James B. Nicholson, Trustee vs. Harmon

Gerald Parsky (announced March 8, 2007) - Chaired the California Bush-Cheney campaigns in 2000 and 2004. Chairman of Aurora Capital Group, LP, a Los Angeles-based investment firm. Senior partner of the Los Angeles law firm of Gibson Dunn & Crutcher, 1977-92. Parsky served as Assistant Secretary of the U.S. Treasury for international affairs and capital markets, 1974-77. He was appointed to the U.C. Board of Regents by Gov. Pete Wilson in 1996; the Board named him chair for a two-year term on May 20, 2004. Parsky was also a member of President Bush’s Commission to Strengthen Social Security.

http://www.gwu.edu/~action/2008/mccain/mccainorg.html

~ ~ ~

NEW DISCOVERY (11-03-08):

California Association of Black Lawyers

Press Release

California Association of Black Lawyers Applauds the State Assembly’s Reprimand of Governor Schwarzenegger’s Judicial Appointments

- - - - -

The California Association of Black Lawyers applauds Speaker Fabian Nunez’s proposed budgetary limitation of new judgeships in response to Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger’s failure to make judicial appointments reflective of the diversity of California.

As local, state and national organizations continue to aggressively promote the necessity and indispensable role of diversity in the legal profession, the executive office of the State of California marches in the opposite direction, as exemplified by its deplorable record of appointing people of color to the judiciary....

Rather than select judges who would inspire the public’s confidence in the impartiality and fairness of the judicial system, Governor Schwarzenegger has appointed candidates to curry favor in the Republican Party as demonstrated by his recent appointments of former Republican Congressman James Rogan and Assistant United States Attorney Laura H. Parsky, daughter of President George W. Bush confidant Gerald Parsky, to judgeships in Orange and San Diego counties, respectively.

If these types of judicial appointments continue, without significant weight attached to diversity and the appreciation of varying backgrounds and experiences, the California judicial system’s fabric will continue to erode and its integrity will be challenged by those who are denied the equal right to participate in its composition....

http://www.calblacklawyers.org/press5.htm

~ ~ ~

NEW DISCOVERIES (10-20-08):

October 19, 2008

AP IMPACT: Mortgage firm
arranged stealth campaign

Freddie Mac secretly paid GOP
consulting firm to kill regulation

By PETE YOST, Associated Press Writer

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Freddie Mac secretly paid a Republican consulting firm $2 million to kill legislation that would have regulated and trimmed the mortgage finance giant and its sister company, Fannie Mae, three years before the government took control to prevent their collapse.

In the cross hairs of the campaign carried out by DCI of Washington were Republican senators and a regulatory overhaul bill sponsored by Sen. Chuck Hagel, R-Neb. DCI's chief executive is Doug Goodyear, whom John McCain's campaign later hired to manage the GOP convention in September.

Freddie Mac's payments to DCI began shortly after the Senate Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs Committee sent Hagel's bill to the then GOP-run Senate on July 28, 2005. All GOP members of the committee supported it; all Democrats opposed it.

In the midst of DCI's yearlong effort, Hagel and 25 other Republican senators pleaded unsuccessfully with Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, R-Tenn., to allow a vote.

"If effective regulatory reform legislation ... is not enacted this year, American taxpayers will continue to be exposed to the enormous risk that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac pose to the housing market, the overall financial system and the economy as a whole," the senators wrote in a letter that proved prescient.

Unknown to the senators, DCI was undermining support for the bill in a campaign targeting 17 Republican senators in 13 states, according to documents obtained by The Associated Press. The states and the senators targeted changed over time, but always stayed on the Republican side....

Continued at: www.kycbs.net/Fannie-Mae.htm

~ ~ ~

October 6, 2008

Democrats dig into McCain's role in a financial scandal of the 1980s

By Brian Knowlton

WASHINGTON: Pushing back hard against pointed new attacks from the Republican campaign of John McCain, Democrats on Monday unveiled an ad about McCain's role in a savings and loan scandal of the 1980s that they say has resonance in today's financial debacle.

As both sides turned increasingly negative, Governor Sarah Palin, McCain's running mate, acknowledged the new tone.

"From now till election day it may get kind of rough," she said with a smile at an event in Clearwater, Florida. With the Republican ticket lagging in the polls, Palin's own attacks on Obama have grown much more personal.

The new 13-minute Obama ad describes the 1987 scandal in which McCain and four other senators were accused of intervening improperly to help shield Charles Keating Jr. and the Lincoln Savings and Loan Association, which he headed, from a federal regulatory investigation.

"Many of our fellow citizens apparently believe that your services were bought by Charles Keating," the ad shows Howell Heflin, then the Senate Ethics Committee chairman, telling a younger McCain....

http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/10/06/america/campaign.php

See also: Vultures in The Meadows

~ ~ ~

NEW DISCOVERY (08-15-08): Undisclosed conflicts of interests between Senator Dan Inouye, Senator Ted Stevens, VECO Corporation, George W. Bush, John McCain, Dick Cheney, Halliburton, Shell Oil, Barack Obama, Mark Bennett, Linda Lingle, Tesoro Petroleum, Faye Kurren, Judge Barry Kurren, Enron, etc.:

December 6, 1996

ENRON and Shell Win Bid in
Capitalization of YPFB's
Transportation Segment

LA PAZ, BOLIVIA – Enron Development Corp. and Shell International Gas Ltd. announced today that the government of Bolivia has named the companies the successful capitalizing company for the transportation segment of the state oil and gas company, Yacimientos Petroliferos...

Business Wire

~ ~ ~

March 30, 1998

The following is an excerpt from a 10-K SEC Filing, filed by TESORO PETROLEUM CORP /NEW/ on 3/30/1998:

ACCESS TO NEW MARKETS

A lack of market access has constrained natural gas production in Bolivia. With little internal gas demand, all of the Company's Bolivian natural gas production is sold under contract to the Bolivian government for export to Argentina.

Major developments in South America indicate that new markets will open for the Company's production. Construction of a new 1,900-mile pipeline that will link Bolivia's extensive gas reserves with markets in Brazil commenced in 1997 and is expected to be operational in early 1999.

The owners of the new pipeline include Petrobras (the Brazilian state oil company), other Brazilian investors, Enron Corp., Shell International Gas Ltd., British Gas PLC, El Paso Energy Corp., BHP, and Bolivian pension funds. When completed, the new pipeline will have a capacity of approximately 1 billion cubic feet ("Bcf") per day.

For more, see...

Googling the Ghost of Ken Lay

Aloha, Harken Energy

Citigroup: Vampires in the City

The Story of Enron

Vultures Up to their Necks in Tesoro Petroleum

~ ~ ~

NEW DISCOVERY (07-10-08):

June 2, 2008

McCain's Attack On Obama Gets Standing Ovation At AIPAC

Seth Colter Walls, The Huntington Post

Republican strategists who hope to cut into Democrats' usual advantage among Jewish voters have some cause for optimism this morning. Speaking on Monday to the annual policy conference of the most powerful Jewish lobbying organization in Washington, DC, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), Sen. John McCain received his most enthusiastic standing ovation at the close of his most pointed attack on Sen. Barack Obama.

"We must apply the full force of law to prevent business dealings with Iran's Revolutionary Guard Corps. I was pleased to join Senators Lieberman and Kyl in backing an amendment calling for the designation of the Revolutionary Guard as a terrorist organization responsible for killing American troops in Iraq. Over three quarters of the Senate supported this obvious step, but not Senator Obama. He opposed this resolution because its support for countering Iranian influence in Iraq was, he said, a 'wrong message not only to the world, but also to the region.' But here, too, he is mistaken. Holding Iran's influence in check, and holding a terrorist organization accountable, sends exactly the right message -- to Iran, to the region and to the world."

Many cheers and whistles accompanied that part of McCain's address, followed by a convention-wide standing ovation. Meanwhile, the Obama campaign fired off a response to McCain's speech before he was even finished delivering it, explaining that the Illinois Democrat's opposition to the resolution McCain cited was due to its inclusion of "aggressive passages" alongside what Obama felt was an accurate description of Iran's Revolutionary Guard as a terrorist organization. Obama will have a chance to explain that vote to the conference on Wednesday.

The importance of the AIPAC's three-day event to both political parties was underscored by the range of participants in the panel discussion that directly followed McCain's speech. Chairman of the House Foreign Affairs committee Howard Berman, a California Democrat, shared the stage with Liz Cheney, Ambassador Dennis Ross and the Knesset's deputy defense minister. As Berman spoke, it was clear he was trying to gently contrast some of McCain's rhetoric, telling the crowd that despite bipartisan consensus that Iran's nuclear ambitions represent a danger, the current administration's policy toward Iran "is not working."

After noting the conference's non-partisan spirit, Liz Cheney went ahead and cast her response in partisan terms, telling the assembled group that the outcome of this fall's election -- and whether the next president will follow the Bush administration's example in fighting the war on terror -- will necessarily have a large impact on where Israel finds itself this time next year.

~ ~ ~

NEW DISCOVERY (06-20-08):

June 20, 2008

New offshore drilling not a quick fix, analysts say

Start-up delays, global market pressures cited

By Lisa Wangsness, Boston Globe Staff

President Bush and Republican presidential candidate John McCain have called this week for lifting a federal moratorium on offshore oil exploration, arguing that taking action to increase domestic oil supplies will help drive down prices.

But analysts say that renewed offshore drilling would have little impact on gas prices anytime soon.

It would take at least a decade for oil companies to obtain permits, procure equipment, and do the exploration necessary to get the oil out of the ground, most industry analysts say. And even then, they add, the amount of new oil produced would probably be too small to significantly affect world oil prices.

Some analysts point out that the wells the United States now depends on are being depleted, and that new exploration could at least help offset that decline in supply from existing wells.

Expanded offshore exploration also carries with it some environmental risks, from oil spills to destruction of habitat to vibrations that damage sea life, which environmentalists say could have catastrophic consequences that far outweigh any potential benefit from further offshore drilling. But other analysts say that improved technology means the risks are much smaller than a generation ago. In this view, a sensible compromise approach would be to make decisions on potential drilling sites on a case-by-case basis.

Americans' anger over $4-a-gallon gasoline apparently has prompted greater public support for renewed offshore drilling. A Gallup poll last month found that 57 percent of respondents favored such drilling while 41 percent were opposed. Democratic candidate Barack Obama supports the moratorium.

The debate over expanded oil exploration has always been polarizing - recall the ferocity of the fight over whether to drill in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge - but some analysts are calling for a more moderate tone.

“Clearly, drilling is not the solution to our oil dependence, but any serious energy proposal has to be comprehensive and include more oil supply and production off the outer continental shelf," said Robbie Diamond, president and founder of Securing America's Future Energy, a nonpartisan group committed to reducing the nation's dependence on oil.

In the short term, oil prices could go down slightly if Congress lifts its moratorium on new offshore drilling, which has been in place since 1981, because the market would factor in the prospect of additional oil supplies later on. But the actual oil would not be produced for 10 to 12 years.

And in any case, increased American production from offshore drilling would not necessarily mean lower prices for American consumers because oil is a global commodity whose price is set by global supply and demand.

"Suppose the US produced all its oil domestically," said Robert Kaufmann, director of the Center for Energy and Environmental Studies at Boston University. "Do you think oil companies would sell oil to US consumers for one cent less than they could get from French consumers? No. Where oil comes from has no effect on price."

And there is not likely to be enough new American oil to make much of a difference, Kaufmann and others said. About 86 billion barrels of additional oil may lie offshore, according to the US government's Energy Information Administration. Of that amount, about 18 billion barrels are subject to the moratorium. Much of the rest lies in areas that are too expensive to exploit or that oil companies have not yet tapped for technical reasons, fueling the industry's desire for fresh territory.

"We're picking over bones," said Cathy Landry, a spokeswoman for the American Petroleum Institute. "If we had new acres, we could hypothetically make a big find. We need oil and natural gas in the future."

But in the best-case scenario, Kaufmann said, the United States could only produce an additional two to four million barrels of offshore oil a day - not enough to shift the global supply-demand balance in a world market that now consumes about 86 million barrels a day and is growing fast. About a quarter of that consumption now occurs in the United States.

Kaufmann said that by the time any additional offshore oil got to market, much of it would merely offset losses from the depletion of current oil fields. Meanwhile, oil producing nations can easily keep supply constant by limiting capacity if they know the United States is adding more.

"There's nothing on the supply side that we can really do to disrupt OPEC's ability to influence prices," he said.

Environmentalists argue that the pollution caused by drilling could compromise fragile ecosystems for very little economic benefit when the United States should be focusing on conservation - the cheapest barrel of oil, they like to say, is the one we don't have to buy - and developing better renewable energy sources.

They point to a number of environmental risks. Drilling fluids contain toxic chemicals. If oil is found, one of the waste products is briny water that also contains toxic chemicals. The noise from drilling could harm some sea animals, such as whales. And the oil would also have to be transported by pipeline or ship, creating its own environmental impacts. Then there is a risk of spills.

"Today we think offshore oil drilling could be the final straw in the unfolding collapse of New England fisheries," said Priscilla Brooks, director of the Ocean Conservation Project at the Conservation Law Foundation, which successfully fought a proposed drilling lease on Georges Bank in the late 1970s.

But Nancy Rabalais, executive director of the Louisiana Universities Marine Consortium and a scientist who has studied the effects of offshore oil production in the Gulf of Mexico, said that she believes expanding offshore oil exploration would not pose terrible risks to the environment because the effects are relatively contained, and the industry is well-regulated.

Henry Lee, who teaches energy policy at Harvard University's John F. Kennedy School of Government, said he believes there is a middle ground. There is no panacea, he said, for solving America's energy problems, so it may be best to lift the prohibitions on offshore drilling, and carefully consider the oil potential and possible environmental costs in different locations on a case-by-case basis.

"Each side, I think, is not being reasonable about this," he said. "I want to do the analysis and figure out what the implications are."

New offshore drilling not a quick fix, analysts say

For more, see: www.kycbs.net/Oil-Stupid.htm

~ ~ ~

< < < FLASHBACK < < <

March 31, 2002

Simon has millions in oil stocks as California fights offshore drilling

DON THOMPSON, Associated Press

SACRAMENTO ---- As California battles the Bush administration over plans to drill for oil off the state's coast, Republican candidate for governor Bill Simon has millions of dollars invested in companies that would benefit if drilling is allowed.

If drilling starts, the companies in which Simon owns stock could gain drilling contracts, ship the oil pumped from beneath the sea and then sell that oil. As governor, Simon could end California's legal efforts to stop drilling.

A Los Angeles millionaire and former oil company vice president, Simon has said repeatedly he opposes additional drilling off California's coast, but has defended his vast investments.

"Just because you're against offshore drilling in certain areas doesn't mean you're against offshore drilling worldwide," Simon said in January.

But his extensive ties to offshore oil interests don't comfort drilling opponents.

"To have someone heavily invested in the oil industry overseeing California's coast is a little scary," said Carl Zichella, the Sierra Club's regional director. "If he waffles (on offshore drilling) at all, it will be to his political detriment."

The Bush administration wants a federal appeals court to allow drilling off San Luis Obispo, Santa Barbara and Ventura counties. Democratic Gov. Gray Davis used the courts to block attempts to build the first new oil platforms off California's coast since 1994, rejected settlement offers and has sworn he will take the case to the U.S. Supreme Court if necessary.

Simon has at least tens of thousands of dollars invested in companies with direct interests in the dispute, financial disclosure documents show, and owns millions more in companies that drill, sell and ship oil by tankers and pipelines.

For example, he owns up to $100,000 of SeaRiver Maritime Financial Holdings Inc., a subsidiary of Exxon Mobil Corp., which is one of the companies holding the 36 leases at issue in the federal drilling case. It also owns currently producing leases. A SeaRiver subsidiary, formerly Exxon Shipping Co., operated the Exxon Valdez that ran aground and spilled oil off Alaska in 1989.

Through family trusts, Simon owns up to $100,000 of stock in USX-Marathon, an Exxon Mobil partner, and Occidental Petroleum, a Shell partner. The trusts own between $4,000 and $20,000 worth of stock in Royal Dutch Petroleum/Shell Oil Co. and ChevronTexaco; both hold California offshore leases.

While Simon owns some oil stock, campaign strategist Jeff Flint said, Davis has accepted hundreds of thousands of dollars in campaign contributions from companies including ChevronTexaco and Occidental, including $176,000 last year alone.

Simon also owns hundreds of thousands of dollars of stock in Seacor Smit Inc., a Houston-based drilling and shipping company, and its former subsidiary, Chiles Offshore Inc., which specializes in offshore drilling.

U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission documents indicate that one-third of Chiles Offshore's business comes from Shell. Seacor Smit, meanwhile, established what its chairman called a "toehold" on the California coast last year when it bought a West Coast supply vessel.

SEC documents and the Simon campaign indicate that South Street Capital LLC, an investment firm controlled by the Simon family, sold about $4 million in Chiles stock last year. Simon declared no income from the stock sale in the financial disclosure report he filed with the Fair Political Practices Commission, but reported owning a maximum of $1 million invested by South Street in the company.

Campaign finance reports and Simon's disclosure forms show some offshore oil money may have gone to his campaign. He sold hundreds of thousands worth of energy stocks last year as he poured more than $4 million of his own money into his campaign. Meanwhile, Simon's siblings, who share in family trust profits, have given him at least $750,000.

Last year, Simon sold as much as $100,000 worth of stock in Diamond Offshore Drilling of Houston, which engaged in three drilling projects off California's coast in the 1980s....

His father, William E. Simon, was President Nixon's "energy czar" through the Arab oil embargo of the early 1970s before becoming treasury secretary. In 1988, Simon and his brother joined their father in William E. Simon & Sons, an investment firm with substantial holdings in the energy industry.

Corporate records from Florida, Louisiana and Mississippi show Simon was a vice president and director through the mid-1990s in Paramount Oil Co. of Baton Rouge, La., and Shore Oil Co. of Houston, oil and exploration companies that had extensive holdings in the Gulf of Mexico region.

Paramount merged into Shore, which later merged with a firm that eventually became 3TEC Energy. Simon sold up to $100,000 in 3TEC shares last year; family trusts own as much as $1 million in 3TEC stock.

Those companies drilled off the Gulf of Mexico coast, Flint said, so it's not "fair to tie Bill's investments" to California.

Oil, gas and other energy company executives have also donated thousands to Simon's campaign, state campaign finance records show.

They include $5,000 from Tesoro Petroleum, a Texas-based company active in offshore drilling, and $22,000 from people and firms connected to Alvin V. Shoemaker, former chairman of First Boston Corp. and a director of Shore Oil and Paramount. Occidental contributed $10,000.

Davis this month accused Simon of profiting from California's energy crisis through business dealings with El Paso Natural Gas, which regulators alleged helped drive up gas and electricity prices last summer.

A Simon family investment company owns between $10,000 and $100,000 in El Paso stock. Simon also sold as much as $100,000 worth of stock last year in 3TEC Energy Corp., 20 percent of which is owned by an investment arm of El Paso.

Simon is a major investor and former board member of Houston-based Hanover Compressor Co., which does business with companies such as El Paso and the bankrupt energy giant Enron.

Davis himself is defending his acceptance since 1996 of $119,500 in campaign funds from Enron.

Simon's charitable foundation also benefits from extensive oil and gas investments, primarily Hanover Compressor.

While Simon was a board member, Hampton joined Enron in a Venezuela-based partnership, SEC records show, before Enron's collapse. After Simon left the board, Hanover ran into Enron-style accounting problems this year over its involvement in the Hampton Roads gas project off the coast of Nigeria with California leaseholder Shell Oil Co.

Though the California Coastal Commission and the state attorney general also are parties to California's suit against the Bush administration, Simon if he became governor could use his legal and budgetary power to end the state's efforts.

"He could make it not just difficult ---- impossible" to continue, said Nathan Barankin, spokesman for Democratic Attorney General Bill Lockyer.

Eleven environmental groups have joined the state's suit, arguing that most Californians want to defend their world-famous coastline.

Simon agrees "there should not be any new exploration or drilling off the coast of California," Flint said. However, he said Simon has taken no position on what he would do with existing contracts such as are at stake in the California suit.

"He would have to take a look at it," Flint said.

For more, see: www.kycbs.net/SimonSays.htm

~ ~ ~

NEW DISCOVERY (06/16/08):

Lawrence Franklin espionage scandal

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia:

The Lawrence Franklin espionage scandal (also known as the AIPAC espionage scandal) refers to allegations that information regarding United States policy towards Iran was passed to Israel through Lawrence Franklin via staffers of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee [AIPAC].

Franklin, a former Defense Department employee, has pleaded guilty to several espionage-related charges and was sentenced in January 2006 to nearly thirteen years of prison. Two former AIPAC employees have also been indicted.

The investigation and prosecutions, which began in 1999, have attracted attention because critics of U.S. Israeli policy have claimed AIPAC has served as a conduit for Israel’s spying efforts with near impunity due to its powerful connections in Washington. Franklin's indictment mentioned but did not name several foreign diplomats, widely believed to be Israeli, as being involved with his efforts....

Continued at: http://www.kycbs.net/AIPAC.htm

~ ~ ~

NEW DISCOVERY (06-09-08):

June 2, 2008

John McCain: Ending the destruction
of Iraq will harm Israel

US presidential candidate, Sen. John McCain on Monday criticized Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Barack Obama's calls for withdrawing US troops from Iraq, saying that such a pullout would harm Israel's security.

Speaking to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), McCain also blasted Obama's calls for talks with Iran.

"The Iranians have spent years working toward a nuclear program,'' McCain said, "and the idea that they now seek nuclear weapons because we refuse to engage in presidential-level talks is a serious misreading of history."

"Even so, we hear talk of a meeting with the Iranian leadership offered up as if it were some sudden inspiration, a bold new idea that somehow nobody has ever thought of before," he said.

"Yet it's hard to see what such a summit with President Ahmadinejad would actually gain, except an earful of anti-Semitic rants, and a worldwide audience for a man who denies one Holocaust and talks before frenzied crowds about starting another," the Arizona senator continued. "Such a spectacle would harm Iranian moderates and dissidents, as the radicals and hardliners strengthen their position and suddenly acquire the appearance of respectability."

McCain seemed to be responding to Sen. Obama's previous statements made during a debate in 2007 in which he expressed willingness to hold talks with leaders of Cuba, Iran, North Korea and Syria.

An Obama campaign spokesman, Hari Sevugan, was quick to retort. "John McCain stubbornly insists on continuing a dangerous and failed foreign policy that has clearly made the United States and Israel less secure."

"Here are the results of the policies that John McCain has supported, and would continue. During the Bush Administration, Iran has dramatically expanded its nuclear program, going from zero centrifuges to more than 3000 centrifuges,'' the Obama camp spokesman added.

"During the Bush Administration, Iran has expanded its influence throughout a vitally important region, plying Hamas and Hizbullah with money and arms. During the Bush Administration, Hamas took over Gaza. Most importantly, the war in Iraq that John McCain supported and promises to continue indefinitely has done more to dramatically strengthen and embolden Iran than anything in a generation.''

McCain also criticized Obama's calls for removing US troops from Iraq. "You would never know from listening to those who are still caught up in angry arguments over yesterday's options, but our troops in Iraq have made hard-won progress under General Petraeus' new strategy." he said.

"[Withdrawal from Iraq] would surely result in a catastrophe,'' McCain said. "If our troops are ordered to make a forced retreat, we risk all-out civil war, genocide, and a failed state in the heart of the Middle East. Al Qaida terrorists would rejoice in the defeat of the United States.

"Allowing a potential terrorist sanctuary would profoundly affect the security of the United States, Israel, and our other friends, and would invite further intervention from Iraq's neighbors, including an emboldened Iran. We must not let this happen.''

In his speech, McCain called for measures aimed at increasing pressure on Iran, such as severely limiting Iranian imports of gasoline, targeted sanctions such as denying visas and freezing assets and a worldwide campaign to divest from companies doing business with Iran.

McCain called for financial sanctions on the Central Bank of Iran, which he said aids in terrorism and weapons proliferation, and he criticized Obama for opposing a measure to designate Iran's Revolutionary Guard as a terrorist organization responsible for killing US troops in Iraq.

McCain has warm relations with the group, which is influential in the Jewish community. His call for sanctions against gasoline imports is a priority that AIPAC's members plan to lobby for in Congress later in the week.

In contrast, Obama has worked to reassure Jewish voters who have expressed some unease about his candidacy.

"I welcome the Muslim world's accurate perception that I am interested in opening up dialogue and interested in moving away from the unilateral policies of George Bush, but nobody should mistake that for a softer stance when it comes to terrorism or when it comes to protecting Israel's security or making sure that the alliance is strong and firm," Obama said in an interview last month with The Atlantic magazine. "You will not see, under my presidency, any slackening in commitment to Israel's security."

www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?pagename=JPost%2FJ...

~ ~ ~

NEW DISCOVERY (05-11-08):

May 11, 2008

GOP Leader Quits Over
Myanmar Junta Ties

CBS News

ST. PAUL, Minn. - (AP) - The man picked by the John McCain campaign to run the 2008 Republican National Convention resigned Saturday after a report that his lobbying firm used to represent the military regime in Myanmar.

Doug Goodyear resigned as convention coordinator and issued a two-sentence statement:

"Today I offered the convention my resignation so as not to become a distraction in this campaign. I continue to strongly support John McCain for president, and wish him the best of luck in this campaign."

Goodyear, chief executive of lobbying firm DCI Group, resigned a few hours after Newsweek posted a story online that the company was paid $348,000 in 2002 and 2003 to represent Myanmar's junta.

"We respect Mr. Goodyear's decision, and look forward to the convention in September," said Brian Rogers, a spokesman for the McCain campaign.

Cyclone Nargis left more than 60,000 people dead or missing, and the U.N. estimates that at least 1.5 million people have been severely affected. Human rights organizations and dissident groups have bitterly accused the junta of neglecting disaster victims and blocking foreign donations of relief supplies.

Justice Department records covering agents of foreign agents that are required to register with the U.S. government show DCI signed a contract to work to "improve relations between the United States and Myanmar" and to act as the junta's public relations agent in Washington.

Newsweek said the firm drafted news releases praising Burma's efforts to curb the drug trade and denouncing claims by the Bush administration that the regime engaged in rape and other abuses.

"It was our only foreign representation, it was for a short tenure, and it was six years ago," Newsweek quoted Goodyear as saying. The magazine said Goodyear added that the junta's record in the current cyclone crisis is "reprehensible."

The Newsweek article also reported that some of Goodyear's allies worried the choice of Goodyear could fuel perceptions that McCain is surrounded by lobbyists. DCI Group earned $3 million last year lobbying for ExxonMobil, General Motors and other clients, the report said.

Newsweek also reported DCI has been a pioneer in running "independent" expenditure campaigns by so-called 527 groups, the kind of operations that McCain has denounced in his battle for campaign finance reform.

The convention runs Sept. 1-4 at the Xcel Energy Center in downtown St. Paul.

www.cbsnews.com/stories/2008/05/11/politics/main4086222.shtml

~ ~ ~

NEW DISCOVERY (05-10-08): Barack Obama outlines plans to debate John McCain, and says questioning McCain’s role in the “Keating Five” savings and loan affair is “fair game”:

May 10, 2008

Obama outlines plans for
race against McCain

By CHARLES BABINGTON and SARA KUGLER, Associated Press Writers

BEND, Ore. - Barack Obama began sketching the outlines of his expected presidential contest against Republican John McCain on Saturday, saying the fall election will be more about specific plans and priorities than about questions of political ideology or who is more patriotic.

Barely mentioning Democratic rival Hillary Rodham Clinton, Obama said he was open to campaigning with McCain in "town hall" events. But he also warned that controversial issues such as McCain's ties to the Keating Five savings and loan scandal are fair game, and he called McCain's proposal for a temporary halt in the federal gasoline tax a pander and a gimmick....

Speaking with reporters in Bend, Ore., Obama brushed aside suggestions that the fall campaign may be largely about his race, liberalism or patriotism.

"In a contest between myself and John McCain," he said, "there is going to be a very clear choice on policy that I don't think is going to have to do with ideology and who theoretically is more liberal or who's more conservative. I think it is going to have to do with who has a plan to provide relief to people when it comes to their gas prices, who has a real plan to make sure that everybody has health insurance, who's got a real plan to deal with college affordability."

"So rather than an abstract set of questions about, 'Is he too liberal, is he too conservative, how do voters handle an African American, et cetera,' I think this is going to be a very concrete contest around very specific plans for how we improve the lives of Americans and our vision for the future," he said.

Obama said he realizes he must continue introducing himself to millions of Americans who do not know him well, and acknowledged that some question his patriotism because he no longer wears a lapel flag pin.

He said the test of patriotism "is whether we are true to the ideals and values upon which this country was founded," and willing to fight for them "even when it's politically inconvenient."

Obama said McCain has received "a free pass" while he and Clinton have battled for months.

McCain, he said, "has a straight-talker image, but it's not clear that lately he's been following through on that image. I mean, this gas tax holiday was a pander. He didn't even have a way of paying for it."

The McCain campaign noted that Obama, as an Illinois state senator, once voted for a temporary gas tax suspension. Obama now says he made a mistake.

Obama was asked Saturday if the fall campaign might touch on the 1987 Keating Five scandal, in which the Senate Ethics Committee said McCain used "poor judgment" for allegedly pressing regulators to go easy on the owner of a failed Arizona savings and loan who was also a campaign contributor.

Obama said there is no doubt the Keating Five case is "germane to the presidency."

"I can't quarrel with the American people wanting to know more about that," he said....

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080510/ap_on_el_pr/democrats

~ ~ ~

NEW DISCOVERY (05-10-08): David Farmer’s undisclosed connections with AIPAC and “Bush’s Brain”, Karl Rove:

From: Hapa1234@aol.com

Date: Sat, 10 May 2008 01:26:40 EDT

Subject: Check out The Raw Story | Official probing Rove now under investigation himself

To: sf.nancy@mail.house.gov, senator@akaka.senate.gov, ustrustee.program@usdoj.gov, admin@ehawaii.gov, jurisnot@yahoo.com, bobby_n_harmon@yahoo.com, hwburgess@hawaii.rr.com, Ken_Conklin@yahoo.com, rroth@hawaii.edu}

The Raw Story | Official probing Rove now under investigation himself

"While Rove Fiddled; The Bush was Burning"? or........White men who can't dance?

ck out:

Dismissed U.S. Attorney's Carole Lam {California} and Frederick Black {South Pacific}.

HATCH ACT and the 1978 Hawaii Constitutional Convention:

a} Congressional Defense Appropriation Committee members, previous Bureau of Indian Affair Chairman, Veterans Affair Committees, Intelligence Committees, Special Counsels {Iran - Contra / Central America International Committees} Bishop, Baldwin, REWALD, Dillingham & Wong, for Hawaii U.S. Senator - Daniel Inouye - Defense Chairman linked to: hidden Public Pork Barrel proceeds for the lavish Hokulia Canoe for Hawaiians only programs / Women Abuse Shelters for Two Political Hawaii Legislature members involved in 1992 U.S. Senate race allegations for Sexual Harassment allegations / Private Defense Contractor Brent Wilkes - Hawaii ADSC Company fronts - Lavish Hawaiian Private Vacations - Luxury Private Accommodations - Hawaiian "Entertainment" linked to Asian Pacific Advisory Council Politicians {Prince Hotels} - AIPAC Lobbyist for Akaka Bill; {Dismissed U.S. Attorney - Frederick Black, Political Appointee under former CIA Director / Vice-President / President George H. Bush linked to former U.S. Federal Prosecutors John Peyton - Kenneth Starr in collusion with former Hawaii District Judges {deceased}: Martin Pence, Harold Fong, & California District Judge: Brian Tamahana}.

b} Alaska U.S. Senator - Ted Stevens linked to hidden Public Pork Barrel projects {Bridge To Nowhere} with family member to self serving Alaska Contractors - Home remodeling projects as well as lobbying ANWAR Bill under the Department of Interior {CREA} with members with the Defense Appropriation Committee Political links to members of Congressional Committees {I.E. - Veterans Committee Chairman - Daniel Akaka, sponsor for the stealth Akaka Bill with no Public voice or vote in Hawaii, Obstruction of Justice in the South Pacific {Jack Abramoff - Tom Delay} and the Broken Trust legacy in Hawaii, in political exchanges for continued political support for a Case of War in Iraq and the ANWAR Bill.

c} California Congressman - Duke "Dukestar" Cunningham: Defense Appropriation Committee member - Veterans Affair Committees linked to lavish Political briberies with Private Defense Contractors and CIA agents linked to Iraq War Appropriations in Washington DC, Southern California, and Hawaii lavish vacations - "Entertainment" with obstruction of justice linked to political Dismissed U.S. Attorney Carole Lam, linked to Political dismissed U.S. Attorney Frederick Black in the South Pacific involving Jack Abramoff {AIPAC} linked to Grover Norquist and Tom Delay {CNP - PNAC}.

Aloha Mai Mo. Aloha Aku: Do the Disavowed Facts matter for Special Counsel Scott Bloch with Karl Rove under Alberto Gonzales and the Broken Trust Legacy in Washington DC?

catbirds - south pac

~ ~ ~

NEW DISCOVERY (04-22-08): David Farmer’s undisclosed connections with AIPAC and Senator John McCain:

From Exhibit: “CONNECTING THE DIRTY DOTS TO AIPAC”:

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

—

DEFENDANT’S EXHIBIT

—

A few words of explanation:

In his "MEMORANDUM IN OPPOSITION TO DEBTOR'S MOTION FOR ORDER TO DISAPPROVE APPOINTMENT OF DAVID C. FARMER AS SUCCESSOR TRUSTEE", filed with the Court on August 24, 2007, the Trustee's attorney, Steven Guttman, Esq., of the law firm, Kessner Umebayashi Bain & Matsunaga, stated to the Court:

"... Harmon is once again attempting to create issues of conflict where none exist by attempting to draw connections between phantom dots."...

Mr. Guttman does not elaborate beyond this simple statement of HIS PERSONAL OPINION, as to WHICH of the thousands of connections I have cited that he wishes the Court to accept, without question, as being merely "phantom dots". In other court filings, Mr. Guttman has characterized my Motions as consisting of "conspiracy theories" -- again with no specific references.

Despite these unnamed "phantom dots" and "conspiracy theories", the Court has blithely and unquestionably gone along with Mr. Guttman's opinions and has repeatedly denied ALL Motions that I have made. In fact, both Courts involved have ruled that the Court Clerk shall not accept any future filings from me without the Courts' prior approval - which it has repeatedly declined to give.

Therefore, due to the fact that I continue to discover new, material FACTS almost daily, I am preparing a set of NEW EXHIBITS in which I intend to document the financial, professional, personal, and political connections between the many various entities involved in this case.

~ o ~

The following is a listing of named witnesses in this case who have factual connections with the subject entity. Each underlined name has been linked to a detailed description of that witness to enable the reader to more easily CONNECT THE DOTS TO...

AIPAC

Investors Equity Insurance Company

Reliance Insurance Group

The Peregrine Fund

The Peregrine Gallery

The Office of Hawaiian Affairs (OHA)

Judith Neustadter Fuqua

James B. “Jim” Nicholson

Dan Inouye

Rupert Murdoch

* * * * *
THE AIPAC PHOTO GALLERY

http://www.tikkun.org/magazine/tik0709/frontpage/israellobby

http://zioneocon.blogspot.com/bush%20speech%20to%20AIPAC.jpg

www.radioislam.org/bush/jewishpower.htm

yannone.blogspot.com/2007_01_01_archive.html

www.kycbs.net/AIPAC-Bush-7-20-3.mht

www.kycbs.net/AIPAC-Rice.mht

www.kycbs.net/AIPAC-Clinton.mht

www.kycbs.net/AIPAC-Bush-McCain.mht

www.kycbs.net/AIPAC-McCain-Lieberman.mht

www.kycbs.net/AIPAC-Washington-Gabfest.mht

* * * * *

LEARN MORE FACTS ABOUT AIPAC:

http://www.stopaipac.org/

http://www.stopaipac.org/spystory.htm

www.hadassah.org/education/content/influentials_israel.asp

http://www.jewishaz.com/jewishnews/021108/hawaii.shtml

http://www.tbrnews.org/Archives/a1721.htm

http://www.antiwar.com/cole/?articleid=3467

http://www.philipweiss.org/mondoweiss/2007/06/lfow.html

http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=AIPAC

http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2008/01/03/6138/

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zidtiC-UPNU

http://www.franklingate.com/aipac-cheney.htm

http://www.kycbs.net/AIPAC.htm

http://www.kycbs.net/AIPAC-9-11.mht

http://www.kycbs.net/AIPAC-Obama.mht

http://www.kycbs.net/AIPAC-Bush-Abramoff-Greenberg.mht

http://www.kycbs.net/AIPAC-Mische-7-11-7.mht

http://youtube.com/watch?v=vwV6O5AGKyw&feature=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B8gHmJUa720

http://ifamericaknew.com/us_ints/mc-aipac.html

http://www.antiwar.com/glantz/?articleid=9697

www.literarylotus.com/2007/12/wimr-brian-schatz.html

http://www.kycbs.net/AIPAC-Lingle-Abramoff-Brownstein.mht

~ ~ ~

NEW DISCOVERY (05-26-08):

The Global Economy's Investment
In Prostitution

Another Perspective

Want to know a few of the results of the move towards the so-called "Global Economy" which has become the nirvana Corporate America seeks? Be very careful, you might not like what you find.

According to U.N. documents, 4 million women a year are sold into sexual slavery around the world. Understand, these documents aren't discussing some Mid- Eastern potentate's harem. What we're talking about is 500,000 women "imported" into Western Europe and 90,000 into Italy, alone. These women are kidnapped and sold into prostitution for the gratification of men like the late Larry Hilblom, the founder of DHL courier service. Hilblom, it should be added, also participated in the kidnapping and sales of many young women, as well.

The majority of these women, who are mostly just young girls, come from the countries once known as client states of the old Soviet Union, such as Albania and the Ukraine. In fact, the selling of girls for the sexual gratification of wealthy men has become a major export for many of the supposedly free nations from the former Soviet bloc.

Amazingly, many of these women are moved through our ally Israel. The reason Israel is a major center for these atrocities is that Israel has absolutely no laws against the sale or ownership of other humans. Now there is wonderful reason to continue our hundreds of billions of dollars in foreign aid to this moral back water of a country.

The main reason that these crimes can so easily occur is the demand by the world's corporations that there be few or no inspections at national borders and that, with corporations buying up governments just like ours at bargain prices, they own the decisions to investigate crimes and, of course, see no reason to investigate the very crimes they, themselves, are committing.

Now, of course, America is immune from these charges, aren't we. I mean, this is the country where politicians spend their entire careers shouting about their fairy tale world of "family values", right? Our government would immediately spring into action should even a hint of this crime appear within our borders, right?

Wrong, of course. Thai women were imported into the United States and forced into sexual slavery in New York, Houston and Toronto, according to stories in the LA Times, New York Times and Dallas Morning News.

How long will it take the corporate prostitutes in Washington, D.C., to even acknowledge these crimes? How many conservatives do you think are going to stand up in protest against these horrors against humanity? How many will demand hundreds of billions of dollars to fight these crimes against humanity? What is less than none?

Unless America wakes up to these violations against humanity and demands action from the blow hards in office, nothing, whatsoever, will ever happen. Why? Because the victims do not fall within the parameters these vile people respect. These are young girls from foreign countries that don't contribute to American political coffers, nor are they related to anyone who owns enough property to matter to American politicians. If they were all Republican, Christian, wealthy wives and daughters of campaign contributors then this would be a problem of cosmic proportion. They aren't, so the problem is ignored.

These crimes against women are only the most extreme examples of the damage that is being done to people all over the world in the name of corporate profits. Add in the disease ridden fruit coming into America from countries which have little in the way of health and safety laws and food covered with the pesticides that America banned so Corporate America sold its stock to the same Third World countries now supplying us with our daily fruits and vegetables and grains.

Consider the effects that corrupt rulers the world over have regarding the financial health of your retirement and investments and, if the idiots who hate government safety nets have their way, your Social Security. Consider the damage another episode like the Hunt brothers attempt to corner the silver market would have on America if it were done by a nation or groups of nations. Finally, consider the costs of a simple computer virus invading the systems which control what will be the world's financial institution.

You, as an individual, have absolutely nothing to gain in a global economy. In fact, you will be the loser if you continue to listen to the lies and do not begin fighting the mutation of your world into a world corporation where the wealthy would rule through unlimited economic power. As in all things, it is your choice but your inaction will affect billions of people for centuries to come.

http://www.anotherperspective.org/advoc150.html

~ ~ ~

NEW DISCOVERY (04-15-08):

Connecting the dots...

David Farmer...Steven Guttman...Brian Schatz...Barack Obama...Oprah Winfrey...Hillary Clinton...Linda Lingle...John McCain....AIPAC...Punahou School...Kamehameha Schools...Dee Jay Mailer...The Global Fund...Henry Paulson...George W. Bush...Haunani Apoliona...OHA...Daniel Akaka...Dan Inouye...Suzanne Case...Dan Case...Steve Case...Jeffrey Case...Aon...The Nature Conservancy...Greg Dunn...Judith Neustadter Fuqua...etc...ad infinitum...

http://www.midweek.com/content/paina/image_full/2090/

~ ~ ~

NEW DISCOVERY (04-18-08):

February 2, 2008

McCain ‘Very Honored’ By Support Of Pastor
Preaching ‘End-Time Confrontation With Iran’

Think Progress

Yesterday, hard-line conservative Pastor John Hagee, founder of Christians United for Israel, endorsed John McCain. Hagee said that McCain “is a man of principle, [who] does not stand boldly on both sides of any issue.” McCain, who had been courting the endorsement for over a year, said that he was “very honored by Pastor John Hagee’s endorsement.”

Demonstrating how wildly out of the American religious and political mainstream Hagee’s views are, McCain’s acceptance of Hagee’s endorsement was condemned today by conservative William Donohue, president of the Catholic League. Calling Hagee a “bigot,” Donahue said the right-wing pastor has waged “an unrelenting war against the Catholic Church” by “calling it ‘The Great Whore,’ an ‘apostate church,’ the ‘anti-Christ,’ and a ‘false cult system.’”

Hagee holds many other radical beliefs. In a 2006 address to CUFI, Hagee declared:

The United States must join Israel in a pre-emptive military strike against Iran to fulfill God’s plan for both Israel and the West… a biblically prophesied end-time confrontation with Iran, which will lead to the Rapture, Tribulation, and Second Coming of Christ.

Speaking to the 2007 AIPAC conference, Hagee compared supporters of a two-state solution in the Middle East to Nazis. Hagee also echoed right-wing Israeli politician Binyamin Netanyahu, telling the audience that “Iran is Germany and Ahmadinejad is the new Hitler.”

Paging Tim Russert: Someone should ask John McCain if, unlike Hagee, he supports a two-state solution for Israel and Palestine, and whether he believes that a military strike against Iran would “fulfill God’s plan for…a biblically prophesied end-time confrontation” as Hagee does.

UPDATE: Faith in Public Life has more.

UPDATE II: Hagee’s tv show, “John Hagee Today,” is also broadcast on Cornerstone Television. In 1999, McCain wrote to the FCC on behalf of campaign contributor Lowell “Bud” Paxson, urging a deal that would have made $17.5 million for Cornerstone.

http://thinkprogress.org/2008/02/28/hagee-mccain-endorsement/

~ ~ ~

Pastor Strangelove: Texan John Hagee, AIPAC, and Instigating War on Iran

http://www.thewe.cc/weplanet/circus/2007/circus_march_2007.html

~ ~ ~

NEW DISCOVERY (04-12-08):

April 12, 2008

David C. Farmer, Esq.
Office of the United States Trustee
c/o Steven Guttman, Esq., Kessner Duca Umebayashi, et al.
220 S. King Street, Floor 10
Honolulu, HI 96813

Re: 99-04339 - David C. Farmer, Trustee vs. Bobby N. Harmon
Ref. New Exhibit: “THE DIRTY MILLIONS FOR ARMAGEDDON”

Dear Mr. Farmer:

Due to new discoveries regarding the Integrated Resources securities fraud and illegal U.S. political campaign funding by foreign nationals (Israel), I am adding the subject Exhibit. You will find this new Exhibit and related witness descriptions at:

http://www.kycbs.net/Dirty-Millions.htm

http://www.kycbs.net/CV05-00030-Witness-Lingle-Linda.htm

http://www.kycbs.net/CV05-00030-Witness-McCain-John.htm

http://www.kycbs.net/CV05-00030-Witness-Kissinger-Henry.htm

http://www.kycbs.net/CV05-00030-Witness-Black-Conrad.htm

http://www.kycbs.net/CV05-00030-Witness-Farmer-David.htm

Mr. Farmer, I again suggest that we try to resolve this matter through negotiation rather that your continuing indefinitely this illegal SLAPP lawsuit.

Very truly yours,

Bobby N. Harmon, CPCU, ARM

cc: U.S. Attorney General Michael Mukasey
E-mail: <AskDOJ@usdoj.gov>

Curtis Ching, Office of the United States Trustee
Fax: (808) 522-8156

~ ~ ~

NEW DISCOVERY (04/30/08):

April 30, 2008

McCain introduced at health care event by health care lobbyist.

At his health care policy event yesterday at the H. Lee Moffitt Cancer Center & Research Institute in Florida, Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) was introduced by the institute’s chairman, former Republican senator Connie Mack. But, as Hotline reports, Mack is more than just a chairman. He’s also a registered state lobbyist “advocating for health insurance companies“:

According to the official site of the Florida Legislature, Mack is registered in 2008 to lobby for Prestige Health Choice, a Florida company. The co. is “filing to become approved by the state of Florida as a Provider Service Network,” and according to a company release dated Nov. 16, 2007, “Prestige will first provide Medicaid managed care services to Florida residents.”

According to Hotline’s Jennifer Skalka, “the McCain campaign lobbied On Call feverishly to tank” its reporting on Mack’s role as a lobbyist, calling the story “ludicrous, absurd and ridiculous.”

~ ~ ~

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

~ ~ ~

NEW DISCOVERY (02/21/08):

February 21, 2008

For McCain, Self-Confidence on Ethics
Poses Its Own Risk

By JIM RUTENBERG, MARILYN W. THOMPSON, DAVID D. KIRKPATRICK
and STEPHEN LABATON, The New York Times

WASHINGTON — Early in Senator John McCain’s first run for the White House eight years ago, waves of anxiety swept through his small circle of advisers.

A female lobbyist had been turning up with him at fund-raisers, visiting his offices and accompanying him on a client’s corporate jet. Convinced the relationship had become romantic, some of his top advisers intervened to protect the candidate from himself — instructing staff members to block the woman’s access, privately warning her away and repeatedly confronting him, several people involved in the campaign said on the condition of anonymity.

When news organizations reported that Mr. McCain had written letters to government regulators on behalf of the lobbyist’s client, the former campaign associates said, some aides feared for a time that attention would fall on her involvement.

Mr. McCain, 71, and the lobbyist, Vicki Iseman, 40, both say they never had a romantic relationship. But to his advisers, even the appearance of a close bond with a lobbyist whose clients often had business before the Senate committee Mr. McCain led threatened the story of redemption and rectitude that defined his political identity.

It had been just a decade since an official favor for a friend with regulatory problems had nearly ended Mr. McCain’s political career by ensnaring him in the Keating Five scandal. In the years that followed, he reinvented himself as the scourge of special interests, a crusader for stricter ethics and campaign finance rules, a man of honor chastened by a brush with shame.

But the concerns about Mr. McCain’s relationship with Ms. Iseman underscored an enduring paradox of his post-Keating career. Even as he has vowed to hold himself to the highest ethical standards, his confidence in his own integrity has sometimes seemed to blind him to potentially embarrassing conflicts of interest.

Mr. McCain promised, for example, never to fly directly from Washington to Phoenix, his hometown, to avoid the impression of self-interest because he sponsored a law that opened the route nearly a decade ago. But like other lawmakers, he often flew on the corporate jets of business executives seeking his support, including the media moguls Rupert Murdoch, Michael R. Bloomberg and Lowell W. Paxson, Ms. Iseman’s client. (Last year he voted to end the practice.)

Mr. McCain helped found a nonprofit group to promote his personal battle for tighter campaign finance rules. But he later resigned as its chairman after news reports disclosed that the group was tapping the same kinds of unlimited corporate contributions he opposed, including those from companies seeking his favor. He has criticized the cozy ties between lawmakers and lobbyists, but is relying on corporate lobbyists to donate their time running his presidential race and recently hired a lobbyist to run his Senate office.

“He is essentially an honorable person,” said William P. Cheshire, a friend of Mr. McCain who as editorial page editor of The Arizona Republic defended him during the Keating Five scandal. “But he can be imprudent.”

Mr. Cheshire added, “That imprudence or recklessness may be part of why he was not more astute about the risks he was running with this shady operator,” Charles Keating, whose ties to Mr. McCain and four other lawmakers tainted their reputations in the savings and loan debacle.

During his current campaign for the Republican presidential nomination, Mr. McCain has played down his attacks on the corrupting power of money in politics, aware that the stricter regulations he championed are unpopular in his party. When the Senate overhauled lobbying and ethics rules last year, Mr. McCain stayed in the background.

With his nomination this year all but certain, though, he is reminding voters again of his record of reform. His campaign has already begun comparing his credentials with those of Senator Barack Obama, a Democratic contender who has made lobbying and ethics rules a centerpiece of his own pitch to voters.

“I would very much like to think that I have never been a man whose favor can be bought,” Mr. McCain wrote about his Keating experience in his 2002 memoir, “Worth the Fighting For.” “From my earliest youth, I would have considered such a reputation to be the most shameful ignominy imaginable. Yet that is exactly how millions of Americans viewed me for a time, a time that I will forever consider one of the worst experiences of my life.”

A drive to expunge the stain on his reputation in time turned into a zeal to cleanse Washington as well. The episode taught him that “questions of honor are raised as much by appearances as by reality in politics,” he wrote, “and because they incite public distrust they need to be addressed no less directly than we would address evidence of expressly illegal corruption.”...

A Formative Scandal

Mr. McCain started his career like many other aspiring politicians, eagerly courting the wealthy and powerful. A Vietnam war hero and Senate liaison for the Navy, he arrived in Arizona in 1980 after his second marriage, to Cindy Hensley, the heiress to a beer fortune there. He quickly started looking for a Congressional district where he could run.

Mr. Keating, a Phoenix financier and real estate developer, became an early sponsor and, soon, a friend. He was a man of great confidence and daring, Mr. McCain recalled in his memoir. “People like that appeal to me,” he continued. “I have sometimes forgotten that wisdom and a strong sense of public responsibility are much more admirable qualities.”

During Mr. McCain’s four years in the House, Mr. Keating, his family and his business associates contributed heavily to his political campaigns. The banker gave Mr. McCain free rides on his private jet, a violation of Congressional ethics rules (he later said it was an oversight and paid for the trips). They vacationed together in the Bahamas. And in 1986, the year Mr. McCain was elected to the Senate, his wife joined Mr. Keating in investing in an Arizona shopping mall.

Mr. Keating had taken over the Lincoln Savings and Loan Association and used its federally insured deposits to gamble on risky real estate and other investments. He pressed Mr. McCain and other lawmakers to help hold back federal banking regulators.

For years, Mr. McCain complied. At Mr. Keating’s request, he wrote several letters to regulators, introduced legislation and helped secure the nomination of a Keating associate to a banking regulatory board.

By early 1987, though, the thrift was careering toward disaster. Mr. McCain agreed to join several senators, eventually known as the Keating Five, for two private meetings with regulators to urge them to ease up. “Why didn’t I fully grasp the unusual appearance of such a meeting?” Mr. McCain later lamented in his memoir.

When Lincoln went bankrupt in 1989 — one of the biggest collapses of the savings and loan crisis, costing taxpayers $3.4 billion — the Keating Five became infamous. The scandal sent Mr. Keating to prison and ended the careers of three senators, who were censured in 1991 for intervening. Mr. McCain, who had been a less aggressive advocate for Mr. Keating than the others, was reprimanded only for “poor judgment” and was re-elected the next year.

Some people involved think Mr. McCain got off too lightly. William Black, one of the banking regulators the senator met with, argued that Mrs. McCain’s investment with Mr. Keating created an obvious conflict of interest for her husband. (Mr. McCain had said a prenuptial agreement divided the couple’s assets.) He should not be able to “put this behind him,” Mr. Black said. “It sullied his integrity.”

Mr. McCain has since described the episode as a unique humiliation. “If I do not repress the memory, its recollection still provokes a vague but real feeling that I had lost something very important,” he wrote in his memoir. “I still wince thinking about it.”

A New Chosen Cause

After the Republican takeover of the Senate in 1994, Mr. McCain decided to try to put some of the lessons he had learned into law. He started by attacking earmarks, the pet projects that individual lawmakers could insert anonymously into the fine print of giant spending bills, a recipe for corruption. But he quickly moved on to other targets, most notably political fund-raising.

Mr. McCain earned the lasting animosity of many conservatives, who argue that his push for fund-raising restrictions trampled free speech, and of many of his Senate colleagues, who bristled that he was preaching to them so soon after his own repentance. In debates, his party’s leaders challenged him to name a single senator he considered corrupt (he refused).

“We used to joke that each of us was the only one eating alone in our caucus,” said Senator Russ Feingold, Democrat of Wisconsin, who became Mr. McCain’s partner on campaign finance efforts.

Mr. McCain appeared motivated less by the usual ideas about good governance than by a more visceral disapproval of the gifts, meals and money that influence seekers shower on lawmakers, Mr. Feingold said. “It had to do with his sense of honor,” he said. “He saw this stuff as cheating.”

Mr. McCain made loosening the grip of special interests the central cause of his 2000 presidential campaign, inviting scrutiny of his own ethics. His Republican rival, George W. Bush, accused him of “double talk” for soliciting campaign contributions from companies with interests that came before the powerful Senate commerce committee, of which Mr. McCain was chairman. Mr. Bush’s allies called Mr. McCain “sanctimonious.”

At one point, his campaign invited scores of lobbyists to a fund-raiser at the Willard Hotel in Washington. While Bush supporters stood mocking outside, the McCain team tried to defend his integrity by handing the lobbyists buttons reading “McCain voted against my bill.” Mr. McCain himself skipped the event, an act he later called “cowardly.”

By 2002, he had succeeded in passing the McCain-Feingold Act, which transformed American politics by banning “soft money,” the unlimited donations from corporations, unions and the rich that were funneled through the two political parties to get around previous laws.

One of his efforts, though, seemed self-contradictory. In 2001, he helped found the nonprofit Reform Institute to promote his cause and, in the process, his career. It collected hundreds of thousands of dollars in unlimited donations from companies that lobbied the Senate commerce committee. Mr. McCain initially said he saw no problems with the financing, but he severed his ties to the institute in 2005, complaining of “bad publicity” after news reports of the arrangement.

Like other presidential candidates, he has relied on lobbyists to run his campaigns. Since a cash crunch last summer, several of them — including his campaign manager, Rick Davis, who represented companies before Mr. McCain’s Senate panel — have been working without pay, a gift that could be worth tens of thousands of dollars.

In recent weeks, Mr. McCain has hired another lobbyist, Mark Buse, to run his Senate office. In his case, it was a round trip through the revolving door: Mr. Buse had directed Mr. McCain’s committee staff for seven years before leaving in 2001 to lobby for telecommunications companies.

Mr. McCain’s friends dismiss questions about his ties to lobbyists, arguing that he has too much integrity to let such personal connections influence him.

“Unless he gives you special treatment or takes legislative action against his own views, I don’t think his personal and social relationships matter,” said Charles Black, a friend and campaign adviser who has previously lobbied the senator for aviation, broadcasting and tobacco concerns.

Concerns in a Campaign

Mr. McCain’s confidence in his ability to distinguish personal friendships from compromising connections was at the center of questions advisers raised about Ms. Iseman.

The lobbyist, a partner at the firm Alcalde & Fay, represented telecommunications companies for whom Mr. McCain’s commerce committee was pivotal. Her clients contributed tens of thousands of dollars to his campaigns.

Mr. Black said Mr. McCain and Ms. Iseman were friends and nothing more. But in 1999 she began showing up so frequently in his offices and at campaign events that staff members took notice. One recalled asking, “Why is she always around?”

That February, Mr. McCain and Ms. Iseman attended a small fund-raising dinner with several clients at the Miami-area home of a cruise-line executive and then flew back to Washington along with a campaign aide on the corporate jet of one of her clients, Paxson Communications. By then, according to two former McCain associates, some of the senator’s advisers had grown so concerned that the relationship had become romantic that they took steps to intervene.

A former campaign adviser described being instructed to keep Ms. Iseman away from the senator at public events, while a Senate aide recalled plans to limit Ms. Iseman’s access to his offices.

In interviews, the two former associates said they joined in a series of confrontations with Mr. McCain, warning him that he was risking his campaign and career. Both said Mr. McCain acknowledged behaving inappropriately and pledged to keep his distance from Ms. Iseman. The two associates, who said they had become disillusioned with the senator, spoke independently of each other and provided details that were corroborated by others.

Separately, a top McCain aide met with Ms. Iseman at Union Station in Washington to ask her to stay away from the senator. John Weaver, a former top strategist and now an informal campaign adviser, said in an e-mail message that he arranged the meeting after “a discussion among the campaign leadership” about her.

“Our political messaging during that time period centered around taking on the special interests and placing the nation’s interests before either personal or special interest,” Mr. Weaver continued. “Ms. Iseman’s involvement in the campaign, it was felt by us, could undermine that effort.”

Mr. Weaver added that the brief conversation was only about “her conduct and what she allegedly had told people, which made its way back to us.” He declined to elaborate.

It is not clear what effect the warnings had; the associates said their concerns receded in the heat of the campaign.

Ms. Iseman acknowledged meeting with Mr. Weaver, but disputed his account.

“I never discussed with him alleged things I had ‘told people,’ that had made their way ‘back to’ him,” she wrote in an e-mail message. She said she never received special treatment from Mr. McCain’s office.

Mr. McCain said that the relationship was not romantic and that he never showed favoritism to Ms. Iseman or her clients. “I have never betrayed the public trust by doing anything like that,” he said. He made the statements in a call to Bill Keller, the executive editor of The New York Times, to complain about the paper’s inquiries.

The senator declined repeated interview requests, beginning in December. He also would not comment about the assertions that he had been confronted about Ms. Iseman, Mr. Black said Wednesday.

Mr. Davis and Mark Salter, Mr. McCain’s top strategists in both of his presidential campaigns, disputed accounts from the former associates and aides and said they did not discuss Ms. Iseman with the senator or colleagues.

“I never had any good reason to think that the relationship was anything other than professional, a friendly professional relationship,” Mr. Salter said in an interview.

He and Mr. Davis also said Mr. McCain had frequently denied requests from Ms. Iseman and the companies she represented. In 2006, Mr. McCain sought to break up cable subscription packages, which some of her clients opposed. And his proposals for satellite distribution of local television programs fell short of her clients’ hopes.

The McCain aides said the senator sided with Ms. Iseman’s clients only when their positions hewed to his principles.

A champion of deregulation, Mr. McCain wrote letters in 1998 and 1999 to the Federal Communications Commission urging it to uphold marketing agreements allowing a television company to control two stations in the same city, a crucial issue for Glencairn Ltd., one of Ms. Iseman’s clients. He introduced a bill to create tax incentives for minority ownership of stations; Ms. Iseman represented several businesses seeking such a program. And he twice tried to advance legislation that would permit a company to control television stations in overlapping markets, an important issue for Paxson.

In late 1999, Ms. Iseman asked Mr. McCain’s staff to send a letter to the commission to help Paxson, now Ion Media Networks, on another matter. Mr. Paxson was impatient for F.C.C. approval of a television deal, and Ms. Iseman acknowledged in an e-mail message to The Times that she had sent to Mr. McCain’s staff information for drafting a letter urging a swift decision.

Mr. McCain complied. He sent two letters to the commission, drawing a rare rebuke for interference from its chairman. In an embarrassing turn for the campaign, news reports invoked the Keating scandal, once again raising questions about intervening for a patron.

Mr. McCain’s aides released all of his letters to the F.C.C. to dispel accusations of favoritism, and aides said the campaign had properly accounted for four trips on the Paxson plane. But the campaign did not report the flight with Ms. Iseman. Mr. McCain’s advisers say he was not required to disclose the flight, but ethics lawyers dispute that.

Recalling the Paxson episode in his memoir, Mr. McCain said he was merely trying to push along a slow-moving bureaucracy, but added that he was not surprised by the criticism given his history.

“Any hint that I might have acted to reward a supporter,” he wrote, “would be taken as an egregious act of hypocrisy.”

Statement by McCain

Mr. McCain’s presidential campaign issued the following statement Wednesday night:

“It is a shame that The New York Times has lowered its standards to engage in a hit-and-run smear campaign. John McCain has a 24-year record of serving our country with honor and integrity. He has never violated the public trust, never done favors for special interests or lobbyists, and he will not allow a smear campaign to distract from the issues at stake in this election.

“Americans are sick and tired of this kind of gutter politics, and there is nothing in this story to suggest that John McCain has ever violated the principles that have guided his career.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/21/us/politics/21mccain.html

TALK TO THE NEW YORK TIMES NEWSROOM

* * *

January 16, 2007

Nightingale at Large

“There are rats in the War Office — also a cat”
Florence Nightingale, 1860

~ ~ ~

McCain & Robert S. Bennett

Nightingale at Large

Again I’m going to deviate from my guideline (obviously no longer a “rule”) and reproduce an article, Paul Krugman’s column “The Texas Strategy” from Monday’s Times. He explains Bush’s “surge” by analogy to the Savings & Loan scandle. Very apt.

Krugman is leading up to future columns on John McCain, who was involved in that scandle as one of the “Keating Five” and also likely to be the Republican candidate for President in 2008. We will hear a lot about McCain’s ethics and McCain on Ethics. I hope we also hear a bit about Robert S. Bennett, likely to be prominent on McCain’s team and in his administration. I am assuming the Democrats are not going to make much of an effort to run their candidate for president against McCain. McCain is very tough. And Bennett serves his clients better than Karl Rove served Bush.

Bennett arranged McCain’s escape from the “Keating Five” part of the S&L scandle in which Keating purchased five Senators, including McCain, to block investigation of his failing bank. Bennett is near the top of all the defense lawyers in Washington. He has defended Enron, KPMG in “the largest ever tax shelter fraud” case, Clark Clifford in the BCCI case, Caspar Weinberger in the Iran-Contra case, Bill Clinton in his multi-million dollar indiscretion cases, Rostenkowski, and recently Judith Miller in the fallout from her selling Iraq War lies case.

Here is the column from the Times:

January 15, 2007

Paul Krugman, “The Texas Strategy”

Hundreds of news articles and opinion pieces have described President Bush’s decision to escalate the Iraq war as a “Hail Mary pass.”

But that’s the wrong metaphor.

Mr. Bush isn’t Roger Staubach, trying to pull out a win for the Dallas Cowboys. He’s Charles Keating, using other people’s money to keep Lincoln Savings going long after it should have been shut down — and squandering the life savings of thousands of investors, not to mention billions in taxpayer dollars, along the way.

The parallel is actually quite exact. During the savings and loan scandal of the 1980s, people like Mr. Keating kept failed banks going by faking financial success. Mr. Bush has kept a failed war going by faking military success.

The “surge” is just another stalling tactic, designed to buy more time.

Oh, and one of the favorite techniques used by the owners of savings and loan associations to generate phony profits — it involved making high-interest loans to crooked or flaky real estate developers — came to be known as the “Texas strategy.”

What was the point of the Texas strategy? Bank owners were certainly gambling — with other people’s money, of course — in the hope of a miraculous recovery that would bail out their negative balance sheets.

But the real point of the racket was a form of looting: as long as they could keep reporting high paper profits, S.&L. owners could keep rewarding themselves with salaries, dividends and sweetheart business deals.

Mr. Keating paid himself a million dollars just weeks before his holding company collapsed.

Which brings us to Iraq. The administration has spent the last three years pretending that its splendid little war isn’t a big disaster. There have been the bromides (we’re making “good progress”); the promises (we have a “strategy for victory”); and, as always, attacks on the media for not reporting the good news from Iraq.

Who you gonna believe, the president or your lying eyes?

Now Mr. Bush has grudgingly sort- of admitted that things aren’t going well — but he says his “new way forward” will fix everything.

So it’s still the Texas strategy: the war’s architects are trying to keep their failed venture going as long as possible.

The Hail Mary aspect — the off chance that somehow, things really will turn out all right — is the least of their motivations. The real intent is a form of looting. I’m not talking mainly about old-fashioned war profiteering, although there is no question that profiteering is taking place on an epic scale. No, I’m saying that the hawks want to keep this war going because it’s to their personal and political benefit.

True, Mr. Bush can’t win another election with phony claims of success in Iraq, the way he did in 2004. But escalation buys him another year or two to claim that we’re making progress — and it gives him another chance to prove that he’s the Decider, beyond accountability.

And as for pundits who promoted the war and are now trying to sell the surge: for a little while longer they can be Very Important People who have the president’s ear.

Meanwhile, the nation pays the price. The heaviest burden — in death, shattered bodies, broken families and ruined careers — falls on those who serve. To find the personnel for the Bush escalation, the Pentagon must lengthen deployments in Iraq and shorten training time at home.

And the back-door draft has become a life sentence: there is no limit on the cumulative amount of time citizen-soldiers can be required to serve on active duty. Mama, don’t let your children grow up to be reservists.

The rest of us will pay a financial price for the hundreds of billions squandered in Iraq and, more important, a price in reduced security.

Escalation won’t bring victory in Iraq, but it might bring defeat in Afghanistan, which the administration will continue to neglect. And it has pushed the military to the breaking point.

Mr. Bush calls his critics “irresponsible,” saying that they don’t have an alternative to his strategy. But they do: setting a timetable for withdrawal, so that we can cut our losses, and trying to save what can be saved. It isn’t a strategy for victory because that’s no longer an option. It’s a strategy for acknowledging reality.

The lesson of the savings and loan scandal was that when a bank has failed, you shouldn’t let the owner string you along with promises — you should shut the thing down. We should do the same with Mr. Bush’s failed war.

–end of Krugman column–

Regards, Jim

http://nightingaleatlarge.com/?p=6

http://nightingaleatlarge.com/?p=6#comment-2205

* * *

FOR MORE SEE: VULTURES IN THE MEADOWS; THE VULTURES IN MAUNAWILI VALLEY

~ ~ ~

September 14, 2006

McCain-Lingle 2008?

By Anthony Pignataro, MauiTime Weekly

He’s the right-wing senior U.S. Senator from Arizona, storied POW from the Vietnam War and presumptive front-runner for the Republican nomination in the 2008 presidential campaign. She’s the first-term, extremely well funded right-of-center Republican Governor of Hawai`i cruising through a cakewalk reelection campaign.

On Oct. 3, Senator John McCain and Governor Linda Lingle will meet at The Dunes at Maui Lani for a private, intimate (no more than 60 people) $1,000-per-plate fundraiser for Lingle’s reelection campaign. Is this the start of a beautiful political relationship that could “consummate,” if you will, in the White House in two years?

It’s not as outlandish as it sounds. Lingle’s political ambitions clearly stretch to Washington. And last year, Senator Daniel Akaka, of all people, brought the two together.

It was the spring of 2005, and the papers were filled with reports of an impending vote in the Senate on Akaka’s Native Hawaiian Recognition Bill. But first the bill came up in the Senate’s Indian Affairs Committee, which McCain chaired. At first, McCain told reporters that he had serious problems with the bill and wondered aloud about its usefulness and constitutionality.

Then Ms. Linda Lingle flew to town, testified before the committee and met with McCain. A few days later, on March 9, 2005, a slightly amended version of the Akaka Bill passed unanimously out of McCain’s committee. A few months later, when the bill looked like it was coming up for a full vote in the Senate (Hurricanes Katrina and Rita squelched that), McCain had become a full Akaka Bill booster. And he publicly said it was all due to Lingle’s influence.

“Here in Washington, it’s hard for us to go against the view of the governor, the Legislature—Republican and Democrat—the senators and the congressman,” he said in the Honolulu Advertiser on June 29, 2005.

And now he’s going to help raise $60,000 for Lingle. By my count, that’s two favors McCain’s given to Lingle. Way I see it, Lingle owes McCain plenty.

http://www.mauitime.com/story.aspx?story_id=2117

~ ~ ~

June 9, 2006

Despite a 'Yes' Vote on Cloture, I am Unequivocally
Opposed to the Akaka Bill

My Vote in Support for Cloture Fulfills an Agreement I Made,
But I Would Not Vote for the Akaka Bill's Passage
Because It Divides the Nation By Race

By U.S. Sen. John McCain

This is from the congressional record, which lists Congressional Debate on S. 147, the “Akaka Bill” on June 7 and 8, 2006. These statements were inserted into the record by Sen. McCain

The Hawaii Reporter

Today we will vote on the motion to proceed to S . 147 , the Native Hawaiian Government Reorganization Act of 2005. This legislation was passed by the Indian Affairs Committee on March 9, 2005. The bill is similar to a bill reported by the Committee during the 108th Congress that was not brought before the full Senate.

S . 147 was developed to provide Native Hawaiians with a mechanism for self-governance and self-determination, which the bill's sponsors believe would protect from legal challenges a variety of programs and services currently in place for the benefit of Native Hawaiians. To achieve this goal, the bill would establish a process that would permit Native Hawaiians to organize a sovereign entity that would have a legal relationship with the United States similar to that which exists today between the United States and federally recognized Indian tribes.

I recognize that this legislation has been offered in response to many legitimate concerns expressed by the members of the Hawaii delegation and the State's Governor. The leaders of the State of Hawaii are attempting to ensure that a longstanding agreement between the Federal Government and Hawaii will not be jeopardized by litigants determined to undermine certain aspects of that agreement relating to Native Hawaiians. That does not change the fact that I have serious doubts about the wisdom of this legislation.

The sponsors reached an agreement in the 108th Congress that they would be afforded an opportunity to bring the bill to the Senate floor during this Congress.

To fulfill that agreement, in my capacity as the chairman of the Indian Affairs Committee, I have worked to ensure that the legislation would be reported by the committee.

I will also support the motion to proceed to the bill's consideration because of the agreement that was reached in the last Congress.

I would like the record to reflect clearly, though, that I am unequivocally opposed to this bill and that I will not support its passage should cloture be invoked.

Again, I do know how important this legislation is to the Senators from Hawaii and certainly to the very capable Governor of the 50th State. I am very much aware that one of the purposes of this legislation is to insulate current Native Hawaiian programs from constitutional attack in the courts, and I am sympathetic to that purpose. I commit to the Senators and the Governor that I remain willing to work with them to address the fundamental legal concerns facing their State. I also recognize the efforts made by Senator Akaka to address some of the criticisms that have been leveled at this legislation. However, I still have a number of significant concerns with this measure.

Foremost among these concerns is that, if enacted, S . 147 would result in the formation of a sovereign government for Native Hawaiian people. I am sure that the sponsors have good intentions, but I cannot turn away from the fact that this bill would lead to the creation of a new nation based exclusively -- not primarily, not in part, but exclusively -- on race. In fact, any person with even a drop of Hawaiian blood would qualify to vote on the establishment of this new, legislatively created entity that would then negotiate with the Federal Government of the United States and the State of Hawaii on potentially unlimited topics.

As the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights stated in its recent report recommending against passage of S . 147, this bill would discriminate on the basis of race and '''further subdivide the American people into discrete subgroups accorded varying degrees of privilege.'''

This is unacceptable to me, and it is unacceptable, I am sure, to most other citizens of this Nation who agree that we must continue our struggle to become and remain one people -- all equal, all Americans....

See also: Apartheid, Hawaiian Style

~ ~ ~

March 9, 2007

Henry Kissinger Backs
Sen. John McCain

Newsmax

Former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger lent his support to Republican presidential candidate John McCain at a Manhattan fundraiser Thursday.

"I think that the most important quality for a president is character," Kissinger said. "All the decisions that the president has to decide, the most important ones are very close decisions. And I have great confidence that John will help us solve the toughest problem for any administration and for our country - to take us from where we are to where we haven't been, and I think John is the man to do this."

Kissinger was one of several people McCain said he calls seeking advice on foreign policy, including Brent Scowcroft, George P. Shultz, Lawrence Eagleburger, Robert Kagan and William Kristol.

"When I have a question about something that's going on in the world, I call Dr. Kissinger and he is able to connect the dots for me," McCain said. "It is easy to be an expert on one aspect of some international situation. He's one of the only people I've ever known who can connect the entire scenario for you in a way that you understand the completeness of the challenge."

~ ~ ~

NEW DISCOVERY (02/22/08):

February 8, 2008

Israeli Journalist Says McCain is Lying

Ha’aretz journalist Amir Oren has challenged likely Republican nominee for US President , Senator John McCain, to a lie detector test over the latter’s denial that he said Israel should return to 1967 armistice lines.

This week, Senator John McCain took heat because of an interview that he granted two years ago to Amir Oren, a credible journalist from the Israeli newspaper HaAretz, on May 1, 2006, in which Mr. McCain declared that his administration “would send “the smartest guy I know” to the Middle East …. “Brent Scowcroft, or Jim Baker though I know that you in Israel don’t like Baker.”

Mr. McCain added “I would expect concessions and sacrifices by both sides.”

When Mr. Oren asked Mr. McCain if that meant a “movement toward the June 4, 1967 armistice lines, with minor modifications? McCain nodded in the affirmative.”

To deflect criticism that he has encountered on the 2008 campaign trail, the McCain campaign has been quoting an article by John B. Judis., senior editor at The New Republic who wrote in an article in that publication on October 25, 2006 that Mr. McCain was “miffed at his portrayal in HaAretz,” saying that “after reading the HaAretz article and subsequent report in The Jewish Press [in New York],” he felt the need to “clear up several serious misimpressions.” Mr. McCain said that “in contrast to the impression left by the HaAretz article, I’ve never held the position that Israel should return to 1967 lines, and that is not my position today.”

The senator repeated this week what he said to the New Republic which was that “in the course of that brief, off-the-cuff conversation, I never discussed settlement blocs, a total withdrawal, or anything of the sort.”

Reached at his desk in Tel Aviv, Mr. Oren told The Bulletin that Mr. McCain is simply “not telling the truth”, and that he would gladly invite him to a polygraph to see who is telling the truth. He said Mr. McCain indeed recommended Mr. Baker and Mr. Snowcroft as his potential candidates to deal with the Middle East, and that he clearly answered in the affirmative when it came to Mr. McCain’s expectations of Israel, and how it should relate to further withdrawals....

Mr. Oren was clearly upset to hear Mr. McCain was challenging the veracity of the interview from two years ago. In Mr. Oren’s words, Mr. McCain should “show the same courage on the campaign trail that he showed in Vietnam.”

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/people/Brent+Scowcroft

~ ~ ~

From The Catbird Seat - Part I:

Brent Scowcroft -

From...and the truth shall set you free, by David Icke:

The Hidden Hand....

The Tower Commission was appointed to investigate the Iran-Contra affair, chaired by Texas Senator, John Tower. This is the same John Tower who, according to CIA man Gunthar Russbacher, was on the plane with Bush when he flew to Paris for the October Surprise meeting with the Iranians! The John Tower who knew the real story of Lee Harvey Oswald.

Also on the Tower Commission was Brent Scowcroft, a Kissinger 'yes man' and an executive of Kissinger Associates; and Ed Muskie, another do-as-you're told politician who could be twisted to suppress the truth. Muskie was himself implicated in both the October Surprise and Iran-Contra.

As you can see, the Commission was thoroughly independent. It cleared George Bush of all blame and involvement. When Bush became president, he made John Tower his secretary of defense. Tower was asked if this appointment was a pay-off from Bush. His response?

"As the Commission was made up of three people, Brent Scowcroft and Ed Muskie, in addition to myself, that would be sort of impugning the integrity of Brent Scowcroft and Ed Muskie ... We found nothing to implicate the Vice President ... I wonder what kind of pay-off they're going to get?"

I can tell him. Bush appointed Brent Scowcroft as his National Security Advisor. The Senate refused to accept Tower's appointment and he began to speak of the injustice he believed had been done to him. He died in a plane crash on April 5^th, 1991.

When the Senate turned down Tower, a decision Bush probably engineered, he selected Dick Cheney as defense secretary. Cheney was the senior Republican member of another committee which cleared Bush of involvement in Iran-Contra, the House Select Committee to Investigate Covert Arms Transactions with Iran....

A group of other people, including former defense secretary, Caspar Weinberger, were given a pardon by Bush for their involvement in Iran-Contra. This came on Christmas Eve 1992, a matter of weeks before they were due to face a trial which would have implicated Bush. In January, 1993, he then passed over the presidency to Bill Clinton who continued the cover-up because ... he was involved too!...

The Washington Post and the rest of the mainstream media which had turned a comparatively minor break-in at the Watergate building into a scandal that dethroned Richard Nixon, kept their heads down as the United States government sold arms to terrorists in exchange for drugs for American children. It is actually possible to coordinate a drug running and arms running operation from the White House and get away with it.

Unbelievable, maybe, but true all the same....

www.kycbs.net/Catbird1.htm

~ ~ ~

Editorial Reviews

The Buying of the President 2000, by Charles Lewis

www.Amazon.com

The essential fact of politics, writes Charles Lewis, is that "it takes mammoth sums of money to obtain power."

The Buying of the President 2000 reveals who is paying. Since 1976, the candidates who have raised the most money have become their party's nominees--and money has become increasingly important with each new election.

In 1999, George W. Bush raised $37 million in four months--before a single primary--more than Bill Clinton and Bob Dole raised for their respective campaigns in all of 1995 and 1996. Who is giving all this money to the presidential candidates, and what do they expect in return?

The Buying of the President 2000 reveals that the top 10 donors to the Democrats include the National Education Association, the Walt Disney Company, and Loral Space and Communications (which benefitted from the Clinton administration's loosening of restrictions on selling high-tech equipment to China).

Among the top 10 Republican party donors: Philip Morris, AT&T, Atlantic Richfield, and Archer Daniels Midland. Bill Bradley's top donors include Citigroup, Merrill Lynch, Goldman Sachs, and Morgan Stanley; Al Gore also gets money from Goldman Sachs and Citigroup, as well as Ernst & Young and BellSouth. It's not surprising that George W. Bush's biggest career donors are companies with business in Texas, including the Enron Corporation and the Bass family, or that John McCain, chairman of the Senate Commerce Committee, has donors with important business before his committee (US West, AT&T, Viacom, Boeing, and Bank of America). But The Buying of the President 2000 does not seek to make voters more cynical, just better informed. If you care about American democracy, it is an alarming, but very important, reference. --Linda Killian

~ ~ ~

ABC News, 2/2/97, by James Walker:

The King of Pork

“Dan Inouye is the second largest industry in the state of Hawaii,” says Richard Borreca of the Honolulu Star-Bulletin.

That’s because in just the last five years, Inouye has brought home almost half a billion in federal tax dollars. The senator has mastered the recipe for pork: one part seniority, mixed with a choice assignment on a powerful spending committee....

Pork Barrels at Sea

When local historians wanted to build a replica of a Polynesian canoe, they went to Sen. Inouye and he delivered.

Two million dollars in federal funds (a.k.a. US Taxpayers’ dollars) and the Hawaii`iloa was built– all 57 feet, 17 thousand pounds of it. The goal was to show how the first Hawaiians sailed to their new home.

Donald Duckworth of Bishop Museum is an admirer of Inouye’s ways. “Certainly out here, we admire and respect Senator Inouye’s translation of our needs.”

But what some call need, others call waste.

How does a boondoggle like this get funded anyway?

Read Between the Lines

Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz, says it’s because some lawmakers slip requests for special projects into huge appropriations bills that no one is likely to scrutinize.

McCain claimed he knew nothing of the Polynesian canoe. “Many times we don’t know what’s in these bills until after they’re signed into law.”

Inouye also used a 203-page military-appropriations bill to get a company a 30-year monopoly on the cruise business in Hawaii.

“You give one company a monopoly to cruise the very beautiful islands of Hawaii, the consumers are going to pay, and clearly, far in excess of what they otherwise would if there was competition,” said Sen. McCain.

Senator Inouye declined ABC News’ request for an interview.

Meanwhile, the pork projects keep flowing into Hawaii. And Senator Inouye keeps spending your money....

~ ~ ~

Catbird Note: What the preceding article doesn’t tell you: Bishop Museum was endowed by Charles Reed Bishop, the husband of Princess Bernice Pauahi Bishop ... AND THE TRUSTEES FOR THE C.R. BISHOP ESTATE ARE THE SAME POLITICALLY-CONNECTED TRUSTEES AS FOR THE KAMEHAMEHA SCHOOLS / BISHOP ESTATE !

AND WHO WAS THE PROJECT DIRECTOR FOR THE $2 MILLION CANOE? Try guessing NAINOA THOMPSON - one of the five NEW TRUSTEES (and son of retired trustee, Myron Thompson, one of the co-investors in the infamous McKenzie Methane deal!) Another coincidence?

* * *

From Portland Free Press, Jan 1997, by Ace R. Hayes: New York Mob at Mena ... Yet another CIA-Mafia drug connection:

Richard Brenneke puts mob boss John Gotti and CIA boss Donald Gregg in the middle of contra drug operations at Mena Airport.

In Dec 1996, the Portland Free Press secured a copy of Richard Brenneke’s 21 June 1991 sworn-deposition before Congressman William Alexander, Jr, and Chad Farris, chief deputy attorney general of Arkansas. . . .

We secured former congressman William Alexander’s fax number and sent him a request for confirmation. We got more than we hope for – Jan 1997: “... the Brenneke transcript, along with other evidence of money laundering by Barry Seal at Mena, Arkansas, was delivered to Judge Walsh for action. Nothing followed. I agree that the American people deserve to know the truth about our government. Thank you for providing it. Good luck.” (signed Bill Alexander)

~ ~ ~

The American people, since World War II, or World War I, or the Spanish American War– take your choice– have witnessed the tip of many criminal icebergs. The official investigations of the criminal icebergs almost always stopped at the waterline. The other 90 percent of the criminal icebergs were never hauled onto the beach for complete examination, prosecution and correction.

The criminal cases of 1980 to the present are in perfect harmony with this honored tradition. This is, of course, why Americans are the most profoundly ignorant people on planet earth. The illusion of knowledge is far worse than knowing you don’t know.

The Iran-Contra-cocaine criminal iceberg was subjected to a series of bogus investigations and damage control “exposes.” The Tower Commission and Select Committee of the House and Senate on Secret Military Assistance to Iran and the Nicaraguan Opposition in 1987, began the damage control operation for the Imperial state.

But the Hall of Shame did not stop with John Tower, Ed Muskie and Brent Scowcroft or Dan Inouye and Lee Hamilton. It included Senator John Kerry and his Special Counsel Jack Blum and Staff Aid Dick McCall. It reached to the Special Counsel, Judge Lawrence E. Walsh ...

* * *

From Shadow, by Bob Woodward: . . . THE REAL THREAT to the Reagan presidency, (Harold) Baker and (Arthur) Culvahouse knew, lived across town in the Watergate Hotel . . . In room 609 of the hotel, Lawrence E. Walsh, 75, had set up living quarters after being named by the three-judge panel as the independent counsel for Iran-contra....

One of Walsh’s first stops was the CIA, which gave his team space and filing cabinets in the basement of agency headquarters in Virginia so they could look at top-secret codeword documents. Early in the investigation, the IRS gave Walsh 11 agents who were experts in tracing hidden money so Walsh could attempt to understand the “Enterprise” that North had set up using Swiss bank accounts for the Iran arms sales, the secret contras resupply and other covert operations.

Iran-contra had dozens of tentacles, and Walsh chose to pursue nearly all of them. He was not sure if he was chasing rabbits or where they might take him. His authority from the three-judge panel called on him to prosecute any related crimes he uncovered, even by underlings.

His preoccupation became (Oliver) North and (John) Poindexter, the operational officers....

Iran-contra would not go away for Bush. Although on September 29 the judge in the (Caspar) Weinberger case dismissed a key obstruction charge, ruling the independent counsel had not shown that Weinberger corruptly worked with others, he demanded a proper reindictment within the next month. . . .

On Wednesday, October 28, six days before the election, Barrett faxed a copy of the new indictment to Walsh in Oklahoma....

Walsh was determined to proceed with the Weinberger trial. He approved an expenditure of $32,600 for Brosnahan to conduct a mock trial before 36 citizens who were paid to act as jurors. After the presentation of the prosecution and defense cases, the 36 people were divided into three separate juries. Two of the mock juries found Weinberger guilty on all four counts, the other found him guilty on three of the counts. The story leaked, unleashing a fresh attack on Walsh. Many Republicans were now publicly urging President Bush, who would be leaving office in January, to exercise his constitutional power to pardon Weinberger.

Bob Bennett, Weinberger’s attorney, told Gray his client’s trial could be embarrassing for Bush, who might be called as a witness.

Gray said he was exploring the pardon option.

“What can I do?” Bennett asked.

“Get some Democratic cover,” Gray said, “and I’ve got to be convinced it’s a one- or two-day story.”

Among others, Bennett recruited House Speaker Tom Foley, the Washington State Democrat, to phone Gray pledging his support for a Weinberger pardon.

Bennett also enlisted Senators Daniel Inouye, a Democrat from Hawaii, and Warren Rudman, who headed the Senate Iran-contra probe, to write a letter of support....

Bush had some reservations. On Tues, Dec 22, he dictated into his diary, “The pardon of Weinberger will put a tarnish, kind of a downer, on our legacy.”

Before going to Camp David that Christmas weekend, where he planned to make the final decision on pardons, Bush was in the Oval Office . . . “Okay, Marlin,” Bush asked Fitzwater. “What’s your final recommendation?”

“Pardon all of them.” . . .

Gray was strongly in favor of pardons. It would end the Walsh investigation. He had his deputies call around to the lawyers for other convicted Iran-contra figures to see if they would accept pardons. Four did: two CIA officers, Elliott Abrams, and former national security adviser Bud McFarlane.

Gray helped draft a three-page executive order explaining the reasoning. Bush signed it on Christmas Eve, December 24, 1992. . . .

www.kycbs.net/Bishop.htm

~ ~ ~

From Washington on $10 Million a Day: Foreign Lobbying: . . .

In Oct of 1996, Brent Scowcroft traveled to Beijing, joining Chubb Corp CEO Dean O’Hare at a meeting with Premier Li Peng. According to an account in the Chinese press, Li “expressed his appreciation for the prolonged efforts Scowcroft has made in helping to develop Sino-U.S. relations,” while Scowcroft assured his host that he was “willing to make further efforts” for that cause.

Scowcroft also sits on the board of at least two corporations with big interests in China, Northrop-Grumman and Qualcomm, and is a trustee of the business-funded Asia Pacific Exchange Foundation, a right-wing beltway outfit that promotes closer ties with Beijing....

www.kycbs.net/ChubbGroup.htm

~ ~ ~

Oct. 24, 1999

The McCain Irony: Reform's Champion Rakes In the Bucks

By John F. Dickerson and Viveca Novak, Time/CNN

The price of admission was $1,000 for the high-tech executives gathered last June at the Washington mansion of America Online honcho George Vradenburg. Guest of honor Senator John McCain took the balcony. "The difference between me and the Democrats," McCain joked, "is that the Democrats want everyone to have a house. I want everyone to have a house like this."

Why were all these smiling tech gurus, including AOL chairman Steve Case, clumped around McCain? Did they think the G.O.P. long shot would be the next President? Maybe, but they were more certain he will continue as chairman of the Senate Commerce Committee, which oversees their companies. "We can't afford not to contribute," says a lobbyist.

Is this any way for a "maverick" to behave? Last week Elizabeth Dole dropped out of the presidential race, crying poverty. Meanwhile, McCain's day job lets him play at Washington's favorite pastime, taking donations from corporations that can be made or broken by his committee.

The irony is that the champion of campaign finance reform uses the system he runs against to get the money to stay in the race. It's working. He's second in New Hampshire. It "rings a little hollow," complained Senate majority leader Trent Lott of McCain's efforts.

Guilty, says McCain. "I know there is an appearance problem. But I have never pressured a lobbyist to contribute...I am sure there are more than a few who wished I had done their bidding." To reject donations by companies he regulates--as some suggest--would put him out of competition, he says. He also says the donations are too small to be corrupting--$1,000 from individuals and $5,000 from political-action committees.

McCain's reforms are aimed not at individuals but at the unlimited amounts that corporations, unions and others can give to a political party, so-called soft money. Last week his bill to outlaw those donations died in the Senate in what has become almost an annual ritual.

The harder McCain pushes for reform, the bigger a target he becomes. Republicans who want to keep the spigot open have spread rumors of dark deals the Arizonan has cut for donors. One such story: his change of mind on rules to ease export limits on technology to scramble and unscramble everything from computer images to phone conversations. McCain's worries about national security kept him from bending to Silicon Valley's arguments that such controls would hamper U.S. companies' ability to compete. After a long lobbying effort, he came around--though just how much is a matter of debate. He says the national interest could be protected by giving the President a veto over exports.

A clear-cut case of McCain's changing his position for campaign cash hasn't surfaced, and compared with those of some presidential rivals, his corporate donations are puny. Industries that are in his thrall one week, he points out, are often pummeling him the next. He harangues cable companies whose rates he says are too high. Long-distance carriers think he favors local phone companies. "He feels he's entitled to take your money at the same time he feels he's entitled to kick your ass," says a telcom executive. This week he will disappoint another set of donors, proposing to end oil and gas tax breaks to pay for school vouchers. Oil and gas companies have given more than $78,000 to his campaigns in recent years.

Still, it's not likely to stop them from ponying up next time a McCain fund raiser calls. And their contributions will keep the McCain contradiction afloat, giving him resources to keep rising in the polls by railing against the system.

http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,33170,00.html

~ ~ ~

From “Vultures in The Meadows”:

Charles Keating - Owner of American Continental Corporation, and the infamous Lincoln Savings and Loan.

CHARLES KEATING AND THE S&L CRISIS

By Brian Downing Quig

From tripod.com, posted by Ron Bell (9/11/92)

Charles Keating, the godfather of the S&L scandal, now sits behind bars, perhaps for the rest of his life. He has been assessed fines exceeding 3.6 billion dollars in just one civil action. Federal prosecution has not yet begun. Yet after several books and tens of thousands of column inches of newsprint, the major features of the Keating story remain, until now, untold. For example, General John Singlaub and the CIA's Latin American military campaigns, Carl Lindner's purchase of UNITED BRANDS and the U.S. Honduran aid program, extensive BCCI transactions, PRUDENTIAL INSURANCE, and Keating's attempt to get a strangle hold on the water supply of Arizona are key essential features of Keating's story that have not had national exposure.

An army of federal regulators, prosecutors, attorneys and judges have combed the affairs of Charles Keating. So why haven't the major features of his operations come to light? Having a brother who was vice president of ASSOCIATED PRESS helped keep items off the wire service. The ownership of Phoenix's two city newspapers helped even more. The ARIZONA REPUBLIC and the PHOENIX GAZETTE are owned by the Dan Quayle family.

The Vice President's involvement in the affairs of CIA Latin American programs provided plenty of incentive for Phoenix newspapers to keep the Keating affair as quiet as possible. And Carl Lindner, a much bigger fish than Charles Keating in these affairs, holds the largest stock interest in KTSP TV, the CBS television affiliate in Phoenix.

Keating is a man who has done favors for many powerful individuals including Presidents Ford, Reagan and Bush. Steven Pizzo, author of INSIDE JOB, one of the best books on S&L looting, supplied Barbara Honegger, author of OCTOBER SURPRISE, a Defense Intelligence Agency telex indicating that the alleged OCTOBER SURPRISE airplane for William Casey's and Heinrich Rupp's Paris trip was arranged by Kenneth Qualls, formerly the chief pilot of Charlie Keating's AMERICAN CONTINENTAL CORPORATION. This and other high level CIA favors may suggest even more sinister reasons why the major features of the Keating story never made it to print.

Savings and Loans were originally chartered to provide home mortgage loans. When Ronald Reagan deregulated the industry, high rollers were free to attempt more ambitious projects with the federally insured deposits. No one was more ambitious than Charlie Keating and no one lost more of the tax payer's money.

To date taxpayers have been assessed $500 billion for the S&L looting – $2 1/2 billion for Charlie's sins alone.

After providing less than a dozen home loans, Keating set out to build THE PHOENICIAN, a $300 million luxury resort hotel financed 55% by his newly acquired S&L, LINCOLN SAVINGS, and 45% by the King and Queen of Kuwait.

November of 1989, six months after Keating's parent company AMERICAN CONTINENTAL finally hit the skids, the Feds took over the PHOENICIAN RESORT in a surprise 1:00 AM raid. At 4:00 AM Keating was summoning bellmen to a side entrance where 24 cartons of files were loaded into Keating's recreational vehicle. When asked about this by a member of the local press the Feds responded that they knew of this and Keating was allowed to take these files because "they were his personal correspondence --- like letters to his family." The federal investigation of Keating was totally compromised from beginning to end.

If the Feds had done even the most elemental examination of the business affairs of Charles Keating, this is what they would certainly have found: On November 26, 1980, just two weeks after the election of Ronald Reagan and George Bush, Keating purchased the property located at 2735 East Camelback Road for his AMERICAN CONTINENTAL CORPORATION Headquarters. For this he paid $3,083,000 to the < NAME OMITTED (per demand by his attorney)> DEVELOPMENT CORPORATION. During the period from 1980 to 1984, Maricopa county court records show that sixty civil suits were filed against < NAME OMITTED >....

< NAME OMITTED > purchased what would soon become the AMERICAN CONTINENTAL Headquarters property April 2, 1979, from James E. Patrick II and Herman Chanen for $550,000. The sale to Keating represented a bump of $2.5 million in only 8 months! What is more, Patrick II and Chanen are not stupid when it comes to real estate.

Patrick II is the son of James Patrick, who at this time was President of VALLEY NATIONAL BANK, Arizona's largest bank. Herman Chanen owns the largest construction company in Phoenix and at sale time was Chairman of the State Board of Regents which oversees all state universities.

These men represented the very pinnacle of the Phoenix business establishment. Soon after the Keating deal, James Patrick Sr. retired to become president of ROYAL PETROLEUM in Kuwait, a country closely connected to Charlie's business affairs.

September 19, 1985, Keating received a $5 million loan on this property from PRUDENTIAL INSURANCE COMPANY, a bump of another $2 million. This was a one payment note that was due in total October 1, 1990. The note was secured with nothing more that the property which had been purchased for $3,083,000. When Keating filed Chapter 11 in April of 1989 this $5 million was added to the rest of the money that just evaporated.

Why were these big business interests coming forward to set Charlie up in business? PRUDENTIAL is a big player in this. Not only was George Bush's father, Prescott Bush, on the board of Directors of PRUDENTIAL but Ronald Reagan was one of the largest stockholders.

It was PRUDENTIAL that owned the land upon which Herman Chanin built the lavish shopping center, BILTMORE FASHION SQUARE, which is located just across the street from Keating's Headquarters.

One month after the PRUDENTIAL loan, Keating really became bold when he purchased the property adjoining the HQ property for $13,000,000 for the Arizona branch of LINCOLN SAVINGS! . . .

The RESOLUTION TRUST CORPORATION (RTC) after taking over LINCOLN SAVINGS moved its Arizona operations to this property. They did this to protect Keating. Keating never had clear title to this property. It can not be sold. The RTC attorneys have been presented with all this information as have the attorneys for the bondholders. They have never as much as made a phone call in response!

Why all this high level protection and why would these big business interests provide Keating all this money? Some answers to these questions lie in Keating's origins. Charles Keating started out as an attorney for Carl Lindner, the original owner of AMERICAN CONTINENTAL CORPORATION. According to UC Berkeley professor Dr. Peter Dale Scott, Carl Lindner is a well documented profiteer off the Vietnam war. Lindner is a much bigger player than Keating.

According to Peter Brewton, the star reporter for the HOUSTON POST whose hard hitting exposes have linked the CIA to the looting of 22 other S&Ls, Lindner owned 7 failed S&Ls but has gone virtually unmentioned in regards to the S&L looting scandal. Lindner is reported to be one of the wealthiest men in America and a top financier of the CENTRAL INTELLIGENCE AGENCY.

When Gorbechev came to the United States he visited Carl Lindner. At the same time as Keating was purchasing the AMERICAN CONTINENTAL HQ property, Lindner was transferring almost the total assets of his AMERICAN FINANCIAL CORPORATION (a private company requiring no stockholder reports) into a Honduran company, UNITED BRANDS, taking UNITED BRANDS from a publicly traded to a private company.

UNITED BRANDS was formed when UNITED FRUIT, a CIA front prominent in several Latin American coups, was merged with a second company. CHIQUITA BANANAS is one of UNITED BRANDS well know brand names.

On the deed of Keating's HQ property it stated "When recorded mail to AMERICAN CONTINENTAL 2621 East Camelback Road, Suite 150, Phoenix, Arizona." This was just across the hall from General John Singlaub's U.S. COUNCIL FOR WORLD FREEDOM, the American affiliate headquarters of the WORLD ANTI-COMMUNIST LEAGUE.

General Singlaub's long CIA career goes all the way back to when he was an OSS agent under the direction of William Casey in France and China during WWII. By purchasing UNITED BRANDS Carl Lindner set himself up to become the world's greatest financial beneficiary of the CONTRA/HONDURAN aid program which poured billions in U.S. aid into Honduras to the direct enrichment of Lindner's plantations. Did Lindner send his water boy, Charles Keating, out to Phoenix to facilitate the Contra war with General Singlaub so that Lindner could multiply his fortune?

The summer preceding Keating's purchase of his headquarters property, Keating headed the media relations group for the JOHN CONNALLY FOR PRESIDENT campaign. With Keating in this section was Jim Brady (soon to become Ronald Reagan's Press Secretary) and Joyce Downey. Upon arriving in Phoenix, Downey went across the hall to become General Singlaub's top executive. Former Texas Governor Connally's son Mark later became an AMERICAN CONTINENTAL executive after serving as an aide to "Keating Five" Senator John McCain.

In a very complicated way all this bleeds into Keating's transactions with BANK OF CREDIT AND COMMERCE INTERNATIONAL (BCCI). It is beyond dispute that before it was exposed, BCCI was the largest corporate crime network the world had ever known.

Even TIME MAGAZINE ran a cover story explaining how BCCI had become the favored means of moving dirty money for not only the Medullin Cocaine Cartel, but for the PLO, MOSSAD, Abu Nadal and the CIA as well as various countries like Saudi Arabia and North Korea.

For anyone looking for the possibilities that Keating was laundering illegal funds for Singlaub's Contras campaign, any transactions with BCCI would set off all kinds of bells and whistles.

In early 1986 Keating met a Pakistani in Switzerland named Abbas Gokal. Gokal belongs to a family of shipping magnates who started the downfall of BCCI by defaulting on $700 million in loans. Gokal introduced Keating to Alfred Hartmann, a BCCI director and president of the Bank's Geneva branch.

Steven Pizzo reported in the NATIONAL MORTGAGE NEWS that Hartmann provided $3 billion in loans to Saddam Hussein for nuclear, chemical and ballistic missile programs just preceding the Gulf war and is the director most closely linked to the laundering of Medullin Cartel drug money.

In 1986, Keating, Hartmann and other BCCI directors met in London, Paris, Zurich, Phoenix and the Bahamas where they founded a corporation known as TRENDINVEST. All this was well known by lower level federal regulators who could not get an appropriate response from higher ups.

In testimony before the HOUSE BANKING COMMITTEE a federal regulator, John J. Meek, testified that "AMERICAN CONTINENTAL had no records of Keating's secret role in TRENDINVEST. Regulators learned of the partnership only from an offhand remark by an AMERICAN CONTINENTAL executive."

Keating invested $17.5 million into this company without even informing the board of directors of AMERICAN CONTINENTAL.

Meeks went on to detail an unending train of baffling Keating transactions which included $25.5 million to DIA HOLDINGS, a Netherlands company, $10 million to SOUTHBROOK HOLDINGS, a Panamanian company, $25 million to GFTA, a West German company – all deals that regulators never figured out.

In summary, did Keating have both the motive and the opportunity to launder illegal funds for CIA operations in Latin America and elsewhere? Yes. Yes. Yes.

It is worth mentioning that when Keating moved out of suite 150, POST\NEWSWEEK moved in. Remember, this was just across the hall from where General John Singlaub ran the Nicaraguan Contra campaign. This was the operation that led Ollie North and General Secord into so much temptation. With the parade of mercenaries that processed through Singlaub's office one must conclude that POST\NEWSWEEK was one among many news organizations that never had the slightest inclination to cover any of these stories.

In as much as an animal is undefinable apart from its environment, it is worth analyzing the political setting of Charles Keating. During the high points of Keating's reign the big man in Arizona was Kemper Marley. Marley was the first and only billionaire in Arizona. His wealth was based originally on a liquor monopoly conferred upon him by Sam Bronfman of the SEAGRAMS family.

In Arizona Marley was all powerful.

In 1948, fifty-two employees of Kemper Marley's wholly-owned company, UNITED LIQUOR, went to prison on federal liquor violations – including Gene Hensley, the father-in-law of Arizona Senator John McCain.

Gene Hensley was Kemper Marley's UNITED LIQUOR general manager. On the basis of so many prosecutions some people might feel UNITED LIQUOR could qualify as organized crime. The slick attorney who kept Marley out of this trial and sent McCain's father-in-law to prison in his place was William Rehndquist – currently the Chief Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court.

It was the judgement of the court that Gene Hensley would be prohibited from ever working in the liquor industry. Of course such judgments meant nothing to Marley. When Gene Hensley got out of prison Marley arranged a BUDWEISER distributorship for Hensley which is now in the hands of Senator John McCain and reported to be worth $50 million!

The best source for an introduction to the environment of total political corruption in Arizona is the book, THE ARIZONA PROJECT: HOW A TEAM OF INVESTIGATIVE REPORTERS GOT REVENGE ON DEADLINE. In graphic detail journalist Michael Wendland links the most prominent people in Arizona with various organized crime king pins.

Wendland was part of the group called INVESTIGATIVE REPORTERS AND EDITORS who came to Phoenix in the wake of the fatal car bombing of the ARIZONA REPUBLIC's investigative reporter, Don Bolles.

It was the conclusion of this group that Marley, by far the wealthiest man in Arizona, was behind this murder.

According to intelligence sources of the Phoenix police, who prepared a background profile of Kemper Marley the week following the Bolles murder, Marley was at one time directly connected to the remnants of the old Al Capone mob.

When Marley died July 1990 he owned 5 square miles of Carefree – the highest priced real estate in Arizona. The smallest lot in this most exclusive township is zoned for one acre. By some coincidence the Tax Accessor made the same mistake evaluating Marley's properties as he did on Charlie Keating's properties. This oversight was saving Marley a million dollars a year. Of course the official investigation showed no wrongdoing in either case.

For the last 45 years Marley bankrolled the Republican Party which doled out Marley's great wealth to a slate of Republican candidates who were almost universally successful in obtaining high political office. Marley was able to control the Democratic party as well. Every current congressman and every senator in Arizona owes his position to the Marley machine.

These office holders include the "Keating Five" Senators John McCain and Dennis DeConcini as well as former State Attorney General, Bob Corbin.

At one point Marley served as Chairman of the Board of the VALLEY NATIONAL BANK. When Bugsy Siegel, on instructions from Meyer Lansky, built the FLAMINGO CLUB, Las Vegas's first casino, the money was borrowed from the VALLEY NATIONAL BANK.

Al Lizanetz, who served as Kemper Marley's public relations man for 20 years, is one of the richest sources for background on the liquor magnate. The Bolles murder was part of a package deal that was to include a hit on Lizanetz.

According to Lizanetz, the Marley machine placed the highest priority on placing lawyers in all the key state and municipal positions. The Arizona State Attorney General during the Keating era, Bob Corbin, worked formerly for Marley in the insurance industry in the 1950s.

Corbin accepted a $55,000 campaign contribution from Charles Keating in a race where he was unopposed. Since Corbin did not have to spend the money in the campaign he got to keep the $50,000 when he retired. This is significant since S&Ls are state chartered institutions and it was therefore the responsibility of State Attorney General Corbin to oversee Keating's operations.

Marley placed his people in the top positions of the Department of Public Safety. The county prosecutor was also key to him. Lizanetz claims that Marley recruited Eugene Pullium to come to Phoenix to start the ARIZONA REPUBLIC/PHOENIX GAZETTE, the monopoly newspaper which has succeeded in covering up these matters.

Eugene Pullium is the grandfather of Dan Quayle.

Dan Quayle grew up in the Phoenix suburb of Paradise Valley living just next door to the founder of the JOHN BIRCH SOCIETY, Robert Welsh. Quayle's parents were the local JOHN BIRCH coordinators.

Marley's mentor was Sam Bronfman, the progenitor of the SEAGRAM’S empire. When Sam Bronfman visited Marley in Arizona he came in the company of Al Capone. Lizanetz claims that Jack Ruby, assassin of Lee Harvey Oswald, was also on the Bronfman payroll.

There may be something to this since Louis Bloomfield, the family attorney for the Bronfmans, was the chairman of the board of PERMENDEX, the Italian company whose board also included Clay Shaw, the man prosecuted by District Attorney James Garrison for the murder of President Kennedy.

Many have suggested that Charles Keating fell out of favor with the powers that be and was set up. This is clearly not so. Ironically, after issuing millions in bribes, the downfall of Keating's empire began and ended with one minor public official who was not for sale. Charlie was playing fast and loose with the rules but he did have his end game well planned.

In order to buy time for his failing company, Keating resorted to selling AMERICAN CONTINENTAL bonds through the affiliates of his S&L, LINCOLN SAVINGS. Telephone solicitors were paid to call LINCOLN CD holders just prior to expiration dates and advise them to roll over their investments into ACC bonds. This was good for $230 million of keep alive money.

While the higher rate of interest was mentioned, the fact that these bonds were not federally insured was not. But these minor infractions would all be covered by Keating's most grandiose of all grandiose schemes.

The most precious resource in Arizona is water. Keating was going to pay off his bondholders with the profits he was going to make through his near successful attempt to monopolize the water supply for the city of Phoenix!

In Arizona there are five water tables from which water can be pumped – an enterprise known as water farming. Keating arranged a $200 million dollar loan through LINCOLN SAVINGS for Ron Ober, Senator Dennis DeConcini's campaign manager.

The grand plan was for Ober to purchase all the land suitable for water farming in La Paz county just south of Phoenix that Keating did not already own. Then Keating engineered a bill for the Arizona legislature that stipulated that the city of Phoenix would be legally obligated to purchase 100% of Keating's and Ober's water before they could purchase a drop from anyone else!

Since Keating and Ober were planning to pump a million acre feet of water a year at a thousand dollars an acre foot that meant profits in the hundreds of millions – far more than was necessary to pay off the bondholders. In fact Keating and Ober would have been well on their way to Rockefeller status wealth.

Since Senator DeConcini had purchased land in the other five suitable water tables he would have made out ever better.

This plan was probably conceived by the more cautious DeConcini who intended to use Keating and Ober for stalking horses for his own business interests. Such grandiose scams can only be attempted when one can count on the local media to keep secrets and law enforcement to look the other way.

Despite some obstreperous lower level officials at the Federal Home Loan Bank Board everything was going like clockwork for Keating. While everyone slept and no one even heard of this water legislation, Keating's bill sailed through the Arizona House of Representatives in a record 2 days. It would have done the same in the state senate except for one man – State Senator Jerry Gilespie.

Another man in Jerry's position could have parlayed for a suit case full of hundred dollar bills. But Jerry killed the bill without wasting a heart beat. In the next senate election a massive amount of funding showed up for Jerry's opponent. Today Jerry heads up the BO GRITZ FOR PRESIDENT CAMPAIGN in Arizona.

This fascinating water story made it onto the cover of the November 1989 issue of PHOENIX MAGAZINE under the very appropriate title PARASITES IN OUR WATER.

This unbelievable account of greed and corruption was believable only because it was written by 5-term ex-congressman Sam Steiger. Even so, no wire services picked it up. This article is the first national coverage of Keating's failed end game.

Things still looked rosy on May 20, 1988 when Keating threw a lavish champagne party at his Headquarters celebrating what Keating imagined to be his final victory over the Federal Home Loan Bank Board. K eating always kept magnums of Dom Pernon chilled for special occasions. FHLBB examiners in San Francisco had been motioning to close down LINCOLN SAVINGS. Thanks to backing from John McCain and Dennis DeConcini and the other "Keating Five" senators LINCOLN SAVING's FHLBB files had that day been moved to Washington D.C. where they were guaranteed to receive much more favorable treatment.

At the height of this rancorous party, Keating ripped off his shirt to reveal a tee shirt with a skull and cross bones superimposed over the letters FHLBB. As one top exec poured cold champagne down the front of one secretary's brassier, Keating threw a computer and a typewriter out through the glass of second story windows. Everyone there roared with approval. The $1 million in bribes to senators seemed well spent.

But there was something Keating had not considered – one $15,000 per year state senator who did not have a price....

http://artofhacking.com/IET/POLITICS/KEATING.TXT

* * *

From The Buying of the President 2000, by Charles Lewis
and the Center for Public Integrity:

JOHN McCAIN . . . In 1976, McCain toyed with the idea of running for a seat in the U.S. house of Representatives in Florida, where he was stationed at the time. He ended up deciding not to run, but within a year he was on Capitol Hill as the Navy’s liaison to the Senate . . .

As his days in the liaison office were winding down, McCain grew impatient to run for office, but he lacked a base from which to launch his political career. As a Navy brat, he’d never lived anyplace long enough to call home. His marriage to Carol Shepp, whom he had wed in 1965, fell apart shortly after he returned from Vietnam. So, in 1981, a year after remarrying, he headed for Arizona, the home state of his second wife, Cindy Hensley.

Cindy Hensley is heir to a considerable family fortune. Her father, James Hensley, started a beer distributorship in 1955, just as Arizona’s economy was entering a long boom period. Today, Hensley & Company, based in Phoenix, is the biggest Anheuser-busch distributor in the state and one of the largest beer distributors in the nation.

From the moment McCain landed in Phoenix, the Hensleys were key sponsors of his political career. Being elected to Congress was “the ultimate goal,” McCain recalled years later. “I just didn’t know how long it would take.”...

The Hensleys helped a lot throughout these years. So did an Arizona real-estate developer named Charles H. Keating, Jr....

For years, McCain accepted Keating’s assorted forms of largesse– campaign contributions, all-expenses-paid vacations, free rides on his corporate jet– without realizing, apparently, that there might be strings attached....

Over the course of his House and early Senate career, McCain would collect $112,000 in campaign contributions from Keating, his relatives, and his employees.

But there was a kicker. When he was asked, years later, at a press conference, whether his contributions to politicians bought him influence, Keating replied, “I want to say in the most forceful way I can: I certainly hope so.”

McCain got more than just campaign money from Keating. McCain, his family, and their babysitter flew on Keating-owned or -chartered jets nine time, including three trips to Cat Cay, Keating’s vacation estate in the Bahamas. And in 1986, Keating cut Cindy McCain and her father into Fountain Square Shopping Center, a strip mall that American Continental Corporation built and managed, for a $359,000 investment.

It was just a matter of time before Keating called in his chits. When he did, it was over Lincoln Savings and Loan, a thrift in Irvine, California, that he’d bought in 1984. It turned out that Keating was raiding the assets of Lincoln’s depositors to finance post real-estate projects such as The Phoenician, a $300 million, 654-room hotel and spa in Scottsdale, Arizona, and his own lavish lifestyle.

By 1986, Edwin Gray, the chairman of the Federal Home Loan Bank Board, grew worried that Lincoln had strayed too far from its core mortgage business, and began to clamp down. Keating turned to his friends in Washington for help.

On March 19, 1987, Keating appealed to McCain in person to meet with federal regulators on his behalf.

At first McCain balked, but then, on April 2, he joined Senators Alan Cranston of California, John Glenn of Ohio, and Dennis DeConcini of Arizona in DeConcini’s office to meet with Gray. On April 9, the four Senators, joined by Don Riegle of Michigan, sat down in San Francisco with four more regulators from the Federal Home Loan Bank Board.

Following the meetings, the board delayed its seizure of Lincoln Savings and Loan for two more years.

When the federal government finally took over Lincoln in 1989, the bailout cost taxpayers $2.6 billion, making it the most expensive S&L bailout in U.S. history. About 17,000 small investors also lost a total of $190 million.

In November 1989, outrage over the bailout and the intervention of powerful lawmakers sparked an investigation by the Senate Ethics Committee. From then on, McCain and the other four Senators, who together accepted $1.3 million in contributions from Keating, were known as the Keating Five.

Caught neck-deep in Keating’s pocket, McCain scrambled to extricate himself. He quickly paid Keating $13,433 for the flights he and his family had taken on Keating’s jet years earlier. But is was too late to make up for the fact that, as a member of the House, he’d never disclosed the flights, as required under House rules.

He refused to return Keating’s contributions; instead he filed a complaint with the Federal Election Commission in which he charged that Keating had illegally made his campaign contributions through American Continental employees. (The FEC dropped the case a few years later.)

McCain readily admitted that he’d made a mistake by going to the meetings, but insisted, “I in no way abused my office.”...

In February 1991, the Senate Ethics Committee cleared McCain, saying he had “exercised poor judgment” but that his actions had not been “improper nor attended with gross negligence.”

“Clearly, ‘no improper conduct’ is what is important here,” McCain said on hearing the committee’s decision. “I view that as full exoneration.”

In a postscript to the scandal, McCain finally contributed $112,000– the amount of money he’d gotten from Keating-related interests– to the U.S. Treasury. (Keating would otherwise rank as his No. 1 career patron.)

McCain’s wife and father-in-law, however, held on to their stake in the Fountain Square Shopping Center. In fact, they held on to it long after American Continental went bankrupt.

Cindy McCain, her father, and the remaining owners sold the mall two years ago for $15 million, reaping a profit that McCain has reported as between $100,000 and $1 million....

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October 12, 1999

THE NEW GLOBAL ORDER

The next Bilderberg meeting

Secret roster, agenda for Washington conference

The secretive Bilderberg society, a group some believe conspires semi-annually to foster global government, will hold a steering committee meeting in Washington next month, WorldNetDaily has learned.

The Nov. 4-5 conference, featuring invited guests such as Vice President Al Gore and presidential candidate John McCain, is scheduled for the Library of Congress in the nation's capital and is sponsored by the American Friends of Bilderberg. The U.S. group is directed by Henry Kissinger, David Rockefeller, Paul Allaire and Richard C. Holbrooke.

Since 1953, the Bilderberg group has convened government, business, academic and journalistic representatives from the U.S., Canada and Europe with the express purpose of exploring the future of the North Atlantic community. The international steering committee includes Conrad Black, publisher of newspapers throughout Canada, the U.S. and the London Telegraph and Jerusalem Post, Vernon Jordan, George Mitchell, Kissinger and Rockefeller.

On the agenda for the November meeting is a panel discussion of the U.S. presidential elections and an exploration of the national security requirements for the 21st century. Among those involved in the discussion of the latter subject will be former U.S. Sens. Gary Hart and Warren Rudman, former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich, journalist Leslie Gelb and Secretary of Defense William Cohen. McCain, at the special invitation of Kissinger, will speak at breakfast Friday morning and Gore will make a Thursday night dinner address, according to the agenda obtained by WorldNetDaily.

Others making presentations include Rep. Bill Thomas of California, Sen. Christopher Dodd of Connecticut, Evan Bayh of Indiana and former White House Chief of Staff Erskine Bowles.

The list of potential invitees to the Washington conference includes the following: Dwayne O. Andreas, Michael H. Armacost, Robert Bartley, Samuel R. Berger, C. Fred Bergsten, Richard Bernstein, James H. Billington, Gen. Charles G. Boyd, Bill Bradley, John H. Bryan, William F. Buckley, William P. Bundy, John H. Chafee, E. Gerald Corrigan, Kenneth W. Dam, Lynne E. Davis, John M. Deutch, Thomas E. Donilon, Theodore L. Eliot Jr., Dianne Feinstein, Martin S. Feldstein, Stanley Fischer, James J. Florio, Lynn Forester, Charles W. Freedman Jr., Stephen Friedman, Thomas Friedman, David Frum, Richard Furland, Orit Gadiesh, Gen. John R. Glavin, David Gergen, Louis V. Gerstner, Paul Gigot, Katherine Graham, Donald Graham, Marc Grossman, Chuck Hagel, Jim Hoagland, James F. Hoge Jr., Mrs. Karen Elliott House, Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison, Peter Jennings, Jems Johnson, Peter Kahn, Nancy Landon Kassebaum, Robert M. Kimmitt, Henry Kravis, William Kristol, Jan Leschly, Winston Lord, Jessica T. Matthews, Charles Mac Mathias, William J. McDonough, George C. McGhee, Richard A. McGinn, Donald F. McHenry, Sam Nunn, Joseph S. Nye Jr., John M. Page Jr., Norman Pearlstine, William J. Perry, Thomas R. Pickering, Gen. Colin Powell, Sir Kieran Prendergast, Larry Pressler, Clyde V. Prestowitz, Steven Rattner, William Rhodes, William Richardson, Sharon Percy Rockefeller, Gen. Brent Scowcroft, Robert Shapiro, George Soros, Lesley Stahl, James B. Steinberg, George Stephanopoulos, Lawrence H. Summers, G. Richard Thornan, Franklin A. Thomas, Alexander J. Trotman, Wiliam Clay Ford Jr., Laura D'Andrea Tyson, Lodewijk J.R. de Vink, Dr. Ezra F. Vogel, Paul A. Volcker, Stanley A. Weiss, John C. Whitehead, Christine Todd Whitman, James D. Wolfensohn and Casimir A. Yost.

The 1999 annual meeting of the Bilderberg group took place in Sintra, Portugal, June 3-6. The November meeting at the Library of Congress is being billed as a special steering committee session.

According to sources which penetrated the high-security meetings in the past, the Bilderberg meetings emphasize a globalist agenda and promote the idea that the notion of national sovereignty is antiquated and regressive.

In 1998, British free-lance journalist Campbell Thomas attempted to cover the conference in Turnberry, Scotland, for the Daily Mail. Thomas began by seeking the opinions of neighbors to the secret meeting being held nearby. One of those was a young woman who told him he was in the hotel's staff quarters and should leave immediately, which he did.

A short while later, two local police officers arrested Thomas, who reportedly remained in custody for eight hours.

Not all journalists are treated quite so harshly, as the guest roster for the November meeting indicates.

www.wnd.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=17214

(For more on the Bilderbergers, GO TO > > > The Freedom to Sing)

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January 12, 1999

Charles Keating, son face new trial
- U.S. reinstates fraud charges

By Michael L. White

LOS ANGELES (AP) – Former Lincoln Savings & Loan chief Charles H. Keating Jr. will be tried again on charges that he defrauded customers by selling them millions of dollars in worthless bonds, a federal prosecutor said Monday.

The case of Mr. Keating and his son, Charles Keating III, was returned to U.S. District Court after an appellate court threw out their federal convictions and said they deserved a new trial....

Mr. Keating rose to national prominence in Phoenix but grew up in Cincinnati, where he practiced law with his brother, former congressman and Enquirer publisher William J. Keating, and got his start in business.)

Known for lavish spending and big salaries during his days as chairman of American Continental Corp., Mr. Keating became a symbol of the savings and loan crisis of the 1980s. He was convicted in federal and state court on charges stemming from the $3.4 billion collapse of Irvine-based Lincoln Savings, which American Continental owned.

Charles Keating III also was convicted during the federal trial. However, the federal convictions were overturned on grounds that jurors learned of Mr. Keating's state conviction and discussed it in the jury room.

The elder Keating's state conviction also was thrown out after an appeals court determined the trial judge gave jurors improper instructions.

Stephen Neal, attorney for the elder Mr. Keating, said prosecutors should give up. Both convictions were constitutionally flawed, he said.

* * *

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) 04-10-99: Charles Keating Jr., whose failed Lincoln Savings and Loan symbolized the thrift industry's crash in the 1980s, pleaded guilty Tuesday to federal fraud charges and was sentenced to the time he already has served in prison.

Keating, 75, pleaded guilty to three counts of wire fraud and one count of bankruptcy fraud, charges which could have meant a maximum of 20 years in prison and a $1 million fine if he had been convicted at trial.

Federal charges against his son, Charles Keating III, were dropped.

Under the original indictments, the elder Keating faced 73 counts of racketeering, conspiracy and fraud. His son was charged with 64 counts.

Lincoln's failure ultimately cost U.S. taxpayers $2.6 billion, making it the costliest thrift crash in U.S. history....

www.kycbs.net/TheMeadows.htm

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Senator John McCain is expected to testify regarding his business, professional, political and personal relationships with Daniel Akaka, Department of Veterans Affairs, Dan Inouye, Daniel Akaka, James B. Nicholson, Jim Nicholson, Robert Dole, Elizabeth Dole, Henry Kissinger, Linda Lingle, Bob Awana, Charles Keating, Ron Rewald, Goldman Sachs, Henry Paulson, Jack Abramoff, Gale Norton, Faye Kurren, The Nature Conservancy, AIG, Robin Campaniano, Judge Rey Graulty, Lawrence Reifurth, Gary Vose, Dan Case, Steve Case, Robert Kihune, Sandwich Isles Communications, Office of Hawaiian Affairs, Haunani Apoliona, Jared Jossem, Robert Katz, Joshua Gotbaum, Nancy Graham, Stephen Ross, Vicki Iseman, Admiral Thomas Fargo, Trex Enterprises, Norm Brownstein, Dwayne Andreas, Archer-Daniels-Midland, Michael Powell, Walt Disney Co., Cisco Systems, RAND Corp., Conrad Black, Joe Lieberman, El Paso Oil, Tesoro Petroleum, and others to be named upon discovery.