Posted on 02/05/2004 11:43:08 PM PST by jmstein7
Well, how convenient it is to be a congressman. No wonder incumbents hate to leave. Sen. John Kerry proved the point last week with the release of his subcommittee's report on the BCCI scandal. The Bank of England fell down on the job, as did American bank regulators, according to the Massachusetts Democrat. The CIA is gravely at fault as well for maintaining covert accounts with the so-called Bank of Crooks and Criminals International. The Justice Department, instead of pursuing wrongdoing by the global bank, got in the way of other investigators. Price Waterhouse, the major accounting firm, was slipshod in adding up the bank's crooked books. President Bush, says the senator, might have even told a few fibs on the fringe of the scandal.
Even Congress is tainted: A former staff aide to Sen. Orrin Hatch is accused of carrying much water for the shady bank, which, among other things, illegally gained control of several U.S. banks, including First American. Just about everybody, it seems, gets some blame for the scandal. Everybody, that is, except Mr. Kerry. Now that's convenient.
There is good reason to ask Mr. Kerry some tough questions about his own involvement in the BCCI scandal - questions he has not yet answered satisfactorily. Mr. Kerry had started the investigation that led to BCCI long ago, when he decided to scrutinize drug money-laundering in Central America. That investigation was begun, according to congressional staffers involved in the probe, in the hope that some tie to George Bush, via the dealings of the CIA, could be found to implicate the president in the drug trade. Instead, as the inquiry progressed, it was Democratic icon Clark Clifford who was implicated.
Mr. Clifford, adviser to presidents and his party's eminence grise, is accused of having been the front man for BCCI when the bank stealthily and illegally bought First American through proxies. Jack Blum, at the time Mr. Kerry's chief investigator, learned of Mr. Clifford's BCCI connection way back in June 1988. Yet months later, in September 1988, Mr. Kerry and Mr. Blum met with Mr. Clifford, who at the time was serving not only as head of First American but as a lawyer for BCCI as well, to discuss some documents that the senator's subcommittee wanted from BCCI. At that meeting Mr. Clifford told Mr. Blum and Mr. Kerry that acquiring the documents wouldn't be necessary because BCCI was on the up and up.
Even though Mr. Blum and Mr. Kerry knew better, they did not confront Mr. Clifford with what they knew about First American. In fact, they let the matter drop. Why? According to Mr. Blum, because "It just didn't seem very important at the time."
It must not have seemed very important months later, either. In the early months of 1989, Mr. Kerry accepted $5,000 in campaign contributions from Mr. Clifford and his associates. The Clifford-BCCI scandal broke in the press some time later, but it was not Mr. Kerry who exposed Mr. Clifford. Indeed, it was not until after the Clifford scandal had ballooned and a few people started asking embarrassing questions about where Mr. Kerry was that the senator threw himself into the BCCI investigation in earnest. The 800-page report issued last week is the fruit of this most recent effort, and it does appear to have quieted those critics who originally wondered about Mr. Kerry's diligence. But the critics should not have been so easily silenced. The 800-page blamefest might be a bit more plausible and tolerable if the senator had devoted a few dozen pages to explain why he gave Mr. Clifford a pass in 1988 and 1989. Without that explanation - and one would hope it would be good - Mr. Kerry has a very substantial credibility problem as an investigator. At his next big BCCI news conference, someone might want to ask the impertinent and oh-so-inconvenient question, "Where was John?"
An insufferably arrogant old S.O.B.
For those of you who remember he was the one that publicly referred to Ronald Reagan as an "Amiable Dunce."
The day he had to testify in court about his slimey, unethical, triple dealing in the BCCI matter warmed my good old heart because to keep his wretched withered old behind out of jail he had to publicly declare himself an ignorant old fool with a weak heart who did not know what was going on and was beguiled by his partner Robert (sleazebag) Altman a.k.a. Wonder Woman's husband.
He was also Trustee of the Harriman Estate and stood by while the hosebag, Pamela Harriman looted the estate for her self. The Harriman children sued him, her, Warnke on this and fortunately Clifford died, and so did the Harriman hosebag.
"How art thou fallen from Heaven oh, Lucifer, son of the morning?"
Regards,
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