I’m offering a chance to surmise and speculate as to what some of SC Fitzgerald’s
‘loose ends’ might be that were in need of tying. Go out on a limb with any wild
guesses or play it safe with an indictment or two. Here are some of mine… I’m
leading off with a handfull of good picks at once. Conrad Black and his cohort, the
infamous Prince of Darkness Richard Perle. They came to the surface in a
tangential investigation of the Hollinger Empire where large sums of money were
unaccounted for. Black is currently buying time from Fitzgerald for something but
there is a deadline of sorts.
The Toronto-based paper, created by Black in his heyday as a newspaper mogul,
reported that Black has indicated he is willing to extend the statute of limitation
on those alleged crimes to "prevent the law enforcement agency from rushing to
judgment." It is widely expected that the U.S. Attorney's Office in Illinois will
seek criminal charges against former Hollinger Chairman and CEO Black, perhaps as
early as the end of this month.
Report: Conrad Black Talking To U.S. to Stave Off Criminal Charges "In a letter
to Patrick Fitzgerald, the U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Illinois two
weeks ago, Lord Black offered to waive the looming statute of limitations attached
to some of the transactions under scrutiny by the Justice Department and the grand
jury," reported Theresa Tedesco and Jonathan Ratner of the Financial Post, the
business section of the National Post. (Black was named to a British peerage
several years ago and has the title Lord Black of Crossharbour.)
Perle and Black have long strong ties to the neoconservative ideology. Perle was in the administration until he stepped down from the position due to a long standing conflict of interest with Global Crossing. These guys are more powerful out of the spotlight of government so a position in the private sector is more dangerous.
In his day job as US Attorney in Chicago, Fitzgerald is also looking into
Perle's activities on the board of Hollinger International, one of the country's
largest media empires. His investigation focuses on how exactly big NeoCon chiseler
Lord Conrad Black allegedly looted the company of some $540 million. According to
shareholders who are desperately trying to get their money back, Perle both enabled
Black's generosity to himself and was also one of the beneficiaries of Black's
largesse. As part of the SEC investigation Perle had received a Wells notice, "a
formal warning that the agency's enforcement staff has determined that evidence of
wrongdoing is sufficient to bring a civil lawsuit." Then recently, in his dogged
climb to the top of the crap heap upon which Black himself is perched, Fitzgerald
managed to flip Chicago Sun-Times publisher David Radler, who has agreed to serve
29 months and turn state's evidence. Anyway, as part of Radler's deal, he'll be
cooperating with the SEC's case that already has Perle in the crosshairs and which
Fitzgerald asked to intervene in this last March. And to make matters worse,
Hollinger's board just censured Perle in an internal company report, and they are
reportedly suing him. Fellow board member Henry Kissinger and others settled a $50
million lawsuit with Hollinger shareholders in May, which also delightfully teases
that there may criminal charges waiting for that old warmonger, too. But it is
Perle who really has his neck in the noose. Fitzgerald's investigation has already
inflicted a severe case of dyspepsia to the BushCo. aparatus who have definitely
been off their game since Matt Cooper testified last summer, and it looks like he's
also having an effect on the international front since many of the bad guys are
running for cover.
Jane Hamsher: Patrick Fitzgerald and the NeoCons
…Fitzgerald offered to intervene last March…huh, how about that.
Fitzgerald would surely want to talk to Perle about,….well,…about a lot of things
but probably about that pesky war thing and his friends in INC and especially
Chalabi. It probably wasn’t a coincidence that all that money stopped flowing about
the same time Chalabi’s office in Iraq was raided.
the report, One possibility is that the disinformation dealers around Ahmad
Chalabi cooked up this memo and set it down on Allawi's desk. Chalabi's Iraqi
National Congress provided at lot of "information" to the Office of Special Plans
before the war, and has especially close ties to indicted liar "Scooter" Libby and
yet unindicted liar Richard Perle. (The latter, while head of the Defense Policy
Board in September 2002, told the Italian newspaper Il Sole 24 Ore that "Mohammed
Atta met Saddam Hussein in Baghdad prior to September 11. We have proof of that,
and we are sure he wasn't just there for a holiday. The meeting is one of the
motives of an American attack on Iraq.") Both Libby and Perle marched to
Condoleezza Rice's office in May 2004 to protest U.S. forces' raid on Chalabi's
home after it was discovered that he had passed along U.S. secrets to Iran. He no
doubt retains strong ties to fellow-liars in Washington.
------------------- Revisiting the Dream
Memo My chronology-in-progress, which I'll post when done, plainly indicates
that the infamous 16 words in President Bush's January 2003 State of the Union
speech, and similar statements by Rice and Powell earlier that month, were caused
by many months of discussion between U.S., British and Italian officials about
alleged efforts by Iraq to obtain yellowcake from Niger; months of activity by
Michael Ledeen in concert with Italian friends culminating with his input into the
Office of Special Plans; months of Judith Miller's reporting on Iraq's supposed
nuclear program; and months of disputation between neocon proponents of the uranium
story (backed up conveniently by British intelligence) and CIA skeptics. The
evidence on which the statement rested was debunked by the IAEA even before the
attack on Iraq began, but the administration and its supporters continued to argue
that there was intelligence aside from the discredited documents linking Iraq to
Niger uranium. One little item left out of all the timelines I've seen is an
article by Con Coughlin in the December 14, 2003 issue of the British newspaper,
the Daily Telegraph.
And you know that the newspaper
itself is on your side. Didn't a Telegraph journalist, David Blair, find those
documents in Baghdad's burned out Foreign Ministry office implicating antiwar
politician George Galloway in the Oil-for-Food scandal? (Embarrassingly, the
documents that turned out to be forged, and Galloway won his libel suit, and got
over a million pounds in damages.) Isn't the Telegraph owned by Conrad Black, big
time Iraq War proponent and good buddy of neocon Richard Perle? And doesn't Perle
sit on the board of directors of Hollinger International, which owns the Telegraph
and the pro-Likud Jerusalem Post? Imagine you're a neocon in December 2003, wincing
at former US Ambassador Joseph Wilson's Niger exposé and thinking, "We need
more evidence for that Niger connection." What do you do? Maybe you get on the
phone to your buddies in Baghdad and ask if they can find some documents. Tell them
to pass them along to some Judith Miller-like friendly journalist working for a
friendly mainstream publication, and then hope the story, as O'Reilly would put it,
"gains traction." I'll just bet you that's exactly what happened, although the
neocons were disappointed at the lack of traction. Their footing was becoming
unsure. Their stumbling and reckless overreaching has resulted in the Fitzgerald
investigation as well as the Larry Franklin bust, with more scandals ahead.
So, that might be a good start but a 2 year investigation with so many attractive
targets would have to include a few more. Timing is everything. The timing of
Ashcroft’s recusal and the time in which he didn’t. After witnessing Fitzgerald’s
opinion of obstruction, I’d say he might look pretty close at this, maybe not. The
Left Coaster explains this head start
First, the media finally caught up to the fact that thanks to Alberto Gonzales, the
White House staff had anywhere from a 12-hour to four-day lead-time to destroy
documents before White House staff was told to preserve all documentation related
to the Plame matter. Gonzales himself admitted on Face the Nation Sunday
in an unsteady performance that he received word of the incoming Department of
Justice inquiry late one night at about 8:00 PM. But the only person Gonzales told
about this was Andy Card, and he didn’t tell anyone else formally to preserve
documents until the next morning. At the time, Gonzales was White House Counsel,
and we are talking about the same Andy Card
who himself read the State Department memo containing secret information about
Plame’s identity. So at the very least Andy Card had all night to clean his
files. And who told Gonzales it was OK to wait until morning to formally tell the
staff to preserve evidence and not shred documents? The same Attorney General who
was a close
political friend of Karl Rove for years, who at that time still had control of
the case himself before he recused himself on New
Year?s Eve months after both he and
Gonzales had direct control of whatever evidence made its way to a special
counsel.
But the most interesting loose ends are another entanglement he might want to tidy
up. The various bits of testimony lead into other overlapping territories. Several
years passed without any appreciable leads in the contract style killing of Gus
Boulis in Florida. He was shot to death at a stoplight in traffic when a few cars
pulled up beside him. He was the former owner of a day-cruise gambling ship that had
been pressured unduly by some legal/political forces to persuade him to sell. The
guys that bought it convinced the financial institution to lend the money on the
balance of what they could come up with. They had kept Boulis as a partial owner and
wired their share to cover a down payment. Trouble is, they didn’t send money. Boulis
was rightfully upset with this and several arguments ensued until that damn
stoplight. The guys who bought the Suncruz ran it into bankruptcy in no time.
They had recently surfaced in another investigation for the initial wire fraud and it
quickly flipped into arrests of others for the murder. Jack Abramoff and his partner
Kidan are into way more than I can list here but the Suncruz had to be mentioned.
That’s the ship/boat where Mohammed Atta was reported as being seen as late as Sept
5-6 2001. Here’s a few more of his adventures
He and the now Headless Hammer Tom DeLay are also being investigated for trips
to the Pacific Marianas Islands, ostensibly for the purpose of visiting Abramoff's
"sweatshop patrons." Abramoff is now under indictment, along with henchman Adam
Kidan, for the SunCruz gambling cruise scandal, with a gangland-style murder
attached offering a vivid example of the GOPMOB making someone an offer they
couldn't refuse and then whacking them before they could squeal. Abramoff is also
the target of the indictment of David Safavian, and the reason as well for the
newest scandal, which leads directly to George W. Bush, the obstruction of justice
of a federal probe in Guam. That's five scandals. The sixth scandal involving
Abramoff, we can exclusively report, is...9. ABRAMOFF LINKED TO WHITE HOUSE SPY
SCANDAL. Through his representation in Washington of members of the political
faction on the receiving end of purloined classified data, Casino Jack' Abramoff is
linked to the White House Spy scandal involving former Marine Leandro Aragoncillo,
The MadCowMorningNews has learned. This began to become clear several months ago in
a move which received little attention at the time, when the federal grand jury
investigating Abramoff subpoenaed Imelda Marcos, the former first lady of the
Philippines. Observers had puzzled over what she could possibly have to do with
Abramoff. Republican "fund-raiser" Adam Kidan was a partner and general counsel for
a hotel in the Caribbean owned by a member of the Sicilian Mafia, a man recently
taken into custody in Italy as part of a major investigation into international
arms trafficking. Odd, the secretive Naples, FL financier who owned the Venice FL
flight school attended by terrorist ringleader Mohamed Atta was also engaged in an
"opening to Cuba" at the same time the Miami Herald says the Sicilian Mafia was
seeking to re-enter Cuba, passing out Presidential Rolexes SunCruz was in the
"final stages" of bringing casino ships to berths in Hong Kong and to the former
Portuguese colony of Macao, and that SunCruz officials had visited Guam, where they
also intended to start a floating casino, the paper reported. "The Northern
Marianas can be a casino hub in the Pacific region, especially with its proximity
to Asia, where millions play cards and machines." http:
The link above has the full article of what a fraction is listed here. It’s well
worth the time to read it. I had to jump ahead to this next part for clarity
When NBC's Dateline did a story recently about sources of terrorist funding
right here in the U.S., they announced "the emerging threat of a new alliance
between al Qaeda and common criminals." It was hardly time to stop the presses.
"Some of the same names in the Abramoff scandal also surface in connection with
Mohamed Atta's," we reported, in a June 21, 2005 story headlined "THE SECRET WORLD
OF 9.11." "There remains a strong suspicion that Atta's terrorist
cadre--supposedly unknown and friendless and burrowing into the
woodwork--was able to call on the assistance, when necessary, of a friendly
global network. Could it be that this network is the same one being probed so
gingerly today by investigators looking into Jack Abramoff? Far from being a rogue
lobbyist who went just a few tens of millions of dollars too far, Jack Abramoff is
an operative for an organization which has sold Americans a bill of goods as
justification in at least three recent wars. There are an amazing number of people
described as 'financial whizzes' and 'boy wonders of business' involved in the
story of Jack Abramoff.
So that’s some serious speculation now, isn’t it? The linked article has plenty of
detail of the history of these connected conflicts and our manipulated ways into
them. I was wanting to focus on the Atta connection in the Suncruz area and another
coincidental connection….or two.
Although the outlines of the tale have become part of South Florida lore, what has
not been disclosed are the full details of the alleged fraud at the heart of the
transaction and the extent of Abramoff's role -- including his use of contacts with
Republican Reps. Tom DeLay (Tex.) and Robert W. Ney (Ohio) and members of their
staffs as he worked to land the deal. --------------- To sell his business, Boulis
turned to his lawyers in the D.C. office of Preston Gates Ellis & Rouvelas
Meeds LLP. Art Dimopoulos, a maritime lawyer, looked for buyers. Jack Abramoff, one
of Dimopoulos's partners at Preston Gates, said he could find one.
------------------
…and the combination of a few rolled into one by the hard work of the anthraxinvestigation.com and
other information from thewebfairy.com.
The following references should be considered in multiple perspectives. Either the account is true as it’s reported or it could be a few were stories planted as part of the propaganda and spin.
October 17, 2005 – According to the Court Docket for the Hatfill v Ashcroft
lawsuit, on Friday, Dr. Hatfill’s lawyers filed a opposition motion in response to
a motion filed on September 30, 2005, by the government’s lawyers to get a “more
definite statement regarding the factual basis for the remaining due process claim,
the nature of the equitable relief he seeks on that theory, and the identity of the
parties against whom or which he seeks relief.” Whatever they’re trying to
accomplish with this legalese, it’s clear in the motion filed on Friday that we’re
going to see some important changes to the lawsuit. And we may learn some new
facts. The new motion says: Dr. Hatfill hearby notifies the court that recent
discovery has revealed the names of additional defendants whom Dr. Hatfill must
name by November 5, 2005. See Scheduling Order (Jun. 6, 2005). Explaining the part
these new defendants played in the scheme to smear Dr. Hatfill and his firing from
Louisiana State University will necessarily require the inclusion of additional
factual details in the Complaint, also drawn from discovery.
http://www.anthraxinvestigation.com/In 2003, the
South Florida Sun-Sentinel reports, Maureen Stevens, the widow of the first victim,
filed a wrongful-death suit that “could embarrass the U.S. government and provide
insight into the ongoing investigation of the fall 2001 bioterrorism attacks.” The
“embarrassing” lawsuit held that spores “were known to be missing from an Army
laboratory at Fort Detrick, Md., as early as 1992,” and that the litigants “accuse
the government of failing to adequately secure them. The bottom line is that a lot
of our [FOIA] requests were not acknowledged or were not answered or responded
to.'”11 Maureen Stevens’ lawsuit was filed in Palm Beach County Circuit Court. It
named Ft. Detrick-USAMRIID, Battelle Memorial Institute and other possible sources
of the anthrax – and BioPort Corp., of Lansing, Mich., a vaccine manufacturer. The
name BioPort is synonymous with mismanagement and contaminated product.
—————————–Adnan Khashoggi Linked to
911 Terrorists May 14, 2000: An inquiry is launched into the behavior of
Bayer in an English trial of the anti-anthrax drug Cipro. The drug is tested on
hundreds despite the company having conducted studies which showed its drug reacted
badly with other drugs, seriously impairing its ability to kill bacteria. These
results are kept secret. Nearly half of those operated on at one test center
develop a variety of potentially life-threatening infections, data at other test
centers is unknown.[Sunday Times, 5/14/00]
October 10-11, 2001: The FBI allows
the original batch of the Ames strain of anthrax to be destroyed, making tracing
the anthrax type more difficult. Suspicions that the anthrax used in the letters
was the Ames strain are confirmed on October 17. [New York Times, 11/9/01, South
Florida Sun-Sentinel, 12/01] What possible excuse can the FBI have for allowing
this destruction, especially when the Ames strain was already suspected? October
14, 2001 (B): Investigators of the anthrax attacks believe Iraq is the prime
suspect. One CIA source says, “They aren’t making this stuff in caves in
Afghanistan. ‘This is prima facie evidence of the involvement of a state
intelligence agency. Maybe Iran has the capability. But it doesn’t look likely
politically. That leaves Iraq.” [Observer, 10/14/01] However, this theory lasts
only a few days. On October 20, the International Herald Tribune reports a new
theory: “A disgruntled employee of a domestic laboratory that uses anthrax carried
out the attacks.” It also states investigators “have tentatively concluded that
[the anthrax] is a domestic strain that bears no resemblance to strains that Russia
and Iraq have turned into biological weapons.” [International Herald Tribune,
10/20/01] However, in late 2002 with war against Iraq growing increasingly likely,
the Iraq theory appears to make a comeback (see October 28, 2002). October 15,
2001: Senator Daschle’s office opens the letter mailed October 9, containing a
lethal dose of anthrax. Senator Leahy’s similar letter is misrouted to Virginia onOctober 12, and isn’t discovered until November 17. [South Florida Sun-Sentinel,
12/8/01] October 15, 2001 (B): The BBC says “Bush has pointed the finger at Osama
bin Laden” for the anthrax attacks. Bush states, “There may be some possible link.
We have no hard data yet, but it’s clear that Mr. Bin Laden is an evil man.” [BBC,
10/16/01] October 16-17, 2001: 28 congressional staffers test positive for anthrax.
The Senate office buildings are shut down, followed by the House of
Representatives. [South Florida Sun-Sentinel, 12/8/01] October 18, 2001: Canada
overrides Bayer’s patent for Cipro and orders a million tablets of a generic
version from another company. The US says it is not considering a similar move.
Patent lawyers and politicians state that adjusting Bayer’s patent to allow other
companies to produce Cipro is perfectly legal and necessary. [New York Times,
10/19/01] The New York Times notes that the White House seems “so avidly to be
siding with the rights of drug companies to make profits rather than with consumers
worried about their access to the antibiotic Cipro,” and points out huge recent
contributions by Bayer to Republicans. [New York Times, 10/21/01]October 27, 2001 (B): The US
government no longer thinks bin Laden is behind the anthrax attacks: “Everything
seems to lean toward a domestic source… Nothing seems to fit with an overseas
terrorist type operation.” The Washington Post suggests neo-Nazi groups are behind
it. Not long after, the FBI releases a profile of the perpetrator of the anthrax
attacks. He is suspected of being a lone, male domestic terrorist, with a
scientific background and laboratory experience who could handle hazardous
materials. [
Washington Post, 10/27/01,
St. Petersburg Times, 11/10/01 On the same day, the London Times claims that
Atta was given a flask of anthrax by an Iraqi agent in April 2001, which then was
used in the US anthrax attacks. London
Times, 10/27/01>However, US and Czech officials eventually conclude the
meeting never even took place (see September 19, 2001-October 20,
2002).>November 12, 2001: The beginning of numerous
mysterious deaths of renowned microbiologists. A good place to start learning about
this is a Globe and Mail article, which calls these deaths a “tale only the best
conspiracy theorist could dream up” yet hard to explain
Globe and Mail, 5/4/02](The Memphis Flyer also provides a good overview,
but is much more speculative: [
Memphis Flyer, 3/7/02]). The first dead microbiologist is Dr. Benito Que,
52, was “an expert in infectious diseases and cellular biology at the Miami Medical
School. Police originally suspected that he had been beaten on November 12 in a
carjacking in the medical school’s parking lot. Strangely enough, though, his body
showed no signs of a beating. Doctors then began to suspect a stroke.”
Globe and Mail, 5/4/02Anthrax victim’s widow breaks four-year silence Saturday, November 05, 2005
WEST PALM BEACH — Four years after the FBI launched the largest investigation
in its history to unmask whoever sent anthrax-laced letters that killed five people
and sickened 17 others, the widow of the nation’s first anthrax-attack victim said
the federal government has kept her in the dark. Breaking her four-year silence,
Maureen Stevens said Friday that the agency has told her “pretty much nothing” and
that if the FBI does find out who killed her husband, tabloid photo editor Robert
Stevens, “I don’t know if they will tell me.” The FBI asked to meet with her next
week, although she did not know what would be discussed, Stevens said. It would be
her second meeting with FBI agents since her husband’s death. “I’m not expecting
too much from (the meeting),” she said. Thus far, no one has been charged in the
anthrax attacks. However, in August 2002, federal officials named scientist Steven
Hatfill as a person of interest.Hatfill sued the federal government, alleging
federal officials harassed and defamed him and later ruined his job prospects.
Maureen Stevens sued the federal government in December 2003, alleging that
security lapses at the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute for Infectious Diseases
in Fort Detrick, Md., ultimately brought her husband in contact with anthrax. Paul
Bresson, a spokesman for the U.S. Department of Justice, said he could not comment
on the lawsuit or Stevens’ allegation that government lawyers were preventing her
from proceeding with her lawsuit through a series of legal delays. “But the
investigation is very much ongoing,” Bresson said. “Certainly, we all wish it were
a solved case. There have been cases in the past that took time, such as the
Unabomber case, which lasted 17 years. We have to get it right when we go into a
courtroom and prosecute. The facts and the law have to be on our side.” Stevens’
lawsuit is now before the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals in Atlanta, where a new set
of judges will determine whether to dismiss it. In April, U.S. District Judge
Daniel T.K. Hurley refused to dismiss it.———————- Chicago
Tribune staff reporter
NewsMine.org – two suspects rented from anthrax victim.txt October 15,
2001 In a strange twist, the FBI said Sunday that the wife of the editor of the
tabloid newspaper where anthrax has been discovered rented apartments in Delray
Beach, Fla., to two men suspected of crashing a hijacked jetliner into the World
Trade Center on Sept. 11. FBI officials said the connection appeared to be a
coincidence, and that there was no evidence of a link between the anthrax at The
Sun’s offices in Boca Raton, Fla., and the terrorists. “We are not searching the
apartment at this time,” said FBI spokeswoman Judy Orihuela. “We are focusing on
[The Sun’s] building.” Orihuela said Gloria Irish, wife of Sun editor Michael
Irish, rented apartments over the summer to suspected hijackers Marwan Al-Shehhi
and Hamza Alghamdi. Both were aboard United Airlines Flight 175, the second jet to
strike the World Trade Center in New York. The Sun is owned by American Media Inc.,
the company that employed Robert Stevens, a photo editor who died this month from a
form of anthrax. Two other employees tested positive for anthrax and five others
are being retested after positive initial results.
This is just a few but there are plenty others to choose from. Feel free to add your
