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Octafish
Octafish's Journal
Octafish's Journal
November 14, 2014
By Richard B. Schmitt
Los Angeles Times Staff Writer
August 25, 2008
WASHINGTON — Long before the mortgage crisis began rocking Main Street and Wall Street, a top FBI official made a chilling, if little-noticed, prediction: The booming mortgage business, fueled by low interest rates and soaring home values, was starting to attract shady operators and billions in losses were possible.
"It has the potential to be an epidemic," Chris Swecker, the FBI official in charge of criminal investigations, told reporters in September 2004. But, he added reassuringly, the FBI was on the case. "We think we can prevent a problem that could have as much impact as the S&L crisis," he said.
Today, the damage from the global mortgage meltdown has more than matched that of the savings-and-loan bailouts of the 1980s and early 1990s. By some estimates, it has made that costly debacle look like chump change. But it's also clear that the FBI failed to avert a problem it had accurately forecast.
Banks and brokerages have written down more than $300 billion of mortgage-backed securities and other risky investments in the last year or so as homeowner defaults leaped and weakness in the real estate market spread.
SNIP…
Most observers have declared the mess a gross failure of regulation. To be sure, in the run-up to the crisis, market-oriented federal regulators bragged about their hands-off treatment of banks and other savings institutions and their executives. But it wasn't just regulators who were looking the other way. The FBI and its parent agency, the Justice Department, are supposed to act as the cops on the beat for potentially illegal activities by bankers and others. But they were focused on national security and other priorities, and paid scant attention to white-collar crimes that may have contributed to the lending and securities debacle.
Now that the problems are out in the open, the government's response strikes some veteran regulators as too little, too late.
Swecker, who retired from the FBI in 2006, declined to comment for this article.
But sources familiar with the FBI budget process, who were not authorized to speak publicly about the growing fraud problem, say that he and other FBI criminal investigators sought additional assistance to take on the mortgage scoundrels.
They ended up with fewer resources, rather than more.
CONTINUED…
http://articles.latimes.com/2008/aug/25/business/fi-mortgagefraud25
FBI saw threat of mortgage crisis -- in 2004!
A top official warned of widening loan fraud in 2004, but the agency focused its resources elsewhere.By Richard B. Schmitt
Los Angeles Times Staff Writer
August 25, 2008
WASHINGTON — Long before the mortgage crisis began rocking Main Street and Wall Street, a top FBI official made a chilling, if little-noticed, prediction: The booming mortgage business, fueled by low interest rates and soaring home values, was starting to attract shady operators and billions in losses were possible.
"It has the potential to be an epidemic," Chris Swecker, the FBI official in charge of criminal investigations, told reporters in September 2004. But, he added reassuringly, the FBI was on the case. "We think we can prevent a problem that could have as much impact as the S&L crisis," he said.
Today, the damage from the global mortgage meltdown has more than matched that of the savings-and-loan bailouts of the 1980s and early 1990s. By some estimates, it has made that costly debacle look like chump change. But it's also clear that the FBI failed to avert a problem it had accurately forecast.
Banks and brokerages have written down more than $300 billion of mortgage-backed securities and other risky investments in the last year or so as homeowner defaults leaped and weakness in the real estate market spread.
SNIP…
Most observers have declared the mess a gross failure of regulation. To be sure, in the run-up to the crisis, market-oriented federal regulators bragged about their hands-off treatment of banks and other savings institutions and their executives. But it wasn't just regulators who were looking the other way. The FBI and its parent agency, the Justice Department, are supposed to act as the cops on the beat for potentially illegal activities by bankers and others. But they were focused on national security and other priorities, and paid scant attention to white-collar crimes that may have contributed to the lending and securities debacle.
Now that the problems are out in the open, the government's response strikes some veteran regulators as too little, too late.
Swecker, who retired from the FBI in 2006, declined to comment for this article.
But sources familiar with the FBI budget process, who were not authorized to speak publicly about the growing fraud problem, say that he and other FBI criminal investigators sought additional assistance to take on the mortgage scoundrels.
They ended up with fewer resources, rather than more.
CONTINUED…
http://articles.latimes.com/2008/aug/25/business/fi-mortgagefraud25
November 14, 2014
The Incredible Con the Banksters Pulled on the FBI
By William K. Black
Posted on August 16, 2013
EXCERPT...
The FBI was desperate to address the mortgage fraud catastrophe in 2007. The irony was that it was vulnerable to political attack because it had been so right, so early about mortgage fraud. The FBI warned publicly in September 2004 that mortgage fraud had become “epidemic” and predicted that it would cause a financial “crisis” if it were not stopped. By 2007, however, the FBI had assigned only 120 FBI agents nationwide to investigate the epidemic of mortgage fraud that had grown massively since the FBI warnings. As I have explained on many occasions (and will reprise briefly in my fourth column in this series) that pittance of agents was assigned to relatively minor mortgage frauds because, as I describe below, the (Mortgage Bankers Association) conned the FBI into defining out of existence the control frauds. With no assistance from the banking regulators, and an industry collapsing in an orgy of mortgage fraud that the FBI had warned about but could not understand or effectively stop given the death of criminal referrals by the financial regulators an overwhelmed FBI turned for industry expertise to the MBA. It was a disastrous choice – and the FBI has refused to end the partnership with the perps.
SNIP...
Given the fact that the CEOs of large fraudulent lenders are criminally liable for tens or even hundreds of thousands of acts of mortgage fraud we should be seeing our prisons overrun with elite white-collar criminals. Instead, the DOJ has no convictions of the elite bankers who led the control frauds that caused the crisis.
CONTINUED...
http://neweconomicperspectives.org/2013/08/the-incredible-con-the-banksters-pulled-on-the-fbi.html
November 13, 2014
Zero Prosecutions Aren’t Few Enough – Wall Street Wants SEC Sanctions Reduced to DMV Points
By William K. Black
Kilkenny, Ireland: November 8, 2014
Wall Street’s full depravity was put on display in Joseph Fichera’s November 6, 2014 op ed in the New York Times. I hasten to add that the reason that the op ed is so revealing is that Fichera is one of the sometimes good guys who, for example, accurately warned that “auction-rate securities” were a dangerous scam and criticized JPMorgan’s odious abuse of Denver. When the Ficheras of the world join in Wall Street’s “race to the bottom” Federal Reserve Bank of New York’s President Dudley’s point about the corrupt culture that characterizes Wall Street is proven irrefutably.
Let’s begin by reviewing the bidding. We have just suffered through the third economic crisis driven by epidemics of control fraud. In two of the crises the financial industry led the fraud epidemics. In the Enron-era fraud epidemic they eagerly aided and abetted Enron’s frauds. In the current crisis we know that U.S. government investigators have found that 16 of the largest banks in the world conspired to falsify Libor, which is used to price $350 trillion in assets. This is the largest cartel in world history by at least three orders of magnitude. Note that all 16 of the banks that participate in creating Libor falsified their statements for the express purpose of falsifying the Libor “fix.” There were no honest banks and there is no reason to believe that if 25 banks participated in setting Libor the results would have differed. The conspirators are not known to have blackballed any bank from participating in “fixing” Libor because of fears that the blackballed bank was led by an honest CEO who would expose and end the conspiracy.
Government investigators have found that over 20 of the largest banks defrauded Fannie and Freddie by selling them vast amount of toxic mortgages through fraudulent “reps and warranties.” Government investigators have found that over 20 of the largest banks defrauded a series of credit unions by selling them toxic mortgages and toxic mortgage derivatives through fraudulent reps and warranties. Government investigators have found other wide ranging frauds by the large banks to (1) rig bids for issuing municipal securities, (2) to foreclose on people through fraudulent affidavits, and (3) by conspiring to falsify foreign exchange (FX) rates. In sum, the leaders of the largest banks in the world are overwhelmingly leading criminal enterprises that commit financial frauds of unprecedented scope and damage. The resulting financial crisis caused by the three most destructive fraud epidemics in history caused over a $21 trillion loss in U.S. GDP and the loss of over 10 million American jobs. Each of those figures is much larger in Europe.
Worse, no senior banker who led the three fraud epidemics has been prosecuted in the U.S. for those crimes. Virtually no senior bankers who led the three fraud epidemics has even been the subject of a civil suit by the U.S. Virtually no senior banker in the U.S. has had his fraud proceeds “clawed back” by the government or the bank. The senior bankers were made wealthy through the “sure thing” of accounting control fraud – with nearly perfect impunity from the criminal and civil law.
This is the setting in which Fichera writes. As a sometimes good guy, one would expect his column to call for the Department of Justice (DOJ) and the SEC to end this impunity and immediately act vigorously to hold the senior bankers personally accountable for leading the frauds that blew up the global economy. Instead, Fichera wrote to urge (1) that the largest banks be treated as “too big to jail,” (2) to decry the “tendency to vilify all Wall Street firms as unscrupulous,” (3) to urge SEC sanctions to be reduced to the level of “DMV” “points,” and (4) to provide that no matter how egregious the fraud the SEC would have no power to remove a Wall Street firm’s license until it committed “multiple” cases of the equivalent of deliberate homicide in which each case could involve deliberately running over millions of investors. Under Fichera’s plan, every dog would get at least one bite – of every investor – which would mean hundreds of thousands of bites. Fichera wants banks to be – officially – entitled to commit securities fraud without effective sanction from the SEC.
CONTINUED...
http://neweconomicperspectives.org/2014/11/zero-prosecutions-arent-enough-wall-street-wants-sec-sanctions-reduced-dmv-points.html#more-8811
Gee. Dr. Black makes some important observations that should be at the front of everyone's mind wondering about justice, let alone how to pay for their kids' college.
BANKSTERS Get the Money and NEVER Go to Jail.
"Hi, DU! I was Willie Sutton. When people asked me, 'Why do you rob banks?' I said, 'Because that's where the money is!' I had no idea I should have gotten into management. Perhaps, after doing my time in Purgatory or the Hot Other Place I can one day be allowed to return topside and really get to work at what I love, get in from the ground floor, so to speak, as a Bankster. They know where the Big Money is. And, like I told the black-horned Cruise Director feller, I really want to do 'God's work,' too."
OK, DU. That quote, I, Octafish, made up. Here's the guy who really wrote the book on the Banksters in "The Best Way to Rob a Bank Is to Own One," William K. Black, who reports that Banksters today want more of a traffic ticket approach to that which Black terms "Control Fraud," corrupt executives looting the banks for their own uses:
Zero Prosecutions Aren’t Few Enough – Wall Street Wants SEC Sanctions Reduced to DMV Points
By William K. Black
Kilkenny, Ireland: November 8, 2014
Wall Street’s full depravity was put on display in Joseph Fichera’s November 6, 2014 op ed in the New York Times. I hasten to add that the reason that the op ed is so revealing is that Fichera is one of the sometimes good guys who, for example, accurately warned that “auction-rate securities” were a dangerous scam and criticized JPMorgan’s odious abuse of Denver. When the Ficheras of the world join in Wall Street’s “race to the bottom” Federal Reserve Bank of New York’s President Dudley’s point about the corrupt culture that characterizes Wall Street is proven irrefutably.
Let’s begin by reviewing the bidding. We have just suffered through the third economic crisis driven by epidemics of control fraud. In two of the crises the financial industry led the fraud epidemics. In the Enron-era fraud epidemic they eagerly aided and abetted Enron’s frauds. In the current crisis we know that U.S. government investigators have found that 16 of the largest banks in the world conspired to falsify Libor, which is used to price $350 trillion in assets. This is the largest cartel in world history by at least three orders of magnitude. Note that all 16 of the banks that participate in creating Libor falsified their statements for the express purpose of falsifying the Libor “fix.” There were no honest banks and there is no reason to believe that if 25 banks participated in setting Libor the results would have differed. The conspirators are not known to have blackballed any bank from participating in “fixing” Libor because of fears that the blackballed bank was led by an honest CEO who would expose and end the conspiracy.
Government investigators have found that over 20 of the largest banks defrauded Fannie and Freddie by selling them vast amount of toxic mortgages through fraudulent “reps and warranties.” Government investigators have found that over 20 of the largest banks defrauded a series of credit unions by selling them toxic mortgages and toxic mortgage derivatives through fraudulent reps and warranties. Government investigators have found other wide ranging frauds by the large banks to (1) rig bids for issuing municipal securities, (2) to foreclose on people through fraudulent affidavits, and (3) by conspiring to falsify foreign exchange (FX) rates. In sum, the leaders of the largest banks in the world are overwhelmingly leading criminal enterprises that commit financial frauds of unprecedented scope and damage. The resulting financial crisis caused by the three most destructive fraud epidemics in history caused over a $21 trillion loss in U.S. GDP and the loss of over 10 million American jobs. Each of those figures is much larger in Europe.
Worse, no senior banker who led the three fraud epidemics has been prosecuted in the U.S. for those crimes. Virtually no senior bankers who led the three fraud epidemics has even been the subject of a civil suit by the U.S. Virtually no senior banker in the U.S. has had his fraud proceeds “clawed back” by the government or the bank. The senior bankers were made wealthy through the “sure thing” of accounting control fraud – with nearly perfect impunity from the criminal and civil law.
This is the setting in which Fichera writes. As a sometimes good guy, one would expect his column to call for the Department of Justice (DOJ) and the SEC to end this impunity and immediately act vigorously to hold the senior bankers personally accountable for leading the frauds that blew up the global economy. Instead, Fichera wrote to urge (1) that the largest banks be treated as “too big to jail,” (2) to decry the “tendency to vilify all Wall Street firms as unscrupulous,” (3) to urge SEC sanctions to be reduced to the level of “DMV” “points,” and (4) to provide that no matter how egregious the fraud the SEC would have no power to remove a Wall Street firm’s license until it committed “multiple” cases of the equivalent of deliberate homicide in which each case could involve deliberately running over millions of investors. Under Fichera’s plan, every dog would get at least one bite – of every investor – which would mean hundreds of thousands of bites. Fichera wants banks to be – officially – entitled to commit securities fraud without effective sanction from the SEC.
CONTINUED...
http://neweconomicperspectives.org/2014/11/zero-prosecutions-arent-enough-wall-street-wants-sec-sanctions-reduced-dmv-points.html#more-8811
Gee. Dr. Black makes some important observations that should be at the front of everyone's mind wondering about justice, let alone how to pay for their kids' college.
November 13, 2014
The Democrats' Political Suicide
by Michael Brenner
Huffington Post, November 10, 2014
EXCERPT...
This bizarre tale knows no precedent in American political history. The explanation, though, is readily apparent for those willing to look at the record. The formula did not require anything as exotic as hemlock; rather the more prosaic ingredients were imbibed gradually. The most toxic have been these.
One, alienate your core constituencies. That includes reneging on a pledge to help the trade unions; launch a campaign of vilification against school teachers -- from kindergarten through college; attack civil liberties protections; commit to reductions in Social Security and Medicare; stiff the environmentalists. In short, do to them in a calculated way what a Republican president would do instinctively.
Two, curry favor with your party's traditional enemies: Wall Street, Big Pharma, the Christian Right, the energy and industrial agriculture trusts. That has the dual effect of blunting your message and blurring your image while emboldening the objects of your favors to demand even more.
Three, permit the Republicans in Congress to exploit to the fullest their irresponsible tactics by never denouncing them for what they are or moving to challenge them on their own electoral turf. As a corollary, go along with the coy designation of the Tea Party controlled radical reactionary Republican Party as self-styled "conservatives."
Four, enable the Republicans to shape public discourse by monopolizing the airways and media. Democratic silence, timidity, defensiveness and evasion have given the Republicans the free run of the playing field. On this score, the party's leadership has been abject -- the president above all. Endless visits to daytime TV shows to schmooze about nothing in particular undercut respect for the presidency, neutralize the advantage of the incumbency and motivate the public to tune out or denigrate important messages. Mr. Obama seems oblivious to the obvious truth that most of the country stopped paying attention to what he says years ago.
CONTINUED...
http://www.commondreams.org/views/2014/11/10/democrats-political-suicide
As that also happens to be the kind of political leadership the Republicans offer, I'd prefer someone more close allied to my own political philosophy, the Democratic.
Yes, because good Democratic leadership is what Democrats and the nation need.
Here's why: What we don't need (which is what we've now got):The Democrats' Political Suicide
by Michael Brenner
Huffington Post, November 10, 2014
EXCERPT...
This bizarre tale knows no precedent in American political history. The explanation, though, is readily apparent for those willing to look at the record. The formula did not require anything as exotic as hemlock; rather the more prosaic ingredients were imbibed gradually. The most toxic have been these.
One, alienate your core constituencies. That includes reneging on a pledge to help the trade unions; launch a campaign of vilification against school teachers -- from kindergarten through college; attack civil liberties protections; commit to reductions in Social Security and Medicare; stiff the environmentalists. In short, do to them in a calculated way what a Republican president would do instinctively.
Two, curry favor with your party's traditional enemies: Wall Street, Big Pharma, the Christian Right, the energy and industrial agriculture trusts. That has the dual effect of blunting your message and blurring your image while emboldening the objects of your favors to demand even more.
Three, permit the Republicans in Congress to exploit to the fullest their irresponsible tactics by never denouncing them for what they are or moving to challenge them on their own electoral turf. As a corollary, go along with the coy designation of the Tea Party controlled radical reactionary Republican Party as self-styled "conservatives."
Four, enable the Republicans to shape public discourse by monopolizing the airways and media. Democratic silence, timidity, defensiveness and evasion have given the Republicans the free run of the playing field. On this score, the party's leadership has been abject -- the president above all. Endless visits to daytime TV shows to schmooze about nothing in particular undercut respect for the presidency, neutralize the advantage of the incumbency and motivate the public to tune out or denigrate important messages. Mr. Obama seems oblivious to the obvious truth that most of the country stopped paying attention to what he says years ago.
CONTINUED...
http://www.commondreams.org/views/2014/11/10/democrats-political-suicide
As that also happens to be the kind of political leadership the Republicans offer, I'd prefer someone more close allied to my own political philosophy, the Democratic.
November 13, 2014
By Christopher Simpson
Covert Action Quarterly 58
A paper trail of declassified documents from the Reagan‑Bush era yields valuable information on how counter‑terrorism provided a powerful mechanism for solidifying Bush's power base and launching a broad range of national security initiatives.
During the Reagan years, George Bush used "crisis management" and "counter‑terrorism" as vehicles for running key parts of the clandestine side of the US government.
Bush proved especially adept at plausible denial. Some measure of his skill in avoiding responsibility can be taken from the fact that even after the Iran‑Contra affair blew the Reagan administration apart, Bush went on to become the "foreign policy president," while CIA Director William Casey, by then conveniently dead, took most of the blame for a number of covert foreign policy debacles that Bush had set in motion.
The trail of National Security Decision Directives (NSDDS) left by the Reagan administration begins to tell the story. True, much remains classified, and still more was never committed to paper in the first place. Even so, the main picture is clear: As vice president, George Bush was at the center of secret wars, political murders, and America's convoluted oil politics in the Middle East.
SNIP...
Reagan and the NSC also used NSDDs to settle conflicts among security agencies over bureaucratic turf and lines of command. It is through that prism that we see the first glimmers of Vice President Bush's role in clandestine operations during the 1980s.
SNIP...
NSDD 159. MANAGEMENT OF U.S. COVERT OPERATIONS, (TOP SECRET/VEIL‑SENSITIVE), JAN. 18,1985
The Reagan administration's commitment to significantly expand covert operations had been clear since before the 1980 election. How such operations were actually to be managed from day to day, however, was considerably less certain. The management problem became particularly knotty owing to legal requirements to notify congressional intelligence oversight committees of covert operations, on the one hand, and the tacitly accepted presidential mandate to deceive those same committees concerning sensitive operations such as the Contra war in Nicaragua, on the other.
[font color="red"]The solution attempted in NSDD 159 was to establish a small coordinating committee headed by Vice President George Bush through which all information concerning US covert operations was to be funneled. The order also established a category of top secret information known as Veil, to be used exclusively for managing records pertaining to covert operations.
The system was designed to keep circulation of written records to an absolute minimum while at the same time ensuring that the vice president retained the ability to coordinate US covert operations with the administration's overt diplomacy and propaganda.
Only eight copies of NSDD 159 were created. The existence of the vice president's committee was itself highly classified.[/font color] The directive became public as a result of the criminal prosecutions of Oliver North, John Poindexter, and others involved in the Iran‑Contra affair, hence the designation "Exhibit A" running up the left side of the document.
CONTINUED...
CovertAction Quarterly no 58 Fall 1996 pp31-40.
Poppy Bush, Secret Government Big Shot...
George Bush Takes Charge: The Uses of ‘Counter-Terrorism’By Christopher Simpson
Covert Action Quarterly 58
A paper trail of declassified documents from the Reagan‑Bush era yields valuable information on how counter‑terrorism provided a powerful mechanism for solidifying Bush's power base and launching a broad range of national security initiatives.
During the Reagan years, George Bush used "crisis management" and "counter‑terrorism" as vehicles for running key parts of the clandestine side of the US government.
Bush proved especially adept at plausible denial. Some measure of his skill in avoiding responsibility can be taken from the fact that even after the Iran‑Contra affair blew the Reagan administration apart, Bush went on to become the "foreign policy president," while CIA Director William Casey, by then conveniently dead, took most of the blame for a number of covert foreign policy debacles that Bush had set in motion.
The trail of National Security Decision Directives (NSDDS) left by the Reagan administration begins to tell the story. True, much remains classified, and still more was never committed to paper in the first place. Even so, the main picture is clear: As vice president, George Bush was at the center of secret wars, political murders, and America's convoluted oil politics in the Middle East.
SNIP...
Reagan and the NSC also used NSDDs to settle conflicts among security agencies over bureaucratic turf and lines of command. It is through that prism that we see the first glimmers of Vice President Bush's role in clandestine operations during the 1980s.
SNIP...
NSDD 159. MANAGEMENT OF U.S. COVERT OPERATIONS, (TOP SECRET/VEIL‑SENSITIVE), JAN. 18,1985
The Reagan administration's commitment to significantly expand covert operations had been clear since before the 1980 election. How such operations were actually to be managed from day to day, however, was considerably less certain. The management problem became particularly knotty owing to legal requirements to notify congressional intelligence oversight committees of covert operations, on the one hand, and the tacitly accepted presidential mandate to deceive those same committees concerning sensitive operations such as the Contra war in Nicaragua, on the other.
[font color="red"]The solution attempted in NSDD 159 was to establish a small coordinating committee headed by Vice President George Bush through which all information concerning US covert operations was to be funneled. The order also established a category of top secret information known as Veil, to be used exclusively for managing records pertaining to covert operations.
The system was designed to keep circulation of written records to an absolute minimum while at the same time ensuring that the vice president retained the ability to coordinate US covert operations with the administration's overt diplomacy and propaganda.
Only eight copies of NSDD 159 were created. The existence of the vice president's committee was itself highly classified.[/font color] The directive became public as a result of the criminal prosecutions of Oliver North, John Poindexter, and others involved in the Iran‑Contra affair, hence the designation "Exhibit A" running up the left side of the document.
CONTINUED...
CovertAction Quarterly no 58 Fall 1996 pp31-40.
November 12, 2014
Now they are American Roilillty.
https://archive.org/stream/GeorgeBushTheUnauthorizedBiography/BushUA_djvu.txt
Before them, they were Caligula's spawn in a red Studebaker...
Now they are American Roilillty.
https://archive.org/stream/GeorgeBushTheUnauthorizedBiography/BushUA_djvu.txt
November 12, 2014
That's why we shouldn't waste time waiting for the Messiah or the Second Coming or for Godot. It really is up to us.
If we ALL work together, we may yet crush that rock.
Visualization of Future Universes
That's why we shouldn't waste time waiting for the Messiah or the Second Coming or for Godot. It really is up to us.
If we ALL work together, we may yet crush that rock.
November 12, 2014
From Project Censored 1993:
How many people do you know who know what "Iraq-gate" is?
For DUers and the interested, the late William Safire detailed how: Poppy Bush helped arm Saddam's Iraq
Get it while you can. I've noticed a lot of this history is disappearing from the DU servers and the rest of the Web. Once those of us who know it are gone, do you think Corporate McPravda and LAckademia will cover it for future generations? Going by the past 51 years, I doubt it.
Know your BFEE: Poppy Bush is why there are no Special Prosecutors around when you need one.
From Project Censored 1993:
5. IRAQGATE AND THE SILENT DEATH OF THE WATERGATE LAW
EXCERPT...
As the year 1992 drew to a close, the media seemed unconcerned with the Bush administration's covert, as well as overt, attempts to kill the Iraggate investigation. These also involved the demise of the Watergate Law, which had assured independent investigations of criminal acts by top officials. The law, which provided for appointment of a special prosecutor to investigate top level members of the administration, expired on December 15, 1992.
SOURCE: http://www.ringnebula.com/project-censored/1993/1993-story5.htm
EXCERPT...
As the year 1992 drew to a close, the media seemed unconcerned with the Bush administration's covert, as well as overt, attempts to kill the Iraggate investigation. These also involved the demise of the Watergate Law, which had assured independent investigations of criminal acts by top officials. The law, which provided for appointment of a special prosecutor to investigate top level members of the administration, expired on December 15, 1992.
SOURCE: http://www.ringnebula.com/project-censored/1993/1993-story5.htm
How many people do you know who know what "Iraq-gate" is?
For DUers and the interested, the late William Safire detailed how: Poppy Bush helped arm Saddam's Iraq
Get it while you can. I've noticed a lot of this history is disappearing from the DU servers and the rest of the Web. Once those of us who know it are gone, do you think Corporate McPravda and LAckademia will cover it for future generations? Going by the past 51 years, I doubt it.
November 11, 2014
He wrote a book on the experience:
http://adamsjfk.com/?page_id=30
Why Milteer matters:
Joseph Adams Milteer, the guy Adams was sent to interview, had outlined what would happen in Dallas before it happened. For some reason, Mr. Hoover "let him go."
Then, there's the Hosty note:
FBI Special Agent James HOSTY destroyed evidence: a ''threatening'' note from Oswald.
A couple of weeks before the assassination, Hosty paid a visit to Marina Oswald's residence at the home of Ruth Paine. Hosty was looking for Lee Harvey Oswald, who was not home. Oswald later found out about the visit and stopped by the Dallas FBI office and dropped off a note addressed to Hosty that threatened to "blow up the FBI building" in the words of the secretary who received the note in an unsealed envelope and read it.
Hosty and the FBI never admitted the note's existence until 1975 when the HSCA looked investigated the matter. Hosty said the note was not a threat and, therefore, not material to the case. Investigators believe Dallas SAC Gordon Shanklin ordered the note destroyed on direct orders from FBI Director J Edgar Hoover, a couple of hours after Oswald's own assassination while in police custody.
The note was never mentioned to the Warren Commission.
Destroying evidence is obstruction of justice.
Then, there's the evidence of various threats against President Kennedy that Hoover ignored. Author and former NYT reporter Edwin Black wrote about the Chicago Plot, the same M.O. as Dallas, ambush, high-power rifles, high-rise, and one patsy by the name of Thomas Arthur Vallee, a USMC veteran from a U-2 base in Japan. The plot was broken up by the Secret Service in Chicago. Not that they wanted to, they sort of had to when the local cops got a call from a landlady with the guns, passports, maps and "parade route" in Highlighter still on the bed.
Very important read in PDF:
http://www.thechicagoplot.com/The%20Chicago%20Plot.pdf
Hoover obstructed Justice in regards to the assassination of President Kennedy.
Special Agent Don Adams of the FBI deserved to be seen and heard by billions. The guy was the real deal, a brave agent who stepped forward. Among his assassination-connected work, FBI Special Agent Don Adams interviewed racist Joseph Adams Milteer, a guy an FBI informant had taped detailing a pre-Dallas plot in Miami.
He wrote a book on the experience:
http://adamsjfk.com/?page_id=30
Why Milteer matters:
Joseph Adams Milteer, the guy Adams was sent to interview, had outlined what would happen in Dallas before it happened. For some reason, Mr. Hoover "let him go."
Then, there's the Hosty note:
FBI Special Agent James HOSTY destroyed evidence: a ''threatening'' note from Oswald.
A couple of weeks before the assassination, Hosty paid a visit to Marina Oswald's residence at the home of Ruth Paine. Hosty was looking for Lee Harvey Oswald, who was not home. Oswald later found out about the visit and stopped by the Dallas FBI office and dropped off a note addressed to Hosty that threatened to "blow up the FBI building" in the words of the secretary who received the note in an unsealed envelope and read it.
Hosty and the FBI never admitted the note's existence until 1975 when the HSCA looked investigated the matter. Hosty said the note was not a threat and, therefore, not material to the case. Investigators believe Dallas SAC Gordon Shanklin ordered the note destroyed on direct orders from FBI Director J Edgar Hoover, a couple of hours after Oswald's own assassination while in police custody.
The note was never mentioned to the Warren Commission.
Destroying evidence is obstruction of justice.
Then, there's the evidence of various threats against President Kennedy that Hoover ignored. Author and former NYT reporter Edwin Black wrote about the Chicago Plot, the same M.O. as Dallas, ambush, high-power rifles, high-rise, and one patsy by the name of Thomas Arthur Vallee, a USMC veteran from a U-2 base in Japan. The plot was broken up by the Secret Service in Chicago. Not that they wanted to, they sort of had to when the local cops got a call from a landlady with the guns, passports, maps and "parade route" in Highlighter still on the bed.
Very important read in PDF:
http://www.thechicagoplot.com/The%20Chicago%20Plot.pdf
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