GOVERNMENT / THE ELITE - LOOKING GLASS NEWS | |
Those who claim the Bush administration is a Nazi regime are not far from the truth |
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by Wayne Madsen The Wayne Madsen Report Entered into the database on Saturday, July 08th, 2006 @ 15:21:04 MST |
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This story is a special investigation of Bush family slush funds, smuggling,
and secret money conduits from and to various right-wing causes, including some
that are extremely violent. The New York Times is running a story today
about the U.S. military recruiting Aryan Nation, neo-Nazi, and other white supremacists
into its ranks. The Times' report states that Neo-Nazi graffiti has sprung up
in Baghdad, in quoting from a report by the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC).
The involvement of white supremacy and neo-Nazi groups with the Pentagon began
in earnest during the administrations of Reagan and Bush I. According to informed
sources who have tracked the neo-Nazis since the Reagan era, the surge in extreme
right-wing elements in the Federal government was spurred on by the network
of Nicaraguan Contra support activities created to facilitate going around the
prohibitions enacted by the Congress. A key member of that strategy was Cheney's
Chief of Staff David Addington, who was with the CIA, the Iran-Contra Committee
in Congress, and then signed on as senior Vice President for the American Trucking
Associations (ATA). WMR reported yesterday on the involvement of a foundation
set up by McLean Trucking Co., a member of the ATA, with covert Contra support.
The ATA is a hotbed of GOP activity as well past connections with support for
covert CIA activities. Its chief lobbyist is Jim ("Whit") Whittinghill,
a former aide to Sen. Bob Dole. Whittinghill's wife, Nancy Dorn, served as an
assistant to Texas Representative Tom Loeffler and later served as Special Assistant
for Legislative Affairs to Presidents Ronald Reagan and George H. W. Bush. Dorn
also served as 1989-93), Nancy Dorn worked for Defense Secretary Dick Cheney
as Assistant Secretary of the Army for Civil Works and Deputy Assistant Secretary
of Defense for Inter-American Affairs. While working for Cheney, Dorn became
a close associate of Addington. Dorn was also Deputy Assistant Secretary of
State for Legislative Affairs. In 2001, Dorn returned to government after acting
as a lobbyist for Pakistan, Azerbaijan, and China. She became special assistant
for legislative affairs to Vice President Cheney. In 2002, Dorn became the Deputy
Director for the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), where she served until
2003 before becoming Vice President for Government Relations of General Electric,
the parent company of NBC and NBC News. (This puts into context the partisan
pro-Bush editorial slants of the network's news division, particularly Nora
O'Donnell, Campbell Brown, Brian Williams, Tim Russert, and Chris Matthews). In the late 1980s and early 90s, Dorn was associated with the network of right-wing
neo-confederates who were gaining tremendous influence in the Republican Party.
While the Army's chief of civil works, Dorn had control over Arlington National
Cemetery and issued guidance on how the Confederate Memorial Committee of the
District of Columbia could hold its annual ceremony at the cemetery's Confederate
War Memorial and pay for it with funds provided by the United Daughters of the
Confederacy (UDC). According to John Edward Hurley, a one-time associate of
White House correspondent Sarah McClendon and the head of the non-partisan Confederate
Memorial Association (CMA), South Carolina GOP operative and Confederate Memorial
Committee chairman Richard T. Hines, now a major lobbyist (RTH Consulting) in
Washington, DC (whose clients include Gambia, Saudi Arabia, Cambodia, and Nigeria),
arranged with the UDC to have funds transferred for the Confederate monument
and ceremony from sources in the South associated with far right-wing elements.
Hines, who was close to South Carolina Senator Strom Thurmond, saw to it money
was transferred from Metrolina Bank in Charlotte, North Carolina (connected
to North Carolina Senator Jesse Helms), to First American Bank in Virginia (then
owned by the CIA-connected Bank of Credit and Commerce International (BCCI)),
to the Mid-Atlantic Credit Union in Gaithersburg, Maryland. One of the officials
involved in this money movement was the chief accountant for Edison Electric
Institute, which was working closely with Enron and, along with Enron, was one
of the largest contributors to the Bush and GOP campaign coffers. The impetus for the Confederate revival at Arlington Cemetery was promoted
by the Sons of Confederate Veterans (SCV) Jefferson Davis Camp Number 305. Its
members included a number of individuals associated with white supremacist and
neo-Nazi organizations. According to the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC),
which was the source of the New York Times article on Aryan Nation and neo-Nazi
penetration of the U.S. military, the SCV has come under the control of racists
and Ku Klux Klansmen. Denne Sweeney, on the urging of SCV Camp 305 member Kirk
Lyons, an attorney for the Klan, took over as SCV commander in 2004. According
to the CMA's Hurley, Lyons, who ran the Houston-based Southern Legal Resource
Center (SLRC) (a right-wing rival of the SPLC), was significantly funded by
Hines. Lyons later moved the SLRC to Black Mountain in western North Carolina.
According to Hurley and the SPLC, the SCV and SLRC are part of a vast network
of far right organizations, including the Council of Conservative Citizens (a
successor to the Klan-linked White Citizens Councils), the secessionist Southern
Partisan magazine (for which Hines arranged an interview with then Missouri
Senator John Ashcroft), the secessionist League of the South, the Aryan Nations,
the National Association for the Advancement of White People, and the National
Socialist White Americans' Party). With the recent news about neo-Nazi and Klan penetration of the U.S. military,
it is noteworthy that Hines' wife, Patricia Mayes Hines, was the U.S. Army's
Deputy Assistant Secretary for Manpower and Reserve Affairs during the George
H. W. Bush administration. Mrs. Hines served under Cheney along with Dorn, who
was permitting neo-Confederate penetration of Arlington Cemetery, and David
Addington, who was continuing to help cover up the elder Bush's role in Iran-Contra
as Cheney's General Counsel, and Lewis I. "Scooter" Libby, who was
Principal Deputy Under Secretary for Strategy and Resources and Deputy Undersecretary
for Policy, and was also involved in senior Bush's covert operations abroad.
Hines, who was an associate of the late Lee Atwater, Karl Rove's dirty tricks
doppelganger, practiced his dirty tricks trade for George W. Bush in his home
state against John McCain in the vicious 2000 GOP primary. It is noteworthy that on the day he was arrested, Murrah Federal building bomber
Timothy McVeigh was wearing a Southern Partisan magazine T-shirt bearing the
Latin phrase, Sic Semper Tyrannis, along with a portrait of Abraham Lincoln.
The phrase was shouted by John Wilkes Booth after he shot to death President
Lincoln at Ford's Theater. Another violent connection to the neo-confederates
is the FBI's VANPAC (Vance Political Assassination Conspiracy) case that involved
white supremacist mail bombings directed against Federal judges. According to
the Department of Justice, "four mail bombs [were] sent in December 1989
to different locations in the southeastern United States. One killed federal
judge Robert Vance [11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals] in Alabama, a second
killed a civil rights attorney [Robert Robinson] in Georgia, and two others
[one at the U.S. Courthouse in Atlanta and the other at the NAACP headquarters
in Jacksonville, Florida] were discovered before they exploded. A massive investigation
ensued involving the FBI and several other law enforcement agencies. The FBI
referred to the case as VANPAC because it involved the assassination of Judge
Vance [at his home] with a bomb sent in a mail package. In June 1991, a federal
jury convicted Walter LeRoy Moody, Jr. [a former Klansman] on charges related
to the bombings." Louis Freeh, Jr. was appointed the Special Prosecutor
in the VANPAC case. After moving the case from Birmingham, Alabama to St. Paul,
Minnesota, and after introducing tainted evidence, Freeh won a successful conviction
of Moody, who was sentenced to seven life sentences. An Alabama court sentenced
Moody to death. In appreciation for his work, Freeh was nominated as U.S. District
Court judge for the southern district of New York. In 1993, President Clinton
named Freeh to be FBI Director, where he served during the McVeigh case and
the Whitewater and Monica Lewinsky investigations of Clinton. Vance was a progressive
Democrat in Alabama, having served as Democratic Party chairman for the state
for 11 years. At the time of his death, several Alabama political figures cited
"drugs" and "Colombian cartels" as the reason for the mail
bombings directed at Federal judges. Vance, a Jimmy Carter appointee, had incurred
the wrath of the neo-confederates who viewed him as too liberal and called him
the "Daniel Ortega of Alabama." Because of the mail bombings directed
against the Federal judiciary (Moody threatened to kill 17 judges), there were
a number of judicial resignations around the United States, which allowed George
H. W. Bush to replace them with his own people.
The threat against judges resumed under Bush's son, George W. Bush. In 2005,
after being threatened with death by white supremacist and World Church of the
Creator (now "Creativity Movement") head Matthew Hale, U.S. District
Judge Joan Humphrey Lefkow, discovered the bodies of her 64-year old husband
and 89-year old mother at her home. They had been brutally murdered. In a bizarre
development, a Chicago man named Bart Ross shot himself in a Milwaukee suburb
after being pulled over by police for a traffic violation. Police said they
found a suicide note in which Ross claimed responsibility for the murders of
Judge Lefkow's husband and mother. However, Ross had no known connections to
any white supremacist organizations. Hale had been convicted for threatening
Judge Lefkow's life and obstruction of justice. Threatening judges was not confined
to people like Hale. Then-House Majority Leader Tom DeLay threatened judges
when he stated, "the time will come for the men responsible for the death
of Terri Schiavo to answer for their behavior." Senator Frank Lautenberg
wrote to DeLay, stating he was "stunned to read the threatening comments
. . . directed at federal judges and our nation's courts of law in general."
The involvement of neo-Nazis and white supremacists with U.S. Special Forces,
reported by the SPLC and New York Times, also bears on the neo-confederate penetration
of the Bush administration. Ashbury International Group, of Sterling, Virginia,
a private military contractor (PMC) offering the services of its ex-Special
Forces personnel to the government, lost a lawsuit brought against its plans
to build a shooting range in Nelson County, Virginia on the plantation of Confederate
Congressman William Portcher Mills, the man who designed the Confederate flag.
Appearing as a witness for Ashbury was Michael Garcia, a former Assistant Secretary
of Homeland Security for Immigration and Customs Enforcement and now the U.S.
Attorney for the Southern District of New York, along with attorneys for the
National Rifle Association. Another Special Forces link to the neo-confederates
is retired Army Lt. Col. Jeffrey Addicott, a former counsel for the US Special
Forces assigned to the Pentagon and, who, according to the CMA's Hurley, was
a close associate of top officials in the neo-confederate movement. Addicott
is currently the Director of the Center for Terrorism Law at St. Mary's College
of Law in San Antonio, Texas and he chaired a panel at the National Defense
Industrial Association's 2006 Special Operations/Low Intensity Conflict (SO/LIC)
conference, an event attended by every major PMC, including those making huge
profits in Iraq. Hurley released the following statement on August 31, 2005,
that implicates a number of Bush I and II officials in the neo-confederate movement
and the Iran-Contra affair, including Chief Justice John Roberts: A Washington association executive has called for an investigation
into the role of Supreme Court nominee John Roberts when he represented
the National Credit Union Administration, a regulatory agency of the
federal government. He charged that there was a bizarre intervention
by the NCUA to quash a subpoena for a personal account while Roberts
was representing the group. Hurley, president of the Confederate Memorial Association which owned
and operated the only Confederate museum in the nation's capital, said
that ongoing litigation against his association had been traced to Contra
supporters and present and former employees in the general counsels
office of the National Credit Union Administration. Moreover, Hurley
said that evidence indicated that a $500,000 political slush fund was
being covered up. Hurley said a court order approving a $15,000 fraudulent legal bill,
after being issued nearly two years ago, was mysteriously submitted
to the bank last week. A two-year lapse in collecting court ordered
fees is unheard of, and Hurley contends that this shows that the White
House is concerned about illegal NCUA activities being exposed while
Roberts represented the group. A "Freedom Fighter" fundraiser was scheduled after Roberts
had made several recommendations on the subject while he was in the
White House Counsels' office. Moreover, Carl "Spitz" Channell
and Richard Miller, who were raising private funds for the Contras,
had met in the White House to ask support for the Contras (as the Walsh
Iran/Contra Report noted). After the Roberts memos counseled that Contra
fundraising should be held outside the White House, a "Freedom
Fighter Night" was scheduled on July 12, 1986 to be held in October
of 1986 at Confederate Memorial Hall. Hurley said that he cancelled
the October event. However, prior to this, a previous reception at the
Hall had been attended by White House personnel. Hurley added that the
invitation to the October event was sent from the Capital Yacht Club. Roberts represented the National Credit Union Administration when he
was with Hogan and Hartson. In 1997, Roberts argued the NCUA case before
the Supreme Court, which dealt with expanding the banking market for
credit unions. In that case, Robert M. Fenner was listed as counsel
for the NCUA with Roberts. Hurley said that Fenner had employed David Eno as the head of his fraud
hotline operation at NCUA. According to Hurley, Eno was a commander
of the Jefferson Davis Camp No. 305 of the Sons of Confederate Veterans,
an organization that sued the Confederate Memorial Association. Kirk
Lyons, an attorney who has represented the KKK and the Aryan Nation,
is an officer in the Sons of Confederate Veterans. Eno and Richard Hines,
another commander of the Jefferson Davis Camp and the husband of White
House Domestic Policy advisor Patricia Hines, were behind the litigation
against the Confederate Memorial Association. Hurley said that the mysterious political funding that was used in
the litigation against his organization was also used for the annual
Confederate ceremonies at Arlington National Cemetery. He charged that
the funds were part of a secret political slush fund that was wired
overnight through a bank in Charlotte by Department of Energy attorney
Stephen Page Smith. The funds were traced to the Mid-Atlantic Federal
Credit Union in Gaithersburg, Maryland which was regulated by Roberts'
client, the NCUA. . A subpoena for this account was quashed by D.C. Superior Court Judge
John H. Bayly. The motion to quash was submitted to Judge Bayly by attorney
Stephen Bisker, a former employee of NCUA's Robert Fenner and current
contractor for the NCUA who works for a major credit union auditing
firm. . Hurley also believes that another $500,000 of illegal political donations
from the American Defense Institute may now be in the account, noting
that attorney Thomas L. O'Neill was on the ADI board and was another
attorney litigating against Mr. Hurley's association. Alan Rothenberg, yet another attorney litigating against the Confederate
Memorial Association, is the treasurer of the U.S. Premier Federal Credit
Union. The president of the USPFCU was Randolph Earnest, assistant to
Ambassador David A. Gross, U.S. Coordinator for International Communications
and Information Policy at the State Department and the former executive
director of Lawyers for Bush-Cheney, a group that worked with Roberts
during the 2000 election. Roberts also represented the National Mining Association. Hurley say
that Herbert Harmon, the chief lawyer in the massive litigation against
the Confederate Memorial Association, uses his home as a contact address
for the Rio Tinto mining operation, the largest in the world. The high-profile Confederate ceremonies in Arlington National Cemetery
are held in June and are attended by such notables as Richard B. Abell,
a former Department of Justice Assistant Secretary in charge of the
Office of Justice Programs and current magistrate for the U.S. Court
of Claims; Nicholas D. Ward, who serves on the Probate and Fiduciary
Rules Advisory Committee of the D.C. Superior Court; and Robert Wilkie,
who currently serves on the National Security Council staff at the White
House. Another prominent lawyer supporting the legal action against Hurley
is Col. Jeffrey Addicott, former senior legal counsel for the Special
Forces and current director of the Center for Terrorism Law. When Judge Bayly jailed Hurley in 1997 for objecting to the quashing
of the subpoena for the Mid-Atlantic account which Hurley believes to
be at the behest of the NCUA, Hurley sold the century-old D.C. museum.
The strange motion to quash "by someone other than the holder of
the account shows a massive fraud and an obstruction of justice in his
case," Hurley said. Hurley cited a Maryland trial that continues this week as an example
of the perilous consequences of dealing with white supremacists. The
trial involves the largest arson in the history of the state. All of
the burned homes in Charles County belonged to blacks. The chief witness
against the Confederate Memorial Association was Lewis Doherty, who
is now listed as an organizer of the neo-Nazi National Alliance that
was distributing white supremacist literature in Charles County prior
to the arsons. Hurley is calling for a complete investigation of John Roberts connection
with the planned "Freedom Fighter" reception, the National
Credit Union Administration, the National Mining Association and the
Rio Tinto mining operation. He said that all the facts about Roberts
in these matters should be known before there is "a secular canonization
of this man for the highest court." *** WMR has learned that under Bush I, the CIA's use of the trucking industry and
cocaine shipments, blossomed. This was no where more apparent than in the state
of South Carolina. In 1989, state Representative Ron Cobb was snared by the
FBI in a cocaine bust. Cobb, a Democrat, was charged with trying to buy a kilo
of cocaine for $20,000 from an undercover FBI agent. Cobb said he was entrapped
to allow the FBI to obtain a covert operative inside the South Carolina legislature.
Cobb was set up as the head of a phony Atlanta-based lobbying company -- Alpha
Group -- and directed by his FBI handlers to bribe South Carolina legislators
into pushing a bill to legalize horse and dog track betting in South Carolina.
Rep. Robert Kohn of Charleston was brought in by Cobb to entrap white legislators
while Rep. Luther Taylor was drafted to bring African American legislators.
In all, 17 legislators pleaded guilty or were convicted of drug and racketeering
charges. Kohn received a lighter sentence for testifying against his colleagues. According to Hurley, Kohn's activities in trying to bribe a judge in South
Carolina in order to get a Florence, South Carolina truck stop owner and major
Republican contributor off the hook for a cocaine bust, were never adequately
pursued by the FBI, mainly because of links between the South Carolina cocaine
smuggling operations, trucking companies, and Ku Klux Klan and southern white
supremacist organizations that were assisting in the distribution of cocaine
in support of George H. W. Bush's Iran-Contra money-making scheme. According
to the CMA's Hurley, Kohn's association with Hines, himself a former member
of the South Carolina House of Representatives, was known to the FBI. But Hines,
as a top GOP figure, was "off limits" as far as the FBI was concerned.
The FBI told Hurley that "political influence" in the judge bribery
case made it impossible for them to continue with an investigation, which was
said to have involved cocaine. Hines was certainly no stranger to the trucking business, having held a position
under the Reagan administration with the now-defunct Interstate Commerce Commission,
which regulated the trucking industry, and the Department of Transportation.
Trucking firms associated with the American Trucking Association were part and
parcel with the national cocaine distribution network in the United States,
according to sources familiar with the covert operation. The Iran-Contra smuggling
operation also saw money from illegal drug sales and off-shore bank account
caches making their way into the campaign coffers of a number of U.S. political
candidates, mostly Republicans but also including a few Democrats. Illicit campaign contributions were particularly targeted at Florida officials
in the state's important Panhandle, a haven and nexus for drug and weapons smuggling
involving the CIA and Latin America during Iran-Contra. According to Florida
sources, Jim Appleman, the Florida State Attorney for the 14th Judicial District
of Florida who was based in Panama City, Florida, gave protection to Bush Senior's
Iran-Contra smuggling operations in northern Florida. Appleman's 2000 campaign
treasurer, Gerald R. Stanton, was President of Mutual Development Corporation,
a Federal Savings & Loan Insurance Corporation entity that only existed
on paper and eventually siphoned off the S&L proceeds confiscated by the
U.S. government. Much of that money ended up in Bush family coffers. Two of
the Bush sons, Neil (Silverado S&L) and Jeb (Broward Federal S&L) were
intimately tied into the S&L collapse. George W. Bush, through his financial
stake in Harken Energy, benefited from money provided by the defunct Bank of
Credit and Commerce International (BCCI), a major avenue for Iran-Contra weapons
and drug money laundering activities. Marvin Bush served as Finance Chairman
of the Virginia Republican Party until 1991, after the collapse of the S&Ls. While Marvin's role in the S&L collapse and the Iran-Contra drug and weapons
smuggling scheme at first appears sketchy, a detailed analysis of contributions
to the GOP while Marvin served as the Virginia Republican Party's finance chair
shows definite links between the youngest Bush brother and the CIA-led network.
Farhad Azima, an Iranian expatriate who was close to the Shah's family, owned
Global International, which was involved in transporting arms for the CIA along
with an associated air company, Race Aviation. Azima was a major contributor
to the GOP, including Virginia Senate and House candidates, when Marvin was
in charge of finances for the Virginia Republicans. The contributions came from
Aviation Leasing and LCA Partners, two of Azima's companies. Global's planes
were maintained by Southern Air Transport, a CIA proprietary that flew weapons
to the Contras and drugs back from Latin America. Azima was also involved with
Mario Renda in Indian Springs Bank of Kansas City. Renda, who was convicted
of bilking $16 million from the S&Ls and tax fraud, was a Long Island mob
figure who brokered drug money laundering for the CIA and the National Security
Council. Renda was associated with four collapsed Virginia Savings & Loans:
Heritage S&L, Investors S&L, Virginia Beach Federal S&L, and First
S&L. Indian Springs collapsed in 1984, a year after its president died in
a suspicious car fire.
While the air transport segment of the Bush crime family's weapons and drug smuggling
operation involved CIA proprietary firms and mob elements, the ground segment
involved trucking firms, some of which were tied to white supremacist and neo-Nazi
organizations. These are the organizations that are now infiltrating the U.S.
military with a wink and a nod from the Bush administration. The money amassed
by the Bushes from these operations also found their way into secret bank accounts
abroad and blind trusts in the United States. According to Insider-Magazine.com's John Caylor, the CIA used its proprietary
airline companies in Florida to ship in drugs and distribute them nationally.
According to Caylor, "former Lt. Col. Thomas Bledsoe, a former owner of
Kenworth of Dothan, Alabama and past President of Alabama Truckers Association
[and director of CIA proprietary Tepper Aviation, which was associated with
Crestview Aerospace Corporation], supplied transportation and possible storage
of the goods [cocaine and weapons]. Bledsoe also flew truck parts nationwide
to truckers with his fleet of pilots and fixed wing aircraft. U.S. Customs Intelligence reports I’ve laid my eyes on say the Tepper
planes would land late at night with several armed masked men in black guarding
the aircraft with sub-machine guns while supervising the on-loading of tractor
trailer rigs and local law enforcement were told to stay the hell away. Bledsoe
became irritated after Customs opened the cover-up investigation and moved his
yacht from BayPoint, Florida to Fort Lauderdale. Chief Lee Sullivan was reportedly
on his payroll. According to those same reports Tepper employed 17 pilots in
1992, was caught with stolen military tanks on board an aircraft and a gun-battle
almost ensued between U.S. Customs and Tepper black ops people. Tepper was part
of the Iran-Contra network and in its first air crash in Angola, Bub Petty,
a Tepper owner from Dothan, was killed." Caylor, who has extensive sources
inside the FBI, Customs, and DEA, reported that Tepper/Crestview maintained
drug and weapons smuggling operations right alongside the DEA at the San Antonio,
Texas airport. The Alabama Trucking Association is a member of the American
Trucking Associations, where Cheney's Chief of Staff Addington used to hang
his hat. The American Trucking Associations suffered the loss of its Vice President
for Public Affairs, Michael Russell on June 15, 2006. The former Department
of Transportation official, veteran newsman, press secretary for Michigan Democratic
Senator Donald Riegle (whose Senate Banking Committee investigated George H.
W. Bush's and Ronald Reagan's supply of weapons of mass destruction to Saddam
Hussein), Michigan Democratic Rep. William Ford, and Vice President Al Gore's
National Performance Review, and resident of Sterling, Virginia, died in a rafting
accident in Colorado. Russell reportedly fell out of his raft and drowned. Drugs moved into the United States and throughout distribution channels controlled
by the Mafia, the Latin American cartels, and the Chinese. While most people
know about Iran-Contra, few have heard about "China-Contra." The Reagan
and Bush I administrations received a significant amount of arms for the Contras
from the Chinese, who were paid back in cocaine. During the height of the Iran-Contra
operation, the FBI conducted a huge cocaine bust in Belize. The arrests led
to a route in which the Chinese were distributing their cocaine through drug
routes that went by air from Belize to Mena, Arkansas and then to Chinese crime
syndicates throughout the United States and Canada. The drug smuggling business was a financial windfall for the Bush family. With
slush funds in BCCI and the S&Ls, the Bush family could move large amounts
of money to their friends in the Republican Party and fatten the campaign coffers
for candidates and office holders who would be permanently beholden to the Bushes.
But the mother lode for Bush money remained in off-shore secret bank accounts.
Adler B. "Barry" Seal was a former TWA pilot who had flown marijuana
and cocaine into the United States since the 1970s. When he was arrested in
1983, Seal had already flown 100 flights into the United States each carrying
between 600 and 1200 pounds of cocaine, equating to a street value of between
$3 and $5 billion. However, Seal became a witness and informant for the government
and proved invaluable for grand juries investigating how drug smuggling worked
in the United States. But that testimony came too close to certain top leaders
who had been involved in the Iran-Contra and China-Contra scandals. On February
19, 1986, at the height of the Iran-Contra scandal, Seal was murdered gangland
style in Baton Rouge, Louisiana at a halfway house where he was assigned. Those
who relied on Seal's testimony and cooperation in the drug war, including Louisiana
Attorney General William Guste, Jr., were aghast that such an important witness
and informant had no protection from the government. The government, of which
the number two man was George H. W. Bush, top kingpin in the smuggling. According
to those close to the Seal family, after Seal was gunned down, several Swiss
bank account numbers were discovered on papers found in the trunk of Seal's
car. They were all in the name of George H. W. Bush. The numbers were confiscated
by Federal agents. After the collapse of BCCI and the S&Ls, the Bush family required a new
slush fund. It would not be a bank but something with which the Bushes were
very familiar -- an energy company specializing in oil and natural gas. Enron,
headed up by Bush friend and contributor Ken "Kenny Boy" Lay would
fill the vacuum left by BCCI and the S&Ls. Enron, operating with dubious
funds from Saudi Arabia, Russia, and other sources, would become the launching
pad for George W. Bush's run for the governorship of Texas and the presidency
of the United States. Enron's corporate jet was used by Bush in the 2000 campaign.
Kenny Boy and George H. W. and W. Bush were close friends. But after Enron served
its purpose, it, too, was allowed to collapse. Just as with BCCI and the S&Ls,
Enron's employees and shareholders took a bath, while its corporate dons cashed
out before the financial doomsday arrived. However, another Bush "phoenix" would arise from the ashes of Enron.
Northern Trust, a Chicago-based multinational financial firm, would assume control
of Enron's pension plans, employee savings accounts, 401Ks, and Employee Retirement
Income Security Act (ERISA) funds. After Enron's bankruptcy in 2002, Northern
Trust and Enron's principals (including Ken Lay, Jeffrey Skilling, Andy Fastow,
Lou Pai, and Cliff Baxter (who supposedly committed suicide before his appearance
before a grand jury as a star witness for the government) were sued in the Houston
U.S. District Court by ex-Enron employees. Just before Lay and Skilling were convicted in the Enron case for fraud, Northern
Trust submitted Form 10Q to the Securities and Exchange Commission stating the
outcome of the suit against Northern Trust: "One subsidiary of the Corporation [Northern Trust] was named as a defendant
in several Enron-related class action suits that were consolidated under a single
complaint in the Federal District Court for the Southern District of Texas (Houston).
Individual participants in the employee pension benefit plans sponsored by Enron
Corp. sued various corporate entities and individuals, including the Bank in
its capacity as the former directed trustee of the Enron Corp. Savings Plan
and former service-provider for the Enron Corp. Employee Stock Ownership Plan.
The lawsuit made claims, inter alia, for breach of fiduciary duty to the plan
participants, and sought equitable relief and monetary damages in an unspecified
amount against the defendants. On September 30, 2003, the court denied the Bank’s
motion to dismiss the complaint as a matter of law. In an Amended Consolidated
Complaint filed on January 2, 2004, plaintiffs continued to assert claims against
the Bank and other defendants under the Employee Retirement Income Security
Act of 1974, seeking a finding that defendants are liable to restore to the
benefit plans and the plaintiffs hundreds of millions of dollars of losses allegedly
caused by defendants’ alleged Now, here is where we go full circle back to Bush and Florida. According to
IRS Form 8872, filed by the Americans for Free Speech, a GOP Political Action
Committee (PAC) located at 2020 Pennsylvania Ave. in Washington, DC, between
Aug. 8, 2004 and September 30, 2004 -- right in the middle of the presidential
election campaign between George W. Bush and John Kerry, affiliated PACs, including
Americans for Jobs, Families for Conservative Values [also located at 2020 Pennsylvania
Ave.], and Taxpayers for Conservative Government and Floridians for Conservative
Values [both located in Tallahassee, Florida] contributed a little less than
$1 million to Americans for Free Speech. The Americans for Free Speech laundered
the money to other right-wing political committees [South Florida Community
Council in Coral Gables; People for Fairness and Equality and Citizens for Safer
Streets in Tallahassee; and Alliance for Protecting Seniors in Washington, DC]
which, in turn, made contributions to various candidates, mostly Republicans
but also a few Democrats. One of these recipients was Stephen Meadows, a Democrat,
but the Bush family's hand picked successor to Florida State Attorney Jim Appleman
in the 14th Judicial District of Florida. Meadows would continue to look out
for the interests of the Bushes in the Florida Panhandle as Appleman had for
the Iran-Contra and S&L frauds. The Americans for Free Speech also listed
an interesting recipient of its expenditures: a Northern Trust office in North
Palm Beach, Florida received payment for handling the money wires from and to
the GOP PACs. On April 18, 2005, The Chicago Tribune ran a story on George W. Bush's 2004
Federal Income Tax Return. Bush listed his address as: Post Office Box 803968,
Chicago, Illinois, 60680. The post office box is the downtown post office box
of -- Northern Trust -- the financial group that held Enron's pension and other
financial assets. It is also the holding company that maintains George W. Bush's
blind trust. Bush money, Enron money, GOP right-wing PAC money, and God only
knows what covert action funds, all handled by the same company. It does sound
all so familiar. Enron is dead and so is Ken Lay. Long live the new Bush slush
fund -- Northern Trust. The question remains. What did Ken Lay know about Northern
Trust? One can assume plenty. For the Bushes, its better that one dead man is
now in a position to keep their secrets. ______________________ Wayne Madsen While many people believe Karl Rove is the most powerful and heartless White
House advisers in the Bush-Cheney administration, Dick Cheney's friend, counsel,
and Chief of Staff David Addington is not less influential and ruthless. Addington,
an Army brat who lived in Saudi Arabia where his father was stationed, never
made it through the Naval Academy having dropped out during his freshman year
as a Midshipman. Addington, described as a conservative Catholic, received his
undergraduate degree from Georgetown and law degree from Duke. After Ronald
Reagan's inauguration, Addington worked in the General Counsel's office at the
CIA where he helped cover up Director Bill Casey's secret and illegal role in
involving the agency in the Iran-Contra scandal. Addington honed his cover-up
skills at the CIA. Working with the Republican minority staff on the House Permanent
Select Committee on Intelligence and becoming Republican counsel on the Iran-Contra
committee, Addington ensured that details of Oliver North's and Elliott Abrams'
global panhandling for the Contras remained as secretive as possible. After
all, many of the countries involved in secretly funding the Contras were dictatorships
close to Vice President George H. W. Bush, including Saudi Arabia. Addington never liked congressional interference with illegal activities carried
out by Republican administrations. He felt that Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford,
and Ronald Reagan were hamstrung by meddlesome members of Congress, independent
prosecutors, and federal judges. In this, Addington had an ideological soul
mate in Dick Cheney, Ford's Chief of Staff. When George H. W. Bush became President
and appointed Cheney as Secretary of Defense, Cheney hired Addington as his
personal special assistant and later as General Counsel for the Defense Department.
If Addington and Cheney were closer than friends and ideological doppelgangers,
they would have had to go to Ikea to pick out furniture. After Clinton became President in 1993, Addington would find that his old connections
to Iran-Contra figures would pay off handsomely. Addington became senior vice
president and general counsel for the American Trucking Association, a lobby
long associated with right-wing causes. According to CIA sources who were involved
with the Iran-Contra operations, one of the American Trucking Association's
most influential member companies was McLean Trucking Company, one of America's
largest trucking firms. The firm was reportedly connected to an entity called
the McLean Foundation, which helped funnel money to the Contras. Whatever deals
Addington knew about the relationship between McLean, the American Trucking
Association, and the CIA, it was clear they were significant enough for the
trucking industry to give him a high paying job after the Democrats took over
the White House. During his stint for the truckers, Addington formed a political
action committee called the Alliance for American Leadership, an exploratory
committee for a presidential run by Cheney in 1996. Addington also worked for
the Holland & Knight law firm, which is very close to Florida Governor Jeb
Bush.
Addington served on Cheney's transition team and then became his General Counsel.
It was Addington who was largely behind the U.S. abrogation of the Geneva Conventions
in dealing with war prisoners and who oversaw the whittling away of legal impediments
to the torturing of prisoners. Addington also championed the creation of a "unitary
executive," an all-powerful White House, with Congress and the Courts taking
a back seat. Addington is identified in the events leading up to the outing of
Valerie Plame Wilson, Ambassador Joseph Wilson's covert CIA wife. After Scooter
Libby was indicted last October, Addington took his place and another Cheney aide
who was named in the outing of Plame, John Hannah, became Cheney's National Security
Adviser. In Addington, CIA Leakgate Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald has likely
met his match. Addington never liked independent counsels let alone special
prosecutors. The mere fact that Fitzgerald was threatening the unitary executive
would have prompted Addington to pull out all the stops. Therefore, it should
come as no surprise that Addington likely interfered in the Fitzgerald Grand
Jury process. The word in Washington is that Fitzgerald was told an indictment
of Rove would go no where since Bush plans to place Libby's name on the next
Christmas pardon list. Libby was indicted for lying to a Grand Jury. With a
pardon of Libby, Fitzgerald would have been hard pressed to bring a case against
Rove or Addington's alter ego, Cheney. Chicago's crime fighting Eliot Ness met
his match in native Washingtonian J. Edgar Hoover. In Washington's Addington,
Chicago's Fitzgerald has witnessed history repeating itself. ___________________ Read from Looking Glass News Fortunate
for the Bush Crime Family: Ken Lay took many secrets to the grave Criminal
Charges Filed Against George H.W. Bush (Sr.) in Iceland Where
was George Herbert Walker Bush on November 22, 1963 ? FBI
Division 4 team names Clintons, Bush 41, 43 in JFK Jr. assassination Bush
family history shows a dark past unseen by most The
Houses of Bush, Sabah, and Maktoum Dubya
didn't want to be anywhere near the "Hinckley Hilton" on March 30 Bush
Crime Family: Transplants from Texas destroying state gambling evidence in Florida |