Lamont's Internet Director Speaks Out On Getting Cleared Of Lieberman Hack Attack
As you may have heard by now, a Federal probe has concluded that Ned Lamont's campaign did not bring down Joe Lieberman's campaign Web site with a hack attack, as the Lieberman camp charged on Election Day 2006.
What really happened was that the Lieberman camp's server failed.
This is vindication for Lamont's Internet director, Tim Tagaris (his picture is here). So I checked in with Tagaris, who as you might expect had a few things to say about this.
"The sad thing is, Lieberman himself repeated the charge all day in an attempt to discredit his opponents and drive down Ned's primary vote," Tagaris instant messages to me. "It was broadcast on every cable news channel, and papers from The New York Times to the Hartford Courant wrote about it."
"And he got away with it -- who cares what's reported today," Tagaris continues. "He won the election based on a pattern of lies loudly repeated and dutifully stenographed."
"Now maybe someone will run an investigation into Joe Lieberman's repeated claim that no one wants to end the war more than he does," Tagaris concludes.
It'll be interesting to see if all the cable and print outlets that went nuts over the Lieberman campaign's accusations that day will take note of the fact that the Lamont campaign -- and Tagaris -- have now been cleared.
Late Update: Lieberman spokesperson Dan Gerstein, who also echoed the Election Day attack on the Lamont campaign, sends over this response:
“After the Lieberman campaign website went down the day before the 2006 Democratic primary, we were told by our website administrator that there was clear evidence of an outside effort to disrupt our site, and that the administrator was so certain that the site had been attacked that he was willing to swear to it in a legal affidavit. Based on his assessment, and the fact that there had been at least one prior attack on the campaign’s website, the campaign asked the Justice Department to investigate the incident to find out what happened and determine if a crime had been committed. The Justice Department has shared the results of their investigation with us, the Senator appreciates their diligence and accepts their findings, and we consider the matter closed.”
My guess? Only if they're shamed into it by the blogs, and, at that only in the most grudging, dismissive manner possible.
Everyone in the MSM knows Joe Lieberman is a great guy. Wouldn't want to sully his reputation.
April 9, 2008 12:32 PM | Reply | Permalink
Oh, they'll take "note."
It will be on the scroller at the bottom of the screen.
April 9, 2008 12:34 PM | Reply | Permalink
Liberman, poor CT, what an embarrassment. I hope the Democrats will swat his Republican a** in 2008. Put him in the coat room.
April 9, 2008 12:35 PM | Reply | Permalink
This is the problem with our media. They are basically stenographers. No critical thinking skills, no cautious skepticism. Just trumpet the latest spin.
MSM = clueless tools
April 9, 2008 12:41 PM | Reply | Permalink
Unfortunately Lieberman isn't up for reelection this year.
I would hope, however, that he can be charged with libel or slander for claiming the server failure was sabotage, and for saying it so loudly that the FBI investigated.
April 9, 2008 12:41 PM | Reply | Permalink
Yes, and it will be equally interesting to see if pigs fly.
More seriously, it's possible some of the newspapers here in CT will pick up on this--people have been getting increasingly disenchanted with Joe. I'm not holding my breath, though.
April 9, 2008 1:00 PM | Reply | Permalink
I'd put my money on the pigs flying...
What was that line from "Mrs. Robinson?"
"Chosen Joe has left and gone away"
Don't we wish..
April 10, 2008 10:48 AM | Reply | Permalink
Lieberman lies, the mainstream media amplify the charge, Broder calls Lieberman the last honest man, progressive bloggers who understood the problem immediately are condemned for degrading the high level of political discourse that the corporate media conduct and moderate. Welcome to the America of Bush and the Washington Post and the NYTimes and...
April 9, 2008 1:00 PM | Reply | Permalink
We are stuck with Lieberman for the next 3+ years? Jesus, that is sad. As a CT resident and lifelong Dem, I absolutely loathe that two-faced S.O.B. for being the #1 cheerleader for a war his constituents don't support, and for basically doing nothing at all for us.
But saying he won the election in large part because he accused Lamont of sabotage? That's a bit much. Lieberman won in large part because Lamont was a weak-ass candidate with all the gravitas of Pee Wee Herman. The guy was basically an unknown, a rich white guy from Greenwich (country playground of NY rich and famous), with one issue. Tim Tagaris has a point here about the MSM being stenographers for the likes of McCain, Lieberman and our hero GWB...But, if he and the Democratic Party in CT can't do better than Ned Lamont, we will be stuck with Lieberman for a long time to come.
April 9, 2008 1:13 PM | Reply | Permalink
I, too, am a CT resident and lifelong Democrat who supported Lamont. I am disturbed by your sneering dismissal of Lamont's challenge. Yes, Lamont was a rich white guy, but he was also the only Democrat to step up to challenge Lieberman. The party establishment was all set to back Lieberman again. If Lamont hadn't been able to (partially) fund his own primary campaign, there would have been no challenge and Lieberman would now be sitting in the Senate as a full-fledged Democrat and superdelegate to the Democratic convention. Lamont did not lose the general election because he was a"weak-ass" candidate, he lost because Lieberman swept the Republican vote and captured enough of the "conservative" Democratic and Independent vote to put him over the top. To suggest that the Democratic party couldn't do better than Lamont is plain BS. They didn't want any challenge. The party was all set to nominate Lieberman for another term. It was only through Lamont's efforts (and the grassroots organization he built) that Lieberman was denied the party nomination. Denying the renomination of a sitting member of the Senate (and prior VP candidate) was no mean feat.
April 9, 2008 1:51 PM | Reply | Permalink
Point taken on Lamont. I was just expressing my own opinion, which I agree is a bit harsh. Perhaps my dimissal was too "sneering". True enough also that it is no "mean feat" to beat a popular sitting Senator in a primary. Unfortunately, it is Old Joe, and not your pal Ned who is currently caucasing with the Senate Dems, and stabbing them in the back every other second of the day.
April 9, 2008 2:13 PM | Reply | Permalink
Lamont wasn't a great candidate (the debates made me wince most of the time) but he was infinitely better than Lieberman...and the mainstream Democrats would have been just fine with Lieberman.
Lieberman, aided and abetted by a completely credulous press (the local newspapers and some particularly beautiful wankery published by the NY Times) was able to hoodwink the public into believing that he wanted to end the war. That's why he won.
People in CT don't like the war (as you both know) but they haven't appreciated Joe's particular toolery with respect to the war until recently.
And Lamont made a tactical error by going dark after winning the primary. Joe got the spotlight, and ran with it.
And can either of you remember Lamont EVER being mentioned without the phrase "Greenwich millionaire"? Thanks, media.
Sorry. I'm still pissed over that election.
April 9, 2008 2:26 PM | Reply | Permalink
A California-esque recall would be a dream. Lieberman is no Gray Davis (our former gov. is an honorable Democrat), but he deserves that fate. The foolish voters who were duped into putting him in office are probably kicking themselves in the pants right now. When the Dems get a sizable majority, I hope and pray they will toss that joker out of all chair seats. Say, Chris Dodd joins an Obama cabinet, it would be great to see Ned Lamont in Joke Lieberman's old seats.
April 9, 2008 1:21 PM | Reply | Permalink
Imagine lies from a man-of-God like LIEberman. What next? Bleeding this country of every nickel and dime for Israel, more loss of life and injuries for Israel, and more depreciation of our respect in the world while we continue to support an outlaw nation Israel.
Yea Joe, keep it up. Your a traitor and a wimp!
April 9, 2008 2:09 PM | Reply | Permalink
Its a shame there's no "recall" mechanism for the United States Senate.
April 9, 2008 2:38 PM | Reply | Permalink
Sargent's article should be edited -- it is unclear whether or not he is referring to the primary or general election in 2006 (though I'd bet most of us reading it know he's referring to the primary). Especially confusing though is the use of Tagaris' quote about Lieberman "winning the election" without referring to which election.
To be clear -- the hacked website claim was made on the day of the primary, which was won by Ned Lamont.
April 9, 2008 2:43 PM | Reply | Permalink
Notice that the FBI closed the investigation BEFORE the election:
Lieberman, who was fighting for his political life against the anti-Iraq war candidate Lamont, implied that joe2006.com was hacked by Lamont supporters.
"The server that hosted the joe2006.com Web site failed because it was overutilized and misconfigured. There was no evidence of (an) attack," according to the e-mail.
A program that could have detected a legitimate attack was improperly configured, the e-mail states.
"New Haven will be administratively closing this investigation," it concluded.
The e-mail, dated Oct. 25, 2006, was included in a technical packet of information recently sent to The Advocate in response to requests under the Freedom of Information Act filed in late 2006 with the offices of state Attorney General Richard Blumenthal and U.S. Attorney Kevin O'Connor. Lieberman was dishonest in not disclosing that fact for 13 days.
April 9, 2008 3:07 PM | Reply | Permalink
The thing is, you don't need a program to detect a legitimate attack. If your servers are churning, you're being attacked. If they're not, then there's no attack. Beyond that, any reasonably competent admin could have and should have had him set up on a new server within an hour. In fact, they should have had him set up on a backup server from the day they put up his website. These days it usually takes less than an hour for DNS info to propagate. The rest should take minutes. It's not like it was a complex e-commerce site or anything. As I recall, they ran a couple of basic scripts, and that was about it. Nothing to configure, but it all could have and should have been set up in advance anyway.-
April 9, 2008 4:21 PM | Reply | Permalink
I did some pretty extensive research on this the day it happened, and from what I could tell, the reason Lieberman's site went down was because his web host went over their bandwidth limits and triggered an automatic suspension. From what I can recall, Lieberman's campaign had a budget hosting account with a company called MyHostCamp.com. They're a reseller, meaning that they purchase server space from another company and then resell the shared bandwidth at a profit to unsuspecting chumps. On the day Lieberman's site went down, ALL of MyHostCamp's clients went offline--along with MyHostCamp's site. If you went to myhostcamp.com on that day, you got the following message:
"Can't connect to www.suspended.page"
Traffic to Lieberman's site probably put them over their preset bandwidth limits. Since purchasing additional bandwidth once you've gone over your allotment can be mind-bogglingly expensive, most hosts have an automatic shutdown to prevent you from receiving a huge bill at the end of the month. I doubt the people at MyHostCamp.com knew at first what had happened, and I'm sure, once they figured it out, they were just too damn embarrassed to 'fess up.
April 9, 2008 3:10 PM | Reply | Permalink
...not trying to make everyone paranoid here, but isn't it possible that some of the mycamp folks got together with the Lieberman campaign and formulated the whole event for the purpose of casting blame at Lamont's people?
I realize it could all be circumstantial events in the old Mennonite bumpersticker "Manure occurs" category, but I think it is just as likely it was a deliberate and strategic political chess move. The fact the FBI did not independently release the truth leads me to beliwve my subterfuge scenario is much more likely than the accidental crash concoction.
That is exactly what I thought at the time, that Elephant Joe's geeks contrived the whole thing as a dirty trick. Whether Joe himself was involved or aware of it, only his hairdresser knows for sure.
April 10, 2008 11:06 AM | Reply | Permalink
My use of HTML didn't work out so well. Trying again:
Notice that the FBI close the investigation 13 days BEFORE the election:
Lieberman was dishonest in not disclosing that fact for 13 days.
April 9, 2008 3:15 PM | Reply | Permalink
Gerstein announced that the site administrator assured him that it was a deliberate attack. Who is this person? Let's make his name public. He certainly deserves public condemnation and ridicule.
April 9, 2008 3:19 PM | Reply | Permalink
You're obviously assuming Gerstein is telling the truth. I guess it's theoretically possible. There's a first time for everything.
I was just thinking as I read the update, imagine a genie appeared before you and said "you can condemn one, but only one, slimy Democratic party hack to spend the rest of his life on a godforsaken, barren island down near Falklands that has nothing except a tin shack, a shovel and a lifetime's supply of spam: Mark Penn, Lanny Davis, Dan Gerstein, or Sidney Blumenthal. Choose wisely."
Well, I would really be pissed I could only choose one.
April 9, 2008 8:07 PM | Reply | Permalink
What I want to know is why the Lieberman campaign didn't find it proper to acknowledge that the FBI had cleared their opponents of any wrongdoing after making charges loudly against them.
I guess honorably admitting an error was secondary to winning?
April 9, 2008 4:00 PM | Reply | Permalink
Actually, there's a bit more to that story. Very few senators came to campaign on Lamont's behalf. Kennedy came up. So did Edwards. I don't recall anyone else, and that's pretty stunning. Even leaders in the state party supported Lieberman in the general election.
April 9, 2008 4:06 PM | Reply | Permalink
Here in CT, we know Joe's a liar who will do anything it takes to further his particular agenda of the moment, no matter how low he has to go. We accept that he's vicious, vindictive, totally lacking in loyalty and completely dishonest. That's why we tried to throw him out.
We don't expect Joe to apologize. He's way too small to do that.
But what we WOULD like is an explanation of where that $387,561.00 "petty cash" money was spent. After all, it's the largest undisclosed "petty cash" expenditure of any Senate campaign. Ever. Where'd it go, Joe?
April 10, 2008 1:01 AM | Reply | Permalink
JoeMentum. I always thought that sounded like coffee flavored chewing gum. Anyone who voted for someone used the word JoeMentum deserves a senator who is not much more than a lobbyist for Israel. I agree that the voters of CT must remove his hind quarters in 2012. Maybe he'll get drafted to play the lead in "Myrtle the Turtle Goes to Washington", a made for C-SPAN special.
April 10, 2008 8:27 AM | Reply | Permalink