Know your BFEE: Judge Laurence Silberman, Go-To Guy of the Military Industrial Complex

[Octafish]

12. Silberman got BFEE off the hook for Iran-Contra TREASON.

Last edited Mon Sep 21, 2015, 11:41 AM - Edit history (2)

History from the socialist POV, among the few to bother recording it accurately:

Who is Laurence Silberman?

The right-wing political career of judge in Secret Service decision

By Martin McLaughlin
wsws.org, 18 July 1998

The judge who declared that Clinton was "at war with the US government" is a long-time political operative in the right-wing of the Republican Party. In 1980 Silberman served as a Reagan campaign aide carrying out some of the most delicate and politically sensitive assignments. He was dubbed the Reagan-Bush campaign's "ambassador to Iran" for his behind-the-scenes contacts with the Khomeini regime.

The Republican campaign was seeking to determine whether Khomeini intended to release any American hostages, held in the US embassy in Tehran, before the election. By some accounts, Reagan and Bush sought to forestall any such "October surprise," which would presumably have aided the Democratic incumbent Jimmy Carter, and Silberman conveyed their sentiments to the Iranians.

Silberman's reward was a nomination to the Court of Appeals for Washington DC, the most political and powerful circuit court because it handles most cases involving the federal government. His most important decision on the Court of Appeals came in the case of Lt. Col. Oliver North, the principal figure in the Iran-Contra affair. Silberman and fellow justice David Sentelle, a former aide to arch-right-wing Republican Senator Jesse Helms, voided the convictions of both North and Admiral John Poindexter in 1990. Their intervention played a key role in sabotaging the investigation by Iran-Contra special prosecutor Lawrence Walsh.

SNIP...

The Iran-Contra investigation was being blocked by the Bush administration, which refused to permit classified CIA documents to be turned over to North and other defendants, citing "national security." This was a transparent maneuver to hamstring the prosecution, in which the White House encouraged North, Poindexter & Co. to seek the documents and then instructed the CIA to refuse them, in order to create an appealable issue.

As Walsh pointed out later (in "Firewall: The Iran-Contra Conpsiracy and Cover-up,&quot his book on the Iran-Contra coverup, the judiciary itself played a key political role. He wrote: "a powerful band of Republican appointees waited like the strategic reserves of an embattled army. The final evaluation of the immunity Congress had granted Oliver North and John Poindexter would be the work of yet another political force--a force cloaked in the black robes of those dedicated to defining and preserving the rule of law. Although the judiciary is theroretically a neutral arm of government and judges are expected to eschew partisan poltics, the underlying political nature of all government institutions was evident when a three-judge panel from the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit reviewed Oliver North's conviction in 1990."

CONTINUED...

http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/1998/07/silb-j18.html

America wouldn't need DU if the corporate owned press had integrity, but that would require news organizations pledge allegiance to the truth instead of the dollar.