Panetta raked in cash for speeches

Leon Panetta saw a lot during his years in Congress and the Clinton White House, and forms released Tuesday show that people are willing to pay a lot to hear him talk about his experiences.

Panetta, whose nomination to be CIA director will go before the Senate Intelligence Committee Thursday afternoon, last year earned $250,000 on the speaking circuit and another $790,000 in fees from consulting fees and board directorships, according to a disclosure statement he filed with Office of Government Ethics.

In all, Panetta, who developed a reputation as a bipartisan policy and budget expert in government, reported earning more than $1.2 million last year from various private sector activities and investments.

Economic meltdown victims Merrill Lynch paid him $56,000 for a pair of talks – one of which came after Bank of America had moved to buy the struggling financial services firm. Wachovia also paid for Panetta talks, as did the defense firm Carlyle Group.

The Pacific Maritime Association paid him $60,000 as “governmental adviser,” which an Obama aide said was for advice on port security issues, not for lobbying.

Panetta, who reported assets worth between $1.5 million and $3.7 million, served on a hodgepodge of high-powered corporate boards last year, including international energy giant BP Corporation (which paid him $125,000 last year) and public relations behemoth Fleishman Hilliard ($120,000).

He also sat on the boards of two insurance companies: Blue Shield of California, which paid him $93,000 and Zenith National Insurance, which paid $170,000 and in which he owns as much as $350,000 in stock. And he pulled down $11,500 for being a director of Corinthian Colleges, a chain of colleges accused of misleading students.

But perhaps his highest profile role since he ended his tenure as President Clinton’s chief of staff in 1997 was as co-director of the Leon & Sylvia Panetta Institute for Public Policy. Panetta and his wife Sylvia founded the non-profit think tank in 1998 near their home on California’s Central Coast, but neither reported receiving any income from it.

Sylvia Panetta’s salary comes from a company called Leon Panetta & Associates, according to the financial disclosure report. Her husband reported receiving consulting fees of $150,000 from the chancellor’s office at California State University, which houses the institute at the school’s Monterey Bay campus.

Panetta represented the Central Coast in the U.S. House for 16 years. And he maintained financial ties to the area, including a share Monterey office building worth as much as $250,000. He also reported earning $50,000 as a professor at his alma mater, Santa Clara University, and a total of $20,000 for directorships with the Commonwealth Club, a California public affairs nonprofit, and the association representing the inns of Monterey.

"In April 1985 [Leon] Panetta joined with 13 of his leftist congressional colleagues — including Ron Dellums, Don Edwards, George Miller, Christopher Dodd, and Les Aspin — in sponsoring a 20th anniversary fund-raising gala for the pro-Marxist Institute for Policy Studies (IPS), which had been described by Brian Crozier, director of the London Institute for the Study of Conflict, as the "perfect intellectual front for Soviet activities which would be resisted if they were to originate openly from the KGB." The IPS was originally funded with millions of dollars from the Faberge perfume magnate and Communist Party member Samuel Rubin and his wife."

"Readers who recall the movement to impeach Bill Clinton remember that one of the charges raised by Clinton's critics was the conflict of interest created when individuals connected with the Chinese Overseas Shipping Company (COSCO) — such as John Huang, Charles Trie, and James and Mochtar Riady — helped funnel contributions to the Clinton reelection campaign. Afterwards, the Clinton administration lobbied for granting COSCO a 10-year lease on the former Long Beach Naval Shipyard in California.

During a March 1997 edition of CNBC's Equal Time program, California Republican State Senator Dick Mountjoy noted that COSCO-linked arms dealer Wang Jun had been granted personal access to President Clinton, and that Wang's business associates had smuggled illegal assault weapons into California for delivery to street gangs by making use of a ship owned and operated by COSCO.

Mountjoy then stated:

The next thing you know, (then-Chief of Staff) Leon Panetta is down here negotiating that port for the Chinese.

There is much more to the COSCO-Long Beach connection than we have room for here, but a good summary of the threat the arrangement made to U.S. security may be found in an item inserted into the Congressional Record by Rep. Gerald B.H. Solomon on May 20, 1997.

Even the most unbiased of observers may legitimately ask: Why on Earth is an individual who helped negotiate the turnover of the Long Beach Naval Shipyard to the communist Chinese, thereby creating the threat to U.S. national security described in the Washington Times article by Rowan Scarborough and inserted into the Congressional Record by Rep. Solomon, being considered for a top position at one of our nation's most critical intelligence agencies?"

http://www.thenewamerican.com/usnews/election/655

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From the website of the Marxist think tank, Institute For Policy Studies...

Obama’s Agenda for Change and the 2009 Summit of the Americas

excerpt:

'Yes We Can' — Change for the Americas Coming from Below

Hemispheric resistance to the first attempt by the U.S. to force the Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA) on every nation on this continent led to its eventual defeat at the IV Summit of the Americas, held in Argentina in 2005. The organizers of the April 2009 V Summit of the Americas had hoped to focus on a social agenda of providing a decent living for all those who call the “Americas” their home. The emergence of the PPA, or Bush’s Plan B for the FTAA, represents a threat to the urgent need of having all nations in the hemisphere focus on tackling the disparities that make the region the most unequeal in the world.

According to Obama, “what's good for the people of the Americas is good for the United States.” Among the specific proposals Obama has made (political freedom and democracy; freedom from fear and security; freedom from want and opportunity) in the “New Partnership for the Americas” document, he says that “it’s time for a new alliance of the Americas” that leaves behind “eight years of failed policies” and “top down reforms”, and puts forward instead an “agenda that advances democracy, security, and opportunity from the bottom up”. For Obama to make good on his vision for a new "partnership" in the Americas, the divisive Bush PPA initiative must be laid to rest well before the April V Summit of the Americas gets underway.

The 2009 IV Peoples’ Summit in Trinidad and Tobago

On April 17-19, 2009, the IV Peoples Summit will be taking place in Port of Spain, Trinidad (while heads of state are simultaneously meeting at the V Summit of the Americas).The message of a "change agenda" for the hemisphere will be brought to the island nation by social movements coming from all points in between Alaska and Tierra del Fuego. A key focus for discussions during the People’s Summit will be the economic meltdown hitting the capitalist system, and the opening that this provides for the implementation of a peoples’ agenda promoting sustainable development, social justice, equity, and peaceful coexistence.[ie, communism/socialism -etl]

In conjunction with the Hemispheric Social Alliance, social movements present in Trinidad and Tobago will be providing a "change agenda" that, in large measure, will likely be echoed by representatives from many of the newly elected governments in Latin America and the Caribbean. The V Summit of the Americas will be an ideal setting for Obama to signal a new respectful and consultative role for the US in the Americas as well. Will Obama avail himself of the opportunity to take this courageous step forward? Ojalá!

Source: Institute For Policy Studies (IPS):
http://www.ips-dc.org/articles/933

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From David Horowitz's FrontPageMag.com/DiscoverTheNetworks.org:
Profile: Institute For Policy Studies (IPS)

IPS’s [Institute For Policy Studies] Washington, DC headquarters quickly became a resource center for national reporters and a place for KGB agents from the nearby Soviet embassy to convene and strategize. Cora Weiss headed one of the IPS's most successful forays -- into Riverside Church in Manhattan. She was invited there in 1978 by the Reverend William Sloane Coffin to run the church's Disarmament Program, which sought to consolidate Soviet nuclear superiority in Europe -- in the name of "peace." In 1982 Weiss helped organize the largest pro-disarmament demonstration ever held. Staged in New York City, the rally was attended by a coalition of communist organizations. During her decade-long tenure at Riverside, which became home to the National Council of Churches, Weiss regularly received Russian KGB agents, Sandinista friends, and Cuban intelligence agents. Weiss became infamous for her role in the psychological warfare conducted against U.S. prisoners of war held in the infamous "Hanoi Hilton" during the Vietnam War.

The Liberation News Service, which is a news source for hundreds of "alternative" publications nationwide (with antiwar, Marxist-oriented perspectives), was founded in 1967 with IPS assistance."

[lots more at link...]

http://www.discoverthenetworks.org/groupProfile.asp?grpid=6991

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