REESE,
FLORENCE
DEANA
MARTIN - Born April 12, 1900, in Sharps Chapel, Tennessee, Florence
Reece, a social activist, poet and songwriter, grew up in a coal
camp at Fork Ridge, Tenn. Florence met her husband-to-be, Sam
Reece, at the young age of fifteen. . . Reece is perhaps best
known for her song "Which Side are You On?," which
soon became the anthem for the labor movement. The song was written
in 1931 during a strike by the United Mine Workers of America.
. . During this strike, the sheriff, J.H. Blair, led his gang
of thugs on a violent rampage, beating and murdering union leaders.
They found themselves at the Reece's home, where Reece was alone
with the children. She held her ground, asking the sheriff, "What
are you here for? You know there's nothing but a lot of little
hungry children here." Then she somehow got word to her
husband not to come home, while the sheriff and his thugs kept
watch at he door. The men ransacked the house in search of Sam,
to no avail. While Florence waited inside for her husband, she
wrote the song on an old wall calendar, to the tune of "Lay
the Lily Low".
About 1940, Pete
Seeger, an "eager young college dropout wanting to learn
union songs," learned the song from Tillman Cadle, a coal
miner. In 1941 it was recorded by the Almanac Singers. This version
made the song famous. The song continues to be sung at gatherings
for labor workers and many other social causes throughout the
world.
PARIS
1968 GRAFFITI
- Alcohol kills.
Take LSD.
- Unbutton your mind as often as your fly.
- Drive the cop out of your head.
- Commute, work, commute, sleep . . .
- Meanwhile everyone wants to breathe and nobody can and many
say, "We will breathe later." And most of them don't
die because they are already dead.
- Boredom is counterrevolutionary.
- No replastering, the structure is rotten.
- Masochism today takes the form of reformism.
- Reform my ass.
- Already ten days of happiness.
- Don't liberate me - I'll take care of that.
- Warning: ambitious careerists may now be disguised as "progressives."
- We refuse to be highrised, diplomaed, licensed, inventoried,
registered, indoctrinated, suburbanized, sermonized, beaten,
telemanipulated, gassed, booked.
- The forest precedes man, the desert follows him.
- Concrete breeds apathy.
- Coming soon to this location: charming ruins.
- Live without dead time.
- Down with the abstract, long live the ephemeral.
- Practice wishful thinking.
- Be realistic, demand the impossible.
- Those who lack imagination cannot imagine what is lacking.
- Exaggeration is the beginning of invention.
- Forget everything you've been taught. Start by dreaming.
- Form dream committees.
- Arise, ye wretched of the university.
- Professors, you make us grow old.
- If God existed it would be necessary to abolish him.
- I suspect God of being a leftist intellectual.
- Going through the motions kills the emotions.
- Commodities are the opium of the people.
- Are you a consumer or a participant?
- I participate. You participate. He participates. We participate.
They profit.
- Abolish alienation.
- I have something to say but I don't know what.
- Comrades, stop applauding, the spectacle is everywhere.
BUREAU
OF PUBLIC SECRETS
CHILE
NIXON
OKAYED ACTION AGAINST ALLENDE, TAPES SHOW
NATIONAL SECURITY ARCHIVES
- President Richard Nixon acknowledged that he had given instructions
to "do anything short of a Dominican-type action" to
keep the democratically elected president of Chile from assuming
office, according to a White House audio tape posted by the National
Security Archive today. A phone conversation captured by his
secret Oval Office taping system reveals Nixon telling his press
secretary, Ron Zeigler, that he had given such instructions to
then U.S. Ambassador Edward Korry, "but he just failed,
the son of a bitch... He should have kept Allende from getting
in."
A transcript of the president's
comments on March 23, 1972, made after the leak of corporate
papers revealing collaboration between ITT and the CIA to rollback
the election of socialist leader Salvador Allende, was recently
published in the National Security Archive book, The Pinochet
File: A Declassified Dossier on Atrocity and Accountability by
Peter Kornbluh; the tape marks the first time Nixon can be heard
discussing his orders to undermine Chilean democracy. The conversation
took place as Zeigler briefed the President on a State Department
press conference to contain the growing ITT/CIA scandal which
included one ITT document stating that Korry had been "given
the green light to move in the name of President Nixon...to do
all possible short of a Dominican Republic-type action to keep
Allende from taking power."
Other declassified records
show that Nixon secretly ordered maximum CIA covert operations
to "prevent Allende from coming to power or unseat him"
in the fall of 1970 but that Ambassador Korry was deliberately
not informed of covert efforts to instigate a military coup.
When the White House-ordered
covert operations failed to prevent Allende's November 3, 1970,
inauguration, Nixon's national security advisor, Henry Kissinger,
lobbied vigorously for a hard-line U.S. policy "to prevent
[Allende] from consolidating himself now when we know he is weaker
than he will ever be and when he obviously fears our pressure
and hostility," according to a previously unknown eight-page
briefing paper prepared for the President on November 5, 1970.
In the secret/sensitive
"memorandum for the president" Kissinger claimed that
Allende's election posed "one of the most serious challenges
ever faced in the hemisphere" and that Nixon's "decision
as to what to do about it may be the most historic and difficult
foreign affairs decision you will have to make this year."
ISABEL HILTON,
THE GUARDIAN, LONDON: The "revelation" that the US
helped to bring Augusto Pinochet to power by destabilizing the
government of President Salvador Allende can have come as a surprise
only to those who have spent the last 27 years in a state of
acute denial . . . But still, the documents confirm that, in
addition to the well-known dirty tricks against Allende, between
1971 and 1973 the US government gave $4 million to opposition
political parties, mostly to the Christian Democrats; that the
CIA spent $2.6 million supporting the Christian Democrats in
the 1964 election in Chile; and that the US went on paying political
parties into the 1980s. The newspaper El Mercurio received about
$1.6 million in covert support from US agents. El Mercurio was
a leading critic of the government of Allende . . . A CIA memo
prepared three years before the 1973 coup states: "If civil
disorders were to follow from a military action, the USG [US
government] would promptly deliver necessary support and material,
(but not personnel)." - GUARDIAN
NY TIMES: A month
before the assassination of a Chilean diplomat and an American
colleague in downtown Washington in 1976, the United States government
ordered its envoys in Latin America to try to avert a plot to
murder leftist opponents of the region's governments, documents
released today show. But the American ambassador in Chile, David
Popper, refused to convey what Washington had learned of the
plot or even the government's concerns to the leader of Chile's
military junta, Gen. Augusto Pinochet, saying he did not want
to offend the general by associating him with the plot, known
as Operation Condor, the documents show. "He might well
take as an insult any inference that he was connected with such
assassination plots," Mr. Popper said in a cable to Washington.
General Pinochet's secret police chief, Gen. Manuel Contreras,
was later convicted in Chile of ordering what was, up to that
time, the worst act of foreign-sponsored terrorism on American
soil: the bombing on Sept. 21, 1976, of the car in which Orlando
Letelier, a former confidant of the deposed Chilean president,
Salvador Allende, was traveling to his job at a Washington research
institute along with two colleagues. He and Ronni K. Moffitt
were killed; her husband, Michael Moffitt, survived the blast.
NY
TIMES
[According
to Narco News, the current US Ambassador to Mexico, Jeffrey Davidow,
was Popper's political counsel during the coup years in Santiago]
The
Cradle Will Rock
A remarkable
film -- both good viewing and good history -- depicts three well
hidden stories from 1930s America. First, movie centers on the
New Deal's Federal Theater Project and attempts by a right-wing
House committee to shut it down. Specifically it is the tale
of "The Cradle Will Rock," written by Marc Blitzstein
[Hank Azaria] and starring a 21-year-old Orson Welles [Angus
Macfadyen]. A joyfully leftist musical funded by the federal
project, it eventually ran afoul of congressional opponents and
a subsequent budget cutback that effectively canceled the play's
opening night. As one account describes it, "Welles, however,
refused to postpone: high irony, because none of his previous
theatrical projects had opened on time, due to his impossibly
elaborate technical requirements. Cradle was hardly ready either,
but no matter: when the over-sold audience gathered outside the
Maxine Elliot Theater, they found it padlocked and guarded by
WPA 'Cossacks' (John Houseman's term) to make certain that no
'government property' (that is, sets, props, or costumes) were
removed. The actors mingled with the audience, entertaining them
with songs and scenes, while Welles furiously phoned around town
to find a vacant theater. Stage manager Jeannie Rosenthal was
circling the city in a truck, carrying a rented piano, destination
unknown . . . Just when no theater seemed to be available, a
little man in the audience spoke to Welles . . . He had a theater,
the Venice, and it was both empty and available, as well as cheap.
The show had a theater! Rosenthal delivered the piano, and Welles
began leading the opening night throng to the Venice, on foot,"
where the musical was performed if with considerable theatrical
anarchy.
Second, the movie
tells of the sometimes warm relationship between Mussolini and
members of the American establishment, notably William Randolph
Hearst. For example, in 1939, Hearst's Cosmopolitan published
an article in which psychiatrist Carl Jung called Mussolini "warm
and human." Of Hitler, Jung said, "There is no question
but that Hitler belongs in the category of the truly mystic medicine
man. As somebody commented about him at the last Nuremberg party
congress, since the time of Mohammed nothing like it has been
seen in this world. This markedly mystic characteristic of Hitler's
is what makes him do things which seem to us illogical, inexplicable,
curious and unreasonable ... So you see, Hitler is a medicine
man, a form of a spiritual vessel, a demi-deity or, even better,
a myth."
In the Nation,
Dana Frank has written, "From 1927 through the mid-thirties,
Hearst solicited and ran regular columns from Benito Mussolini
and then Adolf Hitler. After years of courtship, Hearst finally
got to meet Hitler in 1934 in a carefully arranged rendezvous.
Hearst flattered (and protected) himself by reporting that he
had used the occasion to pressure Hitler to back off on the persecution
of Jews." In Friendly Fascism, Bertram Gross notes that
Mussolini also won "the friendship, support or qualified
approval" of the American ambassador, Cornelius Vanderbilt,
Thomas Lamont, many newspapers and magazine publishers, the majority
of business journals, and quite a sprinkling of liberals, including
some associated with both the Nation and The New Republic."
In the film a Mussolini emissary [Susan Sarandon] sells Da Vincis
to New York luninaries while partying with the likes of Rockefeller.
Finally, 'Cradle'
recounts one of the great incidents of art censorship, the destruction
of Diego River
a's [Ruben Blades]
Rockefeller Center mural that had been commissioned by Nelson
Rockefeller [John Cusack]. Rivera's demise was caused by the
inclusion in the 17' x 63' mural, a depiction of Lenin clasping
the hands of a black and a Russian solider. The Encyclopedia
of Censorship Description of the Art Work reports that, "On
May 22, 1933, Rivera was called down from his scaffold where
he was still working on the unfinished mural. He was handed a
check for $14,000, the balance of his fee, and informed that
he had been dismissed. Within 30 minutes the mural had been covered
by tarpaper and a wooden screen. Seeking a compromise, Rockefeller
suggested that Rivera should replace Lenin with some unknown
face; the artist offered to add Lincoln but refused to expunge
Lenin. Charged with willful propagandizing, he declared only
that 'All art is propaganda.' Since he had accepted his payment,
Rivera was unable to force the Rockefellers to exhibit or even
keep his work. The mural was subsequently removed from the wall..."
The following year, Rivera began a smaller version of the mural
on a wall at the Palacio de Bellas Artes in Mexico City.
Although some
of the dates have been compressed to fit the plot, the underlying
story is true, and one that those in charge of the past don't
care for you to know.
The
Wizard of Oz
LAWRENCE KS JOURNAL-WORLD:
L. Frank Baum's fairy tale about a Kansas girl swept by a tornado
to a magical world of munchkins and witches made both author
and state synonymous with Oz . . . But one slice of the story
is largely ignored . . . Step back in time to Aberdeen, SD, in
late 1890. Conflict among white settlers and American Indians
was intense. It was a decade before "The Wonderful Wizard
of Oz" became a bestseller. Salesman, typesetter, press
operator and editor L. Frank Baum was the publisher of The Aberdeen
Saturday Pioneer. It was in the pages of his weekly newspaper
that Baum left his mark as a racist who repeatedly called for
the mass murder of American Indians. Baum's first appeal for
genocide was printed immediately after the slaying of Sitting
Bull and 10 days before US Army troops, supported by Indian mercenaries,
killed about 300 Lakota men, women and children at Wounded Knee
Creek, SD Here is what Baum wrote: "The proud spirit of
the original owners of these vast prairies, inherited through
centuries of fierce and bloody wars for their possession, lingered
last in the bosom of Sitting Bull. With this fall the nobility
of the redskin is extinguished, and what few are left are a pack
of whining curs. The whites, by law of conquest, by justice of
civilization, are masters of the American continent, and the
best safety of the frontier settlements will be secured by the
total annihilation of the few remaining Indians."
LAWRENCE JOURNAL-WORLD
Palestinian
Time-Line
[Based on an
article by Con Coughlin in the London Sunday Telegraph]
EARLY 19TH CENTURY:
Jewish pioneers escaping Russia begin arriving in area. Dr. Chaim
Weizmann, Israel's first president, would write later that the
Jews did not want to violate the legitimate interests of the
Arabs: "Not a hair of their heads shall be touched."
Jewish settlers depend upon local Palestinians to learn how to
farm the land and survive in their new territory.
1916: Arab leaders
agree to help Britain in its war against the Ottoman Empire.
In return, the British promise that they were "prepared
to recognize and support the independence of the Arabs",
including those in Palestine.
1917: The British
conquer the Holy Land, marching into Jerusalem. Earlier Lord
Balfour, the British foreign secretary, had announced his country's
commitment to the "the establishment in Palestine of a national
home for the Jewish people," seen by Palestinians and others
-- including Lawrence of Arabia -- as a sign of British duplicity.
1930s: As Jews
flee Nazism, immigration to Palestine grows from 4,000 a year
to 62,000 just in 1935. Palestinians see this as more evidence
of British betrayal.
1936: An Arab rebellion erupts against the British.
1939: The British
seek to calm the Arabs with a promised of an "independent
Arab state within ten years." There is no mention of an
independent Jewish state. 28,000 Palestinian Jews sign up to
fight with the British anyway. Among them: Moshe Dayan.
LATE 1940s: With
the end of the war, British have an official policy preventing
further Jewish immigration even in the face of a mass exodus
of Jewish survivors of concentration camps. Ships full of immigrants
are turned away.
1946: Zionists,
led by Menachem Begin, bomb the King David Hotel, used for British
offices. 91 people die.
1947: UN votes
for the partition of Palestine with Jerusalem under international
peace-keepers.
1948: British
withdraw from Palestine. Independent Israeli state declared,
followed by first Arab-Israel war with lasted six months and
ended with a partition along the lines proposed by the UN. While
the Zionists, with reservations, accept the plan, because it
grants them their long-held goal of creating an independent state,
the Arabs bitterly opposed it. Writes Couglhlin: "One of
the most significant results of the war was that Jerusalem was
divided between Israeli and Arab control, with the Arabs controlling
access to the all-important holy sites, including the Wailing
Wall, the holiest shrine in Judaism. On the Arab side, hundreds
of thousands of Palestinians were driven from their homes, and
became refugees in camps set up in Lebanon and Jordan. The areas
of Palestine under Arab control were quickly annexed by neighboring
Jordan, and became known as that country's West Bank. A heavily
fortified 'Green Line' was established, separating the Arab and
Jewish communities. To the enduring humiliation of the new Israeli
state, religious Jews were prevented from praying at the Wailing
Wall."
1967: Six-Day
War reunites Jerusalem, and leaves Israel in control of Golan
Heights, the West Bank, Gaza and the Sinai desert. Disputes over
these territories will mark subsequent negotiations. The Palestinian
Liberation Organization is formed and commences actions against
the Israelis.
1973: Syria and
Egypt attack the Israelis during the Jewish Yom Kippur religious
holiday but are beaten back.
1979: Egypt reaches
an accord with Israel with the help of Jimmy Carter. Not long
after, Sadat is assassinated.
1987: Palestinians
commence a violent uprising.
1993: After secret
meetings, an accord is achieved in Oslo under which the Palestinians
are to get control over the West Bank and Gaza in return for
peace.
1995: Israeli
prime minister Rabin is murdered.
1999: Ehud Barak,
a former Israeli chief of staff, is elected prime minister and
a new peace effort begins with the help of Bill Clinton
SUNDAY
TELEGRAPH
Third
parties that mattered
A short of history
of presidential races in which third party candidates exercised
significant influence:
1824: With only
15 electoral votes dividing leader Andrew Jackson from John Q.
Adams, William Crawford's 41 and Henry Clay's 37 helped throw
the issue into the House where Speaker Clay helped tip the election
to Adams.
1848: Slavery
foes in the Free Soil Party, led by Martin Van Buren, gave the
election to Whig Zachary Taylor.
1856: The Republicans,
a new anti-slavery party, came in second, bringing to an end
the third-place Whigs.
1860: Abraham
Lincoln of the new Republican Party won with only 40% of the
vote against three other candidates, including two from a Democratic
Party split north and south.
1880: Garfield
won the electoral vote but he and Winfield Hancock got 48% each,
with the Greenbacks -- who favored an expanded money supply --
pulling 3%.
1884: Again,
the Democrat (Cleveland) and the Republican (Blaine) came within
one point of each other, enough to make the Greenbacks and the
Prohibitionists players in the race.
1888: The same
one point divided the Democrats(Cleveland) and the Republicans
(Harrison) with the Prohibitionists and Union Labor getting 2%
and 1% respectively.
1892: With only
3 points dividing Cleveland from Harrison, the Populists' 9 points
became critical.
1912: Once again
a new third party (Progressives under Teddy Roosevelt) came in
second in a race that elected Woodrow Wilson.
1916: Wilson
won again but only by 3 points and 23 electoral votes. The Socialists
got 3 points.
1948: Harry Truman's
5-point win was complicated by the presence of a States Rights
Party under Strom Thurmond and a Progressive Party under Henry
Wallace. They each got a little over two points.
1968: With Nixon
and Humphrey each getting 43%, George Wallace's American Independent
Party with its 14% became a key factor in the race.
1992: Ross Perot
got 19% in a race in which the front-runners -- Clinton and Bush
-- were divided by only 6 points.
MORAL: In 13
presidential elections, third parties have been a significant
factor. Talking heads who tell you otherwise don't know their
history.
The
BCCI affair
CARTER, REAGAN,
BUSH,
CLINTON, BUSH, AND BCCI
THE GREATEST
FINANCIAL scandal in history -- the BCCI affair -- left American
participants virtually untouched. The media covered the scandal
poorly even though, according to one investigative journalist,
up to a hundred Washington politicians and lawyers might have
been criminally liable.
As a result --
much like Clinton and the Dixie Mafia -- Americans have but the
vaguest notion of what happened. In fact, the two stories overlap.
And like many contemporary sagas of corruption, the two stories
reached deep into both the major parties. In fact, if George
W. Bush is elected, we will be entering our fifth consecutive
presidential administration (two Democratic and three Republican)
with direct ties to leading figures in the biggest financial
scandal of all time.
This time line
suggests some of the interplay of individuals and parties:
1975
National Bank of Georgia president Bert Lance, whom former Georgia
Governor Jimmy Carter described as being like a brother and was
Carter's chosen but defeated successor, meets with Jackson Stephens,
a Naval Academy classmate of Carter. Stephens Inc. arranges public
offering of NBG stock. Stephens would later be described by the
New York Post as the man who was to "Clinton what Bert Lance
was to candidate Jimmy Carter."
1976
Both Stephens and Lance help Carter in his race for the White
House. Carter uses the NBG corporate plane without disclosing
it. Campaign is later fined.
Two Indonesian
billionaires come to Arkansas. Mochtar Riady and Liem Sioe Liong
are close to Suharto. Riady is looking for an American bank to
buy. Riady's agent is Jackson Stephens.
1977
Lance comes to Washington as director of the Office of Management
and Budget. He quickly comes under investigation for his past
financial dealings and in September resigns. His lawyer is Clark
Clifford, later embroiled in the BCCI case.
1978
Hillary Clinton, the Arkansas governor's wife, is getting considerable
business from Stephens Inc.
George W. Bush
begins operations of his oil firm, Arbusto Energy. He assembles
several dozen investors in a limited partnership including Dorothy
Bush (a friend of BCCI figure Robert Altman), Lewis Lehrman,
William Draper, and James Bath, a Houston aircraft broker who
bought several planes from Air America, a CIA front. Bath's firm
appears to be owned by Saudi investors. He also was a part-owner
of a Houston's Main Bank, along with a couple of BCCI figures.
Stephens brokers
the arrival of BCCI to this country, and steers BCCI's founder,
Hassan Abedi to Bert Lance.
Stephens Inc
tries to sell Riady stock in the National Bank of Georgia. The
Washington Post quotes a US banker suggesting that Riady is working
for Suharto, who is trying to butter up Carter: "They think
of this country like a 'regime' similar to their own and they
just don't realize that such a ploy wouldn't work." There's
no deal. Lance's bank will eventually be taken over by a BCCI
front man -- Ghaith Pharaon. Pharaon later sells his bank to
First American. Pharaon will be fined $37 million by the Federal
Reserve Board and become a fugitive.
Abedi moves to secretly take over First American Bankshares --
later the subject of the only BCCI-connected scandal to be prosecuted
in the US.
1979
Mochtar Riady and Stephens Inc set up Stephens Finance Ltd. In
Hong Kong.
Lance is indicted
on charges of violating federal banking laws. Clifford's partner,
Robert Altman, represents Lance who eventually achieves a hung
jury.
During this same
period, Stephens is, according to Peter Truell and Larry Gurwin
in "False Profits," playing "a crucial role in
BCCI's penetration of the US market."
1984
Mochtar Riady buys a stake in the Worthen holding company whose
assets include the Stephens-controlled Worthen Bank. Price: $16
million. Other Worthen co-owners will eventually include BCCI
investor Abdullah Taha Bakhish. Deal handled by C. Joseph Giroir
II. Giroir is the Rose law firm chair who hired Hillary Clinton.
Giroir will continue to be a deal-maker for the Riadys.
1985
Arkansas state pension funds -- deposited in Worthen by Governor
Bill Clinton -- suddenly lose 15% of their value because of the
failure of high risk, short-term investments and the brokerage
firm that bought them. The $52 million loss is covered by a Worthen
check written by Jack Stephens in the middle of the night, an
insurance policy, and the subsequent purchase over the next few
months of 40% of the bank by Mochtar Riady. Clinton and Worthen
escape a major scandal. Mochtar's son James comes back to Arkansas
to manage Worthen as president.
Worthen is investigated
by the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency for improper
loans to companies owned by the Riadys and Stephenses.
1986
George W. Bush and partners receive more than $2 million of Harken
Energy stock in exchange for a failing oil well operation, which
has lost $400,000 in the prior six months. After Bush joins Harken,
the largest stock position and a seat on its board is acquired
by Harvard Management Company. The Harken board gives Bush $600,000
worth of the company's publicly traded stock, plus a seat on
the board plus a consultancy that pays him up to $120,000 a year.
When Harken runs short of cash it hooks up with Jackson Stephens,
who arranges a $25 million stock purchase by Union Bank of Switzerland.
Sheik Abdullah Bakhsh, who joins the board as a part of the deal,
is connected to BCCI.
1988
Stephens' wife Mary Ann runs George Bush's campaign in Arkansas.
He is a member of Team 100 -- individuals who have given $100,000
to the Republican party.
A few days before
the supposedly surprise arrest of five BCCI officials, some of
the world's most powerful drug dealers quietly withdraw millions
of dollars from the bank. Some government investigators believe
the dealers were tipped off by sources within the Reagan administration.
1989
Bahrain officials suddenly break off offshore drilling negotiations
with Amoco and decide to deal with Harken Energy, George W. Bush's
firm. Harken has had a series of failed ventures and no cash,
so the Bass brothers are brought in to finance Harken's efforts
at a cost of $50 million. Harken's investment banker is the same
firm that helped in BCCI's acquisition of First American. Among
the other BCCI-connected figures that help the deal: Bahrain's
prime minister.
1990
Bush's attorney general, Richard Thornberg, is warned about BCCI
but does nothing.
1991
Stephens Inc gives $100,000 to a Bush dinner committee.
With Stephens,
Mochtar Riady buys BCCI's former Hong Kong subsidiary from its
liquidators.
A former top
aide to White House Chief of Staff John Sununu goes to work for
a prominent figure in the BCCI scandal less than a month after
leaving the Bush administration. Edward Rogers Jr. signs a $600,000
contract to give legal advice to Sheik Kamal Adham, an ex-Saudi
intelligence officer who is being investigated for his role in
BCCI's takeover of First American Bankshares.
The Miami acting
US Attorney is reportedly rebuffed by the Justice Department
in his efforts to indict BCCI and some of its principal officers
on tax fraud charges. Justice Department later denies this occurred.
1992
Ronald Reagan is introduced at the GOP convention by former senator
Paul Laxalt, whose law firm represented BCCI in a drug money
case. The chair of the convention, Craig Fuller, has been the
number two official of Hill & Knowlton which was involved
in the BCCI-First American case. Bush's campaign press representatives
has done PR for a Saudi sheik accused of involvement in the BCCI
affair, earning $200,000 in fees in just two months.
Employees of
Stephens Inc. give more money to the Clinton campaign than those
of any other firm except Goldman, Sachs and the NY law firm of
Wilke, Farr & Gallagher.
Stephens' Worthen
Bank gives Clinton a $3.5 million line of credit allowing the
cash-strapped candidate to finish the primaries. Little Rock
Worldwide Travel provides Clinton with $1 million in deferred
billing for his campaign trips. Without the Worthen and Worldwide
largess, it is unlikely that the cash-strapped candidate could
have survived through the later primaries.
1995
Webster Hubbell, a former Rose law firm partner -- although not
known for skill in Asian trade matters -- goes to work for a
Lippo Group affiliate after being forced out of the Clinton administration
and before going to jail. Hubbell represented both Worthen and
James Riady during the 1980s.
1998
With the settlement of civil fraud charges against Clark Clifford
and Robert Altman, the puny and often diverted investigation
into the American branch of the BCCI scandal effectively comes
to an end. Under the deal, the pair will have to surrender $5
million in stock in First American Bankshares, which had been
illegally controlled by BCCI. They will, however, get to keep
$10-15 million in proceeds obtained during their tenure as First
American attorneys.
*****
The BCCI scandal
cheated depositors out of over $10 billion worldwide. Many of
these were lower income people now being paid off at 15 and 25
cents on the dollar for damage done by a illegal operation willingly
used not only by hundreds of drug dealers and other criminals
from various countries but by the intelligence services of five
nations (including the CIA) and at least one government, Pakistan,
seeking to finance its nuclear weapons development.
Things always moved a little too smoothly in the BCCI investigation,
leaving scores of unanswered questions and, so far as can be
determined, hardly anyone to blame. One exception, Swaleh Naqvi,
BCCI's number two man, was given a mild sentence -- over the
objections of Manhattan District Attorney Robert Morgenthau.
He later told prosecutors that he had never explained to Altman
and Clifford who really owned First American.
Naqvi's plea
bargain with Justice appeared to have been what the Wall Street
Journal called "sweetheart justice." Said the Journal:
"When drugs and money laundering arrive, political corruption
cannot be far behind. If we had an explanation of how BCCI got
away with its illegal purchase of First American, we could afford
to dismiss such ambiguous connections as lawyer-client relationships.
But we have no such answer, and are left to speculate why, in
the Naqvi plea-bargain, the Justice Department does not seem
to be pressing for one."
The American
media has studiously downplayed the story to the end. The New
York Times, for example, put the Altman-Clifford settlement on
its business page.
But while the
story has disappeared not all the characters connected to this
saga have. One, for example, is still president and another is
ahead in the polls.
[The best
book on the BCCI scandal is False Profits]
Kennedy
and the mob
CBS: Legendary
crooner Frank Sinatra served as a liaison between John F. Kennedy's
1960 campaign for president and mobster Sam Giancana in a scheme
to use Mafia muscle to deliver union votes, Sinatra's daughter
tells 60 Minutes in an interview. Tina Sinatra, the late singer's
youngest daughter, also describes her father's final years and
his work for the Central Intelligence Agency.
Tina, 52, says
her father told her that Kennedy patriarch Joseph P. Kennedy
wanted the Mafia's help in delivering the union vote in the 1960
West Virginia primary, in which John Kennedy, then a US senator,
faced Sen. Hubert Humphrey of Minnesota. The elder Kennedy asked
Frank Sinatra to make a request to then-Chicago crime boss Sam
Giancana. Sinatra was approached "because (Kennedy) knew
dad had access to Sam Giancana," Tina said. "It would
be in Jack Kennedy's best interest if his father did not make
the contact directly. Dad was on an errand."
Giancana told
Frank Sinatra he would do it, telling the singer, according to
his daughter, "It's a couple of phone calls." Soon
after Kennedy won the tight race for president, the deal brokered
by Sinatra came back to haunt him when the Kennedy administration
cracked down on the Mafia, an effort led by Robert Kennedy, the
president's brother and attorney general. Tina says her father
told her how he assuaged an angry Giancana. "Sam was saying,
'That's not right. You know he owes me.,' he meaning Joe Kennedy,
and dad, I think, said, 'No, I owe you. I asked for the favor,'"
recalls Tina.
To repay the
favor, Tina says, Frank Sinatra "went to Chicago and played
in (Giancana's) club, the Villa Venice." Sinatra brought
"Rat Packers" Sammy Davis, Jr. and Dean Martin with
him and played two shows for eight straight nights.
Tina says her
father also claimed to have served as a courier for the CIA.
"Because (he) controlled his own air travel, the CIA would
ask him and many others with that capacity to courier a body
-- a living person, you know, not a corpse, but a diplomat or
papers." Sinatra never revealed who or what he was transporting.
The
digger archives
The Digger
Archives is
project to preserve and present the history of the anarchist
guerrilla street theater group that was one of the legendary
groups in San Francisco's Haight-Ashbury. Shrouded in a mystique
of anonymity, the Diggers took their name from the original English
Diggers (1649-50) who had promulgated a vision of society free
from private property, and all forms of buying and selling. The
San Francisco Diggers evolved out of two radical traditions that
thrived in the SF Bay Area in the mid-1960s: the bohemian/underground
art/theater scene, and the new left/civil rights/peace movement.
The Diggers combined
street theater, anarcho-direct action, and art happenings in
their social agenda of creating a free city. Their most famous
activities included distributing free food every day, and distributing
"surplus energy" at a series of free stores (where
everything was free for the taking.) The Diggers coined various
slogans that worked their way into the counterculture and even
into the larger society - "Do your own thing" and "Today
is the first day of the rest of your life" being the most
recognizable. The Diggers, at the nexus of the emerging underground,
were the progenitors of many new (or newly discovered) ideas
such as baking whole wheat bread (made famous through the popular
Free Digger Bread that was baked in one- and two-pound coffee
cans at the Free Bakery); the first free medical clinic, which
inspired the founding of the Haight-Ashbury Free Medical Clinic;
tie-dyed clothing; and, communal celebrations of natural planetary
events.
DIGGER MANIFESTOS
1. Money Is
An Unnecessary Evil
It is addicting.
It is a temptation
to the weak (most of the violent crimes of our city in some way
involve money).
It can be hoarded,
blocking the free flow of energy and the giant energy-hoards
of Montgomery Street will soon give rise to a sudden and thus
explosive release of this trapped energy, causing much pain and
chaos.
As part of the
city's campaign to stem the causes of violence the San Francisco
Diggers announce a 30 day period beginning now during which all
responsible citizens are asked to turn in their money. No questions
will be asked.
Bring money to
your local Digger for free distribution to all. The Diggers will
then liberate it's energy according to the style of whoever receives
it
2. A-Political
Or, Criminal Or Victim Or Or Or Or Or Or Or
. . . You're
born a citizen of a nation. A citizen of a nation with rulers
who legislate rules commanding you to be free. Free to be conditioned
in school until you're sixteen. Free to be a compulsory soldier.
Free to pay sixty percent of your taxes to the military budget.
Free to get legally married. Free to work for a minimum wage.
Free to vote when you're twenty-one. Free to vote for the democratic
or republican party of your choice. Free to buy clothes, food,
and property from the 200 corporations which account for 45%
of the total US manufacturing in 1966. Free to obey arbitrary
curfews. Free to have your freedom regulated by officers who
are your friends and who protect you.
PROTECT you from
obscenity.
PROTECT you from loitering.
PROTECT you from nudity.
PROTECT you from sedition and subversion.
PROTECT you from marijuana, LSD, DRUGS.
PROTECT you from gambling.
PROTECT you from homosexuality.
PROTECT you from statutory rape.
PROTECT you from common-law marriage.
PROTECT you from abortion.
PROTECT you from lonely you.
PROTECT you from demonstrations against your protectors . . .
DIGGERS