Step 1 Break phones; Step 2 ????; Step 3 Profit

The four conservative operatives arrested for maliciously tampering with Sen. Mary Landrieu's phones say that they just wanted to vandalize her phones, not surreptitiously monitor conversations:

Mystery solved? NBC is reporting that James O'Keefe and his three companions were carrying out a plan to gauge how the staff of Sen. Mary Landrieu would respond if their office phone system were disabled, following complaints by conservative constituents that anti-health reform calls were not getting through to the New Orleans office.

Republicans have slammed Landrieu in recent months over what they've dubbed the "new Louisiana Purchase" -- a reference to extra Medicare funding for the state she won in the Senate health care bill. And Rasmussen found just 34% of voters in the state, where tea partiers have targeted Landrieu for her support of reform, back the health plan. [TPMM]

The first hypothesis was that they were just "checking" the phones to make sure that they hadn't been disabled by evil Landrieu staffers bent on ignoring right wingers. When they first came into the office, the phony repairmen let James O'Keefe film them as they fiddled with the phone on Landrieu's reception desk. One guy made a big show of calling the desk phone and announced that he couldn't get through. Up until this point, I can imagine this scene in an O'Keefe expose: Our hero calls desk phone, it doesn't ring, therefore Mary Landrieu is ignoring conservatives.

But the "just checking" theory couldn't account for the fake repairmen's interest in the main phone cabinet, or the report that Stan Dai was arrested in a car near Landrieu's office with listening equipment.

So, the revised excuse is that they wanted to disable Landrieu's phone, just to see what she'd do.

What did they think she would do? The phone system goes down after they leave. Riveting television, right? Unless they planned to covertly monitor Landrieu's response from afar. O'Keefe has a thing for hidden cameras. That might explain why Dai was waiting in the car with reception and transmission equipment what the AP described as "a listening device that could pick up transmissions." 

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Comments

[Eric Jaffa]

Maybe the plan was for the two of them dressed as telephone repairmen to break the phone system and for O'Keefe to film the reaction of the staff to the phones being broken.

[John Emerson]

It sounds very Larry, Curly, and Moe, but people like that are capable of doing real harm too.

IIRC two of that crew hope for jobs in intelligence. There's got to be a joke in there somewhere.

[Weaseldog]

Did they say they were 'owl exterminators?'

That might have worked.

[edgery]

from the AP story on Tuesday:

Authorities said two of the defendants posed as telephone repairmen in hard hats, fluorescent vests and tool belts and asked to see the phones at Landrieu's office; one of them had a tiny camera in his helmet. A third man is alleged to have waited outside in a car with a listening device to pick up transmissions. The fourth, James O'Keefe, used his cell phone to try to capture video of the scene inside, authorities said. (emphasis added)

[CTD]

Ah, so now the vaguely-referenced "listening device" has become "reception and transmission equipment."

[Weaseldog]

Here's a secret video of the defendants in earlier capers.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ApFB-GylZNQ

[Weaseldog]

CTD, in order to receive a transmission, you need a 'listening' device.

You can find more information, using 'The Google'.

[Weaseldog]

CTD, you seem to be awfully worried that idiot criminals might get maligned.

What's your stake in this? Are these criminals friends of yours? Were you an accomplice?

Or are you a self appointed defender of criminals on the internet?

[Jon H]

I wonder how they thought they would identify Landrieu's lines in the phone closet.

They probably aren't labeled with her name, because people move around. They probably have some code for the jacks, like we have here at work. If I want a phone jack or network jack turned on, I don't give them my name, or the name of the lab I'm in, they need the room number and the jack number.

[Jon H]

They should have claimed to be from the Cat Detector Van from the Ministry of Housinge.

[Pope Bandar bin Turtle]

More like the Loony Detector Van!

[Gray, Germany]

"Unless they planned to covertly monitor Landrieu's response from afar."
Response? On a telephone malfunction? After the phone staying silent for some time, the staffers would notice that, and phone for a technician. So, WHERE'S THE DESIRED SCANDAL in that lame video? That doesn't sound like O'Pimp at all. That's nothing anybody would be interested in, so that's certainly NOT what he was up to.