Important Story for Lefty Bloggers: Clint Curtis

If you were following any of the post-election investigations into possible voter fraud, you were probably reading BradBlog, and you probably know who Clint Curtis is, and you might even know that the investigator from the Florida Inspector General's office who was investigating Curtis’ case committed suicide in 2003 two weeks after telling Curtis that the case was about the break open. Unless you’re still reading BradBlog, though, you might not know that the investigation into that suicide was reopened—and then quickly reclosed—by Georgia police, after speaking to someone in Florida.

Here’s a quick summary for those to whom this story is new:

1. In 2001, Clint Curtis filed a whistleblower complaint with the Florida Inspector General’s office, alleging that his employer, Yang Enterprises, Inc. (YEI), was also employing an illegal Chinese alien, Henry Nee, who was committing espionage out of YEI. He also charged that YEI was illegally over-billing the Florida Department of Transportation on a multi-million dollar contract that was brought to YEI by Rep. Tom Feeney (R-FL) (who now sits on the U.S. House Judiciary Committee but was then the Florida Speaker of the House and legal counsel / registered lobbyist for YEI). Ahem.

2. Henry Nee pleaded guilty; though, despite having admitted sending missile components to China “ten or twenty times” in the preceding year, he was sentenced to be released under a 3-year supervised probation and a $100 fine to be paid immediately. YEI was also found to have billed the Florida Department of Transportation for $248,255 of "questionable charges."

(If you’re thinking, Shakespeare’s Sister, I thought you said this had to do with voter fraud, and now you’re talking about Chinese spies—just where exactly are you going with all of this?!, just hold tight; I’m about to get there. Numbers 1 and 2 were important in setting up Curtis as a credible source who knows what he’s talking about.)

3. Clint Curtis has also alleged, most recently in a 2004 sworn affidavit, that he:

designed and built a "vote rigging" software program at the behest of then Florida Congressman, now U.S. Congressman, Republican Tom Feeney of Florida's 24th Congressional District … in 2000 while working … as technical advisor and programmer at Yang Enterprises, Inc.

[…]

Feeney, who had run in 1994 as Jeb Bush's running-mate in his initial unsuccessful bid for Florida Governor … inquired whether the company could build a "vote fraud software prototype".

[…]

Curtis says that Feeney "was very specific in the design and specifications required for this program."

"He detailed, in his own words, that; (a) the program needed to be touch-screen capable (b) the user should be able to trigger the program without any additional equipment (c) the programming to accomplish this needed to stay hidden even if the source code was inspected."

[…]

Upon delivery of the software design and documentation on CD to Mrs. Yang, Curtis again explained to her that it would be impossible to hide routines created to manipulate the vote if anybody would be able to inspect the precompiled source code.

Mrs. Yang then told him, "You don’t understand, in order to get the contract we have to hide the manipulation in the source code. This program is needed to control the vote in South Florida." [emphasis in affidavit]

So, for your consideration…a whistleblower whose complaint about his employer led to the outing of a Chinese spy and the revelations of bilking the state of Florida out of hundreds of thousands of dollars, also admits having designed a voter fraud program to be used in Florida at the request of a Florida politician who was once the running mate of the President’s brother and now sits on the Judiciary Committee.

Now ask yourself—why haven’t we ever heard the name Clint Curtis on the news?

Or, for that matter, the name Raymond Lemme.

4. Lemme was the aforementioned investigator from the Florida Inspector General's office who was assigned to Curtis’ case, and who, according to Curtis, said during a 2003 meeting that he (Lemme):

"had tracked the corruption 'all the way to the top' and that the story would break in the next few weeks and I would be satisfied with the results."

On July 1, 2003 -- just two weeks later -- Raymond Camillo Lemme was found dead in a bathtub, with his arm slashed twice with a razor blade near the left elbow in Room #132 of the Knights Inn motel in Valdosta, Georgia; a border-town some 80 miles from Tallahassee, Florida where Lemme lived and worked.

Lemme’s death was ruled a suicide. It is worth noting that Florida requires mandatory autopsies for suicides. Georgia, however, does not.

5. This prompted the reopening of the case by Georgia authorities:

[G]raphic and disturbing photos from the crime scene -- said in the original police report to have not existed due to a failure in the camera's "flash memory cards" -- have recently been published on the web!

[…]

The legitimacy of the photographs was confirmed by a spokesman from the Valdosta police. Capt. Brian K. Childress of Valdosta's Professional Standards Unit told us in our original conversation with him that, "the flash card initially did fail" but that they were able to recover them after they "reopened the case due to interest on the
Internet."

"We recovered the photos with some software and were eventually able to get them," he told us, "sometime late last year around December." (Our original story on Curtis was published December 6th last year.)

Uh huh. Okay.

6. And this prompted the reclosing of the case by Georgia authorities:

Despite inconsistencies in the photos and other evidence that would seem to conflict with information in the police report, Childress informed us that while the case was re-opened last December after our original report, it was closed quickly thereafter.

"We spoke to someone at the Florida Department of Transportation," he explained, "and then closed the case again. It was either late '04 or early '05."

Who at the Florida Department of Transportation (FDOT) would have the authority to tell another state to close a case file on a possible murder? And why would they exercise that authority?

FDOT was brought as a client by Tom Feeney to YEI, who then proceeded to rip of FDOT, of which YEI was found guilty, based on the testimony of one of their employees, whose case was being investigated by a man whose subsequent suspicious death was not to be scrutinized per orders from someone at FDOT. What the fuck?!

Brad, who’s still trying to get answers, sums it up thusly:

[T]he continuing veracity of Curtis' claims, along with the continuing and documented collapse in credibility of both Feeney and YEI in this matter, have continued to give us reason to believe that some very bad people may well have done some very bad things. The reopening of the case in Valdosta, the sudden appearance of the photographs, the quick re-closure of the case after FDOT officials intervened, and the odd behavior of the Valdosta Police have added a newsworthiness to this element of the story, such that we are no longer able to keep from reporting it. As much as we truly might have liked to.

I agree completely, which is why I’m sharing the story here. Nothing was ever so rotten in the state of Denmark.

(But go read Brad’s more detailed post, too , as he has sections on the inconsistencies in evidence, the departure from the force of the investigating officer in Lemme’s death, and the stonewalling with which he’s being met as he tries to get answers to the numerous questions surrounding this case.)

People ask where are the Woodwards and Bernsteins of today. Well, we’ve found them—they’re called Brad, Aravosis, Susan G… The only difference between them and W&B is that it’s a lot harder for them to get their stories into the Washington Post. They need our help. We pushed Gannon into the mainstream media; now it’s time to do the same with Clint Curtis. Let’s go.