GOP IT Handyman Holds ‘Secrets of the Temple,” Ohio Election Lawyers Say

Rove, GOP “Hacking the 2004 Vote in Ohio” Case Hinges on Cyber Security Expert

OhioNewsBureau

By John Michael Spinelli

COLUMBUS, OHIO: Mainstream media reports last week by the Columbus Dispatch and the Associated Press on the announcement by two election lawyers in Ohio that the GOP, in a grand plan concocted by GOP strategists, among them Karl Rover, sought to corrupt elections by erecting a virtually undetectable cyber system that would tilt close elections to Republicans, were fast and fleeting.

OhioNewsBureau was present last Thursday for the press conference held by Cliff Arnebeck and Bob Fitrakis in the Leveque Tower in Columbus, Ohio’s capital city. The two attorneys announced they are seeking various documents including emails and contributor names from Karl Rove and the US Chamber of Commerce. They are hoping to resuscitate a moribund case filed in federal court in 2006 that sought to prove that GOP cyber operatives tilted the Ohio election enough, by suppressing certain voters groups who tend to rally to progressive candidates, that final state voting tally and the presidency it assured went for George W. Bush.

Although a name like Karl Rove, the famous if not infamous GOP campaign strategist who helped guide George Bush from the Texas Governor’s Mansion in Austin to the White House in Washington and who everyone knows will play a key role again this year in crafting a strategy to make Arizona Sen. John Sidney McCain the next president, is the headline grabber, the person who really holds the “secrets of the temple,” a provocative phrase uttered by Mr. Fitrakis to describe the cyber systems built to help tilt close elections to Republicans, is long-time IT tradesman Mike Connell.

Connell, the man they say was on the scene even if he wasn’t physically present in states South Carolina, where Bush smeared McCain in 2000 to avoid being bumped out of the Republican primary that year had he lost it after loosing New Hampshire to McCain, appears to have had put in place sophisticated systems that even the Wizard of Oz would have marveled at his work.

According to Arnebeck and Fitrakis, Mike Connell, the IT cyber handyman they says is associated with building various state and federal government cyber systems, can reveal the true nature of the election-system “Matrix” he helped build that delivered Florida to Bush in 2000 and states like Ohio to him in 2004.

If the research Arnebeck and Fitrakis hope to uncover, with the aid of Stephen Spoonamore, a long-time Republican who knows both Connell and is work and whose business is building bank security programs that hunt down cyber criminals by detecting the slightest variance in banking transactions and records and bring them to his attention, the results would make for the next Ocean’s 11 movie plot. This time, though, instead of Danny and his cool, savvy team of fraudsters stealing money from impregnable vaults in Las Vegas casinos, they will build an undetectable master Matrix computer system that tips elections to Republican candidates by first making elections close then squeezing just enough votes to make it plausible but untraceable.

For my first report on the request by Arnebeck and Fitrakis to ask Federal Judge Alegnon Marbley to lift the stay in the case by approving the attorney’s letters to hold various documents and emails, here the link.

For more articles, some that may give script writers the history and perspective they need to turn this grand plan into a new detective thriller movie and some like the video of the interview of Arnebeck and Fitrakis following their media conference and the written transcript of it provided by the Velvet Revolution, that followed last week’s event, this roundup of headlines at ePluribus Media will keep you glued to your computer monitor, wondering where the next clue comes from and what it means.

With respect to sorting out whether the Ohio election in 2004 was fair or not, it appears the Buckeye State may become the venue for what won’t happen in Washington any time soon, namely the deposing of Karl Rove on his role and influence in subverting the spirit of democracy and how system were built to produce election results the GOP hope would keep their reign on political power in such a way that no one would or could discover the “secrets of the temple” behind the ransacking of the principles of democracy by taking control of the mechanics of elections. House Speaker Pelosi has no appetite for presidential impeachment hearings, in spite of the dogged attempts by Ohio Congressman Dennis Kucinich to light enough of a fire under Congress to force them to confront the realities of abuse or violations of the US Constitution, which they refuses to confront before and will not understand only months before voters go to the polls in November to select their next president. 

With such explosive allegations of rigged elections coming in the lead up months to this year’s presidential battle, it’s no wonder that mainstream media reporters want little to do with the import of what Arnebeck and Fitrakis are saying. For to take them seriously is to entertain the notion that our elections today, run as they are by private vendors whose electronic voting machines do their work in secret while political parties none the wise play their respective roles in this play called democracy, are corrupt and as such untrustworthy. To follow this story line through the deep dark forest of the allegations and suspicions that are at its core, takes the kind of fortitude that few mainstream print papers have these days, with exceptions made for a news group like McClatchy that didn’t swallow the patriotic hullabaloo in the run up to war in Iraq that nearly all other news sources gladly acquiesced to dispense.

This story, while it may be too hot to handle for the mainstream press because it forces them to write about a scenario they have long held is impossible due to the bi-partisan control of elections, will be followed here because this correspondent thinks it’s it is not only possible but probable, given the expert comments by Mr. Spoonamore on how our electronic system is built to be hacked and by following the sojourn of Mr. Connell from one key state to another and then to Congress, where he built a computer firewall that gives him a front row seat to all information and offices without being detected.

CAN ELECTIONS BE STOLEN WITHOUT COMPUTERS? ONE READER SAYS YES

James Q. Jacobs read the ONB story on Rove and the RICO assertions being aimed at him and sent a link to his own work on vote switching from Kerry to Bush in Cuyahoga County in 2004 that focuses on "one election issue, punch card cross-voting—how votes cast one way were counted other than as intended, as a vote for a different candidate or option."

But Jacobs writes that not only did  vote-switching occur before the "ballots were counted by computer tabulators" but that "Many Ohio elections in the last decade may have been stolen without any computer involvement."

One underground source that has followed the Machiavellian Matrix of the GOP cyber strategy from its head waters to its many tributaries today, says that Jacob's point that elections can be stolen without the aid of computers makes the larger point that the "thieves used all possible means to accomplish the theft" and that it was not a "single avenue of endeavor because any single avenue would tend to break the noise level of error, the 3% margin" and would "become a signal at that point and get noticed."

"That's what these guys know," OhioNewsBureau was told by a well-informed source familiar with Connell and his work. Connell and his IT handyman crew know "ALL about human perception and that the right noise at the right level doesn't get noticed."

To send a tip or story idea to this correspondent, send an email to ohionewsbureau@gmail.com