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This is the eighth 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 second 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.

OIA Lawsuit Involvement

OIA field officer, Jeff Schorr, then had a bright idea of his own, included in the subpoena materials called “OIA lawsuit involvement”. He suggested bringing class-action lawsuits against employers in the CNMI (regarding “job discrimination on the grounds of pregnancy”, and referencing the never-demonstrated claim of forced abortions in the CNMI.) Schorr had spoken to a Denver-based law firm about the idea and says to North in a memo “I spoke with Al (Stayman) about the prospect of the firm suing one or more garment factories on these grounds – perhaps a class action suit – and he was delighted with the idea.

Eventually the firm of Milberg Weiss did bring class action suit against the CNMI garment industry…a perfect choice of firm for a group of bad actors like Stayman, North, and their Congressional and union patrons.

In May, 2006, a federal grand jury indicted Milberg Weiss, a long-time contributor to the Democratic Party, for paying $11 million in kickbacks to plaintiffs over 20 years, basically paying people to serve as plaintiff so the firm could serve as lead attorney. In 2007, three Milberg partners pled guilty, with founding partner Melvyn Weiss electing to go to trial. In 2008, Weiss changed his mind and pled guilty. He was sentenced to 30 months in prison, $10 million in fines and forfeitures, and three years of probation.

As I said, a very fitting choice of firm for Stayman’s friends, people who, like Stayman and North, believe that any actions, regardless of ethics or legality, are justified to accomplish their nefarious goals.

OIA Political Activity

The last packet of subpoenaed material is called “OIA political activity”. It shows a stunning effort by government employees of the OIA to illegally engage in partisan politics.

According to my source who was involved with hearings on these issues, Stayman and his office were “operating as an adjunct to the DNC, at taxpayer expense, targeting Republican Congressmen including Dick Armey, Tom DeLay, Dana Rohrbacher, Brian Bilbray, and Phil English. They conducted opposition research, wrote draft press and campaign materials, and coordinated efforts with opponents of Republican members of the House of Representatives.”

A good example is an October 6, 1999 letter from Alley Stayman to “Segal Joshi” (he misspelled Joshi’s first name, which is Sejal), Assistant to the Executive Director of the Democratic National Committee in which he urges the DNC and other Democrats to “repudiate” the Democratic Governor of the CNMI for working too closely with Republicans. The note also includes a draft press release for the DNC and asks Joshi “What is the right way to approach this problem this week?” The letter is not only on Interior Department letterhead, but it has Stayman’s signature on it below his typed name.

In the opinion of my source, Stayman perjured himself before Congress, claiming that he did not read the memo before he signed it and that he did not think it was ever sent. But two subsequent documents show that Stayman was lying. First is a memo by David North dated the same day as the memo saying that he “talked with Sejal Joshi…Told her of Al’s interest in talking with her and asked her (Sejal) to call Al. Told Al of the call.” And next day, Stayman wrote another memo to Joshi, titled “Re: More on that Nominal Democrat” in which he asks Joshi to “take a long a few more pages when you see BJ tomorrow to provide a little more substance to our position on the Marianas.” (BJ is B.J. Thornberry, then Executive Director of the DNC, who resigned in 1997 after being linked to the Democratic Party’s acceptance of millions of dollars of illegal “soft-money” contributions from foreigners and who was reported to have had an affair with former Colorado governor Roy Romer.)

Other political activity from Stayman’s OIA included:
• A memo from David North to the DNC, including two press releases from CNMI Governor Tenorio, asking the DNC “to repudiate this man, and his allies.”
• A fax to “Keith”, apparently an OIA employee stationed in the CNMI, saying that “Al asks for you to take your camera and get social pictures of the group with DeLay.” (Congressman DeLay was visiting the CNMI to attend the governor’s inauguration; Stayman apparently attended the event as well.)
• A memo from North to the Executive Director of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee asking on behalf of “some friends” for “the names and phone numbers of the Democratic candidate for Congress” for the then-upcoming 1988 election against Congressmen Rohrbacher, DeLay, and Armey. The reason? “The incumbents have been giving the Clinton Administration a hard time over its efforts to reform the sweatshops and trade law evasions now found in the (CNMI).”
• A memo from David North to the Deputy Editor of Roll Call, which begins “As a nameless source, working for a nameless organization, let me expand on our conversation of earlier today.” North is trying to get the editor interested in writing about the position of Resident Representative (of the CNMI) in Washington (interestingly hinting that he prefers the “gentlemanly” Republican to the “fiercely anti-Clinton” Democrat.) North ends the note by saying “Remember – no mention of me, or a collection of clips… Also, feel free to use any words or phrases in this memo. We are not sharing these ideas with any other Capital (sic) Hill publication.”
• A memo to the campaign manager for Christine Kehoe, the Democratic opponent to San Diego Congressman Brian Bilbray in 1998 in which North says “I am faxing from home, because I am doing this on my own time, and at some risk to myself.” In fact, he was faxing from work, on government time, and given that the Clinton Administration let him off without charges, as they usually did for political allies, I doubt he felt very much risk. North offers a draft press release and says “my motivations are: to help elect Democrats to the House and to punish the handful of obvious GOP sweatshop allies, such as Mr. Bilbray; my short-term reward would be, should you use this and subsequent material, a full set of clippings in the local media faxed to my house. My long-term reward, Mr. Bilbray’s defeat by Ms. Kehoe. I look forward to working (very quietly) with you.”

The documents I referenced in this article represent less than 1/3 of the material collected by subpoena of Allen Stayman’s OIA office. The material is technically public information but has rarely been seen by the public and is certainly not publicized by the dominant liberal media.

Allen Stayman, Union Thug With a Government Paycheck

Also, in 1999, an article about Stayman appeared in the Washington Times reporting on Stayman’s alleged threat against a U.S. Senator: “The same Interior Department official under investigation for on-the-job political campaigning against House Republicans was accused of threatening a GOP senator last year. Sen. Rod Grams asked the inspector general to investigate the purported threat by Allen P. Stayman, then-director of the Office of Insular Affairs, that he would ‘go after’ him because the senator was critical of his work.”

The Inspector General, whom I mentioned before as saying that OIA’s behavior under Stayman was the “most egregious” abuse he’d seen in 30 years of law enforcement referred the case to the Department of Justice and recommended to a House panel that David North be prosecuted by the US Attorney General. The DOJ let David North resign to avoid prosecution. The DOJ decided not to take action on some of the charges against Stayman but referred other charges to the Office of the Special Counsel (“OSC”). Stayman resigned which, according to my source, removed him from the jurisdiction of the OSC, undoubtedly the plan all along when DOJ referred charges to them.

Congressman John Doolittle described Stayman’s OIL perfectly in August, 1999: “The political attacks launched from OIA were aimed at the House leadership, rank and file Republican Members … all ostensibly because of their stand on labor and immigration issues concerning the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands (CNMI). In fact, the CNMI was a convenient excuse for illegal partisan campaigning assistance in the form of made-to-order press releases and opposition research offered to Democratic campaigns and offers of help to the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCoC).”

And a representative of the Saipan Garment Manufacturers Association reinforced the idea in 2000 when responding to a criticism by an OIA official regarding how much business the CNMI’s garment industry was losing over the prior year: “What do you expect from an OIA guy? I don’t understand why it is of any consequence to OIA whether we lose 3% or 30%. Everyone knows that if it weren’t for them wishing it were 100%, they wouldn’t even be commenting on our statements.”

This damning trail of evidence shows Allen Stayman to be a hyper-partisan pro-Democrat and pro-union activist who has no qualms about breaking rules and laws while taking paychecks from the taxpayer. The fact that he is the guy leading the attack against Bob Schaffer on the CNMI issue says all you need to know about the matter. I’ve thought all along that he was the Denver Post reporter’s source for the anti-Schaffer hit pieces in the Post in April, and now I’m all but certain of it.

Stayman is now a staffer for Senator Jeff Bingaman (D-NM) in his capacity as Chairman of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee. He has stayed involved in the CNMI issue, working hard to destroy CNMI self-rule and ruin the CNMI’s economy in the effort to shield unions from competition. Stayman and their union friends got their way when S.2739 passed both houses of Congress and became public law on May 8, 2008. More on this later.

The next installment in this series demonstrates the lack of credibility of other critics of the CNMI and of Bob Schaffer, including their obvious political partisanship trumping any pretense of working for human rights.