'Stunner', 'Jaws Dropped'!
Audible 'Gasps' heard in chamber room!
*** BRAD BLOG EXCLUSIVE! PLEASE CREDIT! ***
12-12-04 | The BRAD BLOG has just received an exclusive first-hand account of Clint Curtis' sworn testimony (as reported earlier) to the Judiciary Committee Democrats holding hearings this morning in Columbus, Ohio on Election 2004 Voting Irregularities.
The software programmer, whose sworn affidavit was named Republican U.S. Congressman Tom Feeney (a Republican member of the Judiciary Committee!) as having asked him to create "vote-rigging" software when he was a Florida Congressman prior to 2000 elections!
Curtis was the only witness to be sworn in at today's hearings.
Here is the exclusive account as we've just received it by a very reliable BRAD BLOG source inside the committee hearings!
The following account may sound melodramatic but it is highly accurate.
None of these are quotes and represent my best recollection.
At approximately 1pm, after a witness had finished, Cliff Arnebeck -- who had given a presentation some time before -- interjected and asked to call one more witness. He was given permission to do so. He said he was calling Clint Curtis.
Some of the audience literally gasped while others applauded. They clearly knew who he was.
Curtis stood at the front of room with Arnebeck seated behind him. Curtis was about five to ten feet from the members of congress. At the front of the room, he placed his hand on a Bible and was sworn. To my knowledge, he was the only witness sworn.
Arnebeck began a direct examination of Curtis with basic questions, name, residence....
Then got to his qualifications.
Then, he asked curtis something like whether voting machines could be hacked. He said yes. Arnebeck asked him on what he based that opinion. He said because I wrote a program that could do it. Arnebeck asked when that happened. Curtis said Feeney had asked him to design such a program at Yang Enterprises.
Jaws dropped. Tubbs, Jones, and Waters looked shocked.
Tubbs, Jones, Waters and Nadler asked questions. Waters asked him to repeat who asked him to do it. Congressman Feeney, he said. Nadler asked him some questions, as did tubbs jones and a state senator.
Curtis was asked what he would conclude if there was such a substantial deviation between exit polls and actual results. He said he would conclude the election had been hacked. Gasps. Could have heard a pin drop.
In the end, Curtis was very, very convincing to everyone in attendance. He was a show stopper, a stunner. It was a really amazing moment.
MORE....
As we've previously reported since breaking our original exclusive story on the Curtis affidavit [PDF] last week (Key supporting articles are linked in a box in our right sidebar) Curtis last week met privately with staffers on the Judiciary Committee as well as Senate staffers.
Wired Magazine revealed today in their article on Curtis that it was staffers in Sen. Bill Nelson's office with whom Curtis met last week in D.C.
Nelson oversees NASA in the Senate. Curtis had charged in his affidavit that an employee, Hai Lin Nee (a/k/a Henry Nee) with whom Curtis worked with at Yang Enterprises, Inc. (YEI) had inserted "wiretapping routines" into programs that YEI had been contracted to create for NASA, among other companies (including the Florida Dept. of Transportation).
Nee was charged with shipping chips used in Hellfire anti-tank missiles to the Peoples Republic of China in March of this year, and has since pleaded guilty to one of those counts!
At the time of the alleged October 2000 meeting at YEI when Curtis claims that Feeney asked him to create a "vote-rigging software prototype", Feeney was a member of the Florida Legislature, a corporate attorney for YEI, as well as being a registered lobbyist for the company.
Feeney was said to have been, at the time, the only registered lobbyist known to have been serving concurrently as a legislator in the 160 member Florida statehouse.
Shortly thereafter, Feeney became Speaker of the Florida Legislature.
In 2002 Feeney won a U.S. Congress seat in the newly created 24th Florida congressional district.
Feeney was the running mate to Jeb Bush during his first failed bid for Governor in 1994.
As we noted earlier, Wired Magazine article quotes YEI Attorneys as saying that Curtis was a "disgruntled employee", but does not note that the Attorney who made the statement is both a campaign contributor to Feeney, and, as well, is Feeney's former law partner in Florida.
There seems to be little to indicate that Curtis was "disgruntled" with YEI or vice versa. He submitted his resignation in December of 2000 and stayed on, at YEI's request for an additional six weeks afterwards until a replacement could be found.
Follow this story at The BRAD BLOG