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."
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.
Posted by: Eric Jaffa | January 28, 2010 at 11:52 AM
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.
Posted by: John Emerson | January 28, 2010 at 12:02 PM
Did they say they were 'owl exterminators?'
That might have worked.
Posted by: Weaseldog | January 28, 2010 at 12:15 PM
from the AP story on Tuesday:
Posted by: edgery | January 28, 2010 at 01:39 PM
Ah, so now the vaguely-referenced "listening device" has become "reception and transmission equipment."
Posted by: CTD | January 28, 2010 at 01:45 PM
Here's a secret video of the defendants in earlier capers.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ApFB-GylZNQ
Posted by: Weaseldog | January 28, 2010 at 01:46 PM
CTD, in order to receive a transmission, you need a 'listening' device.
You can find more information, using 'The Google'.
Posted by: Weaseldog | January 28, 2010 at 01:51 PM
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?
Posted by: Weaseldog | January 28, 2010 at 02:11 PM
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.
Posted by: Jon H | January 28, 2010 at 03:20 PM
They should have claimed to be from the Cat Detector Van from the Ministry of Housinge.
Posted by: Jon H | January 28, 2010 at 03:21 PM
More like the Loony Detector Van!
Posted by: Pope Bandar bin Turtle | January 30, 2010 at 02:44 AM
"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.
Posted by: Gray, Germany | January 30, 2010 at 09:46 AM