July 3rd, 2007
Hillary's top strategist accused of illegal eavesdropping
Illegal eavesdropping’s not just for the NSA and Hewlett Packard. Hillary Clinton’s top strategist has now been accused of improperly tapping into a rival’s BlackBerry messages, The Washington Post reports.
Mitchell E. Markel, a former vice president at the polling firm of Penn, Schoen & Berland, filed a lawsuit claiming his BlackBerry was monitored by the firm for nearly a month after he left to start a rival firm. Mark Penn, Hillary Clinton’s chief strategist, approved of the spying, Markel claims.
Markel asserts that Penn, Schoen & Berland hacked into Markel’s BlackBerry and set up a fake email account to which his emails were forwarded. Howard Rubin, an attorney for Penn, Schoen & Berland, denied the firm engaged in any unauthorized monitoring.
“The company hasn’t done anything improper, and the e-mails came in on our own e-mail account,” he said. He declined to elaborate.
Markel’s suit comes just a week after Penn, Schoen & Berland sued him and another former partner, Michael J. Berland, for soliciting the firm’s clients in violation of noncompete agreements.
Markel learned his e-mail was being monitored from the first lawsuit because the suit quotes e-mails between him, Markel and others that show conversations they were having about doing business with clients of their former firm.
