Posted on 08/05/2005 10:20:31 PM PDT by Enchante
How could a retired State Dept wonk and a mid-level 70k a year analyst afford to buy a $750,000 house in 1999?
Low mortgage rates?
It's not THAT far-fetched. The guy was a consultant. They make good money.
"How could a retired State Dept wonk and a mid-level 70k a year analyst afford to buy a $750,000 house in 1999?"
Let's see...he saved every penny while he was a civil servant? No doubt he had lots of friends with money who helped him out. How could a broken down lot like the Clinton's buy all those expensive houses in NY and Georgetown? {;o)
It shows up in the Internet Archive on EPIC's pages on July 22, 2003. I can't find it on the June 24, 2003 capture. So clearly it was online sometime between June 24th and July 22nd, 2003.
Clinton had a book deal.
Ping and bookmark.
My memory is that the NY house was bought, at least in part, with a loan from the good Terry McAwful. There was a book deal with a big advance.
The separate thread is a good idea IMO. Kudos for your effort. All this is curiouser and curiouser.
Try this for the Middle East Institute:
http://64.233.187.104/search?q=cache:_fHmSfsPtvwJ:www.fishkite.com/notes/ambassadorwilsonbio.htm+ambassador+joseph+wilson+%22fishkite.com%22&hl=en
Thanks. It is quite curious indeed.
I've been back there for the last hour or so going through all the links to all the publications, press releases, conferences etc. There are only two references to Wilson both of them in regard to annual conferences. The first is:
Oct. 23, 2003: The Middle East in US Presidential Elections
www.mideasti.org/articles/doc105.html
There is a transcript to his little speech. It's about our Iraq policy and he definitely sounds like a precursor to Kerry--"we have to internationalize this thing." He was one of a group of 4 speakers, appearing just before Zogby.
The other is May 2004: The Politics of Truth: From Yellowcake to White
This one requires Mp3 which I do not have.
Other than this I am pretty certain he is gonzo. The 2005 convention is not till Nov. 7-9 and they haven't listed the speakers yet. From taking a thorough look at their site it does not seem like his scholarly services were much in demand from them.
Wow, thanks for wading through that audio and providing us all with the transcript -- was it very painful to listen to such ranting? Clearly Wilson and Ray McGovern are very close to each other in their whole white-hot rage at "evil neo-cons are tricking the US into doing Sharon's dirty work" theme. Wilson is a man of strong opinions and little intellectual insight - he grabs hold of a slogan or gets talking points from his buddies in 'VIPS' and then just runs wild with it. If Sharon did not exist we would have the same reasons we have to oppose Islamo-fascism.
Thanks again for your great work, KUDOS!!
Apparently Wilson's brother is in real estate--from the Vanity Fair article on the Wilsons (which I believe we're not allowed to link, so I quote without the link):
The Wilsons live in the Palisades, an affluent neighborhood of Washington, D.C., on the fringe of Georgetown. In winter, when the trees have no leaves, the back of their house has a stunning view of the Washington Monument. They'd first seen the house in 1998, when it was still being built, and they had instantly fallen in love with it. Even so, Plame took some persuading before they made an offer. "She's very frugal," explains Wilson. "My brother who's in real estate had to fly in from the West Coast and explain that a mortgage could cost less than our rented apartment in the Watergate."
[Question: does the last sentence quoted above imply that the Wilsons were paying even more for rent before they moved into their $750,000 home?]
Some more miscellaneous notes on the Wilsons' home, summarizing some notes I collected last year: The Wilsons purchased their home from Barry Zuckerman Property (NOTE: There is also a Zuckerman real estate dynasty in California; cf. Wilson's mention above of his brother flying in from the West Coast, where the Wilson family is descended from a former Mayor of San Francisco and Governor of California, James "Sunny Jim" Rolph), which built some other real estate in the same neighborhood (though not Wilson's place). Zuckerman was found guilty of various infractions and fined $1,800:
District of Columbia Department of Health vs. Barry Zuckerman Property and Barry Zuckerman (NOTE: This is a pdf file, and it cannot be linked directly, but it is the first item that comes up if you go to http://doh.dc.gov/doh/site/default.asp and search on "Zuckerman")
The property next door to Wilson's (4618 Charleston Terrace) was purchased for $900,000 by Christopher Wolf, a lawyer with Proskauer Rose, LLP, who has legally advised Wilson and Plame since the Novak leak (Wolf states that before this he had only a neighborly relationship with them; on what may be a coincidental but interesting note, in 1995 Wolf defended The Washington Post and Richard Leiby in a suit filed by a Church of Scientology front). See below on another home in the same neighborhood (note the price on the 1993 market).
---
RTC Auction of Local Properties Brings in $2.08
Million:[FINAL Edition]
Jeanne Cooper. The Washington Post (pre-1997
Fulltext). Washington, D.C.: Oct 16, 1993. pg. E.02
Author(s): Jeanne Cooper
Section: REAL ESTATE
Publication title: The Washington Post (pre-1997 Fulltext). Washington, D.C.: Oct 16, 1993. pg. E.02
Source Type: Newspaper
ISSN/ISBN: 01908286
ProQuest document ID: 72194276
Text Word Count 604
A spacious, opulently modern house in the District's Foxhall neighborhood and 11 other properties have joined the growing list of assets auctioned off by the federal Resolution Trust Corp.
Last Saturday's RTC auction in Bethesda drew about 350 registered bidders and brought in $2.08 million, a figure an RTC official said met the agency's expectations.
Of the 14 commercial and residential properties on the auctioneer's block, the Foxhall home on Charleston Terrace NW brought in the highest bid, selling for $730,000. The five-bedroom, 4 1/2- bath house, built in 1987 with a wine cellar, central vacuum and security systems, was last assessed for $868,140, according to tax roll records provided by TRW REDI Inc.
Potential buyers of the house were required to show certified funds of $20,000 and about 15 began bidding at the opening price of $100,000, according to auctioneer David Kaufman of Chicago. He said the final price came close to his prediction.
"Before the auction I walked through that house in Foxhall and told the broker that was showing it for us, `Seven {hundred thousand},' and it went for $730,000. That's the market value," Kaufman said.
The RTC, which acquired the auction properties from failed savings and loan organizations. . .
SNIP
---
Thanks much for taking the time to look that up. Rather interesting he appeared with Zogby.
Yes, very :-) And having to listen to it multiple times in order to transcribe it was even worse. A little Joseph Wilson goes a long way. . .
Thanks for the ping. I'm glad you are still pursuing many angles and not letting up. The giant squid analogy is very true. I hope we eventually find out who picked him, and why, considering his credentials as well as his connection to Plame were suspect. I still believe it was a setup meant to embarrass the WH/viceP, into butting out of CIA affairs that didn't "concern" them, and silencing the discussion about WMD.
It seems to have been pretty effective, if you notice.
Wilson calls Novak and more or less threatens him and says - Shut up about my wife. Novak remembers "the friend"....does a little research (Dem Contribution List) and publishes his article. He used the words "CIA Operative" to smoke Wilson out...and he did just that. What Novak meant by "Operative" was Dem Operative. Wilson took it to be CIA "Undercover Agent".
My best guess is that Novak knew Valerie from his DC social contacts...before she married Wilson...when she was just Plame old Valerie. It was hardly a "secret" marriage.
That is an intriguing question given the fact that Wilson had retired a year earlier. His State Department penison, based on 22 years of service times 2% times $125,000 (tops) for his high three equals $55,000 a year. Moreover, he had to pay child support from his previous marriage and his second wife (French) had a claim to part of his pension, i.e., they were married for more than 10 years. She would be entitled to about half Wilson's pension. Wilson's third wife, Valierie, could not have been making more than $100K a year. They would have needed a large down payment to qualify for a loan.
I have always questioned why Wilson left the Foreign Service at what should have been the peak of his career. Moreover, those were his peak earning years. I wonder what the incentive was to leave and/or the push by the State Department to have him retire.
As you have pointed out previously, Wilson had some shady contacts in the Middle East. One wonders if Wilson profited from those contacts after he left the Department. There is definitely something that needs to looked at by the USG. They should follow the money. Maybe Wilson is trying to insulate himself from any USG investigation by being anti-Bush. He can always claim that it is politically motivated.
One web source gives an address for Valerie Plame (presumably before she married Wilson) as living at 2700 Virginia Avenue NW in Washington, DC. This is the Watergate West apartment complex. I don't know what apartments sold for in the late 1990s, but they can be expensive now. For example, a recent sale of a 1300 sq. foot apartment indicated a sale price of $379,000. Ownership also involves a monthly fee of $912. which covers taxes, insurance, etc. Don't know where Wilson lived before. They might have raised down payments by sales of former residences.
The same link also mentions a jacqueline C. Wilson, 55, with the address 4612 Charleston Ter NW, which is where Joseph C. and Valerie now live. I don't understand this hit. If it's accurate, who is this 55 year old Jacqueline C. Wilson?
Here is another interesting tidbit I found in case anyone thinks Wilson is making tons of money off book sales. It's from an article titled "Quest for Best Seller means Lots of Returned Books", June 3, 2005. (I'm sorry, I meant to write down the name of the author but I forgot. He's from the Wall Street Journal.)
"Even mid-size publishers sometimes reach for the brass ring.In April 2004, Avalon publishing Group Inc. issued "The Politics of Truth:Inside the Lies that led to War and Betrayed my Wife's CIA Identity," by former US Ambassador Joseph Wilson. At the time books about politics were selling well, and Avalon, eager to deliver as many copies as quickly as possible, printed a 100,000. Shortly before the publication date, April 30, it went back to the presses for an additional 25,000.
Just as the book was hitting the best-seller lists, public attention switched to allegations of abuse at Iraq's Abu Ghraib prison. Although "The Politics of Truth" enjoyed good sales, Charles Winton, Avalon's CEO, says he's now sitting on 60,000 copies, including many that have been returned. The second printing cost at least $60,000, he says, none of which has yet recouped. Mr. Winton says he had to gamble: "You sell a lot of books, but there's also a lot of waste."
www.postgazette.com/pg/05154/515469.stm
This afternoon I have been trying very hard but unsuccessfully to track down a transcript for The Chris Matthew Show for July 17, 2005. My husband was sure Wilson was on that morning (or maybe July 24) and Matthews asked him how his book was doing. The response was something like "very well and it's going to get better." However according to the above only slightly more than half of those printed, 65,000 were sold--probably a lot of them to libraries. That dosn't sound very "good' to me. A big grocery chain I shop at put out a pile of them last summer before the election and a couple of months ago the amount did not look much different and now they are gone--not sold, just cleeared out and maybe sent back to Mr. Winton.
The Watergate is now being turned completely into condos and they are very expensive. I was trying to get some idea of how much rent would be for an apartment suite but I couldn't find anything to reference to the apartment complex before some company took over renovating the hotel last year I think. The hotel suites ran $6000-over $7000 a month according to the hotel's website--I can't imagine Valerie paying that kind of rent.
Isn't Jacqueline C. Wilson his second wife's name? The age seems about right. Why in the world would she be listed? Did she buy the house for them? That is very weird!
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