New York's Eliot Spitzer in the Eye of Scandal

Eliot Spitzer, the Governor of New York, has a problem.  The Governor of New York is the former Attorney General of New York.  As Attorney General, Spitzer exploited scandals, some real, others imagined, many never resolved, but all pursued with the righteous indignation of a populist avenger.

The calculated pursuit of scandal, and the headlines therefrom, made Eliot Spitzer a household name in New York... and governor.  Now, scandal pursues him, and, as The Wall Street Journal puts it, "...far from being a unique, out of character event, the episode is a classic example of the Spitzer political method:  nasty and exaggerated accusations fed by selective, politically motivated news leaks."

The sordid, petty abuse-of-power story is not the stuff of a new-age ethics reformer.  It is from the oldest playbook of political corruption, as yellow as a Dead Sea scroll.

This week, the current Attorney General of New York, Andrew Cuomo, son of Saint Mario, issued a report that implicated the governor's office, the state Department of Homeland Security and the state police in misusing their powers to tarnish the Governor's nemesis Joseph Bruno, New York's Senate Majority Leader.

In essence, as the story thus far goes, the governor's communications director, Darren Dopp, fabricated a media request for information, and then used the state police, including Bruno's own travel detail, to spy on Bruno's travels in an attempt to implicate Bruno in misusing state aircraft for political purposes. Dopp then leaked selected information to the Albany Times-Union.  (The Attorney General's report clears Bruno of the accusations.)

Richard Baum, the secretary to the governor, seems to have known something of Dopp's efforts, but claims he was confused.  Both Baum and Dopp refused to answer questions from investigators for the Attorney General, providing statements instead.  Governor Spitzer says he don't know nothing about no bad stuff, but he wasn't interviewed.

Given the limited authority of the Attorney General's office to compel testimony, demands for further investigations are coming from many quarters, not the least from Majority Leader Bruno himself. 

At a press conference, Bruno said, "I believe for the first time in the history of this state, an executive — the governor's office — has seen fit to abuse the power of that office to spy and track and attempt to really destroy what apparently the governor's office considers a political rival.  If there are cover-ups, the public has a right to know what has been covered up."

Investigations by the Albany County district attorney and the Senate are possible.

Long-time critics of Governor Spitzer cite his reputation as a micro-manager to voice skepticism that he did not know anything regarding the scheme some of his closest aides were about.  Dopp, after all, performed the role of communications director for Spitzer as Attorney General, and many journalists know how that operation was run.

John Podhoretz of the New York Post (which broke the story of the governor's aides' actions):  "We know that he's considered a control freak, a detail-oriented guy with a ceaseless attention to detail and the fine points of every case — and that this portrait of Spitzer is the one offered by his admiring supporters, not by his enemies."

Michael Goodwin of the Daily News:  "Let me be blunt:  I believe Eliot Spitzer not only knew about the scheme.  I believe he approved it and maybe even ordered it.  His denials Monday that he knew nothing ring as hollow as his earlier claim that 'we have never asked the state police to do anything that wasn't standard operating procedure, nor would we.'"

Goodwin cites an incident when Spitzer lied to reporters about the source of millions of dollars in campaign funds as Spitzer ran for Attorney General.  "'Eliot,' I said, 'you lied to us.'  His response was prompt and certain:  'I had to,' he said..."

For the former Attorney General who turned smear into art, several journalists have posed the correct and quite delicious questions:  What did he know, and when did he know it?