Black Box Report

NOW we're talkin'!

Lawyers representing Gov. Eliot Spitzer’s father, Bernard Spitzer, say a prominent political consultant who has been working for State Senate Republicans threatened the elder Mr. Spitzer this month in an anonymous, invective-laced phone message.
......
In the message, the caller says, referring to a potential subpoena: “There is not a goddamn thing your phony, psycho, piece-of-shit son can do about it. Bernie, your phony loans are about to catch up with you. You will be forced to tell the truth and the fact that your son’s a pathological liar will be known to all.”

NSFW link here: Listen for yourself.

The whole helicopter-gate, trooper-gate Spitzer-Bruno slap-fight was starting to get a little stale. The name-calling had stopped, and nothing illegal has yet been found on either side. Then, just when Bloomberg's latest breathless denial of a presidential candidacy threatened to become the week's biggest NY story (yawwwn)....Roger Stone pops up his slimy little head to give the whole thing some of that Roger Stone pizazz! And who's Roger Stone, you ask?

Roger J. Stone’s life and career continues to be one of handling the worst of the dirty work for the Republican party, at the local, state and federal level...

For Mr. Stone, aiding that process has proven to be a good career choice. It has provided him with offices in Washington and homes in NY and Florida. When the going gets dirty, the powerful know, the man to call is Roger J. Stone.

Stone got his start at age 19, infiltrating George McGovern's presidential campaign as part of Nixon's CREEP program. From helping Ollie North raise money for the Contras, to being behind the "hanging chads" of the 2000 presidential recount in Florida and the mob-intimidation of local election officials, and much, much more, Roger Stone was Karl Rove before Karl Rove was. He was even a consultant on Al Sharpton's 2004 campaign, which you could argue was in itself an attack on Democrats.

Oh, and then there was this:

But what gives Stone's latest shenanigans that touch of crazy is not Stone's personal and professional history or his alleged involvement, but his denial:

In any case, I guess the rule of thumb is that if you get a harassing phone call and it's traced back to the phone of one of your political enemies and the voice on the phone sounds like your enemy, then Occam's Razor says you must have broken into the guy's apartment with Rich Little and set him up.

For a guy who sets up other people for a living, he should know what a set-up looks like, right? Unless, of course, he was just projecting. It's also not the first time he's used the "I was set up!" excuse:

Interestingly, this is basically the same explanation Roger Stone gave in 1996 when it became public that he and his wife had been placing ads in sex magazines seeking male and female partners.

Of course, no one actually believes Stone's tissue-thin excu...Wait, I stand corrected:

The fact that [Senate Investigations Committee Chair George] Winner is giving Stone’s “Vast Left Wing Conspiracy” theory any credibility exposes Winner as the hypocrite he has always been. I mean, here’s Winner constantly intimating Governor Spitzer is responsible for the Troopergate non-scandal, despite there being no evidence to support any Spitzer involvement whatsoever, yet he’s willing to accept Stone’s laughable excuses.

But wait, there's more! Stone repeats his denial of involvement - and gives his alibi - on his blog....wait for it.....

The Stone Zone!

Spitzer's Ultimate Dirty Trick
By ROGER J. STONE JR.
..........
Yes, the landlord has keys and full access to my apartment which is generally vacant as I stay on an average one night a week, so a phone call could have been made from my apartment to create a record. I am reviewing the phone bill to determine whether such a call was even made.

(It was - from his phone)

[SNIP]

The guy who makes threatening phone calls to people is Eliot Spitzer not Roger Stone. Ask John Whitehead, Senator Larkin or Sean Hannity. On the night this call was allegedly made, I was at the theater catching the play NIXON and FROST. I highly recommend it to Governor Spitzer. It shows you what hubris and lying brings you.

Aside from the giggle-inducing irony of Stone's alibi, it would seem his story has a rather large hole:

We'll ignore the ironies that Nixon is modern politics' greatest dirty trickster, that Stone worked for Nixon, and that the fulcrum of Frost/Nixon is a (fictional) bizarre late-night phone call. We'll just note this: August 6, 2007, was a Monday. And like many Broadway shows, the play, which closed this weekend, took that night off. "We were completely dark on Mondays," a rep from its management company told us.

Stone has since resigned as Joe Bruno's "Troopergate" consultant at the majority leader's request, I'm sure Joe was shocked to find that Stone might be involved in something like this...

And with that, Roger Stone has managed to turn the tables and make Spitzer, battered and limping from the (completely justified) attacks on the conduct of his staffers, the sympathetic figure here:

Now that he's been given a political gift by this ham-handed Republican thug, the Governor should take the high road with his critics and resume his focus on advocacy for average folks.

Sure, that's what Spitzer should do, but for those of us who like a little craziness with our politics, maybe this story could last a just a little longer.