Siegelman, Gov. Don - "America's Most Wanted" -...

America's Most Wanted

This week, a protestor tried to pin a citizens’ arrest on Karl Rove, the guy who used to be known as “Bush’s Brain.” Here, an exclusive testament from the man who should have been holding the cuffs—former Alabama governor Don Siegelman

as told to Brett Martin October 24, 2008

In 1998, Don Siegelman, newly elected governor of Alabama, was a man to watch on the national political scene—a charismatic Democrat able to win elections in the heart of the South. His misfortune was to be a winner in the adopted home state of Karl Rove. Starting as soon as he was elected, Siegelman says, Rove used his power, and the United States Justice Department, to engineer a series of investigations designed to ruin the governor’s career.

In this, according to the former governor, Rove and his alleged cronies in Alabama were highly successful: In 2002, Siegelman’s reelection effort faltered as a result of the investigations. Three years later, as Siegelman readied another run for governor, the stakes were upped dramatically. A U.S. attorney named Leura Canary, the wife of Rove partner Bill Canary, charged Siegelman with multiple counts of bribery, mail fraud, and other crimes related to Siegelman’s signature initiative: the institution of a state education lottery. The ex-governor and his co-defendant, businessman Richard Scrushy, were found guilty and received surprisingly harsh sentences; Siegelman was sent to prison for seven and a half years.

Earlier this year, fifty-four former attorneys general, from both parties, filed a brief with the Eleventh Circuit Court citing outlandish irregularities in Siegelman’s prosecution and demanding his release. A 60 Minutes segment revealed that the government’s chief witness had been extensively coached. Most damning, a Republican attorney from Rainsville, Alabama, named Jill Simpson came forward and testified that she had been told by Bill Canary that his wife was going to “take care” of Siegelman, and that “Karl” had already made arrangements with the Justice Department. (Rove has denied any wrongdoing.) This March, in an unusual move, the court released the former governor on bond after spending nine months in prison. Now he awaits his appeal while Scrushy remains in prison. Rove has ignored subpoenas to testify before the House Judiciary Committee.

Here, Siegelman gives GQ an exclusive account of his ordeal.

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I never thought for a minute that I was going to be convicted. We knew where this prosecution was coming from. We knew the political motivation. I was confident that the truth would come out—so confident, in fact, that we didn’t put any witnesses on the stand because we didn’t think there was any evidence.

What had happened was that I wanted to raise money for an education lottery that would guarantee that every child in Alabama that graduated from high school would be guaranteed a college education. So I was raising money for the lottery campaign, and when I had a chance to ask people for contributions, I asked them. I asked Richard Scrushy—a very prominent Republican donor, who had given several hundred thousand dollars to my opponent—and he agreed. Later I called him up and asked him to serve on an oversight board that he’d served on for the past three governors, Republicans and Democrats. I had to talk him into it.

There wasn’t a crime here. According to the attorney general, the U.S. Supreme Court, and even the Justice Department, there had to be a quid pro quo deal in order to prove bribery. Not one penny of that money went into my pocket; it all went to the lottery campaign. So I was shocked: one, that a jury could come back after a two-week deliberation with a guilty verdict; and two, that the Department of Justice could be manipulated by one powerful person, that person being Karl Rove.

Now, there had been a governor convicted of taking money before me. That governor, a Republican, actually did put $200,000 into his own pocket, and he was sentenced to 1,000 hours of community service. So when it came to the sentencing hearing, I wasn’t too worried about prison time. And even if I were to be sentenced to prison, my probation officer assured me that I’d have time to get things in order before reporting to jail. He said, “Don’t even think about it. You should be thinking community service.”

But the judge sentenced me to eighty-eight months in prison, and I was handcuffed, shackled, and dragged out of the courtroom in front of my family. I was taken to a maximum-security prison in Atlanta. No daylight. Food served through a little slot in the door. No exercise. I stayed there for three weeks, and then I was flown to a facility in New York, then Michigan, then Oklahoma City before ending up in Oakdale, Louisiana. During this time, my wife and family were not notified where I was.

Time is viewed totally differently in prison. When you’re free, you want the day to last as long as possible. You want to savor every moment. In prison, it’s just the opposite; you want to get rid of days as fast as you can. I couldn’t help but think about the people whose execution dates I had set when I was attorney general and that I’d upheld as governor. I said a quiet prayer that I had made the right decisions, because I knew then that the justice system was not infallible.

We don’t know how many other cases like mine there are out there. The only reason that my case is different, that I’ve gotten any attention, is because of a lifelong Republican named Dana Jill Simpson, who couldn’t sleep at night and came forward to place Rove at the scene of the crime. When I got out of prison, I happened to be at a public meeting that she was also at. I just shook her hand and thanked her. I told her that she was an American hero.

Do I believe in evil? Do I believe that Karl Rove is evil? I do. I don’t mean that he was necessarily raised to be evil. But I think that, like Caligula, he turned himself into an evil ruler. He has subverted democracy and, by the way, done a great disservice to the Republican Party. I hear that more and more—like the former head of the Alabama Republican Party, whom I ran into at the airport in Washington lately. He told me, “I told them they should have stopped at [defeating you in] the election.” Yes, I think there are evil people in the world, and I think Karl Rove is one of them.

That’s why we need to get him in front of the Judiciary Committee. First he said he would testify. Then he said he would only come if he received the questions in advance and nobody was there to take down what he said. So the committee recommended to the full House that he be held in contempt of Congress. If he’s not held in contempt, it will send a clear signal that there are two systems of justice in this country: one for the rich and powerful, those connected to the White House, and one for the rest of us. When we get subpoenaed, we have to show up.

That’s the only way we’re ever going to reinstate people’s belief in our government, in our democracy: clearing the air about what happened at the Department of Justice. We’re not guessing that this stuff happened; we’re not speculating that it might have happened. We know it happened. And if Rove doesn’t pay, what are all those followers of his, the young people who want to be like him, going to think? If he’s held in contempt, it sends the message that their time might be next. It may not stop ’em, but maybe it will slow them down.

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