|
about beans.
The Omaha World-Herald wouldn't discuss the paper's coverage of Hagel. But Hagel's staff faxed Wired News a 2,600-word profile of Hagel published in the World-Herald in October 1996 that briefly mentioned in three paragraphs the senator's chairmanship of the voting company. It also noted that World-Herald publisher John Gottschalk was the person who recruited Hagel to the voting company in 1992. The article, however, didn't address the potential conflict-of-interest issue.
"We haven't covered it too much. This is kind of a tricky area," said World-Herald reporter David Kotok, who declined to say more before hanging up.
When Wired News asked World-Herald executive editor Larry King about his paper's coverage of Hagel, he said, "You're hitting me cold with questions about something that happened in 1996. I would never have one of my reporters do that. I'm not going to respond to this." Wired News later e-mailed questions to King but he didn't respond.
Harris posted the information about Hagel to her publicity website, and ES&S sent her a cease-and-desist letter, the first of three that she would receive from voting companies over the next year. The letter, hand-delivered by a courier, warned Harris to retract statements on her website that implicated Hagel in wrongdoing or face a lawsuit.
"That was very frightening," she said. "Especially because it came with a knock on the door. I knew we stood a very good chance of losing everything. (My husband and I) have five college-age kids ... and we had no money for an attorney."
But activism is in Harris' blood. Relatives on her mother's side hosted a stop on the Underground Railroad, she said. And her husband, an African-American from the South, was passionate about the right to vote, long denied to his ancestors.
So Harris contacted a Hagel opponent, Democratic hopeful Charlie Matulka, a construction worker and first-time office seeker, two weeks before he was to square off against incumbent Hagel at the polls.
Matulka sent a letter to the Senate Ethics Committee requesting an investigation into Hagel's finances. But by the time the committee director responded, Hagel had already won the race. The director wrote that Matulka's complaint had no merit.
Three months after the election, Alexander Bolton, a reporter for The Hill, a newspaper covering Capitol Hill, began reporting a story about Hagel's connection to the voting firm. But before the article ran, he got a visit from Linehan, the senator's chief of staff, who was accompanied by "a prominent GOP lawyer." According to Bolton, they asked him "to soften the story or drop it."
The staff's attempt to influence Bolton's story wasn't unusual. "That's what congressional staffs do," Bolton said. But the interest of the GOP lawyer was different. "That was very unusual," Bolton said. "I've been at The Hill for over four years and that has never happened. It's probably because Hagel has presidential ambitions."
Hagel, a 57-year-old telecommunications millionaire and twice-wounded Vietnam veteran, was on the short list for George W. Bush's running mate in 2000, a slot that ultimately went to fellow Nebraskan Dick Cheney. Hagel and his staff haven't ruled out a possible presidential bid by Hagel in 2008.
They have, however, ruled out Harris' interpretation of events.
"She's misinformed and she misleads," Linehan said, adding that Hagel's employment with ES&S was well-known in Nebraska and was never kept secret. His connection to the McCarthy Group has been on his bio since 1995, she said, and anyone interested could have connected the dots to see that he had a financial interest in the voting company.
She also said that under Federal Election Commission filing rules, which politicians and congressional staffers often complain are murky and open to interpretation, Hagel didn't have to list the McCarthy Group's underlying assets.
"When Hagel ran, he knew there would be questions about what he did and when," Linehan said. "He disclosed everything he was supposed to disclose in 1995. We never did anything wrong. We did not mislead."
Linehan faxed a letter to Wired News from the Senate Ethics Committee dated May 2003, which concluded that Hagel did not violate its rules. However, the committee had changed the way it traditionally interpreted the rules after Hagel's staff met with it to discuss the allegations against the senator. The letter was issued after the rule change.
As for the integrity of Hagel's election, Linehan said polls conducted by the Omaha World-Herald and Gallup days before Hagel's 1996 race showed him and opponent Ben Nelson neck and neck. She also noted that the voting machines used in Nebraska were optical-scan machines with paper ballots. If anyone had questioned the election, officials could
|
|
