Senate ignored 5 Texas
asst. U.S. attorney deaths and firings at Gonzales hearing
Medicare fraud plaintiff filings cite
FBI electronic surveillance, illegal searches tied to obstruction of justice by
DOJ lawyer replacing Missouri
U.S. attorney prosecuting same case
www.tomflocco.com
by Tom Flocco
Washington—April 25, 2007—Tom Flocco.com—Senate Judiciary Committee
Democrats failed to question Attorney General Alberto Gonzales about five Texas
assistant U.S. attorneys—two of whom were found dead and three fired within a
space of 90 days during 2004— while they were prosecuting the same Medicare
fraud and money laundering case with Kansas City U.S. attorney Todd P. Graves
who announced his resignation on March 10, 2006 under pressure from the Justice
Department.
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Reminiscent of the notorious but overlooked Clinton
administration “body count” statistics, Thelma Quince Colbert, head of the
Fort Worth Justice Department (DOJ) civil litigation unit prosecuting companies
defrauding government funded programs like Medicare, reportedly drowned in her
swimming pool on July 20, 2004; and less than two months later Shannon Ross,
criminal chief of the adjacent Dallas DOJ office was found dead in her home on
September 13, 2004 after signing subpoenas seeking evidence in the Texas-based
Novation LLC Medicare fraud case involving several other medical supply
companies.
35 days later on October 18, 2004 Gonzales fired three white collar crime
prosecuting assistant U.S. attorneys in then-deceased Thelma Colbert’s Fort
Worth office—Leonard Senerote, Michael Uhl and Michael Snipes, raising serious
questions as to why Senate Democrats failed to interrogate Gonzales regarding
the curious decimation of the DOJ’s Dallas-Fort Worth corporate fraud unit
resulting from two deaths and three firings within three months, all linked to
the same money laundering case.
In reference to the suspicious death cover-up of former Congressman and MSNBC
host Joe Scarborough’s staff aide Lori Kaye Klausutis, TomFlocco.com
previously interviewed a high government agent with impeccable intelligence
credentials who described how corrupt officials use “roster
doctors employed as secret CIA medical operatives for sensitive and
controversial deaths involving government officials to cover up evidence and
keep American citizens and families from learning the truth about a loved
one’s death,” cover-ups which can then be “employed to blackmail
particular government officials also involved.”
The nature of the timeline of events tied to the same fraud case alone should in
and of itself open the Senate Judiciary majority to severe criticism by its
Party faithful for either its incompetence or intended failure to approve a
separate Special Counsel to examine the Novation case for criminal prosecution
and potential obstruction of justice by alleged “roster doctors.”
Interestingly, fired San Diego U .S. attorney Carol Lam was also prosecuting
Medicare fraud at Tenet Healthcare Alvarado hospital, with Lam’s prosecution
resulting in the Department of Health and Human Services threatening to cut
Medicare and Medicaid benefits to Alvarado. [Case # 03CR15870; U.S. District
Court, Southern California]
Related parts of this story have been bubbling on the internet somewhat beneath
the mainstream news surface; but the heretofore unexamined close proximity of
timeline events related to the case, preceding its apparent cover-up last week
by the Senate Judiciary Committee, will likely force a more public examination
of its curious coincidences—either in or out of the courtroom.
Lam’s California Medicare case was serious enough that Alvarado’s parent
corporation, Tenet Healthcare, reportedly agreed to sell or close down the
hospital and pay $21 million to settle criminal and civil charges brought by the
now fired San Diego U.S. attorney.
According to the Kansas City Western District case, nearly all of St. Luke
hospital’s $100 million supply budget was being purchased through Novation LLC,
then St. Luke’s merged with University of Kansas Hospital after CEO Irene
Cumming of Kansas City Hospital was given a job by University Health System
Consortium on March 19, 2007.
Lam played a central role in the firings scandal because she was reportedly
conducting testimony before grand juries linking indicted former Bush CIA
Executive Director Kyle “Dusty” Foggo and convicted Republican lobbyist Jack
Abramoff to a Capitol
Hill sex ring, Israeli espionage, GOP Under Secretary of Defense for policy
Douglas J. Feith, a forged British intelligence dossier used by Mr. Bush to
deceive Americans into supporting war against Iraq and an attempt to plant
weapons of mass destruction (WMD) in Iraq before the war via an intelligence
pipeline through Dubai and Turkey.
Graves was prosecuting Medicare fraud related to Medical Supply Chain’s civil
antitrust suit against Novation, Volunteer Hospital Association (VHA),
University Health System Consortium (UHC) and Neoform, Inc. regarding
allegations that the companies had formed a cartel to monopolize hospital
supplies to defraud Medicare via payments and kickbacks to corporate
administrators.
This, while Gonzales was never questioned regarding meritorious evidence
reportedly acquired in Medical Supply’s legal discovery that the Bush Justice
Department obstructed justice, spied on judicial prosecutions and fired senior
assistant U.S. attorneys in a case directly affecting increased healthcare costs
for all senior citizens.
Disregarding the public trust
Senate Judiciary Democrats also failed to ask Gonzales whether the DOJ deaths
and firings in Dallas-Fort Worth were linked to Graves’ Medicare prosecution
activity in the Novation case filed on March 9, 2005 and his forced resignation
prior to being replaced on March 23, 2006 by DOJ lawyer Bradley J. Schlozman
under new Patriot Act interim appointment guidelines.
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In an April 18, 2005 affidavit, Medical Supply Chain, Inc.
founder and plaintiff Samuel Lipari described interception of electronic
communications and searches by law enforcement officials which were employed to
interfere with and obstruct his prosecution of Medical Supply Chain, Inc. v.
Novation LLC, et al. [US District Court for the Western District of Missouri,
No. 05-0210-CV-W ODS]
U.S. Attorney Scholzman was accused by Lipari on October 12, 2006 in the U.S.
Court of Appeals Eighth Circuit in St. Louis for failing to prosecute Novation
LLC when Lipari brought evidence to Schlozman’s office regarding corrupt
Medicare practices provided to him by Novation insider executives who came
forward to assert to the Gonzales Justice Department that hospital supply funds
had been laundered through publicly traded electronic hospital supply
marketplace Neoforma, Inc. that was then controlled by Novation, VHA, UHC and
UHC.
Scholzman has reportedly never prosecuted a legal case and previously served as
a deputy in the DOJ civil rights division where he helped overrule career
government lawyers in approving then House GOP Majority Leader Tom DeLay’s
controversial Texas congressional redistricting plan to gain additional Texas
Republican seats in Congress.
Gonzales reacted to widespread criticism of his misuse of the USA PATRIOT ACT by
announcing on January 16, 2007 that Schlozman would be replaced by John Wood,
reportedly two days prior to his testimony to Congress.
This, after Samuel Lipari had been complaining since October 12, 2006 in
Missouri’s Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals that Scholzman had continued to
obstruct justice on behalf of the Bush administration in spite of the clear-cut
evidence of corruption he had brought to Schlozman which had been provided by
Novation insiders.
Senate Judiciary Democrats may have also avoided additional obstruction of
justice issues when they failed to ask Gonzales about the undisclosed content of
his reported meeting on March 22, 2007 in St. Louis when he spoke with Scholzman
and U.S. Attorney Catherine L. Hanaway regarding the official conduct of
Schlozman.
Despite clear evidence of previous wrongdoing and ongoing obstruction of
justice, the Senate Judiciary Committee permitted Schlozman to remain in office
until April 11, 2007 when Gonzales officially replaced him with Missouri GOP
Senator Kit Bond’s cousin, John Wood—another attorney who reportedly never
prosecuted a legal case, who was sworn in as U.S. Attorney for Missouri’s
Western District.
Medicare case produced evidence
Reports out of Kansas City revealed that during the Medical Supply case legal
discovery filed on March 9, 2005, company founder Samuel Lipari discovered a
Justice Department memo revealing that Gonzales had targeted ten U.S. attorneys,
including Graves, with three names having been redacted from the list.
A January 9, 2006 email from Gonzales chief of staff Kyle Sampson to Harriet
Miers and William Kelley at the White House showed the original ten; and
attorneys such as Graves who voluntarily resigned under pressure were simply
redacted from Gonzales’ target list of those refusing to resign, ultimately
resulting in the suspect and uncommon firings occurring so late into a
presidential term.
The Medical Supply discovery also turned up a December 4, 2006 email from
Gonzales Chief of Staff Kyle Sampson targeting Carol Lam for removal, after
which she was fired on December 7, 2006 with six other U.S. attorneys who also
refused to resign.
It remains to be seen whether public outrage over obstruction of justice or
worse—involving assistant U.S. attorney deaths and firings tied to the same
Medicare fraud case occurring along a compacted timeline—will be superseded by
Democrat anger over their Party’s incompetent
or intentional soft Senate Judiciary oversight at a time when the Bush
administration could self destruct, possibly blowing the chance for a Democrat
majority for the next generation.