Last year investigative journalist David Boyajian wrote two exposés on Washington-based Woodrow Wilson International Center, revealing how the center has been violating its Congressional mandate and been up to its neck in tainted corporate cash. You can read Boyajian’s exposés here and here. Many agreed with Boyajian’s damning assessment, including a prominent journalist who called the WWC “a global joke.” I too wrote a follow up article on WWC with a special focus on its ‘oily’ President, Mr. Lee Hamilton. By oily, I mean ‘glisteningly greasy.’ I am sure you recognize his name from his highly publicized position and face as one of the 9/11 Commissioners, but his possibly pay-off position with WWC was not the lone factor for his glistening status in my report. Here are a few excerpts from my piece to illustrate what I mean:

Fortunately one independent reporter researched and reported on one such case, call it ‘chased the egg,’ on one of the 9/11 Commissioners, a Former Representative, Mr. Lee Hamilton, which I happened to come across yesterday. It was truly interesting to see how many ‘honorary’ positions Mr. Hamilton has been given, handed, by our government alone, just check out a few here:

-Co-chair of the Department of Energy Blue Ribbon Commission on America’s Nuclear Future with Brent Scowcroft

-Serves on the President’s Intelligence Advisory Board & the FBI Director’s Advisory Board,

-Serves on the US Department of Homeland Security Task Force

- Serves on the CIA External Advisory Board

The White House, the CIA, and the FBI must have been extremely well-served by Hamilton’s performance as the commissioner to grant him this many prestigious quasi positions. No? For me, the most interesting aspect which was covered by CounterCurrents.Org had to do with Hamilton’s position with and current salary from the Woodrow Wilson Center, and his questionable corporate ties, particularly with BAE Systems, the main sponsor of his forthcoming gala dinner…

You can read my entire article ‘9/11 Commissioner’s Turkey Baste: Chicken or the Egg?’ here. Now back to the focus of this post.

On Friday, December 16, Boyajian wrote another damning exposé on WWC in Foreign Policy Journal which went, of course, largely underreported. This time, the focus of the article was on the new president of the Woodrow Wilson International Center (WWC), another oily persona, another woman with a past, another representative: Jane Harman. I am sure you remember her massive scandal involving espionage-AIPAC-Israel that was quickly covered up and forgotten by the US mainstream media. No?   

How about Harman’s role as ranking member on the House Intelligence Committee in failing to protest when briefed on the Bush administration’s illegal wiretap program and voting for the Iraq war authorization? Come on, even Dick Cheney confirmed that Harman knew about and approved of the program. We all know she got where she got by being good at being a lap dog and an oily one. Let’s add ‘savvy’ to the list of Harman’s adjectives; by that I mean savvy in being damningly oily. The woman knows how to redirect or turn off spotlights to hide her glistening parts: have some control of the spotlights switch. She sits on the board of Newsweek, and maintains intimate relationships with the media puppeteers.

All right, this time let’s go back to Boyajian’s exposé and just stay there. Enough detours. The title of the exposé alone is revealing: “The Marriage from Hell: Jane Harman & the Woodrow Wilson Center”.

Several months ago, this Congressionally-created, multi-million dollar think tank, funded partly by taxpayers, made another colossal blunder. It hired former eight-term Congresswoman Jane Harman (D–CA) to be its president, replacingLee Hamilton, also a former Congressman.

Harman, like Hamilton, is not only part of the good-old-boy (and girl) network of which the WWC is so fond. Among her other baggage, charges of illegal conduct in a spy scandal involving AIPAC (American Israel Public Affairs Committee) have shadowed Harman for years. Let’s take a closer look at Harman and the Wilson Center to see why they’re the marriage from hell.

Oh yes. Boyajian unabashedly puts this glistening woman and WWC under a magnifying class damningly and invites readers to join and see for themselves. I’ll list a few damning excerpts, and then let you go read the entire piece. Here is Harman and her AIPAC scandal:

Harman would persuade the Justice Department to reduce the charges against Rosen and Weissman; in exchange, AIPAC and its influential supporters would persuade then-Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi to reappoint the unpopular Harman as top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee.Harman apparently promised the “Israeli agent” to “waddle into” the AIPAC scandal “if you think it’ll make a difference.” Harman ended the exchange with “this conversation doesn’t exist.”

The Justice Department and CIA wanted to prosecute Harman. But Alberto Gonzales, President Bush’s Attorney General, reportedly refused because – ironically – he “needed Jane” to support the government’s ongoing warrantless wiretapping program.

…

Part of why the WWC has all but ignored Wilson’s record on Turkey and the Caucasus is undoubtedly that many major donors (present and past members of its elite “Wilson Alliance”) have lobbied for, or been members of trade organizations that have lobbied for, Turkey and against the Armenian resolution. These include Alcoa, BAE Systems, Bechtel, Boeing, Bombardier, Chevron, Coca Cola, Exxon-Mobil and Honeywell.

In fact, Harman’s predecessor, Lee Hamilton, engaged in a clear conflict of interest during his tenure by sitting on the board of BAE Systems, a defense giant which does lots of business with Turkey. Last year a Federal judge slapped BAE’s parent corporation with a $400 million criminal fine for “deception, duplicity and knowing violations of law … on an enormous scale. “Too bad the judge didn’t also look into the Wilson Center.

Hamilton also sat on the board of the Albright Stonebridge Group, a “global strategy firm” headed by former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright.

Hamilton’s WWC bio, incredibly, was dead silent about his corporate affiliations. This same Lee Hamilton co-chaired the official National Commission on the 9/11 attacks, whose report has been widely criticized as incomplete and biased. Hamilton and Harman, you see, can be counted on not to rock the corporate establishment’s boat.

…

In the following ‘damning’ paragraph Boyajian mentions another familiar glistening character, Marc Grossman

The WWC is rife with other questionable characters, including those with deep ties to Turkey, such as former board member and present Wilson Council member Ignacio Sanchez, a lobbyist employed by DLA Piper, which is a registered foreign agent for Turkey. And former “Wilson Public Policy Scholar” Marc Grossman, ex-US ambassador to Turkey and DLA Piper bigwig. “Coincidentally,” Sanchez and Grossman were both on the WWC Search Committee that hired Harman.

…

I encourage you to read this damning exposé on our nation’s plentiful damnable figureheads and public servants-turned master. While you are reading think about Victor Hugo’s le Miserable; think about those poor suckers in jail for the possession of 5 ounces of dry weeds; think about the mega charlatans, mega corporate criminals, mega representatives-turned-mega foreign lobbyists selling our nation’s soul-shrunken wealth to the highest bidders …Think about us the people, the biggest suckers of all in all this.

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 “Lobbyists make more money than Congressmen because lobbyists write more laws than we do.” – Congressman Ron Paul (TX)

Government work can inspire a certain image, particularly if you are still swayed by idealistic grade-school texts that extolled the work of ‘public servants.’  These are people working not for themselves, primarily, but for a greater good.  Government workers accept a discount from what they could earn in the private sector, because they care about the public.  We owe them our gratitude.

Well, some of them, to be sure. 

In economics, there is a fundamental principle called ‘rationality.’  A lot of students tend to rebel against this notion, and it has some critics from the behavioral finance profession as well.  But I still remember the day one of my favorite professors in economics, facing heat from students on this score, stepped back and defined rationality simply as ‘self-interested, purposive behavior.’  People don’t intentionally try to harm themselves, even if they don’t always make consistent or good decisions.  People try to pursue their own self-interest, to try to make themselves better off.  In a world without significant government intervention, this tendency usually promotes cooperation among buyers and sellers, and the common good as well.

Does public service make for a vow of poverty?  Our public servants are people, like the rest of us.  As a general tendency, we all tend to pursue our self-interest.   And in the public service world, some of the most ambitious, loudest champions about what is good for the rest of us are also intensely self-interested.  When self-interest combines with the pursuit of profit through government intervention, public servants can make themselves better off while leaving the rest of us worse off.

Assuming that policymakers pursue their own self interest is a central tenet of the public choice school of economics.   The “Chicago School” of regulation (the University of Chicago economics department, not the City of Chicago) similarly calls for us to suspend any enduring belief that public servants are always unselfish.  And when public servants serve themselves, well-organized special interest groups can more easily capture regulatory policy and drive it to their own benefit.  In turn, the revolving door, with our servants moving seamlessly between government and the regulated, and back again, can be a very lucrative business.   

Lobbying can also lead government policy to generate results the opposite of what is being advertised.  For example, anti-trust policy can actually make consumers worse off, particularly if well-organized producers run the show.  Government financial regulation can actually destabilize the financial system, if public guarantees spawn moral hazard and gambling with the public purse.  And the resulting crises can become a lever for taking more money from the many, in order to stabilize and cement the positions of the favored few.

The Chicago Machine – A Glaring Example

William McGurn penned a wonderful op-ed in the Wall Street Journal on November 15, 2011, titled “Crony Capitalism, Chicago Style.”  McGurn discussed recent efforts within the Illinois state legislature to develop tax breaks for large Chicago-area employers.  Some of these firms have been complaining about the high tax burden in Illinois (a valid concern), as well as the offers they were getting to move their operations to other states.  But McGurn also pointed to large-scale donations from some of these large employers for the same politicians that implemented large-scale tax increases in recent years, with much of Corporate Chicago strangely quiet during those tax hikes.   McGurn identified the CME Group, the large financial services enterprise that includes Chicago’s long-successful futures exchanges, the Chicago Mercantile Exchange and the Chicago Board of Trade, as a good example in this regard.

When it comes to government finances under strain, the city of Chicago and the state of Illinois are two of the sickest patients in the hospital.  Chicago and Illinois also have long had some of the mightiest patronage systems in the world.   Patronage is a system whereby state and city politicians help their well-organized special interest group friends, who get out the vote, via people, dollars, or both.   And the large corporations now complaining about their tax burdens and threatening to leave if they don’t get special treatment have also been some of our most influential corporate citizens.  They, too, are responsible for the condition of the bed Chicagoans share today.

The system works, in the City that Works, as long as it works.  Trouble is, as selfish political leaders have purchased short-term success with long-term consequences, kicking the can down the road, the spending and future obligations foisted on taxpayers’ backs builds and builds, to the breaking point. 

The day of reckoning appears closer these days. 

Who Made Hay While The Sun Shined?  2 Examples

A variety of special interest groups, including unions, construction contractors, real estate developers, leaders of some large corporations, and law firms have done very well by themselves in Illinois.  So have their favorite servants in public service.

Some public policy leaders have grown pretty wealthy, out of proportion to their public compensation.  One of them is out of Dodge, after a fashion, while the other remains in a position of power.  These two are both Chicagoans.  The first is former Speaker of the House of Representatives, Dennis Hastert.  The second is currently Mayor of the City of Chicago, Rahm Emanuel.

Dennis Hastert.   A 2006 article in the Chicago Tribune looked into Hastert’s portfolio, and found that his net worth rose from $290,000 to over $6 million in the 19 years that then comprised his tenure in Congress.  This rate of appreciation makes for a compound annual rate of nearly 20% over that 19 year interval, a remarkable return.  A private group had looked into the source of that investment acumen, which in at least one case benefitted from his purchase of land before federally funded highway projects promoted by the powerful Chicago-area Congressman had the effect of increasing the land’s value.   Hastert brought home the federal bacon for his District, and did well by himself at the same time.  In his defense, Hastert supporters have cited the good fortune that he enjoyed given his aggressive real estate investing in a booming market, but the Tribune and other critics have pointed out that only a few well-connected investments made up a large majority of the wealth increase in the period they looked at.

In late 2007, Hastert announced he would be resigning his seat in Congress, and resigned before his term was completed.  The GOP had lost control of Congress in the 2006 election year, with a scandal over sex abuse of young male congressional pages (and arguments within the GOP leadership over the extent of warning delivered to Hastert about the behavior at issue) one factor in the changeover. 

After his resignation from the House of Representatives, Hastert earnings stream found other feeding tributaries.  He continued to earn roughly $100,000 a year in pension benefits from Congress, the Illinois legislature and his previous teaching experience (which included service as a wrestling coach).   But he also earned money from speaking engagements (at $25,000 per speech) and corporate directorships, including a new seat on the board at the above-noted CME Group.   And six months after leaving Congress, Hastert joined a Washington D.C. based lobbying firm, with his clients including the government of Luxembourg and the Republic of Turkey. 

Why might the Republic of Turkey matter, for corruption in Chicago?

In a 2005 article in the magazine Vanity Fair, “An Inconvenient Patriot,” David Rose described what he learned from Sibel Edmonds, and her description of the wiretaps she was instructed to transcribe in her role as an FBI translator.  Edmonds described evidence developed in an FBI investigation of large numbers of small donations to the Hastert campaign from small amounts, as well as the alleged delivery of currency in suitcases, from Turkish interests.  And in a 2009 article in The American Conservative, while discussing the implications of the change from the Bush to the Obama administrations for the prospects of finding the truth in these and related matters, Ms. Edmonds concluded:

The other thing I noticed is how Chicago, with its culture of political corruption, is central to the new administration. When I saw that Obama’s choice of chief of staff was Rahm Emanuel, knowing his relationship with Mayor Richard Daley and with the Hastert crowd, I knew we were not going to see positive changes. Changes possibly, but changes for the worse. It was no coincidence that the Turkish criminal entity’s operation centered on Chicago.

Rahm Emanuel.   Rahm Israel Emanuel was born in Chicago in 1959.  His father, Benjamin Emanuel, was born in Israel.  During the British occupation of Palestine, before the establishment of the State of Israel in 1947, Benjamin Emanuel served in the Irgun, an organization that carried out violent attacks on British and Arab targets, including an infamous bombing of the King David Hotel in 1946 that killed nearly 100 people.  Rahm Emanuel grew up in a less-stressful atmosphere, the relatively wealthy northern suburbs of Chicago, after his father became a pediatrician and moved to the United States.  He and his brother did attend summer camp in Israel, including one stay soon after the 1967 six-day war. 

Emanuel’s interests in high school included ballet, and he turned down the Joffrey Ballet to attend one of the most expensive colleges in the United States, Sarah Lawrence College.  He worked in politics in a variety of ways in the Chicago area early in his career, and then served as a senior advisor and chief fundraiser in Richard M. Daley’s successful run for Mayor in 1989.  He served a stint as a volunteer in the Israel Defense Forces in the first Gulf War.   From there, he turned his talents on the campaign trail for William Clinton, and became a senior advisor in the Clinton White House from 1993 to 1998. 

In 1998 Emanuel resigned his White House post.  He joined an investment banking firm, and made over $16 million in 2+ years there.  He was named a member of the Board of Directors of the Federal Home Loan Mortgage Corporation (“Freddie Mac”) by Clinton in 2000, and earned over $300,000 in that capacity.  During his tenure, Freddie Mac (a chief culprit in our economic and financial crisis in recent years) endured a string of scandals.  In light of Edmonds’ assertions above regarding the close ties in Chicago, it is worth noting that the Administration of former Illinois Senator and current U.S. President Barack Obama recently rejected a FOIA request looking into Freddie Mac during Emanuel’s tenure.

In 2002, then-Illinois-representative to the U.S. Congress, Rod Blagojevich, decided not to run for re-election, but to run for Governor.  (Blagojevich is now facing sentencing for multiple felony corruption convictions.)   Emanuel ran for that Congressional seat, and became a U.S. Representative in late 2002.   Emanuel strongly supported the Congressional resolution authorizing U.S. military action in Iraq.   In early 2003, Emanuel first began serving on the House Financial Services Committee.  Over the next four years, developments in financial markets and their regulation laid the seeds of the worst economic and financial crisis since the Great Depression.  In late 2008, he resigned his congressional seat after President Obama asked him to become White House Chief of Staff, as the administration and financial regulators developed a sea of rescue (bailout) packages.  Emanuel left that post in late 2010 to run for the position of Mayor of Chicago.  He won that race, and was sworn in as Mayor in May 2011. 

Hastert and Emanuel – Some Common Threads

Dennis Hastert and Rahm Emanuel have very different backgrounds, but both have represented interest groups with much to answer for in our recent economic crisis.  In turn, each of these politicians became very wealthy in their careers.  That may be due in part to their talents, and we shouldn’t begrudge talented people from earning a living.  But if public servants trade on their positions of influence, and get rewarded for it, this is a horse of a different color. 

And if the allegations from Sibel Edmonds remain worthy of honest, aggressive investigation, we have a zoo, not just a horse, of a different color.  One possibly-related common thread tying Emanuel and Hastert together are their ties to countries outside the United States – two countries with overlapping goals in international relations over the last decade or so.

Bill Bergman has 10 years of experience as a stock market analyst sandwiched around 13 years as an economist and financial markets policy analyst at the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago. He earned an M.B.A. as well as an M.A. in Public Policy from the University of Chicago in 1990. Mr. Bergman is currently working with Social Movement Sciences LLC, a new enterprise developing evaluation and funding services for not-for-profit organizations.

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I’ve been meaning to write about this for weeks, and just got around doing it. Maybe the subconscious procrastination was due to the conscious sanitization of this news by venues like this. Maybe it was the dread of having to tackle one of the quasi media phony darlings like this guy. Or maybe it was the repressed exhaustion-frustration I went through a couple of years back with this. Okay, allow me to start with the fairly recent development reported ‘incompletely and badly’ by the New York Times:

Representative Jean Schmidt, Republican of Ohio, has been ordered by the House Ethics Committee to repay a Turkish-American group $500,000 for legal services it improperly paid for to help her pursue a defamation lawsuit and other legal proceedings against a Democratic opponent in the 2008 election.

As you can see, very consciously the Times avoids naming ‘that Democratic opponent.’ Because naming him, David Krikorian, would require some fact citing and more context-background on the case; the case they together with the rest of the mainstream media went out of their way to black out. And doing ‘that’ would God forbid bring up the long-blacked-out state secrets privilege in my case. And ‘that’ my dear friends, is something that has been forbidden to these stenographers in the media circus.

So let’s continue the no-coverage coverage of a very significant case involving Congresswoman Jean Schmidt and the twisted and rechanneled Turkish Foreign Lobby dollars:

The action by the House committee, disclosed Friday, did not come with a formal punishment, because ethics investigators concluded that Ms. Schmidt had been misled by her own lawyers from the Turkish American Legal Defense Fund about who was paying the legal bills.

Ms. Schmidt was ordered to amend her annual personal financial disclosure reports to acknowledge the gift from the Turkish Coalition of America, which actually paid the bills, and then reimburse the lawyers.

 The report above casually, and very quickly, glosses over one of the implicated, that is, directly implicated, parties in this case: Schmidt’s lawyer- the lawyer who supposedly, and intentionally, misled his client, and did so with a dollar amount not in the thousands, but actually half a million dollars. Ordinarily this slip by a government garbage disposal facility like the Times would not raise big flags. However, this lawyer is no ordinary lawyer. The lawyer in question here happens to be a famous, very public, high-profile and very deviously and shrewdly marketed man. The lawyer in this case is none other than deceivingly perceived Bruce Fein.  A man who has gotten very wealthy thanks to the foreign lobby, in this case the Turkish lobby in need of a man who knows the maze that gets the cheese to the congressional mice:

In 2007, Ayasli transferred $30 million in stock to fund a new endeavor, the nonprofit Turkish Coalition of America. The organization is headquartered in a Washington suite that has also been listed as the address for the Turkish Coalition USA PAC, the lobbying firm of Lydia Borland (who has represented the Turkish government), and the law firm of Bruce Fein and Associates (Fein comprises half of the Turkish American Legal Defense Fund).

…

In addition to the advocacy done through the ATC (which also funds trips to Turkey for congressional staff), a handful of its members–Citigroup, BAE Systems, Northrop Grumman, Chevron, Textron, United Technologies, Lockheed Martin and Raytheon, which spent a combined $80 million lobbying Washington last year lobbied Congress directly on the genocide resolution and other issues important to Turkey; the Aerospace Industries Association, a trade group, helped coordinate the effort.

…

Oh wait, Bruce Fein is married to Mattie Fein, the Republican candidate who ran against Jane Harman in 2010. Had she won, how would one go about calculating and deducting her campaign-donation  ‘gifts’ from her husbands million-dollar foreign lobby gifts? Isn’t it interesting? And as far as Turkey’s former partner lobby, the Israeli Lobby, this is where Bruce & his voluptuous wife stand when given the Zionism litmus test:

7. Would you support Israel taking military action to stop Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons? Under what circumstances?

The United States should support whatever Israel believes is justified by national security worries over Iran.

I know Mr. Fein has many pro-liberties fans out there who are mistaking him for ‘real;’ some consider him a real constitutionalist who stands for liberties and against secrecy. That’s very similar to those who fell for Obama the constitutionalist. Remember, Obama the author of a very constitutional book? Recall the beautiful words spoken and sold as pro liberties, pro change, anti secrecy and beyond? Well, you have a similar situation with Mr. Fein: he talks a good talk, and writes well. As for who Mr. Fein is: you are looking at a man long succumbed to foreign lobby and military industrial complex lobby dollars. You are looking at a man far more loyal to Israel and its lobby than to our nation. You actually have a man who believes any war would be justified for the sake of Israel. And in the latest Schmidt case you are looking at a man who helped funnel half a million dollar foreign ‘Bakshish’ to his congresswoman friend, and even indicted by the lame Congressional Ethics Committee as an attorney who intentionally misled his client.

Yet, you see none of this in the New York Times coverage. These points are intentionally omitted in mainstream media reports. Just as they were during my case-a topic that threatened corrupt US officials, MIC and Foreign lobbies.

I think I have made the case for the intentional black out and modification of this development by the US media. I am going to stop here, but you can read and watch more on this here.

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BFP Nightly Quote

“If a nation values anything more than freedom, it will lose its freedom: and the irony of it is that if it is comfort or money that it values more, it will lose that, too.” - W. Somerset Maugham

International Newsworthy

Spinning Iran’s Centrifuge

NATO & Turkey Support Armed Rebels in Syria 

NATO Report: US Raids in Afghanistan Tripled Since 2009 

Report: Libyan Rebels, Government Hold Talks in Tunisia 

Azerbaijan: Baku Hedging Its Economic Bets 

Israeli Black Hole in Kosovo 

Israel Seeks 20 More F-35 Stealth Jets 

UK: Concern Social Networks Targeted as BlackBerry Helps Police Identify Rioters 

* * * *

National Newsworthy

The Pentagon’s New China War Plan 

Boeing Spends $4.4 Million on Government Lobbying During Second Quarter 

FBI Investigation Reveals DOD Contractors Stole Iraq Artifacts

Obama’s Vineyard Vacation will Cost Taxpayers Millions of Dollars 

America’s 14 Most Ready to Riot Cities 

The People’s Ponzi Scheme

Officials Pressed by GOP to Release Defense Budget Review

Does FBI Investigation of Gulen Include Louisiana RSD?

New SEC Whistleblower Rules

* * * *

 Noteworthy Editorials

The CIA, Lies & Intelligence

Whither the Antiwar Movement?

Imperialist Freedom

The Greatest Elected Body that Money Can Buy 

Why Does Mainstream Media Disrespect Ron Paul?

How China Sees English Riots

* * * *

BFP Nightly Funnies

“After all the rioting in London this week, officials are worried that it could mean security problems for the Olympics next year. On the bright side, the guy running with the torch will just blend right in.” –Jimmy Fallon

* * * *

BFP Nightly Video Potpourri 

Senator Durbin Disses Reporter’s Downgrade Question

Hitler Lives: 1945 Propaganda- Still Alive today

The Media Admits to Ignoring Ron Paul

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Mainstream media is up in arms over the latest revelations in the ever-growing Murdoch scandal. In a firestorm of outrage, reporters are screaming at the top of their lungs about stunning privacy violations. Members of Congress passionately demand that everyone responsible be investigated and prosecuted. In his letter to FBI Director Mueller, Rep. Peter King, R-N.Y., who chairs the House Homeland Security Committee, had cited reports that News of the World journalists “attempted to obtain phone records of victims of the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11 through bribery and unauthorized wiretapping.”

He also cited reports that the reporters had solicited a New York police officer “to gain access to the content of private phone records” of the 9/11 victims. The NYPD does not intend to conduct an investigation into these shocking allegations. They’re leaving it up to the federal authorities, even though accusations of bribery against one of its own would certainly be within the police department’s purview. Ironically, the FBI has been aware of News Corp’s criminal misconduct for years, but elected not to pursue it until now.

We could only wish that our politicians, law enforcement and the mainstream media were eager to act when our own government engages in the same abuses against law-abiding citizens. Anyone responsible for conducting warrantless surveillance, wiretapping and hacking should be held accountable. The Department of Justice announced that it does not intend to prosecute any government officials responsible for unlawful acts committed under the guise of a “war on terror”. Instead, whistleblowers who exposed the very unlawful acts in question are the ones being prosecuted.

In the mean time, the Murdoch firestorm continues to spread high and wide, engulfing mainstream media’s power structure in its wake. Implications of this case go far beyond the unsavory tabloid tactics employed by the international media empire. It will mar and negatively alter the image of journalism, politics and law enforcement. This case exposed the corruption and media manipulation on a mind-boggling scale that involves 9/11 victims, politicians, celebrities, the royal family, police corruption, murdered children and victims of the 2005 London subway bombings. Murdoch tried to downplay the magnitude of this fiasco by telling his own publication, the Wall Street Journal, that his executives had made only “minor mistakes.” These peccadilloes went far beyond digging through garbage bins. They reportedly included unauthorized wiretapping, bribing the police to gain law enforcement access to confidential records (including medical and financial files of prominent politicians) and hacking.

While it’s only now exploding on such a massive scale in the worldwide media, the Murdoch case is actually quite old. News Corp. paid out more than 1 million pounds ($1.6 million) to settle lawsuits that accused their journalists of using information obtained by illegally hacking into mobile phones of public figures, politicians, sports stars and entertainers, as well as gaining unlawful access to tax records, social security files, bank statements and itemized phone bills. According to the Guardian, Murdoch’s newspapers entered into confidential out-of-court settlement agreements with respect to three such cases, gagging their victims in the process.

During his Parliament testimony, Murdoch repeatedly slapped the table with his hand and did his best to appear indignant. He touted the number of his employees, made excuses for not knowing that they were breaking the law and denied having any responsibility whatsoever as the head of the company. These denials ring hollow, since Murdoch had to be aware of the lawsuits and investigations going on against his company for several years. The News of the World entered into settlement agreements, paid out huge amounts to its victims, was confronted with the evidence of unlawful activities by its reporters and took legal action to silence their targets. While Murdoch refuses to accept any responsibility, he claims to be the best person to stay in charge and “clean this up”. Why, then, didn’t he clean it up years earlier?

In 2008, when the high court ordered the News of the World to pay damages to one of its victims, the paper published the following message: “It is not for the powerful and the influential to run to the courts to gag newspapers from publishing stories that are TRUE…This is all about the public’s right to know.” At the same time, company’s lawyers were persuading the courts to seal the files containing evidence of their illegal actions and paying off its targets to ensure their silence.

In doing so, they prevented the public from knowing anything about criminal behavior by journalists on its payroll. Saying the right thing and doing the right thing is not quite the same.

Perhaps one of the most important aspects of the Murdoch downfall is the elaborate cover-up that went on for years, including media blackouts, suppression of relevant information through avoidance and rampant police corruption. Free press turned out to be Scott-free, operating under the misapprehension that they are above the law. Their arrogance was bought with bribes, as well as close-knit connections to law enforcement, prominent politicians and the Saudi shadow government.

Since August 2006, the evidence of wrongdoing was gathering dust at Scotland Yard, including 11,000 pages of handwritten notes. They were filled with explosive revelations, listing nearly 4000 celebrities, politicians, sports players, police officials and crime victims whose phones may have been hacked by News of the World. Interestingly enough, senior police officials claim that no one bothered to process and analyze the damning paperwork, because they were too busy with counterterrorism investigations. In reality, the police have become so intertwined with the tabloid that they had a common agenda of shutting down any investigations into their own wrongdoing.

Rebekah Brooks, former chief executive of News International, who previously served as the editor of the News of the World, appeared before the Commons media committee in 2003 and testified that her newspaper paid police for stories. She later retracted that statement and claimed that she was referring to the industry in general.

Members of Parliament are apoplectic over a ”revolving door” between the police and News International. Company executives enjoyed close social ties to Scotland Yard’s top officials. Since the beginning of the hacking scandal in 2006, Police Commissioner Paul Stephenson shared meals with company executives and editors 18 times. Assistant Commissioner John Yates also regularly dined with editors from News International. Andy Hayman, who was running the hacking investigation as the chief of the counterterrorism unit, socialized with News International personnel as well. During the same time frame, senior police officials assured Parliament, the news media and the public that there was no evidence of widespread hacking by the news agency in question. Hayman left the Metropolitan Police, turning in his badge for a pen, in December 2007. He was hired to write a column for The Times of London, a News International paper. Apparently, loyalty to the Murdoch Empire is richly rewarded.

Faced with worldwide scrutiny, police later admitted that they botched up the case and acknowledged being inappropriately cozy with those they were obligated to investigate. Stephenson resigned because of his close ties to Neil Wallis, a former News of the World editor involved in the phone hacking and police bribery scandal. Stephenson hired Neil Wallis as his secret PR advisor, from whom he accepted lavish offerings.

Within 24 hours of Stephenson’s resignation, his deputy, John Yates, followed suit. Yates was set to be suspended because of his links with Wallis and his refusal to reopen the case into phone-hacking on two separate occasions. While he was working for the police on the hacking case, Wallis was reporting back to News International. He had also informed Murdoch’s former aide Rebekah Brooks about The New York Times’ reporting on the matter.

Brooks is one of ten participants arrested so far on suspicion of conspiring to intercept communications and corruption. During her latest appointment with the police, she was arrested and promptly bailed out. Brooks is known to have many friends in high places. Those who know her describe Rebekah as a networker extraordinaire. “She buttered up a lot of middle-aged men, and she’s good at that. They probably each thought they were a special adviser and confidant. She was very good at keeping those old warhorses well and truly on her side,” said one former co-worker.

British Prime Minister David Cameron reportedly had dozens of interactions with News International executives and editors, including Rebekah Brooks. She defiantly continued to socialize with political figures amidst the furore over the Prime Minister’s ties to the Murdoch Empire. Brooks managed to keep her job even as the 168-year-old News of the World was shut down, displacing 200 other journalists. Dubbed Murdoch’s “fifth daughter“, Brooks’s closeness to the octogenarian magnate was apparent when Murdoch was asked what his priority was in the current crisis. He pointed to Brooks and said: “This one.”

Murdoch initially insisted that Brooks must not resign, but caved in to the pressure from News Corp.’s second biggest shareholder, Saudi billionaire, Prince Al-Waleed bin Talal. His slice of the pie is topped only by the holdings of Rupert Murdoch himself. As soon as Alwaleed called for the resignation of Brooks, Murdoch and Cameron concurred. In addition to appeasing the richest man of the Arab world and a longstanding Murdoch ally, these public statements appear to be an attempt to distance themselves from the frenzy prompted by the sensational allegations.

Alwaleed has financial links to the “Ground Zero Mosque”, having donated hundreds of thousands of dollars to support the building of a Muslim community center and mosque near Ground Zero in Manhattan. He was quoted asserting that Arab countries can influence U.S. decision-making “if they unite through economic interests, not political…We have to be logical and understand that the U.S. administration is subject to U.S. public opinion…And to bring the decision-maker on your side, you not only have to be active inside the U.S. Congress or the administration, but also inside U.S. society.”

Alwaleed has bragged that it only took a phone call to ensure that the Fox News Channel coverage of Muslims rioting in France not be described as “Muslim”. Money buys all kinds of undue influence over American and British mainstream media. Is anyone still surprised that there is virtually no open discussion as to the issues of Saudi influence in the western media and politics, as well as Saudi links to Al Qaeda and 9/11?

The Murdoch scandal took another dark turn, as the News of the World whistleblower, reporter Sean Hoare, was found dead at his home on July 18, 2011. Just one week before his demise he told the Guardian that “there’s more to come, this is not going to go away.” He repeatedly expressed the hope that the hacking scandal would lead to journalism in general being cleaned up, stating that as his reason for blowing the whistle. Hoare said, “I want to right a wrong, lift the lid on it, the whole culture. I know, we all know, that the hacking and other stuff is endemic. Because there is so much intimidation.” He emphasized that he was not making any money from telling his story.

Sean Hoare recently told the New York Times that reporters at the News of the World were given access to police technology to locate people using their mobile phone signals, in exchange for bribes to police officers. He explained that journalists were able to pinpoint the coordinates of their targets through the use of “pinging” by measuring the distance between a cell phone and a number of phone masts to determine the location of a person they were following.

After Hoare was found dead, there was a notable delay in the arrival of forensics officers at the scene. His death is currently being treated as “unexplained”, but police commented that they are not considering it “suspicious”.

To deal with the public scrutiny, Murdoch hired Steven Rubenstein, a PR guru, whose clients also include Robert De Niro, David Letterman, Paramount Pictures and its head, Brad Grey. Murdoch was also briefed by Dan Tench, one of the UK’s leading entertainment lawyers. Michael Wolff, Murdoch’s biographer, said the head of the media empire is “awful at this sort of stuff. He is pretty inarticulate, mumbles all the time and is incredibly defensive… that is the reason that when he does do interviews they tend to be to his own papers.”

The firestorm already crossed the ocean, as Les Hinton, CEO of the Murdoch-owned Dow Jones and publisher of the Wall Street Journal, resigned. Hinton has worked for Murdoch’s News Corp. for 52 years and headed Murdoch’s British newspaper arm while the hacking and corruption took place. In 2009, Hinton testified to a Parliamentary Committee that phone hacking was an isolated incident involving solely one jailed reporter. Scotland Yard assigned a new team to the hacking allegations only after The New York Times published an article raising questions about the mishandling of the case.

The police are just now starting to notify nearly 4000 targets in the staggering scandal. More arrests are looming on the horizon, as the Metropolitan Police itself is the subject of a judicial inquiry into its handling of this case, as well as the allegations of bribes received by police officials in exchange for supplying confidential information to reporters.

Why didn’t anyone stop the corruption? The Murdoch Empire simply seemed too big to fail, too massive to expose. News International Limited owns the Sunday Times of London, the Times of London, the British tabloid The Sun and newspapers such as the News Limited in Australia and all over the world. It’s a subsidiary of News Corp, a publicly traded American company, whose U.S. holdings include the Wall Street Journal, Fox Broadcasting Co. network, Fox Entertainment Group, New York Post, the 20th Century Fox movie studio, HarperCollins Publishing and two dozen local television stations.

Authorities were looking the other way while the media monopoly continued to grow. The Justice Department that was so eager to pursue a sweeping antitrust suit against Microsoft was not the least bit concerned with the worldwide reach of the Murdoch tentacles. During the last two decades, the number of corporations controlling most of America’s mainstream media outlets, book publishers and movie companies has dwindled from 50 to only 5.

Corporate news media skillfully creates an impression of being free, independent and objective. In reality, the mainstream is quite crafty at pursuing certain stories and blackballing the matters it elects to suppress. Unpopular topics are disposed of by omission, as the media moguls have perfected the art of avoidance. For example, the tragic demise of a child receives mind-numbing amounts of tedious coverage, pushing the populace to disregard multiple murders happening because of misguided wars. Stories that are truly sensational are being avoided or purposely downplayed, while the pieces that pose no threat to the establishment are unduly sensationalized.

The press tiptoes around the minefield of reports dealing with national security shortcomings, which are amongst the least likely topics to receive substantial media exposure. If suppressed stories receive coverage in the so-called “alternative media,” the mainstream reluctantly jumps on the bandwagon. They do so only to dismantle and discredit any politically inconvenient exposé that makes it past the silent treatment stage. The government gets exonerated for their unlawful activities under the guise of “the war on terror,” greedy corporations are defended as “job creators” and corrupt management is favored over “disgruntled” employees with an “axe to grind”.

When so few serve as the opinion-makers for so many, there is no true freedom of the media and no sincere representation of diverse points of view.

The mainstream loathes the alternative media’s use of the Internet, since it defies their blatant media manipulation – but they have a plan for dealing with any threats to their dominance. Meet the Protect IP Act or PIPA (Preventing Real Online Threats to Economic Creativity and Theft of Intellectual Property Act of 2011, also known as United States Senate Bill S.968). Senator Wyden placed a hold on this deceptive bill, noting that overreaching legislation poses a significant threat to Internet commerce, innovation and free speech.

The bill seeks to give control of the Internet to government agencies and corporations by allowing them to blacklist and deny public access to “rogue” websites, especially those registered outside the United States. It would give the United States Department of Justice the power to “expeditiously” make the target website invisible. It would also include the removal of hyperlinks to such websites from search engines and other sites linking to content.

The bill was criticized for not being specific about what constitutes an “infringing” web site and for providing sweeping new powers for removing Internet content without any notification to the alleged offenders. Similar legislation was previously introduced under the name of Combating Online Infringements and Counterfeits Act (COICA), which failed to pass in 2010 and was re-written under the new heading.  

PIPA is supported by government associations, unions, corporations and trade associations. It is opposed by individuals, consumer rights groups such as the Electronic Frontier Foundation as well as Google, Yahoo!, eBay, American Express, Reporters Without Borders and Human Rights Watch.  

Even without this legislation websites are already being seized by Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE), a division of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). ICE’s stated primary mission is “to protect national security, public safety and the integrity of our borders”. Instead, between 2008 and 2011, in the course of its operation “In Our Sites” ICE conducted 2,889 website investigations, devoting 834,360.00 hours to policing the Internet. This is a harbinger of bad things to come.

In the agency’s official presentation to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce’s Coalition Against Counterfeiting and Piracy (CACP), belligerent ICE bragged that it was “Kicking ass and seizing websites – While you were eating your turkey.” Terrorists must have been shaking in their boots reading about the Department of Homeland Security’s priorities. At the same time, the DHS is not the least bit concerned with Saudi involvement in continuing to fund terrorist activities, while they freely operate in the U.S. and abroad, exercising unprecedented control over our mainstream media.

Conflicts of interest that influence media and politics are prevalent on both sides of the shark-infested pond. Tony Blair attempted to downplay the Murdoch scandal by stating that he was surprised by the amount of attention it was receiving. According to Blair, such activities were business as usual for any newspaper and he learned to just “live with it”.

Surely that couldn’t possibly have anything to do with Blair’s close relationship with Murdoch, widespread beliefs that Murdoch was secretly functioning as the hidden member of Tony Blair’s cabinet, the fact that Blair aided Murdoch in overcoming other investigations and the fact that Blair was promised a senior role in his News Corporation (which may no longer seem as such a tempting proposition). Blair is also well known for doing his best to protect the interests of his powerful Saudi friends and alliances, so his efforts to downplay the Murdoch debacle might serve a dual purpose.

Apparently, cartoonish plans of world domination exist not only in “Austin Powers” movies, but also in real life.

Now Rupert Murdoch is taking out ads to say “We are sorry.” I bet everyone responsible for the News of the World disaster is sorry – sorry they got caught. Whether justice prevails at the end of the day remains to be seen. At the very least, Murdoch should find out how his victims felt when their privacy was stolen by his unscrupulous henchmen. Unlike their unsuspecting targets, the Murdoch Empire actually deserves such exposure to let the world see that the Emperor has no clothes.    

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According to our inside sources a new Bipartisan Congressional Caucus for Prozac will be launched before the end of the 112^th Congress. The primary purpose of the Prozac Caucus will be to raise awareness and advocate for this ‘miracle drug’ aka ‘happiness pill,’ on the grounds of combating homegrown terrorism and domestic violence, lowering the national divorce rate, and increasing the level of general job satisfaction among the restless American workforce. “Increasing the level of general satisfaction and happiness, while decreasing the effects of violence and despair inducing factors such as anxiety and depression, are the major keys to achieving long term national security, family unity, and work force stability. With Prozac we believe we can achieve all that and more,” said a congressional aide who wished to remain anonymous. The caucus will have an interactive website with easy-to-print promotional materials and a password protected section for physicians titled ‘Patriotic Physicians for a Secure America.’

Let’s start with what is a congressional caucus, or at least what it is supposed to be, in theory that is. A congressional caucus is a coalition of House and Senate members who meet to discuss specific legislative priorities and policy issues. Caucuses ‘supposedly’ allow members to discuss issues to determine their positions and make sure their votes are informed. They can also give ‘advocates’ a chance for a group of legislators to champion their cause on the Hill. You may go ahead and change ‘advocates’ to ‘lobby and you’ll be even more on target.

When we look at the long list of these caucuses, a list that initially had only a few but seems to lately  have taken off rapidly, we see some caucuses that seem rather ‘ordinary and expected;’ for example,  Children’s Environmental Health Caucus or Congressional Dairy Farmers Caucus. We also see some ‘amusing’ ones, such as Congressional Bike Caucus, Congressional Soccer Caucus, and Congressional Boating Caucus.

You follow me so far? Okay, then there are more than a few caucuses that are ‘confusing:’ Democratic Israel Working Group, Congressional Israel Allies Caucus, Congressional Friends of Jordan Caucus, and other ones for Turkey, Jordan, etc.  Why do I say ‘confusing’? Well, in the above paragraph we outlined the caucus definition, which includes ‘giving advocates, aka lobbies, a chance to influence, aka lobby, their cause through the members of their caucus. In this case, the advocates, aka lobbies, are foreign, and this means ‘direct foreign influence,’ and that in turn would make the representatives in these caucuses who then influence and lobby the rest of the Congress ‘foreign agents.’ Think of it as two-tiered foreign lobbies: First, the registered foreign lobby influencing the target caucus, then, the caucus acting as a lobby for that foreign lobby to influence and lobby the rest of the Congress.

Finally, there are some ‘just plain eyebrow-raising’ caucuses that have been popping up and gaining momentum recently. Probably you haven’t heard of them. Please don’t kick yourself for not knowing. Save that kick, or cancellation of subscription, for the news media you’ve been following. Okay, back to ‘eyebrow-raising’ caucuses. Here is one example:  The Unmanned Aerial Vehicles Caucus, which has recently changed its name to the Unmanned Systems Caucus. Thanks to Corey Pein’s WarisBusiness site I was made aware of this scandalous caucus:

The motivation for members to join the UAV Caucus (not to be confused with the A/V Club) may be national security or job creation, but the caucus is also where members of Congress directly show their allegiance to an industry that donated generously to their war chests.

How much? In the 2010 election cycle alone, UAV-related political-action committees donate more than $1.7 million to the Caucus’ 42 members.

In February 2009, Rep. Buck McKeon (R-CA), at the time the ranking Republican on House Armed Services, co-founded the UAV Caucus. He began to hold meetings on the future of the military systems and by the end of the year he had launched a website–on House servers–for the caucus, which was ostensibly designed to provide news on UAVs and connect members of Congress with the industry.

…

…caucus has served as the Congressional booster for the Association of Unmanned Vehicle Systems International. The UAVSI “Advocacy” page gives am overview of all the ways its members can maximize that relationship;In addition to whatever legislation and appropriations, caucus support has manifested in the opportunity to give committee testimony, visits from Congressmen, keynote speeches, meetings with legislators on “AUVSI DAY,” roundtables, facility tours, but perhaps most notably, a tech fair sponsored by McKeon’s office at the Rayburn House…

…

We filtered the 200 AUVSI corporate members to only the “Diamond” and “Platinum” members, then further narrowed the list to only those with corporate PACs. A stark picture emerged: Altogether, these PACs accounted for $1,788,800 in contributions in the 2010 to the members of the caucus. This figure doesn’t include members who weren’t reelected, such as AUV Caucus co-founder Rep. Allan Mollahan (D-WV), who was defeated in last year’s Democratic primary. Two of the newest members of the caucus—Rick Berg (R-ND) and Vicky Hartzler (R-MO)—received nothing from these PACs, probably because their incumbent opponents were the defense industry’s favorites.

…

You can read the rest of Pein’s revelatory piece here, but I think you all get the point on ‘eyebrow-raising’ caucuses. I guess it wasn’t a really long leap from the Unmanned Aerial Vehicles Caucus to the Bipartisan Caucus for Prozac!

The expected chairman of the upcoming caucus who would neither deny nor confirm the formation of the Caucus for Prozac had the following to say (of course on the condition of anonymity):

“Listen, I’ve always taken pride in being a constitutionalist, and the formation of this caucus is further proof…Somewhere in the Constitution it says people should pursue happiness and their government should help them go get it. See? This is exactly what this caucus is about: help and encourage people to get happiness!”

The congressman may have been a bit under the ‘happiness pill’ influence. He must have meant the Declaration of Independence; not the ‘Constitution,’ and, the passage he must have been thinking of was probably this:  ‘All men are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. — that to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men…’Oh well, at least they are taking the pill they are anxious to sell others.

The expected co-chairman from the opposite party also commented off the record:

“As a nation we are losing our edge, our competitiveness, in so many areas; manufacturing, R & D, services…even in the Global Happiness Index!! We are America. We must be number one. It is time to declare war on unhappiness! With this caucus we are doing just that: declaring war on unhappiness, and getting competitive on the happiness front. If unhappiness is the enemy, this pill is the weapon to kill it…to quash the damn thing. With this caucus we’ll get Americans to swallow this pill… swallow it big time, and in no time they will rank number one again…at least in the happiness department…”

The expected cochairman was talking about the annual World Happiness Index report on countries. Judging from his hawkish tone and aggressive language, he was either not taking the pill, or, exhibiting one of the known adverse reactions to it. The follow up call to check on this was not returned.

With the new trend taking hold in the formation of congressional caucuses, some refer to them as neo-caucuses, other members are frantically working to stake out new territories and mark their turf. There are many empty caucus spots to grab: The Caucus for McDonalds, The Caucus for the F-35, The Caucus for JP Morgan, The Caucus for Pepsi Cola …So many caucuses to form, so little time!

Click here for our previous satirical pieces under Boiling Frogs Beltway Buzz.

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Corey Pein recounts the creation of the recently launched groundbreaking site warisbusiness.com, a nonpartisan site covering military contracting, the global arms trade and the lobby, and how he began the project with two assumptions: The first- a lot of people are making money from war, while enjoying the comforts of anonymity (such people were once plainly called profiteers), and the second: Privatizing war inevitably prolongs it, creating what economists call a “perverse incentive.” Mr. Pein discusses the bought out generals and the militarization of the economy, and the latest on the ‘Rent-A-Generals’ exposé. He talks about scandals such as Mina Corp and the subsequent cover up, US Embassies as marketing arms of military corporations, the win-win outcome of elections for the Pentagon contractors and arms makers, Wikileaks, and more!

Corey Pein is an award-winning investigative reporter and long-form narrative journalist who writes about the military industrial complex, money, politics and violence from London, UK. Previously, he has lived in New Mexico, Oregon, Georgia and in Southeast Asia. His latest project is warisbusiness.com, a startup news site covering military contracting and the global arms trade. Mr. Pein has worked on staff at Columbia Journalism Review, Willamette Week, the Santa Fe Reporter and IHT ThaiDay, and contributed to Salon, Slate, The American Prospect, and CounterPunch, among others.

Here is our guest Corey Pein unplugged!

Note- Boiling Frogs selects warisbusiness.com as the best website of 2010!

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We all know the relevance and importance of a solid and sound background check when it comes to our elected and appointed officials and commissioners. Of course we all want to know about that big ‘conflict of interest’ factor. Okay, not all of us, especially not our MSM stenographers, but a few independent researchers and journalists here and there, and the rest of us among the ‘active and inquiring’ crowd. So let’s call this ‘chasing the chicken’ for now.’ Are you with me so far? Just hang in there and you’ll find out what I’m talking about, or at least I hope you will

Equally or even more significant is the need to follow up into post facto profiteering and connections of those assigned or elected for particular official posts. As in business, there is more than one method of payment and reimbursement for public figures serving interests other than the public, and in some cases interests totally in conflict with those of the public. Think of Former Speaker of the House, Dennis Hastert, and his post official position as a registered foreign agent for Turkey and his $35,000 a month payment. Or think about Former Defense Secretary, William Cohen, who went from heavily in debt and with negative net worth to multi millionaire in less than two years after leaving his public post. Unfortunately even fewer people, reporters and researchers, bother to cover and report on these important cases. Now, let’s call this ‘chasing the egg’ for the sake of what’s coming next.

Fortunately one independent reporter researched and reported on one such case, call it ‘chased the egg,’ on one of the 9/11 Commissioners, a Former Representative, Mr. Lee Hamilton, which I happened to come across yesterday. It was truly interesting to see how many ‘honorary’ positions Mr. Hamilton has been given, handed, by our government alone, just check out a few here:

-Co-chair of the Department of Energy Blue Ribbon Commission on America’s Nuclear Future with Brent Scowcroft

-Serves on the President’s Intelligence Advisory Board & the FBI Director’s Advisory Board,

-Serves on the US Department of Homeland Security Task Force

- Serves on the CIA External Advisory Board

The White House, the CIA, and the FBI must have been extremely well-served by Hamilton’s performance as the commissioner to grant him this many prestigious quasi positions. No? For me, the most interesting aspect which was covered by CounterCurrents.Org had to do with Hamilton’s position with and current salary from the Woodrow Wilson Center, and his questionable corporate ties, particularly with BAE Systems, the main sponsor of his forthcoming gala dinner. Here are a few excerpts:

Back in May, I was unaware that WWC President Lee Hamilton is a board member of one of the Center’s top corporate donors, BAE Systems Inc. That’s the American division of the largest weapons and defense firm in the world, BAE Systems plc, based in the U.K., with annual sales exceeding $36 billion.

Lee Hamilton’s 34 years as Congressman (D-IN) and his service on the CIA External Advisory Board, FBI Director’s Advisory Board, 9/11 Commission, and elsewhere are cited in his biography on the WWC website.

Nowhere, however, does the WWC mention his simultaneous service to corporate America. Hamilton — whose WWC salary exceeds $410,000 and who qualifies for a hefty Congressional pension — is a member of the boards of not only BAE Systems Inc. (since 2004), but also Carbon Motors (since 2008), and the Albright Stonebridge Group (since 2006).

…

Hold on, it’s getting much worse, and I’m adding my own emphasis to the excerpts:

The latter is a DC-based “global strategy firm” headed by former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright (co-chaired the so-called “ Genocide Prevention Task Force” with former Defense Secretary William Cohen, whose firm represents Turkish businesses; they both refuse to acknowledge the Armenian genocide) and National Security Advisor Sandy Berger (pled guilty to stealing classified documents needed by the 9/11 Commission).

…

Even aside from Hamilton’s corporate connections, can the WWC serve as a “neutral forum” for, and objectively analyze, the issues facing the American people when companies with mercenary agendas – overseas business interests, deals with sordid foreign governments, genocide denial, Federal contracts, and more – are helping to foot WWC’s budget?

BAE, for example, has lobbied against an Armenian genocide resolution in the U.S. Congress and, like several WWC donors, is a member of the American Turkish Council. The ATC is a business group that has shamelessly labored to defeat the Armenian resolution and that FBI whistle-blower Sibel Edmonds has accused of serious wrongdoing.

…

Here is more on BAE as a major criminal entity:

Earlier this year, a U.S. District Court judge slapped BAE with a $400 million criminal fine for its “deception, duplicity and knowing violations of law … on an enormous scale.”

Around the same time, BAE agreed to pay a fine of 30 million BP (about $50 million) to the U.K.

What had the genocide-denying BAE done wrong? Among other things, BAE had bribed Saudi officials, reportedly using slush funds, to buy jet fighters. The BBC says that the bribes were in the hundreds of millions of dollars. There were numerous other allegations of dishonest or unlawful practices by BAE in deals with Romania, South Africa, and Tanzania.

To avoid scrutiny, BAE had made illicit payments through intermediaries and front companies.The U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) said that BAE had “conspired to defraud the U.S. by impairing and impeding its lawful functions, [making] false statements … [and violating] the Arms Export Control Act.”

…

Can we say, all together ooh la la, and after that ‘Sibel, how stupid of you to even bother with testifying before the 9/11 Commission, and telling them all about the FBI’s Turkish criminal targets, The American Turkish Council(ATC), Brent Scowcroft, Marc Grossman, illegal weapon deals…??!!’

Okay, I’d rather be called naïve, futile…but I can see the point and ‘stupid’ certainly deserves its spot. And how about the rest of those witnesses who provided testimony and supporting documents on similar issues and targets to this commission of charlatans in bed with mega charlatans? Now please don’t jump and accuse me of something I don’t deserve, ‘Where have you been? You just woke up to smell the roses on the fraudulent 9/11 Commission?!’ No. I was one of the first to go on record with this fraudulent entity and the junk they put out there. And as we all know, Hamilton is not the only one. There are tons on the rest.

Now back to the article, where the official marriage between the BAEs -Hamiltons of our infested nation and those in highest offices come out of their hiding places:

On October 5, “a Gala will be held to celebrate the last decade at The Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, and to honor Lee H. Hamilton.”

BAE Systems has shelled out $250,000 to be the evening’s sole “Presenting Sponsor.” …What does $250,000 buy BAE? President Linda Hudson (she’s also Executive Director of the parent BAE’s board) gets to be the event’s “Presenting Chair.”$250,000 surely also buys a lot of gratitude from attending dignitaries and WWC’s salaried staff, bureaucrats, and alleged scholars.

BAE is allowed to put a “branded give-away” in the evening’s “guest goodie bag.” The guests may include President Obama and the First Lady, the event’s “Honorary Chairs.” Obama and Hamilton are good friends. Hamilton even held a private dinner at the WWC with the president-elect and their staffs several days before the inauguration.

…

Boeing and Chevron have also paid $50,000 each to be “National Sponsors” of the WWC Gala. Both companies have lobbied, obviously at Turkey’s urging, against the Armenian genocide resolution. Executives of both companies have also received WWC’s “Corporate Citizenship Award.” Coincidentally, Chevron recently acquired a lease to explore for oil in Turkish waters. It obviously pays to play ball with Turkey.

WWC Trustee Ignacio Sanchez, among others, gave $15,000 to be a Gala “Benefactor.” Sanchez just happens to work for DLA Piper, a lobbying firm that is registered with the U.S. government as a foreign agent for Turkey. He “represents national and international clients on a broad range of issues … before Congress.” DLA Piper’s contract states specifically that “services shall include … preventing the introduction, debate and passage of legislation and other U.S. government action that harms Turkey’s interests and image.”

…

Instead of me quoting the entire article here is the link for you to go and read the entire piece yourself. But please don’t stop there. When you get a chance, do a search of your own on ATC and its Current Chairman Richard Armitage, its former Chairman Scowcroft, DLA Piper, Marc Grossman…That is if you are interested in the root causes of our nation’s severe infestation.

As for the chicken or the egg point: the culprit media failed our nation royally by not truly reporting on the real backgrounds of these so-called appointed commission members, and this despite the scandalous appointment of the commission’s initial chairman candidate, Henry Kissinger. And today, with all this exposed and well-known background information, the media still continues to provide a platform for these ex-commissioners such as Hamilton as revered experts with licenses for fear mongering geared to benefit the corporations who pay their six figure salaries and the government intent on expanding further its already vast powers. Meanwhile, you and I are stuck with all these infested chickens and rotten eggs, and expected not to know which one comes first.

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Not much in terms of site updates on this week’s Boiling Frogs Round Up. If you haven’t listened to our interview with Pepe Escobar, please do; click here.

Last week I failed to bring to your attention an interesting and noteworthy interview:

Peter B Collins interviewed David Krikorian, challenger to GOP Rep. Jean Schmidt of Ohio, on Schmidt’s efforts to squelch Krikorian’s First Amendment rights and the infamous Turkish Lobby’s covert and overt influence of Schmidt’s campaign. Krikorian ran against Mean Jean in 2008 and got 17% of the vote as an independent. After he announced he would challenge her again in 2010 as a Democrat, Schmidt filed legal actions over Krikorian’s sharp criticism of her support from Turkish interests. Schmidt’s lawyer is Bruce Fein, an erstwhile friend of the PBC show for his support of impeachment for Bush and Cheney; Fein is counsel to the Turkish American Legal Defense Fund and an apologist for Turkey’s denial of the Armenian genocide.

This is a very interesting, and informative interview. You can listen to it here at Peter B Collins’ website. I’m looking forward to your feedback on this; many of you know why.

Rep. Ron Paul on the Escalation in Afghanistan

Congressman Ron Paul has written an excellent editorial piece on our war in Afghanistan and President Obama’s escalation plans now in full action. As always he makes his points clearly and sincerely: No beating around the bush, no gobbledygook stuff, and no special interests or agenda to serve.

Dr. Paul hits some of the most important key words and phrases: Perpetual War, seeking out monsters to destroy abroad, Military Industrial Complex, the War Lobby, bypassing the Constitution, nebulous & never-ending conflicts, domestic liberties, nation-building, war-racketeers…Here are a couple of excerpts:

If anyone still doubted that this administration’s foreign policy would bring any kind of change, this week’s debate on Afghanistan should remove all doubt. The president’s stated justifications for sending more troops to Afghanistan and escalating the war amount to little more than recycling all the false reasons we began the conflict. It is so discouraging to see this coming from our new leadership, when the people were hoping for peace. New polls show that 49 percent of the people favor minding our own business on the world stage, up from 30 percent in 2002. Perpetual war is not solving anything. Indeed continually seeking out monsters to destroy abroad only threatens our security here at home as international resentment against us builds. The people understand this and are becoming increasingly frustrated at not being heard by the decision-makers. The leaders say some things the people want to hear, but change never comes.

We now find ourselves in another foreign policy quagmire with little hope of victory, and not even a definition of victory. Eisenhower said that only an alert and informed electorate could keep these war racketeering pressures at bay. He was right, and the key is for the people to ensure that their elected leaders follow the Constitution. The Constitution requires a declaration of war by Congress in order to legitimately go to war. Bypassing this critical step makes it far too easy to waste resources on nebulous and never-ending conflicts. Without clear goals, the conflicts last forever and drain the country of blood and treasure. The drafters of the Constitution gave Congress the power to declare war precisely because they feared allowing the executive unfettered discretion in military affairs. They understood that making it easy for leaders to wage foreign wars would threaten domestic liberties.

I don’t know about you but I for one always seem to find myself agreeing with Dr. Paul’s view on our foreign policy and the destructiveness of the long-in-power war party. You can read the brief but effective piece here. What do you think?
 

President Obama: Staunch Supporter of our Domestic Enemies?

It certainly appears that way. He’s been vehemently supporting the Patriot Act and its architects & defenders; he’s been relentlessly protecting the previous administrations’ wrongdoers and culprits involved in rendition and torture…And now this: White House wants suit against Yoo dismissed

The Obama administration has asked an appeals court to dismiss a lawsuit accusing former Bush administration attorney John Yoo of authorizing the torture of a terrorism suspect, saying federal law does not allow damage claims against lawyers who advise the president on national security issues.
…

Yoo, a UC Berkeley law professor, worked for the Justice Department from 2001 to 2003. He was the author of a 2002 memo that said rough treatment of captives amounts to torture only if it causes the same level of pain as “organ failure, impairment of bodily function or even death.” The memo also said the president may have the power to authorize torture of enemy combatants.

We’ve been writing and talking about many cases, issues, and points where Obama has been supporting, defending, and continuing the Bush administration’s practices and abuses. Now can we think of any cases, examples, or issues where he, Obama, has actually been opposing or challenging the previous administration’s decisions, policies, or practices? In the Human Rights area? Our civil liberties? War(s)? I didn’t think so either…

The Revolving Doors Keeps Revolving

The revolving door phenomenon has always ranked high among my list of core issues at the heart of diseases that have been inflicted on and metastasized in our nation. A while ago I wrote a piece on this issue titled: The Auctioning of Former Statesmen & Dime a Dozen Generals . Well, here is a recent relevant article on this same disease:

The Army used a loophole in federal ethics law to award lucrative contracts to two recently retired generals, departing from its standard practice for hiring senior advisers, according to public records and interviews.

During the past two years, the Army wanted to bring back two former generals, John Vines and Dan McNeill, to advise commanders as part of its “senior mentor” program. But the service’s program is run by a defense contractor, Northrop Grumman, and federal ethics law prohibits newly retired senior employees from representing a company before their former agency for one year.

That “cooling off” period is designed to prohibit “acts by former government employees which may reasonably give the appearance of making unfair use of prior government employment,” according to ethics regulations. The Army found a way around the rule. Instead of hiring them as defense company subcontractors, as it does for roughly two dozen other Army mentors, the service contracted directly with McNeill and Vines. McNeill received his contract after the Army wrote specific bid solicitations that applied to him and perhaps a few other retired generals. Vines received contracts without competition, records show.

All told, the Army paid McNeill $281,625 from December 2008 through August 2009, federal records show. McNeill told USA Today he also consults for defense firms but declined to name them. He isn’t required to tell the Army about them, either.

Anyway; here is the link to the rest of this Army Times article.

Down the Police State Lane

On Monday I’ll be posting my belated Part IV of The Makings of a Police State series. Meanwhile, here is another item, an additional ingredient, to be added to our boiling pot: Homeland Security Embarks on Big Brother Programs to Read Our Minds and Emotions:

This past February, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) awarded a one-year, $2.6 million grant to the Cambridge, MA.-based Charles Stark Draper Laboratory to develop computerized sensors capable of detecting a person’s level of “malintent” — or intention to do harm. It’s only the most recent of numerous contracts awarded to Draper and assorted research outfits by the U.S. government over the past few years under the auspices of a project called “Future Attribute Screening Technologies,” or FAST. It’s the next wave of behavior surveillance from DHS and taxpayers have paid some $20 million on it so far.

Conceived as a cutting-edge counter-terrorism tool, the FAST program will ostensibly detect subjects’ bad intentions by monitoring their physiological characteristics, particularly those associated with fear and anxiety. It’s part of a broader “initiative to develop innovative, non-invasive technologies to screen people at security checkpoints,” according to DHS.

The “non-invasive” claim might be a bit of a stretch. A DHS report issued last December outlined some of the possible technological features of FAST, which include “a remote cardiovascular and respiratory sensor” to measure “heart rate, heart rate variability, respiration rate, and respiratory sinus arrhythmia,” a “remote eye tracker” that “uses a camera and processing software to track the position and gaze of the eyes (and, in some instances, the entire head),” “thermal cameras that provide detailed information on the changes in the thermal properties of the skin in the face,” and “a high resolution video that allows for highly detailed images of the face and body … and an audio system for analyzing human voice for pitch change.”
…

 
I’ll stop quoting here and urge you to go and read about this mind boggling plan. Once, if, when, it kicks in you may want to think twice before consuming your daily triple shot lattes before your departures. Ladies, you may want to plan departure dates based on your monthly cycle, since some of us know how our body temperature and blood pressure tend to fluctuate crazily during certain times of the month; those of you going through pre-menopause or menopause, you may want to consider not flying all together… I mean come on people; is this for real??!!

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Now it is official. Former U.S. Secretary of State Richard Armitage is on his way to take over the Chairmanship of the American Turkish Council from Brent Scowcroft.

Richard Perle and Douglas Feith were the first Neocon operatives to officially become lobbyists for Turkish ‘special’ interests in the US in 1989. They set up their lobby firm, International Advisors, Inc. (IAI) and formally registered as foreign agents for the government of Turkey, while still connected to the Pentagon. Since 1989 other major-league politicians and bureaucrats have joined the list, including Former Speaker of the House, Dennis Hastert, and Deputy Secretary of State, Marc Grossman.
 

Here are a few excerpts from the brief article on this official announcement, which interestingly took place on October 30, over a week ago, but was completely censored, blacked out, by the media.

ATC Board of Directors announced with a statement Thursday that it elected Ambassador Armitage to succeed Scowcroft –who served for 9 years as chairman– on January 1, 2010.

The American-Turkish Council thanked General Scowcroft for his personal commitment to a strong U.S.-Turkey relationship and particularly for his highly successful leadership of the ATC.

ATC said it was looking forward to working with Armitage to strengthen the business, defense, trade and investment, foreign policy and cultural relations between the United States and Turkey.

Scowcroft and Ambassador Armitage will travel to Turkey November 16-20 for senior-level discussions with Turkey’s government, military and business leadership.

We will have more on this and relevant points soon. Please stay tuned, but meanwhile disseminate this – let it be known. As you can see, the mainstream media and the lobby-influenced & managed pseudo alternative counterparts don’t want you to notice these things

Shielding our Multi-Daddy Statesmen & Generals

Some of you may be familiar with my past interviews, comments, or writings on the issue of ‘revolving doors.’ I started this blog by emphasizing the importance of separating ‘main causes’ from the multiple ‘symptoms’ we’ve been suffering from. Well, I consider the chronic revolving doors phenomena as one of those main causes leading to many of the ailments we suffer from today.

In November 2006 I wrote a two part series on this issue: ‘The Highjacking of a Nation. ‘In Part Two, ‘The Auctioning of Former Statesman & Dime a Dozen Generals’, I provided a few examples of how certain former statesmen and generals cash in on their connections and peddle their influence to the highest bidders turned clients. One of these cases involved General Joseph Ralston. He is the Vice Chairman of The Cohen Group. He serves on the board of Lockheed Martin, which paid the Cohen Group $550,000 in 2005, according to a Lockheed filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Mr. Ralston is also a member of the 2006 Advisory Board of the American Turkish Council (ATC), and one of Turkey’s top advocates and lobbyists.

In late summer of 2006, while serving as the Vice Chairman for the Cohen Group, while serving on Lockheed Martin’s Board, while sitting on the Advisory Board of the Turkish Lobby Group, ATC and lobbying for Turkey, this ‘Dime a Dozen’ General, was appointed to be US Special Envoy for Countering the Kurdistan Workers Party conflict with Turkey. Here is an excerpt from my piece:

“Our government sent this man, Ralston, as a special envoy to help resolve the highly critical Northern Iraq situation with possible dire consequences in the near future. Considering Ralston’s livelihood and his loyalties, as a member of the board of the directors of Lockheed Martin, as the vice chairman of a lobbying firm with foreign interests, as an advisor and board member for the most powerful Turkish Lobby group, ATC, who did this man represent while in Turkey as the special envoy? What interests did he really represent; Iraq’s situation, Lockheed’s livelihood, which depends on further conflicts and bloodshed; the corrupt and criminal government of Turkey and its representation via ATC; or, the furthering of the Cohen Group’s future pimping opportunities?”

Why am I revisiting Ralston and this major case of conflict of interest now? It is because I intend to re-illustrate it within the framework and as an example in the discussion we’ve been having on ‘Dissecting the MSM.’

While the implications of Ralston’s appointment caused a major stir within the Kurdish community and organizations, pointing to Ralston’s position with the Turkish lobby in the US, and within Turkey’s own communities and pointing to Ralston’s position with Lockheed Martin, our own media and watchdog organizations let this gargantuan conflict of interest pass under the radar.

Also from ‘Hijacking of a Nation: Part Two’

“Why in the world did no one within the U.S. mainstream media give even the slightest coverage of this conflict of interest? Why haven’t we heard anyone asking Ralston the most important question, in dire need of an answer: ‘Who’s your daddy Ralston; boy?’ Ralston’s position is no different than what is defined in the Oxford English Dictionary as: “A person conceived and born out of wedlock.” With the possibility of any one of four daddies, and without the benefit of a DNA test, how do we go about determining Ralston’s real daddy?”

Ken Silverstein of Harper Magazine wrote a piece on this in November of 2006, titled ‘Lost in the Valley of the Wolves’. He touched the most important aspects of this case:

“…But it appears that Ralston is representing the interests of the shareholders of Lockheed Martin rather than the interests of the American people.”

“Then came the mid-September announcement (just weeks after Ralston’s appointment) that Turkeywould be purchasing thirty new F-16′s from Lockheed Martin. Weeks later, the Turkish government ruled out purchasing any Eurofighter Typhoon warplanes. This leaves only one option—Lockheed Martin’s new F-35 Joint Strike Fighter. A deal between Lockheed and Turkey would be worth as much as $10 billion.”

… and he asked the ‘real question’ any MSM reporter with even a half of a brain should have asked:

“Did Special Envoy Ralston lobby on behalf of Lockheed Martin during his encounters with Turkish officials? It seems likely. Ralston sits on the Board of Directorsof Lockheed Martin and serves as vice chairman of The Cohen Group, a lobbying firm that has represented Lockheed since 2004. On August 11 of this year, seventeen days before he was named Special Envoy, Ralston was appointed to The Cohen Group team that lobbies for Lockheed.”

…and he emphasized the unmentionable as far as the US MSM is concerned, the Turkish Lobby:

“As Kurdish activist and blogger Mizgin Yilmaz has explained in detail , Ralston has close ties to Turkey through his military service and through his seat on the advisory board of the American Turkish Council. Lockheed Martin is a leading member and financial sponsor of this council, which “is dedicated to effectively strengthening U.S.-Turkish relations through the promotion of commercial, defense, technology and cultural relations.””

…and he concluded it with a punch absent in the work (stenography) of all other MSM players:

“It’s hard to understand how the Bush Administration could appoint a special envoy with so many conflicts of interest, but Lockheed’s corporate slogan says it all: “We never forget who we’re working for.” Neither, it seems, does General Ralston.”

Aside from Harper’s Silverstein, one other publication, the Boston Globe, did an excellent hard-hitting report on this. Kevin McKiernan begins the piece with a great punch line:

“MOST PEOPLE would agree that it’s bad ethics for government officials to invest in companies that they regulate. But what about a US special envoy to a Middle East trouble spot who happens to be a director of an arms company selling weapons to one of the parties in the conflict?”

Here is more from McKiernan’s report:

“The problem is that General Ralston is on the board of Lockheed Martin, the world’s largest arms maker, which just last month finalized a $2.9 billion sale for advanced F-16 fighters that may well be used in the Kurdish region (the State Department acknowledges that F-16 s were involved in human rights abuses in Turkey in the 1990s). This gives the ex-general the appearance of holding a financial interest in his shuttle diplomacy.”

“General Ralston is on the board of the American Turkish Council, the powerful Capitol Hill lobby, and he is vice chairman of the Cohen Group, a corporation founded by former Secretary of Defense William Cohen, with close ties to the Turkish military. Unfortunately, Ralston carries too much baggage to be special envoy, and he should step down before he alienates the Kurds of Iraq, the best — and perhaps only — friend the US government has in the country.”

And even a punchier finale:

“Our new man in Ankara will be seen as an arms merchant in diplomat’s clothing. He should be replaced.”

Now, here is a list of links to some of the major news coverage involving Ralston’s bastardization of military honor:

McClatchy

CBS News

CNN

New York Times

NPR

Time Magazine

I can go on and list more, but I’m sure you get the picture. They all went with the transcript faxed to them by the State Department like good little stenographers! Didn’t they have access to Ralston’s background, which is listed even in Wikipedia and his employer’s, Cohen Group, website? Surely they did! Weren’t they given reports and tips by those who’ve been acting as watchdogs on this case? Surely they were!

Here is a statement from ‘Mizgin’ who not only followed the case from the beginning as it was unfolding, but took it upon herself to contact these MSM reporters, supplying them with all the background on Four-Daddy General Ralston, and underlining all the issues of ‘conflicts of interests’:

At the end of September 2006, a friend in the UK who writes the Hevallo blog had sent me a link to an article in the Dallas-Fort Worth Star Telegram on the sale of F-16s to Turkey. At the same time, Turkey was considering a purchase of the new Lockheed Martin F-35 but was not scheduled to make a decision on this purchase until the end of 2006. This news came almost one month after former NATO Supreme Allied Commander Europe Joseph Ralston was named by the State Department as the “special envoy” to “coordinate” the PKK for Turkey.

Since the PKK was preparing to declare a 1 October 2006 unilateral ceasefire, and since I was working on an English translation of Ocalan’s statement regarding the ceasefire, I didn’t have time to immediately investigate the F-16 story and the connection to Ralston. However, by 1 October, I had completed some initial investigation and noted the conflict of interest that Ralston’s appointment created.

In researching Ralston’s background, I found that he was working for The Cohen Group, a lobbying firm founded by former Defense Secretary William Cohen, and that Ralston was one of two vice-chairmen for The Cohen Group. The other was Marc Grossman. I had come across a Washington Post article from May 2006 on Cohen and his firm which was written by David Hilzenrath. The article described the revolving-door syndrome between government and private business. In writing the article, I thought Hilzenrath would have the background to see that there was an obvious conflict of interest with Ralston’s appointment and his connection to a private company that was listed with the US Senate, in accordance with the Lobbying Disclosure Act of 1995, as a lobbyist hired to sell Lockheed Martin tactical fighter aircraft. In fact, Ralston was listed as a lobbyist with the Senate for this very purpose at least as late as 31 July 2006.

I contacted Hilzenrath with the information I had managed to search out within a couple of days and suggested that he write something about the appointment since he had written about the people involved with The Cohen Group. He was interested initially and asked for a phone number where he could contact me. I gave him a “throw-away” number where he could reach me, but never heard from him again.

In the meantime and out of frustration with trying to get the mainstream media interested in an appointment that was obviously very wrong, I wrote an article myself with was first published on KurdishInfo and then on KurdishMedia. Hevallo managed to get the article published in the UK’s Socialist Worker. A friend from Diyarbakir translated the article into Turkish and I sent it to Ozgur Gundem, where it was published. I also posted the Turkish version on Istanbul Indymedia. Another friend persuaded the Kurdish National Congress of North America to call for Ralston’s resignation as “special envoy.”

Before the end of October 2006, Ralston had secured Turkey’s purchase of F-35 aircraft for $10 billion and the official announcement of the purchase came in December 2006. This meant that within a matter of a few weeks, Ralston had squeezed some $13 billion out of the Turkish Defense Ministry.

From the UK, Hevallo had contacted a reporter for the LA Times, Kim Murphy, after she wrote a piece on Ralston and the Kurdish situation while she had been in Iraq. This also looked promising as Murphy appeared interested initially. Hevallo sent her the information that we had collected on Ralston and the Lockheed deals with Turkey and she was going to present the information to her editor in Washington DC. From that point on the information was buried and we heard nothing else from Murphy or the LA Times.

Did the reporters themselves make the decision to sit on the information about this conflict of interest or did they, honestly, pass it to their editors, who made the final decisions? I don’t know. I guess it really doesn’t matter because our experience proves that somewhere along the line, someone in the mainstream media is going to sit on this kind of information to keep it from the public.

Considering that most of Turkey’s purchases of military hardware during the Clinton administration were subsidized by up to 80% by the US taxpayer, Americans themselves should have an interest in what happens when retired generals-turned lobbyists are appointed to handle situations that deal in matters of life and death.

There were those whom we contacted who did take up the pen to write about the Ralston problem and I am grateful to them for their help. Among those were Ken Silverstein at Harper’s; Kevin McKiernan, a longtime advocate for the Kurdish people, writing in the Boston Globe; Chris Deliso, who included information about Lockheed Martin’s public relations firm, Public Strategies, Inc., who took a great interest in the things I was writing about Ralston and Lockheed–hence the need for “throw-away” phone numbers when you have to deal with these bloodsuckers; and Luke Ryland, who managed to link the Ralston conflict of interest with the Sibel Edmonds case. For all of these, I have nothing but praise and the greatest thanks

So what did they do instead? They all went by the transcript faxed and or e-mailed to them by the State Department like good little stenographers! That’s exactly what they did, and that’s exactly what they’ve been doing when it comes to shielding our multi-daddy Statesmen & Generals.

Is Ralston an isolated case? Of course not! There is an extensive list of these multi-daddy ex government officials who double or maybe even triple dip. Here, check out a few of these dime-a-dozen public servants turned foreign lobbyists:

Former Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert: Here, here, and here.

Former Undersecretary of State & Ambassador to Turkey Marc Grossman: Here, here, and here.

Retired General Brent Scowcroft: Here, here, here, and here.