Bingo Trial: The Geddie Charge

The following is something I wrote for my web-page not long after the bingo indictments came down. It's an analysis of the "obstruction of justice" charge against lobbyist Bob Geddie. As far as I can tell, nothing has occurred on this part of the case to significantly alter what I wrote back in October. In all, Geddie faces, in addition to the obstruction charge, one count of conspiracy, one count of federal program bribery,  and 11 counts of honest services mail and wire fraud. 
Also, Geddie took a leave from Fine & Geddie not long after being indicted.

Bob Geddie

       In my few encounters with Bob Geddie I've found him a friendly, easygoing man -- a tall, tanned, nice looking and nattily-dressed guy who seems to have it all. He and his partner, Joe Fine, head the state's most successful lobbying firm. Ethics disclosures show that Fine Geddie & Associates represents almost 50 clients before the legislature. That list includes political powerhouses like the Alabama Nursing Home Association, Alabama Power, Alfa Insurance, and AT&T. Those are just some of A's. Get into the B's and you've got Blue Cross, and so on and so on.

       Fine & Geddie also represents Milton McGregor's dog-tracks.

       First, the background to the charge, as laid out in the indictment:

       In mid-February (2010), McGregor called a member of the state house of representatives identified in the indictment as, "Legislator 3."

       McGregor hadn't spoken to #3 in two years, and the lawmaker was of the belief that McGregor had backed his opponent in a previous election.

          #3 -- reportedly Republican Barry Mask of Wetumpka -- returned McGregor' call. During the conversation, the latter offered "significant

campaign contributions (to Mask) in return for a favorable vote (by Mask) on bingo legislation."

        If that's an accurate description of McGregor's offer, it was an illegal one -- with McGregor directly connecting contributions with official action. That's called a "quid pro quo" -- Latin for, "something for something." Doesn't matter if he's offering cash stuffed in a brown bag or political donations. It's against the law either way.

         McGregor noted that it wouldn't be in the Republican's political interest for it to be known that he accepted campaign contributions from

the gaming industry. This was a problem easily solved, McGregor said.

         "I can get you significant help in your campaign not from me, from people that I have a great working relationship with, business type people. That some of them that you could never get by yourself.”

       Mask asked if the contributions would be in the apparently wimpy “500 or a couple of thousand” dollars range.

      "Oh no," answered McGregor. "I said significant help. . . . I can and will get you significant help from people that fall in this category. That’s

the commitment I’ll make to you right now and it’s as good as, as, as, as any commitment you will ever get. I will do it, and I will prove it to you.”

       The presentation of McGregor's verbiage in the indictment -- especially the awkward, "as good as, as, as, as any commitment" bit -- suggests

that Mask, apparently suspicious of any call from McGregor, taped the call himself, on his own and prior to contacting the FBI and wearing a wire

as part of the investigation. That's speculation, but seems likely given the situation as described in the indictment.

       During the call, Mask presented McGregor with an opportunity to get started on the promise. He told McGregor that he was holding a

fund-raiser that very evening.

      Soon after hanging up with Mask, McGregor telephoned Geddie. He told the lobbyist about Mask's fundraiser and asked him to attend. Geddie

showed up that evening bearing two checks, both for $2,500, and both from political action committees (PACs) operated by Fine & Geddie.

      The next day, McGregor called Mask to apologize for missing the fundraiser, but made sure the lawmaker knew that Geddie had attended on

his behalf and that he was the source of the PAC money.

     That's the backdrop for the meat of the obstruction/cover-up charge against Geddie.

      Soon after the Mask fundraiser, Geddie -- as described in the indictment -- directed an employee of his firm to "record the two checks he delivered to Legislator 3 as attributable to MCGREGOR in a contribution ledger maintained by GEDDIE’s lobbying business."

         From this, we can infer that the FBI questioned the unidentified employee and, one supposes reluctantly, the employee revealed that directive

and another from Geddie.

        A point to keep in mind: Lying to the FBI/federal prosecutors and/or providing false records in response to a subpoena can land you in jail even if you had nothing to hide and wouldn't otherwise have faced charges.

        Fast forward to April 1 (2010). That's the day it became publicly known that the Justice Department was investigating the use of potentially illegal

tactics by the gaming industry to win passage of the bingo legislation. After that day -- and this is made clear in the indictment -- many of the future

defendants, Geddie included, feared that their phones were being tapped and that some legislators might be wearing wires.

       Geddie subsequently directed his employee to alter the contribution ledger to reflect that two other donors were the actual sources of the contributions to Mask, not McGregor.

       According to the indictment, neither of the donors identified on the altered ledger authorized or were aware of the donations to Mask.

      When the feds issued a grand jury subpoena for Fine & Geddie's contribution records Geddie -- according to the indictment -- "caused

to be produced to law enforcement officials the altered contribution ledgers."

     The decision to question Geddie's employee and the donors listed ledgers as having provided the two $2,500 contributions to Mask reflects considerable creativity and attention to detail by the agents/prosecutors working the case.

       The lobbyist obviously did not expect that to happen.

       As a result of that work, the career of Bob Geddie -- a true legend in Montgomery -- could end with a prison sentence for "obstructing justice."

Landfill Lanny's Toxic Tax Cut

The following is a chapter from, "The Governor of Goat Hill"

            “We hear talk of kickbacks at the Capital.”

            -- Secretary of State Don Siegelman, during 1984 press conference in which he cited “hints and rumors of corruption and kickbacks” involving the operations at Emelle, the huge hazardous waste landfills owned by Waste Management.

            “He (Siegelman) said, ‘We’ll get that revenue ruling you want but those bastards are going to pay for it.”

            -- Testimony of Lanny Young, who was paid $500,000 by Waste Management after the Department of Revenue issued a secret ruling slashing the taxes paid at Emelle.

            When old-timers talk about the member of George Wallace’s family who tried hardest to cash in on Wallace’s power, it’s always brother Gerald. Though colorful Gerald gets the attention, two quieter kin -- Wallace’s daughter Bobbie Jo and her husband James Parsons – made the loudest noise at the bank. The Parsons almost certainly made more money from what my father calls “relative ability” than any gubernatorial relatives in Alabama history.

            The Parsons owe their bounty to hazardous waste.

            In 1974, the Environmental Protection Agency identified the area around the tiny Sumter County town of Emelle as among the most suitable sites in the country for a hazardous waste landfills. Emelle, with a population of maybe 100, is in central Alabama, near the Mississippi border. The EPA was drawn to the area for geological reasons. A chalky layer hundreds of feet thick provides what is said to be an impermeable barrier protecting groundwater from waste seepage.

            Clients for hazardous waste landfills include plastics manufacturers, paint makers, chemical companies and other industries that generate waste too toxic for ordinary landfills. As might be expected, such waste poses a graver threat to the

environment, is more heavily regulated, and disposal costs are substantially greater.

            Three years after the EPA report a group of Tennessee businessmen decided to make a go at Emelle. Among their first moves: Recruiting some home-grown relative ability.

            The men invited James Parsons to become a partner and awarded Alabama’s First Son-In-Law a 28-percent share -- more than anyone else in the company. The group incorporated Resource Industries of Alabama, bought a 300-acre tract near Emelle, and applied for the various permits needed before they could build

such a facility.

            Agencies like the Alabama Department of Public Health parted like the Red Sea, delivering the permits for the state’s first and still only hazardous waste landfills. The company never built a landfills. Instead, it sold the land and permits to Chemical Waste Management. The company, a subsidiary of Waste Management (for clarity’s sake that’s how the company will be identified) agreed

to pay Resource Industries 12 percent of the landfill's revenues for 20 years, then one percent a year until the landfill's closure. The Houston-based garbage giant bought an additional 2,400 acres and built the site.

            Emelle generated more money than anyone could have imagined. In its heyday it accepted waste trucked in from more than 40 states, and was the most profitable hazardous waste landfills in the country.

            The value of Parsons’ relative ability was revealed in the 1990s when he and his partners sued Waste Management for fraud. From 1981 through 1995, Emelle generated some $1 billion in revenues. Of that, Waste Management paid Resource Industries $87 million. Based on his 28 percent share, Parsons banked about $24.3 million.

            In the early 1990s, Parsons and his partners discovered that Waste Management had devised a scheme to hide revenues for the purpose of limiting the royalty payments. In 1996, a federal judge ordered the company to pay Resource Industries $91 million. Naturally, this further enriched George Wallace’s daughter

and son-in-law, by another $20 million plus.

            To slightly restate a previously expressed truism, garbage isn’t garbage, it’s money, and the more toxic, the better.

           

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            In the 1980s, Alabama’s secretary of state sought to boost his name recognition and advance his reputation as an ass-kicking man of the people by blasting away at Emelle. It didn’t seem to matter that as the state’s top elections officer, Siegelman had no role whatsoever in the regulation of landfills. He accused Waste

Management of violating environmental laws and bribing lawmakers. Typically, he declined to identify the culprits, allowing him to appear to be going out on a limb without actually doing so.

            During his 1986 campaign for attorney general he upped the ante.
            “The first thing I will do is close that landfills,” he pledged.

            Siegelman was elected, Emelle stayed open.

            Meanwhile, Gov. Guy Hunt developed an antipathy to the landfills he believed was taking too much toxic waste from other states. In 1992 the legislature passed a Hunt-backed bill that dramatically increased the per-ton taxes for such waste, up to $103 per ton for the most toxic substances.

            In 1996 and 1997 Waste Management made a push to lower the taxes. In a series of letters, Montgomery lawyer Tom DeBray argued that since waste brought to the site was treated and rendered less toxic, it should be taxed at the post-treatment toxicity levels. The company wanted the state to slash the levy on the most common classification from $41.60 a ton to $11.60, the rate for its post-treatment toxicity.

            DeBray made his case to Wade Hope, a Revenue Department lawyer responsible for overseeing the hazardous waste tax. In a letter, Hope told DeBray the department didn’t have the authority to make the change. The legislature had passed the law defining the tax classifications, and “only the Legislature can alter

the rate through a change in the statute,” he wrote.

            The company, despite donating generously to lawmakers and employing top lobbyist Johnny Crawford, hadn’t been able to get it done in the legislature.
        After Siegelman’s inauguration, Waste Management dropped Crawford. He was replaced by Austin-Young, the Lanny pairing with Claire Austin. Out as well was DeBray, the company’s long-time Alabama lawyer. He was replaced by the ever-present Ellis Brazeal, attorney for Lanny and Paul Hamrick’s brother-in-law.

            Could the new team, with its near familial bonds with the Siegelman administration, accomplish what the old could not?

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            During my Lanny studies the previous spring I talked to an old source in the garbage business who I will call – because it’s what he laughingly named himself – Deep Dump. He knew the industry upside down and backwards. He’d given me tips in the past and helped me understand the business.

            Deep Dump didn’t care for Lanny. Among other things, he said he had it from impeccable sources that Waste Management paid Lanny some extraordinary sum to win a huge tax break at Emelle. The company had been seeking the tax cut for years, with no luck. It hired Lanny and, boom, the Siegelman administration

made it happen. Crooked as hell, he said.

            Criminal or not, the deal satisfied the criteria for a story, but first I had to prove it.

            One of Lanny’s UCC loan records had seemed to confirm the tip. It showed that Waste Management had loaned Lanny $1 million in May 2000. The loan was collateralized by proceeds from what the loan record called a “consultant arrangement with Chemical Waste Management Inc.”

            Chemical Waste’s only business in Alabama was at Emelle.

            I’d reported the ChemWaste UCC in my June feature on Lanny. The story noted that the UCC didn’t identify the purpose or financial terms of Young’s consulting agreement; and that Waste Management refused to clarify. A spokesman acknowledged Young’s services as a business development consultant

for the company, but beyond that, nothing.

            I called the Revenue Department and was handed off to the agency’s lawyer, Susan Kennedy. I knew nothing of Kennedy at the time. In the coming year I was to learn considerably more about the politically connected attorney who prosecutors later designated an “unindicted co-conspirator” for her part in the tax change.

            Kennedy confirmed that Waste Management won changes in state regulations affecting the Emelle landfills. The department, though, never heard from Young, she said. Lanny, who surprisingly took my call, told readers his work for Waste Management didn’t involve hazardous waste issues. He said he’d had nothing to

do with the tax cut.

            After the feature on Lanny I asked the Revenue Department to let me review the “complete file with regard to regulatory changes made in the summer of 1999 that affected the Emelle landfills.” I sought all correspondence pertaining to the change; “any financial impact analysis performed in relation to the changes (and) any indication that the governor’s office was or was not consulted in relation to the changes.”

            Taxpayer records, whether for individuals or corporations, are, with few exceptions, private. My position was that the tax cut represented a change in the methods used by the state to tax hazardous waste, whether it applied to one company or 50. Such was the basis for my argument that the records should be public.

            The department did not agree.

            Several factors -- Deep Dump’s reliability, the UCC connecting Lanny to Emelle and the fact that there had been a tax cut -- convinced me there was a story. But I’d hit a bunch of dead ends, was busy on other fronts, and, at least for the time being, closed the Emelle file.

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            By late December 2001, I’d been covering the administration for almost a year, not full-time but overtime. There was the amount and complexity of the stories, the competition from the News, and the emotionally draining battle following my verbal bombardment of Rip. I was whipped, with no strong stories in the hopper. Such was my frame of mind when I decided to make one final push on the Emelle story.

            I hoped to determine Lanny’s fee, but short of that, to confirm that Waste Management had hired him for the tax change. If I couldn’t do that there was no story.

            In late December and early January I traded phone calls and e-mails with Sarah Voss, the company’s Houston-based spokesperson. She didn’t take my questions as a personal affront – there was no, “How can you even ask such a thing of a company/politician as fine as (fill in the blank)?” The both of us realized that information decisions were made above her level. It was agreed that I would e-mail my questions, she would pass them up the ladder, then deliver the responses.

            The Lanny-Chemical Waste UCC cited a role in the transaction by Ellis Brazeal’s law firm, which confused me. Voss said Waste Management had retained Walston Wells to work on the tax change and that the firm, with the company’s blessing, had engaged Lanny as “an outside consultant.”

            With that, I had a story. The piece, which ran in early January, began:

            In June 1999, a law firm for the company that operates Alabama’s only hazardous waste landfills hired a friend and major supporter of Gov. Don Siegelman to help win a significant change in the way the state taxes such waste.

            A Mobile Register review shows the change that Clayton L. “Lanny” Young was hired to help bring about has saved the company about $1 million in less than two years.

            “It was for consulting on getting tax relief for this site, and it was contingent upon the success of the issue they had hired him to help with,” Sarah Voss, a spokeswoman for Houston-based Waste Management Inc., said of the arrangement involving Young…

            Voss said Young received one payment from the law firm “that was based on his achievement of the goals set when he was retained.”

            Readers were told that Waste Management declined to provide “copies of the contracts involving the company, the law firm and Young; identify the amount of the payment to him; or say whether Young had been due further payments.”
            By this stage Lanny was radioactive, and the relationship was not one Waste Management was keen on discussing.

            The piece summarized previous reporting on Lanny, and reported two relevant contributions in 1999 to the lottery foundation – $10,000 from Brazeal’s firm and the other, for $50,000, from Waste Management. That latter was to figure

years later in the case against Siegelman.

            Lanny wasn’t to be found, but I had his old statement denying involvement in the tax change, and used it.

            Siegelman’s old friend Jim Hayes was Revenue Commissioner when the change was made and had signed off on it. Hayes, who had since departed the administration, provided a second level of confirmation of Lanny’s efforts on the tax change.

            He said he had never heard of Lanny Young until Nick Bailey called to see if he had met with Young. Brazeal joined Young and did most of the talking, Hayes recalled.

            “They laid out a case that the fees at Emelle were so high that the taxes for the state were dropping precipitously,” said Hayes.

            Brazeal and Young said that if the taxes were lowered, the site would do more business and that would generate increased collections for the state. Hayes agreed to consider the matter, and assigned a department lawyer to the situation.

            Over the next couple of weeks Hayes received periodic calls from Young. He said he had no idea that Lanny was being paid on a contingency basis to get the change made, and was embarrassed and not a little disgusted to learn so when I told him.

            If anything our story presented Waste Management’s request -- that waste brought to Emelle should be taxed at post-treatment toxicity levels – as reasonable. But there’s no shortage of companies, industries and interest groups with compelling arguments for new or altered laws, including tax changes. Generally

they must present their case to the legislature, as difficult, unwieldy and polluted a process as that may be.

            I wanted to show readers that it was different – and worse – for lobbyists to ply their trade at the Revenue Department, as opposed, say, to the highway department. Taxpayers, individual and corporate, often hire lawyers to engage the department in tax disputes, and there’s nothing wrong with that. But lobbyists?

            I called Jim Sizemore, a respected former revenue commissioner, who told readers that during his five years at the agency, lawyers routinely represented clients with tax disputes, accountants did as well, but never once could he recall

a lobbyist doing so.

            Subsequent records dispelled one of the primary justifications for the change: the prediction that lower taxes would make Emelle more competitive, generate more business, and produce greater revenues for the state. In the first four years

after the change, the state took in more than $1 million less in revenues from Emelle than from the prior period.

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            Six months after the story, in late July 2002, the Dansby lawsuit – one of the two Lowndes County cases against Lanny and Waste Management brought by Susan Copeland and Doyle Fuller -- produced public records gold. Copeland, God bless her, had filed a portion of a transcript from a court hearing during which Lanny’s fee for the Emelle change was divulged.

            It was $500,000.

            How many years, dear reader, did it or will it take you to make $500,000?

            How many hours might you put in before hitting the half-million dollar mark?

            The fee was grotesquely excessive and decidedly story-worthy. The money originated in Houston, at Waste Management; was transferred to Walston Wells’ account in Birmingham; and from there to Goat Hill, Ala., and into Lanny Young’s bank account.

            Walston Wells, while not a large firm, is prominent, very Republican respectable. The firm, it seemed clear, had acted as accessory, as launderer of Waste Management’s dirty money. I suppose the firm looked the other way so it wouldn’t have to see it that way. I felt this was serious enough to go above Brazeal to one of the name partners, Vernon Wells. He said I needed to talk to Ellis, since Waste Management was his client. I called Brazeal. He was polite but nervous. He declined comment, citing attorney-client concerns.

            I called his client, or rather, Sarah Voss. I told her what I’d learned, and that I expected to shortly be in possession of the 1997 correspondence between Tom DeBray and the Revenue Department back in 1997. I e-mailed questions. The main parts are as follows:

           

            That (1997) letter, I’m told, will state that the department determined that only the Legislature could make the change being sought by Chemical Waste. It appears that Chemical Waste then hired Ellis Brazeal and, along with him, Lanny Young, and they

succeeded where DeBray had failed.

            My questions:

            To the ordinary reader, $500,000 will obviously seem like a very considerable sum. Could the company provide, with some degree of specificity, an explanation of what Lanny Young did to assist in this matter?

            Were Young’s personal and political connections with Gov. Don Siegelman and members of his administration, including former Chief of Staff Paul Hamrick, a factor in the decision to hire him?

            Were administration officials involved in the decision, or was it handled completely within the Revenue Department?

            Did anyone recommend to the company that it should hire Young and/or Ellis Brazeal?

            How much has the company saved as a result of the change?

            This story may or may not contain information from a transcript of a separate hearing in the Dansby case, in which it’s stated that Young would have been paid $2 million by Waste Management if he succeeded in negotiating a lower tipping fee at the proposed Lowndes County landfills.

            It may be, though, that this arrangement will be reported in a later story. In the event I include it in this story, I want to go ahead and ask my questions:

            Does Waste Management regularly use consultants and/or companies to handle the permitting and political processes required for new landfills in a way that hides the company’s role in such plans?

            Does Waste Management consider it ethical to off er sums as high as $1 million or $2 million to such companies/consultants in return for their success in lowering tipping fees that Waste Management will later pay to host governments?

            Has Waste Management or its subsidiaries been contacted by law enforcement authorities in connection with the investigation into Lanny Young and members or former members of the Siegelman administration? Has the company been served with subpoenas relating to this investigation?

            Sarah, I guess I’m not giving away any secrets when I say I ask questions that I don’t necessarily expect will be answered. However, as a general practice, I do like to let our readers know that we have asked questions, even when we have not received responses.

            The company declined comment, beyond what it provided back in January. The story reported Lanny’s fee, Waste Management’s failed 1997 attempt to win the change, and summarized the salient points from the first story.

            The AP picked it up and the Birmingham News published an editorial declaring that the “way the change came about, greased by Young’s half-million dollar efforts, smells as bad as any landfills.”

            I’d taken it as far as I could. I couldn’t compel people to talk to me or produce records, but was proud of my efforts and hopeful that, in time, more would come out.

            That time came in 2006, at Siegelman’s trial.

            Claire Austin testified that in spring 1999, Young rented a private room at the Vintage Year, an upscale Montgomery restaurant. The purpose was for Lanny and Claire to introduce their Waste Management clients to Alabama’s new governor. Company officials Chuck Campagna and Tom Herrington came to Montgomery to dine with Siegelman, Hamrick and Bailey.

            “In our business, it’s all about who you know and what access you have. That’s a pretty impressive dinner, when you have the governor come by for dinner,” Austin told jurors.

            Hardly a shocking revelation, but it’s through such details that the curtain gets pulled back for ordinary folk.

            Young testified that Waste Management first broached Emelle with him in late 1998 or early 1999, after which he discussed the matter with Bailey, Hamrick and Siegelman. Then, in late June 1999, the company put all its eggs in one basket

and went for it.

            On June 24, Brazeal filed a petition with the Revenue Department. He demanded a refund of more than $4 million in taxes he claimed his client should not have been compelled to pay. His client would sue if the state didn’t return the money; or, a second option, cut the taxes on the most common classification of

waste from $41.60 per ton to $11.60. I believe the petition was filed to alarm Hayes, the commissioner, who was not a tax professional; and to provide political cover to the administration should this

drastic cut in hazardous waste taxes be discovered. The administration could claim –as it subsequently did -- that Waste Management had the state against a wall.

            Maybe the company would have sued, but there’s a big difference between filing a lawsuit and winning one. If the case was so strong, the company should have sued for the refund and the tax cut.

            Four days after threatening to sue, Waste Management entered into its secret arrangement with Lanny.

            Trial exhibits and Young’s testimony cleared up a few things.

            For example: It hadn’t made sense for a paid up contract to serve as collateral for the $1 million loan identified by the UCC. It only made sense if Lanny was due more money. And he was. He was to receive as much as $1.5 million more  – or $2 million total – with the sum depending on the amount Waste Management

saved as a result of the tax change.

            Most interesting was another condition of the contract: From the day of its signing, Lanny had 30 days to get the tax reduced. If he couldn’t deliver in a month, he didn’t get paid.

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            Before our first story, Waste Management said it hired Walston Wells to seek the tax change; that the firm hired Lanny; and the company blessed it. The actual contract, dated June 29, 1999, showed otherwise, that the arrangement was between the company and Lanny, though, “all payments to Young shall be made

through the trust account of Walston, Wells, Anderson & Bains.” The firm was just the conduit for paying Lanny.

            With 30 days to get the job done, Lanny moved fast.

            The day after signing the contract he asked Bailey to set up the meeting with Jim Hayes, and Nick did as asked.

            There was, however, a problem. Wade Hope, the department attorney who oversaw hazardous waste taxes, wasn’t budging from his long-held position that only the legislature could alter the tax, and he said as much to Hayes. “I told him,

‘Commissioner, this is the same thing that’s come up before. We can’t do that,’” Hope testified at trial.

            The administration solved the Hope problem on July 5. That day Siegelman appointed Susan Kennedy, a friend of Hamrick’s and Lanny’s, as the department’s new general counsel. She thus became the first political appointee to serve as the tax agency’s top lawyer in state history. Longtime general counsel Ron Bowden,

who supported Hope on the Emelle matter, was demoted.

            (After the first Emelle story I wrote several pieces on the circumstances of Kennedy’s departure from the Revenue Department. Prior to leaving in June 2001 she arranged millions of dollars in legal contracts for a law school friend, Pam Slate. While still with the department Kennedy formed a two-person law

firm with Slate. The day after she left the tax agency she began billing on the contracts she’d helped direct to Slate. The firm Slate Kennedy LLC was paid $4.6 million by the Revenue Department from those contracts.)

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            In mid-July 1999, Hope, the department lawyer, was summoned to the commissioner’s office for a meeting with Hayes and Kennedy. He restated his position on Emelle. Kennedy told Hope the matter was no longer his to decide. The ruling was going to be made at the commissioner’s office level. She subsequently directed Hope to draft a cover letter to Brazeal informing him that

the department had agreed to cut the taxes.

            At trial, Bailey testified that Siegelman called Hayes and told him that the tax change was important to the administration. The day before the ruling, Lanny met Siegelman at the governor’s office.

            “He said we’ll get that revenue ruling you want but those bastards are going to pay for it,” Lanny testified at trial.

            On that day the lottery vote was less than three months away. Siegelman was obsessed with its passage and was hitting up donors as never before. He told Lanny to tell the folks at Waste Management that he expected the company to donate $50,000 to the lottery foundation.

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            Soon after the meeting with Hope and Kennedy, Hayes, the Revenue chief, authorized the tax cut at Emelle.

            Eleven days later, Waste Management wired $500,000 from Houston to the Walston Wells firm in Birmingham. That same day, Ellis Brazeal signed a Walston Wells check made out to Lanny Young for $500,000.

            Three days later, Young gave some of it back, paying $50,000 to the firm. At trial, prosecutor Steve Feaga asked Young why “Paul Hamrick’s brother-in-law’s law firm” paid him, and not the company.

            “That is the method that Waste Management chose to use to get the money to me,” Lanny answered.

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            Shortly after the tax change, Miller Matthews, an Atlanta-based Waste Management executive, asked Young to get him a copy of Siegelman’s resume. Matthews wanted to familiarize himself with Siegelman before calling the governor. Lanny procured a resume from Siegelman and faxed it to Matthews.

            On Sept. 7, Lanny escorted Chuck Campagna and another Waste Management official to the lottery foundation headquarters, a home near the mansion that was co-owned by Nick Bailey.

            One of the Waste Management guys handed Siegelman a $50,000 check made out to the foundation. The politician who had years before railed at Waste Management for Emelle-related kickbacks accepted it.

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            On July 15, 1999, Siegelman presented Young with a framed picture of himself. On it was a handwritten note. The picture was introduced into evidence at trial. Lanny was asked to read the note to the jury, and did so.

            It read: “Lanny, You are something. I really appreciate your friendship and look forward to us spending more time together. You are special, Don.”

            One supposes that Siegelman routinely gave friends and supporters autographed pictures of himself with nice notes. What made this keepsake an effective piece of evidence is that July 15 was the same day the Revenue Department issued the ruling slashing the taxes at Emelle.

            

Major award to Villian of "Governor of Goat Hill"

  

Scott Horton, of Harper's

    If there is a villain in my book, "The Governor of Goat Hill," it's not Don Siegelman. The former Alabama governor is, among other things, too nice in person to suit that word. Corrupt, can't answer a question with the truth, and it's his second nature to blame others for acts that were his doing. Still, not a villain. As I embarked upon the final section of the book, called, "The Hoax That Suckered Some of the Top Names in Journalism" -- a truly awful person came to the fore. Scott Horton is as mean-spirited, egregiously insulting and fact retardant as any of the far-right's talking heads. I chose to open that final section with an introductory chapter about him, called, "The Dishonest Broker." (Go here if you wish to read that.)

       In another chapter, "Creative Perjury," I believe I make an air-tight case in support of my opinion that he, well, coached Jill Simpson prior to her testimony before lawyers with the U.S. House of Representatives. (For that chapter, go here.) And here for a rather comical passage from a chapter on the "60 Minutes," report on the Siegelman case. It shows Horton leading the New York Times by the nose and into a reporting disaster that was to require the paper to issue not one but two corrections.

         Two weeks ago, the American Society of Magazine editors gave Horton and Harper's the National Magazine Award for Reporting for a controversial and dubiously reported story by Horton asserting that three prisoners at Guantanamo Bay were murdered by their American captors. Until now, Horton's story was probably best known for the scrutiny it had received. His report, a major piece if true, had been effectively debunked.
           Yesterday (May 23), Alex Koppelman, a former reporter for Salon, and now news editor for AdWeek, published a story called, "A Tall Tale Gets the Prize." Koppelman's piece is a most entertaining read as well as a strongly presented indictment of Horton, Harper's, and the judges who chose Horton's story over  more celebrated pieces in, among others, the New Yorker and Rolling Stone. 
           The following is a rather long chapter in my book explaining how I first became aware of Horton, and our most unusual battle in the pages of a publication called, The Montgomery Independent.
           
           It's long, but I've removed some portions. I think the read pays off and proves, not merely that Horton is a serial fabricator, but that his editors at Harper's know it.

Me v. Horton

       “If just two percent of what Horton reports is true, he qualifi es as one of the greatest investigative reporters of this or any other age, Gilded included. I intend to argue that two percent is at least twice Horton’s average, and that, furthermore, his editors at Harper’s know it.”
    -- Me, in February 2008 story in the Montgomery Independent.


      “Just imagine. I have written 160,000 words about the Siegelman case. I am fairly certain there are some serious mistakes in there. But Eddie writes 7,000 words and finds zip, nadda. Quite a show.”
      -- One of Horton’s comments inserted into that article by Independent publisher Bob Martin.


     Throughout this book I’ve presented what occurred chronologically, not as it happened, but as I discovered it. Not so with this last section on the Free Siegelman movement. The research didn’t commence until February 2008, well after Simpson’s affidavit, her testimony, and so much of the reporting and opining by Horton, Time, the New York Times and others.
    I wasn’t unfamiliar with the subject, just hadn’t dug into it. Was trying to finish the book, after which I intended to bone up on the Simpson nonsense and give it maybe a chapter. This plan changed after the mailman delivered, in late January, that week’s Montgomery Independent.
     Within was a column by Scott Horton that accused Mark Fuller of issuing rulings against Siegelman in return for the Air Force’s award of a 10 year contract worth up to $18.1 million a year to a Colorado-based company called Doss Aviation. This was the company researched a year before by Jill Simpson, and cited
by Scrushy in his failed, belated motion seeking Fuller’s removal from the case.
      Horton’s column, originally published on Harper’s web-site, described what if true would rank as one of the more unusual criminal quid pro quos in American political history. Participants in this enormous scam included a federal judge, Alabama’s governor, officials high and low in the U.S. Air Force, and by necessity,
the White House.


    The Independent is a weekly published by Bob Martin, at the time one of my oldest friends in Montgomery. Bob had despised Siegelman, and routinely pulled my stories off the web and ran them in the Independent. This was fine with me, as it meant more people read them. In return, he gave me a free subscription.
    After Siegelman conceded the 2002 election, Martin wrote the following in his weekly column: “Bob Riley didn’t win the governor’s race. Don Siegelman lost it, and he lost it primarily because of a newspaper reporter named Eddie Curran of The Mobile Register. Curran ferreted out the obnoxious greed of the Siegelman administration. He didn’t get all of it, but he got enough to cost the governor re-election…”
      Accurate assessment or not, it reflected both Bob’s admiration for my work and his feelings toward Siegelman.
     The Independent is well-read in Montgomery in part because of its coverage and commentary on state politics, and I knew that Bob’s decision to publish Horton’s column had to cause Fuller great discomfort.
      Bob later accused me of using him to attack Horton in his pages, and he was right. Bob had published vile garbage about honest people. That needed correcting, and if it required using him, so be it.
      A few months before, Bob had begun re-printing some of Horton’s pieces on the Siegelman case and writing columns that mirrored Horton’s positions. He was trumpeting Jill Simpson’s fantasies in prose as self-righteous as Horton’s, gobbledygook about core American values being trampled upon and such.
     Bob had long ago allowed the Independent to become a forum for his close friend, dog-track owner Milton McGregor. Anyone – judge, governor or lesser politician – who dared take a public act deemed detrimental to McGregor’s gambling interests got
it between the eyes in Bob’s columns. McGregor is a major supporter of Democratic politicians, because in Alabama, taxing the poor through gambling is not only consistent with Democratic principles, but is among the state party’s only objectives. 
      (McGregor, of course, has since been indicted on a host of federal charges alleging bribery of public officials and is set for trial in June.)
        Bob Riley opposes gambling. Therefore, Milton McGregor detests Bob Riley. Consequently, so does Martin and his paper....


      The story that lifted me out of my seat was published in the Independent on Jan. 21, 2008. Martin presented it under the double headlines: “Siegelman’s judge’s firm got $18 million contract;” and, sub-head, “The same day he denied Siegelman’s appeal bond.”
       Horton’s column began:
       “The story out of the Frank M. Johnson Federal Courthouse in Montgomery never seems to change. It is a chronicle of abusive conduct by a federal judge who treats his judicial duties with the same level of contempt he retains for the concept of justice itself.
      "His name is Mark Everett Fuller, and according to the sworn account of a Republican operative (Simpson) testifying before Congress, he was handpicked to manage a courtroom drama to destroy Governor Don Siegelman, and to send him off to prison, post-haste. And that’s exactly what he did.”
      The Judiciary Committee’s back-door man (Horton, for reasons explained elsewhere in the book) told his readers that Fuller “sits in
a shadow which has grown progressively more sinister as time passes.” He derided a Fuller-authored motion as “farcical, the sort of thing that any judge would be ashamed to allow see the light of day.” As if that wasn’t enough, Horton piled on some more, saying Fuller’s brief refl ected the work of, “a third-rate legal mind.”
     Horton and Martin knew Fuller couldn’t defend himself. He was a federal judge and the case remained active. He’d presided over the trial with distinction and fairness. If someone wished to question or criticize his rulings, that was one thing. But accusing him of selling rulings for Air Force contracts?
      Horton was operating without boundaries or scruples, and my old friend Bob Martin had lost his. Somebody had to throw himself in front of this runaway bullshit train. I knew the best man for the job, and it was me.


       I had to approach Bob gingerly, to express my opinion of what he and Horton had written without off ending. I told him in an e-mail that I thought the Independent’s treatment of Fuller “most unfair,” and asked if he would permit me to write, without pay, an article addressing the accusations against Fuller. “I anticipate that the Independent will continue publishing Horton and probably
opining against Fuller. I simply would like to present your readers with one article providing another perspective.”
      Bob answered right back, said he’d love to have it.
      Typically, the story took me far longer than I’d anticipated, and was much longer as well, requiring two installments, both long as hell. It’s the rare Horton paragraph that doesn’t contain multiple errors and lies in support of his malicious attacks. These paragraphs required deconstructing, and that, among other things, took time.
      I was already somewhat familiar with Horton, and had read a few of his columns, but not until my self-assigned work for the Independent did I carefully read the stories by Time, the New York Times, and others; Simpson’s affidavit and her congressional testimony; and, by far the most time consuming, Horton’s
output on the Siegelman case.
      I was blown away by what to my mind was and remains, an alarming case of multi-level journalistic fraud. And this was before the “60 Minutes” report and the Judiciary Committee’s April 2008, Horton-flavored report on “selective prosecution.”
      It was while doing that research that I realized my already over-long book on Siegelman was going to get longer.


       The most enjoyable part of the Independent assignment was the writing. Gone were the constraints that prohibited me from tossing off one-liners, from having fun with the writing. I could work at the Mobile Register for 60 years and never get to write: “Of criticisms of Horton’s writing, a deficiency of confidence is not among them. He makes his cases like a good poker player with a bad hand. He bluffs.”
        And a favorite, for its linkage to a man Horton assuredly hates: “Like the obviously embittered, multi-divorced radio host Rush Limbaugh, Horton crosses all lines of civil discourse in his personal attacks. In Horton’s case, that group includes anyone he associates with the imprisonment of Don Siegelman -- or as Horton calls him, America’s number one political prisoner.”
       The first installment was published on Feb. 21, 2008. In it, I disclosed that I was on an unpaid sabbatical from the Register to write a book about the Siegelman scandals. “If anyone should declare I have a conflict in writing this piece, let them. I contacted Bob and asked that I be able to write this, for free, because I
am disturbed and disappointed to see that the Independent had begun running Horton’s columns. However, I applaud Bob for allowing me an opportunity to correct the record, if even only a fraction of it.”
       I wrote that the purpose of the two-part series was to present a rebuttal of the Horton column accusing Mark Fuller of trading rulings for Air Force contracts.
      This, from that first installment:
     
      (Horton’s) article is laden with factual error, innuendo and a level of sourcing that would not be permitted in the lowest rank of newspapers. That it was published under the Internet masthead of Harper’s -- the second oldest magazine in the country -- can
only be seen as an indictment of that publication…
       It is among my hopes that upon finishing this article you will see a different Mark Fuller than has been presented in Horton’s pieces, including those published in the Independent. Perhaps most importantly, I hope that you hold Scott Horton in contempt for the
bully, liar, phony and pompous ass that he is.


       I had to support such bold statements, and did.
       There was no way to address all of Horton’s fabrications, but I plucked out a few good ones. A particularly illustrative example of the Horton methodology involved two different accounts he gave for a trip Bob Riley made to Washington the previous June.
       As it happened, Riley’s trip coincided with Siegelman’s sentencing.
       Horton’s first account of Riley’s trip was published on the afternoon of July 28, just hours after Fuller sentenced Siegelman and sent him straight to prison. The headline on Harper’s web-page was, “Siegelman sentenced; Riley Rushes to Washington.”
      The thrust of the column was, as Horton put it, “the plot involving Karl Rove to ‘take care’ of Siegelman.” He wrote that “sources in the Cullman County GOP” told him that Riley had been “summoned urgently to Washington.”
      Followed by:
      
     Riley told disappointed organizers of the Cullman function that he will meet with Bush Administration officials to discuss damage control relating to the Siegelman case.
     “The sentence will come down today, and they’re very concerned about all the questions about the role Karl Rove played in this prosecution,” the source said.


       If Horton was telling the truth, then:
       • He had at least two secret sources within the GOP organization of a small rural north Alabama county, which is pretty amazing for a New York liberal.

       • Fuller told Karl Rove and Bob Riley ahead of time that he planned to sentence Siegelman straight to prison.
      • Riley blabbed this stunning news to the spy-infested Cullman County Republican leadership.
      Either all of the above are true or, Jill Simpson-like, Horton made the whole thing up.
      That was Version One of Riley’s trip to Washington.
      Version Two appeared in the column written (for Harper's) seven months later and published in the Independent. This time, no mention was made of the emergency summons from Rove to prepare for the feared Siegelman sentencing fall-out. Instead, Riley’s trip was used in service of Horton’s quid pro quo assertion that Fuller ordered Siegelman straight to prison in return for the decision by the United States Air Force to award the big contract to Doss Aviation. Wrote Horton:


       “Now let’s recall that the day after sentencing of Siegelman, Governor Bob Riley suddenly canceled his plans to speak to fellow Republicans in Cullman County, and rushed off to Washington.
      “(Riley) said he was meeting with the Air Force in order to promote the interests of some Alabama companies seeking contracts. True enough. And of the Alabama companies then pushing aggressively for an extremely lucrative multimillion dollar Air Force contract was named Doss Aviation.”



       During the weeks I worked on the story I sent several e-mails to Horton and his editors at Harper’s. In one I noted the two separate purposes for the trip as reported by Horton; and asked “what evidence does Horton proffer to support his allegation that Riley, while in Washington or at any time in his life, lobbied for Doss?”
      As with most conspiracy theories, there was one kernel of truth. Riley had indeed gone to Washington and he did meet with Air Force officials. His trip – and its purpose – was reported at the time in the Alabama press.
     Then, and still, Alabama was engaged in a nationally-publicized battle over one of the largest Air Force contracts ever, worth up to $35 billion. A partnership of Northrop Grumman and France-based EADS was competing against Boeing and would, if it won the contract, build the giant mid-air refueling planes in Mobile.
     Doss Aviation, again, is in Colorado. It was Horton’s story that Riley canceled the Cullman County function to race to Washington to lobby for Doss Aviation; and that Alabama’s governor did so to reward Fuller for nailing Siegelman. No mention was made of Riley’s real purpose – to urge Air Force decision-makers to
pick the Northrop Grumman-EADS team I used a portion of one of my e-mails to Horton and his editors in the Independent, and do so again here:


       Now, I realize that according to Harper’s, Bob Riley is the devil incarnate and a pathological liar. Nevertheless, I felt it would be worthwhile to say nothing of fair to contact the governor’s press office to seek clarifi cation on this matter.
      Of the ‘sources in the Cullman County GOP’ (who told Horton that Riley told them he was summoned by Rove to Washington), Riley spokesman Jeff Emerson said, “Whoever said that, if anyone indeed did, totally made it up.”
      “Riley did not meet with Karl Rove to discuss anything, much less damage control,” Emerson said. He also provided me with Riley’s schedule on that trip which I will be glad to forward it to you should you request it.
      Emerson also said the following: “Governor Riley said that until Doss Aviation was mentioned in connection with the Siegelman trial, he had never even heard of Doss Aviation.”


     Neither Harper’s nor Horton responded when asked to explain either one of the writer’s two different explanations for Riley’s Washington trip.
    In the column run by the Independent, Horton wrote:


     "And shortly after that sentencing (of Siegelman) came down and Governor Riley made his push for fellow Alabamians seeking Air Force contracts, the Bush Administration took an important decision. On October 4, this story appeared on the
HT Media wire:
      RANDOLPH AIR FORCE BASE, Texas, Oct. 4 — The U.S. Air Force has awarded an $18.1 million contract to Doss Aviation Inc., Colorado Springs, Colo., for flight screening for USAF pilot candidates."


       In fact, the contract – the result of a highly competitive bidding process that lasted three years -- was awarded almost two years before. It was simply finalized in October 2007. Horton knew this.
     He’d written about the pilot training contract in a column published two months before that press release in an August 2007 attack piece called, “The Pork Barrel World of Mark Fuller.”
      In that column he quoted from Scrushy’s recusal motion, the one for which Jill Simpson provided research. That motion, and Horton’s column, gave the amount of the contract and when it was awarded – in February 2006, or 20 months before Fuller sentenced Siegelman.
     Horton knowingly misrepresented Bob Riley’s trip to Washington. He then misrepresented the timing of the award of the contract to Doss. Then he connected the two lies to make his ferociously declared quid pro quo accusation against Mark Fuller, Bob Riley, Karl Rove, Air Force contracting officials and everyone
else who by necessity would have to be in on such a deal. All were smeared in the service of burnishing the Siegelman as victim storyline.
       When I called the president of Doss Aviation, he told me that “60 Minutes” had also called. One can only wonder where the CBS news-hounds got the hot Doss tip. I like to think they wasted a lot of time chasing down that and other sham leads sold them by Horton and Team Siegelman.
       For the first time ever I called Mark Fuller. He was polite and acknowledged that he’d read the articles about him by Horton, but said he couldn’t discuss them or anything related to the case. However, he suggested I contact his former law partner, Joe Cassady, which I did.
      Cassady said he’d practiced law with Fuller’s father for more than 30 years.
      When Mark Fuller graduated from law school he joined their small Enterprise firm. Fullers’ father had represented Doss for years and when Mark Fuller joined the firm, Doss became a client of his as well.
      He explained that some time ago Doss split into two companies. One, based in Dothan, makes fire-retardant clothing for emergency personnel. The other, Doss Aviation, provides pilot training, fueling and other aviation-related services.
      Their only connection is some common ownership.
       In 1989, Doss’s owners decided to sell. Mark Fuller encouraged Cassady and others to join him in buying a substantial share of the company. They did so, and the investment turned out well. Upon being appointed to the federal bench Fuller resigned from Doss’s board. He sold shares to decrease his ownership, and ceased
having anything to do with its operations, Cassady and others said.
      As required of federal judges, Fuller has publicly disclosed his outside income, including hundreds of thousands of dollars a year from the Doss companies. His position as a shareholder was no secret during his confi rmation process before the U.S. Senate. Neither Democrats nor Republicans made an issue of his part ownership in this small, uncontroversial company.
      Until federal judges are prohibited from having investments and receiving outside income -- be it from real estate, private companies, mutual funds or what have you – there is nothing remotely unethical about Fuller retaining shares in Doss. Nor, for that matter, did it present any conflict that would have required
him to remove himself from the Siegelman trial.


      While I was working on the story, Harper’s – not its web-site, but the magazine -- published an article by Horton called, “Vote Machine: How Republicans hacked the Justice Department.” It was promoted on the magazine’s cover, and on the flap that Harper’s has historically used to tout the major pieces within.
      I scanned it until I came across Horton’s presentation of the Siegelman case. It was immediately apparent that he and Harper’s didn't limit their fact-retardant ways to the web-site.
     In one four-sentence stretch, Horton listed what he called “several problems” with the prosecution’s case. First, he told readers that Richard Scrushy had backed Bob Riley, not Siegelman, in the 1998 election. Problem: Bob Riley wasn’t a candidate for governor in 1998. Fob James was Siegelman’s Republican opponent.
       Two sentences later, Horton wrote: “And finally, according to his own uncontradicted testimony, Scrushy didn’t even want the appointment.”
       In an e-mail I informed Horton and his editors that Richard Scrushy didn’t testify at trial, so he “didn’t give uncontradicted testimony about anything.” I also told them that there was testimony that it was very important to Scrushy for HealthSouth to have representation on the CON board.
     That’s just a sampling of the errors. There were plenty of others, and that’s just on the Siegelman portion of the piece.
      Blogs are usually one-person operations, and as such, are notoriously error-laden.
      However, I’d supposed that Horton’s work for Harper’s – whether called a blog or on-line column -- would have higher standards, or in any event, some standards. This seems a fair assumption, especially if, as we are told, that the Internet is the future. Will once-heralded publications like Harper’s routinely
publish error-laden columns and as a defense, say, “It’s just the Internet?”
      I addressed the issue in one of my e-mails to Horton and his editors:


      I can say that my story, while not yet complete, will address Horton’s (and by extension, Harper’s) almost complete failure to identify sources cited for making some very amazing statements.
     Prior to becoming familiar with Mr. Horton’s work, I would have assumed that a magazine of Harper’s reputation and historical significance would not allow anyone, be it in the magazine or under its masthead on a web-page, to publish serious allegations that are neither sourced nor corroborated by public record. Failing to adequately source does have the benefit of making it difficult to refute statements made by people who, I suspect in some cases, don’t even exist…
      I would like to be able to provide readers the answer to a few general questions, including:
       Does Harper’s have different standards for fact-checking and editing for stories in its magazine that it does for stories and under its masthead on the Internet page?
      If so, why?
      Does Harper’s even edit Horton’s copy?


      Horton responded with a short e-mail saying that there were different standards for on-line columns than the magazine. Other major magazines operated in similar fashion, he said.
      One can only hope that these other magazines keep a tighter rein on their Scott Hortons.


      Well before I turned in the first piece, Bob realized that I was going to be critical of Horton. He suggested that I not write about Horton, whose columns, Bob said, were, after all, just “speculation mixed with fact.”
    I responded that it was not possible to address Horton’s accusations against Fuller without writing about Horton.
     I sent the first installment, waited for questions from him, received none. When it came out, I saw that Bob had added a most unusual editor’s note. He wrote that his own research had “corroborated” much of Horton’s reporting. I held my tongue. I still had the second installment to sneak in there. And all in all,
I couldn’t complain. He’d given me tons of space and hadn’t changed a word – in this way, my dream editor.
     Thanks to the Internet the first installment won some notoriety in the loony left blogosphere. On her, “Raw Story” blog, the deliciously melodramatic Larisa Alexandrovna breathlessly reported an advance warning that she and Horton were to be “swift-boated” by the “corrupt politicians of Alabama and their paid shills
in the Alabama press.”
      “Scott Horton, it seems, will be the first victim. I just got word from folks in Alabama that the article on him just went out in the print version of the Montgomery Independent and authored by Eddie Curran (who it is suggested has an interesting relationship with Jeff Sessions).”
     I hesitate to even speculate as to what she meant by, “an interesting relationship with Jeff Sessions,” other than to deny it to my last breath and demand strict proof thereof.
      Horton, said this hilarious woman, “will need your backing.”
     “I can only assume I am next in line,” she wrote wishfully.
     If you’re among those who believe everything written in a “congressional report,” consider this: One of Alexandrovna’s “Raw Story” blog posts was footnoted as evidence in the Judiciary Committee’s April 2008 selective prosecution report.
     That's a true fact.
      I shot Bob the second installment the following Tuesday morning, and waited. Nervously. And there’s nothing unusual in that. It’s part of being a reporter, especially for long, complicated pieces. You file a story, and wait. I’ve been through it a million times. But this time it was different. Bob had caught hell
from certain circles for publishing part one. Part two ended with something that I almost didn’t include for fear that Bob would kill the whole thing.
      Shortly after embarking on the Horton project I began, like others in Alabama, to wonder what the deal was with this New York writer for Harper’s and Don Siegelman. There was a rumor, widely circulated but unconfirmed, that Horton was related to a Birmingham lawyer, William Horton, who had two connections
to the Siegelman case.
     William Horton was the former long-time general counsel at HealthSouth. He’d been the rare HealthSouth official to serve as a defense witness in the accounting fraud trial in Birmingham. Upon leaving HealthSouth, William Horton went to work for the Haskell Slaughter firm which, through Tommy Gallion, had assumed some murky role in the representation of Jill Simpson.
     No one, myself included, seemed able to confirm a relationship between the two Hortons. I finally took the direct approach, as described here. I gave this final part the subhead, “A Horton conflct?”
      First I noted the above connections, and then:


      Scott Horton didn’t reply (to my questions) so I e-mailed William Horton to ask if he was related to Scott Horton. He replied that Scott is his second cousin.
    “At the risk of telling you more than you want to know, we are not in close or frequent contact (Christmas cards are about it), and indeed, I wasn’t aware of his activity for Harper’s until this past fall and had assumed he was still practicing law.
     "Shows you what I know, I guess,” he wrote.
     I take William Horton at his word. But I note the relation, as I did in the following portion of an e-mail to Horton and his editors, for this reason: “I wonder how Scott Horton would treat such a coincidence were it to be found in relation to the prosecution of Don Siegelman?”


      I imagined Bob apoplectic. Here I was, not just exposing Saint Scott for the fraud he was, but noting, even if only in passing, that Horton’s cousin was a partner of (Martin's) much beloved Tommy Gallion.
     This was an especially long piece. Did Bob have questions? Could he shoot me the story so I could give it a final proof, with any changes? I e-mailed, called, left messages. Nothing.
     Late Wednesday, which for the Independent was past the last minute, Bob sent an e-mail.
      “Eddie, why do I get this feeling in my gut that I’m being used?” he asked.
     He informed me that the piece was so critical of Horton that he’d sent it to him for a rebuttal.
     I had, as Bob knew, gone overboard in seeking comment from Horton and Harper’s. Horton had every opportunity to respond and for the most part elected not to. I asked why he was giving Horton this opportunity when he’d never done so for “Horton’s victims -- people attacked like vermin.”
    Bob said he’d send me the story prior to publication. He did not. When I saw it in print, I knew why. He’d inserted Horton’s quotes within the story, and in all caps. Bob also stuck in small editor’s notes throughout. As a result, readers went back and forth from three different writers: Me, Bob and Horton. It was bizarre.
    Horton’s responses were sarcastic as ever but absent his signature arrogance and flair. After the part reporting his relationship with William Horton, readers saw this:


     “I REALLY HAVE TO THANK EDDIE FOR TRACKING DOWN MY LONG LOST SECOND COUSIN, WHO I HAVEN’T SEEN OR SPOKEN WITH IN A DECADE OR MORE … BUT SINCE EDDIE HAS WORKED OUT MY ENTIRE GENEOLOGICAL CHART, I’D LOVE TO KNOW ALL THE OTHER RELATIVES I HAVE IN ALABAMA I LOST TRACK OF. MAYBE WE CAN HAVE A BBQ.”


     Elsewhere he explained that web-logs (blogs) such as his were “spontaneous and usually unedited.” 
     Particularly revealing were his comments regarding those prized Cullman County GOP sources. He touted himself as being the, “FIRST SOURCE ANYWHERE TO NOTE THAT RILEY HAD SUDDENLY CANCELLED HIS LONG-SCHEDULED SPEECH TO CULLMAN REPUBLICANS IN ORDER TO TRAVEL TO WASHINGTON.”
     Not just the first to report it, but the last. Who cared? Had the sorry Alabama media fallen down again in failing to report that a chat by the governor to a county GOP organization was cancelled?
     Horton wrote that he came upon the scoop while interviewing a source who “TOLD ME THE EVENT HAD BEEN CANCELLED BECAUSE SOMETHING URGENT HAD COME UP THAT RILEY WAS GOING TO WASHINGTON.”


     “THE UN-NAMED SOURCE QUOTED WAS AN UNHAPPY
ORGANIZER WHO RELAYED THE INFORMATION TO ME. FRANKLY I NEVER THOUGHT THIS WAS MUCH MORE THAN SPECULATION.
     WHO WOULD THINK HE WOULD HAVE ACTUAL INSIDE
KNOWLEDGE? AT BEST THIS WAS SCUTTLEBUT. BUT IT SURE DOES SEEM TO HAVE EDDIE RILED UP.”
    
     When he wrote the columns, Horton didn’t represent the information from his multiple GOP sources in Cullman County as “speculation” or “scuttlebutt.” Assuming he was telling the truth this time – and my money says he didn’t have one much less two Cullman County sources – Horton was admitting to using
speculative scuttlebutt from an “unhappy organizer” to accuse a federal judge, Alabama’s governor and so many others of engaging in this convoluted criminal conspiracy.
      Horton cloaked his twisted fantasies in journalism and sullied good people.
     Worse, Harper’s let him. When I showed the magazine’s brain trust what he’d done – not just in his “blogs” but in the magazine – they neither stopped him nor made any effort to correct the record.
    Then the Democrats on the Judiciary Committee let Horton either ghostwrite or dictate the focus of their “selective prosecution” report, and for evidence, used 15 columns of his spontaneously written scuttlebutt.


      Horton has since authored two cover stories for the magazine, and now holds the title, Contributing Editor. Bob Martin continues to republish Horton’s columns in the Independent.



     (End of chapter)