Posted on 03/07/2006 8:07:42 PM PST by RWR8189
HILLARY GURU PLANS DATABASE TO RIVAL DNC; SOROS FINANCED
Tue Mar 07 2006 20:38:16 ET
A group of well-connected Democrats led by a former top aide to Bill and Hillary Clinton is raising millions of dollars to start a private firm -- that plans to compile huge amounts of data on Americans to identify Democratic voters.
The effort by Harold Ickes, a deputy chief of staff in the Clinton White House and an adviser to Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, D-N.Y., is prompting intense behind-the-scenes debate in Democratic circles, the WASHINGTON POST is planning to report on Wednesday.
Officials at the Democratic National Committee think that creating a modern database is their job, and say that a competing for-profit entity could divert energy and money that should instead be invested with the national party.
Ickes and others involved in the effort acknowledge that their activities are a vote of no confidence in the DNC under Chairman Howard Dean.
The venture is being backed by financier George Soros.
Developing...
WHODB. Do any old-timers remember? She had the FBI at her disposal for years.
"...raising millions of dollars to start a private firm -- that plans to compile huge amounts of data on Americans to identify Democratic voters."
All they have to do is go to DU - the typical Barking Moonbat (BM for short) is there for everyone to see.
Looks like all of those FBI files will come in handy.
The 666 File! oooooooh!
They cross the line on any privacy law, it is time to class action bankrupt Soros et al out of business.
I don't think people grasp. If she knows who are the Dem voters, she'll also know the ones whe Aren't.
"...that plans to compile huge amounts of data on Americans to identify Democratic voters."
And this doesn't bother them. But tapping the phones of terrorists does? Unbelievable.
The Clintons tried to use the internet as a tool for themselves.
Data-mining software of all kinds. Software that could sniff through trading information, through legal documents, through financial portfolios, looking for money, skeletons, etc.
IIRC, there were two systems, produced by some pretty shady collaborations.
Hmmmm, I wonder how the DU'ers are going to feel about having Soros know everything about them? They're going to have access to all their personal likes and dislikes, how they vote, who knows what else they may get on them.
Harold Ickes belongs high in the disgusting Clintonista Hall of Shame ratings.
The first thought I had when reading the story. Every DemonRAT should be as outraged about this privacy intrusion as they are about the possibility of the Bushies listening in on the DemonRATs overseas calls to their Al Queda buddies!!
FYI Ping
If Dean is against this does it mean DUmmies will go more nuts? I hope this burns canckles but good.
Thank you, this is most interesting...
I would love for a GOP Senator to read this on the Senate floor...and then question Hillary and gang asking for an investigation of the NSA progam.
Looks like Hillary is up to her old tricks.
When translated from PC to American English, what does identifying Democratic voters really mean? Choose one:
A. They are planning to call up their political appointees and demand they copy the voter rolls in their respective counties and have them copy each name that has a "D" next to it.
B. They are planning a massive nationwide tombstone-rubbing party to gather info on their voter base.
C. They plan to mail out special "butterfly surveys" to all eligible voters to see which of them are unable to properly punch out the chads.
D. They plan to get their hands on the membership lists for the Evil Dictators Fan Club.
E. All of the above.
Yep and with Ickes
I'm no Bircher or tin-foil hat wearer but damn this sounds scary!
-PJ
Isn't Ickes part of that MoveOn bunch? That should tell you just how far left Hillary is playing.
What's to know about someone over in DUmmieland?
Address: Trailer park, ?
Favorite day of the week: Welfare check day. Food stamp day.
Favorite color: Welfare check green
Average education: Some elementary schooling.
Life's expectation: For President Bush to be impeached.
Self Assessment: Highly intelligent and handsome/beautiful.
Political party affilliation: Liberal Dimocrat
The Shadow Party: Part II Continued 3
By David Horowitz and Richard Poe
FrontPageMagazine.com | October 7, 2004
Joint Victory Campaign 2004
Launched November 5, 2003
Harold McEwan Ickes keeps a low profile. However, as the Shadow Party’s unofficial chief executive, his growing power is obvious to Washington insiders. “[H]e is the most important person in the Democratic Party today,” outside the official Kerry campaign, says Democrat strategist Howard Wolfson.[1]
Like most Shadow Party leaders, Ickes rose from the New Left. A Freedom Rider in the civil rights movement of the early 1960s, Ickes subsequently traveled to the Dominican Republic, where he involved himself in a coup attempt by a junta of leftwing colonels in 1965.[2] He worked on the 1968 Eugene McCarthy campaign and the 1972 George McGovern campaign. Ickes met Bill Clinton in 1972, while both were working on Operation Pursestrings, a grassroots lobbying effort aimed at cutting off aid to South Vietnam. Ickes later spent fourteen years as a partner in the Mineola, Long Island law firm Meyer, Suozzi, English & Klein, notorious for the long list of violent, mob-run labor unions it has represented.[3]
Ickes left the firm to join the Clinton White House as deputy chief of staff from January 1994 through January 1997. One of his key duties in the White House was suppressing Clinton scandals and defusing federal investigations. “Whenever there was something that [Bill Clinton] thought required ruthlessness or vengeance or sharp elbows and sharp knees or, frankly, skulduggery, he would give it to Harold,” former Clinton advisor Dick Morris told Vanity Fair.[4]
Ickes’ true loyalty is to Hillary, however. The Boston Globe called him “a special favorite of the president's wife.”[5] During his stint at the White House, Ickes headed a secret unit for Hillary, dedicated to suppressing Clinton scandals. It operated, in effect, as a Counsel’s office within the White House Counsel’s office. In his book The Seduction of Hillary Rodham, David Brock refers to Ickes’ special unit as the “Shadow Counsel’s Office.”[6] Its operatives included Mark Fabiani, Chris Lehane, Jane Sherburne and perhaps others. Ickes reported directly to Hillary Clinton on all matters related to the work of this special unit. In time, Ickes would graduate from running Hillary’s Shadow Counsel’s Office to running an entire Shadow Party.
Hillary recruited Ickes as chief campaign advisor for her 2000 Senate run. According to Ickes, he accepted the job after a four-hour meeting with Hillary on February 12, 1999 -- the same day that the U.S. Senate voted on Bill Clinton's impeachment. “I’m really doing this out of my friendship for Hillary, pure and simple,” Ickes told the Associated Press on June 17, 1999. “She called and there was no way I was going to say no to Hillary.” [7]... </snip>
Forget kiddie porn and identity theft, we're going to see some real fireworks in the next few years I believe.
Am I logged in?
Tell me who wins when I get out of the shower.
This will really be hugh and series, especially when the moose bites my cheese-eating sister.
You dumbass!
Where's the host in the sun?
Do you cover your whole house in tinfoil or just your head?
There I did it for you, no need to reply.
 Apparently Data Mining is OK with Hillary and Soros as long as it's just not the NSA doing it to protect the American public.
|
Harold Ickes, long-time labor lawyer
Janice Ann Enright – Ickes’ partner in the Washington lobbying firm The Ickes and Enright Group – also happens to act as Treasurer for the Joint Victory Campaign 2004.
The Ickes and Enright Group is a government affairs consulting firm with strong ties to the Democratic party. It is also affiliated with the firm Griffin, Johnson, Dover & Stewart. Janice Ann Enright and Harold Ickes are the firm's partners.
Clients
* American Federation of Teachers (AFL-CIO)
* Consortium for Worker Education
* Deloitte Consulting
* Equitas Reinsurance Ltd.
* Farallon Capital Management
* HiSynergy Communications, Inc.
* New York City, New York, Council of
* New York Hall of Science
* Telesector Resources Group, Inc d/b/a Verizon Services Group
JOINT VICTORY CAMPAIGN 2004
#Chief fund-raising entity for the Shadow Party
# Founded by George Soros and Harold Ickes
# Executive Director is New Left activist and Clinton aide, Harold Ickes
# Other key players: Janice Ann Enright, George Soros
Joint Victory Campaign 2004 (JVC) is the chief fundraising entity for the Democrat Shadow Party. A 527 stealth Political Action Committee (PAC), it collects contributions and disburses them to two other Shadow Party groups, America Coming Together (ACT) and The Media Fund (TMF), whence they are disbursed further down the line, as needed.
Joint Victory Campaign 2004 is one of the Seven Sister organizations forming the administrative core of the Democrat Shadow Party. The other Seven Sisters constituent groups are America Coming Together, (ACT), America Votes, Center for American Progress (CAP), The Media Fund (TMF), MoveOn.org, and The Thunder Road Group (TRG).
Goals
Joint Victory Campaign 2004 makes no attempt to appeal to moderate, centrist or middle-of-the-road donors. It targets donors sympathetic to the hard Left - the sort who view George W. Bush as a dangerous, rightwing extremist.
"Like millions of Americans, we are terribly concerned about the extremist agenda of the Bush Republicans," its Web site declares. "If we don't act now, the right-wing will use presidential incumbency and a significant financial advantage in 2004 to solidify control of federal and state government for decades to come. That is why we have come together to offer a way to successfully fight back: Victory Campaign 2004."
JVC's Website promises "an aggressive national strategy that is attacking the right-wing on the ground and on the air. We are combining an innovative grassroots program (America Coming Together) with a sophisticated and powerful media operation (The Media Fund), which together will expose the real Bush Republican record and deliver progressive victories at all levels in 2004."
History
Joint Victory Campaign 2004 was formed in late 2003 by Harold Ickes, on behalf of a group of major Democrat donors associated with George Soros.
It is run jointly by America Coming Together (ACT) and The Media Fund (TMF). JVC collects contributions for these two groups and divides the money between them.
In 2004 alone, JVC has channeled more than $35 million into the Shadow Party network - $21.8 million to The Media Fund (TMF) and $13.2 million to American Coming Together (ACT).
Since it is little more than a money conduit, JVC has attracted less press attention than its sister organizations ACT and the Media Fund. However, JVC did surface briefly in a February 5, 2004 Washington Post editorial questioning the shadowy nature of its financial transactions.
The editorial noted that a mysterious 527 committee calling itself the Sustainable World Corporation had suddenly sprung into existence in Houston, Texas on December 10, 2003. Seven days later, it donated $3.1 million to Joint Victory Campaign 2004, which then divided the money between ACT and the Media Fund.
The Washington Post attempted to discover the source of the $3.1 million donation. The editorial notes:
"Sustainable World Corp. lists only a post office box in Houston as its address. Directory assistance has no number for it. Searches of ordinary business databases come up empty. We tracked down Lewis Linn, the Houston accountant who is listed as its registered agent, and asked him about Sustainable World; he said he was bound by professional constraints to keep information about it confidential. Asked if he would check to see whether those behind Sustainable World would let him reveal their identity, Mr. Linn called back to say, `I've talked to my clients, and they wish to remain private.'"
When the Washington Post called Harold Ickes, it was lucky enough to catch him in a candid and forthcoming mood - which is not his usual stance toward the press. Though under no legal obligation to answer the Post's question, Ickes generously explained that Houston investor Linda Pritzker of the Chicago Hyatt hotel family was the mystery benefactor behind Sustainable World Corporation.
"It's nice that Mr. Ickes answered. But a system that permits these kinds of huge donations to be made under a cloak of anonymity is deeply troubling," said the Post.
Personnel
Janice Ann Enright is the Treasurer of Joint Victory Campaign 2004. She is a long-time aide to Harold Ickes, who heads JVC 2004.
A New Left activist with a long and stormy history in the civil rights and antiwar movements of the 1960s, Ickes was a partner in the Mineola, Long Island law firm Meyer, Suozzi, English & Klein for fourteen years. He left in January 1994 to join the Clinton White House.
Ickes served as Assistant to President Bill Clinton and Deputy White House Chief of Staff for Political Affairs and Policy from January 1994 through January 1997. Janice Ann Enright followed Ickes to his new job, leaving Meyer & Suozzi to become Ickes' Special Assistant at the White House. Enright is not an attorney.
After leaving the White House in January 1997, Ickes went into partnership with Enright, forming a Washington lobby called The Ickes & Enright Group. Ickes re-joined Meyer & Suozzi as a partner in June 1998. Today he runs the firm's Washington office:
Meyer, Suozzi, English & Klein
1800 N St NW
Washington, DC 20036
(202) 955-6340
Enright re-joined Meyer & Suozzi at the same time Ickes re-joined the firm in June 1998. Today she works for Ickes in the firm's Washington office, where she is Senior Advisor for Government Affairs.
Ickes and Enright advised Hillary Clinton during her successful New York Senate campaign in 1999 and 2000 - a victory widely attributed to Ickes' ruthless style of backroom politics.
Ickes and Enright's management of Joint Victory Campaign 2004 suggests that these two partners are chiefly responsible for controlling cash flow within the Shadow Party.
http://tinyurl.com/fcsgy
******
The Shadow Party: Part II Continued 3
By David Horowitz and Richard Poe
FrontPageMagazine.com | October 7, 2004
snip
Hillary recruited Ickes as chief campaign advisor for her 2000 Senate run. According to Ickes, he accepted the job after a four-hour meeting with Hillary on February 12, 1999 -- the same day that the U.S. Senate voted on Bill Clinton's impeachment. “I’m really doing this out of my friendship for Hillary, pure and simple,” Ickes told the Associated Press on June 17, 1999. “She called and there was no way I was going to say no to Hillary.” [7]
Harold Ickes formed the Joint Victory Campaign 2004 on November 5, 2003 – the same day that he also formed The Media Fund (see below). JVC 2004 is the chief fundraising entity for the Democrat Shadow Party. A 527 committee, it is run jointly by America Coming Together (ACT) and The Media Fund (TMF). JVC collects contributions for these two groups and divides the money between them, whence the funds are disbursed further down the line, as needed. In 2004 alone, JVC has channeled more than $53 million into the Shadow Party network – $38.4 million to The Media Fund (TMF) and $19.4 million to American Coming Together (ACT).
http://tinyurl.com/edvb3
I'm sure you've seen this, but if not...
Of course, one of their own already runs one of hugest data mining operations in existence: Acxiom
which conveniently has Thomas "Mac" McClarty as a Director, and I believe that Gen. Weasley Clark also has or had a connection.
Founded in 1969, Acxiom is headquartered in Little Rock, Arkansas, with operations throughout the United States, and with processing centers in Arkansas, Illinois, Arizona, Ohio and California. The company also has offices in nine other countries across Europe and Asia. From a small company in Arkansas, Acxiom Corporation has grown into a publicly traded corporation with more than 6,000 employees worldwide
Please FReepmail me if you want on or off my ‘miscellaneous’ ping list.
Of course I remember WHODB! Ickes probably still has all of those files!
Well, WE know that!
Thanks for the ping!
That left out the part about his nasty, DIRTY father, who worked for FDR. He learned dirty tricks at his father's knee.
bttt
HAROLD ICKES
*
"The most important person in the Democratic Party today."
*
Co-founder and unofficial director of the Democrat Shadow Party
*
Sought chairmanship of the Democratic Party in February 2005
*
Ran Hillary's successful Senate campaign in 1999-2000
*
Former Deputy Chief of Staff for the Clinton White House
*
Freedom Rider and antiwar activist of the New Left. Worked on Eugene McCarthy and George McGovern campaigns.
*
Met Bill Clinton through the anti-Vietnam War movement in 1972
*
In his law practice, represented Mob-run labor unions, with ties to the Lucchese, Colombo, Genovese, Gambino and other major crime families.
Harold McEwan Ickes is a long-time Democrat operative widely recognized as the chief organizer of the Shadow Party. During the 2004 presidential race, Democrat strategist Howard Wolfson told New York Magazine that - outside the Kerry campaign - Ickes was "the most important person in the Democratic Party today." (Michael Crowley, "Shadow Warriors," New York Magazine, 28 June 2004)
Ickes was a serious contender to succeed Terry McAuliffe as chairman of the Democratic Party in February 2005, though Howard Dean ended up getting the position.
"Whenever there was something that [Bill Clinton] thought required ruthlessness or vengeance or sharp elbows and sharp knees or, frankly, skulduggery, he would give it to Harold," former Clinton advisor Dick Morris told Vanity Fair in 1997. (Judy Bachrach, "Seduced and Abandoned," Vanity Fair, September 1997)
If Ickes evinces skill in "skulduggery," it comes from long experience working in the dim-lit underworld where politics meets labor racketeering and organized crime.
Recruited by New Left icon Allard Lowenstein in 1964, Ickes turned up on every major battlefront of leftwing activism during the Sixties and early Seventies. He registered black voters in the Deep South for the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) and the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE); assisted Castro-ite rebels in the Dominican Republic; organized resistance to the Vietnam War and campaigned for "peace-at-any-price" candidates Eugene McCarthy and George McGovern.
Ickes subsequently began practicing labor law, representing a long list of gangsters, labor racketeers and Mob-run unions, many with ties to major New York crime families, among them the Lucchese, Colombo, Genovese and Gambino organizations. In his Mob law practice, Ickes often went beyond the call of duty, skirting if not actually crossing the line from attorney to accomplice.
New York Post columnist Mike McAlary wrote in 1993, "There are more than a couple of prosecutors in this city who believe that the only thing separating Harold Ickes and a jail cell is his ability to go strong and silent in the face of tough questions." (Todd S. Purdum, "A Political Whodunit: Suspects Abound in the Downfall of Harold M. Ickes," The New York Times, 14 February 1993, p. 41)
Bill and Hillary Clinton found many uses for Ickes' peculiar talents. By the mid-1990s, he was heading their fundraising machine, collecting record-breaking quantities of soft money - much of it through such unsavory means as labor racketeering; soliciting pay-offs from U.S. businessmen seeking inside access to overseas trade missions; and - as Edward Timperlake and William C. Triplett II document in their book Year of the Rat: How Bill Clinton and Al Gore Compromised U.S. Security for Chinese Cash - cutting deals with Chinese intelligence agents eager to loosen up U.S. export controls on military technology. (Edward Timperlake and William C. Triplett II, Year of the Rat: How Bill Clinton and Al Gore Compromised U.S. Security for Chinese Cash [Washington, DC; Regnery Publishing; 2000] )
By 1996, federal investigators had begun zeroing in on Ickes' involvement in numerous Clinton scandals including Filegate (the illegal commandeering of more than a thousand secret FBI background files on potential Clinton foes) and Chinagate (the selling of military secrets to Red China in exchange for campaign contributions).
Ickes had become a liability. Immediately after Bill Clinton's re-election in November 1996, the President fired him.
The firing was only temporary, however. In 1999, Ickes became Hillary's chief campaign advisor in her 2000 run for the Senate. Following Hillary's successful election, Ickes played a central role in creating the Democrat Shadow Party.
Biography
Harold McEwan Ickes comes from a prominent political family. His father Harold LeClair Ickes served as Secretary of the Interior from 1933 to 1946, under Franklin Delano Roosevelt and Harry Truman.
The elder Ickes lost his first wife in an automobile accident in 1935. At age 64, he married 25-year-old Jane Dahlman. She gave birth to Harold on September 4, 1939. The younger Ickes hardly knew his famous father, who died when he was only twelve.
Harold Ickes attended the prestigious Sidwell Friends School along with other children of Washington's elite. But young Ickes rebelled against his privileged background. After high school, he eschewed college, choosing instead to fulfill a boyhood dream of working as a cowboy on ranches, which he did for three years, acquiring sufficient skill in roping steer and busting broncos to appear in rodeos. (Daniel Wise, "Veteran `Point Man' Ickes Gets New Battle Assignment," New York Law Journal, 28 December 1993, p. 1)
Ickes enrolled in Stanford University in 1961. There he fell under the influence of Professor Allard Kenneth Lowenstein, known as the "Pied Piper" for his ability to seduce idealistic young students into the New Left.
At Lowenstein's urging, Ickes spent the summers of 1964 and 1965 registering black voters in Mississippi and Louisiana respectively, for the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) in Vicksburg, Mississippi and for the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) in Tallulah, Louisiana. White vigilantes in Louisiana beat Ickes so badly in 1965 that he lost a kidney.
Undaunted, Ickes went that same year to the Dominican Republic, where — according to the Boston Globe — he sought to "help deposed leftist president Juan Bosch return to office." After spending two years in Communist Cuba, the socialist Bosch had returned to the Dominican Republic and won the support of a group of leftwing colonels, who sought to place Bosch in power through an armed coup. (John Aloysius Farrell, "The President's Get-It-Done Guy," The Boston Globe, 15 October 1995, p. 14)
Only the arrival of 22,000 U.S. Marines stopped the Bosch coup. According to the Boston Globe, Ickes was present on the island when the Marines landed, on April 29, 1965. He subsequently left the country and began "touring Latin America," until his mentor Lowenstein summoned Ickes back to New York to begin work on the anti-Vietnam War movement.
Shadow Man
Returning to the USA in 1966, Ickes joined Allard Lowenstein in New York. Lowenstein was then running for Congress. He introduced Ickes to the rough-and-tumble world of New York politics. (David Saltonstall, "Harold Ickes Knows All the Secrets But Won't Tell Any," Daily News [New York], 10 October 2000, p. 30)
Ickes became a political operative for the Democrats, working on various campaigns, including the 1968 and 1972 presidential runs of Eugene McCarthy and George McGovern respectively. He met Bill Clinton while both were working on Operation Pursestrings, a grassroots lobbying effort aimed at pushing through the Hatfield-McGovern Amendment to cut off all military aid to South Vietnam.
Hatfield-McGovern was defeated, but subsequent measures promoted by Senator Ted Kennedy succeeded in slashing U.S. aid to South Vietnam by 80 percent in the next three years. By 1975, South Vietnam and Cambodia could no longer afford to defend themselves. They fell to the Communists, who promptly slaughtered 2-3 million people in Indochina.
In 1977, Ickes joined the Mineola, Long Island law firm Meyer, Suozzi, English & Klein, taking charge of its labor practice. Among the crooked unions Ickes represented for the firm were Local 100 of HERE - the Hotel Employees and Restaurant Employees International Union - which was jointly controlled by the Colombo and Gambino crime families; the New York City District Council of Carpenters, then controlled by the Genovese crime family; and Teamsters Local 851, which ran the air freight rackets at JFK airport for the Lucchese crime family. (Micah Morrison, "Who is Harold Ickes?", The Wall Street Journal, 26 October 2000; Jerry Seper, "U.S. to Probe White House Aide's Former Law Firm for Mob Ties," The Washington Times, p. A1)
"The Firm"
Ickes has always denied complicity in any of the criminal activities of his mob clients. Faced with an avalanche of bad press in 1993, Ickes argued, "It is very important that law firms such as mine, which are known for their integrity, provide honest and competent legal representation to unions and their memberships. If we abandoned our clients in the face of allegations of corruption, it would leave union members at the mercy of only corrupt lawyers." (Charles R. Babcock, "Ickes Law Firm is Fighting Release of Investigator's Report," The Washington Post, 16 October 1994, p. A25)
However, Ickes' clients have faced more than mere "allegations of corruption." Several have been convicted and jailed for mob activity. Moreover, Meyer, Suozzi's reputation is considerably more controversial than Ickes admits. Among many New York attorneys, Meyer, Suozzi bears the humorous nickname, "The Firm" - after the 1993 film by the same name, starring Tom Cruise and Gene Hackman as attorneys trapped in a white-shoe law office serving the Mafia. (William G. McGowan, "The Mob and the Deputy Chief of Staff; Harold Ickes, Jr.," Washington Monthly, July 1994, p. 9)
Ickes joined the Clinton White House on January 4, 1994, serving as Assistant to President Bill Clinton and Deputy White House Chief of Staff for Political Affairs and Policy from January 1994 through January 1997.
Ickes brought his mob connections with him to the White House. He would later surface at the center of the so-called "Teamstergate" scandal - a complex money-laundering scheme in which several high-level Democrat leaders and union bosses who were directly implicated in the case mysteriously escaped prosecution. Among the big fish who slipped the net were Service Employees International Union (SEIU) head Andrew Stern; American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME) chief Gerald McEntee ; Terry McAuliffe - who then headed the Clinton-Gore reelection campaign - and, of course, Harold Ickes himself. ("Cleaning up the Unions," The Wall Street Journal, January 30, 2001; John Bacon, "Hoffa Demands Congress Investigate Teamsters Vote," USA Today, 20 December 1994, p. 3A)
For more on Teamstergate and Ickes' ties to organized crime, see the entry for Meyer, Suozzi, English and Klein.
Hillary's Man
Insiders have long noted Ickes' special loyalty toward Hillary Clinton. The Boston Globe called him "a special favorite of the president's wife." (John Aloysius Farrell, "The President's Get-It-Done Guy," The Boston Globe, October 15, 1995, p. 14)
In the Clinton White House, Ickes quickly gravitated to Hillary's end of the operation. He served initially as "health care czar," charged with rescuing Hillary's floundering Health Security Act. (Robin Toner, "New Health Care Czar Preparing for Long Leap," The New York Times, 24 January 1994, A12) Hillary later placed Ickes in charge of a special unit within the White House Counsel's office, dedicated to suppressing Clinton scandals. It operated, in effect, as a Counsel's office within the Counsel's office. In his book The Seduction of Hillary Rodham, David Brock refers to Ickes' special unit as the "Shadow Counsel's Office." Its operatives included Mark Fabiani, Chris Lehane and Jane Sherburne. Ickes reported directly to Hillary Clinton on all matters related to the work of this special unit. (David Brock, The Seduction of Hillary Rodham (New York; The Free Press; 1996), 406-07; Jane Sherburne, interviewed by Chris Bury, Frontline, PBS, August 2000)
In time, Ickes would graduate from running a Shadow Counsel's Office to running an entire Shadow Party.
Hillary recruited Ickes as chief campaign advisor for her 2000 Senate run. According to Ickes, he accepted the job after a four-hour meeting with Hillary on February 12, 1999 -- the same day that the U.S. Senate voted on Bill Clinton's impeachment. "I'm really doing this out of my friendship for Hillary, pure and simple," Ickes told the Associated Press on June 17, 1999. "She called and there was no way I was going to say no to Hillary." (Marc Humbert, "Ickes, a Tenacious Operative, Mrs. Clinton's `Oak Tree' in New York," The Associated Press State & Local Wire, June 17, 1999)
As Hillary's unofficial campaign chief, Ickes brought to bear all the clout and connections he had accumulated through thirty-three-years of bare-knuckled power struggles in the Empire State - most of them fought in dark, smoke-filled rooms beyond the prying eyes of the law. A statewide get-out-the-vote drive conducted by canvassers from the radical cult ACORN and its front group The Working Families Party proved pivotal in Hillary's Senate victory, as did massive assistance from Ickes' old union allies.
Family:
Harold Ickes married attorney Laura Rose Handman on December 5, 1983. She practices media law in New York, but Ickes works in Washington DC. Ickes and Handman have a daughter named Charlotte.
http://tinyurl.com/k3c7u
Remember when we couldn't wait for the Clintons to get out of the White House so we'd never have to hear about these people again?
How could we have been that dumb?
In The Splintering of the Democratic Party, I pointed out how Howard Dean’s accession to the party chair created a problem by pushing the Democrats too far to the left. Soros was underwriting him, Move On and the entire party.
But for a Democrat to win, he (or she) would have to peel off a significant chunk of Republicans and independents, and occupying the Sensible Center is the only way to do it. Otherwise, it’s McGovern time all over again. Hillary has spent her first term setting herself up as a pragmatist and centrist, no doubt receiving a lot of coaching from her husband who was a master of triangulation.
With Dean pushing the party to the Hard Left, it becomes necessary to replace him, preferably with Harold Ickes, but that would open up a fight that would split the party. Hillary doesn’t need to be the heavy in an internal war to purge the Hard Left. They, after all, are the base. What Hillary needs is to control the purse strings. If she has that, then it doesn’t matter who chairs the party.
The coup is her seduction of Soros. If he’s underwriting Hillary’s effort, that means he has abandoned Move On and Dean, its avatar. It means that Hillary’s shadow party will harvest the unions for money while Dean will harvest the Hard Left. But Ickes will have the power while Dean becomes merely a figurehead.
In politics, always follow the money.
New York Times
Bill Clinton's Garbage Man
By Michael Lewis
September 21, 1997, Sunday
snip
Ickes has been caught up in so many of Clinton's scandals and crises that he came to describe his function in the White House as "director of the sanitation department."
As campaign manager of Clinton's '92 New York campaign, he persuaded the state's Democrats to stick with Clinton while Gennifer Flowers strutted luridly through the national imagination. (His persuasion saved Clinton's candidacy.)
snip
When he was 25, Ickes had entered Columbia University Law School and promptly contracted -- if that is the right word - narcolepsy. For 10 years or so Ickes took massive doses of Dexedrine. Five milligrams of the stuff would wire a normal person for 48 hours; Ickes swallowed 60 milligrams a day to keep himself awake. At the White House Ickes had a special terror of falling asleep in the Oval Office. He imagined a day when a pride of Cabinet members would be sitting around the yellow sofas, Al Gore would be going on about the ozone layer and whoosh ... he'd be nodding off on his feet like some giant flamingo. He says: "It's hard to fall asleep on your feet but it can be done.Just give me a nice, dark cozy corner."
snip
Ickes and Clinton got to know each other in the early 1970's, and when they'd meet, they were often joined by their mutual friend Susan Thomases. The ghost of Harold Ickes Sr. was ever present. He had long been one of Thomases' heroes; she worshiped him," she says. It was for that reason, in part, that she knew who Ickes was when he was protesting the Vietnam War at Columbia. (Their friendship was born during Eugene McCarthy's 1968 campaign for the Democratic Presidential nomination; they both worked for him.)
Ickes graduated from high school functionally illiterate, and didn't finish his undergraduate work at Stanford until he was 24. He was, to put it mildly, a loner. "I don't remember having a single close friend before age of 25," he says.
snip
As best as he can recall the first sign he had that his friendship with Clinton had changed was the first time he visited the President in the Oval Office: "The first time I went to brief Clinton I knew him as my friend. He's my friend, I'm thinking. He's the President but he's my friend. And I'm standing there waiting for him to acknowledge me, but. .. he's...doing a crossword puzzle."
The crossword puzzle isn't what's unusual; everywhere the President goes he carries a crossword puzzle, a deck of cards and a book. What's unusual is his new attitude. "I am standing in front of his desk," Ickes says, "waiting for him to give me his undivided attention. I mean he's sitting there like there is no one else in the room. This guy is now the President. But he's also my friend. I'm thinking: 'Hey Pal. I'm here. Let's go.' Without looking up he finally says, 'Yeah, what do you want?'
http://tinyurl.com/frnsb
you know what? They already have that information! They can spend their millions forming a data mining operation, they'll get the same names. "Ooh look, George Clooney's name turned up!" You think?
Hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm............................
Thanks for all that work, kc .... Ickes is literally The Bomb, nuclear, biological and radiological.
R Warren Meddoff, Florida businessman, tells Senators at hearing on campaign financing that Harold M Ickes, then top political adviser in White House, asked him to arrange $1.5 million donation from another businessman, William R Morgan, to help Pres Clinton just days before 1996 Presidential election, and that Ickes called back several hours later to ask him to shred fax that described request;
October 1994 memorandum by former deputy White House chief of staff Harold M Ickes indicates Pres Clinton made fund-raising call to wealthy California businessman from White House that resulted in $50,000 contribution two weeks later; is strongest evidence yet that President tried to raise campaign money by telephone from White House
Democratic National Committee transferred at least $32 million to state Democratic parties in 1996 election as part of elaborate plan to spend more money than Federal election law appeared to allow on huge advertising campaign that indirectly helped re-elect Pres Clinton; plan was conceived and coordinated by Clinton-Gore campaign staff and Democratic Party officials as end-run around legal spending limits
Pres Clinton's former campaign adviser; Harold M Ickes, former White House deputy chief of staff, was deeply involved in directing DNC's fund-raising and expenditures
Kevin Kretz letter disputes February 19 Op-Ed article by Philip B Heymann on allegations surrounding role of Interior Sec Bruce Babbitt and former Deputy White House chief of staff Harold M Ickes in approval of Indian gambling casino
Harold M Ickes, former top White House aide who remains adviser to Pres Clinton, testifies before grand jury in Alexandria, Va, about Pentagon's improper disclosure of details from Linda Tripp's personnel file
Editorial says Atty Gen Janet Reno, by authorizing narrowly defined investigation of whether former deputy White House chief of staff Harold Ickes committed perjury in Senate testimony about 1996 election campaign
Kenneth W Starr's report to Congress reveals that Pres Clinton's Secret Service bodyguards repeatedly allowed Monica S Lewinsky into Oval Office after being told that she was delivering papers and that they were not surprised that she often stayed for an hour or more; Betty Currie, Clinton's secretary, and Harold M Ickes, a former aide, are also cited in report as having been in position to suspect what was going on between Clinton and Lewinsky
House panel probing teamsters union discloses internal Clinton Administration documents that shed fuller and harsher light on effort by Harold M Ickes, former deputy chief of staff, to resolve strike against Diamond Walnut Growers on union's behalf; documents surface at time when Justice Department probes whether he lied to Senate panel probing campaign finance abuses when he denies Adminstration played role in dispute; include Ickes Mar 1995 memo to then-Trade Repr Mickey Kantor saying Ickes had met with group of teamsters officials and wanted Kantor to intervene on strikers' behalf; Kantor, who phoned cooperative president William Cuff after meeting with Ickes
Editorial finds it no surprise that Atty Gen Janet Reno has decided against independent counsel to probe misconduct allegations against Harold Ickes, who ran Pres Clinton's 1996 campaign; says 'cover-up' is now complete, and will be 'shameful page' in Justice Department history
Hillary Rodham Clinton steps up her efforts to consider running for United States Senate from New York as her political adviser, Harold Ickes, contacts wide range of union leaders and campaign consultants;
she (Hillary) also recently entertained powerful New York Democrats and public figures at White House, including Dennis Rivera, labor leader; in making her calls, Mrs Clinton works from a list of 200 names provided by Harold M Ickes, former White House official and veteran of New York politics
US Atty Mary Jo White's office expands criminal probe into whether efforts were made to buy pardons; Sen Hillary Rodham Clinton says she played no role in any of pardons, expresses chagrin that her brother Hugh Rodham accepted large fee for lobbying
Clinton aides say William Cunningham 3d, Mrs Clinton's Senate campaign treasurer and law partner of Clinton adviser Harold Ickes, helped get last-minute pardons for James Manning and Robert Fain; Ickes says friend asked him to help get pardons for two, who were convicted of tax evasion in 1982, interview; says he referred friend, identified by others as television producer Harry Thomason, to Cunningham, did not discuss pardons with either Pres or Mrs Clinton and got no money
Access to Pres Bill Clinton or to White House counsel's office was common ingredient in final group of pardons granted by him; lawyers say that without entree, it was nearly impossible to argue merits of clemency applications; say assistance was given by wide array of people who topped 'Friends of Bill' list: Harry Thomason, television producer, Terry McAuliffe, Clinton fundraiser, Rev Jesse Jackson, and Harold M Ickes, former White House deputy chief of staff and senior adviser to Hillary Clinton; say applicants paid six-figure fees to middlemen such as Hillary Clinton's brother, Hugh Rodham, who worked on two clemency petitions, and Jack Quinn, former White House counsel who represented Marc Rich
http://tinyurl.com/f69oz
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