Gannongate: Greta van Susteren -- conduit for fake Iraq intel from Aziz

[HamdenRice]

<subject line edited>

You may recall from my previous Gannongate post, that Aziz al-Taee, aka Joe Aziz, aka Aziz Kadoory Aziz, may be a key figure.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=104&topic_id=3238821&mesg_id=3238821

The main connection between Gannon and Aziz is that in the run up to the Iraq War, Aziz made a lot of speeches and appearances about the support the Iraqis would give to the invasion. Gannon was one of the RW journalists who was shopping Aziz around, telling his story in interview form.

There were also unsubstantiated claims about Aziz's involvement with Blodgett, which no one has been able to document.

Better documented, however, is Aziz's shady past on the margins of the crack epidemic. Here is a concise explanation that appears to derive from a US attorney's office press release:

<sorry no link -- from a proprieatary data base>

Copyright 1993
PR Newswire Association, Inc.
PR Newswire
May 19, 1993, Wednesday

Michael J. Rotko, U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania, Ernest D. Preate Jr., Attorney General for the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, S.B. Billbrough, Special Agent in Charge, Philadelphia Office, Drug Enforcement Administration, C. Michael Daley, Chief of the Criminal Investigation Division, Philadelphia Office, Internal Revenue Service, David Warren, Special Agent in Charge, Philadelphia Office, U.S. Customs Service, and R.M. Hazelwood, III, Inspector in Charge, U.S. Postal Service, Philadelphia, announced today that a federal grand jury has returned two indictments charging twenty-five (25) individuals with conspiring to aid and abet the distribution of approximately 815,000 grams of "crack" cocaine through the sale of "crack" cocaine vials to "crack" dealers.

The two indictments charge that the twenty-five defendants established and maintained two competing criminal organizations, referred to as the Belkin Crack Vial Organization and the Sigal Crack Vial Organization, in order to manufacture and distribute crack vials for use by "crack" dealers in packaging and selling "crack" cocaine. Each organization created and manufactured its own brands of "crack" vials: the Belkin Crack Vial Organization manufactured the "Banana" vial, and the "Illusion" vial; the Sigal Crack Vial Organization created the "Black Rose" vial. The "Banana" vials were popular with "crack" vial dealers, the grand jury alleged, because they were designed to give the appearance of containing more "crack" than they actually held.

The two organizations are charged with manufacturing approximately 16,300,000 "crack" vials during the last three years. ...
<snip>
A separate indictment charges the following individuals with
criminal participation in the Sigal Crack Vial Organization: Valery
Sigal, a/k/a "Joe," Gennady Sigal, a/k/a "Gene, Zoltan Racz, Zoltan
Harta, Dany Hersohn, a/k/a "Danik," FNU Kim, a/k/a "Mr. Kim," Mi Ran
Kim, Menachem Gola, a/k/a "Nachem," Jabar Pierre Bouayad, John Bonner, James Skyrm, Robert Platt, Yechiel Shifman, a/k/a "Yok," Majid Gholamzadeh, a/k/a "Magic," Edik Ilin, Aziz Kadoory Aziz, a/k/a "Joe."

<end quote>

Oddly Aziz received a very light penalty for someone indicted in a conspiracy to abet the distribution of 815,000 grams of crack --three years of probation, a fine of $3,000, and the forfeiture of $17,673 in profits.

When Aziz turned up as a spokesman for the Iraqi people from Philadelphia, he had these somewhat questionable things to say in the days before the war on Greta van Susteren's show:

VAN SUSTEREN: Aziz -- Aziz, what happens if we give Saddam Hussein two more months or three more months?

AL-TAEE: If we give him two more months or three more months, he will kill more Iraqis. He will definitely supply the terrorists with weapons of mass destruction. As you know, he is the master of biological and chemical weapons, and he will supply them to the (UNINTELLIGIBLE) groups.
And, next time, we'll have a 911 with chemical consequences, and we will -- we are compromising the safety of the American citizens in this country, and we're going to let the slow death process on the Iraqi people continue.
To stop the death of the Iraqi people and to protect the American people, we need to move now and we have to tell the United Nation and the - - all the world and especially France and Germany, who supply Saddam with these chemicals, that enough is enough, and it's time for this -- if Saddam is to impose this war, it will be a war of the humanity against brutality, and United Nations should act now.

<snip>

VAN SUSTEREN: But let me turn to the second issue that people are talking about. Do you have any proof that Saddam Hussein has a connection to al Qaeda?
AL-TAEE: Yes, I do.
Saddam is connected to a group in North Iraq related to the Wahhabi movement. That group is called Al-Ansauer (ph). And he's been supplying them.
Also, we know that one of the hijackers met with Saddam security agents in -- somewhere in Czechoslovakia.
We also know that Saddam has been in dialogue with supporters of bin Laden.
At this point, Saddam started out as a secular Arab nationalist, but now he's definitely -- his interest and bin Laden interest in the same group.

<end quote>

So we have to two main fake claims about Iraq foisted on the gullible American people from the administration -- that they have WMDs and that they have connections with OBL -- parroted by this former crack vial distributor elevated to commentator on Fox News on Greta van Susteren's show.

Hmmmmm.

BTW, remember when Greta was a lawyer before she was a news commentator? One of the clients she represented was Henry Vinson, the central defendant in the Bush I administration underage gay escort sex scandal.

Obviously just a bizarre coincidence, but it's a small world, isn't it?