ORIGINAL SIN Chapter Four

 

“...the concentration of wealth (is) what the Republican party is all about.”

Kevin Phillips. “The Politics of Rich and Poor” 1990

The red BMW convertible raced northbound up the tree lined Lake Drive in the North Port neighborhood of Milwaukee, Wisconsin. It powered toward the little park called the Gilman Triangle. 

The red headed driver reeked of beer as he blew through the stop sign at East Bradford Avenue. Homes and apartment buildings flashed past as he drifted over the center of the 2500 block of the narrow residential street.

It was another 3^rd of July evening, this one two years before Angela and Clifford Barnes would be brutally attacked some 900 miles to the east. The drunk behind the wheel was 38 year old Dennis Frankenberry (above) , a “precocious young advertising executive” and founder of the hottest firm in Milwaukee.  

He had just snared the multi-million dollar Miller Brewing Company account for his agency.  He was, as the saying went, “rich, white and over twenty-one”, and a regular donor to the Wisconsin Republican party.   

Dennis may or may not have seen the single headlamp looming in front of him. He must have felt the impact as the motorcycle crumpled against the kidney grill of his car. And he surely saw the two passengers as they were catapulted onto his hood, and then tossed aside to the pavement like crumpled trash.

The damaged BMW did not pause, and Dennis Frankenberry did not inquire as to the condition the victims he left sprawled on the street behind him. 

Twenty-one year old Toby Gargardeski got the worst of it, fracturing his skull. After surgery the next day Toby would be left in a coma, in critical but stable condition. His companion, 20 year old Melcio Montemoyer, also suffered head injuries, but his most serious injury was a badly fractured leg which would require several surgeries and would never fully heal.

The red BMW continued half a mile up Lake Drive before turning onto East Locust Street. When the car started to give out, Dennis pulled onto a side street, where he finally stopped. He burst into the nearest house, telling the startled occupants that he had just been an accident. They noted he reeked of alcohol and had “watery, red eyes”.  Dennis demanded a glass of water, then a phone. When the police arrived, summoned by a witness who had followed his escape, Dennis hid upstairs. The occupants admitted the cops, who took Dennis into custody. He spent Wednesday night in jail, and on Thursday morning, 4 July, 1985, he was released on bail.

On Monday morning, 8 July, 1985, Dennis Frankenberry was asked to appear with his attorney at the district attorney's office at 8:30 am to discuss the accident. He finally showed up at noon. After a short meeting, Dennis was free to leave again. 

This time he left the state, checking into a private hospital in Kansas to be treated for his addictions to cocaine and alcohol. In reporting his extraordinary treatment, 

The Milwaukee Journal would win no Pulitzer Prize for their coverage. They identified Dennis only as “an advertising executive”. The newspaper was a client of his firm, as was the state of Wisconsin.

It would be October before the city got around to charging Dennis Frankenberry, with reckless driving and leaving the scene of an accident. The October trial was quick. Dennis pled guilty as charged.  He was fined $300. 

And he was incarcerated. For 90 days. In fact he only spent his nights in jail. His days were spent in his office, working on anti-drinking and driving public service ads which would count toward his court ordered 250 hours of public service. In other words he was serving his sentences concurrently. Dennis was also furloughed to spend weekends with his wife and children.  The hypocrisy was noted by a few Milwaukee journalist, despite the official blanket thrown over Dennis' transgression. It was true, as one author has pointed out, that “While outside the correctional facility, Frankenberry committed advertising, not kidnapping and rape.” Still his treatment was the exception.

After only 66 days Dennis was “released” for “good behavior”. That left only the court ordered restitution to his victims. In early January of 1987 the lawyers announced that Toby Gargardeski, awake but struggling to read again and having short term memory problems, was awarded $990,000, and Melcio Montemoyer, just beginning to deal with the nerve damage in his leg and foot, was awarded $250,000. According to the courts, justice had been served. The crippled Melcio explained to the few reporters who showed up, “If it had been me, I would have probably gotten a longer sentence...but then we're no big shots.”  Nor were they white.

The public service ads produced by Frankenberry, Laughlin and Constable would win awards,

bringing the agency and Dennis to the attention of some even “bigger shots”, who, despite Dennis' new reputation, invited them to come to Washington to submit ideas based on theme's suggested by Atwater and Ailes.

Frankenberry's team submitted four ads the Bush campaign decided to put into production. There was the “Boston Harbor” spot (above), attacking Dukakis' environmental record, which was far stronger than Bush's.  There was “Tax Blizzard” which threatened a flood of IRS missives pouring into a middle class family home, building on the “tax and spend Democrats” trope. And there was the “Oath of Allegiance” ad which implied that Micheal Dukakis was unpatriotic. But the one that interested Atwater and Ailes the most was Dennis' “Revolving Door” spot.

“The Revolving Door” did not mention William Horton or his crimes. Atwater and Ailes knew such a blatant racist attack (“n---er, n---er, n---er”) would cause a media blow back. But it could serve as cover for such and attack.  As Ailes told Ad Age magazine, “News is who has the hottest attack ads and who can get the highest ratings.”  The odd fact that the man who would help destroy the weekend parole system in American had himself benefited from that same system did not seem to bother any of the participants.

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ORIGINAL SIN Chapter Three

 

“I’ll tell you what’s at the bottom of it. If you can convince the lowest white man he’s better than the best colored man, he won’t notice you’re picking his pocket. Hell, give him somebody to look down on, and he’ll empty his pockets for you.” Lyndon Baines Johnson 1964.

It's poison bore fruit again in 1951 and in South Carolina. Harvey LeRoy "Lee" Atwater was born on 27 February, in Atlanta, Georgia, but in April his family moved to Charleston, South Carolina (above). 

And on 12 July, William Robert Horton was born near the little segregated sand hill farming town of Chesterfield, South Carolina (above). Lee Atwater was white. William Horton was black. But it was the personality traits they shared which shaped the story that would follow.

William's father was a trash collector and an alcoholic. When William was 5 the police locked up his father for shooting his mother. Shortly thereafter the battered Mrs. Horton left the little boy with his maternal grandmother and disappeared. William grew up in a state still tied to cotton, hand picking it or processing the crop in local textile mills. Despite being warned he would end up on a chain gang like his father, William Horton dropped out of school in the 8^th grade.

In 1956 Lee Atwater's father - an insurance adjuster - moved his family to the Savanna River town of Aiken, on the Georgia border, just down the street from ex-Governor Strom Thurmond. Lee trick-or-treated at Thurmond's home and remembered, "He came out and gave me a Snickers candy bar. That was the best thing I got that year.” Working after school, the hyperactive Lee seemed destined for success, and when his 8^th grade class took a trip to Washington, D.C., Lee Atwater (above) posed sitting at the feet of Senator Thurmond.

William Horton was first arrested at the age of 15 in 1971. He was convicted of breaking and entering, and served 6 months in a juvenile facility. Shortly after his release he was arrested again for assault with a knife, with intent to kill. This time he served 3 years in a penitentiary. Upon release William left South Carolina and headed north to connect with family. 

In 1974 he was charged with 11 offenses in and around the old mill town of Lawrence, Massachusetts (above)  including public drunkenness, assault and battery and selling drugs.

After high school, Lee Atwater attended a private Lutheran college in Newberry, and in 1968 helped register voters pledged to support Richard Nixon. But as his younger brother Eric pointed out, party philosophy held little interest to Lee. “He liked politics because he could kick the other guy's ass.” Then in 1973 Atwater transferred to the University of South Carolina. A college girl friend recalled, “...the opportunist in him...would almost always overrule the nice guy...” 

That year Atwater ran the campaign that elected his friend Karl Rove (above) as President of the College Republicans. In 1977 Lee Atwater graduated from the University of South Carolina with a Master's degree in Communications.

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About 9:30 pm on Saturday, 26 October, 1974, William Horton along with two other drug dealers, Alvin Wildman and Roosevelt Picket,  left a party in Lowell, Massachusetts. Fifteen minutes later their car was seen parked near the Mobile gas station on Marston Street. 

About 9:50 pm the attendant, 17 year old Joseph Fournier (above), was found stabbed 19 times in the neck and chest. He bled to death, stuffed bent double into a trash bin with his feet against his face. The total amount stolen from the station was $276.37. In September 1975 Horton and the others were convicted of murder and sentenced to life imprisonment without the possibility of parole.

Lee Atwater (above right) confessed, “I probably would have never even gotten into politics if it weren't for Strom Thurmond (above, left) .”  It was at Thurmond's suggestion that 36 year old State Senator Carroll Campbell hired Atwater to manage his 1978 campaign for the South Carolina 4^th Congressional District seat. His Democratic opponent was the popular mayor of Greenville, Max Heller. There was also a third party candidate, an itinerant preacher named Don Spouse. 

Polling indicated Heller had a 14 point lead until the final week, when Spouse held a well attended press conference to announce, “I believe in Jesus Christ...Mr. Heller does not.” Spouse added that a Jew should not represent South Carolina. Spouse won only 1,693 votes, but Campbell beat Heller by 5,893 votes. Lee Atwater later took credit for recruiting Spouse, who never ran for office again.

In the summer of 1979 Ed Rollins (above, right) was hired to assemble a staff for Ronald Reagan's 1980 Presidential campaign. He remembered, “ Strom Thurmond was trying to get Lee a job.” Rollins agreed to interview Atwater (above, left),  and was surprised. “Here's this young kid without a real resume...but there was something about his eyes. He had these piercing eyes...the eyes of a killer.” Rollins hired Lee as a political consultant.

William Horton's first months in prison were difficult, and he was written up almost a dozen times by the staff. But by his 6^th year William had become a model prisoner. Beginning in 1985 William Horton was given 10 two day furloughs. Most state prisoners at the time were eligible for weekend furlough programs, as a way of rewarding good behavior and to further rehabilitation.  Massachusetts was the only state which extended this privilege to convicted murderers. 

The on 6 June, 1986 William went on yet another furlough. He saw a movie and stopped at a convenience store, where he bought a winning lottery ticket. The money funded a drug binge, which led to William crashing a car. Horton now ran. Using buses and stolen cars he got to Florida, where he found construction work. A year later William lost his job, and moved to Baltimore where he stayed with friends, until the 4th of July weekend of 1987,  when he went looking for a house to break into in Maryland.

In the March 1980 South Carolina Republican primary, Ronald Reagan (above, right) had two opponents – John Connally and George Bush.  Lee Atwater (above, center) “leaked” negative stories about both sides to both sides.  Connally supposedly tried to buy 100,000 votes from black churches, and Bush was accused of being a member of the infamous “Trilateral Commission”.  Lee Atwater would later claim, with some support, to have played both sides against the other, so that Reagan would win what the Washington Post described as a “mean and dirty”, campaign, “'..in the worst tradition of the politics of the Old South.” 

In November of that same year Lee confessed to winning another election via a smear, “Well, I said that he had been hooked up to jumper cables, in reference to a bout he had with mental illness in college...”

It would be foolish to assume that William Horton  (above) committed only those rapes and assaults for which was arrested and convicted, such as the July 1987 break-in assault and rape of Angela Miller and Clifford Barnes. 

It would be equally foolish to assume that Lee Atwater was responsible for all of the reprehensible attacks he would later claim credit for. However it also seems obvious these two sons of the Palmetto state shared a certain set of personality traits - they both, “habitually and pervasively disregard or violated the rights and considerations of others without remorse.”

The 5^th edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders says persons such as Atwater and Horton, “...may be habitual criminals....or they may...manipulate and hurt others in non-criminal ways which are widely regarded as unethical, immoral, irresponsible...Those with APD often possess an impaired moral conscience and make decisions driven purely by their own desires without considering the needs or negative effects of their actions on others.” The syndrome is defined as antisocial personality disorder.

It was the decision of the Republican party to accommodate racism in order to assemble a winning coalition. It was the choice of the Republican party to elevate those with an “impaired moral conscience” to leadership roles because they produced success. The profit from those decisions would be reaped in the last two decades of the 20th century and the first decade of the 21st century by Ed Rollins (center) and Lee Atwater (right).  And the bill would be deferred until the second decade of the 21^st century, delivered by Republican operative, Roger Stone (left)

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ORIGINAL SIN Chapter Two

 

“The question everyone wants answered is how a cold-blooded murderer ever got out in the first place,”

The Lawrence Eagle-Tribune April, 1987

One afternoon in late May of 1988, the 6' 9” Jim Pinkerton, leader of the 35 “nerds” doing Opposition Research for the Vice President George Walker Bush Presidential campaign, was reading the transcript of the New York Democratic Presidential Primary debate. 

By then it was clear Massachusetts Governor Michael Dukakis would be the Democratic nominee, and early polls gave him a 17 point lead over Bush. 

But Jim read something in Al Gore's remarks which tweaked his interest. He called Reagan White House Staffer Andrew Hill "Andy" Card  (above) who was from the bay state, to ask about the “furlough issue.”

Jim Pinkerton explained later, “Card said, Yes, this has been a huge thing up here...The Boston Globe had run stories on this, the Lawrence Eagle-Tribune had run something like one hundred thirty stories.   They won a Pulitzer Prize (abive) ... it was just sort of totally hiding in plain sight...it was just like discovering gold.” 

When Pinkerton told his boss, campaign manager, “boy wonder” Lee Atwater said, "By the time we’re finished, they’re going to wonder whether Willie Horton is Dukakis’s running mate.”  And  Communications Director Roger Ailes promised to “Strip the bark off that little bastard (Dukakis)”, adding, “The only question is whether we depict Willie Horton with a knife in his hand or without it.” Within days, Horton's threatening mug shot was hanging at Bush''s 15^th street, D.C. headquarters.

Roger Eugene Ailes (above) came into politics as a two time Emmy winning talk show producer with a "boundless propensity for fabulism and a bottomless ego.” 

The talk show brought Ailes (above, left) into contact with Richard Nixon (above, right), who after a few hours listening to Roger, appointed him his Executive for Television.  Privately Ailes had a cynical view of his new client. “He looks like somebody hung him in a closet overnight and he jumps out in the morning with his suit all bunched up and starts running around saying, ‘I want to be president.’"

In the words of Jim Pinkerton, with Nixon, Ailes was,  part Don Rickles, part psychiatrist and part motivational football coach".,  During the 1968 campaign,  instead of doing standard interviews with heavyweight journalists Ailes designed “town hall” meetings,  hosted by local anchors and filled with carefully chosen voters who would ask Nixon softball questions. Historian Rick Perlstein explained the events were not staged, rather, “They were fixed”.

It also highlighted Roger's insight into the creation of news, what came to be called his “Orchestra Pit Theory". “If you have two guys on a stage and one guy says, "I have a solution to the Middle East problem," and the other guy falls in the orchestra pit, who do you think is going to be on the evening news?” Or as Roger rephrased it during the '84 campaign, “ What would a journalist rather cover? New TV ads or the latest proposal to change the capital gains tax?"

Working closely with Ronald Reagan, Ailes became known as “Dr. Feelgood” because of his ability to reassure and coach the candidate through difficult situations. It was Ailes who counseled that facts were not important. “You get elected”, he told Reagan, “on themes”. As Mary Matalin, a longtime Republican campaign strategist remembered, “"Roger always had the clearest vision...When you came to a strategy impasse...I can’t remember a single incident where he lost a fight."

Having chosen to highlight the issues of furloughs – among others - the next step was to convince their client, Vice President George Herbert Walker Bush (above) that he needed to play rough. The Bush family had been wealthy since Samuel Prescott Bush took over the Buckeye Steel Company in 1908 and bought a summer vacation home in Kennebunkport, Maine. 

And although Bush had earned the Distinguished Flying Cross in World War II (above) and been a successful businessman, and politician, he was what Atwater called a "cocktail party Republican", a large step removed from the blood thirsty front line fighters like himself.. 

So Ailes rented an office in a shopping mall in the "quintessentially suburban” town of Paramus, New Jersey (above), where he ran a series of focus groups, testing the public impressions of Bush and Dukakis. It seems likely that while these groups were also “fixed”.

As expected and intended the groups did not have good news for Bush. They reinforced the “Curse of Martin Van Buren”, the last Vice President who had won election to Presidency in his own right back in 1836. Atwater explained the current dilemma. “We’re 17 points back,” said Atwater, “and (Dukakis will) pick up 10 more points at their convention and we won’t win. Even with a good campaign, we won’t win.” After this presentation, Atwater said, “it was an easy sell.”

Atwater (above) would later explain to an interviewer what “it” was. “You start out in 1954 by saying, "Nigger, nigger, nigger.” By 1968 you can't say "nigger"...So you say stuff like forced busing, states' rights and all that stuff. You're getting so abstract now...fiscal conservatism, balancing the budget, cut taxes...” When the interviewer asked if Atwater was admitting the “conservative strategy” was just racism dressed up in new clothes, Lee responded, “You all don't quote me on this.”

By now, William Horton (above)  was inmate number 189-1821 at the Jessup Correctional Institute, south of Baltimore. He had been sentenced to 2 life terms plus 85 years by Maryland Judge Vincent Fema. 

Massachusetts had requested Horton's return to finish his life sentence, but Judge Fema said, "I'm not prepared to take the chance that Mr. Horton might again be furloughed or otherwise released. This man should never draw a breath of free air again." It was as if the judge were writing ads for the Republicans.

And Horton's victims were still trapped in prisons Horton had created for them. They never returned to their home, selling it at a loss. Although they went ahead with their marriage plans 2 months after the assault, Angela Barnes constantly carries a knife in her purse, and keeps one in her beside table. She admits to even taking the weapon into the bathtub with her. She thinks, if faced with a similar situation, with a gun to her head, “I think I'd say 'Go ahead, shoot me'. I don't want to go through this again”. 

Since that horrific night in 1987, Clifford Barnes has never gotten a full night's sleep.  He would later demand, “Ask Dukakis if he wants Willie Horton in his basement”  But when the couple had approached Governor Micheal Dukakis to discuss the state's furlough program, he refused to meet with them. It was as if Dukakis was writing ads for the Republicans.

Now all the Bush team needed to find the right person to create the perfect ad that mixed race and prison furloughs to destroy the Democrat candidate,

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