We told you so!
From the moment last July when Post State Editor Fredric U. Dicker broke the story that the State Police – at the direction of then-Gov. Eliot Spitzer‘s office – began detailed surveillance of Senate Majority Leader Joe Bruno, one question has remained: What did Spitzer know – and when did he know it?
The Post refused to accept Spitzer’s “totally forthright” insistence that he was unaware of his top aides’ actions.
Despite Dicker’s ongoing revelations, Spitzer denied all – while his political allies and media toadies sought to limit the Dirty Tricks damage.
Now, along comes a front-page New York Times report confirming nearly every exclusive broken by The Post’s Albany bureau.
Quoting from private e-mails and interviews with several top Spitzer aides – particularly former flack Darren Dopp – the story concludes that the ex-governor was “deeply involved,” start to finish, in the scandal.
Dopp reportedly testified under oath that a “spitting mad” Spitzer pressed him and Chief of Staff Richard Baum to get police records on Bruno released to the press – often calling Dopp at home early in the morning to press the issue. That puts the lie not only to Spitzer’s accounts, but also to the whitewash report issued last September by Albany DA David Soares, who has now reopened his probe and given Dopp immunity.
The DA’s initial report concluded that no criminal behavior or “improper exercise of official function” took place – despite his finding of “factual discrepancies” and “inconsistencies.”
That’s not surprising – given that Soares refused to put any witnesses under oath or to subpoena documents.
Now the sordid details are on the front pages of the Times. Obviously, the DA no longer has anything to fear from Eliot “Steamroller” Spitzer.
What a profile in courage.
Not.
Attorney General Andrew Cuomo certainly came close to the real story. His bombshell report just weeks after the scandal broke concluded that key Spitzer aides had the State Police cook up documents indicating that Bruno used state resources for political trips.
Cuomo also concluded that Team Spitzer then lured a credulous newspaper, The Albany Times-Union, into using the documents to smear Bruno. In contrast to Soares, Cuomo managed to find all this out, even though Dopp and Baum refused to answer any of his questions.
The Times also confirms The Post’s account that the Spitzerites weren’t just responding to a media inquiry, as Spitzer said; rather, he pushed Dopp to “get a story published” in the Albany Times-Union.
Cuomo’s report suggested that the T-U, editor Rex Smith and reporter James Odato either were duped by Team Spitzer into targeting Bruno or actively collaborated with it.
Then, its cover blown, the T-U spent months doing its best to scuttle any meaningful official investigations into the scandal – particularly by Soares, whose upset win for DA was in large part due to the paper’s support.
Unlike Spitzer, however, the Times-Union remains standing – meaning Soares still has to curry favor with his patron. So it will be interesting to see what his new investigation discloses about the T-U’s role in this scandal.
Soares, in fact, needs to find the courage to lay out all the details. Spitzer himself may be gone, but a full Dirty Tricks accounting still needs to be made.