BEYOND BUSH II
- Media Mesmerism and "The Grand Show"
-
Wes Clark of Waco, Kosovo and Mena Drug Connections --
Dean Fades -- Kerry is the Sleeper - What is Dan Sheehan
Doing to Dennis Kucinich?
- California Recall Shows "Democracy Terminated"
by Michael C. Ruppert
© Copyright 2003, From The Wilderness Publications,
www.copvcia.com. All Rights Reserved. May be
reprinted, distributed or posted on an Internet
web site for non-profit purposes only.
[Our July 1, 2003 publication of Part I of this series,
with its analysis showing that the Neocons of the Bush
administration were systematically being taken down
at the direction of the real powers in control of the
US economy created a huge demand for the promised follow-up
article that would update developments and also look
at the many Democratic presidential challengers. Work
on that story was halted when this writer experienced
a near-fatal encounter with a ruptured appendix and
peritonitis in mid-July. (I am now fully recovered.)
The delay may not have been a bad thing. One thing
that is now apparent is that George W. Bush may have
been set up - much as Lyndon Johnson was in Vietnam
- to create an unwinnable war for the benefit of globalized
monetary interests whose objective is the destruction
of the US as a nation-state, while at the same time
securing a top spot for US-based corporations in an
increasingly globalized and energy-hungry economy.
There has been ample time to get a closer look at
the various "early" candidates seeking to replace George
W. Bush in the White House. We emphasize the word "early". A critical
look at the Democratic contenders -- especially latecomer
Wesley Clark -- reveals past behavior suggesting wolves
in sheep's clothing or -- in the case of Dennis Kucinich
-- campaign styles that promise little more than feel-good
futility as insiders wonder if his campaign is being
derailed from within. Yet, all this drama in an electoral
environment, where mandatory voting software is hopelessly
compromised, is little more than a tempest in a teapot. All
told, it looks as if there is nothing much going on
that gives grounds for enthusiasm or hope--especially
as one focuses only on the "electoral" process.
More alarming, however, is the fact that attention
is being diverted to wasted efforts, rather than to
those that might make a real difference. In the final
analysis, what we can expect after George Bush is a
continuation of what came before and during George
Bush. For those with their eyes open, there will be
little difference in the outcome. Bush was not a marked
historical or policy shift. The Clinton administration
set the stage for 9/11 perfectly. George W. Bush is
merely the captain of a brutal special team sent onto
the field to make a few essential plays consistent
with a larger plan. And if I have to
spend the four years from January 2005 fighting deluded,
guilty, self-aggrandizing progressives who want to
convince us that things will be better under a Democrat,
the same way I fought the current administration, that's
exactly what I'll do. It is, after all, how FTW got
its start.
And I will say -- one more time for the record--
that the destabilization and balkanization of Saudi Arabia
with 25% of known oil reserves remains near the top
of the main agenda. All of that oil lies
in a very small area of land near the east coast of
a country that we already have surrounded. All "we" need
do is convince the American people of
Saudi responsibilities for 9/11 in a way that will
make convenient intervention tasteful to a war-weary American
public that just doesn't get the concept of perpetual
war. Then the US will help the Saudi regime crack from
the inside and threaten regional stability, as the
pretext for the seizure. In my opinion, the next president
will be the one who can convince the powers that be
that he can pull off that agenda, and sell it to the American
people and the world.
There is a great piece of theater in play that has
left many unable to distinguish fictional drama from
stark reality. As John Lennon once said, "Life
is what was happening while I was making other plans." - MCR]
THE
INTERNATIONAL LANDSCAPE
October 20, 2003 1000 PDT (FTW) --Since
Part I of this series was published, the credibility
of the Bush administration has - as predicted - been
assaulted on a variety of fronts. W's approval rating
has dropped below 50%. The Republicans are worried about
whether he is re-electable. The political, military and
economic situation in Iraq has worsened. The US economy
staggers on the brink of meltdown, in debt and an anemic
dollar. The reality of Peak Oil and Gas has been acknowledged
in a number of mainstream publications including CNN,
The Independent, and Jane's Intelligence Summary.
Recent stories have confirmed reports that actual oil
reserves may be 80% smaller than previously reported.
The US has experienced the first of many major power
blackouts yet to come. American military morale is plummeting
as quickly as is its readiness for additional (inevitable)
conflicts. And the military situation in Iraq and Afghanistan
remains as dangerous, and uncertain, as Iraqi oil remains
undeliverable.
The last development is perhaps the biggest of all the
Neocon blunders, but it still accomplishes the primary
objective laid out by Zbigniew Brzezinski in his 1997
book, The Grand Chessboard: The oil and many rebuilding
contracts have been denied to any powers "that might
seek to usurp the US on the world stage". Even as
the US has gone hat-in-hand to the UN asking for help
in Iraq (and been rebuffed), it has made it clear that
it intends to retain absolute control of Iraqi resources.
Europe and Russia will not play that game. Oil in the
ground is oil in the bank and, at least for the moment,
by tweaking supplies and conflicts around the world,
the US can maintain enough supply from other sources
to keep the house of cards from falling. Within three
to five years, that may not be possible.
The race now is to stabilize Iraq in time to rebuild
the infrastructure, and bring its 11% of proven world
reserves online. The US majors won't invest there until
it is safe. On October 11, The Arabic
News reported on a recent World Bank report stating
that the reconstruction of Iraqi infrastructure would
require four years and more than $50 billion (US). This
is another reason why the Bush junta is in jeopardy.
There are few left anywhere who believe that they have
the cachet to pull it off. The oil companies have lost
confidence in the oil men.
Had the US not invaded Iraq, however, French, Russian
and German companies would currently be working on billions
of dollars of contracts to refurbish the oil infrastructure,
thus increasing the amount of Iraqi oil (priced in Euros
rather than dollars) reaching world markets by legal
or extralegal means outside of UN sanctions. Since the
occupation, we have learned much about Iraqi oil being
smuggled through Syria, and by other means. As a result,
Europe and Russia would have been getting economically
stronger and "marking territory" for the day when oil
for food sanctions were inevitably lifted. Europe's economy
is now sustained by the speed with which Russia can sell
its diminishing oil reserves - estimated at just under
60 billion barrels (Gb) - something that it appears eager
to do. This will inevitably force Britain into the EU
at an accelerated pace, especially if BP can't get any
supplies out of Iraq. (Note: Russia's 60 Gb is enough
to supply global needs for just under two years excluding
all other sources, and it is now being pumped faster
than ever. According to Reuters, on August 4, 2003 Russian
exports had reached 8.5 million barrels per day.) Since
Russia has long passed its production peak, it is problematic
as to whether these levels can be sustained for more
than ten years.
This, of course, is consistent with recently declassified
CIA documents showing that the agency was aware of Peak
Oil issues in the 1970s, especially in Russia. (See: http://fromthewilderness.com/free/ww3/081503_cia_russ_summary.html.)
Frustrated that they cannot safely get to Iraqi oil,
the American majors are frantic to secure supplies from
an ever-diminishing global reservoir; hence the recent
frantic expansion of drilling and investment in West
Africa. One of the biggest signs of the reality of Peak
Oil over the last two decades has been a continual pattern
of merger-acquisition-downsizing throughout the industry.
Chevron bought Texaco. Exxon bought Mobil. TotalFinaElf
bought Arco. Now, one of the largest oil buyouts in history
has been announced in Russia as Mikhail Khodorkovsky's
Yukos has just acquired Sibneft creating the fourth largest
oil company in the world. This, even as Chevron, Shell
and Exxon have been reportedly frantically trying to
acquire a 40% stake in YukosSibneft. As of this writing,
Exxon appears to have emerged the winner as the Russian
government announced on October 7th that it
found no reason to block Exxon's purchase. The game of
musical chairs has begun.
An announcement in Reuters on October 8th that
Russia may soon price its oil in Euros explains the additional
incentive for American companies to own a piece of the
Russian pie. Such a move would drastically weaken the
dollar. And while US taxpayers would suffer under a staggering
debt burden as a result, Exxon would reap major new profits
as the Euro surged in value; further proof that corporations,
not nations, rule the world.
As we pointed out in February:
This
administration has presented itself to the globalized
world economy as a business manager that was capable
of putting together an acquisition and merger of
all of the world's major assets. While the Bush administration
has acted as CEO, it has still reported to a globalized
board of directors which includes the major economic
corporations and financial interests of Europe, Russia,
China, Israel, Japan and possibly Saudi Arabia. These should be distinguished from the governments or peoples of
these nations. What it has demonstrated is that it
is incapable of transferring the assets of a significant
portion of Europe into the portfolio. It is operationally
incompetent to manage its way out of a wet paper
bag. The corporate histories of George W. Bush, Dick
Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld demonstrate only the ability
to acquire other companies, pump the share prices,
commit fraud and reap billions in profits.
(http://www.fromthewilderness.com/free/ww3/021303_fig_leaf.html)
A simple way to look at this is to say that the CIA
represents the interests of Wall Street and the global
economic powers, while the Bush Neocons represent the
interests of only one American faction of the global
economy. It is inevitable that the Neocons will be replaced.
Several US presidents have fought the CIA and they have
always emerged on the short end of the stick. This time
will be no different.
THE DOMESTIC
LANDSCAPE
Choking Cheney
The CIA's call for a criminal investigation into the
criminal leak identifying Valerie Plame -- the wife of
former Ambassador Joseph Wilson -- as a covert CIA operative
is the perfect continuation of the operation to remove
the Neocons. It was Wilson who earlier this year disclosed
that not only had he been sent by Cheney's office to
Niger to investigate claims of Iraqi attempts to purchase
uranium but that he had reported back stridently that
the claims were bogus. This was months before W's ill-fated
State of the Union speech and a dozen subsequent assertions
that Iraq was guilty by every major Bush administration
official, including Cheney, Rice, Powell and Rumsfeld.
Cheney has denied ever receiving Wilson's information.
Their claims were made after the CIA had already established
that documents used to support the claim in the State
of the Union address were "crude forgeries".
Not only is the blowing of Plame's cover a clear-cut
criminal case, it keeps in focus all of the intelligence
frauds committed to justify the Iraqi invasion. Ultimately,
the Bush administration will find it impossible to campaign
on a platform of national security as people understand
that the likely suspects, Karl Rove and Cheney Chief
of Staff Lewis "Scooter" Libby have been tied to the
leak, and that the target of the mean-spirited punishment
was a counter-terror case officer investigating weapons
of mass destruction. So much for Bush's "number-one priority".
The outing of Wilson's wife - intended as "payback" for
Wilson - has so offended the American people, and Beltway
insiders, that recent polls have shown that 70% of the
American people support the appointment of a special
prosecutor to investigate the case. As demonstrated by
an October 3rd Op-ed in The Detroit Free
Press, the ranking member of the House Judiciary
Committee, John Conyers, has pointed out that a clear
conflict of interest is involved with the Department
of Justice handling the investigation. Why? Because,
according to Conyers and other news stories, Karl Rove
had been a senior advisor on several of John Ashcroft's
campaigns and may have been responsible for his appointment
as Attorney General. Conyers publicly called for Rove's
resignation on October 7th. If Rove is taken
out of the White House, the Neocons will be running a
one-legged political race and no one will be there capable
of managing "W" in real time.
In the meantime, Dick Cheney becomes ever more vulnerable,
and he may well be replaced before the election rolls
around. First, in spite of recent embarrassing admissions
by George W. Bush and Condi Rice that there were no demonstrated
connections between Al Qaeda and Saddam Hussein, Cheney - as
reported by The Washington Post on September 29
-- continues to imply it in mainstream press interviews.
Second, according to The Washington Post of September
26, and as revealed by CNN on September 25, Cheney still
has strong financial ties to Halliburton whose no-bid
contracts in Iraq have soared to over $1.2 billion out
of the $2 billion in Iraqi contracts it now holds.
As Halliburton's contract awards continue to rise, Cheney's
credibility sinks. Not only has his chief of staff "Scooter" Libby
been tied to the Plame leaks (New York Daily News,
MS-NBC and Salon), but Deputy National Security
Advisor Stephen Hadley, who fell on his sword for allowing
the 16-word lie about Iraqi uranium to stay in the State
of the Union address, has also been disclosed as one
of the primary advocates of the now repudiated Hussein-bin
Laden connection. The Washington Post on September
29 described Hadley as "a longtime Cheney associate". (Special
thanks to researcher and former White House staffer Barb
Honegger for catching this important connection). Thus,
as the Plame scandal unfolds, everything about Bush/Cheney
intelligence fabrications remains firmly and inextricably
on the table, and Cheney is emerging as the next domino.
Further compounding the problem for the administration
is that the Plame leak itself was "shopped" by unnamed
White House staffers to no less than six separate reporters
before columnist Bob Novak picked it up and ran with
it. The fact of the crime cannot be denied.
It is therefore likely that Dick Cheney will be removed
from the 2004 Republican ticket. Before engaging in mass
celebrations, those who are old enough to recall it should
remember that another Vice President, Spiro Agnew, was
successfully removed from the Nixon White House just
before Nixon was replaced to allow for a "safe" Vice
President (Gerald Ford) to be in place when the actual
coup occurred. Who did Ford choose as his Vice
President? Nelson Rockefeller. Although a clear-cut replacement
for Cheney has not stuck his/her head up, one likely
contender here would be former New York mayor Rudy Giuliani.
LBJ-Vietnam Redux
Contrary to popular belief, it was not a group of die-hard
conservative militarists who pushed the US into an unwinnable
conflict in Vietnam. It was a coterie of liberal "Eastern
Establishment" members of the Council on Foreign Relations
and lifelong Democrats. Included here are the likes of
Dean Acheson, McGeorge and William Bundy, John J. McCloy,
Dean Rusk and Robert McNamara. These were the advisors
who continued to prod Johnson into escalation after escalation
until, suddenly in March of 1968 right after the Tet
Offensive, they all became doves overnight and said the
war was a mistake. Johnson was set up and betrayed and
he never recovered. He immediately announced that he
would not run for re-election. That gave us Nixon, more
escalations, and four more years of conflict as the American
people were suckered into believing that Nixon would
end the war quickly. Will people believe the same of
a President Wesley Clark or John Kerry?
The same Vietnam-style sleight of hand is being played
as the huge Win Without War Coalition is saying
that it will support funding for Iraq if only Rumsfeld et
al are removed. This kind of well-intentioned thinking
is what is being sold to the American people as progress.
Even though Win Without War supports a withdrawal
from Iraq, the fact is that withdrawal is impossible,
and it's not going to happen. The US will never let go
of Iraqi oil. But the message is clear: Change front
men and continue with the program. No matter who wins
in 2004, the game will be played as Vietnam was played - but
for much higher stakes.
Major power brokers like international financier George
Soros are backing moves to remove Bush, and Soros is
opening his sizeable checkbook to do it. I was dismayed
recently to see that a board member of the ostensibly
independent Pacifica radio network advocated direct solicitation
of funds from both Soros and the CIA-connected Ford Foundation.
Soros, who has or had business ties with Zbigniew Brzezinski,
Henry Kissinger, the Carlyle Group, the CIA's Radio Free
Europe, Wesley Clark, Richard Allen and George W. Bush
(through Harken Energy), is not a friendly, tree-hugging,
progressive out to save the world. He is the fist in
a velvet glove to the Neocons' baseball bat across the
nose.
Soros, a member of both the Council on Foreign Relations
and the Bilderberger Group, also sits on the World Economic
Forum with many Rockefeller interests. [Two excellent
biographies of Soros are "George Soros: Imperial Wizard
by Heather Cottin (Covert Action Quarterly,
Fall 2002) and George Soros: Prophet of an Open Society
by Karen Talbot at http://globalresearch.ca/articles/TAL307A.html.]
And what of the men behind Bush who pushed and prodded "W" into
Iraq? Looking at the names Cheney, Libby, Wolfowitz,
Rumsfeld, Perle, Jeb Bush and Zalmay Khalilzad one sees
an immediate connection to the now infamous Project for
a New American Century (PNAC) which had laid out Iraqi
invasion plans and much of the blood we now wallow in
long before 9/11. Are there more connections?
An excellent summary by journalist Larry Chin of the
long history of the plans to invade and occupy Iraq,
going back to 1992, is found at: http://onlinejournal.com/Special_Reports/Chin110702/chin110702.html.
Note the early support from Democratic Senator Joe Lieberman
who, since 9/11, has been a major leader in the so-called "war
on terror" and a major supporter of almost every Bush
initiative from the Patriot Act to the resolution authorizing
use of force to remove Saddam Hussein.
Many of these same advisors are members of either the
Council on Foreign Relations (C), The Trilateral Commission
(T), or the Bilderberger Group (B). They include: George
Herbert Walker Bush (C,T), George Tenet (C), Dick Cheney
(C,T), Colin Powell (C,B), UN Ambassador John Negroponte
(C) and Paul Wolfowitz (C,T,B). Many senior career
bureaucrats at the so-called "supergrade" levels in the
Bush administration are members of the Rockefeller/J.P.
Morgan-founded CFR. [Source: Who's Who of the Elite - Members
of the Bilderbergs, Council on Foreign Relations and
Trilateral Commission by Gaylon Ross, Sr. -This handy
reference guide is now available for sale from FTW.)
Another commonality that cannot be overlooked is the
close interrelationships between senior Bush policy makers
and Israel. These include the
former Chairman of the Pentagon's Defense Policy Board,
Richard Perle, who has worked for Israeli weapons firms,
and has been previously connected to leaks of sensitive
material to Israeli intelligence; Deputy Defense Secretary
Paul Wolfowitz, who has relatives living in Israel; Under
Secretary of Defense Douglas Feith whose law firm maintains
an Israeli office; Edward Luttwak of the National Security
Study Group who has taught in Israel; Dov Zakheim, the
Pentagon's Chief Financial Officer who is also a member
of the CFR; Elliot Abrams at the National
Security Council, "Scooter" Libby, and former Press Secretary Ari Fleischer. Some have
even worked on joint planning projects with Israeli ministries.
The point is not to jump to
conclusions about where the power actually resides,
but to understand that Presidents can be, and have
been, sabotaged by power that does not present itself
for a vote. The key question is Qui bono? - Who benefits? As far as Israel is concerned,
perhaps one of the great unresolved questions is whether
Israel controls the US, the US controls Israel, or
whether there is something that controls both. It is
a virtual certainty however, that Israel will continue
to benefit - as it has consistently since 9/11 - when
a new administration takes office. In the last year,
both John Kerry and Wesley Clark (see below) have "discovered" and
made public their Jewish ancestry.
The Madness of the People
It still remains unclear whether or not Bush will lose
the 2004 election, steal it again, or be replaced via
an impeachment effort after a win. There is a great deal
to be learned from the Democratic Party side of the equation,
and voters who eagerly participate in the election process
are almost pathologically in denial about the compromise
of the process that has occurred with proprietary electronic
software that remains easily manipulated and immune from
public scrutiny. As the 2000 election was stolen, the
2004 election may already be locked up (or encoded).
No activist in their right mind should participate in
the Democratic Party nomination process without addressing
this key issue. If they do, they should have their head
examined.
The most detailed work on this angle has been done by New
Zealand's Scoop Media (http://scoop.co.nz/mason/features/?s=usacoup)
and author Bev Harris who has a new book out titled Black
Box Voting: Ballot-tampering in the 21st Century.
You will never think about voting the same way again
after reading it.
DEMOCRATIC
PARTY DUPLICITY - LOOKING AT
THE CANDIDATES
There are thus two major tests for a Democratic Party
presidential challenger from this perspective. One: Does
the candidate address the issues that are really important?
And two: Is it possible to get the candidate into office?
Every major Democratic challenger had made it a point
to say that not only will they continue to support the
war on terror (war for oil), they will do it better than
Bush has.
While so many people are getting excited about one candidate
or another, FTW has remained firm. We will not
endorse any candidate who does not address all of our
issues. These include:
- Peak Oil and Gas
- US Government Complicity in 9/11
- The Criminal Fabrication of Intelligence Justifying
the Iraqi Invasion
- More Than $3.3 Trillion in Taxpayer Money Stolen
From the US Treasury
- Repeal of the Patriot Act, Mandatory Vaccination
Laws, and Protection of Civil Liberties
It is also imperative to see what connections exist
between the major candidates and entities like the CFR,
the Trilateral Commission and the Bilderberg Group. From
that point, a look at the histories of the serious contenders
will provide stark clues as to what can be expected.
That provides a framework to rationally assess each candidate
and to see that the whole process is destined to give
us more of the same, exactly as Richard Nixon did after
he replaced LBJ.
We will first look at several of the key contenders
to see where they come from, where they stand and what
they really represent. Then we'll conclude by looking
at how all the pieces interact.
Wesley Clark
Wesley Clark has been pounced upon with adoration by
progressives and Democrats as though he were a God of
reason and salvation. This late-comer entered the race
in September at the top of the polls. In fact, he is
a reincarnation of the most corrupt and violent aspects
of William Jefferson Clinton. I have great respect for
author and filmmaker Michael Moore, but when I saw him
endorse Wesley Clark, I nearly choked. Let's refresh
everyone's memory by looking at the retired NATO Commander's
history. It shows us is that he has the perfect résumé to
continue the job that the Bush gang began, and then botched.
Clark first hit my radar screen way back in 1993, after
it was learned that US Army troops had been dispatched
to the Branch Davidian compound in Waco Texas. At the
time, Clark was the commander of the 1st Cavalry
Division at Ft. Hood Texas. As the division commander,
Clark was the one to authorize the release of armored
units and - as later disclosed by filmmaker Michael McNulty - very
likely also in command of Delta Force personnel who operated
on his turf, and engaged in a brutal massacre of unarmed
civilians trying to flee the burning compound. According
to a well-documented September 2003 story at www.frontpagemagazine.com Clark's
second in command, Pete Schoomaker, was one of two military
officers to meet with Janet Reno in preparing the plans
for the final assault. That made him Clark's representative.
This is not a good progressive credential.
Clark's real notoriety came in 1999 when, as NATO Commander
under Bill Clinton, he led another US military invasion,
which the UN also refused to sanction, into Bosnia and
Kosovo. Clark's aggressive command nearly resulted in
a military confrontation with a Russian armored column.
As it turns out, the reasons for that invasion were as
fabricated as were the reasons for Bush's invasion of
Iraq. For weeks, the American people were bombarded by
warnings about mass graves containing tens of thousands
of bodies. In the April 1999 issue of FTW, I wrote
about Kosovo and our allies, the Kosovo Liberation Army,
or KLA:
Has
everyone forgotten that the U.S. government referred
to the KLA,
just a year ago, as terrorists? Has everyone forgotten,
in the current "wag the dog" propaganda
assault, that the Serbs, going back to World War
II have been U.S. allies - that they are Christians
and that they are not receiving military training
from countries which sponsor Islamic terror? We hear
reports of mass graves. We hear reports of rape and
atrocities. Have we yet seen any of the victims?
Kosovo
is vastly different from the Contra war or from Afghanistan
and Pakistan. Why? Because U.S. air power is overwhelmingly
committed at the outset. Because the "Mighty
Wurlitzer" of American
media is feeding on the hapless plight of helpless
victims on a scale akin to Wm. Randolph Hearst's
coverage of the sinking of the Maine in Havana Harbor…
The
only difference now is that the quick and cheap capital
and funding mechanism of the drug trade has replaced
the much more time consuming process of investment
and extraction of war costs from a producing economy.
The fact is that the entire world economy and political
decision making machinery is now hooked on drugs.
To me, that is a sure sign that the economic models
operating at the end of the 20th century
are about as adaptable as the dinosaurs were when
the asteroid hit.
There were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, and
there were no mass graves holding tens of thousands of
bodies ever found in Kosovo. Yet, as we documented in
1999 using reports from Jane's Intelligence Weekly and The
Christian Science Monitor, in the process of conducting
that war Clark made safe the KLA's control over 70% of
the heroin reaching Western Europe.
[http://www.fromthewilderness.com/free/regional/KLA1.html]
Another parallel to the post-9/11 world is that, under
US rule, Afghanistan has again become the number-one
producer of opium in the world, estimated at 75% of world
supply, all under CIA control. Afghanistan is the source
of the heroin that is being smuggled through the Balkans
into Western Europe (and all over the world) to this
day. And, Osama bin Laden had Al Qaeda personnel training
the KLA with US permission.
As Professor Michel Chossudovsky of the University of
Ottawa reported in June 2002 in his publication Global
Outlook:
The U.S. Congress has
documented in detail, the links of Al
Qaeda to agencies of the U.S. government during the
civil war in Bosnia-Herzegovina, as well as in Kosovo.3 More
recently in Macedonia, barely a few months before
September 11, U.S. military advisers were mingling
with Mujahideen mercenaries financed by Al Qaeda. Both groups were fighting under the auspices of the
Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA), within the same terrorist paramilitary formation.4
It is absurd to think that the Al Qaeda operatives in
Kosovo were there without Clark's knowledge or that he
did not control their interactions with US military.
In June of 2000, I was stunned to see an announcement
in the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette that a
retiring Wesley Clark was going to go to work for billionaire
investment banker and Presidential kingmaker Jackson
Stephens in Little Rock. This set off alarm bells that
Clark was someone to watch. In his current campaign literature,
Clark lists his profession as an investment banker. And
he is still employed by Stephens.
Stephens was the man who gave a down-and-out Bill Clinton
a $2 million loan to jumpstart an ailing presidential
campaign in 1992. There is also a glowing photograph
of Stephens with a young George W. Bush in the brilliant
expose of the drug money laundering and covert operations
bank BCCI, False Profits. Several BCCI players,
including Saudi banker Khalid bin Mahfouz, have been
directly tied to the financing of Al Qaeda.
A search of the FTW web site shows that I have
written about Stephens - Jimmy Carter's roommate at Annapolis
-- six times. Stephens' firm Systematics, which has since
gone through two name changes to become Axciom, was deeply
connected to the PROMIS software scandal, the Worthen
Bank, the Lippo Group, and subsequently through a 2001 FTW investigation
to drug money laundering out of the Mena Regional Intermountain
Airport in Arkansas. In that investigation, looking into
the apparent release from US prison of Medellin Cartel
co-founder Carlos Lehder, we found that one of Stephens'
subsidiaries, Beverly Enterprises, had been connected
to a suspected money laundering operation involving bearer
bonds sold by Bill Clinton's Arkansas Development Financial
Authority, sold by Stephens Inc, and underwritten by
the insurance giant AIG and Goldman Sachs.
Please See:
http://www.fromthewilderness.com/free/ciadrugs/gray_money.html
http://www.fromthewilderness.com/free/ciadrugs/part_2.html
On Oct. 7, Wesley Clark's campaign manager, Donny Fowler,
resigned suddenly -- according to a CNN story the following
day -- because his authority had been usurped by two
insiders from Clinton's 1992 campaign. That Bill Clinton
would turn up all over the Clark campaign is no surprise.
The day before announcing his candidacy, Clark received
an endorsement from Harlem Congressman Charlie Rangel.
Rangel, a black Democrat, is closely tied to the Clinton
machine. Clinton maintains an office in Harlem. That
being said, what has Wesley Clark ever done to endear
himself to black voters? What was Rangel thinking?
Bill Clinton is a member of the Bilderberg Group, The
Trilateral Commission and the Council on Foreign Relations.
Clark is a member of the CFR.
Wesley Clark is also one of two presidential candidates
to have "discovered" his Jewish ancestry in an election
year. The September 26 issue of The Jewish Forward revealed
that Clark was the son of a Jewish lawyer from New York
named Kanne. After his father's death when Clark was
four, Clark was taken to Arkansas by a Southern Baptist
mother and raised as a Baptist. According to the story,
Clark did not discover his Jewish ancestry until he was
in his twenties. The Forward story is the first-known
public disclosure of this ancestry.
And, last but not least, Wesley Clark has a business
relationship with George Soros. According to Heather
Cottin's excellent deconstruction of Soros (above) Clark
sits on the board of Soros' International Crisis Group
(ICG) with the likes of Zbigniew Brzezinski and Richard
Allen, former Reagan National Security Advisor.
Howard Dean
Just a few short months ago this Yale graduate, medical
doctor and former Vermont Governor was the talk of the
town. He won a "Hollywood" Internet primary sponsored
by MoveOn, ahead of Dennis Kucinich, and jumped to the
head of the pack by out-fundraising his opponents. All
this without really having taken a hard stand on anything
except his opposition to the Iraqi invasion and Bush
tax cuts. While we can find no record that Dean is a
member of the CFR, Trilateral Commission or the Bilderberg
Group (a good thing), we can also find no record that
Dean has really bitten on the issues that matter. His
touted anti-war stance places him squarely in the position
of saying, "I would never have done it" but he has not
put himself in the hard position of saying, "Here's how
I will undo it." Instead, this supporter of NAFTA, GATT
and globalization, committed to protecting our troops
on the ground and American interests abroad, has very
likely toed the line. But there are signs that he may
be someone the elites regard as not sufficiently controllable.
Dean made the sparks fly by stating that the US should
act as an "honest broker" in the Mideast peace process.
His late September statement evoked a wide response from
Democrats like Joe Lieberman and John Kerry that forced
him to "clarify" a rational position that harkened back
to US policies that were less pro-Israel, and which resulted
in far less violence in the region.
Still, Dean won't take a stand on civil liberties except
to say that there are some "glitches" in post-9/11 laws.
He has no position on Peak Oil and has said nothing about
9/11.
He poses a threat to the establishment because he is
an outsider who hasn't been sufficiently harnessed to
know what directions he would or would not take if elected.
But what's most important about Howard Dean is that he
is already fading some in the polls, thanks to Wesley
Clark, and even candidates like Dennis Kucinich. Dean
appears to be the target of a "spike" effort from many
different directions. Still he has not taken on the issues
of real importance to FTW readers and the world
as a whole. Time will tell if his fundraising skill and
internet-driven organization will last beyond next spring.
John Kerry
John Kerry remains the big dog in the race. A decorated
Vietnam War hero, the four-term Massachusetts Senator
is a member of both the CFR and the secret Skull and
Bones fraternity at Yale that also claims Bush I and
Bush II as members.
A Boston Globe article on February 2, 2003 revealed
that John Kerry's Grandfather Fritz Kohn, who committed
suicide, was Jewish. According to the story, it was the Globe itself
that had made this fact known to the Senator by presenting
him with a 1921 article disclosing the relationship to
Kerry's father. Suddenly Kerry, a practicing Catholic,
had the best of both worlds: Boston Irish-Catholic heritage
and Jewish blood.
I have a long history with Kerry. Back in 1986, 1987,
and 1988, I was in contact with his office and his chief
of staff Jonathan Winer on a number of occasions about
CIA drug trafficking. They eagerly asked for any material
I could send them and gave me a direct line. It was one
of my most bitter lessons about how hot issues are controlled.
Kerry, in charge of the potentially explosive Iran-Contra
drug hearings succeeded in producing a 1,200-page record
that was a treasure trove of information for researchers,
but absolutely useless in unraveling a corruption that
controls the US government to this day. What lies buried
in those pages was enough to have turned the American
political system inside out. In the end, its greatest
usefulness was as a benchmark against which to compare
the CIA's investigation of itself after the 1996 Dark Alliance stories
and hard revelations of CIA connections to cocaine smuggling
that Kerry knew all about anyway. Those of us close to
the issue took the lemons Kerry had left us and made
lemonade, as we forced the CIA Inspector General to reconcile
his 1998 report with what we already knew was in Kerry's.
And still - as intended - nothing changed. John Kerry
had successfully contained what was, up to that time,
the biggest scandal in American history.
Wealthy in his own right, Kerry's fortune has been reinforced
by the wealth of his wife (heir to the Heinz food fortune),
estimated by the Associated Press at $550 million. This
is old money and deeply rooted in establishment politics.
A key sign that Kerry might be the anointed one came
for me when George W. Bush's chief counter-terrorism
adviser Rand Beers resigned in a dramatic moment last
June, in protest over Bush's handling of the war on terror
and his headlong rush into Iraq. Beers immediately became
Kerry's senior foreign policy advisor, as Kerry continued
to state that he would improve on and expand the war
on terror. Beers' protestations concealed what I considered
to be a much more sinister objective, the placement of
a key, hands-on operative to manage a smooth transition
of power and a continuation of secret policy. Beers,
who had served in national security roles for three Republican
administrations, was the man who had replaced Lt. Col.
Oliver North after North was fired in 1987 during the
Iran-Contra scandal.
Although Beers is not listed as a CFR member he was
a key contributor, and acknowledged in a 1996 CFR report "Making
Intelligence Smarter" produced by a CFR panel headed
by AIG Chairman Maurice "Hank" Greenberg. Narconews publisher
Al Giordano refers to Beers as a "CFR type". One thing
is certain, Rand Beers committed perjury right after
9/11 by testifying before Congress that Colombian and
Ecuadorian rebels had links to Al Qaeda. He got caught
and had to go back and amend his testimony and retract
the statement. Sound familiar? Giordano caught that and
actually published Beers' retraction under oath at
http://www.narconews.com/beersperjury1.html.
Kerry's energy stance is that the US needs to become
energy independent, a physical impossibility, and he
has paid lip service to biomass, solar and ethanol. Ethanol
is a scientific joke that takes more energy to produce
than it yields and would require most of the arable land
mass of the United States to replace even a part of our
oil consumption. Ethanol is a government subsidized handout
to major corporations like Archer, Daniels, Midland.
Like all of the Democratic challengers, Kerry has been
quick to jump on the bandwagon of cooked Iraqi intelligence
and the Plame leaks. But he won't go near 9/11, stating
instead, that if he were president he would "really" prosecute
the war on terror, (i.e. go after Saudi Arabia, etc.).
Joe Lieberman
He's been almost a better Neocon than some of the Neocons.
A staunch advocate of the war on terror, supporter of
the Patriot Act and Homeland Security, an advocate of
the Iraqi invasion since shortly after 9/11, Joe Lieberman
is a joke. He also doesn't stand much of a chance in
the next election, cursed by the fact that he is the
only real Jewish candidate in the field and marked as
a "loser" after the last presidential election. FTW would
have wholeheartedly supported another Jewish candidate
for President, Paul Wellstone, but he's dead. Wellstone
would have stayed straight and true on the key issues,
and also avoided the rampant criminality of the Clinton
machine.
A Lieberman nomination would come from beyond left field.
Dennis Kucinich
It's easy to like Dennis Kucinich. His office has received FTW for
several years now. He is the only Democratic challenger
to have really addressed any of our issues. The three
he has addressed are Iraq -- the fraudulent intelligence
leading to the invasion, his clear and unequivocal opposition
to it, and his call for a US withdrawal; the Patriot
Act, which he wants to repeal; and $1 trillion of the
missing money from the US Department of Defense. He also
bravely stated that the Iraqi invasion was all about
oil more than two weeks before the invasion began.
But he has not spoken of Peak Oil and Gas, nor has he
made any effort to pursue the glaring unanswered questions
of 9/11.
Kucinich is not a member of the CFR, the Trilateral
Commission or the Bilderberg Group. He has a record of
paying a price to stand up for the people in his battle
with Cleveland power companies when he was mayor. He
speaks with a spiritual - as opposed to religious - awareness
and he has a record that says he won't do what it is
certain the other candidates will do, namely pursue the
war for oil and prolong the Iraqi and Afghan occupations.
However, that does not say that he will do what needs
to be done proactively.
I have been close to Presidential campaigns and I am
not seduced easily. In 1992, as the LA County Press spokesman
for the Ross Perot campaign, my dedication and involvement
earned me a story in the June 22, 1992 issue of PEOPLE Magazine.
And Ross Perot got one place where Kucinich may never
get -- ahead of the front-runners from both parties in
the polls. It was also easy to like Perot. He had spoken
out on issues that were important to me: CIA drug trafficking
and the Vietnam-era POWs, and MIAs. I had written to
him and he had called me twice. But once inside that
campaign, I learned the bitter lesson that Perot had
no intention of winning, and that his campaign had been
infiltrated by some very slick operatives who could have
cared less about the American people. I hold both Perot
and the outside handlers accountable.
No presidential candidate can separate himself from
people inside his campaign who can control, contain and
maneuver him away from issues that the elites don't want
discussed. Dennis Kucinich is no exception. One test
is to see whether the candidate himself speaks the clear
message or whether he equivocates. Does he "get" it when
his lips move, and does he also "speak" it?
On September 21st, I went to a private fund
raising event for Kucinich in Los Angeles, where I wanted
to see Kucinich in person. On my arrival, I encountered
many activists I had known for years. When Kucinich arrived
I was quickly introduced and got all of twenty seconds
to speak with him in private, not enough to accomplish
anything, but as much time as anyone else got. FTW was,
however, on the map and as actor/activist Ed Begley,
Jr. introduced Kucinich, he mentioned FTW's efforts
at tracking missing money from the system. I smiled because
we were electronically wired through the Internet to
more than 1,000 homes around the country.
Kucinich's remarks to the crowd of 200 were inspirational
but vague; committed to peace and ethics, opposed to
the war, focused on ethics, but lacking in any mention
of FTW's key hot buttons, the issues which are
really driving world events. I got the clear impression
in my gut that Kucinich was a good man, but something
felt missing. Fund-raising speeches like this are not
traditionally ones where major policy points are made.
He was entitled to another chance.
After his talk, Kucinich opened up for questions. I
was called on second. I could have thrown him a tough
one about 9/11, an issue which he has not addressed in
any detail, but I didn't. It was his turf, his game.
I asked him as President how he would recover the more
than $3 trillion missing from the Department of Defense.
He stated that he was aware of only $1.1 trillion missing
from the Pentagon in FY 1999 - not a good sign. He was
apparently not aware that CBS News and Donald Rumsfeld
himself had admitted that another $2.3 trillion had gone
missing in FY 2000. As quickly as he fielded the question,
Kucinich diverted his answer away from missing money
to the bloated defense budget, and how he would drastically
cut defense spending and put the money into a Department
of Peace. Standard fare for him.
Wait a second, Dennis…more than three trillion dollars
of my money has been stolen. I want you to get it back!
The American people need that money!
I left the event not convinced and certainly not seduced.
I, and the American people, have been jilted too many
times, and there are other reasons why I worry about
his campaign and what his advisors allow him to say and
not say. I looked for the Braveheart and didn't
see it, and there are reasons to suspect that, if it
is truly there, it will never be allowed to surface.
Sheehan
There is a man occupying a pivotal position in Dennis
Kucinich's campaign that I am extremely leery of. And,
so it seems, are some other Kucinich supporters.
In more intimate circles, my distrust of attorney Daniel
Sheehan is well known. I have not made much of an issue
of it, because Sheehan can get blown out of proportion.
There are "attack poodles" who defend him at every turn.
Sheehan is the man who literally destroyed two of the
best and biggest lawsuits connected to CIA drug dealing
in history: the Christic Institute lawsuit in the 1980s
and a civil suit arising from the murder of Marine Col.
James Sabow at El Toro Marine Air Station after Sabow
had discovered CIA-connected C-130s flying tons of cocaine
onto his base in 1990 and 1991. As it turns out, the
cases ultimately connected with each other, and what
happened in both cases is remarkably consistent. As lead
attorney, Sheehan raised hundreds of thousands of dollars
from victims and activists (Christic) and from the Sabow
family, only to drag litigation out over a period of
years and, through egregious legal conduct, destroy suits
that could have changed the course of history. The Christic
suit was "dismissed with prejudice" meaning that it could
never be filed again by another attorney.
Rather than describe these cases and Sheehan's conduct
in detail, I will rely on the excellent work of investigative
reporter Nick Schou of The Orange County Weekly who
has reported on Sheehan for years. An excellent history
of Sheehan's record is contained in a February 2000 story
by Schou located at http://www.ocweekly.com/ink/00/24/news-schou.php.
Schou wrote:
Sheehan had failed
to report [in the Sabow case] that the Christic Institute had
been fined more than $1 million by a federal judge
in Miami. According
to the government's motion, the judge fined Sheehan
after he submitted "an affidavit with unknown,
nonexistent, deceased sources," using a "deceptive
style used to mask its shortcomings…" Sheehan appealed
King's ruling, lost, and was ordered to pay the legal
fees for the defendants: $1,034,381.35…
… Honey [the Christic plaintiff], now the peace and security
program director for the Institute for Policy Studies,
a Washington, D.C.-based think tank, told the Weekly
that Sheehan single-handedly ruined the La Penca [Christic] case.
"Sheehan's a lousy,
lousy lawyer," she said. "None of the good
legal work was done by him." Honey stated that
she has unsuccessfully tried to get Sheehan disbarred
as an attorney and has even sued him to recover investigative
material and other records from the unsuccessful
lawsuit. "After
we found out about the Sandinista connection, we
realized we had wasted millions of dollars and a
decade with Sheehan," Honey concluded.
The great irony, still recited as a pro-Sheehan catechism
today by many of his supporters, is that the allegations
made by Sheehan in the case were subsequently corroborated,
almost in their entirety, in hearings chaired by none
other than John Kerry. What the Sheehan supporters fail
to realize is that it was Sheehan's legal conduct, not
the facts, that got the Christic case dismissed.
What makes the case of Col. James Sabow so tragic is
that not only was he obviously murdered (all sides agreed
that he had aspirated blood in his lungs and a skull
fracture from a source other than a self-inflicted shotgun
wound), but a man with an impeccable record and real
honor was betrayed by those who claimed to be friends.
When Sabow tried to expose the drug smuggling, connected
to Iran-Contra operations, the Marine Corps charged him
with using military aircraft to transport golf clubs,
speakers and wall decorations for his son, who was attending
college in the Pacific Northwest. And for that, the Marines
claim a devout Catholic committed suicide. Then Dan Sheehan
showed up and took the case for the family.
I will never forget a night in Washington, DC in 1995
when Sheehan's chief investigator, Gene Wheaton (who
also worked on the Christic case), presented Sabow's
brother, Dr. David Sabow, at a small discussion group
headed by veteran White House correspondent Sarah McClendon.
As Wheaton paraded Sabow and made his presentation --
saying that the case under appeal by Sheehan would bring
the government down -- there were snickers from a senior
congressional staffer, a former CIA analyst, and me that
another victim was about to be fleeced and have his case
destroyed. It took five more years and more than $100,000
of Dave Sabow's money, but that is exactly what happened.
Nick Schou's analysis of Sheehan's handling of the Sabow
case revealed that:
Witness testimony
that might have shown Marine Corps officers lied
to the Sabows about their official investigation
into the death was either excluded by the court as
irrelevant or was obscured by Sheehan's habit of
asking interminable, speculative and, in some cases,
unintelligible questions. Indeed, toward the end
of the six-day trial, the government's lawyers needed
only to look as if they might object to Sheehan's
questions--to lean forward, look annoyed or raise
a hand--and Stotler would stop him.
The increasingly testy
Stotler occasionally challenged Sheehan's skills
as a lawyer, at one point observing, "Counsel,
that is literally the worst question I have ever
heard in my life." When Sheehan repeatedly pressed
NCIS agent Mike Barrett about the quality of the
Navy's original death investigation, Stotler intervened
again. "That has nothing to do with this case," she
told Sheehan. "Do you have any other questions
for this witness?"
On the fifth day,
the Justice Department asked Stotler to end the trial;
the plaintiffs had called all their witnesses and
hadn't proved a thing, the government attorneys argued.
Stotler said she would consider it; 24 hours later,
on the afternoon of Jan. 27, it was clear that she
had had enough. "I am prepared to grant the
defense's motion. I don't need to hear any further
testimony at this point," she announced with
finality, just moments before Adams
was supposed to take the stand. "It's pretty
apparent that, looking only at the plaintiff's testimony,
their allegations have not been met by the evidence."
Sheehan hadn't just
failed to prove a vast conspiracy involving drug
running, covert flights and murder. He had also failed
to prove the government acted maliciously in a death
investigation…
While the OIG said
it found no evidence to support the conclusion that
Sabow was murdered, Sheehan's lawsuit contains what
purports to be unassailable direct eyewitness testimony
showing that Sabow was murdered. That allegation
is based on the claims of "Mr. X," whom
Dr. Sabow identified as an ex-Marine Corps official,
now a law-enforcement officer somewhere in the southwestern
United States. Sheehan refused to identify Mr. X
or produce him for interviews either with military
investigators or the media...
James Sabow was murdered. Mr. X was never necessary
to prove that, and he should never have been brought
up. The physical evidence does it. Among other loose
ends, all fingerprints had been wiped from the shotgun
that killed Sabow. Several police forensics experts said
that it would have been impossible for Sabow to not have
left his fingerprints on the weapon he used to kill himself.
But when Sheehan introduced a Mr. X, and couldn't follow
simple legal procedure, the case fell, in part, because
he couldn't produce the witness that he himself had brought
up. Sound familiar? The Sheehan case rested on the premise
that the Marine Corps had been rude to the Sabow family.
It did not even address the wrongful death, which, according
to legal experts interviewed by FTW, was outside
the bounds of the so-called Feres Doctrine that basically
says that soldiers are military property. I was surprised
to learn, just a few weeks ago, that the indefatigable
David had succeeded in getting a member of Congress to
take a new look at the case from a different tack. In
a September 5th 2003 interview, Sabow told The
Orange County Weekly, "Now I believe that all
the people who warned me about (Sheehan) were correct.
I think there was a lot of duplicity involved. I don't
lose any sleep over using the people that offered to
help me, but I am disappointed in their character." The
full story is at: http://www.ocweekly.com/ink/04/01/news-schou.php.
Richard Scheck is a political
activist and researcher who was a classmate of Sheehan's
at Harvard Law. He has long known of concerns about
Sheehan. Six months ago, this writer provided Scheck
with a copy of the Schou article and asked him to pass
it up in the campaign for comment.
Scheck was a volunteer for
the Kucinich team when he saw that Sheehan was positioning
himself to play a major role in developing policy and
strategy for Kucinich. He spoke personally with the Congressman,
as well as several high-level aides, in an attempt to
have a potential problem dealt with at the earliest possible
moment.
"Dennis and his team
are six months late in addressing this. I alerted them
back in March and was ignored," Scheck told FTW.
Scheck wrote an internal
memo to a senior campaign staffer regarding Sheehan's
January speech in Ashland, Oregon in which, "Sheehan
told the audience he hoped Dennis would run and that
Danny intended to have Dennis include the platform Danny
was developing at his new institute in Boston called
the Center for the Study of Alternative World Views."
He told FTW, "The
day after I spoke to Kucinich and sent this memo, I saw
Dennis embrace Danny and speak with him at the big fund-raiser
held in Marin at the beginning of his presidential campaign."
Scheck adds, "My clear
sense is that Danny and his wife are playing a major
role in the Kucinich campaign. Danny personally told
me back in March he was planning a 10-state strategy.
I recently learned from a source within the campaign
that Sarah [Sheehan's wife] was deeply involved."
Aris Anagnos of Los Angeles is a pillar of the activist,
pro-peace community and another staunch Kucinich supporter.
A past president of Americans for Democratic Action,
founder of L.A.'s Peace Center, and key supporter of
the Office of the Americas, Anagnos was also a major
supporter of the Christic Institute lawsuit. In an Oct
13th interview with FTW, Anagnos indicated
that he was aware of the role Sheehan was playing in
the Kucinich campaign and had "expressed his feelings
inside the campaign".
He told FTW, "In the early 1990s, when the Christic
ruling came up for appeal, Sheehan needed to post a bond
to get it going. I put up a bond of almost a million
and a half dollars to do that. When the appeal failed,
the court said ‘pay up'. I asked Sheehan, who had a large
mailing list of people who knew that the allegations
had been validated [by the Kerry hearings], if he would
send out a letter asking them to help bear the burden.
One person should not have to do it. He refused to do
it. I had to pay up and I nearly went bankrupt. But I
don't hold him responsible for the failure of the lawsuit."
FTW then asked Anagnos if he was aware of the
fact that the Christic suit had been dismissed because
of Sheehan's flawed affidavit using deceased and "non-existent" witnesses.
I also asked if Anagnos was aware that the appeal had
been thrown out because the trial court's ruling had
been a dismissal with prejudice because of misconduct
and that the money was a fine (as reported by Schou)
and not a bond. To both questions Anagnos said, "I wasn't
aware of that. I didn't know that." Anagnos was also
not familiar with the Sabow case, even though it had
been positively featured in two segments of a CBS News
program anchored by Connie Chung.
Throughout the course of the Christic suit, Daniel Sheehan
compiled a mailing list of supporters who donated hundreds
of thousands (if not millions) of dollars to support
the case. In politics, such a mailing list is gold. Ask
Bill Clinton about how important such lists are. A question
that arises is, did Sheehan protect his donor list by
having only one man pay the bill for his arguable legal
malpractice?
There is something else that is remarkably consistent
about Daniel Sheehan's behavior. He has a record of telling
people what not to say.
I spoke with him in 1986 during the Christic trial well
before the dismissal, and offered him my first-hand observations
and records alleging CIA involvement in drug dealing.
He was not interested, and he encouraged me to forget
about it. He promised to contact me again and obtain
my records, but he never called. I called back and left
several messages. He refused to respond.
In 1992, during the Perot campaign, while I was serving
as LA Press spokesman, I was told by Perot insiders that
Sheehan had been communicating with Perot, and urging
him to remain silent about POW and CIA-drug issues. One
Perot staffer confirmed to me that Perot had recently
met with or spoken to Sheehan on more than one occasion.
In 1996, just days after I had confronted CIA Director
John Deutch at Locke High School with hard evidence of
CIA drug trafficking (including names of CIA operations),
Sheehan drove to my residence in Sylmar, California and
spent three hours trying to persuade me to give up the
whole issue and get on with my life. My efforts, he told
me, were futile.
In January of 1997, at a large Los Angeles demonstration
focusing on CIA-drug trafficking after a series of stories
in The San Jose Mercury, Sheehan showed up with
David Sabow, who was going to address an eager audience
about proof that the CIA was involved in smuggling cocaine.
Sheehan dogged Sabow's every step, and Sabow told me, "I
have to clear everything I say with Danny. I just can't
say that we know that the CIA was dealing drugs." Sabow's
statement to the crowd was tepid, to say the least.
Is Sheehan having the same effect on Dennis Kucinich?
Decorated Vietnam veteran and lawyer Gary Eitel served
as a special federal prosecutor in a case that looked
into the CIA's diversion of C-130 Hercules aircraft into
the hands of private companies who were operating as
CIA contractors or proprietaries. These were the same
C-130s that flew into Jim Sabow's life. Eitel's investigation
and prosecution, unlike Sheehan's, resulted in two felony
convictions and other civil remedies. Eitel indirectly
provided some pro bono work to the Sabow family. He told
them that the way to prove their case was to find the
refueling records that would identify the El Toro planes
as the same ones he had already proven had been maneuvered
through the Forest Service by the government. According
to Eitel, as soon as this information was passed to Sheehan's
investigator, it was discovered that the records had
been destroyed.
FTW's 1998 investigation of the CIA's diversion
of twenty-eight C-130s is located at
http://fromthewilderness.com/free/pandora/forest_service_c130s.html.
Eitel then seemed to raise a question that is on many
people's minds. "When Danny Sheehan comes into any case,
like he did with Christic, the case comes unglued. The
team that prosecuted those cases couldn't have done a
better job for the other side if they had been working
for them."
A common assessment by those sympathetic to Sheehan
is that his legal failures are the result of incompetence.
However, another perspective could be offered: Namely
that Sheehan is extremely competent at diffusing any
case or issues - maybe even candidates -- that are potentially
devastating to government covert operations. Eitel observed, "Sheehan
was right there in the middle of all of it and he could
have unraveled it right back to Southern Air Transport,
[Bill] Casey and Richard Secord from the Sabow case.
Instead it all went away when Sheehan turned a wrongful
death case into a being rude case, and then blew that
one."
One more thing should be said about Danny Sheehan. I
received a confirmation in 2000 that Daniel Sheehan had
served as the executive director of the Rockefeller/Michael
Milken-funded State of the World Forum in San Francisco.
The Rockefellers are, of course, the creator-founders
of both the Council on Foreign Relations and the Trilateral
Commission.
FTW solicited comment on Sheehan's role in the
Kucinich campaign from three separate high-level campaign
officials. As of press time for this article, that request
has been neither acknowledged nor responded to.
SO NOW WHAT?
As for the remainder of the democratic challengers:
Dick Gephardt (CFR), Al Sharpton, John Edwards, Carol
Mosely Braun and the rest, they are not likely to rise
from the pack and have no broad-based appeal. We will
not have a clear picture of who the anointed one is until
after the closure of filings for the New Hampshire primary,
and most likely not until early next spring. But rest
assured that whoever emerges will not have been
chosen by the people. That is because the people are
not doing what needs to be done to change the system.
Instead, they are willfully lining up to play a game
that has been set out for them, and one that is rigged,
rather than insisting that they play their own game.
With regard to the $87 billion requested by Bush to
fund the occupation, Lieberman and Gephardt have said
they will vote for it while Kucinich, Dean, Kerry, Clark
and Edwards have said that they will (would) not vote
for it without changes to the Bush tax cut program. Dean
and Clark have a free ride on this one. They can't vote.
And for the rest, the measure may pass anyway, making
their opposition symbolic more than real.
At present, it looks to me like Wesley Clark carries
a lot of baggage. The Republican Clinton haters must
be salivating in the wings for Clark to become the nominee.
But they have a problem with Clark they didn't have with
Bill Clinton. They went after Clinton on sexual misconduct
because his more serious crimes involved both political
parties and mutually assured destruction. Still, Clark
would become, by virtue of his presidential bid, the
perfect Secretary of Defense in a John Kerry administration,
or a second Bush Administration.
For the present, Clark's appearance on the stage as
an "early-peaker" seems to have had the intended result
of slowing down Howard Dean. This has been noted by a
number of political observers. Again, barring some miracles,
we think it is unlikely that Clark will make it to the
finish line as the nominee. And it is also not likely
that in these perilous times, so dominated by international
affairs, that a Washington outsider with no experience
on that stage could be sold as the one worthy of "voter
confidence". It is most unlikely that an outside Governor
could reach the White House the way Jimmy Carter (Trilateral,
CFR) or Bill Clinton did.
With all of that being said, we still come back to the
question of whether the 2004 election will even be a
trustworthy process at all.
TERMINATING
DEMOCRACY
For months, now I have been hammered by readers who
have wanted me to say something about the California
recall. OK, here it is.
The California recall was a trial run for the rigged
use of electronic software in the 2004 election, and
further exploitation of coming energy shortages. The
race was called just one minute after the polls closed
even though electronic software was not used in six counties
including Los Angeles County. And no one in the major
press has raised a peep about it. Yet, within days, a
few intrepid researchers were able to find indications
of vote tampering on the proprietary Diebold machines
used in many California counties. In an outrageous conflict
with the public interest, Diebold CEO Walden O'Dell told
Ohio Republicans this August that he was "committed to helping
Ohio deliver its electoral votes to the president next
year." Even the BBC on October 8th,
noted that Diebold and other systems used in California
and elsewhere left the door wide open for tampering:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/3169706.stm. The
Sydney Morning Herald in Australia reported on
October 8th what Americans, and especially
Californians were never told: that the electronic systems
were "as flawed as chads."
Excellent background research on what appears to be
rampant and overtly criminal behavior by Diebold can
be found at the following web sites:
http://www.blackboxvoting.org/
http://www.rense.com/general42/dieboldmachinesyield.htm
http://www.equalccw.com/liebold.html
Diebold is only one of many firms making voting software,
and all of it seems have problems. Republican Senator
Chuck Hagel of Nebraska ought to know. He used to chair
a company, American Information Systems, which owns the
largest company putting machines into US use, Election
Systems and Software. But it's doubtful he's going to
complain. Nebraska used his software in the 2002 election
and he garnered 83% of the vote. An excellent over view
of all the firms involved in electronic voting has been
published by The Online Journal at:
http://www.onlinejournal.com/Special_Reports/100603Landes/100603landes.htm
One major point here is that when and if a Democrat "wins" the
presidency, some Americans will breathe a collective
sigh of relief, and think that they beat the corruption.
But who's to say the votes weren't rigged in that direction,
just to keep the people asleep for a few more years.
There is no cause for optimism based upon what we know
about potential replacements.
Bush and Enron Win Again
From perspectives as different as those of Greg Palast
and Lyndon Larouche, many people saw it coming. Palast
has described in detail how energy deregulation was conceived
and executed by Bush-connected Republicans and even more,
how Arnold Schwarzenegger had an unpublicized Beverly
Hills "tryst" with Enron's Ken Lay, L.A. Mayor Richard
Riordan and convicted stock swindler Michael Milken in
2001, as he was being groomed to occupy California's
State House. If the people of California thought the
first energy crisis was bad - the one that enriched Enron,
Williams, and Reliant and robbed California of an estimated
$50 billion -- they ain't seen nothing yet.
According to The San Francisco Chronicle on October
10:
Gov.-elect Arnold
Schwarzenegger's first appointments Thursday reflect
his close ties to the Bush White House, a relationship
he downplayed during the campaign but now is counting
on to bring California more favorable treatment from
Washington….
Bush and Schwarzenegger
have long minimized their links, perhaps not wanting
to legitimize Democratic accusations that the recall
was a Republican effort orchestrated from Washington.
Schwarzenegger asserted Thursday there was "no
White House connection" in his transition team,
and Bush had insisted throughout the recall campaign
that he was only a spectator watching a "fascinating
political drama."
Nevertheless, the
transition team announced Thursday contains many
of Bush's closest California contacts, including
four of the seven leaders of Bush's 2000 California
Campaign: Gerald Parsky, the chairman, Rep. David
Dreier of San Dimas (Los Angeles
County) and state Sen. Jim Brulte of Rancho Cucamonga
(San Bernadino County), who co-chaired the campaign,
and Eloise Anderson,
who served on the Bush 2000 California committee.
The transition team
also includes Bush confidante George Shultz, Matt
Fong, the former state treasurer who raised in excess
of $100,000 for Bush's 2000 campaign, and Viet Dinh,
a former assistant attorney general in Bush's Justice
Department.
A day later, the Chronicle reported:
Schwarzenegger's energy
strategy is being driven by some of the same members
of former Gov. Pete Wilson's team who led the push
for energy deregulation in the mid-1990s. The governor-elect,
for example, picked for his transition team Jessie
Knight, a former Wilson appointee to the Public Utilities
Commission and a leading proponent of deregulation…
"Deregulation has already cost the state $50 billion,
give or take," said Mike Florio, senior attorney
for The Utility Reform Network. "Why on earth
anyone would want to do that again is mystifying
to us."…
The proposal would create two markets for electricity: Residential
users and small businesses would continue to get
power from the state's utilities, while large users
could take their chances with private energy firms…
Another way of looking at this is to say that small
and residential users, through the bonds they fund
for their public utilities, would be subsidizing the
major power consumers while the revenues of the large
power consumers would be taken away from public utilities.
This will inevitably break the backs of utilities that
can prepare for and carry excess demand and capacity.
Ultimately, that will crack or bankrupt entities like
the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power, which managed to survive unscathed
without interruptions of service or massive rate hikes
in the last energy crisis, but which will not survive
the next one.
Perhaps the best way to understand what is beyond George
W, Bush is to fully appreciate that what came before
him was part of the same agenda as what will follow him.
Nothing has been done to change that. On the critical
issues, a Democrat from the current slate won't make
the slightest bit of difference. And as for immersing FTW's readers
in the grand theater of election 2004 -- that is a disservice
I refuse to perform. Time and focus are critical. Here,
we operate in the real world.
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