Someday E.Coli-Gate will be made into a soap opera. We've never seen a political crisis with so many plot twists. Each new explanation of the crisis given by the Nixon Administration has turned the previous version on its head.
The downside, beyond the health hazards involved, is that there's at least three seasons of material already out there, and it's getting hard to keep track of. Our efforts to come up with a one-sentence summary of recent developments in E.Coli-Gate produced the above headline.
We decided to help cut through the fog by issuing this handy guide to E.Coli-Gate plot twists.
Plot Twist #1: No one in the Nixon Administration knew about the tests.
When E.Coli-Gate started, Jack Cardetti (Nixon's spokesman) issued an official statement saying no one from Nixon's office knew about the E. coli test results until a routine oversight meeting on June 23, when it ordered their release.
The plot took a small twist when it was revealed by Chad Livengood that DNR Deputy Director Joe Bindbeutel had been preparing a report on the results for the Governor's office a month prior, and had told members of the public that Nixon was aware of the tests. But Cardetti held to his old line.
The plot took a second twist when DNR Director of Communications Susanne Medley told Senate investigators she shared the test results with a top aide in the Governor's office, Jeff Mazur. Keep in mind the DNR had insisted its lawyers be present in any Senate interviews with DNR staff - despite the concerns of invesigators that it would intimidate DNR staff into silence. But hey, what did they have to hide?
After that, Cardetti's story changed – this time, nobody in Nixon's office knew except for Jeff Mazur.
Twist number three came when Cardetti revealed that he had known about the report all along. This created a problem for Nixon, who was currently pretending that no ‘high ranking officials’ were aware of the results - an argument that mysteriously excludes both Mazur and Cardetti.
Where are we now? Cardetti is on the record lying to the public at least three times about a serious health hazard. He needs to go, and if this were any other administration he'd already be gone.
Plot Twist #2: Joe Bindbeutel was solely to blame.
This was a smaller side plot - when it was first discovered that the E. coli tests had been concealed, Bindbeutel tried to take sole responsibility for withholding them. Nixon happily seized on the opportunity and blamed Bindbeutel.
Things took a twist after Susanne Medley revealed that most of the DNR's leadership and Jeff Mazur were aware of the test results. Bindbeutel's explanation fell apart.
The twist is significant for two reasons. The first is that Bindbeutel is in the same boat as Cardetti – he lied to the public about a health hazard, and got caught. He needs to be fired.
The second reason is that the day after the test results were finally revealed, Nixon appointed Bindbeutel to a 6-figure job in the Administrative Hearing Commission. At the same time, Jeff Mazur was promoted to be liaison to the DNR. Nixon now claims the timing of the two promotions was a coincidence.
Plot Twist #3: Why the lakes weren't closed.
This one has gone back and forth too many times to count. At first the DNR admitted that they were worried about the economic ramifications of closing the beaches on Memorial Day weekend. Then DNR officials claimed they were looking for "more information" - as if closing the beaches was any more complicated than knowing the E. coli levels were dangerously unsafe.
Cardetti and Mazur are claiming they weren't aware of the significance of the results. They’re playing dumb. They had to know what the test results meant. It took everyone else about twenty minutes to figure it out.
This is no different than when Earl Pabst and others claimed ‘not to remember’ anything about the test results, back when the Nixon Administration was stonewalling.
Was it arrogance that caused Nixon to ask them to conceal the results? Or did an outside party, such as Chuck Hatfield (possibly acting on Lynn Griswold’s behalf) intervene? It’s worth noting the DNR tried to avoid disclosing a meeting Hatfield had at the Governor's office with Bindbeutel.
For those who haven’t read our past posts on Griswold, he’s a Democrat donor who is embroiled in a lawsuit over releasing sewage into the Lake of the Ozarks. Read more here.
Plot Twist #4: Nixon's decision to clean up the lakes was a coincidence.
One of the most suspicious parts about E.Coli-Gate is that on the same day Susanne Medley revealed the Nixon Administration’s involvement, Nixon announced a major 'clean up the Lake of the Ozarks' initiative.
We called it for what it was – an attempt to divert a political crisis.
Nixon is now asserting it was planned for a long time, just like the Bindbeutel and Mazur promotions.
Think that’s likely? Here comes the plot twist. The mayors of Osage Beach, Camdenton and Lake Ozark said they never heard of the proposal before the press conference. The initiative was in such a premature stage Nixon couldn’t say how much the program would cost or where the money would come from.
The substance of the initiative, barely more than an outline, was the product of an hour’s work, at most. If Nixon really was planning it for weeks, his administration has bigger problems on its hands than E.Coli-Gate.
Nixon also made a mistake when he admitted the waters were “unclean and unsafe”. Cardetti had to swoop in and say that by “unsafe” he doesn’t mean Department of Natural Resources safety level “unsafe”.
It’s odd for Cardetti to make any reference to what the DNR considers safe levels of E. coli – a week later he would be asserting that he couldn’t understand a report that said the waters were dangerous.
Plot Twist #5: The DNR supplied false information to Nixon.
When Nixon first gave a Q&A to the press, he mentioned a number of lake closings that had nothing to do with the ones his administration tried to conceal. It was irrelevant to his defense, but when Nixon couldn’t give specifics it raised red flags. Chad Livengood looked into it, and things didn’t add up.
The first plot twist: One of the lake closings Nixon mentioned didn’t exist. It turned out there was an entirely different set of results the DNR also decided to conceal.
This introduced an interesting opportunity for Nixon. He immediately started overlooking the results his administration concealed, and went on a rampage against DNR officials for concealing the other results. Many of those involved have been linked to both plots.
This is where the cover-ups start getting recursive. By unveiling one cover-up (the second set of test results), he has a justification to start an investigation in the DNR that doesn’t focus on him. It’s the only chance he has to get in front of the story, which presently threatens to reveal his involvement in the very first cover-up.
As we said before, he wants people to think he's cleaning house, so they don't look under the rug to see what he's hiding.
It’s not political genius. It’s desperation.
Plot Twist #6: Nixon's long-lost, evil twin brother abducted him and concealed the test results but has now been replaced with the good version of Nixon again.
Okay, we don't know if this one is true or not - but what a twist!
This is an excellent summary to date and should be required reading. The concurrent E. coli scandals are being conflated and frankly, this issue can get confusing.
Also, Can Keith Olbermann put on 60 lbs in order to play Nixon a la Matt Damon in The Informant?
Posted by: The Missouri Record | October 02, 2009 at 11:57 AM