Good Job!

Good Job!

Fred Dicker and the New York Post deserve great praise for exposing
Spitzer's abuse of police powers. Unexpectedly a Democratic Attorney General
quickly verified the Post's report, "the pretext for the surveillance was a
lie." (Dicker, "Post's haste ignited the gov scandal," New York Post, July 24,
2007, page 4)
If the staff of a former state attorney general easily abused the awesome
police powers targeting an elected official, what defenses are there for
civilian critics? Too many public officials abuse their privileges using police
to intimidate their critics. What remains unaddressed is pervasive abuses of
journalists to mislead the public.

Roy Bercaw, Editor ENOUGH ROOM


POST'S HASTE IGNITED THE GOV SCANDAL
By FREDRIC U. DICKER, State Editor
New York Post

July 24, 2007 -- ALBANY - The Post blew the lid off the surveillance of Majority Leader Joe Bruno by Gov. Spitzer's office 2½ weeks ago with an exclusive front-page story headlined: "Police State: Gov. Sicced Cops On Joe."

The Post's probe of the misuse of State Police by Gov. Spitzer's administration - which triggered Attorney General Andrew Cuomo's bombshell report yesterday - was launched after it became clear that something was wrong with an earlier newspaper article suggesting Bruno had misused state aircraft for political purposes.

That Albany Times-Union story on July 1 based its claim on detailed State Police travel records for Bruno - the likes of which had never been made public before for any state official.

State Police sources told The Post at the time that they had never seen records like those - detailing Bruno's stop-by-stop travel schedule and, in the process, potentially compromising Bruno's personal security - ever handed over to a newspaper.

Working through the Fourth of July holiday, The Post interviewed nearly a dozen senior officials with ties to Gov. Spitzer's office, the Legislature and the State Police, and checked volumes of travel records for several top officials.

The paper's bombshell July 5 story documented an unprecedented State Police intelligence-gathering program aimed at Bruno.

It also noted that the pretext for the surveillance was a lie.

Now-suspended Spitzer Communications Director Darren Dopp had told The Post that the record-keeping on Bruno was begun because state Conservative Party Chairman Michael Long had complained about his supposed misuse of the State Police during visits to the city, a claim Long strenuously denied to the paper.

When Dopp subsequently contended he never made such a claim, The Post published an e-mail that Dopp had sent showing that he had.

Later stories also detailed Dopp's multiple and contradictory claims as to why State Police records were kept on Bruno.

They also revealed - in a matter that was not addressed in the Cuomo report - that aides to Spitzer sought to convince prosecutors to begin investigating Bruno before the initial Times-Union report was in print.