One-degree of separation: Rezko-Auchi webscrubbing continues (Updated)
March 8, 2008 by Brenda J. Elliott
Dan Curry of Reverse Spin blog said in January 2008 “There will be a lot more website purges in the months ahead when it comes to Rezko related items.” Truer words were never spoken.
On January 30, 2008, RezkoWatch posted the article Rezko, Auchi, 62 acres and $3.5 million about the $3.5 million loan received by indicted political fixer Antoin “Tony” Rezko from Iraqi-British billionaire businessman Nadhmi Auchi. Within the article was a link to a page from the online publication TheMiddleEastOnline (TMEO) which discussed Auchi’s April 2004 visit to Illinois and Michigan. It also showed pictures of Auchi, Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich, and Illinois State Senate President Emil Jones, Jr.
As recently as January 28, 2008, the page was active. When the page disappeared from TMEO’s website, it was located January 30, 2008, as a cache file. This file has since been removed from the internet.
On January 29, 2008, Bill Baar of Illinoize posted pictures on his blog of Auchi, Blagojevich, and Jones which had been scrubbed from TMEO’s website.
On January 30, 2008, another account of Auchi’s April 2004 visit to Illinois and Michigan was found in the May 2004 blog archive of John Akouri, the former press secretary and senior advisor to U.S. Rep. John Knollenberg (R-Mich.). This article has been deleted from Akouri’s blog. For that matter, the whole May 2004 archive has been deleted and the April 2004 archive only includes a single speech delivered by Akouri.
On January 31, 2008, The Raw Story reported that ABC News had discovered what RezkoWatch had pointed out on January 30, 2008—the page had been removed from TMEO’s website. The ABC News article has been updated and makes no mention at all of the TMEO page or the fact that it had been removed from TMEO’s website.
The following day, on February 1, 2008, RezkoWatch posted an article about the webscrubbing.
A search for the April 2004 TMEO article in the web archive of the reliable web.archive.org—fondly referred to as the Wayback Machine—for middle-east-online.com came up empty. The pages for April and May 2004 are blank. In fact, it appears that the archive for TMEO is no longer available. Period.
Note: The TMEO page in question for Auchi’s April 2004 visit to the United States was located at middle-east-online.com/English/?id=9592.
UPDATE: A RezkoWatcher has provided some interesting side information related to this article.
According to his official Congressional webpage, “As a senior member of the House Appropriations Subcommittee on Foreign Operations, Congressman Knollenberg has led the fight to ensure U.S. funding is being used to rebuild northern Iraq.” Knollenberg writes on his website that there are “an estimated 120,000 Chaldeans in southeast Michigan, the largest concentration outside the Middle East,” and he “represents Chaldean families that live in Oakland County [who] have close relatives in Iraq.”
Interestingly, it just so happens that Rezko’s proposed power plant in Iraq was to be built in Chamchamal in Kurdish (northern) Iraq.
Also see RezkoWatch articles
Disclaimer: Nadhmi Auchi
Auchi does more Rezko damage control
More RezkoWatch articles about Nadhmi Auchi can be located by clicking on his name below.
Posted in Emil Jones, Nadhmi Auchi, Rod Blagojevich, Tony Rezko | 7 Comments
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Dan Curry of Reverse Spin blog said in January 2008 “There will be a lot more website purges in the months ahead when it comes to Rezko related items.” Truer words were never spoken. 
Ok, so this being the Kurds, and understanding the recent incursion into Iraq by Turkey, I wonder how the Sybil Edmonds “group” fits in, too, as the whole thing just seems to be one little ring of corrupt American politicians, and Middle Eastern players?
Men like Eric Edleman and Marc Grossman, who respectively work in the Pentagon, and the State department, were overheard on by Edmonds warning the Turks away from Valerie Plame’s cover company, Brewster Jennings.
Aye, betraying your own CIA for money.
Is Kollenberg suspected of wrongdoing, too?
The inclusion of Knollenberg’s name is not meant to indicate anything. It may be nothing more than just a coincidence.
You might want to try the WAYBACK archives to see if you can recoup those pages. I have been able to pull up deleted and removed pages with this site. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t, but it’s probably worth a try.
http://www.archive.org/index.php
Thanks for the tip uppitywoman. However, as I mentioned, the pages are now blank.
TMEO is owned by General Mediterranean Holding which is owned by Auchi.
re TMEO. Yes.
[...] scrubbing begins at home—in this case with Middle East Online, owned by GMH. The Real Barack Obama documents January 2008 deletions taken down from Auchi’s website as Rezko prepared to go to trial. Also scrubbed: the website of [...]