The Great Mole Hunt
How did a videotape of George W. Bush preparing for the upcoming presidential debates end up in the hands of an adviser to rival Al Gore? That's the question at the heart of one of the campaign season's more bizarre mysteries.
Both sides have been trading accusations of conspiracies, coverups and setups the past two weeks. The latest twist involves a woman employed by a Bush media consultant and a pair of Gap khaki pants.
The woman, Yvette Lozano, 30, was interviewed by the FBI as the possible "mole" who sent a Bush videotape and other debate preparation materials to the office of Tom Downey, a former New York congressman who had been helping Gore get ready for the debates.
Lozano, an office administrator for Maverick Media, an advertising firm that's done work for the Bush campaign, was captured on a surveillance tape last week mailing a parcel at an Austin, Texas, post office. The controversial debate package had an Austin postmark. But Lozano insists the package she shipped did not contain a tape, but a pair of Gap pants she was returning for her boss.
Lozano told the Dallas Morning News she was interviewed voluntarily by two FBI agents who offered leniency in exchange for her revealing who "put her up" to sending the debate materials.
She said she asked for the chance to take a lie-detector test, an offer she said the FBI has not responded to. Lozano said the agents asked whether the delivery of the tapes was a Bush campaign trick, designed to let the Bush camp cry foul at the eleventh hour and scrub the presidential debates.
A copy of the debate tape was reportedly stored at Maverick. The office shares an unlocked door with an editing studio used by both Republican and Democratic consultants.
Both Lozano and her boss, Mark McKinnon, have worked for Democrats in the past, including former Texas Gov. Ann Richards, who was unseated by Gov. Bush.
McKinnon blasted the FBI for questioning Lozano and compared her predicament to that of Richard Jewell, the falsely accused suspect in the 1996 Atlanta Olympics bombing.
He even produced that package the pants arrived in on an appearance on ABC's Good Morning America.
"She was actually mailing this package right here, or a package in return for this one," McKinnon said. "It was a pair of pants that she mailed to the Gap in exchange for one of another color. It was just a terrible, unfortunate coincidence that she was mailing the pants on the day, which was apparently in the range of days when this other package (containing the tape) was mailed."
The incident began Sept. 13, when Downey received the package at his office. He immediately turned it over to the FBI. The package contained briefing books and a videotape of a mock debate between Bush and Sen. Judd Gregg, R-N.H.
A week later, the Gore campaign suspended a 28-year-old campaign worker, Michael Doyne, for telling a friend the Democrats had a "mole"> inside the Bush camp who may have supplied the materials. Gore's aides said Doyne had made the story up.
The Bush campaign has criticized the FBI for not being aggressive enough in its investigation of the Gore campaign's possible role in the incident. Bush spokeswoman Karen Hughes told reporters that authorities should seize computer hard drives from Gore's Nashville campaign headquarters.
Bush aides also suggested that political motives were influencing the bureau's actions. Speaking in Los Angeles on Tuesday, Hughes said the handling of the case "causes us to seriously question whether the FBI is being allowed to do its job and actually investigate or whether someone in Washington is playing politics with this investigation."
Gore spokesman Chris Lehane responded, "We're very, very comfortable having the FBI take up this investigation. For some reason, the Bush campaign does not seem to be very comfortable with the FBI."
Bush himself, asked about the debate material in a television interview, insisted it did not come from his camp. "You know, someone working for me did not send this material," he said on MSNBC.