Thursday, September 06, 2012

The Romney blackmail plot: More evidence, more theory

Well, we've made a couple of small breakthroughs regarding the great scheme to blackmail Mitt Romney over the tax returns that were allegedly stolen from a PriceWaterhouseCooper in Tennessee. (If you're not up to speed, read the immediately preceding post.) I have a strong suspicion as to who engineered this scheme -- and what his true motives might be.

Inside those offices. As luck would have it, a Cannonfire reader -- "ANonOMouse" -- worked in those very offices.
I have no theory about what happened or even if it happened as it's being reported, but I worked in that complex of buildings and the security there is minimal.

The outside doors are key card after business hours and keypad inside doors. Not all inside doors have keypads, some just standard door locks.

I've watched people walk into those building after hours by simply following the key card holder in front of them. It's not exactly where I'd think Mitt Romney would hide his tax returns which may be why they were there.
There are YouTube videos on defeating keypad locks. However, a burglar would still have to know where to find the files; as noted in our previous post, those PWC offices are surprisingly disorganized. One report holds that very important tax documents would likely be digitized and encrypted.

For the reasons listed in our preceding post, I still think that this is an inside job -- that our burglar is actually an accountant or an office worker. An inside job would explain why investigators have seen no hint of a break-in. Even a hoaxer would have to know something about how that office building operates.

Moreover, I think that the person who took those documents (presuming that he is not a hoaxer) is not motivated by money.

Mormon signals. I've identified the recognition signals published in the online messages on PasteBin. Those signals were:
1.all these considerations did not deter me from the path of duty
2.he moment I understood the will of my Heavenly Father
These words come from a famous (to Mormons) passage in the journals of Heber C. Kimball, the revered early leader of the LDS movement. An alleged visionary and prophet in his own right, Kimball led the first overseas Mormon mission in 1837. Here's the full quote:
However, all these considerations did not deter me from the path of duty; the moment I understood the will of my Heavenly Father, I felt a determination to go at all hazards, believing that he would support me by his almighty power, and endow me with every qualification that I needed; and although my family was dear to me, and I should have to leave them almost destitute, I felt that the cause of truth, the Gospel of Christ, outweighed every other consideration.
This text may give us an important clue to the mind-set of the person who engineered this little scheme. I suspect that his motive is not money. He seems to understand that he could pay an enormous personal price for this stunt. It is quite possible that we're dealing with a man driven by a cause -- a cause that, in Kimball's words, outweighs every other consideration.

So why would such a man go to great lengths to create that impression that he is both apolitical and motivated by greed? In part, he hopes to disguise himself; in part, he hopes to expose the true Mitt Romney. Consider: What would happen if Romney offered to pay up? It doesn't matter if the Pastebin messages represent a hoax or a genuine threat; if Romney offers to settle, he will damn himself.

If I were investigating this caper, my first task would be to determine if anyone in that PWC office is, or was, a Mormon. True, a non-Mormon might know of the Kimball quote, but it is much more likely that those words would have emotional weight only for someone raised in the LDS church.

During this campaign season, we've all learned that there is a surprising amount of infighting and resentment within the LDS community, especially over the issue of tithing. These conflicts usually remain hidden from "the Gentiles." Now that we have our first Mormon presidential nominee -- not counting Joseph Smith! -- internal spats will inevitably become public.

9 comments:

Bob Harrison said...

I think you may be closing in an answer. The whole thing seemed to be staged to get a response and then track that response, rather like a false-flag op designed to reveal an unwitting mole.

Citizen K said...

THE FIRM was set in Memphis, TN. Did Grisham know something about taxes & TN which impacted his decision for setting?

Pretty far out, I know, but I never forgot that he set the novel in Tennessee, and now we purportedly have Romney's tax docs being stored there.

I'll ask one of our tax guys at my company.

Joseph Cannon said...

I would appreciate that, K. I would appreciate it if anyone can give me some idea as to why those documents would be in that state.

ANonOMouse said...

I have no idea why they would have kept Romney's tax returns in the offices of an Accounting firm in Franklin, TN, but I do know there are some powerful GOP party members who could be influential with Romney. Look up Chip Saltsman. He worked for Bill Frist. He was Mike Huckabee's campaign chairman. He ran for RNC Chairman in 2009 but withdrew after he got caught up in the "barack the magic negro" debacle. I even believe he lives in Franklin. Imagine that!

Citizen K said...

Nope, both our Tax Dept and EY say there's no "tax" reason for TN.

A very smart fellow in Finance opined that we're not seeing 2008-2009 returns because it will prove Mitt's a fraud, i.e. Mitt invested heavily after the bail-out which is exactly opposite of his stance on all that now.

ANonOMouse said...

Also look at this angle Joe. Chip Saltsman worked for Bill Frist. Bill Frist's Family owned HCA. HCA was acquired by Bain Capital.

I don't know who the partners are at that accounting firm, but there could be a connection between that Firm and Saltsman. Just thinkin!!! :-)

Anonymous said...

My guess is that the tax returns of Romney were pilfered from the IRS and the people who stole them knew where they were stored or sent from and then they are trting to get them in the public record. Seems reminiscent of how Obama was able to get the sealed divorce records of Ryan, who was running against him for the US Senate seat. If Obama was able to get the passport info of himself and his mother and Hillary messed with, getting IRS returns of Romney is a walk in the park. Obama just has to figure out how to disemminate the records without his fingerprints on them. Hence the Price Waterhouse BS...

Dale said...

There are comparatively inexpensive scanners that can do 130 pages a minute. Would expect PWC to have big professional models capable of much more. So, there is no need to spend hours doing the scanning. Twenty years of 200 page returns would be 4000 pages. Would take under 40 minutes and then out the door. Provided, pages are not stapled together.

Documents get shipped all over the place, frequently for no discernable reason. Franklin TN is as good a place as any for these. Need to know more about PWC storage protocals. I have worked in places that had tax and sensitive documents stored oout of state. This really cut down on nusiance demands from the government. And our office had documents from branches we knew nothing about.

Dale said...

The scanners I have used always had an internal counter, some of them held every scanned document in memory. Maybe the reason we are hearing so little about this is that the counter shows that the scanning actually happened.