Posted on 09/24/2005 10:29:28 PM PDT by vadkins
I want to know, too!
Read my post above, your fearless leader is at the bottom of the list. Brown-nose and Cherkoff are two loyal bureaucratic hacks who share some blame, but nowhere near the level of the former Republican (now Dem) Nagin and Blubbering Blanco.
Yeah, Dubya continues to do a great job, alright - of imitating LBJ.
America's course has been driven by mob politics since the Mafia helped Jack Kennedy get in the White House. Only two presidents have apparently been free of mob influence: Gerald Ford and Jimmy Carter. Many of the most important events of our time reflect the influence of criminal forces - from the Mafia to corrupt big time bankers and local drug dealers:
John F. Kennedy: The 1960 election, Castro assassination attempt, Bay of Pigs, assassination
Lyndon B. Johnson: ML King assassination, RFK assassination, SE Asian heroin trade
Richard Nixon: CHAOS, Cambodia, Chile, Watergate.
Ronald Reagan Wall Street scandals, S&L scandal, BCCI scandal, Iran-Contra, Latin American drug trade, domestic spying.
George Bush: Iran-Contra cover-up, BCCI cover-up, S&L cover-up.
Bill Clinton: Whitewater and associated scandals including ties to the S&L and BCCI scandals.
The relationship between the Bush and Clinton families goes back a long way. Here's a timeline:
1984 - Clinton bodyguard, Arkansas state trooper LD Brown, applies for a CIA opening. Governor Clinton gives him help on his application essay including making it more Reaganesque on the topic of the Nicaragua. According to Brown, he meets a CIA recruiter in Dallas whom he later identifies as former member of Vice President Bush's staff. On the recruiter's instruction, he meets with notorious drug dealer Barry Seal in a Little Rock restaurant. Joins Seal in flight to Honduras with a purported shipment of M16s and a return load of duffel bags. Brown gets $2,500 in small bills for the flight. Brown, concerned about the mission, consults with Clinton who says, "Oh, you can handle it, don't sweat it." On second flight, Brown finds cocaine in a duffel bag and again he seeks Clinton's counsel. Clinton says to the conservative Brown, "Your buddy, Bush, knows about it" and of the cocaine, "that's Lasater's deal."
Barry Seal estimates that he has earned between $60 and $100 million smuggling cocaine into the US, but with the feds closing in on him, Seal flies from Mena to Washington in his private Lear Jet to meet with two members of Vice President George Bush"s drug task force. Following the meeting, Seal rolls over for the DEA, becoming an informant. He collects information on leaders of the Medellin cartel while still dealing in drugs himself. The deal will be kept secret from investigators working in Louisiana and Arkansas. According to reporter Mara Leveritt, "By Seal's own account, his gross income in the year and a half after he became an informant - while he was based at Mena and while Asa Hutchinson was the federal prosecutor in Fort Smith, 82 miles away - was three-quarters of a million dollars. Seal reported that $575,000 of that income had been derived from a single cocaine shipment, which the DEA had allowed him to keep. Pressed further, he testified that, since going to work for the DEA, he had imported 1,500 pounds of cocaine into the U.S. Supposed informant Seal will fly repeatedly to Colombia, Guatemala, and Panama, where he meets with Jorge Ochoa, Fabio Ochoa, Pablo Escobar, and Carlos Lehder - leaders of the cartel that at the time controlled an estimated 80 percent of the cocaine entering the United States."...
1985 - Terry Reed is asked to take part in Operation Donation, under which planes and boats needed by the Contras "disappear," allowing owners to claim insurance. Reed has been a Contra operative and CIA asset working with Felix Rodriguez, the Contra link to the CIA and then-Vice President Bush's office. Reed later claims he refused, but that his plane was removed while he was away.
1987 Terry Reed's plane is returned but, according to his account, he is asked not report it because it might have to be "borrowed" again. Reed later says that he had become aware that the Contra operation also involved drug running and had gotten cold feet. He also believed that large sums of drug money were being laundered by leading Arkansas financiers. He went to Bush asset Felix Rodriguez and told him he was quitting. Reed was subsequently charged with mail fraud for having allegedly claimed insurance on a plane that was in fact hidden in a hanger in Little Rock. The head of Clinton's Swiss Guard, Capt. Buddy Young, will claim to have been walking around the North Little Rock Airport when "by an act of God" a gust of wind blew open the hangar door and revealed the Piper Turbo Arrow.
Ronald Reagan wants to send the National Guard to Honduras to help in the war against the Contras. Massachusetts Governor Michael Dukakis goes to the Supreme Court in a futile effort to stop it but Clinton is happy to oblige, even sending his own security chief, Buddy Young, along to keep an eye on things. Winding up its tour, the Arkansas Guard declares large quantities of its weapons "excess" and leaves them behind for the Contras.
Harken Energy, with George W Bush on the board, gets rescued by aid from the BCCI-connected Union Bank of Switzerland in a deal brokered by Jackson Stephens, later to show up as a key supporter of Bill Clinton. The deal was also pushed along by another Clinton friend, David Edwards. Edwards will bring BCCI-linked investors into Harken deals including Abdullah Bakhsh, purchases $10 million in shares of Stephens dominated Worthen Bank. ***
The job of a politician such as Governor Clinton in a situation like Arkansas is not to run things but to keep matters calm and look the other way when necessary. Clinton did this extremely well for the Reagan-Bush illegal Contra-drug operation.
And it worked the other way. The Republican US Attorney Asa Hutchinson knew far more about the massive Arkansas drug trade than he ever let on. Hutchinson apparently not only knew about Seal's operation but when an IRS agent and a state police investigator wanted to take evidence about Mena to a grand jury, Hutchinson let only 3 of their 20 witnesses appear and one of those who did - a banker ready to testify about extensive money laundering - found he was not allowed to tell his story.
There were also a number of occasions leading up to Clinton's impeachment where it seemed clear that the Republicans suddenly backed off because the inquiries were moving onto bipartisan turf. For example, a real investigation into Mena would have hurt both Bush and Clinton. So instead, a corrupt bipartisanship once again arose to save some of our prominent leaders in both parties.
This is all not well understood by the public because the media is loath to admit that anything like this could be going on right under its nose. And liberals don't want to give up their illusion that politics is just a policy debate rather than often something far more sinister. To get some sense of the way the game is sometimes really played, here's an account we ran six years ago: 1999 - Former Arkansas state trooper and Clinton bodyguard L.D. Brown charges in his new book "Crossfire" that Alphonse D'Amato, after subjecting him to bear hugs, head locks, and other forms of gratuitous bonhomie at a large dinner party, asked, "L. D., that Mena thing, that was just a drug deal gone bad wasn't it?" Writes Brown, "I came away from that conversation thinking he was trying to convince me Mena was nothing but a drug operation. It reminded me of the strange Bush and Clinton connection all over again." Later, D'Amato said to Brown, "C'mon, L. D., let's go take a leak." Brown's lawyer and aide to the senator accompanied them on the trip to the men's room. Here's what happened next, according to Brown: "There were a couple of people in the rest room. While they finished their business, we also did what we ostensibly came there to do. But there was more business to do. The Senator's aide checked the stalls in the rest room to make sure they were vacant and then walked to the only door leading into the room. The Senator now grabbed me in the familiar headlock. Justin [Brown's lawyer] looked around to see what was going on as the aide put his foot at the bottom of the door, thus placing an improvised locking mechanism on it. Then the Senator went for the kill. "While putting an extra squeeze on the headlock he said, "L. D., we got to have your help. We need you to cooperate with us." I could hear by now that people were banging on the door to get in the rest room. "We're fucking in here!" the aide yelled. D'Amato continued on, oblivious to the commotion as the aide struggled to keep the door shut. "Now L. D., we'll take care of you, we'll get you a job." With the cigar in his mouth and his arm around my neck, the Senator looked more like a character from a Mario Puzo novel making me "an offer I couldn't refuse" than a United States Senator conducting an investigation on the President of the United States. I was shocked and I could tell Justin didn't want to be there either." People outside obviously were about to wet their pants while this seemed to drag on forever. The aide was now vigorously struggling to keep the door shut while I had "the arm" put on me. The Senator finally released his grip and I mumbled something about being concerned for my family as we finally walked out of the bathroom. The aide, clearly exhausted from his bathroom chores went back to the table with Justin and me while being led by the Senator. The party was about to break up and I was wishing I had never come. Justin and I rolled our eyes at each other at what had just happened. We knew it was improper at best to offer jobs to potential witnesses. It also disappointed me to no end to find yet another person in this entire Whitewater fiasco who wanted to use me." http://www.sianews.com/modules.php?
Is it true? Makes you wonder. How corrupt is D.C.?
pretty damned interesting theory there; makes me wonder how A/D may have been tied to Eschelon.
I gotta quit reading these threads; I'm really getting paranoid.
ping and bookmarked
There is so much alchemy in your rant hat "metalurgist" is apt as can be. I'll bet that when you scroll down Major League baseball rosters and find a ton of guys named Rodriquez that you figure nepotism is alive and well in baseball! There are dots and there are dots, and there are connection and there are connections. But your dot connecting is all over the place, and the cast of characters revolves ultimately around, well, bit parts.
Consider: The Clintons remain nouveau, and as firmly in the seat of power in both NY and the country as the Cuomos. A poor primary here, a misstep there, and the family crumbles. The Bushes are many things, but hardly king-makers. My point is that each family has enough trouble keeping their laundry-dirt in-house as is (think about Jeb's wife at the airport). The idea that they're collaborating on some kind of super-plot - and using Al D'Amato of all people to carry anyone's water! - is nutty. You can connect these dots all you like. And you may be right that hardball politics is more than policy debates. But it is also hardly sinister ACROSS multiple issues and families. Here is where we enter conspiracy land, and here is where you think nepotism reigns in baseball - why? Well, hell, look at all those guys named Rodriquez! Selig's GOT to have something up his sleeve, probably having to do with the Cali cartel, with proceeds converted into Milwaukee beer futures!
Second, Doug Bandow wrote this article and if you weren't so disracted by the affairs of that Selig guy you would have read that.
Third, the books that came out about the goings on of the Arkansas state police and Clinton are fact. JB Brown did write a book and was in the Arkansas state police.
Fourth, George Bush was head of the CIA. A lot of information comes your way when you're at the top. If you wanted to use it, you could amass a lot of power.
Fifth, did you ever wonder how the son a "Party Girl" could just rise to power. It's almost like someone was looking out for him.
Sixth, I'm tired and am going to bed.
I devoutly wish that Able Danger might lead to something that would further bury the Clinton "legacy", forestall a potential Hillary Presidency, and in general turn the tables on those who set out to destroy President Bush with a kangaroo court/9-11 Commission loaded with "moderate" Republicans and Clinton loyalists. However, I cannot help but remember those in this very forum who, week after week, scandal after scandal, from Whitewater to Missile Technology-gate to China-gate (campaign contributions) to Monicagate believed that we had finally connected the dots that would remove Bill Clinton from office, and destroy the Democrats as a political force for decades to come (just as Watergate did to the Republicans). But if we won't believe our lying ears when we hear Bill Clinton say that he could have had Bin Laden but for his own Justice Department, when we won't believe our lying eyes when we see the Predator drone tapes of Bin Laden peacefully strolling around his compound unmolested by our aircraft or cruise missiles, it is simply too much to hope that Able Danger will amount to a hill of beans.
I just got a heads up that Andy McCarthy from National Review will be on the Jerry Doyle show today about Able Danger. Here's the text of the email:
Andrew McCarthy from NRO will be on the Jerry Doyle show today at 1:30 Pacific talking about Able Danger.
You're right to be skeptical about the possible payoff of Able-Danger. As you rightly note, the track record strongly supports skepticism. Still, Able-Danger seems at this early point to differ dramatically from all other Clinton scandals in that it bears on security information-processing going forward. A few more terrorist attacks, either here on in Europe, will make this a front-burner issue that the MSM, Democratic apologists, and Clinton-tired observers cannot ignore. As long as national security is in the spotlight, the Clintons and the Democrats never look good. And there is no posture they can adopt on the fly to make themselves look good.
Just a tin hat theory made mostly in jest.
What I said is that he's looking out for his district...in as many ways possible. The cynical response, as well amplified on later posts in this thread, is that he has enough hard data and "insurance" , that he thinks he has a shot at becoming a "made man".
Oh, I thought it was Geriatrics On Prozac ;-)
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.