Rossputin.com Rational Thinking About Our World

This is the seventh in a series of articles responding articles in the Denver Post by reporter Michael Riley which attack former Congressman and current Senate candidate Bob Schaffer for a fact-finding trip Schaffer took to the Northern Marianas Islands (“CNMI”) in 1999. It is the first of four notes responding to two articles (one in the Post and one in the Rocky Mountain News) regarding the reappearance of Allen Stayman, a pro-union political partisan who attacked the CNMI from his office in the Clinton Administration's Interior Department and then from a position as a Democratic Senate staffer.

On Monday, September 29, 2008, Allen Stayman tried to create a media circus in order to repeat old charges about Bob Schaffer’s role in opposing Stayman’s efforts to “reform immigration and labor on the Northern Mariana Islands” (as the Denver Post reporter puts it) and to try to tie Bob Schaffer to Jack Abramoff. Stayman and “human rights activists” came into Schaffer’s campaign office to read statements while press cameras were filming and clicking away. Joshua Shields, Schaffer’s campaign manager, offered twice to arrange a meeting between Schaffer and these people if they wanted a legitimate meeting rather than a media event. Their answer was just to read another statement then leave.

The real story here is not Bob Schaffer, but the corruption in the Stayman-led OIA during the Clinton Administration and the fact that Stayman should probably be in prison, not working for Democrats on Capitol Hill. (I suppose the standards for Stayman are consistent with the Democrats’ standards for Franklin Raines who also avoided prison due to the shameful settlement by our federal government.)

Additionally, it is interesting to look at the recent history of the Commonwealth of the Northern Marianas (“CNMI”) because the wishes of people like Stayman and the unions he effectively served have eventually come true in the islands, leading to economic devastation (the Governor of the CNMI called it an “economic holocaust”) of those islands, most of whose residents are citizens of the United States. It is yet another example of the pernicious political and economic power of unions, and how their representatives can never be taken at face value. They will do anything, including break the law, to get their way. And that’s just what Stayman and his gang did.

Before I get into the details of Stayman and his departments malfeasance, let’s put it in perspective with a quote from a Washington Post story about Stayman: “Earl Devaney, the Interior Department's inspector general, testified to Congress in 2001 that the behavior of Stayman's office was the 'most egregious' he had seen in 30 years because of its political activity.”

I have received a package of materials which were the product of subpoenas issued to Allen Stayman and his staff at OIA in 1999. This package came from a Congressional staff attorney who was involved in the hearings. The materials are divided into sections which cover OIA’s illegal lobbying efforts, illegal privacy intrusions, illegal lawsuit involvement and illegal political activity.

YOU CAN VIEW SCANS OF A SELECTION OF DOCUMENTS HERE.

They are a damning collection of evidence against Stayman and his underlings and show him to be absolutely without credibility when he levels charges against Bob Schaffer or anyone else. Nearly all of the documents described below are on official government letterhead and all were retrieved from government computers.

Stayman’s key deputy at OIA was one David North. While North was basically the henchmen in all this, it is clear that Stayman was aware of and approving of North’s activities.

These guys were aware that what they were doing was illegal. According to my source, the OIA subpoena included, for the first time ever, a request for the office’s computer hard drives, not just printouts of their contents. A forensic computer technician recovered many deleted documents from those hard drives, the deletion of which by OIA staff was itself a federal crime.

OIA Lobbying

In the area of illegal lobbying by OIA, North wrote draft press releases for labor groups such as the American Yarn Spinners Association and the US Business and Industrial Council. These documents often began with statements such as these:
• “The following is to arrive at the Yarn Spinners’ Association in a plain brown envelope”
• “I am sending you a draft press release…written by an unknown hand, that I would like to discuss with you. If this, or something like this, is of interest, that hand would write similar press releases…and mail hard copies to you as well as a floppy disc in Word Perfect 5.1, so that you could shape them to your format and style, and place them on your own letterhead.”
• “Needless to say, this arrived at your office in a plain, brown envelope, and, of course, can be modified to meet your organization’s needs. Ideally it would be sent to the business editors of the dailies in North Carolina, to business publications there, and to the radio and TV stations. If it works well, the same plain brown envelope could present your organization with similarly tailored stories for several other states. Thank you for the warm response over the phone. Let’s talk again soon.”

The press releases amounted to scare tactics about how domestic garment makers will lose business to garment companies in the Marianas Islands, calling the situation a “lush little loophole."

And in case anybody wants to attempt to argue that North was a rogue actor, the documents on OIA lobbying include at least one memo from North to Stayman about what they were doing, including: “This grows out of conversations with you and Nancy over the last couple of days. My notion: let’s figure out, and publicize, the dollar impacts of the current CNMI policy… A model press release follows; we need someone else to release it, such as Commerce or the textile industry.”

In that same memo to Stayman, North says “Were I still in the consulting business, I would be delighted to get $5000 to do this little job; you might have to pay two or three times that to get a professor at a University, because of overhead rates. It is also something that Rich and I could do in a few days, if someone else were willing to accept DOI-ghosted work.” (emphasis mine)

All of these actions by the Stayman-led OIA were criminal, not just unethical

OIA Privacy Intrusions

The next section of documents is called “OIA Privacy Intrusions” shows Stayman trying to use the power of his office to harass citizens and companies, without probable cause, in the interest of pressuring people to accept the pro-union, anti-CNMI changes which he wanted to cause in the islands.

Stayman drafted a letter to the Secretary of the Internal Revenue Service in which he says that his office has the “corporate names of the 30 garment factories active in the CNMI” and asks “that the IRS simply check its computers to see if (FICA) payments were made by each of the 30 firms, and if the total paid reached the levels shown above.” He adds “Should substantial violations be found, IRS would be encouraged to seize outgoing shipping containers of finished goods, in addition to padlocking the factories…” Basically, Stayman had a Nixon-like “enemies list” and tried to get the IRS to attack the names on the list.

There is a well-known (among the people who care about this subject) memo from Preston Gates (Jack Abramoff’s former firm) about their lobbying strategy for the CNMI, which had hired Preston Gates to represent their interests in Washington. Stayman sent a fax to one of his staffers who was in the CNMI, suggesting that the staffer disclose what was a confidential lawyer-client document to the media and others.

Even more insidious than these privacy intrusions, however, was a December, 1998 note from David North to an Interior Department field worker, Jeff Schorr, in which he says the following about a man from the CNMI whom Stayman’s OIA did not like: “It might be useful to have his SSN, which may be hard to get quietly, or his DOB, which is probably available in the voting records. If we had one or the other we might be able to help CNMI (or some journalists) find some assets of his on the Mainland. All very distant and quite unofficial, so if you think the request inappropriate, no problem at this end.” Do you think North had any question about the request being inappropriate?

In the same note, North says that he sent “a lot of clips” to a reporter “doing a story about the trafficking of women and children for sexual purposes” and then suggests that Time Magazine “may be interested in the Marianas again.” He adds “We need to be careful with this, but they would like to learn enough about Willy Tan to sell their editors on doing a major story about him…” Willy Tan was the largest operator of garment factories in the CNMI, a figure whom Stayman, North, and gang very much wanted to destroy.

Other notes from North include:
• To a Washington Post reporter, including “an organizational chart for Willy Tan’s holdings.”
• To a Los Angeles Times reporter, including Willie Tan’s date of birth, Social Security number, Alien Registration (Green Card) number, and information about Tan’s parents.
• To a Time-CNN reporter, also including a chart of Tan’s holdings.

The next installment in this series will continue to lay out Stayman's partisan activity and criminal behavior, and to wonder aloud how a man like that could still have employ in the Federal Government.