Office of U.S. Trustee vs. Harmon - Witness Robert Gates

David C. Farmer, Successor-Trustee vs. Harmon

(Formerly Woo vs. Harmon & Nicholson vs. Harmon)

CV05-00030 DAE KSC

U.S. District Court For the District of Hawaii

Judges: David A. Ezra; Kevin S. Chang

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DEFENDANT’S WITNESS

ROBERT M. GATES

Address to be determined.

George W. Bush’s new Secretary of Defense, replacing Donald Rumsfeld who has resigned.

Robert Gates is the president of Texas A&M University, and director for Parker Drilling Company. Prior to serving as president of Texas A&M University, Dr. Gates was director of the Central Intelligence Agency. He joined the CIA in 1966 as an intelligence professional. From November 1991 to January 1993 he served as director of central intelligence, where he led all U.S. foreign intelligence agencies and directed the CIA.

From 1999 to 2001, Robert Gates served as Dean of the George Bush School of Government and Public Service at Texas A&M University. Dr. Gates is a member of the board of trustees of The Fidelity Funds - the world’s largest mutual fund company (and second largest institutional investor in Health Net), and a member of the board of directors for NACCO Industries.

Robert Gates serves as senior adviser or consultant to several major international firms and is a trustee of the Forum for International Policy. He is on the national executive board of the Boy Scouts of America and president of the National Eagle Scout Association. Dr. Gates holds a doctorate in Russian and Soviet history from Georgetown University.

According to a Nov. 13, 2006 internet post by Greg Szymanski:

The "big change" called for by Congresswoman Nancy Pelosi, the new Speaker of the House, is nothing more than a political smokescreen to pacify Americans as, behind the scenes, the New World Order and Illuminati are still firmly in control over U.S. foreign and domestic policy.

This should be the headline in the New York Times but unfortunately the Vatican has a firm noose around the neck of the Times corporate owners, making them also complicit in treason against the people of the United States.

And a phone call to Pelosi's Washington D.C. office Friday illustrates how tough questions, tough question never asked by the traitors in the media never will be answered by slimy politicians until Vatican puppets like Pelosi, as well as the entire Senate and most all members of the House are removed by "the crook of the neck" and charged with treason along with their media buddies.

Before getting to the "tough questions," Drew from Pelosi's Washington office provided several politically correct answers for the easier, more common questions....

Robert Gates Nomination for Secretary of Defense

"Congresswoman Pelosi has gone on the record, saying Mr. Gates is well qualified for the position, but the Senate should look at him very closely before he is sworn in."

And hopefully Pelosi and others will contact Patricia Johnson-Holm of Seattle who claims Gates through his connection with the Preston, Gates and Ellis Seattle Law Firm was involved in a sex slavery ring on the West Coast, involved in kidnapping her son, David L. Johnson, involved with Jack Abramoff, involved with George H. Bush in the 80's when they illegally wire tapped Johnson-Holm, involved with illegal gun-running in Iraq and Iran through the connections of the Kenn Borek Airline Co. and his involvement with the Ft. Steilacom Apartment complex and illegal drug-running.

In response to Pelosi's statement, Johnson-Holm said: "These connections should open up a can of worms. But if you say America is in for a big change, then I hope the Senate uses its subpoena power to get to the bottom of Mr. Gates connections to all of my above allegations."

(From www.theantechamber.net/)

< END OF QUOTATION >

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September 13, 2010

VA Made Secret Deal with Prudential;

Families Lose Millions to Insurance Giant

Bloomberg Markets Magazine

The U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs failed to inform 6 million soldiers and their families of an agreement enabling Prudential Financial Inc. to withhold lump-sum payments of life insurance benefits for survivors of fallen service members, according to records made public through a Freedom of Information request.

The amendment to Prudential’s contract is the first document to show how VA officials sanctioned a payment practice that has spurred investigations by lawmakers and regulators. Since 1999, Prudential has used so-called retained-asset accounts which allow the company to withhold lump sum payments due to survivors and earn investment income on the money for itself.

The Sept. 1, 2009, amendment to Prudential’s contact with the VA ratified another unpublicized deal that had been struck between the insurer and the government 10 years earlier — one that was never put into writing, Bloomberg Markets magazine reports in its November issue. This verbal agreement in 1999 provoked concern among top insurance officials of the agency, the documents released in the FOIA request show.

For a decade, until the contract was formally changed, Prudential wasn’t fulfilling its obligations to survivors of fallen service members, says Brendan Bridgeland, an insurance lawyer who runs the non-profit Center for Insurance Research in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

‘Violated Terms’

“It’s very clear they violated the original terms of the contract,” says Bridgeland, who is retained by the National Association of Insurance Commissioners to represent consumers.

“Every veteran I’ve spoken with is appalled at the brazen war profiteering by Prudential,” says Paul Sullivan, who served in the 1991 Gulf War as an Army cavalry scout and is now executive director of Veterans for Common Sense, a nonprofit advocacy group based in Washington. “Now vets are upset at the VA’s inability to stop Prudential’s bad behavior.”

That the VA allowed Prudential to issue retained-asset accounts for 10 years while the contract required lump-sum payouts is “more evidence that the VA was asleep at the wheel for a decade,” says Sullivan, who was a project manager and analyst at the VA from 2000 to 2006.

“When grieving families check the box that they want a lump sum, they should get it. We remain disappointed and irate at the VA’s failure to provide advocacy for veterans,” he says.

State and U.S. Probes

Since July 28, when Bloomberg Markets first reported that Prudential sent checkbooks instead of checks to survivors requesting lump-sum payments, state and federal officials have demanded the retained-asset system be investigated and reformed. The VA itself launched a probe of its life insurance program the day the first story was published.

The next day, New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo launched what he called a “major fraud investigation” of Prudential and other life insurers over their use of retained-asset accounts. Since then, Cuomo’s office has issued subpoenas to Prudential and at least 12 more insurance companies.

The insurance departments in Georgia and New York have also opened probes. The U.S. House Oversight and Reform Committee plans to hold hearings into Prudential’s use of retained-asset accounts to pay money owed to fallen soldiers’ survivors.

‘News to Me’

U.S. Secretary of Defense Robert Gates — whose department includes the VA and who was in office when the 2009 agreement was signed — said when the VA started its probe that he had been unaware that survivors were being sent retained-asset accounts.

“Until today I actually believed that the families of our fallen heroes got a check for the full amount of their benefits,” Gates said at the time. “This came as news to me.”...

CONTINUED AT: PRUDENTIAL - A NEST ON SHAKY GROUND

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NEW DISCOVERY (12/01/08):

December 1, 2008

Robert Gates: Obama's Defense Secretary

Huffington Post

At a news conference today, Obama introduced his picks of retired Marine Gen. James Jones as White House national security adviser, former Justice Department official Eric Holder as attorney general, Arizona Gov. Janet Napolitano as secretary of homeland security, Susan Rice as UN Ambassador, Hillary Clinton as Secretary of State and Robert Gates as Secretary of Defense.... (Read more here).

The New York Times reports that some Obama advisers are concerned by the decision to keep Gates at Defense:

Mr. Gates, who served as C.I.A. director under the first President Bush, would not have to be reconfirmed by the Senate. The prospect of retaining him generated praise from the military establishment and Capitol Hill, where he is viewed as a pragmatist who turned the Pentagon around after the tumultuous tenure of Donald H. Rumsfeld.

But it also stirred a debate inside Mr. Obama's circles, where some advisers worried that the decision to turn to a Republican appointee -- something President Bill Clinton did in naming William S. Cohen to the defense post in 1997 -- would reinforce the notion that Democrats could not manage the military. "It makes them look like they're too wimpy to be trusted to run the building," said one adviser who asked not to be named....

www.kycbs.net/Robert-Gates-Obama-HuffPost-11-19-8.mht

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NEW DISCOVERY (06/09/08):

June 9, 2008

Gates recommends Schwartz as
next Air Force chief

By LOLITA C. BALDOR, Associated Press Writer

WASHINGTON - Defense Secretary Robert Gates recommended Monday that Gen. Norton Schwartz, a 35-year veteran with a background in Air Force special operations, be the next Air Force chief.

In a sweeping shake up of the Air Force, Gates also formally sent former Air Force official Michael Donley's name to the White House to be the next secretary of the beleaguered service.

Gates announced last Thursday that he was removing Air Force Gen. Michael Moseley from the chief's job and Michael Wynne as its top civilian. Gates held them accountable for failing to fully correct an erosion of nuclear-related performance standards.

In an effort to get at least part of the new team in place right away, Gates also asked Bush to designate Donley as the acting secretary effective June 21 — a move that would allow him to begin work without waiting for Senate confirmation. Wynne's resignation is effective that day.

Schwartz had been thought to be in line for retirement, and his replacement as head of Transportation Command, Lt. Gen. William Fraser III, had been announced in April. But on Monday Gates recommended that Fraser be nominated as the next vice chief of the Air Force.

And he said that Gen. Duncan McNabb, the current vice chief, should move to the Transportation Command job.

Later Monday Gates is planning to visit Langley Air Force Base, Va., to address airmen and underscore the depth of his concern about weaknesses in service's leadership.

He is expected to stress the importance of leadership accountability and emphasize that despite his well-publicized tensions with the Air Force, he strongly supports the service and appreciates its many wartime contributions.

On Tuesday, Gates plans to make similar speeches at Peterson Air Force Base, Colo., home of Air Force Space Command, which has responsibility for the service's nuclear intercontinental ballistic missile force, and at Scott Air Force Base, Ill., home of Air Mobility Command, whose tanker refueling aircraft are part of the nuclear bomber mission.

When he announced last Thursday that he was firing Wynne and Moseley, Gates expressed disappointment that shortcomings in the Air Force's handling of its nuclear mission had been allowed to persist.

"I believed that we needed a change of leadership to bring a new perspective and to especially underscore the importance of accountability in dealing with these kinds of problems," Gates told reporters Thursday.

He said at the time that his decision was based mainly on the damning conclusions of an internal report on the mistaken shipment to Taiwan of four Air Force fusing devices for ballistic missile nuclear warheads. And he linked the underlying causes of that slip-up to another startling incident: the North Dakota-to-Louisiana flight last August of a B-52 bomber that was mistakenly armed with six nuclear-tipped cruise missiles.

The report asserted that slippage in the Air Force's nuclear standards was a "problem that has been identified but not effectively addressed for over a decade."

Gates said the Taiwan mistake did not compromise U.S. nuclear weapons technology and did not pose a physical danger, but it "raised questions in the minds of the public as well as internationally."

Tony McPeak, the retired general who was Air Force chief of staff during the first Gulf War in the early 1990s, said in a telephone interview Monday that he welcomed the selections of Schwartz and Donley.

"It's not a mainstream kind of thing" to choose an officer with Schwartz's extensive background in special operations, McPeak said. But Schwartz also has a variety of other experience, including holding senior positions on the Joint Chiefs of Staff. "It's good to have that" broader perspective on the Air Force, said McPeak.

McPeak worked with Donley when Donley was the acting Air Force secretary in the early months of the first Clinton administration in 1993.

"Donley is a solid, solid guy and very experienced," McPeak said.

Donley served as acting secretary of the Air Force for seven months in 1993 and was the service's top financial officer from 1989 to 1993. He is currently the Pentagon's director of administration and management, and has held a variety of strategy and policy positions in government, including a stint on the National Security Council from 1984 to 1989.

Before that he was a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee staff. He served in the Army from 1972 to 1975. He earned bachelors and masters degrees from the University of Southern California.

Schwartz has held several high-level assignments on the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and has been commander of the U.S. Transportation Command since September 2005.

Schwartz, a pilot with more than 4,200 flying hours, served as Commander of the Special Operations Command-Pacific, as well as Alaskan Command, Alaskan North American Aerospace Defense Command Region, and the 11th Air Force. Prior to assuming his current position, Schwartz was Director, the Joint Staff, Washington, D.C.

He attended the Air Force Academy and the National War College, and he participated as a crew member in the 1975 airlift evacuation of Saigon. In 1991, he served as chief of staff of the Joint Special Operations Task Force for Northern Iraq in operations Desert Shield and Desert Storm.

Yahoo News

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Norton Schwartz

Posted on June 01, 2005

Lt. General, U.S. Air Force

Lt. General Schwartz, a 1973 graduate of the Air Force Academy, is Director of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Washington, D.C. In that role, he assists the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff by supervising, coordinating and providing support for and administering the work of the Joint Staff. He also functions as the Chairman’s point of contact for the National Defense University, and with the Secretary of Defence and other U.S. Government agencies.

General Schwartz is a command pilot with more than 4200 flying hours in a variety of aircraft. He participated as a crewmember in the 1975 airlift evacuation of Saigon and, in 1991, served as Chief of Staff of the Joint OPerations Task Force for Northern Iraq in operation Desert Shield and Desert Storm. In 1997, he led the Joint Task Force that prepared for the noncombatant evacuation of U.S. citizens in Cambodia.

When the JCC (Jewish Community Centers) Armed Forces & Veterans Committe presented its Military Leadership Award to air force Lt. General Norton Schwartz in 2004, the general said he was “Proud to be identified as a Jewish as well as an American military leader.”

http://www.jewsingreen.com/home/honor/view/Air%20Force/

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June 29, 2005

A Grateful Houston Thanks Our Soldiers

Service Members Honored by JINSA in Houston

Outstanding representatives from the five branches of the U.S. military (Army, Navy, Air Force, Marine Corps, Coast Guard) and the U.S. Special Operations Command were honored May 26, 2005 in Houston with JINSA’s (The Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs) “Grateful Nation Award.” Lieutenant General Norton Schwartz, USAF, the Director of the Joint Staff, made the presentations to the Grateful Nation recipients on behalf of the Joint Chiefs and the Department of Defense.

The Grateful Nation Award was created two years ago to recognize those from the enlisted, noncommissioned officer and junior officer ranks who have distinguished themselves through superior conduct in the War on Terrorism since the September 11 attacks. The six Grateful Nation Award recipients, the third group to be so honored following presentations in 2003 and 2004, were each chosen by their respective services. JINSA organized travel for the recipients and their families to Houston. In addition, each honoree was presented with a monetary award....

http://www.jinsa.org/articles/print.html/documentid/3030

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See also: www.kycbs.net/AIPAC.htm

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NEW DISCOVERY (04/04/08):

From her witness description:

SUE ARRIGO, MD

Sue Arrigo, who worked closely with George Tenet and worked for 40 years at the highest levels of the CIA, says that 'Monarch' children are used to set up Congressmen and other politicians for blackmail purposes. Now you know why many of them never vote according to what their voters want....

She says that she was tortured in Ireland by CIA and British intelligence officers and raped orally and rectally in order to terrorise her so that she would not speak out. Her family were also threatened. She was forced to sign documents that effectively declared her insane and confined to mental hospital. She was given a drug which interfered with REM sleep so that she would become crazy after this torture and brutal treatment.

Arrigo says that DCI Gates told her that the CIA's new policy is to kill the children they kidnap after two years of service as sex slaves....

Arrigo sounds a very credible person. Only the naive and those ignorant about the CIA's MK-ULTRA mind-control program and Monarch sex slave industry will dismiss her claims as fantasy.

http://www.godlikeproductions.com/forum1/message400379/pg1

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June 15, 2007

Secrets of the CIA's Global Sex Slave Industry

By Sue Arrigo, MD

This is the story of how the CIA uses "war zones" to garner kids for the sex slave business. You may have heard how the two companies, DynCorp and Halliburton, were caught trafficking in women during the war in Yugoslavia....

In these cases,they were importing and trafficking in Russian and East bloc women as sex slaves.

I want to talk about the children that are native to any war zone. The CIA did this across Africa, and anywhere they went as a standard part of their operations.

The names of the front companies will change over time. I am writing this down from memory after being inside the CIA for decades. Some of the details may be off, but the gist of the material will be correct.

Secrets of the CIA's Global Sex Slave Industry - Part 1

Secrets of the CIA's Global Sex Slave Industry - Part 2

Secrets of the CIA's Global Sex Slave Industry - Part 3

* * *

http://freedom4um.com/cgi-bin/readart.cgi?ArtNum=54794

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HIV/AIDS Created by US Government!

Vaccine already developed and easy to make?

Sue Arrigo, MD
California medical license G 50197

As an ex-CIA physician with high level access, I wrote a report for DCI Webster in about 1991 arguing for closure of all the US Bio-Warfare Labs. I did that after reviewing the Ft. Detrick and the CIA's Langley Bio-Warfare Labs's research, looking at their own documents. That review was authorized because Bush, Sr. had sold dangerous Bio-Warfare agents to Hussein, which I ended up having to recover from Iraq. Webster, as a former judge, willing to evaluate the evidence, allowed me to research the field and write a report for him of close to 100 pages and 1000 pages of supporting documents.

Although the focus of my report was why the Bio-Warfare Labs should be closed, the issue of the HIV virus developed by the Ft. Detrick lab formed about 18 pages of my report. At the time I wrote that report, the vaccine for HIV that had been developed in 6 months of work, had already been used by the Cabal since 1983.

It was a crime against humanity that the virus was unleashed on the world, and it continues to be a crime that the vaccine has been kept secret and for private use only. Meanwhile, the outer research to get to a vaccine is an exercise in how not to arrive at a solution before millions more die. The initial "hopes" for HIV per its designers was to be able to walk into Africa and take the resources from a ghost continent. They had hyped it as killing everyone there within a year, in their pre-release reports.

The research at the Labs addressed the fastest way to make vaccines to Bio-warfare agents, both in labs, at a front, and impromptu on a battlefield. That was a pressing concern and one that was researched using millions and millions of dollars.

Vaccine so easy... it can be made in a blender!

Briefly, the consensus at the time was that:

1) Any agent from a sick soldier left in a Waring Blender (or any other food blender) for 8 hours would be broken down well enough to not be infective in small doses ( ie. less than a 100 germs). The Labs had made an IgM set of antibodies to sediment out the human HLA antigens by centrifuging it. That allowed the supernatant to be used as a vaccine with little serum sickness problems. A physician in a war zone equipped with a Waring Blender, a blood specimen centrifuge, and a vial of the IgM could make a fast "fresh" vaccine and start inoculating soldiers. The labs tested that using a variety of agents and common cold agents. It was only if one wanted to store the vaccine in vials that one got into the problem of denaturing the proteins of the agent due to heat, chemicals, etc. That was where most of the problems of loss of effectiveness crop up.

2) The Labs found that causing a 1cm by 1cm abrasion until one got lymph and applying a drop of the "fresh vaccine" and a band aid, worked almost as well as an injection. The abrasion could be caused by three fast firm strokes of very fine sand paper over a template with a square of skin bulging through it. This method had much less serum sickness problem. The major problem was occasion keloid and scar formation and superficial infections.

3) The Labs also showed that it was possible to make a crude live vaccine as an emergency directly on the battlefield. The principle was that infection occurs when the body's defenses are overwhelmed but that the body can usually fend off 10 to 50 organisms even of Bio-warfare agents. It was a simple dilution to get the agent into the right ballpark, starting with a secretion of a sick person. Then a drop of that dilute live agent would be placed on an abrasion. That was also tested during war games with colds etc. The diluted material can't be stored for longer than an hour due to the risk of multiplying the agent. It was assumed that in the field it would not be known whether the agent was a virus or a bacteria. A bacteria that divided every 20 minutes could be 8 fold in quantity after an hour and risk causing the infection one was attempting to prevent. Of course, such a live agent could be extremely dangerous and except in an extreme emergency would not be used.

4) The issue of how to quickly sterilize a make-shift vaccine was also addressed in the research. The best method was to dry the agent, if time permitted. Second best was to preserve the agent in Vodka (40%), not gin, etc., and then to dilute it down to less than 2% alcohol before applying it to the abrasion.

That means that a simple vaccine for HIV can be made by virtually anyone in the world in a short period of time, though it would likely need to be repeated periodically to get and keep the titers up. But repeating it is a good idea anyway as that helps address the mutation problem. So, suppose one took 1 cc of secretions from each of 10 HIV patients in an area (without fungal infections preferably) and mixed them together to have a range of HIV agents. Then one could add 250 cc of Vodka and let it sit a week. Then one could remove a cc of that and add 20 cc of clean water to get a less than 2% alcohol solution. A drop of that could be applied to an abrasion. That, I believe, would give you about 60% protection. Repeating that at intervals of about 2 weeks to a month for 6 months and using new HIV secretions every 6 to 12 months, I think would give one fairly good protection in a person with a normal immune system to start with. Of course, that is a crude method and should be tested for efficacy etc. But it is simple enough to test on sex workers, if they were willing to volunteer. They are at such high risk that the likely benefits almost certainly outweigh the risks. The chief risk would still be sensitization with human HLA proteins. The beauty of using abrasions is that one can wash the vaccine off as soon as any untoward reaction is noticed.

If you know of people doing HIV research who are not controlled by the US govt, could you please pass this information on to them? It would be good to get it out to those who could investigate this information with the intention of saving lives with it. Bio-warfare research is immoral and illegal. Unfortunately the US govt is accelerating that research and production of secret private vaccines.

Sincerely,

Sue Arrigo, MD

http://viewzone.com/aidsmanmade.html

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NEW DISCOVERY (03/16/08):

March 11, 2008

McCain advisers lobbied for
European plane maker

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Top current advisers to Sen. John McCain's presidential campaign last year lobbied for a European plane maker that beat Boeing to a $35 billion Air Force tanker contract, taking sides in a bidding fight that McCain has tried to referee for more than five years.

Two of the advisers gave up their lobbying work when they joined McCain's campaign. A third, former Texas Rep. Tom Loeffler, lobbied for the European Aeronautic Defence and Space Co. while serving as McCain's national finance chairman.

EADS is the parent company of Airbus, which teamed up with U.S.-based Northrop Grumman Corp. to win the lucrative aerial refueling contract on February 29. Boeing Co. Chairman and CEO Jim McNerney said in a statement Monday that the Chicago-based aerospace company "found serious flaws in the process that we believe warrant appeal."

McCain, the Republican presidential nominee in waiting, has been a key figure in the Pentagon's years-long attempt to complete a deal on the tanker. McCain helped block an earlier tanker contract with Boeing and prodded the Pentagon in 2006 to develop bidding procedures that did not exclude Airbus.

EADS retained Ogilvy Government Relations and The Loeffler Group to lobby for the tanker deal last year, months after McCain sent two letters urging the Defense Department to make sure the bidding proposals guaranteed competition.

"They never lobbied him related to the issues, and the letters went out before they were contracted" by EADS, McCain campaign spokeswoman Jill Hazelbaker said Monday.

According to lobbying records filed with the Senate, Loeffler Group lobbyists on the project included Loeffler and Susan Nelson, who left the firm and is now the campaign's finance director. Ogilvy lobbyist John Green, who was assigned the EADS work, recently took a leave of absence to volunteer for McCain as the campaign's congressional liaison.

"The aesthetics are not good, especially since he is an advocate of reform and transparency," said Richard Aboulafia, an analyst with the aerospace consulting firm Teal Group. "Boeing advocates are going to use this as ammunition."

McCain, a longtime critic of influence peddling and special interest politics, has come under increased scrutiny as a presidential candidate, particularly because he has surrounded himself with advisers who are veteran Washington lobbyists. He has defended his inner circle and has emphatically denied reports last month in The New York Times and The Washington Post that suggested he helped the client of a lobbyist friend nine years ago.

He has also cast himself as a neutral watchdog in the Air Force tanker contract, one of the largest in decades.

"All I asked for in this situation was a fair competition," he told reporters Monday at Lambert Field in St. Louis, home of a Boeing fighter jet plant.

On Friday, he defended his aggressive oversight: "I never weighed in for or against anybody that competed for the contract. All I asked for was a fair process. And the facts are that I never showed any bias in any way against anybody -- except for the taxpayer."

Last week, Air Force Secretary Michael Wynne told the Senate Armed Services Committee that the EADS-Northrop Gruman plane was "clearly a better performer" than the one proposed by Boeing.

It is unclear what EADS hired the lobbyists to do. Loeffler and Airbus officials did not immediately respond to phone and e-mail messages left late Monday.

A Boeing spokesman declined to comment Monday on the links between McCain and lobbying efforts on behalf of EADS.

But Boeing supporters already have begun to accuse McCain of damaging Boeing's chances by inserting himself into the tanker deal.

One of them, Rep. Norm Dicks, D-Washington, said the field was "tilted to Airbus" because the Pentagon did not weigh European subsidies for Airbus in its deliberations -- a decision he blamed on McCain. Everett, Wash., is where Boeing would perform much of the tanker work, and Dicks is a senior member of the House Appropriations defense subcommittee.

In December 2006, just weeks before the Air Force was set to release its formal request for proposals, McCain wrote a letter to the incoming defense secretary, Robert Gates, warning that he was "troubled" by the Air Force's draft request for bids.

The United States had filed a complaint with the World Trade Organization alleging that Airbus unfairly benefits from European subsidies. Airbus in turn argued that Boeing also receives government support, mostly as tax breaks.

Under the Air Force proposal, bidders would have been required to explain how financial penalties or other sanctions stemming from the subsidy dispute might affect their ability to execute the contract. The request was widely viewed as hurting the EADS-Northrop Grumman bid.

The proposed bid request "may risk eliminating competition before bids are submitted," McCain wrote in a December 1, 2006, letter to Gates. The Air Force changed the criteria four days later.

Dicks said the removal of the subsidy language was a "game-changer" that favored EADS over Boeing.

"The only reason that they could even bid a low price is because they received a subsidy," Dicks said last week. "And Senator McCain jumped into this and said that (the Air Force) could not look at the subsidy issue -- which I think is a big mistake, especially when the U.S. trade representative is bringing a case in the (World Trade Organization) on this very issue."

EADS' interest in the tanker deal is evident in the political contributions of its employees. From 2004 to 2006, donations by its employees jumped from $42,500 to $141,931, according to an analysis by the nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics. So far this election cycle, company employees have donated $120,350. Of that, McCain's presidential campaign has received $14,000, the most of any other member of Congress this election cycle.

McCain prides himself in the role he played blocking an earlier version of the tanker deal that gave the contract to Boeing. As chairman of the Senate Commerce Committee and of an Armed Services subcommittee, McCain led an investigation that eventually helped kill that contract in 2004. A former Air Force official and a top Boeing executive both served time in prison, and the scandal led to the departure of Boeing's chief executive and several top Air Force officials.

"I intervened in a process that was clearly corrupt," McCain said Friday. "That's why people went to jail."

While McCain has praised Boeing for fixing its practices, his campaign said the experience prompted him to demand "a full, fair and open competition." His letters -- one to Deputy Defense Secretary Gordon England in September 2006 and the other to Gates -- were sent with that spirit in mind, Hazelbaker said Monday.

Once the rules were in place, Hazelbaker said, bidders submitted proposals, the Air Force reviewed them and the contract was awarded.

"That is a process that McCain, appropriately, had absolutely no role in," she said.

www.kycbs.net/McCain-Airbus-Lobby.mht

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April 27, 2007

AP: Panel requests Tillman documents

By SCOTT LINDLAW, Associated Press Writer

A congressional committee on Friday requested documents from the White House and Pentagon describing how and when the Bush administration learned the circumstances of Pat Tillman's death.

The House Oversight Committee is investigating why Tillman's family and the public were misled about the circumstances of his death.

Tillman, a San Jose native, turned down a lucrative new contract with the NFL's Arizona Cardinals to join the Army following the Sept. 11 attacks. He was killed April 22, 2004, by friendly fire in Afghanistan.

Although Pentagon investigators determined quickly that he was killed by his own troops, five weeks passed before the circumstances of his death were made public. During that time, the Army claimed he was killed by enemy fire.

Committee Chairman Henry Waxman (news, bio, voting record) wrote Friday to White House Counsel Fred Fielding requesting "all documents received or generated by any official in the Executive Office of the President" that relate to Tillman.

A second letter was sent to Secretary of Defense Robert Gates. Gates was asked to produce all documents related to Tillman generated by his office and the Pentagon's office of public affairs, as well as the office of Gen. John Abizaid.

The committee gave the administration until May 18 to produce the documents.

The committee held its first hearing on Tillman's death earlier this week. Tillman's family has said they believe the erroneous information peddled by the Pentagon was part of a deliberate cover-up that may have reached all the way to President Bush and then-Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld.

A White House spokeswoman said this week that Bush did not learn about the unusual circumstances of the Army Ranger's death until after the soldier's memorial service on May 3, 2004.

Another spokeswoman, Jeanie Mamo, did not respond Friday evening to requests for White House comment.

On April 29 of that year, a top general sent a memo to Abizaid, who then headed all U.S. military operations in the Middle East and Central Asia. The memo warned that it was "highly possible" that Tillman was killed by friendly fire and made clear that the information should be conveyed to the president. The White House said there is no indication that Bush received the warning.

Two days later, the president mentioned Tillman in a speech to the White House correspondents dinner, but he made no reference to how he died.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070427/ap_on_re_us/tillman_friendly_fire_9

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April 27, 2004

Putin to Suspend Pact With NATO

By C. J. CHIVERS and MARK LANDLER, The New York Times

MOSCOW (April 26) — President Vladimir V. Putin said Thursday that Russia would suspend its compliance with a treaty on conventional arms in Europe that was forged at the end of the cold war, opening a fresh and intense dispute in the souring relations between NATO and the Kremlin.

The announcement, made in Mr. Putin’s annual address to Parliament, underscored the Kremlin’s anger at the United States for proposing a new missile defense system in Europe, which the Bush administration insists is meant to counter potential threats from North Korea and Iran.

Mr. Putin suggested that Russia would use its future compliance with the treaty as a bargaining point in that disagreement with the United States.

The new standoff also demonstrated the Kremlin’s lingering frustration over NATO’s expansion toward Russia’s borders and with the treaties negotiated in the 1990s when Russia, still staggering through its post-Soviet woes, was much weaker and less assertive on the world stage than it is today.

Although Mr. Putin did not mention it on Thursday, Russia is angry that in 2001 the Bush administration unilaterally pulled out of the Antiballistic Missile Treaty of 1972.

On Monday, Mr. Putin’s defense minister, Anatoly E. Serdyukov, rejected an offer from the visiting American defense secretary, Robert M. Gates, to share antimissile technology, which had been intended as a way to assuage Moscow’s opposition to Washington’s missile defense plan.

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice , speaking in Oslo at a gathering of diplomats from NATO countries, reacted coldly to Mr. Putin’s speech.

“These are treaty obligations, and everyone is expected to live up to treaty obligations,” she said.

Ms. Rice also dismissed Russian concerns that introducing new military technology to Europe could upset the balance of forces there and set off an escalation that could lead to a new cold war. She called such claims “purely ludicrous” and said the scale of the proposed missile defense system was obviously far too small to defend against the Russian nuclear arsenal.

Though the step by Mr. Putin was incremental, it was highly symbolic and reminiscent of brinkmanship in the cold war.

The agreement in question, the Treaty on Conventional Armed Forces in Europe, known by the initials C.F.E., was signed in 1990 by the members of NATO and of the Warsaw Pact, including Russia.

It required the reduction and relocation of much of the main battle equipment then located along the East-West dividing lines, including tanks, artillery pieces, armored vehicles and attack aircraft. It also established an inspection regime.

Under the treaty more than 50,000 pieces of military equipment were converted or destroyed by 1995. With its initial ambitions largely achieved, it was renegotiated in 1999, adding a requirement that Russia withdraw its forces from Georgia and Moldova, two former Soviet republics where tensions and intrigue with Moscow run high.

Russia has not withdrawn its troops, and the revised treaty has not been ratified by most of the signing nations, including the United States, which has withheld ratification until the Kremlin complies with the troop withdrawal commitments.

Though in many ways the treaty has already stalled, it has remained a powerful diplomatic marker, a central element in the group of agreements that defused the threat of war in Europe as Communism collapsed.

Jaap de Hoop Scheffer, NATO’s secretary general, expressed dismay at the Kremlin’s decision, saying the alliance greeted Russia’s announcement with “concern, grave concern, disappointment and regret” and calling the treaty “one of the cornerstones of European security.”

Mr. Putin abruptly called the treaty’s future into question. In doing so, he pointedly did not use any of the conciliatory language he sometimes inserts into his speeches to leaven his criticisms of the United States.

He did not define specifically what he meant by a moratorium, nor did his foreign minister, Sergey V. Lavrov, when asked in an appearance in Oslo whether Russia might resist inspections or shift conventional forces now that it was no longer observing the treaty. “Everything will be in moratorium,” Mr. Lavrov said. “It is clear, is it not?”

Mr. Lavrov’s hard-line position in public was preceded by what one senior American official described as a “riveting” session with NATO diplomats in private. In an intense 10-minute monologue, he presented a list of grievances about NATO and its role in the world, from its enlarged membership to the missile defense system.

The officials said Mr. Lavrov’s tone prompted stern responses from several NATO members. “The push-back was universal,” the official said, “including some countries that have been reserved about missile defense. It did not have the effect that he may have anticipated.”

The back-and-forth underscored the intensity and breadth of the dispute, and the degree to which the two sides have parted.

Mr. Putin and Mr. Lavrov warned that Russia might withdraw completely from the treaty if the Kremlin was not satisfied with the results of negotiations in the NATO-Russia Council, an organization created in 2002 to increase cooperation between the former enemies.

“I propose discussing this problem,” Mr. Putin said, “and should there be no progress in the negotiations, to look at the possibility of ceasing our commitments under the C.F.E. treaty.”

http://news.aol.com/topnews/articles/_a/putin-to-suspend-pact-with-nato/20070427141009990001?ncid=NWS00010000000001

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