Wilkes and the CIA -- again

Well, Randy "Duke" Cunningham has been sentenced to eight years. But the scandal does not end with his sad march into the Big House.

As I've argued in the past, the real scandal here isn't the money that went to Cunningham (or Duncan Hunter, or Katherine Harris) -- it's the fact that Brent Wilkes set up fake or semi-fake companies for the express purpose of channeling taxpayer funds into partisan politics.

Of course, the CIA has a long history of using front companies. And -- surprise, surprise! -- Brent Wilkes has odd links to the Agency.

ABC News reports that Wilkes' long time bud, Kyle "Dusty" Foggo -- the number three man at CIA -- will come under the scrutiny of the CIA's Inspector General. Although ABC calls the IG "aggressive" and independent, these adjectives have not always applied to the work of previous holders of that office. We shall see what happens to Foggo.

The ABC story relies on unnamed former CIA officials who say that Foggo was instrumental in swinging fat government contracts to Wilkes' semi-pseudo family of "companies":

As executive director of the CIA, Foggo oversees the administration of the giant spy agency. He was appointed to the post by CIA Director Porter Goss after working as a midlevel procurement supervisor, according to former CIA officials.

While based in Frankfurt, Germany, he oversaw and approved contracts for CIA operations in Iraq.

Hmm. Why do I get the strange feeling that some very unnerving stories lurk between the lines of those two short paragraphs? I don't know who those two former officials are, but ABC may have decided to "go to the top" -- which could mean either former DCI George Tenet, or his temporary successor John McLaughlin, or both.

Months ago, I wrote about Wilkes' longstanding and little-understood links to CIA. Those who consider self-quotation a sin will have to forgive me:

* * *

Brent and Dusty. At least 35 years ago, Brent Wilkes' formed a close friendship with Kyle "Dusty" Foggo. They traveled the same respectable-though-not-exemplary academic path together: High School, Southwestern Community College, San Diego State University. Wilkes, some say, was a violent hot-head who brutalized anyone who looked weaker. One source told me that, even in those days, Wilkes and Foggo were obsessed with attaining power -- a goal few young people dared to express at a time when the scent of 60s pacifism still perfumed the air.

Dusty Foggo became first a cop, then a D.A.'s assistant -- and then was recruited into CIA, where he now holds the third-highest position. Some say that he was always more of a desk jockey than a James Bond, but he did do a stint in Honduras during the contra war. He handled their financing.

And now you know why I spent so much time describing all that money that went to the contras -- and perhaps elsewhere.

As for Wilkes: In college, he had studied accounting, which some might consider an odd choice for a bully with dreams of conquest. Like Foggo, he often bragged about his Agency connections. The world doth not love a wide-mouthed spook, or so I've been told -- yet braggadocio seems not to have harmed the career of these two gentlemen. Much evidence supports the contention that Wilkes became a Legitimate Businessman in one of the networks outlined above: He was not of the Agency, in the sense of drawing a regular paycheck, but he became one of those "outside" businessmen who prospered by aiding the Agency, or a faction within it.

According to the San Diego Union Tribune, one of his early business ventures was very, very noteworthy:

Wilkes had moved to Washington, D.C., and opened a business named World Finance Corp. about three blocks away from the White House. One of his chief activities, sources say, was to accompany congressmen -- including then-Rep. Bill Lowery of San Diego, whom Wilkes met during his participation in the SDSU Young Republicans organization – to Central America to meet with Foggo and Contra leaders.

This passage is somewhat misleading in its implication that Wilkes created the World Finance Corporation, which actually had its origin point while Wilkes was still in school. This was no ordinary financial firm; it was once quite notorious. Before there was BCCI, there was the World Finance Corporation -- a CIA-linked money laundromat that probably had recruited Wilkes earlier than the SDUT story indicates.

* * *

End quotation.

The rest of my overly-long piece from last December detailed the history of the spooked-up World Finance Corporation, which began life under the auspices of an anti-Castro Cuban named Guillermo Hernandez-Cartaya, who had been a banker before the revolution.

Incidentally, Daniel Hopsicker has announced in a radio interview that he will soon have more information on Wilkes and the CIA. There may even be a book in the works, tying together the Cunningham and Abramoff scandals.

You can hear the excellent two-part interview with Daniel Hopsicker by going here; download F-542a and F-542b. The Wilkes/Cunningham material is on side B. If you've read my old stories as well as Hopsicker's previous offerings, the material may seem familiar. Still, it is nice to have the matter well-summarized and discussed on the air.

Hopsicker also delivers some fascinating new information about Mohammed Atta and his pre-attack doings and associations -- but that's a post for another time.

Wilkes and the CIA: Some history

We begin in the realm of rumor: A voice on the telephone has told me that Brent Wilkes, the man who bribed Congressman Cunningham, may now be looking for property in Belize. Is that true? I cannot say -- but who would be surprised? (Apparently, I wasn't the only one to hear that voice.)

Poor Gina! She no doubt had planned such a lovely Christmas party this year...

Today's topic is the relationship between Wilkes and the CIA. Perversely, I'll begin with an historical anecdote that has nothing to do with Wilkes -- at least, not so far as I know -- but which does shed a certain light on his world and how it operates. I'll try to make the narrative as entertaining as possible.

The Legitimate Businessmen's Club. You will read the fullest account of this tale in Joseph Trento's Prelude to Terror (a book I've recommended perhaps too many times), although you can find the gist of it here and here.

Once, in a faraway land called the 1980s, Saddam Hussein and "Poppy" Bush were -- believe it or not! -- the bestest of buds. At that time, some CIA-linked Legitimate Businessmen went over to Iraq to sell military items. Technically, these businessmen were not of the CIA (in the sense of being on the official payroll), yet they maintained close connections to the Agency and to the military. As I've said many times, you can't understand modern history unless you know about these "spooky" informal networks, in which the players receive both start-up capital and connections from covert sources.

One of these Agency-linked arms merchandisers was Sarkis Soghanalian (who had befriended Trento, which is how Trento came to know about this stuff). Business proceeded smoothly; Saddam received cluster bombs, battle choppers, guns, and and even lovelier bits of merchandise.

Somewhere along the way, a mafia-like group of Republican operatives -- which included Richard Nixon and his old "pals" -- muscled onto the scene. In short and in sum, they demanded a hefty cut of Operation Arm Saddam.

This second wave of Legitimate Businessmen made a deal with Saddam to supply the Iraqi military with uniforms. I've seen varying estimates as to how much money this scheme was worth; the high figure is $450 million. The group promised high-quality uniforms manufactured by "their" plant in Tennessee. Actually, the job was off-shored to a Romanian firm known for producing clothing on the ultra-cheap. This decision insured that, instead of making big profits, the Republican mobsters could make big, big, BIG profits.

Saddam's people were not happy when they opened up the boxes and discovered wool uniforms. In a desert country, in the summer, wool is rarely the soldier's first choice.

You would think that Saddam Hussein would refuse ever again to deal with this group. In fact, they became more powerful than ever: They drove out Soghnalian and pretty much took over the weapons trade in Iraq. They did not actually produce the needed goods and services; job orders were farmed out to the low-ball bidders.

These men practiced the most perverse form of capitalism. The greatest rewards went to thugs who did not actually make anything -- who had, in fact, wedged themselves between the consumer and the producers, neither of whom wanted or needed the services of middlemen. Saddam had no choice but to go along with an operation that had acquired the blessings of Republican bigwigs.

Where did the money go? Did the loot merely line pockets -- or was it put to partisan use?

More history. (Bear with me: This part will eventually link up with Wilkes and company.) Ronald Reagan wanted to change governments in Nicaragua, but Congress wouldn't let him arm the contra rebels directly. Private fund-raising efforts took over.

General John K. Singlaub hit up the usual right-wing gazillionaires in the United States. The Sultan of Brunei -- the world's richest man -- made a heavy donation to a cause he cannot have cared about. The Saudis kicked in some $32 million. In a deal brokered by "Scooter" Libby and Oliver North, China provided the contras with tons of equipment, including surface-to-air missiles.

Then things got really weird.

The press started talking about "spooky" drug flights involving such characters as Barry Seal. The notorious Medellin cocaine cartel funded the ARDE contra faction, while the rival Cali cartel funded the FDN contras. Eden Pastora's contra group received funding from a Costa Rican/Panamanian cocaine network. Bush favored the FDN, which is why the American press at that time focused on Medellin and rarely mentioned Cali.

Reagan deregulated the Savings and Loan industry, opening the way for a horde of sharpsters who looted America to the tune of nearly a trillion dollars. As Steve Pizzo and Pete Brewton discovered, many of those "business crooks" -- Stefan Halper, Robert Corson and Herman K. Beebe being perhaps the most interesting examples -- had military and intelligence connections. We were told that no small amount of the looted money went to the contras.

Toward the end of the 1980s, the press offered some strange reports out of the Philippines: Singlaub was in that country searching for the semi-legendary caches of gold and other valuables that the Japanese had buried on the island during WWII. At the time, a few articles suggested that Singlaub was really trying to steer some of Marcos' ill-gotten loot toward the contras. Other sources say that the Japanese treasure had indeed been dug up piecemeal over the decades, and that this unimaginable bounty was used, in part, to finance the anti-Sandinista effort.

Millions from the notorious BCCI bank were diverted "to the contras." Israel contributed a steady flow of arms to the contras. The scandal over the stolen PROMIS software was, in some early reports, tied to contra arming and financing. Money siphoned from military sales to Saddam Hussein (mentioned above) had contra links.

And of course, Reagan's illegal arms sales to Iran resulted in hefty profits being diverted to the contras. That's why they called it the Iran-Contra affair.

I've summarized with an almost criminal brevity a lot of sordid history, and I've done so to emphasize one point: Every time a new scandal popped up during the 1980s and early 1990s, the same refrain appeared: "It's all about funding the contras!" Money from arms sales, cocaine, heroin, gold, S&Ls, crooked banks, gambling, software, bribery, Middle East financiers, "patriotic" donations -- it all went toward regime change in the small country of Nicaragua.

Supposedly.

Eventually, a few people started asking the obvious question: How much money did the contras need? Were they firing gold bullets down there?

In fact, fighters within the contra movement always insisted that they were seriously underfunded. Do not dismiss this assessment. The Sandinista army was hardly one of the world's most impressive fighting machines, yet the contras never seemed to make much headway against them. The FDN won only when the Nicaraguan electorate finally -- literally -- cried "uncle."

But if others grabbed much of this "contra" money -- where did it go? Were pockets lined, or was the clandestine cash used for partisan purposes?

Brent and Dusty. At least 35 years ago, Brent Wilkes' formed a close friendship with Kyle "Dusty" Foggo. They traveled the same respectable-though-not-exemplary academic path together: High School, Southwestern Community College, San Diego State University. Wilkes, some say, was a violent hot-head who brutalized anyone who looked weaker. One source told me that, even in those days, Wilkes and Foggo were obsessed with attaining power -- a goal few young people dared to express at a time when the scent of 60s pacifism still perfumed the air.

Dusty Foggo became first a cop, then a D.A.'s assistant -- and then was recruited into CIA, where he now holds the third-highest position. Some say that he was always more of a desk jockey than a James Bond, but he did do a stint in Honduras during the contra war. He handled their financing.

And now you know why I spent so much time describing all that money that went to the contras -- and perhaps elsewhere.

As for Wilkes: In college, he had studied accounting, which some might consider an odd choice for a bully with dreams of conquest. Like Foggo, he often bragged about his Agency connections. The world doth not love a wide-mouthed spook, or so I've been told -- yet braggadocio seems not to have harmed the career of these two gentlemen. Much evidence supports the contention that Wilkes became a Legitimate Businessman in one of the networks outlined above: He was not of the Agency, in the sense of drawing a regular paycheck, but he became one of those "outside" businessmen who prospered by aiding the Agency, or a faction within it.

According to the San Diego Union Tribune, one of his early business ventures was very, very noteworthy:

Wilkes had moved to Washington, D.C., and opened a business named World Finance Corp. about three blocks away from the White House. One of his chief activities, sources say, was to accompany congressmen -- including then-Rep. Bill Lowery of San Diego, whom Wilkes met during his participation in the SDSU Young Republicans organization – to Central America to meet with Foggo and Contra leaders.

This passage is somewhat misleading in its implication that Wilkes created the World Finance Corporation, which actually had its origin point while Wilkes was still in school. This was no ordinary financial firm; it was once quite notorious. Before there was BCCI, there was the World Finance Corporation -- a CIA-linked money laundromat that probably had recruited Wilkes earlier than the SDUT story indicates.

Perhaps the fullest history of WFC's origins can be found in Hank Messick's 1979 expose of the drug trade, "Of Grass and Snow." The financial institution originated with an anti-Castro Cuban named Guillermo Hernandez-Cartaya, who had been a banker before the revolution. Hernandez-Cartaya joined the CIA's efforts to unseat the dictator, playing a role in the Bay of Pigs. He began the WFC in Coral Gables, Florida in 1971; in the words of Hank Messick, "one did not have to be an international banker to recognize that Hernandez-Cartaya had some very wealthy and powerful backers." According to one account, start-up capital was funneled by way of another CIA associate and Bay of Pigs veteran, Salvador Aldereguia-Ors.

Although it began with just five employees and $500,000 capitalization, the bank was somehow able, just a year later, to loan Panama $10 million. By 1976, WFC had branches in numerous cities and was doing half-a-billion dollars worth of business internationally.

If, as I suspect, Wilkes joined forces with WFC in the mid-1970s, he may have played a role in the creation of a spin-off called the Dominican Mortgage Corporation, which shared the same address as WFC's Coral Gables HQ. This group heavily invested in Vegas -- casinos, real estate development, even a detective agency.

WFC and DMC were the institutions of choice for narco-traffickers. From Messick's book:

Names and dates were given, and the amount of cocaine entering Las Vegas alone was placed at 340 pounds annually. Internal Revenue Service agents told of receiving word of a million in case being carried by courier from Las Vegas to Miami. They tailed the courier to WFC offices in Coral Gables. He entered the building with two suitcases; he came out empty-handed. In Brownsville, the shrimp fleet was reported to be bringing in narcotics in vessels owned by WFC.

The building manager at Coral Gables was a CIA explosives expert. A member of the Santos Trafficante "family" directed one of the branch banks.

In short, the bank was both mobbed up and spooked up. David Yallop and Penny Lernoux report that, around this time, WFC formed alliances with Italy's fascist P2 lodge, which had gained control of the Vatican's finances. As readers know, P2 "graduates" such as Michael Ledeen have played a key role in engineering the current war.

In 1976, the WFC's directors over-reached: They financed an anti-Castro terror group called CORU, headed by CIA "contact" man Orlando Bosch. They targeted not only Castro but any person or institution they considered overly sympathetic to him. That year, CORU conducted no less than 50 bombings in New York, Panama, Miami, Venezuela and other locations; they also appear to have had a hand in the assassination of Orlando Letelier.

In October, they bombed a Cuban passenger jet. "All of Castro's planes are warplanes," an unrepentant Bosch later explained.

Bosch was eventually arrested and held in prison, until he was pardoned by the first President Bush, who had been CIA Director when Bosch went on his terror rampage. Even though Bosch had received his funding from a CIA-affiliated bank, DCI Bush had done nothing to rein him in.

From Peter Dale Scott's Cocaine Politics:

Another CORU crime was the botched kidnapping of the Cuban consul (and the murder of his chauffeur) in Merida, Mexico, on July 23, 1976, only a month after the group's founding. WFC's drug money financed this operation, and WFC's founder, Hernandez Cartaya, may even have helped plan it.

When Bush gave way to Stansfield Turner, the Agency realized that their Cuban contingent had grown arrogant and beyond control. Local Florida cops and the FBI continued to scrutinize the WFC's interactions with drug traffickers. Embarrassing news stories started to appear. The heat, as they say, was on.

The Agency stymied the FBI's work. So did the IRS, which argued that the WFC was best left alone -- after all, they kept all those narco-dollars in the country.

WFC stayed in business -- yet, obviously, something had to be done about the Cubans who ran the place.

In 1978, Hernandez-Cartaya was arrested on a charge of using a fake passport -- a misfortune which tends to befall spooks who fall out of official favor. His partner, Salvador Aldereguia-Ors, was found in the possession of "evidence" (almost certainly bogus) linking him to Castro's intelligence services. When his cousin mysteriously died after putting up bail money, Aldereguia-Ors pulled a vanishing act. Hernandez-Cartaya eventually got out of jail and involved himself with S&L skullduggery.

To put the matter crudely: The CIA put honkies in control of the operation. Among them, it seems, were Brent Wilkes, who (as per the San Diego Union Tribune) opened the WFC office in DC, and Dusty Foggo, who funded and oversaw the anti-Castro Cubans operating in the Salvadoran and Nicaraguan conflicts.

The beast was bridled, but resentments lingered. I believe that the conflict between the CORU cadre and the Turner-ized CIA provides one origin point for the current split between the neocons and the Agency.

(An interesting side-note: WFC had formed a partnership in an Arab bank with Sheikh Naomi, ruler of the small emirate of Ajman. After the 1978 shake-up, the Sheik transfered his affections -- so to speak -- to BCCI.)

WFC still operates in a number of cities; contact information for the Augusta branch is here. Feel free to ring them up and ask if they still launder drug money or do favors for the CIA.

Their specialty now is providing loans to people with poor credit histories. They also -- oddly enough -- sell furniture.

This is noteworthy. Readers will recall that MZM -- run by Wilkes' friend and former employee Mitchell Wade, another man with a CIA background -- reportedly supplied furniture to the West Wing of the White House, an odd task for a firm devoted to intelligence and defense. (According to this story, MZM provided furniture and computers to Cheney's offices.) I have speculated, in the past, that this "furniture" was bugged.

I have no idea how WFC and Wilkes came to part ways. His next employer, according the the SDUT, was "Aimco Financial Management of La Jolla."

His chief duty was to bring in politicians, including Lowery, to talk to Aimco clients about how new laws might affect their finances.

Aimco ran into trouble after securities regulators accused its founder, Marvin I. Friedman, of taking $268,000 of a client's funds in 1991.

Aimco Financial Management of La Jolla has disappeared. It did exist at one time, and Friedman did make contributions to Lowery (presumably at Wilkes' urging). More recently, Friedman was caught out in a much larger scandal involving an entity called Global Money Management, which has been described as a Ponzi scheme in which many an investor was defrauded.

Unfortunately, I have not yet been able to determine is whether the Wilkes/Friedman AIMCO was a subsidiary of this company which owns a massive number of this country's apartments. This AIMCO has had connections (via Director Norman Brownstein) to the CIA and the Bush family.

ADCS, the company Wilkes headquartered in Poway, was founded on software designed by a German firm called VPMax. I think we should see VPMax's role in this as analogous to that of the Romanian concern which provided those wool uniforms to Saddam Hussein. As I suggested earlier, Wilkes empire is largely a collection of false fronts built on a small foundation of "real" products, usually taken from other, smaller players.

And from there, we enter the current scandal. About which, more to come soon.

Until then, consider: Wilkes' firms received millions of taxpayer dollars; Daniel Hopsicker puts the amount at $700 million, although mainstream journalists speak of a much lower figure. Regardless of the amount, sources agree that the Defense Department did not really like or need his document conversion services. And Wilkes' list of companies included obvious fakes.

So once again, the question confronts us: Where did the money go?

This time, we have a pretty clear answer -- in the form of the many political contributions (and outright bribes) made by Wilkes' many subsidiaries.

Go, Goss, go! (Updated)

Bush-friendly CIA Director Porter Goss has abruptly resigned. No stated reason. No designated successor.

CNN said: "Taking a look at what's out on the Internet -- not much controversy involving the director himself." Are they kidding? Or does CNN log on to some other internet? Perhaps they should take a look at Justin Rood's extraordinary work at TPM Muckraker. You know -- just to get a whiff of what real reporting smells like.

To the best of my memory, no previous Director of Central Intelligence has resigned so abruptly. Obviously, something major has occurred. I feel certain that this development is related to the Wilkes/Wade/Cunningham bribery scandal -- to Hookergate -- and possibly to the disengenuous debate over Mary McCarthy of the CIA Inspector General's office.

Goss elevated Brent Wilkes' partner "Dusty" Foggo -- a former cop and Assistant D.A. from an undistinguished college, who became a CIA desk jockey after doing a stint in Honduras as the money guy for the contras. I'm reminded of a recurrent theme in Victor Ostrovsky's books: In Mossad (and presumably in most other spy agencies), you don't advance unless you have a "horse" -- someone powerful pulling you forward. Goss was Foggo's horse -- although, as we shall see, there is some question as to who rode whom.

The CIA's Inspector General (the Agency's "internal affairs" office) has been looking into Foggo's connections with the notorious briber Brent Wilkes, who "owned" a number of semi-fake companies which received ultra-fat government contracts; part of the cash went to fund Republican candidates. (Any actual work could always be subcontracted. We've seen this same scam at work in the Katrina clean-up effort.) Foggo, it is alleged, helped to steer CIA contracts toward Wilkes and his fellow bribe-meister Mitchell Wade.

The only person convicted in the scandal so far, Congressman "Duke" Cunningham, is -- at last report -- doing time in Butner, North Carolina. I do not know to what degree he or Wilkes have cooperated with authorites, but Wade reportedly has spilled beans. He revealed that Wilkes -- with the help of a shady limo service -- has, over the course of more than a decade, run prostitutes in and out of the Watergate and Westin Grand hotels. The girls (and guys?) serviced congressmen and other powerful figures.

Ken Silverstein, in a Harpers piece titeld "Red Lights on Capitol Hill," wrote:

I've learned from a well-connected source that those under intense scrutiny by the FBI are current and former lawmakers on Defense and Intelligence comittees—including one person who now holds a powerful intelligence post.

That sounds an awful lot like former congressman Porter Goss -- indeed, nobody else seems to fit the bill.

A CIA spokesperson characterized any suggestion of Goss' involvement as "irresponsible" and "untrue." That was roughly a week before the DCI suddenly resigned.

Which brings us to another key sentence in the Silverstein piece:

Apparently photographs were taken, and investigators are anxiously procuring copies. My heart beats faster in fevered anticipation.

As I said previously, we can presume that the congressmen were not dumb enough to take photos of themselves partying with working girls. Which means that the photos were taken without their permission.

Which means that -- in all likelihood -- we are dealing with a sting operation. A blackmail ring.

We've seen this sort of thing before. In a previous article, I noted the parallels to a Nixon-era operation run out of Xaviera Hollander's brothel. One could also mention Tongsun Park, the Georgetown Club, and the Koreagate scandal. One might also note the White House-linked gay prostitution ring operating during the Reagan and Bush I eras -- a ring briefly exposed by the Washington Times. Reverend Moon, owner of that journal, was also a prime mover in the Koreagate affair. The Moon empire also has strange but undeniable ties to GOPUSA and Jeff Gannon, the male prostitute who may have stayed overnight in the White House on a number of occasions -- or so Secret Service records would indicate. Quite a few rumors have linked Gannon to the Wilkes/Wade hooker haven -- but so far, these seem to be only rumors.

Blackmail. Savor that thought for a moment.

Now ask yourself: If incriminating photographs of Porter Goss exist, did they play a role in his being tapped for that august position at CIA? One is reminded of a quote attributed to LBJ: "I don't trust a man unless I have his pecker in my pocket."

Before Goss, Bush was bedeviled by DCI George Tenet, who played the role of Janus: Tenet pled loyalty, yet the press kept printing leaks indicating that CIA analysts disagreed with the rationales for war. Bush, who values loyalty above all, presumed that he could rely on greater fealty from Porter Goss.

Blackmail photographs of Porter Goss partying with hookers would explain his ascent as well as his fall. But how would Bush's neocon handlers have known of such photos (presuming that they exist) unless the Wilkes/Wade operation had ties that went as high as the White House itself?

Update: Have you noticed how the sad Patrick Kennedy business is everywhere on the news -- yet the media still refuses to devote much time to hookergate?

Update 2: Goss indicated that he will leave before the designation of a successor. So who will mind the store? Certainly not the embattled Foggo. The Deputy Director of the CIA right now is Vice Admiral Albert M. Calland, III -- a former Navy SEAL who served as the commander of the Naval Special Warfare Development Group. You can read a 2003 interview with Calland here. (He got the CIA job in July of 2005.) The comments about UAVs and UUVs are of some interest. (I've long theorized that UAV testing was one possible cause for reports of... Nope. Not gonna mention that acronym. Not in this blog.) Calland, who supports Donald Rumsfeld's call for greater reliance on Special Forces, looks like a leading candidate for the top spot.

This is troubling. As we noted previously, Rumsfeld's Special Operations Command -- SOCOM -- stands poised to unleash Green Berets and Navy SEALS, both in foreign nations and domestically, after Big Wedding II. Special Forces will have authority to spy and to make arrests of U.S. citizens without warrant. If Calland becomes DCI, the civilian agency won't be in any position to hold the Special Forces in check -- indeed, CIA and SOCOM will work in tandem.

I'm already starting to miss Goss!

Update 3: Justin Rood has some interesting scuttlebutt...

Goss was told to fire Kyle "Dusty" Foggo, his troublesome Executive Director, and Goss refused. That's what we're hearing now from knowledgeable sources. But there's a lot of contradictory information.

Carol Lam

Here's a piece that still has everyone talking:

Fired San Diego U.S. attorney Carol Lam notified the Justice Department that she intended to execute search warrants on a high-ranking CIA official as part of a corruption probe the day before a Justice Department official sent an e-mail that said Lam needed to be fired, U.S. Sen. Dianne Feinstein said Sunday.

The CIA guy in question was, of course, "Dusty" Foggo, good friend to alleged defense contractor Brent Wilkes:

Feinstein said Lam notified the Justice Department on May 10, 2006, that she planned to serve search warrants on Kyle Dustin "Dusty" Foggo, who'd resigned two days earlier as the No. 3 official at the CIA.

On May 11, 2006, Kyle Sampson, then Gonzales' chief of staff, sent an e-mail to deputy White House counsel William Kelley, asking Kelley to call to discuss "the real problem we have right now with Carol Lam that leads me to conclude that we should have someone ready to be nominated on 11/18, the day her 4-year term expires."

Previous mainstream discussions of Lam have mentioned the Cunningham scandal, but not the Agency connection. As Jim Garrison once observed, "You just don't dance with the CIA."

We should note that Porter Goss resigned on May 6, just a few days before all of this went down.

This post on DU goes into some of the "deep politics" of the Foggo/Cunningham/Goss/Wilkes interaction. (I'm glad the author of that piece quoted me so extensively, if only because I had forgotten some of what I had written!) Here's the short version:

Internet sleuths two years proclaimed that when you add it up, at least $700 million in phony defense company contracts have been handed out to GOP bag men over the last decade or so. Much of the $700 million was then funneled back to the GOP Congressmen and the party, so in essence, the Republicans robbed the US Treasury to buy themselves not only hookers, mansions and yachts, they also bought millions of dollars worth of GOP TV ads.

Kyle Sampson, for his part, seems rather unwilling to tumble onto his own scimitar. As Josh Marshall notes, he may be willing to spill details about White House involvement the attorney purge when he speaks before the Senate Judiciary Committee.

The White House was protecting the Wilkes/Wade criminal enterprise. If Sampson threatens to blow the whistle on this -- well. I wouldn't be surprised if extreme measures are not being contemplated, right now, in order to forestall such testimony.

The true cost of Hookergate

I've been lax in covering recent developments in the Wilkes-Cunningham scandal, an ongoing story that once received a great deal of attention on this blog.

Daniel Hopsicker has published an excellent piece pointing out a simple fact missed by all other commentators: "Hookergate" -- unlike previous sex scandals, such as those involving Monica Lewinski or Donna Rice -- cost lives. Tons of DOD cash went to Wilkes and Wade, while our solders went begging:

Just one month after the Duke-ster was getting his rocks off in Hawaii, a story in the Los Angeles Times contained this headline: “Why must Americans in Iraq face death because of outmoded body armor?”

From a New York Times article cited by Hopsicker:

“The Pentagon has been collecting the data on wounds since the beginning of the war in March 2003 in part to determine the effectiveness of body armor.

"The military's medical examiner, Dr. Craig T. Mallak, told a military panel in 2003 that the information 'screams to be published.'"

“The findings and other research by military pathologists suggests that an analysis of all combat deaths in Iraq, including those of Army troops, would show that 300 or more lives might have been saved with improved body armor.”

Hopsicker then brings it all back home:

What makes all this tragic almost beyond words is this statement from the story in the N.Y. Times: Even at retail prices, it would have cost less than $97 million to outfit each of the 150,000 soldiers in Iraq with state-of-the-art vest plates.

Hell, the Defense Department's 'black budget' spent more money than that with Wilkes’ company just to Xerox old maps.

Meanwhile, speculation continues to grow that the rash of fired U.S. Attorneys may have been engineered to provide cover for the one firing that really, really counts -- Carol Lam, the woman who went after Wilkes, Dusty Foggo, and John T. Michael (an under-discussed Cunningham bribe figure).

Interestingly, Lam will soon function as an attorney for Qualcomm, the wireless technology firm. That news may intrigue conspiracy buffs of a certain sort. As this blog noted a long time ago, Qualcomm came up in a mini-scandal involving one Jack Shaw, the Pentagon's Undersecretary of Defense for International Technology Security. I never did figure out if Shaw was the good guy or the bad guy in that business; you'll have to read the earlier stories to come to your own conclusions. I will note here simply that Qualcomm has strong ties to Israel (a factoid which may set off your paranoia buzzers, though not necessarily mine), and counts among its board members Brent Scowcroft.

One possible explanation: The company hired Lam, in part, to keep an eye on her. She must know some very sensitive material.

Must read material...

Another CIA whistleblower. Over on The Next Hurrah, emptywheel has a terrific piece on "Jerry Doe," a CIA analyst who was fired because he refused to peddle false info about Iraq and two other countries. Here's a fascinating bit:

Also, Doe's complaint suggests this Iraq (and Iran?) War effort didn't start with George Bush. The first time Doe was required to bury intelligence was in 2000, before Bush was inaugurated and probably before he was (s)elected. Which reminds me that the Niger embassy in Rome was burgled (and therefore the plot to forge the Niger documents was presumably in place) in early January 2001, before Bush was inaugurated. In other words, they've been setting up their Neocon moves since before Bush was put into office.

I'd offer a word of caution here. As I've mentioned a couple of times, there were two plots involving those Niger docs. At first, the idea was to scam the French, and the motive may have been purely monetary. That said, I have no trouble accepting that the neocons had set gears into motion during the Clinton years.

Wilkes and Shirlington Limo: Ken Silverstein of Harpers has published two important follow-ups (here and here) to his "Red Lights on Capitol Hill" piece.

"Cocaine One": Daniel Hopsicker has an excellent follow-up to his initial report on the coke-laden aircraft owned by the GOP-linked conman Brent Kovar. Brent's partner in his various shady enterprises is his dad, Glenn.

Here's the beauty part...Chairman Glenn Kovar liked to boast about his long-standing ties to the CIA.

So did Brent Wilkes. At first, many people presumed that Wilkes was just talking out of his rectum -- but now we know a great deal more about the history of Wilkes and Foggo.

So why would American spooks ally themselves with a family like the Kovars? And if the Kovars were just shysters, then who arranged for the Mexican authorities to look the other way as the pilot of that busted aircraft made his escape? We'll be coming back to this story...

GOP lies: Alex at the Martini Republic has a nice piece on the rewritten history found in a mass emailing by GOP chairman Ken Mehlman. Of course, "history" is a record of events that occurred in "reality"-- and reality has a well-known liberal bias.

Finally... Ever notice that quite a few recent Bush photos look Photoshopped, even though they weren't? WHAT A FACE! No kidding -- this man could have been one of the great clowns of the classic era. In image 1 (below), we can see an homage to Harry Langdon. In image 2, we see Harpo Marx -- remember how Harpo looked when he got angry? And in image 3, I scry the ghost of Stan Laurel...

A tale of drugs and spooks

I had intended to annoy you with more AA77 skepticism today, but a reader has directed my attention toward a more pressing mystery -- the story of a man who didn't board a jet.

John "Sparky" McLaughlin tried to take his family on vacation last July, only to discover that that an unknown agency had placed him on the terrorist "no-fly" list. This came as quite a surprise to McLaughlin: He's a cop. In fact, he once headed an effective anti-narcotics unit in Philadelphia.

Too effective. His 90s-era investigations of a drug ring run by citizens of the Dominican Republic brought him into conflict with no less a body than the CIA. His work was disparaged, smeared, and shut down. He fought for years to counter the allegations, eventually winning his day in court, along with a $1.5 million dollar judgment (now on appeal). Although his name was cleared, its appearance on a "no-fly" list suggests that "anti-terrorist" measures are being used to persecute a whistleblower.

All the evidence indicates that McLaughlin is a good cop who has made some powerful enemies. To get the full story, check out the lengthy investigations by the Philadelphia City Paper, here and here, as well as the terrific follow-up piece by Bill Conroy over at NarcoNews. I suggest printing out every page and savoring the details over lunch. You won't find a more fascinating or frustrating true crime tale.

The gist:

A decade ago, McLaughlin and three other agents of the Philadelphia Bureau of Narcotics Investigations and Drug Control (BNI) had targeted a coke and heroin ring run out of the Dominican Republic -- a ring which used a fleet of tricked-out Oldsmobile to run "supplies" into Philadelphia, Boston and New York. The four agents -- later dubbed "the Bastard Squad" -- arrested a crack dealer whose brother was the chief stateside fund-raiser for to Revolutionary Dominican Party (PRD), then poised to gain power in the home country. Connections to this party turned up with unnerving regularity.

An informant revealed that the PRD hoped to use drug money to fund the campaign of PRD presidential candidate Jose Pena Gomez. The party intended to buy votes -- literally purchase them outright -- from members of the massive expatriate community living in the United States. This scenario was confirmed when a "wired" informant met with PRD officials.

The Bastard Squad ran this data by their intelligence advisor, a former CIA man named Wilson Prichett. Although some might want to place quotation markes around the word "former," Prichett seems to have acted in good faith. (The writers of the original City Paper article received remarkable access to CIA agent names and confidential memos.)

Prichett fed the Squad's findings to CIA, who passed the data to station chief in Santo Domingo. In the Dominican Republic, rumors connecting Pena Gomez to the drug trade played a quiet role in the election. Even so, the Agency clearly favored Jose Pena Gomez in the upcoming elections.

(As an intelligence-gathering agency, CIA is not supposed to favor anyone -- in theory. Actual practice is another story, as any good CIA history will confirm.)

The CIA made a suspiously vigorous effort to discover the identities of the Squad's informants. McLaughlin infuriated the powers-that-be when he refused to dilvulge the information.

The Drug Enforcement Agency, acting in conjunction with McLaughlin's crew, planned to move against Pena Gomez during a fundraising trip the United States. But the DEA changed its mind at the last minute, allowing the candidate to go home with $500,000 in drug profits. (Eventually, he lost a close election, and died not long thereafter.)

That's when the bomb dropped on the Bastard Squad.

(To read the rest, click "Permalink" below)

The U.S. Attorney's Office announced that they would no longer accept any cases originating from McLaghlin and his associates.

Soon therafter, State District Attorney Tom Corbett made the same announcement.

These decisions effectively shut down the unit. All of their ongoing investigations had to cease. Perpetrators walked -- even some who had pled guilty.

Rumor linked the "Bastard Squad" to various corrupt practices, such as fabricating evidence and conducting searches without probable cause. One of Corbett's top men investigated these rumors and found them baseless; Corbett squelched the exonerative report and continued to treat McLaughlin as a pariah.

The squad members became convinced that their problems stemmed from their refusal to expose the brave informants who had fingered the PRD in the heroin and coke trade.

The pariah treatment was unprecedented. When undercover cops are suspected of going bad, the usual practice is to keep them under surveillance in order to catch them red-handed.

Members of the squad went to court to clear their names. From a 2003 AP account:

The agents filed a civil rights lawsuit in 1997, saying they had "become the targets of vicious unfounded attacks on their credibility and careers by the federal government," with the "marionetted support" of the Philadelphia DA's office and [the Pennsylvania Attorney General’s Office].

The lawsuit also claimed that Pena Gomez's Dominican Revolutionary Party "was, and is, protected and sanctioned, unlawfully, by agencies of the United States government, to include the CIA and the State Department, enabling the Dominicans to distribute illegal drugs at will to the black and Hispanic populations of the Eastern Seaboard."

The 1997 lawsuit was dismissed, but a subsequent suit resulted in a $1.5 million judgment in favor of McLaughlin and his men.

I should mention here that the PRD is considered moderately left-of-center. (So was Mexico's PRI, despite its long and close association with the American power establishment.) The party's color is white, which cynics might interpret as a fitting tribute to the product flooding American streets.

The questions that comes to my mind are these: Is McLaughlin correct in his claim that a faction at CIA protected the Dominican drug trade? If so, who was in that faction?

No outsider can answer that question with any authority. But perhaps we can gather a few hints if we attempt to trace some of the relevant history -- beginning with CIA head Porter Goss:

Rep. Porter J. Goss has disclosed precious few details of his CIA employment from roughly 1960 to 1971,” reported a profile in the Associated Press. Reuters called him a “mystery man,” and said he had been “close-mouthed about his past.”

“He worked in Haiti, the Dominican Republic and Mexico -- tumultuous countries during that decade of the Cold War,” Reuters reported.

During a 2002 interview with The Washington Post, Goss joked that he performed photo interpretation and "small-boat handling," which led to "some very interesting moments in the Florida Straits."

One should never forget Goss' mysterious promotion of Kyle "Dusty" Foggo, who had a background in that part of the world. Foggo was, in turn, a long-time friend to the notorious Brent Wilkes, the prime mover in the Cunningham corruption scandal.

In a previous piece on Wilkes, I presented evidence suggesting that he has long had a relationship with the CIA. Wilkes had worked for the World Finance Corporation, a predecessor to BCCI. WFC, founded by anti-Castro Cuban Guillermo Hernandez-Cartaya, was, in the 1960s and 70s, the financial institution most favored by narcotics traffickers with CIA connections.

I hope the reader will forgive a lapse into self-quotation:

If, as I suspect, Wilkes joined forces with WFC in the mid-1970s, he may have played a role in the creation of a spin-off called the Dominican Mortgage Corporation, which shared the same address as WFC's Coral Gables HQ. This group heavily invested in Vegas -- casinos, real estate development, even a detective agency.

The "Dominican" part of the name now seems particularly resonant.

But why would the CIA take such a special interest in the PRD? The choice seems particularly bizarre when we recall that, back in the 1960s, the Johnson administration had damned PRD founder Juan Bosch as pro-communist -- even though Bosch had, in fact, banned communist movements in his nation.

In the 1980s, PRD leader Salvador Jorge Blanco proved to be spectacularly corrupt. Yet in this same period, the party seems to have forged strong links to American intelligence.

Another PRD leader, Hipólito Mejía, ran the Dominican Republic from 2000 to 2004. During his tenure, poverty increased and the massive Bainiter banking scandal (which tarred more than one party) was exposed.

Quirino Paulino, a former army captain in the Dominican Republic, has been accused of running much of the cocaine traffic between that nation and the United States. Paulino has made large contributions to all the major political parties in his country.

Note: "sparky178" -- presumably John McLaughlin -- has answered questions about his case in a dialogue preserved here.

Tenet vs. Bush?

Murray Waas' latest in the National Journal is mandatory reading. Waas delivers more proof -- although at this point, we hardly need more -- that W and co. knew full well that their justifications for war were misleading.

The most interesting passage -- to my eyes, at least -- concerns former DCI George Tenet:

The one-page October 2002 President's Summary specifically told Bush that although "most agencies judge" that the use of the aluminum tubes was "related to a uranium enrichment effort... INR and DOE believe that the tubes more likely are intended for conventional weapons uses."

The lengthier NIE -- more than 90 pages -- contained significantly more detail describing the disagreement between the CIA and the Pentagon's DIA on one hand, which believed that the tubes were meant for centrifuges, and State's INR and the Energy Department, which believed that they were meant for artillery shells. Administration officials had said that the president would not have read the full-length paper. They also had said that many of the details of INR's dissent were contained in a special text box that was positioned far away from the main text of the report.

But the one-page summary, several senior government officials said in interviews, was written specifically for Bush, was handed to the president by then-CIA Director George Tenet, and was read in Tenet's presence.

Historians will always get a good, dark snicker out of the image of Bush refusing to read a mere 90 pages before deciding to drop bombs. At the moment, though, I am most intrigued by the image of Tenet and Dubya in the oval office, with Bush reading his one-page summary and the head spook explaining the longer words.

How did Waas learn of this meeting? Was anyone else in the room?

More than likely, Tenet described the meeting to his associates, and those associates relayed the information to Waas and (one presumes) other reporters. I would argue that people close to the former DCI would not have spoken of such matters unless Tenet wanted them discussed.

Yesterday, we read that two former high-level CIA officials (not named) had informed ABC News that the Inspector General was looking into allegations that Brent "bribe-master" Wilkes had received lucrative CIA contracts via his old friend at the Agency, Kyle "Dusty" Foggo, who is now the Number Three "company" man. (Amusingly, this Los Angeles Times story notes that the CIA still won't confirm whether Wilkes had any such CIA contracts. Obviously, if no contracts existed, there would be no investigation.)

Who were the sources for the original scoop? I have argued that Tenet or one of his closer aides first spoke to reporters about the Foggo matter.

In light of the "insider" enemies he has made, we should ask not why Bush's approval ratings are so low, but why they are so high.

In times past, no president could withstand a series of assaults of this sort. At least once a week, and sometimes more frequently than that, an absolutely damning revelation hits the press. Clearly, a faction within the intelligence community has decided to spill beans.

And yet none of these revelations has "burying power." The president still maintains a large base of support. Much of the public remains blissfully unaware of the most damning information.

What has changed in our society over the past thirty years? Back in the late 1960s, people asked: "Suppose they gave a war and nobody came?" Nowadays, the question seems to be: "Suppose they released a new version of the Pentagon Papers and nobody read them?"

Wayne Simmons, international man of mystery! (NEW information)

You've probably heard about Wayne Simmons. He's the alleged former CIA officer who functioned as a "terrorism consultant" for Fox News, where he often spewed far-right hooey. My favorite example occurred in 2005, when he told Bill O'Reilly that the election of a Democratic president would result in "9/11s unabated."

A grand jury has indicted Simmons, claiming that he is, in essence, a fraud. Prosecutors say that he lied about being a former CIA operative when he applied for a job at the State Department. They say that he told a similar fib when he worked for a government contractor.

Simmons is also charged with two counts of wire fraud regarding an unrelated real estate scheme in which he also represented himself as a former CIA agent to “bolster his credibility” with the victim, identified only by the initials EL. Simmons offered EL an opportunity to make a $125,000 investment in a real estate investment that would last at least six months.

However, “There was in fact no real estate investment, and the defendant used the invested funds for personal purposes,” according to court documents. Simmons prolonged the fraud by providing the promised monthly payments of 3 percent and “Sent EL text messages intended to lull EL with false explanations as to the status of her invested funds.”

Moreover, he is accused of lying about his felony convictions when he tried to get a security clearance. Simmons claims that he really was CIA, and that his felonies were for acts committed in the line of duty.

Many liberals are getting a hearty chuckle out of this story.  On the left, most writers accept the theory that this oft-seen Fox News "expert" was never anything more than a blowhard and a grifter. Simmons, they say, was just another flim-flam man man who concocted a false history of covert derring-do. (Remember the used car salesman in True Lies? I've met a couple of guys like that.)

But the situation may not be so simple. Is Simmons nothing more than a fraud -- or is something else going on?

Consider: Wayne Simmons wrote a spy novel which received an appreciative blurb from none other than Donald Rumsfield, who said that Simmons had lived the life described in his fiction. Retired General Paul Vallely, who met Simons via Fox News, thought that Simmons was very savvy about Spookworld. Moreover, Marcy Wheeler has tentatively linked Simmons to the likes of former CIA Director David Petraeus and General Stanley McChrystal.

If Simmons were a mere scamster of the "preach a little Gospel, sell a couple bottles of Dr. Good" variety, I strongly doubt that he would have attempted to get the security clearance necessary to work for the State Department. How many con artists would dare to make a play like that? The reward does not justify the risk.

Behind the scenes, I've corresponded a bit with Marcy Wheeler about the Simmons case. As a result of this exchange, I decided to check out the man's internet trail. My conclusion: There is no pressing need to choose between the "Simmons as con man" theory and the "Simmons as covert operative" theory. It is possible for one person to be both.

In fact, that conjunction is more common than many people think. As British writer Robin Ramsey once observed, the spy and the con artist rely on very similar skill sets. For example, both the spy and the con artist know how to set up fake companies, which can be made to seem quite "real" on the internet.

Longtime readers may recall Brent Wilkes and Kyle "Dusty" Foggo, the fellows who played such a huge role in the bribery scandal that brought down Congressman "Duke" Cunningham. Dusty rose to the number three spot at CIA, yet he and Wilkes were pretty damned scammy. I did a lot of research into their outrageous antics back in the day.

Let us now cast a similar eye on Wayne Simmons.

He was kind enough to provide us with a resume (of sorts) -- here and here. Aside from his claims to be a covert operative and a consultant to the Bush White House, Wayne Simmons has dabbled in a surprisingly wide variety of enterprises: He's a novelist, he runs his own airline, he creates and sells high-end software, he's a mortgage loan officer, he ran a medical company, and he's an international financier.

Later in his career, Simmons became President and CEO of WSS International, Ltd, a Maryland company formed to arrange loans for multinational companies in Europe, Hong Kong, and Macau. He was also involved in working with American Fortune 500 companies and providing introductions to the various foreign ministers of Kazakhstan. Currently, Simmons is the general manager and senior loan officer of an Annapolis, Maryland home mortgage broker.

What is WSS International? Well, there's a company bearing that name in DC, but it appears to be unconnected.

The firm started by Simmons seems to be no longer in business. The resident agent was listed as Corrine T. Simmons -- presumably a wife or relative. If you trace the address via Google Street View, you will soon find yourself looking at a pleasant, two-story suburban home in Bowie, Maryland.

I strongly doubt that this "company" mounted many loans for multi-national corporations and Fortune 500 companies.

The home mortgage brokerage firm in Annapolis is First Mortgage Masters, with a mailing address located in a very small (two-story) suburban office building. There are zero reviews of this firm. In fact, I have found no evidence that First Mortgage Masters has ever done any actual, legitimate business.

Remember: Simmons currently faces charges of running a fraudulent real estate investment firm.

Here's the background for the man's airline, Simmons Air, which he presumably manages when not advising the President or dealing with multinational corporations or arranging home loans. Wayne Simmons claims to have a fleet of Cessna 404s. I'd like to see the N numbers. You may be interested in this 2006 ruling from the United States Department of Transportation, which fined Simmons for misleading advertising.

I can find no current website for this airline. So far, I've seen no hard evidence that it has ever sold a passenger ticket.

(Readers may recall the work of Daniel Hopsicker, who has often written about the CIA's use of front companies in the field of aviation. Just before a plane is used in an operation, it often passes through the hands of many tiny companies which exist purely on paper. This ploy obscures the true ownership.)

We have hardly squeezed all the juice out of Simmons' resume. On his website, he claims:

Wayne is the sole inventor and PATENT holder of the Fraud Prevention Software, HADRiAN. He is currently the CEO of Securus LLC, a Delaware Limited Liability Company.

HADRIAN -- a mobile app that prevents credit card fraud -- would appear to be the sole software product offered by Securus.

Wayne Simmons keeps unfolding like a flower! As we've seen, this man has a (claimed) background in counterterrorism, mortgage brokering, airline management, international finance, and novel writing. He has also functioned as a consultant to George Bush, to Fox News, and to an unspecified number of Fortune 500 companies. Yet he also had the time to learn how to write code.

Unfortunately, I have seen no indication that anyone actually uses HADRIAN, although there is indeed a patent.

Securus is located in Annapolis. I would not be surprised to learn that the company's mail (if it actually gets mail) goes to the same address used by First Mortgage Masters. If Securus is an actual software company, how has their website managed to escape the attention of Google?

Pissed Consumer devotes a lot of attention to a New Jersey company called Securus, which appears to be a multi-level marketing scam. I'm not sure if this Securus should be identified with the Wayne Simmons Securus. Alternet says that that the two Securuses (Securi?) are one and the same.

On his website, Wayne Simmons says that Hadrian/Securus is partnered with a company called Smart Solutions of Delaware, which advises corporations on "human capital" and "strategic planning" and whatnot. Surprisingly, this firm also offers an actual, physical product. It's called -- get this -- the BabyHydroSpa.

Smart Solutions, based in Fairfax, VA, introduces us to a remarkable business partner of Wayne Simmons. Although the company is advertising for new hires, the website lists no current employees or officers -- with one exception: CEO John Scudi, a name printed in small type on the "contacts" page.

Does that name ring a bell? In 1998, Rear Admiral John Scudi was relieved of his duties after being caught up in a scandal. He was found guilty of several charges, including granting Navy contracts to a company run by his mistress -- or rather, one of his two mistresses. (Shades of David Petraeus!) Adultery is a crime in the Navy, although it is customarily prosecuted only when there is a link to some other type of criminal activity.

Are we dealing with the same John Scudi? I believe that we are. Let us pause to ponder the circumstances that brought William Simmons and John Scudi into an association.

That's not all. Believe it or not, Simmons once owned a medical company. Alas, his foray into that field caused him to run afoul of the SEC.

WAYNE S. SIMMONS ENJOINED

The Commission today announced that Wayne S. Simmons consented to a permanent injunction, enjoining him from future violations of the registration and antifraud provisions of the Securities Act of 1933.

From July 1987 through June 1988, Simmons was the president and a member of the Board of Directors of Blood-Check Inc., a company headquartered in Greenbelt, Maryland which offered blood-screening services to test for AIDS. The Complaint alleges that in January and February 1988, Simmons was responsible for Blood-Check’s offering to sell unregistered shares of its common stock by means of a prospectus which contained materially false and misleading statements concerning Blood-Check’s liabilities and its history of operations and revenues. It further alleges that Simmons violated the registration provisions of the Securities Act by advertising the availability of the prospectus through tombstone advertisements placed in The Washington Post, The Washington Times, The Annapolis Capitol, and The Baltimore Sun. (SEC v. Wayne S. Simmons, USDC DC, Civil Action No. 88-2899).

All in all, Wayne Simmons appears to be a rather dubious fellow. Could he really have links to Spookworld?

Yeah.

He does seem to know his way around that territory. He seems to know some important people. He used to be represented by the very prestigious firm of Perkin Coie, which is not the sort of law firm one normally associates with low-level scamsters. (The firm has represented at least one former CIA operative.)

If you don't mind a quick visit to the realm of blue-sky speculation, I'd like to close with a message I sent to Marcy Wheeler yesterday:

This is pure gut reaction -- I have no real evidence and I may be wrong -- but I'll bet that if you dig deep into Simmons' past, eventually the name of Mitch WerBell will come up. He ran a well-known paramilitary camp in Georgia. At different times, he would say that he both was and was not CIA. WerBell linked up to an earlier group called Interpen, a group of off the books operatives, most of whom had had serious problems with the law. They were never Agency in any official sense, but they would be called in for dirty work. Sort of like "The Expendables."

I could easily see how a guy in that era who had received training at WerBell's camp might say he was CIA, and could even claim to be a counterinsurgency expert, since WerBell was always bragging about going to hotspots around the world.

WerBell's orbit included a number of people who had one foot in the world of spycraft and another foot in the world of The Big Scam. (The gloriously bizarre Gordon Novel provides one example. If you would like to go insane, spend a week studying the life and works of Gordon Novel.) If WerBell were alive today, I'm pretty sure that his face would be seen on Fox News almost as often as Sean Hannity's.

I'll say it again: The idea of a WerBell/Simmons link is sheer conjecture on my part, and there is every chance that I'm wrong. WerBell has been on my mind a great deal lately, ever since I wrote a post about his little-known link to the strange case of Wayne Williams.

Update: Check out the comments below this post. An anonymous (but apparently well-informed) reader reports that former Rear Admiral John Scudi is related to Wayne Simmons.

I just now found an obit that shines more light on this matter. You have to pay attention, because there is more than one Patricia in this story. The obituary is for a woman named Patricia Willodean (Myers) Simmons, who was married to Navy man Wayne A. Simmons, the father of the subject of our post, Wayne S. Simmons.

Wife of the late Wayne A. Simmons; mother of Patricia (John Scudi) Bradshaw, Wayne (and the late Corinne) Simmons, Michael (Joann) Simmons, and Peggy (James) Wagner; grandmother of ten and great-grandmother of 8. A 60 year resident of Sunnyside in College Park and longtime member of Berwyn Baptist, she began her government career in 1944 with the FBI as a fingerprint specialist, then served as a librarian at the Bethesda Naval Hospital for 36 years.

Apparently, Patricia Bradshaw is Wayne's sister and John's wife. Since I'm in a naughty mood, I can't help asking the obvious question: If Patricia Simmons was the librarian at Bethesda Naval Hospital, did she know the whereabouts of the missing JFK autopsy photos?

Egypt, Democracy, and right-wing revisionism

As I've said previously (and as others have said), the right-wing propagandists want to have it both ways on Egypt.

Much of the conservative propaganda machine roots for Mubarak and warns that his fall will lead to Islamic chaos. But Elliot Abrams, representing the neocons, not only welcomes the fall but portrays it as the fulfillment of George W. Bush's alleged dream of democracy. That kind of spin requires much rewriting of history.

To his credit, Abrams gets this part right:

Mubarak took the same tack for three decades. Ruling under an endless emergency law, he has crushed the moderate opposition while the Islamist Muslim Brotherhood has thrived underground and in the mosques. Mubarak in effect created a two-party system - his ruling National Democratic Party and the Brotherhood - and then defended the lack of democracy by saying a free election would bring the Islamists to power.

If someone had written those very words during (say) the Clinton administration, neocons of Abrams' stripe would have damned the author as a churlish liberal and a dangerous idealist.

The fact is, Bush II was perfectly willing to toss massive amounts of money and weapons at Egypt, as did Bush I, Clinton, Reagan and Carter. The rest of Africa groans in poverty while Egypt receives more American foreign aid than does any other nation, except Israel. That's why, right now, the Egyptians are in the streets seeking freedom -- freedom from us.

Dubya, whom Abrams would portray as the Messiah of democracy, was (and probably still is) in bed with the damnably undemocratic House of Saud. Everyone knows that Prince Bandar earned the nickname "Bandar Bush," and everyone knows that the Bush administration sold the Saudis nearly $20 billion worth of weaponry. This, despite the abundance of evidence that some within the Saudi regime have backed Al Qaeda:

Salem bin Laden, Osama’s brother, has conducted all his American affairs through James Bath, a Houston crony of the Bush family. Bath’s former business partner Bill White testified in court that Bath had been a liaison for the C.I.A. In 1979 Bath invested $50,000 in Arbusto, George W. Bush’s first business venture. Rumor had it that Bath was acting as Salem bin Laden’s representative. "In conflicting statements, Bush at first denied ever knowing Bath, then acknowledged his stake in Arbusto and that he was aware Bath represented Saudi interests."

In addition to doing aviation business with Saudi sheiks, Bath was part owner of a Houston bank whose chief stockholder was Ghaith Pharaon, who represented the Bank of Commerce and Credit International (BCCI), a criminal global bank with branches in 73 countries. BCCI proceeded to defraud depositors of $10 billion during the ‘80s, while providing a money laundry conduit for the Medellin drug cartel, Asia’s major heroin cartel, Manuel Noriega, Saddam Hussein, the C.I.A., and Islamist terrorist organizations worldwide.

Pharaon, a notorious Saudi financier, later helped the Bushes pull off a lucrative fraud, or so says investigator Al Martin. Pharaon arranged for a Bush family company, Gulf Oil and Drilling, to obtain oil and gas leases in the Gulf. The leases were worthless and the Bushes knew it. Their value was misrepresented to a major bank in Florida, which gave massive loans to the Bush family's company, using the leases as collateral. The money was never paid back.

Bush was also very close to the corrupt rulers of Dubai. Remember when he tried to give a Dubai government-controlled firm oversight over the security of our ports? The UAE also gave tons of money to the wretched Neil Bush as part of his "educational software" scam; Lord knows what that was really about.

The Bush-friendly Prime Minister of the UAE, and the absolute monarch of Dubai, was and is Sheik Mohammed ibn Rashid al Maktum -- who has been known to pal around with none other than Osama Bin Laden.

Craig Unger got it right in this 2008 interview:

I think if you look at the neoconservative vision, which talks again about democratization, democratization, it’s really much more about strategic domination of the Middle East, and it’s been a vision to take over Iraq and eventually Iran.

The Iraq war was never about democracy. It was about oil and Israel. The Iraqis know that, even if many Americans do not -- and that's why the Iraqis are not exactly inclined to name streets after George W. Bush.

Obama is little better, of course.

Far from calling the Saudi king on his awful record on human rights and women’s issues, the president is pushing a huge arms deal and heaping praise on the monarch. He’s not only continuing Bush’s soft Saudi policy—he’s surpassing it.

In the next two months, Congress will be asked to give formal approval to a staggering new arms deal with Saudi Arabia. Valued at $30 billion, the deal includes selling the Saudis state-of-the-art missile technology, jets, ships, and helicopters.

Now, about Elliot Abrams: It is infuriating to see this notorious liar present himself as the apostle of democracy. Remember Iran-contra?

Abrams, a Democrat turned Republican who married into the cranky Podhoretz neocon clan, billed himself as a "gladiator" for the Reagan Doctrine in Central America-which entailed assisting thuggish regimes and militaries in order to thwart leftist movements and dismissing the human rights violations of Washington's cold war partners.

One Abrams specialty was massacre denial. During a Nightline appearance in 1985, he was asked about reports that the US-funded Salvadoran military had slaughtered civilians at two sites the previous summer. Abrams maintained that no such events had occurred. And had the US Embassy and the State Department conducted an investigation? "My memory," he said, "is that we did, but I don't want to swear to it, because I'd have to go back and look at the cables." But there had been no State Department inquiry; Abrams, in his lawyerly fashion, was being disingenuous. Three years earlier, when two American journalists reported that an elite, US-trained military unit had massacred hundreds of villagers in El Mozote, Abrams told Congress that the story was commie propaganda, as he fought for more US aid to El Salvador's military. The massacre, as has since been confirmed, was real. And in 1993 after a UN truth commission, which examined 22,000 atrocities that occurred during the twelve-year civil war in El Salvador, attributed 85 percent of the abuses to the Reagan-assisted right-wing military and its death-squad allies, Abrams declared, "The Administration's record on El Salvador is one of fabulous achievement." Tell that to the survivors of El Mozote.

The Salvadoran thugs that Abrams championed made Hosni Mubarak seem like the Easter Bunny. Abrams, in his words, "supervised U.S. policy in Latin America and the Caribbean" throughout much of the Reagan administration.

That policy included backing the contras-a surrogate army dedicated to overthrowing the democratically elected Sandinista government of Nicaragua. It also involved funding the military thugocracy of El Salvador and supervising its war against a popular leftist rebellion. In his role as public servant, Abrams found time to cover up the genocidal policies of the Guatemalan government and embrace the government of Honduras while it perpetrated serial human rights abuses through Battalion 3-16, a U.S.-trained "intelligence unit" turned death squad.

Incidentally: Working under Abrams in Honduras was Kyle "Dusty" Foggo, who later became the number 3 guy at CIA. Foggo was upended in the Wilkes/Cunningham bribery scandal.

The regimes Abrams championed in the 1980s operated according to a playbook similar to the one that Abrams now ascribes to Mubarak. When a dictatorship makes democratic opposition impossible, extremism becomes the only option. Let's have no further lectures on democracy from the likes of Elliot Abrams.

(That said, I am more than a little suspicious of his ability to "call the shot" on Egypt. What did he know...?)

Subpoena power: The foxes guard the henhouse

A long predicted constitutional battle has finally begun. The judiciary committees of both the House and the Senate have subpoenaed administration documents pertinent to the U.S. attorney scandal. In a letter of response, White House counsel Fred Fielding has declined to cooperate, invoking executive privilege.

Thursday was the deadline for surrendering the documents. The White House also made clear that (former counsel Harriet) Miers and (ex-political director Sara) Taylor would not testify next month, as directed by the subpoenas, which were issued June 13. The stalemate could end up with House and Senate contempt citations and a battle in federal court over separation of powers.

The judiciary committees have, in a separate action, also subpoenaed documents relating to the warrantless wiretapping controversy. The White House is again expected to invoke executive privilege.

Congressman John Conyers has fired back at the White House attorney:

The executive privilege assertion is unprecedented in its breadth and scope, and even includes documents that the Adminstration previously offered to provide as part of their 'take it or leave it' proposal. This response indicates the reckless disrepect this Administration has for the rule of law. The charges alleged in this investigation are serious - including obstruction of justice and misleading Congress - and the White House should be as committed to this investigation as the Congress. At this point, I see only one choice in moving forward, and that is to enforce the rule of law set forth in these subpoenas.

As Marcy Wheeler points out, the Fielding letter relies on an opinion written by Solicitor General Paul Clement. Clement, however, heads the Office of Special Counsel's investigation into the Attorney firings.

And now, he's the guy who gets to tell the President that he doesn't have to turn over what might amount to evidence of obstruction of justice in the Foggo and Wilkes case, among others.

The result is a classic case of a fox guarding the henhouse:

But that just demonstrates how hopelessly compromised Clement is. He is--already, even before we hit the courts--in a position where he is simultaneously defending the White House, and investigating it.

Moreover, the Clement opinion makes an astonishing admission about the firing of those U.S. Attorneys, the matter underlying those subpoenas. Here's what Clement wrote:

Among other things, these communications discuss the wisdom of such a proposal, specific U.S. Attorneys who could be removed, potential replacement candidates, and possible responses to congressional and media inquiries about the dismissals.

In other words, Clement buttresses his claim of executive privilege by admitting that which Republicans have long denied -- that the White House was involved in the firings and the choice of replacements. Previously, Bush has insisted that “the Justice Department made recommendations, which the White House accepted."

Republican Congressman Chris Cannon of Utah seems oddly unfamiliar with the admission in Clement's opinion:

After close to 10,000 pages of documents, dozens of interviews and testimony under oath, this investigation has not led, as the majority has speculated, to the White House.

Clement has taken the matter out of speculation. If there was no White House involvement, why invoke executive privilege?

Since Clement obviously cannot both investigate and defend the Bush administration, many now call for a special prosecutor.

Fielding's recalcitrance forces the country to consider one key question: What happens when a person, group or branch of government defies a congressional subpoena?

Congress can issue a citation of contempt. However, 2 U.S.C. § 194 states that such a citation must be referred to the U.S. Attorney in Washington D.C. -- a position held at this time by Jeffrey Taylor, a close confidant of Alberto Gonzales. Only Taylor can convene a Grand Jury to prosecute the offense.

Thus, the paradox: The underlying issue in this matter involves politicization of the U.S. Attorneys. And yet Congress must now rely on a U.S. Attorney to uphold a citation of contempt against the administration. Many believe that Taylor is a product of the politicization which is at the heart of this matter.

White House refusal to honor subpoenas may constitute grounds for impeachment of both Bush and Cheney. In 1970, Gerald Ford (then a House member from Michigan) said that “An impeachable offense is whatever the majority of the House of Representatives considers it to be at any given moment in its history.” Only the impeachment route would bypass the need to rely on Bush/Cheney loyalists such as Taylor and Clement.

Carrot and stick: There's more than one way to purge

Over on Democratic Underground, one "hootinhollar" has a juicy piece on the Lam firing (see also here):

Right before she left she delivered indictments of Foggo and Wilkes, and possibly turned over to the LA office A case regarding Rep. Jerry Lewis (an unfortunate but perhaps apt name) who has already lawyered up at Gibson Dunn, a big LA firm.

That case would have landed on the desk of Debra Wong Yang, the United States Attorney for the Central District of California in Los Angeles. Now, Ol Debbie there, I don't think was on the enemies list, but, she did leave the office for private practice at (you might have guessed it) Gibson Dunn. She allegedly got a tidy signing bonus to the tune of $1.5 Mil.

This is indeed intriguing. Corruption target Jerry Lewis hires the same firm which hired the U.S. Attorney who would have gone after Lewis?

I notice a funky smell in the air, and I don't think it's coming from my vegetable bin.

(To read the rest, click "Permalink" below)

The same firm, Gibson Dunn, also hired an assistant U.S. Attorney under Yang, a man named Douglas Fuchs. They also hired Maurice Suh, "the former Deputy Mayor of Homeland Security and Public Safety for the City of Los Angeles."

The San Bernardino Sun thus quotes a law professor about Yang: "It's no secret: She left for money."

She added that while it may look questionable that Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher hired Yang, she doubted that Yang would provide lawyers there with information about the investigation into Lewis.

Really? Others might not be so certain about that. Josh Marshall offers these words of caution:

Most lawyers would, I think, caution that this isn't necessarily as questionable as it might seem on first blush. Gibson Dunn is a major national law firm based in LA. It's a logical place for someone like Yang to go.

However:

Yang is now one of three co-chairs of the firm's Crisis Management Group, along with New York Partner Randy Mastro and GOP power player Theodore Olson.

And one other issue that might come into play here. If you look at the corruption investigations over the last two years, there's an odd pattern of pivotal investigators and prosecutors getting fortuitous promotions or offers of employment in the private sector at key moments.

(Emphasis added.) Take the carrot or get the stick? We thus come to...

A digression:

Fired U.S. Attorney Carol Lam is doing pretty well at the moment. She walked right into a well-paying gig for Qualcomm.

The reference to Qualcomm reminded me of the Jack Shaw mini-scandal, which should not disappear entirely down the memory hole. (See here and my previous post on the subject, here.)

Defense undersecretary Shaw, who had the job of restoring Iraqi telecommunications, was accused of improperly giving contracts to friends at Qualcomm. (He had deep-sixed an effort to feed the contract to some pals of Chalabi.)

Shaw later claimed that foreign intelligence officials fed him an outrageous story that Russian commandos had heisted weapons at Iraq's Al Qaaqaa facility. The rightists milked that tale for all it was worth, even after it was proven to be bogus.

Shaw never revealed just which foreign intel service misled him, but it should be noted that Qualcomm has strong ties to Israel.

The Weasel and the Damage Done

dr. elsewhere here

We have achieved scandal saturation; I defy anyone to be able to keep up with them all. And we’ve long passed the point where it feels icky to think about it, like wandering into the addiction scene, replete with dealers and victims and pimps and hookers and guns and money (oh my!). Weasels everywhere killing and destroying lives, their own and those of everyone they touch. It’s all about the drug. In this case, though, the drug is power, and the weasels in power are running ruining our government in their desperate clutch to get away with it.

And the wickedest weasel du jour is, of course, Gonzo, our AG, AG. This ex-WH counsel and DOJ un-lawman has achieved what may prove to be the biggest heckuva disaster yet to emerge from this crew, even with Rummy and Condi and Cheney (oh my!) in such stiff competition.

Bravo to our new Democratic Congress for reminding the country -- including the weasels running (or ruining) our government -- what their job of oversight means. And let’s hope they can get to the bottom of this before the slimy devils pull another fast one and somehow draw a get out of jail free card.

But what strikes me as a very crucial factor in this whole US attorney fiasco we cannot forget:

The damage is done.

We may, at some point, be able to stanch the oozing wound, but without some very serious and aggressive intervention, we may never reverse the damage done.

Like the typical addict, these folks believe it’s far better to apologize than ask permission; this is just how they operate. They do what they want, try to keep it as secret as possible, and when the cat’s out of the bag, they instantly externalize the blame and vow it will never happen again.

Meanwhile, they got what they wanted, they got their fix for that immediate moment, and they just lay low and continue doing what they want in secret till they get caught again. Ultimately, though, their agenda is to wear down the will and wherewithal of everyone around them in order to use and abuse with impunity, and stash enough little fixes in every nook and cranny to keep them safe and high “for the foreseeable future.” The DOJ therefore is currently completely and thoroughly corrupted, from the top down, not just the USAttys, but all other career staff who have never required Senate confirmation. Gonzalez saw to this phase of the “process” (doncha just love how he loves that word?) when he handed down the edict that Sampson and Monica would theretofore do all the firing and hiring across the entire DOJ. Recall, importantly, that Monica’s role was as liaison with the WH.

And so it goes. Meanwhile, the damage is done.

This purge of attorneys was not really a purge; it was just a good ol’ fashioned garden variety weeding. The cultivated and nurtured crop of “loyal Bushies” was left untouched, with few exceptions, the most glaring being Fitz who serves now like a rose in the cornfield. (Make that feed corn.) Not that the powers that be appreciated the beauty of his skills; the only reason they did not fire him too was they amazingly realized they would never get away with it. They must still be reeling from the shock that Fitz and Iglesias and McKay and the others who actually take their jobs seriously, actually place their country and their oath to the Constitution before loyalty to the party and to Bush, despite the fact that they’re all Republicans.

Josh Marshall and Joe Biden have both noted that this scandal exposes more in terms of who did not get axed than who did, a point that is predictably but disturbingly ignored by our bought&sold media. Nor does this point ever really get explored in the “why” part that so eludes the pundits because of course AG, head weasel, avoids responding to anything that even glances in that direction. Instead, we’re expected to believe this was all some grand Family Circus “not me I dunno somebody else did it” goof-up, like Iraq or Katrina or Abu Ghraib or Gitmo. About the only real media exploration of these aspects of the scandal has been from the indefatigable Greg Palast, who of course reports for the BBC, not stateside media. In an interview on DemocracyNow!, he gets into some of the drastic implications of the damage done. He also shares the fascinating fact that he is actually in possession of over 500 of emails to and from Karl Rove, many of them addressing the attorney firings.

But the damage done runs so much deeper than these sexy, top level, and - as Gonzo the weasel would have us believe - nearly irrelevant firings of nearly irrelevant US Attorneys. Elizabeth de la Vega, whose 21 year experience as a federal prosecutor brings gravity and history to the picture, articulates for us some of the frontline truths about what the shifts in DOJ operations under Bush mean. Not only have routine procedures become so cumbersome and draconian as to cripple any lawyer, but the entire process has become increasingly centralized, to the point that hardly a brief gets filed that central Justice is unaware. The results of all this unnecessary bureaucracy come right out of Brazil:

Even if the intrepid career prosecutor completes the case initiation paperwork, a US attorney who is either fearful of - or beholden to - the Bush administration, rather than to the laws and Constitution of the United States, can simply fail, for no particular reason, to sign off on the form. Without leaving a single shred of evidence, in other words, the US attorney can stop a controversial investigation before it has even begun. At almost any stage, the ways to stymie or even completely kill off a prosecution are unlimited.

(To read the rest, click "Permalink" below)

And the consequences are beyond chilling:

It is not just public corruption cases that are negatively impacted by the Bush administration's promotion of loyalty to the president and to individual US attorneys as the highest values in the Department of Justice at the expense of integrity and the prudent exercise of independent judgment on the part of its lawyers. This distorted ethos affects all of the cases, because what happens to career prosecutors under such circumstances? They leave.

Indeed, that is precisely what happened in the Northern District of California.

There, the US attorney, Kevin Ryan, was decidedly a "company man" who, like those in the inner circle of the Bush administration's Department of Justice, equated dissent with disloyalty. During Ryan's four-year tenure, 50 of the office's 100 lawyers - including myself - left, taking with them a total of approximately 500 years of experience. In the end, because of the intervention of the district's chief judge, Ryan himself was asked to resign, but the office will take a very long time to recover.

This, folks, is just how serious it is. This is how much damage has already been done.

As horrifying and demanding of the public's awareness as all this is, what seems to me to need more attention than what has happened is the question of what are we going to do now? What can we do now that they have so completely destroyed the system that it can no longer function in compliance with our Constitution, but instead acts consciously as an arm of the WH and the Republican party? What can we do now that Gonzo the weasel's little "process" has gone through their field of US attorneys and kept the Bushie loyalists, while replacing what they likely referred to as the wild and unruly ones, ones who’d ruin their entire plan of power mongering if they could not be kept under control. You know; those annoying folks who dared to do their jobs and put Bush’s dangerous agenda and illicit policies on display instead of out in the back forty?

What our Justice Department now boasts in the perfectly trimmed and straight furrows of Bushies is a force field for both protecting the Bush criminals and attacking their enemies. Almost everywhere, in every district, they have seeded their hybrids of Regency-bred lawyers and bootlicking hit men to at least a critical mass. What will Congress do now that this damage is done? How will they protect our democracy from the intentions Bush and AG (and Cheney and Rove) had for placing them there in the first place? Saying they can’t do that anymore is not enough; the damage is done. We will see the fruits of their labors in the coming months, especially with what does not happen with the Wilkes case, now that Carol Lam is gone.

An indication that after all the damage has been done with the newer and more loyal Bushies now in place is to be seen in Bush’s signal that he will not oppose any legislation that reverses that nasty little nugget in the USAPATRIOT Act revision that allowed all this to happen in the first place and has now been reversed in the Senate. Oh sure, sorry about that; it will never happen again. Wink wink. No problem, though, since targeted result is already achieved; the damage is done.

But let’s consider what damage has been done.

First, if we’re now to accept apologies and mea culpas and move on, with the damage done – as AGAG would have us do as he blames first Sampson then McNulty just as they resign – we’re also expected to believe that these major changes in major US attorney slots around the country to install “loyal Bushies” occurred without either the AG or the President involved or informed or signing off? That in itself is cause for more than serious alarm. The chorus of loyal Bushies keeps crying these attorneys “serve at the pleasure of the President,” but out the other side of their mouths they insist he had nothing to do with it! Once again, they’re trying to have it both ways. Responsibility for disaster getting too close to home? Blame it on an underling. No underling? Hell, as The Decider/Commander –in-Chief need only appoint a blamee-in-waiting as war czar, provided of course he can find such a patsy (and when he can’t, hell, just appoint someone still under command!). Who, after all, is driving this tractor? Or is all the power given over to the field hands in a “consensus” decision? Funny how having power comes with responsibilities, but these guys will have none of that; suddenly power disappears into rank and file.

But the field hands are clueless; reading over Sampson’s testimony, I find it beyond astonishing how little he knew about particular cases and activities undertaken in the offices of these targeted US Attorneys: nothing about investigations of GOP governors in MO and NV, nothing about Iglesias’ refusal to prosecute Dems in NM, nothing about McKay’s refusal to prosecute “voter fraud” in WA, and nothing about Lam’s search warrants to Foggo (this last despite the fact that his email about having to get rid of her occurred the day after Lam informed the DOJ of her intentions). Not just astonishing but insulting – especially for these attorneys – for him to say that the process was “unscientific” and that he has destroyed all the documents leading up to the final list. “All in ‘good faith’ of course.” Geez. And yet this is the guy who was tasked – by head weasel AGAG – with determining not only the individual fates of these attorneys, but the fates of their respective offices and the cases on their desks. Again, is anyone on this tractor, or are all the decisions being made by the field hands? They would have us believe, actually, that the gophers did it. Yet the weasel is far worse! Here he is, the guy supposedly in charge, and he is more clueless than his gopher! In fact, notice that right after Sampson testified, AGAG lay the responsibility for the “project” (Which Gonzo stands by, incidentally) at his feet. And now that McNulty has resigned (for more money, it seems), guess who’s to blame? The bizarre thing is that Gonzo thinks he’s “weathered the storm,” winning this game of whack-a-weasel.

But let’s look back at Sampson’s testified reason for apologizing and resigning: He regrets that he did not anticipate the “perception” of political reasons behind these firings, and did not thus properly prep the players before they appeared before Congress weeks ago, making a dirty little mess of his carefully plotted coup. What he is saying is that they did not anticipate the public response to these firings. What he is saying is that he – and his bosses – did not even consider the “perception” of unethical conduct. What he is saying is that it was nothing more than a PR error, their only concern in any matter that comes down the pike. This administration has yet to be faced with a problem a PR campaign cannot solve. Sick Karen Hughes on it, a big smile, and new talking points (along with the huge price tag for the taxpayers), and the problem will magically disappear. Keep those rows straight and the product big and shiny, but to hell with any real food value.

This is how thoroughly they have dispensed with our Constitution and presumed for themselves full dictatorial powers; because the President’s men want it and do it, it’s legal. They don’t even see the perception of illegal, let alone the illegal. They don’t even slow down for the red lights, forget about the yellows. The very fact that head weasel AGAG has done such a miserable job of obfuscating and dodging and avoiding and misrepresenting and just outright lying, even after prepping so diligently for weeks for his “performances,” with Tim Flannigan of all people as his coach, should tell us how impossible it is for him simply to be honest and tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.

Here’s a thought: they never counted on Republicans actually acting on principle. They actually believed all the fired hands would just roll over and beg for recommendation letters for a quiet new job in the private sector.

If we consider the ‘why’ of all this weeding, it is at least parallel to, and likely more insidious than, the long-term plans to stack the judiciary. The only difference is that the stacking was done overtly; this weeding has been as surreptitious and seedy as Johnny Appleseed’s evil twin. And why would these power mongers want control over the DOJ in addition to the judiciary? For starters, not only will judges start ruling in their favor and against their enemies (us US citizens?), the DOJ will not even prosecute their own for crimes, and will prosecute everyone else for non-crimes. And in order to finally galvanize their stranglehold on power, they’ll be able to manipulate whatever legal activities might surround this coming election (and of course, any in the future) by ignoring election fraud and prosecuting voter fraud. Given how close Bush came to losing in 2004, I suspect Rove got pretty spooked about the prospects of what was coming and initiated this grand scheme then, rather than waiting for 2006 to roll around. In this context, it’s not just a little juicy to imagine how shocked and shaken Rove must have been with the 11/7 results when he worked so hard to manage it (especially considering how close to a sling his sorry fat ass was in with the Libby case about that time). Think of what the real vote numbers must have been with Democrats winning so big, despite all Rove’s manipulations; ya gotta know Rove did.

In all the bizarre disconnects in logical thinking we have seen coming out of this WH, the vote manipulation really takes the cake, doesn’t it? I mean, on the one hand, this is the equivalent of the Iraq miscalculation: it never occurred to them they might be despised as invaders and occupiers, they only believed what they wanted to, all the flowers and chocolates and singing in the streets. And it never occurred to them that they could lose the PR game here when the media deck is so thoroughly stacked in their favor, so they keep believing more corruption and more PR to distract from the corruption will solve the problem. Just keep digging and tap-dancing, that’s their motto; if we put on a good show, no one will notice all the damage we're doing.

But on the other hand, the very fact that they feel the need to go through all these illegal and corrupt machinations exposes a deep-seated belief – a strange unconscious awareness, if you will – that they are unable to win honestly, with all their cards on the table and their agendas truthfully revealed. And it’s even deeper and more insidious than all that, if you consider the patronizing insult implied in this attitude, that the masses cannot possibly know what’s best for themselves so we must presume to do their thinking and their deciding and their voting for them. It’s all justified because of course father knows best. The very tone of these notions oozes disdain for democratic principles, principles they took an oath to uphold. But then, that tone flies in the face of oaths and principles in general, as well. What is left but the monstrously corrupt epidemic we have, this seemingly unstoppable addiction to power that is blinding almost everyone in any public office, blinding them with either greed or fear, to the point that few will stand up for truth or integrity.

Now comes Comey, along with some of the fired US attorneys, to stand with courage to expose yet more of the relentless corruption. Once again, we are given a peek at the horrifying depravity – from Paul O’Neill and Richard Clarke and Larry Wilkerson and even Dilulio and Kuo, and Michael Brown, for chrissake – and the media cannot shift our attention away from Paris or Britney long enough for the disturbing truth. Comey gives us our John Dean moment and exposes the cancer on this presidency (ironically in a hospital room), a cancer that is far more hideous and criminal than Nixon’s petty paranoia, and two of the three major networks just cannot be bothered to report it. The incriminating testimony reveals at least three crimes (Michael Collins has elaborated on this, via Joseph). One, the attempt to obstruct justice by coercing a signature from someone not fully cognizant. Two, the certification of the wiretapping program without DOJ backing, in other words, without legal clearance. Three, the weasel lies from weasel AGAG that the program was legal and cleared as such, and that there was no internal controversy regarding its legality. Impeachable offenses, each of these. Perhaps we should consider making the first such proceedings be against Gonzalez?

What we have needed all along has been for one of the insiders to come forward to point out the cancer on this Presidency, like Dean did with Nixon. Remember, though, that Dean’s role in Nixon’s WH was equivalent to Harriet Mier’s as Counsel to the President, like Gonzalez before her. Comey may be the closest we can get to a WH insider with such integrity, Bush has so thoroughly surrounded himself with corrupt weasels there’s just no chance any of them would even know how to think with conscience like Dean or Comey did, much less act on that.

The tumor on this WH, though, has so many malignant tendrils, tendrils that seem to have invaded every nook and cranny or our government, we may never be able to successfully cure ourselves of it, at least not without a serious revolution. Thus the cancer metaphor loses its gravity when applied here, because this is not a disease of invasion but of choice, and not just of our leadership but of our entire citizenry. No, our national disease is far more like a resistant addiction, this addiction to power and the seductive comfort zone provided directly and indirectly by it, both in terms of the “security” language and the subtle little consumer greeds and satisfactions that maintain the life to which we have so thoroughly become accustomed, our piece in the bargain. Would that Alberto were the only weasel we have to eradicate, with all this dreadful damage done.

Soon: Deeper – and deadlier – damage done.