October, Sinclair, Lucrative Contracts and ENRON- Surprise!

It makes more sense as it's formatted at Sid's Fishbowl (with source links embedded) but I pasted it too.

http://kirghizlight.blogspot.com/2004_10_01_kirghizlight_archive.html#109761268791894071

Follow the money
Karl Rove, you've been busted.

You've read here and elsewhere about Sinclair Broadcasting Group, a fiercely right-wing company that controls 62 TV stations, many in swing states. They donate lots of money to Republican causes, and they recently decided to give a massive boost to the Bush campaign by preempting regular primetime programming in the days before the election to show an anti-Kerry smear piece produced by Carlton Sherwood, a former media consultant to Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge (the Disinfopedia profile of Sherwood is temporarily offline but Catch.com has some good stuff.) Oh, and Sherwood's group, POWs for Truth, just merged with the Swift Boat liars, for good measure.

So, Sinclair is prepared to give a major blast of propaganda to the Bush campaign. What's in it for them? Thanks to The Raw Story, we learn that a company called Jadoo Power Systems has been awarded a contract to develop power systems for the US Special Operations Command. No word on how much it was worth, but it must have been a big deal, because a Jadoo press release from 2003 brags that the company's president and CEO, Larry Bawden, personally briefed President George W. Bush on his company's technology.

It could have been old-school ties. A Fortune magazine profile from October 2003 notes:


Barely two years old, has sold its fuel cells to Boeing; government agencies like the CIA, the Secret Service, and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms; and the U.S. Army. Earlier this year Jadoo placed in the business-plan competition at Harvard Business School, where vice president of business development Jon Berger, 30, earned his MBA this past spring.
Or maybe it was an Enron alumni gathering, The Fortune article continues:

Jadoo's president, Larry Bawden, 45, learned about fuel-cell technology at Aerojet, based in Sacramento, where he worked as director of fuel-cell products. In 1995, Aerojet sold off his unit, and Bawden left with a golden parachute. Embarking on an around-the-world boat trip with his wife, he got as far as Australia before some former colleagues called. They persuaded him to return to become a vice president at a fuel-cell company they were starting called PowerTek. They'd soon lined up a huge customer—the energy giant Enron—but unfortunately it was about to collapse.
So, who owns Jadoo?

The company's Investor Relations page lists only two "current investors":

Sinclair Ventures, Inc. is a wholly owned subsidiary of Sinclair Broadcast Group, Inc....
Contango Capital Management was formed to bring capital to innovative entrepreneurs who are working hard to answer the energy challenges facing our world today and in the near future. Located in Houston, Texas, Contango Capital Management invests in early-stage technology-based and service companies in the energy industry...
Hey, this is interesting. Wasn't Enron located in Houston too? Why, lookie here:

John Berger
Managing Partner
Contango Capital Partners

Mr. Berger is a founding partner of the General Partner and its Managing Partner. Mr. Berger has over eight years of experience in the energy industry, during which he managed energy trading books for Enron Corporation and initiated development of the new Enron Premium Power Division. As a Manager, he made the previously unprofitable southeast short term trading operation for the Enron East Power Trading Division profitable by approximately $30 million over a two year period. Under his management, the southeast short term trading operation successfully administered the largest long-term customer deal in the industry, and increased the average daily volume in the southeast trading hub by ten times the former volume. Mr. Berger also managed the Enron Hourly Trading Desk, and operated a utility system in the southeastern United States. At Enron Energy Services he led and developed Enron's corporate strategy for new energy technologies and energy reliability financial products. In addition, Mr. Berger spearheaded development, investment, and partnership opportunities in fuel cell technologies.

During 2002 and 2003, Mr. Berger served as an advisor to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission where he drafted governance guidelines for the Regional Transmission Organizations and served as an advisor to the drafters of the Standard Market Design regulatory document that is currently before the United States Congress. He also advised the Commission on distributed generation, demand response, information gathering and application issues, investigations, and trade clearing/credit issues in the North American energy markets. Mr. Berger graduated cum laude from Texas A&M University with a B.S. in Civil Engineering. In 2003, he earned an MBA from Harvard Business School where he founded and organized the first annual Harvard Business School Energy Symposium and was a finalist in the 2003 HBS Business Plan Contest.
So a guy who got rich at Enron goes to work for the Bush Administration's Federal Energy Regulatory Commission during the period when they're investigating Enron. He gets an MBA at Harvard, founds a company backed with his Enron stash and some extra seed capital from Sinclair Broadcasting, and uses his connections to get a one-on-one meeting with the President. His company then gets a (presumably no-bid) contract from the Defense Department, thus (presumably) guaranteeing they'll hit their revenue goals this year and (presumably) greasing their skids for the company's planned IPO.

The President even had his picture taken with one of Jadoo's founders:


Connect all the dots. Enron. Harvard Business School. Sinclair. The Swift Boat liars. This is how Rove works. Unfortunately, he left too many tracks this time.

Will somebody please take this story to to the networks and put it on the front page of every newspaper in the country?

Update: Digby was working on the same story at the same time.

They're usually a lot better about covering their tracks than this! They're caught red-handed this time! This needs to be the lead story tomorrow morning, or better yet, Friday morning before the weekend to give people time to be slapped again with just how corrupt these people are.

source links at
http://nomoremister.blogspot.com/

Sinclair Broadcast Group says Stolen Honor isn't a Bush campaign ad, but it ought to be noted that filmmaker Carlton Sherwood's Red, White and Blue Productions shares a mailing address and phone number with Quantum Communications in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. The "principal" of Quantum Communications (here he's called the CEO) is Charles R. Gerow -- a delegate to this year's Republican convention and a member of the Republican National Lawyers Association. Other items listed on Gerow's RNLA page:

Reagan/Bush Campaign Field Staff, 1980

Active involvement in numerous campaigns

Advance work in 6 Presidential campaigns

Alternate Delegate at Large, 1988

Dole for President, surrogate speaker,1996

Lawyers for Bush, 2000

He's a bit of a gadfly -- an anti-taxer who ran against GOP moderate Bill Goodling for Congress in 1996 and 1998 (he nearly pulled off an upset in '96, getting 45% of the vote; in '98 he won endorsements from Grover Norquist, Gary Bauer, and Ed Meese), and he supported Pat Toomey in the GOP primary against Arlen Specter this year. But he's no independent.

Oh, and, amusingly, Quantum Communications is providing "strategic counsel and media relations" for AccuPoll, Inc., which makes touch-screen voting machines (although Gerow may be bucking the GOP establishment in this -- AccuPoll's machines give a paper receipt).

And this is one BIG pit of snakes.