Senator John McCain’s primary opponent, J.D. Hayworth, is talking the 2008 Republican nominees’ many efforts to cover up the fact that the United States left hundreds of POWs behind in North Vietnamese hands. Tea Baggers are wrong about many things, but Hayworth is right on target about the abandonment of those American soldiers and McCain’s sordid role in the cover-up.
The United States signed a peace agreement with the North Vietnamese in Paris on January 27, 1973. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger promised the North Vietnamese $3.25 billion in reconstruction funds if they returned all of our POWs. At one point, the North Vietnamese said they had 368 captives, but they refused to provide a list. Kissinger signed anyhow. Then the North Vietnamese released 591 Americans, including John McCain. The Vietnamese retained the rest as bargaining chips to make sure they got their reparations money. After the French defeat at Dien Bien Phu in 1954, they held on to French captives until France paid reparations.
On February 2, 1973, President Richard Nixon wrote to Premier Pham Van Dong that we knew for certain that they held at least 317 Americans in Laos, and he complained that they had only released 10. Yet, Nixon told the public that all of the POWs had been released.
Admiral Thomas Moorer, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, knew that almost all of the known captives in Laos had not been returned and he said in 1992 that he wanted to resume bombing the north but that Nixon would not go along. He then sent a “back-channel” message about this to ranking officers, saying “Nixon and Kissinger are at it again.”
Ignored Evidence
There were sightings of prisoners and some electronic messages were received. The National Security Administration had a listening post in Saigon until 1975, when it fell. Thereafter, we relied upon the Thai to intercept electronic messages. They passed on much evidence about the POWS, but the authorities in Washington rejected it all because it came from a “third party.” On December 27, 1980, the Thais intercepted a North Vietnamese message that said that American prisoners were being relocated via air from a camp at Attopeu, Laos. Four days later, the CIA Bangkok station reported to Langley about this relocation and about other camps in Laos.
In early, 1981, the Vietnamese told the Reagan administration that it would return the remaining prisoners for $4 billion dollars. Robert Syphrit, a Treasury Secret Service Agent, eventually said he heard the offer being discussed in the Roosevelt Room of the White House. At the time, the Secret Service officer was wiring some equipment and was stunned by what he heard. Present were President Ronald Reagan, Vice President George H.W. Bush, William Casey, Richard Allen, and some cabinet officers. Allen, then national security advisor, testified about the meeting behind closed doors on June 23, 1992. He later retracted his sworn testimony. Somehow journalist Robert Caldwell learned about the meeting and published an article in the San Diego Union-Tribune. He later recanted.
Two Secretaries of Defense, James Schlesinger and Melvin Laird, admitted under oath and on television that the United States left men behind in Vietnam. There have been 1,600 first hand sightings, and many of these people passed lie detector tests. There 14, 000 second hand reports. Satellite photographs show symbols US aviators had been taught to use to identify themselves. An outside consultant was paid to look at all of the photographs, and he said they were just grass and rice formations. But Bob Taylor, a highly regarded Senate staff investigator said,” If grass can spell out people’s names and secret digit codes, then I have a newfound respect for grass.”
In 1981 and 1982, there were two planned rescue missions that were to be led by Delta Force Sgt. Major Eric Hanley. Both were aborted.
As time passed, both the United States government and Vietnam came to share a common policy of denying that there were any remaining U.S. prisoners in Vietnam. The North Vietnamese wanted to gain a place in the community of nations. Some speculated that by 1990 the hostages were probably executed.
McCain’s War with the POW/MIA People
Senator John McCain played the role of the Pentagon’s point man in denying that prisoners had been left behind. Having been a prisoner for five and a half years, he was the perfect figure to lead the effort to keep the lid on this story. Time and again, he was successful in blocking efforts to bring the surface vital pieces of the missing POW story. But who could believe that this hero was not interested in helping these prisoners and their grieving families?
McCain took to attacking POW/MIA advocates, saying they were perpetrators of fraud and profiteers. In the 1970s, Air Force Lt. General Eugene Tighe, once head of the Defense Intelligence Agency, was the main uniformed soldier who defended the efforts of the POW-MIA families to learn what happened to the missing soldiers. McCain became Tighe’s bitter enemy, and the general eventually went into retirement. Later, he attacked former Navy Captain Eugene “Red” McDaniel for drafting a letter against lifting the trade embargo on Vietnam. It was signed by fifty former POWs. Red McDaniel has been described as “one of the most tortured Americans in the history of war.” There seems to be no clear reason why McCain is so hostile to the POW/MIA advocates and opponents of Vietnam.
In 1990, at the urging of the families of the missing prisoners, Congress considered “The Truth Bill,” which McCain managed to kill. It was replaced in 1991 by the “McCain Bill, which did nothing to unseal records.
In August, 1991, the Senate Established a Select Committee to look into the problem. Senator John Kerry, who was deeply committed to normalizing relations with Vietnam, was chairman. Senator Bob Smith was vice-chairman, and Senator McCain – who had asked to be appointed chairman--was its driving force. The families demanded that records be unsealed, particularly those regarding a program called Pave Spike.
It involved dropping electronic motion sensors along the Ho Che Minh Trail. They had spikes on them and were supposed to stick in the ground. Their primary purpose was to alert Americans to enemy troop movements. However, they had another use. Americans on the ground could manually enter data, such as authentication numbers. Planes passing overhead would pickup the information from the devices. By 1974, twenty individual authentication numbers had been entered. There is no record that the committee looked into this.
McCain got into an argument with Dolores Alfond, the sister of a missing airman, woman who wanted the files de-classified. The senator, whose conduct was ugly and shocking, reduced her to tears. His approach was that anyone who disagreed with him impugned his honor and patriotism. Biu Tin, a former North Vietnamese colonel and interrogator of prisoners, appeared at the hearings to say that all the POWs had been sent home in 1973. Mc Cain hugged him. Bin Tin had also told an interviewer that McCain had never been tortured.
Ronald Reagan refused to talk to the Select Committee, and the panel never asked Presidents Nixon and Bush to appear. Vice Chairman Smith spoke to Henry Kissinger by telephone, and a footnote on page 91 of the report indicates that Kissinger said there was a time when Nixon considered bombing Vietnam to retrieve prisoners. Senator Mc Cain fought mightily to remove the note, but it remained. Buried in the report is the estimate that between 150 and 600 might retained by the Vietnamese. The official conclusion was that “a small number” could have been left behind. The Kerry committee essentially accept with little complaint the failure of the Pentagon and Langley to provide critical files. At the time, Richard Cheney was Secretary of Defense and Robert Gates was Director of the CIA.
Congress passed the Missing Personnel Act in 1996, but Mc Cain added an amendment that rendered it unenforceable. A group of about 15 POW/MIA supporters awaited McCain in the Russell Senate Office Building on June 20, 1996 to ask him to drop the amendment. When he realized who they were, his face reddened aqnd he exploded in anger, brushing aside a woman in a wheelchair. These folks thought he had assaulted the lady and filed charges with Capitol Police.
Bell Bell, former head of the Office of POW/MIA Affairs, relates how he was in Hanoi in 1993 with McCain and Ambassador Bill Peterson. Bell said that both Mc Cain and Peterson were very interested in reaching an agreement that POW records from the war never be made public.
Also in 1993, Stephen Morris, a Harvard researcher, found the transcript of a Hanoi politburo briefing in May, 1973. General Tran Van Quang reported that the army held 1,205 prisoners, and noted that they had only admitted to having 368. He said that more than that would be returned, but that a large number would be retained until the United States paid reparations. Since the Vietnamese returned 591, this would mean that they retained 614. The government of Vietnam said the document was a forgery, but it did not explain who produced it and was able to place it in the Soviet archives.
The Defense Intelligence Agency has a Special Office fir Prisoners of War and Missing in Action. Critics have long said that its function was to bury leads about what happened to our missing men. In 1990, Colonel Millard Peck asked to be made head of the office. He intended to what went on there and to see that all leads were thoroughly investigated. He resigned and retired on February 12, 1991, calling the office a “black hole” that was involved in “ a cover-up.” He said he was never really in control of the office and noted that officers who “rocked the boat quickly come to grief.”
What Can Be Learned from this Sad Story?
For decades, the mainstream press has ignored this story. Sydney Schanberg, the Pulitizer Prize winning journalist, has consistently followed it in his Newsday and in The Nation and American Conservative. The present piece is grounded in his hard work. He has written about his failures to interest other many other publications in this cause. He concludes that mainstream journalists are simply lazy. But more is involved. There is a clear pattern of ignoring stories and evidence that would anger the powers that be and the Right. The reader might look into what happened to the journalists who exposed the Iran/Contra Scandal to find examples.
This tale also underscores how people like John McCain own to the press for favorable treatment. His days as an irresponsible young pilot wrecking planes and possibly causing a massive carrier fire have not been carefully explored. Though he was the key player in the Keating Five Scandal, an adoring press helped transform his image to that of a fighter for integrity in the Senate. When he ran for president, there was no exploration with ties with criminal elements or the possibility that his intense interest in gambling made him the wrong person to regulate Indian casinos.
J.D. Hayworth probably will not take the Republican nomination away from McCain. To the extent that he focuses on McCain and the POWs, he is making a great contribution to the public discourse and showing why it is sometimes necessary to distrust government. The trouble is that to date, Tea Baggers have very rarely questioned militarism and imperialism.
McCain’s Democratic opponent in the general election should talk about this case. So long as the nation’s chief priority is serving its military machine, there will be too few resources to rebuild here at home. So long as Democrats fail to demand an end to our wars, their domestic agenda is imperiled.
This is the story of a militarist who cares little about what war does to soldiers or to this nation. Voters need to take off their rose-colored glasses and begin to see that reality is quite different from what is presented in the mainstream media and in the so-called conventional wisdom. John Mc Cain has been one of the chief spear carriers for the military industrial complex that President Dwight Eisenhower warned about. The economy is remains in serious peril now because of the de-regulatory policies that McCain pushed at the behest of corporate America.
McCain’s conduct in this matter is as old as history, going back to that of the Roman aristocrats who cared little for what happened the ordinary men in the legions. In this case, a man born to privilege suffered in a prisoner of war camp but, once liberated, he commanded the effort to discredit those who sought answers about the Missing in Action and the POWs who were never repatriated. As one might expect, his record on veterans concerns is indifferent to so-so. He was not there when they most needed him. He refused to co-sponsor the Agent Orange Bill in 1984 or the Gulf Veterans Health Care Act of 1998. Today, he is the chief spokesman for continuing the Afghan War indefinitely.
Mc Cain says he does not like war, but American promotes it more. But as the prototypical militarist, John Mc Cain shows too little interest in the cost of war and what it does to its victims.
Some say McCain’s recent postures show he no longere has integrity. Maybe he lacked it all along.
Showing posts with label John McCain. Show all posts
Showing posts with label John McCain. Show all posts
Friday, July 9, 2010
Thursday, October 23, 2008
John McCain’s Mysteries
John McCain has repeatedly said that his life is an open book, but a close examination reveals that this is not the case. One of the most puzzling aspects of his long career is that he has repeatedly been the point man in an effort fo prevent the friends and families of Vietnam War MIAs to learn what happened to their loved ones. It makes no sense as McCain is the most famous of the Vietnam War POWs.
When the French were forced out of Indochina, the Communists Vietnamese required that they pay for the return of their prisoners. The North Vietnamese planned to do the same with the United States. They released John McCain and 590 others in January, 1973 and told the United States it would have to pay for the rest. General Tran Van Quang placed the number of the remaining prisoners at 1,205. On February 1, 1973, President Richard Nixon wrote to the North Vietnamese premier, promising $3.25 billion for “postwar reconstruction.” The United States never paid the ransom. Later, in 1981, the North Vietnamese, through a third party offered to return our personnel—now MIAs—for $4 billion. Richard Allen, Reagan’s national security advisor, told Congress about the offer. Treasury agent John Syphrit said he was present when the offer was discussed.
Two Secretaries of Defense, Mel Laird and Richard Schlesinger, have told Congress that American personnel are still in Vietnam. The evidence of this is based upon eyewitness sightings, radio messages, and the prisoners triggering motion sensors in a manner they had been taught to indicate their presence. The servicemen had been taught to enter into the sensors twenty different authentication numbers.
In 1992, Dolores Alford, sister of a missing airman, appeared before the Select Committee on POW/MIA Affairs. She raised questions about her brother and the others and asked about the sensor evidence. The committee was chaired by Senator John Kerry, but John McCain was its dominant force due to his celebrity and background as a POW. With his face turned pink in rage, McCain took some time yelling and berating the woman and ranting about Ms. Alford “denigrating” his “patriotism.” He shouted and shook his fist at witnesses, reducing one to tears. The Committee put out a report that essentially covered up what weas going on, but buried deep in it the staff wrote that the people who analyze satellite and low altitude photographs had never been told about the various distress signals that had been received. Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Sydney H. Schanberg thinks that most of the prisoners have died or have been executed but he believes that some remain in Vietnam.
McCain was also busy sabotaging legislation that would help people learn what had happened to their loved ones. In 1990 and 1991, he handicapped the Truth bill. Then he passed his own version had all sorts of Catch 22 mechanisms to get in the way or researchers. In 1995 and 1996 he attached crippling amendments to the Missing Service Personnel Act.
John McCain has constantly ridiculed the POW activists, referring to the “bizarre rantings of the MIA hobbyists,” and calling them “hoaxers” and “charlatans.” Then he demanded that the Justice Department investigate some of the people who opposed him on this issue. St. John Mc Cain told reporters:
The people who have done these things are not zealots in a good cause. They are the most craven, most cynical and most despicable human beings to ever run a scam.
The Justice Department did his bidding and probed two organizations, but did not find evidence of a scam. Mc Cain heaped scorn on H. Ross Perot, whose concern about the POW/MIAs was certainly sincere and well-informed. Navy Captain and fellow POW Eugene "Red" McDaniel was also attacked by the Arizonan as a fraud.
In 1996, a group of MIA advocates asked to speak with him outside a committee hearing room. He erupted in anger and shoved them aside including Jane Duke Gaylor.
She was in a woman in a wheelchair who was the mother of missing pilot the mother of a missing POW.
His conduct in respect to POW issues simply defies reason, and his angry outbursts suggest he lacks the temperament to be Commander in Chief.
His strange and irrational conduct in respect to the POW issue needs to be explained. Some of the former Swift Boaters are now actively involved in Vietnam Veterans Against John McCain. They have leveled all sorts of charges against the man, but the mainstream media refuses to acknowledge their presence or even look into what they have to say.
They are clearly correct on the POW/MIA issue. They claim that McCain cooperated with the enemy too much while a prisoner of war. It is suggested that his conduct in Hanoi is being held over his head to induce him to frustrate the POW/MIA advocates. No one has ever seen an nonredacted copy of McCain’s post-Hanoi debriefing and the Pentagon refuses to release copies of his confessions. It is an unpleasant subject, almost anyone would be disinclined to blame him for almost anything he said under torturous conditions.
A few of the things he has said about his captivity do not add up. John LeBoutillier is on solid ground when he notes that McCain’s story about the guard making the sign of the cross in the dirt was probably borrowed from Admiral Jeremiah Denton, another POW/Senator.
There is ample evidence that Soviet ( KGB &GRU) and Cuban psychiatrists interrogated POWs in Hanoi, yet McCain insists that it never happened. Some former prisoners spoke about interrogators from North Korea, whose programs for turning prisoners were very successful. It is documented that McCain was interviewed by Spanish psychiatrist Fernando Barral in 1970. North Vietnamese Colonel Bui Tin told a Senate committee in 1992 that Soviet officers interrogated prisoners on a daily basis. Why would McCain deny the presence of non-Vietnamese interrogators and also hug the Vietnamese Colonel Bui Tin as though he were a long lost brother. Bui Tin, who had been a North Vietnamese interrogator. One cannot help wondering about the Stockholm Syndrome.
By his own 1973 US News and World Report account, he thought many of the prisoners had been drugged. Of course, the North Vietnamese could have done this, as drugging and interrogations have long gone hand and hand. McCain’s account includes the claim of being tortured daily, but his two senior officers have said they do not believe he was tortured. Some, including fellow prisoners, say his injuries were the result of the plane crash.
Oddly, he embraced the Vietnamese , Mai Van On, in 1997, who pulled him out of his plane and assisted him, but refused further contact after that meeting in Vietnam. By most accounts, he has become Vietnam’s best friend in the US Senate.
Some suggest that McCain could be blackmailed with information substantiating charges that he he was responsible for the terrible accident on the USS Forrestal in the Gulf of Tonkin on July 29, 1967, when 132 lives were lost. The incident is called the “Forrestfire.” Forrestal survivors angrily confronted him in South Carolina in 2000. It is said that Lt. Commander John McCain “wet started” his A-4E, which set off a chain reaction. Wet-starting was forbidden but considered sort of a joke prank among some pilots. It involved feeding fuel before starting the plane, resulting in more than 12 feet of flames coming out of his plane’s tail that day. The object was to alarm the pilot in the plane behind you. It is claimed that the flame triggered a 6 foot Zuni rocket from an F-4 ahead of Mc Cain to crash into the plane next to Mc Cain’s A-4 fuel tank. Fortunately, he had much practice getting out of planes in a hurry. Then one of his bombs “booked off” and blew a hole in the deck. This is the version of his critics, and many on the Forrestal believed it. That is why McCain was evacuated with the badly wounded.
Some flyers showed great valor and lost their lives fighting the fire. McCain went below but briefly helped sailors off load some bombs from an elevator. He went to the ready room to watch others fight the fire via closed-circuit TV. In his memoirs, he said he was down there worrying about his flying career. The next morning, McCain was evacuated along with the reporter who came aboard to report on the fire. He was the only uninjured Naval person to be evacuated. As his shipmates mourned the lost, he was went off to Saigon for R&R.
The official story simply does not mention McCain or his plane, number 416. Mc Cain , and this author has studied the tapes repeatedly and thinks that the critics are probably dealing the senator a bad rap. The trouble is that the official film footage was not focused on McCain plane when the accident began to happen.
It is puzzling why his shipmates disliked him so and blamed him. Some point out that few Naval aviators from his time have endorsed McCain’s quest for the presidency. That might be because he was more serious about partying than being a pilot and because command influence was used in his favor so often. He had been passed over for promotion twice before this incident. The main reason for withholding promotions is belief that the candidate lacks maturity. Of course, he was promoted as a matter of policy after he became a POW.
There are other aspects of McCain’s life that leave up partly in the dark. We know precious little about his mob ties—just enough to worry. The press dropped the Paxon Communications story like a hot potato, and it looks like all his ties with cable and communications people needs examination. Much more needs to be known about his gambling habits because this reflects judgment, and his personal ties to people in the gambling industry are important because they could bear on ethics. Even his health status is shrouded as only select reporters were permitted to peruse, and take no not4es, on select records for a limited period of time.
With all these questions in mind, all we really have is the image he has carefully constructed and the obvious fact that he seems given to rash decisions and frightening outburst of anger. Just the kind of person we need in the presidency!
When the French were forced out of Indochina, the Communists Vietnamese required that they pay for the return of their prisoners. The North Vietnamese planned to do the same with the United States. They released John McCain and 590 others in January, 1973 and told the United States it would have to pay for the rest. General Tran Van Quang placed the number of the remaining prisoners at 1,205. On February 1, 1973, President Richard Nixon wrote to the North Vietnamese premier, promising $3.25 billion for “postwar reconstruction.” The United States never paid the ransom. Later, in 1981, the North Vietnamese, through a third party offered to return our personnel—now MIAs—for $4 billion. Richard Allen, Reagan’s national security advisor, told Congress about the offer. Treasury agent John Syphrit said he was present when the offer was discussed.
Two Secretaries of Defense, Mel Laird and Richard Schlesinger, have told Congress that American personnel are still in Vietnam. The evidence of this is based upon eyewitness sightings, radio messages, and the prisoners triggering motion sensors in a manner they had been taught to indicate their presence. The servicemen had been taught to enter into the sensors twenty different authentication numbers.
In 1992, Dolores Alford, sister of a missing airman, appeared before the Select Committee on POW/MIA Affairs. She raised questions about her brother and the others and asked about the sensor evidence. The committee was chaired by Senator John Kerry, but John McCain was its dominant force due to his celebrity and background as a POW. With his face turned pink in rage, McCain took some time yelling and berating the woman and ranting about Ms. Alford “denigrating” his “patriotism.” He shouted and shook his fist at witnesses, reducing one to tears. The Committee put out a report that essentially covered up what weas going on, but buried deep in it the staff wrote that the people who analyze satellite and low altitude photographs had never been told about the various distress signals that had been received. Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Sydney H. Schanberg thinks that most of the prisoners have died or have been executed but he believes that some remain in Vietnam.
McCain was also busy sabotaging legislation that would help people learn what had happened to their loved ones. In 1990 and 1991, he handicapped the Truth bill. Then he passed his own version had all sorts of Catch 22 mechanisms to get in the way or researchers. In 1995 and 1996 he attached crippling amendments to the Missing Service Personnel Act.
John McCain has constantly ridiculed the POW activists, referring to the “bizarre rantings of the MIA hobbyists,” and calling them “hoaxers” and “charlatans.” Then he demanded that the Justice Department investigate some of the people who opposed him on this issue. St. John Mc Cain told reporters:
The people who have done these things are not zealots in a good cause. They are the most craven, most cynical and most despicable human beings to ever run a scam.
The Justice Department did his bidding and probed two organizations, but did not find evidence of a scam. Mc Cain heaped scorn on H. Ross Perot, whose concern about the POW/MIAs was certainly sincere and well-informed. Navy Captain and fellow POW Eugene "Red" McDaniel was also attacked by the Arizonan as a fraud.
In 1996, a group of MIA advocates asked to speak with him outside a committee hearing room. He erupted in anger and shoved them aside including Jane Duke Gaylor.
She was in a woman in a wheelchair who was the mother of missing pilot the mother of a missing POW.
His conduct in respect to POW issues simply defies reason, and his angry outbursts suggest he lacks the temperament to be Commander in Chief.
His strange and irrational conduct in respect to the POW issue needs to be explained. Some of the former Swift Boaters are now actively involved in Vietnam Veterans Against John McCain. They have leveled all sorts of charges against the man, but the mainstream media refuses to acknowledge their presence or even look into what they have to say.
They are clearly correct on the POW/MIA issue. They claim that McCain cooperated with the enemy too much while a prisoner of war. It is suggested that his conduct in Hanoi is being held over his head to induce him to frustrate the POW/MIA advocates. No one has ever seen an nonredacted copy of McCain’s post-Hanoi debriefing and the Pentagon refuses to release copies of his confessions. It is an unpleasant subject, almost anyone would be disinclined to blame him for almost anything he said under torturous conditions.
A few of the things he has said about his captivity do not add up. John LeBoutillier is on solid ground when he notes that McCain’s story about the guard making the sign of the cross in the dirt was probably borrowed from Admiral Jeremiah Denton, another POW/Senator.
There is ample evidence that Soviet ( KGB &GRU) and Cuban psychiatrists interrogated POWs in Hanoi, yet McCain insists that it never happened. Some former prisoners spoke about interrogators from North Korea, whose programs for turning prisoners were very successful. It is documented that McCain was interviewed by Spanish psychiatrist Fernando Barral in 1970. North Vietnamese Colonel Bui Tin told a Senate committee in 1992 that Soviet officers interrogated prisoners on a daily basis. Why would McCain deny the presence of non-Vietnamese interrogators and also hug the Vietnamese Colonel Bui Tin as though he were a long lost brother. Bui Tin, who had been a North Vietnamese interrogator. One cannot help wondering about the Stockholm Syndrome.
By his own 1973 US News and World Report account, he thought many of the prisoners had been drugged. Of course, the North Vietnamese could have done this, as drugging and interrogations have long gone hand and hand. McCain’s account includes the claim of being tortured daily, but his two senior officers have said they do not believe he was tortured. Some, including fellow prisoners, say his injuries were the result of the plane crash.
Oddly, he embraced the Vietnamese , Mai Van On, in 1997, who pulled him out of his plane and assisted him, but refused further contact after that meeting in Vietnam. By most accounts, he has become Vietnam’s best friend in the US Senate.
Some suggest that McCain could be blackmailed with information substantiating charges that he he was responsible for the terrible accident on the USS Forrestal in the Gulf of Tonkin on July 29, 1967, when 132 lives were lost. The incident is called the “Forrestfire.” Forrestal survivors angrily confronted him in South Carolina in 2000. It is said that Lt. Commander John McCain “wet started” his A-4E, which set off a chain reaction. Wet-starting was forbidden but considered sort of a joke prank among some pilots. It involved feeding fuel before starting the plane, resulting in more than 12 feet of flames coming out of his plane’s tail that day. The object was to alarm the pilot in the plane behind you. It is claimed that the flame triggered a 6 foot Zuni rocket from an F-4 ahead of Mc Cain to crash into the plane next to Mc Cain’s A-4 fuel tank. Fortunately, he had much practice getting out of planes in a hurry. Then one of his bombs “booked off” and blew a hole in the deck. This is the version of his critics, and many on the Forrestal believed it. That is why McCain was evacuated with the badly wounded.
Some flyers showed great valor and lost their lives fighting the fire. McCain went below but briefly helped sailors off load some bombs from an elevator. He went to the ready room to watch others fight the fire via closed-circuit TV. In his memoirs, he said he was down there worrying about his flying career. The next morning, McCain was evacuated along with the reporter who came aboard to report on the fire. He was the only uninjured Naval person to be evacuated. As his shipmates mourned the lost, he was went off to Saigon for R&R.
The official story simply does not mention McCain or his plane, number 416. Mc Cain , and this author has studied the tapes repeatedly and thinks that the critics are probably dealing the senator a bad rap. The trouble is that the official film footage was not focused on McCain plane when the accident began to happen.
It is puzzling why his shipmates disliked him so and blamed him. Some point out that few Naval aviators from his time have endorsed McCain’s quest for the presidency. That might be because he was more serious about partying than being a pilot and because command influence was used in his favor so often. He had been passed over for promotion twice before this incident. The main reason for withholding promotions is belief that the candidate lacks maturity. Of course, he was promoted as a matter of policy after he became a POW.
There are other aspects of McCain’s life that leave up partly in the dark. We know precious little about his mob ties—just enough to worry. The press dropped the Paxon Communications story like a hot potato, and it looks like all his ties with cable and communications people needs examination. Much more needs to be known about his gambling habits because this reflects judgment, and his personal ties to people in the gambling industry are important because they could bear on ethics. Even his health status is shrouded as only select reporters were permitted to peruse, and take no not4es, on select records for a limited period of time.
With all these questions in mind, all we really have is the image he has carefully constructed and the obvious fact that he seems given to rash decisions and frightening outburst of anger. Just the kind of person we need in the presidency!
Wednesday, October 22, 2008
John McCain and the Keating Five Scandal
John McCain and the “Keating Five: Scandal
By Sherman DeBrosse
It is an odd coincidence that Joe the Plumber, Samuel Joseph Wurzelbacher of Holland, Ohio, bears the last name of the son-in-law of Charles Keating, who was the central figure in the famous but largely forgotten Keating Five Scandal. Another key player was John Mc Cain. The Obama campaign produced a video onm the scandal but has pretty much left it alone. When it was mentioned, the mainstream media did not follow up by providing even sketchy details.
Banker Charles Keating, originally an Ohioan, also got into the business of befriending Arizona politicians. He gave a $55,000 campaign contribution to Bob Corbin, a former Marley employee, who ran unopposed for attorney general. He would supervise state-chartered banks. Keating got his start as a lawyer for Carl Lindner, who made great profits from the Vietnam War. One of the nation’s wealthiest men, Lindner owned 7 S &L that were to fail. By owning United Brands, he was in a position to reap profits from the government’s secret programs to fund and supply the Nicaraguan contras through Hondouras.
Keating purchased property for his office in Phoenix from a mob-connected attorney in 1980. He had a mansion in the Bahamas, where the same attorney family had a casino.
Prudential Insurance loaned him $2 million in 1985. He had numerous dealings with BCCI, which turned out to be the bank of crooks and criminals.
Keating had invested 17.5 million in TrendInvest without notifying his American Continental board. Walter Bush, cousin to the current president, was involved with Continental, which later collapsed. There were many other baffling investments. Some think he was laundering CIA money involved in its Latin American operations.
Keating had a business relationship with Hensley. Keating was good at buying political influence, and he had a ten year close relationship with John McCain, donating about $112,000 to McCain campaigns. Nine times, he paid to transport McCain’s family and babysitter to his place in the Bahamas, often on a private plane. In addition, he permitted Cindy and her father to buy into a lucrative shopping center in California. In return McCain helped him convince Ronald Reagan to deregulate the Savings and Loan industry and place a Keating friend on the board that regulated it. Deregulation was a green light for Keating to build the Phoenician, a resort, in partnership with the rulers of Kuwait. The federal government seized it in February, 1989. His bellmen were permitted to remove 24 cartons of documents.
When the Feds started investigating Keating, McCain organized the “Keating Five” senators to put pressure on the Federal Home Loan Bank board to back off. At one point McCain even demanded that the chairman of that board not participate in the investigation of Keating.
When Keating began to get into trouble and marketed $230,000,000 in bad bonds, he came up with a scheme to cover them with profits from a water scheme. He and a partner bought up a lot of water rights and then had the legislature pass a law requiring Phoenix to first buy as much water as Keating could sell before going to other vendors. They planned to pump about a million acre feet of water in a year. De Concini would also profit because he had purchased some water rights. Such a scheme could only take place in a state where the press looked the other way and the politicians were largely corrupt. The Arizona Republic and the Phoenix Gazette were owned by the family of Dan Quayle.
The Arizona House of Representatives breezed the bill through in two days, but Jerry Gilespie held up things in the Senate. He found a way to stop it dead in its tracks, but he lost his seat in the next election. No wire service reported the story but it was covered by Phoenix Magazine in 1989. This doomed Keating.
As late as May, 1988, Keating thought he had won his battle against the Federal Home Loan Bank Board. On the 20th, he threw a big party because Senators Mc Cain and De Concini, with three others, had succeeded in having the investigation of his Lincoln Savings from San Francisco to Washington. In excitement, he removed his shirt to reveal a tee shirt with a skull and bones superimposed over the letters FHLBB. He had spent a million dollars buying politicians. It looked like he had won, but he was done in when the water scheme petered out.
Keating was eventually fined 3.6 billion and sent to prison. He has been called the father of the S &L crisis. McCain was investigated by the Senate Ethics Committee and was only told he exercised “poor judgment.” Almost as soon as he saw that he had a problem, he played the role of the repentant sinner and began to create the false reputation that he was an opponent of lobbyists and the improprieties seem to flow from their involvement in public life. To convince voters that he was a different sort of politician, he started calling for campaign finance reform. Mrs. McCain retained her profitable partnership with Keating.
By Sherman DeBrosse
It is an odd coincidence that Joe the Plumber, Samuel Joseph Wurzelbacher of Holland, Ohio, bears the last name of the son-in-law of Charles Keating, who was the central figure in the famous but largely forgotten Keating Five Scandal. Another key player was John Mc Cain. The Obama campaign produced a video onm the scandal but has pretty much left it alone. When it was mentioned, the mainstream media did not follow up by providing even sketchy details.
Banker Charles Keating, originally an Ohioan, also got into the business of befriending Arizona politicians. He gave a $55,000 campaign contribution to Bob Corbin, a former Marley employee, who ran unopposed for attorney general. He would supervise state-chartered banks. Keating got his start as a lawyer for Carl Lindner, who made great profits from the Vietnam War. One of the nation’s wealthiest men, Lindner owned 7 S &L that were to fail. By owning United Brands, he was in a position to reap profits from the government’s secret programs to fund and supply the Nicaraguan contras through Hondouras.
Keating purchased property for his office in Phoenix from a mob-connected attorney in 1980. He had a mansion in the Bahamas, where the same attorney family had a casino.
Prudential Insurance loaned him $2 million in 1985. He had numerous dealings with BCCI, which turned out to be the bank of crooks and criminals.
Keating had invested 17.5 million in TrendInvest without notifying his American Continental board. Walter Bush, cousin to the current president, was involved with Continental, which later collapsed. There were many other baffling investments. Some think he was laundering CIA money involved in its Latin American operations.
Keating had a business relationship with Hensley. Keating was good at buying political influence, and he had a ten year close relationship with John McCain, donating about $112,000 to McCain campaigns. Nine times, he paid to transport McCain’s family and babysitter to his place in the Bahamas, often on a private plane. In addition, he permitted Cindy and her father to buy into a lucrative shopping center in California. In return McCain helped him convince Ronald Reagan to deregulate the Savings and Loan industry and place a Keating friend on the board that regulated it. Deregulation was a green light for Keating to build the Phoenician, a resort, in partnership with the rulers of Kuwait. The federal government seized it in February, 1989. His bellmen were permitted to remove 24 cartons of documents.
When the Feds started investigating Keating, McCain organized the “Keating Five” senators to put pressure on the Federal Home Loan Bank board to back off. At one point McCain even demanded that the chairman of that board not participate in the investigation of Keating.
When Keating began to get into trouble and marketed $230,000,000 in bad bonds, he came up with a scheme to cover them with profits from a water scheme. He and a partner bought up a lot of water rights and then had the legislature pass a law requiring Phoenix to first buy as much water as Keating could sell before going to other vendors. They planned to pump about a million acre feet of water in a year. De Concini would also profit because he had purchased some water rights. Such a scheme could only take place in a state where the press looked the other way and the politicians were largely corrupt. The Arizona Republic and the Phoenix Gazette were owned by the family of Dan Quayle.
The Arizona House of Representatives breezed the bill through in two days, but Jerry Gilespie held up things in the Senate. He found a way to stop it dead in its tracks, but he lost his seat in the next election. No wire service reported the story but it was covered by Phoenix Magazine in 1989. This doomed Keating.
As late as May, 1988, Keating thought he had won his battle against the Federal Home Loan Bank Board. On the 20th, he threw a big party because Senators Mc Cain and De Concini, with three others, had succeeded in having the investigation of his Lincoln Savings from San Francisco to Washington. In excitement, he removed his shirt to reveal a tee shirt with a skull and bones superimposed over the letters FHLBB. He had spent a million dollars buying politicians. It looked like he had won, but he was done in when the water scheme petered out.
Keating was eventually fined 3.6 billion and sent to prison. He has been called the father of the S &L crisis. McCain was investigated by the Senate Ethics Committee and was only told he exercised “poor judgment.” Almost as soon as he saw that he had a problem, he played the role of the repentant sinner and began to create the false reputation that he was an opponent of lobbyists and the improprieties seem to flow from their involvement in public life. To convince voters that he was a different sort of politician, he started calling for campaign finance reform. Mrs. McCain retained her profitable partnership with Keating.
Tuesday, October 14, 2008
Mc Cain is Confused on Foreign Policy
McCain’s Confusions Must Be Addressed
The Osama campaign has gently pointed out that John McCain has been erratic on economic matters, lurching from one position to another ion no discernable pattersn. The latest lurch has been repudiating eight years of Bush economic policy, which he supported.
Equally bothersome is the fact that John McCain has made so many simple factual mistakes when discussion foreign policy, his claimed area of expertise.
John McCain was in Iraq, seemed confused, and Joseph Lieberman had to lean over and prompt him. Iraq is a complicated situation , so it was easy to misspeak, and we overlooked the matter. Now he is confused about what job General Petraeus has and is talking about the Iraq/Pakistan border. He has repeatedly said that Al Qaeda operatives in Iraq were trained in Iran; although, there is no evidence to prove this. Indeed, IaQaeda people are Sunni and would be uncomfortable in Shiite Iran. Moreover, McCain must not have known that Iran is still holding one of Osama’s eleven sons under house arrest.
The problem has become that Senator McCain misspeaks so often on this subject and
contradicts himself ( flip-flops ?) so frequently that it has become a troubling pattern. His pronouncements on the Iraq war are so frequently simplistic and uninformed that they call into serious questions his claims about foreign policy expertise.
Just before the invasion, he put on his military expert hat, and said, “I have no quams about our strategic plans.” It would be a quick victory and another glorious chapter in United States military history.
The”expert” Mc Cain now brags about criticizing and rejecting Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld. The fact is that it took McCain 18 months to reach that conclusion. All that time and beyond, he said George W. Bush was doing just fine. True, he did call for an increase in troop level all along.
He thought then and still believes that the Iraq War could be won if more troops on the ground increased the level of physical security. That seems to be his definition of “victory.” Even many with stars on their shoulders claim victory must be defined as a political settlement that brings peace and reconciliation between the different factions in Iraq. That has not come about, and McCain has never explained how he would accomplish this. Barack Obama has always defined victory in these terms; and he has set the standard for the defense of the surge in the same way. McCain does not seem to see any relationship between a good political settlement and victory. So maybe his criticisms of Barack Obama on the success of the surge are honest and not some cheap political slight of hand.
McCain also claims too much credit for the surge, itself—the introduction of more troops. Things have improved on the streets because David Petraeus started putting troops in the neighborhoods. He had long advocated this but had been restrained from doing so. In claiming too much for the surge, McCain slights Petraeus and indirectly claims too much credit for himself.
Maybe McSame reaches the conclusion that the Iraq insurgence and war will be imposed on the ground by military force because he sees this through the prism of a foreign policy fundamentalist—good v. evil. Simple as that—
For quite a while, he was warning that the Shiites could take over Iraq. He sang this odd song long after the Bush Administration had decided to ally with the pro-Iran Shiites. One wonders if he knew that Shiites and the Sunni Al Queda do not get along over significant period of time.
Of late, he sounds the alarm that Al Qaeda could take over. Al Qaeda was never more than a tiny presence there. We and some of the Sunni states in the region touted Abu Musab al-Zarqawi as a powerful Al Qaeda leader, even though he did not get along with Osama bin Laden. Since the Jordanian intelligence killed Zarqawi, his small organization in Ramadi has collapsed and other wannabe Al Qaeda leaders cannot even be found there.
Still McCain droned on about Al Qaeda in Iraq and how Iraq is the center of the War on Terrorism. In an interview with Bill Bennett, he said of Al Qaeda, “These guys want to follow us home….It is not Iraq they are after, my friend. It is us.” His insistence that central role of Al Qaeda in Iraq suggests that he might still think that Iraq was somehow behind 9/11.
In February, he has again warned that the Al Qaeda could take over Iraq. Al Qaeda had only appealed to a tiny segment in the radical religious element among the Sunnis—
And now almost no one identifies himself as Al Qaeda. An aid, who must have understood a little more, tried to explain the claim by saying the Senator meant that Sunni extremists might create a small state there. Of course, the Shiites majority would destroy it and would even have the help of Jordan and the Kurds, neither of whom can brook Sunni religious extremists.
Lately, McCain has been claiming that the Surge made possible the Anbar Awakening—the decision of some sheiks to come over as US allies. The problem was that the Anbar Awakening occurred four months before the Surge began. McCain insisted to Katie Couric his position was an historical fact and CBS cut that segment rather than air footage that would embarrass McCain. That occurred the same day that his campaign distributed information that the media was overwhelmingly in support of Obama.
He has also bragged how the Surge has protected those sheiks even though their leader, Abddul Sattar Abu Riisha was murdered in September, 2007, during the Surge.
Months ago, 141 members of the Iraqi parliament voted that the US should establish a timeline for withdrawal. Now Prime Minister al-Maliki has all but endorsed Obama’s 16 month time frame, and the Bush administration might be moving closer to that position.
One wonders if Mc Cain can find a way to find a way to get in line with these new developments. Perhaps, not as he has been able to take positions that are completely inconsistent with the facts in Iraq. He may well get away with flip flopping, clinging to historical inaccuracies, and a policy that does not really define victory. Most people do not know much about Iraq and there is no evidence that the corporate media will call him on flip flopping or misinformation, There is widespread opposition to the war, but it is pretty thin. Current polling information suggests that McCain may not have to pay for Republican mistakes in Iraq so long as casualties there remain relatively low.
Barach Obama must to show that the Surge has only worked in a limited way and he must show that McCain’s many misstatements on Iraq are not mere gaffes. They show genuine confusion and—yes—almost profound ignorance. After all McCain’s trips to Iraq and attendance at Senate hearings, it seems to be a sad fact that he is either a prisoner of an outworn ideology, or worse, he has a very poor learning curve. We honor this hero for his service to this great republic, but it is too dangerous to reward him with the presidency.
The Osama campaign has gently pointed out that John McCain has been erratic on economic matters, lurching from one position to another ion no discernable pattersn. The latest lurch has been repudiating eight years of Bush economic policy, which he supported.
Equally bothersome is the fact that John McCain has made so many simple factual mistakes when discussion foreign policy, his claimed area of expertise.
John McCain was in Iraq, seemed confused, and Joseph Lieberman had to lean over and prompt him. Iraq is a complicated situation , so it was easy to misspeak, and we overlooked the matter. Now he is confused about what job General Petraeus has and is talking about the Iraq/Pakistan border. He has repeatedly said that Al Qaeda operatives in Iraq were trained in Iran; although, there is no evidence to prove this. Indeed, IaQaeda people are Sunni and would be uncomfortable in Shiite Iran. Moreover, McCain must not have known that Iran is still holding one of Osama’s eleven sons under house arrest.
The problem has become that Senator McCain misspeaks so often on this subject and
contradicts himself ( flip-flops ?) so frequently that it has become a troubling pattern. His pronouncements on the Iraq war are so frequently simplistic and uninformed that they call into serious questions his claims about foreign policy expertise.
Just before the invasion, he put on his military expert hat, and said, “I have no quams about our strategic plans.” It would be a quick victory and another glorious chapter in United States military history.
The”expert” Mc Cain now brags about criticizing and rejecting Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld. The fact is that it took McCain 18 months to reach that conclusion. All that time and beyond, he said George W. Bush was doing just fine. True, he did call for an increase in troop level all along.
He thought then and still believes that the Iraq War could be won if more troops on the ground increased the level of physical security. That seems to be his definition of “victory.” Even many with stars on their shoulders claim victory must be defined as a political settlement that brings peace and reconciliation between the different factions in Iraq. That has not come about, and McCain has never explained how he would accomplish this. Barack Obama has always defined victory in these terms; and he has set the standard for the defense of the surge in the same way. McCain does not seem to see any relationship between a good political settlement and victory. So maybe his criticisms of Barack Obama on the success of the surge are honest and not some cheap political slight of hand.
McCain also claims too much credit for the surge, itself—the introduction of more troops. Things have improved on the streets because David Petraeus started putting troops in the neighborhoods. He had long advocated this but had been restrained from doing so. In claiming too much for the surge, McCain slights Petraeus and indirectly claims too much credit for himself.
Maybe McSame reaches the conclusion that the Iraq insurgence and war will be imposed on the ground by military force because he sees this through the prism of a foreign policy fundamentalist—good v. evil. Simple as that—
For quite a while, he was warning that the Shiites could take over Iraq. He sang this odd song long after the Bush Administration had decided to ally with the pro-Iran Shiites. One wonders if he knew that Shiites and the Sunni Al Queda do not get along over significant period of time.
Of late, he sounds the alarm that Al Qaeda could take over. Al Qaeda was never more than a tiny presence there. We and some of the Sunni states in the region touted Abu Musab al-Zarqawi as a powerful Al Qaeda leader, even though he did not get along with Osama bin Laden. Since the Jordanian intelligence killed Zarqawi, his small organization in Ramadi has collapsed and other wannabe Al Qaeda leaders cannot even be found there.
Still McCain droned on about Al Qaeda in Iraq and how Iraq is the center of the War on Terrorism. In an interview with Bill Bennett, he said of Al Qaeda, “These guys want to follow us home….It is not Iraq they are after, my friend. It is us.” His insistence that central role of Al Qaeda in Iraq suggests that he might still think that Iraq was somehow behind 9/11.
In February, he has again warned that the Al Qaeda could take over Iraq. Al Qaeda had only appealed to a tiny segment in the radical religious element among the Sunnis—
And now almost no one identifies himself as Al Qaeda. An aid, who must have understood a little more, tried to explain the claim by saying the Senator meant that Sunni extremists might create a small state there. Of course, the Shiites majority would destroy it and would even have the help of Jordan and the Kurds, neither of whom can brook Sunni religious extremists.
Lately, McCain has been claiming that the Surge made possible the Anbar Awakening—the decision of some sheiks to come over as US allies. The problem was that the Anbar Awakening occurred four months before the Surge began. McCain insisted to Katie Couric his position was an historical fact and CBS cut that segment rather than air footage that would embarrass McCain. That occurred the same day that his campaign distributed information that the media was overwhelmingly in support of Obama.
He has also bragged how the Surge has protected those sheiks even though their leader, Abddul Sattar Abu Riisha was murdered in September, 2007, during the Surge.
Months ago, 141 members of the Iraqi parliament voted that the US should establish a timeline for withdrawal. Now Prime Minister al-Maliki has all but endorsed Obama’s 16 month time frame, and the Bush administration might be moving closer to that position.
One wonders if Mc Cain can find a way to find a way to get in line with these new developments. Perhaps, not as he has been able to take positions that are completely inconsistent with the facts in Iraq. He may well get away with flip flopping, clinging to historical inaccuracies, and a policy that does not really define victory. Most people do not know much about Iraq and there is no evidence that the corporate media will call him on flip flopping or misinformation, There is widespread opposition to the war, but it is pretty thin. Current polling information suggests that McCain may not have to pay for Republican mistakes in Iraq so long as casualties there remain relatively low.
Barach Obama must to show that the Surge has only worked in a limited way and he must show that McCain’s many misstatements on Iraq are not mere gaffes. They show genuine confusion and—yes—almost profound ignorance. After all McCain’s trips to Iraq and attendance at Senate hearings, it seems to be a sad fact that he is either a prisoner of an outworn ideology, or worse, he has a very poor learning curve. We honor this hero for his service to this great republic, but it is too dangerous to reward him with the presidency.
Wednesday, October 8, 2008
Mc Cain, "The Keating Five," and Lobbyists
John McCain's life is anything but the "open book" he claims it is. Central to his political life was his deep involvement in the "Keating Five Scandal."
The story begins with colorful information on the role of organized crime in Arizona and Mc Cain’s ties to it. Kemper Marley was the big man in Arizona at the time. He was the protégé of Sam Bronfman, a close friend of Al Capone and Meyer Lansky, who visited Arizona in his company. He was also very close to Gus Greenbaum, a Lansky aide and Phoenix gambler.
Greenbaum and his wife were slain in 1948, setting off a mob war that Marley won. Marley became the state’s only billionaire. In 1948, Marley escaped prison while 52 of his prisoners went were incarcerated including henchman Gene Hensley, who would become John McCain’s father-in-law. He was general manager of Marley’s United Liquor. Hensley’s brother was a bootlegger and was also convicted. The court said Hensley must never get into the liquor business again, but when he got out he received a big Budweiser distributorship. Hensley also made money in dog racing, but sold his track to the Jacobs family of Buffalo. They were also linked to the Bronfman booze empire of Canada and the Lansky interests.
Marley headed the Valley National Bank, which lent Meyer Lansky’s man, Bugsy Seagal, the money to build the Flamingo casino . Seagel was killed for stealing from his bosses, and his nationwide gambling wire was turned over to Marley.
Marley ( d. 1990) was very generous with the Republican party and also controlled the Arizona Democrats. Many in major office there owed their jobs to him. Marley’s men included Dennis De Concini, a Democrat, and John McCain
Arizona Republic investigative reporter Don Bolles was killed in a 1976 car bombing. He had investigated crooked land deals that were tied to many of the rich and powerful and had also looked into Marley’s service on state commissions. This led to a 36 member team of investigative reporters coming to Arizona. It produced investigative team coming to Arizona. It produced The Arizona Project: How a Team of Investigative Reporters Got Revenge on Deadline. They believed but could not prove that the Marley gang was behind the murder of Bolles. But they produced a great deal of information on the mob in Arizona.
Astonishingly Bolles lived for eleven days after the explosion and said: “They finally got me. The Mafia. Emprise. Find John (Harvey) Adamson." There was no effort to find out who hired the man who gave Adamson contract. Anderson he was convicted of the car bombing said the Marley gang also wanted Attorney General Bruce Babbitt killed because he wanted anti-trust action against them.
John McCain married mob heiress Cindy Hensley. From the time of his arrival in Phoenix in 1979, the Hensley family sponsored his political career. He received a $50,000 a year salary in 1982 to tour the state as a PR man for the family beer Budweiser distributor firm, but of course he was beginning a Congressional campaign. Anheuser-Bush lobbyist Richard Scheffel said that Hensley used McCain as a channel to move money to politicians.
McCain does not seem to have done anything for the mob, but he must know it was that money that fuelled his career. Must also have met some mob people In 1995, sent “Happy Birthday” wishes to Joseph Bonasno, the head of the New York Bonano mob who had retired in Arizona. From the time of his arrival in Phoenix in 1979, the Hensley family sponsored his political career. McCain recused himself on voting on alcohol matters, but as a committee chairman he used his power to their advantage by not scheduling hearings. In 1997, important hearings that were scheduled never occurred. In 1996, he pushed to normalize relations with Vietnam just as Budweiser was preparing to enter that market.
. Banker Charles Keating also got into the business of befriending Arizona politicians. He gave a $55,000 campaign contribution to Bob Corbin, a former Marley employee, who ran unopposed for attorney general. He would supervise state-chartered banks. Keating got his start as a lawyer for Carl Lindner, who made great profits from the Vietnam War. One of the nation’s wealthiest men, Lindner owned 7 S &L that were to fail. By owning United Brands, he was in a position to reap profits from the government’s secret programs to fund and supply the Nicaraguan contras through Hondouras.
Keating purchased property for his office in Phoenix from a mob-connected attorney in 1980. He had a mansion in the Bahamas, where the same attorney family had a casino.
Prudential Insurance loaned him $2 million in 1985. He had numerous dealings with BCCI, which turned out to be the bank of crooks and criminals.
Keating had invested 17.5 million in TrendInvest without notifying his American Conmtinental board. Walter Bush, cousin to the current president, was involved with Continental, which later collapsed. There were many other baffling investments. Some think he was laundering CIA money involved in its Latin American operations.
Keating had a business relationship with Hensley. Keating was good at buying political influence, and he had a ten year close relationship with John McCain, donating about $112,000 to McCain campaigns. Nine times, he paid to transport McCain’s family and babysitter to his place in the Bahamas, often on a private plane. In addition, he permitted Cindy and her father to buy into a lucrative shopping center in California. In return McCain helped him convince Ronald Reagan to deregulate the Savings and Loan industry and place a Keating friend on the board that regulated it. Deregulation was a green light for Keating to build the Phoenician, a resort, in partnership with the rulers of Kuwait. The federal government seized it in February, 1989. His bellmen were permitted to remove 24 cartons of documents.
When the Feds started investigating Keating, McCain organized the “Keating Five” senators to put pressure on the Federal Home Loan Bank board to back off. At one point McCain even demanded that the chairman of that board not participate in the investigation of Keating.
When Keating began to get into trouble and marketed $230,000,000 in bad bonds, he came up with a scheme to cover them with profits from a water scheme. He and a partner bought up a lot of water rights and then had the legislature pass a law requiring Phoenix to first buy as much water as Keating could sell before going to other vendors. They planned to pump about a million acre feet of water in a year. De Concini would also profit because he had purchased some water rights. Such a scheme could only take place in a state where the press looked the other way and the politicians were largely corrupt. The Arizona Republic and the Phoenix Gazette were owned by the family of Dan Quayle.
The Arizona House of Representatives breezed the bill through in two days, but Jerry Gilespie held up things in the Senate. He found a way to stop it dead in its tracks, but he lost his seat in the next election. No wire service reported the story but it was covered by Phoenix Magazine in 1989. This doomed Keating.
As late as May, 1988, Keating thought he had won his battle against the Federal Home Loan Bank Board. On the 20th, he threw a big party because Senators Mc Cain and De Concini, with three others, had succeeded in having the investigation of his Lincoln Savings from San Francisco to Washington. In excitement, he removed his shirt to reveal a tee shirt with a skull and bones superimposed over the letters FHLBB. He had spent a million dollars buying politicians. It looked like he had won, but he was done in when the water scheme petered out.
Keating was eventually fined 3.6 billion and sent to prison. He has been called the father of the S &L crisis. McCain was investigated by the Senate Ethics Committee and was only told he exercised “poor judgment.” Almost as soon as he saw that he had a problem, he played the role of the repentant sinner and began to create the false reputation that he was an opponent of lobbyists and the improprieties seem to flow from their involvement in public life. To convince voters that he was a different sort of politician, he started calling for campaign finance reform.
McCain went on to gin up a reputation for integrity, but, in fact, he continued to run errands for contributors. Recently, McCain denied ever meeting Lowell “Bud” Paxson, even though there was a 2002 court deposition proving they had met. This is important because in 1999, MC Cain, then chairman of the Senate Commerce Committee, pressed the FCC hard to let Paxson Communications purchase a Pittsburgh television station. The FC claimed McCain’s request seemed like a threat and believed he had crossed the line separating propriety and impropriety. The firm had donated $20,000 to McCain. The firm had provided McCain transportation on a company jet on several occasions. Very briefly, the press raised questions about his relationship with a pretty young Paxson lobbyist who was often in his company in 2000. No solid evidence of a sexual relationship was found, so the press decided not to look into the rest of the story. The fact that McCain is clearly the darling of the press could have something to do with the drying up of the entire story.
When confronted with information about his conduct in the Paxson case, McCain said he was just prodding bureaucrats and then produced documents to show he had done the same thing in other cases involving large contributors. What chutzpah!
In 1999, McCain staff twice intervened to help wealthy contributor and close personal friend Donald Diamond obtain land from closed Army base Fort Ord in California. That deal allowed him to turn a $20 million profit, and another arrangement in 2005, again with McCain help, promises to be more profitable. This involves as many as 12,000 homes and benefits more than one McCain backer. Two former McCain staffers were hired as lobbyists in this complex deal to get him aboard. Twice in the 1990s, McCain introduced land legislation to help Diamond, and a third measure is now before the Senate.
In 2001, questions were raised about legislation he backed for the cruise industry and the large contributions it gave him. There are also questions about his close ties to the cable TV industry.
Recently, it was learned that John McCain had more lobbyists working for his 2008 campaign than any other presidential candidate. Even after 6 were forced to leave due to their ties to unsavory regimes, there are 59 who do nothing but raise money. One of them is Ralph Reed, who was shown to be taking advantage of Native American clients in hearings McCain chaired! Over time, 133 lobbyists have worked for the Straight talk Express.
Others do other things in the campaign. Rick Davis is campaign manager, and Charlie Black is senior political advisor. Among Black’s clients were AT%T, Rupert Murdock, and Blackwater. Twenty-one McCain people also represented AT&T. Black had also been paid to sheppard around Ahmed Chalabi, whose distortions helped get the US to invade Iraq. Could this be connected to McCain’s view that American troops must soldier on there, possibly indefinitely.
Two lobbyists were closely tied to the mortgage industry, which could explain why McCain has been so very friendly to the same industry. Randy Scheunemann, McCain’s foreign policy analyst, has represented the Republic of Georgia, and spoke on McCain’s behalf on this issue as recently as August 17. This could explain why McCain is so hawkish about the Russo-Georgian struggle. He speaks as though he is already president, keeping force and all other options on the table.
None of this information is to suggest Mc Cain is a crook. He is obviously very closely tied to the lobbyists and special interests that he frequently complains about. He cannot claim no links to the mob. There is no doubt that he has a history of going to bat for them—sometimes appearing to go to far. He has repeatedly promised to never doing anything that gives the appearance of impropriety, but his track record is just the opposite of this.
He probably is not a crook, and Mc Cain deserves great praise for his service in the Vietnam War. But he is only mortal and has a bad track record for consistency and truth telling, despite all his self-praise about honesty.
The story begins with colorful information on the role of organized crime in Arizona and Mc Cain’s ties to it. Kemper Marley was the big man in Arizona at the time. He was the protégé of Sam Bronfman, a close friend of Al Capone and Meyer Lansky, who visited Arizona in his company. He was also very close to Gus Greenbaum, a Lansky aide and Phoenix gambler.
Greenbaum and his wife were slain in 1948, setting off a mob war that Marley won. Marley became the state’s only billionaire. In 1948, Marley escaped prison while 52 of his prisoners went were incarcerated including henchman Gene Hensley, who would become John McCain’s father-in-law. He was general manager of Marley’s United Liquor. Hensley’s brother was a bootlegger and was also convicted. The court said Hensley must never get into the liquor business again, but when he got out he received a big Budweiser distributorship. Hensley also made money in dog racing, but sold his track to the Jacobs family of Buffalo. They were also linked to the Bronfman booze empire of Canada and the Lansky interests.
Marley headed the Valley National Bank, which lent Meyer Lansky’s man, Bugsy Seagal, the money to build the Flamingo casino . Seagel was killed for stealing from his bosses, and his nationwide gambling wire was turned over to Marley.
Marley ( d. 1990) was very generous with the Republican party and also controlled the Arizona Democrats. Many in major office there owed their jobs to him. Marley’s men included Dennis De Concini, a Democrat, and John McCain
Arizona Republic investigative reporter Don Bolles was killed in a 1976 car bombing. He had investigated crooked land deals that were tied to many of the rich and powerful and had also looked into Marley’s service on state commissions. This led to a 36 member team of investigative reporters coming to Arizona. It produced investigative team coming to Arizona. It produced The Arizona Project: How a Team of Investigative Reporters Got Revenge on Deadline. They believed but could not prove that the Marley gang was behind the murder of Bolles. But they produced a great deal of information on the mob in Arizona.
Astonishingly Bolles lived for eleven days after the explosion and said: “They finally got me. The Mafia. Emprise. Find John (Harvey) Adamson." There was no effort to find out who hired the man who gave Adamson contract. Anderson he was convicted of the car bombing said the Marley gang also wanted Attorney General Bruce Babbitt killed because he wanted anti-trust action against them.
John McCain married mob heiress Cindy Hensley. From the time of his arrival in Phoenix in 1979, the Hensley family sponsored his political career. He received a $50,000 a year salary in 1982 to tour the state as a PR man for the family beer Budweiser distributor firm, but of course he was beginning a Congressional campaign. Anheuser-Bush lobbyist Richard Scheffel said that Hensley used McCain as a channel to move money to politicians.
McCain does not seem to have done anything for the mob, but he must know it was that money that fuelled his career. Must also have met some mob people In 1995, sent “Happy Birthday” wishes to Joseph Bonasno, the head of the New York Bonano mob who had retired in Arizona. From the time of his arrival in Phoenix in 1979, the Hensley family sponsored his political career. McCain recused himself on voting on alcohol matters, but as a committee chairman he used his power to their advantage by not scheduling hearings. In 1997, important hearings that were scheduled never occurred. In 1996, he pushed to normalize relations with Vietnam just as Budweiser was preparing to enter that market.
. Banker Charles Keating also got into the business of befriending Arizona politicians. He gave a $55,000 campaign contribution to Bob Corbin, a former Marley employee, who ran unopposed for attorney general. He would supervise state-chartered banks. Keating got his start as a lawyer for Carl Lindner, who made great profits from the Vietnam War. One of the nation’s wealthiest men, Lindner owned 7 S &L that were to fail. By owning United Brands, he was in a position to reap profits from the government’s secret programs to fund and supply the Nicaraguan contras through Hondouras.
Keating purchased property for his office in Phoenix from a mob-connected attorney in 1980. He had a mansion in the Bahamas, where the same attorney family had a casino.
Prudential Insurance loaned him $2 million in 1985. He had numerous dealings with BCCI, which turned out to be the bank of crooks and criminals.
Keating had invested 17.5 million in TrendInvest without notifying his American Conmtinental board. Walter Bush, cousin to the current president, was involved with Continental, which later collapsed. There were many other baffling investments. Some think he was laundering CIA money involved in its Latin American operations.
Keating had a business relationship with Hensley. Keating was good at buying political influence, and he had a ten year close relationship with John McCain, donating about $112,000 to McCain campaigns. Nine times, he paid to transport McCain’s family and babysitter to his place in the Bahamas, often on a private plane. In addition, he permitted Cindy and her father to buy into a lucrative shopping center in California. In return McCain helped him convince Ronald Reagan to deregulate the Savings and Loan industry and place a Keating friend on the board that regulated it. Deregulation was a green light for Keating to build the Phoenician, a resort, in partnership with the rulers of Kuwait. The federal government seized it in February, 1989. His bellmen were permitted to remove 24 cartons of documents.
When the Feds started investigating Keating, McCain organized the “Keating Five” senators to put pressure on the Federal Home Loan Bank board to back off. At one point McCain even demanded that the chairman of that board not participate in the investigation of Keating.
When Keating began to get into trouble and marketed $230,000,000 in bad bonds, he came up with a scheme to cover them with profits from a water scheme. He and a partner bought up a lot of water rights and then had the legislature pass a law requiring Phoenix to first buy as much water as Keating could sell before going to other vendors. They planned to pump about a million acre feet of water in a year. De Concini would also profit because he had purchased some water rights. Such a scheme could only take place in a state where the press looked the other way and the politicians were largely corrupt. The Arizona Republic and the Phoenix Gazette were owned by the family of Dan Quayle.
The Arizona House of Representatives breezed the bill through in two days, but Jerry Gilespie held up things in the Senate. He found a way to stop it dead in its tracks, but he lost his seat in the next election. No wire service reported the story but it was covered by Phoenix Magazine in 1989. This doomed Keating.
As late as May, 1988, Keating thought he had won his battle against the Federal Home Loan Bank Board. On the 20th, he threw a big party because Senators Mc Cain and De Concini, with three others, had succeeded in having the investigation of his Lincoln Savings from San Francisco to Washington. In excitement, he removed his shirt to reveal a tee shirt with a skull and bones superimposed over the letters FHLBB. He had spent a million dollars buying politicians. It looked like he had won, but he was done in when the water scheme petered out.
Keating was eventually fined 3.6 billion and sent to prison. He has been called the father of the S &L crisis. McCain was investigated by the Senate Ethics Committee and was only told he exercised “poor judgment.” Almost as soon as he saw that he had a problem, he played the role of the repentant sinner and began to create the false reputation that he was an opponent of lobbyists and the improprieties seem to flow from their involvement in public life. To convince voters that he was a different sort of politician, he started calling for campaign finance reform.
McCain went on to gin up a reputation for integrity, but, in fact, he continued to run errands for contributors. Recently, McCain denied ever meeting Lowell “Bud” Paxson, even though there was a 2002 court deposition proving they had met. This is important because in 1999, MC Cain, then chairman of the Senate Commerce Committee, pressed the FCC hard to let Paxson Communications purchase a Pittsburgh television station. The FC claimed McCain’s request seemed like a threat and believed he had crossed the line separating propriety and impropriety. The firm had donated $20,000 to McCain. The firm had provided McCain transportation on a company jet on several occasions. Very briefly, the press raised questions about his relationship with a pretty young Paxson lobbyist who was often in his company in 2000. No solid evidence of a sexual relationship was found, so the press decided not to look into the rest of the story. The fact that McCain is clearly the darling of the press could have something to do with the drying up of the entire story.
When confronted with information about his conduct in the Paxson case, McCain said he was just prodding bureaucrats and then produced documents to show he had done the same thing in other cases involving large contributors. What chutzpah!
In 1999, McCain staff twice intervened to help wealthy contributor and close personal friend Donald Diamond obtain land from closed Army base Fort Ord in California. That deal allowed him to turn a $20 million profit, and another arrangement in 2005, again with McCain help, promises to be more profitable. This involves as many as 12,000 homes and benefits more than one McCain backer. Two former McCain staffers were hired as lobbyists in this complex deal to get him aboard. Twice in the 1990s, McCain introduced land legislation to help Diamond, and a third measure is now before the Senate.
In 2001, questions were raised about legislation he backed for the cruise industry and the large contributions it gave him. There are also questions about his close ties to the cable TV industry.
Recently, it was learned that John McCain had more lobbyists working for his 2008 campaign than any other presidential candidate. Even after 6 were forced to leave due to their ties to unsavory regimes, there are 59 who do nothing but raise money. One of them is Ralph Reed, who was shown to be taking advantage of Native American clients in hearings McCain chaired! Over time, 133 lobbyists have worked for the Straight talk Express.
Others do other things in the campaign. Rick Davis is campaign manager, and Charlie Black is senior political advisor. Among Black’s clients were AT%T, Rupert Murdock, and Blackwater. Twenty-one McCain people also represented AT&T. Black had also been paid to sheppard around Ahmed Chalabi, whose distortions helped get the US to invade Iraq. Could this be connected to McCain’s view that American troops must soldier on there, possibly indefinitely.
Two lobbyists were closely tied to the mortgage industry, which could explain why McCain has been so very friendly to the same industry. Randy Scheunemann, McCain’s foreign policy analyst, has represented the Republic of Georgia, and spoke on McCain’s behalf on this issue as recently as August 17. This could explain why McCain is so hawkish about the Russo-Georgian struggle. He speaks as though he is already president, keeping force and all other options on the table.
None of this information is to suggest Mc Cain is a crook. He is obviously very closely tied to the lobbyists and special interests that he frequently complains about. He cannot claim no links to the mob. There is no doubt that he has a history of going to bat for them—sometimes appearing to go to far. He has repeatedly promised to never doing anything that gives the appearance of impropriety, but his track record is just the opposite of this.
He probably is not a crook, and Mc Cain deserves great praise for his service in the Vietnam War. But he is only mortal and has a bad track record for consistency and truth telling, despite all his self-praise about honesty.
Monday, October 6, 2008
John Mc Cain's Work for Keating Sheds Light on Today
Though presenting himself as Mr. Clean, the fact is that John McCain has a long history of questionable dealings with lobbyists. In 1987, he worked with four other Senators—all Democrats—to prevent federal regulators from taking over the Lincoln Savings and Loan Association, headed by Charles Keating. McCain attended two meetings with federal regulators to pleas Keating’s case. When he learned that the bank was under criminal investigation, he withdrew from efforts to help Keating. The bank collapsed and Keating went to prison. He was accused of selling worthless bonds to 23,000 people, many of whom were old people. The Five Senators were known as the Keating Five, but McCain and John Glenn were only admonished for showing poor judgment.
Senator McCain said he was only helping a constituent. The fact was that Keating and McCain had been friends since 1981. In three campaigns, Keating raised $112,000 for MCain. McCain made at least nine trips paid for by Keating, three of which were to Keating’s Bahamas complex. Despite Senate rules, McCain did not disclose the flights until forced to. Cindy McCain and her father, Jim Hensley, put $359,100 into Fountain Hills, a Phoenix strip mall sponsored by Keating. It was a” sweetheart deal,” according to the New York Times.
Keating was known as a nasty bigot and bully, and many avoided him. But McCain viewed him as a personal friend. Keating had great influence with President Ronald Reagan, who tried unsuccessfully to give Keating control of the board that regulates savings and loan associations. McCain succeeded in persuading Reagan to nominate two Keating men for that board. Some would say McCain was trying to put minions of the fox in the henhouse.
Keating also had a plan to lift the rule barring direct investments by the S and Ls, which was strongly backed by Newt Gingrich, Mc Cain, and some Democrats. Had the rule been changed, the S and L scandal would have been far worse. McCain probably backed the rule change because, like Phil Gram, he thought regulations should be stripped away. Even in the face of today’s possible financial meltdown, Mc Cain has not changed his mind, nor has Gram, who is a likely candidate for Secretary of the Treasury under the Arizonan. As late as March 25, 2008, McCain thought the mortgage crisis could be solved by stripping away regulations.
McCain was masterful in extricating himself from the Keating Five Scandal, calling it "my asterisk." And saying it will be mentioned on his tombstone. Almost as soon as he saw that he had a problem, he played the role of the repentant sinner and began to create the false reputation that he was an opponent of lobbyists and the improprieties seem to flow from their involvement in public life. To convince voters that he was a different sort of politician, he started calling for campaign finance reform.
Recently, McCain denied ever meeting Lowell “Bud” Paxson, even though there was a 2002 court deposition proving they had met.
Yet in 2006 he said he no longer supported public financing of elections. In 2008, he first signed up for public financing of his primary campaign and then backed out when it provide advantageous to do so. That allowed him to raise more money and spend much of it after the primaries had ended and before the conventions. Then, signing on for public financing of the general campaign, he denounced Obama for being inconsistent and not going for public financing. In all this, McCain looks far less like the honest maverick than a very skilled and crafty pol.
In 1999, MC Cain, then chairman of the Senate Commerce Committee, pressed the FCC hard to let Paxson Communications purchase a Pittsburgh television station. The FC claimed McCain’s request seemed like a threat and believed he had crossed the line separating propriety and impropriety. The firm had donated $20,000 to McCain. The firm had provided McCain transportation on a company jet on several occasions. Very briefly, the press raised questions about his relationship with a pretty young Paxson lobbyist who was often in his company in 2000. No solid evidence of a sexual relationship was found, so the press decided not to look into the rest of the story. The fact that McCain is clearly the darling of the press could have something to do with the drying up of the entire story.
When confronted with information about his conduct in the Paxson case, McCain said he was just prodding bureaucrats and then produced documents to show he had done the same thing in other cases involving large contributors. What chutzpah!
In 1999, McCain staff twice intervened to help wealthy contributor and close personal friend Donald Diamond obtain land from closed Army base Fort Ord in California. That deal allowed him to turn a $20 million profit, and another arrangement in 2005, again with McCain help, promises to be more profitable. This involves as many as 12,000 homes and benefits more than one McCain backer. Two former McCain staffers were hired as lobbyists in this complex deal to get him aboard. Twice in the 1990s, McCain introduced land legislation to help Diamond, and a third measure is now before the Senate.
In 2001, questions were raised about legislation he backed for the cruise industry and the large contributions it gave him.
Recently, it was learned that John McCain had more lobbyists working for his 2008 campaign than any other presidential candidate. Even after 6 were forced to leave due to their ties to unsavory regimes, there are 59 who do nothing but raise money. One of them is Ralph Reed, who was shown to be taking advantage of Native American clients in hearings McCain chaired! Over time, 133 lobbyists have worked for the Straight talk Express.
Others do other things in the campaign. Rick Davis is campaign manager, and Charlie Black is senior political advisor. Among Black’s clients were AT%T, Rupert Murdock, and Blackwater. Twenty-one McCain people also represented AT&T. Black had also been paid to shepard around Ahmed Chalabi, whose distortions helped get the US to invade Iraq. Could this be connected to McCain’s view that American troops must soldier on there, possibly indefinitely.
Two lobbyists were closely tied to the mortgage industry, which could explain why McCain has been so very friendly to the same industry. Randy Scheunemann, McCain’s foreign policy analyst, has represented the Republic of Georgia, and spoke on McCain’s behalf on this issue as recently as August 17. This could explain why McCain is so hawkish about the Russo-Georgian struggle. He speaks as though he is already president, keeping force and all other options on the table.
None of this information is to suggest Mc Cain is a crook. He is obviously very closely tied to the lobbyists and special interests that he frequently complains about. There is no doubt that he has a history of going to bat for them—sometimes appearing to go to far. He has repeatedly promised to never doing anything that gives the appearance of impropriety, but his track record is just the opposite of this.
He probably is not a crook, and deserves great praise for his service in the Vietnam War. But he is only mortal and has a bad track record for consistency and truth telling, despite all his self-praise about honesty. The most worrisome quality is that he seems to have a very poor learning curve. Had the nation followed the course outlined by Newt Gingrich, Charles Keating, Phil Gram, and McCain in the 1980s, the banking collapse of the George H.W. Bush years would have been infinitely worse. He learned nothing from this, and continued to hawk deregulatory policies through t he 1990s and supported the Phil Gram legislation that brought on the California energy crisis and today mortgage meltdown. As late a March he said the answer was more deregulation, and, we are told, he remains in telephone contact with his economic guru, Phil Gram.
It is far from unthinkable to speculate that should McCain enter the White House next January, that economy is experiencing severe shocks, and it is clear that a President McCain would have no clue as to what to do about it.
Senator McCain said he was only helping a constituent. The fact was that Keating and McCain had been friends since 1981. In three campaigns, Keating raised $112,000 for MCain. McCain made at least nine trips paid for by Keating, three of which were to Keating’s Bahamas complex. Despite Senate rules, McCain did not disclose the flights until forced to. Cindy McCain and her father, Jim Hensley, put $359,100 into Fountain Hills, a Phoenix strip mall sponsored by Keating. It was a” sweetheart deal,” according to the New York Times.
Keating was known as a nasty bigot and bully, and many avoided him. But McCain viewed him as a personal friend. Keating had great influence with President Ronald Reagan, who tried unsuccessfully to give Keating control of the board that regulates savings and loan associations. McCain succeeded in persuading Reagan to nominate two Keating men for that board. Some would say McCain was trying to put minions of the fox in the henhouse.
Keating also had a plan to lift the rule barring direct investments by the S and Ls, which was strongly backed by Newt Gingrich, Mc Cain, and some Democrats. Had the rule been changed, the S and L scandal would have been far worse. McCain probably backed the rule change because, like Phil Gram, he thought regulations should be stripped away. Even in the face of today’s possible financial meltdown, Mc Cain has not changed his mind, nor has Gram, who is a likely candidate for Secretary of the Treasury under the Arizonan. As late as March 25, 2008, McCain thought the mortgage crisis could be solved by stripping away regulations.
McCain was masterful in extricating himself from the Keating Five Scandal, calling it "my asterisk." And saying it will be mentioned on his tombstone. Almost as soon as he saw that he had a problem, he played the role of the repentant sinner and began to create the false reputation that he was an opponent of lobbyists and the improprieties seem to flow from their involvement in public life. To convince voters that he was a different sort of politician, he started calling for campaign finance reform.
Recently, McCain denied ever meeting Lowell “Bud” Paxson, even though there was a 2002 court deposition proving they had met.
Yet in 2006 he said he no longer supported public financing of elections. In 2008, he first signed up for public financing of his primary campaign and then backed out when it provide advantageous to do so. That allowed him to raise more money and spend much of it after the primaries had ended and before the conventions. Then, signing on for public financing of the general campaign, he denounced Obama for being inconsistent and not going for public financing. In all this, McCain looks far less like the honest maverick than a very skilled and crafty pol.
In 1999, MC Cain, then chairman of the Senate Commerce Committee, pressed the FCC hard to let Paxson Communications purchase a Pittsburgh television station. The FC claimed McCain’s request seemed like a threat and believed he had crossed the line separating propriety and impropriety. The firm had donated $20,000 to McCain. The firm had provided McCain transportation on a company jet on several occasions. Very briefly, the press raised questions about his relationship with a pretty young Paxson lobbyist who was often in his company in 2000. No solid evidence of a sexual relationship was found, so the press decided not to look into the rest of the story. The fact that McCain is clearly the darling of the press could have something to do with the drying up of the entire story.
When confronted with information about his conduct in the Paxson case, McCain said he was just prodding bureaucrats and then produced documents to show he had done the same thing in other cases involving large contributors. What chutzpah!
In 1999, McCain staff twice intervened to help wealthy contributor and close personal friend Donald Diamond obtain land from closed Army base Fort Ord in California. That deal allowed him to turn a $20 million profit, and another arrangement in 2005, again with McCain help, promises to be more profitable. This involves as many as 12,000 homes and benefits more than one McCain backer. Two former McCain staffers were hired as lobbyists in this complex deal to get him aboard. Twice in the 1990s, McCain introduced land legislation to help Diamond, and a third measure is now before the Senate.
In 2001, questions were raised about legislation he backed for the cruise industry and the large contributions it gave him.
Recently, it was learned that John McCain had more lobbyists working for his 2008 campaign than any other presidential candidate. Even after 6 were forced to leave due to their ties to unsavory regimes, there are 59 who do nothing but raise money. One of them is Ralph Reed, who was shown to be taking advantage of Native American clients in hearings McCain chaired! Over time, 133 lobbyists have worked for the Straight talk Express.
Others do other things in the campaign. Rick Davis is campaign manager, and Charlie Black is senior political advisor. Among Black’s clients were AT%T, Rupert Murdock, and Blackwater. Twenty-one McCain people also represented AT&T. Black had also been paid to shepard around Ahmed Chalabi, whose distortions helped get the US to invade Iraq. Could this be connected to McCain’s view that American troops must soldier on there, possibly indefinitely.
Two lobbyists were closely tied to the mortgage industry, which could explain why McCain has been so very friendly to the same industry. Randy Scheunemann, McCain’s foreign policy analyst, has represented the Republic of Georgia, and spoke on McCain’s behalf on this issue as recently as August 17. This could explain why McCain is so hawkish about the Russo-Georgian struggle. He speaks as though he is already president, keeping force and all other options on the table.
None of this information is to suggest Mc Cain is a crook. He is obviously very closely tied to the lobbyists and special interests that he frequently complains about. There is no doubt that he has a history of going to bat for them—sometimes appearing to go to far. He has repeatedly promised to never doing anything that gives the appearance of impropriety, but his track record is just the opposite of this.
He probably is not a crook, and deserves great praise for his service in the Vietnam War. But he is only mortal and has a bad track record for consistency and truth telling, despite all his self-praise about honesty. The most worrisome quality is that he seems to have a very poor learning curve. Had the nation followed the course outlined by Newt Gingrich, Charles Keating, Phil Gram, and McCain in the 1980s, the banking collapse of the George H.W. Bush years would have been infinitely worse. He learned nothing from this, and continued to hawk deregulatory policies through t he 1990s and supported the Phil Gram legislation that brought on the California energy crisis and today mortgage meltdown. As late a March he said the answer was more deregulation, and, we are told, he remains in telephone contact with his economic guru, Phil Gram.
It is far from unthinkable to speculate that should McCain enter the White House next January, that economy is experiencing severe shocks, and it is clear that a President McCain would have no clue as to what to do about it.
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