THE CATBIRD SEAT: Part I - Birds of a Feather.

THE CATBIRD SEAT

To see where Greed and Evil meet, climb into the catbird seat.

Part I - Birds of a Feather

Fourscore and seven years ago our fathers brought forth upon this continent, a new nation, conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that "all men are created equal."

-- Abraham Lincoln - November 19, 1863

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WELCOME TO THE CATBIRD SEAT!

If you came here to try to spot some of the world's most powerful vultures and birds of prey, you won't be disappointed.

If you observe these birds carefully, you will note they have many common characteristics -- even common breeding habits -- and you'll always find them flocking together.

What are the common traits to look for? Well, these birds generally are found to have:

● a bat's penchant for preying under the cover of darkness

● an absolute lack of compassion for the less fortunate

● a love of self that is their one and only love

● an overactive sense of superiority

● the morals of a dead buzzard

● a thrill for the kill

● no remorse

● greed

It is this last characteristic -- GREED -- that defines the species. The greed for money.

Money can buy controlling interests in giant corporations. Money can buy bodies for fulfilling desires. Money can buy servants, even slaves. Money can buy politicians and regulators and judges.

Thus, money can buy power.

Does this mean that all the wealthy are obsessed with buying power? No, but it does mean that if you are poor you have absolutely no chance of buying a politician, or a judge, or a regulator of any sort.

So if you're ready, get out your best binoculars, be really still and quiet, and take a good look at some of the richest and most powerful birds in the world (and their scavenger sidekicks)...

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A. J. C. Smith - Chairman of the Board and CEO of Marsh & McLennan Companies since 1992. Mr. Smith is a trustee of the various mutual funds managed by Putnam Investment Management, Inc., a subsidiary of MMC. He is also a member of the Board of Overseers of the Joan and Sanford I. Weill Graduate School of Medical Sciences of Cornell University.

In 1998, A.J.C. Smith raked in $6.5 million in salary, bonus and other compensation from Marsh & McLennan Companies. Add to that $11.3 million in stock option grants, and Mr. Smith goes to Washington with a total of $17.9 million. He also has $25.2 million in unexercised stock options from previous years.

On Nov 18, 1999, the Board of Directors of Marsh & McLennan Companies elected Jeffrey W. Greenberg as CEO to succeed A.J.C. Smith, age 65, who will remain chairman of the board until he retires from the company at its 2000 annual meeting.

It was announced that Mr. Smith will continue as a member of the company's board.

For more, GO TO > > > The Marsh Birds; Putnam Investments

Adele Smith Simmons - Director of Marsh & McLennan Companies since 1978. President of the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation from 1989 to 1999. She is also a director of the Synergos Institute and the Union of Concerned Scientists and a member of the Council on Foreign Relations.

Simmons presided over the MacArthur Foundation's billions during the period when most of the foundation's Florida real estate was sold off -- the last of which was sold to WCI Communities at the same time Ms. Simmons announced her decision to resign as president of the foundation.

For more, GO TO > > > The Marsh Birds

Al Gore - (D) Vice President of the United States of America, 1992-2000, and a few pregnant chads short of being U.S. President, 2001-2005.

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

On Sept 7, 1995, Vice President Albert Gore, Jr., stood on the White House lawn and talked in sweeping terms about ending the era of big government. He touted a list of recommendations formulated by the National Performance Review, an initiative Gore directed that, he claimed, streamlined the federal bureaucracy, cut unnecessary waste, and helped make the government "work better and cost less." Gore said that his report, delivered to President Clinton that day, would continue the drive to "reinvent government."

Gore did not mention that his recommendations to the President included a plan to give oil companies access to thousands of acres of oil-rich, publicly owned land that the U.S. Navy has held as emergency reserves since 1912. Ever since the federal government earmarked the reserves for military emergencies, the oil industry had tried and failed to pry them away from the Navy.

In 1922 a couple of oil men-- Edward L Doneny and Harry Sinclair-- bribed Albert Fall, the Secretary of the Interior in the Harding Administration, for secret leases to drill on two of the fields, the Teapot Dome field just outside of Casper, Wyoming, and the Elk Hills field in Bakersfield, California. Doheny and his Pan-American Petroleum and Transport Company (later Atlantic Richfield Company or ARCO), paid $300,000 to Fall in exchange for the rights. When the bribes were uncovered the ensuing Teapot Dome scandal forced the resignations of Fall (who later went to prison) [and who forever gave his family name to the colloquialism: "the fall guy"] and Edward Denby, the Secretary of the Navy.

In 1973, during the Arab oil embargo, the Nixon Administration tried to lease Elk Hills to boost domestic oil production. In 1984, 1986, and 1987, the Reagan Administration proposed selling Elk Hills for a lump sum payment of $1.5 billion that would go toward reducing the federal budget deficit. Each time, Congress wisely blocked the sale of Elk Hills.

But where Fall, Nixon, and Reagan had failed, Gore succeeded. ... President Clinton took Gore's advice and approved a deal to let oil companies buy some of the reserves. The White House then pushed to have language authorizing the sales inserted in the 1996 defense authorization bill, which Congress ultimately approved.

Oil companies bid on the field and, finally, on Oct 6, 1997, the Energy Department announced that the government would sell its interest in the 47,000-acre Elk Hills reserve to Occidental Petroleum Corp for $3.65 billion. It was the largest privatization of federal property in U.S. history, one that tripled Occidental's U.S. oil reserves overnight....

Although the Energy Dept was required to assess the likely environmental consequences of the proposed sale, it didn't. Instead, it hired a private company, ICF Kaiser International, Inc., to complete the assessment. The general chairman of Gore's presidential campaign, Tony Coelho, sat on the board of directors.

Just hours after the announcement of the Elk Hills sale, Gore stood across town on the campus of Georgetown University and delivered a speech to the White House Conference on Climate Change on the "terrifying prospect" of global warming, a problem he blamed on the unchecked use of fossil fuels such as oil. ...

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Occidental Petroleum has been a steady supplier of campaign funds to Gore and to the Democratic Party, though its relationship with Gore goes far deeper. Armand Hammer, who built Occidental Petroleum into the behemoth it is today and who's been described as "the Godfather of American corporate corruption," liked to say that he had Gore's father, Senator Albert Gore, Sr., "in my back pocket." When the elder Gore left the Senate in 1970, Hammer gave him a $500,000-a-year job as the chairman of Island Coal Creek Company, an Occidental subsidiary, and a seat on Occidental's board of directors. By 1992, Gore owned Occidental stock valued at $680,000....

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Consider the lineup:

Tony Coelho . . . resigned in disgrace from the House of Representatives amid charges that he was involved in a sweetheart deal with Michael Milken, the notorious junk-bond dealer.

Nathan Landow . . . investigated for trying to influence the testimony of Kathleen Willey, the White House volunteer who alleged that President Clinton groped her in a corridor outside the Oval Office. [See: William J. Clinton ]

Franklin Haney . . . indicted on 42 counts of making illegal contributions to Tennessee politicians and investigated by Congress for financial irregularities in the lease of a Washington office building that is now home to the FCC.

Maria Hsia . . . indicted for making improper campaign contributions.

Howard Glicken . . . convicted of persuading a foreign national to contribute to a campaign.

Mark Jimenez . . . indicted for making illegal campaign contributions, and currently a fugitive from justice living in the Philippines.

What do they all have in common?

Albert Gore, Jr.

Some are currently employed by, or otherwise involved in, Gore's presidential campaign. Others are past associates that Gore would like the public and the press to forget as he pursues the highest office in the land. . . .

* * *

Albert Gore, Jr.'s Top 10 Career Patrons

1. Ernst & Young International

2. BellSouth Corp.

3. Goldman Sachs

4. D.E. Shaw & Co./Kohliner families

5. Citigroup, Inc.

6. Viacom, Inc.

7. Mattel, Inc./The Learning Co.

8. Eskind family

9. Walt Disney Co.

10. Olan Mills family

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See also: John Waihee

Boris Yeltsin - From Betrayal : . . .When President Clinton met with Russian President Boris Yeltsin on March 13, 1996, both leaders were up for reelection.

Regarding Russia's elections, Clinton said, "First of all I want to make sure that everything the United States does will have a positive impact, and nothing should have a negative impact. The United States will work with Russia to assure this."

Yeltsin replied that a leader of global stature like President Clinton should "support Russia, and that means supporting Yeltsin." The two nations' officials should think about how "to do this wisely," the Russian said.

Clinton told him Secretary of State Warren Christopher and Russian Foreign Minister (and former spy chief) Yevgeni Primakov would talk about that.

"The main thing is that the two sides should not do anything that would harm the other. Things could come up between now and elections in Russia or the United States which could cause conflicts," Clinton said.

The president then raised one particular issue: Russia's refusal to allow imports of American chicken because of worries the poultry contained unacceptable amounts of bacteria. Clinton said perhaps the commission headed by Vice President Al Gore and Russian Prime Minister Victor Chernomyrdin could resolve such issues.

"This is a big issue, especially since about 40 percent of U.S. poultry is produced in Arkansas," Clinton said, dropping the not-so-subtle hint that U.S. backing for the Russian president was linked to resolving the dispute, which involved his longtime political supporter Don Tyson, head of the huge Arkansas poultry producer Tyson Foods, Inc....

"Use direct channels," Yeltsin interrupted. He then said the main thing was that U.S. inspectors had confirmed that there were violations but "now we are back in business."

Within a week after the meeting in Egypt, the Gore-Chernomyrdin commission issued a statement announcing that the poultry dispute had been settled.

The 1996 encounter between the two leaders was revealed in a classified document called a "memorandum of conversation" obtained by the author. It captured the essence of the political subtlety of Bill Clinton.

It also showed the lengths the president would go to satisfy crass political debts, and how cavalierly he would play politics with national security.

The private conversation between Yeltsin and Clinton also captured the essence of how the Clinton administration adopted a Yeltsin-above-all policy toward Russia.

That policy, formulated and pushed by Deputy Secretary of State Strobe Talbott, Clinton's one-time college roommate, would have disastrous consequences when it came to trying to stem the flow of Russian missile technology to Iran. . . .

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. . . .

Burton Wallace Kanter - From The Cheating of America: How Tax Avoidance and Evasion by the Super Rich Are Costing the Country Billions, by Charles Lewis and Bill Allison:

HAVEN'S GATE

Burton Wallace Kanter was a pioneer in the world of offshore companies and banks. Unlike his modern counterparts, with their Web sites and flashy advertisements .... Kanter never advertised his services. He was discreet - a trait that his clients no doubt appreciated. And he was wildly successful.

From its founding in 1964, Castle Trust Ltd. was a shady affair. Bahamian law required a corporation to have five directors; Castle's original board included two fictitious people ... Throughout the course of its 14-year existence, Castle Bank was primarily a vehicle for tax avoidance and evasion.

A complete list of those who made use of the bank's secret accounts was never revealed, but some of those identified as having deposits there included some of the blue chip names in American commerce. Members of the Pritzker family, owners of the Hyatt Hotel chain and Royal Caribbean Cruise Lines, Ltd, had accounts there, as did Hugh Hefner, of Playboy fame, who was involved in casino deals with the Pritzkers.

Tony Curtis, the actor, had an account.

Henry Ford II, his wife, Christina, and several top Ford Motor Company executives, including Lee A. Iacoccca, used the bank to hold their shares of a land development project on what was then the sleepy Caribbean island of St. Martin. . . .

Castle Bank came to the attention of the IRS in 1972, when federal narcotics agents working in California requested information on the institution. They had arrested one Allan George Palmer after watching him unload 900 pounds of marijuana from a plane. Palmer had cashed three checks for $22,500 that had been drawn from commercial accounts that Castle Bank maintained at the American National Bank and Trust Company of Chicago.

IRS officials found that the signature cards for Castle Bank listed nine names, including its president, A. Goodling, the fictious A. Alipranti, Florida attorney Paul Helliwell, and Burton Kanter.

IRS agents interviewed Kanter, who claimed to know almost nothing about the affairs of Castle Bank. Later investigation would prove that he lied about the extent of his knowledge, yet he never suffered any consequences for misleading federal investigators or for operating what the IRS came to believe was a money-laundering scheme and a tax-evasion scheme. . . .

Kanter has always liked to blend business with tax avoidance. In the 1970s, for example, he became part of a massive kickback scheme with two executives from the Prudential Insurance Company, Claude Ballard and Robert Lisle.

Ballard and Lisle managed Prudential's real estate investments, and could choose companies that the insurer hired. Ballard was senior vice of equities; Lisle was president of PIC Realty Corporation, Prudential's real estate subsidiary. Their company controlled upward of $20 billion worth of properties across the United States, and Ballard and Lisle decided who developed and managed those assets. As a result, an introduction to the two could be worth millions of dollars to business.

Kanter met them sometime in the late sixties or early seventies, when the Hyatt Corporation was involved in negotiations with Prudential over the management of the hotel. The three concocted a scheme to get kickbacks from contractors and management companies in exchange for the lucrative Prudential business. Kanter found some of the willing participants in the scheme and hid the payments using yet another elaborate series of companies and trusts. In exchange for his services, he got 10 percent of the kickbacks. Ballard and Lisle split the rest evenly.

Kanter turned to some of his old clients for business. The Hyatt Corporation, owned by the Pritzker family, got Prudential business. So did Bruce Frey, who ran BJF Development, Incorporated, a large real estate developer based in Illinois. (In 1993, Frey and Kantger tried to buy the Miami Dolphins.) The other participants in the kickback scheme were John Eulich, whom Kanter met through Abraham Pritzker sometime in the late sixties or early seventies. William Schaffel, who ran W.D. Schaffel & Company, a New York real estate developer and mortgage broker; J.D. Weaver, who managed Hyatt properties; and Kenneth Schnitzer, a Houston-based real estate developer.

The five individuals and their companies earned millions of dollars' worth of contracts, thanks to their connections to Ballard, Lisle, and Kanter. In return, over a period starting sometime in the 1970s and lasting until 1989, they paid $13 million to four companies controlled by Kanter - Investment Research Associates and its subsidiaries, KWJ Company, Zeus Ventures, and The Holding Company.

Lisle left Prudential for Travelers Insurance Company in 1982, where he did virtually the same type of work. He also continued to participate in the kickback scheme until his retirement in 1988. He died on September 17, 1993.

The IRS ... discovered the scheme. Agents audited Investment Research Associates' 1987 tax returns . . .

Agents spent years unraveling the scheme, covering office walls with ad hoc flow charts showing the participants, the transactions, bank deposits, loans back and forth between related parties, and the other minutiae of the scheme. The Service issued more than 28 Notices of Deficiency to Lisle and his estate, as well as to Ballard, Kanter, and the companies Kanter used to hide the kickbacks. . . .

The case went to trial on June 14, 1994, before Special Trial Judge Iring D. Couvillion. There were nearly five weeks of testimony, producing a transcript of more than 5,400 pages. The briefs ran to more than 4,600 pages, and the exhibits totaled hundreds of thousands of pages. Couvillion then weighed the evidence.

For five years.

On December 15, 1999, he issued his ruling - adding another 606 pages to the case file. . . .

He went into great detail about various projects for which "the Five" - the companies to which Lisle and Ballard steered business - won contracts. He wrote at length on the alleged kickbacks they paid to the three conspirators . . . .

He described the evidence presented on the complicated scheme to cover up the payments. . . . "As a result of the intended confusion created by similar names, Kanter could substitute on entity for another," he wrote. . . .

Kanter disputed the judge's ruling. . . .

As of this writing, Couvillion had yet to determine Kanter's tax liability. Whatever the amount, if Kanter agrees to pay it, it will represent one of the few times in his life he's written a big check to the Treasury.

Kanter, who helped his well-heeled clients avoid their income taxes, is a master of avoiding his own.

He paid nothing from 1979 to 1990. . . .

Carla A. Hills - Chairman and CEO of Hills & Company, International Consultants. The firm provides advice to U.S. businesses on investment, trade, and risk assessment issues abroad, particularly in emerging market economies.

Hills currently serves as a Member of the Board of Directors for American International Group, Chevron, Lucent Technologies Inc., and Time Warner. She is a Co-Chair of the International Advisory board of the Center for Strategic and International Studies; a Vice Chair of the National Committee on U.S.-China Relations and U.S. China Business Council; a Member of the Board of Trustees of the Asia Society, the Council on Foreign Relations, the Institute for International Economics, and the America-China Society; and a Member of the Trilateral Commission and the Inter-American Dialogue.

Hills served as United States Trade Representative from 1989-1993. As a member of President Bush's Cabinet, Hills was the President's principal advisor on international trade policy. She was also the nation's chief trade negotiator, representing American interests in multilateral and bilateral trade negotiations throughout the world.

Hills was chairman of the Urban Institute from 1983 through 1988, and was a member of the Executive Committee of the American Agenda, co-chaired by Presidents Ford and Carter. In 1981-1982, she served as Vice-Chairman of President Reagan's Commission on Housing and in 1985-1986 as a member of the President's Commission on Defense Management. Hills has been active in the American Bar Association, serving as Chairman of the Antitrust Section 1982-1983, and as Chairman of the Conference of Section Chairmen in 1983-1984.

From 1974 to 1975, she was Assistant Attorney General, Civil Division, United States Department of Justice.

In 1975, Carla Hills, already serving as an assistant attorney general, was named by Republican President Gerald Ford as Secretary of the Department of Housing and Urban Development, becoming the third woman in the US to hold a cabinet-level position. Her lack of relevant experience was somewhat controversial during the appointment hearings. She was succeeded, when Democratic President Jimmy Carter took office, by Patricia Robert Harris, in 1977.

In 1989, President George Bush appointed her to another cabinet level position, this time as US Trade Representative. (At the same time, Bush appointed Elizabeth Dole, the former Secretary of Transportation, as Secretary of Labor.)

A free trade advocate, Hills was the primary US negotiator of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA).

She was first offered an appointment as assistant US Attorney by Elliot L. Richardson in 1973, but he resigned shortly thereafter during the Watergate scandal. The offer was renewed by his successor, William B. Saxbe, in 1974.

From 1978 through 1989 she was active again in her profession of law; after 1993 she has worked as a consultant and public speaker. She was one of the founders of the Forum for International Policy.

Hills co-founded the Los Angeles law firm of Munger, Tolles & Hills, where she was a partner from 1962-1974. She was an Adjunct Professor at the University of California at Los Angeles Law School, teaching antitrust law, and co-authored the Antitrust Adviser, which was published by McGraw-Hill.

For more, GO TO > > >: The Bureau of Indian Affairs; The Nature Conservancy; The Peregrine Gallery

Cecil Rhodes - From . . . and the truth shall set you free, by David Icke: From Rhodes to Ruin.

THE ROUND TABLE

Cecil Rhodes was a fabulously wealthy Englishman who exploited the continent and peoples of Africa, a particularly the diamond reserves of South Africa. The name Rhodesia, now Zimbabwe, is an indication of his influence in that part of the world.

As a student at Oxford University, Rhodes was inspired by a fine arts professor called John Ruskin . . . Ruskin was born in London in 1819, the son of a wealthy wine merchant . . . Ruskin was a believer in the New World Order agenda of centralised power, and he felt the State should control the means of production and distribution. This was the same philosophy followed by the early British Labour party before it became the alternative Conservative Party it is today.

Ruskin, however, went further and believed the control of the State could be in the hands of one dictator of superior intellect to the rest of society. . . . His ideas were to be followed by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels ... and became the foundations of the Marxist form of communism which was soon to grip the nations of Eastern Europe. . . .

The views of John Ruskin and his articulate promotion of them brought about a revolution in the thinking of the privileged undergraduates of Oxford ... Rhodes copied Ruskin's inaugural lecture in longhand and kept it with him for the rest of his life. The creation of a world government centered on Britain became Rhodes's obsession and lay at the heart of almost everything he did.

As his wealth grew with his exploitation of South African diamonds and minerals, he established companies like DeBeers Consolidated Mines and Consolidated Gold Fields. He also became the Prime Minister of the Cape Colony and used his wealth and influence to control parliamentary seats in Britain and South Africa. . . .

Rhodes is claimed to have been a member of an elite group known as the Committee of 300, also known as the Olympians. This organisation was the subject of a book by Dr. John Coleman called Conspirators Hierarchy: The Story of the Committee of 300. . . . This organisation consists of leading people in politics, commerce, banking, the media, the military etc, who are working toward the goal of total global power.

Rhodes's idea was to set up a secret society which would manipulate events in a way that would lead to the introduction of centralised global control. This society is known by several names but, for simplicity, I will call it ... The Round Table. . . .

There was an inner circle, the Society of the Elect ... who knew exactly what the game and the aim was, and an outer Circle of Friends, made up of influential people who could help the cause, but who didn't always know the full implications or ambitions of the Round Table. The Table's manipulators were mostly those with the real power rather than the appearance of power. Its members were usually not recorded in history like the famous politicians and military leaders, but they controlled events far more that those documented by the history books. . . .

When Rhodes died in 1902, he bequeathed his funds to the cause. These continued to support the Round Table to an extent, although much of the funding came from the House of Rothschild. In his will, Rhodes also created a system of subsidised scholarships which continue to this day. This was, in part, a front to hide the secret society. Selected overseas students are brought to Oxford University to be taught the British view of life and to be sold the idea of a world government.

It is remarkable how many 'Rhodes Scholars', as they are called, go on to become leaders of countries or heads of intelligence agencies, education, and other subject areas important to the Elite, or 'advisors' to those leaders. The most famous Rhodes Scholar in the world today is Bill Clinton, who was inaugurated as President of the United States in 1993. . . .

Charles Keating - From tripod.com, by Ron Bell (9/11/92)

Charles Keating and the S&L Crisis

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 Peloquin.

And <NAME OMITTED> has a famous father, Robert Peloquin, who has an even more questionable past.

After serving on Robert Kennedy's Strike Force On Organized Crime, Robert Peloquin and half the other attorneys there, distinguished themselves by going directly to work for the major organized crime figures they were investigating.

Peloquin Sr. set up the private spy company, INTERTEL, reportedly for the king pin of American organized crime, Meyer Lansky. After Lansky had failed to introduce legalized gambling into Atlantic City, INTERTEL was formed to "police the gambling industry" to make gambling acceptable to the state of New Jersey. It is a matter of record that Robert Peloquin ran the PARADISE ISLAND CASINO in the Bahamas for Lansky. This is interesting since Keating had his mansion base also in the Bahamas.

It was INTERTEL that was responsible for the security of Howard Hughes the last two questionable years of his life. Nixon's Domestic Affairs Advisor, Charles Colson once stated that it was difficult to tell "where the HUGHES CORPORATION ended and the CIA began".

The parent company of INTERTEL is RESORTS INTERNATIONAL whose original name was MARY CARTER PAINT COMPANY. MARY CARTER PAINT was reported in a significant May 20, 1976 article by Howard Kohn in ROLLING STONE to have been founded by Allen Dulles, the Director of CIA under Presidents Eisenhower and Kennedy.

In the book, THE COMPANY THAT BOUGHT THE BOARDWALK, INTERTEL was described as a merger of former FBI, CIA, Customs, Bureau of Tobacco and Firearms, IRS and other federal agents with organized crime. This book describes in some detail how Robert Peloquin headed the first Justice Department STRIKE FORCE ON ORGANIZED CRIME, then retired to go directly to work for those Justice was investigating.

<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. . . .

For more, GO TO > > > Vultures in The Meadows

Charles M. Harmon , Jr. - Sometime in 1996, Hawaii's wealthy charitable trust, Bishop Estate, loaned approximately $1 million to Charles Harmon, Jr., an investment banker and former general partner of Goldman, Sachs & Co.

The 08/12/96 issue of Pacific Business News reported that Bishop Estate had "quietly purchased the majority interest of a Connecticut specialized advisory business that manages almost $1 billion in assets." . . .

Royal Hawaiian Shopping Center, Inc., a for-profit subsidiary of Bishop Estate, is a co-investor in the purchase of Bigler Investment Management, a Farmington, Conn., firm that manages fund-of-fund accounts. . . .

The purchasing entity, called The Crossroads Group, is expected to take on a much more aggressive money-management outlook. . . . other investors in The Crossroads Group are parties that have had 'long relationships' with Royal Hawaiian...

Massachusetts equity analyst Steven P. Galante said his own research found Bishop Estate purchased about a 60 percent stake in The Crossroads Group. The management team and others own the remaining interest....

According to Galante . . . principals of The Crossroads Group are: Charles M. Harmon, Jr., an investment banker and former general partner at Goldman, Sachs & Co. in New York; Larry I. Landry, chief investment officer of John D. & Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation in Chicago; and Brad Heppner, a consultant at Bain & Co. in Dallas and former director of private investments at the MacArthur Foundation.

All have prior experience with Bishop Estate. In 1993, the MacArthur Foundation, along with Duke University's endowment fund, backed the formation of a Boston merchant bank called Orion Capital Partners LP. . . . Harmon is familiar with Bishop Estate because the Hawaii trust owns 10 percent of Goldman Sachs....

Charles Rossotti - IRS CHIEF ON THE TAKE?

CHARLES ROSSOTTI GETS KICKBACKS

By: Uri Dowbenko

The multi-millionaire IRS Commissioner Charles Rossotti acts as if the usual rules don't apply to him. And actually he's right. They don't.

In a glaring conflict of interest, Charles Rossotti, Commissioner of the US Internal Revenue Service and former Chairman of American Management Systems Inc. (AMS), has retained between $16 million and $80 million of AMS stock.

It's the ultimate insider's deal. In essence, Rossotti gets a kickback every time AMS, a computer data-processing company based in Fairfax, Virginia, gets a new government contract.

Rossotti's ownership of AMS stock was revealed in financial disclosure forms filed in May 2000.

In 1998, the New York Times reported that Rossotti was the largest individual shareholder in AMS, a company that had revenues of $1.28 billion in 2000.

Unlike Vice President Dick Cheney who sold his Halliburton Corp. stock and Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill who sold $100 million worth of his Alcoa Corp. stock, Rossotti refuses to divest.

In fact, Rossotti flaunts his conflict of interest and ethically challenged behavior.

Appointed by President Clinton in 1997, Rossotti's brazen ethics-be-damned position is buttressed by the fact that later he received an executive waiver of conflict of interest rules from the Clinton Administration.

According to Insight Magazine ("IRS Boss Snagged Clinton Waiver" by John Berlau, April 30, 2001), Rossotti got a waiver from Stuart Eizenstat, Clinton's deputy Treasury Secretary. This last minute waiver allows Rossotti to participate in decisions regarding AMS contracts with the IRS. In essence, Rossotti can continue to ensure that AMS interests - and his own - continue to be served by new as well as ongoing government contracts.

Incidentally AMS is supposed to be paid more than $17 million by the IRS this year for "add-ons" to existing contracts for internal software systems -- the so-called Custodial Accounting Project (CAP).

IRS continues to give AMS these add-on contracts without taking new bids from any AMS competitors.

This egregious corporate-government fraud by IRS Commissioner Charles Rossotti is unprecedented in recent history.

AMS: Corporate Insiders at the Government Trough

Founded by Charles Rossotti in 1970, AMS has leveraged its insider contacts and government contracts into a $1.28 billion global business with clients that include more than 43 state governments and federal agencies.

From 1965 to 1969, Rossotti himself was one of the so-called "Whiz Kids" of Defense Department Secretary (and unindicted war criminal) Robert McNamara, whose legacy remains the failed policy to prosecute the bogus Vietnam War. . . .

Rossotti worked in the Office of Systems Analysis within the Office of the Secretary of Defense. The Office's claim to fame was inventing the use of "body counts" (dead "enemy" soldiers) as a gauge of "success" during the infamous war. McNamara received an MBA from Harvard Business School in 1939, and Rossotti got his MBA from Harvard in 1964.

Headquartered in Fairfax, Virginia, AMS has approximately 8,750 employees in 512 offices worldwide. According to the AMS website, its clients include the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), General Services Administration (GSA), the Army Reserve, State Department, Treasury Department and the Department of Defense.

By the way, at Donald Rumsfeld's confirmation hearing, Senator Robert Byrd (D-WV) said, "I seriously question an increase in the Pentagon budget in the face of the Department's recent Inspector General's report.

How can we seriously consider a $50 billion increase in the Defense Department budget when DoD's own auditors say the Department cannot account for $2.3 trillion transactions in one year alone?"

Rossotti's IRS Shakedowns: Political Enemies Audited

The long-standing tradition of failing upward has finally landed Rossotti in the office of Commissioner of the Internal Revenue Service.

According to his website bio, Charles Rossotti "assumed his duties as Commissioner on November 13, 1997, pledging to turn the IRS into an organization that will consistently provide first-class service to the American public."

This stance belies the ugly reality of the IRS and its ongoing shakedowns of perceived political enemies. Its well-known tactics of fear and intimidation have been increasing steadily, marking the IRS as a reasonable facsimile of Soviet thuggery and/or banana republic corruption.

Since Rossotti assumed office, many political enemies of the administration have suffered IRS audits. These audits can only be construed as politically motivated de facto harassment.

A partial list of those targeted by Rossotti and his allegedly "kinder gentler" IRS include:

> Joseph Farah and The Western Journalism Center

> Juanita Broaddrick, who publicly accused Clinton of raping her while he was Arkansas attorney general

> National Center for Public Policy, a group critical of Clinton's environmental policies

> Bill O'Reilly of Fox News' The O'Reilly Factor

> Citizens Against Government Waste.

> Catherine Austin Fitts, former FHA Commissioner under Jack Kemp and President of Hamilton Securities, a company which ironically saved HUD $2.2 billion through its innovative loan sales/auction. . . .

Rossotti's AMS and the "Missing" $59 Billion at HUD

One of the most outrageous breaches of public trust (or in-your-face fraud) has been the Department of Housing and Urban Development's (HUD) "loss" of $59 billion in Fiscal Year (FY) 1999 and $17 billion in FY 1998.

According to the Government Accounting Office (GAO), the company responsible for the HUD software system called HUDCAPS was Rossotti's company, AMS, as well as a company called Advance Technology Systems (ATS).

Despite the poor performance, HUD continued to pay on its contract to AMS, even though the system didn't work and $59 billion was "missing."

The HUD Audit Debacle was then blamed on the agency's financial reporting systems, i.e. accounting software. In fact in her statement to Congress, HUD Inspector General Susan Gaffney reported that she could not validate an audit of the books. In other words, there has been no audit of HUD financial statements for 1999.

And $59 billion is still "missing."...

* * *

For more, GO TO > > > HUD ; Nests in the Pentagon

Charlie Trie - Nov, 1994: President Clinton travels to Indonesia with a U.S. delegation including Webb Hubbell and Bruce Lindsey. They meet twice with Mochtar and James Riady. The Asian-Pacific Economic Council (APEC) Conference is hosted in Jakarta by President Suharto. In attendance is Pauline Kanchanalak, Gene and Nora Lum, and Charlie Trie. The number one priority for Commerce Secretary Ron Brown, according to some sources, was the sale of U.S. weapons, such as the F-16 Fighting Falcon jet fighters, to Indonesia.

Feb, 1996: Ron Brown meets with Wang Jun, chairman of the state-owned China International Trust & Investment Corp. Wang and Charlie Trie attended a White House coffee with Clinton. President Clinton approves the launch of four U.S. satellites on China Aerospace rockets, after signing assault weapon waivers - despite evidence that China was still exporting nuclear and missile technology to Pakistan and Iran.

March, 1996: Ron Brown is granted a delay in scheduled testimony in a civil case brought by Judicial Watch. Charlie Trie presents Michael Cardozo, executive director of the Presidential Legal Expense Trust (a defense fund set up by Bill & Hillary Clinton to help pay their legal bills) with two manila envelopes containing checks and money orders for more than $450,000. The fund returned about $70,000 of this immediately, but deposited $378,300.

Apr 3, 1996: A plane carrying Ron Brown and 34 others crashes over Croatia. There are no survivors.

For more GO TO > > > A Flock of Flying Donkeys

Dan Burton - U.S. Representative (R) from Indiana. Chairman of the Committee for Campaign Finance Reform.

US CONGRESSMEN RECEIVED ILLEGAL CONTRIBUTION FROM KHALISTANI GROUPS

Republican Congressman Dan Burton and others who champion the cause of Khalistan in the US Congress have received campaign contributions from the Council of Khalistan -- a Washington-based organisation established 10 years ago by some militant Sikhs.

The council has funneled at least $ 65,000 to the Republican Party and several congressional candidates, including Burton, in an apparent violation of federal tax laws because the money was collected by a charitable non-profit group, says the weekly newspaper, Hill.

An investigation by the Hill has also revealed that Burton, who is heading the house investigation into campaign finance abuses, has received illegal campaign contributions directly from at least two Sikh temples.

The newspaper quotes Burton's personal attorney Joseph Digenova as saying that Burton ''does not personally review each and every cheque and if there is any problem with a cheque, it will be returned.''

Other members of Congress who have benefitted from the Sikh contributions include Gary Condit (Democrat-California) Gerald Solomon (Republican-New York), Dana Rohrabacher (Republican-California), Vic Fazio (Democrat-California), Amo Houghton (Republican-New York), Edolphus Towns (Democrat-New York), Senator Bob Torricelli (Democrat-New Jersey) and former senator Bob Dole, who unsuccessfully ran against Bill Clinton in the last presidential election.

However, the largest recipient of funds was the Republican Party, whose various campaign committees received more than $22,000 in contributions bundled by the Council of Khalistan.

Most of the recipients of this money have been allies of Burton in pro-Khalistan causes, says the newspaper.

Over the past decade, Burton has been the chief congressional proponent of the Council of Khalistan, the group whose campaign donations has helped generate growing support in Congress for a separate Sikh homeland in India.

The Hill also reveals that Burton, at the behest of the council, urged the state department to revise the extradition treaty with India, which would have the effect of making it more difficult to extradite to India terrorists arrested in the US.

It recalls that Burton's crusade grew from his personal ties to Dr Gurmit Singh Aulakh, a gregarious and persistent Sikh lobbyist whom he met in 1986.

Dr Aulakh was appointed by militant separatists the following year to be president of the Khalistan government in exile. He draws a salary of $59,000 as president of the council, a $ 250,000-a-year-operation, according to the newspaper.

It says at least five of Dr Aulakh's 10 co-founders, many of whom have since been killed in clashes with the Indian police, represented some of India's most notorious terrorist groups. They have been blamed for killing of hundreds, if not thousands, of civilians, and helped foment widespread violence by police and Sikh militants that led to the more than 100,000 deaths.

Dr Aulakh received contributions from Sikhs and, on behalf of the council, handed them to congressional campaigns.

This point is significant because the council is operationally indistinguishable from the International Sikh Organisation, a registered religious charity, which is prohibited by federal law from engaging in partisan activities. And taking money from such organisations is an offence.

* * *

Pakistan Lobbyist's Memo Alleges Shakedown by House Probe Leader

By Charles R. Babcock, Washington Post Staff Writer, March 19 1997

An American lobbyist for the government of Pakistan complained to his client last summer that he had been "shaken down" for campaign contributions by Rep. Dan Burton (R-Ind.), who now is heading a House probe of alleged Democratic campaign fund-raising abuses.

Mark A. Siegel, then a lobbyist for the government of Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto, said he was approached by Burton early last year to raise "at least $5,000" for Burton's reelection campaign. When he was unable to do so, Siegel said, the congressman complained to the ambassador for the Bhutto government here and later threatened to make sure "none of his friends or colleagues" would meet with Siegel or his associates.

"I should tell you," Siegel wrote on July 25, in a two-page memo to a Bhutto aide in Islamabad, "that I worked in Washington for over 25 years and have never been shaken down by anyone before like Dan Burton's threats. No one has ever dared to threaten me into contributing money, and no one has ever followed through on such threats by contacting one of my clients. . . .

Burton is a longtime member of the House International Relations Committee who co-chairs an informal caucus on U.S.-Pakistani relations. The congressman has regularly backed causes of importance to Pakistan and is a longtime recipient of campaign donations from the Sikh community. He was a key supporter of a bill that would have blocked $25 million in U.S. aid to India because of its refusal to allow human rights investigations of alleged atrocities in Punjab state, where Sikh separatists seeking a homeland they call Khalistan have battled New Delhi's security forces.

Two years ago, Burton also backed an effort to lift a long-standing ban on aid to Pakistan that cleared the way for delivery of $368 million worth of U.S. missiles and other military equipment for which it already had paid.

According to Siegel's memo, in conversations last year about fund-raising efforts, Burton said that he was "owed support" and that "he had been there for Pakistan and he expected me to be there for him."

Siegel, who represented the Bhutto government in Washington for several years until her government fell, was paid $452,941 for his services for the year ending July 1995, according to his filing at the Justice Department as a registered foreign agent. A longtime Democrat, Siegel was executive director of the Democratic National Committee in the 1970s and served as a political aide in the Carter White House.

According to the memo, Siegel told Burton he "would do [his] best to try to identify Republican Pakistani-Americans who might contribute to his campaign."

But it soon became clear, the memo continues, "that it was impossible to raise the funds he was asking for without the congressman's attendance at an event. When I informed him of this, he said he wouldn't attend an event for less than $10,000, and added that if I `were smart' I'd put together that much or more for him." . . .

For more, GO TO > > > WHO's Guarding the Hen House?

Dan Harmon - From The Secret Life of Bill Clinton : . . . Sharlene Wilson had been the bartender at Le Bistro, a Little Rock nightclub where Roger Clinton used to play with his rock band Dealer's Choice.

Big Brother would come by from time to time with one or two of his State Troopers. . . .

"Roger had all the pretty girls and drugs and the fast life, and Bill was pretty envious of this," she said. On one occasion "Roger the Dodger" came back to the bar and said he needed two grams of cocaine right away. They carried out the deal near the ladies room. The Dodger then borrowed her "tooter," ... and handed it to the governor. . . .

"I watched Bill Clinton lean up against a brick wall. He must have had an adenoid problem because he casually stuck my tooter up his nose," she said. "He was so messed up that night, he slid down the wall into a garbage can and just sat here like a complete idiot."...

Afterward they went back to the Governor's Mansion and partied into the early hours of the morning. "I thought it was the coolest thing in the world that we had a governor who got high."

That was not the only time she snorted cocaine with Bill Clinton. She claimed to have been present with him at a series of "toga parties" at the Coachman's Inn outside Little Rock between 1979 and 1981. "I was, you know, the hostess with the mostess, the lady with the snow," she said. "I'd serve drinks and lines of cocaine on a glass mirror." . . .

People shared sexual partners in what amounted to a Babylonian orgy. They were elite gatherings of two to twenty people, mostly public officials, lawyers, and local notables, cavorting in a labyrinth of interconnected rooms with women that included teenage girls. Bill Clinton was there at least twice, she said, snorting cocaine "quite avidly" with Dan Harmon.

She gave a graphic description of the sexual activities that Bill Clinton preferred. She remembered seeing a distinctive mole at the base of his stomach. "It's darned me that he's managed to get elected through all this," she said. . . .

Sharlene was surprisingly frank about her job at the Mena Airport in the mid-1980s. The cocaine was flown in on twin-engine Cessnas, sometimes as often as every day. "I'd pick up the pallets and make the run down to Texas. The drop-off was at the Cowboys Stadium. I was told that nobody would ever bother me, and I was never bothered". ...

"If there was a problem I was to call Dan Harmon... A lot of the cocaine that came into Mena was taken up to Springdale in northwest Arkansas," she said, "where it was stuffed into chickens for reshipment to the rest of the country." . . .

But she had another job, which she revealed to me two years later when we were allowed to meet and talk in relative privacy at the prison library. This time she was trembling with emotion, giving free rein to the terrible remorse that had been eating at her for nine years. She used to pick up cocaine deliveries on the railway tracks near the little town of Alexander, thirty miles south of Little Rock....

"Every two weeks, for years, I'd go to the tracks, I'd pick up the package, and I'd deliver it to Dan Harmon, either straight to his office, or at my house. ... Sometimes it was flown in by air, sometimes it would be kicked out of the train. A big bundle, two feet by one and a half feet, like a bale of hay, so heavy I'd have trouble lifting it ... Roger the Dodger picked it up a few times."

But in the summer of 1987 one of the drops disappeared. Furious, Harmon brought out some of his men to watch the delivery on the night of August 22. They were expecting a delivery of 3 to 4 pounds of cocaine and 5 pounds of "weed."

Sharlene was supposed to make the pickup that night but she had been "high-balling" a mixture of cocaine and crystal and was totally "strung-out." They told her to wait in the car, which was parked off Quarry Road. It was around midnight.

"It was scary. I was high, very high. I was told to sit there and they'd be back. It seemed forever. ... I heard two trains. Then I heard some screams, loud screams."

"When Harmon came back, he jumped in the car and said, 'Let's go.' He was scared. It looked like there was blood all down his legs."

She later learned that a group of boys had been intercepted at the drop sight. According to Sharlene some of them had managed to get away, but Kevin Ives, 17, and Don Henry, 16, were captured. Harmon's men interrogated them as they were lying on the ground, face down, hands tied behind their backs.

They were kicked and beaten, and finally executed. One of the boys was stabbed to death with a "survival knife." The bodies were wrapped in a tarpaulin, carried to a different spot on the line, and placed across the railway tracks so that the bodies would be mangled by the next train.

The following day Harmon told Sharlene that she would have to ditch her car. He gave her $500 in cash and told her to deliver a packet of cocaine to an address in Rockford, Illinois. ... from there she fled to the obscurity of Nebraska....

I have Sharlene's signed confession, which she gave to the narcotics detail of the Little Rock Police Dept. on May 28, 1993.

The FBI has it, so does the U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Arkansas.

The whole damn government has it....

~ ~ ~

View a shocking documentary on this betrayal of justice at The Law Party website: http://www.thelawparty.org/

See on the Net: The Crimes of Mena ; Arkansas Justice ; Big News from Arkansas; New York Mob at Mena

Dan Inouye - U.S. Senator (D) from Hawaii, called by some Hawaii's "Political Godfather".

From Honolulu Star-Bulletin, 10/28/96, by Ian Y. Lind: Isle Woman Part of Campaign Probe - Former resident Nora Lum figures in congressional investigation into '92 finances.

Congressional investigators have renewed a probe of former Hawaii resident Nora T. Lum, and a 1992 campaign project which she headed, because of their links to Democratic National Committee fund-raiser John Huang and former DNC official Melinda Yee.

David Bossie, staff investigator for Rep. Dan Burton, said last week that investigators are "extremely interested" in Lum's association with Huang and Yee in the Asian Pacific Advisory Council (APAC-Vote), a DNC project that operated out of offices in Torrance, Calif, during the fall of 1992.

Bossie said APAC-Vote is drawing new scrutiny because its "cast of characters" included Huang, then an officer of the Indonesian-owned Lippo Bank in Los Angeles; the late Secretary of Commerce, Ron Brown, then chairman of the DNC; and Melinda Yee, an assistant to Brown at the DNC and national director of Asian Pacific American affairs for the 1992 Clinton-Gore campaign.

Following the 1992 elections, Brown was appointed secretary of commerce and named Huang and Yee to key positions in the department. . . .

Huang and Yee have been ordered to testify in a lawsuit by the conservative organization, Judicial Watch, which wants to know whether Commerce Dept trade missions were used to raise funds for the Democratic Party. . . .

APAC-Vote officially opened its office on Sept 9, 1992, the same day then-candidate Bill Clinton announced the formation of the Asian Pacific American Committee for Clinton-Gore, whose roster included Sen. Dan Inouye, Sen. Dan Akaka, Rep. Patsy Mink, and then-Gov. John Waihee....

* * *

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. . . .

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 ...

~ ~ ~

View shocking documentaries on this betrayal of justice at The Law Party website: http://www.thelawparty.org/

For more, GO TO > > > Broken Trust

Dan Lasater - From: The Secret Life of Bill Clinton: . . . Dan Lasater -- the Dixie Godfather, and the friend of and provider for the Clinton brothers.

PATTY-ANNE SMITH was sixteen years old when she fell under the ruinous influence of Dan Lasater, friend and patron of the Clinton brothers. ... Her nicknames were Muffin and Precious. She was still a child, but not for long.

"I was a virgin until two months after I met Dan Lasater. He plied me with cocaine and gifts for sexual favors and I finally gave in and slept with him," she said in a police statement . . . At the time Lasater was 40 . . . Under his tutelage she soon became addicted to hard drugs. . . .

Lasater arranged for a corrupt doctor to give her "a pelvic examination and prescribe birth control pills." Once on contraceptives, she was made available to Lasater's business colleagues, including Arkansas State Senator George Locke.

In the end Patty-Anne fled Arkansas after it was explained to her that he planned to use her as a semi-prostitute to "entertain." . . .

For more GO TO > > > A Flock of Flying Donkeys ; The Donkey Nests

Dean R. O'Hare - CEO of Chubb Corporation.

From Executive Pay Watch:

In 2000, Dean R. O'Hare raked in $27,572,966 in total compensation from Chubb.

In addition, the Chubb executive took home $3,324,035 in stock option exercises from prior grants.

And Dean R. O'Hare has $27,281,046 in unexercised stock options from previous years.

* * *

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. . . .

For more, GO TO > > > The Chubb Group

Dennis J. Picard - CEO of Raytheon Co. In 1998, Picard raked in over $4.5 million in salary, bonus and other compensation from Raytheon. Raytheon also beamed in another $5 million in stock option grants for a total of over $9.5 million.

Diane Feinstein - Senator from California; former mayor of San Francisco.

From Washington on $10 Million a Day : Foreign Lobbying . . . But the China lobby's biggest friend in Congress is Senator Dianne Feinstein of California.

Feinstein's romance with China dates to the 1970s, when she was mayor of San Francisco and became close friends with Jiang Zemin, then mayor of Beijing and now China's president. In explaining her interest in U.S.-China relations, Feinstein has said, "In my last life I was Chinese."

It's not possible to confirm this but even if true, Feinstein's passion for Beijing is more likely linked to the fact that her husband in her current life, merchant banker Richard Blum, has substantial business and real estate interests in China. Blum manages $750 million in investments for about 70 companies, with a large chunk of that amount tied up in China.

Blum is also a director of Shanghai Pacific Partners, a major import-export firm. In 1994, Feinstein led the effort to renew MFN for Beijing at a time that her husband was preparing to invest $150 million of his clients' money, along with $2 million of his own, in China.

The China lobby has augmented its firepower by deploying a fleet of lobbyists to directly pressure Congress. ... In addition to Hogan & Hartson, the China lobby has retained Patton, Boggs-- which assigned eight lobbyists to the MFN campaign, including Tommy Boggs and Michael Brown, son of late Commerce Secretary Ron Brown; Hill and Knowlton, headed by Howard Paster; and Manatt, Phelps & Phillips, past home to ex-Commerce Secretary Mickey Kantor. These four firms alone took in at least $160,000 in 1996 to lobby on the MFN issue.

For more, GO TO > > > A Flock of Donkeys

Dick Cheney - Former Secretary of Defense under George H. W. Bush, 1989-1993. Bloke-in-Charge of finding a running mate for George W. Bush, Jr.-- who got himself selected instead-- AND WHO IS NOW VICE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES.

* * *

Quote: "The vice president is always in a very difficult position, in any circumstances ... if he challenges the president in policy meetings ... he's viewed as disloyal."

-- Dick Cheney, 1987, then vice chairman of the House committee investigating the Iran-Contra affair.

* * *

From The Center for Public Integrity (8/2/00):

CHENEY LED HALLIBURTON TO FEAST AT FEDERAL TROUGH

State Department Questioned Deal With
Firm Linked to Russian Mob

Under the guidance of Richard Cheney ... Halliburton Company over the past 5 years has emerged as a corporate welfare hog, benefitting from at least $3.8 BILLION in federal contracts and (US) taxpayer-insured loans.

One of those loans was approved in April by the U.S. Export-Import Bank. It guaranteed $489 MILLION in credits to a Russian oil company whose roots are imbedded in a legacy of KGB and Communist Party corruption, as well as drug trafficking and organized crime funds, according to Russian and U.S. sources and documents. . . .

High-level Access

Wall Street analysts praise Cheney's stewardship of the company and attribute his ability to attract government contracts and grants to his high-level access to the corridors of power that stems from his days as defense secretary under President George Bush. If he becomes vice president, according to a Halliburton official who admires Cheney but asked to remain anonymous, "the company's government contracts would obviously go through the roof."

If Halliburton has benefitted from government generosity, it also has reciprocated with substantial political contributions, largely to Republicans. During Cheney's five years at the helm, the company has donated $1,212,000 in soft and hard money to candidates and parties. . . .

As with Halliburton's campaign donations, the company's lobbying expenditures increased under Cheney's watch.

In 1996, the company spent $280,000 on lobbying. In 1997, the company increased those expenditures to $360,000, to $540,000 in 1998, and to $600,000 in 1999.

That upward trend parallels the increasing success Halliburton has had in winning government contracts, loans, and guarantees under Cheney's direction. . . .

* * *

A CATBIRD NOTE: Some of the top investors in Halliburton include: American Express; Barclays; Merrill Lynch; and Putnam (Marsh & McLennan). The U.K.-based Barclays is one of the largest investors in Riscorp.

For more, GO TO > > > Nests in the Pentagon

Donald J. Tyson - a/k/a "Chicken Man".

In his book, The Secret Life of Bill Clinton, investigative reporter Ambrose Evans-Pritchard writes:

I had been given comprehensive intelligence files from the Criminal Investigations Division of the Arkansas State Police, going back as far as the early 1970's . . .

I was scarcely able to believe what I was seeing. Among the famous names of the Arkansas oligarchy that jumped out from page after page of criminal intelligence files was Don Tyson, the billionaire president of Tyson Foods and the avuncular patron of Bill Clinton and Hillary Clinton. . . .

A gruff barrel-chested man with a cropped beard and a reputation for ruthless business practice, Don Tyson is one of the great characters of Arkansas. He presides over the biggest chicken processing operation in the world from his "Oval Office" -- a replica of the real one -- with dooor handles in the shape of eggs....

The family business, based in Springdale, has grown at an explosive rate since the 1960;s, swallowing up rival companies in a relentless quest for market share....

The documents I was looking at made me wonder about the origins of his liquidity. Here were files from the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency, marked DEA SENSITIVE, under the rubric of the "Donald TYSON Drug Trafficking Organization."

One was from the DEA office in Oklahoma City, dated December 14, 1982. It cited a confidential informant alleging that "TYSON smuggles cocaine from Colombia, South America inside race horses to Hot Springs, Arkansas." It cited the investigation tracking number for Don J. Tyson, a/k/a "Chicken Man," as Nadis 470067.

A second document from the DEA office in Tucson, dated July 9, 1984, stated that "the Cooperating Individual had information concerning heroin, cocaine and marijuana trafficking in the States of Arkansas, Texas, and Missouri by the TYSON organization." The informant described a place called "THE BARN" which TYSON used as a "stash" location for large quantities of marijuana and cocaine.

"THE BARN" area is located between Springdale and Fayetteville, Arkansas, and from the outside the appearance of "THE BARN" looks run down. On the inside of "THE BARN" it is quite plush. . . .

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A memo by the Criminal Investigative Section, dated March 22, 1976, states that Don Tyson "is an extremely wealthy man with much political influence and seems to be involved in most every kind of shady operation, especially narcotics, however, has to date gone without implication in any specific crime . . ."

The memo was triggered by a dispute between Tyson and the Teamsters Union over allegations of drug dealing and prostitution at a Teamsters-owned hotel leased by Tyson. Two sets of documents refer to alleged hit men employed by Tyson to kill drug dealers who owed him money. Another report alleged that Tyson was using his business plane to smuggle quart jars of methamphetamine. All told, it was a staggering portrait of a drug baron.

None of the allegations led to criminal charges, and it would soon become clear why. Police officers who tried to mount a case against Tyson were destroyed by their superiors in the State Police.

The first to try was Beverly "B.J." Weaver, then an undercover narcotics officer in Springdale. Working the streets and bars of northwest Arkansas, disguised as a deaf woman, she collected detailed intelligence on Tyson's alleged smuggling network. . . .

"There were loads going out with the chickens," she explained. "They'd put the coke in the rectums of the chickens, live chickens. That's how they'd move it." . . .

As the allegations from her informants mounted, she requested the intelligence files on Don Tyson. That is when her problems began. Her colleagues in the Springdale office -- who she now believes were "on the take" from the Tyson machine -- put out the word that she was "not stable," that she had "flipped out."

Then it got rough. "They started passing out my photo on the streets, which put my life in danger. I became paranoid. I didn't trust my phone line. There was nobody I could really trust." . . .

By 1987 her position was untenable. Her career in ruins, she resigned from the police and found a job as a security guard in the Bahamas. . . .

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To Don Tyson, who has reportedly again become disenchanted with Clinton and is giving money to Bob Dole in the 1996 campaign, the business of politics has never been particularly complicated. It consists of "a series of unsentimental transactions between those who need votes and those who have money . . . a world where every quid has its quo." . . .