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How Mr Clean got his hands dirty By NEIL LYNDON Sunday Review Features: Pg. 01 SUNDAY TELEGRAPH(LONDON) November 1, 1998, Sunday Al Gore has so far managed to evade scandals engulfing the Clinton White House. But on the eve of next week's mid-term congressional elections, which will make or break Gore's own presidential chances, Neil Lyndon reveals the Vice President's lifelong alliance with one of this century's most corrupt fixers
AL GORE JUNIOR, the Mr Clean of American politics, is the President-in-Impatient-Waiting of the United States. Barring disaster or disgrace, he will be the Democratic candidate in 2000 and stands fair to win the election and occupy the Oval Office. If Bill Clinton resigns or is impeached, Al Gore could become the most powerful man in the world at any time over the next two years.
One who would have derived almost as much pleasure as Gore himself was Armand Hammer. Hammer, who died in 1990 aged 92, was one of the century's most sinister figures. Kremlin papers released after the collapse of the USSR and exhaustively researched by Ed Epstein in his book Dossier prove that, from the Bolshevik revolution of 1917 to the fall of the Berlin Wall, Hammer was a lifelong "agent of influence" of the Soviet Politburo and an accomplice of every Russian leader from Lenin to Gorbachev.
Throughout the whole of his life, Al Gore Snr and his family depended on pay-outs, kickbacks and subventions from Hammer. Like his father's before him, Al Gore Jnr's political career was lavishly sponsored by Hammer from the moment it began until Hammer died, only two years before Gore joined Clinton in the 1992 race for the White House.In the 1930s, to take one example, he was actively trading with Stalin, routing valuable goods through Germany to disguise their origin (a fact he denied to the end of his days). And in 1931, Hammer set up a banking operation in Paris specifically to provide foreign exchange funds, which were otherwise beyond reach, for Stalin's regime.
At the same time as he was serving the Russians, Hammer was also the Godfather of American corporate corruption. As Chairman of Occidental Petroleum Inc of Los Angeles - an industrial colossus with annual sales of $22 billion at the time of Hammer's death - Hammer bribed and suborned elected representatives at all levels of American life, from city assemblymen and mayors to presidents.
Hammer was one of the moneybags behind Richard Nixon's Watergate. He was also the boss of the company that owned the Piper Alpha North Sea platform, which erupted in 1988 with the deaths of 167 men and whose management and safety practices were excoriated in Lord Cullen's report for the British Government. If the crime of corporate homicide had existed then, Hammer might well have been charged. For chicanery, fraud, bribery, corruption, theft and self-promotion, Armand Hammer made Robert Maxwell look like a beginner.
Hammer owned Al Gore Snr. Hammer kept Gore, as he liked to say, "in my back-pocket". When he said this, Hammer would touch his wallet and chuckle.
Throughout the whole of his life, Al Gore Snr and his family depended on pay-outs, kickbacks and subventions from Hammer. Like his father's before him, Al Gore Jnr's political career was lavishly sponsored by Hammer from the moment it began until Hammer died, only two years before Gore joined Clinton in the 1992 race for the White House.
Federal Election Commission records show that Hammer, his wife, his corporations and junior members of his family all made contributions to Gore's campaigns up to the maximum amounts allowable by law. Some of these contributions came from Hammer's grandson Michael and his wife, Dru. (Her understanding of politics may be illustrated by the moment when she was riding through Washington in a car and asked "What is that thing?" of the Washington Monument. When the car turned onto Pennsylvania Avenue, she gasped and said, "I had no idea it was such a big house." She was looking at the Capitol.)
The profound and prolonged involvement between Hammer and Gore has never been revealed nor investigated. Only trifling snippets about Gore and Hammer have ever appeared, and those in minor American publications. The few people in the world who know about their close involvement have always been dryly amused by Gore's Mr Clean reputation, a reputation only recently called into question over allegations of Gore's illicit fund-raising activities in the Presidential election of 1996.
Gore's intimacy with Hammer was frequently visible to me throughout the Eighties when I worked on Hammer's personal staff and travelled constantly with him.
Hammer regularly met Al Gore Jnr for lunch or dinner on his visits to Washington. They would often eat together in the company of Occidental's Washington lobbyists and fixers who, on Hammer's behest, hosed tens of millions of dollars in bribes and favours into the political world. Al Gore and his wife, Tipper, attended Hammer's lavish parties and receptions in Washington: Hammer's 90th birthday party at the Watergate Hotel cost more than $10 million, including a promised fee - on which he welched - of $250,000 to the National Symphony Orchestra for their rendition of Happy Birthday to You.
Separately and together, the Gores sometimes used Hammer's luxurious private Boeing 727 for their own journeys and jaunts. Tipper once hitched a ride with us when Hammer was flying back to America from Europe. During the flight, Tipper Gore and I, seated on the sofas in the forward saloon, had a long conversation about the effect of media intrusion into the affairs of American politicians.
THE subject troubled her and made her large blue eyes widen with alarm. She frowned with concern as she explained that both she and her husband worried that the quality of American democracy was being damaged by sexual scandals, private peccadilloes, such as the one that had then recently eliminated Gary Hart as a Democratic candidate for the Presidency.
"Good people are being frightened away from representative politics," she said. "They ask themselves 'Why should I risk this kind of horrible experience?' After all, every single one of us has something to hide."
After we had finished talking, Tipper went through the plane to Hammer's panelled staterooms where she tried to nobble him for a contribution to the misbegotten campaign she was then running to clean up the lyrics of pop songs. This was droll. Hammer was not best qualified to supply moral guardianship to the young.
Although Hammer was then in his late eighties, he was still relentlessly priapic, running at least three mistresses at the time, in addition to his third wife, and scarcely able to pass a young woman without trying to seduce her. Meanwhile, the old man's interest in pop music was so scant he would not have known the name of Paul McCartney, still less that of Alice Cooper or the rappers Ice-T (two of Tipper's targets).
Between 1984-6, I ghosted Hammer's memoirs, Hammer, Witness to History, which became a best-seller, not least because Hammer himself bought lorry-loads of copies. From 1987-9, I worked for Hammer on a retainer of pounds 10,000 a month, nominally as a political and media consultant but actually as one of his retinue of travelling flunkeys.
I was directly instrumental in persuading him to fly to Aberdeen two days after the Piper Alpha disaster, when he masterfully pulled the wool over the eyes of the media and got some of the world's top reporters and feature writers to feel sorry for him. When I was working for Hammer at this time, the young Al Gore was a relatively junior Senator and, as a Democrat, he was in opposition to the Republican Government. His usefulness to Hammer was, therefore, limited and, on his Washington visits, the old man would concentrate more upon trying to cultivate fruitful relations with men such as Bob Dole, then a powerful figure in the Senate. Yet the kind of services Al junior provided were visible on the day of George Bush's inauguration as President in 1989.
After he had entered the Senate in the early 1980s, Al Gore Jnr would always swing his influence to provide Hammer with a conspicuous place at presidential inaugurations. He helped to ensure that Hammer was invited, almost alone among private citizens, into the inner circle of the Capitol when Ronald Reagan was inaugurated for the second time. For the Bush inauguration in 1989, however, Al Gore exceeded himself.
On the morning of the ceremony, Hammer and his entourage, including me, were among the few guests at the Gores' Washington apartment, where Al and Tipper personally served coffee and cookies. Tipper was effervescent and garrulous, while her husband was tense and guarded, his almond-shaped eyes darting sidelong glances. It looked as if he were in the grip of an unwanted compulsion, as if he didn't much care for us being there but had no choice.
After the party, Gore accompanied Hammer to his seat on the podium. Given Hammer's insatiable hunger for self-promotion, for showing himself off in the cockpits of world power, the place that Gore had reserved for his political godfather was a perfect gift of fealty.
"I had the best seat in the house," Hammer chortled afterwards. He was placed at the top of the platform, beside the steps and the double doors that led into the Capitol. When the ceremony was finished and the platform party mounted the steps, they formed a file to shake the hand of the little, ancient, myopic man who had risen with a grin to usher them in. The new President Bush shook Hammer's hand. The retiring President Reagan also shook his hand, followed by the new First Lady, the old First Lady, the new Vice President Quayle and his lady and the Chief Justice.
All the television networks carried the picture. CNN played the sequence every half-hour throughout the evening of election day. Millions of Americans and lonely travellers in hotel rooms around the world saw images that made it look as if Hammer had personally paid for the inauguration ceremony and everybody leaving the platform was thanking their host for the party. He was in raptures. All thanks to Al Jr.
WHY did Gore Jnr allow himself to be so closely embroiled in a compromising connection with such an unalloyed crook? He had little choice. He inherited from his father the mantle of being Hammer's principal boy in Washington. Gore's father effectively delivered his son into Armand Hammer's back-pocket.
Hammer enjoyed and exploited outright ownership of Al Snr's political career - as Congressman and later Senator of Tennessee - and even insinuated himself ineradicably into the Gores' family life. He sent the Gores an expensive piece of antique silver every Christmas.
Hammer's first ruse for hooking Al Snr was, in the early 1950s, to make him a partner in the cattle-breeding business that Hammer ran in New Jersey. As an officer of the company, Gore could be paid large sums without any provable political association; and the cattle business provided Gore with an income far greater than his political earnings, both in his early days as a Congressman and later as a Senator.
However, Hammer never gave anybody a bean without demanding a payback. In return for his cattle money, he required Gore to represent his interests in the political world. Gore obediently did his master's bidding. In the 1950s, Gore used his influence with J. Edgar Hoover to quash an FBI investigation and a hearing of the House UnAmerican Affairs' Committee into Hammer's dealings with the Soviet Union. Later, Gore defended Hammer on the floor of the Senate against allegations of bribery in obtaining Government contracts (allegations that later proved to be true).
It was Al Gore Snr who obtained US Government clearance for Hammer to visit the USSR in 1961, at a time when the Cold War was close to thermo-nuclear meltdown and US citizens were forbidden entrance to Moscow. This trip was Hammer's first return for 30 years to the country where he had made his first millions in the 1920s, initially through the running of an asbestos mine in the shafts of which bodies of the executed Imperial family had been dumped; and then, in Moscow, through the creation of the first pencil factory in the USSR.
Soon after Hammer's return from Moscow, where he met Khrushchev, it was Al Gore Snr who outlandishly proposed to President Kennedy that Hammer should act as an intermediary between America and Russia in the event of another emergency in Berlin.
In the 1960s, Al Snr took up a position of permanent residence in Hammer's wallet. As head of the powerful Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Gore used his influence on the US Ambassador in Libya to arrange a meeting between Hammer and King Idris. That meeting transformed the position of Occidental Petroleum, making it one of the biggest oil companies in the world and Hammer one of the world's most prominent entrepreneurs.
At a cost of at least $5 million, Hammer bribed the old King and some of his ministers to give him a concession on a vast Libyan oil field that would ultimately produce 800,000 barrels of crude a day (worth roughly $20 million a day or almost $7.5 billion a year). Al Gore Snr was at Hammer's side on the day he paraded King Idris up a red carpet laid on the desert to open the new field.
Gore's reward was to receive from Hammer guaranteed financial security and luxury for the rest of Hammer's life. When Gore retired from the Senate, Hammer appointed him Chairman of Island Creek Coal, an Occidental subsidiary which was the third-biggest coal company in America. Gore's salary was more than $500,000 a year, on top of stock options in Occidental. In the 1980s, Gore became a director on the main board of Occidental, where his annual pay was never less than $750,000.
It was in his director's role that Al Gore Snr was finally, in 1989, forced to submit to public exposure and disgrace for his lackey's role in Hammer's corrupt operations. Hammer had ripped off about $145 million of Occidental shareholders' money to build a gigantic mausoleum of a museum to house the $400-million art collection Hammer had assembled, again using misappropriated corporate funds.
Al Gore Snr was appointed chairman of an "independent group of directors" charged with scrutinising the project on the shareholders' behalf. In fact, that "independent" group functioned as nothing more than a rubber-stamping body for Hammer's indulgence. Under deposition and cross-examination, Gore admitted that he had not read vital reports nor added up the sums. He agreed that he had not made enough effort to understand the project.
By the time Hammer died in 1990, a posse of law-enforcers was bearing down on the 92-year-old, ready to bring criminal charges against him for misappropriation over the museum. Hammer escaped by dying. Al Gore Snr quietly crept away from the scandal.
In his 70-year career of corruption and finagling, Hammer had often come within sight of the prison gates only to dodge his way out of trouble at the last minute. His closest call came in the mid-1970s when he was convicted of an illegal contribution to Richard Nixon's Campaign to Re-Elect the President (Creep). Hammer was charged with having made and concealed the payments to Creep outside the dates allowed for private, undisclosed donations, and convicted of making an illegal payment of $100,000 to Maurice Stans, Nixon's Secretary of Commerce and principal fund-raiser.
The formal proceedings revealed nothing more than a fraction of the fantastic truth. By the 1970s, when Hammer was in sole charge of a multi-billion dollar corporation whose treasury he treated as his own pocket money, a $100,000 sweetener was chicken-feed. He had been distributing $100,000 inducements to Senators as far back as the late 1940s.
What Hammer had actually offered to Creep was support for the President in millions, any amount of which could be had in cash. It was Hammer's money that Nixon had in mind, when he told his henchmen, Haldeman and Erlichman, that a million dollars in cash could be found if it was needed to pay for their illegal acts, and that "it would not be a problem".
HAMMER had done a deal in the Soviet Union for the manufacture and export of fertilisers which he claimed to be worth $20 billion. In order to finance that deal, he needed credits from the United States' Export-Import bank (EximBank). At that point in the Cold War, such credits were not allowed for trade with Russia. What Hammer wanted from Richard Nixon, therefore, was nothing less than a change in America's approach to the Soviet Union, conferring Most Favoured Nation trading status on Russia.
Nixon complied. Hammer received his $200 million EximBank credits and came close to securing MFN status for Russia. He was denied that bonus only by Nixon's disgrace in the Watergate proceedings and the collapse of the Administration.
If Hammer was capable of trying to buy a presidential policy, he was capable of putting a president or a prince in his pocket - as the Prince of Wales was to discover when he gullibly accepted upwards of $30 million from Hammer as a contribution to the Prince's favourite causes. More than any individual this century, Hammer tested and proved the truth of the motto that made him chuckle as he repeated it: "Everybody has a price." He applied it even to future kings and presidents.
A spokesman for Al Gore Jnr has confirmed to The Sunday Telegraph that "Armand Hammer was a friend of the Vice President and a lifelong friend of his father's." However, the Vice President's office was unable to provide further information on money that Hammer might have given to Gore - or on gifts or flights in Hammer's plane that the Vice President and his wife Tipper might have taken. "It was a long time ago," the spokesman said.
The fact remains that Al Gore Jnr must always have been fully aware of Hammer's methods. He must always have suspected that his own father had compromised himself in his subjection to Hammer. Yet Gore appears not to have had the independence of mind to distance himself from the old villain, nor was he given the parental protection that might have allowed him to withstand Armand Hammer's blandishments towards himself. In Al Gore Jnr, Hammer hoped to cultivate and nurture a lifelong liegeman; and young Al promised to fulfil Hammer's ultimate ambitions in the political world.
If Hammer had lived to be 110, as he always declared that he fully intended to do, he might have procured in the year 2000 the prize that the Mafia has always dreamed of. In the newly elected President Al Gore Jnr, Armand Hammer would finally have placed his own boy in the White House.
Neil Lyndon is currently working on his new book, Inferno, about Armand Hammer, the Piper Alpha disaster of 1988 and the politics of global corruption.
Not for commercial use. Solely to be used for the educational purposes of research and open discussion.
Not for commercial use. Solely to be used for the educational purposes of research and open discussion.
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John Vidal on the tribe that is defending its culture against exploitation
T he U'wa tribe of Colombia is remote, little studied, less visited and, until recently, barely registered on the barometer of
western or even local Colombian awareness. But in the past two years its fight with Occidental Petroleum (Oxy) has become
an international cause celebre. For the tribe, the outcome may be life or death. For the oil company, it could be a PR and
financial disaster on the scale that Ken Saro-Wiwa was for Shell.
The U'wa are opposed on many levels to oil drilling. The leaders know that, should Oxy go ahead, the whole area will inevitably
become militarised and attract rebel groups and paramilitary forces, making impossible a way of life that has at its heart
remained unchanged in centuries. The dangers are real: last year, US environmentalist Terry Freitas and two human rights
workers were murdered by a Colombian rebel group after visiting the U'wa. Some U'wa leaders have been threatened, and
Oxy's existing pipeline taking oil from another field has been attacked more than 600 times in the past 12 years.
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But the U'wa are opposed for religious reasons, too. The intensely spiritual tribe, which guards its culture fiercely, believes oil to
be the 'blood of the earth' and therefore sacred. Several years ago, the tribal leaders declared that members would commit
suicide if oil was taken from below their land. This has since been changed to a stance of resistance. 'We prefer (our own)
genocide sponsored by the Colombian government rather than handing over our Mother Earth to oil companies,' said their
spokesman, Roberto Cobaria, last month.
The battle, now taken up by US and other international environment groups, has wider implications and is now gathering a head of steam. The latest to be drawn in is US vice-president Al Gore, a committed 'environ mentalist' who is the Democratic Party frontrunner in the forthcoming elections and eager to grab the large green vote. The Gore family and the Los Angeles-based company have been linked for generations. Gore's father worked for Armand Hammer, the founder of Occidental, and funds from the company and its subsidiaries eventually formed the basis of the Gore family fortune. Activists are also targeting one of the largest shareholders of Occidental stock. Last week, activists from European and other countries, including Britain, demonstrated outside Fidelity Investments, one of the world's largest mutual fund companies, whose US offices are known to invest heavily in the company. Meanwhile, the U'wa will now present charges before the UN and the Organisation of American States (OAS) against Occidental for the violent expulsion of the protesters. The Colombian government argues that Oxy's drilling is located outside the indigenous reserve. But independent congressman Gustavo Petro says the 'problem is not whether the oil project is inside or outside of the reserve. It is a failure to defend indigenous culture, for which Colombia could be charged with the crime of genocide.' Further information: Amazon Watch (www.amazonwatch.org); Rainforest Action Network (www.ran.org); the U'wa Defense Working Group (uwa.moles.org); Action Resource Center (www.arcweb.org). Al Gore can be reached via fax on 001 202-456-7044 or e -mailed on vicepresident@whitehouse.gov |
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Thanks, wallaby; we were discussing this on an earlier thread.
Right on! This needs to come out as a matter of Honor In Pollitics along with all the Chinese communist connections for the various candidates.
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WASHINGTON
In a 370-page report issued Wednesday, the Center for Public Integrity, a Washington nonprofit group, raised questions about
Gore's role in the land sale -- and asserted that it was one of many instances in which the current crop of presidential
contenders did things that wound up benefiting their "career patrons."
"Each of the leading presidential candidates for the 2000 election has done public-policy favors for his campaign contributors,"
said Charles Lewis, the former "60 Minutes" producer who heads the Center for Public Integrity and was the report's main
author. "Every major White House contender who has held past elective office has 'career patrons,' or longtime financial
sponsors, who have underwritten his political career. And every major aspirant has used his government position to help his
patrons."
The report, titled "The Buying of the President 2000" and made public Wednesday at a Washington news conference, criticized
Democrats and Republicans alike and offered detailed lists of both parties' top donors and their interests.
For example: Texas Gov. George W. Bush, the Republican front-runner, has been friendly to the oil industry, letting such major
corporations as Exxon and Marathon Oil craft their own emissions regulations, the center contended, echoing a criticism made
by environmentalists.
"Gov. Bush makes his decisions based on what is right for Texas, and as president he will make his decisions based on what is
right for America," Bush spokesman Scott McClellen responded Wednesday. "Americans can certainly look for themselves at
our donor list posted daily on our Web site to see the broad base of support he has all across America."
Bill Bradley, the former New Jersey senator who is challenging Gore for the Democratic nomination, drew hefty campaign
contributions from the chemical industry. The study said Bradley has proven to be a friend of the industry, introducing numerous
bills that eliminate tariffs on certain highly toxic pesticides.
And despite his image as a blunt reformer intent on cleaning up campaign finance, Arizona Sen. John McCain "rarely breaks
ranks with the special interests who finance his campaigns" -- the telecommunications industry, railroads, real estate developers
and mining companies, the study said.
"Sen. McCain has long said that the campaign-finance system, which he hopes to change by outlawing soft money, corrupts all
political figures by casting doubts over every action by every political figure," McCain spokesman Howard Opinsky said. "That
is precisely why he wants to change the system so that we can start to build confidence and reduce cynicism in our institutions of
government."
Lewis said his team of 24 editors, writers and researchers got no cooperation from any of the presidential candidates. His
researchers were put off with yearlong claims that the candidates had no time for an interview, he said.
Lewis said that when the center asked the Gore campaign for an interview, a written reply came from a campaign lawyer, who
questioned whether it would be legal for a tax-exempt group such as the center to hold such an interview.
*** Ties to the oil industry ***
The Gore campaign Wednesday defended the vice president's conduct in the Clinton administration's 1995 recommendation to
sell the oil field. And Lewis conceded that he hasn't answered every question about Gore's role in the decision. "It's very
difficult for me to tell you precisely what Al Gore did on this thing," he said.
The study said that the oil field known as Elk Hills, near Bakersfield, Calif., had long been coveted by the oil industry. The
Navy had held it since 1912 as an emergency oil reserve.
When Occidental bought it from the government, it was the largest privatization of federal property in history, and it tripled
Occidental's U.S. oil reserves.
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After the government decided to sell the land, various companies bid on Elk Hills, and the U.S. Department of Energy
awarded it to Occidental in 1997.
The study painted Gore as something of a hypocrite, giving a speech about global warming and the dangers of fossil fuels within hours of the announcement of the government's sale of Elk Hills.
Ties run deep between Occidental's founder, the late Armand Hammer, and the Gore family, the study said. Hammer would boast that he had the late Sen. Albert Gore Sr. "in my back pocket," the researchers wrote, quoting words that had previously appeared in writings about Hammer. After the elder Gore retired from the Senate in 1971, Hammer made him chairman of an Occidental subsidiary -- at a salary of $500,000 a year -- and put him on Occidental's board of directors. In the 1960s, the study said, Hammer bought zinc-rich land near the Gore farm in Tennessee. He then sold the land to the elder Gore. Occidental paid Gore Sr. $20,000 in annual royalties to mine the property. But after the first payment, the father sold the land to his son. The younger Gore then began receiving $20,000 checks each year for the mining -- at first from Occidental, and years later from another zinc company to whom he leased the lot. "In all, the Hammer-engineered sweetheart deal has put hundreds of thousands of dollars in profits in Gore's pocket," the study said. A Gore campaign aide, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, noted Wednesday that Occidental had bought the oil field through an "open bid process" that received close congressional and media scrutiny. The company's payment of nearly $3.7 billion was higher than Congressional Budget Office estimates of the property's worth, the aide said. "It was a very straightforward transaction, and as the center itself said today, they weren't able to demonstrate any quid pro quo or make a connection," the aide said. "They're making an insinuation where there's really no evidence." Of the land transactions between Hammer and the Gore family, the aide added: "Decades ago, the vice president's father had a special relationship with Armand Hammer, and then he left his son some land. But that's the extent of it." *** Bradley's contributors *** The study said that Bradley had built relationships with political donors from Wall Street and the pharmaceutical industry in his home state of New Jersey. In a debate with Gore last night in New Hampshire, Bradley said of his actions on drug-industry tax breaks: "I never did anything that I didn't think was in the interests of my constituents and this country." During his 18 years in the Senate, Bradley was known for expertise in arcane economic issues as a member of the powerful Senate Finance Committee. Bradley counts among his top achievements the Tax Reform Act of 1986, a measure that tried to close tax loopholes for the rich and corporations. But that didn't stop donors with interests in tax loopholes from supporting Bradley, the study found. And when attempts were made to curb the multimillion-dollar tax deductions enjoyed by companies with huge debts arising from leveraged buyouts, Bradley opposed those curbs, the study said. "He noted that those who sold companies to corporate raiders earned capital gains, which were subject to taxes," the study said. "The bottom line, to Bradley at least, was this: ' . . . It's a wash to the federal government in terms of tax revenue.'" The study contended it was not a "wash," saying that in 1994 alone, corporations took a total of $611 billion in interest deductions, dwarfing the $173 billion in corporate income taxes paid that year. Bradley's presidential campaign Wednesday dismissed the notion that campaign contributions influenced his positions. "Sen. Bradley is somebody who leads from his beliefs . . . and I don't think anybody can say he is someone who has ever been influenced by contributions in that way," Bradley spokesman Tony Wyche said. He noted that on Tuesday, Bradley proposed to eliminate $124 billion in tax loopholes for businesses. *** 'Nature of the beast' *** One expert said Wednesday that it was wrong to assume that big donors help candidates for one reason only. "It is a reality that money comes from relatively few people," said Thomas Mann, a senior fellow who studies campaign financing at the Brookings Institution. "That is the nature of the beast. Some are obviously trying to cozy up for legislative gains, some are trying to avoid having politicians mad at them, and others give because they have partisan interests." The Center for Public Integrity was founded in 1990. It has published 40 reports on topics ranging from the chemical industry to the August 1996 report "Fat Cat Hotel," which detailed President Clinton's practice of rewarding top Democratic donors with overnight stays in the Lincoln bedroom. |
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Not for commercial use. Solely to be used for the educational purposes of research and open discussion.
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Sweetheart tradeoffs of federal forest lands, as detailed in the recent Seattle Times series, is part of a larger pattern. Titillating
comparisons between the White House sexual escapades of Democrat Bill Clinton and Warren G. Harding, Republican
president from 1921 until his death in 1923, have obscured more-significant parallels in their oil deals for public lands.
Elk Hills and its neighboring Buena Vista Hills reserve were withdrawn from the public domain in 1912, and the Teapot Dome
reserve north of Casper, Wyo., in 1915. Reputedly proven oil deposits, the three reserves were earmarked as the U.S. Navy's
emergency fuel supply. They had not been tapped even for the exigencies of World War I. Then, after the war, in 1922,
President Harding's interior secretary and close friend, Albert B. Fall, stealthily arranged drilling agreements with Harry F.
Sinclair, for Teapot Dome, and Edward L. Doheny, for Elk Hills. Doheny, a prominent Southern Californian worth $ 100
million, had pioneered the Los Angeles field as well as the California and Mexican oil industries.
After Harding's death, a Senate investigation revealed that Fall had accepted $ 404,000 from Sinclair and Doheny. The leases
were canceled and Fall eventually went to jail for bribery, the first American Cabinet member convicted and imprisoned for a
felony committed in office. In time, the Teapot Dome scandal, so named because the Wyoming reserve's improprieties gained
publicity first, epitomized all the sins of the Harding administration, usually ranked the worst of all presidencies. It also became
the darkest stain of corruption on a 20th-century political party, until Watergate of the 1970s. And history textbooks still refer
to Interior Secretary Fall in terms suitable for Benedict Arnold.
For 20 years, the Teapot Dome scandal caused politicians and oil men alike to steer clear of the naval reserves. Not until June
1944, during World War II, did the government sign a contract that would make Standard Oil of California (now Chevron),
which owns Elk Hills' remaining 22 percent, the navy's operational partner on that reserve for the next 50 years.
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Because of the early 1970s Arab oil embargo, Congress contracted all three reserves for full commercial production at their
"maximum efficient rates" to help offset American reliance on imported petroleum. In 1996, despite Elk Hills' impressive
contribution to domestic production, Congress mandated, at President Clinton's behest, the outright sale of Elk Hills to the
highest private bidders and the study of specified options, including direct sale, that would "maximize the value" of Buena Vista
Hills and Teapot Dome as well as three naval oil-shale reserves in Colorado and Utah. Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt's recent
decision to open National Petroleum Reserve/Alaska (formerly Naval Reserve No. 4) for private exploration and drilling adds
yet another chapter to the saga.
Some of the Clinton administration's announcements strangely echoed a failed Harding governmental reorganization program 75 years before.
Interior Secretary Fall must have started spinning in his grave with indignation. Even as an unflinching ally of the oil industry, he had never seriously proposed the outright sale of the naval reserves. Textbooks might still roundly condemn him as a notorious villain, but his oil policy has been adopted in spades by the Clinton administration. In a broader comparison, there is much similarity between the 1920s and the 1990s in America. Harding's vice president and successor, Calvin Coolidge, proclaimed the credo of the '20s: "The business of America is business." Near the end of that decade "Coolidge prosperity," as well as public admiration of corporate business and Wall Street indexes, collapsed with the stock market crash and the Great Depression. Vengeful Democrats then told their Republican foes that in politics, as the old saying went, "If you take credit for the sunshine, you must also take blame for the rain." With the Elk Hills sale as an example, some Clinton critics may be excused for thinking that his "New" Democratic agenda, with its reinventing government program, reminds them of the "Old" Harding-Coolidge Republican party and the "rain" of the late 1920s. David H. Stratton is professor emeritus of history at Washington State University in Pullman, and the author of "Tempest over Teapot Dome: The Story of Albert B. Fall" (1998), published by the University of Oklahoma Press. |
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Lots of gory details.
Thanks for your tireless pursuit of the truth, great work - Bookmarked.
Here are some more links, fellow indefatigable ones:
How come it is okay to damn Gore by the associations of his father but not okay to damn George W. by the associations and actions of his family?
Gore Sr. and Armand Hammer
President Bush
Whom do you propose is more deserving of respect; which is more likely to have been a typical "bought and paid for" politician?
You decide...
It is amazing that Gore retains his reputation as an "environmentalist" while suckling the profits of ecological rape.
[ How come it is okay to damn Gore by the associations of his father but not okay to damn George W. by the associations and actions of his family? ]
The policical incest is deep in the Delta Charlie Zone(D.C.). By deep I mean its bordering on beastiality. And on super tuesday is when you want to pose this question!!!. Too bad, theres too many folks here pleased as punch George Bush is running for President. They would'nt want the conversation to get complicated. When compareing the corrupt
to the corrupt they prefer to come up the lesser of two evils, also corrupt but at least he don't APPEAR as corrupt.
-Duh!-
I noticed a Sinclair station yesterday -- a large new one at that -- and couldn't remember the last time I'd seen one. It surprised me that the company was still around.
In a way, the real scandal of Teapot Dome was the government ownership of those oil fields. Socialism cannot develop such a resource efficiently, and as long it is in government hands, corruption is all but guaranteed. Never mind that Occidental Pete was the successful bidder, and that Al Gore may have helped the deal: It's good that Elk Hills was sold to private enterprise and put into production.
" Hammer set up a banking operation in Paris specifically to provide foreign exchange funds, which were otherwise beyond reach, for Stalin's regime. "
fast forward to the late 70's early 80's & fill in the blanks::
_________ set up a banking operation in Little Rock specifically to provide foriegn exchange funds, which were otherwise beyond the reach, for _________ regime.
"When compareing the corrupt to the corrupt they prefer to come up the lesser of two evils, also corrupt but at least he don't APPEAR as corrupt."
dubya, tho, certainly can't be so dumb/brazen (you choose) as to get caught (albeit with no consequences) at every turn.
Are you saying that Armand Hammer did business in LR, or that someone else did business there in a manner reminiscent of Hammer?
Your thoughts, please, on Mena, CIA, Skull and Bones ...
Just asking...
I haven't been shy about posting information embarrassing to Bush, if that's what you mean. Here's an article that is relevant to the thread, and that briefly brings up Richard Rainwater's assistance that led to GWB reaping a $5 million windfall on his initial investment of $606K in the Texas Rangers baseball team:
Not for commercial use. Solely to be used for the educational purposes of research and open discussion.
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The bottom line is that there is precious little investigative shoe leather being worn thin working the campaign-finance beat.
Thank goodness, then, for Lewis and the CPI, which, having exposed the sale of the Lincoln Bedroom, have now revealed the
"career patrons" and long-time contributors behind all the major White House contenders.
Lucrative ventures
Let's take the Big Four. The book traces Al Gore's involvement with Occidental Petroleum back to his father's relationship with
Armand Ham- mer, who used to say that he had Gore Sr. "in my back pocket." In fact, when Gore the elder left the Senate in
1970, he was hired by Hammer for $ 500,000 a year -- while the vice president has been the beneficiary of campaign
contributions, trips on the corporate jet and $ 20,000 a year from a land deal brokered between his father and Hammer. But
largess is a two-way street. In 1997 the government sold 47,000 acres of federal property in Bakersfield to Occidental, tripling
its oil reserves overnight.
Bush the younger has also had a strangely enchanting effect on corporate titans, chief among them Richard Rainwater, a
financier from Fort Worth and founder of Columbia/HCA, the nation's largest for-profit hospital chain. It was Rainwater who
orchestrated the Texas Rangers stadium deal that scored Bush a cool $ 15 million -- and his much-touted business success. Of
course, one good deed deserves another, and in 1995 Bush vetoed a Patient Protection Act that had been fiercely opposed by
Columbia/HCA. Quid pro quo or quasi-coincidence?
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Bill Bradley's major career patrons are found mostly in Wall Street firms -- but also in the big chemical companies. In return,
Bradley introduced from 1986 to 1996 45 bills designed to benefit the chemical industry with tax credits and tariff exemptions
-- even for highly toxic pesticides.
As for John McCain, according to Lewis and company, he has found many close friends -- and sources of large contributions -- among the major telecommunications companies, which stand to benefit if the Internet Regulatory Freedom Act he introduced becomes law. To get the full chilling picture of the buying of the presidency, you'll have to read the book. Because you are not likely to hear a lot more about it from the media. They're looking for a juicy story line. In the melodramatic narrative the media call campaign coverage, McCain was due for a fall. Build him up. Tear him down. Put him out of his misery. Political counterpunching McCain is fighting back by releasing more than 500 letters he has sent to federal agencies -- some involving campaign contributors, some not. "If people view them in their entirety," he says, "they will see that I have acted on one fundamental principle: to protect the consumer." But there is no doubt that the consumers who contribute are more likely to have access to the senator and his colleagues and therefore more likely to have them act on their behalf. It is easy to criticize McCain for not being as pure as his campaign rhetoric. The hypocrisy cudgel is one the media are particularly adept at wielding. And McCain has clearly given them an enticing target to swing at. So where do we go from here? The chances of McCain beating Bush have always been slim -- despite the "he's gaining on him!" horse-race coverage the press is so fond of. The latest Newsweek Poll shows Bush beating McCain 63 to 13. Let's say the media succeed at stopping any momentum McCain has been building in New Hampshire. Come March, we'll be left with Bush vs. Gore, as expected; "The Buying of the President 2000" gathering dust on the remainders pile; and the issue of political corruption that, as McCain keeps repeating, "taints us all" relegated to the alternative weeklies. No comment Bush misses no opportunity to smugly scold McCain for backing a campaign-finance bill that "Al Gore is applauding," while Gore, between claps, has done his best to avoid the issue. Indeed, when CPI asked to interview the vice president for the book, it received a letter from a campaign lawyer questioning the legality of a tax-exempt group conducting such an interview. So apparently there is a controlling legal authority when it comes to investigating corruption, but not when it comes to participating in it. Arianna Huffington writes for the Los Angeles Times Syndicate. Her Web site is at www.arianna |
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This is one of the great ironies of the oil industry. In fact, with OPEC raising gas prices by cutting back production, South American production under American control is at the max to help control prices to our advantage. (They are also making a ton of money). If gore makes more, he and Oxy will help bring down the price of gas. On the other hand, Bush is into the natural gas industry, which booms when the price of gas goes up. Imagine what he could do to the price of gasoline (oil) with another shot a Saddham. MO Money MO Money BIG MO money.
Either way you vote, expect to line up at the gas station and thin out your wallet quick.
Thanks for the info...I will start an "ammo file" on Albore today! My McLame file served its purpose well!
Go Bush Go!
>$5 million
Oops. Make that $15 million.
Another excellent research effort, Wallaby!!! Thank you so very much for all you do and for remembering to give me a heads up!
The Stephens brothers and the Riadys set up a banking operation in Little Rock specifically to provide foreign exchange funds, which were otherwise beyond the reach, for the mainland Chinese regime.
>comparing the corrupt with the corrupt.
On that score, I would strongly endorse a review of this article, which I believe, thinden, you first called to my attention.
I suspect Armand Hammer will receive as little mention in the coming months as Abdullah Taha Bakhsh.
You didn't mention that Hammer was the conduit for the KGB's fake evidence against John Demjanjuk. Reno is still trying to get him deported on the basis of documents Israel recieved through Hammer and will not let us inspect.
No controlling legal authority...No controlling legal authority...No controlling legal authority... No controlling legal authority...No controlling legal authority...No controlling legal authority...
In the bedroom of his house in Holmby Hills in Los Angeles, Hammer kept a plaque inscribed with a motto that he would see every morning when he opened his eyes. It said:("Will the whole truth about this evil man ever be told?" Neil Lyndon, The Times (London), September 24, 1996)"The Golden Rule: He Who Hath the Gold Maketh the Rule".
Not for commercial use. Solely to be used for the educational purposes of research and open discussion.
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Now, six years after the death of Hammer at age 92, the episode and much
besides have emerged in a new book that casts a
corrosive light on the often-preening supercapitalist who shook Lenin's
hand, cultivated American Presidents, built a global oil
and whisky empire and left a legacy of familial ruin and lawsuits
against his multibillion-dollar Occidental Petroleum Corporation,
as well as against the foundation and art galleries he controlled.
The book, "Dossier: The Secret History of Armand Hammer," by Edward Jay
Epstein, published this month by Random House
and excerpted last month in The New Yorker, ties Hammer to bizarre
deceptions, from contriving a makeover and fake identity
for an art adviser-mistress whom he was hiding from his third wife to
serving as a conduit for dubious Russian artworks. Among
other schemes, it says he trafficked in fake Imperial Faberge eggs that
he authenticated as genuine with an official Faberge
stamp.
Documented in part by secret tape recordings made for Hammer by a member
of his family and obtained by Mr. Epstein, the
book also details bribery schemes said to have helped Hammer land
lucrative oil drilling and mineral concessions in Venezuela
and Libya. It is not clear why Hammer would have risked memorializing
his chicanery.
Samples of the documentation and access to sources were provided to The
New York Times by Mr. Epstein, the author of
previous investigative books on the spy craft and the John F. Kennedy
assassination.
From early on, Hammer's career diverged from his legend as an
international philanthropist, which he later took pains to
construct. After meeting Lenin in 1921, the book says, Hammer secretly
distributed the equivalent of $600,000 in today's
currency to agents of the Communist International in New York.
The Federal Bureau of Investigation kept track of Hammer and his
associates -- a "rotten bunch," J. Edgar Hoover noted in his
files -- but whether for investigative reasons or whether Hammer was
able to outwit his pursuers, no security case was ever
made against him, the book says. Presidents from Franklin D. Roosevelt
on, however, were warned by the F.B.I. to keep their
distance.
The book reports that Hammer used his position as a trustee of the Los
Angeles County Art Museum to hoodwink the museum
out of a collection of drawings by the French caricaturist Honore
Daumier. When Hammer learned that the collector was about
to sell the works to the museum in 1975 for $250,000, he won agreement
to buy them himself for the same sum on the promise
that he would promptly donate them to the museum and take a tax
deduction. Hammer bought the drawings but never did turn
them over to the museum.
In another instance, Hammer pledged $1.8 million to the Metropolitan
Museum of Art for the purchase of a valuable suit of
armor and the honor of having the medieval equestrian gallery named for
him. Later, however, he turned over only $800,000 to
the museum. After he died, his estate paid the museum $200,000 more. In
return the museum dropped claims for the rest of the
money and removed his name from the gallery.
And he browbeat Occidental's directors, from whom he had demanded signed
and undated letters of resignation to cement his
power over them, into spending nearly $100 million of Occidental's money
to build the Armand Hammer Art and Cultural
Center at corporate headquarters in Los Angeles.
Perhaps the strangest of Hammer's schemes occurred in the late 1980's,
when he arranged for Martha Wade Kaufman, whom
he had hired as his art adviser in 1974 and who became his mistress, to
don a wig and legally change her name to Hilary Gibson
to deceive his third wife, Frances. In an episode documented by Mr.
Epstein but not detailed in the book, when Ms. Gibson
found herself fired after his death and unexpectedly cut out of Hammer's
will, she visited Hammer's banker in Basel,
Switzerland, and absconded with a document listing a secret bank
account. Lawyers for the Hammer estate then settled her
claim out of court, awarding her $4.2 million.
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Ms. Gibson, reached by telephone in California, did not dispute the
account but said the terms of her agreement with the estate
precluded public comment.
Also only touched on in the book, but backed up by records and independent interviews, is the story of Hammer's 1972 donation to the Soviet Union of a painting by the Spanish master Francisco da Goya, which the Culture Minister, Yekaterina Furtseva, had been particularly eager to add to the nation's collection. Upon presenting the painting -- a portrait of Dona Antonia de Zarate, painted around 1807 that is a poorer version of a better-known Goya work -- to the Hermitage Museum, Hammer described it as a million-dollar gift, a dubious claim backed up by an associate's appraisal. It was hardly the prize that Hammer pretended, his own account suggests. In a self-taped telephone conversation more than six years later, he told one of his lawyers that the Goya had been bought by the Knoedler Gallery, which he owned, for $60,000 from an heir of Marshall Field, the Chicago department store magnate. The painting was then sold through a Liechtenstein entity, Jovest, to the Armand Hammer Foundation for $160,000, generating a $100,000 profit, an evident violation of Internal Revenue Service tax rules against self-dealing. Along with the Goya, Hammer carried an attache case with $100,000 cash, presumably the kitty, to a meeting with Ms. Furtseva, the Epstein book says, stopping short of stating that the Culture Minister was bribed. Pursued in the Soviet Union by allegations of corruption, Ms. Furtseva died in 1974. Hammer made another high-profile gift to the Soviet Union. Days after presenting the Goya, he gave the Government two letters written by Lenin, which his foundation records say he had bought from a New York gallery for $128,000. Samuel Pisar, an international lawyer who accompanied Hammer and his wife to Moscow, said in a telephone interview from his home in Paris that he had no knowledge of any cash briefcase or other manipulations involving the Goya but recalled vividly the tears in the eyes of the Soviet President, Leonid Brezhnev, as he accepted the Lenin letters. But there was more to the tale, material unearthed after the book's completion suggests. In late 1978, as Occidental fought a fierce battle to acquire the Mead Corporation in an unfriendly takeover, an estranged associate of Hammer's told Mead lawyers of a startling episode he said he had witnessed. The informant, David Karr, an admitted Soviet agent turned international businessman, claimed that prior to the presentation of the Lenin letters he was summoned one night in 1972 to room 2001 of the National Hotel in Moscow to find Hammer in his pajamas, in tears and on his knees, pleading with two K.G.B. agents not to arrest him for bribery and for smuggling Lenin treasures. Stanley Pottinger, one of the lawyers for Mead and an assistant United States attorney general from 1973 to 1977, recalled that Karr said that Hammer was let off the hook after agreeing to return a cache of Lenin memorabilia and to donate other treasures. Mr. Pottinger, now a best-selling novelist, quoted Karr as hinting of more damaging information that Karr called "an atom bomb." A second Mead lawyer, Armistead W. Gilliam of Dayton, Ohio, confirmed Mr. Pottinger's account. He said that Karr had further told them that when Hammer wanted to bribe Soviet officials involved in the awarding of mineral concessions, he invited them to his gallery in Switzerland and had them pick out a painting to buy for themselves, after which a buyer would materialize offering to repurchase it an inflated price, thus providing them with a windfall profit. Robert E. Juceam, a lawyer for Hammer at the time, who is on tape discussing the case with his client, said in an interview that Hammer had derided the story of the hotel room raid as untrue but acknowledged that he had been confronted by Soviet officials upset over his receipt of Lenin letters. Within days of learning of the Karr disclosures, Hammer dropped his takeover bid of Meade. Seven months later, in July 1979, hours after returning from a trip to Moscow, Karr was found dead in suspicious circumstances in his Paris hotel room. The full extent of Hammer's activities in the Soviet Union may never be determined, but there are those who say now that Russian treasures routinely made their way to the United States on his private jet. Joan Weiss, a niece and the heir of Frances Hammer, whose independent fortune Hammer is alleged in lawsuits to have sunk into his enterprises, said the couple often returned with antiques, which Hammer then hid. "I knew he was smuggling things out," Ms. Weiss said in a telephone interview from California. "I saw the stuff coming into the house." Photo: Armand and Frances Hammer with Goya's "Dona Antonia de Zarate," in 1972. (Samuel Pisar) |
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The full extent of Hammer's activities in the Soviet Union may never be determined, but there are those who say now that Russian treasures routinely made their way to the United States on his private jet. Joan Weiss, a niece and the heir of Frances Hammer, whose independent fortune Hammer is alleged in lawsuits to have sunk into his enterprises, said the couple often returned with antiques, which Hammer then hid."I knew he was smuggling things out," Ms. Weiss said in a telephone interview from California. "I saw the stuff coming into the house."
Reminds me of another looting of Russian treasures by Gore's friends:
The informant, David Karr, an admitted Soviet agent turned international businessman, claimed that prior to the presentation of the Lenin letters he was summoned one night in 1972 to room 2001 of the National Hotel in Moscow to find Hammer in his pajamas, in tears and on his knees, pleading with two K.G.B. agents not to arrest him for bribery and for smuggling Lenin treasures....Mr. Pottinger, now a best-selling novelist, quoted Karr as hinting of more damaging information that Karr called "an atom bomb."
... Within days of learning of the Karr disclosures, Hammer dropped his takeover bid of Meade. Seven months later, in July 1979, hours after returning from a trip to Moscow, Karr was found dead in suspicious circumstances in his Paris hotel room.
Not for commercial use. Solely to be used for the educational purposes of research and open discussion.
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Kathryn Tolbert of the Globe staff in Washington contributed to this report. MOSCOW --
The reports, contained in a dossier of correspondence between the KGB's
Secretariat and the Central Committee of the
Communist Party, were briefly made available to independent researchers
at the end of last year.
Carr was the head of a Franco-American firm called Finatech. Judging
from the KGB dossier, he enjoyed enough clout in the
Kremlin to arrange meetings between Kennedy and Soviet leaders.
A Kennedy spokesman said yesterday that the late David Carr was an
American businessman in Moscow who knew the
senator but did not set meetings for him.
The reports were briefly made available to independent researchers at
the end of last year as the Soviet Union was collapsing.
The KGB, fearing it was about to be dismantled, tried to cooperate with
a parliamentary investigation into its role in the August
1991 coup.
Kennedy's conversations with Soviet leaders, from the former general
secretary, Leonid Brezhnev, to KGB chief Vladimir
Kryuchkov, who is awaiting trial for his part in last August's attempted
coup against President Mikhail Gorbachev, sometimes
appear to have involved personal as well as political matters.
In 1978, for example, the dossier describes Kennedy as trying to help a
close friend, former Sen. John Tunney of California, get
some business in the Soviet Union.
"Kennedy requested the KGB to help smooth the cooperation of Soviet
organizations with Agritech, a company headed by
former Senator J. Tunney," the report read, according to notes taken by
Yevgeniya Albats, a writer and specialist on the KGB
who was one of the specialists assigned by the Russian Parliament to
work through the archives.
Kennedy, who made four trips to the Soviet Union, most recently in 1990,
denied asking either the KGB or other Soviet
officials to help Tunney, the senator's spokesman, Paul Donovan, said
yesterday.
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"Any suggestion that Senator Kennedy met with KGB officials to promote a
friend's business interests is preposterous,"
Donovan said in a prepared statement. "He never even knowingly met with
the KGB on his 1978 trip. Whoever is writing these
KGB memos must have quite an imagination."
Tunney did not return a call to his office in Los Angeles. The notes taken on the KGB reports by Albats coincide with those taken independently by another specialist, a historian who requested anonymity. "In its turn this firm is connected to the French-American firm of Finatech SA (societe anonyme), which is headed by a competent source of the KGB, the prominent Western financier D. Carr, with whose help a confidential exchange of opinions has been arranged over the last several years between the General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union and Senator Edward Kennedy. D. Carr provided technical information for the KGB on the situation in the USA and other capitalist countries which was regularly reported to the Central Committee of the CPSU," the report said. Kennedy and Tunney became close friends while studying law at the University of Virginia; Kennedy is credited with getting Tunney interested in politics. Tunney served one term as Democratic senator from California from 1971 to 1977. The information on Kennedy consisted of a little over one typed page and took the form of a summary of Kennedy's visits to the Soviet Union, intended for the Communist Party Central Committee and signed by Kryuchkov. There were no details of the "confidential exchanges of views" between Kennedy and Brezhnev, who died in 1982. Researchers also found a transcript about 10 pages long of a meeting between Kennedy and Kryuchkov in 1990. Both Albats and the historian who examined it stressed that the transcript contained nothing that could embarrass Kennedy. "It could be published tomorrow," one of the sources said. "They discussed disarmament, the need for democracy and Kennedy told them not to pressure the Baltic states," he said. Though the Kennedy material was already included in a file marked "top secret," it was in turn enclosed in a sealed envelope. The beige-brown envelope had, however, come undone. "I think they must have used poor-quality glue," Albats said. Researchers found several such envelopes during their brief perusal of the Secretariat files. All those examined concealed material considered especially sensitive - such as reports on the surveillance of Boris Yeltsin, now the president of Russia, and his close associates in the last years of perestroika. The Secretariat file itself was a mine of information. The KGB Secretariat was "a very important body," said retired KGB Col. Mikhail Lyubimov. "It's the main department through which all papers move." Lyubimov, who worked on the foreign intelligence side of the KGB and specialized in the English-speaking world, said that in his experience, the kind of information kept on Kennedy was the exception rather than the rule. The term competent source, Lyubimov said, is an "elastic, vague term," covering anything from a valuable source to a casual communicant. It did not indicate that Carr was an agent. Among other dossiers the researchers found was a report from Kryuchkov to Gorbachev, dated February 1990, saying that North Korea was "actively engaged" in nuclear weapons research and had already completed work on its first atomic explosive device. CORRECTION-DATE: June 26, 1992, Friday, City Edition CORRECTION: Because of an error in a researcher's notes on KGB files, the name of the late David Karr was misspelled in a Page 1 story yesterday on the file kept by the KGB on Sen. Edward M. Kennedy. |
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A big bookmark for this one. And we can't forget about the Hammer/algore sr dealings with the PRC in the 80's. IMO these contacts opened the door for the ChiCom money that started to roll into the American election process with the 'toon.
The deals that hammer and gore sr did in the Balkans merit examination. The first is the big deal they did with Ceaucescu. The second set of deals they did were to get the first concessions to drill in Albania, back in the '80's. This is of interest now, as the Appenine find in Italy suggests that similar formations in northern Albania (near guess where) could yield a good deal of money. Oxy has the concession.
from FR's old AlGore category:
"...Another of Gore's turnabouts has been on tobacco. Framing himself as the archenemy of "Buttman," Gore reduced many at the 1996 Democratic Convention to tears when telling of his sister Nancy's lost battle with cancer in 1984. "And then I knelt by her bed and held her hand. And in a very short time her breathing became labored and then she breathed her last breath," whispered Gore, pledging to protect children from tobacco.
Like Bill Clinton, Gore did not tell the whole story. He got a break from the press, however, when the media were diverted by the Dick Morris prostitute scandal. He admitted the following day that his family continued to receive annual checks from their tobacco farm for several years after his sister's death. According to the Associated Press, Gore had "considered" volunteering that information to the convention but decided against it.
He also failed to note that four years after his sister's death he praised the virtues of tobacco to Southern voters in the 1988 Democratic primaries. "I want you to know that with my own hands, all of my life, I put it in plant beds and transferred it. I've hoed it, I've dug in it, I've sprayed it, I've chopped it, I've shredded it, spiked it, put it in the barn and stripped it and sold it," he declared as if auditioning to be the next Marlboro Man.
Nor did Gore volunteer at the 1996 convention the fact that from 1979 until 1990 he received $16,440 from tobacco's political-action committees and that he had cast votes in the Senate against several tax increases on tobacco...
...The software industry in California is vital to his fund raising for 2000. Earlier this year, Gore was the main attraction for a $5,000-per-ticket event at the home of Novell's Eric Schmidt. Among the other Silicon Valley bigwigs Gore has courted are John Doerr, a venture capitalist; Technology Network's Wade Randlett; and Occidental Petroleum's Ray Irani. Oxy has been a longtime supporter of the Gore family, providing Gore Sr. with employment after he lost his Senate seat in 1970....
...Gore hoped to rely on Nathan Landow, a Maryland businessman who "played a role in getting me to change my mind" in 1988. Landow, who has been caught up in the campaign-finance and Lewinsky and Kathleen Willey scandals, pledged to help Gore raise $4 million in 1988. Much more will be needed now, especially in costly advertisements to separate Gore from the Clinton scandals and his own fund-raising troubles...."
11/17/97 Insight Magazine:
"Vice President Al Gore said he did not violate the law by making phone calls for donations from the White House; President Clinton confidently told the Washington Press corps in March: "I don't believe that I have changed government policy solely because of a contribution." Whether the Clinton administration's actions - or deliberate inaction - benefited any large contributor "chiefly" or "primarily" rather than "solely" because of a donation probably is an issue only God can answer. But whether California investment banker Sanford Robertson's investment firm reaped rich rewards soon after Robertson made a large donation to the Democratic National Committee, or DNC, in 1996 there can be little doubt.
According to Gore's call records of November 1995, the Vice President intended to call Robertson, a longtime Clinton backer, to seek a $100,000 donation. Robertson denies that Gore called him, nonetheless gave $100,000 to the Democr