White house actively erasing any links to Abramoff and scandal

[carolinalady]

I have spent the entire afternoon researching Governor GW's history in Texas looking for Abramoff connections. Do you know what I found? Almost every website that would contain unflattering information has effectively been scrubbed. Below are a few of the obstacles I ran in to-check them out.

http://www.realchange.org/bushjr.htm go to the bottom of the article and try a few of the websites-esp. under the corruption sources and insider deal sources. The really juicy looking ones are gone!

Most interesting: I found an article referencing the amount of money Texas was spending to let Bush's pioneers stay in the Texas Governor Mansion as a reward. The article quoted the Center for Public Integrity. Anyway, I heard to search the site and I found the following link: Look to the left of the article for a link to the Texas Mansion information---DISAPPEARED!!!!!!!!!!!
http://64.233.187.104/search?q=cache:Jx13TsDim4AJ:www.publicintegrity.org/docs/publici/pi_2000_04.pdf+bush+for+governor+1996+website&hl=en

http://www.publicintegrity.org/report.aspx?aid=473

[texpatriot2004]

1. Are they "re-writing history" again? nm

[MelissaB]

2. Can you use the wayback machine?

I haven't learned how to use it well yet, but here's the link.

http://www.archive.org/

[carolinalady]

5. I inserted the web address that would have contained the

list of guests that stayed at the Texas mansion but it came up
"Sorry no matches"
I really want to see that list because I am thinking Jack is on it.

[Botany]

3. Well, duh

but them darn internets have a memory too. and DU people tend to love google & search engines.


Scotty is also saying that bush didn't know Abramoff too. Abramoff was head of the transition team to move staff into the white house
in 2000. (might have played a little ?with him at some party.)

McClellan: Bush doesn't know Abramoff, but "it's possible that they met"
?
White House press secretary Scott McClellan said Wednesday that Abramoff, his wife and the tribal associates that he helped win influence on Capitol Hill donated thousands to the Bush-Cheney ’04 campaign. Donations to charities has been the policy in similar situations in the past, McClellan said.

Abramoff raised at least $100,000 for President Bush’s 2004 re-election effort, earning the honorary title “pioneer” from the campaign. Abramhoff also gave $5,000 to Bush’s Florida recount effort in 2000.

It was unclear how much exactly the campaign would be giving to charity since McClellan referred questions about the matter to the Republican National Committee, which did not immediately return phone calls about it.

McClellan said Bush does not know Abramoff personally, although it’s possible that the two met at holiday receptions. Abramoff attended three Hanukkah receptions at the White House, the spokesman said.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/10706220 /

. Oh Please... He was a MEMBER OF THE BUSH TRANSITION TEAM!
?
Edited on Wed Jan-04-06 12:21 PM by leftchick

How fucking stupid do they think we are?...

http://www.texasobserver.org/showArticle_new.asp?Articl...

<snip>


Four months after he took the oath of office in 2001, President George W. Bush was the attraction, and the White House the venue, for a fundraiser organized by the alleged perpetrator of the largest billing fraud in the history of corporate lobbying. In May 2001, Jack Abramoff’s lobbying client book was worth $4.1 million in annual billing for the Greenberg Traurig law firm. He was a friend of Bush advisor Karl Rove. He was a Bush “Pioneer,” delivering at least $100,000 in bundled contributions to the 2000 campaign. He had just concluded his work on the Bush Transition Team as an advisor to the Department of the Interior. He had sent his personal assistant Susan Ralston to the White House to work as Rove’s personal assistant. He was a close friend, advisor, and high-dollar fundraiser for the most powerful man in Congress, Tom DeLay. Abramoff was so closely tied to the Bush Administration that he could, and did, charge two of his clients $25,000 for a White House lunch date and a meeting with the President. From the same two clients he took to the White House in May 2001, Abramoff also obtained $2.5 million in contributions for a non-profit foundation he and his wife operated.

and just a little more ..... Abramoff has contacts w/ bush dated back to 1997 ..... Abramoff also
got bush to protect his & his buddies' little pacific sweat & sex shops.

10. More...
?
The records from Abramoff's firm, obtained by The Associated Press from the Marianas under an open records request, chronicle Abramoff's careful cultivation of relations with Bush's political team as far back as 1997.

In that year, Abramoff charged the Marianas for getting then-Texas Gov. George W. Bush to write a letter expressing support for the Pacific territory's school choice proposal, his billing records show.

"I hope you will keep my office informed on the progress of this initiative," Bush wrote in a July 18, 1997, letter praising the islands' school plan and copying in an Abramoff deputy.

White House spokeswoman Erin Healy said Thursday that Bush didn't consider Abramoff a friend. "They may have met on occasion, but the president does not know him," she said.

snip...

The documents show his team also had extensive access to Bush administration officials, meeting with Cheney policy advisers Ron Christie and Stephen Ruhlen, Ashcroft at the Justice Department, White House intergovernmental affairs chief Ruben Barrales, U.S. Trade Representative Robert Zoellick, Deputy Interior Secretary Steven Griles and others.

http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2005-05-06-abra...


Big ups to my fellow DUers who I copied their postings in an e mail I sent to a "good buddy" in the media.

[Botany]

9. Repost

Well something happened to those links in the last few days ......
they worked on thursday or friday

White House & the crooks are in full scramble mood.

[skids]

4. That's not scrubbed.

It's just newspapers that have deleted old stories. I don't know why they can't keep thorough archives considering how cheap disk space is (actually I do -- it's because they let amateur hotdogs redesign their websites once every two years and the material gets lost in the shuffle.)

You can get a lot of the articles out of the wayback machine. Just put the URL from the broken hyperlink into the wayback machine and a history of the page will come up. Here's one of the missing articles:

http://web.archive.org/web/19980223190502/http://texasobserver.org/subjects/dateline/1.30.98.rb.html

[Igel]

6. Try this link.

http://web.archive.org/web/20040727221337/http://www.publicintegrity.org/docs/publici/pi_2000_04.pdf

I think that's the second page you were after.

Bookmark http://web.archive.org. The problem with the link in searching the archive was that the link was to search a website-internal archive: you have to quickly open the page and stop it before the site redirects you, and then extract out the actual URL it was searching for.

Note that when you go to www.archive.org it displays every time it ran into the page. It looks like the page was up and easily available for a month, then was archived. It's not surprising for archived pages to vanish.

For the first webpage and missing links, I randomly chose the link http://caq.com/BushFamilyPreys.html ("The Family that Preys Together"). There are a few revisions, all available: http://web.archive.org/web/*/http://caq.com/BushFamilyPreys.html

Enjoy!

[carolinalady]

7. Thanks-I was able to open the links on that first article I quoted

using that archive, but the actual list that should be on the public integrity website is gone! It does not work with the archive either.
:shrug:

[SoCalDem]

8. waybackmachine.org?

www.waybackmachine.org