Former Alabama Governor Don Siegelman returned for a further hour to give us an update and to answer listener's calls.
Thom Hartmann interviews Former Alabama Governor Don Siegelman, 05 May 2008
[Thom Hartmann]: I have been saying for a long time with regard to the Bush administration, don't look at the prosecutors who were fired, look at the ones who kept their jobs. Don't look at the anomalies or the scandals, look at the stuff that's being buried. Look at the, if you could, look at the 5 million emails in the White House that have been deleted, the evidence of the ongoing crimes that has been covered up. Look at the prosecution of former Alabama Governor Don Siegelman, for example, who is with us as a guest this hour. He'll be taking your calls at 866 303 2270 after we've had an opportunity to discuss a couple of topics here that I'd like to get into with him. Governor Siegelman, welcome back to our program.
[Don Siegelman]: Well, Thom, thank you. I was, I loved your introduction about, you know, if we could just dig up those 5 million emails that have been erased and destroyed. Yeah, I'd I think I said on the last program, I believe Karl Rove learned two things from Watergate: one, he learned that you don't have to create a "secret plumbers unit" in the White House, when you've got the Department of Justice and US Attorneys to do the job for you. And then secondly, you don't leave around tapes like Nixon did; you destroy evidence and I think that that's exactly what has happened in this administration, and Congress, I don't know anywhere else to turn, I think the only place we have to go is to the House and Senate Judiciary committees, asking them to dig in and to find the truth.
[Thom Hartmann]: Yeah. In fact, I would say that this was the lesson of Watergate that was learned even by the Bush Senior administration; we had Ollie North shredding documents like there was no tomorrow. But these guys have turned it into an art form. Let's just recap for our listeners who may not be familiar with the situation, or may just be tuning in or may not have heard our previous conversation, governor; your, you know, what happened with you? You know, if you can kind of give us the elevator speech here in a couple of minutes from the election, you were the sitting Governor of Alabama through today, if you don't mind, just recap it.
[Don Siegelman]: Well, I ran headlong into Karl Rove and did battle with him in Alabama. He made Alabama his second home after being chased out of Texas when he lost the '92 race. And in 1998 I ran for governor and Karl Rove was running both George W's campaign and a campaign for Attorney General in Alabama. Shortly after I endorsed Al Gore, a state investigation was started by Karl Rove's client. And in 2001 a Federal investigation was opened by the wife of Karl Rove's political associate and political partner Bill Canary, his wife was the US Attorney who ultimately brought charges and prosecuted me. The 2002 election was electronically manipulated. I had won the night of the election. Woke up the next morning, the votes had been electronically shifted to my opponent. And the two people given credit, one was Karl Rove's partner, and the other was a person who went to work for a Jack Abramoff / Tom Delay related company.
But throughout this there were multiple scenes where Karl Rove's fingerprints are on this case, are involved in this prosecution or are involved in efforts to defeat me or to defeat my lottery using Jack Abramoff and Indian casino money, Ralph Reed and other friends of Karl Rove such as Grover Norquist. So there's just multiple, multiple opportunities, if we had a video camera that time of having Karl Rove at the scene of the crime and we are now faced with a criminal conviction where I was raising money for the Alabama educational lottery referendum in 1999. At the same time, Rove's bagman Jack Abramoff was running casino money from Mississippi and Louisiana in to Alabama to defeat the lottery. I was investigated; he and his cronies were not. I was convicted of a bribery charge which in my brief on appeal we allege was primarily caused by a wrongful instruction of the judge, and of course, 60 Minutes said that the conviction also came about as a result of the prosecutors using false testimony from a witness. So that's kind of where we stand now.
[Thom Hartmann]: Right, so you're asserting that you're not guilty of bribery, and it seems that the charge was based on, you know, it's not uncommon, for example, for the president to appoint people to ambassadorships who have donated to his campaign; in this case this individual you appointed to a hospital board who had been on a hospital board before, it was an unpaid position, and he had not contributed to your campaign; he had contributed to this campaign for a lottery to fund higher education that you were supportive of.
[Don Siegelman]: That's true. He had also been appointed to this same board by two Republican and one other governor; three governors prior to me.
[Thom Hartmann]: Right.
[Don Siegelman]: Two Republicans and one Democrat. So we feel good that the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals will look at the facts and will say, as you did, that this is no different than the political practices that go on in every state and of course, by the President of the United States in appointing people who have contributed to their campaigns.
[Thom Hartmann]: Right.
[Don Siegelman]: As long as there is not an agreement to, you know, swap government actions or positions in exchange for the money, then there's no crime committed. And of course there was no evidence of that in this case.
[Thom Hartmann]: Now, in your case after you were convicted, you were shackled and led out of court. I mean, typically with a white collar crime, if a person is convicted they're allowed, you know, Martha Stewart, you've got 45 days on bail to prepare to go to jail, or to prepare an appeal, or whatever. They just hauled you off, started moving you around, kept you incommunicado, locked you down.
[Don Siegelman]: Yes, it was a shock to all of us, I think, and it was a shock to the public that someone would be treated that way. But I think that was part of the plan all along and something that the prosecutors wanted and something that the judge went along with, and looking back on it, I think it probably helped open the eyes of the people in Alabama and perhaps throughout the country to the fact that something was going on here that shouldn't be going on.
[Thom Hartmann]: Yeah, do you think that this was payback from Karl Rove, just viciously punishing a political opponent, or was this a way of silencing you so that your story wouldn't be in the press?
Or both?
[Don Siegelman]: Well. I think it was more getting me out of the spotlight. I was also given an additional 3 years in prison because I spoke out on the courthouse steps explaining Karl Rove's involvement in this prosecution, and the judge in sentencing added about 3 years onto my sentence for speaking my mind about the, how the executive branch was involved in this prosecution.
[Thom Hartmann]: Yeah.
[Don Siegelman]: As we can see now from the investigation that's going on by the House Judiciary Committee, we now know that there is evidence of Karl Rove's involvement in this prosecution, so we're also hopeful that the 11th circuit will note that and will strike that from the judge's order as well.
[Thom Hartmann]: I'm curious. Scott Bloch, who is, was, his offices were raided, the Office of Special Counsel apparently had an open investigation into what happened to you and that investigation, at least the OSC task force, a task force within his office, was supposed to be investigating this and he stopped that investigation. Are you familiar with this?
[Don Siegelman]: I am. I read, I'm sure I read the same AP report that, and other newspaper reports that you are referring to, but what was interesting was that the task force started this undisclosed investigation back in September of last year and then decided that they needed to get documents from the Department of Justice and so they were planning to request those documents at the time this investigation was slammed shut and it was interesting that they, that the special counsel said that to continue this would be "a breach" and I'm not sure what he meant by that. And I'm also curious as to what documents that the task force was seeking from the Department of Justice.
[Thom Hartmann]: Right.
[Don Siegelman]: You know, we have also been seeking documents from the Department of Justice; my legal team has, and they, which would examine the conflicts of interest between the prosecutor's husband and Karl Rove and myself. We've also sought information relating to Jack Abramoff's involvement in the Indian casino money and other documents relating to campaign contributions.
[Thom Hartmann]: We have to take a break, sir. We'll get back with that and I just want to wrap this up with Scott Bloch. I'm also curious about your prosecution of Exxon Mobil. And then we'll take calls from our listeners for you. We're talking with governor Don Siegelman of Alabama, former governor, 16 minutes past the hour.
...
[Thom Hartmann]: So, here we have the office that is supposed to be protecting whistle blowers saying, 'let's look into this Siegelman situation' and then Scott Bloch, the head guy, the political appointee, says 'no, no, no, no, no, oh, no, no, no, wait a minute, we're not going to do that'. And now Bloch is under investigation. This is getting very, very convoluted. We'll see where that all leads. We have governor Don Siegelman on the line with us, the former Governor of Alabama, who believes that the election was stolen from him and in part well, I don't want to characterize your position, governor, on this.
I'm curious, there was an article in Harpers back in 2007 that suggested, that pointed to your launching a complaint against Exxon Mobil for fraud that caused a jury to award a judgement against Exxon Mobil of $3.6 billion. Exxon Mobil appealed, and the appeals court, the State High Court handed down an 8:1 vote in favor of Exxon Mobil that reduced the damages down to $51.9 million and of the 9 members of that court, 8 of them were Republicans, one was a Democrat. This is a court that is elected partisanly. And every single one of the Republicans sided with Exxon Mobil. The one Democrat sided with you. And the article in Harpers points out, "Over the last fifteen years, judicial elections in Alabama have been increasingly polarized [politicized], with enormous sums of money entering the state from the national business community in an effort to seize control of the state’s courts. This money was largely channeled by the Chamber of Commerce and entities controlled by it and by the Business Council of Alabama, run by William Canary" whose wife prosecuted you. Is there, and he's also the campaign partner of Karl Rove. Is there something here that we should know about, governor?
[Don Siegelman]: Well, I think it's all, Thom, I think its all interconnected. I want to just jump back to the raid on the Special Counsel for just a minute.
[Thom Hartmann]: Sure.
[Don Siegelman]: But what we're seeing here is a pattern of where the government is blocking every attempt to get the records of not only this case, but other records that would reflect how Karl Rove hijacked the Department of Justice and has used it as a political tool and, you know, whether it's our attempt to get the records or the House Judiciary Committee's effort to get those same records from the DoJ, or whether it's the Special Counsel's task force efforts to get records from the DoJ, we are being shut down at every turn. We are being blocked from getting those records. And as you pointed out at the beginning of the show, they've erased all the emails. So I think there is a pattern here that needs to be explored by the House Judiciary Committee.
Back to your question on Exxon. I brought two important cases up; one against big tobacco. When I was lieutenant governor I filed a taxpayers lawsuit along with the other of attorneys general around the country. I was a former attorney general so I joined in with them and brought Alabama into the case against the recommendation of Karl Rove's client Bill Pryor, who was also the one who started the state investigation against me. Later, when I was governor in '98 I brought the Exxon, the suit against Exxon, again with the reluctance of Karl Rove's client, the Attorney General. As you know, as you pointed out, we won that case and got a huge judgement against Exxon for fraud, but what had happened in the meantime, beginning around 1992 to '94, then leading up through this case, Karl Rove had been hired by Bill Canary who was the head of the Business Council and the husband of my prosecutor, to work in campaigns to unseat the Democrats, and basically they spend $5.5 million of campaign money to elect inexperienced members to the court and they reversed this ruling. You know, again, how connected it is, I don't know. But the players are the same; it's Karl Rove, Bill Canary - the husband of my prosecutor - and me. And I think that there probably is a connection.
[Thom Hartmann]: And you were the burr under the saddle of a whole lot of folks, from Exxon Mobil, but all of them seemed to converge on this Karl Rove and Jack Abramoff bunch. It's this, and now they've put restrictions on your ability to travel?
[Don Siegelman]: Well they did. You know, the last time I was on this show, we were raising Cain about that because it had just happened, that they had reclassified me as a special offender, which meant that I was placed in a category with the Mafia and with potential terrorists, and as a result of that my travel was greatly restricted. They have since that radio show, the Thom Hartmann Program, they have since retracted that classification and said it was a mistake, and so theoretically now I am on the same travel restrictions as before, but I honestly don't know what those are because I haven't tested them yet. So we're going to see, we'll see how far I can go without having a short leash on.
[Thom Hartmann]: Right, and be able to get the message out. We're talking with Former Alabama Governor Don Siegelman. This could be the case, even frankly bigger than Joe Wilson and Valerie Plame, this could be the case that could put, in my opinion, not speaking for you, governor, that could put Karl Rove in jail, and that could break open the corruption in the Bush White House in a way that is absolutely huge if Congress would only do it. If you want more information about this we'll be, Governor Siegelman will be taking your calls, your questions, right after the break here. For more information check out his web site, donsiegelman.org, Siegelman 'i' before 'e', remember that from elementary school? Siegelman donsiegelman.org. Governor, you can stick around, right?
[Don Siegelman]: Absolutely.
[Thom Hartmann]: OK, great. 27 minutes past the hour. We'll be back in a few minutes with your calls for governor Don Siegelman of Alabama.
...
[Thom Hartmann]: 34 minutes past the hour. Thom Hartmann here with you on Air America Radio. We have Governor Don Siegelman on the line, the former governor of Alabama and the man who, whose persecution, I would say, as well as prosecution, by Karl Rove and his buddies - my language, not his - may well break open one of the largest scandals certainly in our history, going back to Watergate.
Governor, before we take any phone calls here, anything you want to add to what we've said? By the way, I want to note for folks listening, your web site is donsiegelman.org 'i' before 'e', siegelman.org, anything you want to toss in?
[Don Siegelman]: Well, I think if anybody wants more information they can go to the donsiegelman.org web site or donsiegelman.com web site, but I want to echo what you just said. I really believe that this case, once it starts to unfold, will make Watergate look like child's play, because it will expose so much more. And I want to make this clear; this is not about me or my case. I mean, this, my guilt or innocence will be decided by the 11th circuit court of appeals. I mean, and I'm confident that of the outcome of that. But what is important here is again the Congress digging in and discovering the truth so we can restore justice and restore our democracy. If Congress fails to act, nothing will have been done to prevent something like this from happening again. We've got to hold those people, Karl Rove and others, accountable and make it clear and unequivocal that we are not going to let this country slide back into this ever again.
[Thom Hartmann]: Yeah. Amen. David in Atlanta, Georgia. You're on the air with Governor Don Siegelman.
[David]: Good afternoon, governor, this is David Diez. I had a question about the House Judiciary Committee requested that Karl Rove testify, and I was just curious, is there any legal means to make him testify, other than politely asking him? And is he trying to use executive privilege again? What is the way around that?
[Thom Hartmann]: You're a former attorney general, you're a former prosecutor, you're an attorney, Governor Siegelman?
Your thoughts?
[Don Siegelman]: Well, I think there is a way around his claim of executive privilege and I believe, first of all, Congress needs to move forward with subpoenaing Karl Rove. And having him before the committee, going ahead and giving him a choice of pleading the 5th Amendment, and refusing to testify, or lying under oath, or telling the truth which I doubt he would ever do. But, so I think probably what we will see is a repeated claim of the 5th amendment when Rove appears before the committee. He has been given until May 12th as I understand it to answer chairman John Conyer's request that he appear voluntarily under oath. We will see, you know, what he will do. But it was interesting to watch Karl Rove equivocate, because he had said basically his lawyer Robert Luskin ? had said ?
"yes, he will testify".
[Thom Hartmann]: Yeah, to Dan Abrams on MSNBC.
[Don Siegelman]: Yeah, and then of course he backtracked on that real quick when John Conyers took him up on it.
[Thom Hartmann]: Yeah.
[Don Siegelman]: So now I think Congress hopefully will move forward and will require his testimony by way of a subpoena.
[Thom Hartmann]: Yeah, and I think, by the way, a personal note here, I think Dan Abrams has done a marvelous job of publicizing this on MSNBC too, and Keith Olbermann as well.
Ian, I don't have a city for you, Ian, I'm sorry. Tell us where you're located?
[Ian]: San Francisco.
[Thom Hartmann]: OK.
[Ian]: And good morning to both of you. What I wanted to suggest is something that I've called in and suggested to the committee a couple of weeks ago, and I wanted to get your reaction, governor. I wouldn't even spend any more time about whether they'd let you travel there. Why not bring the committee hearing to Alabama and hold a hearing there and take your testimony? That would get a lot more publicity for it and maybe the media would start covering this issue.
[Don Siegelman]: Oh, that is a good idea, although I, most of the media here seems to be in a mode of not listening. And if they are listening, they are listening in disbelief to what is being said on the national media. But that is something, I think, that the committee could consider, is having a hearing here. I think that what is, to me what is important is that the Congress, we all write, email or call chairman John Conyers and chairman Henry Waxman of the Government Oversight and Reform committee and encourage them to continue their investigation into this. Congressman Waxman has taken on Jack Abramoff, and of course one of the aspects of his investigation that I would like to see here pursued is investigating Abramoff's involvement in my election in 1998 and his involvement in the Alabama Education Lottery referendum in 1999 and his involvement in both my election and the election being stolen in 2002. Along with that we have Karl Rove, we have Grover Norquist, we have Ralph Reed, all of those people participating; Ralph Reed in all three of those elections.
And nobody is investigating their involvement in money laundering in Alabama of Indian casino money through the Christian Coalition to defeat me and to defeat the lottery effort. It's a huge issue and as I've said before, all roads lead to Rove. This investigation that chairman Waxman is involved will lead to Rove as well. It's a question of whether John Conyers' investigation leads to Rove faster than Henry Waxman's investigation will lead to Rove. But they're both going to the same place.
[Thom Hartmann]: Right, the phone number for Congress, by the way, is 202 225 3121. There are a number of toll free numbers over at callcongress.org. And you can simply call Capitol Hill and ask for the office of John Conyers or Henry Waxman, Congressmen Waxman and Conyers, and register your concern that this situation with regard to the former Alabama governor Siegelman be investigated. There's also information and contact information over at donsiegelman.org, more information there. Len in New York City, you're on the air with governor Don Siegelman.
[Len]: Hi, thank you, and all the best of luck to you. You had just mentioned what I was about to ask you about. Jack Abramoff, Grover Norquist, Ralph Reed were all directly involved in your campaign. It would seem to me that Jack Abramoff is already to some degree, I think as a result of some type of plea agreement, been forced to, you know, help in any way with any type of inquiry, so he would be one of the first people to be called, I would assume. So, could you comment on that?
[Don Siegelman]: Well, I think, yes, I think you're right. I think he obviously knows a lot, and of course more is coming out about how Karl Rove and Jack Abramoff misused and abused power and influence to stymie investigations that might have been going on in the criminal division of the Department of Justice. We recently saw the resignation of Alice Fisher who had ties with Abramoff, and also her deputy Joseph [Robert?] Coughlin, I believe his name was, who had just entered a plea agreement for co-operating, for trading government actions for favors from Abramoff and Abramoff's employees. But there is so much more to be disclosed and so much more that needs to be investigated with regard to Abramoff and Rove's involvement in the abuse of power in the Department of Justice.
[Thom Hartmann]: Amen. Sarah in Sebastopol, California listening on Green 960 in San Francisco. Sarah, you're on the air with Governor Don Siegelman.
[Sarah]: Thank you so much for taking my call, Thom. It's a privilege whenever I get to listen to your show.
[Thom Hartmann]: Thank you.
[Sarah]: And when I heard you mention, Governor Siegelman, that your election was turned over electronically, one of my pet issues is verifiable national voting. And I've signed all the petitions, written letters, and I'm just aghast that nothing seems to be happening to make sure that we have safe, verifiable elections ? what can we do to make this happen?
[Don Siegelman]: Well, I think you're absolutely right. We've got to move towards some kind of ballot.
[Thom Hartmann]: Go back to paper?
[Don Siegelman]: Well, I'm not so sure that we, I would...
[Thom Hartmann]: It works for Canada and all of Europe.
[cross talk]:
[Don Siegelman]: Frankly, I'd rather go back to paper ballots and be able to hand count them if we have to to make sure that we have a winner in office. But, you know, surely there has got to be another way, and of course in our situation in Baldwin County where, it was a Republican county and we had won enough votes in that county. We lost the vote in that county; we expected to lose the vote. But we won enough votes to win the election, went to sleep, and after midnight when the poll workers were sent home and the poll watchers were sent home and the media were sent home, some people got together in the basement of the court house and electronically shifted the votes and the next morning we asked for a hand count of the paper ballots that were passed through the counter and we were told that we could do that by the local officials, but then Karl Rove's client stepped in, the Attorney General, and said anybody that tries to that's going to jail. And again, the people responsible for ballot security in that county was one guy named Dan Gans who later went to work for Jack Abramoff and Tom Delay's company, the Alexander Strategy Group. So.
[Thom Hartmann]: It's amazing. We'll get back to that right after the this. 45 minutes past the hour.
...
[Thom Hartmann]: Welcome back to the Thom Hartmann Radio Program here on Air America Radio. Nine and a half minutes before the hour. We're talking with Governor Don Siegelman of Alabama, former governor of Alabama, his web site, donsiegelman.org and check it out. Our web site, of course, thomhartmann.com, airamerica.com, if you want to drop into our live chat room. 866 303 2270 our telephone number. Governor, we got slammed by the commercial necessities of programming here as you were wrapping up the story of how you had essentially lost the election of 200, or won it and it was taken from you. Do you want to just quickly recap that and then we'll go on to our next caller?
[Don Siegelman]: Well, we won the election, the votes were electronically shifted by two people, one who was, two people who either took credit or got credit for it. Once was Karl Rove's partner, the other was a person who went to work for a Jack Abramoff / Tom Delay-related company. There's no doubt in my mind that the election was stolen. We tried to prove that by hand recount but we were blocked by Karl Rove's client who was them the Attorney General. And that's the story of the election. But it's, you know, what is at stake in this country today is our basic freedoms and whether or not we preserve our democracy and Thom, your show, whether it is me or others who are on talking about this issue, you know, we've got to keep in mind that it is not about me and my case. Again, it is about this country and about whether or not we're going to fight to get it back.
[Thom Hartmann]: Yep.
[Don Siegelman]: And I want to commend you for what you've been doing to help give an expression to the voices out there around the country who want to say something and do something to get this country back to where it should be.
[Thom Hartmann]: Well thank you, sir, and I, without too much mutual admiration here, I want to commend you for, you know, going through hell and still coming back and fighting back. I mean, it's extraordinary. Let's get to our callers. Christopher in Washington, DC. Christopher, you're on the air with governor Don Siegelman.
[Christopher ]: Hey, I wanna say Thom, Thom, because you're so nice I have to say it twice. Thom. Your show has been very inspirational to me and I followed the story of governor Siegelman. The Bush grip must be relaxing on this country's media because 60 Minutes did a great job, I think, telling the story to those who didn't know about it before.
[Thom Hartmann]: Right.
[Christopher ]: I worked as a little underling in the Clinton White House, and since Bush got in there I haven't gone within 500 feet of the place. You know, Rove has been like a dark could over my home city. He's done numerous things around it. Unfortunately they've often only been covered by the local press.
[Thom Hartmann]: Amen. Chris, a question for the governor?
[Christopher ]: My question is, governor, I don't suppose you have a chance of overturning this thing and, you know, running for governor again? Or being able to contend with this Republican? Is that a possibility?
[Don Siegelman]: Well, what I, one, I think the case will I hope and trust that it will be overturned and reversed by the 11th circuit court of appeals. We'll find out within the next 8 months, I think. But I think really, more importantly, regardless of what happens to me, the most important thing is for the people of this country to demand their country back, to demand our democracy back, to restore justice. And I think that starts with an exposé that has to come from Congress; they've got to keep digging for the truth to expose those people who are responsible for what has happened in this country. And we have got to hold them accountable and say clearly to everybody that might be thinking that they're going to do the same thing some day, we're not going to tolerate it any more. We've got to stop this. We've got to regain our country.
[Thom Hartmann]: Amen. Judy in Orange County, California, listening on KTLK in Los Angeles. Hey, Judy. You're live with Governor Don Siegelman.
[Judy]: Thank you Thom for taking my call. Governor Siegelman, I have a question. It concerns me that Bush will pardon Rove on the way out. I was thinking maybe if they can string out this investigation until the election and then at the election really go after Rove so Bush can't pardon him, and get some kind of assurance from our next president that they won't pardon Bush. What is your opinion on that?
[Don Siegelman]: Well, I think that because Rove has been so linked to so many areas of wrongdoing that any attempt to provide a pardon for him could appear to be an obstruction of justice. I think that what would be in the best interests of our, of President Bush is to let this thing go to the, you know, whichever way it's going to go. I just don't believe that he would issue a pardon of Rove before he leaves office, and again what we've got to do is to encourage Congress to keep moving and move fast in case they can uncover something before the end of this term.
[Thom Hartmann]: Right. We just have a couple of minutes left. Mary in South Carolina, quick question for Governor Don Siegelman.
[Mary]: Is that me?
[Thom Hartmann]: That's you
[Mary]: Oh. Well, I sent a note to John Conyers this morning regarding Governor Siegelman, so I hope that's going to help. And I'd like to ask the governor, doesn't a Congressional subpoena trump travel restrictions? And if not, can't he testify electronically right from his home base?
[Don Siegelman]: Sorry, I didn't hear you.
[Thom Hartmann]: Governor, she asked if a Congressional subpoena would trump the travel restrictions that had been imposed on you or any future ones that might be imposed on you and if so, could you testify before Congress from Alabama?
[Don Siegelman]: Oh yes, I think, I will do whatever is necessary to provide Congress with whatever help and assistance I can provide them with that would further this investigation into Karl Rove's abuse of power.
[Thom Hartmann]: K. We have just one minute left. We're talking with Governor Don Siegelman, the former governor of Alabama, donsiegelman.org is his web site. Governor, in this last minute, do you want to give us a wrap up here, the thoughts that you'd like to share with the American people about this?
[Don Siegelman]: Well, again Thom, the most important thing is that we keep talking about it. We have got to inspire and encourage Congress to keep digging for the truth. Again, I want to say how much I appreciate Congressman John Conyers and Chairman Waxman's leadership on the two important issues. Also, Senator Arlen Specter has spoken out on this. He's a Republican who wants to clean the slate, clean house, he wants to make, you know, to set things right. So this is important to America, it's important that we restore justice and restore our democracy.
[Thom Hartmann]: Amen. Governor Don Siegelman donsiegelman.org is his web site. Please check it out. There's an enormous amount of information there. And we'll have a link to it from our home page, thomhartmann.com. Governor, thank you for being with us today.
[Don Siegelman]: Thank you, Thom.
[Thom Hartmann]: Keep up the great work. 57 minutes past the hour.
Transcribed by Sue Nethercott.
