Also, Simpson produced documents showing that Fuller secretly controlled as 44 percent owner a closely held company that received $300 million in Air Force contracts from 2006 to the end of the Bush administration in 2009.
[See Scott Horton, Harper's, The Pork Barrel World of Judge Mark Fuller, August 6, 2007.]
But defendants denied the claims, and a vicious, unfair counter-attack undermined Simpson. Congress and much of the national media lost interest after higher courts and the Obama administration in effect backed the prosecution and whitewashed all follow-ups by failure to put the suspects under oath. This protected the Alabama Republican power structure, including the Riley Family, and key Bush officials.
Roger followed these developments, and started a blog in his spare time in 2007. Alabama developments coincided with exposure in 2007 of the U.S. attorney firing scandal. Rove and Attorney Gen. Alberto Gonzales oversaw the unprecedented purge for political reasons of nine of the nation's more than 90 regional U.S. attorneys during 2006. Roger and other journalists focused on such case histories as the Siegelman prosecution could document clearly what the remaining "loyal Bushies" (as a Gonzales aide called them) had to do to keep their jobs as U.S. attorneys.
JB: So, all of this goes back to the Siegelman case? And the university erroneously claimed that Shuler was blogging on company time. That was the justification for the firing, I believe.
AK: Yes. The university apparently fired him as part of reprisals and other workplace decisions that tend to happen when bosses suddenly get worried about new top management. In this instance, it was rabidly hard-line Republicans taking charge in politics and university board life who were increasingly in a position to hammer a state university over tolerance of perceived political incorrectness. My observation of such situations is that facts tend not to matter -- only loyalty to the hierarchy. I've now studied a decade of Alabama newspaper clips. In that period, you can see that independent reporting and civic whistleblowing is drying up.
By now, Alabama is essentially a one-party state, aside from a single gerrymandered congressional seat. The public impact of one-party rule is not just on politics. It's in the courts, newspapers and all institutions. Jobs, law, information and most of all government contracts are slanted to help insider-cronies, with scant countervailing force.
Roger has diligently collected contrary evidence regarding his own case. But he faces two big problems. One is that the corporations and their judges (including former 1980s EEOC Chairman Clarence Thomas) have gradually reshaped the law to make it very difficult for anyone to prove unlawful firing for reasons of age, sex, race, religion, etc. Proving unfairness is not enough. You have to have a smoking gun.
Just as important, you need a judge who is fair. We are seeing across the country, especially in Alabama, the results of decades of aggressive court-packing with ultra-right ideologues on a mission to reach courtroom results that help their allies and defeat presumed opponents.
The Siegelman prosecution is a clear-cut example of this pattern. Roger Shuler's reporting skills, determination and passion for justice have enabled him to find many more examples, especially in Deep South states undergoing the same political restructuring as Alabama. Rove was a GOP consultant during the 1990s in both Alabama and Texas. Although both states have long voted Republican in presidential elections, Democrats were viable for state offices until he worked his magic. The Supreme Court in both Alabama went from all Democratic in the 1990s to all Republican now.
JB: Yikes! Let's turn back to Shuler now, Andrew. He's stuck in jail for the foreseeable future, so I guess they've succeeded in shutting him up, at least for the time being. His wife, Carol, who also lost her job, is holed up in the family home awaiting arrest as well. Was her termination also part of the political blowback from Shuler's revelations or was that just a coincidence?
AK: Correct. She and Roger have filed a suit alleging that her 2009 firing from her job as an insurance company salvage expert was also reprisal for Roger's blogging.
JB: So, let's sum up what we've got so far. This looks like the typical strategy against whistleblowers and other troublemakers like ethical journalists. Tie them up in legal maneuvers that eat up time and resources, threaten and intimidate. If that doesn't work, get them fired and finally, discredit, neutralize or otherwise marginalize them. Have them arrested. [In some cases, there have even been timely accidents and supposed suicides. Karen Silkwood, for example.] A hard combination to resist. Add to that a stacked court and an emasculated local and national press, plagued by layoffs and reduced publication schedules and where does that leave us? How do we fight back? How do we end intimidation and spring Shuler?
AK: Well, I think you've summed things up pretty well. Your overview shows the way to fight back. Expose them all! Alert the local and national media to the suppressed story about Roger, and the vital press freedoms his ordeal threatens. Use the social media to stir up the nation. The civil rights struggle in Alabama could not jell until national attention revealed the outrages. This is much the same.
(Note: You can view every article as one long page if you sign up as an Advocate Member, or higher).
7
5
3
