Way back in August 2006, the day before Connecticut’s Democratic Senate primary between Joe Lieberman and Ned Lamont, the Lieberman campaign’s website went down. It prompted something of a media frenzy and ugly accusations from Lieberman about his “political opponents” being responsible for the “attack.” (Lieberman’s campaign manager told reporters, “If Ned Lamont has a backbone in his body, he will call on these people to cease and desist.”)
The Lamont campaign issued a categorical denial and denounced the incident, offered to help the Lieberman campaign gets its site back online, and even invited Lieberman to put his site on its servers. Nevertheless, Lieberman aides filed a complaint with the U.S. Attorney’s Office and other agencies regarding the alleged attack.
What of the more obvious, innocent explanation? The AP noted at the time, “The Lieberman campaign denied speculation among liberal Web pundits that the centrist Democrat’s Web site had simply crashed because it used a low-budget Web host unable to handle the volume.”
Good news; the criminal investigation is over. What actually happened in August 2006? Well, it’s a funny story:
A federal investigation has concluded that U.S. Sen. Joseph Lieberman’s 2006 re-election campaign was to blame for the crash of its Web site the day before Connecticut’s heated Aug. 8 Democratic primary.
The FBI office in New Haven found no evidence supporting the Lieberman campaign’s allegations that supporters of primary challenger Ned Lamont of Greenwich were to blame for the Web site crash.
Lieberman, who was fighting for his political life against the anti-Iraq war candidate Lamont, implied that joe2006.com was hacked by Lamont supporters.
“The server that hosted the joe2006.com Web site failed because it was overutilized and misconfigured. There was no evidence of (an) attack,” according to the e-mail.
You don’t say. And why are we just learning about the result of the federal investigation now? That’s a funny story, too.
The e-mail, dated Oct. 25, 2006, was included in a technical packet of information recently sent to The Advocate in response to requests under the Freedom of Information Act filed in late 2006 with the offices of state Attorney General Richard Blumenthal and U.S. Attorney Kevin O’Connor.
The Advocate filed the requests after Blumenthal and O’Connor closed the case but declined to divulge details…. Blumenthal denied The Advocate’s FOI request on the grounds it was a federal matter, and it took more than a year for the FBI and U.S. Department of Justice to respond.
If the Lieberman campaign screwed up its own site, and the matter was dropped, why was it necessary to keep the results of the investigation under wraps?
Regardless, all’s well that ends well. I’m sure Lieberman will do the right thing, acknowledge his own mistake, express regret to the FBI for requesting an unnecessary and wasteful investigation, and apologize to Lamont supporters for the bogus accusations.
We’re waiting.