By Dean Barker

Meet McCain’s National Finance Co-Chair Fred Malek.

So, who is Fred Malek, anyhow?

On a Friday in August 1959, five men in their twenties were arrested about 2 a.m. and held in the county jail all day after sheriff’s deputies found a blood-spattered, unoccupied car about 1:15 a.m. at the entrance to Vicary’s   Park on Kickapoo Creek Road near Peoria, Ill.

…After checking the blood-spattered pants of one of the men at the state crime laboratory in Springfield, it was determined that the stains were animal and not human blood. Backes said the men then changed their story and said they had "caught a dog and were barbecuing it."

Police then found the skinned animal on a spit in the park. The insides of  the dog had been removed, and a bottle of liquor was found on a nearby park  table. Backes said the men told him they had been drinking earlier in the  evening at a West Bluff tavern.

One of the men arrested in the incident, in which a dog was killed,   skinned, gutted and barbecued on a spit, was Frederick V. Malek, 22, of   Berwyn, Ill.

It’s unclear to me whether or not Malek’s earlier fondness for drunken barbarism influenced at all the carrying out of his prominent role within the Nixon Administration. 

You make the call:

Malek’s responsiveness program was extensively investigated by the Senate  Watergate committee. The panel found that the program was aimed at influencing  decisions concerning government "grants, contracts, loans, subsidies,  procurement and construction projects," decisions regarding "legal and  regulatory actions," and even personnel decisions that affected protected  "career positions" — all to advance Nixon’s reelection.

Wow. I’m thinking Mr. Malek might really feel at home in Bush’s concept of the current Department of Justice.

Read more about Malek…

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