"This was a military-style ambush from start to finish . . .a coup d'etat with David Paterson waiting in the wings, and perhaps Joe Bruno queuing up behind him."       

        District Attorney James “Gatemouth” Garrison

I am normally one to dismiss each and every conspiracy theory out of hand. Did Dubya steal the election from Kerry? No, Bush tried to steal it, but somehow managed to win it instead (no, not fair and square, but when is it ever thus?).

 For the demise of Eliot “Ness” Spitzer (is the Costner connection a coincidence? —I think not) to be the coup de grace of a coup d’etat would require the participation of a ruthless blackbag man skilled at covert wet operations.

“Republican political operative Roger Stone, Eliot Spitzer's longtime antagonist, predicted his political demise more than three months in advance.‘Eliot Spitzer will not serve out his term as governor of the state of New York,' Stone said Dec. 6 on Michael Smerconish's radio talk show. He gave no details.

Spitzer's entrapment by federal authorities investigating a prostitution ring raised speculation that Stone, with a 40-year record as a political hit man, somehow was behind it. In truth, Stone had nothing to do with the investigation and said he had not heard about it when he made a prediction based on his general view of Spitzer."

                        Robert Novak – March 16, 2007

"The State-of-the-Art Washington Sleazeball.” 

                         The New Republic (1985) 

 It would require require a corrupt administration in Washington willing to stoop to using the apparati of the federal government in order to overthrow lawfully elected leaders on American soil. 

"Karl Rove, former chief political adviser to President Bush and "architect'' of the president's election campaigns, once sought salacious photographs of the Democratic governor of Alabama, an aide to the convicted ex-governor tells CBS News' 60 Minutes in an interview airing Sunday.Yet there is no truth to this allegation, according to Rove's lawyer, who tells the Tribune the president's adviser never asked for any such thing.

The Republican operative in Alabama tells CBS that Rove asked her to try to prove the state's Democratic governor was unfaithful to his wife in an effort to thwart the highly successful politician's re-election. Rove's attempt to smear Don Siegelman was part of a Republican campaign to ruin him that finally succeeded in imprisoning him, says the operative, Jill Simpson, in an interview with 60 Minutes' Scott Pelley.

CBS News says: "Simpson spoke to Pelley because, she says, Siegelman's seven-year sentence for bribery bothers her. She recalls what Rove, then President Bush's senior political adviser, asked her to do at a 2001 meeting"                       

The Swamp-Chicago Tribune Washington Blog (February 13, 2008)  

It would require the participation of people’s whose hatred of the target in question had achieved degrees almost pathological.  

‘Acid-tongued political consultant Roger Stone was tossed overboard by state Senate Republicans yesterday over an ugly phone message to Gov. Spitzer's father.  

While insisting he had no idea if Stone was the anonymous caller, Senate Majority Leader Joe Bruno said the allegations were "serious enough, despicable enough" to push Stone to quit his $20,000-a-month gig. Stone insisted he didn't make the call to 83-year-old Bernard Spitzer that referred to his son as a "phony, psycho piece of s---."

Along with his theory that dirty tricksters broke into his Central Park South apartment and used doctored recordings to frame him, Stone yesterday added an alibi: At the time of the call, he was attending "Frost/Nixon" on Broadway. One hole in his story: There was no performance of the play on the night of Monday , Aug. 6, when the message was left on the elder Spitzer's voice mail.

Daily News (August 23, 2007)

 It would take the intimate participation of someone with more than a passing familiarity with the seamy side of America’s sexual underbelly. 

“Big time political strategist Roger Stone and his wife Nikki: The former Bob Dole adviser and his wife were swingers and The Vault was a favorite haunt.
 

‘Roger and Nikki were our customers for a long time,’ Marini says. ‘They were heavy duty swingers and ran ads on the Internet and in many sex publications. They were heavy players.’ 

Roger was one of the top advisers who urged Dole and other Republican politicians to emphasize family values and integrity. 

'Regardless of his status in politics, Roger never came to the club in disguise,’ Marini recalls. ‘He looked like a Ken doll. He was tall, blond, handsome and muscular and his wife was curvaceous and very sexy. She would wear leather bras and tantalizing outfits and he would wear collars, chaps and a leather vest with no shirt underneath.’ 

Then in 1996, an ENQUIRER investigation revealed that Roger and his wife frequented group sex clubs and engaged in group sex orgies. In two blockbuster articles, we published evidence, including a shocking ad the couple had placed in a swingers' magazine soliciting lovers for group sex, a handwritten note arranging a sexual encounter, and revealing photos from sex magazines of Roger and Nikki barechested.” 

                                     THE NATIONAL ENQUIRER 

And it would take an operative with enough connections within the world of Democrats to ensure that its target would find no support at home.

“Roger Stone, the longtime Republican dirty-tricks operative who led the mob that shut down the Miami-Dade County recount and helped make George W. Bush president in 2000, is financing, staffing, and orchestrating the presidential campaign of Reverend Al Sharpton.”

                   The Village Voice (January 27, 2004)   

How could such an operation ever be put together?

Roger Stone? Oliver Stone? Coincidence? I think not.