Where was Miers in the GTECH-Littwin-Barnes

nexus scandal, which was all about undue access for, and huge payments ($23 M) to, Texas lottery lobbyist Ben Barnes because of the favors he had done for Bush [and what Barnes knew from then] in an earlier decade?  Miers was lottery commissioner from 1995 to 2000.

The Houston Chronicle on Nov. 17, 2004    recapped the events surrounding Gtech when the Chronicle covered Miers' appointment to WH Counsel -

Miers led the commission to fire two of its executive directors and sought to rebid the GTech contract. After a year with the agency in a morass, the commission gave up when GTech threatened to sue the state and shut the lottery down  . . . .

But the case of [ex-director] Lawrence Littwin became a political problem for Bush, because Littwin alleged that GTech had paid Barnes a $23 million severance package to keep him quiet about how Bush got into the Air National Guard in 1969 during the Vietnam War.

The Commission did vote in 1997 for a renewal of GTech's contract instead of following lower bids.

By the way, I never troubled myself much with the hullaballou about Barnes helping Bush gain entrance ...

 to the Guard.  I would have been more surprised if someone hadn't helped him, than if someone had, given his Dad's position and influence.  To me, that was a nonstory – except to the lengths that Bush's protectors go to cover it up. That would be people like Bartlett, Hughes, and the crew. The outsized payout to Barnes may be part of that.

What mattered perhaps more, and what the press fogged over duplicitously, were the papers from that time in Bush's life (that the press never printed) that are now more in the official public domain since the end of September (though the press still overlooked displaying them!). --->   They can be seen     HERE and also here  [a diary similar to the first link, with longer comments thread].

One thing this appointment tells me.  

Bush's key appointments are about protecting his past (Miers, Gonzales) and protecting his father's past  (Roberts, SG papers sealed, Walsh's Iran-Contra appeals to the Supreme Court undercut by the SG, and Roberts' mid-1980s NHAO file, withheld).

 It's a unifying thread that winds through Bush's picks.