US Ten Most Wanted: Corrupt Politicians

Judicial Watch

JW is a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization. JW neither supports nor opposes candidates for public office.

Washington, DC –Judicial Watch, the public interest group that investigates and prosecutes government corruption, today released its 2007 list of Washington’s “Ten Most Wanted Corrupt Politicians.” The list includes

1. Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-NY): In addition to her long and sordid ethics record, Senator Hillary Clinton took a lot of heat in 2007 – and rightly so – for blocking the release her official White House records. Many suspect these records contain a treasure trove of information related to her role in a number of serious Clinton-era scandals. Moreover, in March 2007, Judicial Watch filed an ethics complaint against Senator Clinton for filing false financial disclosure forms with the U.S. Senate (again). And Hillary’s top campaign contributor, Norman Hsu, was exposed as a felon and a fugitive from justice in 2007. Hsu pleaded guilt to one count of grand theft for defrauding investors as part of a multi-million dollar Ponzi scheme.

2. Senator Diane Feinstein (D-CA): As a member of the Senate Appropriations Committee's subcommittee on military construction, Feinstein reviewed military construction government contracts, some of which were ultimately awarded to URS Corporation and Perini, companies then owned by Feinstein's husband, Richard Blum. While the Pentagon ultimately awards military contracts, there is a reason for the review process. The Senate's subcommittee on Military Construction's approval carries weight. Sen. Feinstein, therefore, likely had influence over the decision making process. Senator Feinstein also attempted to undermine ethics reform in 2007, arguing in favor of a perk that allows members of Congress to book multiple airline flights and then cancel them without financial penalty. Judicial Watch’s investigation into this matter is ongoing.

3. Former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani (R-NY): Giuliani came under fire in late 2007 after it was discovered the former New York mayor’s office “billed obscure city agencies for tens of thousands of dollars in security expenses amassed during the time when he was beginning an extramarital relationship with future wife Judith Nathan in the Hamptons…” ABC News also reported that Giuliani provided Nathan with a police vehicle and a city driver at taxpayer expense. All of this news came on the heels of the federal indictment on corruption charges of Giuliani’s former Police Chief and business partner Bernard Kerik, who pleaded guilty in 2006 to accepting a $165,000 bribe in the form of renovations to his Bronx apartment from a construction company attempting to land city contracts.

4. Governor Mike Huckabee (R-AR): Governor Huckabee enjoyed a meteoric rise in the polls in December 2007, which prompted a more thorough review of his ethics record. According to The Associated Press: “[Huckabee’s] career has also been colored by 14 ethics complaints and a volley of questions about his integrity, ranging from his management of campaign cash to his use of a nonprofit organization to subsidize his income to his destruction of state computer files on his way out of the governor’s office.” And what was Governor Huckabee’s response to these ethics allegations? Rather than cooperating with investigators, Huckabee sued the state ethics commission twice and attempted to shut the ethics process down.

5. I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby: Libby, former Chief of Staff to Vice President Dick Cheney, was sentenced to 30 months in prison and fined $250,000 for lying and obstructing the Valerie Plame CIA leak investigation. Libby was found guilty of four felonies -- two counts of perjury, one count of making false statements to the FBI and one count of obstructing justice – all serious crimes. Unfortunately, Libby was largely let off the hook. In an appalling lack of judgment, President Bush issued “Executive Clemency” to Libby and commuted the sentence.

6. Senator Barack Obama (D-IL): A “Dishonorable Mention” last year, Senator Obama moves onto the “ten most wanted” list in 2007. In 2006, it was discovered that Obama was involved in a suspicious real estate deal with an indicted political fundraiser, Antoin “Tony” Rezko. In 2007, more reports surfaced of deeper and suspicious business and political connections It was reported that just two months after he joined the Senate, Obama purchased $50,000 worth of stock in speculative companies whose major investors were his biggest campaign contributors. One of the companies was a biotech concern that benefited from legislation Obama pushed just two weeks after the senator purchased $5,000 of the company’s shares. Obama was also nabbed conducting campaign business in his Senate office, a violation of federal law.

7. Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-CA): House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who promised a new era of ethics enforcement in the House of Representatives, snuck a $25 million gift to her husband, Paul Pelosi, in a $15 billion Water Resources Development Act recently passed by Congress. The pet project involved renovating ports in Speaker Pelosi's home base of San Francisco. Pelosi just happens to own apartment buildings near the areas targeted for improvement, and will almost certainly experience a significant boost in property value as a result of Pelosi's earmark. Earlier in the year, Pelosi found herself in hot water for demanding access to a luxury Air Force jet to ferry the Speaker and her entourage back and forth from San Francisco non-stop, in unprecedented request which was wisely rejected by the Pentagon. And under Pelosi’s leadership, the House ethics process remains essentially shut down – which protects members in both parties from accountability.

8. Rep. John Conyers (D-MI): Conyers reportedly repeatedly violated the law and House ethics rules, forcing his staff to serve as his personal servants, babysitters, valets and campaign workers while on the government payroll. While the House Ethics Committee investigated these allegations in 2006, and substantiated a number of the accusations against Conyers, the committee blamed the staff and required additional administrative record-keeping and employee training. Judicial Watch obtained documentation in 2007 from a former Conyers staffer that sheds new light on the activities and conduct on the part of the Michigan congressman, which appear to be at a minimum inappropriate and likely unlawful. Judicial Watch called on the Attorney General in 2007 to investigate the matter.

9. Senator Harry Reid (D-NV): Over the last few years, Reid has been embroiled in a series of scandals that cast serious doubt on his credibility as a self-professed champion of government ethics, and 2007 was no different. According to The Los Angeles Times, over the last four years, Reid has used his influence in Washington to help a developer, Havey Whittemore, clear obstacles for a profitable real estate deal. As the project advanced, the Times reported, “Reid received tens of thousands of dollars in campaign contributions from Whittemore.” Whittemore also hired one of Reid’s sons (Leif) as his personal lawyer and then promptly handed the junior Reid the responsibility of negotiating the real estate deal with federal officials. Leif Reid even called his father’s office to talk about how to obtain the proper EPA permits, a clear conflict of interest.

10. Senator Larry Craig (R-ID): In one of the most shocking scandals of 2007, Senator Craig was caught by police attempting to solicit sex in a Minneapolis International Airport men’s bathroom during the summer. Senator Craig reportedly “sent signals” to a police officer in an adjacent stall that he wanted to engage in sexual activity. When the police officer showed Craig his police identification under the bathroom stall divider and pointed toward the exit, the senator reportedly exclaimed 'No!'” When asked to produce identification, Craig presented police his U.S. Senate business card and said, “What do you think of that?” The power play didn’t work. Craig was arrested, charged and entered a guilty plea. Despite enormous pressure from his Republican colleagues to resign from the Senate, Craig refused.

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The American Caligula

Is Hillary Buckling?

by Michael Carmichael

The latest polls from Iowa indicate that frontrunners in both parties, Senator Hillary Clinton and former Governor Mitt Romney, are losing momentum in the closing stages of this key primary. The backstory is fascinating.

Eighteen months ago, US pollster Stanley Greenberg visited London to counsel his deeply troubled client and now former Prime Minister, Tony Blair. Greenberg would leave London to fly to Tel Aviv there to counsel with another client, the Labour Party of Israel. Both Blair and Labour were in dire straits. Both had followed Greenberg’s peculiar advice for years. Both would suffer political humiliation in the months after Greenberg’s mission.

While he was in London, Greenberg addressed a group of Democrats Abroad. As a long-standing advisor and supporter of Hillary Clinton, Greenberg assured the Dems Abroad that she would be a seriously formidable presidential candidate in 2008. “Her numbers will be high,” Greenberg assured the skeptical audience when he was asked about her potential vulnerability.

Greenberg is one of the primary architects of the Democratic Leadership Council (DLC), an organization that claims credit for both of the winning elections of Wiliam Jefferson Clinton to the White House but deserves credit for neither. The DLC champions a peculiar brand of stealth politics – center-right policies and center-right messaging for center-left parties.

While the methods of Greenberg and his business partners have been successful financially - one of his partnerships reported gross sales of sixty million pounds sterling (circa $120 million in today’s dollars) in calendar year 2000 alone - several of his most prominent political clients have suffered defeats at the polls. The American Democratic Party is merely one. The Labour Party of Israel is another. James Carville is one of Greenberg’s associates. Since 1992, Carville has very rarely been involved in US political campaigns as a principal advisor to a candidate. He has, however, pursued a marvelously successful international practice that has followed the story arc of the DLC – counseling center-left parties to message as if they were center-right. The result has been to eviscerate the center-left political thrust in many of the world’s nations.

Today, both men, Greenberg and Carville, have been in the wings of the US presidential election as supporters – if not direct counselors – to Senator Hillary Clinton who has run a textbook DLC campaign – center-right messaging to gain the nomination of her center-left party.

In polls that coursed through the professional community of political consultants in Washington last week, it now appears that Senator Clinton’s presidential candidacy may be buckling under the weight of the burden of messaging against her base.

In September I was approached by a close associate of Senator Clinton. When asked what I thought of her chances, I stated my opinion that her foreign policy was flawed. Then I heard what has become a mantra for her DLC supporters, “She has to get elected.” When I pointed out that she might well not get elected due precisely to her unpopular foreign policy that has supported the war in Iraq since its inception and promises to support a war against Iran, I heard yet another mantra, “She only has to win one more state than Kerry.”

With that sort of thinking, there is little wonder why Hillary’s numbers are now beginning to buckle in a crucial state: Iowa. Both Iowa and New Hampshire are gatekeepers, as well as South Carolina. While it is conceivable that Hillary could lose both Iowa and New Hampshire yet soldier on to win the nomination in the South like Mondale did to defeat Hart in 1984, times have changed. Let us not forget what fate ultimately befell Mondale’s campaign in the fall election – he lost miserably and took down hundreds of Democrats with him.

There is no doubt that Senator Clinton’s top campaign staff believe they are now out of control of their presidential campaign which has assumed a new and unwanted dynamic. Now some of Senator Clinton’s top staff believe that they are in a dangerous and potentially lethal tailspin. The ominous symptoms of panic in Hillaryland hit the front pages only last week as her staff lashed out at her primary opponent: Senator Barack Obama.

At the end of the week, they had accused Obama with being a closet Muslim injecting the dangerous toxin of Islamophobia into the Democratic presidential campaign. This is an egregious development, for the majority of the American Muslim population will vote Democratic in next year’s presidential election – as long as the Democrat does not attempt to demonize them or their religious traditions.

The next day, questions were raised in the US media about the propriety and legality of some of the contributions of Senator Obama’s political action committee.

Both of these smears had the fingerprints of Senator Hillary Clinton’s staff all over them. From highly placed sources in Washington, Planetary received reports that the attacks centering on Obama were being orchestrated by Clinton’s increasingly desperate black operations unit.

On Sunday’s edition of Face the Nation, one of Senator Clinton’s chief lieutenants, Howard Wolfson, openly attacked Senator Obama. There is precisely one and only one reason for these public and covert attacks – her campaign’s internal polls now indicate she is losing ground to Senator Obama in the crucial state of Iowa – and, perhaps, elsewhere as well.

Last week, the Clinton campaign made the conscious decision to go ‘negative.’ In this particular case, this is a last ditch attempt to hold her faltering candidacy together. If their desperate measure is not successful, Senator Hillary Clinton’s bold attempt to become the first woman president of the United States of America will collapse.

SOURCES

Losing Ground In Iowa, Clinton Assails Obama

Unfriendly Skies for Clinton in Iowa

The American Caligula

The Truth Seeker (UK)

President Clinton left in his wake a trail of allegations that, if true, would rank him alongside some of history’s most notorious criminals. He has been implicated in cocaine use by none other than his younger brother Roger Clinton, himself a convicted drug trafficker. In an Arkansas State Police surveillance audio tape, obtained by freelance journalist Scott Wheeler, Roger Clinton can be heard describing how he smuggled large amounts of cocaine through airports. Most significant were his comments about the then Arkansas State Governor, “Got to get some for my brother; he’s got a nose like a vacuum cleaner.”

This is not just groundless speculation. In 1990 Sharlene Wilson, an informant for the Seventh Judicial drug task force in Arkansas, testified under oath that she had supplied Governor Bill Clinton with cocaine. Shortly thereafter the drug task force was closed down and Wilson herself was charged with drug violations. In 1992 she was sentenced to 31 years for selling half an ounce of marijuana and $100 worth of methamphetamine.

Clinton’s misdemeanors amount to more than drug use though, much more. One of the first things Clinton did on assuming the presidency was to appoint Patsy Thomasson - a top lieutenant of convicted drug dealer Dan Lasater - as White House chief of personnel. Clinton then installed his friend Webster Hubbel as “shadow” Attorney General, until Hubbel was jailed for fraud. Prior to his becoming assistant Attorney General he had been over billing clients at the Rose Law firm, in Little Rock Arkansas, where he had been a partner with Hillary Clinton.

Then we have the “suicide” of Vincent Foster, who had been deeply disturbed by events at Waco and had been in the process of preparing a potentially damming report. So Clinton had good reason to want him out of the way and as many suspect his death was not a suicide; eyewitness accounts by police and ambulance crew members who recovered Foster’s body and official autopsy findings are distinctly at odds. One of the reasons that Clinton has been able to get away with so much is the compliance of the mainstream media.

As one of the few journalist’s who has covered Clinton’s time in office with any honesty and insight, Ambrose Pritchard-Evans noted:

“The Washington press corps has chosen not to report this sort of thing, of course, because it always gives more weight to the utterings of an “official” source, with a title, than it does to the testimony of a common citizen.”

As a result Clinton has been allowed to get away with murder, almost literally. Yet he is guilty of far more. He has been implicated in rape, sexual assault, mass murder (Waco), War crimes in Iraq and the former Yugoslavia. Indeed it is no exaggeration to say that history may well place Bill Clinton alongside the likes of Nero and Caligula.

Here then is a list of people who have been connected in some way with Bill Clinton and who have died in rather suspicious circumstances:

1) Susan Coleman: said to have had an affair with Clinton before he became President. Told friends she was expecting his child and was 7 months pregnant when she found dead with a gunshot wound to the head. Verdict, suicide.

2) Larry Guerrin: killed while investigating the INSLAW case. In brief this involved the US Justice Department using stolen software, modifying it for intelligence purposes and then selling it to foreign governments and making millions in the process.

3) Kevin Ives and Don Henry: two 16 year old boys who may have stumbled across drug running operations involving Clinton at Mena airfield in Arkansas in 1987.Initial reports, by State Medical Examiner Fahmy Malak, suggested that the boys had fallen asleep on the railway line and been crushed. However when the parents kicked up a fuss another forensic report showed Kevin’s skull had been crushed prior to being placed on the track whilst Don had been stabbed in the back.

4) Keith Coney: said he had information on Ives and Henry deaths. Died in a high-speed motorcycle crash in 1989, said to have involved a car chase.

5) Keith McKaskle: said to have information on the Ives and Henry deaths. Stabbed to death in November 1988.

6) Gregory Collins: once again said to have information on the Ives and Henry deaths and once again killed, this time by a gunshot wound to the face.

7) Jeff Rhodes: was also said to have information on the deaths of Ives and Henry. He was found on a waste heap in April 1989 with a gunshot wound to the head.

8) James Milam: also had information on the Ives and Henry deaths but before he could talk too widely he was found decapitated. Once again the State Medical Examiner, Fahmy Malak, ruled the death due to natural causes.

9) Richard Winters: a suspect in the Ives and Henry case had offered to cooperate and give evidence. However he died in a ‘robbery’, which was subsequently proved to have been a set-up.

10) Jordan Kettleson: was also said to have information on the Ives and Henry deaths. He was found shot dead in his pick-up in June 1990.

11) Danny Casalaro: a journalist investigating Mena airstrip, the Arkansas coke trade and INSLAW. Had warned his family that he had learnt too much and not to believe it was suicide if he turned up dead. Shortly thereafter he was found in a bathtub in the Sheraton Hotel in Martinsburg, West Virginia. Both his wrists had been slashed, one ten times, all his research material was missing and has never been recovered

12) Victor Raiser: the National Co-Chair for the “Clinton for President” campaign, died in an airplane crash in July, 1992.

13) R Montgomery Raiser: also worked on the Clinton campaign and died in the same crash.

14) Ian Spiro: said to have supporting documentation for grand jury proceedings in the INSLAW case. His wife and three children were found murdered in their home in November 1992.All had gunshot wounds to the head. Ian’s body later was found in a car in the Borrego Desert. FBI reports concluded that he had shot his family and then committed suicide by taking cyanide.

15) Paula Grober: Clinton’s speech interpreter for the deaf. Killed in car smash with no other cars involved and no witnesses. She is said to have been very attractive and traveled extensively with Clinton prior to her death in December 1992. All the above died prior to Clinton’s inauguration in January 1993.In its aftermath the deaths not only continued but became even more numerous.

16) Steve Willis, Robert Williams, Todd McKeahan and Conway LeBleu: were the only four BAFT men killed at Waco.In an autopsy performed by a “private Doctor” all four were found to have near identical “execution style” head wounds. All four had previously been bodyguards for Clinton prior to their deaths in April 1993.

17) Sgt. Brian Haney, Sgt.Tim Sabel, Maj. William Barkley and Capt. Scott Reynolds: Once again all four men had been bodyguards for Clinton prior to their deaths in a helicopter crash near Quantico, Va. Reporters were barred from the scene whilst firefighters responding to the crash had their video tapes seized and a fire cheif described a scene where, “security was tight” with “lots of marines with guns.”

18) Paul Wilcher: was found dead shortly after presenting Attorney General Janet Reno with a report on Waco, death ruled to “unknown causes.”

19) White House deputy counsel Vincent Foster was said to have been preparing a potentially damming report on Waco at the time of his death. As reported in the previous issue he had been deeply disturbed by events at Waco and his death, in July 1993, was officially labeled a “suicide.”.

20) Stanley Heard and Steven Dickson: were members of Clinton’s Health Advisory Committee. Both died in an air crash in September 1993.

21) Jerry Luther Parks: Chief of Security at Clinton’s national campaign headquarters in Little Rock. He was shot through the rear window of his car, the killer then went to the driver’s side of Park’s car and pumped three more 9mm bullets into him. His family reported that shortly before his death their home had been broken into, despite a top line security system. Park’s had been preparing a dossier on Clinton’s activities, the dossier was stolen.

22) Ed Willey: a Clinton fundraiser, was found shot dead in November 1993. Once again the death was ruled suicide. His wife Kathleen, who was working as a White House volunteer at the time, claimed that Clinton sexually assaulted her when she had approached him, distraught over the loss of her husband.

Indeed allegations of sexual assault and even rape go back a long way with Clinton.As far back as 1969 in fact when Clinton was still a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford University. A retired State Department employee said he believed a young English woman who claimed she had been raped by Clinton.

“There was no doubt in my mind that this young woman had suffered severe emotional trauma,” he said. “But we were under tremendous pressure to aviod the embarrassment of having a Rhodes Scholar charged with rape. I filed a report with my superiors and that was the last I heard of it.”

She is not the only woman who has accused Clinton of rape. Early in 1999 Juanita Broaddrick, an Arkansas woman who worked on Clinton’s campaign when he was attorney general in 1978, told NBC that he had raped her. Claiming pressure from the White House NBC shelved the report.

Then we have the case of Elizabeth Ward, a former Miss Arkansas who claimed that Clinton had forced himself on her shortly after she won the State crown. In 1999 she told an interviewer that she did have sex with him but that it was consensual; she later recanted saying that she had been threatened by Clinton supporters into claiming the sex was consensual. And still the killings go on...

23) Dr Roland Rogers: a Dentist from Arkansas. Died on his way to the Sunday Telegraph in London to reveal “sensitive” information about Clinton in March 1994

24) Kathy Furguson: a 38-year-old hospital worker whose ex-husband was a co-defendant in the Paula Jones case. She died in May 1994, from a gunshot wound to the head, ruled suicide; curiously next to the body were several packed suitcases, as if she was getting ready to go somewhere.

25) Bill Shelton: was Kathy’s boyfriend and an Arkansas police officer. He was found on her grave the following month with a gunshot wound to the back of the head. Judged to be “suicide”.

26) Alan G Whither: oversaw Clinton’s Secret Service detail. He was transferred to a field office in Oklahoma City in October 1994.Whatever warning was given to the other BAFT agents in the building (none of whom came to work that day) failed to reach him, he died on April 19 1995 in the infamous Oklahoma City bomb blast. Incidentally the families of the victims of the blast are now preparing to sue the U.S. Government, saying it had prior knowledge of the bombing.

27) Ron Brown: Commerce Secretary died along with 35 other people on April 3,1996, in an air crash involving Airforce 2. At the time of his death Brown was being investigated and had spoken publicly of his willingness to cut a deal with prosecuters. According to one report he allegedly told Clinton, “he was not going down alone.” However his death brought that possibility to an abrupt end. A pathologist close to the investigation reported that there was a hole in the back of Brown’s head that resembled a gunshot wound. And we are not counting the other 35 people who died in the same crash.

28) Shelly Kelly: an Air Force stewardess was onboard the same flight, at the back of the plane, and suffered only minor cuts and bruises in the crash. Indeed she was able to board a rescue helicopter without assistance. She died later died in hospital, supposedly from a loss of blood. According to journalist Joe L Jordan, an autopsy revealed a three inch cut over her main femoral artery which was sustained over three hours after all her other cuts and bruises. Thereafter Clinton ordered the bodies of all the victims cremated.

29) Barbara Wise: a Commerce Department employee. She was found dead in her locked office, partially nude and covered in bruises, following a long weekend. Officially she is said to have died of natural causes.

30) Christine M Mirzayan: Clinton intern killed on August 1 1998. In the publicity prior to the Paula Jones law suit Newsweek revealed that “a former White House staffer” with the initial “M” was about to go public with a story about sexual harassment at the White House. Thereafter Christine was found beaten to death with a heavy object near Georgetown University, Washington.

31) Mary Mahoon: was another former White House intern who was about to go public with a story of sexual harassment at the White House. Before she could though some unknown characters entered a Washington Starbuck’s, where she was working, and shot her dead. Her two assistants’, Aaron Goodrich, 18 and Emory Evans were taken to a room along with Mary and pumped full of bullets. Mary was shot in the chest, face and back of the head, probably with silencers as nobody in the densely populated area heard anything. Even though the killers left $4000 in the cashbox untouched, the police categorized the killings as a robbery whilst acknowledging its “execution style”.

Four members of Delta Force have recently died in training “accidents”. They were Lt Col Anthony A. Boyles, and Sgt Eric Ellingson killed in river “training accidents.” Master Sgt Gaetano Cutino, killed while “exiting” from a helicopter. And Sgt Jamey Dimase killed while participating in marksmanship training. These were the men who had actually gone into the Branch Davidian compound at Waco and carried out the killings of 86 men, women and children. These men were hardened professional killers, yet even they had been disturbed by what they had been ordered to do and actually done. So much so that given immunity from prosecution they had been prepared to come forward and testify.

Although Paul Wilcher does not name them in his report these were the very individuals whose testimony could have demolished Clinton’s Presidency. The Wilcher Report was buried along with Paul Wilcher and for a while things went on as before, in other words the killings went on and on. Then in 1999 the Wilcher Report resurfaced, when Attorney General Janet Reno was told she expressed “total anger”. According to unnamed eyewitnesses quoted in the Drudge Report: “Her face was flushed, she was clearly shaken.” In the following months the four Delta Force men all died in “training accidents”: to quote Paul Wilcher, “to silence their testimony forever.”

Gennifer Flowers was a bit smarter. She had a 12 year affair with Clinton, in its aftermath her apartment was broken into and ransacked and she and her mother received threatening phone calls. Realising that she was in danger she assumed a higher profile, launched legal proceedings against Clinton and embarked on a series of media appearances. Smart girl, it was probably this that saved her life, had she not done so she too would have been on this list.

Finally it should be noted that this is only a partial list, for a more comprehensive picture we would refer you to some of the sources listed below.



Sources include:
www.genniferflowers.com
Daniel Harris and Teresa Hampton,Capitol Hill Blue
Ambrose Pritchard-Evans writing in The Telegraph and the Sunday Telegraph.
The Drudge Report
www.Sudden Instant death Syndrome