http://www.commondreams.org/view/2009/03/25-8
Cheney War Crimes: Just Look at the Statute
by Matthew Rothschild
President Obama needs to tell Attorney General Eric Holder to indict Dick Cheney, right now, for war crimes.
Just look at the statute, Title 18 of the U.S. Criminal Code, Section 2441. It says that someone is guilty of a war crime if he or she commits a "grave breach of common Article 3" of the Geneva Conventions. And then it defines what a grave breach would be.
One such breach is torture, or the conspiracy to commit torture, which Cheney was clearly in on, as when he repeatedly defended waterboarding and talked about the need to go to the "dark side" Here's the language from the statute: "The act of a person who commits, or conspires to commit, an act specifically intended to inflict severe physical or mental pain or suffering . . . upon another person within his custody or physical control for the purpose of obtaining information or a confession, punishment, intimidation, coercion, or any reason based on discrimination of any kind."
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tommy:
I got CHIPPED, MIND CONTROLLED, AND FRIED WITH A DIRECTED ENERGY WEAPON while living in my home...all because I SIGNED A 47 PAGE US DOJ OIG--FBI OPR COMPLAINT that was never legitimately investigated by anyone?
MUELLER'S FBI also abused the PATRIOT ACT to steal my x rays, and also FLIP MY DOCTORS TO PREVENT ME FROM HAVING THE MIND CONTROL TORTURE CHIP REMOVED FROM MY FUCKING SKULL??????
HOUSE NIGGER HOLDER and BARKY the lying faggot puppet...join SEN JUD COMM, and HOUSE JUD COMM in their "silent sanction" of this outrageous dark side PATRIOT ACT CRIME OF VIOLENCE.
Lots more info...all hidden by a gutless lying nazi punk drug dealer named ROBERT SWAN MUELLER, III, (a guy who scripts his dog and pony show hearings with LEAHY and Spector).
TO BREAK IT ALL OPEN...ALL HOLDER--OBAMA--LEAHY--CONYERS have to do is...CALL BEAN AS A WITNESS???????????????????
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Another grave breach is "cruel or inhuman treatment," or the conspiracy to inflict such treatment. Again, Cheney was supervising such treatment in the White House, which would qualify as committing this crime. One time, it got so ghoulish that Attorney General John Ashcroft asked the other principals, "Why are we talking about this in the White House? History will not judge this kindly."
Here's the language on "cruel or inhuman treatment": "The act of a person who commits, or conspires or attempts to commit, an act intended to inflict severe or serious physical or mental pain or suffering . . . including serious physical abuse, upon another within his custody or control."
An additional breach is "mutilation or maiming." Since some detainees say they no longer have the complete functioning of arms or limbs, Cheney may be on the hook here, too. "The act of a person who intentionally injures, or conspires or attempts to injure, or injures whether intentionally or unintentionally in the course of committing any other offense under this subsection, one or more persons . . . by disfiguring the person or persons by any mutilation thereof or by permanently disabling any member, limb or organ of his body, without any legitimate medical or dental purpose."
"Intentionally causing serious bodily harm" is yet another grave breach. The statute defines this as: "The act of a person who intentionally causes, or conspires or attempts to cause, serious bodily injury to one or more persons, including lawful combatants, in violation of the law of war."
For each of these offenses, Cheney could receive life in prison, according to the statute.
That is where he belongs.
And it's time for Obama to stop pussyfooting around. He should indict, arrest, and prosecute Cheney.
"There is no longer any doubt as to whether the current administration has committed war crimes," said Major General Antonio Taguba, USA (Ret.), in the preface to the Physicians for Human Rights report, "Broken Laws, Broken Lives". "The only question that remains to be answered is whether those who ordered the use of torture will be held to account."
That question is now firmly on Obama's desk.
And if he continues to dodge it, he'll make a sick joke of the pious claim that we are a nation of laws, not men.
© 2009 The Progressive
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TOMMY:
I ASSURE YOU...I am the only blogger or news commentator in America who has the pertinent facts and has dared to articulate the secret dark TORTURE MADNESS that DEAD EYE DICK CHENEY used on any political enemy, and any subjective potential future witness?????
AGAIN...Barack, Holder, Leahy, Spector, Conyers....HAVE ALL BEEN ACQUINTED WITH MY FACT PATTERN AND ALLEGATIONS AND...they continually script hearings for BIG, BAD, LYING COCKSUCKER ROBERT SWAN MUELLER, III, who effectively "granted secret criminal immunity" for his butt buddies.
MUELLER is the fucking problem.
MUELLER was...just...uh..."following our protocol" when we at FBI HQ did not work the following WAR CRIMES:
1) Omaha attorney LEROY ROGERS, FRIED WITH DEW TO CAUSE BRAIN STROKE...info came from FBI 302 interview of my father, DR DAVID W. BEAN...FBI was "investigating who my attorneys were" to prevent exposure of my fact pattern in a civil suit filing?
I CONTACTED SD US ATTORNEYS TEN FUCKING TIMES...TO DISCUSS THE DEMAND LETTER ON A CIVIL SUIT...to give dumbfucks a chance to pay damages.
BLUE WALL OF SILENCE FROM FBI, DOJ HQ, AND CHENEY MADHOUSE????????????
2) Attempted MURDER and TORTURE OF MINNEAPOLIS COOPERATING WITNESS DR MARK GORDON....a guy the FBI HAPPILY DESTROYED WHILE ABUSING THE PATRIOT ACT THAT MUELLER WANTS PASSED AGAIN, while pussies and dumbfucking femocratic cocksuckers at US SEN JUD COMM never, ever,...bother DOING A LEGITIMATE PROFESSIONAL OVERSIGHT HEARING OF MUELLER, because...THE STAFF AT US SEN JUD COMM is already "flipped and misdirecting" for the benefit of the punk, drug dealing, murdering, lying fuckhead scum at FBI HQ.
3) CHRISTINA MOORE MURDER BY CHENEY--WHITTINGTON--HAYDEN--NSA TSP--NSA 902ND COUNTERINTELIGENCE UNIT...all covered up by pussy, faggot, and gutless sniveling treasonous whore ROBERT SWAN MUELLER, III, who got the crime tip from me (CHECK THE CALEA COMPUTERIZED WIRETAP INTERFACE to find evidence of the NSA's TITLE III FELONY...use Title III felony to flip your way to the murderers).
4) Alot more...but...WHAT IS THE POINT WHEN A COUPLE OF EXTORTED MK ULTRA PUSSIES NAMED ERIC HOLDER AND BARACK OBAMA have been controlled into pussyland?
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http://www.bradblog.com/?p=7013#more-7013
Why the survival of our Constitutional Democracy may hinge on factually justified criminal prosecutions of the Bush/Cheney cabal...
Guest Blogged by Ernest A. Canning
"It will remain one of democracy's best jokes that it provided its deadly enemies with the means by which it was destroyed." - Joseph Goebbels
* * *
Gradually, as the veil of secrecy lifts, a growing number of Americans are beginning to comprehend the lawlessness of the cabal which seized control of the White House in 2000 in what amounted to a judicially-aided coup d'etat.[i] This lawlessness extended across the board. It included the packing of federal agencies with lobbyists from industries they were designed to regulate, deception to take this nation into a war of choice, fraudulent no-bid contracts, torture, extraordinary rendition, warrantless NSA eavesdropping on the entire stream of domestic electronic communications, and, if Seymour Hersh's recent allegations are accurate, the creation of a highly secretive "executive assassination ring" which reported only to Dick Cheney's office and which had "been going into countries, not talking to the ambassador or the CIA station chief, and finding people and executing them and leaving."[ii]
Unless the rule of law is restored and applied to the Bush/Cheney cabal, the next time around our constitutional democracy could be lost, forever.
The reaction of leading Democratic politicians to these unprecedented high crimes has been ambivalent, at best. Even before she assumed the role of Speaker, Nancy Pelosi announced that impeachment was "off-the-table," thereby enabling two more years of executive lawlessness, not to mention the nation's economic demise. Pelosi evaded so much as mentioning their high crimes until February 2009. President Obama acknowledged that "no one is above the law," but added that the focus of his administration is to look forward, not back.
There are fundamental deficiencies in the President's formulation. First, it is impossible to observe the rule of law without looking back. It would make no sense, for example, for a man charged with armed robbery to come before a judge and say, "Well, the robbery was in the past. You've got to look forward. I have every intention of abiding by the law in the future. So why prosecute me?" Second, looking forward does not mean handling current events at the expense of the rule of law. The point is to look far enough into the future to appreciate that the same people who brought us the last eight years of executive lawlessness could one day return to power...
* * *
As noted by Scott Horton, citing remarks by "Professor Manfred Nowak, the United Nations Rapporteur responsible for torture," existing treaties, which the president is obligated to enforce, mandate the commencement of "an investigation of Bush's torture practices." Law Professor Jonathan Turley, who concurs, notes that in calling for foreign prosecutions while protecting our own, "the U.S. is seen as a nation of hypocrites."
Undoubtedly, both the Speaker and the President, a magna cum laude graduate of Harvard Law School, are well aware of our treaty obligations. They know that neither those obligations nor the rule of law can be satisfied by Senator Leahy's proposed "truth commission." So why do they not insist on criminal investigations and, where factually warranted, prosecutions?
Setting aside the exigencies of having to clean up the disasters the cabal left them, I believe the principle reason stems from a failure to comprehend the true nature of the American hard-right --- a billionaire-funded, well-organized group of anti-egalitarian ideologues.
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tommy:
All people with oversight functions are EXTORTED BY THE POWER ELITE.
DON'T FORGET EXTORTION USING MIND CONTROL aka OPERATION SLAMMER aka MK ULTRA aka SUBLIINAL PROGRAMMING...don't forget the mind control chip in my skull...don't forget OPERATION BROWNSTONE CONTROL FILES on all lying gutless sniveling fuckstick femocratic cocksuckers who aided and abetted the military--police state--corporate whore FASCISM.
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It is a "revolutionary power"[iii] whose agenda is aimed at nothing less than smashing the framework of the American constitutional order. Any doubts as to their radically subversive aims ended with the recent release of a series of Justice Department memos...
* * *
In a 10/23/01 memo [PDF], John Yoo concluded that, in the wake of 9/11, the president could deploy the military inside the U.S. and ignore all constitutional safeguards of individual liberty, including those provided by the 1st and 4th Amendments.
A 6/27/02 Yoo memo [PDF] asserted the president had the unchecked power to declare American citizens "enemy combatants" who could then be placed in "preventative detention" indefinitely without any right to challenge their detention in court.
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Tommy:
PREVENTATTIVE DETENTION has been "secretly and subjectively twisted" to include the involuntary surgical insertion of an RFID MIND CONTROL CHIP IN MY SKULL, after an involuntary controlled substance was used to knock me out, while I slept in my own home???????????
THIS IS THE CRIME THAT A PUSSY, A COCKSUCKER, A LOSER, AND A SPEAR CHUCKING HOUSE NIGGER UNCLE TOM named ERIC HOLDER--BARACK OBAMA have refused to investigate, indict, and prosecute???????
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These memos flow from the "Unitary Executive" theory first enunciated in 1986 by Samuel Alito when he was an attorney in the Reagan Justice Department. It is a theory that is not merely radical but subversive to the rule of law. It postulates that, despite a president's solemn oath to enforce the law, a president is free to disregard any provision of the law which the president perceives to interfere with his executive powers. Under "Unitary Executive" theory, a president is not simply above the law. The president is the law.
As revealed by Jane Mayer in a New Yorker piece entitled "The Hidden Power," it was a spin-off of this radical theory --- dubbed "the new paradigm" by Cheney's chief of staff, David Addington --- which formed the quasi-legal basis for the nearly 1,200 presidential signing statements, torture, military tribunals that were straight out of Kafka and warrantless NSA eavesdropping on Americans. The Mayer article reveals that Addington knew torture, often applied to innocent men, was ineffective, but he didn't care. A Bush administration lawyer, quoted by Mayer, said: "Torture isn't important to Addington as a scientific matter, good or bad, or whether it works or not. It's about his philosophy of Presidential power. He thinks that if the President wants torture he should get torture. He always argued for 'maximum flexibility.'"
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tommy:
Some of the torture victims were indeed innocent, and had taken FBI POLYGRAPHS AT THE ST. PAUL FED BUIDLING across the street from DR MARK GORDON'S APARTMENT (where he was forced and coerced into moving to...so...MINNEAPOLIS FBI COULD MONITOR THEIR STALKING VICTIM WITH THE PIN HOLE SPY CAMERA placed in Gordon's home)???
ONE TORTURE VICTIM SELECTED BY SIOUX FALLS, SD, FBI working with DOD CIFA UNIT AND BLACKWATER INC....was OMAHA ATTORNEY LEROY ROGERS...blasted with microwave radiation to induce a brain stroke.
TO THIS DAY A GUTLESS, DEAD, LYING FUCKSTICK NAMED ROBERT SWAN MUELLER, III, refuses to allow pussies and sniveling weasel dicked ferries at US SEN JUD COMM to "question Mueller about his role in selecting lawyers linked to me for torture".
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Commenting on the scope of the Justice Department memos, attorney Scott Horton observed that John Yoo, the principal author of the memos, had "concluded that in wartime, the president was freed from the constraints of the Bill of Rights with respect to anything he chose to label as a counterterrorism operation inside the United States…We may not have realized it at the time, but for the period from late 2001-January 19, 2009, this country was a dictatorship."
Horton overstated his case.
While the aim was dictatorship, several factors prevented its fruition: Alternative media countered the propaganda that flowed from the right-wing echo chamber; hardworking bloggers like Brad Friedman exposed how easy it was to manipulate E-voting, and a slender Supreme Court majority in Hamdan (2006) slammed the administration's effort to utilize an endless "global war on terror"[iv] as justification for unlimited presidential power. The court found the military tribunals to be at odds with Common Article III of the Geneva Conventions.
In his concurring opinion, Justice Kennedy fired a shot across the bow of the U.S.S. "Unitary Executive," noting that violations of Common Article III were war crimes within the meaning of the U.S. War Crimes statute...
* * *
The loss of democracy was averted, but only because a right-wing project to remake the federal judiciary had not been completed. It is a project in which, following the Senate's 1987 rejection of Robert Bork, whose subversive views were well known, future nominees affiliated with Bork's Federalist Society secured confirmation by evading hard questions designed to expose their radical legal theories. Although seven of the nine Justices are Republican appointees, only four are connected to the Federalist Society. All four are what Law Professor Cass Sunstein refers to as "radicals-in-robes." The Federalist Society is committed to all of the hard-right agenda, especially Unitary Executive theory.
Thanks to a bottling up of Clinton nominees in committee, the judicial project enjoyed greater success in the intermediate appellate courts where, by the end of 2005, approximately 60% of federal appellate judges were Republican appointees. This was followed in 2006 by a Republican threat to end the right of a filibuster in order to secure the appointment of Bush's most radical nominees.
The danger to democracy and the rule of law remains. While the 2008 election placed Democrats in control of the executive and legislative branches, the right-wing judicial project continues with the circulation of a new Senate Republican letter which not only threatened to filibuster Obama's appointees but suggested that "Obama begin by appointing holdover Bush nominees who were never confirmed by the Senate."
Other set-backs --- Nixon's forced resignation; Iran-Contra convictions --- were followed by Ford's pardon of Nixon and G.H.W. Bush's pardoning of his Iran-Contra co-conspirators. These pardons set a dangerous precedent-impunity-which emboldened the hard-right to return with a vengeance during the Bush/Cheney reign.
Unless the rule of law is restored and applied to the Bush/Cheney cabal, the next time around our constitutional democracy could be lost, forever. The survival of the republic mandates nothing less than criminal investigations and prosecutions not only of war crimes and financial crimes but "crimes against democracy," an apt phrase that should be applied to voter suppression, illegal manipulation of election results and the attempted misuse of the Justice Department to gain partisan advantage.
Note: For those so inclined, they can petition Attorney General Eric Holder to appoint a special prosecutor right here.
[i] The Bush 537-vote "victory" in Florida was the product of an illegal purge of some 90,000 mostly Democratic and mostly African-American voters from Florida 's computerized eligible voter rolls (see, e.g., Greg Palast, Armed Madhouse (2006)). It was facilitated by the "Brooks-Brothers riot" which appeared as a spontaneous protest because the corporate media failed to disclose that the angry men in white shirts and ties who stormed the Miami-Dade Canvassing Board to shut down a court-ordered recount were comprised of staffers from the offices of Republican Congressmen Tom DeLay and Tom Sweeney, along with the future U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations, John Bolton. It was sealed by a questionable U.S. Supreme Court decision . It is statistically probable it was also occasioned by the illegal manipulation of the count on both touch-screen DREs and the memory cards used in optical scanners. Per Steven Freeman, Ph.D. & Joel Bleifuss in Was the 2004 Election Stolen? Exit-polls* predicted that Gore won Florida by 7.8% --- a margin of some 435,000 votes.
* Exit-polls have proven accurate in thousands of elections. They are so reliable that the U.S. government utilizes them to measure the fairness of foreign elections. Yet there have been six occasions in which there have been marked discrepancies between exit-polls and the official count in US presidential elections. "In each," per Freeman & Bleifuss, "the official count benefited the mainstream Republican candidate…, and…in five out of the six elections, the candidate whose official numbers far exceeded exit-poll results was named George Bush."
[ii] Per former White House Counsel John Dean, the operation of this assassination unit likely violates an executive order issued by Pres. Ford and is probably a war crime.
[iii] The term "revolutionary power" comes from Henry Kissinger's 1957 doctoral thesis, A World Restored. It was applied to the Bush cabal by Paul Krugman in The Great Unraveling (2004). Its applicability was underscored when, during the 2000 election, every Republican member of Congress was given a Karl Rove-inscribed copy of David Horowitz's Art of Political War. The book instructs its readers to follow Lenin's injunction: "In political conflicts, the goal is not to refute your opponent's argument, but to wipe him from the face of the earth." See, Sheldon Rampton & John Stauber, Banana Republicans (2004).
[iv] As observed by retired General William Odom, the idea of conducting a war on terror is nonsensical. "Terrorism is not an enemy. It cannot be defeated. It's a tactic. It's about as sensible to say we declare war on night attacks and expect we're going to win that war." The real utility of a "global war on terror" is that it is a war without end; a justification for a permanent change toward dictatorial presidential power.
===
Ernest A. Canning has been an active member of the California State Bar since 1977 and has practiced in the fields of civil litigation and workers' compensation at both the trial and appellate levels. He graduated from Southwestern University School of Law where he served as a student director of the clinical studies department and authored a Law Review Article, Executive Privilege: Myths & Realities. He received an MA in political science at Cal State University Northridge and a BA in political science from UCLA. He's also a Vietnam vet (4th infantry, Central Highlands 1968).
Thursday, March 26, 2009
OBAMA-HOLDER: two extorted lying pussies...have never shown an interest in CHENEY'S WAR CRIMES committed against THOMAS S. BEAN?
Wednesday, March 25, 2009
Never...ever...jump to conclusions until you check all possibilities?
http://www.newsoftheweird.com/archive/index.html
Once again, a man was found to have climbed into the waste tank of an outdoor toilet, but according to a March report in the Twin Falls (Idaho) Times-News, the emergency crew seemed to accept his story that it was all a mistake and not a manifestation of perversion.
Rescuers from the town of Filer, Idaho, said the man told them he was just looking for his keys that he had accidentally dropped and had been in the tank for 15 minutes before help arrived.
The man declined to identify himself, and no official report was required, but after the man was hosed off by a fire truck, he "discovered" that his keys had been in his pocket all along, and he drove away. [Times-News, 3-6-09]
Once again, a man was found to have climbed into the waste tank of an outdoor toilet, but according to a March report in the Twin Falls (Idaho) Times-News, the emergency crew seemed to accept his story that it was all a mistake and not a manifestation of perversion.
Rescuers from the town of Filer, Idaho, said the man told them he was just looking for his keys that he had accidentally dropped and had been in the tank for 15 minutes before help arrived.
The man declined to identify himself, and no official report was required, but after the man was hosed off by a fire truck, he "discovered" that his keys had been in his pocket all along, and he drove away. [Times-News, 3-6-09]
THE AUDACITY OF MENDACITY
http://rawstory.com/news/2008/Turley_Obama_get_low_grade_on_0324.html
Turley: Cheney war crimes probe would be 'shortest in history'
David Edwards and Stephen C. Webster
Published: Tuesday March 24, 2009
President Barack Obama said all the right things on 60 Minutes, according to Jonathan Turley. But no mere verbal rebuff to the former vice president will see the law upheld.
If Obama would step out of the way and allow prosecutors to look at evidence of alleged Bush administration war crimes, "it would be the shortest investigation in history," Turley said on a Monday episode of MSNBC's The Rachel Maddow Show.
President Obama, appearing Sunday on the CBS news program, said the former vice president's policies on the treatment of prisoners captured in President Bush's terror war are "unsustainable" and had caused "incredible damage to our image and position in the world."
"The reason Obama seems very irritated by it is that he is responsible for the conversation," said Turley, a constitutional scholar and George Washington University professor. "Because he's the one that is blocking a criminal investigation of Vice President Cheney and President Bush and other Bush officials. It is like a bank robber calling up and asking him to debate bank robbery."
It was only Dec. 15 when the former vice president admitted he approved the interrogation tactics which many, including the international Red Cross, have called torture.
Even Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman Carl Levin (D-MI) called Cheney out for his remarks.
"When the Vice President of the United States says that he believes ... waterboarding is 'appropriate,' there is no other conclusion that I can reach other than I know it's a form of torture," said Sen. Levin. "It's been acknowledged as a form of torture I think since the Inquisition."
Former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice was the first top-ranking Bush administration official to admit that discussions on the techniques took place in 2002 and 2003.
"These are not just our values," said Turley. "They are the law.
"[Obama] should be saying, 'What you are describing is a crime.' And if he would allow an investigation to well-defined war crimes, Dick Cheney would not be making public statements. He would be surrounded by criminal defense counsel.
"...Rachel, let's be honest here. It is just as bad to prevent the investigation and prosecution of a war crime as its commission because you become part of it.
"... You know, some people say, what do you need, a film? We actually had films of us torturing people. So this would be the shortest investigation in history. You have Bush officials who have said that we tortured people. We have interrogators who have said we tortured people. The Red Cross has said it. A host of international organizations have said it.
"What is President Obama waiting for? And I‘m afraid the answer is, a convenient moment."
This video is from MSNBC's The Rachel Maddow Show, broadcast Mar. 23, 2009.
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http://tpmmuckraker.talkingpointsmemo.com/2009/03/does_obamas_approach_to_state_secrets_ape_bushs.php#more
Does Obama's Approach To State Secrets Ape Bush's?
By Zachary Roth -
March 25, 2009, 1:04PM
Is the Obama administration aping its predecessor by taking a dangerously broad view of state secrecy, enabling them to avoid revealing information about warrantless wiretaps and other controversial tactics in the war on terror?
The Washington Post raises the question today, but doesn't provide much of an answer.
The immediate issue is a lawsuit filed by an Oregon charity, suspected of funding terrorism, which alleges that the government's suspected illegal eavesdropping of board members violated the charity's rights. The Obama Justice Department, as we noted earlier this month, has argued that the lawsuit should be dismissed because it implicitly involves state secrets and therefore puts national security at risk -- an argument advanced by the Bush administration as well. And it has gone further, arguing that government lawyers can remove classified documents from the court's custody, in order to keep the charity from reviewing them.
During the campaign, Obama criticized the Bush administration for invoking the state secrets argument too often.
But the extent of the opposition among civil libertarians to the Obama Justice Department's approach isn't clear. The Post quotes a law professor at the University of California at Irvine,, who declares: "There has to be other ways to protect secret information without having to block accountability,"
And of course, the lawyer for the charity isn't happy. "This is an executive branch threat to exercise control over a judicial branch function," he tells the paper.
But the views of civil liberties groups like the ACLU aren't mentioned. The ACLU filed a lawsuit challenging the warrantless wiretap program (it was rejected by the Supreme Court last year) but its level of concern over the Obama Justice Department's approach to the Oregon charity case, or other cases, remains unclear.
We'll hope to fill in some of those blanks later today..
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http://atheonews.blogspot.com/2009/03/wall-street-celebrates-government.html
March 24, 2009
Wall Street celebrates government windfall for banks and big investors
By Barry Grey
24 March 2009
Wall Street erupted in a demonstration of euphoria and greed Monday as the Obama administration announced a plan to offload bankers' bad debts that amounts to an unprecedented looting of taxpayer funds to benefit the financial elite.
All of the major stock indexes soared as Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner laid out details of the administration's so-called Public-Private Investment Program—a euphemism for a scheme to bankroll private investment firms and guarantee them huge profits in return for buying failed home loans and securities from the banks at vastly inflated prices.
The masters of Wall Street, who have been driving up share prices in recent days—especially bank stocks—in anticipation of the roll-out of the program, were delighted to find that it not only met, but exceeded their expectations.
Hedge funds and private equity firms that participate in the scheme will put up as little as 5 percent of the capital to buy between $500 billion and $1 trillion of the banks' junk assets, with the government providing the rest in the form of $75-$100 billion in Treasury funds and low-cost loans from the Federal Reserve Board and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC). The loans will be guaranteed by the government, which will assume the overwhelming bulk of any losses.
Even though the bulk of the capital and financing will come from the government, the public-private investment funds set up under the scheme will be run by private investment firms, which will receive lucrative fees for dividing up the booty.
The banks cheered the deal because it will allow them, at their own discretion, to palm off their bad debts at prices many multiples of what they could currently fetch on the market. Since the government will bankroll the big investors and assume virtually all of the risk, the investors will be willing to pay inflated prices for the illiquid loans and securities in government-supervised auctions. They calculate that they can hold the assets until the housing market recovers and then sell them back to the financial markets at a return of 20 percent or more.
For their part, the banks will be able, at little cost, to cleanse their balance sheets of what is routinely referred to as "toxic waste," laying the basis for a big rise in their stock.
The entire scheme is voluntary.
No one on Wall Street is required to do anything—unless he judges there is a substantial profit to be made. There is no requirement that the banks increase their lending. They can choose to continue to hoard their government windfalls—as they have done thus far with the billions they've received in cash injections and government loans—in order to pressure the state for even more favorable terms.
Stocks opened sharply higher after Geithner's presentation of the plan to reporters Monday morning. They continued to rise throughout the day. The Dow Jones Industrial Average closed with a gain of 497 points, or 6.8 percent. It was the Dow's biggest one-day rise since October 28, bringing it 18.8 percent higher than its low earlier this month. The other major indexes—the Standard & Poor's 500 and the Nasdaq—registered similar gains.
It was, above all, a banner day for bank stocks.
Citigroup finished up 19 percent, Bank of America rose 26 percent, JPMorgan Chase closed 25 percent higher and Wells Fargo ended with a gain of 24 percent.
There was a political as well as an economic component to the jubilation on Wall Street. The plan and the related statements of top administration officials, beginning with Obama, were rightly taken to demonstrate that the Obama administration is nothing more than a direct instrument of the most powerful sections of the financial aristocracy.
Top administration economic officials and Obama himself spent the weekend reassuring Wall Street, which responded with fury to a bill passed by the House of Representatives taxing the bonuses of wealthy executives and traders at AIG and other bailed-out firms, that they did not support the measure and would impose no executive pay limits on firms that participated in the new bank bailout measure.
With Wall Street executives threatening to boycott the program unless they were given ironclad assurances that their fortunes would not be touched and there would be no "change in the rules" down the road, Geithner gave an interview that was published by the Wall Street Journal Monday morning pleading for hedge funds and banks to participate. "The Obama administration believes those provisions shouldn't apply to such broad programs [as the Public-Private Investment Plan] and an exception was made last month for participants in the Federal Reserve's consumer-lending facility," the newspaper reported.
The same issue carried a column by Geithner entitled "My Plan for Bad Bank Assets" which declared that "we need to be very careful not to discourage those investments the economy needs to recover from recession." It went on to equate protecting the million-dollar bonuses awarded by firms that have bilked the public for billions of dollars with defending "the rule of law." Geithner solemnly wrote that "when our government gives its word" to "responsible entrepreneurs and investors... we mean it."
In his press briefing Monday morning, he rejected any suggestion that the government might temporarily nationalize failing banks and declared, "We're going to do what's necessary to protect the system."
Obama, in remarks to the press on the toxic asset plan following a meeting with his top economic advisers, affirmed that it "will involve market participants who have every interest in making a profit."
In fact, the plan was drawn up in the closest consultation with the billionaire bankers and hedge fund managers who stand to profit from it. The Financial Times reported Monday:
"People close to the situation said the plan was the result of detailed talks between Treasury, banks, private equity groups and other investors over the past few weeks. Senior private equity executives said the key terms of the initiative unveiled on Monday went beyond their own wish-lists......
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http://www.whatdoesitmean.com/index1217.htm
March 25, 2009
US Calls For ‘Urgent’ NATO Help As Unemployment Set Soar Over 25%
By: Sorcha Faal, and as reported to her Western Subscribers (Traducción al Español abajo)
Kremlin sources are reporting today that during the secret meetings held last week between former Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev, President Obama and other White House officials in preparation for the first meeting of President Medvedev and Obama at next weeks G-20 London Summit, US Defense Secretary Robert Gates stated that the Americans was set to issue an ‘urgent’ plea for NATO troops to be deployed in the United States ahead of what they are saying will be a ‘summer of fear’ as economic riots are expected to erupt across North America.
This disturbing news coming from the new Obama administration over their fears of growing unrest in their country echo those of former US President George Bush, who as we had previously reported, told the Czech Prime Minister late last year that “We'll be there for you, if we survive.”, and which the US television network Fox inadvertently confirmed this past month.
New information coming from the United States does, indeed, support these fears as the latest unemployment figures show that nearly 15% of Americans are now jobless; an astounding number which is also expected to hit 25% by July, 2009 as the US sinks ever further into the economic abyss.
It is important to note that the ‘official’ US unemployment rate is listed at 7.6%, which is a figure designed solely for propaganda purposes based on the Bureau of Labor Statistics U-1, U-2, U-3, U-4 and U-5 reports, and not the most important U-6 report that gives the actual total of all unemployed persons in the United States, and which for February, 2009 was listed at 14.8%.
So dire have conditions deteriorated in the United States that one of their foremost experts, and future trends forecaster, Gerald Celente (who accurately predicted the 1987 stock market crash and the collapse of the Soviet Union) stated during his recent interview with Russia Today News Service that the US is facing an “Economic collapse the likes of which the World has never seen before.” Even worse, Celente stated that the United States is the most “depressed Nation on Earth”, that the American people are “desperate and fearful”, nearing the “end of their limits”, and as crime soars to “levels seen only in Third World countries” the United States will go into “full rebellion” beginning with a massive “tax revolt” by its citizens against their government.
International Monetary Fund Managing Director Dominique Strauss-Kahn has further warned that “The world is in a dire economic crisis that will push millions into poverty and unemployment, risking social unrest and even war.”
Russian economists further point out in these reports that the United States, Britain and Japanese stimulus plans involving the printing of Trillions of Dollars is ‘doomed to failure’, a sentiment echoed by the Governor of the Bank of England who has warned Prime Minister Brown that the United Kingdom is now broke and cannot afford another stimulus plan to revive their crippled economy.
These new reports also mesh with our March 20th report, “All Private Guns Will Be Confiscated By September 2009, US Tells Russia” wherein we stated about the US economy:
“Leading the United States to the shocking conclusion that their very survival is at risk has been the evaporation of 45 percent of the World’s wealth which has caused a rapid plunge in Global manufacturing leading to a 49 percent collapse in US trade exports which the International Monetary Fund is reported has caused the World’s economy to shrink for the first time in 60 years and has lead Canada’s Central Bank chief David Dodge to state the World is “facing a long and deep recession that will fundamentally alter the nature of capitalism.”
Also to note about the coming collapse of the US are the warnings issued by Igor Panarin, diplomatic professor in Russia's Ministry of Foreign Affairs, who “created a stir” this past November when he predicted that the troubled economy would cause the United States of America to collapse by spring 2009, and as we can read:
“Now Russian foreign policy Russian Foreign Policy Expert Igor Panarin Revises US Collapse Prediction: New Rationale, New Date expert Igor Panarin has moved the predicted U.S. collapse date forward to 2010 and cited new reasons for the country's projected demise.
The Russian Panarin, who is known as an information warfare specialist, has long believed that the United States will fail. Panarin first went public with his pessimistic prognostications in 1998. Interestingly enough, back then his predicted collapse timetable called for the US breakup as early as autumn 2009. In November, with the U.S. and world economies nosediving, Panarin startled the world with a grim prediction, published in Izvestia, that the US breakup was imminent. Due to widespread dissatisfaction with the economic crisis, the US would splinter into 6 distinct nations, as early as spring 2009, Panarin predicted.
Panarin issued a revised prediction Tuesday. The Russian foreign policy expert told students, professors, diplomats and invited press corps representatives at the Russian Diplomatic Academy that the breakup will occur before 2011. Panarin said President Obama will impose martial law on the citizens of the U.S. this year preceding the breakup.”
To the American people placing their hopes in President Obama to rescue them, and their Nation, from total economic collapse there remains no evidence to justify such feelings, especially when viewed from the light of facts showing that “Seven of the Obama campaign’s top 14 donors consisted of officers and employees of the same Wall Street firms charged time and again with looting the public and newly implicated in originating and/or bundling fraudulently made mortgages.”, and that since assuming office he has packed his administration with a virtual ‘who’s who’ of Wall Street insiders and greedy bankers.
Sadly though, there remains little evidence that the American people are preparing themselves for the catastrophes soon to befall them and who continue to believe the pronouncements of their corrupt leaders, and who as Gerald Celente has so pointedly remarked, gave these poor deluded souls such advice as “Go back to your offices.” to World Trade Center workers seeking to flee their burning buildings; “There are weapons of mass destruction in Iraq” to support their invasion of that country; “I have not had sex with that woman” to a Nation wanting the truth from their President…and too many others to count, but all adding up to the same conclusion…one would have to be certified as insane to ever believe anything they were told by this gang of criminals.
© March 25, 2009 EU and US all rights reserved
[Ed. Note: The United States government actively seeks to find, and silence, any and all opinions about the United States except those coming from authorized government and/or affiliated sources, of which we are not one. No interviews are granted and very little personal information is given about our contributors, or their sources, to protect their safety.] .
__________________________________________________
Senator Sanders Blocking Key Obama Nomination
By Ken Silverstein
I reported back in February on the case of Gary Gensler, the former Goldman Sachs employee and derivatives cheerleader who President Obama nominated to head the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC). Gensler’s nomination sailed through the Senate Agricultural Committee but Senator Bernie Sanders has placed a hold on the nomination (as has a second senator who is as yet unnamed). A statement from Sanders’s office said:
While Mr. Gensler is clearly an intelligent and knowledgeable person, I cannot support his nomination. Mr. Gensler worked with Sen. Phil Gramm and Alan Greenspan to exempt credit default swaps from regulation, which led to the collapse of A.I.G. and has resulted in the largest taxpayer bailout in U.S. history. He supported Gramm-Leach-Bliley, which allowed banks like Citigroup to become “too big to fail.” He worked to deregulate electronic energy trading, which led to the downfall of Enron and the spike in energy prices. At this moment in our history, we need an independent leader who will help create a new culture in the financial marketplace and move us away from the greed, recklessness and illegal behavior which has caused so much harm to our economy.
Turley: Cheney war crimes probe would be 'shortest in history'
David Edwards and Stephen C. Webster
Published: Tuesday March 24, 2009
President Barack Obama said all the right things on 60 Minutes, according to Jonathan Turley. But no mere verbal rebuff to the former vice president will see the law upheld.
If Obama would step out of the way and allow prosecutors to look at evidence of alleged Bush administration war crimes, "it would be the shortest investigation in history," Turley said on a Monday episode of MSNBC's The Rachel Maddow Show.
President Obama, appearing Sunday on the CBS news program, said the former vice president's policies on the treatment of prisoners captured in President Bush's terror war are "unsustainable" and had caused "incredible damage to our image and position in the world."
"The reason Obama seems very irritated by it is that he is responsible for the conversation," said Turley, a constitutional scholar and George Washington University professor. "Because he's the one that is blocking a criminal investigation of Vice President Cheney and President Bush and other Bush officials. It is like a bank robber calling up and asking him to debate bank robbery."
It was only Dec. 15 when the former vice president admitted he approved the interrogation tactics which many, including the international Red Cross, have called torture.
Even Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman Carl Levin (D-MI) called Cheney out for his remarks.
"When the Vice President of the United States says that he believes ... waterboarding is 'appropriate,' there is no other conclusion that I can reach other than I know it's a form of torture," said Sen. Levin. "It's been acknowledged as a form of torture I think since the Inquisition."
Former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice was the first top-ranking Bush administration official to admit that discussions on the techniques took place in 2002 and 2003.
"These are not just our values," said Turley. "They are the law.
"[Obama] should be saying, 'What you are describing is a crime.' And if he would allow an investigation to well-defined war crimes, Dick Cheney would not be making public statements. He would be surrounded by criminal defense counsel.
"...Rachel, let's be honest here. It is just as bad to prevent the investigation and prosecution of a war crime as its commission because you become part of it.
"... You know, some people say, what do you need, a film? We actually had films of us torturing people. So this would be the shortest investigation in history. You have Bush officials who have said that we tortured people. We have interrogators who have said we tortured people. The Red Cross has said it. A host of international organizations have said it.
"What is President Obama waiting for? And I‘m afraid the answer is, a convenient moment."
This video is from MSNBC's The Rachel Maddow Show, broadcast Mar. 23, 2009.
_________________________________________________________
http://tpmmuckraker.talkingpointsmemo.com/2009/03/does_obamas_approach_to_state_secrets_ape_bushs.php#more
Does Obama's Approach To State Secrets Ape Bush's?
By Zachary Roth -
March 25, 2009, 1:04PM
Is the Obama administration aping its predecessor by taking a dangerously broad view of state secrecy, enabling them to avoid revealing information about warrantless wiretaps and other controversial tactics in the war on terror?
The Washington Post raises the question today, but doesn't provide much of an answer.
The immediate issue is a lawsuit filed by an Oregon charity, suspected of funding terrorism, which alleges that the government's suspected illegal eavesdropping of board members violated the charity's rights. The Obama Justice Department, as we noted earlier this month, has argued that the lawsuit should be dismissed because it implicitly involves state secrets and therefore puts national security at risk -- an argument advanced by the Bush administration as well. And it has gone further, arguing that government lawyers can remove classified documents from the court's custody, in order to keep the charity from reviewing them.
During the campaign, Obama criticized the Bush administration for invoking the state secrets argument too often.
But the extent of the opposition among civil libertarians to the Obama Justice Department's approach isn't clear. The Post quotes a law professor at the University of California at Irvine,, who declares: "There has to be other ways to protect secret information without having to block accountability,"
And of course, the lawyer for the charity isn't happy. "This is an executive branch threat to exercise control over a judicial branch function," he tells the paper.
But the views of civil liberties groups like the ACLU aren't mentioned. The ACLU filed a lawsuit challenging the warrantless wiretap program (it was rejected by the Supreme Court last year) but its level of concern over the Obama Justice Department's approach to the Oregon charity case, or other cases, remains unclear.
We'll hope to fill in some of those blanks later today..
_____________________________________________________
http://atheonews.blogspot.com/2009/03/wall-street-celebrates-government.html
March 24, 2009
Wall Street celebrates government windfall for banks and big investors
By Barry Grey
24 March 2009
Wall Street erupted in a demonstration of euphoria and greed Monday as the Obama administration announced a plan to offload bankers' bad debts that amounts to an unprecedented looting of taxpayer funds to benefit the financial elite.
All of the major stock indexes soared as Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner laid out details of the administration's so-called Public-Private Investment Program—a euphemism for a scheme to bankroll private investment firms and guarantee them huge profits in return for buying failed home loans and securities from the banks at vastly inflated prices.
The masters of Wall Street, who have been driving up share prices in recent days—especially bank stocks—in anticipation of the roll-out of the program, were delighted to find that it not only met, but exceeded their expectations.
Hedge funds and private equity firms that participate in the scheme will put up as little as 5 percent of the capital to buy between $500 billion and $1 trillion of the banks' junk assets, with the government providing the rest in the form of $75-$100 billion in Treasury funds and low-cost loans from the Federal Reserve Board and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC). The loans will be guaranteed by the government, which will assume the overwhelming bulk of any losses.
Even though the bulk of the capital and financing will come from the government, the public-private investment funds set up under the scheme will be run by private investment firms, which will receive lucrative fees for dividing up the booty.
The banks cheered the deal because it will allow them, at their own discretion, to palm off their bad debts at prices many multiples of what they could currently fetch on the market. Since the government will bankroll the big investors and assume virtually all of the risk, the investors will be willing to pay inflated prices for the illiquid loans and securities in government-supervised auctions. They calculate that they can hold the assets until the housing market recovers and then sell them back to the financial markets at a return of 20 percent or more.
For their part, the banks will be able, at little cost, to cleanse their balance sheets of what is routinely referred to as "toxic waste," laying the basis for a big rise in their stock.
The entire scheme is voluntary.
No one on Wall Street is required to do anything—unless he judges there is a substantial profit to be made. There is no requirement that the banks increase their lending. They can choose to continue to hoard their government windfalls—as they have done thus far with the billions they've received in cash injections and government loans—in order to pressure the state for even more favorable terms.
Stocks opened sharply higher after Geithner's presentation of the plan to reporters Monday morning. They continued to rise throughout the day. The Dow Jones Industrial Average closed with a gain of 497 points, or 6.8 percent. It was the Dow's biggest one-day rise since October 28, bringing it 18.8 percent higher than its low earlier this month. The other major indexes—the Standard & Poor's 500 and the Nasdaq—registered similar gains.
It was, above all, a banner day for bank stocks.
Citigroup finished up 19 percent, Bank of America rose 26 percent, JPMorgan Chase closed 25 percent higher and Wells Fargo ended with a gain of 24 percent.
There was a political as well as an economic component to the jubilation on Wall Street. The plan and the related statements of top administration officials, beginning with Obama, were rightly taken to demonstrate that the Obama administration is nothing more than a direct instrument of the most powerful sections of the financial aristocracy.
Top administration economic officials and Obama himself spent the weekend reassuring Wall Street, which responded with fury to a bill passed by the House of Representatives taxing the bonuses of wealthy executives and traders at AIG and other bailed-out firms, that they did not support the measure and would impose no executive pay limits on firms that participated in the new bank bailout measure.
With Wall Street executives threatening to boycott the program unless they were given ironclad assurances that their fortunes would not be touched and there would be no "change in the rules" down the road, Geithner gave an interview that was published by the Wall Street Journal Monday morning pleading for hedge funds and banks to participate. "The Obama administration believes those provisions shouldn't apply to such broad programs [as the Public-Private Investment Plan] and an exception was made last month for participants in the Federal Reserve's consumer-lending facility," the newspaper reported.
The same issue carried a column by Geithner entitled "My Plan for Bad Bank Assets" which declared that "we need to be very careful not to discourage those investments the economy needs to recover from recession." It went on to equate protecting the million-dollar bonuses awarded by firms that have bilked the public for billions of dollars with defending "the rule of law." Geithner solemnly wrote that "when our government gives its word" to "responsible entrepreneurs and investors... we mean it."
In his press briefing Monday morning, he rejected any suggestion that the government might temporarily nationalize failing banks and declared, "We're going to do what's necessary to protect the system."
Obama, in remarks to the press on the toxic asset plan following a meeting with his top economic advisers, affirmed that it "will involve market participants who have every interest in making a profit."
In fact, the plan was drawn up in the closest consultation with the billionaire bankers and hedge fund managers who stand to profit from it. The Financial Times reported Monday:
"People close to the situation said the plan was the result of detailed talks between Treasury, banks, private equity groups and other investors over the past few weeks. Senior private equity executives said the key terms of the initiative unveiled on Monday went beyond their own wish-lists......
____________________________________________
http://www.whatdoesitmean.com/index1217.htm
March 25, 2009
US Calls For ‘Urgent’ NATO Help As Unemployment Set Soar Over 25%
By: Sorcha Faal, and as reported to her Western Subscribers (Traducción al Español abajo)
Kremlin sources are reporting today that during the secret meetings held last week between former Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev, President Obama and other White House officials in preparation for the first meeting of President Medvedev and Obama at next weeks G-20 London Summit, US Defense Secretary Robert Gates stated that the Americans was set to issue an ‘urgent’ plea for NATO troops to be deployed in the United States ahead of what they are saying will be a ‘summer of fear’ as economic riots are expected to erupt across North America.
This disturbing news coming from the new Obama administration over their fears of growing unrest in their country echo those of former US President George Bush, who as we had previously reported, told the Czech Prime Minister late last year that “We'll be there for you, if we survive.”, and which the US television network Fox inadvertently confirmed this past month.
New information coming from the United States does, indeed, support these fears as the latest unemployment figures show that nearly 15% of Americans are now jobless; an astounding number which is also expected to hit 25% by July, 2009 as the US sinks ever further into the economic abyss.
It is important to note that the ‘official’ US unemployment rate is listed at 7.6%, which is a figure designed solely for propaganda purposes based on the Bureau of Labor Statistics U-1, U-2, U-3, U-4 and U-5 reports, and not the most important U-6 report that gives the actual total of all unemployed persons in the United States, and which for February, 2009 was listed at 14.8%.
So dire have conditions deteriorated in the United States that one of their foremost experts, and future trends forecaster, Gerald Celente (who accurately predicted the 1987 stock market crash and the collapse of the Soviet Union) stated during his recent interview with Russia Today News Service that the US is facing an “Economic collapse the likes of which the World has never seen before.” Even worse, Celente stated that the United States is the most “depressed Nation on Earth”, that the American people are “desperate and fearful”, nearing the “end of their limits”, and as crime soars to “levels seen only in Third World countries” the United States will go into “full rebellion” beginning with a massive “tax revolt” by its citizens against their government.
International Monetary Fund Managing Director Dominique Strauss-Kahn has further warned that “The world is in a dire economic crisis that will push millions into poverty and unemployment, risking social unrest and even war.”
Russian economists further point out in these reports that the United States, Britain and Japanese stimulus plans involving the printing of Trillions of Dollars is ‘doomed to failure’, a sentiment echoed by the Governor of the Bank of England who has warned Prime Minister Brown that the United Kingdom is now broke and cannot afford another stimulus plan to revive their crippled economy.
These new reports also mesh with our March 20th report, “All Private Guns Will Be Confiscated By September 2009, US Tells Russia” wherein we stated about the US economy:
“Leading the United States to the shocking conclusion that their very survival is at risk has been the evaporation of 45 percent of the World’s wealth which has caused a rapid plunge in Global manufacturing leading to a 49 percent collapse in US trade exports which the International Monetary Fund is reported has caused the World’s economy to shrink for the first time in 60 years and has lead Canada’s Central Bank chief David Dodge to state the World is “facing a long and deep recession that will fundamentally alter the nature of capitalism.”
Also to note about the coming collapse of the US are the warnings issued by Igor Panarin, diplomatic professor in Russia's Ministry of Foreign Affairs, who “created a stir” this past November when he predicted that the troubled economy would cause the United States of America to collapse by spring 2009, and as we can read:
“Now Russian foreign policy Russian Foreign Policy Expert Igor Panarin Revises US Collapse Prediction: New Rationale, New Date expert Igor Panarin has moved the predicted U.S. collapse date forward to 2010 and cited new reasons for the country's projected demise.
The Russian Panarin, who is known as an information warfare specialist, has long believed that the United States will fail. Panarin first went public with his pessimistic prognostications in 1998. Interestingly enough, back then his predicted collapse timetable called for the US breakup as early as autumn 2009. In November, with the U.S. and world economies nosediving, Panarin startled the world with a grim prediction, published in Izvestia, that the US breakup was imminent. Due to widespread dissatisfaction with the economic crisis, the US would splinter into 6 distinct nations, as early as spring 2009, Panarin predicted.
Panarin issued a revised prediction Tuesday. The Russian foreign policy expert told students, professors, diplomats and invited press corps representatives at the Russian Diplomatic Academy that the breakup will occur before 2011. Panarin said President Obama will impose martial law on the citizens of the U.S. this year preceding the breakup.”
To the American people placing their hopes in President Obama to rescue them, and their Nation, from total economic collapse there remains no evidence to justify such feelings, especially when viewed from the light of facts showing that “Seven of the Obama campaign’s top 14 donors consisted of officers and employees of the same Wall Street firms charged time and again with looting the public and newly implicated in originating and/or bundling fraudulently made mortgages.”, and that since assuming office he has packed his administration with a virtual ‘who’s who’ of Wall Street insiders and greedy bankers.
Sadly though, there remains little evidence that the American people are preparing themselves for the catastrophes soon to befall them and who continue to believe the pronouncements of their corrupt leaders, and who as Gerald Celente has so pointedly remarked, gave these poor deluded souls such advice as “Go back to your offices.” to World Trade Center workers seeking to flee their burning buildings; “There are weapons of mass destruction in Iraq” to support their invasion of that country; “I have not had sex with that woman” to a Nation wanting the truth from their President…and too many others to count, but all adding up to the same conclusion…one would have to be certified as insane to ever believe anything they were told by this gang of criminals.
© March 25, 2009 EU and US all rights reserved
[Ed. Note: The United States government actively seeks to find, and silence, any and all opinions about the United States except those coming from authorized government and/or affiliated sources, of which we are not one. No interviews are granted and very little personal information is given about our contributors, or their sources, to protect their safety.] .
__________________________________________________
Senator Sanders Blocking Key Obama Nomination
By Ken Silverstein
I reported back in February on the case of Gary Gensler, the former Goldman Sachs employee and derivatives cheerleader who President Obama nominated to head the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC). Gensler’s nomination sailed through the Senate Agricultural Committee but Senator Bernie Sanders has placed a hold on the nomination (as has a second senator who is as yet unnamed). A statement from Sanders’s office said:
While Mr. Gensler is clearly an intelligent and knowledgeable person, I cannot support his nomination. Mr. Gensler worked with Sen. Phil Gramm and Alan Greenspan to exempt credit default swaps from regulation, which led to the collapse of A.I.G. and has resulted in the largest taxpayer bailout in U.S. history. He supported Gramm-Leach-Bliley, which allowed banks like Citigroup to become “too big to fail.” He worked to deregulate electronic energy trading, which led to the downfall of Enron and the spike in energy prices. At this moment in our history, we need an independent leader who will help create a new culture in the financial marketplace and move us away from the greed, recklessness and illegal behavior which has caused so much harm to our economy.
Tuesday, March 24, 2009
PONZI SCHEME SWINDLING and 9/11 flight school in Florida? MAD COW MORNING NEWS breaks open another can of worms
http://www.madcowprod.com/03202009.html
NOTE: click blogpost title above to get linked to DANIEL HOPSICKER'S MAD COW MORNING NEWS...see archive.
Bernie Madoff, Mini-M, & Mohamed Atta
New owner of 'terror' flight school in huge Ponzi scheme
March 20 2009
by Daniel Hopsicker
Another owner of the flight school in Venice Florida that trained Mohamed Atta and Marwan Al-Shehhi to fly is in trouble with the law; current owner Arthur G. Nadel, 75, was arrested recently for running a Ponzi scheme which methodically looted investors in his Sarasota-based hedge funds of more than $300 million.
Nadel's arrest marks the second time in recent years that the owner of Huffman Aviation, the FBO (fixed base of operations) at the Venice Airport has been involved in crimes traditionally associated with the Mob.
Ponzi schemes, of course, are a trademark Mafia specialty. So, too, is the crime of heroin trafficking in which previous owner Wally Hilliard was implicated.
Nadel may have stolen as much as $350 million from his hedge fund investors, many of them middle-class retirees who do not fit the typical hedge fund investor profile of wealthy people willing to risk their entire investment.
New York tabloids, already in overdrive on the story of Bernard Madoff, instantly dubbed Nadel Mini-M, for Mini-Madoff.
Before turning himself in late January, Nadel spent several weeks on the lam. Rumors spread that Nadel was already dead.
He wasn't... Instead he was flying above the clouds on a sleek luxury jet, from Sarasota to San Antonio to Los Angeles, San Francisco, and New Orleans. His high-end Learjet 31-A offers performance matched by few other civilian airplanes; it cruises comfortably at 500 miles an hour, and at an altitude of 51,000 feet,
A few questions no one is asking
Nadel was worried, he wrote, about being murdered. But not, we suspect, by one of the blue-haired widows from whom he stole millions.
For most of his life, Art Nadel was a "jazz pianist," meaning he played the piano in hotel lounges, not seen as a springboard to careers of looting at will.
Take a closer look at the Learjet he was flying before his arrest. Does that look like the ride of a piano player?
While previous owner Wallace J. Hilliard owned Huffman Aviation, and Mohamed Atta was taking flying lessons, DEA agents busted Hilliard’s Learjet carrying 43 lbs. of heroin. It was July 25, 2000, at the Orlando Executive Airport.
43 lbs of heroin is known in the trade, we have been told, as " heavy weight."
How did city officials in Venice allow the airport's mission-critical FBO to fall into the hands--not once but twice--of people otherwise engaged in organized crime?
How many small towns with barely ten thousand people “boast” a tiny local airport which play host to terrorist hijackers? Or been run by a heroin trafficker disguised as a flight school owner, or a man accused of stealing $300 million in a huge financial fraud?
Why do shadowy underworld figures have the permanent run of the airport in Venice, Florida?
It Happened in Venice
Before each man had purchased the major business at the tiny Venice Airport, neither Art Nadel nor Wally Hilliard’s background offered much in the way of clues indicating involvement with organized crime.
After Nadel went on the lam reporters discovered he had been a lawyer in New York who was disbarred in 1982 by the New York Supreme Court. Nadel 'kept' a client's $50,000 escrow check, and neglected to return it.
He was worried, at that time, according to Sarasota Private investigator Bill Warner (whose reporting on Nadel has outpaced the entire staff of the local Sarasota Herald-Tribune) over an unpaid $50,000 loan to a loan shark.
If Nadel was able to borrow $50,000 from a loan shark in New York in 1980, he already had connections with the Mob. Loan sharks are not listed in the New York City phone book.
For his part, Hilliard, who owned Huffman Aviation between 1999 and 2003, was an insurance executive who supposedly ‘retired’ to Florida in 1996 from Green Bay, Wisconsin, not a known hot-bed of Mafia activity.
Hilliard did have connections, however. Not with the Mob, perhaps, but with the CIA, through Myron DuBain, a World War II OSS/CIA operative who became the chairman of Fireman's Fund Insurance, which announced plans to acquire the insurance company founded by Hilliard back in 1982.
DuBain later founded a San Francisco supper club with oilman Gordon Getty and Reagan Secretary of State George Shultz; his "Pacific Institute" kept former Bush Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld busy in the 1990s.
"He needed a little alone time."
Nadel’s fraud began to unravel soon after he left his four-bedroom home for work on the morning of Jan. 14 and didn’t return. By that weekend the Federal Bureau of Investigation had joined local police to search for him.
Nadel's attorneys initially denied he was trying to run away. One of them told reporters, “He went away for a while just to be alone.”
But it was soon clear to all that Nadel was on the run.
Panicked and desperate investors began beseeching Sarasota police and the FBI to find and apprehend him.
Like Madoff, but in a smaller social arena, Art Nadel was considered a trusted and generous philanthropist in Sarasota. But unlike Madoff, many more "ordinary" and perhaps slightly less-sophisticated investors were devastated by Nadel’s Ponzi scheme.
The big question which people in this dire circumstance are understandably concerned with is simple:
"What happened to the money?"
"Fast planes, yep, and lots of hangars too!"
One answer has already become obvious. Nadel spent an enormous amount of money on airplanes and aviation facilities.
Nadel used proceeds from the fraud to purchase what he re-named the Venice Jet Center at the Venice Airport, the same building whose blue awning became well-known internationally after the 9/11 attack as the home of dozens of young Arab men suspected of being terrorists learned to fly.
His "passion for aviation" led him to illegally divert $4 million to the Venice Jet Center and Tradewind LLC, an aviation company he owns which has aircraft and hangars in Georgia and North Carolina.
Managers of Nadel’s hedge funds told clients that their money was gone; that the man behind it had vanished; and that they were frankly not real hopeful any of it would ever be recovered.
Strangely, however, there were two Florida law enforcement agencies which were seemingly unconcerned by Nadel’s disappearance.
The Sarasota County Sheriff's Office even announced it was ending its search for Nadel on the dubious ground that since the Florida financier's car had been found at a Sarasota airport, he wasn’t really missing.
According to a January 21 Associated Press story headlined “Authorities think money manager planned to vanish,” the Sarasota Sheriff’s Department reasoning was that Nadel, who had not yet been charged with any crime, had planned his own disappearance, and left on his own volition.
"He doesn't want to be found," shrugged a Sheriff’s Dept. spokesman.
Perhaps the Sheriff's Department didn't want him to be found. The man picked by Art Nadel to look after his interests at the Venice Airport, Roger Jernigan, worked for the Sarasota Sheriff’s Dept as a helicopter pilot until forced to resign under a cloud.
The second Florida law enforcement agency exhibiting strange behavior during the search for Art Nadel is the Florida Department of Law Enforcement, or FDLE.
And what they did deserves its own story.
NEXT: The War for Control of the Venice FL "Plaza"
_________________________
tommy:
Unknown to most is...BOB MUELLER AT FBI HQ has "got his fame face on" and has made a hell of a big dent against the POWER ELITE.
GOOD.
ABOUT TIME.
GOOD HUNTING BOYS.
I knew...in time...maybe...FBI MIGHT JUST START KICKING SOME ASS
FBI did MADOFF, STANFORD, PIMPS ON THE RUN...SWISS UBS OFFSHORE ACCOUNTS IMPLICATING CORRUPT CONGRESS...BIDENS SNARED IN STANFORD linked to Maddoff...more to come.
NOTE: click blogpost title above to get linked to DANIEL HOPSICKER'S MAD COW MORNING NEWS...see archive.
Bernie Madoff, Mini-M, & Mohamed Atta
New owner of 'terror' flight school in huge Ponzi scheme
March 20 2009
by Daniel Hopsicker
Another owner of the flight school in Venice Florida that trained Mohamed Atta and Marwan Al-Shehhi to fly is in trouble with the law; current owner Arthur G. Nadel, 75, was arrested recently for running a Ponzi scheme which methodically looted investors in his Sarasota-based hedge funds of more than $300 million.
Nadel's arrest marks the second time in recent years that the owner of Huffman Aviation, the FBO (fixed base of operations) at the Venice Airport has been involved in crimes traditionally associated with the Mob.
Ponzi schemes, of course, are a trademark Mafia specialty. So, too, is the crime of heroin trafficking in which previous owner Wally Hilliard was implicated.
Nadel may have stolen as much as $350 million from his hedge fund investors, many of them middle-class retirees who do not fit the typical hedge fund investor profile of wealthy people willing to risk their entire investment.
New York tabloids, already in overdrive on the story of Bernard Madoff, instantly dubbed Nadel Mini-M, for Mini-Madoff.
Before turning himself in late January, Nadel spent several weeks on the lam. Rumors spread that Nadel was already dead.
He wasn't... Instead he was flying above the clouds on a sleek luxury jet, from Sarasota to San Antonio to Los Angeles, San Francisco, and New Orleans. His high-end Learjet 31-A offers performance matched by few other civilian airplanes; it cruises comfortably at 500 miles an hour, and at an altitude of 51,000 feet,
A few questions no one is asking
Nadel was worried, he wrote, about being murdered. But not, we suspect, by one of the blue-haired widows from whom he stole millions.
For most of his life, Art Nadel was a "jazz pianist," meaning he played the piano in hotel lounges, not seen as a springboard to careers of looting at will.
Take a closer look at the Learjet he was flying before his arrest. Does that look like the ride of a piano player?
While previous owner Wallace J. Hilliard owned Huffman Aviation, and Mohamed Atta was taking flying lessons, DEA agents busted Hilliard’s Learjet carrying 43 lbs. of heroin. It was July 25, 2000, at the Orlando Executive Airport.
43 lbs of heroin is known in the trade, we have been told, as " heavy weight."
How did city officials in Venice allow the airport's mission-critical FBO to fall into the hands--not once but twice--of people otherwise engaged in organized crime?
How many small towns with barely ten thousand people “boast” a tiny local airport which play host to terrorist hijackers? Or been run by a heroin trafficker disguised as a flight school owner, or a man accused of stealing $300 million in a huge financial fraud?
Why do shadowy underworld figures have the permanent run of the airport in Venice, Florida?
It Happened in Venice
Before each man had purchased the major business at the tiny Venice Airport, neither Art Nadel nor Wally Hilliard’s background offered much in the way of clues indicating involvement with organized crime.
After Nadel went on the lam reporters discovered he had been a lawyer in New York who was disbarred in 1982 by the New York Supreme Court. Nadel 'kept' a client's $50,000 escrow check, and neglected to return it.
He was worried, at that time, according to Sarasota Private investigator Bill Warner (whose reporting on Nadel has outpaced the entire staff of the local Sarasota Herald-Tribune) over an unpaid $50,000 loan to a loan shark.
If Nadel was able to borrow $50,000 from a loan shark in New York in 1980, he already had connections with the Mob. Loan sharks are not listed in the New York City phone book.
For his part, Hilliard, who owned Huffman Aviation between 1999 and 2003, was an insurance executive who supposedly ‘retired’ to Florida in 1996 from Green Bay, Wisconsin, not a known hot-bed of Mafia activity.
Hilliard did have connections, however. Not with the Mob, perhaps, but with the CIA, through Myron DuBain, a World War II OSS/CIA operative who became the chairman of Fireman's Fund Insurance, which announced plans to acquire the insurance company founded by Hilliard back in 1982.
DuBain later founded a San Francisco supper club with oilman Gordon Getty and Reagan Secretary of State George Shultz; his "Pacific Institute" kept former Bush Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld busy in the 1990s.
"He needed a little alone time."
Nadel’s fraud began to unravel soon after he left his four-bedroom home for work on the morning of Jan. 14 and didn’t return. By that weekend the Federal Bureau of Investigation had joined local police to search for him.
Nadel's attorneys initially denied he was trying to run away. One of them told reporters, “He went away for a while just to be alone.”
But it was soon clear to all that Nadel was on the run.
Panicked and desperate investors began beseeching Sarasota police and the FBI to find and apprehend him.
Like Madoff, but in a smaller social arena, Art Nadel was considered a trusted and generous philanthropist in Sarasota. But unlike Madoff, many more "ordinary" and perhaps slightly less-sophisticated investors were devastated by Nadel’s Ponzi scheme.
The big question which people in this dire circumstance are understandably concerned with is simple:
"What happened to the money?"
"Fast planes, yep, and lots of hangars too!"
One answer has already become obvious. Nadel spent an enormous amount of money on airplanes and aviation facilities.
Nadel used proceeds from the fraud to purchase what he re-named the Venice Jet Center at the Venice Airport, the same building whose blue awning became well-known internationally after the 9/11 attack as the home of dozens of young Arab men suspected of being terrorists learned to fly.
His "passion for aviation" led him to illegally divert $4 million to the Venice Jet Center and Tradewind LLC, an aviation company he owns which has aircraft and hangars in Georgia and North Carolina.
Managers of Nadel’s hedge funds told clients that their money was gone; that the man behind it had vanished; and that they were frankly not real hopeful any of it would ever be recovered.
Strangely, however, there were two Florida law enforcement agencies which were seemingly unconcerned by Nadel’s disappearance.
The Sarasota County Sheriff's Office even announced it was ending its search for Nadel on the dubious ground that since the Florida financier's car had been found at a Sarasota airport, he wasn’t really missing.
According to a January 21 Associated Press story headlined “Authorities think money manager planned to vanish,” the Sarasota Sheriff’s Department reasoning was that Nadel, who had not yet been charged with any crime, had planned his own disappearance, and left on his own volition.
"He doesn't want to be found," shrugged a Sheriff’s Dept. spokesman.
Perhaps the Sheriff's Department didn't want him to be found. The man picked by Art Nadel to look after his interests at the Venice Airport, Roger Jernigan, worked for the Sarasota Sheriff’s Dept as a helicopter pilot until forced to resign under a cloud.
The second Florida law enforcement agency exhibiting strange behavior during the search for Art Nadel is the Florida Department of Law Enforcement, or FDLE.
And what they did deserves its own story.
NEXT: The War for Control of the Venice FL "Plaza"
_________________________
tommy:
Unknown to most is...BOB MUELLER AT FBI HQ has "got his fame face on" and has made a hell of a big dent against the POWER ELITE.
GOOD.
ABOUT TIME.
GOOD HUNTING BOYS.
I knew...in time...maybe...FBI MIGHT JUST START KICKING SOME ASS
FBI did MADOFF, STANFORD, PIMPS ON THE RUN...SWISS UBS OFFSHORE ACCOUNTS IMPLICATING CORRUPT CONGRESS...BIDENS SNARED IN STANFORD linked to Maddoff...more to come.
SWINDLING FUCKHEADS: Chris Story from MI--5 exposes CHENEY MAFIA STEALING QUEENS GOLD?
note: CLICK BLOGPOST TITLE ABOVE to get linked to INTERNATIONAL CURRENCY REVIEW where Chris Story breaks the news on the BUSH CRIME FAMILY TRILLION DOLLAR SWINDLE that destroyed America and the world's economy:
http://www.worldreports.org/news/203_wheels_coming_off_white_house_corruption_engine
...........
BUSH-CLINTON-CIA DRUG-TRAFFICKING LINKS TO STANFORD OPERATION
Next, you may by now have had a chance to read through the full text of the Complaint filed by the Securities and Exchange Commission on 16th February against R. Allen Stanford, James M. Davis, Laura Pendergest-Holt, Stanford International Bank Limited, Stanford Group Company and Stanford Capital Management LLC posted by this service on 12th March 2009.
This Bush-Clinton money laundry operation developed from the Tupelo and Memphis laundry used by the Clinton gang, and subsequently by the Bush gangsters when they were running 'Black' drug deliveries into Miami and Mena, Arkansas.
The Chief Investment Officer for Stanford, 35-year-old Laura Pendergest-Holt, who was also head of 'transfer operations', was arrested on 25th February and taken to a location near Houston described to us by a Houston-based source as 'super-secret'. Word from the source, based on 'inside' information, was that she was 'singing like a canary', and would be arraigned before a Federal Court on 27th February 2009. However, like 'Sir' Allen Stanford himself, this woman has in fact refused to cooperate with the special (not regular) FBI investigating team, and with the United States District Court for the Northern District of Texas, Dallas Division.
According to our sources, the 'transfer operations' involving colossal sums of money were those designated in the S.E.C. Complaint as 'Tier 3 Investments'. You can read how Stanford represented these investments by perusing the complete text of the Complaint [see Archive].
So what we have is another Bush-Clinton money laundry and criminal finance distribution operation handling drug proceeds ('Black Ops'), in the process of being closed down. And it will have been observed that 70-year-old Bernard L. Madoff pleaded guilty to all 11 counts against him, refusing to acknowledge that his operation was part of a much broader conspiracy (as was the case, given that Madoff was 'recruited' we understand, by the Bush Spider ['Die Spinne']).
As a result, Madoff, who will be sentenced in June, faces serving;
• 20 years for Securities Fraud (Count One);
• 5 years for Investment Adviser Fraud (Count Two);
• 20 years for Mail Fraud (Count Three);
• 5 years for Wire Fraud (Count Four);
• 20 years for international money laundering to promote specified unlawful activity (Count Five);
• 20 years for international money laundering to conceal and disguise the proceeds of specified unlawful activity (Count Six);
• 10 years for Money Laundering (Count Seven);
• 5 years for False Statements (Count Eight);
• 5 years for perjury (Count Nine);
• 20 years for making a false filing with the SEC (Count Ten); and:
• 20 years for theft from an employee benefit plan (Count Eleven).
REASON FOR REFUSAL TO IMPLICATE OTHERS: DEATH THREATS TO FAMILY MEMBERS
Obviously, in Madoff's case, the prospect of him dying in prison could not be higher. In the case of Pendergest-Holt, however, she would possibly expect to be freed by her 65th birthday if she had been prepared to implicate others (which she is reported to have done when 'singing like a canary' but this is inconsistent with the reported fact that she is 'not cooperating').
Assuming that she is not, we have:
--(a) Mr Madoff who would have nothing to lose (ostensibly) by cooperating, since his outcome would not be affected; and
--(b) Pendergest-Holt who could improve her prospects some, by cooperating. So why aren't these people (including Stanford who, it will be recalled, was picked up in Virginia, intelligence community country, after his Credit Card had been refused by a firm he approached to fly him privately to Antigua), cooperating with authorities?
There can be only one obvious explanation for this common factor: they have all been threatened: if you 'shop' other components of the Octopus, we'll murder your family members....
.....STANFORD OPERATIONS AND THE OCTOPUS
Whether Obama is or not, a photograph of Mr Obama and Stanford published by Wayne Madsen’s service on 19th February, and public domain intelligence to the effect that Stanford’s island base of Antigua has featured prominently as a center of operations for the Israeli-Russian mafiya, make it clear:
-- (a) that President Obama knew about Stanford before he came to office and
--(b) that Stanford’s activities, in which many governments have taken an interest for years, were unsavoury.
Stanford, who has been exposed as a long-time associate of the Bush Crime Family, has his Houston offices, Madsen reported, ‘directly across Westheimer Road in the part of the Galleria complex where the Carlyle Group offices are located. Coincidence? Not with the Bush criminal cartel’.
• On 18th March it was reported that Madsen was arrested while he was meeting a source with knowledge of Stanford’s connections, but both were later released.
According to ABC TV, in 2008 Mexican authorities seized one of Stanford’s private jets as part of an investigation into the Gulf Cartel by both the Mexican authorities and the FBI. Inside the cabin of the Gulfstream jet, police found cheques connected to drug cartel recipients. On 1st January 2009, the one-man-band accountant based in Antigua who had provided Stanford with ‘auditing’ and related services, died mysteriously just one day after the expiry of his contract with Stanford.
STANFORD ‘TOOK OVER’ FROM NORIEGA AGAINST WHOM LEHDER TESTIFIED
As previously reported, R. Allen Stanford ‘took over’ from Noriega, after Bush Sr. had double-crossed the Panamanian operative; and indeed, drug-running connections to Stanford are widely accessible in the public domain. Which brings in the covert DVD operative, Carlos Lehder Rivas, born in the United States of a Colombian mother and a German father.
Carlos Lehder began his life of crime as a low-level drug dealer in Michigan, and after doing time in jail for a drug-related car theft, Lehder ‘decided’ to seek his fortune in Colombia, according to the open ‘legend’. In reality, he was targeted and then recruited by or on behalf of the German ‘Black’ counterintelligence agency which is the heir of the Nazi Abwehr, Deutsche Verteidigungs Dienst (DVD), based in Dachau, near Munich, almost certainly with the knowledge or on the instructions of George H. W. Bush Sr., the top Godfather implementing long-range DVD criminalism strategy in the Americas.
As we have repeatedly mentioned, the headquarters building of the Central Intelligence Agency is named the George Bush Center for Intelligence, a simple fact which itself confirms the pinpoint accuracy of Congressman Dan Burton’s revealing admission above.
Lehder was so well-placed that when housed in a two-cell unit at the US Penitentiary in Marion, IL, he was given a telephone, which he used to contact aides to the then-Vice President George H. W. Bush, who had been in charge of the CIA during the early years of the Medellín Cartel. The Editor’s book The New Underworld Order develops intelligence to reveal that the Colombian drug cartels were in fact established with the close assistance of the CIA and that foreign operations inside the CIA (which turned out to be German and Soviet) were instrumental in their evolution....
......Yet when, following three years of US pressure on Colombia to adhere to an extradition treaty and turn Carlos Lehder Rivas over, he was finally extradited, Lehder was given kid-gloves treatment from the outset. For ‘public consumption’, the reason for this approach was that the Government wanted Sr. Lehder to testify against General Noriega, who had interfered with the George Bush Sr.-related drug operations in the region (i.e. Bush had double-crossed Noriega, as he always does, not the other way round).
In reality, Lehder’s evidence, as previously reported, was useless: and Mr Robert Merkle, the US Attorney at Tampa, Florida, at the time, who had prepared a Noriega indictment, believed that he had more than enough evidence against Noriega for any input from Lehder to be superfluous.
In the event, Carlos Lehder testified that he had had no direct contact with Noriega, although he acknowledged that the Medellín Cartel had paid millions of dollars to the Panamanian President. For much of his testimony against Noriega, Carlos Lehder Rivas in fact indulged in rambling tirades about US imperialism. This is routine among not only the ‘former’ Soviet apparatus, but among Nazi operatives, to this day. Anyone who doubts this fact should study the hatred tirades by Argentine Nazis against the United Kingdom, as part of the ongoing DVD-manipulated campaign by Argentina (which has failed) to acquire sovereignty over the Falkland Islands.
• In 1982, the Argentine junta was given the ‘green light’ by the secret German ‘Black’ penetration agent, George H. W. Bush Sr., then Vice President of the United States and in charge, therefore, of the National Security Council, to invade the Falklands.
LEHDER EXFILTRATED TO GERMANY UNDER CORRUPT 2000 ELECTION PAYOFF DEAL
When the time came for the 2000 US Presidential election to be stolen, ready money was needed to pay off the Democratic National Committee (which received a $32 million payoff) plus the judicial, law enforcement and legal parties whose cooperation suddenly became necessary and who were to be paid $8 million: whereupon Lehder was tapped in jail for the necessary $40 million in bribes.
The deal was that the top representative of the Bush Crime Family who required the ready cash (because of course the Bush Crime Family could not be expected to part with a single rotten cent of their own ill-gotten gains) would arrange for Lehder’s immediate exfiltration to GERMANY in exchange for Carlos Lehder Rivas extracting $40 million from a bank account on demand.
STANFORD LINKS TO FUND RUN BY BIDEN FAMILY MEMBERS
Recalling again that the Stanford tentacle of the Bush-Clinton-CIA money laundering and financial distribution network ‘took over from’ Noriega’s drug-trafficking operations, the revealing article entitled ‘Stanford has links to a fund run by the Bidens’ published in The Wall Street Journal on Tuesday, 24th February 2009, was clearly of more than incidental interest. The report stated:
‘A fund of hedge funds run by two members of Vice President Joe Biden’s family was marketed exclusively by companies controlled by financier R. Allen Stanford, who is facing Securities and Exchange Commission accusations of engaging in an $8.0 billion fraud’.
‘The $50 million fund was jointly branded between the Bidens’ Global Advisors and a Stanford Financial Group entity and was referred to as the Paradigm Stanford Capital Management Core Alternative Fund’. ‘Paradigm’ is a high-level Masonic key-word. Stanford-related firms marketed the fund to investors. Paradigm Global Investors is owned through a holding corporation by the Vice President’s son Hunter, and Joe Biden’s brother James, the newspaper stated.
Paradigm’s Attorney, Mr X. LoPresti, told The Wall Street Journal that ‘the fund has offered to turn over the $2.7 million investment it received from Mr Stanford’s firm in 2007 to a Court-appointed receiver in the SEC’s civil fraud case involving Mr Stanford’.
Crucially, Mr LoPresti told the newspaper that the Stanford entities put up the $2.7 million in seed money and marketed the (Paradigm) fund to investors. SEC records show that the fund, which was launched in June 2007, had 104 investors as of November 10, 2008, with assets of $49.8 million. Paradigm, based in New York, manages assets worth about $270 million.
Paradigm is/was mentioned on the website of a Stanford entity called Stanford Trust Company, as one of that firm’s ‘investment management strategies’.
Attorney LoPresti confirmed that under an agreement, the Stanford group was entitled to share in a proportion of the fund’s management and performance fees.
When the Bidens bought Paradigm in 2006, the purchase was accompanied by bitter litigation. A knowledgeable source separately references the sale of the MBNA Credit Card operation to the CIA’s very own Bank of America, the proceeds of which deal provided lubrication.
It will have been observed that if Stanford, a Fraudulent Finance operation, was marketing the Biden-owned Paradigm fund to investors, the owners and managers of the Paradigm entity, viz. members of Vice President Joe Biden’s family, may have been co-conspirators in the marketing of fraudulent securities to Americans in various US States. Wire Fraud. 20 years....
....CHINESE REPORTED TO HAVE OBTAINED LIEN ON FEDERAL RESERVE
By contrast, the Chinese Government, as noted above, went to the World Court in early March and obtained a lien on the Federal Reserve, we were informed. This was reportedly forthcoming after the Chinese parties had concluded that the Obama Administration had no more intention than its corrupt predecessor to meet its old financial obligations towards the Chinese, which relate to US undertakings made in the late 1930s for a 70-year period which has expired....
....The following information is therefore reported as received:
• 12th March 2009: Armed with the lien from the World Court, the Chinese Foreign Minister, Yang Jiechi, appeared in the Oval Office amid the cover story about tensions between American and Chinese ships in the South China Sea.
• 17th-18th March: Chinese reported to us to have received the first instalment payable by the United States as referenced above.
• 19th March: Unconfirmed rumour that, on the contrary, the Chinese Government had exercised its lien against the Federal Reserve. On our checking this out, the rumour was dismissed out of hand by knowledgeable sources.
• 20th March: Unconfirmed rumours of arrests in Washington, DC. The Editor is advised by several sources that $3 trillion ‘arrived’ at the Treasury. This is later amended to $4.0 trillion.
• 21st March: It is reported to the Editor that five officers at the Federal Reserve were arrested (see above) after having attempted to divert or steal $200 billion. Other sources said that two officials were arrested: but on 22nd March, separate sources confirm that the number of officials arrested was five.
• 22nd March: At around 5:00pm New York time, it is reported to us that the Chinese parties were paid $13 trillion by the US Government between Wednesday 18th and Friday 20th March 2009. The source provides confirmation of President Obama’s remarks, summarised above; and it is further reported that at least one Obama official was arrested on 20th March, indicating that suspicions of treachery within the Obama Administration are justified.
• 22nd March: About 20 minutes later, the following completely conflicting 'information' is made available to us:
• First, the Obama Treasury offered to pay the Chinese parties in Treasuries, an offer which the Chinese turned down flat.
• Secondly, President Obama or his officials then told the Chinese: in that case, we’ll pay you in cash (as suggested by the earlier report above).
• Thirdly, the Chinese said: ‘No way. Pay us in gold’.
• In the fourth place, the President or his officials responded:
‘There is no way we are going to pay you in gold’.
• Fifth: The Chinese responded: ‘We will only take gold’
(Unspoken: You fools are preparing your own hyperinflation and at the same time you are trying to sell trash Treasuries which no-one in the world wants to buy. Your currency is going to hell due to your own stupidity and to your successive attempts to avoid facing reality: and you want to pay us in Treasuries or cash? We have no confidence in either. We must be paid in gold).
• Sixth: President Obama or his officials responded: ‘No way. Take us to court. You’ll lose’. Which is probably true, since, if any of the foregoing sequence is accurate, the US Government had already offered to pay the Chinese in US Treasury instruments or cash.
The outcome of all this could have been that the Chinese finally accepted cash, as was implied by the original report. It should also be borne in mind either that the scenery has since changed, or that some of the so-called information is false, or that all of the information is false, or all of the above. However the foregoing provides a snapshot showing what may have been going on behind the scenes, beyond what the Editor knows because of the direct attempt to influence us to publish certain information, as detailed here and previously.
Certainly, if that information had been published, the consequences would have been severe. It may transpire that it needs to be published, given that Vice President Biden did not achieve his objectives on that occasion. The information implicating the Bush Crime Family in the CMKX theft is extremely damaging and may need to be publicised outside the Biden context.
KISSINGER AND BAKER RETURN FROM MOSCOW 'WITH GORBACHEV'
On 19th March, Bloomberg reported that President Obama had despatched Dr Henry ('call me Henny') Kissinger, the odious triple or quadruple+ DVD agent with the guttural German accent, and the Bush Crime Family's #1 fixer, James A. Baker II, to Moscow to 'talk to the Russians'. Following their meeting with President Medvedev and GRU-'Prime Minister' Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin in Moscow, Kissinger and Baker returned to Washington DC; and our sources believe that they were accompanied by Mikhail Gorbachev, the former Chief of the CPSU's Administrative Department under Yuri Andropov (Lieberman), whose real name is Korbach or Orbach.
• FACTS: The Administrative Department was the most powerful slot in the entire Soviet CPSU structure. Gorbachev occupied that slot as early as the beginning of the 1980s. This consummate Leninist deceiver has never changed his spots. He occupies a large suite of offices inside the Kremlin. The sudden arrival of the top Soviet in the Oval Office (see immediately below) after being brought to Washington by Kissinger and Baker, must be viewed as an ominous development.
SECRET MEETING BETWEEN OBAMA, BIDEN AND GORBACHEV
On Friday 20th March, a secret meeting took place in the White House between Mikhail Gorbachev, Presidnet Obama and Vice President Biden....
http://www.worldreports.org/news/203_wheels_coming_off_white_house_corruption_engine
...........
BUSH-CLINTON-CIA DRUG-TRAFFICKING LINKS TO STANFORD OPERATION
Next, you may by now have had a chance to read through the full text of the Complaint filed by the Securities and Exchange Commission on 16th February against R. Allen Stanford, James M. Davis, Laura Pendergest-Holt, Stanford International Bank Limited, Stanford Group Company and Stanford Capital Management LLC posted by this service on 12th March 2009.
This Bush-Clinton money laundry operation developed from the Tupelo and Memphis laundry used by the Clinton gang, and subsequently by the Bush gangsters when they were running 'Black' drug deliveries into Miami and Mena, Arkansas.
The Chief Investment Officer for Stanford, 35-year-old Laura Pendergest-Holt, who was also head of 'transfer operations', was arrested on 25th February and taken to a location near Houston described to us by a Houston-based source as 'super-secret'. Word from the source, based on 'inside' information, was that she was 'singing like a canary', and would be arraigned before a Federal Court on 27th February 2009. However, like 'Sir' Allen Stanford himself, this woman has in fact refused to cooperate with the special (not regular) FBI investigating team, and with the United States District Court for the Northern District of Texas, Dallas Division.
According to our sources, the 'transfer operations' involving colossal sums of money were those designated in the S.E.C. Complaint as 'Tier 3 Investments'. You can read how Stanford represented these investments by perusing the complete text of the Complaint [see Archive].
So what we have is another Bush-Clinton money laundry and criminal finance distribution operation handling drug proceeds ('Black Ops'), in the process of being closed down. And it will have been observed that 70-year-old Bernard L. Madoff pleaded guilty to all 11 counts against him, refusing to acknowledge that his operation was part of a much broader conspiracy (as was the case, given that Madoff was 'recruited' we understand, by the Bush Spider ['Die Spinne']).
As a result, Madoff, who will be sentenced in June, faces serving;
• 20 years for Securities Fraud (Count One);
• 5 years for Investment Adviser Fraud (Count Two);
• 20 years for Mail Fraud (Count Three);
• 5 years for Wire Fraud (Count Four);
• 20 years for international money laundering to promote specified unlawful activity (Count Five);
• 20 years for international money laundering to conceal and disguise the proceeds of specified unlawful activity (Count Six);
• 10 years for Money Laundering (Count Seven);
• 5 years for False Statements (Count Eight);
• 5 years for perjury (Count Nine);
• 20 years for making a false filing with the SEC (Count Ten); and:
• 20 years for theft from an employee benefit plan (Count Eleven).
REASON FOR REFUSAL TO IMPLICATE OTHERS: DEATH THREATS TO FAMILY MEMBERS
Obviously, in Madoff's case, the prospect of him dying in prison could not be higher. In the case of Pendergest-Holt, however, she would possibly expect to be freed by her 65th birthday if she had been prepared to implicate others (which she is reported to have done when 'singing like a canary' but this is inconsistent with the reported fact that she is 'not cooperating').
Assuming that she is not, we have:
--(a) Mr Madoff who would have nothing to lose (ostensibly) by cooperating, since his outcome would not be affected; and
--(b) Pendergest-Holt who could improve her prospects some, by cooperating. So why aren't these people (including Stanford who, it will be recalled, was picked up in Virginia, intelligence community country, after his Credit Card had been refused by a firm he approached to fly him privately to Antigua), cooperating with authorities?
There can be only one obvious explanation for this common factor: they have all been threatened: if you 'shop' other components of the Octopus, we'll murder your family members....
.....STANFORD OPERATIONS AND THE OCTOPUS
Whether Obama is or not, a photograph of Mr Obama and Stanford published by Wayne Madsen’s service on 19th February, and public domain intelligence to the effect that Stanford’s island base of Antigua has featured prominently as a center of operations for the Israeli-Russian mafiya, make it clear:
-- (a) that President Obama knew about Stanford before he came to office and
--(b) that Stanford’s activities, in which many governments have taken an interest for years, were unsavoury.
Stanford, who has been exposed as a long-time associate of the Bush Crime Family, has his Houston offices, Madsen reported, ‘directly across Westheimer Road in the part of the Galleria complex where the Carlyle Group offices are located. Coincidence? Not with the Bush criminal cartel’.
• On 18th March it was reported that Madsen was arrested while he was meeting a source with knowledge of Stanford’s connections, but both were later released.
According to ABC TV, in 2008 Mexican authorities seized one of Stanford’s private jets as part of an investigation into the Gulf Cartel by both the Mexican authorities and the FBI. Inside the cabin of the Gulfstream jet, police found cheques connected to drug cartel recipients. On 1st January 2009, the one-man-band accountant based in Antigua who had provided Stanford with ‘auditing’ and related services, died mysteriously just one day after the expiry of his contract with Stanford.
STANFORD ‘TOOK OVER’ FROM NORIEGA AGAINST WHOM LEHDER TESTIFIED
As previously reported, R. Allen Stanford ‘took over’ from Noriega, after Bush Sr. had double-crossed the Panamanian operative; and indeed, drug-running connections to Stanford are widely accessible in the public domain. Which brings in the covert DVD operative, Carlos Lehder Rivas, born in the United States of a Colombian mother and a German father.
Carlos Lehder began his life of crime as a low-level drug dealer in Michigan, and after doing time in jail for a drug-related car theft, Lehder ‘decided’ to seek his fortune in Colombia, according to the open ‘legend’. In reality, he was targeted and then recruited by or on behalf of the German ‘Black’ counterintelligence agency which is the heir of the Nazi Abwehr, Deutsche Verteidigungs Dienst (DVD), based in Dachau, near Munich, almost certainly with the knowledge or on the instructions of George H. W. Bush Sr., the top Godfather implementing long-range DVD criminalism strategy in the Americas.
As we have repeatedly mentioned, the headquarters building of the Central Intelligence Agency is named the George Bush Center for Intelligence, a simple fact which itself confirms the pinpoint accuracy of Congressman Dan Burton’s revealing admission above.
Lehder was so well-placed that when housed in a two-cell unit at the US Penitentiary in Marion, IL, he was given a telephone, which he used to contact aides to the then-Vice President George H. W. Bush, who had been in charge of the CIA during the early years of the Medellín Cartel. The Editor’s book The New Underworld Order develops intelligence to reveal that the Colombian drug cartels were in fact established with the close assistance of the CIA and that foreign operations inside the CIA (which turned out to be German and Soviet) were instrumental in their evolution....
......Yet when, following three years of US pressure on Colombia to adhere to an extradition treaty and turn Carlos Lehder Rivas over, he was finally extradited, Lehder was given kid-gloves treatment from the outset. For ‘public consumption’, the reason for this approach was that the Government wanted Sr. Lehder to testify against General Noriega, who had interfered with the George Bush Sr.-related drug operations in the region (i.e. Bush had double-crossed Noriega, as he always does, not the other way round).
In reality, Lehder’s evidence, as previously reported, was useless: and Mr Robert Merkle, the US Attorney at Tampa, Florida, at the time, who had prepared a Noriega indictment, believed that he had more than enough evidence against Noriega for any input from Lehder to be superfluous.
In the event, Carlos Lehder testified that he had had no direct contact with Noriega, although he acknowledged that the Medellín Cartel had paid millions of dollars to the Panamanian President. For much of his testimony against Noriega, Carlos Lehder Rivas in fact indulged in rambling tirades about US imperialism. This is routine among not only the ‘former’ Soviet apparatus, but among Nazi operatives, to this day. Anyone who doubts this fact should study the hatred tirades by Argentine Nazis against the United Kingdom, as part of the ongoing DVD-manipulated campaign by Argentina (which has failed) to acquire sovereignty over the Falkland Islands.
• In 1982, the Argentine junta was given the ‘green light’ by the secret German ‘Black’ penetration agent, George H. W. Bush Sr., then Vice President of the United States and in charge, therefore, of the National Security Council, to invade the Falklands.
LEHDER EXFILTRATED TO GERMANY UNDER CORRUPT 2000 ELECTION PAYOFF DEAL
When the time came for the 2000 US Presidential election to be stolen, ready money was needed to pay off the Democratic National Committee (which received a $32 million payoff) plus the judicial, law enforcement and legal parties whose cooperation suddenly became necessary and who were to be paid $8 million: whereupon Lehder was tapped in jail for the necessary $40 million in bribes.
The deal was that the top representative of the Bush Crime Family who required the ready cash (because of course the Bush Crime Family could not be expected to part with a single rotten cent of their own ill-gotten gains) would arrange for Lehder’s immediate exfiltration to GERMANY in exchange for Carlos Lehder Rivas extracting $40 million from a bank account on demand.
STANFORD LINKS TO FUND RUN BY BIDEN FAMILY MEMBERS
Recalling again that the Stanford tentacle of the Bush-Clinton-CIA money laundering and financial distribution network ‘took over from’ Noriega’s drug-trafficking operations, the revealing article entitled ‘Stanford has links to a fund run by the Bidens’ published in The Wall Street Journal on Tuesday, 24th February 2009, was clearly of more than incidental interest. The report stated:
‘A fund of hedge funds run by two members of Vice President Joe Biden’s family was marketed exclusively by companies controlled by financier R. Allen Stanford, who is facing Securities and Exchange Commission accusations of engaging in an $8.0 billion fraud’.
‘The $50 million fund was jointly branded between the Bidens’ Global Advisors and a Stanford Financial Group entity and was referred to as the Paradigm Stanford Capital Management Core Alternative Fund’. ‘Paradigm’ is a high-level Masonic key-word. Stanford-related firms marketed the fund to investors. Paradigm Global Investors is owned through a holding corporation by the Vice President’s son Hunter, and Joe Biden’s brother James, the newspaper stated.
Paradigm’s Attorney, Mr X. LoPresti, told The Wall Street Journal that ‘the fund has offered to turn over the $2.7 million investment it received from Mr Stanford’s firm in 2007 to a Court-appointed receiver in the SEC’s civil fraud case involving Mr Stanford’.
Crucially, Mr LoPresti told the newspaper that the Stanford entities put up the $2.7 million in seed money and marketed the (Paradigm) fund to investors. SEC records show that the fund, which was launched in June 2007, had 104 investors as of November 10, 2008, with assets of $49.8 million. Paradigm, based in New York, manages assets worth about $270 million.
Paradigm is/was mentioned on the website of a Stanford entity called Stanford Trust Company, as one of that firm’s ‘investment management strategies’.
Attorney LoPresti confirmed that under an agreement, the Stanford group was entitled to share in a proportion of the fund’s management and performance fees.
When the Bidens bought Paradigm in 2006, the purchase was accompanied by bitter litigation. A knowledgeable source separately references the sale of the MBNA Credit Card operation to the CIA’s very own Bank of America, the proceeds of which deal provided lubrication.
It will have been observed that if Stanford, a Fraudulent Finance operation, was marketing the Biden-owned Paradigm fund to investors, the owners and managers of the Paradigm entity, viz. members of Vice President Joe Biden’s family, may have been co-conspirators in the marketing of fraudulent securities to Americans in various US States. Wire Fraud. 20 years....
....CHINESE REPORTED TO HAVE OBTAINED LIEN ON FEDERAL RESERVE
By contrast, the Chinese Government, as noted above, went to the World Court in early March and obtained a lien on the Federal Reserve, we were informed. This was reportedly forthcoming after the Chinese parties had concluded that the Obama Administration had no more intention than its corrupt predecessor to meet its old financial obligations towards the Chinese, which relate to US undertakings made in the late 1930s for a 70-year period which has expired....
....The following information is therefore reported as received:
• 12th March 2009: Armed with the lien from the World Court, the Chinese Foreign Minister, Yang Jiechi, appeared in the Oval Office amid the cover story about tensions between American and Chinese ships in the South China Sea.
• 17th-18th March: Chinese reported to us to have received the first instalment payable by the United States as referenced above.
• 19th March: Unconfirmed rumour that, on the contrary, the Chinese Government had exercised its lien against the Federal Reserve. On our checking this out, the rumour was dismissed out of hand by knowledgeable sources.
• 20th March: Unconfirmed rumours of arrests in Washington, DC. The Editor is advised by several sources that $3 trillion ‘arrived’ at the Treasury. This is later amended to $4.0 trillion.
• 21st March: It is reported to the Editor that five officers at the Federal Reserve were arrested (see above) after having attempted to divert or steal $200 billion. Other sources said that two officials were arrested: but on 22nd March, separate sources confirm that the number of officials arrested was five.
• 22nd March: At around 5:00pm New York time, it is reported to us that the Chinese parties were paid $13 trillion by the US Government between Wednesday 18th and Friday 20th March 2009. The source provides confirmation of President Obama’s remarks, summarised above; and it is further reported that at least one Obama official was arrested on 20th March, indicating that suspicions of treachery within the Obama Administration are justified.
• 22nd March: About 20 minutes later, the following completely conflicting 'information' is made available to us:
• First, the Obama Treasury offered to pay the Chinese parties in Treasuries, an offer which the Chinese turned down flat.
• Secondly, President Obama or his officials then told the Chinese: in that case, we’ll pay you in cash (as suggested by the earlier report above).
• Thirdly, the Chinese said: ‘No way. Pay us in gold’.
• In the fourth place, the President or his officials responded:
‘There is no way we are going to pay you in gold’.
• Fifth: The Chinese responded: ‘We will only take gold’
(Unspoken: You fools are preparing your own hyperinflation and at the same time you are trying to sell trash Treasuries which no-one in the world wants to buy. Your currency is going to hell due to your own stupidity and to your successive attempts to avoid facing reality: and you want to pay us in Treasuries or cash? We have no confidence in either. We must be paid in gold).
• Sixth: President Obama or his officials responded: ‘No way. Take us to court. You’ll lose’. Which is probably true, since, if any of the foregoing sequence is accurate, the US Government had already offered to pay the Chinese in US Treasury instruments or cash.
The outcome of all this could have been that the Chinese finally accepted cash, as was implied by the original report. It should also be borne in mind either that the scenery has since changed, or that some of the so-called information is false, or that all of the information is false, or all of the above. However the foregoing provides a snapshot showing what may have been going on behind the scenes, beyond what the Editor knows because of the direct attempt to influence us to publish certain information, as detailed here and previously.
Certainly, if that information had been published, the consequences would have been severe. It may transpire that it needs to be published, given that Vice President Biden did not achieve his objectives on that occasion. The information implicating the Bush Crime Family in the CMKX theft is extremely damaging and may need to be publicised outside the Biden context.
KISSINGER AND BAKER RETURN FROM MOSCOW 'WITH GORBACHEV'
On 19th March, Bloomberg reported that President Obama had despatched Dr Henry ('call me Henny') Kissinger, the odious triple or quadruple+ DVD agent with the guttural German accent, and the Bush Crime Family's #1 fixer, James A. Baker II, to Moscow to 'talk to the Russians'. Following their meeting with President Medvedev and GRU-'Prime Minister' Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin in Moscow, Kissinger and Baker returned to Washington DC; and our sources believe that they were accompanied by Mikhail Gorbachev, the former Chief of the CPSU's Administrative Department under Yuri Andropov (Lieberman), whose real name is Korbach or Orbach.
• FACTS: The Administrative Department was the most powerful slot in the entire Soviet CPSU structure. Gorbachev occupied that slot as early as the beginning of the 1980s. This consummate Leninist deceiver has never changed his spots. He occupies a large suite of offices inside the Kremlin. The sudden arrival of the top Soviet in the Oval Office (see immediately below) after being brought to Washington by Kissinger and Baker, must be viewed as an ominous development.
SECRET MEETING BETWEEN OBAMA, BIDEN AND GORBACHEV
On Friday 20th March, a secret meeting took place in the White House between Mikhail Gorbachev, Presidnet Obama and Vice President Biden....
TARP FUNDS paid to congressional LYING COCKSUCKERS: what they show on paper ain't all the dough fed to congress offshore...Swiss UBS IRS violations?
http://www.newsweek.com/id/190363
There was plenty of outrage on Capitol Hill last week over the executive bonuses paid out by AIG after getting federal bailout money. But another money trail could make voters just as angry: the campaign dollars to members of Congress from banks and firms that have received billions via the Troubled Asset Relief Program.
A NEWSWEEK review of recent filings with the Federal Election Commission found that the political action committees of five big TARP recipients doled out $85,300 to members in the first two months of this year—with most of the cash going to those who serves on committees who oversee the TARP program.
Among them:
----Bank of America (which got $15 billion in bailout money) sent out $24,500 in the first two months of 2009, including $1,500 to House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer and another $15,000 to members of the House and Senate banking panels.
----Citigroup ($25 billion) dished out $29,620, including $2,500 to House GOPWhip Eric Cantor, who also got $10,000 from UBS which, while not a TARP recipient, got $5 billion in bailout funds as an AIG "counterparty."
"This certainly appears to be a case of TARP funds being recycled into campaign contributions," says Brett Kappel, a D.C. lawyer who tracks donations. (A spokesman for Cantor did not respond to requests for comment. A spokeswoman for Hoyer said it's his "policy to accept legal contributions.")
The cash flow is already causing angst inside the Beltway. "The last thing I want to do is wake up one morning and see our PAC check being burned on C-Span," said one bank lobbyist, who asked not to be identified because of the issue's sensitivity. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and House Financial Services chair Rep. Barney Frank both said recently they won't take donations from TARP recipients. But House Democratic fundraisers have quietly passed the word that the party's campaign committee will resume accepting them—down the road, though; not right now. Said one fundraiser, who also requested anonymity, "These are treacherous waters."
© 2009
_________________________
tommy:
Don't think that STENY HOYER, PELOSI, GOP SWINE...OTHERS...are selling out this cheap.
Nope.
Offshore bank accounts are not written about.
Offshore payoffs may have been exposed in the Swiss UBS--IRS violations case...but...uh...LOOKS LIKE HOLDER--OBAMA don't want to use that leverage to do what they want to do?
There was plenty of outrage on Capitol Hill last week over the executive bonuses paid out by AIG after getting federal bailout money. But another money trail could make voters just as angry: the campaign dollars to members of Congress from banks and firms that have received billions via the Troubled Asset Relief Program.
A NEWSWEEK review of recent filings with the Federal Election Commission found that the political action committees of five big TARP recipients doled out $85,300 to members in the first two months of this year—with most of the cash going to those who serves on committees who oversee the TARP program.
Among them:
----Bank of America (which got $15 billion in bailout money) sent out $24,500 in the first two months of 2009, including $1,500 to House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer and another $15,000 to members of the House and Senate banking panels.
----Citigroup ($25 billion) dished out $29,620, including $2,500 to House GOPWhip Eric Cantor, who also got $10,000 from UBS which, while not a TARP recipient, got $5 billion in bailout funds as an AIG "counterparty."
"This certainly appears to be a case of TARP funds being recycled into campaign contributions," says Brett Kappel, a D.C. lawyer who tracks donations. (A spokesman for Cantor did not respond to requests for comment. A spokeswoman for Hoyer said it's his "policy to accept legal contributions.")
The cash flow is already causing angst inside the Beltway. "The last thing I want to do is wake up one morning and see our PAC check being burned on C-Span," said one bank lobbyist, who asked not to be identified because of the issue's sensitivity. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and House Financial Services chair Rep. Barney Frank both said recently they won't take donations from TARP recipients. But House Democratic fundraisers have quietly passed the word that the party's campaign committee will resume accepting them—down the road, though; not right now. Said one fundraiser, who also requested anonymity, "These are treacherous waters."
© 2009
_________________________
tommy:
Don't think that STENY HOYER, PELOSI, GOP SWINE...OTHERS...are selling out this cheap.
Nope.
Offshore bank accounts are not written about.
Offshore payoffs may have been exposed in the Swiss UBS--IRS violations case...but...uh...LOOKS LIKE HOLDER--OBAMA don't want to use that leverage to do what they want to do?
FOX Fascism with a camera: in your face Dumbfuckery from luffa boy jackoff BILL O'REILLY
http://thinkprogress.org/2009/03/23/watters-ambush/
I Was Followed, Harassed, And Ambushed By Bill O’Reilly’s Producer
wattersf.jpg On March 1, ThinkProgress picked up on a story by News Hounds, which noted that Fox News host Bill O’Reilly — who has made controversial comments about rape victims in the past — was slated to speak at a March 19 fundraiser for the Alexa Foundation. The group is committed to supporting rape survivors.
Our post — which never criticized the Alexa Foundation — highlighted the fact that in the past, O’Reilly has implied that women who dress in a certain way or consume too much alcohol should perhaps expect to be raped. Here is what he said on his radio show on Aug. 2, 2006, about Jennifer Moore, an 18-year-old woman who was raped and murdered:
Now Moore, Jennifer Moore, 18, on her way to college. She was 5-foot-2, 105 pounds, wearing a miniskirt and a halter top with a bare midriff. Now, again, there you go. So every predator in the world is gonna pick that up at two in the morning. She’s walking by herself on the West Side Highway, and she gets picked up by a thug. All right. Now she’s out of her mind, drunk.
O’Reilly’s comments about Moore were part of a larger segment about the dangers of drunkenness. His other example was Mel Gibson going on a drunken tirade and yelling anti-Semitic comments. “I think it’s safe to say that if Mel Gibson didn’t get drunk, he wouldn’t be in this terrible situation he finds himself in,” said O’Reilly. “And if a young woman, 18-year-old Jennifer Moore of Harrington Park, NJ, didn’t get drunk, she’d be alive today.”
This weekend, while on vacation, I was ambushed by O’Reilly’s top hit man, producer Jesse Watters, who accosted me on the street and told me that because I highlighted O’Reilly’s comments, I was causing “pain and suffering” to rape victims and their families. He of course offered no proof to back up this claim, instead choosing to shout questions at me.
I expect O’Reilly to air this “interview” at some point this week, possibly as early as tonight. I have no expectation that he will show the entire altercation or give the entire story about what happened, so here is the full account, offering a glimpse inside the O’Reilly harrassment machine:
– The Stalking: Watters and his camera man accosted me at approximately 3:45 p.m. on Saturday, March 21, in Winchester, VA, which is a two-hour drive from Washington, DC. My friend and I were in this small town for a short weekend vacation and had told no one about where we were going. I can only infer that the two men staked out my apartment and then followed me for two hours. Looking back, my friend and I remember seeing their tan SUV following us for much of the trip.
– The Ambush: Shortly after checking into our lodgings, we emerged and immediately saw two men walking toward us calling out my name. Watters said he was from Fox News, but never said his or his companion’s name, nor did he say he was with The O’Reilly Factor.
– The Surprise Attack: Watters immediately began asking me why I was causing “pain and suffering” to the Alexa Foundation. He never gave me the context for his questions. Confused, I repeatedly asked him what he was talking about and whether he could refresh my memory, but he just continued shouting his question.
– The Evasion: I said that it was inappropriate for O’Reilly to imply that just because a woman may be drunk and/or dressed in a certain way, she should expect to be raped. Watters asked me whether I had listened to the interview (which I had) and claimed that O’Reilly had made the comments in the context of a commentary on Mel Gibson/drunkenness. When I tried to ascertain why he was attacking ThinkProgress in particular — even though other sites had also covered the story — he said that we were part of the “smear pipeline,” which also included the “Soros-funded” Media Matters. He ignored my comments when I asked if Fox News also smears people.
– Setting A Guilt Trap: Watters ended the charade by demanding that I look into the camera and apologize to the Alexa Foundation and rape victims. I told them that I don’t speak through Fox News and if someone from the Alexa Foundation would like to personally call me, I’d be happy to speak with that person.
– More Stalking: The camera man then continued to film me as I walked down the block. After a few minutes while I waited at the light to cross the street, Watters called him back and they left.
This weekend, we contacted Watters and Loren Hynes, who works in Media Relations at Fox. We have yet to receive a response from them, or anyone else at the network, on Saturday’s incident.
The main issue remains: O’Reilly should offer an apology/explanation of why, when a woman is raped and murdered, it’s relevant what she was wearing or how much she was drinking. O’Reilly never asked me for a statement nor invited me on his show before sending Watters to harass me. Since I’m a 5 ft, 100 pound woman with an opinion that he doesn’t like, perhaps O’Reilly believes I deserve to be treated this way.
_____________________________________________
I Was Followed, Harassed, And Ambushed By Bill O’Reilly’s Producer
wattersf.jpg On March 1, ThinkProgress picked up on a story by News Hounds, which noted that Fox News host Bill O’Reilly — who has made controversial comments about rape victims in the past — was slated to speak at a March 19 fundraiser for the Alexa Foundation. The group is committed to supporting rape survivors.
Our post — which never criticized the Alexa Foundation — highlighted the fact that in the past, O’Reilly has implied that women who dress in a certain way or consume too much alcohol should perhaps expect to be raped. Here is what he said on his radio show on Aug. 2, 2006, about Jennifer Moore, an 18-year-old woman who was raped and murdered:
Now Moore, Jennifer Moore, 18, on her way to college. She was 5-foot-2, 105 pounds, wearing a miniskirt and a halter top with a bare midriff. Now, again, there you go. So every predator in the world is gonna pick that up at two in the morning. She’s walking by herself on the West Side Highway, and she gets picked up by a thug. All right. Now she’s out of her mind, drunk.
O’Reilly’s comments about Moore were part of a larger segment about the dangers of drunkenness. His other example was Mel Gibson going on a drunken tirade and yelling anti-Semitic comments. “I think it’s safe to say that if Mel Gibson didn’t get drunk, he wouldn’t be in this terrible situation he finds himself in,” said O’Reilly. “And if a young woman, 18-year-old Jennifer Moore of Harrington Park, NJ, didn’t get drunk, she’d be alive today.”
This weekend, while on vacation, I was ambushed by O’Reilly’s top hit man, producer Jesse Watters, who accosted me on the street and told me that because I highlighted O’Reilly’s comments, I was causing “pain and suffering” to rape victims and their families. He of course offered no proof to back up this claim, instead choosing to shout questions at me.
I expect O’Reilly to air this “interview” at some point this week, possibly as early as tonight. I have no expectation that he will show the entire altercation or give the entire story about what happened, so here is the full account, offering a glimpse inside the O’Reilly harrassment machine:
– The Stalking: Watters and his camera man accosted me at approximately 3:45 p.m. on Saturday, March 21, in Winchester, VA, which is a two-hour drive from Washington, DC. My friend and I were in this small town for a short weekend vacation and had told no one about where we were going. I can only infer that the two men staked out my apartment and then followed me for two hours. Looking back, my friend and I remember seeing their tan SUV following us for much of the trip.
– The Ambush: Shortly after checking into our lodgings, we emerged and immediately saw two men walking toward us calling out my name. Watters said he was from Fox News, but never said his or his companion’s name, nor did he say he was with The O’Reilly Factor.
– The Surprise Attack: Watters immediately began asking me why I was causing “pain and suffering” to the Alexa Foundation. He never gave me the context for his questions. Confused, I repeatedly asked him what he was talking about and whether he could refresh my memory, but he just continued shouting his question.
– The Evasion: I said that it was inappropriate for O’Reilly to imply that just because a woman may be drunk and/or dressed in a certain way, she should expect to be raped. Watters asked me whether I had listened to the interview (which I had) and claimed that O’Reilly had made the comments in the context of a commentary on Mel Gibson/drunkenness. When I tried to ascertain why he was attacking ThinkProgress in particular — even though other sites had also covered the story — he said that we were part of the “smear pipeline,” which also included the “Soros-funded” Media Matters. He ignored my comments when I asked if Fox News also smears people.
– Setting A Guilt Trap: Watters ended the charade by demanding that I look into the camera and apologize to the Alexa Foundation and rape victims. I told them that I don’t speak through Fox News and if someone from the Alexa Foundation would like to personally call me, I’d be happy to speak with that person.
– More Stalking: The camera man then continued to film me as I walked down the block. After a few minutes while I waited at the light to cross the street, Watters called him back and they left.
This weekend, we contacted Watters and Loren Hynes, who works in Media Relations at Fox. We have yet to receive a response from them, or anyone else at the network, on Saturday’s incident.
The main issue remains: O’Reilly should offer an apology/explanation of why, when a woman is raped and murdered, it’s relevant what she was wearing or how much she was drinking. O’Reilly never asked me for a statement nor invited me on his show before sending Watters to harass me. Since I’m a 5 ft, 100 pound woman with an opinion that he doesn’t like, perhaps O’Reilly believes I deserve to be treated this way.
_____________________________________________
FAILURE IS SUCCESS: how military swine JEOPARDIZED NATIONAL SECURITY to make more money: Stealth Bomber radar scam
B-2 Bomber Radar Spectrum Accidentally Sold, Adds to Military Bandwidth Woes
Jason Mick (Blog) -
March 23, 2009 11:56 AM
Costly blunders and redesigns all part of military networking growth pains
The U.S. military originally had a virtual monopoly of certain communications channels. It was one of the few entities to be using internet, and it used many areas of the spectrum untouched by civilian communications. However, with the digital revolution and the expansion of civilians onto the internet and increasing using of the digital spectrum, the military is finding adapting to the deprivation of these bands difficult.
Last year during the bandwidth auction, the portion of the spectrum used by the B-2 bomber's Raytheon APQ-181 radar was accidentally sold to an obscure multinational organization according to Military.com. As a result, U.S. taxpayers will be footing the over $1B USD bill to replace the radar in the 20 remaining jets.
With users demanding video-ready smartphones, high-speed mobile internet, and other emerging applications, the military is finding that the spectrum is quickly disappearing, and it’s having trouble finding areas for its own sensitive technologies.
Other expensive losses abound. The Joint Tactical Information Distribution System, a costly system used to get AWACS targeting data to F-22 fighter jets has "limited supportability outside the continental U.S."
Another key issue is the steady creep of civilian communications into the spectrum used for flight-test telemetry. While there are workarounds to gather some additional information, telemetry data remains essential to testing both manned and unmanned aircraft and protecting pilots from failures.
Ultimately, more data takes more bandwidth -- an unalterable fact -- and to achieve higher frequencies more power is required. This places inherent limitations to the amount of data capable of being communicated over the spectrum.
Military designers are in a sticky situation as they can't compress their data, in many cases, like civilian applications. "This is not a cell phone,” said Darrell Ernst. "You can't ask the pilot to wait while you redial."
Ernst works for the Mitre Corp., a member of a U.S.-European delegation trying to raise international awareness of bandwidth issues, and estimates that by 2020 the Air Force will need 600 MHz of spectrum for telemetry data. Currently the only vacant spot suggested to them is the 5091 and 5150 MHz band. The Air Force is eager to occupy even this meager 59 MHz offer. States Mr. Ernst, "If [the flight-test community] can get in there and start using it, we can be established as the primary user and it will be hard for them to throw us out."
When it comes to the spectrum issues, there are few good answers, just more fears and doubts. As a final example of the industry problems, when the Joint Strike Fighter (JSF) test program is flying two missions no other combat aircraft will be able to fly in the Western U.S. States Mr. Ernst, "They're the 600-lb. gorilla. They don't see that they have any reason to move, and they don't have the radios to do it."
Jason Mick (Blog) -
March 23, 2009 11:56 AM
Costly blunders and redesigns all part of military networking growth pains
The U.S. military originally had a virtual monopoly of certain communications channels. It was one of the few entities to be using internet, and it used many areas of the spectrum untouched by civilian communications. However, with the digital revolution and the expansion of civilians onto the internet and increasing using of the digital spectrum, the military is finding adapting to the deprivation of these bands difficult.
Last year during the bandwidth auction, the portion of the spectrum used by the B-2 bomber's Raytheon APQ-181 radar was accidentally sold to an obscure multinational organization according to Military.com. As a result, U.S. taxpayers will be footing the over $1B USD bill to replace the radar in the 20 remaining jets.
With users demanding video-ready smartphones, high-speed mobile internet, and other emerging applications, the military is finding that the spectrum is quickly disappearing, and it’s having trouble finding areas for its own sensitive technologies.
Other expensive losses abound. The Joint Tactical Information Distribution System, a costly system used to get AWACS targeting data to F-22 fighter jets has "limited supportability outside the continental U.S."
Another key issue is the steady creep of civilian communications into the spectrum used for flight-test telemetry. While there are workarounds to gather some additional information, telemetry data remains essential to testing both manned and unmanned aircraft and protecting pilots from failures.
Ultimately, more data takes more bandwidth -- an unalterable fact -- and to achieve higher frequencies more power is required. This places inherent limitations to the amount of data capable of being communicated over the spectrum.
Military designers are in a sticky situation as they can't compress their data, in many cases, like civilian applications. "This is not a cell phone,” said Darrell Ernst. "You can't ask the pilot to wait while you redial."
Ernst works for the Mitre Corp., a member of a U.S.-European delegation trying to raise international awareness of bandwidth issues, and estimates that by 2020 the Air Force will need 600 MHz of spectrum for telemetry data. Currently the only vacant spot suggested to them is the 5091 and 5150 MHz band. The Air Force is eager to occupy even this meager 59 MHz offer. States Mr. Ernst, "If [the flight-test community] can get in there and start using it, we can be established as the primary user and it will be hard for them to throw us out."
When it comes to the spectrum issues, there are few good answers, just more fears and doubts. As a final example of the industry problems, when the Joint Strike Fighter (JSF) test program is flying two missions no other combat aircraft will be able to fly in the Western U.S. States Mr. Ernst, "They're the 600-lb. gorilla. They don't see that they have any reason to move, and they don't have the radios to do it."
Good website on VINCE FOSTER MURDER COVERUP
http://www.fbicover-up.com/
Click blogpost title above to find website from PAT KNOWLTON, a Ken Starr subpoenaed witness who "did not buckle under" to the FBI's ONGOING PATTERN AND PRACTISE OF VIOLATING THE PROHIBITION ON SUBORNING PERJURY, OBSTRUCTION OF JUSTICE, MISPRISON OF A FELONY, TAMPERING WITH A WITNESS, CONSPIRACY.
This site has some audio from ASS. US ATTY MIQUEL RODRIGUEZ who was the honest whistleblower on this....so...uh...take a look mainstream media faggot act. See what stories you have been avoiding like the pathetic pussified fuckstick ferries you all enjoy personifying while pretending to "speak for the news".
Click blogpost title above to find website from PAT KNOWLTON, a Ken Starr subpoenaed witness who "did not buckle under" to the FBI's ONGOING PATTERN AND PRACTISE OF VIOLATING THE PROHIBITION ON SUBORNING PERJURY, OBSTRUCTION OF JUSTICE, MISPRISON OF A FELONY, TAMPERING WITH A WITNESS, CONSPIRACY.
This site has some audio from ASS. US ATTY MIQUEL RODRIGUEZ who was the honest whistleblower on this....so...uh...take a look mainstream media faggot act. See what stories you have been avoiding like the pathetic pussified fuckstick ferries you all enjoy personifying while pretending to "speak for the news".
Foreigners....get AIG swindle money...as front men for corrupt congress?
Cuomo: Most AIG Bonus Money Went To Foreigners
By Zachary Roth -
March 23, 2009, 6:39PM
Nine of the top ten AIG bonus recipients have given back the payouts, according to Andrew Cuomo, the New York Attorney General who is probing the issue.
Cuomo also said, on a conference call this afternoon, that 15 of the top 20 bonus recipients from the firm's financial products unit, which is at the center of the bonus furor after causing the company's collapse last year, have returned their awards.
But he added something else that may wind up being less exculpatory for AIG: 47 percent of the $165 million in retention bonuses was awarded to Americans, he said, declaring that he expected to get that money back. That means 53 percent -- around $87 million -- of taxpayer money went to foreigners, and is unlikely to be recouped.
Cuomo said he didn't think it would be in the public interest to release the names of those who gave back the bonuses, and that his office is still assessing the risks of releasing any names at all.
By Zachary Roth -
March 23, 2009, 6:39PM
Nine of the top ten AIG bonus recipients have given back the payouts, according to Andrew Cuomo, the New York Attorney General who is probing the issue.
Cuomo also said, on a conference call this afternoon, that 15 of the top 20 bonus recipients from the firm's financial products unit, which is at the center of the bonus furor after causing the company's collapse last year, have returned their awards.
But he added something else that may wind up being less exculpatory for AIG: 47 percent of the $165 million in retention bonuses was awarded to Americans, he said, declaring that he expected to get that money back. That means 53 percent -- around $87 million -- of taxpayer money went to foreigners, and is unlikely to be recouped.
Cuomo said he didn't think it would be in the public interest to release the names of those who gave back the bonuses, and that his office is still assessing the risks of releasing any names at all.
Monday, March 23, 2009
AIG...CIA DRUG MONEY LAUNDERING...MOSSAD...GREENBURG...9/11 PUT OPTIONS...FBI RAID ON BUZZY KRONGARD
http://www.fromthewilderness.com/free/ww3/10_09_01_krongard.html
SUPPRESSED DETAILS OF CRIMINAL INSIDER TRADING LEAD DIRECTLY INTO THE CIA's HIGHEST RANKS
CIA EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR "BUZZY" KRONGARD MANAGED FIRM THAT HANDLED "PUT" OPTIONS ON UAL
by
Michael C. Ruppert
[© COPYRIGHT, 2001, Michael C. Ruppert and FTW Publications, www.copvcia.com. All Rights Reserved. - May be reprinted or distributed for non-profit purposes only.]
FTW, October 9, 2001 - Although uniformly ignored by the mainstream U.S. media, there is abundant and clear evidence that a number of transactions in financial markets indicated specific (criminal) foreknowledge of the September 11 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. In the case of at least one of these trades -- which has left a $2.5 million prize unclaimed -- the firm used to place the "put options" on United Airlines stock was, until 1998, managed by the man who is now in the number three Executive Director position at the Central Intelligence Agency.
Until 1997 A.B. "Buzzy" Krongard had been Chairman of the investment bank A.B. Brown. A.B. Brown was acquired by Banker's Trust in 1997. Krongard then became, as part of the merger, Vice Chairman of Banker's Trust-AB Brown, one of 20 major U.S. banks named by Senator Carl Levin this year as being connected to money laundering. Krongard's last position at Banker's Trust (BT) was to oversee "private client relations." In this capacity he had direct hands-on relations with some of the wealthiest people in the world in a kind of specialized banking operation that has been identified by the U.S. Senate and other investigators as being closely connected to the laundering of drug money.
Krongard (re?) joined the CIA in 1998 as counsel to CIA Director George Tenet. He was promoted to CIA Executive Director by President Bush in March of this year. BT was acquired by Deutsche Bank in 1999. The combined firm is the single largest bank in Europe. And, as we shall see, Deutsche Bank played several key roles in events connected to the September 11 attacks.
THE SCOPE OF KNOWN INSIDER TRADING
Before looking further into these relationships it is necessary to look at the insider trading information that is being ignored by Reuters, The New York Times and other mass media. It is well documented that the CIA has long monitored such trades - in real time - as potential warnings of terrorist attacks and other economic moves contrary to U.S. interests. Previous stories in FTW have specifically highlighted the use of Promis software to monitor such trades.
It is necessary to understand only two key financial terms to understand the significance of these trades, "selling short" and "put options".
"Selling Short" is the borrowing of stock, selling it at current market prices, but not being required to actually produce the stock for some time. If the stock falls precipitously after the short contract is entered, the seller can then fulfill the contract by buying the stock after the price has fallen and complete the contract at the pre-crash price. These contracts often have a window of as long as four months.
"Put Options," are contracts giving the buyer the option to sell stocks at a later date. Purchased at nominal prices of, for example, $1.00 per share, they are sold in blocks of 100 shares. If exercised, they give the holder the option of selling selected stocks at a future date at a price set when the contract is issued. Thus, for an investment of $10,000 it might be possible to tie up 10,000 shares of United or American Airlines at $100 per share, and the seller of the option is then obligated to buy them if the option is executed. If the stock has fallen to $50 when the contract matures, the holder of the option can purchase the shares for $50 and immediately sell them for $100 - regardless of where the market then stands. A call option is the reverse of a put option, which is, in effect, a derivatives bet that the stock price will go up.
A September 21 story by the Israeli Herzliyya International Policy Institute for Counterterrorism, entitled "Black Tuesday: The World's Largest Insider Trading Scam?" documented the following trades connected to the September 11 attacks:
- Between September 6 and 7, the Chicago Board Options Exchange saw purchases of 4,744 put options on United Airlines, but only 396 call options. Assuming that 4,000 of the options were bought by people with advance knowledge of the imminent attacks, these "insiders" would have profited by almost $5 million.
- On September 10, 4,516 put options on American Airlines were bought on the Chicago exchange, compared to only 748 calls. Again, there was no news at that point to justify this imbalance; Again, assuming that 4,000 of these options trades represent "insiders," they would represent a gain of about $4 million.
- [The levels of put options purchased above were more than six times higher than normal.]
- No similar trading in other airlines occurred on the Chicago exchange in the days immediately preceding Black Tuesday.
- Morgan Stanley Dean Witter & Co., which occupied 22 floors of the World Trade Center, saw 2,157 of its October $45 put options bought in the three trading days before Black Tuesday; this compares to an average of 27 contracts per day before September 6. Morgan Stanley's share price fell from $48.90 to $42.50 in the aftermath of the attacks. Assuming that 2,000 of these options contracts were bought based upon knowledge of the approaching attacks, their purchasers could have profited by at least $1.2 million.
- Merrill Lynch & Co., with headquarters near the Twin Towers, saw 12,215 October $45 put options bought in the four trading days before the attacks; the previous average volume in those shares had been 252 contracts per day [a 1200% increase!]. When trading resumed, Merrill's shares fell from $46.88 to $41.50; assuming that 11,000 option contracts were bought by "insiders," their profit would have been about $5.5 million.
- European regulators are examining trades in Germany's Munich Re, Switzerland's Swiss Re, and AXA of France, all major reinsurers with exposure to the Black Tuesday disaster. [FTW Note: AXA also owns more than 25% of American Airlines stock making the attacks a "double whammy" for them.]
On September 29, 2001 - in a vital story that has gone unnoticed by the major media - the San Francisco Chronicle reported, "Investors have yet to collect more than $2.5 million in profits they made trading options in the stock of United Airlines before the Sept. 11, terrorist attacks, according to a source familiar with the trades and market data.
"The uncollected money raises suspicions that the investors - whose identities and nationalities have not been made public - had advance knowledge of the strikes." They don't dare show up now. The suspension of trading for four days after the attacks made it impossible to cash-out quickly and claim the prize before investigators started looking.
"October series options for UAL Corp. were purchased in highly unusual volumes three trading days before the terrorist attacks for a total outlay of $2,070; investors bought the option contracts, each representing 100 shares, for 90 cents each. [This represents 230,000 shares]. Those options are now selling at more than $12 each. There are still 2,313 so-called "put" options outstanding [valued at $2.77 million and representing 231,300 shares] according to the Options Clearinghouse Corp."
"The source familiar with the United trades identified Deutsche Bank Alex Brown, the American investment banking arm of German giant Deutsche Bank, as the investment bank used to purchase at least some of these options." This was the operation managed by Krongard until as recently as 1998.
As reported in other news stories, Deutsche Bank was also the hub of insider trading activity connected to Munich Re. just before the attacks.
CIA, THE BANKS AND THE BROKERS
Understanding the interrelationships between CIA and the banking and brokerage world is critical to grasping the already frightening implications of the above revelations. Let's look at the history of CIA, Wall Street and the big banks by looking at some of the key players in CIA's history.
Clark Clifford - The National Security Act of 1947 was written by Clark Clifford, a Democratic Party powerhouse, former Secretary of Defense, and one-time advisor to President Harry Truman. In the 1980s, as Chairman of First American Bancshares, Clifford was instrumental in getting the corrupt CIA drug bank BCCI a license to operate on American shores. His profession: Wall Street lawyer and banker.
John Foster and Allen Dulles - These two brothers "designed" the CIA for Clifford. Both were active in intelligence operations during WW II. Allen Dulles was OSS station chief in Berne, Switzerland, where he met frequently with Nazi leaders and looked after U.S. investments in Germany. John Foster went on to become Secretary of State under Dwight Eisenhower and Allen went on to serve as CIA Director under Eisenhower and was later fired by JFK. Their professions: partners in the most powerful - to this day - Wall Street law firm of Sullivan, Cromwell.
Bill Casey - Ronald Reagan's CIA Director and OSS veteran who served as chief wrangler during the Iran-Contra years was, under President Richard Nixon, Chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission. His profession: Wall Street lawyer and stockbroker.
David Doherty - The current Vice President of the New York Stock Exchange for enforcement is the retired General Counsel of the Central Intelligence Agency.
George Herbert Walker Bush - President from 1989 to January 1993, also served as CIA Director for 13 months from 1976-7. He is now a paid consultant to the Carlyle Group, the 11th largest defense contractor in the nation, which also shares joint investments with the bin Laden family.
A.B. "Buzzy" Krongard - The current Executive Director of the Central Intelligence Agency is the former Chairman of the investment bank A.B. Brown and former Vice Chairman of Banker's Trust.
John Deutch - This retired CIA Director from the Clinton Administration currently sits on the board at Citigroup, the nation's second largest bank, which has been repeatedly and overtly involved in the documented laundering of drug money. This includes Citigroup's 2001 purchase of a Mexican bank known to launder drug money, Banamex.
Nora Slatkin - This retired CIA Executive Director also sits on Citibank's board.
Maurice "Hank" Greenburg - The CEO of AIG insurance, manager of the third largest capital investment pool in the world, was floated as a possible CIA Director in 1995. FTW exposed Greenberg's and AIG's long connection to CIA drug trafficking and covert operations in a two-part series that was interrupted just prior to the attacks of September 11. AIG's stock has bounced back remarkably well since the attacks. To read that story, please go to http://www.fromthewilderness.com/
free/ciadrugs/part_2.html.
One wonders how much damning evidence is necessary to respond to what is now irrefutable proof that CIA knew about the attacks and did not stop them. Whatever our government is doing, whatever the CIA is doing, it is clearly NOT in the interests of the American people, especially those who died on September 11.
end
___________________________________________________
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A._B._Krongard
A.B. "Buzzy" Krongard, full name Alvin Bernard Krongard,[1] was the Executive Director of the Central Intelligence Agency. He was appointed by George Tenet on March 16, 2001.
The Executive Director is the third ranking position within the CIA and the incumbent functions essentially as the Chief Operating Officer of the Agency. For three years prior, Krongard had served as Counselor to the DCI.
A longtime consultant to DCIs, Krongard joined the Agency full time in February 1998, following a 29-year business career. During his private sector career, he served as Chief Executive Officer and Chairman of the Board of Alex. Brown & Sons, the nation’s oldest investment banking firm, and Vice Chairman of the Board of Bankers Trust.
Krongard received an A.B. degree (1958) with honors from Princeton University and a Juris Doctor degree with honors from the University of Maryland School of Law. While at Princeton, Krongard played lacrosse. In 1980, he was inducted as a member of the National Lacrosse Hall of Fame. [2] He served three years of active duty as an infantry officer with the United States Marine Corps.
Krongard resigned from the CIA shortly after the arrival of DCI Porter Goss in September 2004. While at the CIA, he was the connection between Erik Prince of Blackwater Security Consulting and the CIA. Through his influence, Blackwater was able to receive its first black contract.[citation needed]
On March 18, 2005, Krongard was appointed as an outside US director to the Global Board of Directors organized to oversee and coordinate the worldwide operations of DLA Piper, one of the world’s leading law firms.
SUPPRESSED DETAILS OF CRIMINAL INSIDER TRADING LEAD DIRECTLY INTO THE CIA's HIGHEST RANKS
CIA EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR "BUZZY" KRONGARD MANAGED FIRM THAT HANDLED "PUT" OPTIONS ON UAL
by
Michael C. Ruppert
[© COPYRIGHT, 2001, Michael C. Ruppert and FTW Publications, www.copvcia.com. All Rights Reserved. - May be reprinted or distributed for non-profit purposes only.]
FTW, October 9, 2001 - Although uniformly ignored by the mainstream U.S. media, there is abundant and clear evidence that a number of transactions in financial markets indicated specific (criminal) foreknowledge of the September 11 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. In the case of at least one of these trades -- which has left a $2.5 million prize unclaimed -- the firm used to place the "put options" on United Airlines stock was, until 1998, managed by the man who is now in the number three Executive Director position at the Central Intelligence Agency.
Until 1997 A.B. "Buzzy" Krongard had been Chairman of the investment bank A.B. Brown. A.B. Brown was acquired by Banker's Trust in 1997. Krongard then became, as part of the merger, Vice Chairman of Banker's Trust-AB Brown, one of 20 major U.S. banks named by Senator Carl Levin this year as being connected to money laundering. Krongard's last position at Banker's Trust (BT) was to oversee "private client relations." In this capacity he had direct hands-on relations with some of the wealthiest people in the world in a kind of specialized banking operation that has been identified by the U.S. Senate and other investigators as being closely connected to the laundering of drug money.
Krongard (re?) joined the CIA in 1998 as counsel to CIA Director George Tenet. He was promoted to CIA Executive Director by President Bush in March of this year. BT was acquired by Deutsche Bank in 1999. The combined firm is the single largest bank in Europe. And, as we shall see, Deutsche Bank played several key roles in events connected to the September 11 attacks.
THE SCOPE OF KNOWN INSIDER TRADING
Before looking further into these relationships it is necessary to look at the insider trading information that is being ignored by Reuters, The New York Times and other mass media. It is well documented that the CIA has long monitored such trades - in real time - as potential warnings of terrorist attacks and other economic moves contrary to U.S. interests. Previous stories in FTW have specifically highlighted the use of Promis software to monitor such trades.
It is necessary to understand only two key financial terms to understand the significance of these trades, "selling short" and "put options".
"Selling Short" is the borrowing of stock, selling it at current market prices, but not being required to actually produce the stock for some time. If the stock falls precipitously after the short contract is entered, the seller can then fulfill the contract by buying the stock after the price has fallen and complete the contract at the pre-crash price. These contracts often have a window of as long as four months.
"Put Options," are contracts giving the buyer the option to sell stocks at a later date. Purchased at nominal prices of, for example, $1.00 per share, they are sold in blocks of 100 shares. If exercised, they give the holder the option of selling selected stocks at a future date at a price set when the contract is issued. Thus, for an investment of $10,000 it might be possible to tie up 10,000 shares of United or American Airlines at $100 per share, and the seller of the option is then obligated to buy them if the option is executed. If the stock has fallen to $50 when the contract matures, the holder of the option can purchase the shares for $50 and immediately sell them for $100 - regardless of where the market then stands. A call option is the reverse of a put option, which is, in effect, a derivatives bet that the stock price will go up.
A September 21 story by the Israeli Herzliyya International Policy Institute for Counterterrorism, entitled "Black Tuesday: The World's Largest Insider Trading Scam?" documented the following trades connected to the September 11 attacks:
- Between September 6 and 7, the Chicago Board Options Exchange saw purchases of 4,744 put options on United Airlines, but only 396 call options. Assuming that 4,000 of the options were bought by people with advance knowledge of the imminent attacks, these "insiders" would have profited by almost $5 million.
- On September 10, 4,516 put options on American Airlines were bought on the Chicago exchange, compared to only 748 calls. Again, there was no news at that point to justify this imbalance; Again, assuming that 4,000 of these options trades represent "insiders," they would represent a gain of about $4 million.
- [The levels of put options purchased above were more than six times higher than normal.]
- No similar trading in other airlines occurred on the Chicago exchange in the days immediately preceding Black Tuesday.
- Morgan Stanley Dean Witter & Co., which occupied 22 floors of the World Trade Center, saw 2,157 of its October $45 put options bought in the three trading days before Black Tuesday; this compares to an average of 27 contracts per day before September 6. Morgan Stanley's share price fell from $48.90 to $42.50 in the aftermath of the attacks. Assuming that 2,000 of these options contracts were bought based upon knowledge of the approaching attacks, their purchasers could have profited by at least $1.2 million.
- Merrill Lynch & Co., with headquarters near the Twin Towers, saw 12,215 October $45 put options bought in the four trading days before the attacks; the previous average volume in those shares had been 252 contracts per day [a 1200% increase!]. When trading resumed, Merrill's shares fell from $46.88 to $41.50; assuming that 11,000 option contracts were bought by "insiders," their profit would have been about $5.5 million.
- European regulators are examining trades in Germany's Munich Re, Switzerland's Swiss Re, and AXA of France, all major reinsurers with exposure to the Black Tuesday disaster. [FTW Note: AXA also owns more than 25% of American Airlines stock making the attacks a "double whammy" for them.]
On September 29, 2001 - in a vital story that has gone unnoticed by the major media - the San Francisco Chronicle reported, "Investors have yet to collect more than $2.5 million in profits they made trading options in the stock of United Airlines before the Sept. 11, terrorist attacks, according to a source familiar with the trades and market data.
"The uncollected money raises suspicions that the investors - whose identities and nationalities have not been made public - had advance knowledge of the strikes." They don't dare show up now. The suspension of trading for four days after the attacks made it impossible to cash-out quickly and claim the prize before investigators started looking.
"October series options for UAL Corp. were purchased in highly unusual volumes three trading days before the terrorist attacks for a total outlay of $2,070; investors bought the option contracts, each representing 100 shares, for 90 cents each. [This represents 230,000 shares]. Those options are now selling at more than $12 each. There are still 2,313 so-called "put" options outstanding [valued at $2.77 million and representing 231,300 shares] according to the Options Clearinghouse Corp."
"The source familiar with the United trades identified Deutsche Bank Alex Brown, the American investment banking arm of German giant Deutsche Bank, as the investment bank used to purchase at least some of these options." This was the operation managed by Krongard until as recently as 1998.
As reported in other news stories, Deutsche Bank was also the hub of insider trading activity connected to Munich Re. just before the attacks.
CIA, THE BANKS AND THE BROKERS
Understanding the interrelationships between CIA and the banking and brokerage world is critical to grasping the already frightening implications of the above revelations. Let's look at the history of CIA, Wall Street and the big banks by looking at some of the key players in CIA's history.
Clark Clifford - The National Security Act of 1947 was written by Clark Clifford, a Democratic Party powerhouse, former Secretary of Defense, and one-time advisor to President Harry Truman. In the 1980s, as Chairman of First American Bancshares, Clifford was instrumental in getting the corrupt CIA drug bank BCCI a license to operate on American shores. His profession: Wall Street lawyer and banker.
John Foster and Allen Dulles - These two brothers "designed" the CIA for Clifford. Both were active in intelligence operations during WW II. Allen Dulles was OSS station chief in Berne, Switzerland, where he met frequently with Nazi leaders and looked after U.S. investments in Germany. John Foster went on to become Secretary of State under Dwight Eisenhower and Allen went on to serve as CIA Director under Eisenhower and was later fired by JFK. Their professions: partners in the most powerful - to this day - Wall Street law firm of Sullivan, Cromwell.
Bill Casey - Ronald Reagan's CIA Director and OSS veteran who served as chief wrangler during the Iran-Contra years was, under President Richard Nixon, Chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission. His profession: Wall Street lawyer and stockbroker.
David Doherty - The current Vice President of the New York Stock Exchange for enforcement is the retired General Counsel of the Central Intelligence Agency.
George Herbert Walker Bush - President from 1989 to January 1993, also served as CIA Director for 13 months from 1976-7. He is now a paid consultant to the Carlyle Group, the 11th largest defense contractor in the nation, which also shares joint investments with the bin Laden family.
A.B. "Buzzy" Krongard - The current Executive Director of the Central Intelligence Agency is the former Chairman of the investment bank A.B. Brown and former Vice Chairman of Banker's Trust.
John Deutch - This retired CIA Director from the Clinton Administration currently sits on the board at Citigroup, the nation's second largest bank, which has been repeatedly and overtly involved in the documented laundering of drug money. This includes Citigroup's 2001 purchase of a Mexican bank known to launder drug money, Banamex.
Nora Slatkin - This retired CIA Executive Director also sits on Citibank's board.
Maurice "Hank" Greenburg - The CEO of AIG insurance, manager of the third largest capital investment pool in the world, was floated as a possible CIA Director in 1995. FTW exposed Greenberg's and AIG's long connection to CIA drug trafficking and covert operations in a two-part series that was interrupted just prior to the attacks of September 11. AIG's stock has bounced back remarkably well since the attacks. To read that story, please go to http://www.fromthewilderness.com/
free/ciadrugs/part_2.html.
One wonders how much damning evidence is necessary to respond to what is now irrefutable proof that CIA knew about the attacks and did not stop them. Whatever our government is doing, whatever the CIA is doing, it is clearly NOT in the interests of the American people, especially those who died on September 11.
end
___________________________________________________
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A._B._Krongard
A.B. "Buzzy" Krongard, full name Alvin Bernard Krongard,[1] was the Executive Director of the Central Intelligence Agency. He was appointed by George Tenet on March 16, 2001.
The Executive Director is the third ranking position within the CIA and the incumbent functions essentially as the Chief Operating Officer of the Agency. For three years prior, Krongard had served as Counselor to the DCI.
A longtime consultant to DCIs, Krongard joined the Agency full time in February 1998, following a 29-year business career. During his private sector career, he served as Chief Executive Officer and Chairman of the Board of Alex. Brown & Sons, the nation’s oldest investment banking firm, and Vice Chairman of the Board of Bankers Trust.
Krongard received an A.B. degree (1958) with honors from Princeton University and a Juris Doctor degree with honors from the University of Maryland School of Law. While at Princeton, Krongard played lacrosse. In 1980, he was inducted as a member of the National Lacrosse Hall of Fame. [2] He served three years of active duty as an infantry officer with the United States Marine Corps.
Krongard resigned from the CIA shortly after the arrival of DCI Porter Goss in September 2004. While at the CIA, he was the connection between Erik Prince of Blackwater Security Consulting and the CIA. Through his influence, Blackwater was able to receive its first black contract.[citation needed]
On March 18, 2005, Krongard was appointed as an outside US director to the Global Board of Directors organized to oversee and coordinate the worldwide operations of DLA Piper, one of the world’s leading law firms.
HOLDER pretends he's not BOUGHT OFF
http://harpers.org/archive/2009/03/hbc-90004587
Dereliction of Duty
By Scott Horton
Congressional Quarterly reports that Attorney General Eric Holder reads the news but feels no obligation to act on what he has learned:
The clamor for a Justice Department probe into allegations of detainee torture has intensified this week after the New York Review of Books published excerpts of a 2007 report by the International Committee of the Red Cross that contained interviews with detainees who claimed they had been tortured.
“We will let the law and the facts take us to wherever we go,” Holder said. But he added that the administration does not want to criminalize policy differences. Holder said the department is “mindful” of recent news accounts. But when asked whether there was a formal Justice Department investigation, Holder said, “I wouldn’t say that.”
Article 6 of the Convention Against Torture provides:
Upon being satisfied, after an examination of information available to it, that the circumstances so warrant, any State Party in whose territory a person alleged to have committed an [act of torture] shall take him into custody or take other legal measures to ensure his presence. The custody and other legal measures shall be as provided in the law of that State but may be continued only for such time as is necessary to enable any criminal or extradition proceedings to be instituted.
The offenses described by the Convention are criminalized under United States law by the Anti-Torture Statute, 18 U.S.C. sec. 2340 and sec. 2340A, which further criminalizes a joint criminal enterprise to violate the prohibition on torture, as obviously occurred.
______________________________
tommy:
ANYBODY notice how a pal of Rahmbo "mega boy for Mossad" Emmanuel....has effectively chilled the facts and legal debate that comes from my specific fact pattern?
HOLDER is another PUPPET in the same league with corrupt lowlife ferries MUKASY, GONZO, ASHCROFT.
NO CHANGE with Unlce Tom in The House White.
Eric...you've proven every thing I said about you...and...you did it by doing nothing.
Congratulations...you justify my remarks.
Dereliction of Duty
By Scott Horton
Congressional Quarterly reports that Attorney General Eric Holder reads the news but feels no obligation to act on what he has learned:
The clamor for a Justice Department probe into allegations of detainee torture has intensified this week after the New York Review of Books published excerpts of a 2007 report by the International Committee of the Red Cross that contained interviews with detainees who claimed they had been tortured.
“We will let the law and the facts take us to wherever we go,” Holder said. But he added that the administration does not want to criminalize policy differences. Holder said the department is “mindful” of recent news accounts. But when asked whether there was a formal Justice Department investigation, Holder said, “I wouldn’t say that.”
Article 6 of the Convention Against Torture provides:
Upon being satisfied, after an examination of information available to it, that the circumstances so warrant, any State Party in whose territory a person alleged to have committed an [act of torture] shall take him into custody or take other legal measures to ensure his presence. The custody and other legal measures shall be as provided in the law of that State but may be continued only for such time as is necessary to enable any criminal or extradition proceedings to be instituted.
The offenses described by the Convention are criminalized under United States law by the Anti-Torture Statute, 18 U.S.C. sec. 2340 and sec. 2340A, which further criminalizes a joint criminal enterprise to violate the prohibition on torture, as obviously occurred.
______________________________
tommy:
ANYBODY notice how a pal of Rahmbo "mega boy for Mossad" Emmanuel....has effectively chilled the facts and legal debate that comes from my specific fact pattern?
HOLDER is another PUPPET in the same league with corrupt lowlife ferries MUKASY, GONZO, ASHCROFT.
NO CHANGE with Unlce Tom in The House White.
Eric...you've proven every thing I said about you...and...you did it by doing nothing.
Congratulations...you justify my remarks.
Dyer, Nevada gets spring snow...GATES at DOD sends Marines in to VIOLATE POSSE COMITATUS ACT?
The "stuff that happens" (Cheney's explanation for anything he is responsible for but refuses to take responsibility for) keeps me smiling an all knowing "in the absurd" grin.
Sometimes it's the beauty of the dessert...and other times its the never ending police state harassment campaign (also known as FBI'S OPERATION SLAMMER with CIA dumbfucks using FBI badges for cover?).
Yesterday...the beautiful FISH LAKE VALLEY (east side of The Sierras, east of The White Mountains) on the South Central border between California and Nevada got a spring snowstorm that chilled the hot springs off of Alkali Springs Road.
It didn't take long for me to set a course for Death Valley's warmer temps. Two hours of driving, and I had the weather on my side.
Too many fuckheads visit National Parks on the weekend. If only we could limit the fuckheads from the National Parks? And, most fuckheads visiting Death Valley are So Cal big city type fuckheads: loud, stupid, weak, rich, moronic, and worthless to a cause (any cause,really).
I guess that's why I hang out in BLM land. Big swathes of public land, unpoliced and open for dispersed camping. Lots of gravel roads keep fuckheads away. Big RV's ain't gonna cut it, and that's fine with me. I notice the "RV land barge beaver boys" all congregate on concrete slots and pack close together like so many dumbfucks with no fucking clue "what is worth living for, and what is worth avoiding".
They drive hundreds of miles and waste thousands of dollars so they can possess a ticket to the blissful cacophony of the earthly echos of generators, morons, kids, mindless dog barking, and other annoyances? You can't take it with you, and still get close to the only thing that matters--SOLITUDE. Yet fuckheads in parks...all end up screwing themselves while vacationing in a social milieu that is not a vacation?
Human stupidity and weakness of the herd...should not be underestimated, even if you are the decider. Right now, the national political news includes:
----1) More pussified dumb fucks who don't have a clue what crimes DARTH CHENEY committed with his merry band of lying cocksuckers: BOB MUELLER, Porter Goss, NSA TSP, NSA 902nd COUNTERINTELLIGENCE GROUP, DOD CIFA UNIT, BLACKWATER INC., DOJ HQ, SD US ATTORNEYS, AUSTIN TEXAS US ATTORNEYS, FBI FIELD FAGGOTS, JOINT FED LOCAL TERRORISM TASK FORCES, FUSION CENTERS, INFRAGUARD, MAINSTREAM MEDIA FAGGOT LAND, THE BLOGOSPHERE of whimpering mental masturbaters.
----2) MORE unfocused blurred focus on the latest AIG FUCK YOU SWINDLE by the CIA money laundering scum. More lies and denials by Barky, Geithner, and others...who just can't figure out why someone would be outraged about IN YOUR FAT STUPID SHEEP FACE FUCK YOU SWINDLING on the taxpayers dime? Even mainstream media FOX NEWS pussies try to spin corruption as rational?
----3) The Songbird count in the South East is way down. End Times? The Bat population is also down according to Linda Moulton Howe.
----4) A BILL has passed in one of the congressional clown houses that BANS ORGANIC GARDENING? Yup...no more home victory gardens? OBAMA the dumbest fuck in D.C. is again toying with political suicide so he can apologize again?
----5) The police state is worried about former military personnel who own weapons and ammo. Hmmm...looks like a war is coming, and the soldiers ain't buying the Secret Team's bullshit. May the Winners win, and the Losers lose.
----6) FBI HQ is still doing surveillance on a cooperating witness who signed a US DOJ OIG complaint--me, THOMAS SUTHERLAND BEAN. The dumb fucks sent two MARINE CORP BIBLE THUMPING NUMB SKULLS to do recon at Alkali Springs outside of Dyer, Nevada. Nice fantasy world these lunatics live in.
How does a bible thumper become a grabbastic murdering Marine Corp jarhead?
Military pukes...ain't real smart when it comes to sting operations and disinfo.
Hey...uh...Mr HOlder, why is GATES AT DOD sending more Marine corp pukes to do more illegal surveillance on Bean? GATES is worried about his legal liabilities when he committed overt acts as part of conspiracies to OBSTRUCT JUSTICE in re. THE SIOUX FALLS, SOUTH DAKOTA DOD CIFA UNIT (working with SF FBI 302s) using BLACKWATER INC to CONDUCT 3 SOUTH DAKOTA MURDERS, ONE NORTH DAKOTA MURDER, and several attempted PATRIOT ACT MURDERS of my known associates.
Gates is dirty on that: MISPRISION OF A FELONY FOR GATES AT DOD?
----7) Mueller also has other dumb fucks literally following in my tire tracks with their GPS tracking device?
What could dumb fucks be looking for?
A dead drop perhaps?
No dead drops dumb fucks.
Keep looking.
I like "acting suspicious" by "planting blank scraps of paper under rocks, bushes, or in coke bottles" way out in the BLM dessert.
This keeps the FBI counter terror fags busy trying to find the microdot message that does not exist.
I also like circling names in phone books pages THAT ARE TORN OUT AND PUT IN EMPTY SODA CANS (carefully placed on conspicuous tree branches near the last GPS reading from my truck).
I cannot keep track of how many totally unknown innocent people have been fingered by the contract surveillance fags who report to the FBI pussies?
FBI loves to demonize scapegoats, and...everyone is guilty of suspicion so that the FBI is never ever wrong about anything.
Good luck Fed fuckheads...good luck.
It keeps me entertained watching the dumb fucks deal with Dis info.
I give away alot books and magazines to total strangers. No doubt, the police state has this all on tape. How many idiots have been harassed by a secret police surveillance for "taking a free used book" from me?
Imagine how much no bid front loaded surveillance money gets pissed away by FBI swine, as they chase nothing down a bunny hole to nowhere?
Sometimes it's the beauty of the dessert...and other times its the never ending police state harassment campaign (also known as FBI'S OPERATION SLAMMER with CIA dumbfucks using FBI badges for cover?).
Yesterday...the beautiful FISH LAKE VALLEY (east side of The Sierras, east of The White Mountains) on the South Central border between California and Nevada got a spring snowstorm that chilled the hot springs off of Alkali Springs Road.
It didn't take long for me to set a course for Death Valley's warmer temps. Two hours of driving, and I had the weather on my side.
Too many fuckheads visit National Parks on the weekend. If only we could limit the fuckheads from the National Parks? And, most fuckheads visiting Death Valley are So Cal big city type fuckheads: loud, stupid, weak, rich, moronic, and worthless to a cause (any cause,really).
I guess that's why I hang out in BLM land. Big swathes of public land, unpoliced and open for dispersed camping. Lots of gravel roads keep fuckheads away. Big RV's ain't gonna cut it, and that's fine with me. I notice the "RV land barge beaver boys" all congregate on concrete slots and pack close together like so many dumbfucks with no fucking clue "what is worth living for, and what is worth avoiding".
They drive hundreds of miles and waste thousands of dollars so they can possess a ticket to the blissful cacophony of the earthly echos of generators, morons, kids, mindless dog barking, and other annoyances? You can't take it with you, and still get close to the only thing that matters--SOLITUDE. Yet fuckheads in parks...all end up screwing themselves while vacationing in a social milieu that is not a vacation?
Human stupidity and weakness of the herd...should not be underestimated, even if you are the decider. Right now, the national political news includes:
----1) More pussified dumb fucks who don't have a clue what crimes DARTH CHENEY committed with his merry band of lying cocksuckers: BOB MUELLER, Porter Goss, NSA TSP, NSA 902nd COUNTERINTELLIGENCE GROUP, DOD CIFA UNIT, BLACKWATER INC., DOJ HQ, SD US ATTORNEYS, AUSTIN TEXAS US ATTORNEYS, FBI FIELD FAGGOTS, JOINT FED LOCAL TERRORISM TASK FORCES, FUSION CENTERS, INFRAGUARD, MAINSTREAM MEDIA FAGGOT LAND, THE BLOGOSPHERE of whimpering mental masturbaters.
----2) MORE unfocused blurred focus on the latest AIG FUCK YOU SWINDLE by the CIA money laundering scum. More lies and denials by Barky, Geithner, and others...who just can't figure out why someone would be outraged about IN YOUR FAT STUPID SHEEP FACE FUCK YOU SWINDLING on the taxpayers dime? Even mainstream media FOX NEWS pussies try to spin corruption as rational?
----3) The Songbird count in the South East is way down. End Times? The Bat population is also down according to Linda Moulton Howe.
----4) A BILL has passed in one of the congressional clown houses that BANS ORGANIC GARDENING? Yup...no more home victory gardens? OBAMA the dumbest fuck in D.C. is again toying with political suicide so he can apologize again?
----5) The police state is worried about former military personnel who own weapons and ammo. Hmmm...looks like a war is coming, and the soldiers ain't buying the Secret Team's bullshit. May the Winners win, and the Losers lose.
----6) FBI HQ is still doing surveillance on a cooperating witness who signed a US DOJ OIG complaint--me, THOMAS SUTHERLAND BEAN. The dumb fucks sent two MARINE CORP BIBLE THUMPING NUMB SKULLS to do recon at Alkali Springs outside of Dyer, Nevada. Nice fantasy world these lunatics live in.
How does a bible thumper become a grabbastic murdering Marine Corp jarhead?
Military pukes...ain't real smart when it comes to sting operations and disinfo.
Hey...uh...Mr HOlder, why is GATES AT DOD sending more Marine corp pukes to do more illegal surveillance on Bean? GATES is worried about his legal liabilities when he committed overt acts as part of conspiracies to OBSTRUCT JUSTICE in re. THE SIOUX FALLS, SOUTH DAKOTA DOD CIFA UNIT (working with SF FBI 302s) using BLACKWATER INC to CONDUCT 3 SOUTH DAKOTA MURDERS, ONE NORTH DAKOTA MURDER, and several attempted PATRIOT ACT MURDERS of my known associates.
Gates is dirty on that: MISPRISION OF A FELONY FOR GATES AT DOD?
----7) Mueller also has other dumb fucks literally following in my tire tracks with their GPS tracking device?
What could dumb fucks be looking for?
A dead drop perhaps?
No dead drops dumb fucks.
Keep looking.
I like "acting suspicious" by "planting blank scraps of paper under rocks, bushes, or in coke bottles" way out in the BLM dessert.
This keeps the FBI counter terror fags busy trying to find the microdot message that does not exist.
I also like circling names in phone books pages THAT ARE TORN OUT AND PUT IN EMPTY SODA CANS (carefully placed on conspicuous tree branches near the last GPS reading from my truck).
I cannot keep track of how many totally unknown innocent people have been fingered by the contract surveillance fags who report to the FBI pussies?
FBI loves to demonize scapegoats, and...everyone is guilty of suspicion so that the FBI is never ever wrong about anything.
Good luck Fed fuckheads...good luck.
It keeps me entertained watching the dumb fucks deal with Dis info.
I give away alot books and magazines to total strangers. No doubt, the police state has this all on tape. How many idiots have been harassed by a secret police surveillance for "taking a free used book" from me?
Imagine how much no bid front loaded surveillance money gets pissed away by FBI swine, as they chase nothing down a bunny hole to nowhere?
Friday, March 20, 2009
Swiss UBS...9/11 put options at Deustche Bank (Buzzy Krongard--CIA)...and AIG swindle?
US insurer AIG, German sewers tangled tax scheme
Mar 18 09:45 PM US/Eastern
What do Berlin trams, German sewers and the stricken US insurer AIG have in common? They have all got intertwined in complex financial transactions that could cost many Germany cities dearly.
The tale began with intermediaries such as Deutsche Bank and the financial arm of auto maker Daimler that approached cash-strapped communities, specialist Werner Ruegemer told AFP.
"These 'arrangers' told municipal authorities that thanks to a US fiscal loophole, they could obtain cash just by signing a piece of paper," he explained.
The transactions are known as cross border leasing, or CBL.
Behind the German intermediaries were US banks operating from post boxes in locations such as the state of Delaware, known for its business-friendly tax environment.
In Berlin, indebted city officials agreed in 1997 to rent tram and subway cars to a US trust, and then sub-let them back for use in the city's transit system.
More than 1,000 cars were involved in the scheme, according to press reports.
The US investor that bought or rented German infrastructure got a tax benefit for foreign investments, while the city got money but became a renter, or sub-renter of the assets.
Berlin received 69 million euros (90 million dollars) from its deal.
Another key actor in the transaction were banks or insurance companies that agreed to guarantee the value of the assets until the contract expired, from 25 to 99 years later.
Ruegemer said 180 such contracts were signed in Germany for an estimated 80 million euros.
In 2004 however, a US court uncovered the loophole.
Since then, German municipal authorities have come to realize the full content of the contracts they signed, written with complex technical terms over hundreds of pages and signed in New York during comfortable business trips for which all expenses were paid.
A US financier for example can demand a city continue to maintain subway cars it no longer uses so the investment does not lose its value, or prevent a worksite from proceeding.
And many banks and insurance companies that guaranteed the contracts are now distressed, forcing communities to guarantee the guarantor's financial health or replace them, according to terms of the deals.
A frequent guarantor was AIG, which is in deep trouble after posting a 2008 loss of almost 100 billion dollars.
US investors therefore have demanded that municipalities find other guarantors for the assets, which is often impossible at present, or provide their own guarantees.
Bochum, in western Germany, had to buy 125 million dollars' worth of US Treasury bills on credit to insure the value of the sewer it had ceded.
For its tramways and subway cars, Berlin had contracted insurance in 2004 from a consortium that included AIG and the US investment bank Lehman Brothers, which went bankrupt in September 2008.
In a worst case scenario, the German capital could face claims for 200 million dollars on the basis of the CBL contracts.
"For now, no one has asked us for a cent," said Petra Reetz, spokeswoman for the Berlin transit system BVG.
"If someone comes after us, we will not pay, we will take them to court," she vowed.
Copyright AFP 2008, AFP stories and photos shall not be published, broadcast, rewritten for broadcast or publication or redistributed directly or indirectly in any medium
Mar 18 09:45 PM US/Eastern
What do Berlin trams, German sewers and the stricken US insurer AIG have in common? They have all got intertwined in complex financial transactions that could cost many Germany cities dearly.
The tale began with intermediaries such as Deutsche Bank and the financial arm of auto maker Daimler that approached cash-strapped communities, specialist Werner Ruegemer told AFP.
"These 'arrangers' told municipal authorities that thanks to a US fiscal loophole, they could obtain cash just by signing a piece of paper," he explained.
The transactions are known as cross border leasing, or CBL.
Behind the German intermediaries were US banks operating from post boxes in locations such as the state of Delaware, known for its business-friendly tax environment.
In Berlin, indebted city officials agreed in 1997 to rent tram and subway cars to a US trust, and then sub-let them back for use in the city's transit system.
More than 1,000 cars were involved in the scheme, according to press reports.
The US investor that bought or rented German infrastructure got a tax benefit for foreign investments, while the city got money but became a renter, or sub-renter of the assets.
Berlin received 69 million euros (90 million dollars) from its deal.
Another key actor in the transaction were banks or insurance companies that agreed to guarantee the value of the assets until the contract expired, from 25 to 99 years later.
Ruegemer said 180 such contracts were signed in Germany for an estimated 80 million euros.
In 2004 however, a US court uncovered the loophole.
Since then, German municipal authorities have come to realize the full content of the contracts they signed, written with complex technical terms over hundreds of pages and signed in New York during comfortable business trips for which all expenses were paid.
A US financier for example can demand a city continue to maintain subway cars it no longer uses so the investment does not lose its value, or prevent a worksite from proceeding.
And many banks and insurance companies that guaranteed the contracts are now distressed, forcing communities to guarantee the guarantor's financial health or replace them, according to terms of the deals.
A frequent guarantor was AIG, which is in deep trouble after posting a 2008 loss of almost 100 billion dollars.
US investors therefore have demanded that municipalities find other guarantors for the assets, which is often impossible at present, or provide their own guarantees.
Bochum, in western Germany, had to buy 125 million dollars' worth of US Treasury bills on credit to insure the value of the sewer it had ceded.
For its tramways and subway cars, Berlin had contracted insurance in 2004 from a consortium that included AIG and the US investment bank Lehman Brothers, which went bankrupt in September 2008.
In a worst case scenario, the German capital could face claims for 200 million dollars on the basis of the CBL contracts.
"For now, no one has asked us for a cent," said Petra Reetz, spokeswoman for the Berlin transit system BVG.
"If someone comes after us, we will not pay, we will take them to court," she vowed.
Copyright AFP 2008, AFP stories and photos shall not be published, broadcast, rewritten for broadcast or publication or redistributed directly or indirectly in any medium
AIG sued US GOV (AIG is 80% owned by US Gov?) to steal more money? This Obama's change?
http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2009/03/aig-sues-us-for-return-of-306-million.html
Thursday, March 19, 2009
A.I.G. Sues U.S. for Return of $306 Million in Tax Payments, Some Involving Tax Deals in Offshore Havens - Uses Taxpayer Money to Pursue the Lawsuit
As the New York Times notes:
A.I.G. sued the government last month in a bid to force it to return the payments, which stemmed in large part from its use of aggressive tax deals, some involving entities controlled by the company’s financial products unit in the Cayman Islands, Ireland, the Dutch Antilles and other offshore havens....
A.I.G. is effectively suing its majority owner, the government, which has an 80 percent stake .... The company is in effect asking for even more money, in the form of tax refunds. The suit also suggests that A.I.G. is spending taxpayer money to pursue its case....
The lawsuit ... details, among other things, certain tax-related dealings of the financial products unit, the once high-flying division that has been singled out for its role in A.I.G.’s financial crisis last fall
Thursday, March 19, 2009
A.I.G. Sues U.S. for Return of $306 Million in Tax Payments, Some Involving Tax Deals in Offshore Havens - Uses Taxpayer Money to Pursue the Lawsuit
As the New York Times notes:
A.I.G. sued the government last month in a bid to force it to return the payments, which stemmed in large part from its use of aggressive tax deals, some involving entities controlled by the company’s financial products unit in the Cayman Islands, Ireland, the Dutch Antilles and other offshore havens....
A.I.G. is effectively suing its majority owner, the government, which has an 80 percent stake .... The company is in effect asking for even more money, in the form of tax refunds. The suit also suggests that A.I.G. is spending taxpayer money to pursue its case....
The lawsuit ... details, among other things, certain tax-related dealings of the financial products unit, the once high-flying division that has been singled out for its role in A.I.G.’s financial crisis last fall
Wayne Madsen Arrested: OBAMA--HOLDER puppet pussies on civil rights...no FREEDOM OF PRESS UNDER BARACK "the punk"
http://onlinejournal.com/artman/publish/article_4478.shtml
BULLETIN: Busted while reporting in Alexandria, Va.
By Wayne Madsen
Online Journal Contributing Writer
Mar 18, 2009, 15:40
(WMR) -- This editor has covered the news in nasty dictatorships and corruption-ridden countries from Rwanda and Uganda to India and Thailand. I have also reported on journalists like our colleague John Caylor, who was arrested in Panama City, Florida, while trying to obtain public documents, pursuant to Florida’s open government law, on that state’s abuse and even murder of prison inmates.
In the eight years of the Bush-Cheney administration, I covered anti-war protests in Washington and never once did I face an arrest situation, although there were some close calls. My arrest-free journalism record was shattered last night in Alexandria, Virginia, while meeting a confidential source.
I hoped to report today on a significant link between “Sir” Allen Stanford’s collapsed Stanford Financial Group and a top Democratic Party lobbyist who is close to the Obama administration. I also hoped to report on the covert activities of Stanford’s operations in Venezuela and Panama.
That story will have to wait, unfortunately.
Last night, while meeting the source in O’Connell’s Irish pub in Alexandria, Alexandria police, who apparently had plainclothes police inside the St. Patrick’s Day-jam packed establishment, arrested my source for no apparent reason while I and the source’s wife looked on in shock. When I asked one of the men who forced the source to the ground outside why they were placing him under arrest, he shouted to me to “back off.” I asked the man if he was a police officer. His response was, “No, I’m a fireman.”
I then told the “fireman” that I was a member of the press, produced my credentials, and wanted to know what the charges were against my source. He then motioned to someone behind me who shoved me up against a police SUV and placed me in handcuffs.
I was taken to Alexandria city jail and booked for “drunk in public.” Of course, there was no blood test or field sobriety test administered by anyone, police or “firemen,” to prove the spurious charge.
Then again, I did not have it as bad as some people who have been victims of America’s “justice” system. I was not hooded, chained, placed on a plane for God-knows-where and subjected to torture by brutish Third World interrogators. Nor was I placed in solitary confinement without seeing the light of day. However, I was not permitted to speak to an attorney nor was I read my Miranda rights in this Kafkaesque post-Miranda era.
I am also quite concerned about the fate of my source whom I only saw once in the “lockup.” The cops were extremely physically rough with him for some unknown reason.
There was also something very unsettling about the police retaining custody of my reporter’s notebook for some three hours while I was under arrest.
In a way, I should not be surprised that this arrest took place in Alexandria. The town has always crawled with intelligence types and other covert players, from neo-Confederates involved with the global small arms business to the CIA-linked International Association of Chiefs of Police and the infamous U.S. Court for the Eastern District of Virginia national security “rocket docket” team of Chief Judge James Cacheris and his attorney brother, Plato. Alexandria is only outdone by trendy McLean for the greatest number of spooks per square mile.
However, Alexandria was not always a center for right-wing ne’er-do-wells. Alexandria was once the home of George Washington, the leader of the American Revolution. Its inns and meeting halls once attracted such revolutionary Virginia notables as Patrick Henry, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, and George Mason.
In 1735, New York publisher John Peter Zenger was charged with seditious libel and in a case many thought he would lose, he was acquitted of all charges. The Zenger case later spurred the founders of this nation to enshrine the freedom of the press in the First Amendment to the Constitution.
My trial is scheduled for March 25 at 9:30 am in the Circuit Court in Alexandria at 520 King Street in Room 201. I intend to plead not guilty to the charge against me and cite the First Amendment of the Constitution in my defense. I invite all those in the Washington area who value a free press to attend what I will simply call “mini-Zenger II.”
I, for one, will not see a free press in this nation go down without a fight. And I must also say that even in Uganda, a dictatorship, President Yoweri Museveni’s security agents never tried to stage an incident while I met opposition leaders at the Sheraton Hotel in Kampala. Although the agents were intently interested in whom I was meeting, they had much more class than the brutish Alexandria police and the “fireman.”
UPDATE 1X: WMR can report that our source was released from Alexandria jail and is doing fine today.
Previously published in the Wayne Madsen Report.
Copyright © 2008 WayneMadenReport.com
_____________________________
tommy:
More proof that WAYNE MADSEN IS THE MOST EFFECTIVE REPORTER IN D.C.
More proof that MADSEN was targetted for writing his last story on THE MADDOFF SCANDAL reaching to Maddoff's sentencing judge in a real estate scam using stolen money.
_______________________________
Investigators looking at ties between Madoff and Stanford
By Wayne Madsen
Online Journal Contributing Writer
Mar 10, 2009, 00:20
(WMR) -- The emergence of a connection between Bernard Madoff, the $50 billion Ponzi scheme fraudster, and R. Allen Stanford’s collapsed $50 billion Stanford Financial Group may center round the Bank of New York (BONY) Mellon’s Pershing LLC, which bills itself as “a leading global provider of clearing and financial services outsourcing solutions to more than 1,100 institutional and retail financial organizations and independent investment advisers who collectively represent more than five million active investors.”
Headquartered in New Jersey, Pershing’s involvement with both Stanford and BONY, which has had a checkered past with some of Madoff’s closest friends in the Russian-Israeli Mafia, including individuals like Grigory Loutchansky and Marc Rich, may provide investigators with an important key to unraveling the complex world of Russian-Israeli organized crime penetration of the global financial system.
Germany’s Wirtschaftsblatt reported on February 19, 2009, that Pershing began transferring funds from Stanford’s international headquarters in Antigua after Madoff was arrested in December 2008. After Stanford came under federal investigation, Pershing ceased the money transfers, according to the paper.
On March 18, 2008, WMR reported:
“In 2002, OPERATION SPIDERWEB, a joint FBI-EUROPOL operation, resulted in the arrest of 20 Russian-Israeli dual citizens on charges of money laundering. The laundering primarily involved the Bank of New York (BONY), the Russian bank Menatep, and an ‘Internet bank’ called the European Union Bank.
More importantly, the money laundering network also included Benex, a firm connected to Bill Clinton-pardoned Mossad figure Marc Rich, who still resides primarily in Switzerland. Benex’s office was located on Queens Boulevard in Forest Hills in the same building where Grigori Loutchansky headquartered two of his companies.
Loutchansky is a Latvian-born Israeli who laundered billions through his Vienna-based NORDEX firm.
National Security Agency (NSA) signals intercepts have reportedly yielded intelligence on Loutchansky’s role in the smuggling of nuclear materials. Loutchansky also was closely linked to Clinton’s 1996 re-election campaign through New York real estate magnate and Democratic donor Sam Dombs.”
Menatep was owned by Russian tycoon Mikhail Khodorkovsky, who was justifiably imprisoned by the Putin government for fraud and tax evasion.
Where was the European Union Bank headquartered and chartered?
Stanford’s one-time playground, Antigua.
Previously published in the Wayne Madsen Report.
Copyright © 2008 WayneMadenReport.com
____________________________________________
Madoff took fall for New York's Richest and most powerful politicians
by Wayne Madsen
A reliable source who is close to both the U.S. Court for the Southern District of New York and the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Southern District of New York's Organized Crime Unit tells WMR that Ponzi scammer Bernard Madoff, who was remanded to prison last week by U.S. Judge Denny Chin, took a "fall" for some of New York's most powerful and wealthiest politicians who were using Madoff's private investment scheme as a "front" to assist in a major real estate redevelopment plan for New York that stood, and still stand, to make the conspirators super-rich.
Although the federal prosecutors in the case against Madoff claim the former chairman of NASDAQ and chief of Madoff Investment Securities refused to cooperate in their criminal conspiracy investigation of Madoff, the prosecutors have no intention of expanding the case beyond Madoff and possibly some of his family members.
WMR has been informed by a well-informed New York legal source that Madoff is a second-tier player in a major real estate development plan that used some of the money skimmed off by Madoff's Ponzi scheme to fund some of the real estate development projects. WMR has been told that another second-tier player in the real estate scheme is none other than Madoff's trial judge, Chin.
The judge, WMR is told, particularly represents the real estate development interests of Tishman Speyer, the real estate firm that owns the Chrysler Building, Rockefeller Center, and the MetLife Building. Chin has been amply rewarded for his "services" with a luxurious penthouse for him and his wife in Battery Park City in lower Manhattan. WMR has also been told that Chin has been responsible for destroying important email evidence that points to the involvement of New York's top political leadership in the Cornerstones project.
Madoff, another second-tier player in the Cornerstones, also stood to gain financially from the proect as a major investor in real estate in his own right.
A branch of the Tishman family, Tishman Construction Company, specializes in the building and operation of entertainment complexes, including casinos projects in Las Vegas and Atlantic City. Last July, Tishman and Revel Hotel and Casino in Atlantic City executives were killed in a plane crash in Owatonna, Minnesota, 60 miles south of Minneapolis.
Chin and Madoff were linchpins in a major redevelopment scheme for New York called the "Cornerstones." There are four Cornerstone" redevelopment projects planned for Manhattan that will see the building of major entertainment and gambling casino operations in the city with high-speed rail links between them and to other parts of the city. The four "Cornerstones" are the new World Trade Center site surrounding the future Freedom Tower, Grand Central Station/Times Square, Penn Station, and a floating casino complex on the East River near the Brooklyn Bridge.
WMR has been told that Chin is closely allied in the mega-billion dollar real estate development scheme with former Attorney General Michael Mukasey, who once served on the same southern district of Manhattan federal circuit with Chin. WMR is told that Chin and Mukasey represented the interests of New York's "Landlord Lobby" and "West Side Lobby" in major cases involving real estate plans for New York City. Chin and Mukasey failed to recuse themselves from cases in which they had clear conflicts-of-interest, WMR was informed. Mukasey's son Marc, an attorney for the law firm Bracewell Giuliani, is representing Frank DiPasquale, Madoff's chief financial officer.
Mukasey and Giuliani are also close friends and business associates and both worked for the same law firm Patterson Belknap.
Although the Cornerstones projects are supported by New York interests who represent the middle class and poor, mainly due to the fact that it will create mixed-income housing units and provide money for public education and the city's increasingly deteriorating public schools, critics point out that the project has been stalled because major players who used Madoff to launder money in New York and abroad for the entertainment and casino operations skimmed some of the proceeds for themselves and have essentially stalled the project. Critics also point out that the planned Freedom Tower complex at the old World Trade Center site has been delayed for seven years due to money, in addition to basic construction materials like concrete and steel, have been siphoned off for other more immediate construction projects.
In addition, although the Cornerstones is slated to improve public education, a number of public schools have been sold off for private development as part of the overall scheme.
Former Assistant U.S. Attorney in the southern district of Manhattan Chad Vignola, who also worked for Mayor Giuliani on the city's Waste Management Commission and resigned from the city's Department of Education amid a nepotism scandal, is reportedly very much involved with the Cornerstones project and is close to both Giuliani and Chin in ensuring the project's completion.
Vignola resigned as chief counsel for New York City's Education Commissioner Joel Klein, a Bloomberg appointee who takes his orders from the Giuliani-Bloomberg "mafia" in New York, after Deputy Education Commissioner Diana Lam resigned after she tried to get her husband hired by the Education Department. The sale of public school property to private real estate developers has reportedly been at the center of Klein's tenure, along with the creation of charter schools at the expense of deteriorating schools in poorer area of the city.
Two area state governors who posed potential problems for the Cornerstones project were dispatched quickly through sex scandals.
Tishman Construction received the consulting contract from the state of New Jersey for the Xanadu entertainment complex at the Meadowlands sports complex in East Rutherford, New Jersey during the administration of Governor Jim McGreevey. Tishman had hired McGreevey's Israeli intelligence "honey trap" Golan Cipel as a consultant at a salary of $7500 a month after Cipel left other jobs arranged by McGreevey, including one as New Jersey homeland security chief adviser. McGreevey resigned as governor after his affair with Cipel became public. The new transportation hub at the World Trade Center Cornerstones entertainment center will link that complex with the Xanadu complex in New Jersey via the PATH train operated by the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey.
New York's Governor, former Attorney General Eliot Spitzer, was a dogged pursuer of fraud on Wall Street and those pursuits posed a severe problem for the Cornerstones money laundering operation. Spitzer was forced to resign as governor after he was identified as a customer of the Emperors Club VIP prostitution service run by ex-Israeli government official Mark, aka "Michael," Brener. Details of the probe of Spitzer, known as "Client 9" in federal investigation documents, were leaked by federal investigators working out of the U.S. Attorneys office for southern Manhattan, which has been described as a hub for organized criminal activity even though it comprises the "Organized Crime" investigation unit.
The Barack Obama administration's interest in the mega-bucks real estate boondoggle in New York is heightened by the fact that Klein was on the short list to be Obama's Secretary of Education. In fact, WMR has been told by a knowledgeable source that the Cornerstones project and its receipt of federal stimulus money is a major priority for both Obama and his chief of staff Rahm Emanuel, along with New York Democratic Senator Charles Schumer, a major recipient of campaign contributions from Madoff and his well-heeled associates.
A veteran of the corrupt U.S. Attorneys office for southern Manhattan is the U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Illinois Patrick Fitzgerald. His pursuit of Rod Blagojevich, who was forced to resign as Governor of Illinois, parallels the campaign by his old New York federal colleagues against Spitzer. Chicago billionaire real estate developer Sam Zell, the owner of the Tribune Company that owns Chicago's Wrigley Field, is interested in selling the lucrative baseball park, which sits within the Fifth congressional district once held by Blagojevich and subsequently by Emanuel. Blagojevich was seen as a possible problem if the ball park were sold for the development of a Cornerstones-like mega entertainment and casino center.
With McGreevey, Spitzer, and Blagojevich out of the picture, the Russian-Israeli mob-connected entertainment and casino interests now have a virtual free hand in New York and Chicago, with a wink and a nod from Emanuel who occupies the powerful White House position as Chief of Staff and who can influence the dispersal of federal stimulus money to assist in the various redevelopment schemes. With Spitzer gone and an increasingly unpopular David Paterson as Governor, Bloomberg is given a good chance of unseating Paterson and ensuring that Albany supports the Cornerstones plan for New York City.
The billions of dollars that the Cornerstones players had Madoff skim in his Ponzi scheme that are sitting in off-shore locations, including Israel, the Cayman Islands, Belize, and other financial centers, was to have been re-introduced into New York to fund the Cornerstones development projects. But the fact that Madoff was caught in the scheme and ran the risk of identifying and testifying against his "handlers" has put the entire Cornerstones project risk, WMR has been told.
The Madoff money that was "parked" in Israel, with Russian-Israeli mobsters earning interest and able to use the funds for other financial "leverage," was to be pumped back into New York for the Russian-Israeli mob to make billions from the Cornerstones casino/entertainment complexes in Manhattan. Bloomberg was being counted on to "deliver" the project but now that Madoff was caught the project has been further delayed and silent "investors" in the project are growing restless.
Madoff had guaranteed the major Cornerstones developers that there would be "no release" of information on the source of funding for the project and former New York Mayor Rudolph Giuliani guaranteed that Madoff's "account" would be protected from federal, state, and local law enforcement scrutiny.
WMR was told by our legal source in New York that Madoff and Chin have their "strings pulled" by New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, a "shill" for Giuliani who plans to run for Governor of New York to take care that New York City's redevelopment project does not face any problems in Albany; former New York Governor Mario Cuomo, who is shilling for the financial interests of his son Andrew Cuomo, New York's Attorney General (Giuliani jumped the GOP ship in 1994 to endorse Democrat Mario Cuomo for Governor); and former Senator Alphonse D'Amato, Giuliani's political enemy who, nevertheless, hopes to capitalize on the Cornerstones project.
In fact, WMR was told that the federal stimulus package for New York City is almost entirely slated for rail and rail station projects to support the Cornerstones. These projects include a hookup between the Second Avenue subway and the Q Street subway that will also connect to a high-speed rail link from the East River floating casino to Coney Island; a new rail tunnel linking the Grand Central Station/Times Square casino/entertainment complex with the World Trade Center complex; and enhanced rail links between the Cornerstones and New Jersey. One indication that the federal stimulus money is geared for new rail stations is the fact that the rail station for the new Yankee Stadium is still not completed just weeks prior to the opening of the new stadium.
One source familiar with Cornerstones emphasized the pressure on Bloomberg to deliver on the project. The source revealed that if the Madoff fiasco is any indication of Bloomberg's team's performance, the project is in real trouble. The source added that Bloomberg will pay dearly politically and financially if he fails "to deliver the goods" on the Cornerstones.
With Madoff going to federal prison without a jury trial and no conspiracy charges being brought, the investors in Cornerstone hope their mega-project can be saved with little public notice. It is also certain that based on the massive returns that were expected from Cornerstones, some of Madoff's closest investors, who are now complaining about not knowing about his Ponzi scheme, likely knew very well that if the project came off without a hitch, they stood to gain on their original investments.
http://www.waynemadsenreport.com/
BULLETIN: Busted while reporting in Alexandria, Va.
By Wayne Madsen
Online Journal Contributing Writer
Mar 18, 2009, 15:40
(WMR) -- This editor has covered the news in nasty dictatorships and corruption-ridden countries from Rwanda and Uganda to India and Thailand. I have also reported on journalists like our colleague John Caylor, who was arrested in Panama City, Florida, while trying to obtain public documents, pursuant to Florida’s open government law, on that state’s abuse and even murder of prison inmates.
In the eight years of the Bush-Cheney administration, I covered anti-war protests in Washington and never once did I face an arrest situation, although there were some close calls. My arrest-free journalism record was shattered last night in Alexandria, Virginia, while meeting a confidential source.
I hoped to report today on a significant link between “Sir” Allen Stanford’s collapsed Stanford Financial Group and a top Democratic Party lobbyist who is close to the Obama administration. I also hoped to report on the covert activities of Stanford’s operations in Venezuela and Panama.
That story will have to wait, unfortunately.
Last night, while meeting the source in O’Connell’s Irish pub in Alexandria, Alexandria police, who apparently had plainclothes police inside the St. Patrick’s Day-jam packed establishment, arrested my source for no apparent reason while I and the source’s wife looked on in shock. When I asked one of the men who forced the source to the ground outside why they were placing him under arrest, he shouted to me to “back off.” I asked the man if he was a police officer. His response was, “No, I’m a fireman.”
I then told the “fireman” that I was a member of the press, produced my credentials, and wanted to know what the charges were against my source. He then motioned to someone behind me who shoved me up against a police SUV and placed me in handcuffs.
I was taken to Alexandria city jail and booked for “drunk in public.” Of course, there was no blood test or field sobriety test administered by anyone, police or “firemen,” to prove the spurious charge.
Then again, I did not have it as bad as some people who have been victims of America’s “justice” system. I was not hooded, chained, placed on a plane for God-knows-where and subjected to torture by brutish Third World interrogators. Nor was I placed in solitary confinement without seeing the light of day. However, I was not permitted to speak to an attorney nor was I read my Miranda rights in this Kafkaesque post-Miranda era.
I am also quite concerned about the fate of my source whom I only saw once in the “lockup.” The cops were extremely physically rough with him for some unknown reason.
There was also something very unsettling about the police retaining custody of my reporter’s notebook for some three hours while I was under arrest.
In a way, I should not be surprised that this arrest took place in Alexandria. The town has always crawled with intelligence types and other covert players, from neo-Confederates involved with the global small arms business to the CIA-linked International Association of Chiefs of Police and the infamous U.S. Court for the Eastern District of Virginia national security “rocket docket” team of Chief Judge James Cacheris and his attorney brother, Plato. Alexandria is only outdone by trendy McLean for the greatest number of spooks per square mile.
However, Alexandria was not always a center for right-wing ne’er-do-wells. Alexandria was once the home of George Washington, the leader of the American Revolution. Its inns and meeting halls once attracted such revolutionary Virginia notables as Patrick Henry, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, and George Mason.
In 1735, New York publisher John Peter Zenger was charged with seditious libel and in a case many thought he would lose, he was acquitted of all charges. The Zenger case later spurred the founders of this nation to enshrine the freedom of the press in the First Amendment to the Constitution.
My trial is scheduled for March 25 at 9:30 am in the Circuit Court in Alexandria at 520 King Street in Room 201. I intend to plead not guilty to the charge against me and cite the First Amendment of the Constitution in my defense. I invite all those in the Washington area who value a free press to attend what I will simply call “mini-Zenger II.”
I, for one, will not see a free press in this nation go down without a fight. And I must also say that even in Uganda, a dictatorship, President Yoweri Museveni’s security agents never tried to stage an incident while I met opposition leaders at the Sheraton Hotel in Kampala. Although the agents were intently interested in whom I was meeting, they had much more class than the brutish Alexandria police and the “fireman.”
UPDATE 1X: WMR can report that our source was released from Alexandria jail and is doing fine today.
Previously published in the Wayne Madsen Report.
Copyright © 2008 WayneMadenReport.com
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tommy:
More proof that WAYNE MADSEN IS THE MOST EFFECTIVE REPORTER IN D.C.
More proof that MADSEN was targetted for writing his last story on THE MADDOFF SCANDAL reaching to Maddoff's sentencing judge in a real estate scam using stolen money.
_______________________________
Investigators looking at ties between Madoff and Stanford
By Wayne Madsen
Online Journal Contributing Writer
Mar 10, 2009, 00:20
(WMR) -- The emergence of a connection between Bernard Madoff, the $50 billion Ponzi scheme fraudster, and R. Allen Stanford’s collapsed $50 billion Stanford Financial Group may center round the Bank of New York (BONY) Mellon’s Pershing LLC, which bills itself as “a leading global provider of clearing and financial services outsourcing solutions to more than 1,100 institutional and retail financial organizations and independent investment advisers who collectively represent more than five million active investors.”
Headquartered in New Jersey, Pershing’s involvement with both Stanford and BONY, which has had a checkered past with some of Madoff’s closest friends in the Russian-Israeli Mafia, including individuals like Grigory Loutchansky and Marc Rich, may provide investigators with an important key to unraveling the complex world of Russian-Israeli organized crime penetration of the global financial system.
Germany’s Wirtschaftsblatt reported on February 19, 2009, that Pershing began transferring funds from Stanford’s international headquarters in Antigua after Madoff was arrested in December 2008. After Stanford came under federal investigation, Pershing ceased the money transfers, according to the paper.
On March 18, 2008, WMR reported:
“In 2002, OPERATION SPIDERWEB, a joint FBI-EUROPOL operation, resulted in the arrest of 20 Russian-Israeli dual citizens on charges of money laundering. The laundering primarily involved the Bank of New York (BONY), the Russian bank Menatep, and an ‘Internet bank’ called the European Union Bank.
More importantly, the money laundering network also included Benex, a firm connected to Bill Clinton-pardoned Mossad figure Marc Rich, who still resides primarily in Switzerland. Benex’s office was located on Queens Boulevard in Forest Hills in the same building where Grigori Loutchansky headquartered two of his companies.
Loutchansky is a Latvian-born Israeli who laundered billions through his Vienna-based NORDEX firm.
National Security Agency (NSA) signals intercepts have reportedly yielded intelligence on Loutchansky’s role in the smuggling of nuclear materials. Loutchansky also was closely linked to Clinton’s 1996 re-election campaign through New York real estate magnate and Democratic donor Sam Dombs.”
Menatep was owned by Russian tycoon Mikhail Khodorkovsky, who was justifiably imprisoned by the Putin government for fraud and tax evasion.
Where was the European Union Bank headquartered and chartered?
Stanford’s one-time playground, Antigua.
Previously published in the Wayne Madsen Report.
Copyright © 2008 WayneMadenReport.com
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Madoff took fall for New York's Richest and most powerful politicians
by Wayne Madsen
A reliable source who is close to both the U.S. Court for the Southern District of New York and the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Southern District of New York's Organized Crime Unit tells WMR that Ponzi scammer Bernard Madoff, who was remanded to prison last week by U.S. Judge Denny Chin, took a "fall" for some of New York's most powerful and wealthiest politicians who were using Madoff's private investment scheme as a "front" to assist in a major real estate redevelopment plan for New York that stood, and still stand, to make the conspirators super-rich.
Although the federal prosecutors in the case against Madoff claim the former chairman of NASDAQ and chief of Madoff Investment Securities refused to cooperate in their criminal conspiracy investigation of Madoff, the prosecutors have no intention of expanding the case beyond Madoff and possibly some of his family members.
WMR has been informed by a well-informed New York legal source that Madoff is a second-tier player in a major real estate development plan that used some of the money skimmed off by Madoff's Ponzi scheme to fund some of the real estate development projects. WMR has been told that another second-tier player in the real estate scheme is none other than Madoff's trial judge, Chin.
The judge, WMR is told, particularly represents the real estate development interests of Tishman Speyer, the real estate firm that owns the Chrysler Building, Rockefeller Center, and the MetLife Building. Chin has been amply rewarded for his "services" with a luxurious penthouse for him and his wife in Battery Park City in lower Manhattan. WMR has also been told that Chin has been responsible for destroying important email evidence that points to the involvement of New York's top political leadership in the Cornerstones project.
Madoff, another second-tier player in the Cornerstones, also stood to gain financially from the proect as a major investor in real estate in his own right.
A branch of the Tishman family, Tishman Construction Company, specializes in the building and operation of entertainment complexes, including casinos projects in Las Vegas and Atlantic City. Last July, Tishman and Revel Hotel and Casino in Atlantic City executives were killed in a plane crash in Owatonna, Minnesota, 60 miles south of Minneapolis.
Chin and Madoff were linchpins in a major redevelopment scheme for New York called the "Cornerstones." There are four Cornerstone" redevelopment projects planned for Manhattan that will see the building of major entertainment and gambling casino operations in the city with high-speed rail links between them and to other parts of the city. The four "Cornerstones" are the new World Trade Center site surrounding the future Freedom Tower, Grand Central Station/Times Square, Penn Station, and a floating casino complex on the East River near the Brooklyn Bridge.
WMR has been told that Chin is closely allied in the mega-billion dollar real estate development scheme with former Attorney General Michael Mukasey, who once served on the same southern district of Manhattan federal circuit with Chin. WMR is told that Chin and Mukasey represented the interests of New York's "Landlord Lobby" and "West Side Lobby" in major cases involving real estate plans for New York City. Chin and Mukasey failed to recuse themselves from cases in which they had clear conflicts-of-interest, WMR was informed. Mukasey's son Marc, an attorney for the law firm Bracewell Giuliani, is representing Frank DiPasquale, Madoff's chief financial officer.
Mukasey and Giuliani are also close friends and business associates and both worked for the same law firm Patterson Belknap.
Although the Cornerstones projects are supported by New York interests who represent the middle class and poor, mainly due to the fact that it will create mixed-income housing units and provide money for public education and the city's increasingly deteriorating public schools, critics point out that the project has been stalled because major players who used Madoff to launder money in New York and abroad for the entertainment and casino operations skimmed some of the proceeds for themselves and have essentially stalled the project. Critics also point out that the planned Freedom Tower complex at the old World Trade Center site has been delayed for seven years due to money, in addition to basic construction materials like concrete and steel, have been siphoned off for other more immediate construction projects.
In addition, although the Cornerstones is slated to improve public education, a number of public schools have been sold off for private development as part of the overall scheme.
Former Assistant U.S. Attorney in the southern district of Manhattan Chad Vignola, who also worked for Mayor Giuliani on the city's Waste Management Commission and resigned from the city's Department of Education amid a nepotism scandal, is reportedly very much involved with the Cornerstones project and is close to both Giuliani and Chin in ensuring the project's completion.
Vignola resigned as chief counsel for New York City's Education Commissioner Joel Klein, a Bloomberg appointee who takes his orders from the Giuliani-Bloomberg "mafia" in New York, after Deputy Education Commissioner Diana Lam resigned after she tried to get her husband hired by the Education Department. The sale of public school property to private real estate developers has reportedly been at the center of Klein's tenure, along with the creation of charter schools at the expense of deteriorating schools in poorer area of the city.
Two area state governors who posed potential problems for the Cornerstones project were dispatched quickly through sex scandals.
Tishman Construction received the consulting contract from the state of New Jersey for the Xanadu entertainment complex at the Meadowlands sports complex in East Rutherford, New Jersey during the administration of Governor Jim McGreevey. Tishman had hired McGreevey's Israeli intelligence "honey trap" Golan Cipel as a consultant at a salary of $7500 a month after Cipel left other jobs arranged by McGreevey, including one as New Jersey homeland security chief adviser. McGreevey resigned as governor after his affair with Cipel became public. The new transportation hub at the World Trade Center Cornerstones entertainment center will link that complex with the Xanadu complex in New Jersey via the PATH train operated by the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey.
New York's Governor, former Attorney General Eliot Spitzer, was a dogged pursuer of fraud on Wall Street and those pursuits posed a severe problem for the Cornerstones money laundering operation. Spitzer was forced to resign as governor after he was identified as a customer of the Emperors Club VIP prostitution service run by ex-Israeli government official Mark, aka "Michael," Brener. Details of the probe of Spitzer, known as "Client 9" in federal investigation documents, were leaked by federal investigators working out of the U.S. Attorneys office for southern Manhattan, which has been described as a hub for organized criminal activity even though it comprises the "Organized Crime" investigation unit.
The Barack Obama administration's interest in the mega-bucks real estate boondoggle in New York is heightened by the fact that Klein was on the short list to be Obama's Secretary of Education. In fact, WMR has been told by a knowledgeable source that the Cornerstones project and its receipt of federal stimulus money is a major priority for both Obama and his chief of staff Rahm Emanuel, along with New York Democratic Senator Charles Schumer, a major recipient of campaign contributions from Madoff and his well-heeled associates.
A veteran of the corrupt U.S. Attorneys office for southern Manhattan is the U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Illinois Patrick Fitzgerald. His pursuit of Rod Blagojevich, who was forced to resign as Governor of Illinois, parallels the campaign by his old New York federal colleagues against Spitzer. Chicago billionaire real estate developer Sam Zell, the owner of the Tribune Company that owns Chicago's Wrigley Field, is interested in selling the lucrative baseball park, which sits within the Fifth congressional district once held by Blagojevich and subsequently by Emanuel. Blagojevich was seen as a possible problem if the ball park were sold for the development of a Cornerstones-like mega entertainment and casino center.
With McGreevey, Spitzer, and Blagojevich out of the picture, the Russian-Israeli mob-connected entertainment and casino interests now have a virtual free hand in New York and Chicago, with a wink and a nod from Emanuel who occupies the powerful White House position as Chief of Staff and who can influence the dispersal of federal stimulus money to assist in the various redevelopment schemes. With Spitzer gone and an increasingly unpopular David Paterson as Governor, Bloomberg is given a good chance of unseating Paterson and ensuring that Albany supports the Cornerstones plan for New York City.
The billions of dollars that the Cornerstones players had Madoff skim in his Ponzi scheme that are sitting in off-shore locations, including Israel, the Cayman Islands, Belize, and other financial centers, was to have been re-introduced into New York to fund the Cornerstones development projects. But the fact that Madoff was caught in the scheme and ran the risk of identifying and testifying against his "handlers" has put the entire Cornerstones project risk, WMR has been told.
The Madoff money that was "parked" in Israel, with Russian-Israeli mobsters earning interest and able to use the funds for other financial "leverage," was to be pumped back into New York for the Russian-Israeli mob to make billions from the Cornerstones casino/entertainment complexes in Manhattan. Bloomberg was being counted on to "deliver" the project but now that Madoff was caught the project has been further delayed and silent "investors" in the project are growing restless.
Madoff had guaranteed the major Cornerstones developers that there would be "no release" of information on the source of funding for the project and former New York Mayor Rudolph Giuliani guaranteed that Madoff's "account" would be protected from federal, state, and local law enforcement scrutiny.
WMR was told by our legal source in New York that Madoff and Chin have their "strings pulled" by New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, a "shill" for Giuliani who plans to run for Governor of New York to take care that New York City's redevelopment project does not face any problems in Albany; former New York Governor Mario Cuomo, who is shilling for the financial interests of his son Andrew Cuomo, New York's Attorney General (Giuliani jumped the GOP ship in 1994 to endorse Democrat Mario Cuomo for Governor); and former Senator Alphonse D'Amato, Giuliani's political enemy who, nevertheless, hopes to capitalize on the Cornerstones project.
In fact, WMR was told that the federal stimulus package for New York City is almost entirely slated for rail and rail station projects to support the Cornerstones. These projects include a hookup between the Second Avenue subway and the Q Street subway that will also connect to a high-speed rail link from the East River floating casino to Coney Island; a new rail tunnel linking the Grand Central Station/Times Square casino/entertainment complex with the World Trade Center complex; and enhanced rail links between the Cornerstones and New Jersey. One indication that the federal stimulus money is geared for new rail stations is the fact that the rail station for the new Yankee Stadium is still not completed just weeks prior to the opening of the new stadium.
One source familiar with Cornerstones emphasized the pressure on Bloomberg to deliver on the project. The source revealed that if the Madoff fiasco is any indication of Bloomberg's team's performance, the project is in real trouble. The source added that Bloomberg will pay dearly politically and financially if he fails "to deliver the goods" on the Cornerstones.
With Madoff going to federal prison without a jury trial and no conspiracy charges being brought, the investors in Cornerstone hope their mega-project can be saved with little public notice. It is also certain that based on the massive returns that were expected from Cornerstones, some of Madoff's closest investors, who are now complaining about not knowing about his Ponzi scheme, likely knew very well that if the project came off without a hitch, they stood to gain on their original investments.
http://www.waynemadsenreport.com/
ILLUMINATI World Order plans with Putin: Gun Confiscation under lying puppet Barack Obama
http://www.whatdoesitmean.com/index1216.htm
March 20, 2009
All Private Guns Will Be Confiscated By September 2009, US Tells Russia
By: Sorcha Faal, and as reported to her Western Subscribers (Traducción al Español abajo)
Kremlin reports on the extraordinary meeting held today between President Medvedev and former United States Secretaries of State Henry Kissinger (under Nixon), James Baker (under Bush Sr.), Charles Shultz (under Regan), former United States Defense Secretary William Perry (under Clinton), and former US Senator and top defense expert Sam Nunn, are stating that the Americans are acknowledging for the first time their acceptance of a New Global Order in which they seek to partner with natural resource rich Russia and the oil rich Nations of the Middle East in order to ensure their survival into the 21st Century.
Leading the United States to the shocking conclusion that their very survival is at risk has been the evaporation of 45 percent of the World’s wealth which has caused a rapid plunge in Global manufacturing leading to a 49 percent collapse in US trade exports which the International Monetary Fund is reported has caused the World’s economy to shrink for the first time in 60 years and has lead Canada’s Central Bank chief David Dodge to state the World is “facing a long and deep recession that will fundamentally alter the nature of capitalism”.
Though Prime Minister Putin has warned that “resorting to a printing press would be unwise and extremely dangerous”, the already bankrupt United States, whose staggering debt is four times higher than their entire National income, has allowed its Federal Reserve Bank Chairman Ben “Throw Money Out of Helicopters” Bernanke to ‘create out of thin air’ a further $1.2 Trillion to stabilize the American economy, but which in turn has led to the collapse of the US Dollar leading the United Nations to recommend next week that the World “ditch the dollar as its reserve currency in favor of a shared basket of currencies”.
Russian economists further state in these reports that the United States has been left with ‘no other option’ than to force the massive devaluation of the US Dollar in order to ‘shake lose’ from banks and private investors the hundreds of billions they are currently hoarding and is being blamed for collapsing a United States where consumer spending accounts for two-thirds of its economy and which without money to borrow, or borrowers to loan to, is fast approaching the abyss.
With the devaluation of the US dollar, however, massive inflation will ensue causing the value of these currently hoarded hundreds of billions of US Dollars to plummet and forcing them to be spent before they become totally worthless, a policy which China, the largest Global holder of US debt, has voiced increasing concerns about and have cut back on their purchases of American debt even as desperation hits their own factories as orders plunge.
These top American Officials have also assured President Medvedev that new laws being written by the Obama administration will ‘completely’ reform the American financial system by fully integrating it into a single Global Economy due to be enacted during the coming G-20 summit in London.
When President Medvedev voiced his concerns to the Americans over his belief that the US Congress would not allow such a radical new set of laws to pass, these reports continue, Kissinger stated that the American people were being ‘primed’ to overwhelm their lawmakers into swiftly enacting ‘in its entirety’ the Obama administrations new banking and financial laws by the outrageous behavior of those collapsed financial giants that includes:
----1.) The insurance giant AIG which after receiving over $300 billion in US taxpayer money paid out nearly $200 million in bonuses;
----2.) The collapsed stock selling giant Merrill Lynch which after receiving $20 billion in US taxpayer money paid out $3.6 billion in bonuses; and
----3.) The collapsed US banking giant Citigroup who after receiving $45 billion in US taxpayer money announced a $10 million redecoration of their executive office suites.
News from the United States today further confirm Kissinger’s assertions to President Medvedev as US Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner has now admitted that he had ordered US Senator Christopher Dodd to include the executive pay provision into the stimulus bill which was, in fact, a loophole allowing these controversial bonuses to be paid out.
To such machinations being utilized by their supposed ‘leaders’ against them in order to pave the road from a once sovereign United States to this New World Order these Americans remain nearly clueless, but when pressed by President Medvedev on the plans to ensure that civil society on the North American continent doesn’t break down Kissinger reportedly replied, “By September we’ll have confiscated all privately owned guns so it really doesn’t matter what we do, we’ll still be in charge”.
Russian Intelligence reports state that gun ownership statistics in the United States vary widely, but is estimated to be that nearly 50 percent of US households have nearly 270 million guns, none of which these Americans seem now ready to part with without a fight.
But, new reports coming from the United States show that they are fast adopting the tactics used by the German Nazis to disarm their society prior to the installation of fascist rule and martial law by first rendering all private guns useless by eliminating and restricting the ammunition they use. And from new reports coming from the United States we can see that this ‘plan’ is already being instituted with ammunition shortages being reported in Idaho, Georgia, and Louisiana, and a new law just introduced in California which would:
1. Stop the private transfer between individuals of more than 50 rounds of ammunition.
2. License and tax anyone selling handgun ammunition commercially and force these stores to get background checks on anyone selling ammunition.
3. Get a thumbprint from anyone buying handgun ammunition.
4. Ban all ammunition sales that don't take place face-to- face, in other words, ban mail-order sales.
Even more chilling for American gun owners was the Obama administrations order to the US Military on March 12 which stated: “Effective immediately DOD Surplus, LLC, will be implementing new requirements for mutilation of fired shell casings. The new DRMS requirement calls for DOD Surplus personnel to witness the mutilation of the property and sign the Certificate of Destruction.” which would have crippled the US ammunition industry, who are the largest purchasers of used military ammunition brass, but after found out about by US Senators was quickly withdrawn.
To the reasons feared by the leadership class in the United States of their citizens retaining the right to firearms we can read:
“As the growing world-wide economic crisis deepens, military forces from Canada, the United States, and the United Kingdom are preparing to meet angry citizens on the street. The economic crisis - and the public outrage it is causing - is at the forefront of intelligence agencies and military forces in the western world.
Prominent trends forecaster Gerald Celente has been sounding the alarm for years, warning that riots and tax revolts are coming to America. The Pentagon, U. K. Ministry of Defense, and Canadian military apparently agree. In November of 2008 the United States Army War College released the report Known Unknowns: Unconventional "Strategic Shocks" in Defense Strategy Development. The report identifies economic collapse as a reason for the defense establishment to conduct domestic operations. The report states,
"Widespread civil violence inside the United States would force the defense establishment to reorient priorities in extremis to defend basic domestic order and human security. Deliberate employment of weapons of mass destruction or other catastrophic capabilities, unforeseen economic collapse, loss of functioning political and legal order, purposeful domestic resistance or insurgency..."
The CIA and MI5 are both watching the economic situation for signs of unrest and political instability. As the Washington Post reports, the CIA has added an economic situation report to its threat assessment for the White House. A further sign that the United States government is anticipating widespread unrest comes with the domestic stationing of the 1st Brigade Combat Team of the 3rd Infantry Division. The Army Times reports,
"They may be called upon to help with civil unrest and crowd control or to deal with potentially horrific scenarios such as massive poisoning and chaos in response to a chemical, biological, radiological, nuclear or high-yield explosive, or CBRNE, attack."
Canadian military forces have been given a nearly identical domestic mission in a synchronized move with the United States. Canada's National Post reports that,
"The Canadian military has embarked on a wide-ranging plan to turn its reserve soldiers into focused units trained and equipped to respond to a nightmarish array of domestic threats, including terrorist "dirty bomb" attacks, biological agent containment, Arctic catastrophes and natural disasters.”
Reports from the United States are also revealing that for the first time since their Civil War, active duty US Army Troops were put into the streets of Alabama after the killing spree of a crazed gunman, but which the US Army is now reporting it is ‘investigating’ because it doesn’t know who deployed them.
To whom the leadership elite in America are actually planning on protecting themselves from we can further read: “A new document meant to help Missouri law enforcement agencies identify militia members or domestic terrorists has drawn criticism for some of the warning signs mentioned.
The Feb. 20 report called "The Modern Militia Movement" mentions such red flags as political bumper stickers for third-party candidates, such as U.S. Rep. Ron Paul, who ran for president last year; talk of conspiracy theories, such as the plan for a superhighway linking Canada to Mexico; and possession of subversive literature.”
As to what these dangerous American terrorists can expect once they are in the custody of their US intelligence services?
“The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) concluded in 2007 that US methods to extract information from prisoners at secret CIA jails as part of the "war on terror" amounted to torture.”
Even worse for these dissident Americans are the chilling revelations from top investigative news journalist Seymour Hersh: “After 9/11, I haven’t written about this yet, but the Central Intelligence Agency was very deeply involved in domestic activities against people they thought to be enemies of the state. Without any legal authority for it. They haven’t been called on it yet. That does happen.”
So today, as the United States ‘watch list’ for domestic and International terrorists has hit 1 million names, in a country that already has more prisoners than any other Nation in the World, or our entire Earths’ history for that matter, and as sales of weapons and ammunition are still hitting record highs in America since President Obama’s election, it would appear more than likely that the assertions of US officials to Russia that they remain in control of their country is highly doubtful…and needing just one single ‘spark’ to plunge it into full scale civil war.
And whose to say that hasn’t been their ‘plan’ all along?
© March 20, 2009 EU and US all rights reserved
[Ed. Note: The United States government actively seeks to find, and silence, any and all opinions about the United States except those coming from authorized government and/or affiliated sources, of which we are not one. No interviews are granted and very little personal information is given about our contributors, or their sources, to protect their safety.] .
March 20, 2009
All Private Guns Will Be Confiscated By September 2009, US Tells Russia
By: Sorcha Faal, and as reported to her Western Subscribers (Traducción al Español abajo)
Kremlin reports on the extraordinary meeting held today between President Medvedev and former United States Secretaries of State Henry Kissinger (under Nixon), James Baker (under Bush Sr.), Charles Shultz (under Regan), former United States Defense Secretary William Perry (under Clinton), and former US Senator and top defense expert Sam Nunn, are stating that the Americans are acknowledging for the first time their acceptance of a New Global Order in which they seek to partner with natural resource rich Russia and the oil rich Nations of the Middle East in order to ensure their survival into the 21st Century.
Leading the United States to the shocking conclusion that their very survival is at risk has been the evaporation of 45 percent of the World’s wealth which has caused a rapid plunge in Global manufacturing leading to a 49 percent collapse in US trade exports which the International Monetary Fund is reported has caused the World’s economy to shrink for the first time in 60 years and has lead Canada’s Central Bank chief David Dodge to state the World is “facing a long and deep recession that will fundamentally alter the nature of capitalism”.
Though Prime Minister Putin has warned that “resorting to a printing press would be unwise and extremely dangerous”, the already bankrupt United States, whose staggering debt is four times higher than their entire National income, has allowed its Federal Reserve Bank Chairman Ben “Throw Money Out of Helicopters” Bernanke to ‘create out of thin air’ a further $1.2 Trillion to stabilize the American economy, but which in turn has led to the collapse of the US Dollar leading the United Nations to recommend next week that the World “ditch the dollar as its reserve currency in favor of a shared basket of currencies”.
Russian economists further state in these reports that the United States has been left with ‘no other option’ than to force the massive devaluation of the US Dollar in order to ‘shake lose’ from banks and private investors the hundreds of billions they are currently hoarding and is being blamed for collapsing a United States where consumer spending accounts for two-thirds of its economy and which without money to borrow, or borrowers to loan to, is fast approaching the abyss.
With the devaluation of the US dollar, however, massive inflation will ensue causing the value of these currently hoarded hundreds of billions of US Dollars to plummet and forcing them to be spent before they become totally worthless, a policy which China, the largest Global holder of US debt, has voiced increasing concerns about and have cut back on their purchases of American debt even as desperation hits their own factories as orders plunge.
These top American Officials have also assured President Medvedev that new laws being written by the Obama administration will ‘completely’ reform the American financial system by fully integrating it into a single Global Economy due to be enacted during the coming G-20 summit in London.
When President Medvedev voiced his concerns to the Americans over his belief that the US Congress would not allow such a radical new set of laws to pass, these reports continue, Kissinger stated that the American people were being ‘primed’ to overwhelm their lawmakers into swiftly enacting ‘in its entirety’ the Obama administrations new banking and financial laws by the outrageous behavior of those collapsed financial giants that includes:
----1.) The insurance giant AIG which after receiving over $300 billion in US taxpayer money paid out nearly $200 million in bonuses;
----2.) The collapsed stock selling giant Merrill Lynch which after receiving $20 billion in US taxpayer money paid out $3.6 billion in bonuses; and
----3.) The collapsed US banking giant Citigroup who after receiving $45 billion in US taxpayer money announced a $10 million redecoration of their executive office suites.
News from the United States today further confirm Kissinger’s assertions to President Medvedev as US Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner has now admitted that he had ordered US Senator Christopher Dodd to include the executive pay provision into the stimulus bill which was, in fact, a loophole allowing these controversial bonuses to be paid out.
To such machinations being utilized by their supposed ‘leaders’ against them in order to pave the road from a once sovereign United States to this New World Order these Americans remain nearly clueless, but when pressed by President Medvedev on the plans to ensure that civil society on the North American continent doesn’t break down Kissinger reportedly replied, “By September we’ll have confiscated all privately owned guns so it really doesn’t matter what we do, we’ll still be in charge”.
Russian Intelligence reports state that gun ownership statistics in the United States vary widely, but is estimated to be that nearly 50 percent of US households have nearly 270 million guns, none of which these Americans seem now ready to part with without a fight.
But, new reports coming from the United States show that they are fast adopting the tactics used by the German Nazis to disarm their society prior to the installation of fascist rule and martial law by first rendering all private guns useless by eliminating and restricting the ammunition they use. And from new reports coming from the United States we can see that this ‘plan’ is already being instituted with ammunition shortages being reported in Idaho, Georgia, and Louisiana, and a new law just introduced in California which would:
1. Stop the private transfer between individuals of more than 50 rounds of ammunition.
2. License and tax anyone selling handgun ammunition commercially and force these stores to get background checks on anyone selling ammunition.
3. Get a thumbprint from anyone buying handgun ammunition.
4. Ban all ammunition sales that don't take place face-to- face, in other words, ban mail-order sales.
Even more chilling for American gun owners was the Obama administrations order to the US Military on March 12 which stated: “Effective immediately DOD Surplus, LLC, will be implementing new requirements for mutilation of fired shell casings. The new DRMS requirement calls for DOD Surplus personnel to witness the mutilation of the property and sign the Certificate of Destruction.” which would have crippled the US ammunition industry, who are the largest purchasers of used military ammunition brass, but after found out about by US Senators was quickly withdrawn.
To the reasons feared by the leadership class in the United States of their citizens retaining the right to firearms we can read:
“As the growing world-wide economic crisis deepens, military forces from Canada, the United States, and the United Kingdom are preparing to meet angry citizens on the street. The economic crisis - and the public outrage it is causing - is at the forefront of intelligence agencies and military forces in the western world.
Prominent trends forecaster Gerald Celente has been sounding the alarm for years, warning that riots and tax revolts are coming to America. The Pentagon, U. K. Ministry of Defense, and Canadian military apparently agree. In November of 2008 the United States Army War College released the report Known Unknowns: Unconventional "Strategic Shocks" in Defense Strategy Development. The report identifies economic collapse as a reason for the defense establishment to conduct domestic operations. The report states,
"Widespread civil violence inside the United States would force the defense establishment to reorient priorities in extremis to defend basic domestic order and human security. Deliberate employment of weapons of mass destruction or other catastrophic capabilities, unforeseen economic collapse, loss of functioning political and legal order, purposeful domestic resistance or insurgency..."
The CIA and MI5 are both watching the economic situation for signs of unrest and political instability. As the Washington Post reports, the CIA has added an economic situation report to its threat assessment for the White House. A further sign that the United States government is anticipating widespread unrest comes with the domestic stationing of the 1st Brigade Combat Team of the 3rd Infantry Division. The Army Times reports,
"They may be called upon to help with civil unrest and crowd control or to deal with potentially horrific scenarios such as massive poisoning and chaos in response to a chemical, biological, radiological, nuclear or high-yield explosive, or CBRNE, attack."
Canadian military forces have been given a nearly identical domestic mission in a synchronized move with the United States. Canada's National Post reports that,
"The Canadian military has embarked on a wide-ranging plan to turn its reserve soldiers into focused units trained and equipped to respond to a nightmarish array of domestic threats, including terrorist "dirty bomb" attacks, biological agent containment, Arctic catastrophes and natural disasters.”
Reports from the United States are also revealing that for the first time since their Civil War, active duty US Army Troops were put into the streets of Alabama after the killing spree of a crazed gunman, but which the US Army is now reporting it is ‘investigating’ because it doesn’t know who deployed them.
To whom the leadership elite in America are actually planning on protecting themselves from we can further read: “A new document meant to help Missouri law enforcement agencies identify militia members or domestic terrorists has drawn criticism for some of the warning signs mentioned.
The Feb. 20 report called "The Modern Militia Movement" mentions such red flags as political bumper stickers for third-party candidates, such as U.S. Rep. Ron Paul, who ran for president last year; talk of conspiracy theories, such as the plan for a superhighway linking Canada to Mexico; and possession of subversive literature.”
As to what these dangerous American terrorists can expect once they are in the custody of their US intelligence services?
“The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) concluded in 2007 that US methods to extract information from prisoners at secret CIA jails as part of the "war on terror" amounted to torture.”
Even worse for these dissident Americans are the chilling revelations from top investigative news journalist Seymour Hersh: “After 9/11, I haven’t written about this yet, but the Central Intelligence Agency was very deeply involved in domestic activities against people they thought to be enemies of the state. Without any legal authority for it. They haven’t been called on it yet. That does happen.”
So today, as the United States ‘watch list’ for domestic and International terrorists has hit 1 million names, in a country that already has more prisoners than any other Nation in the World, or our entire Earths’ history for that matter, and as sales of weapons and ammunition are still hitting record highs in America since President Obama’s election, it would appear more than likely that the assertions of US officials to Russia that they remain in control of their country is highly doubtful…and needing just one single ‘spark’ to plunge it into full scale civil war.
And whose to say that hasn’t been their ‘plan’ all along?
© March 20, 2009 EU and US all rights reserved
[Ed. Note: The United States government actively seeks to find, and silence, any and all opinions about the United States except those coming from authorized government and/or affiliated sources, of which we are not one. No interviews are granted and very little personal information is given about our contributors, or their sources, to protect their safety.] .
Wednesday, March 18, 2009
CIA uses FBI badges for cover? DOES THIS EXPLAIN THE WELLSTONE MURDER with MINNEAPOLIS FBI stealing the DULUTH, MN AIRPORT LOGS shows prior knowledge
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jeff-stein/cia-man-accused-of-rape-c_b_176119.html
Warren's claim to be an FBI agent prompted a hotel manager to send a security video of the incident to the FBI, said two of the sources.
FBI officials said they could not recall such an incident.
One version of the incident had Warren "flashing FBI credentials." According to a longtime senior CIA operations official, the CIA has occasionally used the FBI for cover, as it has many other agencies, particularly the Department of State.
But other veteran intelligence operatives said they had never heard of the CIA using the FBI for cover -- or counterfeiting FBI credentials for an operation.
_______________________
tommy:
MOST MORONS did not read the Patriot Act.
Find section that created 100 FBI BADGES FOR THE NEW 'SPECIAL SERVICE' who only report to the White House.
That's the clue to my facts.
That's why MUELLER did not want me to subpoenae SIOUX FALLS FBI SPECIAL COUNTERINTELIGENCE SPECIAL COCKSUCKER STEVEN PLUTA....Mueller moved Pluta to Iraq to duck the subpoena.
SIOUX FALLS MD cHAD CARDA...also...uh...well...South Dakota National Guard was deployed to make sure Carda also...could not be subpoenaed. See, SD Med Bd Complaint that a pussy named SEN LEAHY, Conyers, Holderfaggot, Obamaclown...do not want to read or review or disclose??????????????????????????
More facts for BARKY AND DUMBFAGGOT HOLDER to ignore?.
___________________________________
One of the former senior CIA officials talked about the incident because he was incensed that Warren would be allowed to return to duty in Cairo despite "such a shocking lack of judgment." This official maintained that Warren was given lenient treatment because he is an African American.
But another former CIA division chief described Warren as a highly talented officer whose "future was unlimited."
Jeff Stein can be reached at jstein@cq.com. Go to his daily SpyTalk blog at CQ Politics for more on this and other national security topics.
In 2007 Warren was made CIA station chief in Algiers. Sometime during his North African postings, he converted to Islam, according to news reports.
It was in Cairo that he first met a married woman who would later charge him with drugging and having unwanted sex with her.
Last year she, and another woman in Algiers, independently reported to embassy officials that Warren had invited them to his residence, knocked them out with so-called "date rape" drugs and had sex with them.
Evidence supporting their accusations was gathered by agents from the Diplomatic Security Service and summarized in an affidavit obtained by ABC Television News last month.
A CIA spokesman declined to comment on any aspect of the Warren case, except to reiterate that "the agency would take seriously, and follow up on, any allegation of misconduct."
Warren and his attorney could not be located for comment.###
Jeff Steinhttp://blogs.cqpolitics.com/spytalk/about.html can be reached at jstein@cq.com. Go to his daily SpyTalk blog at CQ Politics for more on this and other national security topics.
_______________________________________________
Number of Reported Sexual Assaults in Military Climbed 8%
Pentagon officials said Tuesday the higher number of sexual assaults suggest that more people are reporting the incidents rather than keeping quiet.
FOXNews.com
Tuesday, March 17, 2009
The number of reported sexual assaults throughout the military jumped 8 percent from last year, according to the Pentagon's Sexual Assault and Prevention and Response Office.
Dr. Kay Whitley, director of the office, said Tuesday this is viewed as a positive indicator, suggesting that more people are reporting the incidents rather than keeping quiet.
In 2005, the military introduced the option of restrictive reporting, which allows victims to report an assault without revealing the identity of their attacker.
Victims are offered a full range of treatment, including a rape kit if necessary, and have the option of revealing the name of their attacker up to one year later if they choose. The Pentagon believes this program is working, and accounts for the increase in reporting.
"Sometimes a victim needs time to restore order to his or her life before getting involved in the justice system, and restricted reporting allows this to happen," Whitley said at a news conference Tuesday.
Because the Pentagon, however, is not able to tally the total number of assaults in the military, it is unknown whether the uptick in reporting is due entirely to the new restrictive reporting policy or there were simply more attacks this year.
But the Pentagon believes, based on anonymous surveys conducted over the past three years, that sexual assaults occur at a relatively equal rate over time.
In the fiscal year 2008, 2,923 people, whether they were service members or civilians subjected to service members, reported a sexual assault. That's up from 2,688 in the previous year.
Last year, 110 converted from restricted to unrestricted, choosing to later reveal the identity of their attacker. The total number of restricted reports last year was 753 before the conversions.
The Pentagon said one of the major barriers for reporting crimes among victims is fear of retaliation.
The military does not clearly track convictions. But in 2008, 317 service members received courts-martial, including some crimes originally reported in 2007.....
______________________________
tommy:
You got to love those flag sucking, grabbastic, GOP scumbag punk scum...don't you?
Guess what "neocon, Gop, Militarized, Police State Faggot Act" destroyed America with: MADDOFF...ENRON...SCHOOL SHOOTERS...COINTELPRO...FALSE FLAG...ANTHRAX...PATRIOT ACT...FISA SELLOUT...WAR COMMISSIONS ACT....etc?
WHEN IS RAPE AND THE CONSPIRACY TO OBSTRUCT RAPE OF FEMALE SOLDIERS...an act of PATRIOTISM AND HEROISM??????????????????????????????????????????????????
Warren's claim to be an FBI agent prompted a hotel manager to send a security video of the incident to the FBI, said two of the sources.
FBI officials said they could not recall such an incident.
One version of the incident had Warren "flashing FBI credentials." According to a longtime senior CIA operations official, the CIA has occasionally used the FBI for cover, as it has many other agencies, particularly the Department of State.
But other veteran intelligence operatives said they had never heard of the CIA using the FBI for cover -- or counterfeiting FBI credentials for an operation.
_______________________
tommy:
MOST MORONS did not read the Patriot Act.
Find section that created 100 FBI BADGES FOR THE NEW 'SPECIAL SERVICE' who only report to the White House.
That's the clue to my facts.
That's why MUELLER did not want me to subpoenae SIOUX FALLS FBI SPECIAL COUNTERINTELIGENCE SPECIAL COCKSUCKER STEVEN PLUTA....Mueller moved Pluta to Iraq to duck the subpoena.
SIOUX FALLS MD cHAD CARDA...also...uh...well...South Dakota National Guard was deployed to make sure Carda also...could not be subpoenaed. See, SD Med Bd Complaint that a pussy named SEN LEAHY, Conyers, Holderfaggot, Obamaclown...do not want to read or review or disclose??????????????????????????
More facts for BARKY AND DUMBFAGGOT HOLDER to ignore?.
___________________________________
One of the former senior CIA officials talked about the incident because he was incensed that Warren would be allowed to return to duty in Cairo despite "such a shocking lack of judgment." This official maintained that Warren was given lenient treatment because he is an African American.
But another former CIA division chief described Warren as a highly talented officer whose "future was unlimited."
Jeff Stein can be reached at jstein@cq.com. Go to his daily SpyTalk blog at CQ Politics for more on this and other national security topics.
In 2007 Warren was made CIA station chief in Algiers. Sometime during his North African postings, he converted to Islam, according to news reports.
It was in Cairo that he first met a married woman who would later charge him with drugging and having unwanted sex with her.
Last year she, and another woman in Algiers, independently reported to embassy officials that Warren had invited them to his residence, knocked them out with so-called "date rape" drugs and had sex with them.
Evidence supporting their accusations was gathered by agents from the Diplomatic Security Service and summarized in an affidavit obtained by ABC Television News last month.
A CIA spokesman declined to comment on any aspect of the Warren case, except to reiterate that "the agency would take seriously, and follow up on, any allegation of misconduct."
Warren and his attorney could not be located for comment.###
Jeff Steinhttp://blogs.cqpolitics.com/spytalk/about.html can be reached at jstein@cq.com. Go to his daily SpyTalk blog at CQ Politics for more on this and other national security topics.
_______________________________________________
Number of Reported Sexual Assaults in Military Climbed 8%
Pentagon officials said Tuesday the higher number of sexual assaults suggest that more people are reporting the incidents rather than keeping quiet.
FOXNews.com
Tuesday, March 17, 2009
The number of reported sexual assaults throughout the military jumped 8 percent from last year, according to the Pentagon's Sexual Assault and Prevention and Response Office.
Dr. Kay Whitley, director of the office, said Tuesday this is viewed as a positive indicator, suggesting that more people are reporting the incidents rather than keeping quiet.
In 2005, the military introduced the option of restrictive reporting, which allows victims to report an assault without revealing the identity of their attacker.
Victims are offered a full range of treatment, including a rape kit if necessary, and have the option of revealing the name of their attacker up to one year later if they choose. The Pentagon believes this program is working, and accounts for the increase in reporting.
"Sometimes a victim needs time to restore order to his or her life before getting involved in the justice system, and restricted reporting allows this to happen," Whitley said at a news conference Tuesday.
Because the Pentagon, however, is not able to tally the total number of assaults in the military, it is unknown whether the uptick in reporting is due entirely to the new restrictive reporting policy or there were simply more attacks this year.
But the Pentagon believes, based on anonymous surveys conducted over the past three years, that sexual assaults occur at a relatively equal rate over time.
In the fiscal year 2008, 2,923 people, whether they were service members or civilians subjected to service members, reported a sexual assault. That's up from 2,688 in the previous year.
Last year, 110 converted from restricted to unrestricted, choosing to later reveal the identity of their attacker. The total number of restricted reports last year was 753 before the conversions.
The Pentagon said one of the major barriers for reporting crimes among victims is fear of retaliation.
The military does not clearly track convictions. But in 2008, 317 service members received courts-martial, including some crimes originally reported in 2007.....
______________________________
tommy:
You got to love those flag sucking, grabbastic, GOP scumbag punk scum...don't you?
Guess what "neocon, Gop, Militarized, Police State Faggot Act" destroyed America with: MADDOFF...ENRON...SCHOOL SHOOTERS...COINTELPRO...FALSE FLAG...ANTHRAX...PATRIOT ACT...FISA SELLOUT...WAR COMMISSIONS ACT....etc?
WHEN IS RAPE AND THE CONSPIRACY TO OBSTRUCT RAPE OF FEMALE SOLDIERS...an act of PATRIOTISM AND HEROISM??????????????????????????????????????????????????
The AntiChrist Spear Chucking Pussy: BARACK OBAMA was behind the swindling AIG slimeball scam
http://www.foxnews.com/politics/first100days/2009/03/17/lawmakers-turn-obama-administration-aig-bonuses/
Lawmakers Turn Fire on Obama Administration Over AIG Bonuses
Though President Obama pledged last month to crack down on executive pay for companies that take "exceptional" amounts of federal bail-out money, the administration now seems to be struggling to do anything about the bonuses AIG says it is contractually obligated to pay.
FOXNews.com
Tuesday, March 17, 2009
Lawmakers outraged at bailed-out American International Group's move to pay $165 million in executive bonuses are turning their fire on the Obama administration, asking why top officials didn't act to prevent the pay-out earlier.
Though President Obama pledged last month to crack down on executive pay for companies that take "exceptional" amounts of federal bailout money, the administration now seems to be struggling to take action to retrieve the bonuses AIG says it is contractually obligated to pay.
This, despite the fact the government, with its $170 billion in assistance, holds about an 80 percent stake in the company, and just pledged another $30 billion.
"It seems like they are an administration in disarray," House Minority Whip Eric Cantor, R-Va., said Tuesday.
Sen. Richard Shelby, R-Ala., suggested Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner does not have a handle on the AIG matter.
"We need to find out when these bonuses were approved and more than that, when they were contracted for. And who knew this?" said the ranking Republican on the Senate Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs Committee. "Did Secretary Geithner know and look the other way?"
The senator, a harsh critic of the Treasury's bailout program known by its acronym "TARP," or Troubled Assets Relief Program, said members who voted for the program bear some blame, but he put much of the fault at Geithner's feet.
"There's either competence or incompetence going on here, and it looks like a lot of incompetence," Shelby said, adding: "I think this is the tip of the iceberg."
_____________________
tommy:
Senator it's called BARKY IS A CORRUPT LYING MUTHERFUCKER.
_____________________
"I think Secretary Geithner does not have his hands around the details of this, and if he does, then there's a lot more questions to be asked," he said.
Shelby, interviewed on CBS' "Early Show," raised the possibility of resignation, saying: "I don't know if he should resign over this. That's up to -- you know, he works for the president of the United States."
White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs said Tuesday the president has "complete confidence" in Geithner.
Outrage continues to spread through the halls of Congress, as members' offices are inundated with calls from angry constituents. The Federal Reserve as well as the Treasury Department are coming under a harsh spotlight, since both gave taxpayer dollars to AIG (though the majority of the funding came from the Fed).
Gibbs was peppered with questions at his daily briefings Monday and Tuesday on why the administration didn't act earlier -- like when it was offering another $30 billion to the company in early March.....
________________________________________________
http://thinkprogress.org/2009/03/18/obama-aig-fire/
FLASHBACK: In October, Obama Said That AIG Executives ‘Should Be Fired’ For Their Excesses
Earlier this week, after the AIG bonuses were revealed, Rep. Barney Frank (D-MA) called for the replacement of company executives. “Since the federal government … now essentially owns that company, maybe it’s time to fire some people.” Frank told ThinkProgress that, “when you are trying to undo something, it is often not the case that the people who did it are the ones to put in place.”
So far, however, the administration has not embraced Frank’s call.
Last fall, as Wall Street crumbled and just one week after the federal government bailed out AIG, the firm’s executives spent $440,000 on manicures, facials, pedicures, and massages at a luxury resort in California. At the time, Obama was a vocal proponent of firing AIG executives. During an October 7, 2008 presidential debate with Sen. John McCain (R-AZ), candidate Obama declared, “those executives should be fired”:
OBAMA: It means we are cracking down on CEOs and making sure that they are not getting bonuses or golden parachutes as a consequence of this package [TARP]. In fact, we just found that AIG — a company that got a bailout — just a week after they got help, went on a $400,000 junket. I’ll tell you what. Treasury should demand that money back, and those executives should be fired.
Watch it:
In October, the revelations about AIG’s luxury retreat sparked widespread outrage, just as the AIG bonuses are doing today. That didn’t stop AIG, however. In November, the Washington Post reported that AIG “plans to pay out $503 million in deferred compensation to some of its top employees, saying it must tap the funds to keep valuable workers from exiting the troubled insurance giant” — the same rationale AIG CEO Edward Liddy is using today.
Update:
Speaking to reporters outside the White House this afternoon, Obama took full responsibility for the White House's handling of the bonus issue, as Greg Sargent noted. "Asked if he wished he’d known about the bonuses sooner, Obama said, in the course of answering: 'Ultimately, I’m responsible. I’m the President of the United States…The buck stops with me.'"
___________________________
tommy:
1) NOTICE Obama is politically suicidal?...and "takes responsibility" for someone else's crimes?...or was OBAMA taking credit for HIS CRIMES?
2) Notice how the love affair with this mysterious spear chucking liar....is over with and...OBAMA still knows that AMERICA IS SO IMPOTENT he can literally commit political suicide based on RAHBMO KIKE'S ADVICE, and still...fuck around like he is our Transference Authority Figure.
3) IN MY MIND...this lying corrupt manchurian puppet on a string.....is getting real old real fast.
PREDICTION: BARKY is the antichrist, or was programmed by the FBI'S OPERATION SLAMMER MIND CONTROLLERS to become CHENEY'S ALTER EGO in a darker color.
4) OBAMA is not really...a black man. A black man and woman told me that. They don't identify with the guy. Black people have seen all the white lies and liberal poseing with full knowledge that, "...HUMAN NATURE IS FLAWED BEYOND HOPE..." and therefore suspicion and cynacism is the only way to stay sane.
I agree.
Barky is a punk idiot.
He will get old.
He will lose his base. Hope springs eternally into madness.
The AUDACITY OF HOPE, should be changed to the AUDACITY OF MENDACITY FROM ANOTHER PUPPET CLOWN LYING MUTHEFUCKAH.
_____________________________________
http://www.examiner.com/x-268-Right-Side-Politics-Examiner~y2009m3d17-Obama-Received-a-101332-Bonus-from-AIG
Obama Received a $101,332 Bonus from AIG
March 17, 3:01 PM ·
Senator Barack Obama received a $101,332 bonus from American International Group in the form of political contributions according to Opensecrets.org. The two biggest Congressional recipients of bonuses from the A.I.G. are - Senators Chris Dodd and Senator Barack Obama.
The A.I.G. Financial Products affiliate of A.I.G. gave out $136,928, the most of any AIG affiliate, in the 2008 cycle. I would note that A.I.G.’s financial products division is the unit that wrote trillions of dollars’ worth of credit-default swaps and "misjudged" the risk.
_____________________________________________
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/17/us/politics/17signing.html?ref=us
By CHARLIE SAVAGE
Published: March 16, 2009
WASHINGTON — A leading Republican senator maintains that President Obama is violating a campaign promise with his claim that he can bypass whistle-blower protections for executive branch officials who give certain information to Congress.
The lawmaker, Senator Charles E. Grassley, Republican of Iowa, sent a letter to Mr. Obama on Friday that condemned a signing statement the president attached to the $410 billion catchall spending bill he signed into law last week.
A signing statement, occasionally issued by presidents upon their signing a bill, is a document that instructs executive branch officials on how to carry out the new law. In this statement, Mr. Obama flagged a provision that protects officials who give information to Congress about their jobs or agencies. He said the statute could not limit his power to control the flow of certain information to lawmakers....
________________________________
tommy:
Anybody count BARKY's (THE LYING CORRUPT SPEAR CHUCKER) flip-flops from his campaign shitstorm of hollow mantras?
I hear the DEMS are so fucked in the head...they are courting another weasel dicked dumbfucking lying faggot named ARLEN "magic bullet boy" SPECTOR (so that Leiberman has some company in political no man's land?)
Lawmakers Turn Fire on Obama Administration Over AIG Bonuses
Though President Obama pledged last month to crack down on executive pay for companies that take "exceptional" amounts of federal bail-out money, the administration now seems to be struggling to do anything about the bonuses AIG says it is contractually obligated to pay.
FOXNews.com
Tuesday, March 17, 2009
Lawmakers outraged at bailed-out American International Group's move to pay $165 million in executive bonuses are turning their fire on the Obama administration, asking why top officials didn't act to prevent the pay-out earlier.
Though President Obama pledged last month to crack down on executive pay for companies that take "exceptional" amounts of federal bailout money, the administration now seems to be struggling to take action to retrieve the bonuses AIG says it is contractually obligated to pay.
This, despite the fact the government, with its $170 billion in assistance, holds about an 80 percent stake in the company, and just pledged another $30 billion.
"It seems like they are an administration in disarray," House Minority Whip Eric Cantor, R-Va., said Tuesday.
Sen. Richard Shelby, R-Ala., suggested Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner does not have a handle on the AIG matter.
"We need to find out when these bonuses were approved and more than that, when they were contracted for. And who knew this?" said the ranking Republican on the Senate Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs Committee. "Did Secretary Geithner know and look the other way?"
The senator, a harsh critic of the Treasury's bailout program known by its acronym "TARP," or Troubled Assets Relief Program, said members who voted for the program bear some blame, but he put much of the fault at Geithner's feet.
"There's either competence or incompetence going on here, and it looks like a lot of incompetence," Shelby said, adding: "I think this is the tip of the iceberg."
_____________________
tommy:
Senator it's called BARKY IS A CORRUPT LYING MUTHERFUCKER.
_____________________
"I think Secretary Geithner does not have his hands around the details of this, and if he does, then there's a lot more questions to be asked," he said.
Shelby, interviewed on CBS' "Early Show," raised the possibility of resignation, saying: "I don't know if he should resign over this. That's up to -- you know, he works for the president of the United States."
White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs said Tuesday the president has "complete confidence" in Geithner.
Outrage continues to spread through the halls of Congress, as members' offices are inundated with calls from angry constituents. The Federal Reserve as well as the Treasury Department are coming under a harsh spotlight, since both gave taxpayer dollars to AIG (though the majority of the funding came from the Fed).
Gibbs was peppered with questions at his daily briefings Monday and Tuesday on why the administration didn't act earlier -- like when it was offering another $30 billion to the company in early March.....
________________________________________________
http://thinkprogress.org/2009/03/18/obama-aig-fire/
FLASHBACK: In October, Obama Said That AIG Executives ‘Should Be Fired’ For Their Excesses
Earlier this week, after the AIG bonuses were revealed, Rep. Barney Frank (D-MA) called for the replacement of company executives. “Since the federal government … now essentially owns that company, maybe it’s time to fire some people.” Frank told ThinkProgress that, “when you are trying to undo something, it is often not the case that the people who did it are the ones to put in place.”
So far, however, the administration has not embraced Frank’s call.
Last fall, as Wall Street crumbled and just one week after the federal government bailed out AIG, the firm’s executives spent $440,000 on manicures, facials, pedicures, and massages at a luxury resort in California. At the time, Obama was a vocal proponent of firing AIG executives. During an October 7, 2008 presidential debate with Sen. John McCain (R-AZ), candidate Obama declared, “those executives should be fired”:
OBAMA: It means we are cracking down on CEOs and making sure that they are not getting bonuses or golden parachutes as a consequence of this package [TARP]. In fact, we just found that AIG — a company that got a bailout — just a week after they got help, went on a $400,000 junket. I’ll tell you what. Treasury should demand that money back, and those executives should be fired.
Watch it:
In October, the revelations about AIG’s luxury retreat sparked widespread outrage, just as the AIG bonuses are doing today. That didn’t stop AIG, however. In November, the Washington Post reported that AIG “plans to pay out $503 million in deferred compensation to some of its top employees, saying it must tap the funds to keep valuable workers from exiting the troubled insurance giant” — the same rationale AIG CEO Edward Liddy is using today.
Update:
Speaking to reporters outside the White House this afternoon, Obama took full responsibility for the White House's handling of the bonus issue, as Greg Sargent noted. "Asked if he wished he’d known about the bonuses sooner, Obama said, in the course of answering: 'Ultimately, I’m responsible. I’m the President of the United States…The buck stops with me.'"
___________________________
tommy:
1) NOTICE Obama is politically suicidal?...and "takes responsibility" for someone else's crimes?...or was OBAMA taking credit for HIS CRIMES?
2) Notice how the love affair with this mysterious spear chucking liar....is over with and...OBAMA still knows that AMERICA IS SO IMPOTENT he can literally commit political suicide based on RAHBMO KIKE'S ADVICE, and still...fuck around like he is our Transference Authority Figure.
3) IN MY MIND...this lying corrupt manchurian puppet on a string.....is getting real old real fast.
PREDICTION: BARKY is the antichrist, or was programmed by the FBI'S OPERATION SLAMMER MIND CONTROLLERS to become CHENEY'S ALTER EGO in a darker color.
4) OBAMA is not really...a black man. A black man and woman told me that. They don't identify with the guy. Black people have seen all the white lies and liberal poseing with full knowledge that, "...HUMAN NATURE IS FLAWED BEYOND HOPE..." and therefore suspicion and cynacism is the only way to stay sane.
I agree.
Barky is a punk idiot.
He will get old.
He will lose his base. Hope springs eternally into madness.
The AUDACITY OF HOPE, should be changed to the AUDACITY OF MENDACITY FROM ANOTHER PUPPET CLOWN LYING MUTHEFUCKAH.
_____________________________________
http://www.examiner.com/x-268-Right-Side-Politics-Examiner~y2009m3d17-Obama-Received-a-101332-Bonus-from-AIG
Obama Received a $101,332 Bonus from AIG
March 17, 3:01 PM ·
Senator Barack Obama received a $101,332 bonus from American International Group in the form of political contributions according to Opensecrets.org. The two biggest Congressional recipients of bonuses from the A.I.G. are - Senators Chris Dodd and Senator Barack Obama.
The A.I.G. Financial Products affiliate of A.I.G. gave out $136,928, the most of any AIG affiliate, in the 2008 cycle. I would note that A.I.G.’s financial products division is the unit that wrote trillions of dollars’ worth of credit-default swaps and "misjudged" the risk.
_____________________________________________
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/17/us/politics/17signing.html?ref=us
By CHARLIE SAVAGE
Published: March 16, 2009
WASHINGTON — A leading Republican senator maintains that President Obama is violating a campaign promise with his claim that he can bypass whistle-blower protections for executive branch officials who give certain information to Congress.
The lawmaker, Senator Charles E. Grassley, Republican of Iowa, sent a letter to Mr. Obama on Friday that condemned a signing statement the president attached to the $410 billion catchall spending bill he signed into law last week.
A signing statement, occasionally issued by presidents upon their signing a bill, is a document that instructs executive branch officials on how to carry out the new law. In this statement, Mr. Obama flagged a provision that protects officials who give information to Congress about their jobs or agencies. He said the statute could not limit his power to control the flow of certain information to lawmakers....
________________________________
tommy:
Anybody count BARKY's (THE LYING CORRUPT SPEAR CHUCKER) flip-flops from his campaign shitstorm of hollow mantras?
I hear the DEMS are so fucked in the head...they are courting another weasel dicked dumbfucking lying faggot named ARLEN "magic bullet boy" SPECTOR (so that Leiberman has some company in political no man's land?)
Request to Canadian Shoe Cannoneers: could you please point that thing at BILL O'REILLY'S FAT LYING LUFFA BOY JACKOFF MOUTH?
http://thinkprogress.org/2009/03/17/bush-shoe-cannon/
Canadian activists build ‘shoe cannon’ to hurl shoes at effigy of Bush.
Former President Bush is in Calgary today giving his first speech since leaving office last January. While it appears Canadian human rights lawyers and activists were unsuccessful in banning Bush from Canada (he arrived safely last night), protesters have gathered to rally against Bush’s invasion of Iraq and his terror and detention policies. As part of the protests, local activists have collected shoes from Canadians around the country and constructed a shoe cannon that will launch shoes at an effigy of Bush:
Footwear has been collected and a cannon has been constructed to toss shoes at an effigy of the much-maligned leader in homage to the Iraqi reporter who chucked his loafers at Mr. Bush last December and was sentenced last week to three years in prison.
Over the weekend, activists held a mock trial and found Mr. Bush guilty of committing war crimes and urged authorities to arrest him when he steps foot on Canadian soil.
“We had shoes sent in (to us) from across the country,” said Colette Lemieux of the Canadian Peace Alliance. “It doesn’t matter that he is no longer president,” she added. “A bank robber who stops holding up banks can and must still be prosecuted for his crimes.” The same applies for Bush, she said.
___________________________
TOMMY:
Anybody notice how weak and pathetic the left wing pussies in America are?
How come lefties have not built a shoe cannon?
How come lefties have not thrown shoes on Bush's lawn in Dallas, The South American jungle ranch, and Crawford?
AMERICA...SAVE OLD SHOES...CARRY TO TEXAS...DEPOSIT AT BUSH'S CRAWFORD RANCH...no?
Canadian activists build ‘shoe cannon’ to hurl shoes at effigy of Bush.
Former President Bush is in Calgary today giving his first speech since leaving office last January. While it appears Canadian human rights lawyers and activists were unsuccessful in banning Bush from Canada (he arrived safely last night), protesters have gathered to rally against Bush’s invasion of Iraq and his terror and detention policies. As part of the protests, local activists have collected shoes from Canadians around the country and constructed a shoe cannon that will launch shoes at an effigy of Bush:
Footwear has been collected and a cannon has been constructed to toss shoes at an effigy of the much-maligned leader in homage to the Iraqi reporter who chucked his loafers at Mr. Bush last December and was sentenced last week to three years in prison.
Over the weekend, activists held a mock trial and found Mr. Bush guilty of committing war crimes and urged authorities to arrest him when he steps foot on Canadian soil.
“We had shoes sent in (to us) from across the country,” said Colette Lemieux of the Canadian Peace Alliance. “It doesn’t matter that he is no longer president,” she added. “A bank robber who stops holding up banks can and must still be prosecuted for his crimes.” The same applies for Bush, she said.
___________________________
TOMMY:
Anybody notice how weak and pathetic the left wing pussies in America are?
How come lefties have not built a shoe cannon?
How come lefties have not thrown shoes on Bush's lawn in Dallas, The South American jungle ranch, and Crawford?
AMERICA...SAVE OLD SHOES...CARRY TO TEXAS...DEPOSIT AT BUSH'S CRAWFORD RANCH...no?
Tuesday, March 17, 2009
Barky Obama's cheap payoff from AIG
http://www.examiner.com/x-268-Right-Side-Politics-Examiner~y2009m3d17-Obama-Received-a-101332-Bonus-from-AIG
Obama Received a $101,332 Bonus from AIG
March 17, 3:01 PM ·
Senator Barack Obama received a $101,332 bonus from American International Group in the form of political contributions according to Opensecrets.org. The two biggest Congressional recipients of bonuses from the A.I.G. are - Senators Chris Dodd and Senator Barack Obama.
The A.I.G. Financial Products affiliate of A.I.G. gave out $136,928, the most of any AIG affiliate, in the 2008 cycle. I would note that A.I.G.’s financial products division is the unit that wrote trillions of dollars’ worth of credit-default swaps and "misjudged" the risk.
The Washington Post reports a "mob effect" at A.I.G financial products division:
A tidal wave of public outrage over bonus payments swamped American International Group yesterday. Hired guards stood watch outside the suburban Connecticut offices of AIG Financial Products, the division whose exotic derivatives brought the insurance giant to the brink of collapse last year. Inside, death threats and angry letters flooded e-mail inboxes. Irate callers lit up the phone lines. Senior managers submitted their resignations. Some employees didn't show up at all.
With the anger and rage that is being exhibited against A.I.G., perhaps the bonuses Obama received from A.I.G. explain Obama's A.I.G crocodile tears.
Now that the Wall street Journal has revealed that A.I.G. paid bonuses of $1 million or more to 73 employees, it's time to ask if recipients of A.I.G. "bonuses," including President Obama, will give what now ought to be taxpayer money back?
_______________________________________
http://fdralloveragain.blogspot.com/2009/03/obama-outraged-aig.html
Monday, March 16, 2009
Obama "Outraged" at AIG?
Apparently the president was "outraged" that AIG paid out $165M in pay and bonuses after his own congress forced $175B down their throats in the face of reported 10:1 to voter opposition (that was the low end).
I guess the president doesn't follow Goldman Sachs, which paid out $11B in pay and bonuses after grabbing $10B from taxpayers.
Gee, let's see...
$11B (GS) vs. $165M (AIG)
110% of taxpayer funds (GS) vs. 0.1% of taxpayer funds (AIG)
But isn't this the obvious problem with centrally managed Socialist/Marxist economies?
A few people, especially those dumb enough to think they can manage the entire world economy in real time, cannot possibly understand a single company from an outsider's perspective, let alone the truly infinite complexity and often counter intuitive efficiencies of global capitalism, assuming it was ever tried.
It is also a shame the President of the United States feels the need to belittle his office by quarreling with the CEO of a penny stock, and apparently losing.
Posted by fdralloveragain at 5:31 PM
__________________________________
http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0309/20039.html
AIG ships billions in bailout abroad
By EAMON JAVERS | 3/15/09 7:40 PM EDT
Updated: 3/16/09 6:24 PM EDT
Billions of American taxpayer dollars used to bailout insurance giant AIG are flowing to some of the largest foreign banks in the world, according to new documents released by beleaguered company Sunday.
The revelation seemed sure to cause political complications for President Barack Obama and his economic team, already on the defensive Sunday over why they couldn’t stop AIG from doling out $165 million in bonuses to some of its top corporate officials — even as the company was receiving a massive infusion of taxpayer funds.
The documents AIG released account for some of the more than $180 billion in aid that AIG has received, and they detailed for the first time which financial firms are benefitting from the federal handout.
In all, AIG disclosed payments of $105.3 billion between September and December 2008. And some of the biggest recipients were European banks. Societe Generale, based in France, was the top foreign recipient at $11.9 billion, Deutsche Bank of Germany got $11.8 billion and Barclays, based in England, was paid $8.5 billion.
Here in the U.S., Goldman Sachs received $12.9 billion. Edward Liddy, the government-installed CEO of AIG, sat on the board of directors of Goldman Sachs until he joined AIG.
He took the position while President George W. Bush's Treasury Secretary, Henry Paulson — who until joining the administration had served as Goldman's chairman and CEO — arranged the insurance company's initial government bailout.
______________________________________________
http://aconstantineblacklist.blogspot.com/2009/03/aig-confiscate-hank-greenbergs-wealth.html
Sunday, March 15, 2009
AIG: Confiscate Hank Greenberg's Wealth
The AIG Scandal
by Felix Salmon
Mar 2 2009
While I was stuck for most of today in areas of London which seemingly had no wifi coffee shops, AIG managed to contrive to lose $61 billion in a single quarter ($670 million a day!) and the stock market finally gave up any hope of staying above Dow 7000; S&P 700 is only six points away.
It's fascinating to me that AIG is still a publicly-listed company: the official Treasury statement goes to great lengths to perpetuate the fiction that AIG and the US government are two separate and distinct things, and to empasize that this period of "public ownership" (they don't use the word "nationalization") will come to an end "as rapidly as possible".
I doubt it'll happen: under any ownership but that of the government, the ratings agencies would never have been so happy to pre-approve today's deal, and any sale by the government will be almost impossible without jeopardizing those all-important ratings. Besides AIG does something only the government can ever do, as Justin Fox explains:
"Essentially, AIG got into the business of insuring much of the world's financial system against the consequences of a global financial meltdown. It turned out to be incapable of delivering on that insurance--no private company could deliver on it, which is one reason why AIG's business of selling credit default swaps was a scam. And so government has stepped has stepped in as the ultimate insurer."
Providing insurance where private institutions can't is one of the most important and essential roles of government.
The scandal here is not the size of the losses from the global financial meltdown -- those are losses which sooner or later, in one form or another, would have had to be borne by the government anyway. Rather, the scandal is that AIG could have earned billions of dollars by selling insurance against a meltdown, even as it was wholly incapable of paying out on those policies.
I wouldn't be surprised to learn that Hank Greenberg was still a billionaire, even as the policies his company wrote have cost the average American household some $1,600. It's time for his wealth to be confiscated: it might be only a drop in the bucket compared to AIG's total losses, but it would feel very right.
http://www.portfolio.com/views/blogs/market-movers/2009/03/02/the-aig-scandal
Posted by Alex Constantine at 11:18 AM
Obama Received a $101,332 Bonus from AIG
March 17, 3:01 PM ·
Senator Barack Obama received a $101,332 bonus from American International Group in the form of political contributions according to Opensecrets.org. The two biggest Congressional recipients of bonuses from the A.I.G. are - Senators Chris Dodd and Senator Barack Obama.
The A.I.G. Financial Products affiliate of A.I.G. gave out $136,928, the most of any AIG affiliate, in the 2008 cycle. I would note that A.I.G.’s financial products division is the unit that wrote trillions of dollars’ worth of credit-default swaps and "misjudged" the risk.
The Washington Post reports a "mob effect" at A.I.G financial products division:
A tidal wave of public outrage over bonus payments swamped American International Group yesterday. Hired guards stood watch outside the suburban Connecticut offices of AIG Financial Products, the division whose exotic derivatives brought the insurance giant to the brink of collapse last year. Inside, death threats and angry letters flooded e-mail inboxes. Irate callers lit up the phone lines. Senior managers submitted their resignations. Some employees didn't show up at all.
With the anger and rage that is being exhibited against A.I.G., perhaps the bonuses Obama received from A.I.G. explain Obama's A.I.G crocodile tears.
Now that the Wall street Journal has revealed that A.I.G. paid bonuses of $1 million or more to 73 employees, it's time to ask if recipients of A.I.G. "bonuses," including President Obama, will give what now ought to be taxpayer money back?
_______________________________________
http://fdralloveragain.blogspot.com/2009/03/obama-outraged-aig.html
Monday, March 16, 2009
Obama "Outraged" at AIG?
Apparently the president was "outraged" that AIG paid out $165M in pay and bonuses after his own congress forced $175B down their throats in the face of reported 10:1 to voter opposition (that was the low end).
I guess the president doesn't follow Goldman Sachs, which paid out $11B in pay and bonuses after grabbing $10B from taxpayers.
Gee, let's see...
$11B (GS) vs. $165M (AIG)
110% of taxpayer funds (GS) vs. 0.1% of taxpayer funds (AIG)
But isn't this the obvious problem with centrally managed Socialist/Marxist economies?
A few people, especially those dumb enough to think they can manage the entire world economy in real time, cannot possibly understand a single company from an outsider's perspective, let alone the truly infinite complexity and often counter intuitive efficiencies of global capitalism, assuming it was ever tried.
It is also a shame the President of the United States feels the need to belittle his office by quarreling with the CEO of a penny stock, and apparently losing.
Posted by fdralloveragain at 5:31 PM
__________________________________
http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0309/20039.html
AIG ships billions in bailout abroad
By EAMON JAVERS | 3/15/09 7:40 PM EDT
Updated: 3/16/09 6:24 PM EDT
Billions of American taxpayer dollars used to bailout insurance giant AIG are flowing to some of the largest foreign banks in the world, according to new documents released by beleaguered company Sunday.
The revelation seemed sure to cause political complications for President Barack Obama and his economic team, already on the defensive Sunday over why they couldn’t stop AIG from doling out $165 million in bonuses to some of its top corporate officials — even as the company was receiving a massive infusion of taxpayer funds.
The documents AIG released account for some of the more than $180 billion in aid that AIG has received, and they detailed for the first time which financial firms are benefitting from the federal handout.
In all, AIG disclosed payments of $105.3 billion between September and December 2008. And some of the biggest recipients were European banks. Societe Generale, based in France, was the top foreign recipient at $11.9 billion, Deutsche Bank of Germany got $11.8 billion and Barclays, based in England, was paid $8.5 billion.
Here in the U.S., Goldman Sachs received $12.9 billion. Edward Liddy, the government-installed CEO of AIG, sat on the board of directors of Goldman Sachs until he joined AIG.
He took the position while President George W. Bush's Treasury Secretary, Henry Paulson — who until joining the administration had served as Goldman's chairman and CEO — arranged the insurance company's initial government bailout.
______________________________________________
http://aconstantineblacklist.blogspot.com/2009/03/aig-confiscate-hank-greenbergs-wealth.html
Sunday, March 15, 2009
AIG: Confiscate Hank Greenberg's Wealth
The AIG Scandal
by Felix Salmon
Mar 2 2009
While I was stuck for most of today in areas of London which seemingly had no wifi coffee shops, AIG managed to contrive to lose $61 billion in a single quarter ($670 million a day!) and the stock market finally gave up any hope of staying above Dow 7000; S&P 700 is only six points away.
It's fascinating to me that AIG is still a publicly-listed company: the official Treasury statement goes to great lengths to perpetuate the fiction that AIG and the US government are two separate and distinct things, and to empasize that this period of "public ownership" (they don't use the word "nationalization") will come to an end "as rapidly as possible".
I doubt it'll happen: under any ownership but that of the government, the ratings agencies would never have been so happy to pre-approve today's deal, and any sale by the government will be almost impossible without jeopardizing those all-important ratings. Besides AIG does something only the government can ever do, as Justin Fox explains:
"Essentially, AIG got into the business of insuring much of the world's financial system against the consequences of a global financial meltdown. It turned out to be incapable of delivering on that insurance--no private company could deliver on it, which is one reason why AIG's business of selling credit default swaps was a scam. And so government has stepped has stepped in as the ultimate insurer."
Providing insurance where private institutions can't is one of the most important and essential roles of government.
The scandal here is not the size of the losses from the global financial meltdown -- those are losses which sooner or later, in one form or another, would have had to be borne by the government anyway. Rather, the scandal is that AIG could have earned billions of dollars by selling insurance against a meltdown, even as it was wholly incapable of paying out on those policies.
I wouldn't be surprised to learn that Hank Greenberg was still a billionaire, even as the policies his company wrote have cost the average American household some $1,600. It's time for his wealth to be confiscated: it might be only a drop in the bucket compared to AIG's total losses, but it would feel very right.
http://www.portfolio.com/views/blogs/market-movers/2009/03/02/the-aig-scandal
Posted by Alex Constantine at 11:18 AM
WAYNE MADSEN REPORT on Maddoff--Kike...Mossad...9/11...Dancing Israeli demolition team celebrating NEO CON VICTORY ON 9/11
Also printed at:
http://blogs.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=blog.view&friendId=147509065&blogId=477219700
NOTE: CLICK BLOGPOST TITLE ABOVE TO GET LINKED TO TOM HENEGHEN'S BLOG at myspace:
WayneMadsenReport.com
March 16, 2009
Madoff took fall for New York's Richest and most powerful politicians
by Wayne Madsen
A reliable source who is close to both the U.S. Court for the Southern District of New York and the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Southern District of New York's Organized Crime Unit tells WMR that Ponzi scammer Bernard Madoff, who was remanded to prison last week by U.S. Judge Denny Chin, took a "fall" for some of New York's most powerful and wealthiest politicians who were using Madoff's private investment scheme as a "front" to assist in a major real estate redevelopment plan for New York that stood, and still stand, to make the conspirators super-rich.
Although the federal prosecutors in the case against Madoff claim the former chairman of NASDAQ and chief of Madoff Investment Securities refused to cooperate in their criminal conspiracy investigation of Madoff, the prosecutors have no intention of expanding the case beyond Madoff and possibly some of his family members.
WMR has been informed by a well-informed New York legal source that Madoff is a second-tier player in a major real estate development plan that used some of the money skimmed off by Madoff's Ponzi scheme to fund some of the real estate development projects. WMR has been told that another second-tier player in the real estate scheme is none other than Madoff's trial judge, Chin.
The judge, WMR is told, particularly represents the real estate development interests of Tishman Speyer, the real estate firm that owns the Chrysler Building, Rockefeller Center, and the MetLife Building. Chin has been amply rewarded for his "services" with a luxurious penthouse for him and his wife in Battery Park City in lower Manhattan. WMR has also been told that Chin has been responsible for destroying important email evidence that points to the involvement of New York's top political leadership in the Cornerstones project.
Madoff, another second-tier player in the Cornerstones, also stood to gain financially from the proect as a major investor in real estate in his own right.
A branch of the Tishman family, Tishman Construction Company, specializes in the building and operation of entertainment complexes, including casinos projects in Las Vegas and Atlantic City. Last July, Tishman and Revel Hotel and Casino in Atlantic City executives were killed in a plane crash in Owatonna, Minnesota, 60 miles south of Minneapolis.
Chin and Madoff were linchpins in a major redevelopment scheme for New York called the "Cornerstones." There are four Cornerstone" redevelopment projects planned for Manhattan that will see the building of major entertainment and gambling casino operations in the city with high-speed rail links between them and to other parts of the city. The four "Cornerstones" are the new World Trade Center site surrounding the future Freedom Tower, Grand Central Station/Times Square, Penn Station, and a floating casino complex on the East River near the Brooklyn Bridge.
WMR has been told that Chin is closely allied in the mega-billion dollar real estate development scheme with former Attorney General Michael Mukasey, who once served on the same southern district of Manhattan federal circuit with Chin. WMR is told that Chin and Mukasey represented the interests of New York's "Landlord Lobby" and "West Side Lobby" in major cases involving real estate plans for New York City. Chin and Mukasey failed to recuse themselves from cases in which they had clear conflicts-of-interest, WMR was informed. Mukasey's son Marc, an attorney for the law firm Bracewell Giuliani, is representing Frank DiPasquale, Madoff's chief financial officer.
Mukasey and Giuliani are also close friends and business associates and both worked for the same law firm Patterson Belknap.
Although the Cornerstones projects are supported by New York interests who represent the middle class and poor, mainly due to the fact that it will create mixed-income housing units and provide money for public education and the city's increasingly deteriorating public schools, critics point out that the project has been stalled because major players who used Madoff to launder money in New York and abroad for the entertainment and casino operations skimmed some of the proceeds for themselves and have essentially stalled the project. Critics also point out that the planned Freedom Tower complex at the old World Trade Center site has been delayed for seven years due to money, in addition to basic construction materials like concrete and steel, have been siphoned off for other more immediate construction projects.
In addition, although the Cornerstones is slated to improve public education, a number of public schools have been sold off for private development as part of the overall scheme.
Former Assistant U.S. Attorney in the southern district of Manhattan Chad Vignola, who also worked for Mayor Giuliani on the city's Waste Management Commission and resigned from the city's Department of Education amid a nepotism scandal, is reportedly very much involved with the Cornerstones project and is close to both Giuliani and Chin in ensuring the project's completion.
Vignola resigned as chief counsel for New York City's Education Commissioner Joel Klein, a Bloomberg appointee who takes his orders from the Giuliani-Bloomberg "mafia" in New York, after Deputy Education Commissioner Diana Lam resigned after she tried to get her husband hired by the Education Department. The sale of public school property to private real estate developers has reportedly been at the center of Klein's tenure, along with the creation of charter schools at the expense of deteriorating schools in poorer area of the city.
Two area state governors who posed potential problems for the Cornerstones project were dispatched quickly through sex scandals.
Tishman Construction received the consulting contract from the state of New Jersey for the Xanadu entertainment complex at the Meadowlands sports complex in East Rutherford, New Jersey during the administration of Governor Jim McGreevey. Tishman had hired McGreevey's Israeli intelligence "honey trap" Golan Cipel as a consultant at a salary of $7500 a month after Cipel left other jobs arranged by McGreevey, including one as New Jersey homeland security chief adviser. McGreevey resigned as governor after his affair with Cipel became public. The new transportation hub at the World Trade Center Cornerstones entertainment center will link that complex with the Xanadu complex in New Jersey via the PATH train operated by the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey.
New York's Governor, former Attorney General Eliot Spitzer, was a dogged pursuer of fraud on Wall Street and those pursuits posed a severe problem for the Cornerstones money laundering operation. Spitzer was forced to resign as governor after he was identified as a customer of the Emperors Club VIP prostitution service run by ex-Israeli government official Mark, aka "Michael," Brener. Details of the probe of Spitzer, known as "Client 9" in federal investigation documents, were leaked by federal investigators working out of the U.S. Attorneys office for southern Manhattan, which has been described as a hub for organized criminal activity even though it comprises the "Organized Crime" investigation unit.
The Barack Obama administration's interest in the mega-bucks real estate boondoggle in New York is heightened by the fact that Klein was on the short list to be Obama's Secretary of Education. In fact, WMR has been told by a knowledgeable source that the Cornerstones project and its receipt of federal stimulus money is a major priority for both Obama and his chief of staff Rahm Emanuel, along with New York Democratic Senator Charles Schumer, a major recipient of campaign contributions from Madoff and his well-heeled associates.
A veteran of the corrupt U.S. Attorneys office for southern Manhattan is the U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Illinois Patrick Fitzgerald. His pursuit of Rod Blagojevich, who was forced to resign as Governor of Illinois, parallels the campaign by his old New York federal colleagues against Spitzer. Chicago billionaire real estate developer Sam Zell, the owner of the Tribune Company that owns Chicago's Wrigley Field, is interested in selling the lucrative baseball park, which sits within the Fifth congressional district once held by Blagojevich and subsequently by Emanuel. Blagojevich was seen as a possible problem if the ball park were sold for the development of a Cornerstones-like mega entertainment and casino center.
With McGreevey, Spitzer, and Blagojevich out of the picture, the Russian-Israeli mob-connected entertainment and casino interests now have a virtual free hand in New York and Chicago, with a wink and a nod from Emanuel who occupies the powerful White House position as Chief of Staff and who can influence the dispersal of federal stimulus money to assist in the various redevelopment schemes. With Spitzer gone and an increasingly unpopular David Paterson as Governor, Bloomberg is given a good chance of unseating Paterson and ensuring that Albany supports the Cornerstones plan for New York City.
The billions of dollars that the Cornerstones players had Madoff skim in his Ponzi scheme that are sitting in off-shore locations, including Israel, the Cayman Islands, Belize, and other financial centers, was to have been re-introduced into New York to fund the Cornerstones development projects. But the fact that Madoff was caught in the scheme and ran the risk of identifying and testifying against his "handlers" has put the entire Cornerstones project risk, WMR has been told.
The Madoff money that was "parked" in Israel, with Russian-Israeli mobsters earning interest and able to use the funds for other financial "leverage," was to be pumped back into New York for the Russian-Israeli mob to make billions from the Cornerstones casino/entertainment complexes in Manhattan. Bloomberg was being counted on to "deliver" the project but now that Madoff was caught the project has been further delayed and silent "investors" in the project are growing restless.
Madoff had guaranteed the major Cornerstones developers that there would be "no release" of information on the source of funding for the project and former New York Mayor Rudolph Giuliani guaranteed that Madoff's "account" would be protected from federal, state, and local law enforcement scrutiny.
WMR was told by our legal source in New York that Madoff and Chin have their "strings pulled" by New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, a "shill" for Giuliani who plans to run for Governor of New York to take care that New York City's redevelopment project does not face any problems in Albany; former New York Governor Mario Cuomo, who is shilling for the financial interests of his son Andrew Cuomo, New York's Attorney General (Giuliani jumped the GOP ship in 1994 to endorse Democrat Mario Cuomo for Governor); and former Senator Alphonse D'Amato, Giuliani's political enemy who, nevertheless, hopes to capitalize on the Cornerstones project.
In fact, WMR was told that the federal stimulus package for New York City is almost entirely slated for rail and rail station projects to support the Cornerstones. These projects include a hookup between the Second Avenue subway and the Q Street subway that will also connect to a high-speed rail link from the East River floating casino to Coney Island; a new rail tunnel linking the Grand Central Station/Times Square casino/entertainment complex with the World Trade Center complex; and enhanced rail links between the Cornerstones and New Jersey. One indication that the federal stimulus money is geared for new rail stations is the fact that the rail station for the new Yankee Stadium is still not completed just weeks prior to the opening of the new stadium.
One source familiar with Cornerstones emphasized the pressure on Bloomberg to deliver on the project. The source revealed that if the Madoff fiasco is any indication of Bloomberg's team's performance, the project is in real trouble. The source added that Bloomberg will pay dearly politically and financially if he fails "to deliver the goods" on the Cornerstones.
With Madoff going to federal prison without a jury trial and no conspiracy charges being brought, the investors in Cornerstone hope their mega-project can be saved with little public notice. It is also certain that based on the massive returns that were expected from Cornerstones, some of Madoff's closest investors, who are now complaining about not knowing about his Ponzi scheme, likely knew very well that if the project came off without a hitch, they stood to gain on their original investments.
http://www.waynemadsenreport.com/
__________________________________________________
Guilty Verdict for 5 in A.I.G. Case
By LYNNLEY BROWNING
Published: February 26, 2008
Five former insurance executives were found guilty Monday of fraud and conspiracy in a scheme to manipulate the financial statements of the insurance company American International Group.
Christopher P. Garand, a former vice president of General Re, faces a $29.5 million fine, in addition to prison time.
The defendants — one from A.I.G. and four from the General Re Corporation — were convicted in Federal District Court in Hartford after a five-week trial.
One question is whether the verdicts will increase the legal pressure on Maurice R. Greenberg, the former chief executive of A.I.G. Mr. Greenberg, 82, ran the company at the time of the sham transaction at the center of the trial and was an unindicted co-conspirator. Fallout over the transaction led to his ouster in 2005. He has denied wrongdoing.
Eric J. Glover, a prosecutor for the United States attorney’s office for Connecticut, said Monday that the government’s investigation “is continuing,” as is usual with such prosecutions, but he declined to provide any details.
Throughout the trial, including six days of deliberations, the jury of nine men and three women wrestled with complex, arcane accounting concepts.
The defendants were convicted on all 16 charges, including conspiracy, securities fraud, mail fraud and lying to the Securities and Exchange Commission. Sentencing is scheduled for May 15.
The most senior defendants are Ronald E. Ferguson, 63, the former chief executive of General Re, and Elizabeth A. Monrad, 51, Gen Re’s former chief financial officer. The A.I.G. defendant was Christian Milton, 58, who formerly ran the company’s reinsurance business.
Questions about legitimate reinsurance, which is insurance for insurance and is intended to spread out risk, lay at the heart of the trial.
The other defendants are Robert Graham, 58, General Re’s former senior vice president and assistant general counsel; and Christopher P. Garand, 59, a former General Re senior vice president. In addition to prison, four out of the five defendants face fines of up to $46 million; the fifth, Mr. Garand, faces a $29.5 million fine.
It was unclear Monday whether the guilty verdicts would raise new questions about the involvement of Warren E. Buffett, the investor who runs Berkshire Hathaway Inc., which owns General Re.
Both Mr. Greenberg and Mr. Buffett have said that they knew generally of the transaction but were unfamiliar with its inner workings or with any improper accounting. ...........
http://blogs.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=blog.view&friendId=147509065&blogId=477219700
NOTE: CLICK BLOGPOST TITLE ABOVE TO GET LINKED TO TOM HENEGHEN'S BLOG at myspace:
WayneMadsenReport.com
March 16, 2009
Madoff took fall for New York's Richest and most powerful politicians
by Wayne Madsen
A reliable source who is close to both the U.S. Court for the Southern District of New York and the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Southern District of New York's Organized Crime Unit tells WMR that Ponzi scammer Bernard Madoff, who was remanded to prison last week by U.S. Judge Denny Chin, took a "fall" for some of New York's most powerful and wealthiest politicians who were using Madoff's private investment scheme as a "front" to assist in a major real estate redevelopment plan for New York that stood, and still stand, to make the conspirators super-rich.
Although the federal prosecutors in the case against Madoff claim the former chairman of NASDAQ and chief of Madoff Investment Securities refused to cooperate in their criminal conspiracy investigation of Madoff, the prosecutors have no intention of expanding the case beyond Madoff and possibly some of his family members.
WMR has been informed by a well-informed New York legal source that Madoff is a second-tier player in a major real estate development plan that used some of the money skimmed off by Madoff's Ponzi scheme to fund some of the real estate development projects. WMR has been told that another second-tier player in the real estate scheme is none other than Madoff's trial judge, Chin.
The judge, WMR is told, particularly represents the real estate development interests of Tishman Speyer, the real estate firm that owns the Chrysler Building, Rockefeller Center, and the MetLife Building. Chin has been amply rewarded for his "services" with a luxurious penthouse for him and his wife in Battery Park City in lower Manhattan. WMR has also been told that Chin has been responsible for destroying important email evidence that points to the involvement of New York's top political leadership in the Cornerstones project.
Madoff, another second-tier player in the Cornerstones, also stood to gain financially from the proect as a major investor in real estate in his own right.
A branch of the Tishman family, Tishman Construction Company, specializes in the building and operation of entertainment complexes, including casinos projects in Las Vegas and Atlantic City. Last July, Tishman and Revel Hotel and Casino in Atlantic City executives were killed in a plane crash in Owatonna, Minnesota, 60 miles south of Minneapolis.
Chin and Madoff were linchpins in a major redevelopment scheme for New York called the "Cornerstones." There are four Cornerstone" redevelopment projects planned for Manhattan that will see the building of major entertainment and gambling casino operations in the city with high-speed rail links between them and to other parts of the city. The four "Cornerstones" are the new World Trade Center site surrounding the future Freedom Tower, Grand Central Station/Times Square, Penn Station, and a floating casino complex on the East River near the Brooklyn Bridge.
WMR has been told that Chin is closely allied in the mega-billion dollar real estate development scheme with former Attorney General Michael Mukasey, who once served on the same southern district of Manhattan federal circuit with Chin. WMR is told that Chin and Mukasey represented the interests of New York's "Landlord Lobby" and "West Side Lobby" in major cases involving real estate plans for New York City. Chin and Mukasey failed to recuse themselves from cases in which they had clear conflicts-of-interest, WMR was informed. Mukasey's son Marc, an attorney for the law firm Bracewell Giuliani, is representing Frank DiPasquale, Madoff's chief financial officer.
Mukasey and Giuliani are also close friends and business associates and both worked for the same law firm Patterson Belknap.
Although the Cornerstones projects are supported by New York interests who represent the middle class and poor, mainly due to the fact that it will create mixed-income housing units and provide money for public education and the city's increasingly deteriorating public schools, critics point out that the project has been stalled because major players who used Madoff to launder money in New York and abroad for the entertainment and casino operations skimmed some of the proceeds for themselves and have essentially stalled the project. Critics also point out that the planned Freedom Tower complex at the old World Trade Center site has been delayed for seven years due to money, in addition to basic construction materials like concrete and steel, have been siphoned off for other more immediate construction projects.
In addition, although the Cornerstones is slated to improve public education, a number of public schools have been sold off for private development as part of the overall scheme.
Former Assistant U.S. Attorney in the southern district of Manhattan Chad Vignola, who also worked for Mayor Giuliani on the city's Waste Management Commission and resigned from the city's Department of Education amid a nepotism scandal, is reportedly very much involved with the Cornerstones project and is close to both Giuliani and Chin in ensuring the project's completion.
Vignola resigned as chief counsel for New York City's Education Commissioner Joel Klein, a Bloomberg appointee who takes his orders from the Giuliani-Bloomberg "mafia" in New York, after Deputy Education Commissioner Diana Lam resigned after she tried to get her husband hired by the Education Department. The sale of public school property to private real estate developers has reportedly been at the center of Klein's tenure, along with the creation of charter schools at the expense of deteriorating schools in poorer area of the city.
Two area state governors who posed potential problems for the Cornerstones project were dispatched quickly through sex scandals.
Tishman Construction received the consulting contract from the state of New Jersey for the Xanadu entertainment complex at the Meadowlands sports complex in East Rutherford, New Jersey during the administration of Governor Jim McGreevey. Tishman had hired McGreevey's Israeli intelligence "honey trap" Golan Cipel as a consultant at a salary of $7500 a month after Cipel left other jobs arranged by McGreevey, including one as New Jersey homeland security chief adviser. McGreevey resigned as governor after his affair with Cipel became public. The new transportation hub at the World Trade Center Cornerstones entertainment center will link that complex with the Xanadu complex in New Jersey via the PATH train operated by the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey.
New York's Governor, former Attorney General Eliot Spitzer, was a dogged pursuer of fraud on Wall Street and those pursuits posed a severe problem for the Cornerstones money laundering operation. Spitzer was forced to resign as governor after he was identified as a customer of the Emperors Club VIP prostitution service run by ex-Israeli government official Mark, aka "Michael," Brener. Details of the probe of Spitzer, known as "Client 9" in federal investigation documents, were leaked by federal investigators working out of the U.S. Attorneys office for southern Manhattan, which has been described as a hub for organized criminal activity even though it comprises the "Organized Crime" investigation unit.
The Barack Obama administration's interest in the mega-bucks real estate boondoggle in New York is heightened by the fact that Klein was on the short list to be Obama's Secretary of Education. In fact, WMR has been told by a knowledgeable source that the Cornerstones project and its receipt of federal stimulus money is a major priority for both Obama and his chief of staff Rahm Emanuel, along with New York Democratic Senator Charles Schumer, a major recipient of campaign contributions from Madoff and his well-heeled associates.
A veteran of the corrupt U.S. Attorneys office for southern Manhattan is the U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Illinois Patrick Fitzgerald. His pursuit of Rod Blagojevich, who was forced to resign as Governor of Illinois, parallels the campaign by his old New York federal colleagues against Spitzer. Chicago billionaire real estate developer Sam Zell, the owner of the Tribune Company that owns Chicago's Wrigley Field, is interested in selling the lucrative baseball park, which sits within the Fifth congressional district once held by Blagojevich and subsequently by Emanuel. Blagojevich was seen as a possible problem if the ball park were sold for the development of a Cornerstones-like mega entertainment and casino center.
With McGreevey, Spitzer, and Blagojevich out of the picture, the Russian-Israeli mob-connected entertainment and casino interests now have a virtual free hand in New York and Chicago, with a wink and a nod from Emanuel who occupies the powerful White House position as Chief of Staff and who can influence the dispersal of federal stimulus money to assist in the various redevelopment schemes. With Spitzer gone and an increasingly unpopular David Paterson as Governor, Bloomberg is given a good chance of unseating Paterson and ensuring that Albany supports the Cornerstones plan for New York City.
The billions of dollars that the Cornerstones players had Madoff skim in his Ponzi scheme that are sitting in off-shore locations, including Israel, the Cayman Islands, Belize, and other financial centers, was to have been re-introduced into New York to fund the Cornerstones development projects. But the fact that Madoff was caught in the scheme and ran the risk of identifying and testifying against his "handlers" has put the entire Cornerstones project risk, WMR has been told.
The Madoff money that was "parked" in Israel, with Russian-Israeli mobsters earning interest and able to use the funds for other financial "leverage," was to be pumped back into New York for the Russian-Israeli mob to make billions from the Cornerstones casino/entertainment complexes in Manhattan. Bloomberg was being counted on to "deliver" the project but now that Madoff was caught the project has been further delayed and silent "investors" in the project are growing restless.
Madoff had guaranteed the major Cornerstones developers that there would be "no release" of information on the source of funding for the project and former New York Mayor Rudolph Giuliani guaranteed that Madoff's "account" would be protected from federal, state, and local law enforcement scrutiny.
WMR was told by our legal source in New York that Madoff and Chin have their "strings pulled" by New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, a "shill" for Giuliani who plans to run for Governor of New York to take care that New York City's redevelopment project does not face any problems in Albany; former New York Governor Mario Cuomo, who is shilling for the financial interests of his son Andrew Cuomo, New York's Attorney General (Giuliani jumped the GOP ship in 1994 to endorse Democrat Mario Cuomo for Governor); and former Senator Alphonse D'Amato, Giuliani's political enemy who, nevertheless, hopes to capitalize on the Cornerstones project.
In fact, WMR was told that the federal stimulus package for New York City is almost entirely slated for rail and rail station projects to support the Cornerstones. These projects include a hookup between the Second Avenue subway and the Q Street subway that will also connect to a high-speed rail link from the East River floating casino to Coney Island; a new rail tunnel linking the Grand Central Station/Times Square casino/entertainment complex with the World Trade Center complex; and enhanced rail links between the Cornerstones and New Jersey. One indication that the federal stimulus money is geared for new rail stations is the fact that the rail station for the new Yankee Stadium is still not completed just weeks prior to the opening of the new stadium.
One source familiar with Cornerstones emphasized the pressure on Bloomberg to deliver on the project. The source revealed that if the Madoff fiasco is any indication of Bloomberg's team's performance, the project is in real trouble. The source added that Bloomberg will pay dearly politically and financially if he fails "to deliver the goods" on the Cornerstones.
With Madoff going to federal prison without a jury trial and no conspiracy charges being brought, the investors in Cornerstone hope their mega-project can be saved with little public notice. It is also certain that based on the massive returns that were expected from Cornerstones, some of Madoff's closest investors, who are now complaining about not knowing about his Ponzi scheme, likely knew very well that if the project came off without a hitch, they stood to gain on their original investments.
http://www.waynemadsenreport.com/
__________________________________________________
Guilty Verdict for 5 in A.I.G. Case
By LYNNLEY BROWNING
Published: February 26, 2008
Five former insurance executives were found guilty Monday of fraud and conspiracy in a scheme to manipulate the financial statements of the insurance company American International Group.
Christopher P. Garand, a former vice president of General Re, faces a $29.5 million fine, in addition to prison time.
The defendants — one from A.I.G. and four from the General Re Corporation — were convicted in Federal District Court in Hartford after a five-week trial.
One question is whether the verdicts will increase the legal pressure on Maurice R. Greenberg, the former chief executive of A.I.G. Mr. Greenberg, 82, ran the company at the time of the sham transaction at the center of the trial and was an unindicted co-conspirator. Fallout over the transaction led to his ouster in 2005. He has denied wrongdoing.
Eric J. Glover, a prosecutor for the United States attorney’s office for Connecticut, said Monday that the government’s investigation “is continuing,” as is usual with such prosecutions, but he declined to provide any details.
Throughout the trial, including six days of deliberations, the jury of nine men and three women wrestled with complex, arcane accounting concepts.
The defendants were convicted on all 16 charges, including conspiracy, securities fraud, mail fraud and lying to the Securities and Exchange Commission. Sentencing is scheduled for May 15.
The most senior defendants are Ronald E. Ferguson, 63, the former chief executive of General Re, and Elizabeth A. Monrad, 51, Gen Re’s former chief financial officer. The A.I.G. defendant was Christian Milton, 58, who formerly ran the company’s reinsurance business.
Questions about legitimate reinsurance, which is insurance for insurance and is intended to spread out risk, lay at the heart of the trial.
The other defendants are Robert Graham, 58, General Re’s former senior vice president and assistant general counsel; and Christopher P. Garand, 59, a former General Re senior vice president. In addition to prison, four out of the five defendants face fines of up to $46 million; the fifth, Mr. Garand, faces a $29.5 million fine.
It was unclear Monday whether the guilty verdicts would raise new questions about the involvement of Warren E. Buffett, the investor who runs Berkshire Hathaway Inc., which owns General Re.
Both Mr. Greenberg and Mr. Buffett have said that they knew generally of the transaction but were unfamiliar with its inner workings or with any improper accounting. ...........
BARKY SHAFTS HEROIC WHISTLEBLOWERS
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/17/us/politics/17signing.html?ref=us
By CHARLIE SAVAGE
Published: March 16, 2009
WASHINGTON — A leading Republican senator maintains that President Obama is violating a campaign promise with his claim that he can bypass whistle-blower protections for executive branch officials who give certain information to Congress.
The lawmaker, Senator Charles E. Grassley, Republican of Iowa, sent a letter to Mr. Obama on Friday that condemned a signing statement the president attached to the $410 billion catchall spending bill he signed into law last week.
A signing statement, occasionally issued by presidents upon their signing a bill, is a document that instructs executive branch officials on how to carry out the new law. In this statement, Mr. Obama flagged a provision that protects officials who give information to Congress about their jobs or agencies. He said the statute could not limit his power to control the flow of certain information to lawmakers.
“I do not interpret this provision,” he wrote, “to detract from my authority to direct the heads of executive departments to supervise, control and correct employees’ communications with the Congress in cases where such communications would be unlawful or would reveal information that is properly privileged or otherwise confidential.”
In his letter, Mr. Grassley called Mr. Obama’s statement “overly broad” and said it would “undoubtedly chill whistle-blowers who might otherwise come forward to report waste, fraud or abuse to Congress.” He asked Mr. Obama to enforce and obey the statute fully.
“This is a shocking statement that acknowledges that you would be willing to give an order preventing employee whistle-blowers from making disclosures to Congress,” he wrote. “I do not see how this statement can be reconciled with your campaign promise to protect whistle-blowers. In fact, it is even more egregious than simply breaking a promise, because it actually restricts current and previously existing whistle-blower protections.”
Tom Devine, legal director of the Government Accountability Project, a group that promotes the defense of whistle-blowers, said Mr. Obama’s statement could mean very different things, depending on how broadly the administration defined the word “confidential.”
“The president has a responsibility to clear up the confusion,” Mr. Devine said.
The White House press office referred questions to an administration official, imposing the condition that he not be identified by name or title.
The official, a lawyer, said Mr. Obama was “committed to whistle-blower protections.” He declined to define every kind of instance in which the president’s power to keep a matter confidential would trump a whistle-blower protection statute, but he did say the administration had no intention of going further than did Presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush in signing statements concerning similar provisions.
“I don’t think President Obama’s signing statement injects a new level of uncertainty into the law,” he said.
During the presidential campaign, Mr. Obama criticized Mr. Bush’s frequent use of signing statements as an abuse of power and promised to exercise greater restraint when using them. His campaign said he would not issue “signing statements that undermine the legislative intent.”
In the letter Friday, Mr. Grassley told Mr. Obama he had violated that pledge, because “you have gutted the legislative intent of this provision.”
The administration official pointed to a memorandum Mr. Obama issued on March 9 laying out a signing statements policy. The document, which does not mention legislative intent, says he will employ only “legitimate” interpretations of statutes. Mr. Obama’s challenge in this case, the official said, is consistent with that principle.
____________________________________
http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/
GLENN GREENWALD at Salon.com:
Sunday March 15, 2009 17:01 EDT
Obama's "enemy combatant" policy: following a familiar pattern
(updated below)
Rich Lowry, National Review, Friday:
Barack Obama has perfected a three-step maneuver that could never even be attempted by a politician lacking his rhetorical skill or cool cynicism.
First: Denounce your presidential predecessor for a given policy, energizing your party’s base and capitalizing on his abiding unpopularity.
Second: Pretend to have reversed that policy upon taking office with a symbolic act or high-profile statement.
Third: Adopt a version of that same policy, knowing that it’s the only way to govern responsibly or believing that doing otherwise is too difficult.
_______________________________________
Tuesday, April 7, 2009
Hill AFB commander killed in car accident in Georgia
By MITCH SHAW
Standard-Examiner Davis Bureau
mishaw@standard.net
HILL AIR FORCE BASE -- A commander at Hill Air Force Base was killed early Sunday morning in Georgia after his cab was struck by a car driving down the wrong side of a large freeway.
According to the Georgia State patrol, Col. Stephen E. Mittuch was killed when a woman in a white 1996 Ford Taurus, driving north in a southbound lane of Interstate 75, collided head-on with the cab Mittuch was a passenger in.
By CHARLIE SAVAGE
Published: March 16, 2009
WASHINGTON — A leading Republican senator maintains that President Obama is violating a campaign promise with his claim that he can bypass whistle-blower protections for executive branch officials who give certain information to Congress.
The lawmaker, Senator Charles E. Grassley, Republican of Iowa, sent a letter to Mr. Obama on Friday that condemned a signing statement the president attached to the $410 billion catchall spending bill he signed into law last week.
A signing statement, occasionally issued by presidents upon their signing a bill, is a document that instructs executive branch officials on how to carry out the new law. In this statement, Mr. Obama flagged a provision that protects officials who give information to Congress about their jobs or agencies. He said the statute could not limit his power to control the flow of certain information to lawmakers.
“I do not interpret this provision,” he wrote, “to detract from my authority to direct the heads of executive departments to supervise, control and correct employees’ communications with the Congress in cases where such communications would be unlawful or would reveal information that is properly privileged or otherwise confidential.”
In his letter, Mr. Grassley called Mr. Obama’s statement “overly broad” and said it would “undoubtedly chill whistle-blowers who might otherwise come forward to report waste, fraud or abuse to Congress.” He asked Mr. Obama to enforce and obey the statute fully.
“This is a shocking statement that acknowledges that you would be willing to give an order preventing employee whistle-blowers from making disclosures to Congress,” he wrote. “I do not see how this statement can be reconciled with your campaign promise to protect whistle-blowers. In fact, it is even more egregious than simply breaking a promise, because it actually restricts current and previously existing whistle-blower protections.”
Tom Devine, legal director of the Government Accountability Project, a group that promotes the defense of whistle-blowers, said Mr. Obama’s statement could mean very different things, depending on how broadly the administration defined the word “confidential.”
“The president has a responsibility to clear up the confusion,” Mr. Devine said.
The White House press office referred questions to an administration official, imposing the condition that he not be identified by name or title.
The official, a lawyer, said Mr. Obama was “committed to whistle-blower protections.” He declined to define every kind of instance in which the president’s power to keep a matter confidential would trump a whistle-blower protection statute, but he did say the administration had no intention of going further than did Presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush in signing statements concerning similar provisions.
“I don’t think President Obama’s signing statement injects a new level of uncertainty into the law,” he said.
During the presidential campaign, Mr. Obama criticized Mr. Bush’s frequent use of signing statements as an abuse of power and promised to exercise greater restraint when using them. His campaign said he would not issue “signing statements that undermine the legislative intent.”
In the letter Friday, Mr. Grassley told Mr. Obama he had violated that pledge, because “you have gutted the legislative intent of this provision.”
The administration official pointed to a memorandum Mr. Obama issued on March 9 laying out a signing statements policy. The document, which does not mention legislative intent, says he will employ only “legitimate” interpretations of statutes. Mr. Obama’s challenge in this case, the official said, is consistent with that principle.
____________________________________
http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/
GLENN GREENWALD at Salon.com:
Sunday March 15, 2009 17:01 EDT
Obama's "enemy combatant" policy: following a familiar pattern
(updated below)
Rich Lowry, National Review, Friday:
Barack Obama has perfected a three-step maneuver that could never even be attempted by a politician lacking his rhetorical skill or cool cynicism.
First: Denounce your presidential predecessor for a given policy, energizing your party’s base and capitalizing on his abiding unpopularity.
Second: Pretend to have reversed that policy upon taking office with a symbolic act or high-profile statement.
Third: Adopt a version of that same policy, knowing that it’s the only way to govern responsibly or believing that doing otherwise is too difficult.
_______________________________________
Tuesday, April 7, 2009
Hill AFB commander killed in car accident in Georgia
By MITCH SHAW
Standard-Examiner Davis Bureau
mishaw@standard.net
HILL AIR FORCE BASE -- A commander at Hill Air Force Base was killed early Sunday morning in Georgia after his cab was struck by a car driving down the wrong side of a large freeway.
According to the Georgia State patrol, Col. Stephen E. Mittuch was killed when a woman in a white 1996 Ford Taurus, driving north in a southbound lane of Interstate 75, collided head-on with the cab Mittuch was a passenger in.
MOSSAD orders Obama to release BERNIE "the swindling hook nose kike" MADOFF
http://www.whatdoesitmean.com/index1215.htm
March 18, 2009
“Release Madoff or Risk War”, Israel Warns US
By: Sorcha Faal, and as reported to her Western Subscribers (Traducción al Español abajo)
Russian Intelligence reports are stating today that Israel’s incoming right-wing Nationalist Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has ‘ordered’ President Obama to release disgraced Wall Street investor Bernard Madoff [photo top left] or ‘risk full and total war’.
Not being reported in the United States about its worst ever case of financial fraud involving former Mossad agent Bernard Madoff is that the billions in funds collected from the wealthiest American-Israelis were used to finance Israel’s Global intelligence network reported to have been responsible for numerous attacks against its perceived enemies, including the catastrophic attacks upon America on September 11, 2001.
According to these reports, Madoff was the chief financier for a vast Israeli spy and sabotage network set up by former Israeli Security Agency (Shin Bet) director Jacob Perry (Yaakov Peri) who ‘transformed’ himself into one of America’s most powerful businessman and led what FSB sources call the смертоносная шатия 7 [English translation roughly means “Murderous/Fatal Gang of 7”] which references the leaders of this American-Israeli cabal who besides Madoff and Perry include:
Henry Taub, Hungarian born American-Israeli who created the giant United States payroll company ADP which continues to funnel to Israeli intelligence services financial records for nearly every US citizen.
Maurice Greenberg, American-Israeli who was the former chairman and CEO of American International Group (AIG), the World's 18th largest public company and its largest insurance and financial services corporation which has (so far) funneled over $180 billion in US taxpayer money directly to Israel.
Larry Silverstein, the American-Israeli billionaire who secured a lease for the World Trade Center buildings in New York on July 24, 2001, insured them for $3.55 billion spread among 24 different insurance companies, and after their destruction 2 months later on 9/11 collected $4.55 billion for Israel.
Mort Zuckerman, Canadian born American-Israeli billionaire who through his vast publishing empire has direct control over 70 percent of the news reported in the United States.
Edouard de Rothschild, French born American-Israeli member of the all powerful European Rothschild Banking Empire and director of the Rothschild & Cie Banque reported by the FSB to hold nearly 80% of the wealth stolen by Israel from the United States Government and its citizens.
These reports further state that Madoff was ‘convicted’ in a ‘one of a kind’ designed trial in which his guilty plea kept all evidence against Israel’s betrayal of the United States from being entered into official American records as it was deemed by the Obama administration as ‘too incendiary’ for the American people to know about and would, most certainly, unleash an Israeli backlash many Russian Military Analysts state would leave ‘many US cities in ruin’.
Bringing Israel’s threat directly to President Obama, these reports continue, was Israeli Defenses Forces Chief of Staff Lieutenant-General Gabi Ashkenazi, who threatened the Americans that “an Israeli military strike was a "serious" option”, and which would ignite a Total Global War in which the very survival of the United States would be in the balance.
President Obama, however, appears ‘more than willing’ to confront the Israelis, especially after being informed of the full extent of Israel’s involvement in the 9/11 attacks and the other attacks planned by the Israeli assassination and sabotage teams sent into the United States posing as Israeli ‘art students’, and of which the Washington Post News Service reported on in the immediate aftermath of the attacks before going permanently silent:
“In addition to the 1000-plus Middle Easterners of the Muslim persuasion swept up in Ashcroft's post-9/11 dragnet, it seems, some 60 Israelis were in custody. And these were no ordinary tourists: INS officials testified in immigration court hearings that this group was "of special interest to the government" – the same argument used to justify the detention of Arabs in connection with the investigation into 9/11.”
It is interesting to note too that during the past week, top American investigative journalist Seymour Hersh reported that former US Vice President, Richard (Dick) Cheney, headed a CIA assassination ring that these FSB reports state was specifically created to hunt down and kill ‘all Israeli agents’ found in the United States itself, or abroad.
These reports also state that President Obama in fighting back against the Israelis is fast finding that his first battles are those involving Israel’s stranglehold on his own government and Congressional leaders, and who just two weeks ago threw out the White House’s effort to name all lobbyists and their moneyed connection to US political, economic and military power centers.
President Obama suffered a further defeat with the withdrawal of Charles Freeman, whom he had picked to head the National Intelligence Council, but who in withdrawing slammed the Israel “lobby” strangling the United States by stating:
“The libels on me and their easily traceable email trails show conclusively that there is a powerful lobby determined to prevent any view other than its own from being aired, still less to factor in American understanding of trends and events in the Middle East. The tactics of the Israel Lobby plumb the depths of dishonor and indecency and include character assassination, selective misquotation, the willful distortion of the record, the fabrication of falsehoods, and an utter disregard for the truth. The aim of this Lobby is control of the policy process through the exercise of a veto over the appointment of people who dispute the wisdom of its views, the substitution of political correctness for analysis, and the exclusion of any and all options for decision by Americans and our government other than those that it favors.”
It is important at this point to note too how Mr. Freeman’s charges against Israel’s powerful lobby in the United States agree with those of the distinguished American professors John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt, and who in their critically acclaimed book titled The Israel Lobby stated:
“Besides, the Lobby’s campaign to quash debate about Israel is unhealthy for democracy. Silencing sceptics by organising blacklists and boycotts – or by suggesting that critics are anti-semites – violates the principle of open debate on which democracy depends. The inability of Congress to conduct a genuine debate on these important issues paralyses the entire process of democratic deliberation. Israel’s backers should be free to make their case and to challenge those who disagree with them, but efforts to stifle debate by intimidation must be roundly condemned.”
To the current threats being made by Israel against the United States it is also important to note, these reports continue, that what the Jewish state wants for their now imprisoned agent Madoff is exactly what the Americans did for the leader of the former vast energy giant Enron, Kenneth Lay, and who prior to being convicted for what at that time amounted to the biggest corporate fraud in American history, but who was ‘rescued’ by the CIA who were the actual ‘founders’ of Enron and used its billions in fraudulent gains to support the vast Bush-Clinton drug empire, by falsifying his death and giving him a new identity.
To the final outcome of these events it is not in our knowing, other than to point out our present times most obvious historical comparison when during the late 1920’s American and European Zionist banking interests deliberately collapsed the World’s economy leading to the outbreak of Total Global War in 1939. It goes without saying, of course, that the Western World today is ‘not allowed’ to know the full and horrible truth about what is truly happening now, even though it has never been a great secret.
Perhaps this sad fact would be different if these Westerners were to remember the words of the great British Prime Minister and war leader Winston Churchill written in 1920 about what our World is once again facing....and be warned:
“Some people like Jews and some do not; but no thoughtful man can doubt the fact that they are beyond all question the most formidable and the most remarkable race which has ever appeared in the world.
The conflict between good and evil which proceeds unceasingly in the breast of man nowhere reaches such intensity as in the Jewish race. The dual nature of mankind is nowhere more strongly or more terribly exemplified. We owe to the Jews in the Christian revelation a system of ethics which, even if it were entirely separated from the supernatural, would be incomparably the most precious possession of mankind, worth in fact the fruits of all other wisdom and learning put together. On that system and by that faith there has been built out of the wreck of the Roman Empire the whole of our existing civilisation.
And it may well be that this same astounding race may at the present time be in the actual process of producing another system of morals and philosophy, as malevolent as Christianity was benevolent, which, if not arrested, would shatter irretrievably all that Christianity has rendered possible. It would almost seem as if the gospel of Christ and the gospel of Antichrist were destined to originate among the same people; and that this mystic and mysterious race had been chosen for the supreme manifestations, both of the divine and the diabolical.
In violent opposition to all this sphere of Jewish effort rise the schemes of the International Jews. The adherents of this sinister confederacy are mostly men reared up among the unhappy populations of countries where Jews are persecuted on account of their race. Most, if not all, of them have forsaken the faith of their forefathers, and divorced from their minds all spiritual hopes of the next world. This movement among the Jews is not new.
From the days of Spartacus-Weishaupt to those of Karl Marx, and down to Trotsky (Russia), Bela Kun (Hungary), Rosa Luxembourg (Germany), and Emma Goldman (United States), this world-wide conspiracy for the overthrow of civilisation and for the reconstitution of society on the basis of arrested development, of envious malevolence, and impossible equality, has been steadily growing. It played, as a modern writer, Mrs. Webster, has so ably shown, a definitely recognisable part in the tragedy of the French Revolution. It has been the mainspring of every subversive movement during the Nineteenth Century; and now at last this band of extraordinary personalities from the underworld of the great cities of Europe and America have gripped the Russian people by the hair of their heads and have become practically the undisputed masters of that enormous empire.
There is no need to exaggerate the part played in the creation of Bolshevism and in the actual bringing about of the Russian Revolution, by these international and for the most part atheistical Jews. It is certainly a very great one; it probably outweighs all others. With the notable exception of Lenin, the majority of the leading figures are Jews.”
© March 18, 2009 EU and US all rights reserved
[Ed. Note: The United States government actively seeks to find, and silence, any and all opinions about the United States except those coming from authorized government and/or affiliated sources, of which we are not one. No interviews are granted and very little personal information is given about our contributors, or their sources, to protect their safety.]
__________________________________________
http://blogs.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=blog.view&friendId=147509065&blogId=472463083
Thursday, March 5, 2009
Did MOSSAD's superkike RAHMBO threaten Barack with Secret Service removing the hook nosed bastard from WH?
Note: click blogpost title above to get linked to TOM HENEGHEN'S MYSPACE...nice photos.
http://blogs.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=blog.view&friendId=147509065&blogId=472463083
EXPLOSIVE BREAKING NEWS: Secret Service Removes Rahm Emanuel from Oval Office
Category: News and Politics
...
http://blog.myspace.com/tom_heneghan_intel
Explosive Back Breaking News
Secret Service Removes Rahm Emanuel from Oval Office
Wanta Protocols Update
U.S. Banks Nationalization
by Tom Heneghan
Sunday February 22, 2009
The President has also ordered U.S. Secretary Treasury Timothy Geithner to begin preliminary planning to nationalize U.S. banks aka Bank of America and Citibank and other financial institutions tied to the massive, toxic Bush-Clinton Crime Family derivatives that have collapsed the U.S. economy and threatens the financial stability of the entire world.
Reference: The nationalization order will save the U.S. banking institutions by placing these toxic derivatives in Bankruptcy Court where the culprits and criminals like Bernard Madoff and Sir R. Allen Stanford can be brought to justice for turning the entire U.S. banking system into a TREASONOUS Federal Reserve Ponzi Scheme.
Item: Former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan is now singing like a canary and fingering former White House occupant George W. Bushfraud and his predecessor, daddy Bush’s little bitch, Bill Clinton, in using the Federal Reserve as a piggy bank for illegal offshore money laundries aka the bogus Clinton 1993 Mexican loan aka the Bernard Madoff Ponzi Scheme aka the bogus Bank of America "bail out" of Merrill Lynch by Bushfraud and associates, which resulted in the massive looting of U.S. Taxpayers money by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. (pic J. Scott Applewhite)
Note: The Isle of Gibraltar is now under SEC and DOJ inquiry in regards to illegal private, secret accounts tied to the Bushes, both Clintons, current Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu and former British Prime Minister, Dunblaine pedophile and war criminal, Anthony Blair.
President Obama’s decisions set off a mini rebellion inside the Obama White House over this weekend by KHAZARIAN Jew, Head of the North American Israeli Mossad and current White House Chief of Staff, Rahm Emanuel.
Emanuel flew into a temper tantrum when President Obama made it clear to Emanuel that he would implement the Wanta-Reagan-Mitterrand Protocols tout de suite.
Emanuel also flew into a rage when it became clear to him that Obama would order immediate nationalization of the banks thereby exposing the Bush-Clinton Crime Family toxic derivatives.
Reference: Emanuel, who operates as a gate keeper for the Israeli Mossad and the Bush-Clinton Crime Family Syndicate financial interests, allegedly physically threatened the President and called him a “House Nigger”.
Secret Service agents were called on to escort Rahm Emanuel from the Oval Office. (photo UPI Photo/Brian Kersey)
White House sources revealed that KHAZARIAN Jew Emanuel was then roughed up in the White House hallway by a Secret Service agent of Irish-American ancestry.
And, of course, it gets worse!
President Obama also had to reprimand current U.S. Secretary of State, loser lesbian in-the-closet KHAZARIAN Jew and Israeli Mossad agent, Hillary Rodenhurst Clinton...
_____________________________________________________-
http://feeds.bignewsnetwork.com/index.php?sid=478626
Tuesday 17th March, 2009
US bars entry of Israel's new national security aide
ANI Tuesday 17th March, 2009
Washington, Mar.17 : The United States has decided to bar the entry of Uzi Arad, who is expected to be Israel's new national security adviser, for nearly two years on the grounds that he is an intelligence risk.
According to the Washington Times, Arad, a former member and director of intelligence for the Mossad, Israel's spy service, is mentioned in the indictment of Lawrence Franklin, a former Pentagon analyst who pleaded guilty in 2005 to providing classified information about Iran in a conversation with two employees of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC).
Beyond Arad's status, Prime Minister-designate Benjamin Netanyahu is likely to face difficulties abroad because of his choice, announced Monday, of Avigdor Lieberman to serve as foreign minister in a narrow new rightist government.
Lieberman, head of the Israel Is Our Home party, has advocated requiring Israel's 1.46 million Arabs to take a loyalty test or risk expulsion.
Arad acknowledged to The Washington Times that he has not been able to obtain a visa to come to the United States, but said the Israeli government is trying to change that.
"The director general of the Israel Foreign Ministry did tell his American counterparts that there has been no cause to deny me a visa," Arad told The Times.
Israeli and U.S. officials said Arad has been denied a U.S. visa since June 2007 under section 212 3(a) of the Immigration and Nationality Act.
This gives consular officers and the Justice Department authority to bar people who may seek "to violate any law of the United States relating to espionage or sabotage" from entering the country.
Arad was a member of the Mossad spy service from 1975 to 1997. After retiring, he became Netanyahu's foreign policy adviser.
While in the Mossad, Arad worked mainly on analysis, but he also served as a liaison for intelligence operations with allied services such as the CIA.
March 18, 2009
“Release Madoff or Risk War”, Israel Warns US
By: Sorcha Faal, and as reported to her Western Subscribers (Traducción al Español abajo)
Russian Intelligence reports are stating today that Israel’s incoming right-wing Nationalist Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has ‘ordered’ President Obama to release disgraced Wall Street investor Bernard Madoff [photo top left] or ‘risk full and total war’.
Not being reported in the United States about its worst ever case of financial fraud involving former Mossad agent Bernard Madoff is that the billions in funds collected from the wealthiest American-Israelis were used to finance Israel’s Global intelligence network reported to have been responsible for numerous attacks against its perceived enemies, including the catastrophic attacks upon America on September 11, 2001.
According to these reports, Madoff was the chief financier for a vast Israeli spy and sabotage network set up by former Israeli Security Agency (Shin Bet) director Jacob Perry (Yaakov Peri) who ‘transformed’ himself into one of America’s most powerful businessman and led what FSB sources call the смертоносная шатия 7 [English translation roughly means “Murderous/Fatal Gang of 7”] which references the leaders of this American-Israeli cabal who besides Madoff and Perry include:
Henry Taub, Hungarian born American-Israeli who created the giant United States payroll company ADP which continues to funnel to Israeli intelligence services financial records for nearly every US citizen.
Maurice Greenberg, American-Israeli who was the former chairman and CEO of American International Group (AIG), the World's 18th largest public company and its largest insurance and financial services corporation which has (so far) funneled over $180 billion in US taxpayer money directly to Israel.
Larry Silverstein, the American-Israeli billionaire who secured a lease for the World Trade Center buildings in New York on July 24, 2001, insured them for $3.55 billion spread among 24 different insurance companies, and after their destruction 2 months later on 9/11 collected $4.55 billion for Israel.
Mort Zuckerman, Canadian born American-Israeli billionaire who through his vast publishing empire has direct control over 70 percent of the news reported in the United States.
Edouard de Rothschild, French born American-Israeli member of the all powerful European Rothschild Banking Empire and director of the Rothschild & Cie Banque reported by the FSB to hold nearly 80% of the wealth stolen by Israel from the United States Government and its citizens.
These reports further state that Madoff was ‘convicted’ in a ‘one of a kind’ designed trial in which his guilty plea kept all evidence against Israel’s betrayal of the United States from being entered into official American records as it was deemed by the Obama administration as ‘too incendiary’ for the American people to know about and would, most certainly, unleash an Israeli backlash many Russian Military Analysts state would leave ‘many US cities in ruin’.
Bringing Israel’s threat directly to President Obama, these reports continue, was Israeli Defenses Forces Chief of Staff Lieutenant-General Gabi Ashkenazi, who threatened the Americans that “an Israeli military strike was a "serious" option”, and which would ignite a Total Global War in which the very survival of the United States would be in the balance.
President Obama, however, appears ‘more than willing’ to confront the Israelis, especially after being informed of the full extent of Israel’s involvement in the 9/11 attacks and the other attacks planned by the Israeli assassination and sabotage teams sent into the United States posing as Israeli ‘art students’, and of which the Washington Post News Service reported on in the immediate aftermath of the attacks before going permanently silent:
“In addition to the 1000-plus Middle Easterners of the Muslim persuasion swept up in Ashcroft's post-9/11 dragnet, it seems, some 60 Israelis were in custody. And these were no ordinary tourists: INS officials testified in immigration court hearings that this group was "of special interest to the government" – the same argument used to justify the detention of Arabs in connection with the investigation into 9/11.”
It is interesting to note too that during the past week, top American investigative journalist Seymour Hersh reported that former US Vice President, Richard (Dick) Cheney, headed a CIA assassination ring that these FSB reports state was specifically created to hunt down and kill ‘all Israeli agents’ found in the United States itself, or abroad.
These reports also state that President Obama in fighting back against the Israelis is fast finding that his first battles are those involving Israel’s stranglehold on his own government and Congressional leaders, and who just two weeks ago threw out the White House’s effort to name all lobbyists and their moneyed connection to US political, economic and military power centers.
President Obama suffered a further defeat with the withdrawal of Charles Freeman, whom he had picked to head the National Intelligence Council, but who in withdrawing slammed the Israel “lobby” strangling the United States by stating:
“The libels on me and their easily traceable email trails show conclusively that there is a powerful lobby determined to prevent any view other than its own from being aired, still less to factor in American understanding of trends and events in the Middle East. The tactics of the Israel Lobby plumb the depths of dishonor and indecency and include character assassination, selective misquotation, the willful distortion of the record, the fabrication of falsehoods, and an utter disregard for the truth. The aim of this Lobby is control of the policy process through the exercise of a veto over the appointment of people who dispute the wisdom of its views, the substitution of political correctness for analysis, and the exclusion of any and all options for decision by Americans and our government other than those that it favors.”
It is important at this point to note too how Mr. Freeman’s charges against Israel’s powerful lobby in the United States agree with those of the distinguished American professors John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt, and who in their critically acclaimed book titled The Israel Lobby stated:
“Besides, the Lobby’s campaign to quash debate about Israel is unhealthy for democracy. Silencing sceptics by organising blacklists and boycotts – or by suggesting that critics are anti-semites – violates the principle of open debate on which democracy depends. The inability of Congress to conduct a genuine debate on these important issues paralyses the entire process of democratic deliberation. Israel’s backers should be free to make their case and to challenge those who disagree with them, but efforts to stifle debate by intimidation must be roundly condemned.”
To the current threats being made by Israel against the United States it is also important to note, these reports continue, that what the Jewish state wants for their now imprisoned agent Madoff is exactly what the Americans did for the leader of the former vast energy giant Enron, Kenneth Lay, and who prior to being convicted for what at that time amounted to the biggest corporate fraud in American history, but who was ‘rescued’ by the CIA who were the actual ‘founders’ of Enron and used its billions in fraudulent gains to support the vast Bush-Clinton drug empire, by falsifying his death and giving him a new identity.
To the final outcome of these events it is not in our knowing, other than to point out our present times most obvious historical comparison when during the late 1920’s American and European Zionist banking interests deliberately collapsed the World’s economy leading to the outbreak of Total Global War in 1939. It goes without saying, of course, that the Western World today is ‘not allowed’ to know the full and horrible truth about what is truly happening now, even though it has never been a great secret.
Perhaps this sad fact would be different if these Westerners were to remember the words of the great British Prime Minister and war leader Winston Churchill written in 1920 about what our World is once again facing....and be warned:
“Some people like Jews and some do not; but no thoughtful man can doubt the fact that they are beyond all question the most formidable and the most remarkable race which has ever appeared in the world.
The conflict between good and evil which proceeds unceasingly in the breast of man nowhere reaches such intensity as in the Jewish race. The dual nature of mankind is nowhere more strongly or more terribly exemplified. We owe to the Jews in the Christian revelation a system of ethics which, even if it were entirely separated from the supernatural, would be incomparably the most precious possession of mankind, worth in fact the fruits of all other wisdom and learning put together. On that system and by that faith there has been built out of the wreck of the Roman Empire the whole of our existing civilisation.
And it may well be that this same astounding race may at the present time be in the actual process of producing another system of morals and philosophy, as malevolent as Christianity was benevolent, which, if not arrested, would shatter irretrievably all that Christianity has rendered possible. It would almost seem as if the gospel of Christ and the gospel of Antichrist were destined to originate among the same people; and that this mystic and mysterious race had been chosen for the supreme manifestations, both of the divine and the diabolical.
In violent opposition to all this sphere of Jewish effort rise the schemes of the International Jews. The adherents of this sinister confederacy are mostly men reared up among the unhappy populations of countries where Jews are persecuted on account of their race. Most, if not all, of them have forsaken the faith of their forefathers, and divorced from their minds all spiritual hopes of the next world. This movement among the Jews is not new.
From the days of Spartacus-Weishaupt to those of Karl Marx, and down to Trotsky (Russia), Bela Kun (Hungary), Rosa Luxembourg (Germany), and Emma Goldman (United States), this world-wide conspiracy for the overthrow of civilisation and for the reconstitution of society on the basis of arrested development, of envious malevolence, and impossible equality, has been steadily growing. It played, as a modern writer, Mrs. Webster, has so ably shown, a definitely recognisable part in the tragedy of the French Revolution. It has been the mainspring of every subversive movement during the Nineteenth Century; and now at last this band of extraordinary personalities from the underworld of the great cities of Europe and America have gripped the Russian people by the hair of their heads and have become practically the undisputed masters of that enormous empire.
There is no need to exaggerate the part played in the creation of Bolshevism and in the actual bringing about of the Russian Revolution, by these international and for the most part atheistical Jews. It is certainly a very great one; it probably outweighs all others. With the notable exception of Lenin, the majority of the leading figures are Jews.”
© March 18, 2009 EU and US all rights reserved
[Ed. Note: The United States government actively seeks to find, and silence, any and all opinions about the United States except those coming from authorized government and/or affiliated sources, of which we are not one. No interviews are granted and very little personal information is given about our contributors, or their sources, to protect their safety.]
__________________________________________
http://blogs.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=blog.view&friendId=147509065&blogId=472463083
Thursday, March 5, 2009
Did MOSSAD's superkike RAHMBO threaten Barack with Secret Service removing the hook nosed bastard from WH?
Note: click blogpost title above to get linked to TOM HENEGHEN'S MYSPACE...nice photos.
http://blogs.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=blog.view&friendId=147509065&blogId=472463083
EXPLOSIVE BREAKING NEWS: Secret Service Removes Rahm Emanuel from Oval Office
Category: News and Politics
...
http://blog.myspace.com/tom_heneghan_intel
Explosive Back Breaking News
Secret Service Removes Rahm Emanuel from Oval Office
Wanta Protocols Update
U.S. Banks Nationalization
by Tom Heneghan
Sunday February 22, 2009
The President has also ordered U.S. Secretary Treasury Timothy Geithner to begin preliminary planning to nationalize U.S. banks aka Bank of America and Citibank and other financial institutions tied to the massive, toxic Bush-Clinton Crime Family derivatives that have collapsed the U.S. economy and threatens the financial stability of the entire world.
Reference: The nationalization order will save the U.S. banking institutions by placing these toxic derivatives in Bankruptcy Court where the culprits and criminals like Bernard Madoff and Sir R. Allen Stanford can be brought to justice for turning the entire U.S. banking system into a TREASONOUS Federal Reserve Ponzi Scheme.
Item: Former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan is now singing like a canary and fingering former White House occupant George W. Bushfraud and his predecessor, daddy Bush’s little bitch, Bill Clinton, in using the Federal Reserve as a piggy bank for illegal offshore money laundries aka the bogus Clinton 1993 Mexican loan aka the Bernard Madoff Ponzi Scheme aka the bogus Bank of America "bail out" of Merrill Lynch by Bushfraud and associates, which resulted in the massive looting of U.S. Taxpayers money by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. (pic J. Scott Applewhite)
Note: The Isle of Gibraltar is now under SEC and DOJ inquiry in regards to illegal private, secret accounts tied to the Bushes, both Clintons, current Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu and former British Prime Minister, Dunblaine pedophile and war criminal, Anthony Blair.
President Obama’s decisions set off a mini rebellion inside the Obama White House over this weekend by KHAZARIAN Jew, Head of the North American Israeli Mossad and current White House Chief of Staff, Rahm Emanuel.
Emanuel flew into a temper tantrum when President Obama made it clear to Emanuel that he would implement the Wanta-Reagan-Mitterrand Protocols tout de suite.
Emanuel also flew into a rage when it became clear to him that Obama would order immediate nationalization of the banks thereby exposing the Bush-Clinton Crime Family toxic derivatives.
Reference: Emanuel, who operates as a gate keeper for the Israeli Mossad and the Bush-Clinton Crime Family Syndicate financial interests, allegedly physically threatened the President and called him a “House Nigger”.
Secret Service agents were called on to escort Rahm Emanuel from the Oval Office. (photo UPI Photo/Brian Kersey)
White House sources revealed that KHAZARIAN Jew Emanuel was then roughed up in the White House hallway by a Secret Service agent of Irish-American ancestry.
And, of course, it gets worse!
President Obama also had to reprimand current U.S. Secretary of State, loser lesbian in-the-closet KHAZARIAN Jew and Israeli Mossad agent, Hillary Rodenhurst Clinton...
_____________________________________________________-
http://feeds.bignewsnetwork.com/index.php?sid=478626
Tuesday 17th March, 2009
US bars entry of Israel's new national security aide
ANI Tuesday 17th March, 2009
Washington, Mar.17 : The United States has decided to bar the entry of Uzi Arad, who is expected to be Israel's new national security adviser, for nearly two years on the grounds that he is an intelligence risk.
According to the Washington Times, Arad, a former member and director of intelligence for the Mossad, Israel's spy service, is mentioned in the indictment of Lawrence Franklin, a former Pentagon analyst who pleaded guilty in 2005 to providing classified information about Iran in a conversation with two employees of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC).
Beyond Arad's status, Prime Minister-designate Benjamin Netanyahu is likely to face difficulties abroad because of his choice, announced Monday, of Avigdor Lieberman to serve as foreign minister in a narrow new rightist government.
Lieberman, head of the Israel Is Our Home party, has advocated requiring Israel's 1.46 million Arabs to take a loyalty test or risk expulsion.
Arad acknowledged to The Washington Times that he has not been able to obtain a visa to come to the United States, but said the Israeli government is trying to change that.
"The director general of the Israel Foreign Ministry did tell his American counterparts that there has been no cause to deny me a visa," Arad told The Times.
Israeli and U.S. officials said Arad has been denied a U.S. visa since June 2007 under section 212 3(a) of the Immigration and Nationality Act.
This gives consular officers and the Justice Department authority to bar people who may seek "to violate any law of the United States relating to espionage or sabotage" from entering the country.
Arad was a member of the Mossad spy service from 1975 to 1997. After retiring, he became Netanyahu's foreign policy adviser.
While in the Mossad, Arad worked mainly on analysis, but he also served as a liaison for intelligence operations with allied services such as the CIA.
How BOB MUELLER STAYS OUT OF THE FED PEN: HOLDER dirty on AIG--Fannie Mae swindling?
http://aconstantineblacklist.blogspot.com/2009/03/us-cybersecurity-chief-resigns-cites.html
Saturday, March 14, 2009
US Cybersecurity Chief Resigns, Cites Pentagon/NSA Dominance of Civilian Agencies
Boston Examiner
March 13, 2009
The head of the Department of Homeland Security's cybersecurity agency resigned effective Friday, citing concerns that the National Cybersecurity Center is underfunded and effectively controlled by the Pentagon through the National Security Agency.
Rod Beckstrom, who was appointed by President Bush in March 2008, submitted a letter last week to DHS secretary Janet Napolitano:
"NSA effectively controls DHS cyber efforts," Beckstrom wrote in the letter. Beckstrom said it is "bad strategy" for any one agency to have complete control over cybersecurity.
Former FBI director Louis Freeh made similar comments in a speech before the FOSE government IT expo in Washington Thursday, calling for increased cooperation between government and the private sector.
"It's true that NSA does dominate most national cybersecurity efforts," Freeh said. "Is the military going to continue to be responsible or is it time to stand up to an independent civilian facility, too? This problem is too large to relegate it to a bureaucratic pigeonhole."
In an unrelated matter that involves the Obama administration's staffing issues, President Barack Obama's chief information officer Vivek Kundra is on leave, the White House said, while the FBI investigates a former employee of Kundra's from his former job for the District of Columbia.
Posted by Alex Constantine at 4:56 PM
____________________
http://aconstantineblacklist.blogspot.com/2009/03/source-obama-official-on-leave-after.html
Thursday, March 12, 2009
Source: Obama official on leave after FBI raids
By DEVLIN BARRETT and NEDRA PICKLER
WASHINGTON (AP) — An aide to President Barack Obama is on leave from his White House job after the FBI raided his old District of Columbia government office Thursday, arresting a city employee and a technology consultant on corruption charges, a White House official said. The charges were lodged against the two men at a federal court hearing as the FBI finished searching the city's technology office, which was led until recently by Obama's new computer chief, Vivek Kundra.
Kundra is on leave from his White House job until further details of the case become known, according to a White House official speaking on condition of anonymity because the official did not want to publicly discuss personnel matters.
At the court hearing, Yusuf Acar, the acting chief security officer in the city's technology office, was ordered held without bond pending a hearing Tuesday. Prosecutors said $70,000 in cash was found during a search of Acar's Washington home and that he posed a serious flight risk.
Technology consultant Sushil Bansal of Dunn Loring, Va., was released but was ordered not to conduct overseas financial transactions or leave the Washington metropolitan area. Bansal is due back in court on April 21, and prosecutors said they were hopeful that a plea agreement could be reached in his case.
Acar worked under Kundra, Obama's pick to coordinate federal computer systems. Obama spokesman Robert Gibbs would not say whether the White House knew the investigation was under way when it named Kundra last week, but called the case "a serious matter."
Mafara Hobson, a spokeswoman for Washington Mayor Adrian Fenty, said she was "very confident" Kundra is not a target of the investigation.
Bansal's lawyer, David Lamb declined to comment. It was not immediately clear who would represent Acar in the case.
Acar, a 40-year-old native of Turkey, had a $127,468-a-year position purchasing the city's computer equipment and lining up contract workers for numerous city agencies, according to court documents.
Authorities say Acar and Bansal, along with others, defrauded the government through a variety of schemes, including billing the city for items that were never delivered and "ghost" contract employees who did not work. The scheme involved Acar approving falsified bills and splitting the money with vendors including Bansal, who submitted them, court documents alleged.
Bansal, a native of India who turns 42 next week, is a former city employee and the founder and chief executive of Advanced Integrated Technologies Corp. The company has offices in Washington and India and did more than $13 million in business with the District of Columbia government in the past five years, according to court documents.
One contract involved providing computer support for the city's Department of Motor Vehicles. The company also was given a contract to upgrade the city's human resources computer records and sold virus detection software to the city.
In August Bansal was named entrepreneur of the year by the Association of Indians in America.
An FBI affidavit supporting the arrest warrants indicates that several other businesses and individuals were involved in the alleged schemes, but the other people are identified only by their initials.
The FBI worked with another employee in the city's technology office, who was in on the scheme and secretly recorded conversations with Acar and Bansal as part of the investigation.
In 2007, federal investigators uncovered a massive embezzlement scheme in the city's tax office.
Men and women dressed in suits and wearing latex gloves could be seen entering and leaving the glass-enclosed lobby of the Office of the Chief Technology Officer on Thursday afternoon.
Even as the raid was taking place, Kundra was giving a speech at FOSE, an annual government technology expo. Kundra said part of his focus is to change the way the government buys technologies from vendors.
Associated Press writers Philip Elliott, Donna Borak, Brian Westley and Brett Zongker contributed to this report.
http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5hMT9GSjeFeuiRWPCUKflpfkvfw3QD96SOREO0
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Switzerland Agrees to Aid in Pursuit of Tax Cheats
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/14/business/worldbusiness/14tax.html?_r=1&em
By LYNNLEY BROWNING
Published: March 13, 2009
Bowing to international pressure, Switzerland announced on Friday that it would move toward a more rigid definition of tax evasion and help global authorities pursue tax cheats.
The surprise announcement came after a similar shift by two other European tax havens, Liechtenstein and Andorra, on Thursday.
Together the moves deal the biggest blow yet to European traditions of banking secrecy and come amid a global crackdown on tax evasion. The three governments agreed to cooperate with authorities in the United States and elsewhere in investigating tax evasion and, under certain circumstances, to turn over data on accounts at banks headquartered within their jurisdictions.
"The adoption of the O.E.C.D standards is a significant signal that bank secrecy as it has existed for generations is coming to an end," said Scott D. Michel, a tax lawyer at Caplin & Drysdale in Washington, D.C.
Switzerland is not abandoning its banking secrecy laws, but rather adopting the definition of tax evasion used by the 30-nation Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development.
Switzerland was placed this week on the O.E.C.D.’s list of uncooperative tax havens, which also includes Andorra, Austria, Hong Kong, Liechtenstein, Luxembourg, Monaco and Singapore. It has also come under pressure from the British prime minister, Gordon Brown, who last month threatened to disinvite Switzerland to a meeting in London next month of the Group of 20 leading nations. Austria and Luxembourg have also agreed to adopt the organization’s definition of tax haven.
Switzerland is home to a third of the estimated $7 trillion hidden offshore globally.
Switzerland, unlike the United States and many other countries, distinguishes between tax fraud and tax evasion, and does not consider tax evasion to be a crime. But by adopting the O.E.C.D. definition, it will now cooperate with countries with which it has information-sharing treaties in pursuing tax evasion.
Those countries must already possess names of clients suspected of tax evasion, and then ask Switzerland for assistance.
“The privacy of foreign clients not under suspicion will continue to be protected by Swiss bank-client confidentiality,” the Swiss Bankers Association said on Friday. “An automatic exchange of information is excluded.”
UBS, the Swiss bank, averted indictment last month and agreed to pay $780 million to the Justice Department to settle charges that it helped scores of wealthy Americans evade taxes through secret offshore accounts.
UBS declined to comment.
David Jolly contributed reporting.
___________________________________________________________
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/politics/2008676224_apholderbank.html?syndication=rss
UBS bank listed among Holder ex-clients
Newly released documents list Attorney General-nominee Eric Holder's past clients, including a major bank under investigation.
WASHINGTON —
Newly released documents list Attorney General-nominee Eric Holder's past clients, including a major bank under investigation.
Holder's financial disclosure forms offer few surprises, though, and his work for Swiss bank UBS AG has been known. The bank is the subject of an ongoing Justice Department probe. Holder represented the firm in a separate discrimination case.
The government has already charged one fugitive former UBS executive and another has gotten a guilty plea from another.
The company has said it is cooperating with the investigation. Authorities say one UBS executive hid $20 billion in assets from the Internal Revenue Service by using secret, overseas accounts for thousands of wealthy clients.
Holder's nomination is awaiting Senate approval.
Copyright © 2009 The Seattle Times Company
_____________________________________________________
http://tpmmuckraker.talkingpointsmemo.com/2009/03/since_last_fall_us_and_uk_launched_fraud_probes_into_aig.php
Since Last Fall, US And UK Launched Fraud Probes Into AIG
By Zachary Roth - March 17, 2009, 2:31PM
Here's a point that's worth remembering amid the furor over those AIG bonuses: law enforcement agencies on both sides of the Atlantic have begun investigations into the company in recent months -- and those probes appear to be ongoing.
Last September, when the financial crisis began in earnest, following the collapse of Lehman Brothers, several news outlets reported (via Nexis) that the FBI had launched an investigation into potential fraud at four of the firms at the center of the collapse: Lehman, Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac ... and AIG. Subsequent reports have suggested that the AIG piece is focused on the financial products unit (AIGFP), where the losses that led to the firm's collapse mostly occurred.
The FBI, in keeping with its usual practice, hasn't said anything on the record about the investigation -- and an agency spokesman wouldn't confirm or deny its existence to TPMmuckraker today.
And last month, Britain's Serious Fraud Office -- in conjunction with the Financial Services Authority, the British counterpart to the SEC -- announced (via Nexis) that it had launched its own probe of that same AIG unit, focusing on suspected illegal transactions there. AIGFP had offices Connecticut and London, but its CEO during the time at issue, Joseph Cassano, was based in London.
British authorities (who seem chattier than their US counterparts) said at the time that UK and US investigators were cooperating with each other.
So that also means that, as of late February, when the UK investigation was announced, the FBI probe into AIG was still active, at least as far as the British understood.
It's by no means clear that either of these efforts will lead to charges. But given the basic shape of the river on AIGFP's credit default swaps -- in which, as Josh has written, the firm essentially offered to insure other parties' mortgage assets, without enough collateral to make good on the deal -- it doesn't seem beyond the realm of possibility that fraud occurred.
And the possibility of criminal charges could give the federal government crucial leverage over AIG as it tries every means possible to get that bonus money back.
Late Update: ABC News reports that the American probe is looking into whether AIG intentionally misled investors and regulators by continuing to make optimisitc pronouncements about the firm's health, even when they knew the company was in trouble.
It reports:
In Securities and Exchange Commission filings, AIG acknowledges that it is under federal scrutiny for possible fraud, and notes that it is cooperating with the government's probe.
Investigators are looking at statements from company leaders, who sometimes painted a sunny picture, even in the months and weeks before financial implosion.
And:
FBI and SEC investigators are hunting for whistle-blowers and is (sic) subpoenaing company e-mails and internal documents to see if the facts match the company rhetoric.
________________________________________
Congress Slams Fannie, Freddie
By Zachary Roth - December 9, 2008, 5:10PM
The House Oversight committee held hearings today on the role of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac in the housing crisis and financial meltdown. And, no surprise, committee members didn't exactly heap praise on the troubled mortgage giants.
Committee chair Henry Waxman: "The CEOs of Fannie and Freddie made reckless bets that led to the downfall of their companies. Their actions could cost taxpayers hundreds of billions of dollars."
GOP Rep. Darrell Issa: "Outright fraud and greed wasn't isolated to just Wall Street. Fannie and Freddie shared in this disgrace as it drove much of the poor decision making that have led us to where we are today."
From the Wall Street Journal:
Lawmakers cited thousands of documents collected by the committee that Waxman said "show that the companies made irresponsible investments" that destabilized the firms and forced the government to put the companies in conservatorship in September.
Specifically, the panel released a June 2005 presentation made by former Fannie CEO Daniel Mudd that suggested the firm should move away from the traditional mortgage market in order to take advantage of the growing subprime and non-prime loan businesses.
"If we do not seriously invest in these 'underground' type efforts and the market changes prove to be secular, we risk: becoming a niche player; becoming less of a market leader; becoming less relevant to the secondary market," the presentation slides say.
Fannie, the slides continue, could "meet the market where the market is" by accepting higher risk and more volatile earnings
.
Daniel Mudd, CEO of Fannie Mae, offered this defense to the committee: "We couldn't afford to make the bet that the changes were not going to be permanent," he said.
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By Ann Turner | Article Date: 6/04/2008 4:07 PM
Illinois Senator Barack Obama has selected a powerhouse three-person team to assist him in choosing his Democratic vice-presidential running mate for the November contest against presumptive Republican nominee John McCain. Caroline Kennedy, former Deputy Attorney General Eric Holder and former Fannie Mae CEO Jim Johnson will make up the team, working with Obama to choose the best balanced candidate for the VP slot on his ticket.
________________________________
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eric_Holder
... March 2004 Holder and Covington & Burling were hired by Illinois governor Rod Blagojevich to act as a special investigator to the Illinois Gaming Board. The Gaming Board had voted 4-1 earlier that month to allow a casino to be built in Rosemont, Illinois. That vote defied the recommendation of the board's staff, which had raised concerns about alleged organized-crime links to the Rosemont casino's developer. The move had also raised concerns that the governor had named his close friend and fund-raiser, Christopher Kelly, as a "special government agent" to be involved in official state negotiations about the casino. Holder's legal work for the State of Illinois never materialized when the board reversed its decision and refused to hire Kelly. The investigation was subsequently canceled on May 18, 2004.[23]........
...After the U.S. government filed suit against the Swiss bank UBS AG, whom Holder had represented during his time in private practice,[41] the attorney general recused himself from all legal matters concerning the bank,[42] which stands accused of conspiracy in U.S. tax fraud. Nonetheless, Holder met with Swiss Minister of Justice Eveline Widmer-Schlumpf on March 2, 2009, in the midst of the investigation....
________________________________________
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Covington_%26_Burling
Chiquita International Brands
Partner Eric Holder in 2007 defended Chiquita International Brands against lawsuits brought by relatives of people slain by terrorists and paramilitia belonging to the United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia, which Chiquita paid for protection.[9][10]
Chiquita settled the suits in a felony plea accepted by U.S. District Judge Royce Lamberth which awarded the families $25 million USD, also entailing 5 years probation.
Chiquita became the first major U.S. corporation to be convicted of financing terrorism. After the settlement, U.S. Assistant Attorney Jonathan Malis said the $1.7 million in payments "fueled violence" and "paid for weapons and ammunition to kill innocent people." Holder stressed that Chiquita had asked the Department of Justice in 2003 if the payments should be stopped.[11]
_________________________________
Robert Eric Wone was general counsel for Radio Free Asia and president-elect of the Asian Pacific American Bar Association at the time of his death.[1] He was a fourth generation Chinese American, and was raised in New York,[2] where his parents still lived as of 2003,[3] but had recently moved to the Washington, D.C. area prior to Wone's death.[4] Previously, he had worked in real estate law with the Washington, D.C. firm of Covington & Burling until leaving for Radio Free Asia in July,[5] and had been law clerk to Judge Raymond A. Jackson of the Federal District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia.[3] Wone served as the general counsel for the Organization of Chinese Americans (OCA) in 2006,[6] as part of his Covington & Burling public service responsibilities..........
.....Death
Late on August 2, 2006, Wone was fatally stabbed while staying overnight at a Swann Street NW townhouse in Washington, D.C. owned by Joseph Price and his domestic partner Victor Zaborsky,[12] where Dylan Ward also resided.[4] Wone had gone to Price's residence at approximately 10:30 P.M. after working late, as had been arranged days before.[4] The 911 call was made by Zaborsky at 11:49 P.M., and paramedics arrived at 11:54, followed shortly by the police.[4] Price phoned Wone's wife, but Wone was pronounced dead at George Washington University Hospital at 12:24 A.M. on August 3.[4]
Price, Ward, and Zaborsky all initially spoke with the police without attorneys, denying any involvement in his death and speculating that an intruder had killed Wone.[4] All three attended Wone's funeral, where Price served as a pallbearer.[4]
[edit] Investigation
Wone was found in Price's townhome on Swann Street. Paramedics responding to the emergency call "found the three residents’ calm behavior unusual; none was screaming or even helping direct the paramedics."[2] According to Ward's attorney, detectives who interrogated the three housemates the night of the murder informed them that they were the main suspects in the case, and asked many sexually charged accusatory questions.[13] Three days after the murder, the Gay and Lesbian Liaison Unit of the D.C. police were called in, but unit head Sgt. Brett Parson declined to discuss why his unit was involved.[14] Within two weeks of the murder, police publicly alleged that the crime scene had been tampered with.[15] Investigators spent more than three weeks examining the townhouse in detail, "removing flooring, pieces of walls, a chunk of staircase, the washing machine, even sink traps."[4] Allegations that the area around Wone's body had been cleaned were revealed in an affidavit in support of a search warrant for homeowner Joseph Price's offices at the D.C. law firm of Arent Fox.[15]
[edit] Years without progress
Three months after Wone's death, there was a burglary at the Swann Street residence, in which more than $7,000 of electronic equipment was taken.[16][17] Two individuals, including a close relative of Price's,[18] were charged with the burglary, but those charges were later dropped.[17] In 2007, D.C. police revealed that they had been preparing to make an arrest in the Wone murder case in 2006, but that the burglary had derailed those plans.[17] Police have not revealed the name of the arrest target, nor the charge(s) which would have been filed.[17]
At the one-year anniversary of Wone's death, Katherine Wone held a press conference to appeal for public assistance in finding Wone's killer,[16] her first public comment on the case.[19] During the press conference, Holder publicly pled with Price, Zaborsky, and Ward to provide additional information, saying “You need to ask yourself, ‘Have I provided police with all the information I know?’ Only you, your conscience and your God can answer that question. You’re either a friend and you cooperate or you don’t.”[19][20] Interested parties, such as the OCA, used the first anniversary of Wone's death to criticize apparent police inaction on the investigation.[6]
Prior to the news conference, Katherine Wone expressed frustration with the time the FBI crime lab was taking to process evidence, writing in an email, "It has been trying at times as we continue to wait for the FBI to complete their analysis of all the samples that were taken."[16] By the one-year anniversary of Wone's death, the case had been transferred to three separate prosecutors, earning it "vagabond status in the U.S. Attorneys' office".[18]
At the two-year anniversary of Wone's murder, no press conference was held, and neither the Wone family or police had any comment.[17]
[edit] Arrests and charges
An obstruction of justice charge was filed in October 2008 against housemate Dylan Ward, who had since moved to Miami-Dade County, Florida and was living in a home owned by Price.[21] In November 2008, Price and Zaborsky were arrested and also charged with obstruction of justice.[11] As of December 5, 2008, all three men were released pending trial, but subject to electronic monitoring and curfews.[11] On December 19, 2008, additional charges of conspiracy were filed against each of the three men.[22] During the same hearing, the electronic monitoring and curfew restrictions for the three defendants were ended and prosecutors announced the possibility that charges related to tampering with evidence could be filed in the future.[22][23]
The affidavit filed by authorities supporting the arrest warrant for Ward showed that investigators had concluded the men were not telling the truth about what happened. The report states "The evidence demonstrates that Robert Wone was restrained, incapacitated, sexually assaulted, and murdered inside 1509 Swann Street,"[21] and there exists "overwhelming evidence, far in excess of probable cause" that Price, Zaborsky, and Ward "obstructed justice by altering and orchestrating the crime scene, planting evidence, delaying the reporting of the murder to the authorities, and lying to the police about the true circumstances of the murder."[24] Price and Zaborsky were domestic partners,[17] and the affidavit alleges that Price had previously had a sexual relationship with Ward.[21]
Among other evidence, officials believe that a knife from the kitchen had been smeared with blood placed near the body, while a duplicate of the knife which was missing from a set found in Ward's bedroom would have been more consistent with the wounds to Wone's body. The autopsy revealed evidence of some degree of suffocation, perhaps by a pillow, and puncture marks on his neck, chest, foot and hand. Though no toxins were found in his blood, a lack of evidence of struggle led investigators to suspect Wone was injected with a paralytic agent. Cadaver dogs found a blood residue in a dryer lint trap and the patio drain, which detectives believe could be evidence that someone washed themselves in the back patio area, and dried the wet clothes in the dryer.[25]
[edit] Criticism
Lawyers for the three accused men have called the affidavit “speculation, innuendo, assumptions, and irrelevant inflammatory comments” and maintain their clients' innocence.[11] City Paper Columnist Jason Cherkis reported unattributed criticism of the medical examiner's failure to test for exotic drugs and to keep a sample of Wone's blood for later testing, as well as detectives' failure to follow up on a lint trap that had attracted a cadaver dog's attention.[26] The City Paper's coverage of the murder has been criticised, however, because another City Paper reporter who has covered the story, Jule Banville, is acquainted with Price. Id. at comments 5, 6. Washington attorney Dale Sanders opined that the release of the extensively detailed affidavit appeared calculated to turn one of the housemates, presumably Ward, against the others, and hypothesized that it indicated prosecutors lacked sufficient evidence to charge any of the housemates with additional crimes without the cooperation of a witness.[21] Price's lawyer has challenged the timing of the indictments and that the civil suit "looked unseemly", and questioned whether the prosecutors and Wone family attorneys are acting in concert.[27]
[edit] Civil lawsuit
On November 25, 2008, Wone's widow Katherine filed a $20 million wrongful death lawsuit against the three men, largely based on the police affidavit. The lawsuit alleges "defendants’ negligent failure to rescue Robert Wone after he was injured, defendants’ destruction of evidence of Robert Wone’s murder, and defendants’ conspiracy to destroy evidence and obstruct the police investigation into Robert Wone’s murder."[11] Prior to his nomination as United States Attorney General, Wone's widow was advised by Eric Holder as a pro bono legal advisor.[28][4] and the Washington Blade referred to Holder as her "chief attorney" in 2008.[17]
[edit] Aftermath
Wone's death has proven to be one of Washington, D.C.'s most mysterious homicide cases.[29][1] The Washington Examiner listed the Wone case, in light of the arrests, as one of eight top crime stories in D.C. for 2008.[30] The Washington Blade stated that the case "has captured the interest of the gay community because it occurred inside the home of a prominent gay male couple."[17]
In addition to Washington D.C. area and Asian American outlets, national outlets such as ABC News and gay publications such as the Windy City Times have carried related stories.[31][32]
Since Wone's death, multiple organizations have established scholarships and other memorials in his name, including the Virgina Department of Social Services "Robert E. Wone Award for Exemplary Service",[33] the "Robert E. Wone Judicial Clerkship & Internship Conference" at Howard University School of Law,[34] a conference room at OCA headquarters,[34] and the "Robert E. Wone Fellowship" of the Asia Pacific American Bar Association Educational Fund.[35]
[edit] References
1. ^ a b Duggan, Paul; Clarence Williams (2008-11-01). "Cover-Up Alleged in D.C. Killing Of Lawyer". The Washington Post. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/10/31/AR2008103102290.html. Retrieved on 2008-12-31.
2. ^ a b c d e f Tseng, Judy (2008-12-16). "Break in D.C. Lawyer Murder Case". Asian Week. http://www.asianweek.com/2008/12/16/break-in-dc-lawyer-murder-case/. Retrieved on 2009-01-01.
3. ^ a b c "Weddings/Celebrations; Katherine Yu, Robert Wone". The New York Times. 2003-06-08. http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9C01E1DD1F30F93BA35755C0A9659C8B63. Retrieved on 2009-01-01.
4. ^ a b c d e f g h i Schwartzman, Paul (2006-10-09). "A New Glimpse Into Night of D.C. Slaying". The Washington Post. p. B01. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/10/08/AR2006100801061_pf.html. Retrieved on 2009-01-01.
5. ^ Petkofsky, Andrew (2006-08-05). "Slain Lawyer a Friend to Many". Richmond Times Dispatch. p. B.6. http://proquest.umi.com/pqdweb?did=1091356731&sid=1&Fmt=3&clientId=20886&RQT=309&VName=PQD. Retrieved on 2009-01-01. (Registration required)
6. ^ a b Chu, Hope (2007-08-02). "OCA Remembers General Counsel Robert Wone, Questions Investigation Inactivity". OCAnational.com. http://www.ocanational.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=382&Itemid=94. Retrieved on 2009-01-04.
7. ^ "Covington & Burling Diversity Update" (pdf). Covington & Burling. Winter 2006. http://www.cov.com/files/upload/diversity%20update%20winter%202006.pdf. Retrieved on 2009-01-04.
8. ^ Hilder, Miles (2008-11-21). "Details of alum’s murder released". The Flat Hat. http://flathatnews.com/content/69543/details-alum%E2%80%99s-murder-released. Retrieved on 2009-01-01.
9. ^ Goddard, Lisa; Robert Wone (1993-09-30). "The Media Have Maligned Professors". Richmond Times Dispatch. p. A17. http://proquest.umi.com/pqdweb?did=614430911&sid=1&Fmt=3&clientId=20886&RQT=309&VName=PQD. Retrieved on 2009-01-04. (Registration required)
10. ^ Heintz, Francesca (2006-08-31). "Profs Shocked by Brutal Killing of Law Alumnus". The Daily Pennsylvanian. http://media.www.dailypennsylvanian.com/media/storage/paper882/news/2006/08/31/News/Profs.Shocked.By.Brutal.Killing.Of.Law.Alumnus-2255567.shtml. Retrieved on 2009-01-02.
11. ^ a b c d e Chibbaro Jr., Lou (2008-12-05). "Gay Defendants Blast officials in Wone Case: Police Accused of Spreading ‘Inflammatory Comments’". The Washington Blade. http://www.washingtonblade.com/2008/12-5/news/localnews/13684.cfm. Retrieved on 2009-01-01.
12. ^ Peterson, Karen S. (2004-03-09). "Looking Straight at Gay Parents". USA Today. http://www.usatoday.com/life/lifestyle/2004-03-09-gay-parents_x.htm. Retrieved on 2009-01-06.
13. ^ "A third not-guilty plea in D.C. lawyer death". WTOP Radio. 2008-11-25. http://www.wtopnews.com/?nid=25&sid=1525831. Retrieved on 2009-01-06.
14. ^ Cook, Gretchen (2006-10-10). "Murder in D.C.". The Advocate. p. 39.
15. ^ a b Klein, Allison; Henri E. Cauvin (2006-08-16). "Police Say Crime Scene Was Altered in NW Killing". The Washington Post. p. B.1. http://proquest.umi.com/pqdweb?did=1095337371&sid=1&Fmt=3&clientId=20886&RQT=309&VName=PQD. Retrieved on 2009-01-01. (Registration required)
16. ^ a b c Klein, Allison (2007-08-05). "Year Later, Lawyer's Slaying Still Shrouded in Mystery; Widow to Plead for Witnesses to Speak Out on Husband's Death in Attempt to Raise Investigation's Profile". The Washington Post. p. C.6. http://proquest.umi.com/pqdweb?did=1315169781&sid=1&Fmt=3&clientId=20886&RQT=309&VName=PQD. Retrieved on 2009-01-04. (Registration required)
17. ^ a b c d e f g h Chibbaro, Jr., Lou (2008-08-01). "Wone murder remains unsolved 2 years later". The Washington Blade. http://www.washingtonblade.com/2008/8-1/news/localnews/13021.cfm. Retrieved on 2009-01-01.
18. ^ a b Palazzolo, Joe (2007-08-09). "A Year Later, Police Still Don't Know Who Killed D.C. Lawyer". Law.com. http://www.law.com/jsp/article.jsp?id=1186563716143. Retrieved on 2009-01-04.
19. ^ a b McCabe, Scott (2007-08-07). "Wone’s wife pleads for killer to reveal himself". The San Francisco Examiner. http://www.examiner.com/a-867688~Wone_s_wife_pleads_for_killer_to_reveal_himself.html. Retrieved on 2008-01-04.
20. ^ Klein, Allison (2007-08-07). "Lawyer's Wife Pleads for Killer to Step Forward". The Washington Post. p. B04. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/08/06/AR2007080600773.html. Retrieved on 2009-02-08.
21. ^ a b c d Chibbaro Jr., Lou (2008-10-20). "Police say Wone was drugged, sexually assaulted before murder". The Washington Blade. http://www.washblade.com/thelatest/thelatest.cfm?blog_id=22079. Retrieved on 2009-01-01.
22. ^ a b "New Charges Filed in Death of D.C. Attorney". Fox Television Stations. 2008-12-19. http://www.myfoxdc.com/myfox/pages/News/Detail?contentId=8111104&version=1&locale=EN-US&layoutCode=TSTY&pageId=3.2.1. Retrieved on 2009-01-01.
23. ^ Neil, Martha (2008-12-22). "Prosecutor Seeks More Charges in Case of Murdered D.C. Area Attorney". ABA Journal. http://abajournal.com/news/prosecutor_seeks_more_charges_in_case_of_murdered_d.c._area_attorney/. Retrieved on 2009-01-02.
24. ^ Palazzolo, Joe; Mike Scarcella (2008-11-03). "Arrest Made in Murder of Washington Lawyer". Law.com. http://www.law.com/jsp/article.jsp?id=1202425723647. Retrieved on 2009-01-01.
25. ^ "'Obstruction' Affidavit Exposes Secrets of D.C. Murder Mystery". WJLA/NewsChannel 8. 2008-10-31. http://www.news8.net/news/stories/1008/566109.html. Retrieved on 2009-01-09.
26. ^ Cherkis, Jason (2008-12-09). "Robert Wone Case: Two Possible Gaps in Police Work". Washington City Paper. http://www.washingtoncitypaper.com/blogs/citydesk/2008/12/09/robert-wone-case-two-possible-gaps-in-police-work/. Retrieved on 2009-01-01.
27. ^ Forsyth, Jennifer (2008-11-26). "Family of Slain Lawyer Robert Wone Sues, Alleging Cover-up". WSJ.com. http://blogs.wsj.com/law/2008/11/26/family-of-slain-lawyer-robert-wone-sues-alleging-cover-up/. Retrieved on 2009-01-01.
28. ^ "Questionnaire for Eric Holder, Jr., Attorney General Nominee" (pdf). United States Senate Judiciary Committee. http://judiciary.senate.gov/resources/documents/upload/111th-Holder-Questionnaire-Public.pdf. Retrieved on 2009-01-03. (Section 26, near end of document)
29. ^ "Radio Free Asia Counsel Robert Eric Wone, 32". The Washington Post. 2006-08-23. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/08/22/AR2006082201329.html. Retrieved on 2008-12-31.
30. ^ McCabe, Scott (2008-12-31). "Top D.C. crime stories of 2008". The Washington Examiner. http://www.dcexaminer.com/local/crime/Top-DC-crime-stories-of-2008-01-0109.html. Retrieved on 2009-01-01.
31. ^ Michels, Scott (2008-11-21). "Police Allege Coverup in Lawyer's 2006 Murder". ABC News. http://abcnews.go.com/TheLaw/story?id=6306456&page=1. Retrieved on 2009-01-03.
32. ^ Roehr, Bob (2006-08-16). "Murder in Dupont". Windy City Times. http://www.windycitymediagroup.com/gay/lesbian/news/ARTICLE.php?AID=12365. Retrieved on 2009-01-03.
33. ^ "AmeriCorps Members Pledge Year of Service at VCU Ceremony". Virginia Department of Social Services. 2007-10-24. http://www.vaservice.org/go/news/P70/. Retrieved on 2009-01-04.
34. ^ a b "OCA and Robert Wone" (pdf). Asian Pacific American Bar Association of the Greater Washington DC Area, Inc.. 2008. 4-5. http://www.napaba.org/uploads/napaba/APABA-DC_NL.pdf. Retrieved on 2009-01-04.
35. ^ "Fourth Annual Benefit Dinner" (pdf). Asian Pacific American Bar Association Educational Fund. 2007-03-20. http://www.aefapaba.hostcentric.com/event/2007%20Program%5B1%5D.pdf. Retrieved on 2008-01-04.
Saturday, March 14, 2009
US Cybersecurity Chief Resigns, Cites Pentagon/NSA Dominance of Civilian Agencies
Boston Examiner
March 13, 2009
The head of the Department of Homeland Security's cybersecurity agency resigned effective Friday, citing concerns that the National Cybersecurity Center is underfunded and effectively controlled by the Pentagon through the National Security Agency.
Rod Beckstrom, who was appointed by President Bush in March 2008, submitted a letter last week to DHS secretary Janet Napolitano:
"NSA effectively controls DHS cyber efforts," Beckstrom wrote in the letter. Beckstrom said it is "bad strategy" for any one agency to have complete control over cybersecurity.
Former FBI director Louis Freeh made similar comments in a speech before the FOSE government IT expo in Washington Thursday, calling for increased cooperation between government and the private sector.
"It's true that NSA does dominate most national cybersecurity efforts," Freeh said. "Is the military going to continue to be responsible or is it time to stand up to an independent civilian facility, too? This problem is too large to relegate it to a bureaucratic pigeonhole."
In an unrelated matter that involves the Obama administration's staffing issues, President Barack Obama's chief information officer Vivek Kundra is on leave, the White House said, while the FBI investigates a former employee of Kundra's from his former job for the District of Columbia.
Posted by Alex Constantine at 4:56 PM
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http://aconstantineblacklist.blogspot.com/2009/03/source-obama-official-on-leave-after.html
Thursday, March 12, 2009
Source: Obama official on leave after FBI raids
By DEVLIN BARRETT and NEDRA PICKLER
WASHINGTON (AP) — An aide to President Barack Obama is on leave from his White House job after the FBI raided his old District of Columbia government office Thursday, arresting a city employee and a technology consultant on corruption charges, a White House official said. The charges were lodged against the two men at a federal court hearing as the FBI finished searching the city's technology office, which was led until recently by Obama's new computer chief, Vivek Kundra.
Kundra is on leave from his White House job until further details of the case become known, according to a White House official speaking on condition of anonymity because the official did not want to publicly discuss personnel matters.
At the court hearing, Yusuf Acar, the acting chief security officer in the city's technology office, was ordered held without bond pending a hearing Tuesday. Prosecutors said $70,000 in cash was found during a search of Acar's Washington home and that he posed a serious flight risk.
Technology consultant Sushil Bansal of Dunn Loring, Va., was released but was ordered not to conduct overseas financial transactions or leave the Washington metropolitan area. Bansal is due back in court on April 21, and prosecutors said they were hopeful that a plea agreement could be reached in his case.
Acar worked under Kundra, Obama's pick to coordinate federal computer systems. Obama spokesman Robert Gibbs would not say whether the White House knew the investigation was under way when it named Kundra last week, but called the case "a serious matter."
Mafara Hobson, a spokeswoman for Washington Mayor Adrian Fenty, said she was "very confident" Kundra is not a target of the investigation.
Bansal's lawyer, David Lamb declined to comment. It was not immediately clear who would represent Acar in the case.
Acar, a 40-year-old native of Turkey, had a $127,468-a-year position purchasing the city's computer equipment and lining up contract workers for numerous city agencies, according to court documents.
Authorities say Acar and Bansal, along with others, defrauded the government through a variety of schemes, including billing the city for items that were never delivered and "ghost" contract employees who did not work. The scheme involved Acar approving falsified bills and splitting the money with vendors including Bansal, who submitted them, court documents alleged.
Bansal, a native of India who turns 42 next week, is a former city employee and the founder and chief executive of Advanced Integrated Technologies Corp. The company has offices in Washington and India and did more than $13 million in business with the District of Columbia government in the past five years, according to court documents.
One contract involved providing computer support for the city's Department of Motor Vehicles. The company also was given a contract to upgrade the city's human resources computer records and sold virus detection software to the city.
In August Bansal was named entrepreneur of the year by the Association of Indians in America.
An FBI affidavit supporting the arrest warrants indicates that several other businesses and individuals were involved in the alleged schemes, but the other people are identified only by their initials.
The FBI worked with another employee in the city's technology office, who was in on the scheme and secretly recorded conversations with Acar and Bansal as part of the investigation.
In 2007, federal investigators uncovered a massive embezzlement scheme in the city's tax office.
Men and women dressed in suits and wearing latex gloves could be seen entering and leaving the glass-enclosed lobby of the Office of the Chief Technology Officer on Thursday afternoon.
Even as the raid was taking place, Kundra was giving a speech at FOSE, an annual government technology expo. Kundra said part of his focus is to change the way the government buys technologies from vendors.
Associated Press writers Philip Elliott, Donna Borak, Brian Westley and Brett Zongker contributed to this report.
http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5hMT9GSjeFeuiRWPCUKflpfkvfw3QD96SOREO0
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Switzerland Agrees to Aid in Pursuit of Tax Cheats
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/14/business/worldbusiness/14tax.html?_r=1&em
By LYNNLEY BROWNING
Published: March 13, 2009
Bowing to international pressure, Switzerland announced on Friday that it would move toward a more rigid definition of tax evasion and help global authorities pursue tax cheats.
The surprise announcement came after a similar shift by two other European tax havens, Liechtenstein and Andorra, on Thursday.
Together the moves deal the biggest blow yet to European traditions of banking secrecy and come amid a global crackdown on tax evasion. The three governments agreed to cooperate with authorities in the United States and elsewhere in investigating tax evasion and, under certain circumstances, to turn over data on accounts at banks headquartered within their jurisdictions.
"The adoption of the O.E.C.D standards is a significant signal that bank secrecy as it has existed for generations is coming to an end," said Scott D. Michel, a tax lawyer at Caplin & Drysdale in Washington, D.C.
Switzerland is not abandoning its banking secrecy laws, but rather adopting the definition of tax evasion used by the 30-nation Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development.
Switzerland was placed this week on the O.E.C.D.’s list of uncooperative tax havens, which also includes Andorra, Austria, Hong Kong, Liechtenstein, Luxembourg, Monaco and Singapore. It has also come under pressure from the British prime minister, Gordon Brown, who last month threatened to disinvite Switzerland to a meeting in London next month of the Group of 20 leading nations. Austria and Luxembourg have also agreed to adopt the organization’s definition of tax haven.
Switzerland is home to a third of the estimated $7 trillion hidden offshore globally.
Switzerland, unlike the United States and many other countries, distinguishes between tax fraud and tax evasion, and does not consider tax evasion to be a crime. But by adopting the O.E.C.D. definition, it will now cooperate with countries with which it has information-sharing treaties in pursuing tax evasion.
Those countries must already possess names of clients suspected of tax evasion, and then ask Switzerland for assistance.
“The privacy of foreign clients not under suspicion will continue to be protected by Swiss bank-client confidentiality,” the Swiss Bankers Association said on Friday. “An automatic exchange of information is excluded.”
UBS, the Swiss bank, averted indictment last month and agreed to pay $780 million to the Justice Department to settle charges that it helped scores of wealthy Americans evade taxes through secret offshore accounts.
UBS declined to comment.
David Jolly contributed reporting.
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http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/politics/2008676224_apholderbank.html?syndication=rss
UBS bank listed among Holder ex-clients
Newly released documents list Attorney General-nominee Eric Holder's past clients, including a major bank under investigation.
WASHINGTON —
Newly released documents list Attorney General-nominee Eric Holder's past clients, including a major bank under investigation.
Holder's financial disclosure forms offer few surprises, though, and his work for Swiss bank UBS AG has been known. The bank is the subject of an ongoing Justice Department probe. Holder represented the firm in a separate discrimination case.
The government has already charged one fugitive former UBS executive and another has gotten a guilty plea from another.
The company has said it is cooperating with the investigation. Authorities say one UBS executive hid $20 billion in assets from the Internal Revenue Service by using secret, overseas accounts for thousands of wealthy clients.
Holder's nomination is awaiting Senate approval.
Copyright © 2009 The Seattle Times Company
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http://tpmmuckraker.talkingpointsmemo.com/2009/03/since_last_fall_us_and_uk_launched_fraud_probes_into_aig.php
Since Last Fall, US And UK Launched Fraud Probes Into AIG
By Zachary Roth - March 17, 2009, 2:31PM
Here's a point that's worth remembering amid the furor over those AIG bonuses: law enforcement agencies on both sides of the Atlantic have begun investigations into the company in recent months -- and those probes appear to be ongoing.
Last September, when the financial crisis began in earnest, following the collapse of Lehman Brothers, several news outlets reported (via Nexis) that the FBI had launched an investigation into potential fraud at four of the firms at the center of the collapse: Lehman, Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac ... and AIG. Subsequent reports have suggested that the AIG piece is focused on the financial products unit (AIGFP), where the losses that led to the firm's collapse mostly occurred.
The FBI, in keeping with its usual practice, hasn't said anything on the record about the investigation -- and an agency spokesman wouldn't confirm or deny its existence to TPMmuckraker today.
And last month, Britain's Serious Fraud Office -- in conjunction with the Financial Services Authority, the British counterpart to the SEC -- announced (via Nexis) that it had launched its own probe of that same AIG unit, focusing on suspected illegal transactions there. AIGFP had offices Connecticut and London, but its CEO during the time at issue, Joseph Cassano, was based in London.
British authorities (who seem chattier than their US counterparts) said at the time that UK and US investigators were cooperating with each other.
So that also means that, as of late February, when the UK investigation was announced, the FBI probe into AIG was still active, at least as far as the British understood.
It's by no means clear that either of these efforts will lead to charges. But given the basic shape of the river on AIGFP's credit default swaps -- in which, as Josh has written, the firm essentially offered to insure other parties' mortgage assets, without enough collateral to make good on the deal -- it doesn't seem beyond the realm of possibility that fraud occurred.
And the possibility of criminal charges could give the federal government crucial leverage over AIG as it tries every means possible to get that bonus money back.
Late Update: ABC News reports that the American probe is looking into whether AIG intentionally misled investors and regulators by continuing to make optimisitc pronouncements about the firm's health, even when they knew the company was in trouble.
It reports:
In Securities and Exchange Commission filings, AIG acknowledges that it is under federal scrutiny for possible fraud, and notes that it is cooperating with the government's probe.
Investigators are looking at statements from company leaders, who sometimes painted a sunny picture, even in the months and weeks before financial implosion.
And:
FBI and SEC investigators are hunting for whistle-blowers and is (sic) subpoenaing company e-mails and internal documents to see if the facts match the company rhetoric.
________________________________________
Congress Slams Fannie, Freddie
By Zachary Roth - December 9, 2008, 5:10PM
The House Oversight committee held hearings today on the role of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac in the housing crisis and financial meltdown. And, no surprise, committee members didn't exactly heap praise on the troubled mortgage giants.
Committee chair Henry Waxman: "The CEOs of Fannie and Freddie made reckless bets that led to the downfall of their companies. Their actions could cost taxpayers hundreds of billions of dollars."
GOP Rep. Darrell Issa: "Outright fraud and greed wasn't isolated to just Wall Street. Fannie and Freddie shared in this disgrace as it drove much of the poor decision making that have led us to where we are today."
From the Wall Street Journal:
Lawmakers cited thousands of documents collected by the committee that Waxman said "show that the companies made irresponsible investments" that destabilized the firms and forced the government to put the companies in conservatorship in September.
Specifically, the panel released a June 2005 presentation made by former Fannie CEO Daniel Mudd that suggested the firm should move away from the traditional mortgage market in order to take advantage of the growing subprime and non-prime loan businesses.
"If we do not seriously invest in these 'underground' type efforts and the market changes prove to be secular, we risk: becoming a niche player; becoming less of a market leader; becoming less relevant to the secondary market," the presentation slides say.
Fannie, the slides continue, could "meet the market where the market is" by accepting higher risk and more volatile earnings
.
Daniel Mudd, CEO of Fannie Mae, offered this defense to the committee: "We couldn't afford to make the bet that the changes were not going to be permanent," he said.
___________________________________
By Ann Turner | Article Date: 6/04/2008 4:07 PM
Illinois Senator Barack Obama has selected a powerhouse three-person team to assist him in choosing his Democratic vice-presidential running mate for the November contest against presumptive Republican nominee John McCain. Caroline Kennedy, former Deputy Attorney General Eric Holder and former Fannie Mae CEO Jim Johnson will make up the team, working with Obama to choose the best balanced candidate for the VP slot on his ticket.
________________________________
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eric_Holder
... March 2004 Holder and Covington & Burling were hired by Illinois governor Rod Blagojevich to act as a special investigator to the Illinois Gaming Board. The Gaming Board had voted 4-1 earlier that month to allow a casino to be built in Rosemont, Illinois. That vote defied the recommendation of the board's staff, which had raised concerns about alleged organized-crime links to the Rosemont casino's developer. The move had also raised concerns that the governor had named his close friend and fund-raiser, Christopher Kelly, as a "special government agent" to be involved in official state negotiations about the casino. Holder's legal work for the State of Illinois never materialized when the board reversed its decision and refused to hire Kelly. The investigation was subsequently canceled on May 18, 2004.[23]........
...After the U.S. government filed suit against the Swiss bank UBS AG, whom Holder had represented during his time in private practice,[41] the attorney general recused himself from all legal matters concerning the bank,[42] which stands accused of conspiracy in U.S. tax fraud. Nonetheless, Holder met with Swiss Minister of Justice Eveline Widmer-Schlumpf on March 2, 2009, in the midst of the investigation....
________________________________________
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Covington_%26_Burling
Chiquita International Brands
Partner Eric Holder in 2007 defended Chiquita International Brands against lawsuits brought by relatives of people slain by terrorists and paramilitia belonging to the United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia, which Chiquita paid for protection.[9][10]
Chiquita settled the suits in a felony plea accepted by U.S. District Judge Royce Lamberth which awarded the families $25 million USD, also entailing 5 years probation.
Chiquita became the first major U.S. corporation to be convicted of financing terrorism. After the settlement, U.S. Assistant Attorney Jonathan Malis said the $1.7 million in payments "fueled violence" and "paid for weapons and ammunition to kill innocent people." Holder stressed that Chiquita had asked the Department of Justice in 2003 if the payments should be stopped.[11]
_________________________________
Robert Eric Wone was general counsel for Radio Free Asia and president-elect of the Asian Pacific American Bar Association at the time of his death.[1] He was a fourth generation Chinese American, and was raised in New York,[2] where his parents still lived as of 2003,[3] but had recently moved to the Washington, D.C. area prior to Wone's death.[4] Previously, he had worked in real estate law with the Washington, D.C. firm of Covington & Burling until leaving for Radio Free Asia in July,[5] and had been law clerk to Judge Raymond A. Jackson of the Federal District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia.[3] Wone served as the general counsel for the Organization of Chinese Americans (OCA) in 2006,[6] as part of his Covington & Burling public service responsibilities..........
.....Death
Late on August 2, 2006, Wone was fatally stabbed while staying overnight at a Swann Street NW townhouse in Washington, D.C. owned by Joseph Price and his domestic partner Victor Zaborsky,[12] where Dylan Ward also resided.[4] Wone had gone to Price's residence at approximately 10:30 P.M. after working late, as had been arranged days before.[4] The 911 call was made by Zaborsky at 11:49 P.M., and paramedics arrived at 11:54, followed shortly by the police.[4] Price phoned Wone's wife, but Wone was pronounced dead at George Washington University Hospital at 12:24 A.M. on August 3.[4]
Price, Ward, and Zaborsky all initially spoke with the police without attorneys, denying any involvement in his death and speculating that an intruder had killed Wone.[4] All three attended Wone's funeral, where Price served as a pallbearer.[4]
[edit] Investigation
Wone was found in Price's townhome on Swann Street. Paramedics responding to the emergency call "found the three residents’ calm behavior unusual; none was screaming or even helping direct the paramedics."[2] According to Ward's attorney, detectives who interrogated the three housemates the night of the murder informed them that they were the main suspects in the case, and asked many sexually charged accusatory questions.[13] Three days after the murder, the Gay and Lesbian Liaison Unit of the D.C. police were called in, but unit head Sgt. Brett Parson declined to discuss why his unit was involved.[14] Within two weeks of the murder, police publicly alleged that the crime scene had been tampered with.[15] Investigators spent more than three weeks examining the townhouse in detail, "removing flooring, pieces of walls, a chunk of staircase, the washing machine, even sink traps."[4] Allegations that the area around Wone's body had been cleaned were revealed in an affidavit in support of a search warrant for homeowner Joseph Price's offices at the D.C. law firm of Arent Fox.[15]
[edit] Years without progress
Three months after Wone's death, there was a burglary at the Swann Street residence, in which more than $7,000 of electronic equipment was taken.[16][17] Two individuals, including a close relative of Price's,[18] were charged with the burglary, but those charges were later dropped.[17] In 2007, D.C. police revealed that they had been preparing to make an arrest in the Wone murder case in 2006, but that the burglary had derailed those plans.[17] Police have not revealed the name of the arrest target, nor the charge(s) which would have been filed.[17]
At the one-year anniversary of Wone's death, Katherine Wone held a press conference to appeal for public assistance in finding Wone's killer,[16] her first public comment on the case.[19] During the press conference, Holder publicly pled with Price, Zaborsky, and Ward to provide additional information, saying “You need to ask yourself, ‘Have I provided police with all the information I know?’ Only you, your conscience and your God can answer that question. You’re either a friend and you cooperate or you don’t.”[19][20] Interested parties, such as the OCA, used the first anniversary of Wone's death to criticize apparent police inaction on the investigation.[6]
Prior to the news conference, Katherine Wone expressed frustration with the time the FBI crime lab was taking to process evidence, writing in an email, "It has been trying at times as we continue to wait for the FBI to complete their analysis of all the samples that were taken."[16] By the one-year anniversary of Wone's death, the case had been transferred to three separate prosecutors, earning it "vagabond status in the U.S. Attorneys' office".[18]
At the two-year anniversary of Wone's murder, no press conference was held, and neither the Wone family or police had any comment.[17]
[edit] Arrests and charges
An obstruction of justice charge was filed in October 2008 against housemate Dylan Ward, who had since moved to Miami-Dade County, Florida and was living in a home owned by Price.[21] In November 2008, Price and Zaborsky were arrested and also charged with obstruction of justice.[11] As of December 5, 2008, all three men were released pending trial, but subject to electronic monitoring and curfews.[11] On December 19, 2008, additional charges of conspiracy were filed against each of the three men.[22] During the same hearing, the electronic monitoring and curfew restrictions for the three defendants were ended and prosecutors announced the possibility that charges related to tampering with evidence could be filed in the future.[22][23]
The affidavit filed by authorities supporting the arrest warrant for Ward showed that investigators had concluded the men were not telling the truth about what happened. The report states "The evidence demonstrates that Robert Wone was restrained, incapacitated, sexually assaulted, and murdered inside 1509 Swann Street,"[21] and there exists "overwhelming evidence, far in excess of probable cause" that Price, Zaborsky, and Ward "obstructed justice by altering and orchestrating the crime scene, planting evidence, delaying the reporting of the murder to the authorities, and lying to the police about the true circumstances of the murder."[24] Price and Zaborsky were domestic partners,[17] and the affidavit alleges that Price had previously had a sexual relationship with Ward.[21]
Among other evidence, officials believe that a knife from the kitchen had been smeared with blood placed near the body, while a duplicate of the knife which was missing from a set found in Ward's bedroom would have been more consistent with the wounds to Wone's body. The autopsy revealed evidence of some degree of suffocation, perhaps by a pillow, and puncture marks on his neck, chest, foot and hand. Though no toxins were found in his blood, a lack of evidence of struggle led investigators to suspect Wone was injected with a paralytic agent. Cadaver dogs found a blood residue in a dryer lint trap and the patio drain, which detectives believe could be evidence that someone washed themselves in the back patio area, and dried the wet clothes in the dryer.[25]
[edit] Criticism
Lawyers for the three accused men have called the affidavit “speculation, innuendo, assumptions, and irrelevant inflammatory comments” and maintain their clients' innocence.[11] City Paper Columnist Jason Cherkis reported unattributed criticism of the medical examiner's failure to test for exotic drugs and to keep a sample of Wone's blood for later testing, as well as detectives' failure to follow up on a lint trap that had attracted a cadaver dog's attention.[26] The City Paper's coverage of the murder has been criticised, however, because another City Paper reporter who has covered the story, Jule Banville, is acquainted with Price. Id. at comments 5, 6. Washington attorney Dale Sanders opined that the release of the extensively detailed affidavit appeared calculated to turn one of the housemates, presumably Ward, against the others, and hypothesized that it indicated prosecutors lacked sufficient evidence to charge any of the housemates with additional crimes without the cooperation of a witness.[21] Price's lawyer has challenged the timing of the indictments and that the civil suit "looked unseemly", and questioned whether the prosecutors and Wone family attorneys are acting in concert.[27]
[edit] Civil lawsuit
On November 25, 2008, Wone's widow Katherine filed a $20 million wrongful death lawsuit against the three men, largely based on the police affidavit. The lawsuit alleges "defendants’ negligent failure to rescue Robert Wone after he was injured, defendants’ destruction of evidence of Robert Wone’s murder, and defendants’ conspiracy to destroy evidence and obstruct the police investigation into Robert Wone’s murder."[11] Prior to his nomination as United States Attorney General, Wone's widow was advised by Eric Holder as a pro bono legal advisor.[28][4] and the Washington Blade referred to Holder as her "chief attorney" in 2008.[17]
[edit] Aftermath
Wone's death has proven to be one of Washington, D.C.'s most mysterious homicide cases.[29][1] The Washington Examiner listed the Wone case, in light of the arrests, as one of eight top crime stories in D.C. for 2008.[30] The Washington Blade stated that the case "has captured the interest of the gay community because it occurred inside the home of a prominent gay male couple."[17]
In addition to Washington D.C. area and Asian American outlets, national outlets such as ABC News and gay publications such as the Windy City Times have carried related stories.[31][32]
Since Wone's death, multiple organizations have established scholarships and other memorials in his name, including the Virgina Department of Social Services "Robert E. Wone Award for Exemplary Service",[33] the "Robert E. Wone Judicial Clerkship & Internship Conference" at Howard University School of Law,[34] a conference room at OCA headquarters,[34] and the "Robert E. Wone Fellowship" of the Asia Pacific American Bar Association Educational Fund.[35]
[edit] References
1. ^ a b Duggan, Paul; Clarence Williams (2008-11-01). "Cover-Up Alleged in D.C. Killing Of Lawyer". The Washington Post. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/10/31/AR2008103102290.html. Retrieved on 2008-12-31.
2. ^ a b c d e f Tseng, Judy (2008-12-16). "Break in D.C. Lawyer Murder Case". Asian Week. http://www.asianweek.com/2008/12/16/break-in-dc-lawyer-murder-case/. Retrieved on 2009-01-01.
3. ^ a b c "Weddings/Celebrations; Katherine Yu, Robert Wone". The New York Times. 2003-06-08. http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9C01E1DD1F30F93BA35755C0A9659C8B63. Retrieved on 2009-01-01.
4. ^ a b c d e f g h i Schwartzman, Paul (2006-10-09). "A New Glimpse Into Night of D.C. Slaying". The Washington Post. p. B01. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/10/08/AR2006100801061_pf.html. Retrieved on 2009-01-01.
5. ^ Petkofsky, Andrew (2006-08-05). "Slain Lawyer a Friend to Many". Richmond Times Dispatch. p. B.6. http://proquest.umi.com/pqdweb?did=1091356731&sid=1&Fmt=3&clientId=20886&RQT=309&VName=PQD. Retrieved on 2009-01-01. (Registration required)
6. ^ a b Chu, Hope (2007-08-02). "OCA Remembers General Counsel Robert Wone, Questions Investigation Inactivity". OCAnational.com. http://www.ocanational.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=382&Itemid=94. Retrieved on 2009-01-04.
7. ^ "Covington & Burling Diversity Update" (pdf). Covington & Burling. Winter 2006. http://www.cov.com/files/upload/diversity%20update%20winter%202006.pdf. Retrieved on 2009-01-04.
8. ^ Hilder, Miles (2008-11-21). "Details of alum’s murder released". The Flat Hat. http://flathatnews.com/content/69543/details-alum%E2%80%99s-murder-released. Retrieved on 2009-01-01.
9. ^ Goddard, Lisa; Robert Wone (1993-09-30). "The Media Have Maligned Professors". Richmond Times Dispatch. p. A17. http://proquest.umi.com/pqdweb?did=614430911&sid=1&Fmt=3&clientId=20886&RQT=309&VName=PQD. Retrieved on 2009-01-04. (Registration required)
10. ^ Heintz, Francesca (2006-08-31). "Profs Shocked by Brutal Killing of Law Alumnus". The Daily Pennsylvanian. http://media.www.dailypennsylvanian.com/media/storage/paper882/news/2006/08/31/News/Profs.Shocked.By.Brutal.Killing.Of.Law.Alumnus-2255567.shtml. Retrieved on 2009-01-02.
11. ^ a b c d e Chibbaro Jr., Lou (2008-12-05). "Gay Defendants Blast officials in Wone Case: Police Accused of Spreading ‘Inflammatory Comments’". The Washington Blade. http://www.washingtonblade.com/2008/12-5/news/localnews/13684.cfm. Retrieved on 2009-01-01.
12. ^ Peterson, Karen S. (2004-03-09). "Looking Straight at Gay Parents". USA Today. http://www.usatoday.com/life/lifestyle/2004-03-09-gay-parents_x.htm. Retrieved on 2009-01-06.
13. ^ "A third not-guilty plea in D.C. lawyer death". WTOP Radio. 2008-11-25. http://www.wtopnews.com/?nid=25&sid=1525831. Retrieved on 2009-01-06.
14. ^ Cook, Gretchen (2006-10-10). "Murder in D.C.". The Advocate. p. 39.
15. ^ a b Klein, Allison; Henri E. Cauvin (2006-08-16). "Police Say Crime Scene Was Altered in NW Killing". The Washington Post. p. B.1. http://proquest.umi.com/pqdweb?did=1095337371&sid=1&Fmt=3&clientId=20886&RQT=309&VName=PQD. Retrieved on 2009-01-01. (Registration required)
16. ^ a b c Klein, Allison (2007-08-05). "Year Later, Lawyer's Slaying Still Shrouded in Mystery; Widow to Plead for Witnesses to Speak Out on Husband's Death in Attempt to Raise Investigation's Profile". The Washington Post. p. C.6. http://proquest.umi.com/pqdweb?did=1315169781&sid=1&Fmt=3&clientId=20886&RQT=309&VName=PQD. Retrieved on 2009-01-04. (Registration required)
17. ^ a b c d e f g h Chibbaro, Jr., Lou (2008-08-01). "Wone murder remains unsolved 2 years later". The Washington Blade. http://www.washingtonblade.com/2008/8-1/news/localnews/13021.cfm. Retrieved on 2009-01-01.
18. ^ a b Palazzolo, Joe (2007-08-09). "A Year Later, Police Still Don't Know Who Killed D.C. Lawyer". Law.com. http://www.law.com/jsp/article.jsp?id=1186563716143. Retrieved on 2009-01-04.
19. ^ a b McCabe, Scott (2007-08-07). "Wone’s wife pleads for killer to reveal himself". The San Francisco Examiner. http://www.examiner.com/a-867688~Wone_s_wife_pleads_for_killer_to_reveal_himself.html. Retrieved on 2008-01-04.
20. ^ Klein, Allison (2007-08-07). "Lawyer's Wife Pleads for Killer to Step Forward". The Washington Post. p. B04. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/08/06/AR2007080600773.html. Retrieved on 2009-02-08.
21. ^ a b c d Chibbaro Jr., Lou (2008-10-20). "Police say Wone was drugged, sexually assaulted before murder". The Washington Blade. http://www.washblade.com/thelatest/thelatest.cfm?blog_id=22079. Retrieved on 2009-01-01.
22. ^ a b "New Charges Filed in Death of D.C. Attorney". Fox Television Stations. 2008-12-19. http://www.myfoxdc.com/myfox/pages/News/Detail?contentId=8111104&version=1&locale=EN-US&layoutCode=TSTY&pageId=3.2.1. Retrieved on 2009-01-01.
23. ^ Neil, Martha (2008-12-22). "Prosecutor Seeks More Charges in Case of Murdered D.C. Area Attorney". ABA Journal. http://abajournal.com/news/prosecutor_seeks_more_charges_in_case_of_murdered_d.c._area_attorney/. Retrieved on 2009-01-02.
24. ^ Palazzolo, Joe; Mike Scarcella (2008-11-03). "Arrest Made in Murder of Washington Lawyer". Law.com. http://www.law.com/jsp/article.jsp?id=1202425723647. Retrieved on 2009-01-01.
25. ^ "'Obstruction' Affidavit Exposes Secrets of D.C. Murder Mystery". WJLA/NewsChannel 8. 2008-10-31. http://www.news8.net/news/stories/1008/566109.html. Retrieved on 2009-01-09.
26. ^ Cherkis, Jason (2008-12-09). "Robert Wone Case: Two Possible Gaps in Police Work". Washington City Paper. http://www.washingtoncitypaper.com/blogs/citydesk/2008/12/09/robert-wone-case-two-possible-gaps-in-police-work/. Retrieved on 2009-01-01.
27. ^ Forsyth, Jennifer (2008-11-26). "Family of Slain Lawyer Robert Wone Sues, Alleging Cover-up". WSJ.com. http://blogs.wsj.com/law/2008/11/26/family-of-slain-lawyer-robert-wone-sues-alleging-cover-up/. Retrieved on 2009-01-01.
28. ^ "Questionnaire for Eric Holder, Jr., Attorney General Nominee" (pdf). United States Senate Judiciary Committee. http://judiciary.senate.gov/resources/documents/upload/111th-Holder-Questionnaire-Public.pdf. Retrieved on 2009-01-03. (Section 26, near end of document)
29. ^ "Radio Free Asia Counsel Robert Eric Wone, 32". The Washington Post. 2006-08-23. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/08/22/AR2006082201329.html. Retrieved on 2008-12-31.
30. ^ McCabe, Scott (2008-12-31). "Top D.C. crime stories of 2008". The Washington Examiner. http://www.dcexaminer.com/local/crime/Top-DC-crime-stories-of-2008-01-0109.html. Retrieved on 2009-01-01.
31. ^ Michels, Scott (2008-11-21). "Police Allege Coverup in Lawyer's 2006 Murder". ABC News. http://abcnews.go.com/TheLaw/story?id=6306456&page=1. Retrieved on 2009-01-03.
32. ^ Roehr, Bob (2006-08-16). "Murder in Dupont". Windy City Times. http://www.windycitymediagroup.com/gay/lesbian/news/ARTICLE.php?AID=12365. Retrieved on 2009-01-03.
33. ^ "AmeriCorps Members Pledge Year of Service at VCU Ceremony". Virginia Department of Social Services. 2007-10-24. http://www.vaservice.org/go/news/P70/. Retrieved on 2009-01-04.
34. ^ a b "OCA and Robert Wone" (pdf). Asian Pacific American Bar Association of the Greater Washington DC Area, Inc.. 2008. 4-5. http://www.napaba.org/uploads/napaba/APABA-DC_NL.pdf. Retrieved on 2009-01-04.
35. ^ "Fourth Annual Benefit Dinner" (pdf). Asian Pacific American Bar Association Educational Fund. 2007-03-20. http://www.aefapaba.hostcentric.com/event/2007%20Program%5B1%5D.pdf. Retrieved on 2008-01-04.
Barack considers POLITICAL SUICIDE: Rahmbo screws Obama again?
http://www.buffalonews.com/180/story/610029.html
“The Obama administration is considering making veterans use private insurance to pay for treatment of combat and service-related injuries,” a move that has earned widespread criticism from veterans groups. IAVA Director Paul Rieckhoff said the proposal “is bad for the country and bad for veterans,” while Joe Violante, legislative director of Disabled American Veterans, called it “a betrayal.” Watch Rieckhoff discuss the idea with Rachel Maddow here.
“The Obama administration is considering making veterans use private insurance to pay for treatment of combat and service-related injuries,” a move that has earned widespread criticism from veterans groups. IAVA Director Paul Rieckhoff said the proposal “is bad for the country and bad for veterans,” while Joe Violante, legislative director of Disabled American Veterans, called it “a betrayal.” Watch Rieckhoff discuss the idea with Rachel Maddow here.
Monday, March 16, 2009
I thought CHENEY'S fat lying ass was gone from DC bullshit land?
http://thinkprogress.org/2009/03/15/cheney-stuff-happens/
Cheney’s Excuse For Economic Failures Under His Watch: ‘Stuff Happens’
During an interview with Dick Cheney this morning, CNN host John King asked the former vice president why “we should listen to you” for economic advice. To make his case, King noted the following statistical changes that occurred under the Bush/Cheney administration:
Unemployment rate: Rose from 4.2 percent to 7.6 percent
Poverty: Jumped from 32.9 million individuals to 37.3 million
Uninsured: Escalated from 41.2 million individuals to 45.7 million
Budget deficit: Inherited budget surplus of $128 billion and left office with $1.3 trillion deficit
“So what would you say to someone out there watching this who’s saying why should they listen to you?” King asked. Cheney responded that there’s “all kinds of arguments that could be made,” but he emphasized that there is “something more important than” the specific numbers King cited — namely, 9/11.
Cheney argued the Bush administration had to spend (without paying for it) because it went into “wartime mode.” Cheney also referenced the need to spend money after the Katrina disaster:
All of these things required us to spend money that we had not originally planned to spend or weren’t originally part of the budget. Stuff happens. And the administration has to be able to respond to that, and we did.
Watch it:....
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http://www.worldreports.org/news/47_cheney_bribes_officials_to_abort_wanta_payment
CHENEY BRIBES OFFICIALS TO ABORT WANTA PAYMENT
INVESTIGATORS, CIA 'WHITE HATS' CONFIRM BRIBERY
Friday 2 February 2007 12:53
CODES WERE READY FOR PAYMENT THURSDAY 1ST FEBRUARY
BRIBERY INFORMATION COMES FROM INSIDE WHITE HOUSE COMPOUND
CHENEY COUNTERMANDED PRESIDENT BUSH'S EXPLICIT INSTRUCTIONS
CONDOLEEZA RICE'S UNDERTAKINGS TO THE ICJ CIRCUMVENTED BY CHENEY
CRISIS ESCALATES AS THE OFFICIAL CLEPTOCRACY AGAIN MISUSES WANTA'S FU
Friday 2 February 2007 12:53
In so doing, he countermanded the signed bank instructions of the President of the United States himself, representing an act of treason which probably has no historical precedent. This arrogant man appears to be running rings round President Bush Jr., who may or may not realise that Cheney, like Paulson, has been thumbing his nose at the White House for his own personal gain.
Prior to the arrest of US Treasury Secretary Paulson, we predicted that his arrogance would lead to a dramatic fall: and this duly happened. We now predict that Vice President Richard Cheney is heading for an even more humiliating stumble, and, having delayed his resignation, may find that his official colleagues turn sharply against him.
INVESTIGATORS AND 'WHITE HATS' FURIOUS AT THIS FURTHER ABUSE
Furious investigators have informed the Ambassador and Michael C. Cottrell, M.S., the Executive Vice President and Treasurer of AmeriTrust Groupe, Inc, that – and we quote – ‘Cheney bribed somebody in the Treasury not to make the payment’. This statement was separately confirmed by ‘white hat’ sources at the CIA, Langley. The sources added: ‘Cheney et al tied the money up to work it through the weekend’.
It is believed that these rogue operatives knew that Mr Cottrell was deliberately refraining from authorising any further Internet postings this week, given his acceptance at face value of the ‘line’ that payment was to be completed by Friday 2nd February. Such assurances can no more be relied upon than official signatures on US documents, as the whole world now knows.
The $4.5 trillion tagged and earmarked for the Ambassador and AmeriTrust Groupe, Inc, remains located at Bank of New York (as previously reported). Banking codes are normally valid for 48 hours, but on this occasion the period was extended: it expired automatically at midnight Eastern Standard Time on Thursday 1st February. After midnight on the date of expiry, the old codes cannot be activated and new codes must be issued for the following week.
FUNDS BEING RUN THROUGH CLOSED CENTRAL BANKING NETWORK
It is thought that Cheney and other operatives are running the funds through the Federal Interbank Settlement Fund – the closed, unsupervised ‘central bank’ network which enables crooked Federal Reserve officials and their associates elsewhere in the US Federal structures, and in parallel structures abroad, to generate fiat money funds beyond all scrutiny and to stash the untaxed proceeds into offshore bank accounts.
Investigators informed us at 3.00 am UK time on Friday 2nd February that enormously large dollar movements out of the United States to a ‘back room’ operation at the Bank of England, which functions round the clock, have been monitored. The Bank of England office is issuing short-term loans with interest rates starting at 25%, the informed New York financial sources tell us. These loans represent bridge (or ‘gap’) loans to large businesses.
The resulting US dollar deposits, running into trillions of dollars, are being returned to the United States – a process known as ‘churning’.
The corrupt officials are believed to be exploiting the $4.5 trillion cash-cash deposit belonging to Ambassador Wanta, which is a rare example of the hard dollar cash from which collateralised hypothecation transactions can be (illegally) mounted. In other words, Cheney et al are using Wanta’s $4.5 trillion, as a ‘piggy bank’. We were also informed by the same Treasury sources that Henry M. Paulson is involved in these illegal financial operations: in other words, though disgraced following his arrest in Europe, humiliated and without ICJ immunity, Paulson has predictably resumed the scamming operations in which he was notoriously engaged before his arrest.
BANK OF ENGLAND APPEARS TO BE A CO-CONSPIRATOR
These operations, facilitated by the Bank of England which accordingly appears to be a co-conspirator to the misuse of the underlying funds, are being run through the Federal Interbank Settlement Fund in a massive orgy of fiat money-making which must certainly be approved by the Chancellor of the Exchequer Gordon Brown. There may be a reason for this. Mr Brown, whose conduct of Britain’s financial and economic affairs has been quite appalling (all the UK numbers, macroeconomic and financial, look dreadful) may be on the threshold of power, given that the Prime Minister, Tony Blair, was questioned on Thursday for a second time by police investigating the loans-for honours affair. On Wednesday, his ‘gopher’ friend Lord Levy, in charge of raising funds for the Labour Party, was arrested for a second time.
[Underlying this ‘loans for honours’ scandal is the corrupt manner in which British political parties are financed. An illegal UK ‘Black’ intelligence agency, GO-2, situated inside MI6, runs two drug cartels into Britain, devastating the lives of thousands of British people. Proceeds from these evil operations are laundered to finance the political parties.
One way this is done is to entice ambitious businessmen and others burdened with large egos, with the prospect of a knighthood or a peerage, in exchange for, say, a soft loan or a donation of £1.0 million. Sensitive sources inform us that a hidden component of such transactions involves the targeted ‘donor’ or ‘lender’ being ‘promised’ the repayment of his donation or loan, plus a matching sum, to be deposited into his offshore bank account, no questions asked. GO-2, like elements of MI6, serves the interests of the Pan-German establishment – the strategy of which is determined by our friends at DVD: Deutsche Verteidigungs Dienst, Dachau, the Magus of which is allegedly George H. W. Bush Sr..
Both the United States and Britain – collectively ‘the Main Enemy’ – are victims of long-range DVD corruption strategy, which is intended to reverse the outcomes of two World Wars and to hasten the mad idolatry of the New (Under)world Order, which these secret continuing Nazis believe they will eventually dominate].....
Cheney’s Excuse For Economic Failures Under His Watch: ‘Stuff Happens’
During an interview with Dick Cheney this morning, CNN host John King asked the former vice president why “we should listen to you” for economic advice. To make his case, King noted the following statistical changes that occurred under the Bush/Cheney administration:
Unemployment rate: Rose from 4.2 percent to 7.6 percent
Poverty: Jumped from 32.9 million individuals to 37.3 million
Uninsured: Escalated from 41.2 million individuals to 45.7 million
Budget deficit: Inherited budget surplus of $128 billion and left office with $1.3 trillion deficit
“So what would you say to someone out there watching this who’s saying why should they listen to you?” King asked. Cheney responded that there’s “all kinds of arguments that could be made,” but he emphasized that there is “something more important than” the specific numbers King cited — namely, 9/11.
Cheney argued the Bush administration had to spend (without paying for it) because it went into “wartime mode.” Cheney also referenced the need to spend money after the Katrina disaster:
All of these things required us to spend money that we had not originally planned to spend or weren’t originally part of the budget. Stuff happens. And the administration has to be able to respond to that, and we did.
Watch it:....
__________________________________________
http://www.worldreports.org/news/47_cheney_bribes_officials_to_abort_wanta_payment
CHENEY BRIBES OFFICIALS TO ABORT WANTA PAYMENT
INVESTIGATORS, CIA 'WHITE HATS' CONFIRM BRIBERY
Friday 2 February 2007 12:53
CODES WERE READY FOR PAYMENT THURSDAY 1ST FEBRUARY
BRIBERY INFORMATION COMES FROM INSIDE WHITE HOUSE COMPOUND
CHENEY COUNTERMANDED PRESIDENT BUSH'S EXPLICIT INSTRUCTIONS
CONDOLEEZA RICE'S UNDERTAKINGS TO THE ICJ CIRCUMVENTED BY CHENEY
CRISIS ESCALATES AS THE OFFICIAL CLEPTOCRACY AGAIN MISUSES WANTA'S FU
Friday 2 February 2007 12:53
In so doing, he countermanded the signed bank instructions of the President of the United States himself, representing an act of treason which probably has no historical precedent. This arrogant man appears to be running rings round President Bush Jr., who may or may not realise that Cheney, like Paulson, has been thumbing his nose at the White House for his own personal gain.
Prior to the arrest of US Treasury Secretary Paulson, we predicted that his arrogance would lead to a dramatic fall: and this duly happened. We now predict that Vice President Richard Cheney is heading for an even more humiliating stumble, and, having delayed his resignation, may find that his official colleagues turn sharply against him.
INVESTIGATORS AND 'WHITE HATS' FURIOUS AT THIS FURTHER ABUSE
Furious investigators have informed the Ambassador and Michael C. Cottrell, M.S., the Executive Vice President and Treasurer of AmeriTrust Groupe, Inc, that – and we quote – ‘Cheney bribed somebody in the Treasury not to make the payment’. This statement was separately confirmed by ‘white hat’ sources at the CIA, Langley. The sources added: ‘Cheney et al tied the money up to work it through the weekend’.
It is believed that these rogue operatives knew that Mr Cottrell was deliberately refraining from authorising any further Internet postings this week, given his acceptance at face value of the ‘line’ that payment was to be completed by Friday 2nd February. Such assurances can no more be relied upon than official signatures on US documents, as the whole world now knows.
The $4.5 trillion tagged and earmarked for the Ambassador and AmeriTrust Groupe, Inc, remains located at Bank of New York (as previously reported). Banking codes are normally valid for 48 hours, but on this occasion the period was extended: it expired automatically at midnight Eastern Standard Time on Thursday 1st February. After midnight on the date of expiry, the old codes cannot be activated and new codes must be issued for the following week.
FUNDS BEING RUN THROUGH CLOSED CENTRAL BANKING NETWORK
It is thought that Cheney and other operatives are running the funds through the Federal Interbank Settlement Fund – the closed, unsupervised ‘central bank’ network which enables crooked Federal Reserve officials and their associates elsewhere in the US Federal structures, and in parallel structures abroad, to generate fiat money funds beyond all scrutiny and to stash the untaxed proceeds into offshore bank accounts.
Investigators informed us at 3.00 am UK time on Friday 2nd February that enormously large dollar movements out of the United States to a ‘back room’ operation at the Bank of England, which functions round the clock, have been monitored. The Bank of England office is issuing short-term loans with interest rates starting at 25%, the informed New York financial sources tell us. These loans represent bridge (or ‘gap’) loans to large businesses.
The resulting US dollar deposits, running into trillions of dollars, are being returned to the United States – a process known as ‘churning’.
The corrupt officials are believed to be exploiting the $4.5 trillion cash-cash deposit belonging to Ambassador Wanta, which is a rare example of the hard dollar cash from which collateralised hypothecation transactions can be (illegally) mounted. In other words, Cheney et al are using Wanta’s $4.5 trillion, as a ‘piggy bank’. We were also informed by the same Treasury sources that Henry M. Paulson is involved in these illegal financial operations: in other words, though disgraced following his arrest in Europe, humiliated and without ICJ immunity, Paulson has predictably resumed the scamming operations in which he was notoriously engaged before his arrest.
BANK OF ENGLAND APPEARS TO BE A CO-CONSPIRATOR
These operations, facilitated by the Bank of England which accordingly appears to be a co-conspirator to the misuse of the underlying funds, are being run through the Federal Interbank Settlement Fund in a massive orgy of fiat money-making which must certainly be approved by the Chancellor of the Exchequer Gordon Brown. There may be a reason for this. Mr Brown, whose conduct of Britain’s financial and economic affairs has been quite appalling (all the UK numbers, macroeconomic and financial, look dreadful) may be on the threshold of power, given that the Prime Minister, Tony Blair, was questioned on Thursday for a second time by police investigating the loans-for honours affair. On Wednesday, his ‘gopher’ friend Lord Levy, in charge of raising funds for the Labour Party, was arrested for a second time.
[Underlying this ‘loans for honours’ scandal is the corrupt manner in which British political parties are financed. An illegal UK ‘Black’ intelligence agency, GO-2, situated inside MI6, runs two drug cartels into Britain, devastating the lives of thousands of British people. Proceeds from these evil operations are laundered to finance the political parties.
One way this is done is to entice ambitious businessmen and others burdened with large egos, with the prospect of a knighthood or a peerage, in exchange for, say, a soft loan or a donation of £1.0 million. Sensitive sources inform us that a hidden component of such transactions involves the targeted ‘donor’ or ‘lender’ being ‘promised’ the repayment of his donation or loan, plus a matching sum, to be deposited into his offshore bank account, no questions asked. GO-2, like elements of MI6, serves the interests of the Pan-German establishment – the strategy of which is determined by our friends at DVD: Deutsche Verteidigungs Dienst, Dachau, the Magus of which is allegedly George H. W. Bush Sr..
Both the United States and Britain – collectively ‘the Main Enemy’ – are victims of long-range DVD corruption strategy, which is intended to reverse the outcomes of two World Wars and to hasten the mad idolatry of the New (Under)world Order, which these secret continuing Nazis believe they will eventually dominate].....
Hilary...Vince Foster Murder...Marc Rich...Leo Wanta Trust Swindle....missing 250 Million?
http://www.worldreports.org/news/8_leo_wanta_and_the_global_financial_showdown
15 Apr 2006 Report by Greg Szymanski:
The Patrick Fitzgerald investigation is spilling over across the pond to Switzerland, trying to trace the bank swindling and dirty dealings of Clinton-Bush bagman and Mossad agent, Marc Rich.
Sources near Fitzgerald claim the crime-busting Chicago special prosecutor is delving into why Rich was tipped off and able to evade a 1993 arrest attempt, ordered by FBI director William Sessions.
Those watching the Plamegate investigation hope Fitzgerald is the 'real deal' and not just providing a neo con dog and pony show, but sources claim that the investigation is now meticulously looking into bank swindles by the Bush-Clinton mob, amounting to more than a trillion dollars, involving money earmarked for the U.S. Treasury.
And bank account records – tracing more than $750 billion of missing or stolen money – have been already provided as public record by Leo Wanta, the former U.S. Treasury agent assigned by Sessions to put the finger on Rich. (See accounts listed below).
In a telephone conversation Friday, Wanta said he still keeps the official 1993 Rich arrest warrant, as proof-positive the events took place as he reported.
However, in a strange turn of events, Wanta was jailed for his efforts, placed for 134 days in a Swiss dungeon, as Rich was allowed to slip free in a move, according to Wanta, leading to the theft of hundreds of billions – if not trillions – of U.S. Treasury funds by the Bush-Clinton mob.
After Wanta was framed and put in jail, reports linking Hillary Clinton to dipping into the Wanta-controlled accounts were recently verified by overseas investigators.
UK investigators claim that the First Lady travelled to Grenada, ordering a bank transfer from Bank Crozier Limite, Grand Anse P.O. Box 1005, St George's Grenada, West Indies.
Although the amount that Clinton pilfered overall is unknown, it is estimated that she may have writhdrawn approximately $250 milliion from a Leo Wanta-controlled account, an account to be transferred to the U.S. Treasury listed under Marvelous Investment Limited, bank account number A/C 374-250. [Information is available concerning other heists in which she may have been involved].
Wanta, released form a long jail term last October [CORRECTION BY CS: NOVEMBER], also said this week in a telephone conversation that he has provided new information to overseas investigators in an effort to uncover even more of the stolen money, as he is fast on the trail of the vast sum of money with the help of foreign investigators and sophisticated computer software.
"They are now messing with my computer, but so far we've successfully traced well over a trillion dollars and there is more to come, I'm sure", said Wanta, adding that the original source of the money came from a financial scheme he put together on behalf of President Ronald Reagan to destabilize the Soviet currency at the end of the Cold War, subsequently amassing a fortune amounting to more than 27.5 trillion dollars. [CS: This fund is now believed to be worth around $70 trillion or more].
"We did so well with what we did, Bush and Clinton wanted to copy our methods. When I didn't play all with them, they wanted me out of the way so they could get their hands on the money."
After the Cold War ended, the money was placed in overseas accounts, Wanta being appointed legal guardian of the fortune by President Reagan with the understanding it be returned to the American people to be used for schools, roads and even infrastructure improvements in Louisiana to bolster the inadequate levee system..
To the dismay of Wanta's detractors and skeptics, a 2003 federal court ruling, docket no. 02-1363-A, dated April 15, 2003, by Federal Judge Bruce Lee affirmed Wanta's position as legal trustor with the obligation to return a major portion of the money after taxes and trustor expenses back to the U.S. Treasury.
But when Bush senior and Clinton took over the reins of the White House, according to Wanta, things changed, as the vast sum of money was treated more like their own personal slush fund instead of property of the American people.
In July 1993, a lot more than the failed arrest of Rich arrest took place, including a visit by the late deputy White House Counsel, Vince Foster, who was killed in a Washington park on his return to Washington D.C. on July 20, 1993.
According to Wanta, who recently appeared on Greg Szymanski's radio show, The Investigative Journal, he said the events surrounding Rich and Foster went like this:
"I was ordered in my capacity as Treasury agent and appointed Ambassador to arrest Marc Rich and bring him back to the States. However, I found out he was tipped off by Mossad agents not to meet with me. Rich then escaped, fleeing Switzerland.
"At the same time, I was ordered to give Vince Foster $250 million dollars earmarked for the Childrens Fund. It took us a few days to make the proper transactions of roughly $81 million each and then Foster left with the money for Washington.
"Then, for no reason, I was shackled by Swiss authorities and put in a Swiss dungeon, where I ended up spending 134 days. I found out Vince had heard about what happened and made attempts through the State Department to find out what happened and to get me out. But the next thing I heard, a Swiss guard passed on a message that Vince Foster was dead.
"Then later Yitzhak Rabin tried to help, sending a letter which I have retained as proof. However, when authorities got word he was traveling to Switzerland on my behalf, I was immediately flown to the States, where I was charged with a trumped up Wisconsin state income tax charge, leading to a 20 year jail term.
"I finally was released last year [CS: NOVEMBER]. I don't know why, but I am now in the process of trying to account for the 27.5 trillion as well as account for the stolen money. They, being Bush and Clinton, really wanted me out of the way all these years so that I couldn't return the money, but they didn't expect the Federal Court ruling in 2003 which I filed and in which I prevailed.
"It's interesting they haven't appealed and now time has run out. I know they don't want anyone to know about this story and that is why the (controlled) press has stayed silent."
Wanta has no idea what happened to the $250 million Foster had in his possession when he left Switzerland, the Fitzgerald investigation needs to connect the dots in order to determine the real purpose of the Childrens Defense Fund, chaired by Hillary Clinton, and said to be used as her own personal slush fund, as well as front for CIA covert domestic and foreign operations.
Further, it should be remembered Rabin also took steps to help Wanta, sending him a letter still in Wanta's possession. Investigators, who believe that Foster was assassinated, also point out that Rabin met the same fate, being assassinated as well in 1995.
•The following information has been condensed from World Reports Limited services and posted by www.arcticbeacon.com. For the actual detailed original reports, which are sold commercially (of course: how else could they be financed?), please activate the CONTACT US facility on this website, or order your SUBSCRIPTIONS and BOOKS from the present site (visit SERIALS and BOOKS in the Lower Red Panel).
15 Apr 2006 Report by Greg Szymanski:
The Patrick Fitzgerald investigation is spilling over across the pond to Switzerland, trying to trace the bank swindling and dirty dealings of Clinton-Bush bagman and Mossad agent, Marc Rich.
Sources near Fitzgerald claim the crime-busting Chicago special prosecutor is delving into why Rich was tipped off and able to evade a 1993 arrest attempt, ordered by FBI director William Sessions.
Those watching the Plamegate investigation hope Fitzgerald is the 'real deal' and not just providing a neo con dog and pony show, but sources claim that the investigation is now meticulously looking into bank swindles by the Bush-Clinton mob, amounting to more than a trillion dollars, involving money earmarked for the U.S. Treasury.
And bank account records – tracing more than $750 billion of missing or stolen money – have been already provided as public record by Leo Wanta, the former U.S. Treasury agent assigned by Sessions to put the finger on Rich. (See accounts listed below).
In a telephone conversation Friday, Wanta said he still keeps the official 1993 Rich arrest warrant, as proof-positive the events took place as he reported.
However, in a strange turn of events, Wanta was jailed for his efforts, placed for 134 days in a Swiss dungeon, as Rich was allowed to slip free in a move, according to Wanta, leading to the theft of hundreds of billions – if not trillions – of U.S. Treasury funds by the Bush-Clinton mob.
After Wanta was framed and put in jail, reports linking Hillary Clinton to dipping into the Wanta-controlled accounts were recently verified by overseas investigators.
UK investigators claim that the First Lady travelled to Grenada, ordering a bank transfer from Bank Crozier Limite, Grand Anse P.O. Box 1005, St George's Grenada, West Indies.
Although the amount that Clinton pilfered overall is unknown, it is estimated that she may have writhdrawn approximately $250 milliion from a Leo Wanta-controlled account, an account to be transferred to the U.S. Treasury listed under Marvelous Investment Limited, bank account number A/C 374-250. [Information is available concerning other heists in which she may have been involved].
Wanta, released form a long jail term last October [CORRECTION BY CS: NOVEMBER], also said this week in a telephone conversation that he has provided new information to overseas investigators in an effort to uncover even more of the stolen money, as he is fast on the trail of the vast sum of money with the help of foreign investigators and sophisticated computer software.
"They are now messing with my computer, but so far we've successfully traced well over a trillion dollars and there is more to come, I'm sure", said Wanta, adding that the original source of the money came from a financial scheme he put together on behalf of President Ronald Reagan to destabilize the Soviet currency at the end of the Cold War, subsequently amassing a fortune amounting to more than 27.5 trillion dollars. [CS: This fund is now believed to be worth around $70 trillion or more].
"We did so well with what we did, Bush and Clinton wanted to copy our methods. When I didn't play all with them, they wanted me out of the way so they could get their hands on the money."
After the Cold War ended, the money was placed in overseas accounts, Wanta being appointed legal guardian of the fortune by President Reagan with the understanding it be returned to the American people to be used for schools, roads and even infrastructure improvements in Louisiana to bolster the inadequate levee system..
To the dismay of Wanta's detractors and skeptics, a 2003 federal court ruling, docket no. 02-1363-A, dated April 15, 2003, by Federal Judge Bruce Lee affirmed Wanta's position as legal trustor with the obligation to return a major portion of the money after taxes and trustor expenses back to the U.S. Treasury.
But when Bush senior and Clinton took over the reins of the White House, according to Wanta, things changed, as the vast sum of money was treated more like their own personal slush fund instead of property of the American people.
In July 1993, a lot more than the failed arrest of Rich arrest took place, including a visit by the late deputy White House Counsel, Vince Foster, who was killed in a Washington park on his return to Washington D.C. on July 20, 1993.
According to Wanta, who recently appeared on Greg Szymanski's radio show, The Investigative Journal, he said the events surrounding Rich and Foster went like this:
"I was ordered in my capacity as Treasury agent and appointed Ambassador to arrest Marc Rich and bring him back to the States. However, I found out he was tipped off by Mossad agents not to meet with me. Rich then escaped, fleeing Switzerland.
"At the same time, I was ordered to give Vince Foster $250 million dollars earmarked for the Childrens Fund. It took us a few days to make the proper transactions of roughly $81 million each and then Foster left with the money for Washington.
"Then, for no reason, I was shackled by Swiss authorities and put in a Swiss dungeon, where I ended up spending 134 days. I found out Vince had heard about what happened and made attempts through the State Department to find out what happened and to get me out. But the next thing I heard, a Swiss guard passed on a message that Vince Foster was dead.
"Then later Yitzhak Rabin tried to help, sending a letter which I have retained as proof. However, when authorities got word he was traveling to Switzerland on my behalf, I was immediately flown to the States, where I was charged with a trumped up Wisconsin state income tax charge, leading to a 20 year jail term.
"I finally was released last year [CS: NOVEMBER]. I don't know why, but I am now in the process of trying to account for the 27.5 trillion as well as account for the stolen money. They, being Bush and Clinton, really wanted me out of the way all these years so that I couldn't return the money, but they didn't expect the Federal Court ruling in 2003 which I filed and in which I prevailed.
"It's interesting they haven't appealed and now time has run out. I know they don't want anyone to know about this story and that is why the (controlled) press has stayed silent."
Wanta has no idea what happened to the $250 million Foster had in his possession when he left Switzerland, the Fitzgerald investigation needs to connect the dots in order to determine the real purpose of the Childrens Defense Fund, chaired by Hillary Clinton, and said to be used as her own personal slush fund, as well as front for CIA covert domestic and foreign operations.
Further, it should be remembered Rabin also took steps to help Wanta, sending him a letter still in Wanta's possession. Investigators, who believe that Foster was assassinated, also point out that Rabin met the same fate, being assassinated as well in 1995.
•The following information has been condensed from World Reports Limited services and posted by www.arcticbeacon.com. For the actual detailed original reports, which are sold commercially (of course: how else could they be financed?), please activate the CONTACT US facility on this website, or order your SUBSCRIPTIONS and BOOKS from the present site (visit SERIALS and BOOKS in the Lower Red Panel).
Pussified Dems continually join FBI HQ's CONSPIRACY TO OBSTRUCT INVESTIGATION OF CHENEY'S PATRIOT ACT MURDERS
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/16/us/politics/16cheney.html?_r=1&ref=politics
Cheney Says Obama Has Increased Risks
By A. G. SULZBERGER
Published: March 15, 2009
Former Vice President Dick Cheney said Sunday that President Obama had made the country less safe, asserting that the new administration’s changes to detention and interrogation programs for terrorism suspects would hamper intelligence gathering.
Kevin Wolf/Associated Press
Former Vice President Dick Cheney said the best approach was to treat terrorism as a military issue, not a law enforcement one.
Mr. Cheney said the moves suggested that terrorism was now being treated as a law enforcement problem.
“He is making some choices that, in my mind, will, in fact, raise the risk to the American people of another attack,” Mr. Cheney said of Mr. Obama in an interview on the CNN program “State of the Union.”
Since taking office, Mr. Obama has reversed many of the policies championed by Mr. Cheney in his eight years of serving under President George W. Bush. Mr. Obama has announced plans to close the detention camp in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, within the year, suspended military trials for terrorism suspects and prohibited the interrogation practice known as waterboarding.
But on Sunday, Mr. Cheney said those very policies had produced intelligence — still classified — that helped uncover specific plots......
_____________________________
tommy:
Any pussy at ERIC "house nigger" Holder's bogus clown act (DOJ HQ) want to talk about my CHRISTINA MOORE MURDER AFFADAVIT that gave fuckhead MUELLERPUNK AT FBI HQ all the crim leads he needed to link CHENEY TO THE MURDER OF A PREGNANT CHRISTIAN HOUSEWIFE NAMED CHRISTINA MOORE, in Round Rock, Texas on 9/23/03???
NOTICE HOW A PUSSY NAMED BARKY OBAMA AND ERIC "house nigger Uncle Tom" HOLDER along with drug dealer and mafia goon cocksucker BOB MUELLER...have all....sort of...forgot about working the Murder of this witness (Enron--Cheney's Energy Task Force) as a PATRIOT ACT CRIME OF TERRORISM BY FALSE FLAG DARTH CHENEY?
________________________________________________________________________________
http://www.opednews.com/articles/America-s-Darth-Vader--Di-by-Allen-L-Roland-090313-115.html
America's Darth Vader / Dick Cheney
by Allen L Roland
www.opednews.com
As I have said for years, Dick Cheney's fingerprints are on virtually every lie and abuse of power committed by the corrupt Cheney/Bush administration. Seymour Hersh's recent revelations about an 'executive assassination ring' that directly reported to Cheney is another strong indication of Cheney's shadow presidency ~ which will eventually be linked to the 9/11 conspiracy or cover up: Allen L Roland
By 2008, Vice President Dick Cheney's shadow presidency was in full view ~ it answered to no one and that included the President. Remember, Cheney asserted in June, 2007 that his office is not a part of the executive branch of the U.S. government, and therefore not bound by a presidential order governing the protection of classified information by government agencies ~ http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2007/06/21/2021/
T.D. Allman / Rolling Stone / in an article entitled The Curse of Dick Cheney summed up Cheney's slide to the dark side ~ " As vice president, Cheney was the decisive force pushing America into war. In the inner councils of the administration, it was he who emasculated Colin Powell, cut the State Department out of effective policymaking, foisted fake reports on the intelligence agencies and supplanted the National Security Council. It was also Cheney who placed appointees personally loyal to him, including Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz, in charge of the Pentagon and speckled the warmaking bureaucracy with desk officers culled from neoconservative Washington think tanks ~ ideologues with no military experience ~ Those who have known him over the years remain astounded by what they describe as his almost autistic indifference to the thoughts and feelings of others " http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/story?id=6450422
But legendary investigative reporter Seymour Hersh, on March 10th dropped another bombshell regarding Cheney at a “Great Conversations” event at the University of Minnesota. In response to a question if executive abuse of power still happens today, Hersh replied ~
“Yuh. After 9/11, I haven’t written about this yet, but the Central Intelligence Agency was very deeply involved in domestic activities against people they thought to be enemies of the state. Without any legal authority for it. They haven’t been called on it yet. That does happen.
"Right now, today, there was a story in the New York Times that if you read it carefully mentioned something known as the Joint Special Operations Command -- JSOC it’s called. It is a special wing of our special operations community that is set up independently. They do not report to anybody, except in the Bush-Cheney days, they reported directly to the Cheney office. They did not report to the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff or to Mr. [Robert] Gates, the secretary of defense. They reported directly to him. ...
"Congress has no oversight of it. It’s an executive assassination ring essentially, and it’s been going on and on and on. Just today in the Times there was a story that its leaders, a three star admiral named [William H.] McRaven, ordered a stop to it because there were so many collateral deaths.
Under President Bush’s authority, they’ve been going into countries, not talking to the ambassador or the CIA station chief, and finding people on a list and executing them and leaving. That’s been going on, in the name of all of us." Bush 'executive assassination ring' reported directly to Cheney office: Seymour Hersh
Starting with the infamous Office of Special Projects which fed tainted Iraq intelligence directly to Cheney's office, to the outing of Valerie Plame which led to the indictment of Cheney's top Aide Scooter Libby ~ we then had the emergence of David Addington who answered only to Cheney and has been at the center of nearly every controversy shaking the White House.
Once again ~ This was a Dick Cheney Administration and Bush was its cheerleader . All marching orders came from Cheney ~ and then, in 2003, Ron Hutcheson, Philadelphia Inquirer, added more validity to this naked truth by stating that the Torture memos, spying, Guantanamo can all be traced to Cheney's top aide, David Addington. See BUSH RESELLING CHENEY'S WAR ~
http://blogs.salon.com/0002255/2006/03/23.html
It stands to reason that if Cheney felt he had the power to eliminate anyone on the planet, he could certainly have easily outed Valerie Plame without conscience and he most certainly could have played a key role in the 9/11 cover up or conspiracy as a justification for attacking Iraq and seizing its oil reserves.
It tells you alot about the darkness of Cheney's mind that the first thing to come to his mind when looking for bright spots in his term of office was 9/11 ~ as revealed in a Chris Wallace interview on Fox news in December, 2008.
The former head of the Star Wars missile defense program under Presidents Ford and Carter, Dr Robert M Bowman, Lt. Col., USAF, ret, has gone public to say that the official version of 9/11 is a conspiracy theory and his main suspect for the architect of the attack is Vice President Dick Cheney.
Bowman is no lightweight ~ He flew 101 combat missions in Vietnam. He is the recipient of the Eisenhower Medal, the George F. Kennan Peace Prize, the President’s Medal of Veterans for Peace, the Society of Military Engineers Gold Medal (twice), six Air Medals, and dozens of other awards and honors. His Ph.D. is in Aeronautics and Nuclear Engineering from Caltech. He chaired 8 major international conferences, and is one of the country’s foremost experts on National Security.
If Cheney, who already had control of the government, orchestrated or at the least allowed the 9/11 attacks to occur, and remember he was in total control of the situation room during part of the so-called attacks ~ it would make total sense that he would go out of his way to justify this action by blatantly pushing for an attack on Iraq ~ which is what he subsequently did.
So what was Bush obliviously waiting for in that classroom in Florida, while supposedly reading the book My Pet Goat, which was upside down, and America was under attack ? He was waiting for instructions from Cheney ~ who had already seized control of the government as shadow president.
Here's another confirming view about Cheney's shadow government that answered to no-one including the President ~ " Dick Cheney was running a completely separate chain of Command & Control via the Secret Service, assuring the paralysis of Air Force response on 9/11. The Secret Service has the technology to see the same radar screens the FAA sees in real time. They also have the legal authority and technological capability to take supreme command in cases of national emergency. Dick Cheney was the acting Commander in Chief on 9/11."
http://fromthewilderness.com/free/ww3/011805_simplify_case.shtml
Evidently, Bush was kept purposely out of the 9/11 loop by Cheney which is why Cheney resisted being interviewed under oath by the 9/11 commission and insisted that he and Bush be interviewed together.
As such, 9/11 was indeed Dick Cheney's bright spot or big moment and he obviously took full advantage of it ~ and we are still paying the price for his deceptions.
RE-OPEN 9/11 INVESTIGATION
Allen L Roland
http://blogs.salon.com/0002255/2009/03/12.html
Cheney Says Obama Has Increased Risks
By A. G. SULZBERGER
Published: March 15, 2009
Former Vice President Dick Cheney said Sunday that President Obama had made the country less safe, asserting that the new administration’s changes to detention and interrogation programs for terrorism suspects would hamper intelligence gathering.
Kevin Wolf/Associated Press
Former Vice President Dick Cheney said the best approach was to treat terrorism as a military issue, not a law enforcement one.
Mr. Cheney said the moves suggested that terrorism was now being treated as a law enforcement problem.
“He is making some choices that, in my mind, will, in fact, raise the risk to the American people of another attack,” Mr. Cheney said of Mr. Obama in an interview on the CNN program “State of the Union.”
Since taking office, Mr. Obama has reversed many of the policies championed by Mr. Cheney in his eight years of serving under President George W. Bush. Mr. Obama has announced plans to close the detention camp in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, within the year, suspended military trials for terrorism suspects and prohibited the interrogation practice known as waterboarding.
But on Sunday, Mr. Cheney said those very policies had produced intelligence — still classified — that helped uncover specific plots......
_____________________________
tommy:
Any pussy at ERIC "house nigger" Holder's bogus clown act (DOJ HQ) want to talk about my CHRISTINA MOORE MURDER AFFADAVIT that gave fuckhead MUELLERPUNK AT FBI HQ all the crim leads he needed to link CHENEY TO THE MURDER OF A PREGNANT CHRISTIAN HOUSEWIFE NAMED CHRISTINA MOORE, in Round Rock, Texas on 9/23/03???
NOTICE HOW A PUSSY NAMED BARKY OBAMA AND ERIC "house nigger Uncle Tom" HOLDER along with drug dealer and mafia goon cocksucker BOB MUELLER...have all....sort of...forgot about working the Murder of this witness (Enron--Cheney's Energy Task Force) as a PATRIOT ACT CRIME OF TERRORISM BY FALSE FLAG DARTH CHENEY?
________________________________________________________________________________
http://www.opednews.com/articles/America-s-Darth-Vader--Di-by-Allen-L-Roland-090313-115.html
America's Darth Vader / Dick Cheney
by Allen L Roland
www.opednews.com
As I have said for years, Dick Cheney's fingerprints are on virtually every lie and abuse of power committed by the corrupt Cheney/Bush administration. Seymour Hersh's recent revelations about an 'executive assassination ring' that directly reported to Cheney is another strong indication of Cheney's shadow presidency ~ which will eventually be linked to the 9/11 conspiracy or cover up: Allen L Roland
By 2008, Vice President Dick Cheney's shadow presidency was in full view ~ it answered to no one and that included the President. Remember, Cheney asserted in June, 2007 that his office is not a part of the executive branch of the U.S. government, and therefore not bound by a presidential order governing the protection of classified information by government agencies ~ http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2007/06/21/2021/
T.D. Allman / Rolling Stone / in an article entitled The Curse of Dick Cheney summed up Cheney's slide to the dark side ~ " As vice president, Cheney was the decisive force pushing America into war. In the inner councils of the administration, it was he who emasculated Colin Powell, cut the State Department out of effective policymaking, foisted fake reports on the intelligence agencies and supplanted the National Security Council. It was also Cheney who placed appointees personally loyal to him, including Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz, in charge of the Pentagon and speckled the warmaking bureaucracy with desk officers culled from neoconservative Washington think tanks ~ ideologues with no military experience ~ Those who have known him over the years remain astounded by what they describe as his almost autistic indifference to the thoughts and feelings of others " http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/story?id=6450422
But legendary investigative reporter Seymour Hersh, on March 10th dropped another bombshell regarding Cheney at a “Great Conversations” event at the University of Minnesota. In response to a question if executive abuse of power still happens today, Hersh replied ~
“Yuh. After 9/11, I haven’t written about this yet, but the Central Intelligence Agency was very deeply involved in domestic activities against people they thought to be enemies of the state. Without any legal authority for it. They haven’t been called on it yet. That does happen.
"Right now, today, there was a story in the New York Times that if you read it carefully mentioned something known as the Joint Special Operations Command -- JSOC it’s called. It is a special wing of our special operations community that is set up independently. They do not report to anybody, except in the Bush-Cheney days, they reported directly to the Cheney office. They did not report to the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff or to Mr. [Robert] Gates, the secretary of defense. They reported directly to him. ...
"Congress has no oversight of it. It’s an executive assassination ring essentially, and it’s been going on and on and on. Just today in the Times there was a story that its leaders, a three star admiral named [William H.] McRaven, ordered a stop to it because there were so many collateral deaths.
Under President Bush’s authority, they’ve been going into countries, not talking to the ambassador or the CIA station chief, and finding people on a list and executing them and leaving. That’s been going on, in the name of all of us." Bush 'executive assassination ring' reported directly to Cheney office: Seymour Hersh
Starting with the infamous Office of Special Projects which fed tainted Iraq intelligence directly to Cheney's office, to the outing of Valerie Plame which led to the indictment of Cheney's top Aide Scooter Libby ~ we then had the emergence of David Addington who answered only to Cheney and has been at the center of nearly every controversy shaking the White House.
Once again ~ This was a Dick Cheney Administration and Bush was its cheerleader . All marching orders came from Cheney ~ and then, in 2003, Ron Hutcheson, Philadelphia Inquirer, added more validity to this naked truth by stating that the Torture memos, spying, Guantanamo can all be traced to Cheney's top aide, David Addington. See BUSH RESELLING CHENEY'S WAR ~
http://blogs.salon.com/0002255/2006/03/23.html
It stands to reason that if Cheney felt he had the power to eliminate anyone on the planet, he could certainly have easily outed Valerie Plame without conscience and he most certainly could have played a key role in the 9/11 cover up or conspiracy as a justification for attacking Iraq and seizing its oil reserves.
It tells you alot about the darkness of Cheney's mind that the first thing to come to his mind when looking for bright spots in his term of office was 9/11 ~ as revealed in a Chris Wallace interview on Fox news in December, 2008.
The former head of the Star Wars missile defense program under Presidents Ford and Carter, Dr Robert M Bowman, Lt. Col., USAF, ret, has gone public to say that the official version of 9/11 is a conspiracy theory and his main suspect for the architect of the attack is Vice President Dick Cheney.
Bowman is no lightweight ~ He flew 101 combat missions in Vietnam. He is the recipient of the Eisenhower Medal, the George F. Kennan Peace Prize, the President’s Medal of Veterans for Peace, the Society of Military Engineers Gold Medal (twice), six Air Medals, and dozens of other awards and honors. His Ph.D. is in Aeronautics and Nuclear Engineering from Caltech. He chaired 8 major international conferences, and is one of the country’s foremost experts on National Security.
If Cheney, who already had control of the government, orchestrated or at the least allowed the 9/11 attacks to occur, and remember he was in total control of the situation room during part of the so-called attacks ~ it would make total sense that he would go out of his way to justify this action by blatantly pushing for an attack on Iraq ~ which is what he subsequently did.
So what was Bush obliviously waiting for in that classroom in Florida, while supposedly reading the book My Pet Goat, which was upside down, and America was under attack ? He was waiting for instructions from Cheney ~ who had already seized control of the government as shadow president.
Here's another confirming view about Cheney's shadow government that answered to no-one including the President ~ " Dick Cheney was running a completely separate chain of Command & Control via the Secret Service, assuring the paralysis of Air Force response on 9/11. The Secret Service has the technology to see the same radar screens the FAA sees in real time. They also have the legal authority and technological capability to take supreme command in cases of national emergency. Dick Cheney was the acting Commander in Chief on 9/11."
http://fromthewilderness.com/free/ww3/011805_simplify_case.shtml
Evidently, Bush was kept purposely out of the 9/11 loop by Cheney which is why Cheney resisted being interviewed under oath by the 9/11 commission and insisted that he and Bush be interviewed together.
As such, 9/11 was indeed Dick Cheney's bright spot or big moment and he obviously took full advantage of it ~ and we are still paying the price for his deceptions.
RE-OPEN 9/11 INVESTIGATION
Allen L Roland
http://blogs.salon.com/0002255/2009/03/12.html
Bernie "the swindling kike" Maddoff's links to MOSSAD MAFIA SCUM all protected by FBI HQ
http://www.bollyn.info/home/articles/911/another-massive-zionist-fraud-surfaces/
note: CLICK BLOGPOST TITLE ABOVE TO GET LINKED TO BOLLYN'S website...good site if you want the truth from a guy who was "illegally stalked and arrested in Chicago by a secret nazi quasi legal secret police group" because...Bollyn discovered truth of THE KIKE CONSPIRACY TO BLOW UP 3,000 AMERICANS on 9/11:
Bollyn's Update on Madoff's Guilty Plea
of March 12, 2009
By Christopher Bollyn
March 14, 2009
Bernard Madoff's plea of guilt on 11 charges is merely a ruse to protect his Zionist co-conspirators, especially those Zionists in high positions at two private Israeli banks apparently involved in the fraud.
Bernard Madoff's guilty plea of March 12 was clearly meant to do two things essential to protect the billions of dollars of assets stolen in this huge crime:
prevent him from having to cooperate with investigators and thus keep hidden the secrets of where the stolen money is – and how it got there.
By claiming to have acted alone, Madoff is defending the other criminals involved in the massive fraud. Madoff is simply playing the fall guy for his family members and a whole "army of people" involved in this huge and long-lasting scheme.
As investor George Nierenberg told the court: "I know that the operation was massive. I know that he didn't commit these crimes alone and do not understand why conspiracy isn't one of his pleas."
Nierenberg, who described himself as "one of the many victims of Madoff's egregious crimes," said that just producing the false client account statements for the 4,800 customers in Madoff's investment firm would have required an "army of people." Nierenberg noted that Madoff was often away from the office so there would have had to have been other people involved in the scheme.
As Madoff victim Ronnie Sue Ambrosino told the court of Judge Chin: "I believe you have the opportunity today to find out as to where the money is and who else was involved in this crime."
Finding the other people and institutions involved in this crime is crucial. As I have pointed out in the following article about Madoff, he is closely tied with two individuals who are long-standing directors or owners of private Israeli banks: Sy Syms, a veteran director of Israel Discount Bank of New York (now controlled by the Bronfman family), and Jacob Ezra Merkin, co-owner of Bank Leumi.
_____________________________________
tommy:
Director Mueller and Eric "pussy" Holder: do you know the names of the 3 Kike banks in Israel who stole 400, 000, 000, 000$ in the first 700 billion $ bailout?
Check these facts boys....see the scam?
Holder is letting MADDOFF KIKE plea to everything except CONSPIRACY CHARGES TO PROTECT THE MOSSAD KIKES WHO STOLE 400 BILLION AFTER THE DANCING ISRAELIS BLEW UP THE WTC WITH THERMITE CUTTING CHARGES ON 9/11
ANYBODY have any questions on the KIKE PROBLEM IN AMERICA WITH 'MEGA' BOY RAHMBO running Barky "the clown" Obama's White House--Mad House?
_____________________________
Merkin, for example, is known to have been deeply involved in the fraud as an investor and a person who funneled billions of dollars of funds to Madoff. In the Madoff scheme, all the victims are not really victims; some of them are actually part of the fraud. Ezra Merkin is evidently one of them.
Most importantly to the Madoff scheme, both Bank Leumi and Israel Discount Bank have branches in Switzerland where Swiss banking secrecy laws apply. Bank Leumi has its main office in Zurich and a branch in Geneva. It should be noted that Bank Leumi's Swiss banking operation has "representative offices" in Budapest and Israel. Banking secrecy is the first point of Bank Leumi's Swiss branch:
Leumi Switzerland is a full service private banking institution operating according to Swiss regulations. As such, the bank provides its clients with all the benefits that a Swiss-banking environment has to offer: Maximum discretion in accordance with the tradition of Swiss banking secrecy.
Israel Discount Bank is the same.
Oddly, IDB of New York opens it's webpage with this comment about Madoff:
IDB Bank wishes all of you a healthy and happy New Year. We are also pleased to notify you that IDB Bank has no exposure to the Madoff funds or any of the other funds that were feeder funds to Madoff. Our heart goes out to those who have suffered losses from this scandal and we hope that 2009 will bring you some relief. Our balance sheet is strong, as is our liquidity position. The future is bright, and we look forward to being able to serve all of your banking needs in 2009 and in all the coming years.
IDB has its Swiss branch in Geneva, Switzerland.
Both Bank Leumi and IDB have branches in other countries, such as the Cayman Islands, where money-laundering is common.
While Madoff mentions other banks in his confession, he says nothing about banking at either Bank Leumi or IDB.
How strange.
Stranger is the fact that while JP Morgan had invested hundreds of millions (until recently) in the Madoff scam as had many leading Zionist organizations and individuals, IDB had not. How is it that the bank run by his close friend and business partner at Yeshiva University's Syms School of Business managed to remain untouched by the Madoff scheme?
Why would Madoff NOT have used the banking services at these banks, given his very close working relationship with a veteran director and owner of each bank? This does not make any sense, unless, of course, these banks are part of the crime on a higher level.
This is how Madoff's confession is part of the ruse. Most likely Madoff used his co-conspirators at the highest level of these private Israeli banks for the most important part of his scheme: the removal of the funds from the United States to off-shore accounts where they could not be seen or reached by U.S. investigators or courts.
It's all quite obvious.
Why are Madoff's business ties to Merkin and Syms, and the Israeli banks they represent, not being discussed in the Zionist-controlled media?
Don't they want to find the money?
Some of these media outfits lost money in the Madoff scam.
In Madoff's written confession of March 12, he says that he maintained accounts at several banks in the United States and Britain. These banks are identified as Chase Manhattan, now part of JP Morgan Chase, and the Bank of New York. Are we, the public, the court, and the victims of his fraud, to believe that Madoff maintained accounts only at these banks, which at times must have held billions of dollars – and nobody thought something was wrong? This is simply not credible.
Wouldn't the bankers at Chase have wondered why Madoff, who was supposedly running an investment fund, was leaving huge amounts of cash to sit for significant periods?
Wouldn't the bank want to know the purpose of the account and the source of its funds?
Who were Madoff's bankers at Chase, and what sort of relationship did he have with them?
Another fundamental question is what kind of relationship did he have with Ezra Merkin and Sy Syms, and with the private Israeli banks they controlled?
Madoff is an accomplished liar and complete criminal. To accept what he said in his confession as the complete truth would be absurd and foolish. Madoff is simply taking the fall to protect the ill-gotten gains and his fellow co-conspirators, particularly those at Bank Leumi and IDB. A proper investigation to find Madoff's stolen assets must include these two banks.
_______________________________________________
http://business.timesonline.co.uk/tol/business/industry_sectors/banking_and_finance/article5913819.ece
March 16, 2009
Bernard Madoff's winning clients try to block victims
Christine Seib in New York
Investors are stashing profits that they made from Bernard Madoff’s $65 billion (£47 billion) Ponzi scheme as the trustee of the phoney funds gears up to claw back cash to compensate hard-up victims.
Lawyers report being besieged by investors seeking advice on how to protect their money from the clawback by Irving Picard, the trustee of the Madoff business. One lawyer in Manhattan, who declined to be named, said: “People are thinking about how to protect their returns. It’s something we’re getting a lot of questions about, as are other firms.”
Madoff pleaded guilty on Thursday to running the world’s largest investment fraud. He is being held in custody in New York awaiting sentencing on July 16. Madoff used cash given to him by new customers to distribute fraudulent returns to existing investors in a scam that he claims began in the early 1990s.
So far Mr Picard has recovered about $943 million from the fund management empire, an insignificant sum compared with the compensation claims expected to be lodged. The trustee is expected to try to retrieve cash withdrawn from the funds so that he can distribute it among victims. Investors are being advised, for example, to continue making normal pension fund payments because it would be difficult for Mr Picard to retrieve money placed in retirement accounts.......
note: CLICK BLOGPOST TITLE ABOVE TO GET LINKED TO BOLLYN'S website...good site if you want the truth from a guy who was "illegally stalked and arrested in Chicago by a secret nazi quasi legal secret police group" because...Bollyn discovered truth of THE KIKE CONSPIRACY TO BLOW UP 3,000 AMERICANS on 9/11:
Bollyn's Update on Madoff's Guilty Plea
of March 12, 2009
By Christopher Bollyn
March 14, 2009
Bernard Madoff's plea of guilt on 11 charges is merely a ruse to protect his Zionist co-conspirators, especially those Zionists in high positions at two private Israeli banks apparently involved in the fraud.
Bernard Madoff's guilty plea of March 12 was clearly meant to do two things essential to protect the billions of dollars of assets stolen in this huge crime:
prevent him from having to cooperate with investigators and thus keep hidden the secrets of where the stolen money is – and how it got there.
By claiming to have acted alone, Madoff is defending the other criminals involved in the massive fraud. Madoff is simply playing the fall guy for his family members and a whole "army of people" involved in this huge and long-lasting scheme.
As investor George Nierenberg told the court: "I know that the operation was massive. I know that he didn't commit these crimes alone and do not understand why conspiracy isn't one of his pleas."
Nierenberg, who described himself as "one of the many victims of Madoff's egregious crimes," said that just producing the false client account statements for the 4,800 customers in Madoff's investment firm would have required an "army of people." Nierenberg noted that Madoff was often away from the office so there would have had to have been other people involved in the scheme.
As Madoff victim Ronnie Sue Ambrosino told the court of Judge Chin: "I believe you have the opportunity today to find out as to where the money is and who else was involved in this crime."
Finding the other people and institutions involved in this crime is crucial. As I have pointed out in the following article about Madoff, he is closely tied with two individuals who are long-standing directors or owners of private Israeli banks: Sy Syms, a veteran director of Israel Discount Bank of New York (now controlled by the Bronfman family), and Jacob Ezra Merkin, co-owner of Bank Leumi.
_____________________________________
tommy:
Director Mueller and Eric "pussy" Holder: do you know the names of the 3 Kike banks in Israel who stole 400, 000, 000, 000$ in the first 700 billion $ bailout?
Check these facts boys....see the scam?
Holder is letting MADDOFF KIKE plea to everything except CONSPIRACY CHARGES TO PROTECT THE MOSSAD KIKES WHO STOLE 400 BILLION AFTER THE DANCING ISRAELIS BLEW UP THE WTC WITH THERMITE CUTTING CHARGES ON 9/11
ANYBODY have any questions on the KIKE PROBLEM IN AMERICA WITH 'MEGA' BOY RAHMBO running Barky "the clown" Obama's White House--Mad House?
_____________________________
Merkin, for example, is known to have been deeply involved in the fraud as an investor and a person who funneled billions of dollars of funds to Madoff. In the Madoff scheme, all the victims are not really victims; some of them are actually part of the fraud. Ezra Merkin is evidently one of them.
Most importantly to the Madoff scheme, both Bank Leumi and Israel Discount Bank have branches in Switzerland where Swiss banking secrecy laws apply. Bank Leumi has its main office in Zurich and a branch in Geneva. It should be noted that Bank Leumi's Swiss banking operation has "representative offices" in Budapest and Israel. Banking secrecy is the first point of Bank Leumi's Swiss branch:
Leumi Switzerland is a full service private banking institution operating according to Swiss regulations. As such, the bank provides its clients with all the benefits that a Swiss-banking environment has to offer: Maximum discretion in accordance with the tradition of Swiss banking secrecy.
Israel Discount Bank is the same.
Oddly, IDB of New York opens it's webpage with this comment about Madoff:
IDB Bank wishes all of you a healthy and happy New Year. We are also pleased to notify you that IDB Bank has no exposure to the Madoff funds or any of the other funds that were feeder funds to Madoff. Our heart goes out to those who have suffered losses from this scandal and we hope that 2009 will bring you some relief. Our balance sheet is strong, as is our liquidity position. The future is bright, and we look forward to being able to serve all of your banking needs in 2009 and in all the coming years.
IDB has its Swiss branch in Geneva, Switzerland.
Both Bank Leumi and IDB have branches in other countries, such as the Cayman Islands, where money-laundering is common.
While Madoff mentions other banks in his confession, he says nothing about banking at either Bank Leumi or IDB.
How strange.
Stranger is the fact that while JP Morgan had invested hundreds of millions (until recently) in the Madoff scam as had many leading Zionist organizations and individuals, IDB had not. How is it that the bank run by his close friend and business partner at Yeshiva University's Syms School of Business managed to remain untouched by the Madoff scheme?
Why would Madoff NOT have used the banking services at these banks, given his very close working relationship with a veteran director and owner of each bank? This does not make any sense, unless, of course, these banks are part of the crime on a higher level.
This is how Madoff's confession is part of the ruse. Most likely Madoff used his co-conspirators at the highest level of these private Israeli banks for the most important part of his scheme: the removal of the funds from the United States to off-shore accounts where they could not be seen or reached by U.S. investigators or courts.
It's all quite obvious.
Why are Madoff's business ties to Merkin and Syms, and the Israeli banks they represent, not being discussed in the Zionist-controlled media?
Don't they want to find the money?
Some of these media outfits lost money in the Madoff scam.
In Madoff's written confession of March 12, he says that he maintained accounts at several banks in the United States and Britain. These banks are identified as Chase Manhattan, now part of JP Morgan Chase, and the Bank of New York. Are we, the public, the court, and the victims of his fraud, to believe that Madoff maintained accounts only at these banks, which at times must have held billions of dollars – and nobody thought something was wrong? This is simply not credible.
Wouldn't the bankers at Chase have wondered why Madoff, who was supposedly running an investment fund, was leaving huge amounts of cash to sit for significant periods?
Wouldn't the bank want to know the purpose of the account and the source of its funds?
Who were Madoff's bankers at Chase, and what sort of relationship did he have with them?
Another fundamental question is what kind of relationship did he have with Ezra Merkin and Sy Syms, and with the private Israeli banks they controlled?
Madoff is an accomplished liar and complete criminal. To accept what he said in his confession as the complete truth would be absurd and foolish. Madoff is simply taking the fall to protect the ill-gotten gains and his fellow co-conspirators, particularly those at Bank Leumi and IDB. A proper investigation to find Madoff's stolen assets must include these two banks.
_______________________________________________
http://business.timesonline.co.uk/tol/business/industry_sectors/banking_and_finance/article5913819.ece
March 16, 2009
Bernard Madoff's winning clients try to block victims
Christine Seib in New York
Investors are stashing profits that they made from Bernard Madoff’s $65 billion (£47 billion) Ponzi scheme as the trustee of the phoney funds gears up to claw back cash to compensate hard-up victims.
Lawyers report being besieged by investors seeking advice on how to protect their money from the clawback by Irving Picard, the trustee of the Madoff business. One lawyer in Manhattan, who declined to be named, said: “People are thinking about how to protect their returns. It’s something we’re getting a lot of questions about, as are other firms.”
Madoff pleaded guilty on Thursday to running the world’s largest investment fraud. He is being held in custody in New York awaiting sentencing on July 16. Madoff used cash given to him by new customers to distribute fraudulent returns to existing investors in a scam that he claims began in the early 1990s.
So far Mr Picard has recovered about $943 million from the fund management empire, an insignificant sum compared with the compensation claims expected to be lodged. The trustee is expected to try to retrieve cash withdrawn from the funds so that he can distribute it among victims. Investors are being advised, for example, to continue making normal pension fund payments because it would be difficult for Mr Picard to retrieve money placed in retirement accounts.......
Power Control Group runs Obama like puppet: AIG swindle...and Lawrence Summers
http://careandwashingofthebrain.blogspot.com/2009/03/450-million-in-aig-bonuses-to-be-paid.html
Monday, March 16, 2009
450 MILLION in AIG Bonuses to be paid, not the reported 150 million
"I think the economic logic behind dumping a load of toxic waste in the lowest wage country is impeccable and we should face up to that . . . I've always thought that under-populated countries in Africa are vastly underpolluted."
Lawrence Summers, Oboma's Director of the WH National Economic Council in a 1991 memo while at the World Bank. Summers is leading the chorus demanding that Wall Street gangsters be allowed to keep their bonuses.
Uhh, is this the kind of "exports" to the 3rd World you're talking about Larry? Dumping toxic crap, including radioactive waste off Somalia's coastline?
While the MSM is reporting that AIG bonuses are "only" in the 150 million dollar range , Amy Goodman of Democracy Now brings us the real number, 450 MILLION and the mealy-mouthed apology issued for this travesty by Oboma insider Larry Summers.
AIG to Pay Out $450 Million in Bonuses
The failed insurance giant AIG is preparing to pay out $450 million in bonuses to top executives and other employees despite receiving a $173 billion government bailout. The bonuses include over $165 million to executives in the Financial Products unit, which lost $40 billion last year and played a major role in the meltdown of the global financial system. AIG is paying out the bonuses even though it is now 80 percent owned by the US government. On Sunday, Lawrence Summers, the director of the White House National Economic Council, described the bonuses as outrageous, but he said the bonuses are part of a contract.
Lawrence Summers: “We are a country of law. There are contracts. The government cannot just abrogate contracts. Every legal step possible to limit those bonuses is being taken by Secretary Geithner and by the Federal Reserve system.”
AIG’s new chief executive Edward Liddy justified the bonuses, saying AIG would have trouble attracting and retaining talent “if employees believe their compensation is subject to continued and arbitrary adjustment by the US Treasury.”
"Retaining talent?" The same band of clowns who helped run AIG into the ground, that kind of talent you want to reward?
Who is this humanitarian Larry Summers?
For starters he's President OBOMBA's Director of the White House National Economic Council, whose functions are to coordinate policy-making for domestic and international economic issues, coordinate economic policy advice for the President, ensure that policy decisions and programs are consistent with the President's economic goals, and monitor implementation of the President's economic policy agenda.
In other words, "Lucky" Larry is going to help Wall Street banks to continue on with their planned theft of taxpayer funds from 401K retirement accounts and pension funds.
Summers was Secretary of the Treasury during the waning years of Slick Willie's administration when the "Financial Services Modernization Act" was pushed thru Congress. That act nullified the Depression era "Glass-Steagall" act that forbid banks from acting like casinos.
Summers has continually fought for lower corporate taxes at the same time fighting to eliminate unemployment for the laid off.
Great guy, Larry is.
Larry also helped Enron while they were defrauding Californians out of money and electricity.
Where did some of that loot that AIG got from American taxpayers get off to?
AIG Lists Banks It Gave Bailout Money To
Meanwhile, AIG has disclosed for the first time the names of the financial institutions that benefited from the government’s $173 billion bailout. Goldman Sachs was the largest recipient at nearly $13 billion. Over $35 billion was also paid out to foreign banks including Société Générale of France, Deutsche Bank of Germany, Barclays of Britain and UBS of Switzerland.
Posted by Greg Bacon at 8:29 AM
Labels: Corruption
___________________________________________
tommy:
New HOLLOW MANTRA OF CRACKED VISION for Barky the clown Obama:
"THE AUDACITY OF MENDACITY AND CORRUPTION"
Monday, March 16, 2009
450 MILLION in AIG Bonuses to be paid, not the reported 150 million
"I think the economic logic behind dumping a load of toxic waste in the lowest wage country is impeccable and we should face up to that . . . I've always thought that under-populated countries in Africa are vastly underpolluted."
Lawrence Summers, Oboma's Director of the WH National Economic Council in a 1991 memo while at the World Bank. Summers is leading the chorus demanding that Wall Street gangsters be allowed to keep their bonuses.
Uhh, is this the kind of "exports" to the 3rd World you're talking about Larry? Dumping toxic crap, including radioactive waste off Somalia's coastline?
While the MSM is reporting that AIG bonuses are "only" in the 150 million dollar range , Amy Goodman of Democracy Now brings us the real number, 450 MILLION and the mealy-mouthed apology issued for this travesty by Oboma insider Larry Summers.
AIG to Pay Out $450 Million in Bonuses
The failed insurance giant AIG is preparing to pay out $450 million in bonuses to top executives and other employees despite receiving a $173 billion government bailout. The bonuses include over $165 million to executives in the Financial Products unit, which lost $40 billion last year and played a major role in the meltdown of the global financial system. AIG is paying out the bonuses even though it is now 80 percent owned by the US government. On Sunday, Lawrence Summers, the director of the White House National Economic Council, described the bonuses as outrageous, but he said the bonuses are part of a contract.
Lawrence Summers: “We are a country of law. There are contracts. The government cannot just abrogate contracts. Every legal step possible to limit those bonuses is being taken by Secretary Geithner and by the Federal Reserve system.”
AIG’s new chief executive Edward Liddy justified the bonuses, saying AIG would have trouble attracting and retaining talent “if employees believe their compensation is subject to continued and arbitrary adjustment by the US Treasury.”
"Retaining talent?" The same band of clowns who helped run AIG into the ground, that kind of talent you want to reward?
Who is this humanitarian Larry Summers?
For starters he's President OBOMBA's Director of the White House National Economic Council, whose functions are to coordinate policy-making for domestic and international economic issues, coordinate economic policy advice for the President, ensure that policy decisions and programs are consistent with the President's economic goals, and monitor implementation of the President's economic policy agenda.
In other words, "Lucky" Larry is going to help Wall Street banks to continue on with their planned theft of taxpayer funds from 401K retirement accounts and pension funds.
Summers was Secretary of the Treasury during the waning years of Slick Willie's administration when the "Financial Services Modernization Act" was pushed thru Congress. That act nullified the Depression era "Glass-Steagall" act that forbid banks from acting like casinos.
Summers has continually fought for lower corporate taxes at the same time fighting to eliminate unemployment for the laid off.
Great guy, Larry is.
Larry also helped Enron while they were defrauding Californians out of money and electricity.
Where did some of that loot that AIG got from American taxpayers get off to?
AIG Lists Banks It Gave Bailout Money To
Meanwhile, AIG has disclosed for the first time the names of the financial institutions that benefited from the government’s $173 billion bailout. Goldman Sachs was the largest recipient at nearly $13 billion. Over $35 billion was also paid out to foreign banks including Société Générale of France, Deutsche Bank of Germany, Barclays of Britain and UBS of Switzerland.
Posted by Greg Bacon at 8:29 AM
Labels: Corruption
___________________________________________
tommy:
New HOLLOW MANTRA OF CRACKED VISION for Barky the clown Obama:
"THE AUDACITY OF MENDACITY AND CORRUPTION"
Saturday, March 14, 2009
KIKES WIN...Obama rolls over again...THE AUDACITY OF MENDACITY?
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1070318.html
U.S. official: Obama won't cut military aid to Israel
By DPA
U.S. President Barack Obama will not cut the billions of dollars in military aid promised to Israel, a senior U.S. administration official said Wednesday.
The $30 billion in aid promised to Israel over the next decade will not be harmed by the world financial crisis, the official told Israel Radio. He spoke on condition of anonymity.
The Obama Administration however expects the next government of Prime Minister-designate Benjamin Netanyahu to continue peace negotiations with the Palestinians, he said.
The increased military aid was promised to outgoing prime minister Ehud Olmert by then-under secretary of state for political affairs Nicholas Burns in August 2007.
Israel Radio also quoted the official as saying that if Hamas joins a Palestinian unity cabinet but does not accept the conditions of the Quartet of Middle East peace sponsors - the U.S., European Union, United Nations and Russia - the Obama Administration would have no dealings with that government.
The radical Islamist movement ruling Gaza is holding talks in Cairo with the secular Fatah party of moderate President Mahmoud Abbas and other factions on forming a unity government.
The talks in Cairo are a bid to reconcile between the rivaling factions, which have been locked in a bitter power struggle since Hamas beat Fatah in January 2006 elections and culminated in the Islamist group violently seizing sole control of Gaza in June 2007.
After the Hamas elections victory, the Quartet said it would boycott Hamas, unless it recognized Israel's right to exist, endorsed past interim peace deals calling for a two-state solution to the conflict, and renounced violence.
___________________________________________
http://www.counterpunch.org/mcgovern03122009.html
Chas Freeman Walks the Plank
Obama Caves to the Lobby
By RAY McGOVERN
On Tuesday morning Director of National Intelligence, Admiral Dennis Blair, employed the indicative mood in describing the high value that Chas Freeman, his appointee to head the National Intelligence Council (NIC), will bring to the job—“his long experience and inventive mind,” for example. By five o’clock in the afternoon, Freeman announced that he had asked that his selection “not proceed.”
Not one to mince words, Freeman spelled out the strange set of affairs surrounding the flip-flop and the implications of what had just happened. Borrowing the pointed warning from George Washington’s Farewell Address against developing a “passionate attachment” to the strategic goals of another nation, Freeman made it clear that he was withdrawing his “previous acceptance” of Blair’s invitation to chair the NIC because of the character assassination of him orchestrated by the Israel Lobby.
The implications? Freeman was clear:
“The outrageous agitation…will be seen by many to raise serious questions about whether the Obama administration will be able to make its own decisions about the Middle East and related issues...[It casts} doubt on its ability to consider, let alone decide what policies might best serve the United States rather than those of a Lobby intent on enforcing the will and interests of a foreign government…
“The aim of this Lobby is control of the policy process through the exercise of a veto over the appointment of people who dispute the wisdom of its views…and the exclusion of any and all options for decision by Americans and our government other than those it [the Lobby] favors.”
Foreign policy analyst Chris Nelson described the imbroglio as a reflection of the “deadly power game on what level of support for controversial Israeli government policies is a ‘requirement’ for U.S. public office.” Before the flip-flop on Freeman was announced, Nelson warned, “If Obama surrenders to the critics and orders Blair to rescind the Freeman appointment, it is difficult to see how he can properly exercise leverage, when needed, in his conduct of policy in the Middle East. That, literally, is how the experts see the stakes in the fight now under way.”
The fight is now over.
Schadenfreude
Sen. Chuck Schumer, (D-New York) led Lobby boasting just minutes after the Freeman debacle was announced. Schumer was clear: “His [Freeman’s] statements against Israel were way over the top…I repeatedly urged the White House to reject him, and I am glad they did the right thing.”
And, as Glen Greenwald has noted, “Lynch mob leader Jonathan Chait [of the New Republic and author of a recent Washington Post op-ed on the subject], who spent the last week denying that Israel was the driving force behind the attacks on Freeman,” now concedes the obvious.
Greenwald quotes Chait: “Of course I recognize that the Israel Lobby is powerful, and was a key element in the pushback against Freeman.”
Neoconservative Daniel Pipes offered an anatomy of the crime, blog-bragging about how it was conducted:
“What you may not know is that Steven J. Rosen of the Middle East forum was the person who first brought attention [on February 19] to the problematic nature of Freeman’s appointment…Within hours, the word was out and three weeks later Freeman has conceded defeat. Only someone with Steve’s stature and credibility could have made this happen.”
The same Steve Rosen?
The same one who is currently on trial for violations of the Espionage Act involving the transmission of classified information intended for Israel?
Yes, one and the same!
This has to be the purest brand of gall that ever came down the Pipes.
This “morning after,” I find myself wondering when White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel—another staunch supporter of the Lobby who reportedly was Schumer’s go-to guy on the get-Freeman campaign—saw fit to let Admiral Blair in on the little secret that no way could he have Freeman. And why Blair tucked tail.
In a March 8 letter to Admiral Blair, we Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS) endorsed his appointment of Freeman and decried the campaign to derail it. We seven signatories (with cumulative experience of 130 years) noted that the Freeman case was the first time we witnessed such a well-coordinated campaign to reverse the appointment of an official to an intelligence job not requiring Senate confirmation.
In other words the influence of the Israel Lobby is seeping ever deeper into the ranks of the intelligence community.
Military Mindset
It seems altogether possible that Admiral Blair, accustomed to military command authority, assumed he had the right to appoint his senior staff and did not think to check out the naming of Freeman with White House and other politicians hypersensitive to pressure from the Lobby.
And this points up a host of other problems. One is that of having military officers, active or retired, running national intelligence. It appears to be beyond their ken to consider resigning on principle.
I imagine it never occurred to Blair that he might have quit on the spot as soon as he learned that Freeman was being jettisoned a couple of hours after Blair had praised him to the skies; or that, earlier, he might have threatened to resign if the Obama administration let itself be bullied in this way.
Blair is no neophyte, but he clearly underestimated the Lobby’s power compared with his own. It appears the White House told Blair to treat the Freeman appointment as though in the subjunctive mood—long enough to “run it up the flagpole and see who salutes,” as the saying goes.
Then, when the Lobby made sure there were no salutes, but rather the strongest and most scurrilous spitting, Freeman was hauled on down. That may be the way they do things in Chicago, as well as in Washington.
The Freeman flip-flop is merely the latest sign that Obama is afraid to take on the Lobby. But the world is watching the new president. Most will interpret the new president’s acquiescence in this charade as a sign of weakness—of his not being his own man. This is a distinct liability as Obama prepares to meet next month with the likes of Vladimir Putin who will be taking his measure.
The encounter with Putin brings to mind another young president’s first meeting with Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev in Vienna in June 1961.
Khrushchev had studied the fiasco of the Bay of Pigs in April 1961; he would have understood if Kennedy had chosen either to leave Castro alone or to destroy him. When Kennedy was rash enough to approve a strike on Cuba but not bold enough to finish the job, in Khrushchev’s view, the latter decided he was dealing with an inexperienced young leader who could be intimidated and blackmailed—one who would shrink from hard decisions.
Kennedy later said of his encounter with Khrushchev in Vienna, "He beat the hell out of me." The meeting gave him to believe that Kennedy might well back down if the USSR put missiles in Cuba.
As for Israel, the Russians were better able to understand Washington’s “passionate attachment” to Israel in strategic terms, as the Cold War played out in the Middle East and Washington had a perceived need to have Israel as a permanent “battleship” there. Now the Russians see the power of the Israel Lobby for what it is—who can miss it? The Obama administration is seen as caving under political pressure.
Although the Russians continue to be amazed at the Lobby’s strong influence over U.S. policy, the Russians are happy as clams to sit back and watch as the identification of the U.S. with Israeli policy inflicts incalculable damage to U.S. interests throughout the region and beyond.
Though a sportsman, Putin is best at chess. He is likely to shy away from playing basketball with our new president. Obama will have to beat Putin at his own game—and Obama now has shown himself easy to push around.
Israeli Adventurism
With Freeman’s withdrawal, there is surely much gloating among the politically aware in Israel. Gloating is one thing; dangerous miscalculation is another.
The danger is particularly high as Benjamin Netanyahu takes over as Israeli prime minister. Netanyahu and his close “neoconservative” friends in the U.S. make no bones about their preference for a Bush/Cheney-style preventive strike on Iran’s nuclear facilities.
As Gareth Porter and I write in today’s Miami Herald, the specter of such a strike takes on more reality with Netanyahu as prime minister. He, too, is taking the measure of our young president and may draw very dangerous conclusions from his subservience to the Lobby, as well as the key role played by chief of staff Rahm Emanuel in the White House.
Impact on Intelligence
The effect of the Freeman affair on the intelligence community is easy to predict. Those who were looking forward to a fearless integrity will be deeply disappointed. They may seek honest work elsewhere, if they perceive that Blair is only titular head of intelligence and that pro-Lobby political operatives like Emanuel are calling the shots.
On the other hand, those managers and analysts who were pleased as punch to be sent over to brief the pro-Israel Washington Institute for Near East Policy (WINEP), created by the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) will be delighted. This briefing practice, encouraged by the Bush/Cheney administration, was highly irregular for a non-partisan intelligence community to be engaged in. It can be expected to flourish now, with the abject object lesson of Freeman’s demise.
Unconscionable Timidity
On October 5, 2007 I published an article on Israel’s deliberate attempt, on June 8, 1967, to sink the USS Liberty in international waters off the Sinai, killing 34 of the Liberty crew and wounding over 170 in the process.
The lead was:
“So Who’s Afraid of the Israel Lobby? Virtually everyone: Republican, Democrat—Conservative, Liberal. The fear factor is non-partisan, you might say, and palpable. The American Israel Public Affairs Committee brags that it is the most influential foreign policy lobbying organization on Capitol Hill, and has demonstrated that time and again, and not only on Capitol Hill.”
The point? In June 1967, the Israelis learned that they could get away, literally, with murder and still not endanger their influence in Washington.
Events of the past weeks demonstrate that they and their Lobby are equally good at character assassination. It is embarrassingly shameful to watch President Obama acquiesce in all of this.
Ray McGovern works with Tell the Word, the publishing arm of the ecumenical Church of the Saviour in inner-city Washington, DC. He is on the Steering Group of Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS). He is a contributor to Imperial Crusades: Iraq, Afghanistan and Yugoslavia, edited by Alexander Cockburn and Jeffrey St. Clair (Verso). He can be reached at: rrmcgovern@aol.com
U.S. official: Obama won't cut military aid to Israel
By DPA
U.S. President Barack Obama will not cut the billions of dollars in military aid promised to Israel, a senior U.S. administration official said Wednesday.
The $30 billion in aid promised to Israel over the next decade will not be harmed by the world financial crisis, the official told Israel Radio. He spoke on condition of anonymity.
The Obama Administration however expects the next government of Prime Minister-designate Benjamin Netanyahu to continue peace negotiations with the Palestinians, he said.
The increased military aid was promised to outgoing prime minister Ehud Olmert by then-under secretary of state for political affairs Nicholas Burns in August 2007.
Israel Radio also quoted the official as saying that if Hamas joins a Palestinian unity cabinet but does not accept the conditions of the Quartet of Middle East peace sponsors - the U.S., European Union, United Nations and Russia - the Obama Administration would have no dealings with that government.
The radical Islamist movement ruling Gaza is holding talks in Cairo with the secular Fatah party of moderate President Mahmoud Abbas and other factions on forming a unity government.
The talks in Cairo are a bid to reconcile between the rivaling factions, which have been locked in a bitter power struggle since Hamas beat Fatah in January 2006 elections and culminated in the Islamist group violently seizing sole control of Gaza in June 2007.
After the Hamas elections victory, the Quartet said it would boycott Hamas, unless it recognized Israel's right to exist, endorsed past interim peace deals calling for a two-state solution to the conflict, and renounced violence.
___________________________________________
http://www.counterpunch.org/mcgovern03122009.html
Chas Freeman Walks the Plank
Obama Caves to the Lobby
By RAY McGOVERN
On Tuesday morning Director of National Intelligence, Admiral Dennis Blair, employed the indicative mood in describing the high value that Chas Freeman, his appointee to head the National Intelligence Council (NIC), will bring to the job—“his long experience and inventive mind,” for example. By five o’clock in the afternoon, Freeman announced that he had asked that his selection “not proceed.”
Not one to mince words, Freeman spelled out the strange set of affairs surrounding the flip-flop and the implications of what had just happened. Borrowing the pointed warning from George Washington’s Farewell Address against developing a “passionate attachment” to the strategic goals of another nation, Freeman made it clear that he was withdrawing his “previous acceptance” of Blair’s invitation to chair the NIC because of the character assassination of him orchestrated by the Israel Lobby.
The implications? Freeman was clear:
“The outrageous agitation…will be seen by many to raise serious questions about whether the Obama administration will be able to make its own decisions about the Middle East and related issues...[It casts} doubt on its ability to consider, let alone decide what policies might best serve the United States rather than those of a Lobby intent on enforcing the will and interests of a foreign government…
“The aim of this Lobby is control of the policy process through the exercise of a veto over the appointment of people who dispute the wisdom of its views…and the exclusion of any and all options for decision by Americans and our government other than those it [the Lobby] favors.”
Foreign policy analyst Chris Nelson described the imbroglio as a reflection of the “deadly power game on what level of support for controversial Israeli government policies is a ‘requirement’ for U.S. public office.” Before the flip-flop on Freeman was announced, Nelson warned, “If Obama surrenders to the critics and orders Blair to rescind the Freeman appointment, it is difficult to see how he can properly exercise leverage, when needed, in his conduct of policy in the Middle East. That, literally, is how the experts see the stakes in the fight now under way.”
The fight is now over.
Schadenfreude
Sen. Chuck Schumer, (D-New York) led Lobby boasting just minutes after the Freeman debacle was announced. Schumer was clear: “His [Freeman’s] statements against Israel were way over the top…I repeatedly urged the White House to reject him, and I am glad they did the right thing.”
And, as Glen Greenwald has noted, “Lynch mob leader Jonathan Chait [of the New Republic and author of a recent Washington Post op-ed on the subject], who spent the last week denying that Israel was the driving force behind the attacks on Freeman,” now concedes the obvious.
Greenwald quotes Chait: “Of course I recognize that the Israel Lobby is powerful, and was a key element in the pushback against Freeman.”
Neoconservative Daniel Pipes offered an anatomy of the crime, blog-bragging about how it was conducted:
“What you may not know is that Steven J. Rosen of the Middle East forum was the person who first brought attention [on February 19] to the problematic nature of Freeman’s appointment…Within hours, the word was out and three weeks later Freeman has conceded defeat. Only someone with Steve’s stature and credibility could have made this happen.”
The same Steve Rosen?
The same one who is currently on trial for violations of the Espionage Act involving the transmission of classified information intended for Israel?
Yes, one and the same!
This has to be the purest brand of gall that ever came down the Pipes.
This “morning after,” I find myself wondering when White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel—another staunch supporter of the Lobby who reportedly was Schumer’s go-to guy on the get-Freeman campaign—saw fit to let Admiral Blair in on the little secret that no way could he have Freeman. And why Blair tucked tail.
In a March 8 letter to Admiral Blair, we Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS) endorsed his appointment of Freeman and decried the campaign to derail it. We seven signatories (with cumulative experience of 130 years) noted that the Freeman case was the first time we witnessed such a well-coordinated campaign to reverse the appointment of an official to an intelligence job not requiring Senate confirmation.
In other words the influence of the Israel Lobby is seeping ever deeper into the ranks of the intelligence community.
Military Mindset
It seems altogether possible that Admiral Blair, accustomed to military command authority, assumed he had the right to appoint his senior staff and did not think to check out the naming of Freeman with White House and other politicians hypersensitive to pressure from the Lobby.
And this points up a host of other problems. One is that of having military officers, active or retired, running national intelligence. It appears to be beyond their ken to consider resigning on principle.
I imagine it never occurred to Blair that he might have quit on the spot as soon as he learned that Freeman was being jettisoned a couple of hours after Blair had praised him to the skies; or that, earlier, he might have threatened to resign if the Obama administration let itself be bullied in this way.
Blair is no neophyte, but he clearly underestimated the Lobby’s power compared with his own. It appears the White House told Blair to treat the Freeman appointment as though in the subjunctive mood—long enough to “run it up the flagpole and see who salutes,” as the saying goes.
Then, when the Lobby made sure there were no salutes, but rather the strongest and most scurrilous spitting, Freeman was hauled on down. That may be the way they do things in Chicago, as well as in Washington.
The Freeman flip-flop is merely the latest sign that Obama is afraid to take on the Lobby. But the world is watching the new president. Most will interpret the new president’s acquiescence in this charade as a sign of weakness—of his not being his own man. This is a distinct liability as Obama prepares to meet next month with the likes of Vladimir Putin who will be taking his measure.
The encounter with Putin brings to mind another young president’s first meeting with Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev in Vienna in June 1961.
Khrushchev had studied the fiasco of the Bay of Pigs in April 1961; he would have understood if Kennedy had chosen either to leave Castro alone or to destroy him. When Kennedy was rash enough to approve a strike on Cuba but not bold enough to finish the job, in Khrushchev’s view, the latter decided he was dealing with an inexperienced young leader who could be intimidated and blackmailed—one who would shrink from hard decisions.
Kennedy later said of his encounter with Khrushchev in Vienna, "He beat the hell out of me." The meeting gave him to believe that Kennedy might well back down if the USSR put missiles in Cuba.
As for Israel, the Russians were better able to understand Washington’s “passionate attachment” to Israel in strategic terms, as the Cold War played out in the Middle East and Washington had a perceived need to have Israel as a permanent “battleship” there. Now the Russians see the power of the Israel Lobby for what it is—who can miss it? The Obama administration is seen as caving under political pressure.
Although the Russians continue to be amazed at the Lobby’s strong influence over U.S. policy, the Russians are happy as clams to sit back and watch as the identification of the U.S. with Israeli policy inflicts incalculable damage to U.S. interests throughout the region and beyond.
Though a sportsman, Putin is best at chess. He is likely to shy away from playing basketball with our new president. Obama will have to beat Putin at his own game—and Obama now has shown himself easy to push around.
Israeli Adventurism
With Freeman’s withdrawal, there is surely much gloating among the politically aware in Israel. Gloating is one thing; dangerous miscalculation is another.
The danger is particularly high as Benjamin Netanyahu takes over as Israeli prime minister. Netanyahu and his close “neoconservative” friends in the U.S. make no bones about their preference for a Bush/Cheney-style preventive strike on Iran’s nuclear facilities.
As Gareth Porter and I write in today’s Miami Herald, the specter of such a strike takes on more reality with Netanyahu as prime minister. He, too, is taking the measure of our young president and may draw very dangerous conclusions from his subservience to the Lobby, as well as the key role played by chief of staff Rahm Emanuel in the White House.
Impact on Intelligence
The effect of the Freeman affair on the intelligence community is easy to predict. Those who were looking forward to a fearless integrity will be deeply disappointed. They may seek honest work elsewhere, if they perceive that Blair is only titular head of intelligence and that pro-Lobby political operatives like Emanuel are calling the shots.
On the other hand, those managers and analysts who were pleased as punch to be sent over to brief the pro-Israel Washington Institute for Near East Policy (WINEP), created by the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) will be delighted. This briefing practice, encouraged by the Bush/Cheney administration, was highly irregular for a non-partisan intelligence community to be engaged in. It can be expected to flourish now, with the abject object lesson of Freeman’s demise.
Unconscionable Timidity
On October 5, 2007 I published an article on Israel’s deliberate attempt, on June 8, 1967, to sink the USS Liberty in international waters off the Sinai, killing 34 of the Liberty crew and wounding over 170 in the process.
The lead was:
“So Who’s Afraid of the Israel Lobby? Virtually everyone: Republican, Democrat—Conservative, Liberal. The fear factor is non-partisan, you might say, and palpable. The American Israel Public Affairs Committee brags that it is the most influential foreign policy lobbying organization on Capitol Hill, and has demonstrated that time and again, and not only on Capitol Hill.”
The point? In June 1967, the Israelis learned that they could get away, literally, with murder and still not endanger their influence in Washington.
Events of the past weeks demonstrate that they and their Lobby are equally good at character assassination. It is embarrassingly shameful to watch President Obama acquiesce in all of this.
Ray McGovern works with Tell the Word, the publishing arm of the ecumenical Church of the Saviour in inner-city Washington, DC. He is on the Steering Group of Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS). He is a contributor to Imperial Crusades: Iraq, Afghanistan and Yugoslavia, edited by Alexander Cockburn and Jeffrey St. Clair (Verso). He can be reached at: rrmcgovern@aol.com
INTERVIEW WITH SUSAN LINDAUER: how the Patriot Act creates a KAFKA BURDEN that is insurmountable for innocent heros
NOTE: click blogpost title above to get linked to story
http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/HL0903/S00130.htm
By Michael Collins
In March, 2004 Susan Lindauer was arrested for allegedly acting as an "unregistered agent" for prewar Iraq. She challenged the government's assertion and sought the right to prove at Trial that she'd been a United States intelligence asset covering Iraq and Libya from the early 1990's through 2003 (see articles).
In an unprecedented judicial ploy that lasted five years, federal prosecutors blocked Ms. Lindauer's rights to trial or any other sort of evidentiary hearings that would test her story. For 11 months, she was confined at Carswell federal prison on a Texas military base and at the Metropolitan Correctional Center in Manhattan, without a conviction or plea bargain.
During the indictment, she was conveniently gagged from sharing her direct knowledge of Iraqi Pre-War Intelligence, which she gained as a primary asset covering the Iraqi Embassy at the United Nations from August, 1996 onwards. She was also silenced from talking about the advance warning she gave the Office of Counter-Terrorism and U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft's private staff in August, 2001, about possible airplane hijackings and a reprise of the 1993 World Trade Center attack.
But there was more than the Sixth Amendment's "right to a speedy trial" at stake.
Lindauer was one of the first citizens charged under special judicial provisions of the Patriot Act. The exceedingly complex legislation, emerged from the desk of John Yoo just days after the 9/11 attack. It passed the House 357 to 66 and the Senate 98 to 1. The Patriot Act eviscerated long standing Constitutional protections. It fundamentally altered how trials are conducted whenever provisions of the act are invoked in a court of law.
Lindauer's indictment was the one of the first test drives of the Patriot Act for the Bush-Cheney Department of Justice. Her nightmare officially ended five days before the Obama Inauguration, when the prosecution dropped the case "in the interests of justice."
In the current interviews, Susan Lindauer explains how the Patriot Act was used to quash her most fundamental rights of due process, which would otherwise have empowered her to repudiate the indictment and protect her reputation.
Michael Collins: Not many people know that you were arrested under provisions of the Patriot Act. You were one of the fist U.S. citizens to experience the brutality of this legislation. How did it shape your case and treatment in the Courts?
Susan Lindauer: That's right. Along with Jose Padilla, I will go down in history as one of the first and only non-Arab Americans ever indicted on the Patriot Act during the Bush Administration.
I believe that my case demonstrates why the Patriot Act should be repealed immediately to safeguard our country and our freedom.
I have always opposed war and advocated diplomacy to solve conflicts. The indictment accused me of "acting as an unregistered Iraqi Agent," on the grounds that I delivered a letter forecasting the failure of the Occupation to my cousin, Andy Card, Chief of Staff to President George Bush. That's what used to be known as Freedom of Speech. The letter was not hostile or threatening. In fact, it proved tragically accurate. That did not matter to the Justice Department. Vocalizing opposition to Bush policy was treasonous. End of discussion.
Collins: What happened when you got to court?
Lindauer: Once I got to Court, I discovered that the indictment also contained two "secret charges," gratis of the Patriot Act. My attorney and I were given the dates for the two allegations, saying that I attended meetings with Iraqi officials in October, 1999 and October, 2001, but nothing more to explain what I had allegedly done wrong.
There was nothing unusual about the fact that those meetings had occurred. I visited the Iraqi Embassy at the United Nations about every three weeks for 7 years. My handlers were fully informed, which explains how the government could have been tracking the dates in the first place. They got the dates from me.
"a. On or about October 14, 1999, Susan Lindauer -- met with an officer of the Iraq Intelligence Service (“IIS”) in Manhattan.
"c. In or about October 2001, SUSAN LINDAUER -- accepted a task given to her in Manhattan by an officer of the IIS." USA v. Lindauer. S2 03 Cr. 807 (MBM)
No, the government was claiming that something unusual took place during those specific meetings. Under the Patriot Act, the Prosecution was not required to tell us what those offensive actions were. Nor was the Court allowed to tell us what type of laws might have been violated by those actions.
We were only told that conviction on either of the "secret charges" would get me five years in federal prison.
Collins: Please help readers understand more about "secret evidence." Were you and your lawyer denied access to evidence, because it was considered "secret" or "classified"? How did this work under the Patriot Act?
Lindauer: It's unbelievable, isn't it? As if "secret charges" were not terrible enough, there was also "secret evidence" which could be applied to those "secret charges."
The Prosecution had the right to ask a jury to convict me of those two undisclosed charges without revealing a shred of evidence to support the charges whatsoever. The Patriot Act authorized the prosecutor to ask a jury to "take it on faith" that some unspecified evidence would prove that some unspecified law had been broken.
If a judge so instructed before deliberations, the jury could be required to ignore the lack of presentation of evidence in weighing whether to convict me. The Judge could simply instruct a jury that the Justice Department regarded the evidence as "sufficient" to constitute a crime and that would be "sufficient knowledge" for their review. That kind of instruction practically requires a jury to convict a defendant.
The fundamental question of "guilty beyond reasonable doubt" is shattered. To say the least, it drastically undercuts protections in the jury system of the United States.
Conversely, evidence that might exonerate me, and prove my innocence, could be considered "secret and classified" as well. My attorney and I could be prohibited from knowing of its existence or using it in my defense. Even if that evidence or witness statements tossed out the whole case, and saved me from years in prison, I would not be entitled to know of its existence or present it to the jury.
Collins: This sounds like Franz Kafka's "The Trial" combined with the Queen of Hearts in "Alice in Wonderland." How did you conceptualize your experience at the time?
Lindauer: The outstanding blog, Welcome Back to Pottersville published a headline that I loved: Franz Kafka, Meet Susan Lindauer.
Oh yes, I was floored. I know the Constitution. I cherish it, in fact. I could not believe such a thing would happen to somebody like me, with my education from Smith College and the London School of Economics, and all of my community resources. I mean, if the government could do this to somebody like me, what could they do to somebody who has nothing? It's a frightening thought.
Above all, I despised the Assistant US Attorney, Edward O'Callaghan, who prosecuted my case. Numerous times I correctly told the Court that the FBI had verified my story and Mr. O'Callaghan was falsifying his claims about the availability of witnesses to authenticate my story. He flat out lied about my identity and activities to a senior federal judge. I mean, come on. We interviewed those witnesses, too. We know what they told the FBI.
And so I kept challenging the Court that nobody had to take my word for anything. I challenged the Court to subpoena the witnesses and question them directly under oath. For FIVE YEARS, I told the Court that all questions could be cleared up in ten minutes, with a simple pre-trial evidentiary hearing.
(Part three of this interview focuses on that issue.)
Collins: Back to the "secrecy rules," How did those work in trial preparation?
Lindauer: Within the category of "secret evidence," the law pretends to establish a safeguard for defendants by allowing two levels of secrecy.
Under the main category of secrecy, both the attorney and defendant are prohibited from laying eyes on evidence or witness statements. The Prosecutor always retains the right to deny access on the grounds of national security.
A sub-section of the Patriot Act allows the defense attorney to petition the government for a security clearance in order to review some parts of the "secret evidence." In reality, the process drags out for many months, while most defendants languish in prison waiting for trial. (And because the case involves the Patriot Act, they're frequently detained in solitary confinement.) Getting clearance can take six months to a year, costing the Defense valuable time to review the evidence or plan a rebuttal.
A security clearance does not automatically guarantee access to evidence, however. Depending on their backgrounds, different attorneys qualify for different levels of security clearances. For example, an activist attorney with a history of pro bono cases involving the ACLU or something equally subversive, like Greenpeace, might qualify for a very low security clearance, because their career choices and previous cases might be perceived to threaten the State. So one attorney might have more or less access to secret evidence than another. But you can't know until the security clearance review is completed.
Hope is vain, however. That safeguard is mostly irrelevant and procedural.
To illustrate that point, in five years under indictment, I had two separate attorneys with very different levels of security clearances, including a former federal prosecutor, the outstanding Mr. Brian Shaughnessy of Washington, DC, who regularly handles the most high level and complicated security cases. Neither attorney was ever able to determine what those two "secret charges" were. Neither attorney ever saw the "secret evidence."
More disturbingly, the attorney is strictly prohibited from revealing any part of that "secret evidence" to the Defendant. The Defendant cannot see it or know about it, and therefore cannot provide an effective response to the attorney to rebut it. Thus, ironically, the Patriot Act handicaps the defendant's ability to assist in the preparation of their Defense strategy.
Thus, it renders the Defendant INCOMPETENT TO STAND TRIAL.
Ah, the plot thickens.
Collins: It does in a very major way. What actions could be so serious as to deny your constitutional rights? Did you ever figure out what those "secret charges" might have been? Surely you know what you were doing in October, 1999 and October, 2001.
Lindauer: Oh yeah. And I'll bet your readers think those accusations must be very serious! Wouldn't you think? I must have done something far too horrible for the government to whisper aloud! Wanna bet?
In five years, we could only guess about those two charges. We surmised that in October 1999, I was indicted for blocking the Iraqi Government in Baghdad from making financial campaign contributions to the George W. Bush Presidential Campaign.
That's right. With immediate assistance from my U.S. Intelligence contacts, I stopped Iraq from making illegal campaign contributions to the 2000 Bush Election campaign--at least through my channels.
We have speculated that perhaps Saddam gave money to the Bush Campaign in 2000 through somebody else and some other channel. And the Republicans don't want anybody to know about it. Perhaps I was indicted to stop the Democrats from investigating campaign contribution records.
Consider that Andy Card was warned of Iraq's attempts in two progress reports on March 1, 2001 and December 2, 2001. The Republican leadership that attacked me was very much aware that this question of illegal campaign contributions was hanging out there. And I was indicted for stopping it from happening.
Collins: What about the second "secret charge"?
That was allegedly in October, 2001. We're still in the dark on that one; however, we think it involves my efforts to collect health statistics from Baghdad regarding depleted uranium left behind by the United States in the first Gulf War.
Depleted Uranium has resulted in a spike in Iraqi birth defects and cancer rates from long-term exposure. They say Iraqi children suffer cancer "like the flu," it's so common.
Tragically, exposure to depleted uranium might seriously harm American soldiers and their future unborn children, too! I suspect it will become a major health risk for soldiers who return from repeated tours of duty in Iraq. When they start having families back home, we're going to hear about this.
That's probably all it took to categorize the documents as "secret evidence" and "secret charges." They didn't want my case to raise the profile of that health risk for Americans in Iraq. None of that health information was ever returned to me in discovery.
For knowing something so unpleasant about the government's responsibilities, the Justice Department actually wanted me to serve five years in prison. It's unbelievable.
Collins: It must have been terrifying. The government figuratively tied you to a chair and challenged you to a 15 round boxing match. Did you ever consider pleading guilty to stop the beating?
Lindauer: Never! I'm a helluva boxer myself, Mike! They must have been surprised to find I could go 15 rounds. I'm strong and tenacious to this day!
No, I had my entire legal strategy mapped out in the first couple of hours after my arrest. I could see mistakes in the indictment, and I quickly identified which witnesses and evidence would be necessary to repudiate the whole lot.
My witness list was outstanding. It included international attorneys from the Lockerbie Trial, former Congressional staffers, even a couple of international journalists. One of Scotland's finest Solicitors, Edward MacKechnie, who won acquittal for his Libyan client in the Lockerbie Trial, immediately promised to travel at his own expense to testify for me as to the identity and credentials of Dr. Richard Fuisz, my CIA handler. I have the emails to prove it. His participation was beyond dispute.
There was no question that I had an outstanding defense. What's more, I have outstanding bona fides to go with it. I took perverse satisfaction in knowing that once the jury received witness corroboration of my extensive credentials dealing with Libya and Iraq, Yemen, Egypt, Syria/Hezbollah and Malaysia for 9 years from 1993 to 2002, they would be appalled by the prosecution's arguments to convict me.
Any jury would recognize that I had legitimate reason for participating in the 9/11 investigation as a "first-responder," not to mention that I'm one of the few individuals who openly warned about 9/11 for several months before the attack. I still think a New York jury would have applauded me.
The public just didn't know who I was-- yet-- or the extensive work that put me on the cutting edge of anti-terrorism for so many years.
That would change with witness testimony at trial. It would not be boring.
Collins: What was your reaction to getting arrested in March, 2004?
I was disgusted and perversely amused. At my home, while FBI agents were handcuffing me, I asked what I was charged with. That's a natural question when FBI agents come pounding on your door.
They wouldn't tell me.
That's the Patriot Act for you.
The arresting FBI agent said that I could read the indictment when I got to Baltimore-- Not Washington D.C. or Greenbelt, Maryland, which are 15 minutes from my home. They processed me in Baltimore, a city that's 45 minutes away and out of the sphere of Washington media. All through the drive, the FBI agent only told me that I would be extradited to New York. I had no idea why I'd been arrested at all.
When I finally got to read the indictment, I was purple with outrage. After 9 years of hard work and devotion to Anti-Terrorism as an Asset for the U.S. government, I was now accused of acting as an "unregistered Iraqi agent" and "conspiracy with the Iraqi Intelligence Service." Oh My!
I told the arresting FBI agent, "This is bullshit. This is political. You want me out of the way so you can lie about Iraq and 9/11 during the (2004) election."
Collins: You were arrested in March 2004, when President Bush was locked in a tight race with John Kerry and appeared to be losing. Do you think presidential campaign politics was involved in your indictment?
Lindauer: There was never any question that it was a cheap, political indictment engineered by ruthless White House staff, including my own cousin, Andy Card, afraid of losing Bush's re-election.
A few weeks before my arrest, I contacted the offices of Senators Trent Lott and John McCain and asked to testify before the new blue-ribbon Presidential Commission on Iraqi Pre-War Intelligence. As part of that testimony, I would have detailed Iraq's efforts to cooperate with the 9/11 investigation, and, before 9/11, our threats to bomb Baghdad in April and May, 2001 if they failed to serve up any fragments of intelligence relating to a new conspiracy involving airplane hijackings. I, personally, bickered with Iraqi diplomats at the United Nations for several months seeking that information. Iraq had nothing to give us.
Under the circumstances, arresting me must have presented an irresistible temptation.
Collins: How so?
Lindauer: They saw that I would be sidelined in legal wrangling until after the November election. I would be gagged from telling the full and accurate story of Iraqi Pre-War Intelligence and the government's advance warnings of a 9/11 style attack. This gave Republicans a significant advantage over the Democrats, shielding them from criticism during their campaigns.
After November, the charges against me would be declared bogus, and the case would be dismissed for lack of merit. I would ultimately win, whereas American voters would have lost an opportunity to make informed decisions about which candidates to support. They would be flying blind just the way politicians wanted.
Collins: What was some of the most devastating information that you would have shared?
Lindauer: Imagine if American voters had known that the 9/11 strike was not a surprise to U.S. Intelligence! Would it have changed any votes if Americans had known the truth? That throughout the summer of 2001, there were extensive discussions about possible airplane hijackings and a reprise of the 1993 World Trade Center attack, specifically?
In August 2001, we thought the attack was "imminent." At the instruction of my CIA handler, Dr. Richard Fuisz, I personally alerted the private staff of U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft and the Office of Counter-Terrorism at the Justice Department about our fears, asking for their cooperation in issuing an emergency alert throughout all agencies for any fragment of intelligence or suspicious activity that might help us pre-empt a conspiracy to hijack and/or bomb airplanes.
Would any of that have made a difference in the voting booth?
Would Americans still think the "War on Terror" was a success?
That's the kind of wild card that campaign staff hate during a tight election.
Collins: Do you have any parting words on the Patriot Act?
Lindauer: It strikes me as ironic that the Patriot Act, which Congress passed after 9/11 to empower law enforcement to hunt down terror suspects, was first used to suppress and punish an American citizen who spent a life-time opposing violence in terrorism or war, and who gave advance warning about the 9/11 attack in specific detail.
I'm obviously a very dangerous woman! My indictment provides a classic example of a fearful incumbent -- a dictator -- arresting his political opponents on trumped up charges so that he can remove obstacles to staying in power, and intimidates others into silence when they would otherwise speak against him.
It's what you'd expect from Chile under Pinochet in the 1970s, the El Salvadoran juntas in the 1980s, Egypt today. It's Myanmar and Tibet. And it's what happened to me.
Collins: Part three of this interview explores the intense and chilling abuse Ms. Lindauer suffered when confined to the Carswell federal prison facility housed in the Carswell U.S. Air Force base near Ft. Worth Texas. At the same time, Lindauer will describe how federal law enforcement officials associated with her case manipulated proceedings and falsified reports about her life and activities.
END
Permission to reproduce in part or whole with attribution of authorship and a link to this article
__________________________________
tommy:
ANYBODY NOTICE HOW THE PUSSIES, THE FAGS, THE GUTLESS DUMBFUCK CORRUPT WHORES AT THE DEMOCRATIC COCKSUCKER PARTY (Obam, Holder, Leahy, Conyers, Pelosi, Reid, ) all ignore this madness.....when....the info could result in the Democrats political benefit.
No comment from HOLDER because mainstream media ferries...have...rolled over with the pussified punk Democrat clown act....doncha know?
Anybody want to question Karl Rove and Addington on this political harassment of an insider who tried to stop FALSE FLAG TERRORISM BY THE RADICAL RIGHT WING?
NOTICE HOW MUELLER'S FBI is...yes...again implicated in more conspiracies to OBSTRUCT JUSTICE WHILE TAMPERING WITH A COOPERATING WITNESS WHO STUCK HER NECK OUT TO STOP TERRORISM?
NOTICE how this...corroborates that fact that...ALL TERRORISM IS FALSE FALG BY FBI AND RADICAL RIGHT WING CONTROL GROUP who have control of OBAMA--HOLDER.
http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/HL0903/S00130.htm
By Michael Collins
In March, 2004 Susan Lindauer was arrested for allegedly acting as an "unregistered agent" for prewar Iraq. She challenged the government's assertion and sought the right to prove at Trial that she'd been a United States intelligence asset covering Iraq and Libya from the early 1990's through 2003 (see articles).
In an unprecedented judicial ploy that lasted five years, federal prosecutors blocked Ms. Lindauer's rights to trial or any other sort of evidentiary hearings that would test her story. For 11 months, she was confined at Carswell federal prison on a Texas military base and at the Metropolitan Correctional Center in Manhattan, without a conviction or plea bargain.
During the indictment, she was conveniently gagged from sharing her direct knowledge of Iraqi Pre-War Intelligence, which she gained as a primary asset covering the Iraqi Embassy at the United Nations from August, 1996 onwards. She was also silenced from talking about the advance warning she gave the Office of Counter-Terrorism and U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft's private staff in August, 2001, about possible airplane hijackings and a reprise of the 1993 World Trade Center attack.
But there was more than the Sixth Amendment's "right to a speedy trial" at stake.
Lindauer was one of the first citizens charged under special judicial provisions of the Patriot Act. The exceedingly complex legislation, emerged from the desk of John Yoo just days after the 9/11 attack. It passed the House 357 to 66 and the Senate 98 to 1. The Patriot Act eviscerated long standing Constitutional protections. It fundamentally altered how trials are conducted whenever provisions of the act are invoked in a court of law.
Lindauer's indictment was the one of the first test drives of the Patriot Act for the Bush-Cheney Department of Justice. Her nightmare officially ended five days before the Obama Inauguration, when the prosecution dropped the case "in the interests of justice."
In the current interviews, Susan Lindauer explains how the Patriot Act was used to quash her most fundamental rights of due process, which would otherwise have empowered her to repudiate the indictment and protect her reputation.
Michael Collins: Not many people know that you were arrested under provisions of the Patriot Act. You were one of the fist U.S. citizens to experience the brutality of this legislation. How did it shape your case and treatment in the Courts?
Susan Lindauer: That's right. Along with Jose Padilla, I will go down in history as one of the first and only non-Arab Americans ever indicted on the Patriot Act during the Bush Administration.
I believe that my case demonstrates why the Patriot Act should be repealed immediately to safeguard our country and our freedom.
I have always opposed war and advocated diplomacy to solve conflicts. The indictment accused me of "acting as an unregistered Iraqi Agent," on the grounds that I delivered a letter forecasting the failure of the Occupation to my cousin, Andy Card, Chief of Staff to President George Bush. That's what used to be known as Freedom of Speech. The letter was not hostile or threatening. In fact, it proved tragically accurate. That did not matter to the Justice Department. Vocalizing opposition to Bush policy was treasonous. End of discussion.
Collins: What happened when you got to court?
Lindauer: Once I got to Court, I discovered that the indictment also contained two "secret charges," gratis of the Patriot Act. My attorney and I were given the dates for the two allegations, saying that I attended meetings with Iraqi officials in October, 1999 and October, 2001, but nothing more to explain what I had allegedly done wrong.
There was nothing unusual about the fact that those meetings had occurred. I visited the Iraqi Embassy at the United Nations about every three weeks for 7 years. My handlers were fully informed, which explains how the government could have been tracking the dates in the first place. They got the dates from me.
"a. On or about October 14, 1999, Susan Lindauer -- met with an officer of the Iraq Intelligence Service (“IIS”) in Manhattan.
"c. In or about October 2001, SUSAN LINDAUER -- accepted a task given to her in Manhattan by an officer of the IIS." USA v. Lindauer. S2 03 Cr. 807 (MBM)
No, the government was claiming that something unusual took place during those specific meetings. Under the Patriot Act, the Prosecution was not required to tell us what those offensive actions were. Nor was the Court allowed to tell us what type of laws might have been violated by those actions.
We were only told that conviction on either of the "secret charges" would get me five years in federal prison.
Collins: Please help readers understand more about "secret evidence." Were you and your lawyer denied access to evidence, because it was considered "secret" or "classified"? How did this work under the Patriot Act?
Lindauer: It's unbelievable, isn't it? As if "secret charges" were not terrible enough, there was also "secret evidence" which could be applied to those "secret charges."
The Prosecution had the right to ask a jury to convict me of those two undisclosed charges without revealing a shred of evidence to support the charges whatsoever. The Patriot Act authorized the prosecutor to ask a jury to "take it on faith" that some unspecified evidence would prove that some unspecified law had been broken.
If a judge so instructed before deliberations, the jury could be required to ignore the lack of presentation of evidence in weighing whether to convict me. The Judge could simply instruct a jury that the Justice Department regarded the evidence as "sufficient" to constitute a crime and that would be "sufficient knowledge" for their review. That kind of instruction practically requires a jury to convict a defendant.
The fundamental question of "guilty beyond reasonable doubt" is shattered. To say the least, it drastically undercuts protections in the jury system of the United States.
Conversely, evidence that might exonerate me, and prove my innocence, could be considered "secret and classified" as well. My attorney and I could be prohibited from knowing of its existence or using it in my defense. Even if that evidence or witness statements tossed out the whole case, and saved me from years in prison, I would not be entitled to know of its existence or present it to the jury.
Collins: This sounds like Franz Kafka's "The Trial" combined with the Queen of Hearts in "Alice in Wonderland." How did you conceptualize your experience at the time?
Lindauer: The outstanding blog, Welcome Back to Pottersville published a headline that I loved: Franz Kafka, Meet Susan Lindauer.
Oh yes, I was floored. I know the Constitution. I cherish it, in fact. I could not believe such a thing would happen to somebody like me, with my education from Smith College and the London School of Economics, and all of my community resources. I mean, if the government could do this to somebody like me, what could they do to somebody who has nothing? It's a frightening thought.
Above all, I despised the Assistant US Attorney, Edward O'Callaghan, who prosecuted my case. Numerous times I correctly told the Court that the FBI had verified my story and Mr. O'Callaghan was falsifying his claims about the availability of witnesses to authenticate my story. He flat out lied about my identity and activities to a senior federal judge. I mean, come on. We interviewed those witnesses, too. We know what they told the FBI.
And so I kept challenging the Court that nobody had to take my word for anything. I challenged the Court to subpoena the witnesses and question them directly under oath. For FIVE YEARS, I told the Court that all questions could be cleared up in ten minutes, with a simple pre-trial evidentiary hearing.
(Part three of this interview focuses on that issue.)
Collins: Back to the "secrecy rules," How did those work in trial preparation?
Lindauer: Within the category of "secret evidence," the law pretends to establish a safeguard for defendants by allowing two levels of secrecy.
Under the main category of secrecy, both the attorney and defendant are prohibited from laying eyes on evidence or witness statements. The Prosecutor always retains the right to deny access on the grounds of national security.
A sub-section of the Patriot Act allows the defense attorney to petition the government for a security clearance in order to review some parts of the "secret evidence." In reality, the process drags out for many months, while most defendants languish in prison waiting for trial. (And because the case involves the Patriot Act, they're frequently detained in solitary confinement.) Getting clearance can take six months to a year, costing the Defense valuable time to review the evidence or plan a rebuttal.
A security clearance does not automatically guarantee access to evidence, however. Depending on their backgrounds, different attorneys qualify for different levels of security clearances. For example, an activist attorney with a history of pro bono cases involving the ACLU or something equally subversive, like Greenpeace, might qualify for a very low security clearance, because their career choices and previous cases might be perceived to threaten the State. So one attorney might have more or less access to secret evidence than another. But you can't know until the security clearance review is completed.
Hope is vain, however. That safeguard is mostly irrelevant and procedural.
To illustrate that point, in five years under indictment, I had two separate attorneys with very different levels of security clearances, including a former federal prosecutor, the outstanding Mr. Brian Shaughnessy of Washington, DC, who regularly handles the most high level and complicated security cases. Neither attorney was ever able to determine what those two "secret charges" were. Neither attorney ever saw the "secret evidence."
More disturbingly, the attorney is strictly prohibited from revealing any part of that "secret evidence" to the Defendant. The Defendant cannot see it or know about it, and therefore cannot provide an effective response to the attorney to rebut it. Thus, ironically, the Patriot Act handicaps the defendant's ability to assist in the preparation of their Defense strategy.
Thus, it renders the Defendant INCOMPETENT TO STAND TRIAL.
Ah, the plot thickens.
Collins: It does in a very major way. What actions could be so serious as to deny your constitutional rights? Did you ever figure out what those "secret charges" might have been? Surely you know what you were doing in October, 1999 and October, 2001.
Lindauer: Oh yeah. And I'll bet your readers think those accusations must be very serious! Wouldn't you think? I must have done something far too horrible for the government to whisper aloud! Wanna bet?
In five years, we could only guess about those two charges. We surmised that in October 1999, I was indicted for blocking the Iraqi Government in Baghdad from making financial campaign contributions to the George W. Bush Presidential Campaign.
That's right. With immediate assistance from my U.S. Intelligence contacts, I stopped Iraq from making illegal campaign contributions to the 2000 Bush Election campaign--at least through my channels.
We have speculated that perhaps Saddam gave money to the Bush Campaign in 2000 through somebody else and some other channel. And the Republicans don't want anybody to know about it. Perhaps I was indicted to stop the Democrats from investigating campaign contribution records.
Consider that Andy Card was warned of Iraq's attempts in two progress reports on March 1, 2001 and December 2, 2001. The Republican leadership that attacked me was very much aware that this question of illegal campaign contributions was hanging out there. And I was indicted for stopping it from happening.
Collins: What about the second "secret charge"?
That was allegedly in October, 2001. We're still in the dark on that one; however, we think it involves my efforts to collect health statistics from Baghdad regarding depleted uranium left behind by the United States in the first Gulf War.
Depleted Uranium has resulted in a spike in Iraqi birth defects and cancer rates from long-term exposure. They say Iraqi children suffer cancer "like the flu," it's so common.
Tragically, exposure to depleted uranium might seriously harm American soldiers and their future unborn children, too! I suspect it will become a major health risk for soldiers who return from repeated tours of duty in Iraq. When they start having families back home, we're going to hear about this.
That's probably all it took to categorize the documents as "secret evidence" and "secret charges." They didn't want my case to raise the profile of that health risk for Americans in Iraq. None of that health information was ever returned to me in discovery.
For knowing something so unpleasant about the government's responsibilities, the Justice Department actually wanted me to serve five years in prison. It's unbelievable.
Collins: It must have been terrifying. The government figuratively tied you to a chair and challenged you to a 15 round boxing match. Did you ever consider pleading guilty to stop the beating?
Lindauer: Never! I'm a helluva boxer myself, Mike! They must have been surprised to find I could go 15 rounds. I'm strong and tenacious to this day!
No, I had my entire legal strategy mapped out in the first couple of hours after my arrest. I could see mistakes in the indictment, and I quickly identified which witnesses and evidence would be necessary to repudiate the whole lot.
My witness list was outstanding. It included international attorneys from the Lockerbie Trial, former Congressional staffers, even a couple of international journalists. One of Scotland's finest Solicitors, Edward MacKechnie, who won acquittal for his Libyan client in the Lockerbie Trial, immediately promised to travel at his own expense to testify for me as to the identity and credentials of Dr. Richard Fuisz, my CIA handler. I have the emails to prove it. His participation was beyond dispute.
There was no question that I had an outstanding defense. What's more, I have outstanding bona fides to go with it. I took perverse satisfaction in knowing that once the jury received witness corroboration of my extensive credentials dealing with Libya and Iraq, Yemen, Egypt, Syria/Hezbollah and Malaysia for 9 years from 1993 to 2002, they would be appalled by the prosecution's arguments to convict me.
Any jury would recognize that I had legitimate reason for participating in the 9/11 investigation as a "first-responder," not to mention that I'm one of the few individuals who openly warned about 9/11 for several months before the attack. I still think a New York jury would have applauded me.
The public just didn't know who I was-- yet-- or the extensive work that put me on the cutting edge of anti-terrorism for so many years.
That would change with witness testimony at trial. It would not be boring.
Collins: What was your reaction to getting arrested in March, 2004?
I was disgusted and perversely amused. At my home, while FBI agents were handcuffing me, I asked what I was charged with. That's a natural question when FBI agents come pounding on your door.
They wouldn't tell me.
That's the Patriot Act for you.
The arresting FBI agent said that I could read the indictment when I got to Baltimore-- Not Washington D.C. or Greenbelt, Maryland, which are 15 minutes from my home. They processed me in Baltimore, a city that's 45 minutes away and out of the sphere of Washington media. All through the drive, the FBI agent only told me that I would be extradited to New York. I had no idea why I'd been arrested at all.
When I finally got to read the indictment, I was purple with outrage. After 9 years of hard work and devotion to Anti-Terrorism as an Asset for the U.S. government, I was now accused of acting as an "unregistered Iraqi agent" and "conspiracy with the Iraqi Intelligence Service." Oh My!
I told the arresting FBI agent, "This is bullshit. This is political. You want me out of the way so you can lie about Iraq and 9/11 during the (2004) election."
Collins: You were arrested in March 2004, when President Bush was locked in a tight race with John Kerry and appeared to be losing. Do you think presidential campaign politics was involved in your indictment?
Lindauer: There was never any question that it was a cheap, political indictment engineered by ruthless White House staff, including my own cousin, Andy Card, afraid of losing Bush's re-election.
A few weeks before my arrest, I contacted the offices of Senators Trent Lott and John McCain and asked to testify before the new blue-ribbon Presidential Commission on Iraqi Pre-War Intelligence. As part of that testimony, I would have detailed Iraq's efforts to cooperate with the 9/11 investigation, and, before 9/11, our threats to bomb Baghdad in April and May, 2001 if they failed to serve up any fragments of intelligence relating to a new conspiracy involving airplane hijackings. I, personally, bickered with Iraqi diplomats at the United Nations for several months seeking that information. Iraq had nothing to give us.
Under the circumstances, arresting me must have presented an irresistible temptation.
Collins: How so?
Lindauer: They saw that I would be sidelined in legal wrangling until after the November election. I would be gagged from telling the full and accurate story of Iraqi Pre-War Intelligence and the government's advance warnings of a 9/11 style attack. This gave Republicans a significant advantage over the Democrats, shielding them from criticism during their campaigns.
After November, the charges against me would be declared bogus, and the case would be dismissed for lack of merit. I would ultimately win, whereas American voters would have lost an opportunity to make informed decisions about which candidates to support. They would be flying blind just the way politicians wanted.
Collins: What was some of the most devastating information that you would have shared?
Lindauer: Imagine if American voters had known that the 9/11 strike was not a surprise to U.S. Intelligence! Would it have changed any votes if Americans had known the truth? That throughout the summer of 2001, there were extensive discussions about possible airplane hijackings and a reprise of the 1993 World Trade Center attack, specifically?
In August 2001, we thought the attack was "imminent." At the instruction of my CIA handler, Dr. Richard Fuisz, I personally alerted the private staff of U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft and the Office of Counter-Terrorism at the Justice Department about our fears, asking for their cooperation in issuing an emergency alert throughout all agencies for any fragment of intelligence or suspicious activity that might help us pre-empt a conspiracy to hijack and/or bomb airplanes.
Would any of that have made a difference in the voting booth?
Would Americans still think the "War on Terror" was a success?
That's the kind of wild card that campaign staff hate during a tight election.
Collins: Do you have any parting words on the Patriot Act?
Lindauer: It strikes me as ironic that the Patriot Act, which Congress passed after 9/11 to empower law enforcement to hunt down terror suspects, was first used to suppress and punish an American citizen who spent a life-time opposing violence in terrorism or war, and who gave advance warning about the 9/11 attack in specific detail.
I'm obviously a very dangerous woman! My indictment provides a classic example of a fearful incumbent -- a dictator -- arresting his political opponents on trumped up charges so that he can remove obstacles to staying in power, and intimidates others into silence when they would otherwise speak against him.
It's what you'd expect from Chile under Pinochet in the 1970s, the El Salvadoran juntas in the 1980s, Egypt today. It's Myanmar and Tibet. And it's what happened to me.
Collins: Part three of this interview explores the intense and chilling abuse Ms. Lindauer suffered when confined to the Carswell federal prison facility housed in the Carswell U.S. Air Force base near Ft. Worth Texas. At the same time, Lindauer will describe how federal law enforcement officials associated with her case manipulated proceedings and falsified reports about her life and activities.
END
Permission to reproduce in part or whole with attribution of authorship and a link to this article
__________________________________
tommy:
ANYBODY NOTICE HOW THE PUSSIES, THE FAGS, THE GUTLESS DUMBFUCK CORRUPT WHORES AT THE DEMOCRATIC COCKSUCKER PARTY (Obam, Holder, Leahy, Conyers, Pelosi, Reid, ) all ignore this madness.....when....the info could result in the Democrats political benefit.
No comment from HOLDER because mainstream media ferries...have...rolled over with the pussified punk Democrat clown act....doncha know?
Anybody want to question Karl Rove and Addington on this political harassment of an insider who tried to stop FALSE FLAG TERRORISM BY THE RADICAL RIGHT WING?
NOTICE HOW MUELLER'S FBI is...yes...again implicated in more conspiracies to OBSTRUCT JUSTICE WHILE TAMPERING WITH A COOPERATING WITNESS WHO STUCK HER NECK OUT TO STOP TERRORISM?
NOTICE how this...corroborates that fact that...ALL TERRORISM IS FALSE FALG BY FBI AND RADICAL RIGHT WING CONTROL GROUP who have control of OBAMA--HOLDER.
SEYMOUR HERSH: only mainstream media reporter to BREAK OPEN CIA--NSA--DOD CIFA UNIT--BLACKWATER ASSASINATION TEAM...3 south dakota murders obstructed
http://www.minnpost.com/ericblackblog/2009/03/11/7310/investigative_reporter_seymour_hersh_describes_executive_assassination_ring
Investigative reporter Seymour Hersh describes 'executive assassination ring'
By Eric Black | Published Wed, Mar 11 2009 11:17 am
At a “Great Conversations” event (MP3) at the University of Minnesota last night, legendary investigative reporter Seymour Hersh may have made a little more news than he intended by talking about new alleged instances of domestic spying by the CIA, and about an ongoing covert military operation that he called an “executive assassination ring.”
Hersh spoke with great confidence about these findings from his current reporting, which he hasn’t written about yet.
__________________________
tommy:
I've never talked or communicated with Hersh.
HERSH does not use the personal pronouns happily omitted by clowns like LEAHY, CONYERS, HOLDER, OBAMA when they happily ignore the dispositive facts, rules, laws, and allegations from my numerous and voluminous complaints.
All my communications are illegally suppressed and misdirected pursuant to BOB MUELLER'S ORDERS FROM FBI HQ to the "never ending civilian retired FBI surveillance program" that used to be called NSA TSP. I can prove that statement.
FBI did not "steal all of my evidence" using "sneak and peak" searches by contract surveillance (same guys I bumped into last night in Death Valley Nat. Park--California).
Now...(after Leahy got Gonzo to admit at USSEN JUD COMM that "The Nsa Tsp is over with") the surveillance and all the dirty tricks are run under some other name or agency...like FUSION CENTERS?...JFLTTF?....HOMELAND SECURITY?...INFRAGUARD?
Nobody really has a clue how MUELLER'S FBI TAMPERS WITH WITNESSES while claiming they are running a 24 year terrorist surveillance that follows no rule of law?
NOT ONE FUCKINGPUSSY CLOWN IN OBAMA'S BOGUS DOJ HQ...under Holder...wants to talk to me, or find out JUST WHAT THE FUCK IS GOING ON?...and how the Dems and Gop are complicit along with Obama when the WAR COMMISSIONS ACT created an Enabling Law that "legalizes any mind control or FBI OPERATION SLAMMER NEUTRALIZATION OF ANY WITNESS" (just as long as the you slander the target as a terrorist or "enemy non combatant"? Read WAR COMMISSIONS ACT...notice that "it could be applied to US Citizens who actually sign US DOJ OIG--FBI OPR COMPLAINTS".)
___________________________
In an email exchange afterward, Hersh said that his statements were “an honest response to a question” from the event’s moderator, U of M Political Scientist Larry Jacobs and “not something I wanted to dwell about in public.”
Hersh didn’t take back the statements, which he said arise from reporting he is doing for a book, but that it might be a year or two before he has what he needs on the topic to be “effective...that is, empirical, for even the most skeptical.”
The evening of great conversation, featuring Walter Mondale and Hersh, moderated by Jacobs and titled “America’s Constitutional Crisis,” looked to be a mostly historical review of events that have tested our Constitution, by a journalist and a high government official who had experience with many of the crises.
And it was mostly historical, and a great conversation, in which Hersh and Mondale talked about the patterns by which presidents seem to get intoxicated by executive power, frustrated by the limitations on that power from Congress and the public, drawn into improper covert actions that exceed their constitutional powers, in the belief that they can get results and will never be found out. Despite a few references to the Founding Fathers, the history was mostly recent, starting with the Vietnam War with much of it arising from the George W. Bush administration, which both men roundly denounced.
At the end of one answer by Hersh about how these things tend to happen, Jacobs asked: “And do they continue to happen to this day?”
Replied Hersh:
“Yuh. After 9/11, I haven’t written about this yet, but the Central Intelligence Agency was very deeply involved in domestic activities against people they thought to be enemies of the state. Without any legal authority for it. They haven’t been called on it yet. That does happen.
"Right now, today, there was a story in the New York Times that if you read it carefully mentioned something known as the Joint Special Operations Command -- JSOC it’s called. It is a special wing of our special operations community that is set up independently. They do not report to anybody, except in the Bush-Cheney days, they reported directly to the Cheney office. They did not report to the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff or to Mr. [Robert] Gates, the secretary of defense. They reported directly to him. ...
"Congress has no oversight of it.
It’s an executive assassination ring essentially, and it’s been going on and on and on. Just today in the Times there was a story that its leaders, a three star admiral named [William H.] McRaven, ordered a stop to it because there were so many collateral deaths.
"Under President Bush’s authority, they’ve been going into countries, not talking to the ambassador or the CIA station chief, and finding people on a list and executing them and leaving. That’s been going on, in the name of all of us.
"It’s complicated because the guys doing it are not murderers, and yet they are committing what we would normally call murder. It’s a very complicated issue. Because they are young men that went into the Special Forces. The Delta Forces you’ve heard about. Navy Seal teams. Highly specialized.
"In many cases, they were the best and the brightest. Really, no exaggerations. Really fine guys that went in to do the kind of necessary jobs that they think you need to do to protect America. And then they find themselves torturing people.
"I’ve had people say to me -- five years ago, I had one say: ‘What do you call it when you interrogate somebody and you leave them bleeding and they don’t get any medical committee and two days later he dies. Is that murder? What happens if I get before a committee?’
"But they’re not gonna get before a committee.”
Hersh, the best-known investigative reporter of his generation, writes about these kinds of issues for The New Yorker. He has written often about JSOC, including, last July that:
“Under the Bush Administration’s interpretation of the law, clandestine military activities, unlike covert C.I.A. operations, do not need to be depicted in a Finding, because the President has a constitutional right to command combat forces in the field without congressional interference.”
(“Finding” refers to a special document that a president must issue, although not make public, to authorize covert CIA actions.)
Here is a tape of the full Mondale-Hersh-Jacobs colloquy, a little over an hour, without the audience Q and A. If you want to look for the Hersh statement quoted above, it’s about at the 7:30 mark.
_________________________________
TOMMY:
Hersh is only scratching the surface.
Hersh did not mention the SOUTH DAKOTA MURDERS AND ATTEMPTED MURDERS that had "absolutely nothing to do with an interrogation" or "the access to info to prevent terrorist attack".
THE TORTURE OF DR MARK GORDON WHO WAS COERCED, THREATENED, HARASSED, AND STALKED BY SIOUX FALLS, SD, FBI AGENT DAN REYNALDS AND DAVE HELLER....had nothing to do with TERRORISM OR STOPPING TERRORISM.
They went after Mark (a totally innocent medical doctor...much like Steven Hatfield, and Dr Ivins, and Brandon Mayfield, and so many others) only because HIS BROTHER WAS RICH GORDON, WHO WAS SD US SENATOR TOM DASCHLE'S EX CHIEF OF STAFF...and...and...RICH WAS TIED TO ME, THROUGH HIS BROTHER MARK GORDON.
Thus...FBI AND DOD DESTROYED MARK GORDON WHILE VIOLATING HIS CIVIL LIBERTIES UNDER COLOR OF LAW AND USED THE NSA TSP with Nsa 902nd COUNTERINTELIGENCE GROUP doing the SIGINT (GPS in car--no warrant...Bug in car--no warrant...Pin Hole Spy Camera in home--no warrant...wiretap using CALEA WIRETAP--no warrant).
HERSH is not near the truth...unless he uses the allegations in my complaint. That complaint was obstructed by GLEN FINE AND LEAHY AND MUELLER, AND THE DOJ HQ taking orders from DARTH CHENEY (ORDERED MURDER OF CHRISTINA MOORE IN ROUND ROCK, TEXAS...to this day a pussy, an Uncle Tom, a House NIgger clown named ERIC HOLDER REFUSES TO DISCUSS THIS FACT PATTERN WITH ME FACE TO FACE?
HOLDER AND OBAMA AND LEAHY AND CONYERS AND MUELLER have all....rolled over on the civil rights of a pregnant christian housewife named CHRISTINA MOORE??????????
_______________________________________
* And the Bush-Cheney years. (Said Hersh: “The contempt for Congress in the Bush-Cheney White House was extaordinary.” Said Mondale of his successor, Cheney, and his inner circle: “they ran a government within the government.” Hersh added: “Eight or nine neoconservatives took over our country.” Mondale said that the precedents of abuse of vice presidential power by Cheney would remain "like a loaded pistol that you leave on the dining room table.")
_____________________
tommy:
NOTICE HOW STUPID HERSH IS?
HE SEEMS TO IMPLY THAT THE FASCISTIC TAKEOVER OF OUR COUNTRY...has some how ended under Obama--Holder--Mueller?
Seymour...you could not be more stupified by Barack's bogus smoke and mirror show.
OBAMA did not pick his cabinet.
The JCS and DOD and CIA sat Obama down in Hawaii...and showed him the dirt they have on him, and they literally told him who his cabinet was gonna be.
Thus...we are stuck with an extorted corrupt Uncle Tom pussy named ERIC HOLDER, a guy who literally DOES NOT PROTECT WITNESSES...DOES NOT WORK PATRIOT ACT MURDERS BY GOP--DOD--FBI?
__________________________________
Jacobs pressed both men on the question of whether the frequent abuses of power show that the Constitution fails, because these things keep happening, or whether it works, because these things keep coming to light.
Mondale stuck with the happy answer. “The system has come through again and again,” he said. Presidents always think they will get away with it, but eventually reporters like Hersh bring things to light, the public “starts smelling this stuff,” the courts and the Congress get involved. Presidents “always, in the long run, find out that the system is stronger than they are.”
Hersh seemed more troubled by the repetitions of the pattern. The “beautiful thing about our system” is that eventually we get new leaders, he said. “The evil twosome, Cheney and Bush, left,” Hersh said. But he also said “it’s really amazing to me that we manage to get such bad leadership, so consistently.”
___________________
TOMMY:
Mr Hersh...you need to do a google search on FBI OPERATION SLAMMER to create extortionate leverage for the OPERATION BROWNSTONE files held on all congressional scum and bogus poseing idiots like ERIC HOLDER, OBAMA, LEAHY, CONYERS, PELOSI, REID, and so many other pretendors.
Mr Hersh...speaking of the CIA...uh...did you notice the timeline evidence that STEVE KAPPES made sure that CHENEY'S NAME SHOWED UP ON THE D.C. MADAME'S PHONE LIST...AND DC MADAME WAS DEAD SOON BEFORE SHE WAS SENTENCED....AND....DIDN'T THE DUKE CUNNINGHAM CASE LEAD TO WATERGATE II VIDEOS....what were those videos for?...is that what OPERATION BROWNSTONE is all about--EXTORTION?.
_____________________
And he added that both the press and the public let down their guard in the aftermath of 9/11.
“The major newspapers joined the [Bush] team,” Hersh said. Top editors passed the message to investigative reporters not to “pick holes” in what Bush was doing. Violations of the Bill of Rights happened in the plain sight of the public. It was not only tolerated, but Bush was re-elected.
__________________
tommy:
HERSH NEVER MENTIONS ROBERT SWAN MUELLER, III.
FBI HQ facilitated and obstructed the WELLSTONE MURDER...when MINNEAPOLIS COUNTERINTELIGENCE SPECIAL AGENT STEVEN PLUTA flew into Duluth, Mn, airport with prior knowledge of Wellstone's murder to scoop up the missing airport logs (NO WARRANT) .
NOTICE that FBI FROM MINNEAPOLIS NOT DULUTH, MINNESOTA FBI were at Wellstone plane crash before anybody else...including the closest FBI office in Duluth, Mn?
FBI HQ is behind all of this.
FBI TOOK INFO FROM MY FATHER, DR DAVID W. BEAN...to locate and identify all future lawyers who would be murdered or maimed with brain strokes, brain tumors, heart attacks, etc.
FBI knows that.
Lately they have been busy HARASSING MY 73 YEAR OLD FATHER, claiming that he OBSTRUCTED JUSTICE when he "allegedly gave me this info".
LATELY, MUELLER sent another stalker to "mouth off to me" in the bathroom at Death Valley National Park. This fuckhead FBI clown mouthed off to me...while I was washing me face in the sink?
SEE, US DOJ OIG--FBI OPR COMPLAINT SIGNED, under penalty of prosecution, BY THOMAS S. BEAN.
MUELLER has consistently granted CRIMINAL IMMUNITY FOR NUMEROUS FELONIES.
BOB ALSO SENT ANOTHER MORON TO FOLLOW ME TO MY REMOTE CAMPSIGHT...AND...MUELLER THINKS HE IS GONNA fuck me around for 24 years?
Karma swings around Bob...you broke it, you buy it fuckhead.
Be a man Bob...don't fag around hiding behind your provocateurs.
BE A MAN MUELLER....MEET ME FACE TO FACE.
FBI IS AND ALWAYS WAS...A MILITARY GOP GESTAPO fronting behind a legitimate law enforcement perogative...and...now...the perogative TERRORISM is used to neutralize Democrats or suspected Democrats like DR MARK GORDON--cooperating MINNEAPOLIS FBI WITNESS COERCED INTO COMING AFTER ME WHILE SF FBI special agents DAVE "fuckface" Heller, and little dead punk DANNY "shithead" Reynalds...violated the rule of law everyday.
3 SOUTH DAKOTA MURDERS BY FBI WORKING WITH DOD CIFA UNIT IN SHRIVER BUILDING downtown Sioux Falls, South Dakota.
BOB NELSON OF NORTH DAKOTA...AIRPLANE falls out of sky....?
MUELLER TESTIFIED THAT HE WAS A FAG, A PUSSY, A LIAR, AND SECRET NAZI PUNK MURDERER when Mueller said, "....I was just following FBI protocol" (reference to FBI contacting the White House about the South Dakota Murders and Christina Moore Murder in Texas).
It all goes to Bob Mueller's perogative.
It all falls on Bob and FBI's ongoing conspiracy to join, aid, abet, and obstruct all CONSPIRACIES TO COMMIT PATRIOT ACT MURDERS.
__________________________
And even Mondale admitted that one of his greatest successes, laws reforming the FBI and CIA in the aftermath of the Church Committee, were supposed to fix the problem so that “we would never have these problems again in the lifetime of anyone alive at the time, but of course we did.”
UPDATE: The CIA responds to Seymour Hersh (via MinnPost)
_____________________________________________
http://www.rutherford.org/articles_db/commentary.asp?record_id=581
The Groundwork Has Already Been Laid for Martial Law
By John W. Whitehead
3/4/2009
During his two terms in office, George W. Bush stepped outside the boundaries of the Constitution and assembled an amazing toolbox of powers that greatly increased the authority of the Executive branch and the reach of the federal government.
Bush expanded presidential power to, among other things:
----, allow government agents to secretly open the private mail of American citizens;
----authorize government agents to secretly,
----and illegally, listen in on the phone calls of American citizens and read our e-mails;
----assume control of the federal government following a "catastrophic event";
----and declare martial law.
Thus, the groundwork was laid for an imperial presidency and a potentially totalitarian government--a state of affairs that has not ended with Barack Obama's ascension to the Oval Office, despite hopes to the contrary that President Obama would fully restore the balance between government and its citizens to a pre-Bush status quo. As Charlie Savage reports in the New York Times, "Signs suggest that the administration's changes may turn out to be less sweeping than many had hoped or feared--prompting growing worry among civil liberties groups and a sense of vindication among supporters of Bush-era policies."
The fact is that the problem is bigger than Obama or any individual who occupies the White House.
Indeed, once the government assumes expansive powers and crosses certain constitutional lines, it's almost impossible to pull back.
Just consider some of the lines that have already been crossed.
The local police have, in many regards, already evolved into de facto extensions of the military. Dressed like Darth Vader look-alikes, the police have opted for the SWAT-team dress formally adopted by the federal agencies. Congressional legislation allows the U.S. military, by way of the Pentagon, to train civilian police. The Pentagon has also provided local police with military equipment such as M-16 rifles, bayonets, boats, vehicles, surveillance equipment, chemical suits and flak jackets, among other items. Thus, they are armed to the teeth.
We already have a federal police force comprised of Secret Service agents who are authorized to "carry firearms; make arrests without a warrant for any offense against the United States committed in their presence." A recent incident demonstrates the increased and immediate involvement of federal agents in local matters with the assistance of local police. Chip Harrison, a construction worker in Oklahoma, was pulled over by local police because of an anti-Obama sign proclaiming "Abort Obama, not the unborn" in his pickup truck window. The sign was confiscated by local police, and Harrison was informed that the sign could be considered a threat to the president. The local police contacted the Secret Service, who, within a matter of hours, came to Harrison's home and investigated the matter. So much for the freedom of expression.
According to the Army Times, we now have at least 20,000 U.S. military troops deployed within our borders to "help with civil unrest and crowd control or to deal with potentially horrific scenarios such as massive poisoning and chaos in response to a chemical, biological, radiological, nuclear or high-yield explosive, or CBRNE, attack." I am not alone in believing that we are just one incident--be it a terrorist attack, a major financial blowout or a widespread natural disaster--away from martial law being declared in this country. And once that happens, the Constitution and Bill of Rights will be suspended and what government officials believe and do, no matter how arbitrary, will become law.
Our methods of communication are already being monitored--and, in some instances, shut down, abetted by the telecommunications giants, which act as extensions of the government. Thus, not only does the government have the ability to open and read our mail, it can also listen in on our phone calls and jam our cell phone calls. As the Washington Post reports, federal authorities already have the ability to jam cell phones and other wireless devices. Unbeknownst to the nearly two million people who attended the Obama Inauguration festivities, federal authorities jammed cell phone signals at specific locations.
Such disruptions simply appear to be a dropped call or lost signal. Of course, such jamming could be conducted on a more extensive basis nationwide. This would prevent citizens from being able to communicate with one another or make appeals to their government representatives. Although jamming is technically illegal for state and local agencies, Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.) plans to introduce legislation to allow local police to "selectively" jam cell phones.
We already live in a surveillance state. There was a time when people could flee when the government got out of control. Now, with our every movement monitored by cameras on sidewalks, streets, ATMs, and in shops, offices, schools and parks, there truly is nowhere to hide. Moreover, equipped with high-powered satellites and massive databases, the government can track us using our cell phones, cars, credit cards, driver's licenses and passports.
For those who have been paying attention, such as former war correspondent Chris Hedges in his Truthdig article, "Bad News From America's Top Spy," it's clear that the groundwork for a seamless transition into martial law under a totalitarian state of government has been laid. And local law enforcement, which has already been serving as a de facto military force, will be the key to maintaining martial law under a police state. Given the interconnectedness of our federal, state and local agencies, you can be sure that all of this will happen quickly.
All that is needed is another threat to national security--a so-called "catastrophic event." Under the Bush administration, the danger was terrorism. Under the Obama administration, the economy is being posed as the greatest threat to national security.
This danger was made clear in a U.S. Army War College report issued last fall. As Hedges reports, "The military must be prepared, the document warned, for a 'violent, strategic dislocation inside the United States,' which could be provoked by 'unforeseen economic collapse,' 'purposeful domestic resistance,' 'pervasive public health emergencies' or 'loss of functioning political and legal order.' The 'widespread civil violence,' the document said, 'would force the defense establishment to reorient priorities in extremis to defend basic domestic order and human security.'"
What does all this mean for you and me, the average citizen? When and if martial law is declared, freedom, as we have known it, will be obsolete. And don't expect much in the way of warning or help from the corporate media. As the war in Iraq showed, they are all too willing to be co-opted by the military for the sake of access and ratings. And there will be many Americans who won't know what's happening. They'll be too busy watching the latest entertainment spectacle and trying to guess the next American Idol.
Thankfully, we have not yet reached the point of no hope. But it must be acknowledged that the average American simply does not have the ability to withstand a totalitarian government.
Right now, all we can do is sound the alarm. Become educated. Form local citizens groups in your community. Educate your neighbors on their rights and inform them about the grave possibilities we face in the event of a government-declared emergency. Keep in almost near-constant contact with your representatives in Congress and voice your discontent. Most of all, stay informed and exercise your right to redress your grievances with the government while you still can.
As abolitionist Wendell Phillips once proclaimed:
Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty--power is ever stealing from the many to the few.... The hand entrusted with power becomes ... the necessary enemy of the people. Only by continual oversight can the democrat in office be prevented from hardening into a despot
Investigative reporter Seymour Hersh describes 'executive assassination ring'
By Eric Black | Published Wed, Mar 11 2009 11:17 am
At a “Great Conversations” event (MP3) at the University of Minnesota last night, legendary investigative reporter Seymour Hersh may have made a little more news than he intended by talking about new alleged instances of domestic spying by the CIA, and about an ongoing covert military operation that he called an “executive assassination ring.”
Hersh spoke with great confidence about these findings from his current reporting, which he hasn’t written about yet.
__________________________
tommy:
I've never talked or communicated with Hersh.
HERSH does not use the personal pronouns happily omitted by clowns like LEAHY, CONYERS, HOLDER, OBAMA when they happily ignore the dispositive facts, rules, laws, and allegations from my numerous and voluminous complaints.
All my communications are illegally suppressed and misdirected pursuant to BOB MUELLER'S ORDERS FROM FBI HQ to the "never ending civilian retired FBI surveillance program" that used to be called NSA TSP. I can prove that statement.
FBI did not "steal all of my evidence" using "sneak and peak" searches by contract surveillance (same guys I bumped into last night in Death Valley Nat. Park--California).
Now...(after Leahy got Gonzo to admit at USSEN JUD COMM that "The Nsa Tsp is over with") the surveillance and all the dirty tricks are run under some other name or agency...like FUSION CENTERS?...JFLTTF?....HOMELAND SECURITY?...INFRAGUARD?
Nobody really has a clue how MUELLER'S FBI TAMPERS WITH WITNESSES while claiming they are running a 24 year terrorist surveillance that follows no rule of law?
NOT ONE FUCKINGPUSSY CLOWN IN OBAMA'S BOGUS DOJ HQ...under Holder...wants to talk to me, or find out JUST WHAT THE FUCK IS GOING ON?...and how the Dems and Gop are complicit along with Obama when the WAR COMMISSIONS ACT created an Enabling Law that "legalizes any mind control or FBI OPERATION SLAMMER NEUTRALIZATION OF ANY WITNESS" (just as long as the you slander the target as a terrorist or "enemy non combatant"? Read WAR COMMISSIONS ACT...notice that "it could be applied to US Citizens who actually sign US DOJ OIG--FBI OPR COMPLAINTS".)
___________________________
In an email exchange afterward, Hersh said that his statements were “an honest response to a question” from the event’s moderator, U of M Political Scientist Larry Jacobs and “not something I wanted to dwell about in public.”
Hersh didn’t take back the statements, which he said arise from reporting he is doing for a book, but that it might be a year or two before he has what he needs on the topic to be “effective...that is, empirical, for even the most skeptical.”
The evening of great conversation, featuring Walter Mondale and Hersh, moderated by Jacobs and titled “America’s Constitutional Crisis,” looked to be a mostly historical review of events that have tested our Constitution, by a journalist and a high government official who had experience with many of the crises.
And it was mostly historical, and a great conversation, in which Hersh and Mondale talked about the patterns by which presidents seem to get intoxicated by executive power, frustrated by the limitations on that power from Congress and the public, drawn into improper covert actions that exceed their constitutional powers, in the belief that they can get results and will never be found out. Despite a few references to the Founding Fathers, the history was mostly recent, starting with the Vietnam War with much of it arising from the George W. Bush administration, which both men roundly denounced.
At the end of one answer by Hersh about how these things tend to happen, Jacobs asked: “And do they continue to happen to this day?”
Replied Hersh:
“Yuh. After 9/11, I haven’t written about this yet, but the Central Intelligence Agency was very deeply involved in domestic activities against people they thought to be enemies of the state. Without any legal authority for it. They haven’t been called on it yet. That does happen.
"Right now, today, there was a story in the New York Times that if you read it carefully mentioned something known as the Joint Special Operations Command -- JSOC it’s called. It is a special wing of our special operations community that is set up independently. They do not report to anybody, except in the Bush-Cheney days, they reported directly to the Cheney office. They did not report to the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff or to Mr. [Robert] Gates, the secretary of defense. They reported directly to him. ...
"Congress has no oversight of it.
It’s an executive assassination ring essentially, and it’s been going on and on and on. Just today in the Times there was a story that its leaders, a three star admiral named [William H.] McRaven, ordered a stop to it because there were so many collateral deaths.
"Under President Bush’s authority, they’ve been going into countries, not talking to the ambassador or the CIA station chief, and finding people on a list and executing them and leaving. That’s been going on, in the name of all of us.
"It’s complicated because the guys doing it are not murderers, and yet they are committing what we would normally call murder. It’s a very complicated issue. Because they are young men that went into the Special Forces. The Delta Forces you’ve heard about. Navy Seal teams. Highly specialized.
"In many cases, they were the best and the brightest. Really, no exaggerations. Really fine guys that went in to do the kind of necessary jobs that they think you need to do to protect America. And then they find themselves torturing people.
"I’ve had people say to me -- five years ago, I had one say: ‘What do you call it when you interrogate somebody and you leave them bleeding and they don’t get any medical committee and two days later he dies. Is that murder? What happens if I get before a committee?’
"But they’re not gonna get before a committee.”
Hersh, the best-known investigative reporter of his generation, writes about these kinds of issues for The New Yorker. He has written often about JSOC, including, last July that:
“Under the Bush Administration’s interpretation of the law, clandestine military activities, unlike covert C.I.A. operations, do not need to be depicted in a Finding, because the President has a constitutional right to command combat forces in the field without congressional interference.”
(“Finding” refers to a special document that a president must issue, although not make public, to authorize covert CIA actions.)
Here is a tape of the full Mondale-Hersh-Jacobs colloquy, a little over an hour, without the audience Q and A. If you want to look for the Hersh statement quoted above, it’s about at the 7:30 mark.
_________________________________
TOMMY:
Hersh is only scratching the surface.
Hersh did not mention the SOUTH DAKOTA MURDERS AND ATTEMPTED MURDERS that had "absolutely nothing to do with an interrogation" or "the access to info to prevent terrorist attack".
THE TORTURE OF DR MARK GORDON WHO WAS COERCED, THREATENED, HARASSED, AND STALKED BY SIOUX FALLS, SD, FBI AGENT DAN REYNALDS AND DAVE HELLER....had nothing to do with TERRORISM OR STOPPING TERRORISM.
They went after Mark (a totally innocent medical doctor...much like Steven Hatfield, and Dr Ivins, and Brandon Mayfield, and so many others) only because HIS BROTHER WAS RICH GORDON, WHO WAS SD US SENATOR TOM DASCHLE'S EX CHIEF OF STAFF...and...and...RICH WAS TIED TO ME, THROUGH HIS BROTHER MARK GORDON.
Thus...FBI AND DOD DESTROYED MARK GORDON WHILE VIOLATING HIS CIVIL LIBERTIES UNDER COLOR OF LAW AND USED THE NSA TSP with Nsa 902nd COUNTERINTELIGENCE GROUP doing the SIGINT (GPS in car--no warrant...Bug in car--no warrant...Pin Hole Spy Camera in home--no warrant...wiretap using CALEA WIRETAP--no warrant).
HERSH is not near the truth...unless he uses the allegations in my complaint. That complaint was obstructed by GLEN FINE AND LEAHY AND MUELLER, AND THE DOJ HQ taking orders from DARTH CHENEY (ORDERED MURDER OF CHRISTINA MOORE IN ROUND ROCK, TEXAS...to this day a pussy, an Uncle Tom, a House NIgger clown named ERIC HOLDER REFUSES TO DISCUSS THIS FACT PATTERN WITH ME FACE TO FACE?
HOLDER AND OBAMA AND LEAHY AND CONYERS AND MUELLER have all....rolled over on the civil rights of a pregnant christian housewife named CHRISTINA MOORE??????????
_______________________________________
* And the Bush-Cheney years. (Said Hersh: “The contempt for Congress in the Bush-Cheney White House was extaordinary.” Said Mondale of his successor, Cheney, and his inner circle: “they ran a government within the government.” Hersh added: “Eight or nine neoconservatives took over our country.” Mondale said that the precedents of abuse of vice presidential power by Cheney would remain "like a loaded pistol that you leave on the dining room table.")
_____________________
tommy:
NOTICE HOW STUPID HERSH IS?
HE SEEMS TO IMPLY THAT THE FASCISTIC TAKEOVER OF OUR COUNTRY...has some how ended under Obama--Holder--Mueller?
Seymour...you could not be more stupified by Barack's bogus smoke and mirror show.
OBAMA did not pick his cabinet.
The JCS and DOD and CIA sat Obama down in Hawaii...and showed him the dirt they have on him, and they literally told him who his cabinet was gonna be.
Thus...we are stuck with an extorted corrupt Uncle Tom pussy named ERIC HOLDER, a guy who literally DOES NOT PROTECT WITNESSES...DOES NOT WORK PATRIOT ACT MURDERS BY GOP--DOD--FBI?
__________________________________
Jacobs pressed both men on the question of whether the frequent abuses of power show that the Constitution fails, because these things keep happening, or whether it works, because these things keep coming to light.
Mondale stuck with the happy answer. “The system has come through again and again,” he said. Presidents always think they will get away with it, but eventually reporters like Hersh bring things to light, the public “starts smelling this stuff,” the courts and the Congress get involved. Presidents “always, in the long run, find out that the system is stronger than they are.”
Hersh seemed more troubled by the repetitions of the pattern. The “beautiful thing about our system” is that eventually we get new leaders, he said. “The evil twosome, Cheney and Bush, left,” Hersh said. But he also said “it’s really amazing to me that we manage to get such bad leadership, so consistently.”
___________________
TOMMY:
Mr Hersh...you need to do a google search on FBI OPERATION SLAMMER to create extortionate leverage for the OPERATION BROWNSTONE files held on all congressional scum and bogus poseing idiots like ERIC HOLDER, OBAMA, LEAHY, CONYERS, PELOSI, REID, and so many other pretendors.
Mr Hersh...speaking of the CIA...uh...did you notice the timeline evidence that STEVE KAPPES made sure that CHENEY'S NAME SHOWED UP ON THE D.C. MADAME'S PHONE LIST...AND DC MADAME WAS DEAD SOON BEFORE SHE WAS SENTENCED....AND....DIDN'T THE DUKE CUNNINGHAM CASE LEAD TO WATERGATE II VIDEOS....what were those videos for?...is that what OPERATION BROWNSTONE is all about--EXTORTION?.
_____________________
And he added that both the press and the public let down their guard in the aftermath of 9/11.
“The major newspapers joined the [Bush] team,” Hersh said. Top editors passed the message to investigative reporters not to “pick holes” in what Bush was doing. Violations of the Bill of Rights happened in the plain sight of the public. It was not only tolerated, but Bush was re-elected.
__________________
tommy:
HERSH NEVER MENTIONS ROBERT SWAN MUELLER, III.
FBI HQ facilitated and obstructed the WELLSTONE MURDER...when MINNEAPOLIS COUNTERINTELIGENCE SPECIAL AGENT STEVEN PLUTA flew into Duluth, Mn, airport with prior knowledge of Wellstone's murder to scoop up the missing airport logs (NO WARRANT) .
NOTICE that FBI FROM MINNEAPOLIS NOT DULUTH, MINNESOTA FBI were at Wellstone plane crash before anybody else...including the closest FBI office in Duluth, Mn?
FBI HQ is behind all of this.
FBI TOOK INFO FROM MY FATHER, DR DAVID W. BEAN...to locate and identify all future lawyers who would be murdered or maimed with brain strokes, brain tumors, heart attacks, etc.
FBI knows that.
Lately they have been busy HARASSING MY 73 YEAR OLD FATHER, claiming that he OBSTRUCTED JUSTICE when he "allegedly gave me this info".
LATELY, MUELLER sent another stalker to "mouth off to me" in the bathroom at Death Valley National Park. This fuckhead FBI clown mouthed off to me...while I was washing me face in the sink?
SEE, US DOJ OIG--FBI OPR COMPLAINT SIGNED, under penalty of prosecution, BY THOMAS S. BEAN.
MUELLER has consistently granted CRIMINAL IMMUNITY FOR NUMEROUS FELONIES.
BOB ALSO SENT ANOTHER MORON TO FOLLOW ME TO MY REMOTE CAMPSIGHT...AND...MUELLER THINKS HE IS GONNA fuck me around for 24 years?
Karma swings around Bob...you broke it, you buy it fuckhead.
Be a man Bob...don't fag around hiding behind your provocateurs.
BE A MAN MUELLER....MEET ME FACE TO FACE.
FBI IS AND ALWAYS WAS...A MILITARY GOP GESTAPO fronting behind a legitimate law enforcement perogative...and...now...the perogative TERRORISM is used to neutralize Democrats or suspected Democrats like DR MARK GORDON--cooperating MINNEAPOLIS FBI WITNESS COERCED INTO COMING AFTER ME WHILE SF FBI special agents DAVE "fuckface" Heller, and little dead punk DANNY "shithead" Reynalds...violated the rule of law everyday.
3 SOUTH DAKOTA MURDERS BY FBI WORKING WITH DOD CIFA UNIT IN SHRIVER BUILDING downtown Sioux Falls, South Dakota.
BOB NELSON OF NORTH DAKOTA...AIRPLANE falls out of sky....?
MUELLER TESTIFIED THAT HE WAS A FAG, A PUSSY, A LIAR, AND SECRET NAZI PUNK MURDERER when Mueller said, "....I was just following FBI protocol" (reference to FBI contacting the White House about the South Dakota Murders and Christina Moore Murder in Texas).
It all goes to Bob Mueller's perogative.
It all falls on Bob and FBI's ongoing conspiracy to join, aid, abet, and obstruct all CONSPIRACIES TO COMMIT PATRIOT ACT MURDERS.
__________________________
And even Mondale admitted that one of his greatest successes, laws reforming the FBI and CIA in the aftermath of the Church Committee, were supposed to fix the problem so that “we would never have these problems again in the lifetime of anyone alive at the time, but of course we did.”
UPDATE: The CIA responds to Seymour Hersh (via MinnPost)
_____________________________________________
http://www.rutherford.org/articles_db/commentary.asp?record_id=581
The Groundwork Has Already Been Laid for Martial Law
By John W. Whitehead
3/4/2009
During his two terms in office, George W. Bush stepped outside the boundaries of the Constitution and assembled an amazing toolbox of powers that greatly increased the authority of the Executive branch and the reach of the federal government.
Bush expanded presidential power to, among other things:
----, allow government agents to secretly open the private mail of American citizens;
----authorize government agents to secretly,
----and illegally, listen in on the phone calls of American citizens and read our e-mails;
----assume control of the federal government following a "catastrophic event";
----and declare martial law.
Thus, the groundwork was laid for an imperial presidency and a potentially totalitarian government--a state of affairs that has not ended with Barack Obama's ascension to the Oval Office, despite hopes to the contrary that President Obama would fully restore the balance between government and its citizens to a pre-Bush status quo. As Charlie Savage reports in the New York Times, "Signs suggest that the administration's changes may turn out to be less sweeping than many had hoped or feared--prompting growing worry among civil liberties groups and a sense of vindication among supporters of Bush-era policies."
The fact is that the problem is bigger than Obama or any individual who occupies the White House.
Indeed, once the government assumes expansive powers and crosses certain constitutional lines, it's almost impossible to pull back.
Just consider some of the lines that have already been crossed.
The local police have, in many regards, already evolved into de facto extensions of the military. Dressed like Darth Vader look-alikes, the police have opted for the SWAT-team dress formally adopted by the federal agencies. Congressional legislation allows the U.S. military, by way of the Pentagon, to train civilian police. The Pentagon has also provided local police with military equipment such as M-16 rifles, bayonets, boats, vehicles, surveillance equipment, chemical suits and flak jackets, among other items. Thus, they are armed to the teeth.
We already have a federal police force comprised of Secret Service agents who are authorized to "carry firearms; make arrests without a warrant for any offense against the United States committed in their presence." A recent incident demonstrates the increased and immediate involvement of federal agents in local matters with the assistance of local police. Chip Harrison, a construction worker in Oklahoma, was pulled over by local police because of an anti-Obama sign proclaiming "Abort Obama, not the unborn" in his pickup truck window. The sign was confiscated by local police, and Harrison was informed that the sign could be considered a threat to the president. The local police contacted the Secret Service, who, within a matter of hours, came to Harrison's home and investigated the matter. So much for the freedom of expression.
According to the Army Times, we now have at least 20,000 U.S. military troops deployed within our borders to "help with civil unrest and crowd control or to deal with potentially horrific scenarios such as massive poisoning and chaos in response to a chemical, biological, radiological, nuclear or high-yield explosive, or CBRNE, attack." I am not alone in believing that we are just one incident--be it a terrorist attack, a major financial blowout or a widespread natural disaster--away from martial law being declared in this country. And once that happens, the Constitution and Bill of Rights will be suspended and what government officials believe and do, no matter how arbitrary, will become law.
Our methods of communication are already being monitored--and, in some instances, shut down, abetted by the telecommunications giants, which act as extensions of the government. Thus, not only does the government have the ability to open and read our mail, it can also listen in on our phone calls and jam our cell phone calls. As the Washington Post reports, federal authorities already have the ability to jam cell phones and other wireless devices. Unbeknownst to the nearly two million people who attended the Obama Inauguration festivities, federal authorities jammed cell phone signals at specific locations.
Such disruptions simply appear to be a dropped call or lost signal. Of course, such jamming could be conducted on a more extensive basis nationwide. This would prevent citizens from being able to communicate with one another or make appeals to their government representatives. Although jamming is technically illegal for state and local agencies, Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.) plans to introduce legislation to allow local police to "selectively" jam cell phones.
We already live in a surveillance state. There was a time when people could flee when the government got out of control. Now, with our every movement monitored by cameras on sidewalks, streets, ATMs, and in shops, offices, schools and parks, there truly is nowhere to hide. Moreover, equipped with high-powered satellites and massive databases, the government can track us using our cell phones, cars, credit cards, driver's licenses and passports.
For those who have been paying attention, such as former war correspondent Chris Hedges in his Truthdig article, "Bad News From America's Top Spy," it's clear that the groundwork for a seamless transition into martial law under a totalitarian state of government has been laid. And local law enforcement, which has already been serving as a de facto military force, will be the key to maintaining martial law under a police state. Given the interconnectedness of our federal, state and local agencies, you can be sure that all of this will happen quickly.
All that is needed is another threat to national security--a so-called "catastrophic event." Under the Bush administration, the danger was terrorism. Under the Obama administration, the economy is being posed as the greatest threat to national security.
This danger was made clear in a U.S. Army War College report issued last fall. As Hedges reports, "The military must be prepared, the document warned, for a 'violent, strategic dislocation inside the United States,' which could be provoked by 'unforeseen economic collapse,' 'purposeful domestic resistance,' 'pervasive public health emergencies' or 'loss of functioning political and legal order.' The 'widespread civil violence,' the document said, 'would force the defense establishment to reorient priorities in extremis to defend basic domestic order and human security.'"
What does all this mean for you and me, the average citizen? When and if martial law is declared, freedom, as we have known it, will be obsolete. And don't expect much in the way of warning or help from the corporate media. As the war in Iraq showed, they are all too willing to be co-opted by the military for the sake of access and ratings. And there will be many Americans who won't know what's happening. They'll be too busy watching the latest entertainment spectacle and trying to guess the next American Idol.
Thankfully, we have not yet reached the point of no hope. But it must be acknowledged that the average American simply does not have the ability to withstand a totalitarian government.
Right now, all we can do is sound the alarm. Become educated. Form local citizens groups in your community. Educate your neighbors on their rights and inform them about the grave possibilities we face in the event of a government-declared emergency. Keep in almost near-constant contact with your representatives in Congress and voice your discontent. Most of all, stay informed and exercise your right to redress your grievances with the government while you still can.
As abolitionist Wendell Phillips once proclaimed:
Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty--power is ever stealing from the many to the few.... The hand entrusted with power becomes ... the necessary enemy of the people. Only by continual oversight can the democrat in office be prevented from hardening into a despot
Tuesday, March 10, 2009
Chris Storey's latest: Queen's 52 billion restored?...who stole it before?
http://worldreports.org/news/200_queens_52_billion_stolen_under_obamas_regime
QUEEN'S FUNDS WITHDRAWN ON 29TH JANUARY 2009 AFTER OBAMA CAME TO OFFICE
It will be recalled that we have reported that the $14.0 trillion of real cash-cash funds, the only 'real' and clean money in the system, had to be withdrawn from access by US authorities altogether and that the withdrawal of these funds occurred on 29th January 2009.
This fact, which we had already reported, was confirmed to the Editor of this service on 3rd March 2009 by a British intelligence source.
The $14.0 trillion had consisted of the $6.2 trillion made available by Her Majesty the Queen, with a proportion owned by Prince Al-Aweed Al-Talal of Saudi Arabia, via the Bank of England on 19th-20th June 2007, to Bank of New York Mellon for use as the basis for the Group of Seven (G-7)-approved Refunding Programme of transparent, fully taxed private sector Capital Markets trading operations to reliquefy the delinquent banks ON THE BOOKS, and that the $6.2 trillion cash represented LOAN funds which had nothing whatsoever to do with any other funds referenced in earlier reports.
It will also be recalled that we have reported that the $6.2 trillion languished for 19 months within the Custodial Account system under Paulson US Treasury control within US money center banks, and was not used for the purpose for which it was intended, but was corruptly redeployed instead to generate illicit funds for the corrupt banker's ramp carousel and for the enrichment of holders of the highest offices in the United States and their corrupt attorneys, intermediaries and others.
In our posting dated 5th March 2009, we reported that prior to the $14.0 trillion (incorporating the $6.2 trillion) being repatriated, an amount of $50 billion of The Queen's funds had allegedly been stolen. We included the word 'allegedly', although we KNEW that $52 billion HAD been STOLEN.
Moreover as reported, the $6.2 trillion plus the Chinese segments aggregating $7.8 trillion were removed from any possibility of being accessed by US parties on 29th January 2009, namely just over a week AFTER President Barack Obama entered the White House.
MANIFESTLY, if there had been a problem of theft PRIOR TO OBAMA COMING TO OFFICE, the funds would have been removed from access by the corrupt US authorities BEFORE Mr Barack Hussein Obama entered the White House, wouldn't they?
• The British authorities concerned wouldn't have wanted to cause the incoming Obama Administration embarassment by removing the funds after the Inauguration.
• Diplomacy, and all that.
• INSTEAD OF WHICH the funds were removed from access AFTER the Inauguration.
SO THE $52 BILLION OF HMQ'S MONEY ('GUARANTEES') WERE STOLEN UNDER OBAMA
From which it is A CERTAINTY that the $52 billion that were STOLEN from The Queen's LOAN funds were sliced AFTER OBAMA ENTERED THE WHITE HOUSE, AND NOT BEFORE.
• FACT: Therefore, the theft occurred under President Obama and NOT under his predecessor.
Which must be a FACT that the White House would prefer that we hadn't UNDERSTOOD.
• Next point:
On Friday 6th March 2009, between approximately 8:19 EST and 8:20 EST, Michael C. Cottrell, B.A., M.S., the US securities expert, received a telephone call from a Gold Badge who advised him that a 'clarification' was 'necessary' regarding 'the $50 billion of The Queen's money allegedly stolen prior to repatriation' (citing the Editor's language used in the report dated 5th March 2009).
The 'clarification' that he wanted made (should the Editor so agree to it, at his sole discretion) was that this text should be amended to read:
'$52 billion of guarantees by The Queen' and that no cash was stolen.
HOWEVER, a signed guarantee is a signed guarantee, and one issued by a Head of State is better than CASH, don't you know. So, what we have now found out is as follows:
• US authorities UNDER OBAMA ADMIT that value of $52 billion belonging to The Queen was STOLEN, thereby acknowledging the accuracy of our report to this effect dated 5th March 2009.
• Stealing guarantees means that The Queen's guarantees, if they were stolen rather than actual cash, were stolen BECAUSE THEY WERE TO BE USED FOR PURPOSES OTHER THAN THOSE THAT WERE INTENDED BY THE GUARANTOR. This is A GROSS ACT OF ECONOMIC WARFARE.
NO WONDER THAT THE VIBES BETWEEN OBAMA AND BROWN DURING HIS RECENT VISIT TO WASHINGTON WERE SO BAD.
NO WONDER COMPLICIT VICE PRESIDENT BIDEN LOOKED LIKE A SOUR JACKASS AS HE SAT WITH A SIMILAR BLANK EXPRESSION TO CHENEY BEHIND THE BRITISH PRIME MINISTER AS HE DELIVERED HIS PRAISE FOR THE VERY CROOKS WHO HAVE STOLEN FROM THE QUEEN AND ARE CONTINUING TO RAPE AND PILLAGE THEIR FELLOW AMERICANS AND THE REST OF THE WORLD UNDER BARACK HUSSEIN OBAMA 'AS WE SPEAK'.
• If it is the case that guarantees rather than cash were stolen, then we suggest that the publicity we have given and are giving to this matter must, by definition, render the illegal and corrupt use of those guarantees for duplicitous, illicit purposes UNDER THE B. OBAMA REGIME impossible now, since every Government and every bank in the world will be appraised of this latest instance of official corruption at the highest level of the US Government, under President Obama as under his predecessors, just as soon as this report has been posted.
• BUT IF the guarantees have already been deployed, those parties thereto will have become co-conspirators in this de facto Act of US Economic Warfare against the United Kingdom committed under the Obama Administration and should immediately UNWIND THE TRANSACTIONS and/or the relationships involved, or face the consequences.
THE EDITOR MAKES HIS OWN 'CLARIFICATION'
Finally, the Editor would like to make the following further 'clarification':
• Pressure has been exerted from the White House on the Editor of this service to post certain information (in our possession), the overall effect of which would be to serve the Obama White House's interest in focusing the entire blame for specific thefts and fraud, and generally for the ongoing, unresolved financial chaos, on the corrupt predecessor Administration, and away from the present US Government and White House.
• The Editor was not born yesterday, although yesterday was in fact his birthday.
• If it was all the Bush II Administration's fault, why then was the US Dollar Refunding not at once implemented as agreed by the G-7 Financial powers in 2007 and 2008, why have the Settlements been sabotaged SO FAR, as under the despicable George Bush regime, and why was $52 BILLION OF THE QUEEN'S MONEY STOLEN, and why this nit-picking differentiation between $52 billion cash and $52 billion of guarantees by a Head of State?
• Is it seriously suggested that stealing $52 billion of guarantees by a HEAD OF STATE is a LESSER CRIME than stealing $52 billion in cash?
But thanks anyway to the Gold Badge for confirming the theft, which took place UNDER OBAMA AND NOT BEFORE HE ENTERED THE WHITE HOUSE.
• Thought you'd all appreciate this 'clarification'.
• UPDATES APPENDED AT 3:OOAM UK TIME 1OTH MARCH 2009:
(1) We have been advised that the matter of the $52 billion of The Queen's 'guarantees' has now been 'rectified' by or on the instructions of President Obama.
This BEGS THE QUESTION of why they were 'removed' in the first place: AND WE KNOW THAT THEY WERE MISSING WHEN THE LOAN FUNDS WERE WITHDRAWN, as this information was provided inter alia by a Gold Badge source, and it has now been separately confirmed that the $52 billion of 'guarantees' were indeed 'restored'. (Clearly if they have been 'restored', that is because they were previously missing).
• So, WHEN were the $52 billion 'restored', exactly?
AFTER the appearance of the present report, which rendered the 'guarantees' USELESS when corruptly applied for a purpose for which they were not intended, by any chance?
(2) We have not published certain other detailed information supplied to us, for the reason set out above, namely that it focuses attention on certain criminal acts under the Bush II regime, whereas the crisis the world faces is being experienced UNDER PRESIDENT OBAMA and Vice President Joe Biden, who have the power to resolve matters but have conspicuously failed, so far, to do so.
We are not satisfied that the information that certain forces want us to publish has been proffered for straightforward reasons, and until such time as this is clarified to our satisfaction, the Editor exercises his prerogative not to publish the information [see above].
(3) Nor is this White House enforcing the Rule of Law.
• For instance, the Clintons are reported to have been able to REMOVE all their ill-gotten money from Citibank. Excu...se us? Those funds were FROZEN when the Provost Marshal was replaced by a new Provost Marshal way back, remember?
• So we suspect that Clinton's gopher, Robert Rubin, has procured the removal of the Clinton funds from Citibank and that he did this before he himself left the institution.
• If this is correct, then the new White House has allowed a disgracefully corrupt state of affairs to remain unaddressed, and THAT IS NOT GOOD ENOUGH AND IS NOT CONSISTENT WITH PLEAS THAT WE HEAR TO THE EFFECT THAT PRESIDENT OBAMA IS A 'WHITE HAT'.
• On the evidence to date, his hat is getting rather dirty, and the dirt comes off the hands of the scumbags in his entourage.
(4) We are advised that the oft-braceleted Dr Alan 'Greenspan was flung into jail yesterday, and that a sensitive meeting took place on Monday to 'decide his fate'. One is tempted to ask why on earth it is necessary to hold a meeting to decide whether this crook has now committed enough crimes to warrant APPLICATION OF THE RULE OF LAW: or could it be that he holds so much dirt on those who are trying to decide what to do with him, that they are prepared to go on fiddling while the whole international financial system collapses, stupid fools, around their ears?
(5) After propaganda all weekend to the effect that the Settlements were on track for progress and implementation on 9th March, NOTHING HAPPENED, even though Citibank had been advised that if the payments were not effected as required on 9th March, Citibank will be subjected to a straight FDIC takeover (which was supposed to happen overnight: we'll see).
(7) The Editor has detailed information on the Stanford dimension of the crisis, plus the open domain intelligence on Vice President Biden's involvement, and this report takes precedence, although there is still some work left to do on it (on top of the Editor's other publishing work).
• FACT: Stanford, from Houston, TX, took over where Noriega left off, as a primary Ponzi scheme operative working with/for the Bushes. DVD drug-running operative Carlos Lehder 'testified' in Noriega's trial (although his testimony was a rant and was superfluous to requirements), and was the source of the $40 million procured by a Bush Sr. Attorney to pay off key political structures in 2000 when the election was being stolen, and to silence the law enforcement, plus the legal and penitentiary personnel, when Lehder, in exchange, was whisked from long-term incarceration and extradited to GERMANY.
Naturlich. Our sources reported that the political structures in question recieved $32 million and the corrupted personnel $8 million, on that happy and lucrative occasion.
• SWINDLER'S LIST UPDATE: Sherman Oaks-based mortgage banker Bruce Friedman, whose
Friedman Charitable Foundation committed $10 million to the Children’s Museum of Los Angeles and $1 million to Brandon’s Village, a special-needs park in Calabasas, has been indicted on securities fraud charges by the Securities and Exchange Commission [9th March 2009].
The SEC alleges that Friedman, along with his two companies, Diversified Lending Group (DLG) and Applied Equities, Inc. (AEI), perpetrated a $216 million real estate investment fraud scheme, raising money from investors nationwide, many of whom are seniors, promising guaranteed high returns via real estate investments. Another PONZI FRAUD bites the dust.
The SEC complaint alleges that Friedman diverted substantial investor money to ventures that were unrelated to real estate, and misappropriated at least $17 million to support his hyperlavish lifestyle, including purchases of a luxury home, cars, vacations, jewellery, and designer clothing for himself and a female of his acquaintance. The SEC has frozen DLG’s, AEI’s and Friedman’s assets.
OK, small fry compared with Madoff, Stanford, the Bushes, the Clintons, Dr Alan 'god' Greenspoon, and all the other notorious criminals that we have to report about. But shoals of 'little fish' like this sheister are cruising for the appropriate bruising, and it'll continue like this for YEARS AND YEARS.
Mopping up the lesser sheisters makes US law enforcement, after years of neglect, both look good and feel good about itself: whereas, what is actually happening is that most Americans are asking with extreme impatience, now: WHY ARE THE GIGA-CROOKS WALKING, when they should all have been arrested and decapitated BEFORE THIS PREDICTED CRISIS RAN OUT OF CONTROL?
• The sordid answer which is being SUPPRESSED is this: 'BECAUSE WE WANT TO BE PAID, TOO'
QUEEN'S FUNDS WITHDRAWN ON 29TH JANUARY 2009 AFTER OBAMA CAME TO OFFICE
It will be recalled that we have reported that the $14.0 trillion of real cash-cash funds, the only 'real' and clean money in the system, had to be withdrawn from access by US authorities altogether and that the withdrawal of these funds occurred on 29th January 2009.
This fact, which we had already reported, was confirmed to the Editor of this service on 3rd March 2009 by a British intelligence source.
The $14.0 trillion had consisted of the $6.2 trillion made available by Her Majesty the Queen, with a proportion owned by Prince Al-Aweed Al-Talal of Saudi Arabia, via the Bank of England on 19th-20th June 2007, to Bank of New York Mellon for use as the basis for the Group of Seven (G-7)-approved Refunding Programme of transparent, fully taxed private sector Capital Markets trading operations to reliquefy the delinquent banks ON THE BOOKS, and that the $6.2 trillion cash represented LOAN funds which had nothing whatsoever to do with any other funds referenced in earlier reports.
It will also be recalled that we have reported that the $6.2 trillion languished for 19 months within the Custodial Account system under Paulson US Treasury control within US money center banks, and was not used for the purpose for which it was intended, but was corruptly redeployed instead to generate illicit funds for the corrupt banker's ramp carousel and for the enrichment of holders of the highest offices in the United States and their corrupt attorneys, intermediaries and others.
In our posting dated 5th March 2009, we reported that prior to the $14.0 trillion (incorporating the $6.2 trillion) being repatriated, an amount of $50 billion of The Queen's funds had allegedly been stolen. We included the word 'allegedly', although we KNEW that $52 billion HAD been STOLEN.
Moreover as reported, the $6.2 trillion plus the Chinese segments aggregating $7.8 trillion were removed from any possibility of being accessed by US parties on 29th January 2009, namely just over a week AFTER President Barack Obama entered the White House.
MANIFESTLY, if there had been a problem of theft PRIOR TO OBAMA COMING TO OFFICE, the funds would have been removed from access by the corrupt US authorities BEFORE Mr Barack Hussein Obama entered the White House, wouldn't they?
• The British authorities concerned wouldn't have wanted to cause the incoming Obama Administration embarassment by removing the funds after the Inauguration.
• Diplomacy, and all that.
• INSTEAD OF WHICH the funds were removed from access AFTER the Inauguration.
SO THE $52 BILLION OF HMQ'S MONEY ('GUARANTEES') WERE STOLEN UNDER OBAMA
From which it is A CERTAINTY that the $52 billion that were STOLEN from The Queen's LOAN funds were sliced AFTER OBAMA ENTERED THE WHITE HOUSE, AND NOT BEFORE.
• FACT: Therefore, the theft occurred under President Obama and NOT under his predecessor.
Which must be a FACT that the White House would prefer that we hadn't UNDERSTOOD.
• Next point:
On Friday 6th March 2009, between approximately 8:19 EST and 8:20 EST, Michael C. Cottrell, B.A., M.S., the US securities expert, received a telephone call from a Gold Badge who advised him that a 'clarification' was 'necessary' regarding 'the $50 billion of The Queen's money allegedly stolen prior to repatriation' (citing the Editor's language used in the report dated 5th March 2009).
The 'clarification' that he wanted made (should the Editor so agree to it, at his sole discretion) was that this text should be amended to read:
'$52 billion of guarantees by The Queen' and that no cash was stolen.
HOWEVER, a signed guarantee is a signed guarantee, and one issued by a Head of State is better than CASH, don't you know. So, what we have now found out is as follows:
• US authorities UNDER OBAMA ADMIT that value of $52 billion belonging to The Queen was STOLEN, thereby acknowledging the accuracy of our report to this effect dated 5th March 2009.
• Stealing guarantees means that The Queen's guarantees, if they were stolen rather than actual cash, were stolen BECAUSE THEY WERE TO BE USED FOR PURPOSES OTHER THAN THOSE THAT WERE INTENDED BY THE GUARANTOR. This is A GROSS ACT OF ECONOMIC WARFARE.
NO WONDER THAT THE VIBES BETWEEN OBAMA AND BROWN DURING HIS RECENT VISIT TO WASHINGTON WERE SO BAD.
NO WONDER COMPLICIT VICE PRESIDENT BIDEN LOOKED LIKE A SOUR JACKASS AS HE SAT WITH A SIMILAR BLANK EXPRESSION TO CHENEY BEHIND THE BRITISH PRIME MINISTER AS HE DELIVERED HIS PRAISE FOR THE VERY CROOKS WHO HAVE STOLEN FROM THE QUEEN AND ARE CONTINUING TO RAPE AND PILLAGE THEIR FELLOW AMERICANS AND THE REST OF THE WORLD UNDER BARACK HUSSEIN OBAMA 'AS WE SPEAK'.
• If it is the case that guarantees rather than cash were stolen, then we suggest that the publicity we have given and are giving to this matter must, by definition, render the illegal and corrupt use of those guarantees for duplicitous, illicit purposes UNDER THE B. OBAMA REGIME impossible now, since every Government and every bank in the world will be appraised of this latest instance of official corruption at the highest level of the US Government, under President Obama as under his predecessors, just as soon as this report has been posted.
• BUT IF the guarantees have already been deployed, those parties thereto will have become co-conspirators in this de facto Act of US Economic Warfare against the United Kingdom committed under the Obama Administration and should immediately UNWIND THE TRANSACTIONS and/or the relationships involved, or face the consequences.
THE EDITOR MAKES HIS OWN 'CLARIFICATION'
Finally, the Editor would like to make the following further 'clarification':
• Pressure has been exerted from the White House on the Editor of this service to post certain information (in our possession), the overall effect of which would be to serve the Obama White House's interest in focusing the entire blame for specific thefts and fraud, and generally for the ongoing, unresolved financial chaos, on the corrupt predecessor Administration, and away from the present US Government and White House.
• The Editor was not born yesterday, although yesterday was in fact his birthday.
• If it was all the Bush II Administration's fault, why then was the US Dollar Refunding not at once implemented as agreed by the G-7 Financial powers in 2007 and 2008, why have the Settlements been sabotaged SO FAR, as under the despicable George Bush regime, and why was $52 BILLION OF THE QUEEN'S MONEY STOLEN, and why this nit-picking differentiation between $52 billion cash and $52 billion of guarantees by a Head of State?
• Is it seriously suggested that stealing $52 billion of guarantees by a HEAD OF STATE is a LESSER CRIME than stealing $52 billion in cash?
But thanks anyway to the Gold Badge for confirming the theft, which took place UNDER OBAMA AND NOT BEFORE HE ENTERED THE WHITE HOUSE.
• Thought you'd all appreciate this 'clarification'.
• UPDATES APPENDED AT 3:OOAM UK TIME 1OTH MARCH 2009:
(1) We have been advised that the matter of the $52 billion of The Queen's 'guarantees' has now been 'rectified' by or on the instructions of President Obama.
This BEGS THE QUESTION of why they were 'removed' in the first place: AND WE KNOW THAT THEY WERE MISSING WHEN THE LOAN FUNDS WERE WITHDRAWN, as this information was provided inter alia by a Gold Badge source, and it has now been separately confirmed that the $52 billion of 'guarantees' were indeed 'restored'. (Clearly if they have been 'restored', that is because they were previously missing).
• So, WHEN were the $52 billion 'restored', exactly?
AFTER the appearance of the present report, which rendered the 'guarantees' USELESS when corruptly applied for a purpose for which they were not intended, by any chance?
(2) We have not published certain other detailed information supplied to us, for the reason set out above, namely that it focuses attention on certain criminal acts under the Bush II regime, whereas the crisis the world faces is being experienced UNDER PRESIDENT OBAMA and Vice President Joe Biden, who have the power to resolve matters but have conspicuously failed, so far, to do so.
We are not satisfied that the information that certain forces want us to publish has been proffered for straightforward reasons, and until such time as this is clarified to our satisfaction, the Editor exercises his prerogative not to publish the information [see above].
(3) Nor is this White House enforcing the Rule of Law.
• For instance, the Clintons are reported to have been able to REMOVE all their ill-gotten money from Citibank. Excu...se us? Those funds were FROZEN when the Provost Marshal was replaced by a new Provost Marshal way back, remember?
• So we suspect that Clinton's gopher, Robert Rubin, has procured the removal of the Clinton funds from Citibank and that he did this before he himself left the institution.
• If this is correct, then the new White House has allowed a disgracefully corrupt state of affairs to remain unaddressed, and THAT IS NOT GOOD ENOUGH AND IS NOT CONSISTENT WITH PLEAS THAT WE HEAR TO THE EFFECT THAT PRESIDENT OBAMA IS A 'WHITE HAT'.
• On the evidence to date, his hat is getting rather dirty, and the dirt comes off the hands of the scumbags in his entourage.
(4) We are advised that the oft-braceleted Dr Alan 'Greenspan was flung into jail yesterday, and that a sensitive meeting took place on Monday to 'decide his fate'. One is tempted to ask why on earth it is necessary to hold a meeting to decide whether this crook has now committed enough crimes to warrant APPLICATION OF THE RULE OF LAW: or could it be that he holds so much dirt on those who are trying to decide what to do with him, that they are prepared to go on fiddling while the whole international financial system collapses, stupid fools, around their ears?
(5) After propaganda all weekend to the effect that the Settlements were on track for progress and implementation on 9th March, NOTHING HAPPENED, even though Citibank had been advised that if the payments were not effected as required on 9th March, Citibank will be subjected to a straight FDIC takeover (which was supposed to happen overnight: we'll see).
(7) The Editor has detailed information on the Stanford dimension of the crisis, plus the open domain intelligence on Vice President Biden's involvement, and this report takes precedence, although there is still some work left to do on it (on top of the Editor's other publishing work).
• FACT: Stanford, from Houston, TX, took over where Noriega left off, as a primary Ponzi scheme operative working with/for the Bushes. DVD drug-running operative Carlos Lehder 'testified' in Noriega's trial (although his testimony was a rant and was superfluous to requirements), and was the source of the $40 million procured by a Bush Sr. Attorney to pay off key political structures in 2000 when the election was being stolen, and to silence the law enforcement, plus the legal and penitentiary personnel, when Lehder, in exchange, was whisked from long-term incarceration and extradited to GERMANY.
Naturlich. Our sources reported that the political structures in question recieved $32 million and the corrupted personnel $8 million, on that happy and lucrative occasion.
• SWINDLER'S LIST UPDATE: Sherman Oaks-based mortgage banker Bruce Friedman, whose
Friedman Charitable Foundation committed $10 million to the Children’s Museum of Los Angeles and $1 million to Brandon’s Village, a special-needs park in Calabasas, has been indicted on securities fraud charges by the Securities and Exchange Commission [9th March 2009].
The SEC alleges that Friedman, along with his two companies, Diversified Lending Group (DLG) and Applied Equities, Inc. (AEI), perpetrated a $216 million real estate investment fraud scheme, raising money from investors nationwide, many of whom are seniors, promising guaranteed high returns via real estate investments. Another PONZI FRAUD bites the dust.
The SEC complaint alleges that Friedman diverted substantial investor money to ventures that were unrelated to real estate, and misappropriated at least $17 million to support his hyperlavish lifestyle, including purchases of a luxury home, cars, vacations, jewellery, and designer clothing for himself and a female of his acquaintance. The SEC has frozen DLG’s, AEI’s and Friedman’s assets.
OK, small fry compared with Madoff, Stanford, the Bushes, the Clintons, Dr Alan 'god' Greenspoon, and all the other notorious criminals that we have to report about. But shoals of 'little fish' like this sheister are cruising for the appropriate bruising, and it'll continue like this for YEARS AND YEARS.
Mopping up the lesser sheisters makes US law enforcement, after years of neglect, both look good and feel good about itself: whereas, what is actually happening is that most Americans are asking with extreme impatience, now: WHY ARE THE GIGA-CROOKS WALKING, when they should all have been arrested and decapitated BEFORE THIS PREDICTED CRISIS RAN OUT OF CONTROL?
• The sordid answer which is being SUPPRESSED is this: 'BECAUSE WE WANT TO BE PAID, TOO'
Monday, March 9, 2009
JUSTIN RAIMONDO'S BULLSHIT DETECTOR is off the scale: OBAMA is a weak appeasing puppet with no clear authentic vision or hope?
http://antiwar.com/justin/
March 9, 2009
Signs of Progress And danger
by Justin Raimondo
I suppose progressives and others hopeful for a more rational foreign policy are going to have to be content, for the moment, with crumbs from the presidential table, such as Barack Obama's recent statement to the New York Times that we might consider negotiating with elements of the Taliban. This is, however, not entirely good news, because the counterinsurgency doctrine that animates this proposal aims at replicating our alleged "success" in Iraq, where the U.S. military allied with hard-core Sunni fundamentalists against largely foreign forces said to be affiliated with al-Qaeda.
The blowback from this tactic has yet to hit the fan, but you can be sure that when the U.S. military begins to downsize its presence in Iraq, these soldiers of the "Awakening" – armed and subsidized by us – will move to fill the power vacuum and run straight into the Shi'ite militias. The resulting conflict will no doubt cause the Obama administration to think twice about leaving, as the Iraqi government asks us to intervene. Having planted the seeds of the coming civil war, we'll have ample pretext to renegotiate the status of forces agreement.
The two faces of the Obama administration illustrate the principle that foreign policy, far from being formulated with the solving of actual problems in mind, is almost entirely driven by domestic political concerns. On the one hand, we have the Good Obama – the one who says he's going to stop the practice of torture by U.S. military and intelligence personnel – except that Leon Panetta, his pick for CIA chief, says we're going to continue "renditioning" prisoners when we don't want to dirty our own hands by subjecting them to methods that, say, the Egyptians or the Saudis wouldn't blink at.
The Obama administration has made overtures to the Russians that we might be willing to forgo the anti-missile system Bush installed in Eastern Europe, which Moscow is up in arms about. On the other hand, the clueless Hillary Clinton's State Department can't get a decent translator. When she handed Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov a toy button, she thought it was labeled "reset."
The idea was to follow up on Vice President Joe Biden's remarks in Munich, where he suggested that relations between the two countries needed to be reset on a new course – while demurring when asked if Obama intended to drop the missile-shield deployment. For a long moment, as Clinton presented the button to Lavrov, the mask of "competence" slid down to reveal the utter ridiculousness of the Americans: "We worked hard to get the right Russian word," burbled Hillary, smiling her most plastic smile. Her grin vanished as he answered, "You got it wrong." Instead of "reset," the word meant "overcharge." As Politico reports, she came back with
"'In a way, the word that was on the button turns out also to be true,' she argued. Though Lavrov had said that word on the button meant overcharge, Clinton suggested that that peregruzka could also be translated as overload."
I'll tell you what's on overload: my BS detector.
The style of this administration is to speak out of both sides of its mouth while looking over its shoulder at the various constituencies it must appease.
The "realist" wing of the Obama administration, centered in the intelligence community and the diplomatic corps, looks to someone like Charles "Chas" Freeman, whose appointment as head of the National Intelligence Council would place him in a key position. Freeman was picked by Director of National Intelligence Dennis Blair, whose spokeswoman made sure to let the Washington Times know that the president had no prior knowledge of the appointment. Freeman's sin, in the eyes of the Lobby, was to promote The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy, the seminal book by John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt that diagnoses the deforming effects of Israel's American amen corner on our policymaking process.
The president's left-wing supporters want action on the Israeli-Palestinian front, and expectations are high: a new understanding of the "special relationship" is a prerequisite for success. Yet the administration is extraordinarily sensitive to criticism from the Israel lobby, which has gone on a jihad against Freeman, throwing everything in the book at him, and then some. The chosen theme of their hate campaign, in this case, is to portray Freeman as an agent of foreign powers – Saudi Arabia and China, so far.
This charge, coming from the Israel lobby, is a hoot and a half – especially when one considers that the first voice to be raised against Freeman belonged to none other than Steve Rosen, the former AIPAC top lobbyist awaiting trial on charges of espionage on behalf of Israel (see this timeline).
Very early on, a struggle for the heart and soul of the Obama administration is taking place within the national security bureaucracy, with the "realists" arrayed against the Lobby and the "national security Democrats" grouped around the Center for a New American Security, the Democratic version of the infamous Project for a New American Century. CNAS appointees are pouring into top Pentagon policy and State Department positions, while the core resistance to the War Party, as in the Bush years, remains in the intelligence sector, in this case Blair's National Intelligence Council.
Change? It's still possible: the War Party, although in charge at State and the Pentagon, is hampered by widespread uneasiness among the president's base at the escalating conflict in Afghanistan and the prospect of a wider conflict in Central Asia. On the other hand, Obama is unlikely to want to take on the Israel lobby so early in his administration.
The Freeman appointment is one test of where we are going: if the Lobby succeeds in derailing it, that will tell us who's still in the driver's seat when it comes to steering our future course. The Lobby is fighting to assert its power of veto, which it exercised effortlessly during the Bush dark ages. Is this the bright dawn of a new day, or will the same old clouds darken our horizon for the next four years? Some indication of where we are headed is due shortly, but in the meantime, it's important to know that your voice is important.
We're at a plastic juncture in the history of our foreign policy, one that could go either way.
Do I have the audacity to hope?
Well, yes, I do.
On the other hand – and you knew I was coming to that – the War Party has the advantage, as usual, both in resources and in terms of its influence at the highest levels of the policymaking hierarchy. The playing field isn't level, but, then again, it never is. Nevertheless, the odds are no longer quite so stacked against us, and that's a sign of progress, I'm glad to admit.
~ Justin Raimondo
March 9, 2009
Signs of Progress And danger
by Justin Raimondo
I suppose progressives and others hopeful for a more rational foreign policy are going to have to be content, for the moment, with crumbs from the presidential table, such as Barack Obama's recent statement to the New York Times that we might consider negotiating with elements of the Taliban. This is, however, not entirely good news, because the counterinsurgency doctrine that animates this proposal aims at replicating our alleged "success" in Iraq, where the U.S. military allied with hard-core Sunni fundamentalists against largely foreign forces said to be affiliated with al-Qaeda.
The blowback from this tactic has yet to hit the fan, but you can be sure that when the U.S. military begins to downsize its presence in Iraq, these soldiers of the "Awakening" – armed and subsidized by us – will move to fill the power vacuum and run straight into the Shi'ite militias. The resulting conflict will no doubt cause the Obama administration to think twice about leaving, as the Iraqi government asks us to intervene. Having planted the seeds of the coming civil war, we'll have ample pretext to renegotiate the status of forces agreement.
The two faces of the Obama administration illustrate the principle that foreign policy, far from being formulated with the solving of actual problems in mind, is almost entirely driven by domestic political concerns. On the one hand, we have the Good Obama – the one who says he's going to stop the practice of torture by U.S. military and intelligence personnel – except that Leon Panetta, his pick for CIA chief, says we're going to continue "renditioning" prisoners when we don't want to dirty our own hands by subjecting them to methods that, say, the Egyptians or the Saudis wouldn't blink at.
The Obama administration has made overtures to the Russians that we might be willing to forgo the anti-missile system Bush installed in Eastern Europe, which Moscow is up in arms about. On the other hand, the clueless Hillary Clinton's State Department can't get a decent translator. When she handed Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov a toy button, she thought it was labeled "reset."
The idea was to follow up on Vice President Joe Biden's remarks in Munich, where he suggested that relations between the two countries needed to be reset on a new course – while demurring when asked if Obama intended to drop the missile-shield deployment. For a long moment, as Clinton presented the button to Lavrov, the mask of "competence" slid down to reveal the utter ridiculousness of the Americans: "We worked hard to get the right Russian word," burbled Hillary, smiling her most plastic smile. Her grin vanished as he answered, "You got it wrong." Instead of "reset," the word meant "overcharge." As Politico reports, she came back with
"'In a way, the word that was on the button turns out also to be true,' she argued. Though Lavrov had said that word on the button meant overcharge, Clinton suggested that that peregruzka could also be translated as overload."
I'll tell you what's on overload: my BS detector.
The style of this administration is to speak out of both sides of its mouth while looking over its shoulder at the various constituencies it must appease.
The "realist" wing of the Obama administration, centered in the intelligence community and the diplomatic corps, looks to someone like Charles "Chas" Freeman, whose appointment as head of the National Intelligence Council would place him in a key position. Freeman was picked by Director of National Intelligence Dennis Blair, whose spokeswoman made sure to let the Washington Times know that the president had no prior knowledge of the appointment. Freeman's sin, in the eyes of the Lobby, was to promote The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy, the seminal book by John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt that diagnoses the deforming effects of Israel's American amen corner on our policymaking process.
The president's left-wing supporters want action on the Israeli-Palestinian front, and expectations are high: a new understanding of the "special relationship" is a prerequisite for success. Yet the administration is extraordinarily sensitive to criticism from the Israel lobby, which has gone on a jihad against Freeman, throwing everything in the book at him, and then some. The chosen theme of their hate campaign, in this case, is to portray Freeman as an agent of foreign powers – Saudi Arabia and China, so far.
This charge, coming from the Israel lobby, is a hoot and a half – especially when one considers that the first voice to be raised against Freeman belonged to none other than Steve Rosen, the former AIPAC top lobbyist awaiting trial on charges of espionage on behalf of Israel (see this timeline).
Very early on, a struggle for the heart and soul of the Obama administration is taking place within the national security bureaucracy, with the "realists" arrayed against the Lobby and the "national security Democrats" grouped around the Center for a New American Security, the Democratic version of the infamous Project for a New American Century. CNAS appointees are pouring into top Pentagon policy and State Department positions, while the core resistance to the War Party, as in the Bush years, remains in the intelligence sector, in this case Blair's National Intelligence Council.
Change? It's still possible: the War Party, although in charge at State and the Pentagon, is hampered by widespread uneasiness among the president's base at the escalating conflict in Afghanistan and the prospect of a wider conflict in Central Asia. On the other hand, Obama is unlikely to want to take on the Israel lobby so early in his administration.
The Freeman appointment is one test of where we are going: if the Lobby succeeds in derailing it, that will tell us who's still in the driver's seat when it comes to steering our future course. The Lobby is fighting to assert its power of veto, which it exercised effortlessly during the Bush dark ages. Is this the bright dawn of a new day, or will the same old clouds darken our horizon for the next four years? Some indication of where we are headed is due shortly, but in the meantime, it's important to know that your voice is important.
We're at a plastic juncture in the history of our foreign policy, one that could go either way.
Do I have the audacity to hope?
Well, yes, I do.
On the other hand – and you knew I was coming to that – the War Party has the advantage, as usual, both in resources and in terms of its influence at the highest levels of the policymaking hierarchy. The playing field isn't level, but, then again, it never is. Nevertheless, the odds are no longer quite so stacked against us, and that's a sign of progress, I'm glad to admit.
~ Justin Raimondo
OBAMA--HOLDER...prove they are drifting without a rudder?
http://www.salon.com/opinion/feature/2009/03/06/state_secrets_obama/index.html
Obama's Bush league decision
The president's lawyers continue to block access to information that could expose warrantless wiretapping. Is this change we can believe in?
By Jon B. Eisenberg
March 6, 2009 | Last July and September, I recounted in Salon how, in the case of Al-Haramain Islamic Foundation Inc. v. Bush, where I am one of the plaintiffs' lawyers, government attorneys for the Bush administration had gone to extreme and even bizarre lengths to prevent the federal courts from determining the legality of President Bush's warrantless wiretapping program.
The government's problem is a top-secret document that the Treasury Department accidentally disclosed to Al-Haramain, an Islamic charity in Oregon. The Treasury Department was investigating the charity in 2004 for purportedly financing terrorist activities. We believe the document confirms the surveillance of Al-Haramain and two of its lawyers as part of the 2004 investigation, and confirms their standing to sue as victims of the program, and for an adjudication of its illegality.
For three years, the Bush administration attempted to assert the state secrets privilege in an effort to prevent us from using the secret document to establish standing. (The state secrets privilege, which is rooted in a 1953 Supreme Court case, allows the government to squelch civil lawsuits involving classified evidence that is a state or military secret.)
On Jan. 5, 2009, United States District Judge Vaughn Walker issued a key ruling in our favor, saying that, upon issuance of top secret security clearances to some of the plaintiffs' attorneys, we may be given access, under secure conditions, to the secret document as well as other secret material filed by the government in the case, for the purpose of adjudicating standing. After extensive background checks by the FBI, the government granted top secret security clearances to us.
On Jan. 20, Barack Obama became president of the United States.
This gave us "hope."
We finally expected to see, in the Justice Department's handling of the case under Attorney General Eric Holder, some "change we can believe in." But it hasn't happened. Incredibly, the Justice Department has continued to assert the state secrets privilege in the Al-Haramain case, even though Judge Walker ruled last July that the privilege in the Al-Haramain case, does not apply to the case.
Thus, during the first weeks of the Obama administration, the government is continuing to abuse the state secrets privilege in the Al-Haramain case. The Obama administration, while taking a big step this week toward government transparency by releasing some Bush-era secret memos, at the same time seems to be continuing the Bush-era strategy of preventing the courts from passing judgment on Bush's (well, really Dick Cheney's) radical theories of presidential power. The case is now called Al-Haramain Islamic Foundation Inc. v. Obama.
On Feb. 27, the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals rejected an emergency request by the Justice Department -- that's Obama's Justice Department -- for an immediate stay of further proceedings before Judge Walker.
The 9th Circuit's ruling allows Judge Walker to give us access to the secret court filings and adjudicate standing.
That evening, the government attorneys did something mind-boggling: They informed Judge Walker in a public court filing that if he intends to give us access to the secret filings in the case, the government will "withdraw that information from submission to the Court."
Evidently that means executive branch authorities (who? the FBI? the Army?) will attempt to seize the documents from Judge Walker. That would be a violation of the constitutional separation of powers, unprecedented in this nation's history.
Incredibly, the Obama administration seems to be provoking a separation-of-powers crisis between the executive and judicial branches.
In yet another public filing with Judge Walker on Feb. 27, the government lawyers informed him that the government's previous secret filings in the Al-Haramain case contain "an inaccuracy" that "cannot be set forth on the public record."
The "inaccuracy" is described only in secret filings accompanying the public filing.
It appears that high officials in the Bush administration asserted a falsehood or falsehoods in their previous secret filings with the court, which the Obama administration is attempting to keep secret.
What could that "inaccuracy" be?
We haven't a clue, because ... it's a secret!
What on earth is going on here?
Have Obama's people really decided to continue traveling the Bush path of abusing the state secrets privilege -- perhaps for reasons of political expediency -- or do they just need more time to get up to speed on the Al-Haramain case before they start doing the right thing?
We wait to see.
And we wait to see how Judge Walker responds to these latest outrages by the Bush -- oops, I mean the Obama -- administration.
_______________________________________________________
http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2009/03/07/al_marri/index.html
FROM GLENN GREENWALD at Salon.com:
Saturday March 7, 2009 08:08 EST
Preventing a judicial ruling on the power to imprison without charges
(updated below)
After being held in captivity as an accused "enemy combatant" by the U.S. Government for more than five years without charges or a trial of any kind, Ali Al-Marri -- who was a legal resident in the U.S. and was on U.S. soil at the time of his detention -- was, two weeks ago, finally indicted and charged with various crimes in a federal court. The indictment came as the U.S. Supreme Court was set to rule whether the Constitution allows the President to imprison legal residents inside the U.S. as "enemy combatants" and keep them imprisoned indefinitely with no charges or trial (both sides of the appellate court decision agreed that the legal analysis is the same for the power to imprison U.S. citizens).
But now there will be no such ruling, because the Obama administration (over the objections of Al-Marri's ACLU lawyer) successfully convinced the Court to dismiss the case on the ground that the indictment of Al-Marri renders the question "moot." This critical question will thus remain unresolved by the Supreme Court.
What just happened in the Al-Marri case is (with one important exception) a virtual repeat of what the U.S. Government (under the Bush administration) did in the Jose Padilla case. The Bush administration arrested Padilla, a U.S. citizen, on U.S. soil; accused him of being an "enemy combatant"; and then imprisoned him for the next three-and-a-half years without charges or a trial of any kind (even without contact with the outside world, including a lawyer). Just as Padilla's case was about to be heard by the U.S. Supreme Court, which was set to rule on whether the Constitution allows a President to order American citizens imprisoned in military brigs with no trial, the Bush DOJ indicted Padilla and then convinced the Supreme Court to refrain from ruling on the issue because Padilla's indictment rendered the question "moot."
The critical question thus remained unresolved by the Supreme Court.
It doesn't exactly take great powers of observation to see the pattern here.
Federal courts are excruciatingly slow.
Even when someone's liberty is being unjustly deprived -- i.e., when they're being held in a cage with no trial -- federal judges take their sweet time in issuing rulings: often many, many months -- sometimes longer. Federal judges are guaranteed life tenure; have virtually no oversight or supervision; essentially rule unchallenged over their little fiefdoms; and thus have no real incentive to resolve cases quickly.
Some work hard, and many don't.
They get to cases when they get to them.
Thus, it's virtually certain that it will take a case of this sort several years to wind its way through the various stages of judicial review, all while the detainee sits in prison with no trial.
This time factor alone vests the U.S. Government with the power to imprison legal residents or even U.S. citizens with no trial for at least a period of several years, as the detainee's constitutional challenge to the process-less imprisonment slowly winds it way through the federal courts. Before the U.S. Supreme Court can rule on whether that is constitutional, the Government can then finally bring charges against (or simply release) the detainee, and then argue to the Court (apparently, with success) that there is no reason for the Court to rule on the constitutionality of those actions because the case is now "moot."
That's what just happened in the Al-Marri case (just like in the Padilla case), and there's no reason why it can't continue to happen that way.
The Obama administration absolutely did the right thing in indicting Al-Marri. Continuing to imprison him without charges was an ongoing disgrace. And the Obama administration's consent to have the Supreme Court vacate the Fourth Circuit's horrendous decision upholding this power is commendable (though another Fourth Circuit ruling, in the Padilla case, largely upheld the President's detention powers, and that was left standing by the Supreme Court when it dismissed Padilla's case (and Al-Marri's) and thus remains good law).
But there were numerous steps the Obama administration could have and should have taken to prevent a repeat of the Padilla travesty, including:
----(a) explicitly renouncing the Bush administration's view that the President possesses this radical power (the super-transparent Obama DOJ refuses to comment on its view in that regard even though Candidate Obama explicitly rejected a similar theory -- see Questions 5 and 10); and
----(b) urging the Supreme Court to resolve the question notwithstanding Al-Marri's indictment, as Al-Marri's lawyers requested, on the ground that it meets one of the judicially established exceptions to the "mootness" doctrine.
The Obama administration did neither: instead, it explicitly refused to renounce this power while simultaneously ensuring that the Supreme Court would -- once again -- refrain from ruling on its constitutionality:
While the government did not defend its power to detain Mr. Marri at present, it left open the possibility that he or others might be subject to military detention as enemy combatants in the future. “Any future detention — were that hypothetical possibility ever to occur — would require new consideration under then-existing circumstances and procedure,” the Justice Department told the court in a brief filed Wednesday.
This action means not only that Obama could imprison legal residents or even American citizens as "enemy combatants," but could even re-declare Al-Marri himself to be an "enemy combatant" if he's acquitted in his trial.
It's disturbing that this question remains unresolved particularly given that key Obama appointees -- including Solicitor General Elena Kagan and White House Counsel Gregory Craig -- have openly suggested that, at least with regard to foreign nationals, the "War on Terror" paradigm empowers the President to view the world as a "battlefield" and thus imprison people without charges as "enemy combatants."
This action by the Obama administration should also (at least in a rational world) put to rest the painfully sycophantic claim that the only reason the Obama DOJ is embracing radical Bush-era legal positions is because they secretly hope to lose in court and thereby create good judicial precedent. If that were really their secret, noble goal, then they would have urged the U.S. Supreme Court here to rule on Al-Marri's claims (which many legal observers expected would end in Al-Marri's favor) -- not urged the Court to refrain from ruling, thus shielding this asserted power from ultimate judicial scrutiny.
There's no reason to assume that the Obama administration intends to exercise the power to imprison legal residents or U.S. citizens without charges, as the Bush administration did. Unless and until they do that, they haven't done it. And with Al-Marri's indictment, there are now no U.S. citizens or legal residents being held as "enemy combatants," so that's an important step.
But, for obvious reasons, it is both unjust and dangerous to preserve this power by engaging in maneuvers (whether intended or not) to block the Supreme Court from finally ruling on the constitutionality of this ultimately tyrannical weapon. Thus far, in the realm of the Constitution and civil liberties, the primary attribute of the Obama administration is to do everything in its power to protect and preserve the President's ability to assert the radical powers invented and seized by the Bush administration, independent of whether they actually intend to use those powers at some point.
That behavior seems exactly (and disturbingly) consistent with what White House Counsel Greg Craig -- in the context of explaining why they wanted to avoid a judicial ruling on the executive privilege dispute between the Bush White House and Congress -- described to The New York Times' Charlie Savage as the administration's guiding principle when it comes to executive power:
The president is very sympathetic to those who want to find out what happened. But he is also mindful as president of the United States not to do anything that would undermine or weaken the institution of the presidency.
There is, of course, no real way to reverse the radically expanded powers of the executive without taking steps to "undermine or weaken the institution of the presidency" -- exactly that which Craig expressly vowed Obama would not do. So far, they seem to be adhering quite faithfully to that strange vow.
Obama's Bush league decision
The president's lawyers continue to block access to information that could expose warrantless wiretapping. Is this change we can believe in?
By Jon B. Eisenberg
March 6, 2009 | Last July and September, I recounted in Salon how, in the case of Al-Haramain Islamic Foundation Inc. v. Bush, where I am one of the plaintiffs' lawyers, government attorneys for the Bush administration had gone to extreme and even bizarre lengths to prevent the federal courts from determining the legality of President Bush's warrantless wiretapping program.
The government's problem is a top-secret document that the Treasury Department accidentally disclosed to Al-Haramain, an Islamic charity in Oregon. The Treasury Department was investigating the charity in 2004 for purportedly financing terrorist activities. We believe the document confirms the surveillance of Al-Haramain and two of its lawyers as part of the 2004 investigation, and confirms their standing to sue as victims of the program, and for an adjudication of its illegality.
For three years, the Bush administration attempted to assert the state secrets privilege in an effort to prevent us from using the secret document to establish standing. (The state secrets privilege, which is rooted in a 1953 Supreme Court case, allows the government to squelch civil lawsuits involving classified evidence that is a state or military secret.)
On Jan. 5, 2009, United States District Judge Vaughn Walker issued a key ruling in our favor, saying that, upon issuance of top secret security clearances to some of the plaintiffs' attorneys, we may be given access, under secure conditions, to the secret document as well as other secret material filed by the government in the case, for the purpose of adjudicating standing. After extensive background checks by the FBI, the government granted top secret security clearances to us.
On Jan. 20, Barack Obama became president of the United States.
This gave us "hope."
We finally expected to see, in the Justice Department's handling of the case under Attorney General Eric Holder, some "change we can believe in." But it hasn't happened. Incredibly, the Justice Department has continued to assert the state secrets privilege in the Al-Haramain case, even though Judge Walker ruled last July that the privilege in the Al-Haramain case, does not apply to the case.
Thus, during the first weeks of the Obama administration, the government is continuing to abuse the state secrets privilege in the Al-Haramain case. The Obama administration, while taking a big step this week toward government transparency by releasing some Bush-era secret memos, at the same time seems to be continuing the Bush-era strategy of preventing the courts from passing judgment on Bush's (well, really Dick Cheney's) radical theories of presidential power. The case is now called Al-Haramain Islamic Foundation Inc. v. Obama.
On Feb. 27, the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals rejected an emergency request by the Justice Department -- that's Obama's Justice Department -- for an immediate stay of further proceedings before Judge Walker.
The 9th Circuit's ruling allows Judge Walker to give us access to the secret court filings and adjudicate standing.
That evening, the government attorneys did something mind-boggling: They informed Judge Walker in a public court filing that if he intends to give us access to the secret filings in the case, the government will "withdraw that information from submission to the Court."
Evidently that means executive branch authorities (who? the FBI? the Army?) will attempt to seize the documents from Judge Walker. That would be a violation of the constitutional separation of powers, unprecedented in this nation's history.
Incredibly, the Obama administration seems to be provoking a separation-of-powers crisis between the executive and judicial branches.
In yet another public filing with Judge Walker on Feb. 27, the government lawyers informed him that the government's previous secret filings in the Al-Haramain case contain "an inaccuracy" that "cannot be set forth on the public record."
The "inaccuracy" is described only in secret filings accompanying the public filing.
It appears that high officials in the Bush administration asserted a falsehood or falsehoods in their previous secret filings with the court, which the Obama administration is attempting to keep secret.
What could that "inaccuracy" be?
We haven't a clue, because ... it's a secret!
What on earth is going on here?
Have Obama's people really decided to continue traveling the Bush path of abusing the state secrets privilege -- perhaps for reasons of political expediency -- or do they just need more time to get up to speed on the Al-Haramain case before they start doing the right thing?
We wait to see.
And we wait to see how Judge Walker responds to these latest outrages by the Bush -- oops, I mean the Obama -- administration.
_______________________________________________________
http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2009/03/07/al_marri/index.html
FROM GLENN GREENWALD at Salon.com:
Saturday March 7, 2009 08:08 EST
Preventing a judicial ruling on the power to imprison without charges
(updated below)
After being held in captivity as an accused "enemy combatant" by the U.S. Government for more than five years without charges or a trial of any kind, Ali Al-Marri -- who was a legal resident in the U.S. and was on U.S. soil at the time of his detention -- was, two weeks ago, finally indicted and charged with various crimes in a federal court. The indictment came as the U.S. Supreme Court was set to rule whether the Constitution allows the President to imprison legal residents inside the U.S. as "enemy combatants" and keep them imprisoned indefinitely with no charges or trial (both sides of the appellate court decision agreed that the legal analysis is the same for the power to imprison U.S. citizens).
But now there will be no such ruling, because the Obama administration (over the objections of Al-Marri's ACLU lawyer) successfully convinced the Court to dismiss the case on the ground that the indictment of Al-Marri renders the question "moot." This critical question will thus remain unresolved by the Supreme Court.
What just happened in the Al-Marri case is (with one important exception) a virtual repeat of what the U.S. Government (under the Bush administration) did in the Jose Padilla case. The Bush administration arrested Padilla, a U.S. citizen, on U.S. soil; accused him of being an "enemy combatant"; and then imprisoned him for the next three-and-a-half years without charges or a trial of any kind (even without contact with the outside world, including a lawyer). Just as Padilla's case was about to be heard by the U.S. Supreme Court, which was set to rule on whether the Constitution allows a President to order American citizens imprisoned in military brigs with no trial, the Bush DOJ indicted Padilla and then convinced the Supreme Court to refrain from ruling on the issue because Padilla's indictment rendered the question "moot."
The critical question thus remained unresolved by the Supreme Court.
It doesn't exactly take great powers of observation to see the pattern here.
Federal courts are excruciatingly slow.
Even when someone's liberty is being unjustly deprived -- i.e., when they're being held in a cage with no trial -- federal judges take their sweet time in issuing rulings: often many, many months -- sometimes longer. Federal judges are guaranteed life tenure; have virtually no oversight or supervision; essentially rule unchallenged over their little fiefdoms; and thus have no real incentive to resolve cases quickly.
Some work hard, and many don't.
They get to cases when they get to them.
Thus, it's virtually certain that it will take a case of this sort several years to wind its way through the various stages of judicial review, all while the detainee sits in prison with no trial.
This time factor alone vests the U.S. Government with the power to imprison legal residents or even U.S. citizens with no trial for at least a period of several years, as the detainee's constitutional challenge to the process-less imprisonment slowly winds it way through the federal courts. Before the U.S. Supreme Court can rule on whether that is constitutional, the Government can then finally bring charges against (or simply release) the detainee, and then argue to the Court (apparently, with success) that there is no reason for the Court to rule on the constitutionality of those actions because the case is now "moot."
That's what just happened in the Al-Marri case (just like in the Padilla case), and there's no reason why it can't continue to happen that way.
The Obama administration absolutely did the right thing in indicting Al-Marri. Continuing to imprison him without charges was an ongoing disgrace. And the Obama administration's consent to have the Supreme Court vacate the Fourth Circuit's horrendous decision upholding this power is commendable (though another Fourth Circuit ruling, in the Padilla case, largely upheld the President's detention powers, and that was left standing by the Supreme Court when it dismissed Padilla's case (and Al-Marri's) and thus remains good law).
But there were numerous steps the Obama administration could have and should have taken to prevent a repeat of the Padilla travesty, including:
----(a) explicitly renouncing the Bush administration's view that the President possesses this radical power (the super-transparent Obama DOJ refuses to comment on its view in that regard even though Candidate Obama explicitly rejected a similar theory -- see Questions 5 and 10); and
----(b) urging the Supreme Court to resolve the question notwithstanding Al-Marri's indictment, as Al-Marri's lawyers requested, on the ground that it meets one of the judicially established exceptions to the "mootness" doctrine.
The Obama administration did neither: instead, it explicitly refused to renounce this power while simultaneously ensuring that the Supreme Court would -- once again -- refrain from ruling on its constitutionality:
While the government did not defend its power to detain Mr. Marri at present, it left open the possibility that he or others might be subject to military detention as enemy combatants in the future. “Any future detention — were that hypothetical possibility ever to occur — would require new consideration under then-existing circumstances and procedure,” the Justice Department told the court in a brief filed Wednesday.
This action means not only that Obama could imprison legal residents or even American citizens as "enemy combatants," but could even re-declare Al-Marri himself to be an "enemy combatant" if he's acquitted in his trial.
It's disturbing that this question remains unresolved particularly given that key Obama appointees -- including Solicitor General Elena Kagan and White House Counsel Gregory Craig -- have openly suggested that, at least with regard to foreign nationals, the "War on Terror" paradigm empowers the President to view the world as a "battlefield" and thus imprison people without charges as "enemy combatants."
This action by the Obama administration should also (at least in a rational world) put to rest the painfully sycophantic claim that the only reason the Obama DOJ is embracing radical Bush-era legal positions is because they secretly hope to lose in court and thereby create good judicial precedent. If that were really their secret, noble goal, then they would have urged the U.S. Supreme Court here to rule on Al-Marri's claims (which many legal observers expected would end in Al-Marri's favor) -- not urged the Court to refrain from ruling, thus shielding this asserted power from ultimate judicial scrutiny.
There's no reason to assume that the Obama administration intends to exercise the power to imprison legal residents or U.S. citizens without charges, as the Bush administration did. Unless and until they do that, they haven't done it. And with Al-Marri's indictment, there are now no U.S. citizens or legal residents being held as "enemy combatants," so that's an important step.
But, for obvious reasons, it is both unjust and dangerous to preserve this power by engaging in maneuvers (whether intended or not) to block the Supreme Court from finally ruling on the constitutionality of this ultimately tyrannical weapon. Thus far, in the realm of the Constitution and civil liberties, the primary attribute of the Obama administration is to do everything in its power to protect and preserve the President's ability to assert the radical powers invented and seized by the Bush administration, independent of whether they actually intend to use those powers at some point.
That behavior seems exactly (and disturbingly) consistent with what White House Counsel Greg Craig -- in the context of explaining why they wanted to avoid a judicial ruling on the executive privilege dispute between the Bush White House and Congress -- described to The New York Times' Charlie Savage as the administration's guiding principle when it comes to executive power:
The president is very sympathetic to those who want to find out what happened. But he is also mindful as president of the United States not to do anything that would undermine or weaken the institution of the presidency.
There is, of course, no real way to reverse the radically expanded powers of the executive without taking steps to "undermine or weaken the institution of the presidency" -- exactly that which Craig expressly vowed Obama would not do. So far, they seem to be adhering quite faithfully to that strange vow.
OBAMA secretly grants criminal immunity to CHENEY NUTHOUSE
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/opinion/402617_thomas08.html
Bush, top aides apparently home free
By HELEN THOMAS
HEARST NEWSPAPERS
WASHINGTON -- Can Americans face the truth about the Bush administration's abuse of power?
I believe so, but clearly President Barack Obama and some Democratic lawmakers think they can't. Or possibly they don't want to be bogged down in a search which could be viewed as vindictive against the former regime. Too bad.
Obama -- a former constitutional law professor-- has ruled out a look backward, claiming that any review of possible illegalities by Bush and his coterie would lead to "politics that have made Washington dysfunctional."
Picking up on the last Bush mantra that we should move "forward," Obama with his don't-rock-the-boat perspective is not about to nail his predecessor. After all, Obama is now a member of the club and shows signs of fitting in very quickly and easily.
President Richard M. Nixon had a more courageous opposition in the form of the Democratic-led impeachment drive that led to his resignation in disgrace.
But House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., quickly took any discussion of Bush impeachment off the table because she feared such a prosecution would disrupt the Democratic legislative agenda.
__________________
TOMMY:
Anytime a Femocrat opens their mouth to elicit some sort of punk excuse for being weak, cowardly, extorted corrupt whores...........you need to ignore the bogus clown excuse and understand that THE FEMOCRATS ARE AS COMPLICIT AND CORRUPT AS THE NEOCON NAZI TRASH.
__________________
This double standard embraced by nervous politicians nourishes the perception that laws do not apply equally when politicians seek to protect each other.
Sen. Pat Leahy, D-Vt., Rep. John Conyers, D-Mich., and Rep. Dennis Kucinich, D-Ohio, are the few congressional leaders who have the courage to say in effect: "Stop the music. We can't go forward until we have a clear understanding of what travesties were perpetrated by the Bush administration."
They reflect the view of philosopher George Santayana that if we do not remember the past we are condemned to repeat it in the future.
But we're not talking about grand jury indictments here.
Leahy is proposing the creation of a "truth-finding panel" designed "to get to the bottom of what happened --and why -- to make sure it never happens again."
____________________
TOMMY:
LEAHY and the pussies at the Femocratic cocksucker clown act...talk a line of shit...but don't forget LEAHY HAPPILY COVERED UP THE FACTS IN MY COMPLAINTS, MAKING IT ALMOST IMPOSSIBLE TO UNDERSTAND THE IMPLICATIONS OF HIS QUESTIONING OF BOB MUELLER.
ONLY those who knew the facts...knew what was g
Bush, top aides apparently home free
By HELEN THOMAS
HEARST NEWSPAPERS
WASHINGTON -- Can Americans face the truth about the Bush administration's abuse of power?
I believe so, but clearly President Barack Obama and some Democratic lawmakers think they can't. Or possibly they don't want to be bogged down in a search which could be viewed as vindictive against the former regime. Too bad.
Obama -- a former constitutional law professor-- has ruled out a look backward, claiming that any review of possible illegalities by Bush and his coterie would lead to "politics that have made Washington dysfunctional."
Picking up on the last Bush mantra that we should move "forward," Obama with his don't-rock-the-boat perspective is not about to nail his predecessor. After all, Obama is now a member of the club and shows signs of fitting in very quickly and easily.
President Richard M. Nixon had a more courageous opposition in the form of the Democratic-led impeachment drive that led to his resignation in disgrace.
But House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., quickly took any discussion of Bush impeachment off the table because she feared such a prosecution would disrupt the Democratic legislative agenda.
__________________
TOMMY:
Anytime a Femocrat opens their mouth to elicit some sort of punk excuse for being weak, cowardly, extorted corrupt whores...........you need to ignore the bogus clown excuse and understand that THE FEMOCRATS ARE AS COMPLICIT AND CORRUPT AS THE NEOCON NAZI TRASH.
__________________
This double standard embraced by nervous politicians nourishes the perception that laws do not apply equally when politicians seek to protect each other.
Sen. Pat Leahy, D-Vt., Rep. John Conyers, D-Mich., and Rep. Dennis Kucinich, D-Ohio, are the few congressional leaders who have the courage to say in effect: "Stop the music. We can't go forward until we have a clear understanding of what travesties were perpetrated by the Bush administration."
They reflect the view of philosopher George Santayana that if we do not remember the past we are condemned to repeat it in the future.
But we're not talking about grand jury indictments here.
Leahy is proposing the creation of a "truth-finding panel" designed "to get to the bottom of what happened --and why -- to make sure it never happens again."
____________________
TOMMY:
LEAHY and the pussies at the Femocratic cocksucker clown act...talk a line of shit...but don't forget LEAHY HAPPILY COVERED UP THE FACTS IN MY COMPLAINTS, MAKING IT ALMOST IMPOSSIBLE TO UNDERSTAND THE IMPLICATIONS OF HIS QUESTIONING OF BOB MUELLER.
ONLY those who knew the facts...knew what was g