CNN is reporting DHS Mike Chertoff will be nominated for Attorney General, and Clay Johnson III will be nominated to replace Chertoff.
Who is Clay Johnson?
Johnson is currently working in obscurity as Deputy Director for Management at the Office of Management and Budget.
The Deputy Director for Management provides government-wide leadership to Executive Branch agencies to improve agency and program performance.
Yeah and what a great job he has done - can you say FEMA and Hurricane Katrina?
Prior to this he was the Assistant to the President for Presidential Personnel, responsible for the organization that identifies and recruits approximately 4000 senior officials, middle management personnel and part-time board and commission members.
In other words, he's the guy that filled the Executive Branch with "loyal Bushie" ideologues like Monica Goodling.
From 1995 to 2000, Mr. Johnson worked with Governor George W. Bush in Austin, first as his Appointments Director, then as his Chief of Staff, and then as the Executive Director of the Bush-Cheney Transition.
So he managed Bush's initial appointment of criminals like Rove, Rumsfeld, and Ashcroft. And he's very close to the whole Texas mafia of Karl Rove, Karen Hughes, Joe Allbaugh, Jim Baker, and the rest of the gang of thieves and war criminals.
But despite his clout, Johnson only made news during the 1999 scrubbing of J.H. Hatfield's unauthorized biography of George W. Bush, Fortunate Son. Amy Goodman summarized the story in August 2003:
In the book, Hatfield charges that Bush was arrested in 1972 for cocaine possession. Why wasn’t the future President charged? Hatfield writes that Bush’s father used his political connections to have his son’s record expunged.
Soon after publication of Fortunate Son the Dallas Morning News received information about Hatfield’s criminal past.
The media jumped all over it and Hatfield’s reputation and credibility were ruined.
St. Martins Press promised to turn Fortunate Son into “furnace fodder.” It withdrew 70,000 copies from bookshelves and destroyed them. But a small publisher Soft Skull Press reprinted the book with the banner “The Book They Burned is Back.”
Hatfield had previously refused to reveal the source of his information about Bush’s alleged cocaine arrest. He now to decided to name him. He claimed it was none other than Karl Rove, Bush’s closest political adviser.
If Rove did indeed leak the information, he couldn’t have leaked it to a better subject. Soon after publication of the Fortunate Son, Hatfield’s credibility came under fierce attack.
The media followed the trail laid out for them. They diverted inquiries about Bush’s drug history to stories about Hatfield’s checkered past. He lost two other book contracts and faced financial ruin and obscurity.
The character assassination finally took its toll. In July 2001, Hatfield was found dead of an apparent suicide in a hotel room in Springdale, Arkansas. He was 43 years old. Police said he left notes for his family and friends that listed alcohol, financial problems and Fortunate Son as reasons for killing himself. He is survived by a wife and daughter.
Hatfield's cocaine revelation relied on two sources besides Karl Rove, namely Clay Johnson and Bush's Austin minister Jim Mayfield. Sander Hicks of Soft Skull Press reported how he finally got Hatfield to name his sources:
Two months after the bloody October of Hatfield’s public destruction, it was a crisp sunny winter day in New York City. Although Hatfield had the flu, he taped his portion of 60 Minutes early in the morning, and I went in later. Leslie Stahl, the elegant host of the program, had pointedly asked me on tape if I knew the sources. I said no, but that Hatfield had promised to reveal them to me.
After the taping, we walked through the Lower East Side. I had taken Hatfield and his lawyer, and my coworker to lunch at a Chinese restaurant. I needed to hold Jim Hatfield to his promise to share the sources with me; I needed to see the phone and travel records. I needed to know the whole thing wasn't a big sick joke. I needed to be 100% sure. My gut had me already believing in Jim Hatfield. He believed in what we were doing. He stood behind all his research. He admired me for making a maverick decision, and attempting to redeem his battered book.
Hatfield stopped on the corner of Ludlow and Rivington and turned to me in the bright light. His hands were stuffed deep into the pockets of his Navy peacoat. He looked tired, but determined. He looked down the street.
"You've got to take this information with you to your grave. You've got to swear."
I swore not to repeat it to anyone. I also knew that the truth is bigger than one person. We would both choose to reveal the sources publicly when the time was right, when we had no other choice. When we no longer had anything left to lose.
"The Eufaula Connection? That was Karl Rove. The other top Bush advisor was Clay Johnson. The Bush confidante, was his minister, Mayfield. Now you know. Remember, you’ve got to swear now...."
Does George Bush really want to subject Clay Johnson to national scrutiny? Back in 1999, Karl Rove could kill a story like this by driving Hatfield to commit suicide. But when progressive bloggers discover this story, it will be impossible for Bush to kill it.
Stay tuned!
Update 1 12 p.m.: CNN is now reporting Chertoff is just one of many names being floated for A.G. Boy that was quick!
Update 2: Keith Olbermann interviewed Jim Moore about Johnson's Andover/Yale frat ties to Bush. Moore explained that no sane person wanted to move to Washington to join the disastrous Bush administration in its final year, so the only people Bush can count on are those who cut themselves and exchanged blood as teenagers.
