General Discussion
Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsJimmy Hoffa disappeared 40 years ago today
The Detroit News, July 30, 2015
Forty years ago today, former Teamsters President James R. Hoffa went to the Machus Red Fox restaurant on Telegraph (now the site of Andiamo Bloomfield Township), believing he was to have a "peace conference" with mob boss Tony Provenzano.
Hoffa had relinquished the presidency of the Teamsters years earlier after he was convicted of jury tampering, but in the years since his release in 1971, he missed being involved in the union. Was the meeting with Tony Pro intended to enable his return to power?
But Provenzano was reportedly in New Jersey that long summer day of July 30, 1975, and the last anyone heard of Hoffa was a phone call he made to his wife, Josephine, at 2:30 p.m. from a nearby pay phone. He told her nobody was there to meet him. The next morning, his car was found abandoned in the parking lot.
Hoffas disappearance remains one of the 20th centurys great unsolved mysteries. Many of those with links to the Hoffa case have taken secrets to their graves Giacomo "Black Jack" Tocco, Leonard Schultz, Vito "Billy Jack" Giacalone, Anthony Giacalone, Tony Zerilli, and so on.
CONTINUED...
http://www.detroitnews.com/story/news/local/michigan/2015/07/30/jimmy-hoffa-disappeared-years-ago/30871061/
My guess is he was about to testify before the House Select Committee on Assassinations and was silenced, along with other people who were called to testify, including Sam Giancana, Johnny Roselli and George de Mohrenschildt.
BainsBane
(54,435 posts)Octafish
(55,745 posts)Poppy Bush told Ed Koch 'nothing I can do' to stop your assassin, yet he ran CIA & Op CONDOR.
'Im sorry, Ed. Theres nothing I can do': Shocking untold tale of the Chilean government's plot to KILL Ed Koch...and how CIA director George Bush couldn't help
* Then a New York congressman, Koch won the ire of South American dictators he'd begun a crusade to help oust in the name of democracy
* Exiled Chilean ambassador Orlando Letelier was assassinated days before Koch was warned in a shocking act of terrorism in Washington
* A new book links the threat on Koch to what was known as Operation Condor, a top secret terrorism corps involving Pinochet and other despots
In The Condor Years, John Dinges reveals Bush knew of Condor threats against Koch but failed to warn him until Letelier's spectacular murder
By JOSHUA GARDNER
Daily Mail (London), PUBLISHED: 10:58 EST, 18 February 2014
Ed Koch's status as a beloved New York City mayor hid a shocking untold history: the late politician was the target of a widespread South American terror operation's 70s-era assassination plot, a new book revealed Tuesday.
While still serving as a New York congressman working to oust ruthless despots from beleaguered countries like Chile and Uruguay, Koch received a phone call in 1976 from then-CIA Director George H.W. Bush telling the future mayor to watch his back.
Just days before, Washington saw its worst act of terror ever when an exiled Chilean ambassador was snuffed out with a car bomb on Embassy Row. Bush called to tell Koch he was next, and there was nothing he could do.
'Listen, my agents have gotten news that theres a contract out on your life,' Bush told the horrified four-term congressman in a conversation recalled to author John Dinges by Koch.
SNIP...
Cue Operation Condor: an alliance of six Latin American countries led by Chile and Pinochet which formed secretly as a means of collaborating when one country wanted an enemy on foreign soil dead.
CONTINUED...
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2562159/Shocking-untold-tale-Chilean-governments-plot-KILL-Ed-Koch-CIA-director-George-Bush-help.html
BainsBane
(54,435 posts)As well as the Church Committee Hearings on Covert Action in Chile and Assassination Plots. I do not recall anything about Ed Koch. How is it that you have decided he was some sort of target? Because he denounced the national security states, with no power to do anything to influence them? Perhaps he was a target. I don't know. I do know that we have clear evidence that many other tens of thousands of people were killed, tortured, and disappeared during that period.
It's clear the Chilean intelligence services were behind the bomb that killed Letelier and Moffitt, and the NSArchives have obtained US documents through FOIA requests demonstrating that the US government failed to act to prevent it, despite knowing of Chile's ongoing assassination plots through Condor. http://nsarchive.gwu.edu/NSAEBB/NSAEBB199/ But why Ed Koch? Letelier had been a loyal supporter of Allende, had been targeted and tortured by the Pinochet government, and was a spokesman for the Chilean resistance. They wanted him dead. Why does an American mayor need to be injected in the story, as though the deaths of a former Ambassador and his US assistant aren't enough?
The established historical reveals a legacy far more brutal and deadly than your creative speculation. Yet for some reason, you want to focus only on high-profile American figures, as though the deaths of tens of thousands of Chileans, Argentinians, Brazilians and Uruguayans aren't enough. The US of course financially supported those governments and installed some of them, as in the case of Pinochet. They also trained torturers at the School of the Americas. This began before Pappy Bush and extended well beyond him. Then CIA Director Richard Helms ran the coup operation in Chile, and of course we know Kissinger was heavily involved (the one incident he refused to discuss in a recent film biography). The history is far worse and more extensive than one evil family. Is is in fact the history of US imperialism and the Cold War. Yet somehow you seem far more concerned with a few famous Americans. If you want to read something truly horrific, see this: http://utpress.utexas.edu/index.php/books/cattop
The original documents in Portuguese can be accessed on Microfilm at a number of US libraries, including at UT Austin, or online http://bnmdigital.mpf.mp.br/#!/ Or the work of the Truth and Reconciliation commission released last year: http://g1.globo.com/politica/noticia/2014/12/consulte-integra-do-relatorio-final-da-comissao-nacional-da-verdade.html
What is astounding about the Brazilian case is that torture has conducted in open court and carefully documented, a function of the bizarrely juridical nature of Brazilian culture. You won't find the names of Ed Koch, George H. W. Bush, or any of your other favorites. you will find thousands of others: ANGELINA GONÇALVES, ANTÔNIO JOSÉ DOS REIS, SEBASTIÃO TOMÉ DA SILVA, LABIBE ELIAS ABDUCH, OTÁVIO SOARES FERREIRA DA CUNHA, and thousands more. You can even see some of their faces. http://estaticog1.globo.com/2014/12/10/MortoseDesaparecidos_1950-1969.pdf For the remarkable story of how these documents came to first be published, the chapter on Brazil in this book is as compelling as any mystery story. http://www.amazon.com/Miracle-Universe-Settling-Accounts-Torturers/dp/0226893944
And of course the US had knowledge of the ongoing torture yet continued to support the government anyway. http://nsarchive.gwu.edu/NSAEBB/NSAEBB478/
My problem with "creative speculation" is not that it blames "corporatists and oligarchs," as one poster commented. Rather that it makes the issues small, neat and tidy. If the history of US support of terror and assassination were limited to one family, that would make it so much easier, wouldn't it? But it's not. It runs throughout US history during the Cold War, even before and since. It is the history of US empire and brutal defense of capitalism. It has brought us cheap oil, copper, fruit--the bananas you buy today at the store, all come with a legacy of brutal repression and murder. It is not simply about Jimmy Hoffa or Ed Koch, or the fault of the BFEE. It is America; it is part of all of us. Conspiracy theories eschew that in order to tie it all up into easy packages, to engage in simplistic pointing at bad guys, as though life were a tightly scripted movie. If only it were so simple. If only fault lay with the BFEE to the exclusion of Democratic presidents like Truman, JFK, LBJ, and Carter. If only one or two maleficent CIA directors were responsible rather than the entire intelligence apparatus of the US government. If only it weren't central to the American project and our position in the world. If it is a Bush family evil empire, it is an American Evil Empire, an empire of which we all are part. If you ever had the occasion to travel to Latin America, you would know you are viewed through that lens, even called an imperialist. That is not because of one American family. It is the legacy of the nation.
Octafish
(55,745 posts)From GWU's National Security Archive:
ED KOCH THREATENED WITH ASSASSINATION IN 1976
NEW BOOK REVEALS "CONDOR" THREAT AGAINST
FORMER NEW YORK CONGRESSMAN/MAYOR
CIA DELAYED RESPONDING TO INTELLIGENCE
ON POSSIBLE TERRORIST PLOT BY ALLIED
LATIN AMERICAN MILITARY OFFICIALS
According to documents obtained by Dinges and interviews he conducted for The Condor Years, the CIA station chief in Montevideo received information in late July 1976 that two high-level Uruguayan intelligence officers had discussed their ability to have Chile's secret police, DINA, send agents to the United States to kill Koch. The station chief, identified in the book as Frederick Latrash, reported the conversation to CIA headquarters but recommended that the Agency take no action because the officers had been drinking at a cocktail party when the threat was made.
Only after Chilean operatives carried out the September 21, 1976, assassination of former ambassador Orlando Letelier did the CIA warn Koch and share the intelligence with the FBI and the State Department, according to the new book. A car bomb planted by those agents killed Letelier and an American woman, Ronni Moffitt on Massachusetts Avenue in Washington D.C. Considered at the time to be the most egregious act of international terrorism ever committed in the U.S. capital, the Letelier-Moffitt assassination was quickly linked by the FBI to a shadowy six-country alliance, Operation Condor, created by Chile to enable the military governments to track down and kill their opponents inside and outside of Latin America.
The basic Condor method of operation, according to FBI and CIA documents, was for member countries to assist each other in carrying out assassinations against each other's enemies. Col. Jose Fons, one of the two officers identified as discussing the plan to kill Koch, was Uruguay's representative to a November 1975 secret meeting in Santiago, Chile, at which Operation Condor was created, according to secret Chilean documents obtained by Dinges. The other officer, Major Jose Nino Gavazzo, who is described in a secret State Department memorandum as "apparently a dangerous type," was also a Condor operative. He headed a team of intelligence officers working in Argentina in 1976 in operations that resulted in the kidnapping and deaths of more than 100 Uruguayans.
SNIP...
In mid October 1976, Koch wrote to the Justice Department asking for FBI protection and requesting "any additional information relating to this matter in your files which I should be made aware of." None was provided to him. In his 1991 autobiography, Koch wrote that Bush had called him and told him to "be careful." But, until Dinges told the former mayor of New York City about Operation Condor in an interview in 2001, Koch was not aware of the connection between the threat on his life and the assassination operations of Condor, on which the CIA had concrete intelligence in the summer of 1976.
As a result of his meeting with Dinges, Koch petitioned the CIA and other agencies for more information on why he had not been expeditiously warned of a terrorist threat on his life. The CIA declined to declassify the relevant reports, but sent Koch a letter with this explanation for the delay: "The Agency's initial analysis of these comments [the military officers' discussion of killing Koch] was that they represented nothing more than alcohol-induced bravado. In the aftermath of the assassination of Orlando Letelier in Washington, DC, U.S. officials questioned their assumption that other countries would not conduct assassinations in the U.S." (see Document 4)
Details of the threat have also been deleted from State and Justice Department documents released to Koch. But the documents reveal that the State Department took action after the fact to prevent the two officers from entering the United States. In late 1976, Colonel Fons and Major Gavazzo were assigned to prominent diplomatic posts in Washington D.C., but the State Department forced the Uruguayan government to withdraw their appointments with the public explanation that "Fons and Gavazzo could be the objects of unpleasant publicity ." The real reason, according to the documents, was the threat against Koch (see Document 3).
CONTINUED w/LINKS...
http://www2.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB112/
Keep standing up against these un-American fascist gangsters, BainsBane. You're doing a bang up job.
BainsBane
(54,435 posts)or even bother to read my post, I don't see any point in even trying to have a discussion.
Octafish
(55,745 posts)Including this part.
I've read many of the CIA-ITT memos
As well as the Church Committee Hearings on Covert Action in Chile and Assassination Plots. I do not recall anything about Ed Koch.
Which is why I answered with the info from GWU.
And this part.
Still, so what?
Rex
(65,616 posts)Sadly some here are treated better than others, like the person you are replying to. Looks like you pissed off the local concern troll enough to make them make their own thread!
Octafish
(55,745 posts)IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH doesn't work for me.
Octafish
(55,745 posts)From 2006, Know your BFEE: Los Amigos de Bush
Know your BFEE or "Hey, America! Wake Up and Smell the Sulfur!"
Few today remember a most heinous terrorist act: The assassinations of former Chilean ambassador Orlando Letelier and American Ronnie Karpen Moffit.
Ms. Moffit was an American citizen murdered by agents of a foreign government on U.S. soil. Her only crime was being with Orlando Letelier, whose crime was to speak out against the military coup that toppled the democratically elected Chilean government he served. Because he refused to turn over the Chilean secret police and their American contacts, these assassinations were allowed, if not sanctioned, by George Bush, then director of central intelligence and head of the CIA.
As with all things having to do with the BFEE, the world get worse. So, a reminder:
October will mark the 30th anniversary of another most heinous terrorist act: The bombing of a Cuban civilian airliner that killed 73 passengers and crew. The pilots reported the blast caused their aircraft to catch fire and they were burning up as they attempted an emergency landing. The plane crashed into the Caribbean, a few miles west of Barbados. All aboard perished, including a close friend of the Great DUer malaise.
Cubana Airlines DC-8 like the one bombed by BFEE members Luis Posada Carriles and Orlando Bosch. Both turds have been protected by Poppy and Baby Doc Bush and the CIA, which strangely has been loyal to them rather than to various presidencies before and in-between.
Heres an excellent essay based on the facts:
The Charmed Life of a Mass Murderer
Posada Carriles and Bush's Anti-Terror Hoax
By SAUL LANDAU
Counterpunch June 9, 2005
President George W. Bush has emphasized that if one of the myriad of U.S. police agencies even suspect someone of planning, abetting or carrying out a terrorist act, he will, at a minimum, get tossed into a dark hole. Indeed, Bush has thrown the Magna Carta into the garbage heap when it comes to Muslims suspected of pernicious thoughts toward the United States.
But if suspected terrorists turn their rage toward the detested Fidel Castro, these rules don't apply.
Indeed, those who try to bomb Cuban targets, or those related to Cuba, receive special treatment. This double-standard casts a shadow over the president's commitment to fight terrorism.
For example, TV footage showed Homeland Security cops arresting Posada in mid May. But the arresting officers didn't even handcuff the Western Hemisphere's most notorious terrorist. (Remember how Bush's pal Ken "Kenny Boy" Lay ENRON's CEO got handcuffed?) Justice Department spokespeople said they plan to charge the foremost terrorist in the western hemisphere with "illegal entry into the United States."
The FBI has reams of files on Posada, affectionately called "Bambi" by his terrorist friends. Former FBI Special Agent Carter Cornick told New York Times reporter Tim Weiner that Posada was "up to his eyeballs" in the October 1976 destruction of a Cuban commercial airliner over Barbados. All 73 passengers and crew members died. Recently published FBI and CIA documents not only confirm Cornick's statement, but also reveal that U.S. agencies had knowledge of the plot and did not inform Cuban authorities or try to stop the bombing.
SNIP
One wonders: Did Posada announce his illegal presence in the United States with the idea that U.S. government complicity in aiding and abetting his past acts of terrorism would protect him? U.S. authorities didn't inform Cuba or try to stop the 1976 air-bombing plot, and in 1971, as Veciana stated, the CIA made the gun that Posada's agents placed inside the camera to assassinate Castro. And Ollie North has knowledge of Posada's covert activities for U.S. intelligence as well.
CONTINUED
http://www.counterpunch.org/landau06092005.html
[font color="red"]What ties these two events together is the involvement of George Herbert Walker Bush, as then-CIA director, in their cover-up as crimes and in the protection of their perpetrators, as in the person of one Luis Posada Carriles, Orlando Bosch and their colleagues-in-terror.[/font color]
Think about it: A murder-forgiving CIA director Bush went on to become President of the United States. Today, Bushs son, George, acts as president. The younger Bush has used his office from Day One to protect and cover-up the crimes of his father.
Thats what Hugo Chavez was talking about when he smelled the sulfur and called Bush The Devil.
America needs to wake up and smell the sulfur, too. Heres some background on the above:
LUIS POSADA CARRILES
THE DECLASSIFIED RECORD
CIA and FBI Documents Detail Career in International Terrorism; Connection to U.S.
National Security Archive Electronic Briefing Book No. 153
http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB153 /
Dont forget to check out Orlando Bosch, while youre at it. GOOGLE with Jeb Bush for some interesting connections to the present day.
Democracy Nows Amy Goodman and Juan Gonzalez interviewed National Security Archives Peter Kornbluh and Leteliers son, Francisco:
http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=06/09/21/153...
Another important point to remember, is Kissinger's close association with Operation CONDOR, the assassination program run out of "The Cone" to silence democrats, liberals, union leaders, progressives, socialists, communists or anyone who stood for justice and equality.
Chile security chief was CIA informer
BBC Tuesday, 19 September, 2000, 23:24 GMT 00:24 UK
Recently declassified documents in the United States show that the former head of the secret police in Chile, Manuel Contreras, was a paid informant for the US intelligence agency, the CIA.
The report, comprising CIA documents requested by the US Congress, show that contact with Contreras began in 1974 - a year after the military coup that brought General Augusto Pinochet to power.
Contreras oversaw the much-feared security service DINA
The report adds that the contact was maintained until 1977 - a year after Contreras plotted the killing of the then Chilean Foreign Minister and foe of General Pinochet, Orlando Letelier, in Washington.
A BBC correspondent in Washington, Nick Bryant, says the documents reinforce the view that the US turned a blind eye towards political repression in Chile during the Pinochet era and that the CIA was complicit in many human rights abuses.
Pinochet's confidant
As head of the security service, DINA, Contreras became the one of the most feared men in Chile, second only to General Pinochet.
The general's iron rule was underpinned by the tactics of brutal repression that saw thousands die and thousands more flee into exile. Others disappeared or were tortured.
CONTINUED
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/932897.stm
Of course, there are even more sulferous friends than these
Bush s Longstanding Criminal Mexican Amigos
The disturbing ties of some of George W. Bush's Latino advisors
More on Bush-Amigos links in PBS Frontline interview with Gary Jacobs
By Julie Reynolds
Research assistance by Victor Almazán and Ana Leonor Rojo
LOS AMIGOS DE BUSH
Dime con quién andas y te diré quién eres. (Tell me who you side with and I will tell you who you are.) George W. Bush for President web site
Those who say that George W. Bush has scant knowledge of foreign affairs don't understand his family's relationship with Mexico.
If one event could be said to make that relationship visible, it had to be the state dinner given eleven years ago by President Bush for Mexico's president, Carlos Salinas. It was an elegant yet boisterous gala, where the biggest movers and shakers in Texas and Mexico congregated and celebrated. This group was to become W's Mexican legacy, a gift of ties and connections passed on from the father to his son.
SNIP
The Mexican president had spent a long day with President Bush signing trade pacts, the precursors of NAFTA. Salinas brought his so-called Dream Team: his commerce secretary, finance minister, and his personal Machiavelli, Jose Córdoba. It would later be astounding to see, as the decade unfolded, how many of that administration's proud men and women fell shamefully from grace - some exiled, some imprisoned and some assassinated.
No one knew it then, but many at that banquet would survive to one day help young W beat a path back to the White House. There were loyal "Bushfellas" who were old friends of the family: Commerce Secretary Robert Mosbacher Sr., General Colin Powell, and George Bush Senior's ever-present friend, Secretary of State James Baker. Gary Jacobs, whose Texas bank was about to be bought by the son of Mexico's billionaire-politico Carlos Hank González, was also a guest. Tony Garza, then a young judge, is now a Bush cabinet contender. Today, all are advisors or contributors to W's campaign.
Hidden among the glitterati were two relative unknowns. They were, however, familiar to the group at hand. They were the loyal "Amigos de Bush" from San Antonio: criminal defense lawyer Roy Barrera Jr. and car dealer Ernesto Ancira Jr. In contrast to the Salinas group, the ties of Barrera and Ancira to drug cartels would remain unnoticed for another decade. Their ties to George W. would grow stronger.
CONTINUED
GOOGLE cache:
http://72.14.209.104/search?q=cache:Th5_dq9beuYJ:www.el...
May also be at:
http://www.newsmakingnews.com/contents10,2,00.htm
Henry Kissinger and Agusto Pinochet
I don't see why we need to stand by and watch a country go communist due to the irresponsibility of its people. The issues are much too important for the Chilean voters to be left to decide for themselves. -- Henry A. Kissinger
Remember: If the guy W wanted to appoint head of the 9-11 Commission feels that way about democracy in Chile, whats there to make us think he and those for whom he toils believe differently about democracy in the United States of America?
Thanks to those who read and give a damn.
JEB
(4,748 posts)At least there was some feeble day late dollar short attempt the hold Pinochet to account. Kissinger just gets the glad hand from too many leaders. Makes me retch.
Ghost in the Machine
(14,912 posts)Have YOU ever traced the Bush family tree back as far as you can? Look at the names of the families that they all married into, and the ancestry becomes clear that this is one BIG family, that has been involved with Banking, Oil, Government and MIC companies for several generations. They keep honoring those of the past by giving their children, grandchildren, great-grandchildren and so on either the first or middle names of ancestors from almost 200 years ago, hence John Ellis Bush, George Walker Bush, Neil Mallon Pierce Bush, Marvin Pierce Bush & Dorothy Walker, all born to George Herbert Walker & Barbara Pierce Bush. George W Bush named his own daughter Barbara Pierce Bush, after his mother, and Jenna Welch Bush, whose middle name is her mothers maiden name.
Then you have all the other Prestons, Prescotts, Walkers, and so on. It would really do you some good to research this entire family... surprise! The name "Koch" even comes up in there!
Go here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_H._W._Bush#External_links , then click on the name "George Herbert Walker Bush" and it will open up tp show the family names. If you click on each one of them, especially going backwards, you will see the picture starting to develop of who and what these people really are.
Peace,
Ghost
BainsBane
(54,435 posts)It is no way refutes my point.
Ghost in the Machine
(14,912 posts)I KNOW that you didn't have time to look up the link, much less research any of the ancestors past Poppy, whose own father was involved with a bank that got its assets frozen under the Trading With the Enemies Act" from (I think) 1943 until the war was over.
See:
Bush was a founding member and one of seven directors (including W. Averell Harriman) of the Union Banking Corporation (holding a single share out of 4,000 as a director), an investment bank that operated as a clearing house for many assets and enterprises held by German steel magnate Fritz Thyssen.[6][7] In July 1942, the bank was suspected of holding gold on behalf of Nazi leaders.[8] A subsequent government investigation disproved those allegations but confirmed the Thyssens' control, and in October 1942 the United States seized the bank under the Trading with the Enemy Act and held the assets for the duration of World War II.[6] Journalist Duncan Campbell pointed out documents showing that Prescott Bush was a director and shareholder of a number of companies involved with Thyssen.[6]
According to journalist Joe Conason, Prescott Bush's involvement with UBC was purely commercial and he was not a Nazi sympathizer.[9] The Anti-Defamation League[10] and historian Herbert Parmet[7] agreed with that assessment. The Anti-Defamation League said that "rumours about the alleged Nazi 'ties' of the late Prescott Bush ... have circulated widely through the internet in recent years. These charges are untenable and politically motivated ... Prescott Bush was neither a Nazi nor a Nazi sympathiser." [6] The 1942 investigation did not establish a connection between Prescott Bush and Thyssen.[6]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prescott_Bush#Union_Banking_Corporation
Another prominent Bush Family member was involved in a fruit business, which also imported bananas, but I will let YOU look it up, I already know, but it's already been a long day, and I am tired & need to stretch out for a bit. That's what happens when you are disabled from a work related accident that left you with a broken neck and back, 2 major neck surgeries, but still have no one to take care of your property for you except your 77 year old father, who doesn't need to be out there either, 2 months or so after being diagnosed with blood cancer. That's who we are in *our* family, we do what *needs* to be done, even if it puts you in bed for a few days, so I think you can handle doing some of your own research back on this family (BFEE) and find out the connections to banks, steel magnates, all sorts of top level people in industries, even in news papers (though I *could be wrong* on that one, and won't mind admitting at all if I am, that's the sort of man I am).
Peace,
Ghost
BainsBane
(54,435 posts)I do not care.
Octafish
(55,745 posts)That is most undemocratic. Maybe if I did that to you, it would bother you.
BainsBane
(54,435 posts)You completely ignore what I write in favor of walls of articles and text that seem to be posted to elicit admiration. You'll need to look elsewhere for that.
Not only that, you denigrate the lives of people like me by continually insisting that what matters are a few great men. I find it particularly insulting when those "great men" are accused rapists.
Octafish
(55,745 posts)As for supporting rapists, that is a lie and smear.
BainsBane
(54,435 posts)Do you not regularly defend Julian Assange, who is evading an arrest warrant for rape? Did you not say it was wrong to refer to Bill Cosby as a rapist because he hadn't been convicted in a court of law? Then when you were called out on the disparity between your views on his presumption of innocence versus the Bushes, who likewise have not been convicted in a court of law, you distracted from your contradiction by claiming people had attacked you for posting about the BFEE.
Octafish
(55,745 posts)Your loss.
BainsBane
(54,435 posts)Octafish
(55,745 posts)That's why I wrote that a journalist does not write an accused is anything until proven guilty.
If you can't figure that out, that's your loss. It is not my business.
zappaman
(20,607 posts)Certainly hasn't stopped you from labeling them.
Tell us, Octafish of DU...what crimes were they convicted of?
Octafish
(55,745 posts)If I didn't write about their crimes and so on, who would, besides, the professors of criminology?
The Bush Family: A Continuing Criminal Enterprise?
Gary W. Potter, PhD.
Professor, Criminal Justice
Eastern Kentucky University
The S&Ls, the Mob and the Bushs
During the 1980's hundred of Savings and Loan Banks failed. Those bank failures cost U.S. taxpayers over $500 billion to cover federally insured losses, and much more to investigate the bank failures (Pizzo, Fricker, and Muolo, 1989; Brewton, 1992; Johnston, 1990). More than 75% of the Savings and Loan insolvencies where directly linked to serious and often criminal misconduct by senior financial insiders (Pizzo, Fricker and Muolo, 1989: 305). In fact, less than 10 percent of bank failures are related to economic conditions, the rest are caused by mismanagement or criminal conduct (Pizzo, Fricker and Muolo, 1989: 305).
A good example of the Savings and Loan failures can be found in the activities of Mario Renda, a Savings and Loan insider who often worked in close collaboration with organized crime (Pizzo, Fricker and Muolo, 1989: 123-126;302). Renda served as a middle man in arranging about $5 billion a year in deposits into 130 Savings and Loans, all of which failed (Kwitny, 1992: 27). Many of these deposits were made contingent on an agreement that the Savings and Loan involved would lend money to borrowers recommended by Renda, many of whom were organized crime figures or people entirely unknown to the banking institution involved (Kwitny, 1992: 27).
SNIP...
Prescott Bush: The Yakuzas Frontman
Finally, and perhaps most seriously, the Bush family pioneered the practice which has now become commonplace of collaboration between corporate and organized criminals. Prescott Bush, uncle of the current President and brother of the former President, played a key role in helping the Japanese Yakuza extend their financial and real estate holdings to the United States. In 1989, Prescott Bush made arrangements for a front company for Japanese organized crime groups to buy into two U.S. corporations and to make a sizeable real investment in the U.S. (Helm, 1991a: 1; Isikoff, 1992: A1). West Tsusho, a Japanese corporation, was identified by Japanese police officials as a front company for one of that countrys largest organized crime syndicates. Prescott Bush was paid a fee of $500,000 for his help in negotiating West Tsushos purchase of controlling interest in Assets Management, a U.S. corporation (Helm, 1991a: 1; Isikoff, 1992: A1). Bush also assisted the Japanese mob in investing in Quantam Access, a U.S. software company, which was ultimately taken over by the Japanese (Helm, 1991b: 10; Isikoff, 1992: A1). Both companies ultimately went into bankruptcy (Isikoff, 1992: A1; Moses, 1992).
George Bush Sr.: Shutting Down the Organize Crime Strike Forces
Despite assessments from senior law enforcement officers and experts on organized crime that efforts to control organized crime would be crippled, in December 1989, the administration of George Bush, Sr. abolished all 14 regional organized crime strike forces (McAlister, 1989: A 21; Struck out, 1990). The organized crime strike had been created as independent entities so they would not be subject to political influences or bureaucratic wrangling within federal law enforcement. In the two decades of their operation the strike forces had secured convictions of major organized crime figures in several U.S. cities (Struck out, 1990). It is at the very least curious to note that the federal strike force in Miami had been responsible for indicting Miguel Recarey, the man for whom Jeb Bush had intervened with regulators. Organized crime strike forces had similarly indicted Mario Renda, the organized crime liaison to the S& Ls, as well as several other key figures in the Savings and Loan Fiasco (Pizzo, Fricker, and Mulolo, 1989: 112, 120-123, 303, 337).
CONTINUED...
http://critcrim.org/critpapers/potter.htm
Prof. Potter and Bartcop gave the BFEE the hammer, unlike you, zappaman. That's why I write that when the secret government has all our ISPs, it takes a brave person to voice opposition.
BainsBane
(54,435 posts)Octafish
(55,745 posts)I just did.
BainsBane
(54,435 posts)and get back to you.
BainsBane
(54,435 posts)BainsBane
(54,435 posts)and please, no more walls of articles about the Bush family.
Besides, you aren't a journalist, and this site isn't a journalistic publication. It's a discussion board.
LeftOfWest
(482 posts)wtf???
Intertubes and all.
come on.
LanternWaste
(37,748 posts)I think you're talking to someone whose grasp of history is predicated wholly on political bias. Far easier to simply pat them on their heads, bless their little hearts, and return to the somewhat more objective, peer-reviewed table where the adults are seated (and, if we listen closely, involved in the moon-landing conspiracy followed quickly by the moon bombing conspiracy-- both the fault of the BFEE.... insert 47 links to editorials lacking peer-review here, followed by a righteous and self-validating but ultimately irrelevant rant against censorship).
BainsBane
(54,435 posts)Somehow I felt compelled to respond, which was indeed silly of me.
Octafish
(55,745 posts)Either way, I try to make it clear where and why I write what I do. That's why, when I write about crimes of the national security state, I use links and name sources and materials. For instance, from 2005:
Know your BFEE: The Secret Government
I think it's stood the test of time. Sorry if it's not up to your standards, but, hey, calling somebody names is so easy, even you can do it, LanternWaste.
cpwm17
(3,829 posts)SidDithers
(44,228 posts)Sid
zappaman
(20,607 posts)Very clear in your writing.
Dr Hobbitstein
(6,568 posts)Who else would it be?
Octafish
(55,745 posts)A program entered into by Allen Dulles when Eisenhower was president, yet Corporate Owned News continue to print, falsely, that the assassination program was JFK's idea. So, here's why I would have, from the Water is Wet as all Wetwork Department:
If things had gone according to plan, Nixon would've been president during the Bay of Pigs and would've sent in the Marines, along with the Army, Navy, Air Force and Coast Guard, making Allen Dulles and Meyer Lansky and all their rich and corrupt friends very, very happy.
AUG 1960: Richard Bissell meets with Colonel Sheffield Edwards, director of the CIA's Office of Security, and discusses with him ways to eliminate or assassinate Fidel Castro. Edwards proposes that the job be done by assassins hand-picked by the American underworld, specifically syndicate interests who have been driven out of their Havana gambling casinos by the Castro regime. Bissell gives Edwards the go-ahead to proceed. Between August 1960, and April 1961, the CIA with the help of the Mafia pursues a series of plots to poison or shot Castro. The CIAs own internal report on these efforts states that these plots "were viewed by at least some of the participants as being merely one aspect of the over-all active effort to overthrow the regime that culminated in the Bay of Pigs." (CIA, Inspector General's Report on Efforts to Assassinate Fidel Castro, p. 3, 14)
http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/bayofpigs/chron.html
Details on the actual sit-down, which to an amateur democratic detective interested in justice would seem like a lead worth pursuing:
Ever wonder about the sanity of America's leaders? Take a close look at perhaps the most bizarre plot in U.S. intelligence history
By Bryan Smith
Chicago Magazine
November 2007
(page 4 of 6)
EXCERPT...
By September 1960, the project was proceeding apace. Roselli would report directly to Maheu. The first step was a meeting in New York. There, at the Plaza Hotel, Maheu introduced Roselli to O'Connell. The agent wanted to cover up the participation of the CIA, so he pretended to be a man named Jim Olds who represented a group of wealthy industrialists eager to get rid of Castro so they could get back in business.
"We may know some people," Roselli said. Several weeks later, they all met at the Fontainebleau Hotel in Miami. For years, the luxurious facility had served as the unofficial headquarters for Mafioso leaders seeking a base close to their gambling interests in Cuba. Now, it would be the staging area for the assassination plots.
At a meeting in one of the suites, Roselli introduced Maheu to two men: Sam Gold and a man Roselli referred to as Joe, who could serve as a courier to Cuba. By this time, Roselli was on to O'Connell. "I'm not kidding," Roselli told the agent one day. "I know who you work for. But I'm not going to ask you to confirm it."
Roselli may have figured out that he was dealing with the CIA, but neither Maheu nor O'Connell realized the rank of mobsters with whom they were dealing. That changed when Maheu picked up a copy of the Sunday newspaper supplement Parade, which carried an article laying out the FBI's ten most wanted criminals. Leading the list was Sam Giancana, a.k.a. "Mooney," a.k.a. "Momo," a.k.a. "Sam the Cigar," a Chicago godfather who was one of the most feared dons in the countryand the man who called himself Sam Gold. "Joe" was also on the list. His real name, however, was Santos Trafficantethe outfit's Florida and Cuba chieftain.
Maheu alerted O'Connell. "My God, look what we're involved with," Maheu said. O'Connell told his superiors. Questioned later before the 1975 U.S. Senate Select Committee on Intelligence (later nicknamed the Church Committee after its chairman, Frank Church, the Democratic senator from Idaho), O'Connell was asked whether there had ever been any discussion about asking two men on the FBI's most wanted list to carry out a hit on a foreign leader.
"Not with me there wasn't," O'Connell answered.
"And obviously no one said stopand you went ahead."
"Yes."
"Did it bother you at all?"
"No," O'Connell answered, "it didn't."
CONTINUED...
http://www.chicagomag.com/Chicago-Magazine/November-2007/How-the-CIA-Enlisted-the-Chicago-Mob-to-Put-a-Hit-on-Castro/index.php?cparticle=4&siarticle=3
Yet, for some reason, the CIA continues to the present day to imply that it was Kennedy who did that.
Spies: Ex-CIA Agent In Raleigh Says Castro Knew About JFK Assassination Ahead Of Time
Former CIA agent and author Brian Latell in Raleigh
By The Raleigh Telegram
RALEIGH A noted former Central Intelligence Agency officer, author, and scholar who is intimately knowledgeable about Cuba and Fidel Castro, says he believes there is evidence that Castros government knew about the assassination of President John F. Kennedy in 1963 ahead of time.
SNIP...
Robert Kennedy, as the Attorney General of the United States, was in charge of the operation, said Latell. Despite the United States best efforts, the operation was nonetheless penetrated by Cuban intelligence agents, said Latell.
Latell said there were two serious assassination attempts by the United States against Castro that even used members of the mafia to help, but both of them were obviously unsuccessful.
He also said that there was a plot by the United States to have Castro jabbed with a pen containing a syringe filled with a very effective poison. Latell said that he believes the experienced assassin who worked for Castro who originally agreed to the plan may have been a double agent. After meeting with a personal representative of Robert Kennedy in Paris, the man knew that the plan to assassinate Castro came from the highest levels of the government, including John F. and Robert Kennedy.
The plan was never carried out, as the man later defected to the United States, but with so many double agents working for Castro also pledging allegiance to the CIA, Latell said it was likely that the information got back to Havana that the Kennedy brothers endorsed that plot with the pen.
CONTINUED...
http://raleightelegram.com/201209123311
Yet, the Mighty Wurlitzer cough Shenon plays the false tune that Kennedy was the guy who wanted Castro dead.
What the Warren Commission Didnt Know
A member of the panel that investigated JFKs death now worries he was a victim of a massive cover-up.
By PHILIP SHENON
February 02, 2015
EXCERPT...
Slawson feels betrayed by several senior government officials, especially at the CIA, whom he says he trusted in 1964 to tell the truth. He is most angry with one manthen-Attorney General Robert Kennedy, who assured the commission during the investigation that he knew of no evidence of a conspiracy in his brothers death. It is now clear, as I and others have reported, that Robert Kennedy withheld vital information from the investigation: While he publicly supported the commissions findings, Kennedys family and friends have confirmed in recent years that he was in fact harshly critical of the commission and believed that the investigation had missed evidence that might have pointed to a conspiracy.
What a bastard, Slawson says today of Robert Kennedy. This is a man I once had admiration for.
Slawson theorizes that that attorney general and the CIA worked together to hide information about Oswalds Mexico trip from the commission because they feared that the investigation might stumble onto the fact that JFKs administration had been trying, for years, sometimes with the help of the Mafia, to assassinate Castro. Mexico had been a staging area for the Castro plots. Public disclosure of the plots, Slawson says, could have derailed, if not destroyed, Robert Kennedys political career; he had led his brothers secret war against Castro and, as declassified documents would later show, was well aware of the Mafias involvement in the CIAs often harebrained schemes to murder the Cuban dictator. You cant distinguish between Bobby and the CIA on this, Slawson says. They were working hand in glove to hide information from us.
Although there is nothing in the public record to show that Robert Kennedy had specific evidence of a foreign conspiracy in his brothers death, I agree with Slawson that RFK and senior CIA officials threw the commission off the trail of witnesses and evidence that might have pointed to a conspiracy, especially in Mexico. Slawson also now suspectsbut admits again that he cannot provethat Chief Justice Earl Warren, who led the commission that bore his name, was an unwitting participant in the cover-up, agreeing with the CIA or RFK to make sure that the commission did not pursue certain evidence. Warren, he suspects, was given few details about why the commissions investigation had to be limited. He was probably just told that vital national interests were at stakethat certain lines of investigation in Mexico had to be curtained because they might inadvertently reveal sensitive U.S. spy operations.
That might explain what Slawson saw as Warrens most baffling decision during the investigationhis refusal to allow Slawson to interview a young Mexican woman who worked in the Cuban consulate in Mexico and who dealt face-to-face with Oswald on his visa application; declassified CIA records would later suggest that Oswald had a brief affair with the woman, who was herself a committed Socialist, and that she had introduced him to a network of other Castro supporters in Mexico. It was a different time, Slawson says. We were more naïve. Warren would have believed what he was told.
CONTINUED...
http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2015/02/warren-commission-jfk-investigators-114812_Page2.html#.VN982vnF-UV
Why would CIA not want the Warren Commission, and the American public to which it reported, know the truth about its illegal assassination program? Let's ask George H.W. Bush, Dr Hobbitstein. Maybe he knows.
To quote Sid Dithers:
Octafish
(55,745 posts)Based on what he told FBI, I think he should be interrogated by a Grand Jury.
Poppy Bush warned FBI -- AFTER -- JFK assassinated.
In the hour of the death of President John F. Kennedy, Texas oilman George Herbert Walker Bush named a suspect to the FBI in a "confidential" phone call. He then added he was heading for Dallas. Skeptics need not take my word for it, that's what Poppy told the FBI:
Here's a transcript of the text:
TO: SAC, HOUSTON DATE: 11-22-63
FROM: SA GRAHAM W. KITCHEL
SUBJECT: UNKNOWN SUBJECT;
ASSASSINATION OF PRESIDENT
JOHN F. KENNEDY
At 1:45 p.m. Mr. GEORGE H. W. BUSH, President of the Zapata Off-Shore Drilling Company, Houston, Texas, residence 5525 Briar, Houston, telephonically furnished the following information to writer by long distance telephone call from Tyler, Texas.
BUSH stated that he wanted to be kept confidential but wanted to furnish hearsay that he recalled hearing in recent weeks, the day and source unknown. He stated that one JAMES PARROTT has been talking of killing the President when he comes to Houston.
BUSH stated that PARROTT is possibly a student at the University of Houston and is active in political matters in this area. He stated that he felt Mrs. FAWLEY, telephone number SU 2-5239, or ARLINE SMITH, telephone number JA 9-9194 of the Harris County Republican Party Headquarters would be able to furnish additional information regarding the identity of PARROTT.
BUSH stated that he was proceeding to Dallas, Texas, would remain in the Sheraton-Dallas Hotel and return to his residence on 11-23-63. His office telephone number is CA 2-0395.
# # #
Gee. Why was Poppy Bush in Dallas when JFK was assassinated?
Could it be, he was on official business? I suspect he was on Secret Government business. After all, his eldest son bragged during his Texas Air National Guard and Harvard grad school days that his daddy was CIA.
Here's an FBI document from the same week of the assassination in which FBI Director J Edgar Hoover briefed one "Mr. George Bush of the Central Intelligence Agency." Some strange coincidence there, wot?
Here's a transcript of the above:
Date: November 29, 1963
To: Director
Bureau of Intelligence and Research
Department of State
From: John Edgar Hoover, Director
Subject: ASSASSINATION OF PRESIDENT JOHN F. KENNEDY
NOVEMBER 22, 1963
Our Miami, Florida, Office on November 23, 1963, advised that the Office of Coordinator of Cuban Affairs in Miami advised that the Department of State feels some misguided anti-Castro group might capitalize on the present situation and undertake an unauthorized raid against Cuba, believing that the assassination of President John F. Kennedy might herald a change in U. S. policy, which is not true.
Our sources and informants familiar with Cuban matters in the Miami area advise that the general feeling in the anti-Castro Cuban community is one of stunned disbelief and, even among those who did not entirely agree with the President's policy concerning Cuba, the feeling is that the President's death represents a great loss not only to the U. S. but to all of Latin America. These sources know of no plans for unauthorized action against Cuba.
An informant who has furnished reliable information in the past and who is close to a small pro-Castro group in Miami has advised that these individuals are afraid that the assassination of the President may result in strong repressive measures being taken against them and, although pro-Castro in their feelings, regret the assassination.
The substance of the foregoing information was orally furnished to Mr. George Bush of the Central Intelligence Agency and Captain William Edwards of the Defense Intelligence Agency on November 23, 1963, by Mr. W. T. Forsyth of this Bureau.
# # #
I do remember that GHWB was head of the CIA when the Church Committee was looking into the CIA assassination programs. He made things all friendly-like and turned what had been a serious hunt for truth under previous DCI Colby into another dog-and-pony show that was big on show and light on facts.
Regarding Dallas: Now I don't know if Poppy was a trigger man, was only there to watch what happened or what just happened to be there. I do know Poppy Bush has never explained these memos. He's never even admitted where he was the day JFK was killed.
Seeing how he would go on to become President, as would his dim son, I believe it's vitally important that we learn the Truth.
Why? The United States and the world haven't been the same since November 22, 1963. And not a single major player in the nation's mass media have stepped up and demanded a real investigation. So, it's up to us, We the People.
What's more, Poppy Bush sheltered mass-murdering jet-bombing terrorists like Luis Posada Carriles.
Don't you think that's worth investigating, Dr Hobbitstein?
Dr Hobbitstein
(6,568 posts)We should be investigating this.
Octafish
(55,745 posts)Eddie Lopez was the investigator for the House Select Committee on Assassinations.
By Bryan Bender
Boston Globe, Oct. 15, 2014
WASHINGTON It was nearly four decades ago that Eddie Lopez was hired by a congressional committee to reinvestigate the 1963 murder of President John F. Kennedy, a role that had him digging through top secret documents at the CIA.
In the end, the House Select Committee on Assassinations reported in 1978 that it believed the assassination was probably the result of a conspiracy, although it couldnt prove that, and its conclusions are disputed by many researchers.
But now Lopez is seeking answers to a lingering question: Could still-classified records reveal, as he and some of his fellow investigators have long alleged, that the CIA interfered with the congressional investigation and placed the committee staff under surveillance?
SNIP...
It was time to fight one last time to ascertain what happened to JFK and to our investigation into his assassination, Lopez, who is now the chief counsel for a school district in Rochester, N.Y., said in an interview. He is joined in the effort by two other former investigators, researcher Dan Hardway and G. Robert Blakey, the panels staff director.
Lopez, 58, charges that the CIA actively stymied the probe and monitored the committee staff members as they pursued leads about the events leading up to the assassination.
CONTINUED...
http://www.bostonglobe.com/news/nation/2014/10/15/decades-later-seeking-shed-light-cia-conduct-congressional-inquiry-jfk-assassination/dUf8qawsBQWfM2kxm7w7DM/story.html
PS: Must've missed this story when it came out, as it wasn't in my local paper. Thought DU might be interested, seeing how CIA and the Secret Government are still lying to the American people, still spying on the American people, and still making a killing off war. What else they're doing to the American people, I can't guess.
PPS: What Ed Lopez's partner, Dan Hardway, told me and a college museum full of folks a year ago.
PPPS: Sorry you don't understand why this is important or you do understand and work to ridicule me for pointing it out, Dr Hobbitstein. Either way, your post doesn't say much for you.
Dr Hobbitstein
(6,568 posts)Jimmy Hoffa pissed off some mobsters and got killed. It's quite simple. You reach at these conflated, intricate theories, when often the simplest answer is the correct one. If a sitting President can't get a blowjob without the whole world knowing, how in the everloving fuck could any large, multi-faceted conspiracy like this go down? It requires WAY too much suspension of belief to even be a film.
Octafish
(55,745 posts)What you wrote:
Looks like opinion. Not even a link.
SidDithers
(44,228 posts)Always.
Sid
Octafish
(55,745 posts)That bothers me. For some reason that doesn't bother you.
Dr Hobbitstein
(6,568 posts)Lee Harvey Oswald, for instance.
zappaman
(20,607 posts)What are the odds?
Dr Hobbitstein
(6,568 posts)Major Nikon
(36,891 posts)It could have been the Freemasons, Bigfoot, the Trilateral Commission, the Illuminati, the Bilderbergers, or these guys...
Dr Hobbitstein
(6,568 posts)I am now wholly convinced that it was these guys. Although, they were working with the BFEE.
Octafish
(55,745 posts)Sen. Prescott Bush straightens Sen Richard Nixon's hat.
Nixon's Hoffa Pardon Has An Odor
By James Warren
Chicago Tribune, April 08, 2001|
EXCERPT...
Keep in mind, the board was supposed to be totally independent from the White House. As Jack Grayson, the head of the Price Commission back then and now in charge of a Texas business group, informed me Friday, AFL-CIO President George Meany had extracted written assurances from Nixon that there would be no White House meddling.
Nixon asks Mitchell how they would "position," or "spin" in current parlance, a commutation. He urges accentuating how long Hoffa had served and "that he not be discriminated against because of his being a labor leader."
But Nixon, ever obsessed with the Kennedys, frets that Sen. Edward Kennedy (D-Mass.) might criticize a commutation. Mitchell responds that "it could be terribly significant if Teddy turned out to be the candidate" for the Democrats the next year.
Mitchell's bottom line is clear: "What I think should also be done, if you want to move in that direction, then we better get some pretty clear understanding from this guy (Fitzsimmons). No. 1, he (Hoffa) is not going back in the labor market (sic). He is going to stay out of it. I think Fitzsimmons will get those since it's in his interest."
"Also would like to get an understanding from Fitzsimmons to give us some help with the Pay Board. That would be awful, wouldn't it?" Nixon says facetiously.
(George) Shultz chimes in, "Yes, I think it would be useful."
Shultz notes Hoffa's great popularity in the union, which prompts Nixon to concede: "He's a great symbol. You have to realize that he cuts into the Kennedy mystique. This was the major accomplishment of Bobby Kennedy as attorney general, putting Hoffa in jail. So Teddy Kennedy will come roaring out and kick the hell out of us for letting Hoffa out of jail."
CONTINUED...
http://articles.chicagotribune.com/2001-04-08/news/0104080311_1_jimmy-hoffa-gen-john-mitchell-teamsters/2
Pardon netted Nixon cash and favors, which is par for the War Party or BFEE. You can hear Tricky Dick right here:
http://www.pbs.org/opb/historydetectives/feature/president-richard-nixon-tapes/
Dr Hobbitstein
(6,568 posts)linked together to try to form some kind of conspiracy before. The suspension of disbelief required to even contemplate anything you say is more than any bad film I've ever seen.
Everything from JFK to MLK to Jimmy Hoffa. All the BFEE. Global warming? BFEE. Milk gone bad in the fridge? BFEE. DU slow to load? BFEE.
Octafish
(55,745 posts)DUers asked about the BFEE, apparently to mock me or what I posted. So, I showed some of the obvious connections. I didn't know pointing out crimes by the beneficiaries of secret government corruption -- the War Party -- would make you so mad.
Rather than waxing indignant, do you have anything to say about him or those connections?
Dr Hobbitstein
(6,568 posts)He was going to meet with mob guys when he disappeared.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jimmy_Hoffa#Disappearance
A known mob hitman confessed (on his deathbed) to killing him, burning his body in a 50 gallon drum, then later crushing that drum in the trunk of a car.
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2006/apr/23/paulharris.theobserver
Occam's Razor - the simplest explanation is most often the correct one. Which reminds me: Occam's Razor? Tool of the BFEE.
Octafish
(55,745 posts)...Johnny Roselli, Sam Giancana, George deMohrenschildt.
Here's what CIA wrote in 1967 about those involved with Dallas who were murdered or died in suspicious circumstances:
Occam's Razor may work for you, but it doesn't explain what happened. Seeing how this is, ostensibly, a Democracy, it's my right to know.
Dr Hobbitstein
(6,568 posts)And my right to say your speculation is downright insane.
You won't see me shed a tear because mobsters were killed. Hell, that's kind of a big risk in their line of business. But if you want to believe it was the BFEE with the pipe-wrench in the kitchen, then so be it.
Octafish
(55,745 posts)Even someone as intelligent as you can understand that secret government agencies should not be in the murder business with the Mafia. That's why Jimmy Hoffa was called to testify. That's what makes his disappearance so harmful to democracy.
Going from the people I've asked, most Americans don't know their government went into business with the Mafia in 1960 when Ike and Nixon were in office. President Lyndon B. Johnson termed the government-criminal relationship a "damned Murder Inc. in the Caribbean." The man at CIA who approved the arrangement to hire the Mob and its killers to "eliminate" Cuban leader Fidel Castro was Allen Dulles. Sacked at CIA by Kennedy post Bay of Pigs, Dulles was named to "serve" on the Warren Commission by LBJ. For reasons that are now made clear by documents released over the past half century, Dulles and CIA failed to inform the Warren Commission and the nation of their murderous enterprise against Castro, as well as their active operational interest in Lee Harvey Oswald.
The CIA stonewalled a federal law to release its records involving CIA agent George Joannides, the agency's anti-Castro spearhead in New Orleans. For some reason, the national security state doesn't want the People to know what was Joannides doing there in regards to Lee Harvey Oswald, who came in major and public with CIA affiliated anti-Castro exiles working for Joannides, the DRE - Directorio Revolucionario Estudantil.
When the House Select Committee on Assassinations when Eddie Lopez and Dan Hardway were HSCA investigators working reading any document they wanted at CIA and making good progress in their investigation, Joannides was called out of retirement to hamper the two. You see, that's not my opinion: The CIA covered up for Murder Inc.
Octafish
(55,745 posts)As opposed to what we know. For instance...
Justice Thomas reported a wealth of gifts
In the last six years he has accepted free items valued at $42,200, the most on the high court.
December 31, 2004|Richard A. Serrano and David G. Savage | Times Staff Writers
Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas has accepted tens of thousands of dollars worth of gifts since joining the high court, including $1,200 worth of tires, valuable historical items and a $5,000 personal check to help pay a relative's education expenses.
SNIP...
He also took a free trip aboard a private jet to the exclusive Bohemian Grove club in Northern California -- arranged by a wealthy Texas real estate investor who helped run an advocacy group that filed briefs with the Supreme Court.
Those and other gifts were disclosed by Thomas under a 1978 federal ethics law that requires high-ranking government officials, including the nine Supreme Court justices, to file a report each year that lists gifts, money and other items they have received.
Thomas has reported accepting much more valuable gifts than his Supreme Court colleagues over the last six years, according to their disclosure forms on file at the court.
CONTINUED...
http://articles.latimes.com/2004/dec/31/nation/na-gifts31
Wanna bet that's just the tip of the iceberg, those gifts between a Bush appointed Supreme Court judge and their super wealthy friends, Major Nikon? Wonder what'd they consider more valuable than knowing the right person? Don't worry about having to actually formulate an answer, it's rhetorical.
Major Nikon
(36,891 posts)Who knew?
Octafish
(55,745 posts)The connections, relationships, and beneficiaries that you mock exist and they hurt democracy.
Major Nikon
(36,891 posts)First you are talking about Hoffa, then in the same context you offer up Thomas.
I get that in your mind those two things are intrinsically linked by the BFEE, but you probably shouldn't assume it's the same for everyone else.
Just sayin'
Octafish
(55,745 posts)Oscar like.
Major Nikon
(36,891 posts)Octafish
(55,745 posts)Where do you find the time?
You should use it to show where I posted anything that is not true or in error.
zappaman
(20,607 posts)Great smear!
I'd hi-five you if I could, so this will have to do instead...
Octafish
(55,745 posts)He wrote this:
Yet, you act like that's OK.
I hope it's because you really don't know that much about Frank Zappa. Otherwise, it supports the contention that you don't care for what it means, zappaman.
zappaman
(20,607 posts)Major Nikon
(36,891 posts)Octafish
(55,745 posts)Everyone is ignorant, only on different subjects.
Major Nikon
(36,891 posts)Octafish
(55,745 posts)No wonder!
Major Nikon
(36,891 posts)zappaman
(20,607 posts)You're paranoid, alright...
Octafish
(55,745 posts)John McAdams, lone nut specialist that gets in Time etc., archives at least one Octafish OP. You can imagine the lonely hearts that attracts.
Major Nikon
(36,891 posts)Octafish
(55,745 posts)You posted this...
Poppa Bush also used his influence to free a terrorists who bombed an airliner full of civilians
...yet now, you can't find fault with the BFEE.
Major Nikon
(36,891 posts)You accuse others of "straw man" with zero basis and then construct your own strawmen just to confuse yourself.
Very telling that.
What I posted was purely factual. No imagining dots to connect required. When you post facts, I'm right there with you. When you post conspiracies that require a very active imagination, I chuckle.
Octafish
(55,745 posts)Use GOOGLE and see. I don't like what you all write enough to bother bothering you.
dionysus
(26,467 posts)replaced with human/alien hybrids at Area 51 to throw people off the track...
you should read more...
then they replaced Clarence Thomas with another alien hybrid... it's all there for you to see man.. if only you'd open your eyes!
reddread
(6,896 posts)sad to see anyone wasting a moment on this planet disputing historical facts and impugning the character of any poster here the way you seem bent upon smearing an informed researcher.
What use is that?
waste of energy?
disrespect?
hyena packs and liberal message boards.
who would they outsource those contracts to?
Major Nikon
(36,891 posts)reddread
(6,896 posts)consider yourself overestimated.
SidDithers
(44,228 posts)Sid
raouldukelives
(5,178 posts)Which some think is a big joke. Mostly those who defend it either vocally or financially.
Meeting with a mob boss? Couldn't just be a mob thing. It must involve the everlasting and eternal BFEE conspiracy.
Do we know where Bush Sr. was 40 years ago today? He wasn't teaching Sgt. Pepper's band to play!
Octafish
(55,745 posts)So much fuel melted under the reactors that I'd forgotten the clowns with the evil stares. LOL.
The Mob's President: Richard Nixon's Secret Ties to the Mafia
Don Fulsom
CrimeMagazine.com, February 5, 2006
EXCERPT...
Many Nixon biographers say Richard Danner, a former FBI agent gone bad, introduced Nixon to Rebozo in 1951. Danner was the city manager of Miami Beach when it was controlled by the Mob. Danner eventually became a top aide to Nixons financial angel, eccentric billionaire Howard Hughes. And, years later, during the final act of the Watergate scandal, Danner delivered a $100,000 under-thetable donation from Hughes to President Nixon.
Nixon and Rebozo hit it off almost immediately. Their mutual friend, Sen. George Smathers of Florida, once said: I dont want to say that Bebes level of liking Nixon increased as Nixons (political) position increased, but it had a lot to do with it.
The two men were almost inseparable from then on. Rebozo was there to lend moral as well as financial support to his idol through Nixons many political ups and downs. He was there in Florida in 1952 when Nixon celebrated his election to the vice presidency; Rebozo was in Los Angeles in 1960 when Nixon got word that Sen. John Kennedy had edged him out for the presidency; he comforted Nixon after his 1962 defeat for California governor; and Rebozo and Nixon drank and sunbathed together in Key Biscayne after Nixons political dreams came true and he won the 1968 presidential election. During Nixons White House years, rough estimates show Rebozo was at Nixons side one out of every 10 days.
Known as Uncle Bebe to Nixons two children, Trisha and Julie, Rebozo frequently bought the girls and Nixons wife Pat expensive gifts. He purchased a house in the suburbs for Julie after she married David Eisenhower. The Saturday Evening Post, in a March 1987 article, put the price at $137,000.
Rebozo came in and out of the White House as he pleased, without being logged in by the Secret Service. Though he had no government job, Rebozo had his own private office and phone number in the executive mansion. When he travelled on Air Force One, which was frequently, Bebe donned a blue flight jacket bearing the Presidential Seal and his name. (Nixons own flight jacket was inscribed The President as though no one would recognize that fact by just looking at him.)
Rebozos organized crime connections were solid. For one, he had both legal and financial ties with Big Al Polizzi, a Cleveland gangster and drug kingpin. Rebozo built an elaborate shopping center in Miami, to be leased to members of the rightwing Cuban exile community, and he let out the contracting bid to Big Al, a convicted black marketer described by the Federal Bureau of Narcotics as one of the most influential members of the underworld in the United States.
Nixon and Rebozo bought Florida lots on upscale Key Biscayne, getting bargain rates from Donald Berg, a Mafia-connected Rebozo business partner. The Secret Service eventually advised Nixon to stop associating with Berg. The lender for one of Nixons properties was Arthur Desser, who consorted with both Teamsters President Jimmy Hoffa and mobster Meyer Lansky.
Nixon and Rebozo were friends of James Crosby, the chairman of a firm repeatedly linked to top mobsters, and Rebozos Key Biscayne Bank was a suspected pipeline for Mob money skimmed from Crosbys casino in the Bahamas. By the 1960s, FBI agents keeping track of the Mafia had identified Nixons Cuban-American pal as a non-member associate of organized crime figures.
Former Mafia consigliere Bill Bonanno, the son of legendary New York godfather Joe Bonanno, asserts that Nixon would never have gotten anywhere without his old Mob allegiances. And he reports that through Rebozo Nixon did business for years with people in (Florida Mafia boss Santos) Trafficantes Family, profiting from real estate deals, arranging for casino licensing, covert funding for anti-Castro activities, and so forth.
If friendships enabled Nixon to craft links with the Mafia, so did hatred. Teamsters union leader Jimmy Hoffa hated John and Robert Kennedy as much as Nixon did. Robert Kennedy had been trying to put Hoffa in jail since 1956, when RFK was staff counsel for a Senate probe into the Mobs influence on the labor movement. In a 1960 book, Robert Kennedy said, No group better fits the prototype of the old Al Capone syndicate than Jimmy Hoffa and some of his lieutenants.
Because he shared a common enemy with Nixon, Hoffa and his two million-member union backed Vice President Nixon against Sen. John Kennedy in the 1960 election, and did so with more than just a get-out-the-vote campaign. Edward Partin, a Louisiana Teamster official and later government informant, revealed that Hoffa met with New Orleans godfather Carlos Marcello to secretly fund the Nixon campaign. Partin told Mob expert Dan Moldea: I was right there, listening to the conversation. Marcello had a suitcase filled with $500,000 cash which was going to Nixon ... (Another $500,000 contribution) was coming from Mob boys in New Jersey and Florida. Hoffa himself served as Nixons bagman.
CONTINUED (now, for-pay, but a few more graphs can be read gratis)...
http://www.crimemagazine.com/mobs-president-richard-nixons-secret-ties-mafia
Nixon and the Mob go way back. Thanks to Bush political dynasty, their influence is felt to the present day. Most DUers would be happy to shed light on them. Why do you laugh, treestar? Do you find treason funny?
snooper2
(30,151 posts)Here's his most recent picture-
Octafish
(55,745 posts)Snooper2 wanted to know if Id asked DUers for money and wondered how much support I had gotten from my fan base.
Despite the discouragement, I shared on DU some of what I learned there:
Octafish to attend JFK assassination conference. Do you think JFK still matters?
JFK Conference: Amazing Day of Information and Connecting with Good People
After JFK Conference, when I got home, I felt like RFK.
JFK Conference: Bill Kelly introduced new evidence - adding Air Force One tape recordings
JFK Conference: Rex Bradford detailed the historic importance of the Church Committee
JFK Conference: Lisa Pease Discussed the Real Harm of Corrupt Soft Power
JFK Conference: James DiEugenio made clear how Foreign Policy changed after November 22, 1963
JFK Conference: Mark Lane Addressed the Secret Governments Role in the Assassination
JFK Conference: David Talbot named Allen Dulles as 'the Chairman of the Board of the Assassination'
JFK Conference: Dan Hardway Detailed how CIA Obstructed HSCA Investigation
Noah's Ark - Nov. 22, 1963 (at Oakland Community College in Michigan)
JFK Remembered: Dan Rather and James Swanson talk at The Henry Ford (like Heinz History Center, a Smithsonian Affiliated Institution.)
Seven Days in May -- tonight on TCM
Machine Gun Mouth
So, while I don't recall snooper2 for much, he or she or whatever is a snooper2 did goad me into action.
Thanks, snooper2! You really are something!
snooper2
(30,151 posts)breaking arm patting myself right now...
FYI, the mob killed Hoffa, he had just finished a book outing a whole bunch of fuckers. That book was his death warrant.
Octafish
(55,745 posts)snooper2
(30,151 posts)Octafish
(55,745 posts)$500,000 when that was real money.
https://books.google.com/books?id=ZiV1F_Guiy4C&pg=PT47&lpg=PT47&dq=don+fulsom+nixon+hoffa+fbi+bribes&source=bl&ots=DGSqXcnhCY&sig=Wf5OjXa05uxAX2JJ4hX_Kr04Urw&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0CCsQ6AEwAmoVChMInNeG0KGDxwIVQuqACh36zADu#v=onepage&q=don%20fulsom%20nixon%20hoffa%20fbi%20bribes&f=false
olddots
(10,237 posts)And the Dics have been running things for years .
Octafish
(55,745 posts)Apart from efforts by Democrats like Jimmy Carter, Bill Clinton, Barack Obama and John Kerry, It's been all-war, all-the-time since.
The very words of George W Bush, uttered at a press conference in which not a single of the callow, cowed press corpse saw fit to ask a follow-up. And then he laughs.
Gold Star mom Cindy Sheehan tried to bring it to our nation's attention. Few others, if anyone, saw fit to comment.
As for where American's entrepreneurial spirit of war came from: Poppy: Bush Sr told the FBI he was in Dallas on Nov. 22, 1963.
Thanks for standing up to them, olddots. In times of wall-to-wall NSA surveillance, that takes backbone -- Democratic backbone.
Nuclear Unicorn
(19,497 posts)Twenty-five. You gots a friggin' problem wit dat?
Octafish
(55,745 posts)By Don Fulsom
April 23, 2012
EXCERPT...
Longtime Mob lawyer Frank Ragano disclosed in the 1990s that the assassination plot against Castro was hatched in the summer of 1960. He reported that Maheus search for mob killers began with John Roselli who brought in Sam Giancana, the Chicago boss, and Santo [Trafficante] . . . The CIA operatives told Maheu he could offer $150,000 to the assassins, and that Castros murder was a phase of a larger plan to invade Cuba and oust the Communist government. Ragano also claimed he was the unwitting messenger in a July 1963 order from Teamsters boss Jimmy Hoffa to Trafficante and Marcello for President Kennedys murder.
Sam Giancana confided to his brother, Chuck, in 1966, that the CIA had offered him $150,000 to hit Castro. I told em I couldnt care less about the money. Well take care of Castro. One way or another. I think its my patriotic duty.
Giancana said CIA Director Allen Dulles had come up with the idea, and that two top CIA officials Richard Bissell and Sheffield Edwardswere chosen to make the arrangements. And he said the agency made contact with him through Maheu. Giancana designated Roselli as the plans Mafi a-CIA go-between.
Of that conversation with his brother, Chuck also mentioned a number of other conspirators in the plot on Castros life: Mooney said he put Jack Ruby back in action supplying arms, aircraft , and munitions to exiles in Florida and Louisiana, while the former Castro Minister of Games, Frank Fiorini [also known as Frank Sturgis], joined Ruby in the smuggling venture along with a [Guy] Banister CIA associate, David Ferrie.
President Kennedy was elected to office before Nixon and the other planners had time to pull off the Bay of Pigs invasion. The invasion took place on April 17, 1961 on Kennedys watch and was a resounding failure, one for which Kennedy publicly accepted full responsibility. Fifteen hundred Cuban exiles were quickly overwhelmed by some 20,000 Cuban troops. But, convinced the CIA had set him up, Kennedy fired CIA chief Allen Dullesan old Nixon friendand swore hed dismantle the agency.
CONTINUED...
http://www.thehistoryreader.com/contemporary-history/nixons-bay-pigs-secrets/
BainsBane
(54,435 posts)President at the time it was carried out. He could have said no. He chose to allow it to go ahead.
Nuclear Unicorn
(19,497 posts)believe
Octafish
(55,745 posts)Seems counter to what a democracy is about.
CIA Director Allen Dulles, longtime Bush-Walker business associate and political colleague, reported to President John F. Kennedy that the Cuban exile invasion would work without US military intervention. They also knew the plan had been compromised, yet failed to inform the president that Castro knew the place and date for the attack.
Soviets Knew Date of Cuba Attack
By Vernon Loeb
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, April 29, 2000; A04
Shortly after the failed Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba in 1961, a top CIA official told an investigative commission that the Soviet Union had somehow learned the exact date of the amphibious landing in advance, according to a newly declassified version of the commission's final report.
Moreover, the CIA apparently had known of the leak to the Soviets--and went ahead with the invasion anyway.
In an effort to oust Fidel Castro, the CIA organized and trained a force of about 1,400 Cuban exiles and launched the invasion on April 17, 1961.
Castro's soldiers easily repelled the landing force in less than 72 hours, killing 200 rebels and capturing 1,197 others in what became one of the worst foreign policy blunders of the Cold War.
The investigative commission, chaired by Gen. Maxwell Taylor, was established almost immediately and held a series of secret hearings at the Pentagon before sending a sharply critical report to President Kennedy in June 1961.
CONTINUED
http://www.latinamericanstudies.org/bay-of-pigs/soviets.htm
The un-released Volume V, from what I understand, covers the Taylor investigation. So, it's likely to provide JFK's perspective on the fiasco.
What's also important: Dulles and CIA wanted a war to regain Cuba. They also wanted war in Vietnam. Dulles' heirs in the War Party - the BFEE - also lied USA into a bunch more wars stretching to the present day.
Why you ridicule me for posting about that is your business, Nuclear Unicorn. Personally, I'm glad it's not my problem.
Octafish
(55,745 posts)A.) Was Compromised.
B.) Couldn't work without US military support.
C.) Involved CIA contracting with the Mafia to murder Castro and a whole bunch more "Cubans."
Other than that, JFK went against his better instincts and approved.
After he was assassinated, these three facts were not communicated to the Warren Commission or the US public until the mid-1970s.
BainsBane
(54,435 posts)to see what JFK knew about the ones on Fidel.
The relevant point was that JFK was a rabid Cold Warrior, more than happy to overthrow by force a sovereign government. His watch, his call, his responsibility.
Octafish
(55,745 posts)Ms. Conway is fearless and kind -- quite a combination.
US - CUBA RELATIONS
CASTRO ASSASSINATION PLOTS
EXCERPT...
Mar 17, 60 - President Eisenhower signs National Security Council directive on the anti-Cuban covert action program (Operation 40) authorizing the CIA to organize, train, and equip Cuban refugees as a guerilla force to overthrow Castro. (Fonzi chronology p 415)
Aug, 60 - CIA Deputy Director of Plans Richard Bissell and CIA Chief of Security Sheffield Edwards have discussions concerning use of underworld figures in organized crime. Certain figures in organized crime are already involved in a plot to kill Castro. (Alleged Assassination Plots Involving Foreign Leaders, 11/20/75)
Aug 16 , 60 - First Attempt: The first assassination plot by the United States against Fidel Castro is initiated when a CIA official is given a box of Castro's favorite cigars and told to poison them. It is unknown whether any attempt was later made to pass the cigars on to Castro. (Alleged Assassination Plots Involving Foreign Leaders, 11/20/75, p. 73)
Sept 2, 60 - CIA Chief of Operational Support James O 'Connell reports assassination operation has commenced.
Sept 24, 60 - Initial meeting is held between CIA Operational Support Chief O 'Connell mobster John Rosselli, and Robert Maheu, a private investigator with CIA ties, at the Plaza Hotel in New York for the purpose of planning assassination of Castro. Rosselli then asks Giancana to participate. Giancana agrees and approaches Trafficante, who agrees to recruit an "asset" to carry out the murder. (Davis; Fonzi chronology p 415)
Late Sept, 60 - Bissell and Edwards brief Dulles and CIA Deputy Director Charles Cabell about operations against Castro.
Early Oct, 60 - Subsequent meeting takes place in Florida (Fountainbleu Hotel) and includes Rosselli, Giancana, Trafficante, Maheu, and O 'Connell. Rosselli (and Maheu) stay at the Kenilworth Hotel keeping his presence from underworld colleagues.
O 'Connell turns over plan for poison pills to CIA 's Technical Services.
Oct 18, 60 - Hoover sends memo to Deputy Director of Plans Bissell at CIA, with copies to some other members of the intelligence community stating that an informant had reported that "during a recent conversation with several friends, Giancana stated that Fidel Castro was to be done away with very shortly. When doubt was expressed regarding this statement, Giancana reportedly assured those present that Castro's assassination would occur in November." According to the memorandum Giancana claimed to have met with the assassin-to-be on three occasions and said that the assassination could be accomplished by dropping a pill in Castro's food. The memorandum did not specifically reveal CIA involvement. (Memo, Hoover to Bissell, 10/18/60; Church Committee Report, The Assassination Plots, p 125-126)
Oct 31, 60 - Arthur J. Ballentti, a private detective hired to bug a Las Vegas hotel room for Giancana is caught and arrested. Ballentti's bail was paid by Rosselli. The CIA had been asked to approve the bugging and told Mahue to hire an independent outside detective and that they would pay for it.
The FBI commenced an investigation with quickly developed that Maheu and Giancana were involved in the case. In April 1961, Rosselli's involvement was discovered. Giancana later makes a deal for the CIA to step in because of his help with the Castro plots. CIA's Edwards tells Mahue to refer the FBI to him "to be briefed that he was engaged in an intelligence operation directed at Cuba." (Assassination Plots, Interim Report: Alleged Assassination Plots Involving Foreign Leaders, p 71)
Nov 27, 60 - Dulles and Bissell brief Pres-elect JFK on plans for Cuban exiles and CIA to invade Cuba and probably alludes to ploy to assassinate Castro (per Bissell) in circumlocutious terms, without telling him of organized crime involvement.
Dec 19, 60 - Cuba and the Soviet Union issue a joint communiqué in which Cuba openly aligns itself with the domestic and foreign policies of the Soviet Union and indicates its solidarity with the Sino-Soviet Bloc. (NYT, 12/20/60
Jan 3, 61 - The United States and Cuba sever diplomatic and consular relations.
CONTINUED...
http://jfklancer.com/cuba/castroplots.html
The history shows the GOP in 1960 left a turd in a burning bag on the White House welcome mat for President Kennedy. They did a similar colonialist-capitalist thing with Lumumba and the former Belgian Congo, except they managed to see that democrat dead.
A HERETIC I AM
(24,557 posts)Funny as fuck!
(Heard it years ago, but it's still funny)
I was going to tell you another one, but it probably wouldn't go over very well. rather off color.
JEB
(4,748 posts)posting here and attacking with snide condescension and very few facts.
notadmblnd
(23,720 posts)attacking everything that Octafish posts. If you ask me, they think their shit doesn't stink. However, their farts are giving them away.
JEB
(4,748 posts)They seem to have an agenda that has nothing to do with posting facts or discussion of issues.
notadmblnd
(23,720 posts)I'm not sure what their agenda is either. They don't seem to be interested in the truth so I don't think their agenda is deep. Perhaps he just pissed one of their fellow clique members off and they called "jam pile" on Octafish just for shits and giggles?
Rex
(65,616 posts)This is what happens when concern trolls take over a forum. They make sure it sucks for everyone else. I just ignore and stay amused by them now, since it is only a few people and they are all in this thread.
notadmblnd
(23,720 posts)If that were the case, I'd laugh them off too. But they're vicious in their attempts to discredit and have certain individuals banned. I've seen so many respected posters ran off over the years. I really do wonder if their mission here is to discredit the entire site. This also makes me think that doing what they do, is actually their day jobs. Hell, I have more free time than most people and I don't have the where with all to spend all day, every day here trolling for posters that I can attack- which is all these few individuals seem to do.
All I can say, is hopefully one day they'll make a mistake and drop their masks and they will be seen for what they are by the people who see them as popular DU members and who follow them in their quest to destroy DU without question.
Octafish
(55,745 posts)Oh, well.
Here's a summation:
Giancana Died When He Refused the Outfits Orders
CosaNostraNews, April 15, 2014
EXCERPT...
The police officers guarding his home in Oak Park, Illinois, were somehow recalled on the evening of June 19, 1975. Someone entered Giancana's kitcheneither someone posing as a friend or an enemy who had broken in without Giancanas awareness. The details of how it happened probably will never be known. What is known is that someone shot Momo in the back of the head while he was frying up some sausage and peppers.Jerry Capeci says it was "most likely" Dominick Butch Blasi who fired the fatal shots; but I have learned "most likely" means the reporter is speculating, which is a nice way of saying that he is guessing.
Giancanas lifeless body hit the ground, facedown. He was turned over onto his back and shot six times in the face and neck.
One reason some believe that a guest had dropped by had to do with the frying sausage and peppers, which Giancana, at that time, was not able to eat for reasons having to do with his health.
The hit on Giancana has taken on an even greater enigmatic hue due to the fact that Giancana was also slated to appear before a U. S. Senate committee investigating supposed CIA-Cosa Nostra plots to assassinate President John F. Kennedy.
Hit man Nicholas Calabrese told the FBI in the 2000s that Tony Accardo was behind the killing, due to Giancanas inability to provide payment from his offshore interests.
Some have alleged that the CIA killed Giancana based on something that happened during his relationship with the agency.
A third theory is that boss Santo Trafficante, Jr. ordered Giancana's murder due to mob fears that Giancana would testify about Cosa Nostra and CIA plots to kill Cuban president Fidel Castro. If this were the case, Trafficante likely would not have moved unless he got a nod from Outfit bosses Accardo and Aiuppa
SOURCE: http://www.cosanostranews.com/2014/04/giancana-died-when-he-refused-outfits.html
As for those on DU who mock me for pointing this out, the truth hurts them more than they'll ever hurt me.
Thank you for caring about this important history, JEB. I wish I could express how much I appreciate Democrats who can prioritize what really matters for Democracy.
Rex
(65,616 posts)They are such a bore, but this shit plays on years later for kicks I guess. You have to wonder what goes on inside the mind of a concern troll.
They trolled Pitt last week, so now it is Octas turn. We can't have nice things in GD...not even for a day. They make sure of it.
Holly_Hobby
(3,033 posts)Octafish
(55,745 posts)It is a loaded term, designed to poison the person as a source of information and news. The reality is far stranger than fiction. For instance, here's the treasonous, murderous reality of the "Unindicted Co-Conspirator" of Watergate fame:
Nixon approved hiring a Secret Service man who said he'd 'kill on command' to guard Ted Kennedy. You can hear Nixon and Haldeman discuss it, about 40 minutes into the HBO documentary "Nixon by Nixon." While I had read the part of the transcript available years ago, and wrote about it on DU, almost no one I know has heard anything about it.
Ted Kennedy survived Richard Nixon's Plots
By Don Fulsom
In September 1972, Nixons continued political fear, personal loathing, and jealously of Kennedy led him to plant a spy in Kennedys Secret Service detail.
The mole Nixon selected for the Kennedy camp was already being groomed. He was a former agent from his Nixons vice presidential detail, Robert Newbranda man so loyal he once pledged he would do anythingeven killfor Nixon.
The President was most interested in learning about the Sen. Kennedys sex life. He wanted, more than anything, stated Haldeman in The Ends of Power, to catch (Kennedy) in the sack with one of his babes.
In a recently transcribed tape of a September 8, 1972 talk among the President and aides Bob Haldeman and Alexander Butterfield, Nixon asks whether Secret Service chief James Rowley would appoint Newbrand to head Kennedys detail:
Haldeman: He's to assign Newbrand.
President Nixon: Does he understand that he's to do that?
Butterfield: He's effectively already done it. And we have a full force assigned, 40 men.
Haldeman: I told them to put a big detail on him (unclear).
President Nixon: A big detail is correct. One that can cover him around the clock, every place he goes. (Laughter obscures mixed voices.)
President Nixon: Right. No, that's really true. He has got to have the same coverage that we give the others, because we're concerned about security and we will not assume the responsibility unless we're with him all the time.
Haldeman: And Amanda Burden (one of Kennedys alleged girlfriends) can't be trusted. (Unclear.) You never know what she might do. (Unclear.)
Haldeman then assures the President that Newbrand will do anything that I tell him to He really will. And he has come to me twice and absolutely, sincerely said, "With what you've done for me and what the President's done for me, I just want you to know, if you want someone killed, if you want anything else done, any way, any direction "
President Nixon: The thing that I (unclear) is this: We just might get lucky and catch this son-of-a-bitch and ruin him for '76.
Haldeman: That's right.
President Nixon: He doesn't know what he's really getting into. We're going to cover him, and we are not going to take "no" for an answer. He can't say "no." The Kennedys are arrogant as hell with these Secret Service. He says, "Fine," and (Newbrand) should pick the detail, too.
Toward the end of this conversation, Nixon exclaims that Newbrands spying (is) going to be fun, and Haldeman responds: Newbrand will just love it.
Nixon also had a surveillance tip for Haldeman for his spy-to-be: I want you to tell Newbrand if you will that (unclear) because he's a Catholic, sort of play it, he was for Jack Kennedy all the time. Play up to Kennedy, that "I'm a great admirer of Jack Kennedy." He's a member of the Holy Name Society. He wears a St. Christopher (unclear). Haldeman laughs heartily at the Presidents curious advice.
Despite the enthusiasm of Nixon and Haldeman, Newbrand apparently never produced anything of great value. When this particular round of Nixons spying on Kennedy was uncovered in 1997, The Washington Post quoted Butterfield as saying periodic reports on Kennedy's activities were delivered to Haldeman, but that Butterfield did not think any potentially damaging information was ever dug up.
SOURCE:
http://surftofind.com/tedkennedy
It's been pretty much wars without end for profits without cease, with the rich getting richer and the middle class disappearing, ever since Vietnam. Can't say that's not in the news, though.
Economist Tyler Cowen of George Mason University has seen the future and it looks bleak for most of us. Thankfully, the United States of America may be in for good times, especially for those perched atop the socio-economic pyramid scheme, should war break out.
The Pitfalls of Peace
The Lack of Major Wars May Be Hurting Economic Growth
Tyler Cowen
The New York Times, JUNE 13, 2014
The continuing slowness of economic growth in high-income economies has prompted soul-searching among economists. They have looked to weak demand, rising inequality, Chinese competition, over-regulation, inadequate infrastructure and an exhaustion of new technological ideas as possible culprits.
An additional explanation of slow growth is now receiving attention, however. It is the persistence and expectation of peace.
The world just hasnt had that much warfare lately, at least not by historical standards. Some of the recent headlines about Iraq or South Sudan make our world sound like a very bloody place, but todays casualties pale in light of the tens of millions of people killed in the two world wars in the first half of the 20th century. Even the Vietnam War had many more deaths than any recent war involving an affluent country.
Counterintuitive though it may sound, the greater peacefulness of the world may make the attainment of higher rates of economic growth less urgent and thus less likely. This view does not claim that fighting wars improves economies, as of course the actual conflict brings death and destruction. The claim is also distinct from the Keynesian argument that preparing for war lifts government spending and puts people to work. Rather, the very possibility of war focuses the attention of governments on getting some basic decisions right whether investing in science or simply liberalizing the economy. Such focus ends up improving a nations longer-run prospects.
It may seem repugnant to find a positive side to war in this regard, but a look at American history suggests we cannot dismiss the idea so easily. Fundamental innovations such as nuclear power, the computer and the modern aircraft were all pushed along by an American government eager to defeat the Axis powers or, later, to win the Cold War. The Internet was initially designed to help this country withstand a nuclear exchange, and Silicon Valley had its origins with military contracting, not todays entrepreneurial social media start-ups. The Soviet launch of the Sputnik satellite spurred American interest in science and technology, to the benefit of later economic growth.
War brings an urgency that governments otherwise fail to summon. For instance, the Manhattan Project took six years to produce a working atomic bomb, starting from virtually nothing, and at its peak consumed 0.4 percent of American economic output. It is hard to imagine a comparably speedy and decisive achievement these days.
SNIP...
Living in a largely peaceful world with 2 percent G.D.P. growth has some big advantages that you dont get with 4 percent growth and many more war deaths. Economic stasis may not feel very impressive, but its something our ancestors never quite managed to pull off. The real questions are whether we can do any better, and whether the recent prevalence of peace is a mere temporary bubble just waiting to be burst.
Tyler Cowen is a professor of economics at George Mason University.
SOURCE: http://www.nytimes.com/2014/06/14/upshot/the-lack-of-major-wars-may-be-hurting-economic-growth.html?_r=0
[font color="purple"]Dr. Cowen, from what I've read, is a fine person and not one to promulgate war. He's just sayin'.
He has commented on other Big Ticket economic themes impacting us today: "Inequality," for another instance. [/font color]
Tired Of Inequality? One Economist Says It'll Only Get Worse
by NPR STAFF
September 12, 2013 3:05 AM
Economist Tyler Cowen has some advice for what to do about America's income inequality: Get used to it. In his latest book, Average Is Over, Cowen lays out his prediction for where the U.S. economy is heading, like it or not:
"I think we'll see a thinning out of the middle class," he tells NPR's Steve Inskeep. "We'll see a lot of individuals rising up to much greater wealth. And we'll also see more individuals clustering in a kind of lower-middle class existence."
It's a radical change from the America of 40 or 50 years ago. Cowen believes the wealthy will become more numerous, and even more powerful. The elderly will hold on to their benefits ... the young, not so much. Millions of people who might have expected a middle class existence may have to aspire to something else.
SNIP...
Some people, he predicts, may just have to find a new definition of happiness that costs less money. Cowen says this widening is the result of a shifting economy. Computers will play a larger role and people who can work with computers can make a lot. He also predicts that everyone will be ruthlessly graded every slice of their lives, monitored, tracked and recorded.
CONTINUED with link to the audio...
http://www.npr.org/2013/09/12/221425582/tired-of-inequality-one-economist-says-itll-only-get-worse
For some reason, the interview with Steve Inskeep didn't bring up the subject of the GOVERNMENT DOING SOMETHING ABOUT IT LIKE IN THE NEW DEAL so I thought I'd bring it up. Older DUers may recall the Democratic Party once actually did do stuff for the average American, from school and work to housing and justice. But, we can't afford that now, obviously, thanks to austerity or the sequester or the divided government.
What's important is that the 1-percent may swell to a 15-percent "upper middle class." Unfortunately, that may see the rest of the middle class go the other way. Why does that ring a bell? Oh yeah.
"Commercial interests are very powerful interests," said George W Bush on Feb. 14, 2007 White House press conference in which he added, "Let me put it this way, ah, sometimes, ah, money trumps peace." And then he giggled and not a single member of the callow, cowed and corrupt press corpse saw fit to ask a follow-up.
Gold Star mom Cindy Sheehan tried to bring it to our nation's attention back in 2007. I don't recall even one reporter from the national corporate owned news seeing it fit to comment. Certainly not many have commented on how three generations of Bush men -- Senator Prescott Sheldon Bush, President George Herbert Walker Bush and pretzeldent George Walker Bush all had their eyes on Iraq's oil.
I wish the Press had done its job. Those in authority would have to do their job. Millions might still be alive, the People might use the money spent on wars in better ways, and the Republic might see a return to Justice. But, I don't know that. I just think that. I do know I very much appreciate that you care, Holly_Hobby!
bobthedrummer
(26,083 posts)ished. She was another draft deferment baby for her daddy-she was born in Madison, WI on July 28, 1966.
She's Daddy's Big BFEE Girl today
Elizabeth Cheney profile (RightWeb)
http://www.rightweb.irc-online.org/profile/Cheney_Elizabeth
Octafish
(55,745 posts)More from Media Matters: Fox News' Union-Busting Crusade
That RightWeb is something, bobthedrummer. Do you know Cheney's stay-behind at State, Victoria Nuland?
Victoria Nuland's spouse: Robert Kagan
Robert Kangan's brother: Frederick Kagan
Frederick Kagan's spouse: Kimberly Kagan
Brilliant people, big ideas, etc. And a buttload of PNAC.
robertpaulsen
(8,676 posts)Your intelligence, passion, patience, tenacity and commitment to principle is unparalleled. Keep it up!
Holly_Hobby
(3,033 posts)Octafish
(55,745 posts)Coming from you, robertpaulsen, that means the world to me.
Thank you.
PS: In real life, I'm no hero, like Jimmy Stewart who flew 20 combat missions as pilot of a B-24.
http://jimmy.org/biography/
Then, the guy in that movie. Yeah. I want to be like him -- a real Democrat.
Ghost in the Machine
(14,912 posts)... a Union my father was once President of, and served on the E-Board, and my grandfather was a Founding Member of... constant telephoned death threats, and people trying to break into our home on the nights my dad was gone to the union meetings, leaving my mom home alone with me and my older sister... I worried about MY father a lot, wondering *IF* he was going to make it home that night!
Thanks for the Thread, Octafish!
Peace,
Ghost
zappaman
(20,607 posts)Me too.
A month ago.
Right on!
Ghost in the Machine
(14,912 posts)Late Happy Birthday, Zappaman!
Peace,
Ghost
Octafish
(55,745 posts)Their murders have never left my mind or heart.
Dec. 31, 1969: Three small-time burglars from Cleveland celebrated New Years Eve in 1969 by sitting in a car on a lonely road near Clarksville in rural Washington County. They drank beer and whiskey and waited for the lights to go out in an old brick farmhouse they were watching not far away. Perhaps the men were building up their courage. This was no routine theft job. This was the big time murder for hire.
At 1 a.m., the farmhouse went dark. The three men Paul Gilly, Aubran Martin and Claude Vealey approached the house, flattened the tires on two cars in the driveway, cut telephone wires, then entered the residence through a back door. After taking off their shoes, the three crept upstairs.
They carried two weapons an M1 carbine and a revolver. Martin wielded the revolver. He snuck into the bedroom of Charlotte Yablonski, 25, and shot her two times in the head. Vealey and Gilly entered the bedroom of Charlottes parents, Joseph (known as Jock) and Margaret Yablonski. Vealey attempted to fire the carbine but the clip fell out. Gilly picked up the clip, inserted it into the weapon and managed to fire one shot at Joseph Yablonski. Then the gun jammed.
By then Martin had entered the room. Joseph Yablonski was making a move for a nearby shotgun. Martin fired four shots with the revolver, killing both Joseph and Margaret.
So went the final political assassination of the bloody 1960s.
CONTINUED...
http://newsinteractive.post-gazette.com/thedigs/2013/04/26/murder-of-the-yablonskis/
PS: You are welcome, Ghost in the Machine! Thank you and your father! Unions are the core of the middle class and democracy.
Response to Octafish (Original post)
StandingInLeftField This message was self-deleted by its author.
zappaman
(20,607 posts)Think about it...
JIMMY has 5 letters. So does HOFFA.
5.
Now, he has a middle initial which is one letter.
1.
Put the 1next to the 5.
51.
The idea that he was in the mob, knew about the mob, knew too much about what they were up to and then was killed by the mob is ludicrous.
Mob guys NEVER kill mob guys!
It's never happened and never will.
So Area 51 is probably it.
Prove me wrong.
Keep up the excellent, fact filled work my friend.
Did someone say "Pulitzer"?
Octafish
(55,745 posts)Think about it.
zappaman
(20,607 posts)Think about it.
Octafish
(55,745 posts)As for what I write, that's for everyone to see.
That's why I've asked you and the Tag Team to show where I'm wrong. You never do.
zappaman
(20,607 posts)But you can't.
Telling...
Octafish
(55,745 posts)71. My guess is it was related to Area 51.
Think about it...
JIMMY has 5 letters. So does HOFFA.
5.
Now, he has a middle initial which is one letter.
1.
Put the 1next to the 5.
51.
The idea that he was in the mob, knew about the mob, knew too much about what they were up to and then was killed by the mob is ludicrous.
Mob guys NEVER kill mob guys!
It's never happened and never will.
So Area 51 is probably it.
Prove me wrong.
Keep up the excellent, fact filled work my friend.
Did someone say "Pulitzer"?
Perhaps someone more qualified than I can help you with your understanding.
zappaman
(20,607 posts)On that we agree, old friend!
Octafish
(55,745 posts)People judge you by what you write.
zappaman
(20,607 posts)People laugh at what you write, but that isn't my fault.
Octafish
(55,745 posts)... I'll give you the benefit of the doubt and assign it to your puerile nature.
zappaman
(20,607 posts)In the spirit of your friendliness, I'll give you the benefit of the doubt when it comes to delusional thinking!
Octafish
(55,745 posts)My friends want to prosecute the war criminals, traitors and banksters of the War Party.
Act_of_Reparation
(9,116 posts)Octafish
(55,745 posts)BainsBane
(54,435 posts)at all.
Act_of_Reparation
(9,116 posts)...and give me the short version.
What insight I am expected to gleam from the Ghost of DU Past?
Incidentally, I wasn't smearing you. It was a lighthearted rib nudge.
BainsBane
(54,435 posts)Just don't let Joe mix his vodka with whiskey. He just isn't his usual jovial self after that.
MinM
(2,650 posts)The conspiracy theorists at PBS ...
came to the same conclusion.
Keep up the great work, Octafish.
Octafish
(55,745 posts)http://www.democraticunderground.com/10025277060#post33
Thank you, MinM. These are things important to ALL who care about justice and democracy. And for those who don't understand that, perhaps with time they'll figure out why it is that the wars go on and on and the rich keep getting richer.
msanthrope
(37,549 posts)Octafish
(55,745 posts)damaging information. And potentially very, very embarrassing for the agency. So if Jimmy Hoffa was
close to that kind of information we can see how Russell Bufalino and others certainly would have
wanted him to be, lets say, silenced.
PDF of History Detectives transcript: http://www-tc.pbs.org/opb/historydetectives/static/media/transcripts/2014-07-24/HDSI_WHO_KILLED_JIMMY_HOFFA_Final_Transcript_1.pdf
It may be funny to you, msanthrope, but it matters to democracy.
msanthrope
(37,549 posts)Octafish
(55,745 posts)Anything to add about the discussion, besides distraction?
msanthrope
(37,549 posts)Octafish
(55,745 posts)You, no.
msanthrope
(37,549 posts)Octafish
(55,745 posts)Government agents (and their allies) might enter chat rooms, online social networks, or even real-space groups and attempt to undermine percolating conspiracy theories by raising doubts about their factual premises, causal logic or implications for political action.
http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1084585
msanthrope
(37,549 posts)sent government agents after your threads, do you?
Octafish
(55,745 posts)Perhaps "sunk" is too harsh a term. Riding "low in the water" may be better.
Have you read up on DARPA's "Narrative Networks"?
DARPA launched the Narrative Networks program to understand how narratives influence human cognition and behavior, and apply those findings in international security contexts. The program aims to address the factors that contribute to radicalization, violent social mobilization, insurgency, and terrorism among foreign populations, and to support conflict prevention and resolution, effective communication and innovative PTSD treatments.
Narratives may consolidate memory, shape emotions, cue heuristics and biases in judgment, and influence group distinctions. To determine their influence on cognitive functions requires a working theory of narratives, an understanding of what role they play in security contexts, and an examination of how to systematically analyze narratives and their psychological and neurobiological impact.
Narrative Networks has three parallel tracks of research and development:
Develop quantitative analytic tools to study narratives and their effects on human behavior in security contexts;
Analyze the neurobiological impact of narratives on hormones and neurotransmitters, reward processing, and emotion-cognition interaction; and
Develop models and simulations of narrative influence in social and environmental contexts, develop sensors to determine their impact on individuals and groups, and suggest doctrinal modifications.
Fascinating question for anyone who gives a damn about liberty, justice and democracy.
Ichingcarpenter
(36,988 posts)President Kennedys former press secretary, Pierre Salinger, said Maheu told him the CIA-Mafia plots against Castro were authorized by Nixon:
I knew Maheu well. He told me [in 1968, when Salinger was soliciting Maheus boss, Howard Hughes, for a campaign contribution to Robert Kennedys White House bid] about his meetings with the Mafia. He said he had been in contact with the CIA, that the CIA had been in touch with Nixon, who had asked them to go forward with this project . . . It was Nixon who had him [Maheu] do a deal with the Mafia in Florida to kill Castro.
Nixon White House counsel John Dean confirms that Maheu was the point of contact for the CIAs effort to have the Mafi a assassinate Fidel Castro in the early 1960s. Dean said he was told by fellow Nixon aide Jack Caufield that the Hughes empire was embroiled in an internal war, with two billion dollars at stake, private eyes swarming, nerve- jangling power plays going on, and Mafia figures lurking in the wings.
Longtime Mob lawyer Frank Ragano disclosed in the 1990s that the assassination plot against Castro was hatched in the summer of 1960. He reported that Maheus search for mob killers began with John Roselli who brought in Sam Giancana, the Chicago boss, and Santo [Trafficante] . . . The CIA operatives told Maheu he could offer $150,000 to the assassins, and that Castros murder was a phase of a larger plan to invade Cuba and oust the Communist government. Ragano also claimed he was the unwitting messenger in a July 1963 order from Teamsters boss Jimmy Hoffa to Trafficante and Marcello for President Kennedys murder.
Sam Giancana confided to his brother, Chuck, in 1966, that the CIA had offered him $150,000 to hit Castro. I told em I couldnt care less about the money. Well take care of Castro. One way or another. I think its my patriotic duty.
Giancana said CIA Director Allen Dulles had come up with the idea, and that two top CIA officials Richard Bissell and Sheffield Edwardswere chosen to make the arrangements. And he said the agency made contact with him through Maheu. Giancana designated Roselli as the plans Mafi a-CIA go-between.
Of that conversation with his brother, Chuck also mentioned a number of other conspirators in the plot on Castros life: Mooney said he put Jack Ruby back in action supplying arms, aircraft , and munitions to exiles in Florida and Louisiana, while the former Castro Minister of Games, Frank Fiorini [also known as Frank Sturgis], joined Ruby in the smuggling venture along with a [Guy] Banister CIA associate, David Ferrie.
President Kennedy was elected to office before Nixon and the other planners had time to pull off the Bay of Pigs invasion. The invasion took place on April 17, 1961 on Kennedys watch and was a resounding failure, one for which Kennedy publicly accepted full responsibility. Fifteen hundred Cuban exiles were quickly overwhelmed by some 20,000 Cuban troops. But, convinced the CIA had set him up, Kennedy fired CIA chief Allen Dullesan old Nixon friendand swore hed dismantle the agency.
Nixon, Hunt, and many CIA and exile leaders privately pinned blame for the military catastrophe on Kennedy for not providing adequate air cover. Later, Hunt publicly accused the president of a failure of nerves.
Mafia bosses, already enraged by Kennedys anticrime crusade in this country, were upset that their lucrative gambling casinosshut down by Castro would not be returning to Cuba.
- See more at: http://www.thehistoryreader.com/contemporary-history/nixons-bay-pigs-secrets/#sthash.76QL5QvX.dpuf
The Nixon Tapes:the National Security Archive
http://nsarchive.gwu.edu/NSAEBB/NSAEBB95/
Watergate: The Hidden History: Nixon, The Mafia, and The CIA
https://books.google.dk/books?id=JqtkAgAAQBAJ&pg=PT376&lpg=PT376&dq=Nixon+and+the+cuban+problem+tapes&source=bl&ots=Je9r1NdTOV&sig=WRTTkaCEyLRWmxoJaGlWUBZOi9U&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0CE8Q6AEwCGoVChMImuGK5MWKxwIVS_9yCh1SAw_j#v=onepage&q=Nixon%20and%20the%20cuban%20problem%20tapes&f=false
Nixon's Hoffa Pardon Has An Odor" Chicago Tribune
http://articles.chicagotribune.com/2001-04-08/news/0104080311_1_jimmy-hoffa-gen-john-mitchell-teamsters/2
Thanks Octafish for fighting the good fight and informing the public.
Octafish
(55,745 posts)It is how the modern world came to be. Ask Poppy, Porter Goss and Frank Carlucci about Operation 40 and ZR/RIFLE and watch what happens. Then they got Old Pruneface to seal the deal.
MAFIA helped Ronald Reagan move into White House
EXCLUSIVE: Revealed, how the MAFIA helped Ronald Reagan get to the White House. Shocking documentary reveals Mob connections that catapulted him to the presidency and how a probe was thwarted at 'the highest levels'
President Reagan owed his acting and political career to Hollywood mogul Lew Wasserman, chief of entertainment behemoth MCA, who was in bed with the Mob
An investigation into the relationship between MCA and the Mafia was halted and Federal prosecutors believe it was one of the 'political favors' that can be traced back to Reagan's White House
'Ronald Reagan is a complete slave of MCA who would do their bidding on anything,' one secret Justice Department document revealed
According to the producer of the documentary, Wages of Spin II: Bring Down The Wall, one MCA executive had ties to Mob boss John Gotti
'Reagan's whole career in politics was subsidized by MCA,' he asserts, and helped him financially because for a long time he was living above his means
The Mob was probably working Nancy Reagan too, according to the producer. 'She was a driving force behind Reagan'
By JERRY OPPENHEIMER
Daily Mail, PUBLISHED: 13:22 EST, 21 May 2014 | UPDATED: 03:42 EST, 22 May 2014
A shocking new documentary screened exclusively by MailOnline exposes the chilling conncections between the Mafia, one of Hollywood's most powerful entertainment companies and its head honcho Lew Wasserman and President Ronald Reagan and his Justice Department.
SNIP...
But there was a dark side to Wasserman - and to Reagan - all of which is revealed in a shocking new documentary, Wages of Spin II: Bring Down The Wall, that, according to the film's producer and those interviewed, links both of them in darkly shadowed ways to the Mafia, and the killing of a U.S. Department of Justice organized crime Strike Force investigation into Mob influence and infiltration at the highest levels of MCA.
SNIP...
Richard Stavin, a former veteran federal prosecutor who was assigned to the Justice Department's Organized Crime Strike Force in Los Angeles and was an integral member of the MCA-Mafia probe team, declared in the film for the first time:
'It's my belief that MCA and its' involvement with Mafia individuals, Mafia-dominated companies and our inability to pursue those was not happenstance. I believe it was an organized, orchestrated effort on the part of certain individuals within Washington, D.C. to keep a hands-off policy towards MCA.
'At the time, Ronald Reagan was the President of the United States and Edwin Meese was the Attorney General of the United States (Stavin's ultimate boss). A little known fact was MCA and Lew Wasserman supported Ronald Reagan when he wanted to become president of the Screen Actors Guild, which was the launch of Mr. Reagan's political career.
'I would like to think that the people in the highest levels of this government were not protective of MCA...But I'm not so sure about that.'
SNIP...
SAG's bylaws had always banned talent agencies like MCA from producing any form of entertainment, such as TV programs and movies. But during Reagan's fifth year as the guild's president a secret blanket waiver was negotiated with SAG, and it gave MCA and Wasserman the platinum opportunity to not only market talent as agents but also to move into TV and film making.
CONTINUED...
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2635094/EXCLUSIVE-Revealed-MAFIA-helped-Ronald-Reagan-White-House-Shocking-documentary-reveals-Mob-connections-catapulted-presidency-probe-thwarted-highest-levels.html
Well. That's a "wow" as they used to say in Hollywood.
One very important name that was left out: Dan Moldea, an investigative reporter who actually uncovered and documented the story in the early 1980s and wrote about it in "Dark Victory: Reagan, MCA and the Mob."
That's the reality of it.
Rex
(65,616 posts)Bahahahaha!