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February 3, 2010
Two Things About the Pataki Administration and a Hope About What Is Secretly Going on Behind the Scenes Respecting Atlantic Yards
Noticing New York
Michael D.D. White weaves together a tale from strands as diverse as Atlantic Yards, Forest City Ratner, White's own years in the Pataki administration, whistleblowers, the ESDC, Attorney General Andrew Cuomo, indictments in Yonkers, Shaya Boymelgreen, and former Bronx State Senator (and convicted felon) Guy Velella, among others.
When looking at both the Yonkers indictments and the facts that emerged respecting events that sent Senator Velella and his cohorts to jail one has to wonder how distinguishable or different are the fact patterns and conduct of government officials with respect to Atlantic Yards, not to mention some of the overlapping patterns associated with the Columbia University expansion eminent domain case. Atlantic Yards (similarly the Columbia case) involves political manipulations to confer a massive mega-monopoly and an astounding heap of subsidies on a developer without any real, true or credible bid, and without any accompanying cost benefit analysis despite neutral and convincing analysis that the only actions now being taken ESDC and the city will result in net losses to the public.
That seems straightforward enough. But then things get Rumsfeldian.
The fact is that investigations are conducted on a need to know basis. Even though some of us at the agency were close to the core of the Velella investigation and its very origin and even though we participated in and contributed to the investigation, there was much that the investigators did not tell us and that we did not know. Similarly there were other officials or public employees who also knew of some aspects of the investigation (in some cases less than we knew) but did not know how much they did not know. Some may have specifically known they didn’t know everything but still didn’t know what they didn’t know. A couple of things to note in this regard: It’s not a bad formula to encourage good behavior and secondly, since you yourself don’t know exactly where your puzzle pieces fit in when you provide them to investigators it is good to be vigilant and meticulous about the truth.
Read on to find out how White ties it all together.
Posted by eric at February 3, 2010 8:43 PM