NYT : New York G.O.P. Severs Ties With Consultant

New York G.O.P. Severs Ties With Consultant

By DANNY HAKIM and ANAHAD O’CONNOR | August 22, 2007

ALBANY, Aug. 22 — A prominent political consultant who was accused this week of leaving a threatening, profanity-laced phone message for Gov. Eliot Spitzer’s 83-year-old father announced today that he would resign from his job and no longer work with State Senate Republicans.

In a statement released this morning, Joseph L. Bruno, the State Senate majority leader, made no mention of whether the consultant, Roger J. Stone Jr., admitted to leaving the anonymous phone message. But he said that the allegations against Mr. Stone “can only serve as a distraction from the real issues — the abuse of government power, political espionage and a cover up of information,” and said that Mr. Stone had been asked to step down.

“He has agreed to resign and end his relationship with us at our request,” Mr. Bruno said. “We are not going to allow this incident to become a distraction or to be used as an excuse to hamper people from getting at the truth.”

The allegations against Mr. Stone were laid out in a letter sent Tuesday to Senator George H. Winner Jr., an upstate Republican who is chairman of the Senate Committee on Investigations and Government Operations. A copy of the letter — and an audio clip of the phone message — were obtained by The New York Times.

Mr. Stone, a seasoned practitioner of hard-edged politics who worked for Presidents Richard M. Nixon and Ronald Reagan and for George W. Bush in the 2000 recount battle, adamantly denied the allegation in an interview on Tuesday, calling it “the ultimate dirty trick.” He asserted that allies of Governor Spitzer may have gained access to a phone in his Manhattan apartment to make the threatening call.

The message, left at Bernard Spitzer’s Manhattan office just before 10 p.m. on Aug. 6, says that Mr. Spitzer, 83, a wealthy real estate developer, would be “compelled by the Senate sergeant at arms” to testify about “shady campaign loans” he made to his son during Eliot Spitzer’s unsuccessful campaign for attorney general in 1994.

Mr. Winner’s committee has been holding hearings into a scheme by some of Governor Spitzer’s top aides to use the State Police to embarrass Mr. Bruno, the Senate Republican leader. Senate Republicans have said they were considering reviewing Bernard Spitzer’s 1994 loans to his son.

“If you resist this subpoena, you will be arrested and brought to Albany,” the message says, according to a transcript. The message also calls Governor Spitzer a “phony” and a “psycho.”

Bernard Spitzer’s lawyers hired Kroll Associates, the private investigative firm, to trace the message, and their report was included with the letter to Mr. Winner. The firm traced the number that appeared on Mr. Spitzer’s caller identification system, linking it to listings under the name of Mr. Stone’s wife, Nydia.

“The review of publicly available records,” the report says, “strongly suggests that the number is controlled by Roger Stone.”

Digital recordings were also sent to Mr. Winner, including the audio of the voice mail message and “a sample of Roger Stone’s voice from a broadcast interview” to allow for comparison. The Times was given a copy of both recordings, but was unable to draw any conclusions about whether Mr. Stone’s voice was on Mr. Spitzer’s phone message.

In the message, the caller says, referring to a potential subpoena: “There is not a goddamn thing your phony, psycho, piece-of-shit son can do about it. Bernie, your phony loans are about to catch up with you. You will be forced to tell the truth and the fact that your son’s a pathological liar will be known to all.”

Mr. Stone, 55, said the number from which the call was alleged to have been made was indeed his, and that it was also shared by a Florida law firm for which he does public relations work, Rothstein Rosenfeldt Adler. But he denied that he made the call or that it was his voice on the message.

He said his apartment building on Central Park South is owned by H. Dale Hemmerdinger, a fund-raiser for Mr. Spitzer who is the governor’s nominee to be chairman of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, and suggested that allies of the governor might have given access to his apartment to someone who made the threatening call. An official at Mr. Hemmerdinger’s company said she was not prepared to comment.

Mr. Stone said: “They have unfettered access to my apartment. I am on television constantly. As Gore Vidal said, never pass up the chance to have sex or be on television. Putting together a voice tape that sounds like me wouldn’t be hard to do.”

Mr. Stone said he could not remember where he was on the date of the call and had no specific evidence that his apartment had been entered without authorization. But he said he believed that things have been missing from his apartment recently.

Mr. Winner also noted that technology is available that makes it possible to mimic another person’s phone number on a caller identification machine.

Mr. Stone is known as an aggressive strategist, having once, while still a teenager, recruited a mole to infiltrate the 1972 presidential campaign of George S. McGovern. He worked for President Reagan in 1980 and 1984 and went to Florida in 2000 to help George W. Bush win the recount. On his Web site, Mr. Stone claims to know “first hand the gritty underside of American politics.”

But his work in New York has raised eyebrows among Republicans; he has worked for the Rev. Al Sharpton, a Democrat, and aided Tom Golisano, a billionaire businessman and Independence Party candidate, in his 2002 challenge to the Republican incumbent, Gov. George E. Pataki.

At a news conference this afternoon in Saratoga, Mr. Bruno said Mr. Stone was asked to end his work with Senate Republicans despite denying that he left the phone message.

“We have talked with Roger today,” he said. “Roger no longer has a relationship with the Senate, based on the allegations, and I have heard form people around me that I have confidence in that, whether it’s true or not, we are, until there’s clarity, severing our relationship totally and completely.”

The news conference had a familiar feel to it for the Albany press corps who have spent weeks chasing Governor Spitzer in the wake of a report by Attorney General Andrew M. Cuomo that the Spitzer administration misused the State Police in an attempt to discredit Mr. Bruno. Once again, a top state official was saying he didn’t know what happened, trying to change the subject and left before answering all of the questions reporters had.

“We are not going to be diverted to anything like this, away from the real problem that needs to be investigated, until we find the truth, and that is did the executive and all of the people around him in the highest offices of this state abuse the power of the executive by using the State Police in an illegal way to try and dispose of a political rival?” Mr. Bruno said. “That’s the main issue and we are not going to let anything divert us on behalf of the people of New York State, who deserve to know the truth.”

Mr. Stone, who has been working for Senate Republicans since June, was paid $20,000 a month and has had a leading role in directing their recent political offensive against the governor. He made a presentation to Senate Republicans in Mr. Bruno’s office shortly before a special session last month.

“I made a presentation about what I thought the party needed to do to get on offense,” he said.

The loan at issue was given by Bernard Spitzer to help his son repay a $4.3 million bank loan that Eliot Spitzer used to vastly outspend his rivals in the 1994 Democratic primary for attorney general, which he lost.

During that campaign, Eliot Spitzer played down the size of the loan. But shortly before the 1998 election, which he won, he said his father had lent him millions of dollars. One of his opponents in the 1998 campaign sued unsuccessfully over the issue and the Board of Elections decided not to investigate the matter.

Mr. Winner said that his office had received the letter from Bernard Spitzer’s lawyers but that he had not seen it yet. He added that he did not think his panel had jurisdiction over the issue.

Jeffrey A. Moerdler, a lawyer for Bernard Spitzer, said his client would not comment. “He was distressed, absolutely,” Mr. Moerdler said, adding that the letter was also sent to the State Ethics Commission. The governor’s office had no immediate comment on the matter.