Huffington Post: White House Email Trail Grows Cold With Death Of Bush IT Expert

[Hissyspit]

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/rebecca-abrahams/white-house-email-trail-g_b_152965.html

Rebecca Abrahams
Posted December 22, 2008 | 06:21 PM (EST)

White House Email Trail Grows Cold with Death of Bush IT Expert

How many licks does it take to get to the Tootise Roll center of a Tootsie Pop? The world may never know...

For those of you who remember the famous 1969 animated Tootsie Roll commercial -- the wise old owl's line is indeed applicable to the missing White House emails -- the world may never know.

Unfortunately, this holds true more than ever with the untimely death of Bush IT guru Mike Connell. Connell was killed this past Friday while attempting to land his private plane three miles outside Akron-Canton Airport. Connell, 45, was the only soul onboard the aircraft. The accident is under investigation.

- snip -

The AP failed to mention that Connell was also the chief architect of George W. Bush election websites including GeorgeWBush.com and GWB43.com -- the primary email account used by Karl Rove during his tenure as Senior White House Advisor. Connell's company, GovTech Solutions, was responsible for building and managing congressional email servers and firewalls, including websites for the House Judiciary Committee, Financial Services, Ways and Means and Administration Committees. Connell also managed the servers for former Ohio Secretary of State Kenneth J. Blackwell in 2004.

Mike Connell had also been subpoenaed to testify in an Ohio lawsuit regarding his knowledge of vote rigging and the outsourcing of the vote count to Smart Tech servers in Chatanooga, Tennessee before they were rerouted back to Blackwell's office during the 2004 election. The same SmartTech servers were also used to run Connell's GeorgeWBush.com and GWB43.com websites.

Ohio attorneys Cliff Arnebeck and Bob Fitrakis were banking on Connell's testimony to substantiate their racketeering case against Karl Rove for alleged criminal wrongdoing in the 2004 election.

In a telephone interview on August 2, 2008, Arnebeck told me:

Mike Connell comes into play because he has been a common instrument in many facets of Rove's activity that we see as a criminal enterprise. He comes into play in Florida in work in 2000 and it is not clear to me what he is doing. But if you are in the State system, you've got a strategic asset to be in the system during an election and whether that is in terms of any of this Choicepoint business or any vote counting or registration data base, I don't know the answer to it but he was in the system. In 2004 he was doing web and server hosting in Chatanooga, Tennesee for the Ohio vote in the general election of 2004.

Arnebeck added:

Connell, in an oversight capacity of data processing and is in a position to tell us as a witness how things relate to another and to tell us where there may have been opportunities where corrupt activity may have been in play.
With respect to Connell's knowledge about the missing emails, Arnebeck referred to Connell's 2006 meeting with cyber security expert Stephen Spoonamore. Arnebeck said, "My understanding is that there was there was a conversation in which Mr. Connell asked about data destruction and the conversation was terminated when Spoonamore said 'if you're talking about White House emails, I will not talk about this -- discussion is over.' Connell then knowing that destruction would be illegal -- may have proceeded to destroy, although I do not know that, it could be that he went back to Rove or an intermediary to say that it would create a legal problem and Rove would then have gotten someone else to take care of data destruction. We just don't know."

One thing is certain, Arnebeck was concerned about Connell's security and said:

- snip -

One of the steps Arnebeck was referring to was a July 24, 2008 email to US Attorney General Michael Mukasey warning of Rove's threats against Connell:

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[drm604]

1. K&R

:kick:

[gordianot]

2. Who wants to bet nothing is ever really investigated on the Federal level

If someone were to give Rove a dirty look they would be investigated. I am curious to see how the incoming Obama administration handles these anomalies.

[The Backlash Cometh]

3. If this IT specialist was worth his salt,

he would have programmed a virus to go forth and multiply if he didn't get back within 24 hours to type in a code word.

White Rabbit

[Swamp Rat]

4. Mission accomplished