A Conspiracy So Lunatic ...
Hinderaker, John H.
A Conspiracy So Lunatic . . . Only ‘60 Minutes’ could fall for it. BY JOHN H. HINDERAKER Jill Simpson is an unusual woman. A lawyer, she has scratched out an uncertain living in...
...Moreover, when she told her story of the alleged conspiracy against Don Siegelman to John Conyers’s House Judiciary Committee staff, she said that she heard references to someone named “Carl” in the aforementioned telephone conversation—she made the natural inference that this must be Karl Rove—but never offered the blockbuster claim that Rove himself had recruited her to spy on Siegelman...
...Subsequently, MSNBC’s Dan Abrams invited Simpson to repeat her slur against Rove...
...Fair question...
...This can be explained only by the fact that Simpson included in her fable, as she related it to CBS, a fi nal conspirator: Karl Rove, who, according to Simpson, orchestrated the plot against Siegelman...
...Jill Simpson, who barely got by in Alabama, is now toasted by the national Democratic party and featured on network and cable news...
...All this because she has testifi ed—without a shred of supporting evidence— to a conspiracy so vast as to be not just implausible, but ridiculous...
...But what explains CBS’s and MSNBC’s decision to peddle her fable...
...SIMPSON: No...
...However, they suggested to me that that was not relevant because there was nothing illegal about that and they’d just prefer that not come up at the hearing that day...
...PELLEY: From Karl Rove...
...Simpson’s story is unbelievable and contradictory on so many levels that it cannot bear a moment’s inspection...
...SIMPSON: I had had other requests for intelligence before...
...24, 2008 story, that you then repeated on Feb...
...25, 2008: ABRAMS: And why have you never mentioned before the allegations of Rove and the pictures...
...Those who know her in DeKalb County scoff at the idea that she is a Republican at all...
...What MSNBC found plausible was Simpson’s suggestion that House Democratic staffers got their hands on the story that Karl Rove had tried to get compromising photographs of the governor of Alabama and they hushed it up...
...This prompted Rove to write to Abrams, posing a series of questions about whether Abrams had used elementary journalistic methods to check the accuracy of Simpson’s account...
...Fellow DeKalb County lawyers describe her as “a very strange person” who “lives in her own world...
...She said that during Siegelman’s term as governor of Alabama, Rove had asked her to follow Siegelman around and try to get photographs of him “in a compromising sexual position” with one of his aides...
...Simpson can offer no evidence that she has ever spoken to or met Karl Rove...
...I talked to congressional investigators, Dan...
...Pelley was at a crossroads: He knew that either (1) he was on the verge of uncovering a whole series of Rovian plots, the stuff of which Pulitzers are made, or (2) he was talking to a lunatic...
...In her affidavit, she did not claim that she had ever met Rove, let alone been his secret agent in Alabama...
...Karl Rove has become the man who cannot be libeled...
...John H. Hinderaker is a contributor to the blog Power Line...
...Instead, in late February, CBS’s ‘60 Minutes’ gave her a starring role...
...Put aside the fact that before she was interviewed by House Democratic staffers, Simpson submitted an affidavit on the alleged conspiracy...
...SIMPSON: Yes...
...Normally one might expect a person of uncertain mental health who alleged such a comprehensive conspiracy to be ushered quietly offstage...
...Neither in the affi davit that she submitted to the committee, nor in 143 pages of sworn testimony that she gave to the committee’s staff, did she ever claim to have met Karl Rove, spoken to Karl Rove, or carried out any secret spy missions on his behalf, even though the whole point of her testimony was to try to spin out a plot against Siegelman that was ostensibly led by someone named “Carl...
...Any story that includes his name is treated as self-authenticating, requiring neither supporting evidence nor the barest plausibility...
...The daughter of rabid Democrats, she has rarely if ever been known to participate in politics as even a low-level volunteer...
...Rumor has it that she is leaving DeKalb County for good and heading for the suburbs of Washington, D.C...
...Simpson failed to mention [in her sworn statement to House Judiciary Committee staff] the claim she made to CBS for their Feb...
...25th...
...The credulity of modern journalists apparently knows no bounds...
...Instead, in late February, CBS’s 60 Minutes gave her a starring role...
...He is facing seven years in a federal prison...
...Intuiting, no doubt, which way the conversation was likely to go, Pelley discreetly chose not to inquire further...
...A lawyer, she has scratched out an uncertain living in DeKalb County, Alabama...
...Siegelman himself has called her a “great American,” while simultaneously acknowledging that her story, insofar as it claims a relationship with him, is false...
...any port in a storm...
...60 Minutes chose to highlight Simpson’s claim that she was Rove’s secret agent without telling its viewers that this sensational allegation had been altogether absent from her sworn accounts...
...Normally, one might expect a person of uncertain mental health who alleged such a comprehensive conspiracy to be ushered quietly offstage...
...This led to one of the great moments in recent broadcast history: 60 MINUTES’S SCOTT PELLEY: Were you surprised that Rove made this request...
...Every person whose name Simpson has invoked has labeled her story a fantasy, including Siegelman...
...Simpson claims to have participated in a phone conversation with several Alabama Republicans in which she was made privy to a plot involving the Republican governor of Alabama, Bob Riley, a former justice of the Alabama Supreme Court, a federal judge, two United States attorneys, several assistant United States attorneys, the Air Force, and, apparently 12 jurors, to “railroad” former governor Don Siegelman into his 2006 conviction for bribery and mail fraud...
...Which is why I asked her the following on Feb...
...Rove’s letter drew a response from Abrams: [Y]ou wrote, “Did it not bother you Ms...
...And when I talked to those congressional investigators I told them that I had followed Don Siegelman and tried to get pictures of him cheating on his wife...
...Having committed the unforgivable sin of contributing to two successful Republican presidential campaigns, Rove has become, for American media, the equivalent of an outlaw, possessing no rights that must be respected...
...she claimed to have played a key role both in his giving up his unsuccessful contest of the 2002 gubernatorial election and in his defense of the criminal charges against him...
...But that has not prevented her from being hailed as a hero by the Democratic party...
...SIMPSON: Well, let me explain something to you...
...Siegelman’s embrace of Simpson is understandable...
...Yet today, she is a minor celebrity who is unvaryingly described in the press as a “Republican operative...
...Wholly unexplained, for example, is why, if Rove or anyone else wanted to spy on the governor of Alabama, he would assign the task to a conspicuously large redhead with no experience as an investigator and no ties to the Republican party, rather than hire a professional investigator...
...Citing her testimony, John Conyers has threatened to subpoena Karl Rove to testify before his committee...
...In her 60 Minutes interview, Simpson claimed to have been Rove’s secret agent in Alabama...
...Recently, Simpson’s house and law offi ce were on the auction block...
...PELLEY: Why not...
Vol. 13 • May 2008 • No. 35
