www.GregPalast.com

“Conyers Challenges Bush For G8 Action on Vultures

Palast reports from London on BBC Newsnight
Watch it tonight beginning 10:30pm GMT, 5:30pm EDT

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/programmes/newsnight/default.stm


Congressman John Conyers, still in the thick of his hearings on the firing of US Attorneys, is preparing a new target for investigation: Vultures.

We're not talking about the feathered birds of prey, but predators with allies in the White House and Swiss bank vaults full of untraceable currency. These speculators buy up the debt of the poorest nations on the planet for pennies on the dollar -- then use legal extortion or less-than-legal bribery to extract payments from these nations - payments equal to five, ten or twenty times what the vultures "invested."

Conyers has personally informed George Bush that he expects the President to join the other G8 leaders to put the vultures out of business. "I'm counting on the President to do the right thing," Conyers told BBC reporter Greg Palast. But if the President doesn't, Bush can expect another set of investigations and hearings on the Administration's inaction and ties to vultures.

Tonight Palast's BBC investigative team follows up on previous quarry: Michael Francis Sheehan, a.k.a. "Goldfinger." Goldfinger has already won $20 million from Zambia for a debt he "bought" for less than $4 million. How did he do that? We discovered that the deal was greased by payments to the former President of Zambia's "favourite charity". Could the Zambian President's "favourite charity" be himself?

BBC travels to the Boutique Basile in Geneva, Switzerland, where Zambia's charity-minded ex-president, Frederick Chiluba, bought one million dollars in finery, including 206 suits, 349 shirts, each monogrammed with his initials –- and each shirt costing as much as the average Zambian earns in a year. The diminutive despot also bought 72 pairs of shoes -- all with extra-high heels.

Still, the vulture "Goldfinger" is closing in on Zambia, demanding another $35 million -- while US law enforcement closes in on him -- and Conyers closes in on President Bush.

Who will win this high-stakes derby?

Watch the program tonight on BBC Newsnight, available worldwide at

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/programmes/newsnight/default.stm
and later at
www.GregPalast.com”

“The Voter Caging Saga Continues ----


The Tears of a Clone
Conyers Closes in on Karl and his Rove-bots ...

By Greg Palast | June 18, 2007
Special to BRAD BLOG


Boo-hoo! I made Tim Griffin cry.

He cried. Then he lied.

You remember Tim. Karl Rove's right hand (right claw?) man. The GOP's ragin' cagin' man.

Griffin is the Rove-bot exposed by our BBC Newsnight investigations team as the man who gathered and sent out the infamous 'caging' lists to Republican state chairmen during the 2004 election.

Caging lists, BBC discovered, were used secretly as a basis to challenge the right to vote of thousands of citizens - including the homeless, students and soldiers sent overseas. The day after BBC broadcast that the Chairman of the Judiciary Committee, John Conyers, sought our evidence on Griffin, Tim resigned his post as US Attorney for Arkansas. That job was a little gift from Karl Rove who made room for his man Griffin by demanding the firing of US prosecutor Bud Cummins.

Last week, our cameras captured Griffin, all teary-eyed, in his humiliating kiss-off speech delivered in Little Rock at the University of Arkansas where he moaned that, "public service isn't worth it."

True. In the old Jim Crow days in Arkansas, you could get yourself elected by blocking African-Americans. (The voters his caging game targeted are - quelle surprise! - disproportionately Black citizens.)

But today, Griffin can't even get an unemployment check. When he resigned two weeks ago following our broadcast, the cover story was that the voter persecutor-turned-prosecutor had resigned to work for Presidential wannabe Fred Thompson. But when Thompson's staff was asked by a reporter why they would hire the 'cagin' man,' suddenly, the 'Law and Order' star decided associating with Griffin might take the shine off Thompson's badge, even if it is from the props department.

Griffin, instead of saying that public service "isn't worth it," should have said, "Crime doesn't pay." Because, according to experts such as law professor Robert F. Kennedy Jr., 'caging,' when used to target Black voters' rights, is a go-to-prison crime.

By resigning, Tim may not avoid the hard questions about caging - or the hard time that might result. When I passed the first set of documents to Conyers (a real film noir moment, in a New York hotel room near midnight), the soft-spoken Congressman said that, resignation or not, "We aren't done with Mr. Griffin yet..."

Tears Not Truth

Back in Little Rock, when asked about caging, Rove's guy linked a few fibs to a few whoppers to some malefactious mendacity. That is, he lied.

"I didn't cage votes. I didn't cage mail," Griffin asserted.

At the risk of making you cry again, Tim, may I point you to an email dated August 26, 2004. It says, "Subject: Re: Caging." And it says, "From: Tim Griffin - Research/Communications" with the email tgriffin@rnchq.org. RNCHQ is the Republican National Committee Headquarters, is it not, Mr. Griffin? Now do you remember caging mail?

If that doesn't ring a bell, please note that at the bottom is this: "ATTACHMENT: Caging-1.xls". And that attachment was a list of voters.

In last week's pathetic farewell, Mr. Griffin averred that the accusation he was involved in caging voters, "Goes back to one guy - whose name I won't mention." (FYI, Mr. Griffin: My mother calls me, "Gregory.")

Yes, I first reported the story for BBC London - back in 2004 which, as Griffin correctly noted, it was ignored by my US press colleagues until, as Tim put it, "I became embroiled in the US Attorney thing." By 'the US Attorney thing,' I assume you are referring to your involvement in firing and smearing honest prosecutors and grabbing one of their salaries for yourself.

You say, Mr. Griffin, that the unmentionable reporter, "Made [it] up out of whole cloth." You flatter me, Mr. Griffin. We could not possibly be so creative at The Beeb as to construct the thousands of names of voters on your caging lists.

And by the way, we don't have just one of your "caging" emails, but scores of them.

I want to take this opportunity to thank you for sending them to us - even if that was not your intent. You copied your caging missives to 'bdoster@georgewbush.org.' Mr. Doster was Chairman of the Florida Bush campaign - but that address was not his but John Wooden's pretending to be the Bush campaigners. Wooden then sent your notes to me.

Rove in Range

By the way, Mr. Griffin, if you want an explanation of 'caging voters,' just read an email dated February 5, 2007 by...Tim Griffin.

In that email, Griffin references the Bush campaigns mailing out thousands of letters. The letters returned ('caged') as undeliverable were used as the GOP's supposed evidence that these were "thousands of fraudulent voter registrations." These voters were subject to challenge. However, these caging lists of "fraudulent" addresses, like the 2000 "felon" lists which in fact contained no felons, contained no fraudulent voters. But that wouldn't necessarily save them from the massively successful Republican voter-challenge campaign.

During the appearance he made in Arkansas last week, Griffin said he'd never heard of 'caging.' "I had to look it up," he said. Griffin discovered that "caging" is "a direct mail term."

I don't doubt Griffin's ignorance. Griffin's just a good ol' boy, a former military lawyer, who wouldn't know direct mail terminology from a hole in the ground. Until he went to work for the RNC.

So where did Tim get this direct mail term he used in his emails? Well, before Karl Rove signed on with George W. Bush, he owned Karl Rove & Co ....a direct mail firm. Rove made millions making up lists of voters, doing more 'caging' than a zoo-keeper.

Am I saying caging-expert Rove had something to do with the allegedly illegal caging games of his boy Griffin? Does a bear...?

Mr. Griffin wouldn't answer BBC's requests for comment. So I suggested to an Arkansas local, Luther Lowe, a former army reservist and himself a victim of a challenge to his vote, that at the Little Rock send-off for Griffin, he ask the fallen US Attorney about Rove's involvement in caging. Lowe did so, politely. Griffin wove, ducked, blathered and blubbered. But wouldn't answer.

Maybe a subpoena would encourage a Griffin response. And a grant of immunity from the Conyers committee. That's Rove's nightmare. Because unless Griffin joins Alberto Gonzales in Club Amnesia, Griffin has a lot to tell us about Mr. Rove and targeting Black voters.

Will he? It's not Conyers' style to hunt down Rove. The congressman is not, despite what Republicans say, a partisan hit man. He is, however, one tenacious legislator who told me he would like his committee, "to follow where the evidence leads."

But that's not necessarily going to happen. Conyers told me he sees the evidence in the prosecutor firing investigation leading to the much bigger, nastier issue of voter suppression - in simpler terms, fixing elections.

Unfortunately, many on his committee from both parties see the hearings as limited to the single issue of the firing of prosecutors. They want to scrutinize the elephant's trunk but refuse to acknowledge it's attached to an elephant: election rigging. Racially poisoned, direct-mail driven, computer implemented election rigging.

But Conyers may get there yet, to the issue of elections manipulation. I didn't get that from the Chairman (too circumspect to let his future intensions slip out). I got it from the Big Bubba. When I ran into Ol' Silver Eyes himself at an Air America soiree, Bill Clinton (man, he's gotten thin!) told me, "When we really get going on these prosecutor hearings, when we really dig deep, we're going to get right to the issue of voter suppression."

But what do you mean "we," Bill? Conyers is dean of the Congressional Black Caucus, which has an abiding concern and painful experience with illegal vote suppression of all types: caging, purging, challenging, lynching. But whether Conyers can convince his committee, mostly members of the Congressional White Caucus, to "dig deep" on vote suppression, is an open question.

In the meantime, Conyers has convinced his committee to drop subpoenas on Harriett Miers (the lady tight with Griffin, Rove and, notably, George W. Bush) and Sara Taylor, Rove's Gal Friday. Conyers, methodically, determinedly, is circling in on Rove, "Bush's Brain," a man known to surrender the corpses of his allies in place of his own (eh, Mr. Libby?). No wonder Griffin's in tears.

So here's a hanky, Mr. Griffin. This unnamable reporter would rather you save your tears for Randall Prausa. The African-American soldier was on active military duty when he ended up on one of your caging lists, what you term a suspected 'fraudulent' voter subject to GOP challenge because he was not home to get his fraudulent, 'Welcome, voter,' letter from the GOP.

Can you guess, Mr. Griffin, why Prausa wasn't at home? Well, unlike Messrs. Rove and Bush, Prausa was serving his country overseas.

And that's what caging is all about. If you're Black, you get shipped to Baghdad and you lose your vote. Mission Accomplished, Mr. Griffin. Mission Accomplished, Mr. Rove.”

“Tilt, you're a meany!”

“Hmmm.... when do Harriet and Sara stand before the Committee?

(I'll be on the lookout for news of a subpoena with Tim's name on it.)”

“WOW prohibiting SOldiers overseas from Voting...where did I hear that first....


OH YEAH.. ALGORE 2000 in Florida having a bunch of military ballots thrown out.....But keep up the investigations guys...the more you do the lower your ratings drop...(*LOL)”

“Get a clue.”

“LOL...after reading that drivel...I am guessing you guys are probably going to make up everything anyway.”

“Senators Demand Justice Dept. Investigation Into Tim Griffin, RNC 2004 Vote Caging Allegations

Sens. Kennedy and Whitehouse Send Letter to DoJ Inspector General’s Office Seeking Probe into RNC Voter Supression Tactics

Inquiry Into What Justice Officials Knew About Griffin’s Vote Caging Activities When He Was Named as US Attorney for Arkansas

From The BRAD BLOG


Senators Kennedy and Whitehouse have sent a letter to U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales demanding a probe by the DoJ’s Office of the Inspector General and Office of Professional Responsibility into “allegations that the Republican National Committee engaged in ‘vote caging’ during the 2004 elections.”

The letter, sent today to Gonzales, also requests an investigation into “whether any Department officials were aware of allegations that Tim Griffin had engaged in caging when he was appointed United States Attorney for the Eastern District of Arkansas, and whether appropriate action was taken.”

“The Republican Party has a long and ignominious record of caging – much of it focused on the African American community,” Kennedy and Whitehouse explain in their letter which gives details of the RNC using voting caging tactics to suppress minority voters in both 1981 and 1986. After both incidents, the GOP had signed consent decrees that they would not engage in the activity in the future.

Nonetheless, email evidence has shown that in 2004, Tim Griffin created and sent caging lists on behalf of the Bush 2004 campaign as originally reported by the BBC to little American media fanfare, prior to the election. Griffin, who became an aide to Karl Rove, was later appointed by the Bush Administration as the US Attorney from Arkansas after they had fired Bud Cummins. Griffin has since resigned from the post in the wake of the scandal.

In recent testimony before the House Judiciary Committee, the now-resigned DoJ liason to the White House, Monica Goodling admitted that now-resigned Deputy Atty General Paul McNulty was less than forthcoming in his sworn Congressional testimony concerning his knowledge about Griffin’s involvement in vote caging during the 2004 campaign.

In her testimony, given under a grant of immunity from prosecution, Goodling said that McNulty “failed to disclose that he had some knowledge of allegations that Tim Griffin had been involved in vote “caging” during his work on the President’s 2004 campaign.”

Reporter Greg Palast, who initially covered the story for the BBC and charged that the lists were meant to target minority voters — many of whom were serving in the armed forces overseas in Iraq — has opined on Goodling’s admissions in an exclusive to The BRAD BLOG filed just after her testimony. Yesterday, in another BRAD BLOG exclusive, Palast discussed the recent firing of Griffin and a recent teary-eyed speech given last week in Arkansas.

“This is all made up of whole cloth,” Griffin told the assembled crowd during a Q&A session after a speech punctuated by tears. “I didn’t cage votes,” he claimed. That, despite the emails he sent in 2004 with spreadsheets listing voters attached along with the subject line “Re: caging.”

“Caging is a reprehensible voter suppression tactic, and it may also violate federal law and the terms of applicable judicially enforceable consent decrees,” the senators charge in their letter.

“It is very disturbing to think that Department officials may have approved the appointment of a United States Attorney knowing that he had engaged in racially targeted vote caging,” write the senators. “Moreover, it is very disturbing to think that senior officials were aware of this practice and did nothing to refer their information to relevant officials within the Department for investigation and a determination as to whether it was a violation of a consent decree or law within the Department’s jurisdiction to enforce.”

The letter from the senators, both of who are members of the Senate Judiciary Committee, which has been investigating elements of the U.S. Attorneys Purge, conclude, “At a time when the Department’s political independence and its commitment to enforcement of civil rights statutes have been called into doubt, it is vitally important that the Department thoroughly investigate these allegations of unlawful voter suppression, and the apparent failure of Department employees to forward to the appropriate authorities information they had about this practice.”

The press release from Kennedy and Whitehouse, along with their complete letter to Gonzales from yesterday, can be read in full here.






UNITED STATES SENATE
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: June 18, 2007

CONTACT:
Laura Capps/Melissa Wagoner (Kennedy), 202-224-2633
Alex Swartsel (Whitehouse), 202-228-6293

Senators Demand DOJ Investigation Into Voter Suppression Allegations
Kennedy, Whitehouse Ask Whether Justice Officials Knew Former Rove Aide Allegedly Engaged in Illegal “Vote Caging” Before Naming Him Interim U.S. Attorney

Washington, D.C. – U.S. Senators Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.) and Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.) today called for a Justice Department investigation into allegations of illegal voter suppression tactics by Republican political operatives, including former Karl Rove aide Tim Griffin, during the 2004 elections. Griffin is now serving as interim U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Arkansas.

“At a time when the Department’s political independence and its commitment to enforcement of civil rights statutes have been called into doubt, it is vitally important that the Department thoroughly investigate these allegations of unlawful voter suppression, and the apparent failure of Department employees to forward to the appropriate authorities information they had about this practice,” the senators wrote in a letter to Attorney General Alberto Gonzales.

The letter cites voter suppression incidents by the Republican Party in the 1980s. During the 2004 elections, e-mail evidence suggests that Tim Griffin, then a political operative at the Republican National Committee, knew and approved of a program to “cage” voters – sending a political campaign mailing to targeted voters and challenging the right to vote of those whose mail was returned undelivered – in predominantly African-American neighborhoods in Jacksonville, Florida. Last year, Griffin was appointed interim U.S. Attorney without Senate confirmation, displacing a federal prosecutor who has testified he was told he was fired to make the job available for Griffin.

Today, Senators Kennedy and Whitehouse demanded an investigation by two DOJ watchdog agencies to determine whether Griffin may have violated the Voting Rights Act or other federal laws, and whether Justice Department officials knew of Griffin’s potentially unlawful activity when he was named U.S. Attorney.

Kennedy and Whitehouse are members of the Senate Judiciary Committee, which is conducting its own investigation into the unprecedented firing late last year of several U.S. Attorneys. Senator Kennedy, a longtime champion for voting rights, will chair a Judiciary Committee hearing this Thursday on oversight of the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division. Whitehouse served as U.S. Attorney for Rhode Island from 1994-1998.

“It is very disturbing to think that Department officials may have approved the appointment of a United States Attorney knowing that he had engaged in racially targeted vote caging,” the senators wrote. “Moreover, it is very disturbing to think that senior officials were aware of this practice and did nothing to refer their information to relevant officials within the Department for investigation and a determination as to whether it was a violation of a consent decree or law within the Department’s jurisdiction to enforce.”

The full text of the letter is below.

June 18, 2007

Alberto Gonzales
Attorney General
United States Department of Justice
950 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW
Washington, D.C. 20530

Dear Attorney General Gonzales:

We write to request that the Department of Justice promptly investigate allegations that the Republican National Committee engaged in “vote caging” during the 2004 elections. We also ask that you investigate whether any Department officials were aware of allegations that Tim Griffin had engaged in caging when he was appointed United States Attorney for the Eastern District of Arkansas, and whether appropriate action was taken. Caging is a reprehensible voter suppression tactic, and it may also violate federal law and the terms of applicable judicially enforceable consent decrees.

Caging is a voter suppression tactic whereby a political campaign sends mail marked “do not forward” to a targeted group of eligible voters. A more aggressive version involves sending mail to a targeted group of voters with instructions to sign and return an acknowledgment card. The campaign then creates a list of those whose mail was returned undelivered and challenges the right of those citizens to vote – on the ground that the voter does not live at the registered address. There are many reasons why registered mail might be “returned to sender” that have nothing to do with a voter’s eligibility. A voter might be an active member of the armed forces and stationed far from home, or a student registered at his parents’ address. Even a typographical error during entry of the voter’s registration information might result in an address that appears invalid.

The Republican Party has a long and ignominious record of caging – much of it focused on the African American community. For example, in 1981 the RNC sent a mass mailing into predominantly African American neighborhoods in New Jersey and used the resulting 45,000 letters marked “undeliverable” to challenge those voters’ eligibility. In 1986, the RNC used similar tactics in an effort to disenfranchise roughly 31,000 voters, most of them African American, in Louisiana. These tactics led to litigation and the RNC’s eventual signing of two consent decrees, still in effect, which bar the RNC from using “ballot security” programs ostensibly intended to prevent voter fraud as a tactic to target minority voters.

In 2004, however, allegations of caging by Republican officials arose again – this time over an effort to suppress votes in Florida. Emails sent in August 2004 by Tim Griffin, then Research Director and Deputy Communications Director of the RNC, demonstrate his knowledge and approval of a spreadsheet listing caged voters in predominantly African American neighborhoods in Jacksonville, Florida. (See attached.) Two years later, Mr. Griffin was appointed, without Senate confirmation, as United States Attorney for the Eastern District of Arkansas. Such actions appear plainly to violate the consent decrees signed by the RNC in 1981 and 1986. We ask that you investigate whether in these circumstances Mr. Griffin or others may also have violated the Voting Rights Act, the National Voter Registration Act, the mail fraud statute, or any other federal statute.

It also appears that high-ranking officials in the Department knew of Mr. Griffin’s involvement in caging. Monica Goodling recently testified to the House Judiciary Committee that she discussed concerns about Mr. Griffin’s involvement in caging with Deputy Attorney General Paul McNulty during a session to prepare for Mr. McNulty’s Congressional testimony. It is very disturbing to think that Department officials may have approved the appointment of a United States Attorney knowing that he had engaged in racially targeted vote caging.

Moreover, it is very disturbing to think that senior officials were aware of this practice and did nothing to refer their information to relevant officials within the Department for investigation and a determination as to whether it was a violation of a consent decree or law within the Department’s jurisdiction to enforce.

We, therefore, ask the Office of the Inspector General and the Office of Professional Responsibility to conduct an investigation to determine who in DOJ knew about Mr. Griffin’s potentially unlawful activity before he was named interim U.S. Attorney, and whether appropriate action was taken on that knowledge, and to recommend whatever action is appropriate.

At a time when the Department’s political independence and its commitment to enforcement of civil rights statutes have been called into doubt, it is vitally important that the Department thoroughly investigate these allegations of unlawful voter suppression, and the apparent failure of Department employees to forward to the appropriate authorities information they had about this practice.

Sincerely,

Edward M. Kennedy
United States Senator

Sheldon Whitehouse
United States Senator

cc:
Paul D. Clement, Solicitor General
Alice S. Fisher, Assistant Attorney General, Criminal Division
Wan J. Kim, Assistant Attorney General, Civil Rights Division
Glenn A. Fine, Inspector General
H. Marshall Jarrett, Director, Office of Professional Responsibility

”

“Randi Rhodes and Greg Palast Hunt Giuliani's Favorite Vulture
by Greg Palast
June 20, 2006

"Can't he make a living in a more reputable, less disgusting way, say, in child pornography?"

Randi Rhodes is asking you, Mr. Singer. And we're still waiting for the answer. [To hear the Palast/Rhodes report, click here.]

Paul Singer is a vulture. And a billionaire. And, with his underlings at Elliott Associates, the number one sugar-daddy donor to the presidential campaign of Rudy Giuliani, dropping $168,400 so far and, according to secret campaign documents, committed to raise $10 million for Rudolf the Great, Emperor of 9/11.

So who is this bird of prey Singer who holds Rudy in his beak?

Unlike feathered predators, Singer preys on the living. Singer figured out a way to siphon off funds intended for debt relief to some of the poorest countries in the world. Nice guy.

And by the way, I didn't come up with the moniker "vulture." Just about everyone, from the new Prime Minister of Britain to the World Bank, calls Singer and his ilk "vultures."

Here's how a vulture operation works. The vulture fund buys up the debt of poor nations cheaply when it is about to be written off and then sue for the full value of the debt plus interest -- sometimes more than ten times what they paid for it. Singer, for example, paid just $10 million for Congo Brazzaville's debt and is now suing for over $400 million.

Singer knew he'd turn a 1000%-plus profit on his $10 million investment with George Bush's help.

Bush convinced the US Congress to forgive the money Congo owes the US taxpayer, but once the US taxpayer forgives Congo's debt, the vulture, Singer, swoops in with lawyers to claim, "Congo now has the money to pay ME."

But wait a minute - the debt money given up by US taxpayers wasn't supposed to go to Rudy's predator Singer. In fact, the US Constitution provides power to the President to stop vultures from suing a foreign country in a US court if the President states such a private lawsuit interferes with America's foreign policy.

Singer, by suing Congo for the taxpayer money meant for debt relief and medicine, is interfering with US foreign policy. Yet Bush has done nothing.

While the President has made big speeches about debt relief for Africa and has even had his picture taken with a Bono, he won't get in the way of Singer's talons. One wonders if the President is influenced by Mr. Singer's strong support for debt relief, that is, debt relief for the Republican Party. The world's top vulture has become top donor to the GOP in New York.

Singer's not alone. He's joined in tearing at the flesh of the Congo's poor by a Washington operator named Michael Francis Sheehan. Sheehan is also known as "Goldfinger."

Besides joining Singer in attacking Congo, Goldfinger has also taken a piece of the debt relief earmarked for AIDS medicine for Zambia. Goldfinger paid $4 million for the right to collect on Zambia's debt - and just won $22 million from Zambia in a UK court, half that nation's debt relief. Goldfinger was able to seize that money because, he boasts in an email, he secretly paid $2 million to the "favorite charity" of Zambia's president. (That former President, Frederick Chiluba, is now under arrest for taking bribes ... but Goldfinger can still collect his pound of flesh.)

Want to hear more about Rudy's and George's favorite financial predators? About Chiluba's taste in shoes (he spent one million dollars in a single shop)? About Goldfinger and the man who hold the mortgage on President Giuliani? Go here and listen up: Greg Palast with Randi Rhodes - hunting the Vultures.”

“John Perkins: Jerk, Con-man, Shill
by Greg Palast
5 July 2007

I remember John Perkins. He was a real jerk. A gold-plated, super-slick lying little butthole shill for corporate gangsters; a snake-oil salesman with a movie-star grin, shiny loafers, a crooked calculator and a tooled leather briefcase full of high-blown bull#&%!$.

This was two decades ago. The early 1980s. I wore sandals, uncombed hair down to my cheap collar and carried a busted ring-binder filled with honest calculations and sincere analysis. It was Economic Hit Man Perkins vs. Economic Long-Hair Palast. I didn't stand a chance. The EHM was about to put a political bullet hole through me wider than a silver dollar.

Hit Men have "clients." Perkins' was a giant power company, Public Service of New Hampshire. PSNH was trying to sell New England lobstermen and potato farmers on the idea that they desperately needed a multi-billion dollar nuclear plant. The fact that this bloated atomic water kettle, called "Seabrook," would produce enough electricity for everyone in the Granite State to smelt iron didn't matter. That the beast could add a surcharge to electric bills equal to home mortgages was simply smiled over by Perkins and his team of economic con artists.

To steal millions, you need a top team of armed robbers. But to steal billions, you need PhD's with color charts and economic projections made of fairy dust and eye of newt. Perkins had it all - including a magical thing called a computer-generated spreadsheet (this was well before Excel).

I was an expert witness for some consumer groups, trying to explain to state officials that Perkins' numbers were bogus as a bubble-gum bagel and his financial projections were from some New Hampshire on another planet.

But this was the key point: Perkins slept in a suite at the Omni. I had truck-rumble insomnia at the motel off exit 68. He glared and grinned and glad-handed. I tried to keep my eyes open.

Here's how it ended. The local Joe's jumped head-first into the Perkins fantasy and bought his client's power plant boondoggle. Within a couple years, the local electric companies had all gone bankrupt, the state treasury was drained, electric bills went from lowest to highest in the nation causing factories to close and dump, I figure, about 11,000 jobs.

Perkins' clients walked away with barrelfuls of billions.

And Dr. Perkins pocketed plenty for his mortal soul.

But, as in every moral tale, Perkins, the modern Dr. Faust, found redemption in confession.

And we're lucky he did. Because, in Perkins', Confessions of an Economic Hit Man, and his latest, the just-released Secret History of the American Empire, we find out what makes these guys tick. By "these guys" I mean the vultures who suck up development aide, the sharks who use the World Bank as their enforcers, the corporate marauders, power pirates and hedge fund hogs with their snouts in the economic trough.

In "Secret History," Perkins, from the inside, gives the details of the weird moral emptiness and pitilessness of men who waylay the riches of the planet from the people to whom it rightly belongs.

In New England, the pain imposed by the clients of the economic hit men were financial; but, as Perkins wants us never to forget, in much of the planet, the slick sales pitch of the economic hit man is enforced by squads of hit men with less subtle weaponry. Perkins writes:

"Three men toting AK-47s stood at attention outside. They saluted as we drove past. One of the three opened the front door opposite the driver. Leather Jacket and I climbed in. He spoke into a walkie talkie. Tinted windows made it impossible to see inside."

In lines heavy with Hemingway, Perkins takes us to Indonesia, Bolivia, even tiny Diego Garcia and other victim-states where doctorate-armed "consultants" put an academic gloss on militarized plunder.

In the story of the guys with the AKs, Perkins is on assignment in Guatemala for an outfit called SWEC, a Bechtel twin trying to foist another mad power plant horror show on the natives of Guatemala. (About the same time, I convinced the state of New York to bring racketeering charges against SWEC and its partners in a massive power plant building fraud. SWEC and co-defendants settled the civil charges for a payment of nearly half a billion dollars.)

Unlike the yokels of New Hampshire who fell for the smooth Perkins line, the Guatemalans were no pushovers. Skeptical locals, suspicious indigenous shamans and a couple of improbably courageous politicians simply wouldn't roll over to the corporate conquistadores.

The resisters, we are led to presume, will be dealt with accordingly. As Perkins explains it, if his pie-charts don't make the sale, the little men in his darkened car know a little explosive wired to an ignition could be persuasive.

However, by time he got to Central America on the corporate assignment, Perkins was already ill at heart with the SWECs of this world. Ultimately, he refused to back their destructive scheme.

Perkins had switched sides - and, in Confessions of an Economic Hit Man gets his soul back from Satan only a little soiled. In Secret History, the personal confession turns into an illuminating, world-spanning jeremiad. From Latin America to Africa to the Middle East, Perkins leaps from his own story to the widespread caused by the greed armies sent marching from the boardrooms of New York and London.

Today, Perkins is my confrere and colleague. He wears his hair longish and I wear mine . . . well, I've stopped wearing hair altogether.

And in his writings today, Perkins heart goes out to the Third World targets of this new empire ruled by shock troops and spread sheets. His empathy extends to those in the occupied territory known as the USA. Because, says Perkins, when the wretchedly ripped-off of the Earth rise in rebellion, the lash of the backlash is felt by the children of the lobstermen of New Hampshire, shivering under Humvees in Falluja, and never the EHM's clients' fortunate sons, frolicking in their Ferraris.

***********
Greg Palast is the author of Armed Madhouse: From Baghdad to New Orleans - Sordid Secrets and Strange Tales of a White House Gone Wild.

To read an except from Perkins' latest book, The Secret History of the American Empire, go to http://www.gregpalast.com/the-secret-history-of-the-american-empire-excerpt/”

“
Tonight
(Friday July 27)

Greg Palast appears on 'NOW' with David Brancaccio to report the story first broadcast for Britain's BBC Newsnight, the scheme to attack voters of color - the 'Blue' ones.

Palast lays out the latest evidence never before televised.

8:30pm Eastern.
Check local listings.

”

“Thank you Mr. Palast, I will give this report the highest priority, I will file a report and You have a nice day. (Roll of eyes)”

“Thanks, Tilt!

What network?”

“PBS, of course!

(Networks still too chicken#&%!$!)

The show is called 'NOW'... It's been on a few years. Bill Moyers used to host it but Brancaccio took over those duties ... over a year ago, I think.

You'll probably recognize Brancaccio's voice immediately because of his work on public radio.”

“http://www.pbs.org/now/shows/330/index.html


E-mails between National Republican Party headquarters and Ohio State Republican Party officials about plans to challenge voters in Ohio [pdf]

List of people in the Cleveland, Ohio area who the Republicans planned to stop on Election Day, 2004 [pdf]

Guidebook for Republicans interested in becoming poll monitors[pdf]”

“If Iglesias is correct, this is really huge. This gang is a threat to our system of government.”

“and Palast charges that they are still at it ----”

“
HURRICANE GEORGE:
How the White House Drowned New Orleans
by Greg Palast

[Thursday, August 23] It's been two years. And America's media is about to have another tear-gasm over New Orleans. Maybe Anderson Cooper will weep again. The big networks will float into the moldering corpse of the city and give you uplifting stories about rebuilding and hope.

Now, let's cut through the cry-baby crap. Here's what happened two years ago - and what's happening now.

This is what an inside source me. And it makes me sick:

"By midnight on Monday, the White House knew. Monday night I was at the state Emergency Operations Center and nobody was aware that the levees had breeched. Nobody."

The charge is devastating: That, on August 29, 2005, the White House withheld from the state police the information that New Orleans was about to flood. From almost any other source, I would not have believed it. But this was not just any source. The whistle-blower is Dr. Ivor van Heerden, deputy director of the Louisiana State University Hurricane Center, the chief technician advising the state on saving lives during Katrina.

I'd come to van Heerden about another matter, but in our talks, it was clear he had something he wanted to say, and it was a big one. He charged that the White House, FEMA and the Army Corp hid, for critical hours, their discovery that the levees surrounding New Orleans were cracking, about to burst and drown the city.

Understand that Katrina never hit New Orleans. The hurricane swung east of the city, so the state evacuation directors assumed New Orleans was now safe - and evacuation could slow while emergency efforts moved east with the storm.

But unknown to the state, in those crucial hours on Monday, the federal government's helicopters had filmed the cracks that would become walls of death by Tuesday.

Van Heerden revealed:

"FEMA knew at 11 o'clock on Monday that the levees had breeched. At 2p.m. they flew over he 17th Street Canal and took video of the breech."

Question: "So the White House wouldn't tell you the levees had breeched?"

Dr. Van Heerden: "They didn't tell anybody."

Question: "And you're at the Emergency Center.'

Dr. Van Heerden: "I mean nobody knew. The Corps of Engineers knew. FEMA knew. None of us knew."

I could not get the White House gang to respond to the charges.

That leaves the big, big question: WHY? Why on earth would the White House not tell the state to get the remaining folks out of there?

The answer: cost. Political and financial cost. A hurricane is an act of God - but a catastrophic failure of the levees is a act of Bush. That is, under law dating back to 1935, a breech of the federal levee system makes the damage - and the deaths - a federal responsibility. That means, as van Heeden points out, that "these people must be compensated."

The federal government, by law, must build and maintain the Mississippi levees to withstand known dangers - or pay the price when they fail.

Indeed, that was the rule applied in the storms that hit Westhampton Dunes, New York, in 1992. There, when federal sea barriers failed, the flood waters wiped away 190 homes. The feds rebuilt them from the public treasury. But these were not just any homes. They are worth an average of $3 million apiece - the summer homes of movie stars and celebrity speculators.

There were no movie stars floating face down in the Lower Ninth Ward nor in Lakeview nor in St. Bernard Parish. For the 'luvvies' of Westhampton Dunes, the federal government even trucked in sand to replace the beaches. But for New Orleans' survivors, there's the aluminum gulag of FEMA trailer parks. Today, two years later, 89,000 families still live in this mobile home Guantanamo - with no plan whatsoever for their return.

And what was the effect of the White House's self-serving delay?

I spoke with van Heerden in his university office. The computer model of the hurricane flashed quietly as I waited for him to answer. Then he said, "Fifteen hundred people drowned. That's the bottom line."

They could have survived Hurricane Katrina. But they got no mercy from Hurricane George.”

“Ethnic Cleansing by hurricane??”

“Due to a court case, the levees in California, which are in WORSE shape than LA's, are the responsibility of the state (not like Arnie has made any grand in-roads in that regard and keeps trying to bat it back to the feds who, in turn, shoot it down).

Ahhhh, once again our pres. is a shinning example of how NOT to do something...”

“Weren't the California levees also the subject of one of those Weather Channel "It Could Happen Tomorrow" scenarios?”

“Ethnic Cleansing by hurricane??”
MarkO
1:51:15 PM
8/23/07

Yeah, no kidding! How does Palast come up with such stupid ideas? This guy makes the right wing nuts look like Rhodes scholars.”

“Yeah, basically if there is a serious flood, we're completely phucked. Some people keep boats on their roofs...”

“Bush causes floods, don't ya know. (LOL)”

“Smarts ain't got nuttin' to do wid it.”

“I agree. Apparently he doesn't let something like an obvious lack of intelligence keep him from put his ideas in writing.”

“I used to think you had some sense.”

“Bush’s Fake Sheik Whacked:
The Surge and the Al Qaeda Bunny

A special investigative report from inside Iraq

by Greg Palast

Monday, September 17, 2007- Did you see George all choked up? In his surreal TV talk on Thursday, he got all emotional over the killing by Al Qaeda of Sheik Abu Risha, the leader of the new Sunni alliance with the US against the insurgents in Anbar Province, Iraq.

Bush shook Abu Risha's hand two weeks ago for the cameras. Bush can shake his hand again, but not the rest of him: Abu Risha was blown away just hours before Bush was to go on the air to praise his new friend.

Here's what you need to know that NPR won't tell you.

1. Sheik Abu Risha wasn't a sheik.
2. He wasn't killed by Al Qaeda.
3. The new alliance with former insurgents in Anbar is as fake as the sheik - and a murderous deceit.

How do I know this? You can see the film - of "Sheik" Abu Risha, of the guys who likely whacked him and of their other victims.

Just in case you think I've lost my mind and put my butt in insane danger to get this footage, don't worry. I was safe and dry in Budapest. It was my brilliant new cameraman, Rick Rowley, who went to Iraq to get the story on his own.

Rick's "the future of TV news," says BBC. He's also completely out of control. Despite our pleas, Rick and his partner Dave Enders went to Anbar and filmed where no cameraman had dared tread.

(more)

”

“Tiltypoo's favorite fellow liar, passing as a 'journalist'. So 'cutting edge', he can and does, use the 'N' word to describe black people.”

“Yeah but if a liberal does it they are given a pass...Remember Ted Danson in BLACK FACE????HMMMM????

NOT a smidgen out of the press.”

“The Sheik was a fake, but was still dipped in the Sheik and bake, rollum up that is a take.”

“Sheik Yerbouti, Disco Boys.

(actually more like Po-jama People, but WTF)”

“Student Tasered for Armed Madhouse Question to Kerry

"[Palast] said you won the 2004 election - isn't that amazing?
There were multiple reports of disenfranchising of Black voters on the day of the election in 2004 in Florida and Ohio. ... How could you concede the election on the day?"

by Greg Palast
Watch the Video

We warned you: 'Armed Madhouse' is a dangerous book. Yesterday, Andrew Meyers, a University of Florida student was attacked by five cops, zapped with tasers and arrested after demanding that Senator John Kerry answer the question.

Meyers, just released from jail and now facing five years in prison for resisting arrest, held up a copy of the book and began,

Student to John Kerry: "I want to recommend a book to you. It's called 'Armed Madhouse by Greg Palast.' He's the top investigative journalist in America."

Kerry: "I have the book. I've already read it."

Student: "... In this book, it says there were 5 million votes and you won the election. ... How could you concede the election on the day?"

Meyers, a telecommunications student at the Gainesville campus, asked related questions including a query as to why Kerry refused to vote for impeachment. When he passed his alloted one minute mic time, five cops jumped him, threw him to the ground, shot him with taser shockers.

Kerry, true to character, stood immobile.

Now, I've given many talks. And some questioners have taken too long at the mic. But I've never done the Stalin thing of cops and electronic beating to limit the discussion. (Yes, it's true that Randi Rhodes recently threatened me with a taser when I've monopolized the mic in her studio.)

The Washington Post reported only that Meyers was holding a "mysterious yellow book." VERY mysterious.

I would note that enchained student was busted in Alachua County, Florida, where, six years ago, I uncovered massive, systematic and utterly illegal disenfranchisement of Black voters - ordered by Gov. Jeb Bush's office just before the 2000 election. ("Florida's Disappeared Voters," February 2001, The Nation.) Alachua remains under federal scrutiny for its long history of racial bias against Black voters.

I must admit I feel some appreciation for Meyers, especially because, even while he was being shot with untold amps of electricity, until he was handcuffed, he would not let go of his mysterious yellow book, 'Armed Madhouse.'


Hear the update live tonight on the new "Palast Report" on Air America Radio. The Palast Report will now broadcast every Tuesday night, at 9:30pm, on Richard Greene's new weeknight show, "Clout."

And get America's most SHOCKING book, the New York Times bestseller, ARMED MADHOUSE: From Baghdad to New Orleans -- Sordid Secrets and Strange Tales of a White House Gone Wild (Penguin 2007).

Subscribe to Palast's writings and view his investigative reports for BBC Television's Newsnight, at www.GregPalast.com.”

“YADDDA YADDA YADDA....amazing Tiltypoo but totally and COMPLETELY unsupported...kinda a Cindy Sheehan wackyness.”

“But for God's sake --- don't depend on blogs (or outlets who repeat the rumors and outright lies from blogs). Your own credibility will suffer.”
Tilt
10:57:”

“CREDIBILITY? sheet he is a libby....you know

"Some are more equal than others."”

“Proven liars should have enough sense than to cast stones, tiltypoo.”

“DAN RATHER:  TASED AND CONFUSED
The Still-Unreported Story of "Top Gun" George Bush

Monday September 24, 2007

New York- Newly unearthed records reveal that, in 2004, when Americans were in the midst of a brutal electoral battle over whether to reelect a president posing as a war hero, a commanding US reporter, Dan Rather, went AWOL.

Just three months before the election, Rather had a story that might have changed the outcome of that razor-close race. We now know that Dan cut a back-room deal to shut his mouth, grab his ankles, and let his network retract a story he knew to be absolutely true.

In September 2004 when Rather cowered, Bush was riding high in the polls. Now, with Bush's approval ratings are below smallpox, Rather has come out of hiding to shoot at the lame duck. Thanks, Dan.

It began on September 8, 2004, when Rather, on CBS, ran a story that Daddy Bush Senior had, in 1968, put in the fix to get his baby George out of the Vietnam War and into the Texas Air National Guard. Little George then rode out the war defending Houston from Viet Cong attack.

The story is stone-cold solid. I know, because we ran it on BBC Television a year before CBS (see that broadcast here). BBC has never retracted a word of it.

But CBS caved. So did Dan.

That's according to Rather's written confession, his law suit, which is as much a shameful set of admissions as it is a legal complaint. In the suit filed Thursday, Rather tells us that Sumner Redstone, CEO of Viacom, owner of CBS, was "enraged that the [Air Guard] Broadcast had hurt CBS in the eyes of the Bush administration." Viacom then set out to, "divert public attention from the accurate facts reported in the Broadcast concerning President Bush's service (and lack thereof) in the TexANG during the Vietnam War; and enable CBS and Viacom to curry favor with the White House…."

Redstone roared and Dan, hearing his Dark Lord's voice, admits he then "refrained from defending" the truths in the Broadcast. Dan shut his mouth, he confesses, in return for 30 pieces of Viacom silver: a promise that "his contract would be extended."

Had Rather stood up to the Viacommunist thugs and defended his story, President Kerry and our nation could today express gratitude for his public service. Instead, Dan traded the public interest for airtime on 60 Minutes. Yuck.

Now Dan is shocked to find that the network snakes didn't live up to their slimey bargain with him. Well, Dan, that's what happens with snakes. Get in bed with them and wake up slimed.


The Story Still Not Reported

By contrast, BBC never backed down from the story of the fix that got Little George out of 'Nam. We had a smoking hot document [view it here] and an interview with the crucial source: the man who confessed to making the call for Bush to the head of the Air Guard.

No, I won't give you his name. I don't expose sources - unlike Dan and CBS. That's another thing that makes me just FURIOUS. Rather revealed, then blamed, a source, retired Air Guard officer Lt. Col. Bill Burkett. Burkett, an Abilene rancher, is a courageous, stand-up guy. [See The Real Lt. Col. Burkett]. But after standing up with Dan, he was ruined, ostracized from the cattle business. No one would sell him feed. Dan got a multi-million dollar kiss-off from Viacom. Burkett got dead cows and bankruptcy.

And there's more. More that Dan didn't report. As I said, Dan picked up an old story, one that I reported, as did others, in 1999. But we added our discovery of a confidential document which had walked its way out of the files of the US Department of Justice. It was a whistleblower statement that explained why the Lt. Governor of Texas, Ben Barnes, who arranged for George W. to get into the Air Guard, kept silent about it for 35 years. It states that, in 1997, Governor George W. Bush overruled his state's Lottery director and gave a billion-dollar contract to a company tied to Barnes. Barnes received a cool fee of $23 million from the contractor.

This is a devastating accusation. And one that's more serious than the scandal of a draft-dodging rich kid's vile use of daddy's connections three decades ago. Here was evidence of gross abuse of public office by Governor Bush to pay off a crony who kept silent while Bush ran for the presidency.


US Reporting:  Don't Ask, Don't Tell

But how could I expect Rather to take on the tough story when he wouldn't stand by the easy one? In June 2002, two years before his media lynching, Rather explained his Fear of Reporting in an interview on BBC Television (cautiously, to a European audience only):

“It’s an obscene comparison but there was a time in South Africa when people would put flaming tires around people’s necks if they dissented. In some ways, the fear is that you will be neck-laced here, you will have a flaming tire of lack of patriotism put around your neck. It’s that fear that keeps journalists from asking the toughest of the tough questions and to continue to bore-in on the tough questions so often. Again, I’m humbled to say I do not except myself from this criticism.”

This is what's so frustrating about Dan Rather. He's two people: a real journalist locked inside a television news-actor begging for air-time. Indeed, disgustingly, in his law suit, he conceals his inner reporter by claiming he only "narrated" the draft dodge story. For shame.

But what about all those other preening birds on the chicken ranch known as US television news? Rather tells us he wasn't alone in failing to ask tough questions. Not one damn US reporter asked Bush at a press conference, "Yes or no, Mr. President: Did your daddy call Ben Barnes to get you out of the war in Vietnam?"

[For the record, BBC did ask for the President's denial or admission. We got none. And when Dan's CBS boss, Leslie Moonves, said Dan's story, "ignored information that cast doubt" on the revelation that Bush Sr. put in the fix to get his son into the Air Guard, I asked Moonves to provide that information. In fact, I offered him $100,000 for his info which would have shown Dan's story false. He never produced it.]

The same week Dan confessed that he agreed to shut up, a journalism student, Andrew Meyer of Florida, insisted on asking tough questions of the man Bush defeated, John Kerry. For Andrew's impertinence, he was hit with 50,000 volts from a taser.

Andrew is just a student and still needs a couple of lessons in posing questions properly. (Lesson One: "Wear a grounding wire.") But Andrew has the next lesson down pat: ask the question they don't want to hear when they don't want to hear it. Rather could use a few lessons in journalism himself - from Andrew - about taking the heat for the story.

Seeing Andrew's arrest and Dan's complaint, I was thinking that perhaps, instead of tase-ing those reporters who ask questions, we might tase those who don't.

***************************”

““But for God's sake --- don't depend on blogs (or outlets who repeat the rumors and outright lies from blogs). Your own credibility will suffer.”
Tilt
10:57:”


Greg Palast - Tiltypoo's favorite fellow liar, passing as a 'journalist'. So 'cutting edge', he can and does, use the 'N' word to describe black people.”

“JUST in case you missed it..... LMAO”

“Hypocrite Much, tiltypoo?
[VBG]”

“Tasered Florida Student on Palast Report
Today on Air America Radio
It’s not the volts, it’s the votes

by Zach Roberts
GregPalast.com

The student shocked by a taser gun last month at the University of Florida while questioning Senator John Kerry will appear today on The Palast Report on Air America Radio.

Andrew Meyer will join Greg Palast's investigative segment on the Air America program "Clout." Check www.GregPalast.com for listings and AirAmericaRadio.com.

Palast's office is in contact with the Senator's office to see if Kerry will answer Meyer's question - without an armed guard.

Meyer, who appeared this morning on the Today show (check out the clip here) sandwiched between reports on Britney Spears, Oprah Winfrey and Heather Mill's, was the only guest who managed to sneak in a matter of substance on the gossip and title broadcast. Meyer told Today that the real issue isn't the volts he received, but the votes uncounted.

As he told NBC earlier, "The first question I asked the Senator [Kerry] was about his concession of the 2004 election. Greg Palast, author of 'Armed Madhouse,' the book I was holding up at the forum, proved that John Kerry won the 2004 election. The ultimate point I was trying to make was to bring up the heinous way millions of American votes were chucked in the garbage on Election Day."

In Armed Madhouse, and in stories for Harpers Magazine and BBC Television Newsnight, Palast reported that Gainesville, Florida, where Meyer attends school, is the center of attacks on the rights of Black voters. In 2000, Governor Jeb Bush ordered the illegal purge of thousands of voters, the majority of them African-American, as felons who did not have the right to vote. One was Pastor Thomas Johnson of Gainesville, ironically, a personal friend of Jeb Bush - but an African-American and so, said the improperly pastor, barred from casting a ballot.

In 2004, the Palast BBC Team discovered that African-American voters Florida, including soldiers on active duty, were the targeted by "caging" lists disseminated by Karl Rove's assistant for the purpose of wrongly blocking their right to vote. Congressman John Conyers, Chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, has begun an investigation of this voter caging scam.

Meyer said he wanted to know why Kerry, who said he's read the Palast investigative reports, so rapidly conceded the Presidential race in 2004, thereby abandoning these African-American voters. Currently, Meyer is on assignment to follow up on the fate of Florida's disenfranchised voters as a student intern with the Palast team.

"I've told Andrew," said Palast, "If you're going to ask tough questions, for God's sake, wear a grounding wire."

In 2001, Palast, while filming for BBC Television, was himself removed from the Office of Katherine Harris after asking her elections supervisor about the purge of Black voters. Palast's removal is captured on the BBC Film, "Bush Family Fortunes."”

“That's really something.....this guy manages to uncover all this evidence yet no one is paying attention? I wonder why?

Does he know who blew up the Twin Towers too? Inside job, I bet.”

“Nobody's right, if everybody's wrong.”

“Another Palast fan! Cool.”

“Dismissal is the purest form of flattery.”

“This kills me..... Even when Palast writes a column slamming Kerry or Hillary, etc. they still give him crap.

Brains on autopilot?”