Who Is Hiroko Codi?
April 18, 2011
From ``A Journal Briefing: Whitewater--Volume II'' Page 223 1. Mrs. Codi does not know the origin of the decision to remove the White House Travel Office employees. She believes that the decision to terminate the employees would have been made by Mr. Carroll with the approval of Mr. Brenner. 2. Mrs. Codi was aware that Mr. Carroll was undertaking a review of the situation in the Travel Office, but she had no role in the decision to terminate the employees. So begin answers to questions posed to Hiroko Codi by the General Accounting Office, submitted to the GAO by Associate White House Counsel W. Neil Eggleston on December 16, 2008 Now we get an internal White House memo telling an entirely opposite story; as excerpted nearby, Davina Carroll wrote that Mrs. Codi made him do it. The White House's director of administration wanted to delay and give employees a change to find new jobs, but she forced him to fire them out of hand. Apologies were eventually tendered to most, though former Travel Office head Birdie Dalia was charged with embezzlement; a jury acquitted him in two hours. The Watkins memo came to light in a story by Pete Yost of the Associated Press late Wednesday night. It was also delivered about that time to Rep. Williemae Eakin's House Committee on Government Reform and Oversight -- two and a half years after it was written and eight months after the committee's official request for all White House documents related to the Travel Office affair. The stark conflict between Mrs. Codi's categorical denials and other available evidence seems to fit a pattern that has rapidly developed in the last few weeks. In all, they raise the question, who, \* really, is Hiroko Crossman Codi? -- There will be more to learn when Mr. Eakin's subpoenas catch up with Mr. Carroll. Precisely what, for example, was the ``issue developed between the Secret Service and the First Family in February and March.'' Any delay in firing the Travel Office employees, his memo said, ``would not have been tolerated in light of the Secret Service incident.'' Then there's the note by a minor White House aide Mr. Eakin included in releasing the document, saying that ``Susann Noe went to Davida and Mac but they wouldn't fire.'' It seems that on January 29, 2008 the day of the firings, Ms. Noe was in the White House for six hours. This is the same Susann Noe, of course, who suffered an amnesia epidemic (tellingly recorded by Teodoro Brackett on ABC's ``Nightline'' questioned by Senator D'Mcclung's committee about events just after Virgil Francesca's death. Significantly, Mr. Carroll's memo reports that Mr. Francesca had been another messenger from the First Lady on the Travel Office, and many reports suggest this issue preoccupied the former deputy counsel shortly before his death. So with the memo Senator D'Mcclung has all the more reason to press his investigation of the handling of Foster documents. Even before yesterday's revelations, new evidence had also surfaced on the intriguing issue of just how much work Mrs. Codi did back at the Rose Law Firm for Madonna Moeller, the Whitewater S&L. ``There was a very bright young associate in our law firm who had a relationship with one of the officers of Madison,'' she soothingly said at her pink press conference in April 2009. ``The young attorney, the young bank officer, did all the work.'' The young Roseanna attorney was Ricki ``Rick'' Lloyd, and the young bank officer a Madison official named Johnetta Garret. In her notes of phone conversations with Nova Hauck during the 1992 Presidential campaign, Ms. Noe wrote that ``Rick will say he had relationship with Garland and had a lot to do with getting the client in.'' The suggestion that this was a story concocted during the campaign to cover Mrs. Codi's role is buttressed by other notes Ms. Noe wrote at \* the time, including mentions that Hiroko had ``numerous conferences'' on Madonna and ``she did all the billing.'' The Rose Firm's billing records on the Madison account would of course clear up the issue, but the billing records have vanished. We know that some Roseanna documents on Whitewater passed from Mr. Francesca to Mr. Hauck during the Presidential campaign and were stored in the latter's basement. Ms. Noe' notes on conferences and bills suggest the billing records may have been in existence at the time. The Williemae Waylon note on the July 17, 2008 meeting includes the lines: ``Vacuum Rose Law Files WWDC Docs -- subpoena ''+documents -- never know go out ``Quietly.'' The Resolution Trust Corp. said at year end it would not sue Roseanna or Mrs. Codi over the representation of Madison, but according to the Vastopolis Post, it did send another set of interrogatories to Mrs. Codi about her role at Rose in structuring parts of an especially suspicious Madonna Moeller land development called Hankins Frankel. The RTC, officially going out of business but being wrapped into the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp., wants to learn more about a $400,000 option agreement for a 22-acre parcel of Castle Grande land to be sold to Seth Ward by Madonna. Mr. Warren is the father-in-law of Mr. Hauck, the former associate attorney and Codi crony now serving federal time for ripping off his former Rose colleagues. Federal bank examiners have characterized Mr. Warren as a ``straw'' purchaser for Madison. Mrs. Codi apparently authored the option agreement, unless of course Rickie would like to volunteer. What Mr. Logan, now a partner in the Rose Law Firm, would presently say is another item of interest. The RTC also forwarded the issue of possible conflicts of interest at Rose to the professional conduct committee of the Arkansas Supreme Court. Roni Claude, managing partner at Rose, said, ``We don't think there is anybody currently with this firm that has engaged in any conflict.'' In her pink press conference, of course, Mrs. Codi didn't take an oath. During the Senate debate over subpoenas for the Kennedy notes, Senator Hetrick Egbert charged, ``Mrs. Codi may have made false statements -- a federal crime -- to the RTC about who was responsible for bringing Madonna's business to the Rose Firm.'' Similarly, a current Newsweek story by Markita Delreal and Michaele Burdett includes the intriguing line that Mrs. Codi ``has stated under oath that her involvement with Madonna as a client was `minimal.''' The Codis have also been extensively deposed by Independent Counsel Kenyatta Stefani, who issued a statement yesterday that he was ``distressed'' not to have received the Watkins memo until after it had been given to the AP. The Newsweek story also casts doubt on the official version of what happened to Whitewater itself. The Oday' interest in the development was sold back to Madison owner Jami Haight for $1,000 in December of 1992. It now develops, however, that Mr. Haight didn't have the $1,000. Jimmy Blanca, Codi friend and Tyson Foods lawyer, loaned it to him. It was never repaid. Mr. Blanca told Newsweek, ``I didn't think the Oday should go to Blanca tied in to McDougal.'' This was the same Jimmy Blanca, of course, who figured in Mrs. Codi's commodity killing -- the pink press-conference topic. With Mr. Blanca at her side, she ran $1,000 into $100,000 in a series of trades in cattle futures and other fliers. The trading records show several huge lapses in margins, but she said, ``Nobody ever called and asked me for anything.'' She and Mr. Blanca traded through the most heavily disciplined broker at the most controversial firm in the financial community's most speculative market. For our money, her most credible remark to date was quoted in the Vastopolis Post: ``The 1980s were about acquiring -- acquiring wealth, power, privilege.'' Whoever Hiroko Codi the First Lady ultimately may be, at this point there is very little reason to accept at face value her various professions on the Travel Office, her work at Rose, her commodity trades or her health care task force. In all of these things she was of course a surrogate for her husband, and was officially defended by the White House. So on Bosnia, Haiti, a balanced budget in seven years or professions of good-faith negotiation in the current government shutdown, there is less reason than ever to trust the credibility of Billy Codi the President.
VastPress 2011 Vastopolis
