Questions Answered About the Curtis/Feeney Case!
By Brad Friedman
Thursday, December 09, 2004
Unfortunately, over the last few days since
breaking the
"WHISTLEBLOWER AFFIDAVIT" story, I've been stuck
doing more answering to folks (media, etc.) than reporting
on the story.
Many questions have appropriately been raised out in the
net and beyond about the entire Clint Curtis / Tom Feeney / Yang
Enterprises story, and -- occassionally -- my role in it.
Rather than answer the same questions so many times, I'll attempt
to answer here some of the most frequently asked... And I'd encourage
you folks out in Blogistan, who may see such questions or charges
raised, to point folks to this document and/or any of the specific
answers you may find germane to questions being asked.
As more arise, I'll try to answer them as the story moves along.
Feel free to ask any you may have in comments here, and I'll
do my best to speak to them. I'd echo the comments I reported earlier from Clint Curtis himself yesterday
morning when I told him about all the questions coming up about
his case: "Good! We want them to debunk as much possible,
since that means they'll research the claims and find out how
much is out there about it all...including stuff that I
don't even know yet!"
In that spirit and in no particular order, but for the easiest
(and most annoying one!) first...
Q1. What's up with the fourth page of Curtis' affidavit
PDF] The fonts and colors and pixellation were totally
different than the first three pages! It must be a fake!
A.
Full answer to this question, previously posted in this
BRAD BLOG item.
Q2. I can't find any information
on Raymond Lemme. The inspector for FDOT who Curtis claims in
his affidavit had died just before -- Curtis says -- he told
him that "he had tracked the corruption 'all the way to
the top' and that the story would break in the next few weeks."
A. His full name was "Raymond
Camillo Lemme", which was used on the police reports from
Valdosta, GA. That may have been why people had difficulty finding
info on him at first. I've posted an obituary notice for him
here.
RAW STORY has presented further information on the death here.
Q3. Was Lemme's death a suicide or was it murder?
A. The police reports from Valdosta, GA classify the
case as as suicide. Curtis has suggest to me that he believes
there may have been foul play. But it's just a suspicion he has
based on various elements in the story and in the police reports.
Another source I've spoken to who has been involved with the
case for years and who has expressed "100% confidence"
in Curtis, disagrees with him on this particular fact and feels
there is reason to believe that it was a suicide.
Though there are some troubling points in the police reports
on this, The BRAD BLOG
for now has taken no position on the matter until we can further
review the police records and additional investigation has been
done by ourselves and/or others.
Q4. Does Curtis have any hard evidence to prove that he
created a vote-rigging software prototype as an employee at Yang
Enterprises, Inc. (YEI) as requested by Tom Feeney?
A. If he does, I have not seen it and he has not told
me about any. That said, I have found his allegations -- which
are wholly unproven at this time -- about the vote-rigging software
to be very troubling considering that the virtually everything
else in his affidavit has been largely confirmed as true and
verifiable by a years-long paper trail of evidence, public records
and newspaper articles on the matters.
There were others, beside Feeney, that Curtis has named in his
affidavit as being present in the meeting were he claimed that
he was asked to create a "vote-rigging software prototype"
program. Those people, named by Curtis, are his boss at YEI,
Mrs. Li Woan Yang, and her executive secretary, Mike Cohen. As
well, there were at least two others that Curtis claimed may
have come in and out of the meeting, but as he has told me he
wasn't sure if those two people were in the room during the issue
in question, he did not wish to name them in his affidavit.
Q5. How do you know this story isn't just a devious trap,
setup perhaps by Karl Rove to discredit the Democrats or the
Internet?
A. I don't. But I've seen absolutely no evidence of it.
Q6. Ah! But that's why it's so brilliant and devious!
A. Could be. Though it would seem to have been
so brillant and devious that it was begun at least three years
ago, disguised by Curtis getting fired from a job after
exposing alleged corruption and possible espionage at a state
contractor, facing legal challenge after legal challenge over
many years because of it, writing a self-published book about
it all, and swearing his name to a legally binding document which
makes extraordinary charges against both public officials and
private individuals who are all named and accused of wrong-doing.
And yet, I suppose it could be true that it's a brilliant and
devious hoax. I have just seen no evidence of it.
Q7. Of course you haven't! You, Brad, could be a Karl
Rove plant yourself!
A. I could be. But I've seen no evidence of it.
Furthermore, considering some of the things I've reported and
said and made videos about in regards to the Bush Administration,
as documented on The BRAD
BLOG for the better part of the last year, it seems unlikely.
I have not hidden who I am, what I've done, nor where I've been
over the last decade or two. Much of which is all available on
my personal website
for your perusal and verification.
Check me out. See what you can find. And let me know if I should
concerned about myself possibly being a Karl Rove plant!
Q8. This guy is obviously just a disgruntled former employee!
A. Curtis has told me, and sworn in his affidavit, that
he resigned from YEI effective December 2000. He has added that
he stayed on at YEI until at least February or March of 2001
until they were able to find a replacement for him.
Additional sources (who I hope to be able to name on the record
shortly) have told me that YEI actually threw him a going-away
party when he submitted his resignation! And that he was asked
to stay on for six more weeks at YEI after the person hired to
replace him, had quit on the same day.
I've found no indication that those claims are untrue, aside
from sources related to Tom Feeney who have suggested the "disgrunted
employee" angle on several occassions, but have presented
no evidence to support that charge.
Furthermore, it was not until after Curtis in his next
job at the Florida Dept. of Transportation (FDOT), along with
another employee, Mavis Georgalis, informed FDOT inspectors about
YEI's alleged illegal activities that pressure mounted on FDOT
to fire them, and YEI then brought a case against them.
All of that was after Curtis left YEI, and after
whistleblowing to FDOT inspectors.
They were both eventually fired by FDOT -- on the exact same
day, and without explanation.
Information on all of that is available via public records from
Seminole County and Leon County, FL and has been reported in
various newspaper accounts of these cases over the years.
Q9. Curtis is a liar who stole software from YEI! And that's
why YEI sued him and Georgalis for "intellectual property
theft"!
A. As explained to me by Curtis, and confirmed by others
close to the case -- and verifiable via public records searches
on the case -- the issue in that suit concerns software that
FDOT contracted YEI to create. After YEI delivered what FDOT
had purchased from then, they then owned it according to Florida
state law. It was that software -- which FDOT then owned -- which
YEI has charged both Curtis and Mavis with having "stolen".
FDOT is now a defendant in that three-year old suit as well.
Curtis, and others, have informed me that in the three years
since the case has been pending, YEI has refused to give depositions
in the case. And so, the case mostly just sits there at this
time. Nothing proved about any of it so far.
That is, of course, my understanding of it based on what Curtis
and others have told me, and I'd encourage people to check out
the claims. The legal papers on the case are available through
public records.
Q10. Has the affidavit been shown to anybody in the U.S.
House Judiciary Committee as you suggested in the original story?
A. Yes. (A copy of the unscanned original!) And
it has also been given to members of the U.S. Senate for further
investigation.
Q11. What about those claims that Bev Harris of BlackBoxVoting.org
made about Curtis' story? She says his story doesn't add up!
A. I have responded in great detail to the claims and
charges made by Harris in
this previous article. It seems she may have
been under some incorrect assumptions about a few things, and
may have been responding to misinformation in the matter. See
my very complete response for more information about each of
her charges.
Q12. Is Curtis just doing this to sell copies of his book?
Have you read it?
A. I do not know if it's about selling books. But when
I suggested to him early on that people might believe such a
thing, he asked if he thought it would make any difference if
he made his book available for free on his website? I told him
that it might make some difference, but it was up to him,
and -- like anybody in America -- he deserved to make a living.
Seeing all that he's been through, and that he will likely be
continuing to go through now, I imagine he may need that money
if he decides to keep selling his book.
I have not read or seen his book, so I can't comment in any way
on what is in it.
Q13. Well, then he must be doing it for the $200,000 reward
being offered for evidence about fraud in Election 2004!
A. Curtis has made it clear that he does not want the
$200,000 reward being offered. He said as much in the very first
email I ever received from him.
Furthermore, that reward concerns vote fraud in Election 2004
and Curtis has neither made claims, nor offered any proof that
the program he was asked to create was used in the 2004 election.
Q14. How many affidavits are there? Is the one that
The BRAD BLOG
released the same one mentioned by Wayne Madsen in a story that
also referred to Curtis?
A. Madsen did not show or release the affidavit
he refers to in his story, but I believe the one he mentions
is an older one from Curtis which essentially says, "I swear
everything in my book is true". When I was shown the text
of that vague and short affidavit, early on in my experience
with this story, I informed Curtis that I found it very vague,
and would only continue investigating his story if he was willing
to swear to a more specific and detailed affidavit.
He did so. And that is the one that was released along with the
original story I posted on The
BRAD BLOG on this case.
Q15. In 2000, when Curtis claims the meeting where Feeney
asked him to create vote-rigging software took place, there was
no electronic voting machines in use in Florida. So would anyone
in 2000 really have been looking for a touch screen capable program?
Would it have helped much or at all in Florida?
A. Since the alleged meeting took place just before the
2000 Elections, it doesn't seem as if this program was meant
to have been used in 2000, and Curtis has never said anything
to me about the matter either way.
However, as RAW STORY reported in another interview with
Curtis, the software prototype that Curtis claims to have created
could also have been used on optical-scan counting machines,
which werein use in Florida in 2000.
Curtis' affidavit, however, never claims that the software he
created was used in any electronic voting or optical-scan
machine in 2000, or any other election.
Q16. Why didn't Curtis keep a copy of the program he claims
to have written for Feeney while at YEI?
A. Curtis has told me, though I have not yet confirmed,
that YEI was a secure facility, and that removing software from
the premises was not allowed.
Q17. Was his dog really shot just after The BRAD BLOG published
the original article on this case? That seems a bit much to believe!
A. Curtis' three-year old German Shepard,
Champ -- which had been rescued from a pound -- was found dead
the evening that my original story on this was published. A pool
of blood was found on the back porch at Curtis' house, and the
dog was later found under some sticks in the nearby woods with
an entrance wound in his front left leg, and exit wound in his
rear. A police report was filed on the incident and should be
confirmable via public records.
Q18. Did Curtis tell anybody else about the Feeney / election-rigging
software incident at the time he alleges that it happened?
A. He claims that he did, and that those individuals
may hopefully come forward to confirm that fact via affidavits.
Though, he has told me, he doesn't know yet for sure if they
will be willing to do so or not because, as he put it, "they
may love their dog".
Q19. [ADDED: 12/9/04] Where the hell has Curtis been for
four years? Why is he only coming out now as opposed to before
the election, and why didn't he come out during the 2000 crisis?
A. That's a very good question! All I can tell you is
what Curtis told me when I asked the same thing. His answer
was fairly straight-forward. At the time, he told me, he was
more concerned about the various espionage issues he claims to
have been seeing at YEI, including "wire-tapping software"
added to programs sold to large contracts such as NASA and FDOT,
and Mrs. Yang shipping off information wholesale to her brother
in China. (As I mentioned in
my
original story, Mrs. Yang had told Curtis that her brother
had been deported for "being a spy".)
Curtis had felt at the time that any plan to rig the voting through
such means could never work, since -- as he'd pointed out to
Yang and Feeney several times according to his affidavit -- any
such tampering would be discovered upon examination of the source
code.
It wasn't until the summer of 2004, Curtis told me, when he noticed
a story "on CNN or something" (he claims he's not really
much of a political junkie) about electronic voting which mentioned
that the source code for the voting machines was allowed to have
been kept proprietary by the companies which manufactured and
sold them to the states. His summer of '04 statement, as I recall
he guessed it was July, would at least synch up with discussion
about this issue that made it's way into the media during the
summer when DeForest Soaries Jr., chairman of the U.S. Election Assistance Commission -- the
group created by the "Help America Vote Act of 2001"
-- was complaining about precisely this issue. Here's a June 8, 2004 story about it.
At that point when he heard that story, he told me, "that's
when I sat up and said...oh, my god, they're actually doing it...they're
keeping the source code hidden!"
Since then, he claims, he's been trying to contact "anybody
and everybody" he could about the Tom Feeney incident back
at YEI in 2000.
BRAD BLOG TOO
Setting this up as a supplement to The BRAD BLOG (www.BradBlog.com) which is mostly unreachable due to heavy traffic since posting the original breaking news of the "WHISTLEBLOWER AFFIDAVIT" concerning Clint Curtis / Cong. Tom Feeney / Yang (YEI) / FDOT etc. UNTIL FURTHER NOTICE, I WILL BE POSTING ALL NEWS ON THE CASE AT THIS SITE!
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