Today we learn that the current leader of the family has a strong connection to both Blackwater and the Bush family:
Turns out Joseph Schmitz, COO & general counsel of the Prince Group, Blackwater's parent company, is married to one Lucila Garnica Gallo, Colomba Bush's sister (Jeb Bush's wife). Is there no limit to the corruption of this misadminstration/crime family?I've mentioned the Blackwater thing before, but not the odd marriage. "Odd," because paterfamilias John Schmitz hated the Bush family. It was a classic "Cowboys vs. Yankees" sort of antipathy. And now the two clans are joined...!
For more on the Schmitzes and why I consider them noteworthy, see here. Excerpts:
I've been watching the bizarre Schmitz clan since the mid 1970s, when paterfamilias John G. Schmitz -- a man so far to the right he got kicked out of the John Birch Society -- ran for President under the American Independent Party banner. (Slogan: "When you're out of Schmitz, you're out of gear!") We later learned that Schmitz kept a mistress and a second family, including an infant son with a mutilated penis.
Schmitz’s daughter, school teacher Mary Kay LeTourneau, made national headlines when it was discovered that the father of her children was a thirteen year old student. Her brother John P. Schmitz was an Iran Contra player and Deputy Counsel for Bush the elder, a man despised by father John G. John P's brother, Joseph -- a member of the Knights of Malta and the Federalist Society -- was Haliburton's greatest enabler when the company was stea...er, misplacing Iraq reconstruction money.
Joseph Schmitz is the other noteworthy sibling (not counting the one with the mutilated penis; I have no idea what happened to him). A member of the Knights of Malta, the Federalist Society, the American Council on Germany and something ominously titled the American Security Network, Joseph Schmitz led the effort to keep the blame for the Abu Ghraib abuses restricted to the lower levels. (Considering his family, I doubt that he considered the photos a very big deal.)Here's the kicker: Blackwater gave $$ to the Green party in order to sandbag the Dems -- just as Joseph Schmitz' dad used to undercut Nixon by running on the AIP ticket.
Y'think Blackwater's behind the Dem-hate posts you see on all the lefty sites? I wouldn't put it past 'em...
7 comments:
Are you serious?
Eric Prince comes from that?
WOW!
No wonder he looks and acts like a prick. It all makes sense now.
Someone with Blackwater knows their Nazi color schemes.
And why would this guy name his charity the Freiheit Foundation? Aren't there any good English alternatives in Mr. Prince's thesaurus?
Enjoy your blog, Mr. C.
That would be Schmitz. He's a darn Teuton.
"That would be Schmitz. He's a darn Teuton."
->the "Schmitz"-name is common in the German City Cologne only.
Here the Nazis, or the Teutones have been and are and will be always a very small minority.They had to use force to get a foothold there."
Cologne is a very cosmoplitan area.
Contrary to many towns of in the US.
This spezial Schmitz has emigrated to the US.
Guess why?
Schmitz's Wikipedia article appears to have been scrubbed since last winter, when I saved a copy. Here are some of the bits that are no longer there:
In his confirmation hearings, committee Democrats expressed concern about a letter that Schmitz had written to the Washington Times in 1991 in which he had accused then-candidate Bill Clinton of treasonous actions and had inappropriately signed the letter with his military rank. . . .
Upon taking office, Schmitz hired L. Jean Lewis, a Republican operative and whistleblower in the Whitewater Affair. Lewis, a former Resolution Trust Corporation investigator, was a pivotal figure in publicizing the alleged financial misdeeds of President Bill Clinton and wife Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton. She marketed products with pictures of Mrs. Clinton and the logo "B.I.T.C.H.: Bill, I'm Taking Charge. Hillary." Schmitz eventually created the position of "Chief of Staff" for Lewis. . . .
According to the Los Angeles Times (September 25, 2005), Schmitz had an "unusual fascination" with Baron Friedrich Wilhelm von Steuben, a Prussian officer appointed Inspector General of the Continental Army by George Washington. "The Nation" (September 25, 2005) magazine reported that Schmitz spent three months redesigning the seal of the Inspector General's office to include elements of von Steuben's family crest, including the von Steuben family motto, Sub Tutela Altissimi Semper, "Under the Protection of the Almighty." (Schmitz was quoted in the LA Times article as saying that the eagle of the previous seal looked "like a chicken".) Schmitz authored an article in the in-house journal of the federal inspectors general about Von Steuben and mentioned him in virtually every speech he made while in office ("The Enduring Legacy of Inspector General von Steuben," Public Inquiry, F/W 2002, [1]. "He was consumed with all things German and all things Von Steuben," said a government official quoted in the LA Times article. "He was obsessed."
Schmitz also took an unusual interest in the sex slave trade. His office investigated the involvement of the U.S. military in the sex trade in South Korea, Bosnia, and Kosovo, but found little beyond the propensity of soldiers to frequent brothels, an inexcusable moral lapse, according to Schmitz's testimony before Congress and an article he wrote that was published on the website of the World Security Network. . . .
The Los Angeles Times article also claims that Schmitz interfered in other investigations of senior officials:
The Air Force Academy sex scandal, in which senior Air Force Academy officials were accused of failing to investigate rape allegations by female cadets.
A contracting scandal involving the Air Force and Boeing Corporation, in which senior Air Force officials, including former Air Force Secretary James Roche, were accused of steering contracts to the Boeing Corporation. Before presenting his report to Congress, Schmitz allegedly sent it to the White House for review. The names of several White House officials were reportedly redacted from the report. Sen. Charles Grassley was quoted by the Los Angeles Times as saying to Schmitz, "That decision … raises questions about your independence."
Yeah- someone scrubbed it a couple of days ago.
Here's a link with the original wikipedia post:
http://www.answers.com/topic/joseph-e-schmitz
I doubt that Schmitz was sincere in his quest to investigate sex slave trade in the military- it was probably damage control or bartering tool. The whole DynCorp scandal stayed pretty well below the radar.
http://dir.salon.com/story/news/feature/2002/08/06/dyncorp/index.html
and didn't effect their contracts:
http://www.forbes.com/finance/2007/10/01/dyncorp-blackwater-iraq-pf-ii-in_jl1001companies_inl.html
kc
nice article. I would love to follow you on twitter. By the way, did anyone learn that some chinese hacker had busted twitter yesterday again.
Post a Comment