B.C's Own
Rose Mary Woods?

Nixon had Rose Mary
....Gordo has Rosemarie

Back in 1973, after enjoying a landslide victory in the election of 1972, Richard Nixon found himself increasingly cornered by the constant drip of Watergate allegations, evidence and questions. Although the botched burglaries that started it all had happened before the election the previous fall, CREEP (Nixon's appropriately named re-election committee) had managed to keep the whole incident from becoming an election issue.

This is reminiscent of our recent spring election where Gordo the Greedy and his Gang of Co-conspirators managed to keep almost all relevant issues from having any effect on their re-election, with the apparent collaboration of the supposed opposition NDP. The true state of the economy, the true nature of Campbell's environmental exploitation policies, fish farms, ruin of the river projects and the dictatorship imposed by Bill 30's removal of any sort of local input or control of development were not as important as Carole James' inability to pick a day with good weather to take reporters for a small plane flight, or the hand of an NDP candidate on the clothed breast of a friend in a private photo were much more relevant to the Canned Waste/Glow Ball media enablers, so sorely lacking in any potential Carl Bernsteins or Woodwards. Instead we had to listen to the pontifications of our Vaughn Palmer and Keith Baldrey who by rights should be just receiving their checks from the mighty Public Affairs Bureau along with most of the rest of the journalists and communications experts employed in British Columbia.

Rose Mary Woods

As the steady drip of Watergate picked up its pace, Rose Mary Woods (seen at left performing the famous "stretch") took her place as a "person of interest" or significant character in the ongoing drama that led to the first resignation of a sitting Preznit of the Excited Snakes.

For those too young (or too senile) to remember those heady days when even the Preznit was held at least somewhat accountable here's some of what Wikipedia has to say about Rose Mary Woods, who worked for Richard Milhouse Nixon from 1951 until his fall from grace.

....she moved to Washington, D.C. in 1943, working in a variety of federal offices until she met Nixon while she was a secretary to the Select House Committee on Foreign Aid. Impressed by his neatness and efficiency, she accepted his job offer in 1951.

....../snip

Fiercely loyal to Nixon, Woods claimed responsibility in 1974 grand jury testimony for inadvertently erasing up to 5 minutes of the 18 1/2 minute gap in one of the Nixon audio tapes (specifically, the one from June 20, 1972) that were central to the scandal. Her demonstration of how this might have occurred—which depended upon her stretching to simultaneously press controls several feet apart (what the press dubbed the "Rose Mary Stretch"[3]) was met with skepticism from those who believed the erasures, from whatever source, to be deliberate. Later investigators identified five to nine separate erasures. The contents of the gap remain a mystery.

Rosemarie Hayes

In this morning's Globe and Mail, former Leaden Gyro winner, Gary Mason, breaks the story of the woman who could turn out to be Gordon Campbell's very own, and maybe not so fiercely loyal, Rose Mary Woods, or more accurately, his own Rosemarie (definitely a touch more Canadian, eh?)

Tapes containing the e-mail correspondence of B.C. Premier Gordon Campbell and members of his cabinet that lawyers in a government corruption trial have insisted are critical to the defence of their clients were ordered destroyed in early May, The Globe and Mail has learned.

According to several sources, the person responsible for managing the government e-mail delivery service has filed an affidavit in court that contains the potentially politically explosive information.

In her affidavit, Rosemarie Hayes, director of Messaging and Collaboration Services, Workplace Technology Services (WTS), states that at the beginning of May of this year, her department requested that backup tapes of government e-mails created prior to May of 2004 be expunged from the system. The e-mails are the subject of a legal proceeding and as such should not have been deleted, according to the government's own guidelines.

..../snip

The new information would appear to contradict statements made in court last month by government lawyer George Copley.

Mr. Copley said that executive branch e-mails from 2001 to 2005 could not be recovered because backup tapes were kept for only 13 months.

..../snip

if e-mails that were potentially damaging to the government of Mr. Campbell existed as recently as this May and were ordered destroyed, demands for a probe into the matter could grow even louder and spark calls for an obstruction-of-justice investigation.

There is more over at Gary's piece in the Globe and Mail, especially some description of legislation and policy that pertains to the retention of information, particularly in cases of potential legal proceedings. Unsuprisingly the comments board for this article wasn't just closed down early, but if any were ever left they too are inaccessible to be even read, at least when I visited the article myself, fairly early this morning (PDT of course for this westerner).

I can visualize Gordon Campbell and his creepy, greedy co-horts as they are running around and around a huge container holding all their dispicable and incriminating secrets trying to frantically plug the leaks as the existing leaks keep growing and new leaks pop up top, bottom and sides. I can only try to keep the faith that TRUTH WILL OUT, in the end....and in this case perhaps the truth can set us free from the ongoing crime spree that we have been victimized by for the last eight years by the largest and most successful criminal organization in the province - The BC liaR Government.

I've been grasping at the memory of the Fall of Nixon after the 1972 landslide since that gross evening of May 12. Thinking of Nixon, Harper, Campbell, Bush the Lesser and DickHead Cheney, I can't help wondering why it is that the voters are so inclined to actually elect and entrust with our concerns such obviously psychologically DAMAGED individuals - frankly the ones mentioned are all sociopaths as far as I am concerned.