Posted on 09/22/2005 10:04:49 AM PDT by Calpernia
The Central Intelligence Agency has an almost unblemished record of screwing up every "secret" armed intervention it ever undertook. From the overthrow of the Iranian government in 1953 through the Bay of Pigs, the failed attempts to assassinate Fidel Castro of Cuba and Patrice Lumumba of the Republic of Congo, the Phoenix Program in Vietnam, the "secret war" in Laos, aid to the Greek colonels who seized power in 1967, the 1973 killing of Salvador Allende in Chile and Ronald Reagan's Iran-contra war against Nicaragua, there is not a single instance in which the agency's activities did not prove acutely embarrassing to the United States. The CIA continues to get away with this primarily because its budget and operations have always been secret and Congress is normally too indifferent to its constitutional functions to rein in a rogue bureaucracy. Therefore the tale of a purported CIA success story should be of some interest.
According to the author of the newly released Charlie Wilson's War, the exception to CIA incompetence was the arming between 1979 and 1988 of thousands of Afghan moujahedeen ("freedom fighters"). The agency flooded Afghanistan with an astonishing array of extremely dangerous weapons and "unapologetically mov[ed] to equip and train cadres of high tech holy warriors in the art of waging a war of urban terror against a modern superpower," in this case, the USSR.
The author of this glowing account, George Crile, is a veteran producer for the CBS television news show "60 Minutes" and an exuberant Tom Clancy-type enthusiast for the Afghan caper. He argues that the U.S. clandestine involvement in Afghanistan was "the largest and most successful CIA operation in history" and "the one morally unambiguous crusade of our time." He adds that "there was nothing so romantic and exciting as this war against the Evil Empire." Crile's sole measure of success is the number of Soviet soldiers killed (about 15,000), which undermined Soviet morale and contributed to the disintegration of the Soviet Union in the period from 1989 to 1991. That's the successful part.
However, he never mentions that the "tens of thousands of fanatical Muslim fundamentalists" the CIA armed are some of the same people who in 1996 killed 19 American airmen at Dhahran, Saudi Arabia; bombed our embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in 1998; blew a hole in the side of the U.S. destroyer Cole in Aden harbor in 2000; and on Sept. 11, 2001, flew hijacked airliners into New York's World Trade Center and the Pentagon. Today, the world awaits what is almost certain to happen soon at some airport -- a terrorist firing a U.S. Stinger low-level surface-to-air missile (manufactured at one time by General Dynamics in Rancho Cucamonga) into an American jumbo jet. The CIA supplied thousands of them to the moujahedeen and trained them to be experts in their use. If the CIA's activities in Afghanistan are a "success story," then Enron should be considered a model of corporate behavior.
Nonetheless, Crile's account is important, if appalling, precisely because it details how a ruthless ignoramus congressman and a high-ranking CIA thug managed to hijack American foreign policy. From 1973 to 1996, Charlie Wilson represented the 2nd District of Texas in the U.S. House of Representatives. His constituency was in the heart of the East Texas Bible Belt and was the long-held fiefdom of his fellow Democrat, Martin Dies, the first chairman of the House Un-American Affairs Committee. Wilson is 6 feet, 4 inches tall and "handsome, with one of those classic outdoor faces that tobacco companies bet millions on." He graduated from the Naval Academy in 1956, eighth from the bottom of his class and with more demerits than any other cadet in Annapolis history.
After serving in the Texas Legislature, he arrived in Washington in 1973 and quickly became known as "Good Time Charlie," "the biggest playboy in Congress." He hired only good-looking women for his staff and escorted "a parade of beauty queens to White House parties." Even Crile, who featured Wilson many times on "60 Minutes" and obviously admires him, describes him as "a seemingly corrupt, cocaine snorting, scandal prone womanizer who the CIA was convinced could only get the Agency into terrible trouble if it permitted him to become involved in any way in its operations."
Wilson's partner in getting the CIA to arm the moujahedeen was Gust Avrakotos, the son of working-class Greek immigrants from the steel workers' town of Aliquippa, Pa. Only in 1960 did the CIA begin to recruit officers for the Directorate of Operations from among what it called "new Americans," meaning such ethnic groups as Chinese, Japanese, Latinos and Greek Americans. Until then, it had followed its British model and taken only Ivy League sons of the Eastern Establishment. Avrakotos joined the CIA in 1961 and came to nurture a hatred of the bluebloods, or "cake eaters," as he called them, who discriminated against him. After "spook school" at Camp Peary, next door to Jamestown, Va., he was posted to Athens, where, as a Greek speaker, he remained until 1978.
During Avrakotos's time in Greece, the CIA was instrumental in destroying Greek freedom and helping to turn the country into probably the single most anti-American democracy on Earth today. Incredibly, Crile describes this as follows: "On April 21, 1967, he [Avrakotos] got one of those breaks that can make a career. A military junta seized power in Athens that day and suspended democratic and constitutional government." Avrakotos became the CIA's chief liaison with the Greek colonels. After the fall of the colonels' brutally fascist regime, the 17 November terrorist organization assassinated the CIA's Athens station chief, Richard Welch, on Dec. 23, 1975, and "Gust came to be vilified in the Greek radical press as the sinister force responsible for most of the country's many ills." He left the country in 1978 but could not get another decent assignment -- he tried for Helsinki -- because the head of the European Division regarded him as simply too uncouth to send to any of its capitals. He sat around Langley for several years without work until he was recruited by John McGaffin, head of the Afghan program. "If it's really true that you have nothing to do," McGaffin said, "why not come upstairs? We're killing Russians."
Wilson was the moneybags and sparkplug of this pair; Avrakotos was a street fighter who relished giving Kalashnikovs and Stingers to the tribesmen in Afghanistan. Wilson was the more complex of the two, and Crile argues that his "Good Time Charlie" image was actually a cover for a Barry Goldwater kind of hyper-patriotism. But Wilson was also a liberal on the proposed Equal Rights Amendment and a close friend of the late Congresswoman Barbara Jordan (D-Texas), and his sister Sharon became chairwoman of the board of Planned Parenthood.
As a boy, Wilson was fascinated by World War II and developed an almost childlike belief that he possessed a "special destiny" to "kill bad guys" and help underdogs prevail over their enemies. When he entered Congress, just at the time of the Yom Kippur War, he became a passionate supporter of Israel. After he traveled to Israel, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee began to steer large amounts of money from all over the country to him and to cultivate him as "one of Israel's most important Congressional champions: a non-Jew with no Jewish constituents." Jewish members of Congress also rallied to put Wilson on the all-powerful Appropriations Committee in order to guarantee Israel's annual $3-billion subsidy. His own Texas delegation opposed his appointment.
Wilson was not discriminating in his largess. He also became a supporter of Anastasio "Tacho" Somoza, the West Point graduate and dictator of Nicaragua who in 1979 was swept away by popular fury. Before that happened, President Carter tried to cut the $3.1-million annual U.S. aid package to Nicaragua, but Wilson, declaring Somoza to be "America's oldest anti-Communist ally in Central America," opposed the president and prevailed.
During Wilson's long tenure on the House Appropriations Committee, one of its subcommittee chairmen, Clarence D. "Doc" Long, used to have a sign mounted over his desk: "Them that has the gold makes the rules." Wilson advanced rapidly on this most powerful of congressional committees. He was first appointed to the foreign operations subcommittee, which doles out foreign aid. He then did a big favor for then-Speaker Thomas P. "Tip" O'Neill Jr. (D-Mass.). The chairman of the Defense Appropriations subcommittee at the time, Rep. John Murtha (D-Pa.), had been caught in the FBI's ABSCAM sting operation in which an agent disguised as a Saudi sheik offered members of Congress large cash bribes. O'Neill put Wilson on the Ethics Committee to save Murtha, which he did. In return, O'Neill assigned Wilson to the defense appropriations subcommittee and made him a life member of the governing board of the John F. Kennedy Performing Arts Center, where he delighted in taking his young dates. Wilson soon discovered that all of the CIA's budget and 40 percent of the Pentagon's budget is "black," hidden from the public and even from Congress. As a member of the defense subcommittee, he could arrange to have virtually any amount of money added to whatever black project he supported. So long as Wilson did favors for other members on the subcommittee, such as supporting defense projects in their districts, they would never object to his private obsessions.
About this time, Wilson came under the influence of a remarkable, rabidly conservative Houston woman in her mid-40s, Joanne Herring. They later fell in love, although they never married. She had a reputation among the rich of the River Oaks section of Houston as a collector of powerful men, a social lioness and hostess to her fellow members of the John Birch Society. She counted among her friends Ferdinand and Imelda Marcos, dictator and first lady of the Philippines, and Yaqub Khan, Pakistan's ambassador to Washington, D.C., who got Herring named as Pakistan's honorary consul for Houston.
In July 1977, the head of Pakistan's army, Mohammed Zia-ul-Haq, seized power and declared martial law, and in 1979, he hanged Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, the president who had promoted him. In retaliation, Carter cut off U.S. aid to Pakistan. In 1980, Herring went to Islamabad and was so entranced by Zia and his support for the Afghan freedom fighters that on her return to the United States, she encouraged Wilson to go to Pakistan. There he met Zia, learned about the Afghan moujahedeen and became a convert to the cause. Once Reagan replaced Carter, Wilson was able to restore Zia's aid money and added several millions to the CIA's funds for secretly arming the Afghan guerrillas, each dollar of which the Saudi government secretly matched.
Although Wilson romanticized the mountain warriors of Afghanistan, the struggle was never as uneven as it seemed. Pakistan provided the fighters with sanctuary, training and arms and even sent its own officers into Afghanistan as advisors on military operations. Saudi Arabia served as the fighters' banker, providing hundred of millions with no strings attached. Several governments, including those of Egypt, China and Israel, secretly supplied arms. And the insurgency enjoyed the backing of the United States through the CIA.
Wilson's and the CIA's greatest preoccupation was supplying the Afghans with something effective against the Soviets' most feared weapon, the Mi-24 Hind helicopter gunship. The Red Army used it to slaughter innumerable moujahedeen as well as to shoot up Afghan villages. Wilson favored the Oerlikon antiaircraft gun made in Switzerland (it was later charged that he was on the take from the Zurich-based arms manufacturer). Avrakotos opposed it because it was too heavy for guerrillas to move easily, but he could not openly stand in Wilson's way. After months of controversy, the Joint Chiefs of Staff finally dropped their objections to supplying the American Stinger, President Reagan signed off on it, and the "silver bullet" was on its way. The Stinger had never before been used in combat. It proved to be murderous against the Hinds, and Soviet President Mikhail S. Gorbachev decided to cut his losses and get out altogether. In Wilson's postwar tour of Afghanistan, moujahedeen fighters surrounded him and triumphantly fired their missiles for his benefit. They also gave him as a souvenir the stock from the first Stinger to shoot down a Hind gunship.
The CIA "bluebloods" fired Avrakotos in the summer of 1986, and he retired to Rome. Wilson became chairman of the Intelligence Oversight Committee, at which time he wrote to his CIA friends, "Well, gentlemen, the fox is in the hen house. Do whatever you like." After retiring from Congress in 1996, he became a lobbyist for Pakistan under a contract that paid him $30,000 a month. Meanwhile, the United States lost interest in Afghanistan, which descended into a civil war that the Taliban ultimately won. In the autumn of 2001, the United States returned in force after Al Qaeda retaliated against its former weapon supplier by attacking New York and Washington. The president of the United States went around asking, "Why do they hate us?"
Crile knows a lot about these matters and presents them in a dramatic manner. There are, however, one or two items that he appears unaware of or is suppressing. For the CIA legally to carry out a covert action, the president must authorize a document called a finding. Crile repeatedly says that Carter signed such a finding ordering the CIA to provide covert backing to the moujahedeen after the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan on Dec. 24, 1979. The truth of the matter is that Carter signed the finding on July 3, 1979, six months before the Soviet invasion, and he did so on the advice of his national security advisor, Zbigniew Brzezinski, in order to try to provoke a Russian incursion. Brzezinski has confirmed this sequence of events in an interview with a French newspaper, and former CIA Director Robert M. Gates says so explicitly in his 1996 memoirs. It may surprise Charlie Wilson to learn that his heroic moujahedeen were manipulated by Washington like so much cannon fodder in order to give the USSR its own Vietnam. The moujahedeen did the job, but as subsequent events have made clear, they may not be grateful to the United States.
[Mr. Johnson is the author of Blowback: The Costs and Consequences of American Empire and The Sorrows of Empire: Militarism, Secrecy and the End of the Republic, to be published in January by Metropolitan Books.]
>>>>>During Wilson's long tenure on the House Appropriations Committee, one of its subcommittee chairmen, Clarence D. "Doc" Long, used to have a sign mounted over his desk: "Them that has the gold makes the rules." Wilson advanced rapidly on this most powerful of congressional committees. He was first appointed to the foreign operations subcommittee, which doles out foreign aid. He then did a big favor for then-Speaker Thomas P. "Tip" O'Neill Jr. (D-Mass.). The chairman of the Defense Appropriations subcommittee at the time, Rep. John Murtha (D-Pa.), had been caught in the FBI's ABSCAM sting operation in which an agent disguised as a Saudi sheik offered members of Congress large cash bribes. O'Neill put Wilson on the Ethics Committee to save Murtha, which he did. In return, O'Neill assigned Wilson to the defense appropriations subcommittee and made him a life member of the governing board of the John F. Kennedy Performing Arts Center, where he delighted in taking his young dates. Wilson soon discovered that all of the CIA's budget and 40 percent of the Pentagon's budget is "black," hidden from the public and even from Congress. As a member of the defense subcommittee, he could arrange to have virtually any amount of money added to whatever black project he supported. So long as Wilson did favors for other members on the subcommittee, such as supporting defense projects in their districts, they would never object to his private obsessions.<<<<<<<
What is AbScam?
Abscam (sometimes ABSCAM) was a US political scandal in 1980. An FBI sting operation led to the arrest of members of Congress for accepting bribes.
The FBI set up Abdul Enterprises, Ltd. in 1978 and FBI employees posed as Middle Eastern businessmen in videotaped talks with government officials, where they offered money in return for political favors to a non-existent sheik. Much of the FBI operation was directed by the experienced Melvin Weinberg. It was the first major operation by the FBI to trap corrupt public officials; up until 1970 only ten members of Congress had ever been convicted of accepting bribes.
On February 2, 1980 reports surfaced that FBI personnel were targeting members of Congress in a sting operation. The media dubbed the operation Abscam after the name of the company.
Of the thirty plus targeted officials, one senator, Harrison A. Williams, and five members of the House of Representatives (John Jenrette, Richard Kelly, Raymond Lederer, Michael Myers, Frank Thompson) were convicted of bribery and conspiracy in separate trials in 1981. Another, John M. Murphy, was convicted of a lesser charge. While most of the politicians resigned, Myers had to be expelled and Williams did not resign until the vote on his expulsion was almost due. Five other government officials were convicted, including the mayor of Camden, Angelo Errichetti.
The FBI was accused of entrapment and in 1982 the conviction of Richard Kelly was overturned. (He had been memorably videotaped jamming $25,000 into his pockets.) The FBI and the Department of Justice were also accused of having political motivations in the politicians they targeted.
Christian Voice, which made its headquarters at the Heritage Foundation, gave Rep. Kelly a 100% morality rating, along with another who was censured for having a sexual relationship with a teenage page (see Congressional Page sex scandal, 1983).
The Abscam model of using a fake front company and concealed recording equipment served as the basis for a number of other investigations during the 1980s.
FOIA:
http://foia.fbi.gov/foiaindex/abscam.htm
Was Abscam the stepping stone to Able Danger?
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/954479/posts
Scamlord (abscam)
Abcam
On February 3, 1980, the Philadelphia Inquirer and other newspapers revealed details about a secret two-year FBI sting operation code-named "Abscam." By 1984, four members of the U.S. House of Representatives and one U.S. Senator had been convicted of bribery and conspiracy charges. It was the biggest scandal to hit Washington since Watergate though it is largely forgotten today. Why is that? Because neither party has an incentive to bring it up.
What was Abscam?
The name "Abscam" is derived from the fictitious company the FBI set up - Abdul Enterprises - to lure various public officials into accepting bribes.
On September 19, 1978, the FBI - via another fictitious company named "Olympic Construction Corp." - rented a house in Washington D.C. from, ironically enough, a Washington Post reporter named Lee Lescaze. According to an article Lescaze wrote in 1997 for the Post, "the FBI knew that I was a newspaper reporter and apparently didn't care." He also said that "The FBI is a good tenant. It pays the rent on time."
The house - along with a yacht in Florida and hotel rooms in Pennsylvania and New Jersey - was used to set up meetings between various public officials and a mysterious Arab sheik named Abdul who wanted:
To purchase asylum in the U.S.
To involve them in an investment scheme
To get help in getting his money out of his country
FBI agents posing as associates of Abdul approached various public officials with Abdul's goals and how they could help to achieve them. The FBI secretly videotaped each meeting and had no trouble finding politicians willing to abuse their office in exchange for bribes. Despite the convictions, the FBI itself became a target as politicians who were not caught soon realized how easily they could have been.
Rep. Richard Kelly of Florida is notorious for a January 8, 1980 videotape showing him stuffing $25,000 worth of bribes in his pockets and then turning to one of the agents and saying "Does it show?" Kelly was lucky enough to encounter a judge sympathetic to the entrapment excuse and, sadly, his conviction was overturned.
Angelo Errichetti was not as lucky. In 1981, New Jersey State Senator Errichetti was sentenced to six years in prison and fined $40,000 for his involvement in Abscam.
Representative Frank Thompson (D-N.J.), used $24,000 of campaign funds for his legal fees related to his Abscam trial. This was actually legal at the time but showed in the minds of many just how unethical some of these "entrapped" defendants were.
On May 1, 1981, Senator Williams was convicted and on March 11, 1982, Senator Williams of New Jersey resigned rather than have his colleagues vote him out.
One of the Abscam figures was quoted on one of the videotapes as claiming that then Hempstead Town Supervisor Al D'Amato was "definitely taking contributions -- he's on the take." D'Amato - who would be no stranger to scandal over the coming decades - later became a three-term Senator for the state of New York. Ironically, he held investigations into the Whitewater affair in the mid-90s.
Abscam Aftermath
Although a repeat of Abscam would doubtless net dozens if not hundreds of convictions today, don't expect the Justice Department or the FBI to conduct such a sting operation ever again. The political appointees to Justice are well aware their party faithful were not amused by Abscam. For a brief moment in our nations history starting with Watergate and ending with Abscam, the American people learned what scoundrels their elected officials were. One can only hope that future generations will recognize this.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1453849/posts
Sen. Torricelli Played Key Role in Closing Down CIA Ops
NewsMax ^ | BACKSTORY 9/17/01 | Wes Vernon
Posted on 07/30/2005 2:36:27 PM EDT by Liz
WASHINGTON - Sen. Robert Torricelli, D-N.J., led congressional efforts in the mid-1990s that handcuffed the CIA's abilities to recruit spies - a key policy that helped allow the attacks of Sept. 11 to take place with no intelligence warnings. Current and former CIA operatives say that Clinton administration policies, which forbade the CIA from recruiting known terrorists and other criminals, left the U.S. government bereft of all intelligence about such terrorist groups.
In 1995, then-Rep. Robert Torricelli, D-N.J., made secrets public at the behest of left-wing activist Bianca Jagger, his girlfriend at the time, according to Newark Star-Ledger columnist Paul Mulshine in the January/February issue of Heterodoxy.
The secrets suggested that the CIA had on its payroll one or more unsavory characters who had been involved in murder.
Torricelli gave away secrets he obtained through his membership on the House Intelligence Committee.
(snip)
From a blogged Tony Snow interview:
Tony Schaffer: "CIA was against it for professional jealousy, said that if the operation 'cutting off the tentacles worked, that'd steal the CIA's thunder.'"
http://therevolutionwillbeblogged.blogspot.com/2005/08/able-danger-interview.html
This seems to confirm that they were working on the same information, but separately:
What is interesting about this information now is that a CIA team, working separately from the Able Danger Team, had set its sights on al-Mihdar and al-Hazmi. The two were already on a CIA terror watch list and still had managed to obtain U.S. visas.
http://www.northjersey.com/page.php?qstr=eXJpcnk3ZjczN2Y3dnFlZUVFeXkyNjMmZmdiZWw3Zjd2cWVlRUV5eTY3NDQ2OTMmeXJpcnk3ZjcxN2Y3dnFlZUVFeXk5
Thanks ravingnutter!
Is Wilson any relation to Joseph C. Wilson, IV of the Plame notoriety? Brief bio of Joseph Wilson:
"Ambassador Wilson was a member of the U.S. Diplomatic Service from 1976 until 1998. His early assignments included Niamey, Niger, 1976-1978; Lome, Togo, 1978-79; the State Department Brueau of African Affairs, 1979-1981; and Pretoria, South Africa, 1981-1982."
I'm coming up with a number of Wilsons in my searches. So I don't know.
Thanks, Calpernia, for this posting. Stuff like this makes FR the resource it is.
|
Rep. Michael J. Myers (PA) (1980)
H. REP. NO. 96-1387, 96th Cong., 2d Sess. (1980)
|
Convicted of bribery, conspiracy and Travel Act violations (Aug. 30, 1980) |
Preliminary inquiry voted (Sept. 3, 1980); Special Counsel hired; adopted SAV (Sept. 16, 1980); recommended expulsion, 10-2 (Sept. 24, 1980) |
Resolutions to investigate (Oct. 2, 1980 and March 4, 1981); expelled, 376-30 (Oct. 2, 1980) |
ABSCAM Investigation; SAV charged violations of House R. 43(1), House R. 43(2), and House R. 43(3) |
|
Rep. John Jenrette, Jr. (SC) (1980)
H. REP. NO. 96-1537, 96th Cong., 2d Sess. (1980) |
Convicted of bribery and conspiracy (Oct. 7, 1980); accepted money in return for promising to use official influence [H. R. 43(1)-(3)] |
Preliminary inquiry voted (Nov. 13, 1980); adopted SAV (Dec. 3, 1980); sanction hearing terminated by resignation (Dec. 10, 1980); report filed (Dec. 16, 1980) |
Resolutions to investigate (Oct. 2, 1980 and March 4, 1981) |
ABSCAM Investigation; defeated for reelection (Nov. 1980); resigned (Dec. 10, 1980); SAV charged violations of R. 43(1)-(3) |
|
Rep. Raymond F. Lederer (PA) (1981)
H. REP. NO. 97-110, 97th Cong., 1st Sess. (1981) |
Convicted of bribery, acceptance of an unlawful gratuity, conspiracy and Travel Act violations (Jan. 9, 1981) |
Preliminary inquiry voted (March 11, 1981); adopted SAV (April 2, 1981); expulsion recommended, 10-2 (April 28, 1981); report filed (May 20, 1981) |
Resolutions to investigate (Oct. 2, 1980 and March 4, 1981) |
ABSCAM Investigation; resigned (Apr. 29, 1981); SAV charged violations of R. 43(1)-(3) |
|
Rep. John Murtha (PA)(1981)
H. REP. NO. 97-1004, 97th Cong., 1st Sess., at 6 (1983) |
Bribery and conspiracy |
Preliminary inquiry voted (May 28, 1981); dismissed (July 28, 1981) (Special Counsel resigned) |
Resolutions to investigate (Oct. 2, 1980 and March 4, 1981) |
ABSCAM Investigation; recused from ABSCAM-related investigations (member of Standards Comm.) |
|
Rep. Frederick W. Richmond (NY) (1982)
H. REP. NO. 97-1004, 97th Cong., 1st Sess., at 6 (1983) |
Pleaded guilty to felony charge of evading federal taxes, two misdemeanors involving a government contract, and misdemeanor possession of marijuana (Aug. 25, 1982) |
Preliminary inquiry voted (May 12, 1982); deferred at request of Justice Dept. ("DOJ") |
|
Resigned (Aug. 25, 1982) |
>>>>>In 1995, then-Rep. Robert Torricelli, D-N.J., made secrets public at the behest of left-wing activist Bianca Jagger, his girlfriend at the time, according to Newark Star-Ledger columnist Paul Mulshine in the January/February issue of Heterodoxy.
The secrets suggested that the CIA had on its payroll one or more unsavory characters who had been involved in murder.
Torricelli gave away secrets he obtained through his membership on the House Intelligence Committee. <<<<<<
04/19/2001
- ...senator appears on Meet the Press, ostensibly to discuss relations with China. But he ends up being grilled by host Tim Russert about an ongoing federal investigation into the fund-raising practices of his 1996 campaign. Torricelli is forced to concede on the air that, yes, his home was searched by federal agents.
- The New York Times reports in a front-page story that David Chang, a former Torricelli supporter, has told the government that he gave the senator at least 10 Italian-made suits, a Rolex watch, Tiffany cuff links, an area rug, a 52-inch television set and an unspecified amount of cash.
- Torricelli holds a press event in Newark. Torricelli angrily declares, "To challenge my integrity based on the claims of David Chang is beneath contempt."
- Torricelli has not been charged with any crime, and the accusations against him remain unproven. Chang has pleaded guilty to illegally donating $53,700 to the 1996 Torricelli campaign and is now cooperating with federal investigators. In a press statement, Torricelli said angrily, "My reputation is not David Chang's opportunity to get out of jail free."
- He flamboyantly dated Bianca Jagger and Patricia Duff, the ex-wives of Mick Jagger and billionaire Ron Perelman. As the chief fundraiser for Senate Democrats for four years, Torricelli spent long evenings in the living rooms of the mega-rich, raising tens of millions from the kind of contributors who don't think twice about writing $50,000 checks to the party.
- Sen. Harrison Williams and Rep. Frank Thompson went to prison because they could not resist bribe offers from FBI agents masquerading as Arab sheiks. Torricelli's current legal torment does not demonstrate that these ethical questions are unique to New Jersey's political culture.
- Democrat Robert Torricelli, was forced to withdraw his candidacy for reelection over corruption charges
>>>The New York Times reports in a front-page story that David Chang, a former Torricelli supporter, has told the government that he gave the senator at least 10 Italian-made suits, a Rolex watch, Tiffany cuff links, an area rug, a 52-inch television set and an unspecified amount of cash.<<<
David Chang, an international businessman, is one of the Democratic Party's biggest donors. He visited with President Bill Clinton at the White House on several occasions and claims to have eaten pizza with the President in South Korea. On April 13, David Chang was placed under 24-hour house arrest for allegedly coercing a former employee to lie about the methods in which he made campaign contributions.
Chang is a target of the U.S. Department of Justice's Campaign Financing Task Force. His house arrest stems from taped conversations made by federal investigators between fired Chang employee Chris Kim and Chang in which Kim was reportedly asked to lie to federal authorities about Chang's alleged laundering of $80,000 in South Korea. At the time, Chang was free on $500,000 bail after being charged with making illegal campaign contributions to Senator Robert Torricelli (D-NJ) in 1996.
A letter from the Justice Department released in mid-April states the government has evidence that Chang "received and/or solicited" help from Senator Torricelli on four matters. These matters are helping to unfreeze Chang's assets in North Korea, helping him purchase a South Korean insurance company, writing college recommendations for relatives and making introductions for him with foreign dignitaries.
Torricelli's office admits to helping try to unfreeze Chang's North Korean assets, but reports it was unsuccessful. Chang received bipartisan support in his attempt to buy the Korea Life Insurance Company as well as seeking Torricelli's assistance, but that also failed. On a trip to South Korea last September during negotiations on the sale, Chang was accompanied by President Clinton's chief fundraiser Terrence McAuliffe.
Regarding charges that Chang funneled $23,000 to Torricelli's 1996 Senate campaign, three people have already pled guilty to the illegal activity and one has fled the country. Chang passed money to members of the Bergen County (NJ) Democratic Party leadership which then reimbursed others for their donations to the Torricelli campaign. Torricelli's initial response was to speculate that every member of Congress gets donations from such "straw donors," and that "people have to learn to take these laws seriously." He denies knowledge of any illegal contributions.
>>> Was Abscam the stepping stone to Able Danger?
August 2001
Between July 10th (when the FBIHQ and O'Neill received the Kenneth Williams Phoenix-Memo) and early August, John Pickard takes over the job of NY-FBI director Louis Feesh.
Pickard was involved in the TWA flight 800 investigation and the embassy bombings in Africa. In 1979 he worked undercover on the money laundering case code named "ABSCAM". http://www.fbi.gov/pressrel/pressrel01/pickard103101.htm
Brian Ross (NBC)
Ross solidified his reputation for investigative reporting by breaking stories such as the 1980 ABSCAM story, for which he was honored with a National Headliner Award. In 1989 he broke a number of stories on the Colombian drug cartel, including the highly publicized story that Israeli mercenaries were training Colombian assassins. His exclusive report in March, 1990, that Iraq was trying to buy trigger mechanisms for nuclear weapons, just months before the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait, made headlines worldwide.
Ross was the first reporter to name Mohamed Atta and describe him as the ringleader of the World Trade Center and Pentagon attacks.
ping
It was only the beginning of the extraordinary maneuvers Wilson had to make to push this bill through a highly reluctant Congress. By then even his most reliable ally, John Murtha, the chairman of the Defense Appropriations subcommittee, wanted to end the CIA program. Murtha was appalled at reports of the mujahideen's drug trafficking, but in the end he stood with Charlie, and his support guaranteed the bill's passage in the House. It was passed in the Senate that fall. The secret appropriation was hidden in the $298 billion Defense bill for fiscal year 1992. When it was presented for a vote, no one but the interested few noticed the $200 million earmarked for the Afghans.
http://foia.fbi.gov/foiaindex/abscam.htm
(NOTE: John Murtha)
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1555707/posts
Rep. Murtha Working With Code Pink to Undermine Morale of Wounded at Walter Reed
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