PDF of Cutler Files Website 9.29.10

9/29/2010 The Secret File on Eliot CUtler
Home The Bangor Bison Cutler in Maine

Saying 'NO' At OMB Cutler in DC China's Lobbyist
The Thornburg Mess Eliot's Fantasy Reward Offered
He’s a phony and a fraud. He’s rewriting and revising

his history and profile to fit a carefully created
campaign persona, fudging the facts and ignoring the
truth.
So just who is Eliot Cutler? Since the mainstream media in

Maine are clearly in the tank for Cutler - whose ravings are
quoted verbatim with no challenge or even cursory
confirmation by lazy Maine reporters - this is only place
where you’ll find out.
Cutler calls himself an “independent,” even claims to have

once been a Republican. But a lifetime of working for big
name Democrats, at a Democratic law firm and supporting
and contributing to Democratic causes and candidates -
including Barack Obama - shows otherwise.
On the campaign trail, he credits a “great school system” in

Bangor for giving him a solid foundation. What he doesn’t
say is that he left Bangor after his freshman year in high
school to attend an elite private school saying he was
“bored” with Bangor and couldn’t get a good education
there.
He brags about his time at the Office of Management and

Budget (OMB). But his foot-dragging and bureaucratic
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9/29/2010 The Secret File on Eliot CUtler
incompetence may have led to the deaths of 39 people.
These are just some of the confusing contradictions and

outright lies that Eliot Cutler is telling on the campaign trail.
Over the next several weeks, THE SECRET FILE ON
ELIOT CUTLER will reveal the facts about his life, facts
you’ll find nowhere else, to help voters see the full picture
of the man - his arrogance and ego, his ties to big
corporations and foreign countries, and how he has spent a
lifetime working directly against the interests of Maine and
the US.
Browse around and check back often. You’ll find

everything that Cutler doesn’t want you to know.
Who we are: We are a group of researchers, writers and

journalists who are frustrated that Maine’s mainstream media
is either unwilling or incapable of adequately investigating
the backgrounds of candidates for higher office. We are not
authorized by or affiliated with any candidate or political
party, and we have not been compensated in any way for our
effort. We do not advocate for or against the election of
any particular candidate. We are simply exercising our First
Amendment rights of free speech to provide the public with
important information regarding candidates. The information
provided here comes from a variety of reputable public
sources, including news articles, court and municipal records
and other documents. Links are provided throughout this site
so a reader can obtain most of the source material and decide
for themselves. Contact us at [email protected]
NOT PAID FOR OR AUTHORIZED BY ANY CANDIDATE
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9/29/2010 The Secret File on Eliot Cutler

On the campaign trail, Cutler loves to talk about his roots in Bangor and how important that city was to his
early foundation. Click on the links to hear “The Bangor Bison”* express his undying devotion to Maine’s
Queen City:
In and Around “M aine Can

Bangor Work”
Nov. 9, 2009 Campaign Video
But hold the phone. It’s true that Cutler did attend Bangor schools – but only one year of public high
school. After that, he transferred to an elite Ivy League prep school, Deerfield Academy, in
Massachusetts. (It appears from the record that Cutler has spent no significant time in Maine since age
15.)
Although he praises Bangor and the Bangor school system now, he had a much different take
during a 2002 interview with Bates College for the Edmund Muskie Archives:
“I went away as a sophomore in high school….mostly because I think I wanted to get away, I
was itchy to get out of Bangor. I was doing all right in school but I wasn’t working very hard at
all, and I was bored I think….So we started the process and I ended up at Deerfield Academy in
Massachusetts. And to this day have a very strong link to Deerfield and feel great loyalty to
Deerfield, it was a great place for me…Academically I was challenged far beyond any challenge
I’d had in Bangor….I learned to write at Deerfield. And that’s the most important thing that
happened to me by far….and I’m not at all sure it would have happened that way or that early at
Bangor High School.”
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So in 2002, it was Deerfield Academy that gave him the most important foundation of his life. In
2010 when he’s a candidate for governor, it’s Bangor. Cutler’s great “loyalty” and experience at
Deerfield is not mentioned in his campaign speeches, and he continues to say that he “went to
Bangor schools” every chance he gets.
Phony, phony, phony.
*In Timothy Crouse’s landmark book The Boys on the Bus, Cutler, who was Ed Muskie’s
scheduler on his 1972 presidential campaign, was nicknamed “The Bangor Bison.” He’s
described in other articles at the time as a “tall, heavy set Down-Easter.”
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Take a good look at this picture. This is Eliot Cutler’s sprawling, coastal estate in Cape Elizabeth, as seen from
outer space. It’s valued by the town at $4 million and the property taxes are over $70,000 a year, making
Cutler one of the BIGGEST property taxpayers in all of tony Cape Elizabeth.
Cutler claims that he and his wife moved there “for good” in 1999. But the facts tell a different story.
Click on the audio links below and hear Cutler spin his tale of lies and deception:
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Drive Time In and Around WGAN

Bangor Augusta Inside Maine
S ept. 9, 2009 Nov. 6, 2009 March 27, 2010
Got that? He worked in Washington, lived a few years in China, then moved to Maine when his wife got a job
at Maine Medical Center, and they’ve been living in their mansion since 1999.
BULLSHIT!
It really doesn’t matter how long he’s lived in Maine or when he moved back to Maine. What’s important is
he’s trying to mislead voters by being dishonest about his past. In other words, he’s a liar.
Here’s the real story:
Cutler and his wife both lived and worked in China from 2007 to mid-2009. Before that, they lived mostly in
Washington, DC.
•According to Cutler’s bio on his law firm’s website Cutler “is senior counsel in the firm’s
Washington and Beijing offices”….and “was the partner in charge of the firm’s Beijing office
from its 2007 opening until June, 2009.”
•A 2004 Annual Report of the Muskie School for Public Service, for which Cutler is the chair, lists
his address as Washington, DC, not Cape Elizabeth.
•From a 2007 press release from Cutler’s firm of Akin Gump: “Before relocating with the firm to
Beijing, Mr. Cutler was based in Washington, D.C.”
•In a Jan. 21, 2009 post on the Muskie School’s website of an interview with Cutler, it says, “Cutler
currently lives in Beijing and is managing his law firm’s office there.”
•In an article in the London Times dated Feb. 16, 2008, Cutler is described as “a Beijing-based
lawyer.”
•In a 2007 editorial he wrote for a Chinese newspaper, Cutler wrote, “All this makes a Washington
lawyer in Beijing feel right at home.” (Not a Cape Elizabeth lawyer?)
•In a winter 2009 USM Muskie School of Public Service newsletter, a short article on a talk given by
Cutler says, “A Maine native, Cutler came from his office in Beijing, China, to share his
perspective....”
• As recently as 2008, his wife, Melanie Cutler listed her employer as a hospital in Beijing when
making several donations to then Sen. Barack Obama’s presidential bid, not Maine Medical Center.
She is listed as staff psychiatrist at the Beijing United Family Hospital in the summer of 2008.
• Of nine election cycles in Maine since 2000, Cutler voted absentee five times, according to Maine
state voter records. He neglected to vote altogether in 2001 and 2007. It appears he voted in
person only twice since 2000. The voter record for his wife is nearly identical with the only
difference that there is no record of her voting in 2005.
So why does Cutler shade the facts about his past? Why not just come clean - he didn’t move to Maine
“for good” in 1999. He bought a big house in Maine in 1999 and continued to live most of the time
somewhere else.
He’s a tourist, not a resident

On the campaign trail, Cutler likes to brag about his time at the Office of Management and Budget
(OMB), giving the impression that he was a courageous cost-cutter who stood up to the spendthrift
bureaucrats. Click below and listen to his puffery:
“Changed the course of government?” It’s a myth he repeats on his website:
Eliot’s job (at OMB) was to make the tough decisions about how tax dollars were spent – to cut out
programs that weren’t working, to reshape others and to force necessary changes in government
priorities.
But sometimes saying “NO” is just a euphemism for bureaucratic ineptitude.
Left out of Cutler’s long list of Washington credentials and accomplishments is at least one glaring
example of how his lack of action in his role as a big government bureaucrat led to unimaginable
tragedy.
In 1972, after the collapse of two private dams killed 333 people, Congress rushed through legislation
mandating a national program for federal inspection of private dams. In the years leading up to Jimmy
Carter’s inauguration in early 1977, two US Presidential administrations had struggled to implement the
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new dam inspection law. The dangers were well known and well documented, but mid-level officials
within OMB resisted funding the program for years, saying that inspections of private dams were a
state not federal matter. It was a position that violated Congressional intent and veered from
presidential policy.
But just a few months into the Carter administration, the program was funded by Congress after
investigative news reports and government analysis again highlighted the dangerous situation. The
months ticked by, however, as OMB officials continued to drag their feet and delay the paperwork
necessary to release the funds to pay for the dam inspections. In mid-June, California Rep. Leo Ryan,
who chaired a House subcommittee that conducted a study on dam safety, warned the OMB of the
dangers of delay: “You’re living on borrowed time.”
And there were other warnings, even from within the Administration. On July 13, Philip M. Smith,
associate director of President Carter’s Office of Science and Technology Policy, wrote a letter,
saying, “Our preliminary statistical analysis indicates that in any year, 25 to 30 dams can be expected
to fail,” Smith warned.
That letter was addressed to the person responsible for the OMB’s position on dams: then Associate
Director Eliot Cutler.
Despite these warnings, still nothing happened.
Then, four months later, on Nov. 6, 1977, the Kelly Barnes Dam in Toccoa Falls, Georgia collapsed in
the middle of the night, killing 39 people – including 20 children as they slept. A 30 foot wall of water
came crashing down the river valley with the force of 7,500 locomotives, crushing houses, mobile
homes and dormitories at the Toccoa Falls Bible College where students were asleep in their beds.
To get a sense of the enormity of the tragedy, watch the video below:
The eyewitness accounts by survivors of the tragedy are heartbreaking. Bill Stacy, 19, who lived with
his parents in a trailer, said: "I heard a bunch of people screaming and hollering. There was this terrible
screeching noise .. the trailers were all over the place -- some floating, some just came apart."
Eldon Elsberry narrowly escaped drowning in his pickup truck. After coming to the surface, “I
remembered that Bill had said his wife and children were all sleeping. I ran for their farm house, hoping
to warn them, but halfway there I saw it begin to float away. The agony was awful I knew a man's
wife and children were floating away....there were many screams, mostly from children. I stood on
the bank and watched people die, but I couldn't do a thing."
Bodies were found as far away as two miles from the site of the dam, which held back 80-acre Kelley
Barnes Lake. Waterlogged mattresses, battered window frames and dozens of uprooted trees littered
the banks of the once-small creek.
An investigating board later found that “a routine and proper inspection would have determined that
there were some severe problems with that dam...its problems were the kinds of things that could have
been caught and corrected.” But on the Monday morning following the dam’s collapse, the paperwork
to release the funds to pay for those inspections was literally still sitting on Elliot Cutler’s desk - along
with a newspaper bearing the grim headline, “At least 37 Die as Earthen Dam Collapses in Georgia”
The only response he could muster to the senseless loss of life was that it was “a horrible
coincidence.”
Congress was furious. Five years after passing the law requiring federal inspection of private dams,
not a single dam had been inspected. Rep. Ryan called for the government to begin enforcing the law,
saying the Toccoa Falls dam was like hundreds of others around the country - "loaded shotguns
pointed at the people downstream."
Of course, only after disaster had struck did Cutler finally submit the paperwork to the president.
Within days of the tragedy, Carter ordered the Corps to put more than 500 inspectors in the field. In
two weeks, they visited 95 dams in 49 states, proving that the federal government can act fast when it
wants to. But it was small consolation for those who lost loved ones in a horrible tragedy that didn’t
have to happen.
That’s Cutler’s legacy at the OMB.
The details of this tragedy were first reported in a 1977 article in the Los Angeles Times by reporter
Gaylord Shaw who won a Pulitzer Prize in 1978 for a series on dam safety and the lack of government
action. See “Mid Level Budget Officials Blocked Dam Inspections,” by Gaylord Shaw, Dec. 25, 1977,
Los Angeles Times.
9/29/2010 The Secret file on Eliot Cutler

From the minute he left his government job, Eliot Cutler began amassing his fortune by selling out
his principles and working both sides of the corridors of power.
His lucrative opportunism is well documented in press accounts of his exploits over the years in
which he’s referred to by his critics as a “modern-day holdup man,” “rotten,” “cocky and
obnoxious,” and for making “wheelbarrows full of money” by opposing economic development
projects that eventually got built anyway. It’s a pattern he’s repeated throughout his professional
life, leaving observers to wonder: what does Eliot Cutler truly stand for?
Today, Cutler panders to the environmental community by taking credit for helping write the
federal Clean Air Act, the Clean Water Act and the Environmental Policy Act (which requires a full
environmental impact statement for every possible federal project, no matter how insignificant).
But when Jimmy Carter appointed Cutler to become the associate director of the Office of
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Management and Budget (OMB) for Natural Resources, Energy and Science, it was the
environmental groups that protested. Loudly. One of his chief critics was Marion Eddy, founder of
one of the nation’s most respected non-profit environmental organizations, The League of
Conservation Voters. She and other groups mounted a huge campaign against Cutler, an
experience that he later described as “hideous.”
Why were environmentalists so opposed to Cutler? Because after five years working with Senator
Ed Muskie on a subcommittee with jurisdiction over environmental legislation and before his
appointment to the OMB, Cutler joined the old-line law firm of Webster & Sheffield. One of the
firm’s clients was the International Council of Shopping Centers, a trade association of owners
and operators of the nation’s strip malls and shopping centers. (Curiously, Cutler’s official bio
leaves out his years at Webster & Sheffield, perhaps because of that firm’s reputation for
defending tobacco companies, as well as shopping malls). Cutler soon became the General
Counsel and director of governmental affairs for the Shopping Center group at a time when its
biggest problem was a set of regulations proposed by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)
dealing with “indirect source pollution,” namely parking lots that attract a lot of smog-producing
cars.
Who better to understand the ins and outs of environmental laws than the man who helped write
them? Through a court challenge and Congressional arm twisting - including personally testifying
before Muskie’s subcommittee against the provision that Muskie favored - Cutler was able to stop
the EPA’s proposed regulations, leaving Wal-Mart - but not its customers - to breathe easier.
“Cutler sold his Muskie experience to the special interests,” said the head of one environmental
group that fought a losing battle against Cutler’s appointment.
But Cutler had discovered a niche - exploiting loopholes in environmental laws that he helped write
to benefit his clients. And himself.
After four uneventful years at OMB during which he oversaw the policies and budgets of the EPA,
Cutler joined with another White House staffer to start his own law firm, Cutler and Stanfield,
specializing in - what else - “environmental law.” It’s actually a euphemism for the work he and
his law partner really became noted for: stopping or delaying the construction of airports.
Employing some revisionist history, Cutler today describes the work he did a little differently.
Watch this interview with Democratic supporter Harold Pachios:
“Occasionally” he represented opponents of projects? Is he kidding? How about most of the

time?
A 1991 article in the Fort Worth Star Telegram was headlined, “Lawyer Chops Airports Down
to Size,” and called Cutler and his firm “the most sought-after legal team in the nation for
counsel on airport growth issues. “In most of Culter’s airport cases,” the newspaper reported,
“his firm has represented airport opponents.”
Said the chairman of the Dallas/Fort Worth Airport Board, “His strategy at other airports across
the country is stalling to the point that he feels the airport is in such a bind that they will cave in
or give in to (the opponents’) request.”
A 1993 article in a Seattle paper reports, “Cutler estimated that he has been involved in 20 to 30
airport expansion cases over the past 10 years. IN MOST CASES (emphasis added), he
represented communities near airports opposed to expansion.”
Another article dubbed Cutler the “airport buster,” and credited him and his firm for
delaying or halting over two dozen airport projects. “They are considered in Texas to be
the ultimate ‘airport busters,’” said Rob Allyn, a Dallas PR executive who worked with
Cutler and his partner to fight the expansion of the Dallas-Ft. Worth International Airport.
“I don’t think there has been a larger expansion than the one proposed at Dallas-Fort
Worth - $3.5 billion. It has been stalled for years, and it today is at a standstill.”
A 1996 article in the St. Louis Business Journal said Cutler had a national reputation for
finding loopholes in the law to delay or stop airport expansions, a characterization that
even Cutler’s law partner apparently agreed with: “Cutler is an expert in environmental
laws and their loopholes,” said Peter Kirsch.
The Mayor of Louisville, Kentucky told a newspaper in 1996 that “Washington lawyer Eliot
Cutler holds up airports like Jesse James held up banks,” and said Cutler’s arrival on the scene
to block an airport expansion in his city “was not a welcome sight.”
Cutler did sometimes work for airports and cities, offering his services to the highest bidder as a
blocking maneuver. “He’s so effective, he’s been hired (by airports) as a defensive action,
because they don’t want to see him on the other side,” said George Doughty, head of the Lehigh
Northampton Airport Authority in Allentown, Pennsylvania.
“If the client wants to work a deal where it’s a win-win situation for everyone, Eliot can do
that,” said Doughty. “If the client wants to simply obstruct, then he can do that too. And he
charges a lot for it.”
And sometimes it was hard to tell exactly who Cutler was working for. “The firm works both
sides of the runway,” said the Puget Sound Business Journal. In his latest TV ad, Cutler claims
to have “helped build airports....all over America,” and he has called himself the “architect” of
the Denver Airport. But far from an achievement, as Cutler now contends, the siting,
development and construction of Denver’s airport was a classic bureaucratic clusterfuck -
years behind schedule and 50% over original costs.
But Cutler wasn’t hired to build the airport anyway. He was hired by surrounding towns and
counties to block the construction of Denver’s airport, which he did for more than six years by
using little-known land use restrictions. The airport was finally built (albeit in a different location
more than 20 miles outside of Denver).
“He was rotten,” said former Adams County Commissioner Jim Nelms who hired Cutler to fight
Denver’s airport plans. “The only thing he did for Adams County is get them to give away 53
square miles of land to the city of Denver. He did more for Denver than he did for Adams
County. Everything I saw led me to believe he was working for Denver.”
In another article, Nelms described Cutler as “cocky” and “obnoxious.” Cutler “was very
swashbuckly, with fancy cufflinks, fancy clothes, big cars, staying in the finest hotels,” Nelms
said. “Nothing’s cheap about Eliot.”
In 1992, Cutler was back in Colorado, this time to fight the Sierra Club, the Environmental
Defense Fund and other groups that had filed suit to stop the expansion of Front Range Airport,
about eight miles southeast of the Denver airport.
But win or lose, fighting with environmental groups or against them, Cutler and his firm were
paid handsomely. All those delays and foot dragging added up to lots of billable hours:
• Cutler collected more than $6 million in legal fees over a six-year period from communities
opposing the expansion of the Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport. The airport was
eventually approved after the communities Cutler represented lost six major court cases,
including one that went all the way to the US Supreme Court.
• In Denver, Cutler collected $7 million in legal fees from Adams County trying to stop an
airport that was ultimately built.
• Bridgeton, Missouri paid him $1.78 million to fight the expansion of the Lambert-St. Louis
International Airport. “He charged $265 an hour from the time he left D.C. until he got
back,” said former Bridgeton Councilman Rich Collier.
• Cutler was also involved in airport battles in Tampa, Florida; Phoenix, Arizona; and Seattle,
Washington.
Said Richard Fleming, president of the Denver Chamber of Commerce, “The pattern seems to
be that in virtually every community where Eliot has been brought in (to oppose airports), he
has made a wheelbarrow full of money, and at the end of the day, the project was built.”
Update: Cutler’s opportunism hasn’t stopped. He built his career - and filled his wallet - by
using the legal system and loopholes in environmental laws to delay major economic
development projects for years all across the country. Now, as Candidate Cutler, he says he
wants to “tear down the wall of no” that is delaying projects here in Maine and tying them up
in bureaucratic red tape - the same ‘wall of no’ that he made a fortune building in communities
all across America.
9/29/2010 the secret file on eliot cutler

For the last 25 years, Cutler and his law firm of Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld have worked to
help companies send thousands of good paying American jobs overseas, as well as fight charges that
China is illegally “dumping” cheap, consumer products in the US at the expense of good-paying
manufacturing jobs here.
From 2007 to 2009, Cutler personally led the effort as the Managing Partner of his firm’s Beijing
office, where he employed “his experience as a lawyer, government official and political operative,”
according to his firm’s website. The result has been the loss of millions of jobs here in the US,
including more than 10,000 jobs lost right here in Maine, according to a 2008 study by the Economic
Policy Institute.
According to a CNN report Exporting America, these are some of the companies, all clients of Cutler’s
firm, that are sending US jobs overseas: AT&T, Boeing, Dow Chemical, Johnson & Johnson, Pfizer,
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Tyco, Texas Instruments, among many others.
Each one of Cutler’s clients that has moved American jobs to China connects to poignant stories of
dislocation and disappointment. Here are just two examples:
In the last decade GE has closed over fifteen factories in Ohio alone. US employment in the
lighting division has dropped by 68% and the company plans to send even more jobs to China
in anticipation of new US efficiency policies. Starting in 2014 only compact florescent bulbs will
be sold in the US and GE plans to make every single one of them in China, where skilled labor
is cheap, and unsafe, polluting factories are allowed to operate freely. In fact at least two of
the eight large multinational polluters in China, cited by a 2009 Greenpeace report, are
Cutler’s clients.
Hanesbrands, Inc., the clothing manufacturer best known for its Hanes, Champion and
Playtex brands, announced it would ship 1,300 jobs to China from North Carolina in 2008,
devastating lives of loyal US factory workers. Bill Sanders, 69, a lifelong textile worker, found
out about the closing of his plant as he arrived to work one day at 7am. “It all ended today. My
whole life changed…I went weak…I’ll never find another job in textiles,” he lamented.
But sadly, that’s only half the story. Cutler is known around the world as “China’s Lobbyist,” helping
massive state owned and controlled Chinese companies buy up American companies to the tune of
billions of dollars. “It is an honor for us to be asked to help Chinese clients in the US,” said Cutler.
”We try to persuade members of the Congress and regulators that the decision…[is] in the best
interests of the United States.”
But in at least one blockbuster deal, US officials were not persuaded. In 2005, Cutler’s firm was hired
by China National Offshore Oil Company (CNOOC) - the country’s leading offshore exploration and
oil development company which is 70% owned by the communist Chinese Government. CNOOC
needed the law firm’s help in its $18.5 billion bid to buy California-based petroleum giant Unocal.
Cutler’s firm put on a full-court press to win over legislators and White House officials, records show.
In just eight days at the end of June 2005, Akin Gump lobbyists reported about 250 contacts with the
Office of the President, the Vice President, the Department of Energy, the Department of Commerce,
and a long list of congressmen, senators and their staffs. Records show that while some lobbyists
knocked on the doors of legislators, others worked the phones, sent out dozens of e-mail messages
with information about CNOOC and distributed favorable newspaper articles and editorials about the
Chinese company.
The lobbyists also called and sent e-mail to officials at the Treasury Department, which houses the
Committee on Foreign Investment in the US (CFIUS), a secretive panel that reviews corporate
mergers on national security grounds. CFIUS took a dim view of Akin Gump’s attempt to put
Unocal’s energy reserves in the hands of the Chinese government, as a matter of national security.
So did some members of Congress. Rep. Frank Wolf, R-VA, questioned Akin Gump’s loyalties if not
its patriotism. “The Chinese government is prosecuting Christians,” he said. “They have Catholic
bishops and Protestant pastors in jail. In Tibet, they are prosecuting Muslims and Evangelicals. The
Chinese government is spying on the United States. Why would you work for a government that is
spying on the United States? Greed is driving them.”
In a strongly worded letter to Akin Gump lobbyists, Wolf wrote, “During the presidency of Ronald
Reagan, no major law firm or lobbying organization would have represented the Soviet Union if it had
tried to take over an American oil company.”
Rep. Curt Weldon, a senior member of the House Armed Services Committee, agreed. “Unfortunately,
corporate dollars often transcend national security.”
CNOOC and its masters in Beijing eventually withdrew the offer rather than subject itself to thorough
examination by US regulators, something to which the Chinese are wholly unaccustomed.
So what was Cutler’s involvement? With all of his Washington experience and contacts, it’s hard to
believe he didn’t make at least some of those hundreds of lobbying calls and e-mails to Congress or the
Commerce Department. But in a recent interview with blogger Mike Tipping, Cutler claims he wasn’t
involved and, astoundingly, claims he doesn’t even remember the case.
“Our representation of CNOOC - I don’t even remember,” he said. “I think I was at the firm then, but
I wasn’t involved.”
Someone should explain Google to Cutler, because in prior interviews, Cutler spoke at length about his
firm’s work for CNOOC, boasted about it, in fact, and was unapologetic to be working directly
against US national interests. He even suggested that he was a personal acquaintance of CNOOC’s
chairman and could have salvaged the deal if only CNOOC had come to him sooner.
“[CNOOC] Chairman Fu is a very wise man,” said Cutler. “Had CNOOC come to us earlier…[i]t
would have made the deal much easier to get approval.”
In a 2006 interview, Cutler said, “We think that Chinese clients will find that the unique combination of
skills and experience that we provide is valuable - perhaps essential - as they navigate the world outside
China. This is exactly the reason that China National Offshore Oil Company (CNOOC) came to us last
year when it sought to acquire Unocal.”
Cutler had another, far more personal reason to be involved in the CNOOC deal. Since 2004, Cutler
has been a trustee of the Thornburg International Value Fund, a huge international mutual fund
founded in 1998, that according to its latest annual report holds over $200 million in shares of
CNOOC, Ltd. Thornburg is one of CNOOC’s top five institutional shareholders. A takeover of Unocal
by CNOOC would have certainly boosted the share price of CNOOC stock and in turn lifted the value
of the Thornburg fund of which Cutler oversees.
But today, despite being a senior counsel for the firm that had a major involvement in the failed
CNOOC bid, and despite sitting on a board of directors that oversees a fund with a huge investment in
the same Chinese oil company, and despite being portrayed on his law firm’s website as a specialist in
“energy and global transactions,” Cutler claims amnesia about the whole CNOOC episode, or any
involvement in the nasty business of offshore oil.
“By any measure of my work at Akin Gump, over the entire time I was there, you will find almost no
oil companies, big or small, or oil service companies, big or small, period,” he told Tipping.
But the outrage and failure of the CNOOC deal didn’t stop Cutler or his firm from continuing to
represent China’s interests. In 2008, the firm was hired by Bain Capital to help smooth the way for
China’s Huawei Technologies $2.2 billion buyout of 3Com Corp. Because 3Com had defense contracts
for computer network security and anti-hacking software - a known Chinese target - the US director
of national intelligence labeled the 3Com deal a threat to national security. Huawei was founded by a
former People’s Liberation Army officer and current member of the Communist Party. Rumors persist
that the firm is actually run by the PLA. The company has been linked to violations of UN sanctions in
Iraq and has also been dogged by accusations of intellectual property theft and corporate espionage.
(For a recent 60-minutes report on Chinese espionage, go here.)
Congress was again concerned. “U.S. regulators ought to reject the proposed buyout of 3Com by one
of the least transparent companies operating in China, a firm with shadowy ties to Chinese army and
intelligence services,” said Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, a Republican on the House Foreign Affairs
Committee.
But it was just another client for Cutler and his firm. After Congress began a bipartisan probe of the
deal, the Huawei-3Com marriage hit the skids, just like the failed CNOOC deal before it.
Cutler’s Clients Imported Tainted, Dangerous Chinese Products to US and Maine
At the same time Cutler was helping

to export jobs and buy up vast
swaths of the American economy,
he was also representing companies
that imported toxic and dangerous
Chinese products into the US and
Maine.
Claire’s Stores, with at least two

locations in the state, sold toxic lead
contaminated children’s items in
Maine and around the US. In 2007
58,000 children’s necklaces manufactured in China and sold exclusively by Claire’s were recalled by
the Consumer Products Safety Commission (CPSC).
GE has had numerous Chinese-made products recalled by the CPSC for defects. One such Item was a
GE branded toaster sold in Wal-Marts across the US and Maine that sparked and caused at least 140
fires. 210,000 were recalled in 2008. Other examples of hazardous GE products made in China and
recalled here are 146,000 electric slow-cookers and 50,000 electrical outlet converters. In 2008 alone,
over 80% of the product recalls by the CPSC involved Chinese products. (Side note: in 2008, Cheryl
Falvey was named the CPSC’s new General Counsel. Prior to that position, Flavey was a partner in
the law firm of Akin Gump.)
Meanwhile, Cutler and his firm has represented a variety of Chinese companies against charges of
illegal “dumping” - flooding the US market with goods that are sold well below their actual production
costs making it impossible for US companies to compete. In the past, Akin Gump has proudly
represented:
• Chinese honey exporters and importers accused of dumping products on the US market
(beekeeping and honey production provide over $100 million annually to the Maine economy.)
• One of China's largest electricity companies accused of dumping cheap televisions into the
United States from Malaysia and China
• An alliance of importers and national restaurant chains that opposed imposing penalties on China
for dumping shrimp on the US market which was pushing US shrimp fishermen and dealers out
of business.
The International Trade Commission currently has more than 60 separate orders outstanding regarding
China’s dumping in industries from paint brushes to hammers, from paper clips to industrial bearings,
from tissue paper to steel.
Cutler Helped China Cover Up Human Rights Violations and Suppress Protests During the 2008
Summer Olympics.
In 2007 Cutler’s office formed a P.R. and policy partnership with Publicis Groupe SA to help the
totalitarian Chinese government, and the companies that do business with them, deal with protests and
bad publicity during the 2008 Summer Olympics. “Everyone is watching China,” said Cutler.
“Olympics sponsors are worried about a backlash.”
And well they should have been. The list of China’s human rights problems is long. It is the world’s
leading jailer of journalists and executes more “criminals” in any given year than the rest of the world
combined. It is home to 16 of the 20 most polluted cities on the planet. It has its hands in crises in
Darfur, Tibet, Burma, Iran, Zimbabwe and China’s own Uighur Muslim provinces in the western
region of Xinjiang.
The companies that want access to the vast untapped market of 1.3 billion potential customers are
constantly caught between appeasing Beijing and the scrutiny of the rest of the world. China was
understandably worried about disruption of the games and withdrawal of key sponsors under pressure
from those protesting China’s human rights violations, its use of sweatshop labor, its polluted air and
water.
China’s abuse of its workforce also contributes to the artificially low cost of Chinese goods. Millions
of child workers and forced laborers are used to make products for export to the U.S. Independent
labor unions are forbidden, and workers who attempt to form them are fired, imprisoned, or worse.
These violations of internationally accepted workers’ rights artificially depresses the labor market,
leading to Chinese products being cheaper because the companies only have to pay workers 15 to 50
cents per hour.
But to Cutler, China’s problems are neither unique or significant. “Most of China's safety and quality
problems are caused by good people trying to do their jobs in a domestic marketplace that is so highly
competitive and unregulated that it often accounts for nothing but the most direct costs,” he wrote.
As Gerald Weinand wrote on the blog Dirigo Blue, “That people are dying in a genocide, or more
slowly by environmental poisoning or lack of work place safety, or that lethal products are being sold
around the world, or even the continued occupation of Tibet, all these (for Culter) were simply a
public relations problem to be solved.”
Cutler and his team were there to help those money-grubbing corporations keep the protests down and
the world’s attention focused where Beijing wanted it: on the Games.
Postscript: A 2008 article in Washingtonian reported on the failure of Akin Gump’s office in China,
which Cutler ran, to produce much business. “Tensions are said to be high, with partners in the New
York office unhappy that the Washington lawyers are not producing their share of revenue. The firm
also closed its office in Taipei...and insiders predict the money-losing Beijing office will be next to go.
The China offices have been expensive failures in the eyes of New York partners, who are pressing
Washington to stop the bleeding.”
Yet another failed business by Eliot Cutler.

On April Fool’s Day last year, Thornburg Mortgage Inc., a publicly traded residential mortgage lender based in
Santa Fe, New Mexico, announced that it would file for bankruptcy and cease operations. Along with Enron
and General Motors, the $36.5 billion company entered the top-10 list of biggest bankruptcies in US history.
The bankruptcy was a surprise to many. Thornburg had long prided itself for making large “jumbo” mortgage
loans (over $400,000) to only the most qualified borrowers, unlike other, disgraced lenders such as
Countrywide Credit or Ameriquest that got into trouble for so-called “subprime” lending to unqualified
homebuyers. But clearly, something was amiss at Thornburg that ultimately resulted in its spectacular demise.
Among the company’s well compensated board of directors was one Eliot Cutler, now a candidate for
governor in Maine. Recently, Cutler released a lengthy statement in an attempt to fend off an expected attack
by his opponents linking the management - or
mismanagement - of Thornburg to the Wall Street greed
and incompetence that sent the US economy into a
tailspin. Cutler also expected criticism for accepting
$22,000 in “director’s fees” after the company had
declared bankruptcy
The statement was classic Cutler: it made exaggerated

(and unsubstantiated) accusations against a rival campaign
while portraying Cutler and Thornburg as innocent victims
of the worldwide housing and financial slump. Cutler
restated Thornburg’s claim that it was distinct from the ugly subprime mess on Wall Street because its
borrowers were wealthy with a very low default rate, and the company’s collapse was due to factors outside
its control. And while it was true that Cutler received a $22,000 payment from the company after declaring
bankruptcy, the payment was fully approved by the courts and anyway it paled in comparison to his personal
investment of hundreds of thousands of dollars (Cutler couldn’t remember the exact amount) that he lost
when Thornburg collapsed.
But Cutler’s statement was a lot like Thornburg’s investment portfolio - a load of crap.
cutlerfiles.com/…/The_Thornburg_Mes… 1/7
Nevertheless, the Maine press - including Cutler’s pals at Maine Today Media - lapped up Cutler’s statement
verbatim without so much as a Google search to confirm its accuracy. Had the media bothered, it would have
found plenty of information to contradict him, including one Wall Street analyst who said Thornburg was a
victim alright, “a victim of mid-2000s, asset-backed security delusion....and they paid for it.” Or another
analyst who described Thornburg as “the ultimate Roach Motel” - sitting on a pile of rotten securities that it
couldn’t get rid of. Or an analyst with The Motley Fool who wrote this about Thornburg’s explanation of its
business: “The numbers might be the only thing not lying.”
Here are the facts:
• While Cutler claims that Thornburg only lent big jumbo loans to qualified, wealthy borrowers, the
company itself was playing a familiar Wall Street game: the money it lent to home buyers came from
investors who bought Thornburg-issued securities, securities that turned out to be just as toxic as those
mortgages from Countrywide. As explained in the opening chapter of House of Cards: A Tale of
Hubris and Wretched Excess on Wall Street, by William D. Cohan, unlike a traditional bank that uses
cash from its depositors for most of its operations, outfits like Thornburg funded their operations in
other ways: either by occasionally issuing long-term securities, such as debt or preferred stock, or
more often by obtaining short-term, often overnight, borrowings in the unsecured commercial paper
market or in the overnight “repo” market. So in addition to servicing its wealthy clientele, Thornburg
also bought and repackaged other, lower quality mortgages into what were known as “asset-backed
securities” - those “toxic” derivatives that brought down such venerable but no less greedy and self-
destructive firms as Lehman Brothers and Bear Stearns. And what were the assets that backed these
“asset-backed securities?” Complex investment instruments like Collateralized Debt Obligations
(CDO’s), Reverse Repurchase Agreements (repo’s), commercial paper and especially non-conforming
Alt-A mortgages (the kind that don’t require a borrower to document his income or assets, suggesting
that they perhaps shouldn’t have qualified for a loan in the first place). At the time of its collapse,
Thornburg was holding billions in securities backed by these Alt-A mortgages. “Thornburg’s
problems...aren’t related to the assets it owns - high-grade ‘jumbo’ ARM mortgages to wealthy
clients,” wrote the Financial Times, “but more about the way it conducted its business, and as a lender,
aggressively financed its operations.” Or as MuckrakersGuide.com put it, “Thornburg Mortgage
executives bragged that they offered loans to only the most creditworthy customers. Such standards
evidently didn’t apply to the securities Thornburg sold to investors.”
• Although Thornburg didn’t declare bankruptcy until April 2009, documents reveal that the company
hired counsel “related to debt counseling or bankruptcy” as early as 2008, indicating that the company
officials knew that Thornburg was sinking fast but didn’t tell its shareholders. Even earlier, in August
2007, Thornburg’s CEO recognized his company’s troubles as a harbinger of things to come and called
then US Rep. Heather Wilson (R-New Mexico) to warn her of a looming “1929-like event” in the credit
and financial markets. Thornburg’s failure to disclose its troubles or its heavy investments in toxic
assets became the subject of numerous class action lawsuits that named Cutler and the board of
directors as defendants. (In his statement, Cutler said that all “claims against Eliot and the other
independent directors that have been adjudicated to date have been dismissed,” which is a little like
saying, “All claims that have been dismissed have been dismissed.” It left out the fact that several cases
were consolidated and are still pending, at least one of which names Cutler as a defendant.) On Feb. 8,
2008, Judge James O. Browning dismissed part of the lawsuits against Thornburg’s directors, but
denied the motion to dismiss the claims against Thornburg’s CEO Larry Goldstone. “Judge Browning
held that Goldstone’s repeated efforts to distance the company from the mortgage crisis by
differentiating the company from Alt-A (subprime) mortgage originators ‘gives rise to a strong
inference that Goldstone was attempting to hide from the market that [Thornburg] engaged in Alt-A or
subprime lending, and knew, or recklessly disregarded that withholding this information would mislead
investors.’ Thornburg’s omission from its 2007 10-K of its failure to meet the J.P. Morgan margin
calls, and of the consequent triggering of cross-defaults in other agreements, suggests that Thornburg
was ‘concealing information’.” Sound familiar? Goldstone’s questionable excuses are repeated by
Cutler today.
• Meanwhile, as Thornburg’s foundation was collapsing leaving investors with billions in worthless stock,
Cutler and other executives continued to collect big paychecks - far more than the $22,000 that Cutler
defended in his press release. SEC documents show that Cutler’s cash compensation for 2007 alone
was $105,000. And his “lost investment” was mostly paper losses - $318,000 in Thornburg stock that
was awarded to him by the company as part of his compensation above and beyond his cash
compensation.
• But that’s not all. While Cutler claims Thornburg only made jumbo mortgage loans - a category “on the
verge of subprime” - to wealthy borrowers, a review of 10 Thornburg loans recorded at the
Cumberland County Registrar of Deeds show only two that would qualify as “jumbo’ and one of them
- by far the largest - is to Cutler himself, a $3.6 million mortgage loan from Thornburg in 2001 - two
years before he joined Thornburg’s board of directors - with terms that can only be described as a
“sweetheart deal.” So sweet in fact that today they would be illegal. Far from just the $22,000 in
payments Cutler received after Thornburg’s bankruptcy, Cutler continues to benefit from the now
defunct company in the form of an unusually low interest rate on his huge home mortgage (see below).
Small wonder that Thornburg’s angry investors who ended up with nothing sued Cutler and Thornburg to get
their money back.
The Complicated, Complex and Confusing Story of Thornburg’s Collapse
Perhaps one of the reasons why Cutler believed his statement on Thornburg would be accepted without
question is because he knows that what happened to Thornburg - indeed, what happened to the entire US
banking and financial system - is so complex that few people truly understand it. Some of this is deliberate.
The bond markets that repackaged crappy mortgages into “asset backed securities” did so with all the worst
intentions - so investors and certainly the public wouldn’t know what was really going on. It’s possible that
even Cutler believes what he says - that Thornburg wasn’t involved in the Wall Street’s subprime mess, that it
was everybody else who was trying to screw investors and shareholders, not Thornburg.
That would just make him naive and stupid instead of corrupt.
Founded in 1993, Thornburg Mortgage began as a conventional real estate investment trust (REIT), but it soon
branched out to originate retail and wholesale mortgages, and work closely with other financial institutions
(a.k.a. correspondent origination). The company followed an aggressive growth strategy through what the
Financial Times called “a veritable disaster-smorgasbord of wholesale funding methods” - CDOs, commercial
paper conduits and repo agreements with prime brokerages like Bear Stearns and Lehman Brothers. In fact, a
significant amount of Thornburg’s business came from buying up raw mortgage backed securities and then
repackaging them as CDOs. By the end of December 2007, 64% of Thornburg’s balance sheet was
permanently financed through CDOs.
Then there were the Alt-A mortgages. In his new book, The Big Short: Inside the Doomsday Machine,
Michael Lewis describes Alt-A loans this way:
Alt-A was just what they called crappy mortgage loans for which they hadn’t even bothered to acquire the
proper documents - to verify the borrower’s income, say. ‘A’ was the designation attached to the most
creditworthy borrowers; Alt-A, which stood for ‘Alternative A-paper,’ meant an alternative to the most
creditworthy, which of course sounds a lot more fishy once it is put that way. As a rule any loan that had been
turned into an acronym or abbreviation could more clearly be called a ‘subprime loan,’ but the bond market
didn’t want to be clear.
Other analysts agree. “Alt-A is such a broad group of loans, it’s very hard for investors to know which will
perform poorly,” said Bose George, an analyst at Keefe, Bruyette & Woods. “Big chunks will perform very
poorly. Other parts will behave like prime.”
Thornbug was sitting on a lot of Alt-A loans. Billions worth. It was a convenient cover story to say that its
lending practices were sound, but the leveraging and selling of its securities that provided the money for those
sound jumbo loans was pure subprime. “The distinction had become superficial,” Lewis writes. “In practice,
Alt-A mortgage loans made in the United States between 2004 and 2008 totaling $1.2 trillion were as likely to
default as subprime loans totaling $1.8 trillion.”
Cutler joined the board of Thornburg Mortgage in late 2003, but his connection with Thornburg goes back
decades. He has been on the board of Thornburg Investment Company, a related firm started by the same
founder as Thornburg Mortgage, since the early 1980s. He claims credit for creating the first of that firm’s
mutual funds in 1981 and maintained a financial interest in the management of the funds for about 15 years. He
remains a member of the board of trustees of Thornburg mutual funds to this day.
There are several perks of being on the Board of Directors of a large public company. Some are obvious: the
power and prestige, the tony conferences at extravagant resorts, the stock options and compensation packages
for a few hours of work once every quarter. But one part of Eliot’s compensation for his seat on what would
later become the ninth largest bankruptcy in US history isn’t yet well known.
In June 2001, after Cutler completed construction of his massive, sprawling estate overlooking Zeb Cove in
Cape Elizabeth, he took out a 30 year mortgage on the property with none other than Thornburg Mortgage.
For $3.6 million.
The timing here is interesting. Cutler didn’t officially join the board until 2003, but his connections with the
other Thornburg-related companies, and his deep connections in Washington, must have earned him a once-in-
a-lifetime deal. A close look at the terms of the loan, obtained from public records, tells the jaw-dropping
story. Let’s just say that if Thornburg gave all their clients the same sweetheart deal as they gave Cutler, well,
then that might explain why it went under. Perhaps when the inevitable salvo from the Cutler campaign
launches against this revelation, he can explain just how it was that he got such liberal terms from a company
he recently claimed operated with “the best practices in the industry” - and then wound up on the board of
directors shortly thereafter.
Here are the facts: according to the leading provider of historical mortgage rate data, HSH Associates, the
7.125% rate Cutler was given at signing was significantly below the average rate at the time of 7.33%. It may
not seem like much, but on that basis alone, Cutler likely saved more than $10,000 a year on interest charges
in the initial year or two.
But that was only the start. According to SEC filings made by Thornburg Mortgage, when Cutler became a
Director of the company in late 2003, he became eligible for a special “employee residential mortgage
program” offered by the company. Again, the timing is interesting - the Sarbanes Oxley Act which Congress
passed in 2002 in reaction to numerous Wall Street scandals made such arrangements illegal. But loans existing
as of the date the law went into effect were grandfathered. Since Cutler’s 2001 mortgage was deemed to
qualify under this provision, his rate dropped from 7.125% to 4.125% as long as he was a director, and
perhaps longer.
Also evident from the SEC filings is that Cutler’s mortgage is a jumbo, interest-only, adjustable-rate mortgage
(ARM). That means the economic benefit of this sweetheart loan to Cutler was in excess of $115,000 per year
during the years he was a director, in addition to the other forms of compensation he received. It also means
that Cutler himself is benefiting handsomely from the very type of loan that became the poster child of the
mortgage meltdown - the very type of toxic loan he distances himself and Thornburg Mortgage from today.
One has to wonder if such a rich deal might have led to Cutler looking the other way while senior management
drove the company into the ground. Who would want to stop that gravy train?
And if you’re worried that this sweetheart deal has evaporated along with the tens of billions of dollars in
Thornburg Mortgage shareholder equity, fear not. According to the basic terms of the mortgage on file at the
Registry of Deeds, after July 2008 Cutler’s loan goes from a low fixed rate to an even lower adjustable rate.
So even if the special Thornburg Mortgage deal has ended for Cutler, he's still benefitting to the tune of six
figures every year until 2031.
The bottom line is this: this past July when Cutler opened the letter that tells him his new mortgage rate for the
next 12 months, he must have smiled quietly to himself: according to the terms of the mortgage he would only
be paying 2.875% - about half the rate you would be paying for the exact same loan - until 2031.
One more thing: if you’ve ever taken out a mortgage, you know that the lender almost always charges you a
fee at closing on top of the annual interest payment. In June 2001 the average fee (commonly referred to as
“points”) was 0.39% for a 30 year ARM. If this applied to Cutler’s $3.6 million loan, he would have paid over
$14,000 in fees at closing. But the mortgage is silent to any “points” due.
Sweet indeed.
FROM TRIPLE A TO TOXIC ALMOST OVERNIGHT
While there were signs of trouble as early as August 2007, the beginning of the end for Thornburg Mortgage,
according to House of Cards, came on Valentine’s Day 2008 when UBS, the large Swiss bank, reported a
fourth-quarter loss of $11.3 billion after writing off $13.7 billion of investments in US mortgages. Amid this
huge write-off, UBS said it had lost $2 billion on Alt-A mortgages and, worse, that it had a additional exposure
of $26.6 billion to them.
Suddenly, investment banks and mortgage companies like Thornburg that were sitting on a pile of Alt-A debt
joined the subprime mess. The billions
of dollars in what were thought to be
solid mortgage-backed securities held
by Thornburg were suddenly
radioactive, and their value
plummeted. “UBS’s sneeze meant
that Thornburg, among others,
caught a major cold,” writes Cohan.
That set off a round of dreaded

margin calls, demands by investors
and holders of the toxic securities for
more and more collateral to shore up those assets, sending Thornburg into a tailspin of having to raise more
and more cash. In March, Thornburg announced it had $610 million in outstanding margin calls, an amount
greater than its cash on hand. Just a few weeks later, Thornburg said it had reached an agreement with five of
its major creditors - including Bear Stearns, Citigroup, Credit Suisse and UBS - that would halt the margin calls
for one year - provided it could come up with $848 million in one week.
By its own description, Thornburg was “left with limited available liquidity” to meet the new margin calls or
any future margin calls. “From Dec. 31 2007, to March 3, 2008, Thornburg received margin calls totaling
$1.777 billion and was able to satisfy only $1.167 billion of them, or about 65 percent - a dismal
performance,” writes Cohan.
Thornburg had nothing left to sell that the market wanted - the ultimate Roach Motel.
On April 1, 2009, Thornburg announced that it would file for bankruptcy and by the end of the year, it was no
longer in existence. Cutler officially resigned from the board in October last year.
Although the federal government didn’t bail out Thornburg like it did other large mortgage investment
companies, it did eventually acquire $1 billion worth of Thornburg’s securities through the acquisition of
“legacy assets” held by Bear Stearns. An analysis of those securities by the Santa Fe Reporter showed
Thornburg’s securities to be a “complex bundle of loans from assorted companies” - including disgraced
Countrywide - half of which were the shaky Alt-A (subprime) variety.
“Thornburg always claimed it only lent to wealthy ‘prime’ borrowers,” the newspaper reported. “Evidently, it
wasn’t so particular about re-selling other lenders’ crappy loans to investors. The security prospectus shows
that approximately 1 in 5 (Thornburg) loans were originated and serviced by Countrywide, whose brand name
became a synonym for predatory lending.”
If Thornburg was an innocent victim, as Cutler contends, so was Lehman Brothers, Bear Stearns and so many
other investment banks and mortgage companies that peddled risky “asset-backed securities” that were
nothing more than a Wall Street euphemism for subprime, toxic loans. “Financial ebola,” as one analyst called
them. Wall Street’s mistakes taught America a hard lesson. But it’s a lesson that Cutler evidently hasn’t learned
yet.
9/29/2010 The secret file on eliot cutler

Whenever someone runs for governor, the first question they get asked is, “Why?” Instead of answering
honestly (“Because I have a big fucking ego the size of Montana and I want all the attention. Plus I’ll get
a driver and good parking.”), candidates invariably come up with some bullshit answer like, “The
challenges we face today are so great that I just couldn’t sit on the sidelines and let my state ‘s economy
continue it’s decline, blah, blah, blah....”
Cutler is no exception. He is convinced he has the business and political skills necessary for the job. But
the real answer, as revealed in numerous interviews over the years, is that Cutler is running for governor
because, well, because he’s always wanted to be governor. Since he was kid.
Here’s what his mother said in an interview with the Edmund Muskie Archives:
Eliot, Eliot was too big, too heavy, he had acne, he was not a very, he wasn't a pretty charming child.
And I remember that when other kids were out doing things, during the McCarthy hearings, when he was
cutlerfiles.com/…/Eliots_Fantasy.html 1/2
9/29/2010 The secret file on eliot cutler
just a little kid, he sat in front of the TV and listened to all those people declare their rights under
Article 5 or whatever it is of the Constitution, declared their right not to incriminate themselves. And we
went to a Boy Scout meeting one night, I remember, and Eliot wished to participate in the adult
discussion. I think he was then about maybe eight or nine or something, he must have been, because he
never was an active Boy Scout. Anyway, he insisted on speaking up, and I finally took him out and took
him home and planted him with his father who was gentler than I. And I thought, jeepers, how are you
going to control this? But at any rate, he developed an interest in government and as he grew up he kept
talking about how he was going to be governor of Maine someday.
Cutler himself told a reporter for the Forth Worth Star Telegram in 1991, “My dream had always been to
go back to Maine and go into politics.” He repeated it in a 2002 interview with the Muskie Archives. “I
know I wanted to be governor from the time I was 12 or 13 years old,” he said. Recalling his years at
Harvard, Cutler said, “I had decided years before that I really wanted to go into politics. I wanted to run
for office, I wanted to be governor of Maine at some point, I wanted to come back to Maine and run for
office. And so I had set out on this course by then, I mean I knew exactly what I wanted to do.”
So why is Eliot Cutler running for governor? To fulfill his childhood fantasy. That’s the real answer.
Accept no substitutes.
cutlerfiles.com/…/Eliots_Fantasy.html 2/2

Here’s Eliot Cutler campaigning in his barn coat to

convince voters he’s “just like Maine.” Riiighttt. It’s
as phony as his rope-throw comb-over hairdo that
looks like it was cut with a Flowbee.
We’re offering a $500 reward to anyone who can

come up with a picture of Eliot Cutler in a barn coat
BEFORE he started his run for governor.
BONUS REWARD: Somewhere there’s a picture of

young Eliot when he was at the Harvard Lampoon,
painted in gold lame and wearing long underwear,
presenting the Hasty Pudding Award to Natalie
Wood. Who wouldn’t love to see that? (Ewwww!)
Send your entries to [email protected]
NO T PAID FO R O R AUTHO RIZED BY ANY CANDIDATE
cutlerfiles.com/…/Reward_Offered.html 1/1

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9/29/2010 The Secret File on Eliot CUtler

Home The Bangor Bison Cutler in Maine

He’s a phony and a fraud. He’s rewriting and revising

So just who is Eliot Cutler? Since the mainstream media in

Cutler calls himself an “independent,” even claims to have

On the campaign trail, he credits a “great school system” in

He brags about his time at the Office of Management and

These are just some of the confusing contradictions and

Browse around and check back often. You’ll find

Who we are: We are a group of researchers, writers and

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Home The Bangor Bison Cutler in Maine

In and Around “M aine Can

Phony, phony, phony.

Home The Bangor Bison Cutler in Maine

Drive Time In and Around WGAN

Here’s the real story:

He’s a tourist, not a resident

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Home The Bangor Bison Cutler in Maine

“Changed the course of government?” It’s a myth he repeats on his website:

But sometimes saying “NO” is just a euphemism for bureaucratic ineptitude.

Despite these warnings, still nothing happened.

That’s Cutler’s legacy at the OMB.

Home The Bangor Bison Cutler in Maine

“Occasionally” he represented opponents of projects? Is he kidding? How about most of the

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Home The Bangor Bison Cutler in Maine

Cutler’s Clients Imported Tainted, Dangerous Chinese Products to US and Maine

At the same time Cutler was helping

Claire’s Stores, with at least two

Yet another failed business by Eliot Cutler.

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Home The Bangor Bison Cutler in Maine

The statement was classic Cutler: it made exaggerated

Here are the facts:

The Complicated, Complex and Confusing Story of Thornburg’s Collapse

FROM TRIPLE A TO TOXIC ALMOST OVERNIGHT

That set off a round of dreaded

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Home The Bangor Bison Cutler in Maine

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Home The Bangor Bison Cutler in Maine

Here’s Eliot Cutler campaigning in his barn coat to

We’re offering a $500 reward to anyone who can

BONUS REWARD: Somewhere there’s a picture of

Send your entries to [email protected]

NO T PAID FO R O R AUTHO RIZED BY ANY CANDIDATE

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