CAMPBELL PUSHED NO-BID CONTRACT

Records Indicate Senator Lobbied for Software Deal

Washington - As director of a Rocky Mountain drug-fighting task force,
Tom Gorman was surprised to learn last year that Sen. Ben Nighthorse
Campbell had gotten him a million-dollar federal grant.

Gorman had not asked for the money, nor was he familiar with the
software system it was supposed to buy. And he was unaware, until
Campbell's chief of staff told him, that it was targeted to one
particular firm.

It quickly became clear, to Gorman and other public officials, that
Campbell was trying to steer a no-bid contract to a software company
called Thinkstream Inc. One of the company owners, records show, is a
longtime political supporter of the senator.

Memorandums, e-mails and other documents obtained by The Denver Post
through a Colorado open-records request show that, contrary to
Campbell's assertion that his chief of staff, Ginnie Kontnik, was
freelancing on the matter, the senator energetically pressed fellow
legislators, regional officials like Gorman and the Bush White House
on Thinkstream's behalf.

Campbell's efforts caused Gorman and other public officials to turn
against the project - one called it tainted; another termed it a sweet
deal - and have plunged the senator and his office into a federal
criminal investigation.

Colorado's senior senator, citing an ongoing U.S. Justice Department
investigation of his office, won't comment on why he seemed so eager
to help Oregon-based Thinkstream.

But there are notable links between Campbell and the software
firm.

Energy executive Michael S. Smith, a longtime ally of Campbell who
served as his campaign finance chairman in 1992, owns half of
Thinkstream. Smith was instrumental in getting the senator to secure
the grant and moved to save it when Gorman and others balked.

Members of Denver's Brownstein, Hyatt & Farber law firm, which lobbied
for Thinkstream until parting company this spring, were the largest
group of contributors to Campbell's re-election campaign, according to
a survey by the Center for Responsive Politics, a Washington campaign
watchdog group.

Democratic fundraiser Norm Brownstein's decision to help lead a
"Democrats for Campbell" campaign committee was an important element
in Campbell's hopes to win re-election without formidable Democratic
opposition.

Smith's energy company, Freeport LNG Development LP, also retained the
Brownstein firm as its lobbyist. And Smith worked with Brownstein on
charitable causes.

"One-of-a-kind technology"

A member of the Brownstein lobbying team, Steve Demby, was in the room
when Gorman was informed of the Thinkstream grant at a March 7, 2003,
meeting with Campbell's chief of staff, Kontnik. There, Gorman was
assured that there would be no need for competitive bidding.

"This is a one-of-a-kind technology," Gorman was told, according to
documents obtained by The Post. "Sole-sourcing would not be an issue
since only this company had the capability."

In one e-mail, Thinkstream's chief executive officer, Barry Bellue,
lauds Campbell's efforts for the company.

"I have been working on this project with Sen. Campbell and his staff
beginning in August 2002, from sourcing the funds, to writing the
language in the Senate bill, from planning the scope of the project
for Colorado," Bellue wrote in January 2004 after hearing that the
project had been put on hold. "It is more than a person can handle.
I'm afraid my heart was just broken last night."

Campbell ultimately had pushed too hard.

Government officials who said they felt pressured by the senator -
Gorman and Al Brandenstein, who worked for the White House drug czar -
resisted, worrying that they were part of what Brandenstein
characterized in a White House memo as a "tainted" process.

"I really was not comfortable putting myself or the board in the
position that says this was somebody's sweet deal behind the scenes,"
said Aaron Kennard, sheriff of Salt Lake County, Utah, who chaired the
anti-drug board that employed Gorman.

In a meeting with Campbell, said Kennard, the senator said, "We got
this money and I made it happen, and I expect it to be followed through."

But, said Kennard, "I was still not going to be pushed into something
I did not feel good about."

The grant is now in limbo and is part of a Justice Department
investigation into Campbell's office, the senator has
acknowledged.

Citing health concerns, Campbell has announced he won't run for
re-election, though he declines to rule out a candidacy for governor.

In an interview last week, Bellue cast his firm as a victim in the
saga.

"This whole thing has been a colossal mess," he said. "A total
political mess."

Self-made millionaire

A Louisiana native, reared in poverty, Bellue now is a self-made
millionaire who lives in a plantation home filled with French antiques
and counts the Louisiana governor among his high-ranking Democratic
friends.

"My life has always been an effort to try and overcome the wounds and
shame of my childhood," Bellue said.

Bellue's path toward Thinkstream started in 1996 after he made
millions selling a software company. Eager to start a new business, he
relocated to Boulder.

There Bellue met Smith, a Denver oilman who had started a technology
company called Sync Ware. Bellue says he invested in Smith's firm,
scrapped its technology and renamed it Thinkstream.

Smith and Bellue were listed in 1998 financial filings as the two
"beneficial owners" and directors of Thinkstream. Smith declined to
talk about Thinkstream, but Bellue said that Smith retains a half
interest in the company and has invested more than a million dollars
in the firm.

Bellue had a grand vision for integrating computer databases. "We
wanted to organize the world," he said.

The Thinkstream software allows government agency databases to share
information by pulling it to one site. Since the Sept. 11, 2001,
attacks spurred security concerns and homeland defense spending, this
is a highly competitive niche.

In February 2002, after returning to Louisiana, Bellue learned that
the sheriff's office for East Baton Rouge Parish wanted a contractor
capable of integrating databases.

Bellue contacted Col. Mike Barnett in the sheriff's office and told
him that Thinkstream could do the job in five days - for free.

"I didn't think he could do it," Barnett said, "but what did I have to
lose?"

Bellue delivered on his promise. Barnett's computer specialist told
him that the Thinkstream technology was groundbreaking.

Barnett and Sheriff Elmer Litchfield then bought stock in Thinkstream,
a private company. So did the computer specialist. These purchases
proved controversial, and ultimately damaging, to Thinkstream.

Thinkstream bid for, and won, a $1.5 million contract to link numerous
Louisiana law-enforcement agencies - only to lose it on May 20, 2002,
after a competitor, citing the investments, protested.

Barnett says he and the sheriff, to avoid any appearance of
impropriety, sold their stock for what they paid back to Bellue.

Bellue then turned to Washington for funding to integrate government
databases across the state. He got in touch with Tommy Hudson, a Baton
Rouge lawyer and former leader of the Louisiana Senate, who had left a
job as chief of staff to Sen. John Breaux, D-La., and gone to work as
a lobbyist in Brownstein's Washington, D.C., office.

Bellue believed that once law-enforcement officials saw his software
in action, they would line up to buy it.

"I need an anchor in Colorado to demonstrate the power of this
revolutionary technology," Bellue told Douglas County Sheriff Michael
Acree.

To achieve that, Hudson called upon Breaux's seatmate - Sen. Mary
Landrieu, D-La. - who serves on the Senate Appropriations Committee
with Campbell.

Bellue says Campbell was then approached, on Thinkstream's behalf,
from two directions in the fall of 2002 - by Landrieu and by
Thinkstream investor Smith.

Campbell, who chaired an appropriations subcommittee, put into an
appropriation bill $1.15 million for "a demonstration project in
Colorado that uses Web-based technology to securely integrate
disparate databases."

Bellue: Never asked Campbell

The funding was directed to the Rocky Mountain High Intensity Drug
Trafficking Area, or HIDTA, the regional drug-fighting group headed by
Gorman that, among other duties, distributes federal funds. Campbell
had worked with it on other projects.

Bellue says he never asked Campbell, the senator's staff or anyone at
the Rocky Mountain HIDTA to treat the contract as a "sole source"
project that avoided competitive bidding.

But a chronology that the Rocky Mountain HIDTA compiled, obtained by
The Post, states:

"On March 7, 2003, Director Gorman was informed by (Campbell) Chief of
Staff Ginnie Kontnik and Thinkstream attorney Steve Demby that Senator
Campbell had secured $1,150,000 for Rocky Mountain HIDTA for a
law-enforcement database connectivity project involving a company
called Thinkstream.

"Director Gorman was informed this is one-of-a-kind technology and
that sole-sourcing would not be an issue since only this company had
the capability."

The Brownstein firm acknowledges that it was a sole-source contract
and added in a statement, "There was nothing improper in this firm's
actions in arguing for it."

The sole-sourcing concerned Gorman, however, especially when he
discovered that other companies did provide capabilities similar to
Thinkstream's, and that other regional HIDTAs used some of those firms.

"With the whole homeland security thing, everybody was rushing to
market this stuff," said Mike Coleman, chief of administrative
services for the Douglas County Sheriff's Office.

Bellue and Barnett say that Thinkstream is better than the
competition, and that Gorman's technical advisers told him so, but
that he dismissed their advice.

"Remove this one person from the picture, and we would all be writing
about the wonderful benefits that his measly $1 million federal grant
had brought to the state of Colorado," Bellue said.

Initially, Bellue faulted Campbell and Brownstein for his
troubles.

"It was mismanaged by the senator's office. It was mismanaged by my
law firm," he said. "Brownstein, Hyatt & Farber tried to push Tom
Gorman around, and they got a different reaction than what they
thought they were going to get.

"When Gorman wanted to do a bid project, they should have said,
'Fine,"' says Bellue. Instead, "they told him, 'Tom, the senator wants
this done.' I think they pushed him too hard to do a sole-source project."

When reaction to his published comments reached Bellue, he contacted
editors at The Post denying he had made those statements.

Brownstein officials say they kept Thinkstream fully informed.
Managing partner Bruce James said, "No action was ever undertaken by
Brownstein, Hyatt & Farber involving Thinkstream without Thinkstream's
full knowledge and participation."

Beyond that, the firm has declined to comment on details of its
dealings with Thinkstream.

Campbell aides pressed the White House drug czar's office to find a
source in the federal budget for the Thinkstream money.

"The senator's staff has advised that he envisions that the Rocky
Mountain HIDTA will enter into a contract with a specific Colorado
vendor," White House lawyer Michael Gottlieb warned his superiors.
"There are potential legal (and, of course, political)
repercussions."

White House lawyers ultimately would conclude that there was no legal
requirement for the Rocky Mountain HIDTA to put the contract out to
bid. But Brandenstein was concerned.

"Something about this strikes me as improper," he told his superiors.
Sole-source contracts were justified only for rare, "unique and
innovative research." He called the effort "a tainted attempt to
preselect a vendor," and warned that the White House could be
"publicly embarrassed."

Brandenstein's objections were brushed aside. He was later demoted and
retired from government service.

The White House was compliant, but Campbell had a harder time dealing
with Gorman's misgivings. The director had shared his concerns with
Kennard of Utah, the chairman of the Rocky Mountain HIDTA board, and
in September the project was placed on hold.

Bellue told Gorman to put the project out to bid "so there would be no
insinuation of any wrongdoing with Thinkstream," according to the
HIDTA chronology. He e-mailed Gorman on Sept. 5: "You must do what you
believe in your heart to be right."

Campbell sought funds shift

In October, Campbell asked the White House to shift the $1.15 million
from the Rocky Mountain HIDTA to the Douglas County Sheriff's Office
in order "to bypass" competitive bidding.

The White House repeatedly told Gorman to drop his objections. Gorman
refused.

"If there were other companies that could provide the same service or
same process in general, then we felt we would have to go out and do a
competitive bidding process," Gorman recalled in an interview.

On Oct. 21, Bellue sent an e-mail to his lobbyist, Steve Demby. "I
informed Tom Gorman that I was finished with this process of
obstruction and delay," Bellue wrote. Competitive bidding, he said,
"would be a never-ending process."

Then came a Nov. 21 letter from Campbell to Gorman that pushed for
Thinkstream.

"I would appreciate you moving expeditiously and release this funding
to move forward with the project without further delay," the letter
said.

In December, the Rocky Mountain HIDTA board turned over the grant to
the Douglas County Sheriff's Office, which was ready to go with
Thinkstream. The company's technicians began to install the system in
Douglas County.

"It's finally coming together for us," Bellue e-mailed Sheriff
Acree.

And then, things changed. Bellue said Campbell was warned the
sole-source contract could get him in trouble.

On Jan. 20, Campbell wrote to Gorman:

"I owe you and the Rocky Mountain HIDTA Executive Board an
apology."

The senator said it wasn't his idea to push in the Nov. 21 letter for
Thinkstream.

"Unfortunately, a member of my staff may have unintentionally lobbied
on behalf of the vendor who initially presented the concept," the
letter said. "I was unaware of the final letter and would not attempt
to use my influence on behalf of a specific vendor."

Later, on May 7, Campbell would say the Justice Department was
investigating actions of a "former staff member," whom he did not
name. Other details made clear it was Kontnik, who has denied
wrongdoing in the Thinkstream matter.

Bellue emphatically disputes Campbell's story: "For him to say he knew
nothing about this is total crap. He knew damn well what was going
on."

A day after the Campbell apology to Gorman, in a fax to members of the
Rocky Mountain HIDTA, its new chairman - Matt Mead, the U.S. attorney
for Wyoming - intervened.

"The board acted on false information when voting," Mead wrote. "I
feel Douglas County must immediately suspend any further action on the
pilot project."

At least one participant in the process thinks Coloradans will be the
ultimate losers.

Said Douglas County's Coleman: "A tremendous tool should be in the hand of
local cops, and it's not."