Greg Palast Responds re Land Shark ER Post on ChoicePoint/Private KGB!

[Land Shark]

Palast's email to me is in the box below. It's worth reading, on infiltration of election protection groups by Choicepoint.

Background:
I posted in Election Reform the following link about how ChoicePoint is engaged in conspiring with the federal government (i.e. agreeing to something illegal or untoward) via contracts to circumvent the Constitutional and Privacy Act limitations wisely placed on the federal government. ChoicePoint does so because Choicepoint provides detailed informational dossiers (at least 1.2 million paid hits in one recent year alone) to the FBI and up to 35 other federal agencies that the government itself could not legally compile on its own citizens. See detailed evidentiary links from law reviews and choicepoint press releases at
<http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=203&topic_id=440200&mesg_id=440200>

Investigative journalist Greg Palast's new book "Armed Madhouse" continues in his tradition of breaking important stories like the 2000 Choicepoint "felon" purge in Florida (almost entirely non-felons). The man-bites-dog story that is the subject of this and other recent posts is the number of DU'ers who will rise to Choicepoint's defense, despite the fact that Choicepoint and other data mining companies doing a very active business with the feds is called America's Private KGB by Greg Palast.

Although Palast's latest view is that Choicepoint has evolved into a sort of "private KGB" because it engages in the above behavior (and more), several prominent election activists continue to defend Choicepoint. It becomes particularly odd when these activists who defend Choicepoint have to do so by attempting to trash Greg Palast, as well as attorney, scientific study co-author and election activist Land Shark (Paul Lehto), and any other activist who dares to critique Choicepoint's involvement in the election protection movement or Choicepoint generally.

As stated in the atlanta progressive article linked to in the post linked immediately above this sentence, there are a "surprising" number of election activists who defend ChoicePoint privately, in off the record interviews, and sometimes publicly. Public examples include those who trashed my OP link above. Apparently, this defense of Choicepoint extends to trashing Greg Palast in off the record interviews, such that Palast feels he has to offer to defend his honor and accuracy re Choicepoint in court if the campaign continues. Count me among Palast's supporters, as the above link demonstrates.

Palast, with whom I've had the privilege of speaking to only a couple times, has taken time out of his busy schedule (including Mexico City election coverage) to read DU and provide me with an email response to controversy in the thread above, as well as (I presume) Mod Mom's thread also in ER. It's clear from all of this, including Palast's response below, that people are having to pay a price for criticizing Choicepoint, and Choicepoint's activist defenders consider it important enough to honor Choicepoint that it is worth burning all bridges with Greg Palast, Land Shark, and many others.

Perhaps Greg Palast is right, in his email below authorized for Publication in full, that we are dealing with activists who are "cutouts" for Choicepoint of some sort. Certainly, if Greg Palast is right, any *effective* cutout would have certain indicia of respectability or they would never be listened to in the first place.

Also in the last 24 hours:
Choicepoint to Diebold to CIA thread
<http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=203x440298>

Choicepoint's President's wife funds votetrustusa and co-founds Georgia election group
<http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=203x440147>

You be the judge. There's the link above and its discussion, and here's Palast email to me which he said in the subject line I could post:

Thank you for a cogent response to ChoicePoint's latest smear tactics. When ChoicePoint pays Republicans, progressives are up in arms over the conflicts. But when, through cut-outs, they pay a so-called voter protection group, Rove's excuses come out of activists' lips. Shame. Shame. Shame.


And the effect followed the cash: After taking loot from the wife of the CEO of ChoicePoint, VoteTrustUSA's executive immediately ran to the defense of ChoicePoint's ill-making role in wrongly purging African-Americans from Florida Voter rolls. The company testified their executives KNEW the list used by the state included, in their own words, "those who are not felons" ... that is, they watched thousands lose their civil rights, an election stolen, and pocketed the millions.


Arguably, ChoicePoint, because of its culpable knowledge, had more to do with the attack on civil rights and the theft of the 2000 election than Jeb Bush.


I don't mind debating with ChoicePoint (which they refuse to do); but I'll be damned if I will tolerate smears from one of their paid hand puppets smearing my investigative reports while wearing the purloined mantle of voter protection. VoteTrustUSA has violated the public's trust.


This is not the first time ChoicePoint has purchased protection from pretend voter activists. In 2000, their cover was a group called Voter Integrity Project. What we have here is a case of old tricks with new dogs.


I would welcome a public discussion with ChoicePoint executives, especially about my new findings released in my latest book, Armed Madhouse. But they refuse to speak with me on the record. In one of their weirder faints, the company demanded the right to defend themselves on the Randi Rhodes show on condition I not be in the studio. Randi agred -- and placed me in a glass booth just OUTSIDE the studio.


Mrs. Curling's money may not influence VoteTrustUSA. Likewise, Lockheed's payments to Mrs. Cheney may not have influenced our Vice-President. Nevertheless, these marital joint political accounts are the essence of conflict of interest. But the fact that policies and positions quickly align with the cash leaves the uncomfortable impression that Trust can be bought.

Greg Palast
www.GregPalast.com

Greg Palast is the author of the New York Times bestseller, "ARMED MADHOUSE: Who's Afraid of Osama Wolf?, China Floats Bush Sinks, the Scheme to Steal '08, No Child's Behind Left and other Dispatches from the Front Lines of the Class War."

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