes:

Bev Harris
http://www.blackboxvoting.org

[ewagner]

1. Bev

You are a wonder!

:toast:

[ParanoidPat]

2. LOL! Took him long enough!

:evilgrin: Hmmm, wonder why he 'found' it all of a sudden! :shrug: :)

[RedEagle]

5. How to Proof That Document

Is there any way to do that? Show that it's not 8 year old paper? I'd still give people the list of places that it WASN'T to be found. If it was supposed to be on file, how come it wasn't?

Do they keep the original filings on other mediums there in D.C.?

And if that was disclosed back in 1995, don't you think his opponent would have raised a stink about it?

Stink is the right word for this.

[BevHarris]

3. Latest news: Hagel Says He Would Consider Cabinet Post

Omaha Channel.com, NE - Aug 8, 2003
http://www.theomahachannel.com/news/2392627/detail.html

If offered, Nebraska Sen. Chuck Hagel says he would seriously think about swapping the title senator for secretary. A Republican, Hagel said if President Bush were to ask him to serve in a Cabinet-level position after the 2004 election, he would give it considerable thought.

But he told the Scottsbluff Star-Herald that George W. Bush has to get re-elected first and Hagel said, "I don't think that's a given."

Hagel was re-elected last year to a second six-year term. He says he is content being a senator and that is the best place he can serve his Nebraska constituents.

[ozymandius]

6. Which members of the cabinet are at the chopping block? n/t

[ParanoidPat]

7. How does taking a Cabinet position affect....

....Presidential pardons? :shrug: :evilgrin:

[SharonAnn]

4. For heaven's sake! "Dodgy" rather than a liar

ROTFL.

Just getting ready to sign off and go to bed. This'll put me there with smiles!

[Eloriel]

8. And let's not forget ...

So interesting that I was just going over this tonight. Here's a wonderful article on Hagel and other issues:

"If You Want To Win An Election, Just Control The Voting Machines"
Thom Hartmann, February 26, 2003
http://www.guerrillanews.com/corporate_crime/doc1126.html

Maybe Nebraska Republican Chuck Hagel honestly won two U.S. Senate elections. Maybe it's true that the citizens of Georgia simply decided that incumbent Democratic Senator Max Cleland, a wildly popular war veteran who lost three limbs in Vietnam, was, as his successful Republican challenger suggested in his campaign ads, too unpatriotic to remain in the Senate. Maybe George W. Bush, Alabama's new Republican governor Bob Riley, and a small but congressionally decisive handful of other long-shot Republican candidates really did win those states where conventional wisdom and straw polls showed them losing in the last few election cycles.

Perhaps, after a half-century of fine-tuning exit polling to such a science that it's now sometimes used to verify how clean elections are in Third World countries, it really did suddenly become inaccurate in the United States in the past six years and just won't work here anymore. Perhaps it's just a coincidence that the sudden rise of inaccurate exit polls happened around the same time corporate-programmed, computer-controlled, modem-capable voting machines began recording and tabulating ballots.

But if any of this is true, there's not much of a paper trail from the voters' hand to prove it.
You'd think in an open democracy that the government - answerable to all its citizens rather than a handful of corporate officers and stockholders - would program, repair, and control the voting machines. You'd think the computers that handle our cherished ballots would be open and their software and programming available for public scrutiny. You'd think there would be a paper trail of the vote, which could be followed and audited if a there was evidence of voting fraud or if exit polls disagreed with computerized vote counts.

You'd be wrong.

The respected Washington, DC publication The Hill has confirmed that former conservative radio talk-show host and now Republican U.S. Senator Chuck Hagel was the head of, and continues to own part interest in, the company that owns the company that installed, programmed, and largely ran the voting machines that were used by most of the citizens of Nebraska.

Back when Hagel first ran there for the U.S. Senate in 1996, his company's computer-controlled voting machines showed he'd won stunning upsets in both the primaries and the general election. The Washington Post (1/13/1997) said Hagel's "Senate victory against an incumbent Democratic governor was the major Republican upset in the November election." According to Bev Harris of www.blackboxvoting.com, Hagel won virtually every demographic group, including many largely Black communities that had never before voted Republican. Hagel was the first Republican in 24 years to win a Senate seat in Nebraska.

Six years later Hagel ran again, this time against Democrat Charlie Matulka in 2002, and won in a landslide. As his hagel.senate.gov website says, Hagel "was re-elected to his second term in the United States Senate on November 5, 2002 with 83% of the vote. That represents the biggest political victory in the history of Nebraska."

What Hagel's website fails to disclose is that about 80 percent of those votes were counted by computer-controlled voting machines put in place by the company affiliated with Hagel. Built by that company. Programmed by that company.

(more)

AND, here's the article in The Hill discussing the RESIGNATION of the Director of the Senate Ethics Committee: http://www.thehill.com/news/012903/hagel.aspx

Hagel’s ethics filings pose disclosure issue
By Alexander Bolton

On May 23, 1997, Victor Baird, who resigned Monday as director of the Senate Ethics Committee, sent a letter to Sen. Charles Hagel requesting “additional, clarifying information” for the personal financial disclosure report that all lawmakers are required to file annually.

Among other matters, Baird asked the Nebraska Republican to identify and estimate the value of the assets of the McCarthy Group Inc., a private merchant banking company based in Omaha, with which Hagel had a special relationship.

Hagel had reported a financial stake worth $1 million to $5 million in the privately held firm. But he did not report the company’s underlying assets, choosing instead to cite his holdings as an “excepted investment fund,” and therefore exempt from detailed disclosure rules.

Questioned by The Hill, several disclosure law experts said financial institutions set up in the same fashion as the McCarthy Group Inc. do not appear to meet the definition of an “excepted investment fund,” — at least as the committee had defined the category until Monday.


(more)

Jerk. MORE Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them, or something like that.

Eloriel

[stevedeshazer]

9. Wow.

I have to take a shower now after reading that!

[Rex]

10. What ever happened to business ethics?

nt

[arcane1]

11. makes you woner what else they would "find" if they tried

fine work!

:toast:

I met 2 people tonight who knew all about the BBV issue but had never heard of DU before.. not sure how they found out but one of them was in IT and they had seen the Johns Hopkins study

[dusty64]

12. And yet not a word of

this in the corporate media. I find ES&S just as sinister as Diebold, especially its "christian" reconstructionist ties. Didn't hagel "win" black Democratic strongholds that have never "voted" rethug before? His opponent has some very interesting things to say about all this, maybe I can find the links about that later (short of time right now.)